Sam winced, letting John know he’d gotten his point across. Seeing the pain in his sister’s eyes softened him.
“If not for me, then for Dad. We’ve just recently been able to put the past behind us and be a family again, and I don’t want to lose that.”
“Okay, you’re right. So you already know about Dad’s research of the Capanhuaco tribe in the Amazon. He had finally convinced the tribe to take him to their ancestral home, and that’s where he was last spring. Well, he and his team disappeared. Francisco called and asked me to lead a search party to find him and we did, but not before I was kidnapped.”
“What? Who in the hell kidnapped you?”
“A man named Francis Dumond. He was the guy who funded Dad’s trips, but Dad didn’t know it was him. Dumond wanted something that Dad was looking for in Peru.”
“What did he want?”
Sam took a deep breath. “A power source unlike anything known to man.”
A look of confusion spread across John’s face. “A power source in the middle of the Amazon? That doesn’t make any sense.”
“This is why Dad and I decided not to tell you. Dad was looking for an ancient civilization that lived underground in the Amazon, and he found it. But it turns out that this civilization was more technologically advanced than any other group in the region. Dad even thought they might not be human, but had interbred with some of the local tribes and taken on human traits. I was really skeptical about the whole thing, but after I met the tribe that led Dad to their ruins, I wasn’t sure what to believe.”
“Hang on. You met with this tribe? What was it about them that was so unbelievable?”
“The way they looked was … strange. And then there was the way they communicated with dad.”
“Dad had a conversation with this tribe?”
“Not exactly. Dad said they communicated through telepathy. He believed that they were so advanced that they had moved beyond the need for speaking. They were the ones who told him that I was in trouble and what Dumond was doing.”
John’s eyebrow lifted at this revelation, but he wanted to know the rest of the story.
“So how did you and Dad get away?”
“Dumond had a partner who turned on him, and we escaped during a gun fight. We got out just before the volcano erupted.”
“Are you talking about the eruption of El Misti in Arequipa?”
“Yep. We were there and so were these creatures, along with Dumond and his men.”
“Geez, Sam! How could you guys have kept this from me?” John shook his head in disbelief, looking away from his sister.
“Sorry, Johnny, we thought we were doing the right thing. We thought the less you knew, the safer you would be in case this Dumond character popped up again. We didn’t mean to keep you in the dark. We were just trying to protect you.”
John paced around the room, shaking his head, muttering under his breath. He finally cooled and walked back to Sam.
“I can’t believe you guys didn’t tell me about this.”
Sam stared at the ground.
“I understand what you and Dad were trying to do, but if we’re going to be a family again, you have to be honest with me,” John said.
“You’re right.”
John walked over to a chair and sat down, contemplating what his sister had told him. Sam followed, taking a seat next to him.
“This may explain what’s been happening to Dad and me.”
“How?”
John removed the folder from his jacket and tossed it on the coffee table.
Sam wrinkled her nose. “What’s that?”
“It’s the reason Jacob disappeared and why these guys are chasing me. This folder contains information about a secret government program called Project MK Ultra. The CIA was experimenting on people without their knowledge, trying to see if mind control was possible. They had limited success, but kept pursuing it. This is some pretty serious stuff, and it was all illegal. The courts shut it down and the program ended in the 1970s. At least that’s the public story.”
“What do you mean?”
“I think the government continued the program in a different form. Do you know what Jacob and I were working on?”
“I know you were conducting psychological research on the efficacy of some new treatments for people with depression.”
“Right, and the key to that therapy was the ability to target and erase specific, traumatic memories. We theorized that doing this would help people move past their grief, letting them live a normal, happy life. We began research to create a new drug that would interfere with the neurotransmitters that the brain uses to recall past memories in the hippocampus and the frontal cortex.”
“Remember, I’m not a neurobiologist,” Sam said.
“Sorry. Newer memories are stored mostly in an area of the brain known as the hippocampus, while older memories are stored mostly in the frontal cortex. But recalling a memory involves both areas of the brain. Since a traumatic experience could have happened at any time in the past, we had to find a drug that would interfere with memory recall…”
“…in both parts of the brain at the same time,” Sam commented.
“Right. We had a breakthrough about ten months ago in our lab. We developed a new compound that isolated the process in lab animals, but there was a side effect.”
“What was it?”
“The drug caused temporary paralysis, but after a few hours, the paralysis subsided. Functional MRI showed that brain activity returned to normal.
“So there was no damage?” Sam asked.
John shook his head. “And since there was no damage, we decided it was time to try the compound on a volunteer—Timothy Cobb—to gather data for a full clinical trial. He was suffering from severe depression brought on by a traumatic event he’d suffered years ago. We explained how we believed the drug worked and the side effects, and he was willing to try it.”
“How did it go?”
“We discovered that the memory was only temporarily erased. But that’s not what was interesting about the trial.”
“What do you mean?”
“When the drug was administered, we discovered an unexpected side effect, one that we couldn’t have detected in a non-human subject.”
“Which is?”
“The subject became very susceptible to suggestion.”
“What exactly do you mean?”
“We could control the subject’s behavior.”
“How did you find that out?”
“Our subject became non-communicative when we administered the drug and we were worried that he had suffered some sort of synaptic damage. We told him to blink his eyes twice if he could hear us and he did. Then to check if other extremities were still working, we told him to wiggle the toes on his right foot and he did that too. It took us a while, but after several sessions, we realized that there was no paralysis involved with the use of the drug. He was simply waiting for external direction before taking action.”
“You mean anyone under the effects of the drug was like a robot, waiting to be told what to do?”
“Yes. We had misinterpreted the results with the lab animals. They appeared to be paralyzed because they were waiting for someone to tell them what to do. Since we couldn’t communicate with them, they just sat there.”
Sam wrinkled her face. “That’s creepy, John.”
“I know. Jacob and I realized the potential ramifications of this. Basically, we had created a mind control substance and, if it fell into the wrong hands, who knows what they would do.”
“So what did you do?”
“We kept it under wraps, while we tried to develop a drug to block the mind control properties. We stonewalled Dr. Monroe, the senior partner who reviewed our work, but eventually he called a meeting with us because we weren’t providing progress reports. He asked to arrange a meeting with one of our subjects and wanted to sit in on a session. He was ready to pull us off of the project and hand it o
ver to other researchers if we didn’t. We had no choice but to let him know what was going on. That’s when strange things started happening.”
“Like what?”
“We started seeing unfamiliar faces at the lab and in our offices. People we had never seen before, including military officials. They denied us access to parts of the lab and even some of our own research files. Jacob became worried about the military getting their hands on our research and tried to convince me to steal the files from the company.”
“What did you tell him?”
“I told him I wanted to finish the project. We had just synthesized a compound to block the mind control effects of our new drug and I thought we would have a better chance of controlling the situation if we stayed directly involved. That’s when Jacob became withdrawn. He only talked to me when he had to and stopped returning my calls. Now he’s disappeared, and I feel guilty as hell.” John put his head down.
Sam spoke quietly. “John, there’s no way you could have known what was going to happen. You can’t blame yourself.”
“Maybe, but I think it’s pretty clear that Jacob was right.”
“Well, what you’re telling me explains what happened to you, but it still doesn’t explain how Dad is involved.”
“That’s because I left one thing out, something I found in this file. According to official government records, Project MK Ultra started in the early 1950s, but it was preceded by a well-known event that might explain Dad’s involvement.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Roswell.”
“You mean the city in New Mexico where the UFO supposedly crashed?”
“Yes, the alleged alien crash in Roswell in 1947. Project MK Ultra is a result of that incident.”
“How? I thought the government said the Roswell incident was just a weather balloon experiment that went wrong.”
“That was their cover story, but, according to this file, there was an alien vessel that crashed into that farm. The government moved in, took the debris and the crew of the vessel, and started conducting experiments. One of the soldiers who came in contact with a surviving crew member exhibited a temporary state of paralysis when the creature touched him. It was only temporary, but the military was frightened about the incident and started conducting experiments on the creature. They discovered that the alien secreted a clear, gel-like substance from its fingertips that caused the soldier’s temporary paralysis.”
“But it wasn’t paralysis.”
“Right. The substance produced a hypnotic state under which the soldier became susceptible to influence. The military collected as much of the gel as possible before the creature died and tried to recreate it in the lab, but failed. That was the start of Project MK Ultra, and I believe that the government has continued to try to recreate that chemical. I think Jacob and I were unknowing participants in the project. When they discovered that we had been able to replicate the effects of the alien secretions, they stepped in to take it.”
“But why go after Dad?”
“If the military knew that Dad had been in contact with similar creatures in Peru, they probably wanted to see what he knew. He could also lead them to the creatures so they could collect more of the mind control gel from them. By snatching Dad, they would have a backup plan for the drug we created. And if they came after Dad, then they’ll probably come after you.”
“Great.”
“Sorry, Sam, but I thought it would be better if you heard it from me.”
Sam paced the floor, nervously strumming her fingers on her leg. She made a lap around her living room and returned to John’s side.
“Do you know where Dad is?”
“I was hoping you might know.”
“I haven’t heard from him for a few days now.”
“I don’t think it’s safe here. If the government is looking for us, we need to get out of here as soon as we can.”
“Where should we go?”
“We need to find Dad. And I think I know where we can start looking.”
Chapter Fifteen
The bright afternoon sunlight spilled in through the window and splashed onto Gabby’s desk. It was the kind of day that marketers plastered onto postcards beckoning tourists to spend a few days in paradise. The beauty of the afternoon, however, was lost on Gabby who sat in her chair staring at a blank computer screen, holding her chin between her fingers. Two days had passed since the break-in at the field office, and they had found no additional information. The situation had been surreal and Gabby still couldn’t believe that her friend was dead, or that his murderer had been allowed to walk free.
“You know, if people see you staring at an empty computer screen, it won’t be long before rumors start flying that you’ve lost your mind,” Charlie said, leaning his tall frame against the doorjamb.
“Maybe they’re not rumors. Maybe there’s some truth to the idea,” Gabby replied, not lifting her eyes from the screen.
“Horseshit! The wound’s still fresh, that’s all.”
Charlie walked over to the desk, grabbed a wooden chair, spun it around, and sat down with his arms folded along the back. He did so in one fluid motion and, despite her mood, Gabby couldn’t help but be a little impressed.
“We still don’t have any more information about the break-in, and forensics wasn’t able to tell what the guy was after. Whoever he was, he really knew how to cover his tracks.”
“When did you check with forensics?”
“At seven this morning. They were still working on it, but didn’t seem too hopeful.”
“Is that right? Hmmm, well that’s not what I heard,” Charlie said, his crooked smile slowly spreading across his face.
Gabby noticed a sheet of paper carefully folded and dangling from his fingertips. She immediately shot up from her desk, taking long strides toward Charlie.
“Is that what I think it is?” she asked hopefully.
“Might be, but then again, might not,” he replied.
“Damn it, Charlie, stop messing around.” Gabby grabbed the paper from his hand and hastily unfolded it.
“Who’s Jamie Edmunds?” Gabby asked.
“Well, it’s like I was telling you before you so rudely interrupted me. Apparently forensics was able to recover part of the file that our friend had copied from our system. He was looking for information on Ms. Edmunds.”
“I don’t get it. Why would someone risk breaking into the field office to get information on this woman?” Gabby looked down at the sheet of paper, flipping it over to see the back. It was blank. The only information on it was Jamie’s name and an address in Bermuda. She looked at Charlie.
“I was wondering the same thing, so I called a friend of mine in the Miami office. He checked the records and found something interesting about Ms. Edmunds.”
“What Charlie, what did he find?”
Charlie lifted his head and propped his chin on his left fist and looked contemplative.
“Charlie!”
“Okay, Gabby,” he said, grinning from ear to ear. “Ms. Edmunds had called to report being abducted by aliens about a year ago. Apparently, the agent taking the call thought she was crazy, but filed the report anyway. She asked if we could send someone out to meet with her, but the agent told her it wasn’t the type of thing we investigate.”
“What would the DOD want with a woman who reported being abducted by aliens?”
“Beats me.” Charlie shrugged.
“Maybe we need to pay Ms. Edmunds a visit.”
“Didn’t Agent Spence tell you to drop this?”
“Yes.”
“But you’re not going to listen, are you?”
“No, I’m not.”
“Well then, I guess I have to do what any self-respecting Texan would do in a situation like this.”
“And what’s that?”
“Come along and protect the lady in distress, of course!”
Gabby shook her head and smiled for the first time in
days. “Thank you.”
Chapter Sixteen
Stars twinkled like tiny Christmas lights dotting the night sky. The air was crisp and clear, but the nearly moonless night made seeing into the distance a challenge. Nick strained his eyes, but all he could see was the open ocean.
“How much longer before we get there, Rob?”
“About ten minutes. We’re getting close to the spot now. How’s our girl?”
Randall glanced toward the side of the boat where Jamie stood facing out to sea. She had barely moved since they left the dock. He had tried engaging her in conversation, but she had been reticent.
“Not much of a change since we pulled out. I’m worried about her. Poor kid has no idea what’s been happening to her and now she’s out here in the middle of nowhere with a couple of old farts telling her everything’s going to be alright,” Randall replied.
“Speak for yourself, buddy! I’m still a spring chicken!”
“You keep telling yourself that, Dr. Hoffman.”
“On a serious note, what are we going to do if we find what we’re looking for? As you so delicately pointed out, we’re just two old guys and a young lady. I’m not sure we can take on a bunch of creatures from another planet if it comes down to a good old fashioned street fight.”
“Let’s cross that bridge when we come to it.”
The words had barely left his lips when Randall heard a faint noise coming from behind the diving boat.
“Do you hear that?” he asked.
“Yeah, sounds like a boat motor,” Rob replied, scanning the water.
“Someone out for a cruise?”
“I doubt it. Most sailors from these parts like to travel during the day, and if they’re out on the water at night, they tend to hug the coastline.”
“It’s getting louder,” Randall said.
“Take the wheel.” Rob hurried to the aft of the boat and removed a tarp draped over a large cylindrical object. Nick realized it was a searchlight. Rob swung the light up and turned on the power. The darkness parted as a bright beam swept out across the waves.
“Sounds like it’s coming from the starboard side, off that way,” Randall said, pointing off the side of the ship.
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