by Mike Kraus
“What a bunch of bullshit.” Linda closes the folder and throws it onto the table. “Body part harvesting. What kind of idiot decides that should be the official excuse?”
“We’re still trying what we can, but…” The taller technician trails off and shrugs.
“I appreciate that. Don’t worry about it, though. If their official line is that the bodies were stolen by someone wanting to sell their months-old livers and lungs then we won’t find anything else out.” Linda taps the folder on the table and shakes her head. “This is a message, you know. Whoever’s behind this cover-up is sending me a message. They think they can make up whatever they want and get away with it.” She pauses for a second and shrugs with reluctant acceptance. “And you know what? They can.”
Linda closes her eyes and leans back in her chair. Her mind is tired and her body is weak. She has spent years chasing her tail around in circles, trying to track down every lead possible. Each one that she finds holds enormous promise but is eventually extinguished. Sometimes time is the enemy. Sometimes the enemy is some unknown adversary, like whoever absconded with the bodies of her fellow Marines before they could be fully examined.
The ultimate enemy, in her mind, is still at large. And she will continue to do whatever she can to find him.
Linda finishes her drink and crushes the can before throwing it into the trash. She stands up and gives a hug to each of the technicians. “Thank you both. I know you risked a lot to do this. If you ever need anything you know how to reach me.”
The technicians nod and smile at her. She gathers her things and departs from the lab to head home and lick her wounds of defeat. She needs a long rest and some time to think about her next move. Being repeatedly forced back to square one after years of effort is exhausting and she is tempted yet again to give up. The memories of that day so many years ago haunt her every step, though, and she can not—will not—give up.
Chapter 15
Frank found it odd that the annex building was completely deserted and the feeling that there might be someone else inside with him made him exceptionally nervous. Traipsing around in old barns had its own dangers including the possibility of being shot by the owner. Had he been wandering around the CIA-run building before the attacks when it was staffed, though, he would have most certainly been shot, arrested or—in his imagination at least—taken to some black site in some foreign country to be interrogated for years.
Fortunately, though, while the empty building did have an exceptionally eerie feel about it he hadn’t heard or seen any sign of anyone else around. In fact, as he whipped his flashlight back and forth along the main corridor on the first floor, he noticed that each room he walked past appeared exceptionally empty. A few of the rooms were conference rooms while others looked like supply rooms or offices but all were both unlocked—a fact he was relieved to discover—and devoid of both people and all but the most basic of office equipment.
Frank stepped into one of the offices and pointed his light at the desk, a small side table and then at a filing cabinet in the corner. Each of the cabinet’s drawers were open and a key was still inserted in the lock at the top. Instead of being filled with paperwork, though, the cabinets were utterly empty. As Frank glanced around further he noticed that there wasn’t a sign of paperwork or personally identifying items anywhere else in the room, either.
“What the hell’s going on here?” He pulled open each drawer on the desk, finding only a few pencils and pens rolling around inside. He went across the hall to the next office and found it to be virtually identical to the first. All of the drawers and cabinets were empty, nothing identifiable was visible and it had the look and feel of a room that had been systematically cleared out.
Frank headed back to the hall to continue searching for a way up to the next floor. Signs were posted on the wall every few feet that contained ominous warnings to visitors about what would happen if they were caught with a camera, recording device or even glancing in the general direction of something they weren’t explicitly authorized to view. After circling the main floor twice in search of some stairs Frank finally found them behind a closed door down the main hall near the back of the building.
Frank stepped out onto the second floor and looked at the numbers on the wall next to each door. The numbers on the first floor had all started with one while the numbers on the second floor all started with two. “Guess I’ll go up another flight, huh?” Frank muttered to himself as he turned back to the stairs before stopping and looking into an open office next to the stairwell. While all of the others had been empty he noticed a gleam of metal inside office one two zero. Frank scooped the source of the glint off of the desk in the office and held it up in front of his flashlight, giving a slight grin as he realized what he had found.
“Hello there. I wonder why someone left you behind.” He slipped the set of keys into his pocket and looked through the drawers in the office, but found nothing else of interest besides a few framed photos and some discarded coffee cups. The sight of the personal items made him wonder if the offices on the first floor hadn’t actually ever been used and he decided to take a slight detour to check the rest of the rooms on the second floor.
Five minutes later, after hurrying from room to room, Frank had decided that the offices on the first floor were, in fact, never used. The filing cabinets in the offices on the second floor were all twice as wide as the ones below and the locks were much larger. They too, though, were left open and were all empty, but there were bits of plastic tabs and a few metal supports inside the cabinets that gave the impression that they had actually been used before. Some of the locks, too, were missing keys while others had their keys inserted.
It looks like they cleaned out every single piece of information this place ever held. Frank mused to himself as he walked around. I bet they were ordered to evacuate and this was part of the process. Makes sense, too. Destroy any sensitive data and it doesn’t matter if a couple of random people break in and look around. I bet the headquarters still has power and is locked up tight, though.
Despite the less sterile and more lived-in look of the rooms on the second floor Frank failed to find anything of value in any of the offices he checked besides the car keys he had noticed earlier. A quick glance at his watch to check the time made his stomach churn as he remembered Linda lying downstairs and he ran back towards the stairs in an effort to make up for lost time.
On the third floor it took Frank less than thirty seconds to find room three eighty-seven. It, like all the others, was open and Frank could see before he even walked in that it was more like the rooms on the first floor than the second. There were no personal photos anywhere in the room, the trash can only had a few torn pieces of paper wrapper from some sort of food and the filing cabinets and drawers were completely empty.
Not wanting to fail Linda, though, Frank did his due diligence and methodically searched through the office, combing each drawer, nook and cranny for any signs of information. After a few minutes of searching he plopped down in the chair behind the desk and shook his head, wondering just what he had gotten himself into.
“I could be in Texas right now.” Frank scrunched his nose up as he responded to himself in a mocking tone.
“You could! But nooo. You had to go after the crazy lady to try and help her save the world.”
Frank sighed and turned slowly in the chair as he wondered what to do next. Going for help would, at best, result in he and Linda being taken into custody but it would also mean that she would get medical treatment. When she recovered, though, he was certain she would kill him for ruining her quest to stop the man she believed was behind everything.
He leaned back as the chair turned and idly looked around the office when his gaze fell on the computer monitor. His eyes narrowed as he looked at the corner of the monitor and he sat up suddenly, pointing his flashlight at it. “What on earth?” Frank reached out and plucked a small yellow sticky note from the corner of the monitor, hold
ing it close to read the tiny handwriting that covered the entirety of the scrap of paper.
L – We were right. I hope I’m right about you coming here. If you are reading this, come to 2854. I know you know the street.
The note was unsigned but knowing what he knew it was easy for Frank to figure out who wrote it. “She knew Linda would come here.” Frank sat back in the chair, still holding the sticky note as he thought about everything Linda had told him.
While he would have never said it to her face he had started to consider her as something of a crackpot. It was true that the terrorist attacks were quite real but her stories about pursuing a mysterious seemingly all-powerful person across the globe were a strain to believe. When she added in the theory that the person she had spent years pursuing was behind the attacks Frank had found it frighteningly difficult to believe that what she said was true.
He had still gone along with her, though, going as far as abandoning his own journey home to help her. Doubt had clouded his mind but it was there no more. The small scrap of paper with four sentences on it somehow made more of an impact on him than all of what she had told him herself. All trace of doubt was gone and his thoughts reeled as he struggled to figure out what to do next.
“Crap!” Frank scrambled up out of the chair as he remembered that Linda was still downstairs. He ran down the hall and stairwell and burst back out into the hallway on the main floor. He skidded to a stop in the lobby where he knelt down next to Linda’s still form and put his hand to her forehead.
She still felt hot to the touch but was breathing relatively normally though there was a certain amount of extra effort in her inhalations that he hadn’t noticed before. He took the socks off of her forehead and stomach and shuddered as he felt how hot they were before pouring more water over them and placing them back on her body.
“Hey.” Frank whispered to Linda as he took her hand. “Hey, you still with me?”
Linda’s eyes fluttered open and she moved her lips quietly for a few seconds as she tried to speak. “Yeah.” Her voice was hoarse and she closed her eyes again after speaking.
“Hey! Don’t go to sleep on me! Listen, your friend, Sarah Cala-whatever—I found her office. It was empty, just like the rest of them. They must have cleaned out all the files before the employees left. But she left something up there for you.”
Linda opened her eyes again and Frank held the note in front of her face, shining his flashlight at it. “Apparently she thought you’d be coming here to find her. What was the name of the street she lived on again?”
“In Wildwood hills. North of the river.” Linda took the note with a shaking grasp, flicking her eyes across it as she tried to read the words through her blurred vision. She dropped the paper and Frank took it, then she grabbed him by the arm with a surprisingly strong grip. “Get us there.”
Frank shook his head. “No way. We are going to find you a doctor right now.”
“Frank.” Linda’s grip grew stronger and Frank found himself unable to shake free. “Get. Us. There. Now.”
“You’ve got a fever! You could die!”
“She will help. Just get there. Twenty minutes if you find a car. Just hurry.” Linda’s grip faded and she slumped back onto the floor, closing her eyes as she drew in fast wheezing breaths. She had expended all of her energy in the span of a few seconds. Frank watched her closely, placing the wet sock back on her forehead where it had slipped off when she was pulling on his arm.
Standing up, he walked over to the front door of the lobby and looked out at the parking lot and the grass and trees beyond. It was a beautiful day outside, but the sight meant nothing to him. His stomach churned as he tried to decide on the best course of action. Whatever choice he made would be one that he could not come back from.
If he took Linda to those who were in charge of the survivor city then she would most likely survive, but she and he would both end up trapped in the city for an indefinite amount of time. If, on the other hand, he took her to try and find her contact from the CIA then Linda could perish regardless of whether they found this “Sarah” person or not.
In all of Frank’s thinking, the one thought that was no longer present was the question of whether Linda was right about Omar or not. The simple note from Sarah proved that Linda was telling the truth. It also proved that the threat, as radical and crazy and impossible as it seemed, was real. And somehow he had gotten himself tangled up with the only person who had put enough pieces together to possibly disarm the threat.
In a choice between saving Linda’s life but rendering it impossible to stop Omar or giving her a chance to stop Omar but risking her life on someone who might not even be there, Frank was at an impasse. Every second that ticked by while he wrestled with his decision was another second that Linda slowly slipped toward the abyss.
Chapter 16
The parking lot of the CIA’s annex building was far larger than Frank had initially thought. When the building was constructed a few years prior it was originally intended to only be filled to one fifth capacity. The extra capacity would be filled over the course of ten to fifteen more years and the parking lot would be expanded as necessary to accommodate the additional workers. When the building—plus an additional hastily constructed wing—was nearly filled with new employees after just two years the parking lot that had been in front of the building was expanded to wrap around both sides as well.
While Frank had been frustrated by large parking lots before the annex parking lot took that frustration to a whole new level. He ran past the parked cars, mashing the lock button on the key fob as he tried to locate the vehicle associated with the keys he had picked up from inside the building. When he started going through the lot it hadn’t occurred to him to start on one side and work his way around in a systematic fashion. Instead he spent twenty minutes running back and forth until he finally heard a light beep off to one side near the fence out in front of the building.
Frank ran to the vehicle that made the noise and reached for the door handle. As he opened it, though, he fumbled with the key fob and started to drop it. He grabbed for it and in the process mashed all of its buttons—including the alarm—with his fingers. The deafening alarm startled him and he dropped the keys again as he tried to push the alarm button again to make the sound stop.
Seconds passed by in panicked agony as Frank tried again to push the alarm button before realizing that he needed to manually unlock the car to turn off the alarm. He inserted the key and turned it, then opened the car door only to find that the alarm was still going off. Sliding into the driver’s seat he jammed the key into the ignition and turned, then let out a sigh of relief as he was rewarded by blissful silence.
Laying partway on his side in the car Frank took a second to sit up and adjust himself before looking around at the interior. It was a small sedan not unlike one they had driven a few days earlier. The back had a few pieces of trash and odds and ends in it and one of the two cup holders had a thin travel cup sitting in it that was filled with a suspiciously fuzzy liquid. Other than that, though, the vehicle looked like it was in good shape and it was big enough to hold Frank, Linda and their two backpacks.
Frank shook his head as he put the car into reverse, lamenting the fact that their Humvee was still out on the edge of town with their rifles, extra ammo, food and other gear in it that they wouldn’t be able to access. He briefly considered the possibility of somehow driving out of the cordon in the sedan, around to their Humvee and then taking it to find Linda’s CIA contact, but abandoned the idea almost immediately due to how long it would take and the risks that would be involved.
As Frank wound through the parking lot towards the front of the annex a flash of movement in the rearview mirror caught his attention. He glanced at the mirror and his eyes grew wide as he saw the shape of three green camo vehicles racing down the road toward the annex. Frank twisted in his seat to get a better view and confirm that his eyes weren’t playing tricks on him. Unfortunately,
though, it was no trick. Two Humvees and one white police car were traveling together toward the annex at a high rate of speed. The road in was narrow and twisty but the two Humvees didn’t hesitate to go off-road to minimize the amount of time it would take to arrive.
“Shit!” Frank turned back around and slammed down on the accelerator, sending the sedan lurching forward. He turned the wheel and skidded to a stop in front of the annex, his foot throbbing from pressure as the antilock braking system kicked into overdrive. Frank jumped out of the car and ran into the building, not bothering to look behind him as he dashed into the lobby and over to Linda.
“Linda!” Frank shouted at her as he knelt down next to her. “Come on, we have to go! There’s a patrol on the way and we have to go now!” Linda didn’t respond and Frank leaned in, putting his ear to her face. He could hear and feel her breath on his ear but she didn’t open her eyes or show signs of movement no matter how much he pushed, pulled, pinched and shouted at her.
After wasting several seconds trying to wake her up, Frank slid his arms under her legs and back, scooping her into his arms. He turned and ran back out of the building as fast as he could, all while trying to not let her or her clothes fall to the ground. He opened the back door of the sedan awkwardly and slid her inside before slamming the door closed. A quick glance out across the parking lot made his heart leap into his throat as he saw that the vehicles were nearly at the gate and guardhouse out front. The gate was tall and well-armored against vehicular attacks but Frank knew how well the Humvees were built and was certain that they would be able to win if the drivers wanted to smash on through.
