The Skywalkers: A Thriller (A Rossler Foundation Mystery Book 5)

by JC Ryan

  “Let’s wait.”

  Ten minutes later, a patently curious Daniel seated in front of him, Luke took the bull by the horns. “Daniel, did you ever hear about an FBI project called The Prophet?”

  “You mean, besides the ones in the Middle East who keep prophesying my downfall?”

  Luke chuckled. “Yeah, besides those.”

  “No. What is it?”

  Luke filled Daniel in, philosophizing that if Raj and his cronies already knew about it, the Top Secret status was moot. He got a kick out of describing Salome’s role in its creation, when she was barely out of diapers, as he put it.

  “Interesting, Luke, but what’s on your mind? You weren’t just coming to my office to tell me old news, were you?”

  “No. What I need to tell you is what Salome has done with it, with Raj’s help. She’s been trying to get the FBI to update it for years, and with good reason. What her enhancements have revealed looks very much like a conspiracy by a handful of companies, maybe just a handful of individuals, to control every major industry you can think of.”

  “Wow, you mean, buy up shares in the biggest companies?”

  “No, I mean buy up shares in every company. Total control, Daniel.”

  "What? You can't be serious. The FCC and FTC..."

  "Are unaware of it. The shell corporations are so numerous and the relationships between them so vague that it isn't visible. Until Salome traced them, that is, on a hunch. Without that hunch, no one would think to look."

  As Salome explained to him, Luke now explained to Daniel what was happening and how. Minute activities, many layers deep, by companies that were all but invisible in the markets, but resulting in rich and influential individuals seizing virtual control by banding together to control their shares as a block. The difficulty in tracking it, without the tools Salome had brought to bear, including the one only she and Raj had access to. “But Luke, I don’t understand. Why won’t the FBI listen to her? Or the CIA, for that matter?”

  “Who knows? Maybe they don’t want to be embarrassed again, or maybe they’re receiving orders to let it go. I did tell you that our current fearless leader is implicated, didn’t I?”

  Daniel shook his head at the disrespect he heard in Luke’s tone for the incumbent president. Not that he didn’t agree. The man was no Nigel Harper. But a criminal? Well, it had happened before.

  Luke went on. “She says she’s given up, and I agree she should. It’s hard to know who to trust anymore. But, her trip isn’t what it seems. She’s planning for disaster.”

  “So, where do we fit into all this? Assuming it’s true.” Seeing Luke about to protest, Daniel hurried on. “I have no doubt it’s true, I’m just stunned at the speed of the developments. How long has this been going on?”

  “It’s hard to say how long. But I can answer your other question. The history of this Foundation shows that any time there's a powerful group of bad guys out there, they are watching you closely. I’d say the Foundation is a prime target, especially now there’s evidence of another huge find."

  "Won't they already have an idea, from Salome's searches, that we are trying to find them?"

  "It's possible. But I understand she used a variety of hacker techniques to mask where the searches were coming from, as well as using some obscure search engines she didn't think had been compromised yet. The big three or four she's been avoiding for months."

  "Why didn't she bring me her concerns herself?"

  "It was all pretty circumstantial. I didn't believe her myself, until she showed me something that almost caused me to strangle her."

  Daniel's eyebrows went up in astonishment. That hadn't sounded like a joke.

  "She had about thirty seconds to explain, Daniel, and she took a huge risk, but nothing less would have convinced me. This is bigger than just telecom companies. She had a dossier on me that had things even I didn't know. It also included my bank accounts, investment accounts, passwords, the contents of my will..."

  "You're not serious!"

  "I am. There simply wasn't anything but circumstantial hints here and there. How she ever got onto it is a mystery to me. But it did convince me. There are forces moving behind the scenes to completely dominate finances, communications, industry, hell, even world opinion. I've never seen anything this big before."

  Coming from a retired CIA analyst, that was a shocking statement. The next one was even more so.

  "Salome believes the Foundation needs to prepare a place to go to ground. Somewhere that a core group of people can literally hide from what's coming. That's what she and Roy are doing; finding the place."

  Daniel was, as his brother would have said, gob smacked.

  "My own employees don't trust me?"

  Luke's voice was a little gentler when he answered. "That's not it, Daniel, they respect and admire you, especially Salome and Roy. So much so that she won’t put any half-baked idea in front of you. You need to know she has your best interests at heart. And you need to be ready to listen to what she has to say when she gets home.”

  Daniel dropped his head a bit as he nodded. “You know, I was just thinking about something along these lines, the other day when you dropped in. I’ll listen. Thanks for paving the way, Luke.”

  “Any time, Daniel. Ryan and I thought you must be something special from the time Sarah brought you home like a prize. You’ve become more than that to me, though. A good friend, as well as my nephew-in-law. I’d do anything to protect what you’ve built here, even stand up to Sally.”

  Daniel smiled. “That’s a huge compliment, Luke, and I feel the same way. Let’s just hope no one takes over the world between now and the time Salome gets back. But, if they do, we can always sic Sally on them.”

  Chapter 15 - Do you know how to pitch the tent?

  Roy and Salome had decided against camping on Sunday night after all. In the first place, it had gotten too dark to see a good spot, not that they'd know what a good spot looked like, Salome reflected. In the second, both were a little daunted by their new equipment. She'd asked Roy if he had ever been camping before.

  "As a kid, sure," he answered.

  "Well, do you know how to pitch the tent, and set up the stove and everything?" she asked.

  "No, not really, but how difficult could it be? Do you? "

  "Me?" she'd asked. "Not a chance! I'm a city girl, remember?" In fact, she'd grown up in a loft in Manhattan, the daughter of a fashion designer and an English professor who were rather surprised to find Madame Professor pregnant again at the age of forty-five. Neither had ever expected to have more children after their son, the brilliant but pathologically shy brother Salome had used as a model to get inside Roy’s defenses.

  Fortunately, Salome had been a brilliant child herself and her parents were as proud of her accomplishments as they were of her brother’s, before their deaths in a small-aircraft crash on the way to a fashion show in Chicago. From her father, she'd inherited an impeccable taste in fashion, and from her mother a precision in speech that often made people think she was a stick-in-the-mud, until they discovered her sense of humor and her passion for life. Neither had ever taken her camping.

  Faced with fumbling in the dark to get their camp set up, they decided instead to go on and drive to Billings, spend the night in a hotel, and get an early start in the morning.

  By afternoon on Monday, Salome was grateful for the early start. The Gallatin National Forest was going to be it, she'd known it since they entered the wooded hills.

  “Look, Roy. The mountains here are higher and more massive than in the Bighorn. This is our place, I just know it.”

  In addition, the woods were denser, and there were tiny dirt roads leading off in a maze that would be hard for anyone looking for something like a hidden compound to navigate.

  In fact, she and Roy had been wandering on them for hours. “It’s lucky we ended up with this SUV,” he remarked. Some of the roads were little more than tracks made by a few off-road enthusiasts lo
oking for a picnic or camping spot, apparently, for they led nowhere. After back-tracking on several of these, Salome knew what she was looking for. Around mid-afternoon, she spotted it, a faint track with a log-and-chain barrier across it. Hanging on the chain was a sign that said 'Road Closed'.

  "Roy, take that one," she said.

  "But honey, it's closed."

  "Just drive around, love. There's no fence. It's just to discourage traffic."

  Muttering that he was indeed discouraged, Roy drove off the road, dodging a large boulder, and went around the sign. "Now what?"

  "Just follow it to the end."

  To call it a dirt road would have been elevating it to an honor it had never deserved. The track was rough, barely visible in spots, and long. To Salome's delight, it all but disappeared as it led around an outcropping of granite and into a narrow corridor through densely-spaced trees, finally opening out into an area that had little underbrush. It was as if the tree canopy above had deprived any lower-growing plants of the sun they needed to thrive. A carpet of evergreen needles, with pine-cones scattered here and there, blanketed the bare soil.

  "This is perfect," Salome cried. She clapped her hands in delight, like a child. Roy got out of the SUV and stretched, cramped from long hours behind the wheel. She went to him and hugged him, her arms around his waist. "Isn't it beautiful, love?"

  He looked around, and his eyes took on a soft look. "Almost as beautiful as you."

  Salome giggled, a trait that she usually suppressed when working. "Flattery will get you anything you want," she said.

  Roy grinned his boyish grin.

  It would be full dark early, under these trees. And it was far too late to make their way out of this secluded glen and to a hotel. Camping it was, and she needed the light to figure out the stove and other gear they'd brought. She bent down and picked up a handful of the pine needles. Surprisingly, there was bare dirt only a few inches down. The needles were dry and brittle, so they'd have to clear a wide spot if they were going to have a campfire, which she wanted for the light and warmth even though they had a Coleman kerosene stove to cook on.

  "Roy, love, could you clear a spot about ten feet in diameter, so we can have a campfire?"

  Roy looked around. "Babe, ten feet isn't enough. A spark would send this whole area up in a blaze. Can you do without a fire tonight?"

  How disappointing. A campfire would have been romantic. But, Roy was usually right about anything he stated like that. "Yes, I guess so. Want to help me set up the tent?"

  He came to join her at the back of the SUV, looking in dismay at the jumble of gear they'd shoved in, hurrying to get on the road on Saturday. "Where is it?"

  "It's in there somewhere. A big canvas bag, remember?"

  "Oh, yeah. Damn, I'm going to have to unload the whole kit and caboodle. Why don't you try to organize it somehow, as it comes out?"

  "Sounds like a plan."

  As Roy brought out item after item of food, a Port-a-Potty, the kerosene stove, cooking utensils, sleeping bags, a deflated air mattress and more, Salome dutifully put them in separate areas according to their function. The tent was the last thing to come out.

  "That wasn't very good planning, was it?" Roy asked, his face red from the effort of reaching into the vehicle and dragging stuff out.

  "I don't know how else would have been better. We need all this stuff, right?"

  "I think so. I guess we'll see."

  Roy picked up the heavy bag with the tent in it and walked a few yards away. He dumped the contents on the ground and began fumbling with short metal tubes.

  "Wait, love, shouldn't you read the directions?" Roy could build a nuclear weapon in a kitchen with a Swiss army knife, though. Surely he must be able to pitch a tent and get a gas stove working.

  He looked at her incredulously. "I'm an engineer, remember?"

  Salome considered it the better part of valor to let him do it, noting where he laid the pamphlet with directions, for when he gave up. Meanwhile, she set the stove on a short folding table and took out the directions for lighting it. 'Hmm, pump this thing, oh, wait, I need to connect the kerosene bottle. Where is it? Oh, here, inside the stove. Screw the connector on here. Okay, now pump it ten times and press the red switch. Where's the red switch? Well, that's a stupid place for it.'

  Salome sat up, swept her hair into a knot that wouldn't last long without a barrette, and tried again, now that her hair wouldn't catch fire along with the cook ring. She pumped again, then reached around the other side of the stove for the igniter. A flame leapt up, almost singeing her nose, and Salome shrieked, jumping back and falling over as the stool she was sitting on lost its balance.

  Roy was at her side immediately. "What the heck?" he asked, looking down at her.

  "Help me up," she said, her dignity ruffled. "The stove exploded at me."

  Roy helped her get to her feet and looked at the stove. "It doesn't look like it exploded."

  "Well, it tried to burn me." Roy shook his head.

  "Hey, it's going to take both of us to put this tent up. Could you help me?"

  Muttering unladylike curse words at the stove, Salome started to go with him, then hesitated. "Wait, let me get some water on to boil. I'm not lighting that thing again tonight."

  When she'd put on a pot of water, Salome went over to where Roy had laid out the tent. He'd staked the corners down in a neat square, and the rest of the tent lay crumpled in the middle, waiting for the poles to slide through the loops that would erect a cozy little canvas room for them to sleep in.

  "Tell me again why we didn't get one of those nylon things that you just throw in the air and it comes down as a tent," she said.

  "Because they aren't very roomy," he explained, for the third or fourth time. "We wouldn't have been able to get the air mattress in it. You said you didn't want to sleep on the bare ground."

  "Oh, yeah," she said. She hadn't counted on a four-inch bed of pine needles. "Okay, let's do this. What first?"

  Roy held up a more-or-less U-shaped assembly of metal tubes, a straight center tube connected to two end tubes with a bend at the connecting end. "This one goes across the top, through the loops, to hold up the roof," he said. "Then there are some for each of the corners. This one has to go in first."

  Salome looked at the assembly of tubes, and at the straight seam at the top of the tent. “Shouldn’t we put the middle part in through the loops and then connect the sides?" Without saying it, she was thinking that for an engineer, he hadn't quite grasped the concept. Any woman who'd ever hung curtains on a rod knew you couldn't turn a corner while trying to thread something onto a straight rod. Maybe it was just too simple for his mind.

  "Oh, uh, I guess you're right." Roy disconnected one side tube from the straight top part and had Salome hold up the last loop on one side, while he threaded the tube through the first and middle loops. Holding the middle of the straight tube, he skirted around the tent floor and swapped places with her, attaching the second side while she held up the middle. He stepped back. "There, that wasn't so hard, was it? You can let go now."

  As soon as she let go, the whole thing collapsed, knocking one of the side tubes out of its socket.

  "Huh." Roy scratched his head. This wasn't as easy as it looked.

  After a few more attempts, they managed to get the top stabilized while they worked on the corners, and then Roy's first mistake came back to haunt them. With the floor staked down, it was impossible to properly stretch the top corners of the square tent. But, as soon as he pulled the stakes, the center pole at the top collapsed again. Salome was ready to tell him to forget it, they'd blow up the mattress and sleep in the back of the SUV, when they finally, by trial and error, got the tent up. She resisted kicking one of the poles in the certain knowledge that if she did, the whole thing would collapse again. She could only hope that it didn't do so in the middle of the night while they were sound asleep.

  When she returned to the stove, the water had all but boiled a
way. Luckily, there was an inch of water left, so the pan wasn't ruined. At this point, Salome was wondering what anyone saw in camping. What she wouldn't give for a nice hotel room, with someone else to cook dinner for them, and a soft bed to look forward to.

  A few hours later, with bellies full of a surprisingly delicious can of stew and 'campfire biscuits', tinned biscuits steam-cooked on top of the simmering stew, the couple lay on top of their zipped-together sleeping bags, completely exhausted. The effort of setting up camp had tired them, as had the long day. But despite that it turned out you could make love in a tent. Roy would later tell her one of the most romantic things he’d ever said; that he was glad it worked because if it was not possible he would rather die in the doomsday calamity than be with her and not be able to do it.

  ***

  Zipped snugly into her sleeping bag, her husband sprawled over both his side and part of hers, Salome woke with a feeling of fear. What was that noise? She lay quietly, holding her breath to hear the faint sounds coming from outside the tent. Roy's breathing was loud enough to obscure it, but Salome was certain there was someone, or something, outside the tent. Would the intruder, whatever it was, hear if she woke Roy? He'd probably make a startled sound. Would that make a bear attack them through the canvas that now seemed far too flimsy? What if it was one of the dozens of serial killers the FBI thought roamed rural areas, killing at random when a ready victim appeared?

  An explosion of sound startled her into a muffled scream, which woke Roy. Instead of making a noise as she'd expected, he rolled to her side and gathered her in. Whispering in her ear, he asked what was wrong.

  "I heard a noise," she whispered.

  "What did it sound like?" he asked, still whispering.

  "Didn't you hear it? It was so loud."

  "No, I didn't hear it. Just your scream. What did it sound like?" he repeated.

  "I don't know, I can't describe it. Roy, what's out there?"

  "Don't know, babe, but if it isn't in here with us, it's probably harmless. Go back to sleep."