PSI/Net

by Rob MacGregor

  "Let's go. This should be interesting," Calloway said.

  "I know. We've got to convince him that he needs us as much as we need him. Otherwise, he's not going to open his door."

  They followed the waitress's map and within minutes were traveling on a two-lane road that wound through the countryside. After several miles the pavement ran out and Doc consulted the napkin again.

  "Keep going one point six miles, then turn right into his drive. It's marked with a stake that's painted red on top."

  "I guess he doesn't like neighbors," Calloway said, peering around at the sloping landscape. "I haven't seen any houses for a couple of miles."

  "I think we can safely say that Perez is ensconced in what the real estate folks would call a true mountain hideaway."

  Calloway laughed. "That sounds about right."

  They came to the red-topped marker and turned onto a rutted single lane. No mailbox, no sign. He wondered how the hell Perez found the place at night. They bounced along the road for a quarter mile before they came to a compact reddish brown, wood-frame building with a sloping roof that backed against a modest rocky butte. As they moved closer, Calloway saw the front wall was actually two garage doors.

  They stopped and stepped outside. Crested Butte Mountain, majestic and solemn, pulled his gaze. "If I lived here, I would've built a house with a wide-angle, picture-window view of the mountain," Calloway said. "But I guess Eduardo had other ideas."

  They walked to the building and found a door on the right side. Doc gave Calloway a puzzled look. "Do you think this really is where he lives? Maybe it's the wrong place."

  Calloway pointed to a rectangular-shaped piece of wood above the door where the words "Yaro Lu" had been inscribed.

  Doc smiled. "That's right. That's the name he heard when he was trying to remote view the winning lottery numbers."

  Calloway started to knock when a disembodied voice spoke up. "I told you, Doc, that you two are not welcome here. Please leave right now."

  Calloway looked around for a camera, but didn't see any. They must have triggered hidden sensors that had alerted Perez to their presence. "Eduardo, you've got to listen to us," he said. "We're all in danger. You can't hide in your cave against them. We've got to work together."

  "They can't do anything to me. I'm protected."

  Calloway turned to Doc, shrugged.

  "Eduardo, damn you!" Doc shouted. "You came to me. You found out about the drug. I let you in my house. Now you don't have the courtesy to do the same for me?"

  "Go away," the voice firmly replied.

  Calloway touched her arm. "Let's go."

  Doc slammed her fist against the door. "You coward. You fucking coward, Eduardo, hiding in your hole, shaking and sweating, waiting for the big asteroid to hit. That's some life, Eduardo. Enjoy it."

  They turned and headed for the Explorer. "I guess it's you and me, Doc."

  "I guess so," she muttered in disgust. "That bastard."

  Calloway started to open the door when Perez's voice boomed at them through a loudspeaker. "The door is open. Come in, walk to the back, and push the buzzer."

  Calloway exchanged a look with Doc. He shrugged, baffled by the sudden change in Perez's position. They walked back to the building. "Maybe he didn't like being called a coward," Doc whispered. Calloway wondered if they should've just driven off. Perez seemed unstable as well as paranoid. He placed his hand on the doorknob. "You sure about this?"

  "We don't have any choice," she said under her breath.

  He opened the door and they stepped into a three-car garage with a Range Rover, a pickup with oversized tires and a snowplow, and an old Toyota that looked out of place. In addition to the vehicles, the building included a workshop and a storage area. They moved past the workshop and found a fortified steel door.

  "That one would take a tank to break down," Calloway said as Doc hit the buzzer.

  Nothing happened for several seconds, then a recorded woman's voice requested them to enter. Calloway pulled open the door only to reveal an elevator door. "A door within a door. Now what?"

  Doc reached out and pressed a square button. The doors instantly whispered apart. They stepped inside and saw a panel that indicated there were three levels below them. "So, where are we going, Eduardo?" Doc asked.

  "Press number three," Perez's voice answered through an intercom.

  The elevator slowly descended. Calloway turned to Doc and smiled. "Deeper and deeper we go."

  "And where we come out, no one knows," she answered as the elevator stopped. The door slid open and they stepped out into an entryway dominated by tall columns that looked as if they'd been carved out of the gray stone wall.

  Calloway lowered his gaze from the columns. He barely recognized Perez, who stood off to one side, his arms crossed. The onetime Cuban refugee looked lean and muscular, not a bit pudgy as he remembered him. His hair was close-cropped and he wore a short goatee. His brown eyes fell on Calloway, then Doc, as if he were seeing them for the first time.

  "So, what is this all about?" he asked in a suspicious voice.

  No hellos, no greetings of any kind. It was as if they'd just returned from lunch and were continuing an earlier conversation.

  "It's been a long time," Calloway said.

  "So long that I still do not understand what brings you here." Perez spoke in a faintly accented English that always sounded too formal to Calloway because he rarely used contractions.

  Calloway had gotten along with Perez, but they'd never been close during the three or four years when they both worked in Eagle's Nest. But right now he felt as if he'd never worked with him, never even known him.

  "Can we come in and sit down?" Doc asked with a smile.

  Perez stared at them as if he considered sending them on their way again. "First, I will tell you the reason I let you in. I realized they were here, pushing me, urging me to turn you away. They most definitely do not want us together."

  "So you really did want to let us in?" Calloway asked.

  "No, I did not. But when I realized how much they feared us together, I knew I had to open the door."

  They followed him further into the underground abode. "This looks like quite a place, Eduardo," Doc said. "I'm very impressed."

  "It took a big piece of my fortune," he responded. "But it is worth it."

  "I didn't see any neighbors around," Calloway said. "Isn't it sort of lonely."

  "Lonely?" he responded in a dismissive tone. "No. I have more than a hundred and forty-five acres. It is not a prison. I can go out into the world anytime I want, but mostly I prefer to stay right here."

  No doubt, Calloway thought.

  They moved into an enormous room that looked like the interior of a lodge with walls made of treated logs that glistened. An oversized fireplace with a dark mantel dominated one wall and a flagstone floor gave the place a sense of sturdiness and impenetrability.

  The walls curved inward, rising up toward a skylight high overhead. Calloway gazed up, noticed that the atrium had been blasted out of solid rock. Walkways at the two higher levels circled the atrium. "It's not the Brown Palace Hotel, but it's pretty damned impressive, Eduardo," Doc said.

  "I wanted a secure home, not a palace."

  "If the idea here is protection, doesn't this atrium leave you vulnerable," Calloway asked, pointing upward. "I'd think someone could smash the glass and drop a hand grenade on you."

  Perez laughed. "No. There are two layers of a very thick coated plastic that are five feet apart. You could smash an ax against it and it would just bounce off. But that is not all. By pressing a button I can seal off the top with a three-inch plate of steel. It takes eight seconds to close electrically and about twenty by hand."

  "I take that back. It looks as if you're prepared for about any catastrophe," Calloway commented.

  Perez nodded solemnly. "As soon as I became rich, I also became obsessed with survival. I needed to know that I was going to live long enough to enjoy the m
oney."

  Calloway knew all about obsessions. "Are you enjoying it now?"

  Perez smiled at Calloway. "I am feeling very secure, at least secure from physical changes in the environment."

  "Like an asteroid strike?" Calloway asked.

  "I would hope so."

  Calloway wondered if they were just going to stand around or if Perez would offer them a seat in his house. Doc didn't wait to find out. "Eduardo, do you think we could sit down and tell you about what's been going on over the last couple of days?"

  "I'm not used to having guests, especially ones who so willfully impose themselves on my privacy," he said, coolly.

  He reached into his shirt pocket and took out a black, rectangular object not much thicker than a card. He spoke softly into it, requesting a pitcher of iced tea. Then he pointed at a black leather couch. Calloway and Doc sat down, but Perez remained on his feet, moving nervously about.

  "The asteroid scenario is one possibility that concerned me when I began work on this project six years ago," he said, glancing at Calloway. "But now I'm more concerned about solar flares. We have entered solar cycle number twenty-three, and there already has been an increase of solar activity, X class flares, the largest we know of. An enormous flare could send enough radiation, X rays, and gamma to destroy most of the life on earth."

  "Why would you want to survive something like that?" Doc asked.

  "I do not think the devastation is going to be total. Some people will survive, but life will be different. I want to be around to help with the post-cataclysmic reconstruction. I think my talents—our talents—will be very useful."

  "You mean remote viewing?" Calloway asked.

  "Of course. You see, I believe other forms of intelligent life will make themselves known to us. Some will be helpful, others will not. Those of us with our skills will be able to distinguish which ones we can trust."

  "You mean like the ones supposedly talking with the president?" Doc asked.

  "I heard about that," Perez said slowly. "My feeling is that he is making a very big mistake. Those are not friendly entities. They have wrongly invaded his life. They are manipulative and they have probably even influenced his thinking."

  "So you believe he was actually contacted?" Doc asked.

  "It was not a dream. I think he is in trouble. Very big trouble."

  "That's what the politicians are saying," Calloway said.

  "I do not mean political trouble. I think his life is in danger. These creatures are holding him hostage, some sort of mental hostage." He tapped his temple.

  Calloway agreed with what he'd said about Dustin's encounters, except he didn't think the creatures came from a distant planet. He wondered if Perez had gotten lost in his fantasies, whether they were about dangerous aliens or a worldwide cataclysm. The underground mansion, in fact, was a monument to Perez's paranoia. Certainly, what he said about the solar flares represented one possible future. But Calloway had also peered into the future world and he had never sensed any dramatic planetary changes happening in his lifetime.

  Perez's preoccupation with disaster gave Calloway an opening to turn the conversation in the direction he and Doc wanted to pursue. "Eduardo, what do you think about Gordon Maxwell's projections about several western states breaking off from the union in the next few years?"

  "Maxwell? Why would I pay any attention to him? He is not a visionary. He is an exploiter. He sells his services to the highest bidder. He tried to get me to join the others again to remote view by telephone. He said I could travel the world without leaving my house, and he told me I could work on a special project, something that would help keep the federal government from infringing on my freedom."

  Perez snorted. "I told him to go fuck himself and that he was the one trying to infringe on my freedom."

  "Maxwell approached me, too," Doc said.

  Perez looked distracted. "Excuse me. Let me see what's taking Sarah so long."

  Doc sidled closer to Calloway on the couch after Perez walked away. "So what do you think?" she asked in a low voice.

  "I think that if I stayed here a couple of days, I could get very paranoid about the outside world."

  She smiled. "But you'd be comfortable."

  Perez returned, followed by a pretty blond woman who carried a tray with a pitcher and glasses and an assortment of cookies. Perez introduced her as Sarah, his housekeeper, and mentioned that she was from Denmark and was spending a year in the States. Calloway recalled the old Toyota in the garage and guessed it belonged to her. What an introduction to America, he thought.

  Sarah greeted him and Doc, and set down the tray. She and Doc exchanged a few more comments, then she moved off and disappeared into another room.

  Calloway took a sip of tea, then set his glass down. He wished Perez would've offered him a beer. He pushed the thought away and turned to the reluctant host. "So, Doc and I have been doing some work together. We've been tracking a nuclear bomb."

  Perez sat down on a reclining chair, crossed his arms, and listened as Calloway proceeded to summarize all that had happened since he'd seen the numbers by the river. He detailed the search for the bomb, the attacks they'd encountered, and finished by speculating on the deadly acts possibly committed by Maxwell's remote viewers in defense of Wiley."

  Perez dropped his head back and stared up into the atrium. "I've protected myself from the dangers of the outer world, but now I face an attack through the inner world. I hope that I am prepared for it. Maybe the Z-Factor made me a little paranoid, but then there are good reasons to be that way."

  "The what?" Calloway asked.

  "That's the code name for the drug that Maxwell used on us. Let me show you something." Perez abruptly stood and walked off. He returned less than a minute later with a file folder.

  "I want you both to read this. It is a fifteen-page monograph that Maxwell wrote six years ago. There were only twelve copies of it published. It circulated privately in the intelligence community and this copy was passed to me just three weeks ago."

  Calloway glimpsed a top-secret classification stamp on the cover. He started to move closer to read over her shoulder, but Perez held up a hand. "Let Doc read first. You need to call a Camila Hidalgo. Who is she?"

  "She works for the president. She helped us out."

  Perez didn't seem impressed. "You also should call Lewis Fielding, an FBI agent. I have their numbers for you."

  "When did they call?"

  "Before you arrived. One after another. Come. You can use my study."

  Calloway stood up. "Damn it, Eduardo. It would've been nice if you had told me a little sooner."

  Perez's eyes narrowed. He pointed a finger at Calloway. "And it would have been nice if you would not give my telephone number out to government agents. Now I have to change it."

  "I'm sorry. But I'm concerned about that bomb."

  They moved into a study with built-in bookcases, another fireplace and expensive mahogany furnishings. He took the phone Perez handed him and settled down into what he immediately recognized as the most comfortable leather chair he'd ever sat in.

  He waited until Perez left the room, then dialed the first number on Perez's notepad and asked for Camila. He felt unexpectedly nervous.

  This time she answered right away. "I hope I'm not interrupting you."

  "Don't apologize for calling me, Trent. Just get to the point." She sounded frazzled. Things were not going well in her world.

  "First, do you know if they found the bomb under the bridge?"

  "Clarke told me there was no bomb."

  "It was there. I'm sure of it. Someone picked it up."

  "Trent, is there anything else? I'm really under pressure right now. If you've read the headlines, you can understand."

  "Wait a minute. I know this sounds weird, but I think there might be a link, a direct connection between the bomb and Dustin's alien contact."

  No reply.

  "Camila, did you hear me?"

  "Trent,
there was no bomb. In all likelihood, there are no aliens, either. So in that sense, yes, they are connected."

  "That's not what I mean." He felt his head pounding again and rubbed a finger between his eyes. "I'm almost certain there's a group of remote viewers who are imposing on the president's mind, and now I think they've got the bomb."

  "Trent, I'm sorry. I've got to go. I've got a meeting in five minutes. But if you've got anything substantial, talk to the FBI."

  He felt a sinking feeling as he hung up. He had hoped that she would congratulate him for locating the bomb, for saving Washington. He wanted her to believe his explanation about the aliens and to ask him to help protect the president from more psychic assaults. But of course, it didn't work out that way.

  He remained seated for nearly a minute. Then he slowly stood up. Disappointment spread through him like a virus. His legs felt leaden, his head pounded. If Camila didn't believe him, then who would? Not Clarke, not Tyler, and not Fielding, the FBI agent. He felt his doubts returning. Why should they believe him? Maybe there really was no bomb.

  Stop. That was exactly what Maxwell and the others wanted him to believe. They wanted him to give up and go back to Bluff, to drown himself in his drinking, and maybe one day his body would be found floating down the river, and of course it would look like an accident.

  He walked back out to the spacious central room where Doc, the monograph in her lap, talked with Perez. They looked up as he approached.

  "Trent, you've got to read this document," Doc said, excitedly. This proves what Eduardo told me before and what we've been thinking."

  Calloway sat down on the couch, took the monograph. "Proves what?"

  "It proves not only that the Z-Factor enhanced our remote viewing skills, but linked us all together into a psychic web."

  Perez picked up a sketch pad from a nearby table and scrawled something on it. "So, we are the three from the old group who are not playing the game and we are caught in Maxwell's psychic net like flies in a spider web. If we buzz and shake our wings, the spiders will descend upon us."