DREAM ON (Mark Appleton #2)

by Patterson, Aaron

  Taras walked onto the back porch that looked over the ocean. It was beautiful, and with the day he’d had, it was the perfect end. He felt good now that his urge had been fed. It was a sweet release that ran from his head down to his toes. Killing—there was nothing like it.

  As he fired up the engine, he flipped open his cell phone and sent a text message. It read, “Go, Code: Dreamcatcher.”

  Looking at his watch, he waited for five minutes. As he crested the hill, he saw the city lights come into view, and then he saw a mushroom cloud rise from the earth—a red glow filling its underbelly.

  The first school was a surprise even for him. He never thought that the American people would love their pocketbooks more than their children. But the calls into the hotline came back with 64% in favor of bombing a school. Their pride and arrogance was overwhelming. Maybe he would learn to love them after all. They thought like he did. You can always make more kids, but oil is a scarce resource!

  * * *

  A DARK HOODED MAN slipped onto the school grounds without much notice. The bomb he carried was the size of a cigarette lighter. He found the boiler room and strapped it to the main gas line that fed the entire school premises.

  Harry S. Truman High School was bigger than he had thought. He walked in with eyes down, as if he were a maintenance man. The chemical that he now carried would mix with the air, and a single drop would destroy anything within a hundred yards.

  After setting everything up, he walked to the street where he grabbed a cab and headed away from the school. He didn’t want to be a victim of his own bomb. The city lights bounced off the side of the cab and back toward the neon city signs. It looked like a movie set with the roads wet from a short shower and the smell of fresh mountain air, even this far in the city. After ten minutes he had the driver pull over and let him out.

  He was a short man in his late twenties with a dark, braided goatee. Taras was not only his boss but also The Boss. His name was enough for the hooded man to cower in fear and not ask any questions.

  The bar had a soft glow from a half-broken sign that used to say Gabe’s, but only the G and the a remained lit. Pushing open the door, he found a place at the bar and sat down. He was known around this part of town, and the bartender slid a cold mug of moose drool in front of him.

  “Thanks.” He didn’t feel like talking tonight. The city was on edge. The bombings that were soon to come were in the back of everyone’s mind. Somehow, they just knew there was no way to avoid the chaos.

  His cell rumbled in his pocket and his heart jumped. Looking at the number, he opened it up and read the text message. Reaching his hand into his coat pocket, he felt the cold metal of the remote detonator with his fingertips. You’ll never be forgiven for this.

  He mashed down on the device, sending an electronic signal through the air and over miles. It found its target and ignited the small bomb. He heard a popping sound followed by a ripping, shrill shriek. It cut through the night air. The world was about to change.

  * * *

  CARSON RAN FROM HIS office just in time to see the news come on the flat screen TVs that were placed everywhere throughout the FBI building. He knew what it was going to say when he saw the smoke rising from the New York skyline. Director Jacobson was coming from his office with three top agents in tow. Carson almost collided with them, and the director turned on him, angry.

  “Carson, what do you want? We’ve got an emergency on our hands!” He pushed up his thick glasses.

  “I have new information. The WJA didn’t do it. They aren’t Chaos.”

  “What are you talking about?” He pushed past Carson and headed for the elevator. “We’ve been called to an emergency meeting with the president. We don’t have time for theories.”

  Carson slid past the closing elevator door and opened the file on the Karjanskis. “Sir, this is the person called Chaos. Her name is Emily Dobson. She is involved in the Russian Mafia.”

  “Mafia? What Mafia? The Russians can hardly blow their noses without us, let alone blow up a building.”

  “Just look at the file, please.” Carson handed the thick file to Director Jacobson, and he thumbed through it. His eyes grew large when he saw the photo of Taras Karjanski. “Oh!”

  “You know him, sir?” Carson didn’t like the reaction from his boss. Not much got him worried, much less shocked.

  “This is General Karjanski. We all believed he was killed in a bombing a few years back. He is ruthless, and has the power to pull off something like this. Carson, where did you get this information?”

  Carson pulled on his collar and looked away. “From an old friend of mine. I swore I wouldn’t say, sir. But it’s legit, I promise you.”

  Jacobson didn’t like the answer but brushed it aside. “You’re coming with us to meet the president. Tell him everything you know about this. You got that?”

  “Yes, sir.” Carson felt a lump the size of a potato fill his throat. He had never met the president, much less had a meeting with him. He adjusted his tie and tried to look like he wasn’t scared out of his mind. You had better be right, Kirk Weston, or my name will go down in history, and not for a good reason.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  KIRK MUTTERED UNDER HIS breath. He hated small, confined spaces, and right now he was on his knees crawling through a tunnel that was getting smaller by the minute. They’d been going through this tunnel for at least an hour. They had been through two large rooms that led nowhere.

  Isis called from up ahead. “I think I found the exit.”

  The cave gave off a breath of fresh air as they emerged from underground. They had gone a few miles, and from the looks of it, they were farther inland. And no closer to finding Mark or Solomon. Then he noticed something.

  “See the bent grass. It looks like drag marks.” Kirk said. The small trail of bent grass led them fifty yards west, where there were signs of a struggle. The second entrance had a few spent casings on the ground and blood splattered on the dirt and rocks. Isis bent down and took a sample of the blood with her DNAX device, which would search the DNA in all government and WJA listings. It got results within seconds.

  “Solomon!” Isis took a few more samples but couldn’t find anything besides his blood and some hair. They followed the drag marks.

  Kirk entered a cave that led downward to an old wooden door. He pulled on his glasses and scanned through the door. The room was empty. The door was half open, and as he entered, he could smell the stench of dried blood and sweat.

  The room was wrecked. One table was on its side, and torture devices, with blood on their blades, were scattered all over the floor. A cold, metal table stood in the center of the room with blood-soaked straps for a victim’s legs and arms. The table was red with blood. It looked like there had been a slaughter…

  Isis took samples and found traces of Mark’s DNA, as well as Solomon’s. A third set was from Emily Dobson. Taras must have killed her. Or maybe Mark put up a fight and wounded her. No bodies were anywhere to be found.

  After searching the room for over an hour, they called for a cleanup crew. The WJA would go over everything with a fine-toothed comb and clean the area, leaving no trace that anyone had ever been there.

  Kirk sat in the tall grass and looked over the rolling hills. He had lost the Red Dog once again. This game was beginning to get old. Isis sat down next to him and took his hand in hers. She looked up at him with her beautiful dark eyes and smiled. “We’ll get him, we always do.”

  Kirk leaned down, kissed her on the forehead, then looked off in the distance. His cell phone vibrated, and seconds later Isis’s phone was chirping as well. They looked at each other and checked the text message.

  School bombed. Report back to base A.S.A.P.

  * * *

  WITH THE THREAT OF oil refineries going up in smoke, gas prices doubled over night. Security and private militia groups were hired and sent to scour each refinery. The military in each country that housed oil refineries sent out u
nits armed with bomb-sniffing dogs, and the massive hunt began.

  OPEC put a lock on any oil being sent out, in case there was an emergency. They wanted to have enough in reserve to keep up with the demand. There were long lines at every gas station. Gas was now the most valuable substance on earth.

  Taras landed at his refinery in Equatorial Guinea with a smile. He was having even more of an effect on the American economy then he could have imagined. Equitorial Guinea was the same as he had left it, but it grew hotter with each passing week.

  Abe’s landing was so dusty he put a wet rag over his face so he could breathe. Taras made his way to the main entrance. The brand new door looked nice, and the smell of fresh paint made Taras grin in satisfaction. He opened the door to meet the new supervisor, one of his own men from the old country.

  “General, it is an honor to see you again.” The tall blond man had a name, but Taras didn’t remember it. He cared less for this man than he did for the choking dust that seemed to cover everything.

  “Is everything in order?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Good, I will inspect your work. You may wait for my report.” Taras turned, followed Abe down the stairs, and sat in the waiting Jeep. The tour took over an hour. Nevertheless, it was worth it. The buildings and project were impressive by anyone’s standards. He saw that everything was polished and painted. He could eat off the floor if he wanted to.

  “What do you think, Abe?” Taras lit a fat cigar and took a long drag.

  “Looks nice. You won’t find a more beautiful operation on this planet.”

  “Well said. And true, my old friend.”

  The ride back to the top was quiet as Taras thought of the next stage in his plan. He knew it would hurt him, but in the end, he would rise to the occasion and stomp the world under his feet.

  The scared supervisor wiped sweat from his face and paced the room as he waited for the verdict. Taras enjoyed his torment, so he sat smoking his cigar without saying a word. Ten minutes went by, and then he spoke in Russian,.

  “Well done, you may tell your family you pleased me.” Taras blew a ring of smoke that drifted toward the scared Russian.

  “Thank you, sir. Thank you!” The man bowed and watched as Taras walked out the door. The chopper took off and disappeared from view, making the supervisor sigh in relief.

  Twenty minutes later, a single MQ1 Predator, armed with two laser-guided Hellfire antitank missiles with nuclear warheads, silently slipped through the air. The missiles engaged and dove toward the refinery with earth-shattering speed.

  The Russian sat down in his high-backed chair and took a sip of his black coffee just in time to feel the reverberation of the molten fireball as it crashed through the refinery’s office. The blast could be felt over one hundred miles away, and, to the tiny town nearby, it felt like a small earthquake. The next stage had begun. Operation Dreamcatcher was now underway.

  * * *

  THE GRAY, STREAKED HAIR of the president of the United States was disheveled, and he had dark circles under his eyes. The news media and the country was in a panic, as, one after another, oil refineries and oil fields were bombed.

  The Joint Chief of Staff, Conner Wells, sat silently with the rest of the Cabinet and the FBI and CIA. The oval office was packed, yet the room was so quiet you could hear the clock ticking on the wall. Tick, tick…it was a reminder of the precious time that was slipping by as they tried to gather information on The General, whose existence had just been revealed to the president.

  “Gentlemen, ladies. How do we stop this Dog—this, what does he call himself?”

  “Red Dog, sir.” Carson was standing with his hands shoved in his pockets. He was so nervous that he could feel his sweat running down his back.

  “Yes, Red Dog, whatever. I need more than information from an unknown source. Agent Carson, you know this source?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “So tell me, what do you suggest we do with that unverified info?” The president paced the floor between his desk and the rest of the group.

  Carson wiped the moisture from his forehead with the back of his hand and looked at Captain Jacobson for some kind of support. His blank stare was confirmation that he was on his own with this one. The fate of America and maybe the rest of the world rested in what Carson had locked inside his head.

  “Sir, have you ever heard of the World Justice Agency?”

  Jacobson started to interject but Carson didn’t give him time to butt in. “It is an elite group of, shall we say, vigilantes, who are so well-funded and organized that we don’t know who their leaders are or even where their headquarters are located. We have set up a special task force just for them, but even after years of searching we are no closer to finding them than when we first started.”

  “Go on.”

  After this little speech, he was sure he would be fired, if not sent to prison for revealing top-secret information to a room full of people who may or may not be classified.

  “May I?” He walked over to the computer screen that hung on the wall, accessed the controls that slid from the control panel, and began typing. He pulled up his personal computer remotely and opened up a file marked Favorite Local Restaurants.

  “They are linked with hundreds, if not thousands, of hits. Murders of prominent villains: Al Capone, Hitler, Saddam Hussein, all killed by WJA. The rest is an elaborate hoax by the FBI to keep up appearances.”

  Whispers crossed the room as Carson ran through countless files and cases involving assassinations. “One thing is common through all of this. The symbol WJA is stamped or found at every site, connected with every case. If we won’t punish the crime, then they will, down to the smallest cases like this one involving an eight-year-old girl who was kidnapped and later killed. We never caught the killer, but a year later, a State Representative turned up dead in a hotel room with a video pinned to his chest of him confessing to the crime. It was later confirmed by DNA that he was the killer.”

  Carson suddenly worried that he had said too much. They were sure to think he had lost his marbles.

  The president sat on his high-back, leather chair with a thoughtful look on his face. “This is all very interesting, but what does this have to do with our current problem?”

  “We first believed that the WJA was involved in the Chaos notes, but I think they’re on our side. They’re the ones who have given me this information on Taras Karjanski. They’re the only ones who can stop him.”

  Captain Jacobson jumped up and protested. “Now, hold on a minute! This is all circumstantial. They could still be the instigators. They certainly are powerful enough. We don’t know whose side they are on, or that they didn’t fabricate this whole thing to lead us on a wild goose chase.” The captain was red in the face, and Carson wondered where he’d be applying for his next job.

  The room erupted with arguments and conjecture. Finally, the president held up his hand and called the meeting to order. “Okay, I can see that this is a touchy subject. I believe that with the evidence before me, we don’t have much of a choice here. We need to contact this WJA group. Through the papers or news media, I don’t care how, just get it done. Make it happen, people.”

  The meeting was dismissed, but Carson and Captain Jacobson were asked to stay behind. “Mr. President, I feel this is a mistake.”

  “Captain Jacobson, I hear your concerns, but I think this is the best course for the country. I need you on board with me on this, you understand?” The captain stood stiffly and nodded.

  “Agent Carson. You get to your contact and do whatever is necessary to get a meeting with this group. I want someone from the World Justice Agency in front of my desk by tomorrow. Got it?”

  * * *

  A MEETING OF EQUAL proportions was going on at the Merc building down in the deepest parts of the WJA headquarters. Every agent and field operative was in attendance, and Big B was leading. They had one case and one case alone.

  Find and stop Taras Karja
nski.

  Isis couldn’t stop thinking about Solomon and Mark. Their leaders were gone in the time of crisis. She knew Taras had carefully planned that. Were they still alive? Mark, we need you! Where are you?

  The energy that usually filled the halls of the Merc building had slipped away, leaving a hole in everyone’s heart. Solomon, their leader, was feared to be dead, and the country they loved was being terrorized by a madman.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  I SUCKED IN A breath of air and gasped for another. The stale air was thick with the smell of blood and body odor.

  In the darkness, the dreams kept coming. I watched the world I loved go up in smoke, and a depression brought on by a bankrupt economy and the total cut-off of foreign oil ravage my country. The bombs took out not only the oil across Africa, but ripped through Asia and Russia as well. The dead refineries in the Middle East couldn’t be jumpstarted fast enough to keep up with the panic and fear that had set in. America was in an uncontrolled downward spiral.

  The same dreams plagued my mind as I lay in the dark. I tried everything to escape, but with each passing minute, the air was getting harder and harder to breathe. My own stench soon was unnoticeable to me. My wounds didn’t even hurt anymore. I was trained to block out any pain and keep my mind sharp and in control; however, some things are beyond training.

  The time I spent asleep was the time I cherished. It was the only time I could see K and Sam. They came alive in my dreams. I could smell K’s sweet perfume as it wafted across the room from her perfect shoulders. Sam would giggle and jump into my lap, demanding a story.

  My mind played tricks on me as I tried to avoid the thin line separating sanity and insanity. The only thing I could do was hide. Therefore, I created a safe place to go, deep within my subconscious. Sometimes I feared it was the same place you go when you die. Each time I went there, I had to fight and struggle to make it out again. In this place, K, Sam, and I were in a small room, just talking. I talked with them about anything and everything. I would go to this place and shield my mind from the mental hopelessness that was pushing down on me.