Ship of the Damned

by James F. David

  There was an old house on the other side. Jett squatted next to the fence, studying it. Sloan started forward, but Jett pulled him down.

  “Wait,” Jett said.

  Then he saw Compton appear at the corner of the house, pointing at the back window. Boards covered most of the windows, but this window had missing boards and the glass underneath was broken. Sloan followed Jett to the house, where they joined Compton.

  Nodding, Jett pulled out his phone.

  “What’s the situation?” Jett asked the man who answered.

  “We’re holding the cops for now, but they won’t cooperate long. Worse, the media’s here. A TV crew picked up the police call.”

  “Ask what happened to Pierce?” Sloan whispered.

  Jett would have ignored Sloan, but he worried that Pierce might be delirious and need to be shut up.

  “What about Pierce?” Jett asked.

  “Dead. His spine was broken.”

  “Send a unit to back us up. We’ve got the Special contained and we’re moving in.”

  “Well?” Sloan whispered.

  “He’s dead.”

  Sloan’s face went red, his lips tightening. Jett had seen the signs before; it was rage—something Jett had never felt.

  “I’m going to kill that bastard,” Sloan said, starting to stand.

  Jett held him down while Compton watched dispassionately.

  “We’ll go in, but we coordinate entry,” Jett said.

  “Okay, but I kill him,” Sloan insisted.

  “If you get there first,” Compton said, smiling slightly.

  “Just stay out of my way!”

  “We’ll enter the same way he did,” Jett said.

  “I’m first,” Sloan said.

  Jett watched Sloan creep toward the window, then looked at Compton. She was still smiling. They followed Sloan, taking up positions on either side of the window, then signalled Sloan that they were ready. Having had a minute to calm down, Sloan was less reckless and peeked into the room first. Satisfied, he placed both hands on the sill and leaned inside, pulling one knee up. Suddenly the window exploded—the frame, boards, and remaining glass were blown away, Sloan with them. Jett lay on the ground picking splinters out of his face and hands. Compton was doing the same. Sloan lay twenty feet away on his stomach, his head twisted at an impossible angle.

  “I was afraid of that,” Compton said matter-of-factly. “Now what?”

  “I could order you inside,” Jett said.

  “Don’t waste your breath.”

  A black van pulled up, three of their men spilling out, taking cover and waiting for directions.

  “Make him come to us,” Compton said.

  Jett thought for a second, then told Compton to hold her position, and ran to the van.

  “Find some containers, siphon out some gas,” he ordered. “We’re going to burn him out.”

  Ten minutes later they had three glass jugs of gas, rags sticking out the top. Jett directed his men to surround the building. With everyone in position he handed Compton one of the jugs.

  “We’ll only have a few minutes once the fire starts,” he said. “The police are only a couple of blocks away and antsy.”

  Lighting the rag, Compton threw it through the window, the jug shattering and spreading the gas. Flames lit the interior. The other jugs were thrown through windows in the front. The old wood-frame building caught fire quickly. A minute passed, and another; nothing happened. Smoke poured from the building, a tell-tale plume streaming into the sky. Shouts of “Fire!” came from down the street, and workers came out of a plant across the road. Jett called for another team to keep the crowd back, but his men were spread thin. The standoff had to end soon.

  Suddenly, wood splintered in the front of the house, sounding as if a wrecking ball had broken through the wall. Then came another blast of wood and glass. Jett held his ground, looking at Compton.

  “It’s a diversion,” he said.

  Compton nodded, smiling slightly. He lifted his gun, supporting it with his left hand. Then the back door blew out, broken into dozens of pieces. Smoke billowed from the door, and through the smoke came the Special. Jett and Compton put six bullets into him before he made two steps, and continued to fire as he fell. They replaced their clips before advancing to make sure the Special was dead.

  As they were checking the body the police arrived, with a fire engine right behind. A few seconds later a television van roared up. As soon as the van stopped, the satellite dish on the top rotated, finding its uplink. A reporter and cameraman piled out of the van, the woman reporter arguing that they should set up the shot by the body, the cameraman arguing that the burning house was “more visual.” A crowd was gathering, too, and Jett reeled with the task ahead. He had to deal with injured civilians, two dead agents, the body of a Special riddled with bullets, a burning house, and a television crew filming the aftermath. As if reading his thoughts, Compton said, “Hoover Dam couldn’t contain this.”

  BULLETIN

  Monica and Elizabeth shared social work stories, boring Wes. They were in the airport bar, drinking overpriced coffee, waiting for their flight. There was golf on a TV hanging from the ceiling, and Wes watched it despite knowing little about the game.

  Wes used to spend his spare time working on his computer programs or in the lab—his time off was barely distinguishable from his work. Since meeting Elizabeth he had changed. He took walks with her now, and three times a week they worked out together at the campus facilities. Walking the stair-stepper and lifting the weights was repetitive, but afterward he found his mind clearer, better at problem solving. He now kept the gym schedule even when Elizabeth couldn’t make it.

  The golf match was interrupted, the logo for a local channel coming on with the voice of an announcer saying, “We interrupt this program for a special news bulletin.” The logo was replaced with a woman reporter standing in front of a burning house, with firefighters, police, and clumps of people in the background. The reporter’s curly blond hair was wilting in the Oklahoma summer heat, and her white blouse clung to her body. Beads of perspiration dotted her face.

  “We’re at the scene of a fire, Roger, which you can see behind us, but there is more to the story than just a fire. We have reports that two, maybe three men were killed and several others injured. The incident began a couple of blocks from here at the Midwestern Wire factory. Workers called for an ambulance when they found an injured man in the parking lot, but when the ambulance arrived a fight broke out and one man was killed.”

  “Barbara, how was the man injured?” Roger broke in.

  “I have an eyewitness who can tell us what happened.”

  Barbara stepped sideways, the camera following her. A man waited nervously, but with a look of self-importance. He wore blue work clothes, was balding, and had a dark moustache. The reporter held the microphone to his face and said, “What is your name, sir, and where do you work?”

  “I’m Avery Singer and I work at Midwestern Wire.”

  “What did you see today, sir?”

  “Well, this sailor was lying in our parking lot and my friend Willie sees him and calls me over. He’s hurt bad so we yells and tells them to get an ambulance.”

  “Was the man conscious?” Barbara asked.

  “Sort of, but he wasn’t making any sense. He was like out of his head or something.”

  “What happened next, sir?”

  “Well the ambulance comes but the ambulance guys don’t seem to know what they’re doing. I mean they just picked the guy up and dragged him to the ambulance. He started yelling for help and then some guy came around the ambulance with a gun and wham, the guy with the gun got hit in the stomach so hard it killed him!”

  “Who struck him?” Barbara asked.

  “I’m not sure. No one was close. Maybe the sailor kicked him. Anyway, we tried to help the hurt man and all hell broke loose. It was a big fight and then all of a sudden another guy with a gun shows up and then it was like
being in a tornado except there wasn’t any wind. Everyone was knocked down except the hurt guy—he was a sailor, did I mention that?”

  Wes nudged Elizabeth hard enough to break into her conversation, then pointed at the television. “Listen to this report.”

  Elizabeth rolled her eyes for Monica, but both women listened as the reporter continued the interview.

  “A tornado with no wind?” the reporter probed.

  “That’s what it felt like,” Singer said.

  “Tell us what happened to the ambulance,” the reporter continued.

  “I was getting to that. Something hit it and tipped it almost all the way over.”

  “An explosion,” the reporter suggested.

  “Nah. I didn’t hear anything like that. It just tipped.”

  “Another windless tornado?” the reporter said.

  “Maybe,” Singer said, irritated. “I’m not crazy. Ask Willie about it. He’ll tell you the same.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Singer,” the reporter said, stepping away. “I have another witness who can describe the events here by the burning house.” She stepped next to another man, Hispanic, dark hair, shorter than the reporter. “What is your name, sir?”

  “Hector Ramirez.”

  “What did you see, Mr. Ramirez?”

  “I saw a sailor run into that house, the one that’s burning. These ambulance people were chasing him, and another guy. That guy got killed.”

  “What happened, sir?”

  “He tried to climb in the window and it blew up. Spit him right back out.”

  “There was an explosion?”

  “Must have been. What else could do that?”

  “Go on, Mr. Ramirez.”

  “Some other guys came, and pretty soon they threw something in the house—I think it was gasoline. Anyway, the house caught on fire. Then wham, wham, the whole front of the house blew out and then the side of the house blew and the sailor came running out. The ambulance guys shot the sailor a couple dozen times.”

  Elizabeth and Wes exchanged glances, Monica watching curiously.

  “Sound familiar?” Wes said, thinking of his previous experience with a psychokinetic killer. With just the power of his mind the man had crushed Len’s chest and then knocked Wes down a flight of stairs. By the time the police finally cornered the psychokinetic in a 7-Eleven, the man had literally destroyed the building, collapsing the roof using only his psi power.

  Elizabeth knew what Wes was remembering.

  “It could be any number of things,” Elizabeth said. “Anyway, this has nothing to do with your experiments.”

  “Sure,” Wes said.

  “We don’t know what happened, Wes. It doesn’t mean psi abilities are involved.”

  Monica was listening intently, and Wes knew they had said too much. The report ended, the golf match returned. Wes pretended to watch it while he wondered about the strange events described in the news bulletin, hoping that Elizabeth was right and that what had happened had nothing to do with his experiments.

  SOLUTION

  The Office of Special Projects had a small conference room in a corner which was used mostly for staff reviews and agent debriefings. The conference room door was glass, and through it Jett could see that the space was filled to overflowing with a mixture of civilians, CIA, and Navy brass. He sat waiting outside Woolman’s office, watching the lips of those in conference with Woolman, wishing he were a lip-reader. The brass were agitated, and the normally sedate CIA chief was red-faced and sweating. Something big had happened, and the fact they had gathered at OSP told Jett that it involved the Specials.

  Shortly, the meeting broke up, those in the conference room departing one at a time to keep the gathering secret. The CIA chief let the others leave first, staying with Woolman. When he did leave, he was grim-faced and oblivious to the others in the office. Now only one person remained in the conference room with Woolman, gathering papers into a briefcase. Woolman left him, walking directly to his office and ignoring Jett, but leaving his office door open. Jett waited a few minutes to let Woolman compose himself, then stepped in, closing the door behind him.

  Woolman was tense; beads of sweat formed on his bald head. As his fingers drummed the tabletop, he seemed unaware of the snare-drum rhythm filling the room. Jett was better at monitoring his body language than Woolman, never letting toe-tapping, tongue-wagging, or finger-drumming reveal his inner state. He saw fidgeting as a weakness, since it could be a window into a person’s mind. Woolman’s finger-drumming told Jett that he was anxious; his anxiety was expected—taking out the Special had been messy. But the unusual gathering in the conference room told Jett that something more important was going on.

  Woolman had a family—a wife and two daughters. There were no pictures of them, of course; families were a liability in their line of work, and those with dependents didn’t like to advertise the fact. Few field agents were married, and he knew of none who had children. Since families made you vulnerable, when agents married they were either reassigned to the office or transferred to the Secret Service. Jett wondered if this is how Woolman ended up with a desk job. He also wondered what kind of woman would marry Woolman. The man never smiled, never joked, and never showed even the slightest interest in female staff or agents. It was likely Mrs. Woolman had her own pathologies that made her need a fidgety man with a cold exterior.

  “Your mission was a disaster. It was all over the news.”

  Woolman was debriefing Jett, but clearly was distracted by his previous meeting.

  “It couldn’t be helped. There were a dozen people around when we found him.”

  “The ambulance ruse was good,” Woolman said.

  “One of the women in the crowd was a nurse and queered the whole thing. She could tell we didn’t know what we were doing and turned the crowd against us.”

  “Bad luck,” Woolman said.

  The rhythm of Woolman’s fingers was rapid now, individual beats nearly indistinguishable.

  “Containment in the information age is damn near impossible—cellular phones, Internet, satellite broadcasts, and every Joe Blow with a video camera.”

  “It is a challenge,” Jett said.

  “It used to be only the intelligence services had access to these technologies. Now I see women in grocery stores talking on cell phones, and they could be connected to anyone on the planet.”

  Jett also had trouble picturing Woolman in a grocery store pushing a cart, selecting heads of lettuce and squeezing bread to find the freshest loaf. If there was a domestic side to Woolman, it was as well hidden as his warm side.

  “There’s another problem,” Woolman said abruptly. “As you must have realized we’re getting more breakouts.”

  Jett knew the frequency of his tracking assignments had increased, adding to his job satisfaction.

  “We thought the Specials were testing a way to punch through Pot of Gold’s containment field. Now we suspect they had something else in mind.”

  Pot of Gold was the code name for the place where the Specials came from.

  Touching the intercom button on his phone, Woolman said, “Send Dr. Lee in.”

  Dr. Lee was the project director at Rainbow, the facility that monitored Pot of Gold. As he entered, Jett recognized him as the last man left in the conference room. Dr. Lee was Chinese-American, short, oval-faced, and wore a gray suit with a red-and-blue striped tie. The suit was expensive, the tie tasteful. Jett could see that behind his wire-rimmed glasses there were layers of creases around his eyes, although the rest of his face was smooth, making his age hard to judge. Jett guessed that Dr. Lee was older than Woolman.

  “Dr. Lee, meet Nathan Jett.”

  Shaking hands, Dr. Lee said, “I’ve heard you do good work.”

  “I’ve heard the same about you,” Jett lied politely. He knew little about what Dr. Lee or any of the technicians at Rainbow did.

  “Dr. Lee, Mr. Jett has been cleared for your briefing.”

  Dr. Lee smil
ed in response, then said, “Two days ago the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz was cruising off the Pennsylvania coastline when it disappeared. No other ships in the flotilla were significantly affected.”

  Jett’s blood pressure rose slightly. On the face of it, Dr. Lee’s story was impossible to believe, but Woolman didn’t tolerate nonsense and had no sense of humor. That, combined with the strange meeting in the conference room and the rumors of problems at Rainbow, gave the disappearing-carrier story credibility.

  “Nothing the size of the Nimitz simply vanishes,” Jett said.

  Dr. Lee smiled, then looked to Woolman, who drummed his fingers a few times and nodded.

  “There was more to it,” Dr. Lee said. “The ship was enveloped in a green light, and when the light faded, the Nimitz was gone. It encountered the green light twice before, and the John F. Kennedy reported a similar phenomenon at approximately the same latitude and longitude. I became involved when it was discovered that the electromagnetic waves recorded by ships in the flotilla are similar to those generated by Pot of Gold.”

  Again Dr. Lee smiled, using his smile to release tension just as Woolman used his finger drumming.

  “We see three possibilities,” Woolman cut in. “It may be that another nation has discovered the technology that created Pot of Gold and used it to capture the Nimitz. It’s the usual list of suspects: Japan, Russia, China, North Korea. However, our intelligence tells us they have no credible research program in resonant magnetic fields. They continue to be nuclear focussed. The second possibility is that a private agency has developed this technology. There are a few corporations and foundations with the resources and the will, but again there is no evidence of a sustained effort.”

  “Not even the Kellum Foundation,” Dr. Lee added.

  Woolman shot Dr. Lee a glance that said he had revealed too much, and Jett took note of it. Jett knew of the Kellum Foundation and its reputation for funding unconventional research. The foundation had been an early supporter of cold fusion research, pouring millions into that dead end.