by Matt Rogers
He didn’t consider anything past taking action.
He had made it this far on cerebral reaction alone, taking situations one step at a time. He would do the same here.
The street was quiet — a wide, well-paved stretch of asphalt twisting through a neighbourhood of similarly lavish houses. There was no sign of anyone staking out his residence. If Ramos noticed anything out of the ordinary, he would have ducked back into the house.
The coast seemed clear.
He unlocked the Toyota and dived in. Briefly, he touched a hand to the left side of his chest, worried at the rate at which his heart was pounding. Copious amounts of caffeine and the nootropic Modafinil had enabled him to work fourteen, fifteen, sixteen hour days building a drug empire. Now, the same cognitive enhancers threatened to put him into cardiac arrest. He focused on his breathing as he reversed out of the driveway at breakneck speed and surged for the shanty towns to the east.
The drive took nine minutes.
Ramos almost caused a head-on collision three separate times, each one spiking his heart rate even higher. It was the longest, most agonising nine minutes of his life. He considered what he might find at the safe house, what disaster that might spell. Along the way, he came to realise the extent of the responsibility he had placed on a select few individuals. He should have known that if certain members of his inner circle — like Carlos — were affected, it would tear the rug out from underneath his entire operation.
When he squealed into the shanty town’s limits and pulled to a halt outside the tech team’s shoddily-constructed tin building, he cursed his own foolishness. He should have been more careful. He should have had his men stationed outside the property twenty-four hours a day, brandishing the highest-calibre weaponry they could get their hands on.
He should have personally protected the most crucial node in his empire’s system.
The front door hung wide open, its accompanying mesh screen torn off its hinges. Ramos stepped out of the Toyota’s cabin with the AR-15’s barrel raised, pointed straight at the darkened doorway. He stomached a stabbing bolt of tension and pressed forward.
Instantly, his suspicions were confirmed.
Arterial blood had been used as paint to adorn the front wall of the building with a large insignia, almost the same size as Ramos himself. It depicted two fangs intersecting. The crimson smear was still fresh.
The Draco cartel’s symbol.
It was unmistakable.
Ramos suppressed the fury coursing through his blood and headed straight into the building. He didn’t care if Draco thugs were still on the premises.
In fact, he hoped they were.
He would make them pay.
It took a few seconds for his eyes to adjust to the lowlight. The blinds on the opposite wall were still drawn — only faint slivers of daylight filtered through the cracks. They illuminated four silhouettes, strung from the ceiling by crude lengths of rope, dangling limply by their necks.
Ramos took one look at what had been done to their faces.
He’d seen everything that he needed to see.
The trestle tables in the centre of the room were gone, as well as all the technology atop it. The Draco cartel had seized it all.
The blow would be debilitating to their day-to-day operations. Maybe even crippling. There was a sizeable chance that Ramos wouldn’t be able to come back from this. He would need to take risks, and act quickly and decisively.
Thankfully, he had lived half his life that way.
He stepped out of the foul-smelling building with one concept consuming his thoughts.
Revenge.
9
It took two hours for the room to be constructed.
By the time it was ready, King had wound down from the day’s training. He’d soaked for twenty minutes in an ice bath, foam-rolled the tight knots out of his muscles, and finally dressed in casual clothing for the final portion of the day. He wasn’t sure exactly what Lars had in store, but he knew it had something to do with his brain. The man’s area of expertise seemed to revolve largely around an untested area of combat.
King was intrigued to find out what the results would show.
As the sun disappeared below the horizon and the woods of Curt Gowdy State Park were plunged into darkness, Lars emerged from the warehouse’s adjoining offices, wiping sweat off his forehead.
King sat at a makeshift dining table, shovelling a plate of chicken and rice into his mouth. He peered across the room as Lars made his way over, dropping into the chair opposite with an emphatic sigh.
‘We’re ready,’ Lars said.
‘What’s ready, exactly?’
‘I’d rather just take you through the exercise, instead of explaining it to you in detail. It’s preferable if you’re unprepared for what might happen.’
‘You’ve got me worried.’
‘Don’t be. You good to go?’
‘Let me finish this.’
King scraped the last forkfuls of the meal off his plate and gulped them down with a tall glass of water. Satisfied, he skidded his chair back across the dusty concrete floor and followed Lars into the previously-abandoned offices.
He hadn’t spent much time in this section of the warehouse. The rooms were empty, cleared out by the last occupants — or never furnished in the first place. Like most of the warehouse, it was cold and empty.
Not anymore.
Lars gestured for him to step into one of the rooms, squeezing through a narrow doorway that hadn’t been designed to handle King’s bulk. He entered a wood-panelled space, far cosier than the rest of the complex. A projector screen had been stretched across one wall, facing a plain office chair that seemed to be the only furniture pointed in the screen’s direction. Behind the chair, a tight semicircle of high-tech gadgetry was set up. There were two other people in the room — a young, stern-looking woman with brunette hair pinned up in a tight bun, and an elderly balding man adjusting a dial on the side of one of the machines.
‘What the hell is this?’ King muttered. It looked like something out of a bad science-fiction movie.
‘Nothing as sinister as you might think,’ Lars said. ‘King, this is Anne and Raymond from the Defence Sciences Office at DARPA. They’re here to see what your brain does when placed in a live situation. You’ll be hooked up to an EEG monitor for the duration of the test. I assume you’re okay with that.’
‘Sounds like my idea of a fun Sunday evening,’ King said.
Anne and Raymond smiled simultaneously. They both stepped forward and introduced themselves with pleasant handshakes. King greeted them both in turn, then sat himself down in the chair while Anne prepared to attach the receptors to his face and scalp.
‘Been here long?’ she said quietly as she pressed a cool silicon node to the upper portion of his cheek.
‘Not long,’ he said. ‘I’m probably just as confused as you are.’
She smiled, exposing a row of pearly white teeth. King flashed a subtle glance at how the official military uniform rested against her frame. She evidently kept in shape, judging by her curves. He couldn’t suppress his attraction — it had been far too long since he’d been romantically involved with anyone.
Wonder how brief her visit is…
‘I want you to watch the video in front of you,’ Lars said, tearing King’s train of thought back to the present. ‘Just let it flood your senses. Don’t resist it. Don’t think of this as an experiment, or anything of the sort. Just sit back and let your natural instincts take over.’
King nodded. Another ten or fifteen receptors were pressed onto his head, ranging from the back of his skull to the space just below his eyes. He sat completely still, unnerved by the quietness of the room. He was used to sweat and exertion. Hard training had consumed his life for the past year. He had come to resent anything that involved sitting around unnecessarily.
After a few more beats of waiting, he shifted uncomfortably in his seat.
Then the projector
screen burst into life and everything changed.
In an instant, he recognised what he was looking at. The grainy footage had been recorded from the under-barrel of a combat rifle, wielded by some sort of high-level operative. King guessed DEVGRU. The footage blurred as the weapon began to bounce up and down, indicating that the man behind the camera was sprinting toward an unknown destination. King glimpsed a shoddy dirt trail and an overgrown front garden.
The man behind the camera took cover momentarily — King tuned into the sounds of shuffling footsteps behind him. It seemed that he was the leader of the unit. His barrel stayed trained on the ground while he mouthed near-silent commands to his fellow soldiers. King tuned into the small details — the rasping of his voice, the scuffing of boots on gravel, the sheer silence of the neighbourhood.
It brought back memories of Ramadi.
‘What is this?’ he muttered.
No-one responded.
Lars, Anne, and Raymond had all stepped out of his peripheral vision. Briefly, King felt like turning his head to make eye contact with them, but he couldn’t resist keeping his eyes locked on the screen. The images filled his vision — he realised that speakers had been installed in the walls around him, providing unparalleled surround sound.
King fell quiet and concentrated on the feed.
For all he knew, he could be witnessing a live operation. Very little information had been fed to him regarding the video footage. His heart skipped a beat as the barrel lifted to aim at a rundown two-storey residence surrounded by overgrown vegetation.
The soldier moved in. King heard the man’s attempts to mask his laboured breathing. He heard every intricacy of the noises. His own heart rate quickened in turn. The set-up of the video feed had been expertly crafted. It felt like he had stepped into a war zone himself, despite full knowledge that he sat in a makeshift theatre room in a warehouse in Wyoming.
The operative on the projector screen approached the front door of the residence. He paused on one side of the flimsy wood, waiting for a comrade to take up position on the opposite side. The man filling the camera’s view looked to be in his thirties, with a thick frame and a bushy beard. His face had been coated in dark khaki paint.
Definitely DEVGRU, King thought.
The man across from the camera’s feed nodded imperceptibly. There was a brief pause — like the calm before the storm — before the guy dropped his boot into the centre of the door. It crashed inwards, loud enough for King to jolt in his seat.
The scene descended into madness.
Sharp screaming — half in Arabic, half in English — flooded the speakers, rolling over King’s senses in waves that were intense enough to cause a panic attack. He struggled to suppress the sensations — Lars and the two DARPA scientists had deliberately organised the video to be as immersive as possible.
The shaky footage stabilised for a brief second, and King got a proper look at the interior of the house. A man with his face covered by a bandanna had a Kalashnikov AK-47 pressed to the side of a screaming woman’s head. There were two more insurgents on the stairs, barking harsh orders and shaking identical firearms in the camera’s direction.
The yelling reached a crescendo — which culminated in the bandanna-clad man wrenching the trigger of his rifle. Blood sprayed from the side of the civilian’s head and she dropped, all the tension slackening from her limbs simultaneously.
King barely noticed the footage coming to an end. He registered the cracking of unsuppressed gunfire and honed in on the hostiles, sizing up the distance between the camera and each of the three armed men in the frame.
The footage abruptly cut off as vicious swathes of assault rifle ammunition tore across the interior of the house.
The overwhelming sound died out.
10
Lars stepped into King’s view and nodded with satisfaction.
King stared up at him. ‘That’s it?’
‘That’s all we needed.’
‘Seems like a lot of set-up for a brief test.’
‘We wanted to see how your brain would react in a volatile situation. I’m interested in exactly what goes on in there.’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘You’re still in that state, aren’t you?’
King couldn’t deny it. His heart rate had shot through the roof, and it took enormous effort just to make conversation with Lars. He felt wired, like a shaking adrenalin-junkie experiencing a massive dose of thrills. ‘That sound system and projector combination is goddamn effective.’
‘It’s quite remarkable, really,’ Anne said. ‘Your norepinephrine and dopamine levels have skyrocketed.’
‘Sure feels that way,’ King said.
‘Could I ask you to bring those down — if you’re able to?’
King nodded, recognising the dissolution of the perceived threat and attempting to react accordingly. He felt the narrow tunnel of concentration shrink away, replaced by a zen-like calm. It only took a few seconds.
‘Holy shit,’ Raymond breathed, staring at the monitor in front of him.
‘He can control it?’ Lars said. ‘Turn it up and down?’
‘It seems so.’
‘You always been able to do that?’ Lars said.
King shrugged. ‘As long as I can remember.’
‘The times you’ve found yourself in live combat situations — you’ve used that to your advantage?’
King shrugged again. ‘Never really thought about it. I just keep myself in that zone until the job is done.’
‘I think this might just work.’
As Anne began the process of removing the EEG receptors from the sides of King’s head, he stomached a certain sense of annoyance at the situation.
Lars seemed to notice.
‘Everything okay?’ he asked as King finally came free of the sticky nodes and got to his feet.
‘How much longer are you going to keep me cooped up in this warehouse, running tests and leaving me in the dark?’
‘You don’t like it?’
‘The wait doesn’t bother me. The secrecy does. I want to know why this division was hurried into existence, and why I’m being tested in this room instead of at DARPA itself. What are we still doing in Wyoming?’
‘You were already here,’ Lars said. ‘We thought we’d come to you. At first, I was told I had two weeks to get you ready. That’s changed.’
‘Get me ready for what?’ King said. ‘I’m not going to keep asking for much longer…’
‘There was an incident in Tijuana nearly a week ago,’ Lars said. ‘Two DEA agents were murdered.’
‘Drug cartel?’
‘Drug cartel.’
‘I’ve got no experience with the war on drugs,’ King said. ‘And, frankly, I’ve got my own opinions about how you guys are handling it. If that was what this was all about, you should have told me at the start because I would have refused.’
‘You’re right,’ Lars said. ‘What we’re doing certainly isn’t working. That’s why this project was green-lit. You and I have the chance to pioneer an unconventional method of doing things.’
‘Like a secret agent? James Bond shit?’
‘Not exactly. But I do want you to tear this new cartel apart from the inside.’
‘I’m going to need a lot more information than that.’
‘I was planning to drip-feed it to you over the next week. But you’re flying out tomorrow morning.’
‘What changed?’
Lars paused and grimaced slightly. ‘There was another incident this morning.’
‘What happened?’
‘It’s late. I’ll brief you tomorrow. Come for a morning run with me.’
‘Alright.’
Anne and Raymond had silently observed the conversation from the back of the room. King imagined they had full clearance, or Lars wouldn’t have breathed a word about military proceedings around them. The four of them left the room, making their way back out into the warehouse itself. Raymond and Lars pulled ah
ead, discussing the specific results of the test in low tones. They seemed entirely preoccupied with their conversation, ignoring King.
It gave him the chance to talk to Anne.
‘How long are you out here for?’ he said.
She smirked. ‘Is this you trying to chat me up?’
King paused. ‘Sorry. Are you married?’
‘No. Single.’
‘Oh.’
‘I study the brain,’ she said. ‘It’s pretty clear when a guy is keen. Even one as macho as you.’
He sensed the underlying sarcasm and hesitated. ‘I didn’t mean…’
‘I’m just playing with you,’ she said, punching him lightly in the shoulder. ‘Sorry — I’m not great at small talk either. Spend ninety percent of my life at work.’
‘I can relate,’ King muttered.
‘You’re off tomorrow, I hear?’
‘Apparently so. This is all a bit of a whirlwind at the moment.’
‘I can see that.’
‘Are you two leaving tonight?’
‘I drove myself,’ Anne said. ‘I can hang around … I guess.’
‘Your choice.’
‘Could be a nice release.’
‘I’d say so.’
She eyed him up and down, all too obvious in her intentions. King guessed that she had abandoned subtlety after the barriers of small-talk had come down. He decided to do the same.
‘My room’s out back,’ he said. ‘I won’t say it’s a nice joint, because it’s not. Like I said — this has been a whirlwind.’
‘I’m sure I won’t mind.’
There was a moment of hesitation, with both of them unsure how to proceed. Anne shook her head in disbelief. ‘This was an awfully quick decision.’
King shrugged. ‘I’ve had my mind and body wrapped up in this craziness for the last year, almost. I think I’m pretty desperate for a release, to be honest. I hope I wasn’t too forward.’
She shrugged back. ‘I’m feeling the same. Let me go talk to Raymond — let him know that I’m too tired for the drive to the airport and that I’m crashing here. He’ll understand.’
