The Path Of The Nightmare

by J. J. Carlson

  “Stupid frickin cheap tent,” the voice mumbled.

  “Language,” San said.

  “What? I said ‘frickin,’” There were a few more zips and tugs, then a heavy sigh. Slowly, a slender woman with bushy black hair began oozing from the small gap in the tent. Her foot snagged, and she freed herself with a forceful kick. Standing, she squinted in the morning light.

  “You look…nice,” San said.

  Susana sneered, then sat heavily at the picnic table.

  San blessed the meal, and the family dug in. There was little conversation as eggs, sausages, and crispy hash browns disappeared from the campers’ plates. Within ten minutes, everyone was well sated. San and Phil cleaned up the table and the cooking area while Maria, Susana, and Anita departed for the shower facility.

  When the last skillet and utensil was clean, Philip returned to the tent. San settled into a camping chair with a cup of coffee and a paperback novel. He had to admit, Anita thought of everything. She stored everyone’s cell phones in a bus station storage locker, purchased all new camping supplies, and had everything set up before nightfall. It was more comfortable than he thought life on the run could be.

  Philip was not so optimistic. In previous years, he loved the annual camping trips with his mother, sister, and favorite aunt. But for the past six months, his life had revolved around computer games and social media. Stripped of his electronics, he felt imprisoned in the great outdoors. As he lay on the air mattress, staring up at the ceiling, he wondered what his buddies were doing. Probably still sleeping after a long night of online gaming. Then he realized his friends were still in school, preparing for final exams. The thought made him grin, and he sat up to look for something to do. He scanned the piles of clothes on the floor and rumpled sleeping bags, searching for the deck of cards he and his sister had used the night before. Something bright caught his eye, and he crawled onto the floor to investigate. A yellow slip of paper was protruding from his father’s blue jeans.

  Being careful not to make too much noise, he eased the note out. He frowned at a spot of red near the corner that looked suspiciously like blood. Sitting cross-legged, he unfolded the note. He recognized his parents’ handwriting, and his eyes widened at the scrawled messages. It seemed like his mother and father were using the same piece of paper to communicate. But why wouldn’t they just talk out loud if they were close enough to write on the same paper? And what did his dad mean by, “Eugene and Daron are watching the street?” The whole exchange seemed like something out of a spy movie. What were his suburban parents involved in?

  Philip thought back to a conversation he had with his father about one of his work associates going rogue and stealing technology. Philip hadn’t taken it seriously at the time, but this note made it seem like they were in real danger. He shivered, and glanced at a string of capital letters at the bottom of the page: K-A-T-H-A-R-O-S.

  “Please! Make it stop!”

  The general’s screams echoed through the forest, miles beyond the reach of sympathetic ears. He was completely naked, his body torn with cuts, scrapes, and bite wounds.

  Jarrod ignored the commandant’s pleas and plodded onward, dragging his prey along by the ankle.

  Even the general’s closest, most adoring subordinates wouldn’t recognize him now. His face was swollen and disfigured by driver ants ripping away large chunks of flesh with their pincer-like mandibles. Thousands of jagged vines sank into his skin as he was pulled along—clinging, stretching, and finally springing free, their thorns coated in blood. The physical pain was bad enough, but the visions inside his head were enough to drive a man insane.

  Jarrod had force-fed the general a sub-lethal dose of hallucinogenic mushrooms before breaking both of his legs and towing him through the jungle for six hours. The time for interrogation was drawing near—his captive was near death. Jarrod released the man’s ankle, grabbed him by the shoulders, and propped him against a tree. With swift, precise movements, he plucked the ants from the general’s body, crushing them and tossing them aside.

  “Is that better?” Jarrod asked.

  The man didn’t answer. His eyes rolled around wildly in his skull and foamy spittle dripped from his mouth.

  “This will dull the pain,” Jarrod said, reaching into a leather pouch on his wrist. His ebony fingers removed pinches of white powder and sprinkled them onto the commandant’s wounds. Slowly, the man’s eyes settled, and he breathed a sigh of relief.

  “Better?” Jarrod asked.

  The general nodded, though waves of pain still showed on his face.

  “Good. Then let’s get started. In your quarters, you described someone with black eyes and metal implants. Have you seen this person?”

  The general shut his eyes, and the word “No,” rolled off his lips.

  “Have you seen a photo?”

  “Yes.”

  Jarrod used his thumbs to lift his captive’s eyelids. “If you cooperate, I’ll give you more cocaine.”

  The man nodded and tried to focus on Jarrod’s black visage.

  “Good. Do you know the name of the person who showed you the photo?”

  A nod.

  “Give me a name.”

  The general’s eyes bounced to the pouch on Jarrod’s wrist. “Please...I need more. The pain…”

  “Give me a name and I’ll give you more.”

  The general winced and seemed to search his mind. Finally, he said, “Dedrick.”

  Jarrod nodded, then sprinkled some more of the powder on his captive. “Do you know where I can find Dedrick?”

  The general actually smiled as the powerful drug entered his bloodstream. His eyes grew dreamy, and he said, “I am one of the few that knows where he is.”

  “Tell me.”

  The man looked at the pouch expectantly and didn’t say anything.

  “Tell me,” Jarrod repeated.

  The general shook his head and said, “More first.”

  Jarrod nodded, then loosened the pouch’s drawstring. With a flick of his wrist, he up-ended the small bag and dumped half of its contents on the ground.

  “No!” the general shouted, stretching his hands toward the snowy powder.

  A four-inch spike grew out of Jarrod’s thumb, and he drove it into the man’s shoulder. Leaning in close, he whispered, “Where is Dedrick?”

  The general groaned, and his body trembled. He tried to speak, but it came out as unintelligible babble. Jarrod responded by dusting the general’s eyes with cocaine.

  “Just tell me where he is, and I will give you the rest.”

  Pleasure washed over the captive’s face. He spoke again, this time listing numbers and letters.

  “Grid coordinates?” Jarrod asked.

  The general nodded, and pawed the air in front of Jarrod’s wrist.

  Jarrod slipped the pouch off and placed it in the general’s hands. The general greedily dipped his fingers in and rubbed the substance over his gums.

  As Jarrod turned to walk away, the general said, “Dedrick will kill you. His fortress can’t be breached, and he has a soldier even you could not stand against.”

  Ignoring the taunt, Jarrod broke into a sprint. He would need a GPS to find Dedrick’s precise location, but he already knew it would take several days’ travel to get there. His primary mission, once again, was placed on hold. The criminals responsible for killing his family were granted another reprieve from the violence awaiting them. This intel was worth following; the biomechanical abomination was an insult to his wife, and it needed to be destroyed.

  19

  Eugene Carver weaved through the southbound traffic in his candy-apple-red Datsun. “Be honest,” he said. “You were a little bit disappointed when Young invited you over for poker and not beer.”

  “Of course I am,” Daron grumbled. “It’s been days, and we’ve got jack squat. There are supposedly hundreds of highly organized terrorists preparing for an all-out attack, and we can’t find a single one. If we could get just one of th
ose bastards to tail Young, we could follow the trail back to the hornet’s nest.”

  “Even if it means sacrificing Daniel?” Eugene asked.

  “This is war,” said Daron, avoiding the question. “Sometimes it isn’t pretty. You of all people should know that.”

  Eugene shook his head. “It’s war, but I think we have options that don’t involve dangling analysts as bait.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m all ears.”

  Eugene stared at the road in silence. He didn’t have any better ideas. He didn’t have any ideas, period. They had no one in custody, and the cell phone they had grabbed was a bust. It had a sophisticated timer that wiped every trace of usable data if it wasn’t reset. By the time the analysts had taken it apart, it was useless. And the days since their first encounter with the Katharos agents hadn’t yielded any new leads. They were chasing ghosts.

  Still, Eugene didn’t like hanging Young out to dry. Less than a year ago, Eugene had been the bait in a trap meant to prove Jarrod Hawkins’s combat effectiveness. The incident put Eugene in the hospital for weeks, but he had at least survived. He seriously doubted Daniel Young would live through an encounter with Katharos.

  “This assault on DARPA is supposed to happen in one week,” Daron continued. “If we can’t find some way to stop it, Young and a whole lot of other people are going be in the crosshairs.”

  “Do you think they’ll actually target the Pentagon?” Eugene asked. “I mean, the actual building?”

  “Hard to say,” Daron said, “the way I understand it, a physical attack wouldn’t be nearly as damaging as a large-scale cyber attack.”

  “But there are a some pretty powerful computers in that building,” Eugene countered. “I’m sure some of them aren’t connected to any network, which makes them a target for an actual assault.”

  “But how? It would be suicide to attack the Pentagon. There are units all over the city that would show up with enough firepower to fight off an army.”

  Eugene’s eyes narrowed. “An army, maybe. But what about Lateralis?”

  Daron shifted uneasily. “I don’t know. Lateralis is their trump card. I don’t think they’d risk playing it in the United States. Whether or not they could take down the Pentagon, there’d be no way they could get it back out of the country. It would be a suicide mission.”

  “But they also have Roberts,” Eugene said.

  Daron tilted his head, and Eugene continued. “Who’s to say she couldn’t figure out how to make more of those things?”

  Daron pondered for a moment, then said, “But she was working with a whole team of engineers. She didn’t make Lateralis on her own.”

  “Not the first time,” Eugene said. “But I bet she’s smart enough to make it work once she has a template. Then the original would be expendable.”

  “That’s true…” Daron said. An idea danced just outside of his reach. The pair of black-ops agents sat in total silence for nearly two minutes before he spoke again.

  “We need to get Jarrod stateside.”

  “How? He’s off on a crusade, and we have no way of contacting him.”

  Daron shook his head. “I’ve had someone monitor Jarrod’s digital footprint. He hasn’t touched his bank accounts, credit cards, email, or voice mail, but he periodically logs into Facebook and checks his sister’s page. He always reroutes his connection, so it’s hard for us to pinpoint his location, but not impossible.”

  Eugene frowned. “I didn’t know he had a sister.”

  “He doesn’t have any blood relatives; he was adopted at a young age. His father and three of his siblings are still alive, but they all think he’s dead. He never tries to make contact, but he does check up on them.”

  “Which means we could send him a message the next time he logs in…” Eugene said.

  “Exactly.”

  “But how are we supposed to convince him to come back to Maryland?”

  Daron stared out the window for a long moment, then said, “I’ll figure something out.”

  Eugene sighed. He didn’t like the tone in his partner’s voice, but he knew prying for further details would get him nowhere. Sensing the conversation was over, he turned on the radio and tried to lose himself in the music.

  They arrived at the designated meeting location thirty minutes later. It was an innocuous parking lot in front of a hardware store. They parked next to a minivan, shielding themselves from the building’s security cameras.

  Daniel Young was leaning against his Honda Civic, waiting for them to arrive. When the red sports car pulled in, he made his way across the lot. Eugene stepped out and ushered the analyst into the back seat. With a mumbled complaint, Young settled into the cramped space.

  “What’s the news?” Daron asked.

  “You tell me,” Daniel huffed. “You were supposed to get me more security privileges, not get them revoked.”

  Daron glared at the analyst. “What the hell are you talking about? I did my part. The only person who has more access than you is the President of the United States.”

  “Not anymore,” Young said. “It’s all gone. I can’t even check my email, and I’m being investigated for accessing classified information without permission.”

  “That’s impossible,” said Daron. “You were cleared all the way to the top.”

  Young folded his arms over his chest. “Apparently not. A dozen people have huge files documenting my alleged misconduct. There are memorandums going back months, and they all have appropriate digital time stamps. But somehow, they all showed up at once.”

  Eugene turned around. “You think someone hacked the system and planted the files?”

  “There’s no way,” Young said. “Our digital security is unbreakable. If someone did try to hack in, we would know about it immediately. There has to be someone on the inside.”

  Daron massaged his temples, trying to force himself to remain calm. “You’re telling me you brought us all the way down here to tell us you haven’t found anything, and you can’t even access the system anymore?”

  “It’s not like it’s my fault,” Young said. “I didn’t ask to have my service record trashed. Think about it, my career is totally screwed. I’ll be lucky if I don’t get fired!”

  Daron couldn’t hold back. The pressure building inside him suddenly burst, and he yelled, “I don’t give a damn about your job! People will die if we don’t find some answers!”

  Young recoiled in the back seat, putting as much distance between himself and Daron as possible.

  “Let’s try to not freak out,” Eugene said. “Is there any way we can help you get your security privileges back?”

  “With about a dozen lawyers and six months, yeah,” Young scoffed. Even as the words escaped his lips, he glanced at Daron and flinched. The big man didn’t react. He was doing breathing exercises with his eyes closed.

  “I’ll task someone else with the search,” Daron said finally. “If their privileges get revoked, I’ll go on to the next analyst. I want you to take the rest of the week off and watch civilian news outlets for any stories about engineers getting killed at research universities.”

  Much of the research going into DARPA took place at universities across the country. In order to set back US weapons development, Katharos would have to eliminate civilian as well as military scientists.

  “Take the week off?” Young said. “That’ll burn up all my vacation days. I was hoping to—”

  Daron held up a finger to cut him off. It was shaking, as if he was trying to keep his own arm from choking Young.

  “I mean, uh, no problem,” Young stammered. “I’ll keep an eye out. Invite you over for poker if I find something?”

  Eugene opened his door and smiled. “You got it.” The analyst scurried back to his car, and Eugene sagged in his seat. “What are we going to do? Katharos is crushing us.”

  Daron nodded slowly. “There’s nothing we can do but get ready for war.”

  20

  Rain pounded the
Congolese hillside, forming deep channels in the silty soil. The forest was normally well-equipped to handle heavy rain, but the unusual characteristics of this hillside amplified the runoff. A massive steel and concrete fortress near the top of the hill shed running water with the efficiency of a storm drain. The concrete buildings and patios were rust-colored to match the ground, the fences and turrets a dark green to blend in with the vegetation. A ninety-foot tower poked above the African Mahogany trees. At the top, a multi-spectral, ultra high-definition camera rotated slowly, its glass eye watching the surrounding hills.

  More than a dozen guards with Heckler and Koch G38 rifles patrolled the fence line, and eight more manned sniper rifles and .50 caliber machine guns in the watchtowers. The men and women on the security staff were of mixed nationalities, and none were native to the world’s largest continent. Germans stood alongside Russians and Venezuelans. A common goal, rather than shared heritage, united the diverse group. They sought an end to all suffering in the world, but understood the journey would be a painful one. True purification could only happen through fire.

  Lukas Woodfall stepped out of a concrete building and made his way to the nearest guard. He was staring down at a digital display projected onto his forearm by his watch, and his face betrayed acute anxiety.

  As he approached, the guard spoke in Italian, “Is everything alright, Dedrick?”

  Even as the guard uttered the words, a tiny speaker in Lukas’s ear translated them to English. He didn’t particularly like the name “Dedrick,” but he didn’t have a choice. Everyone was assigned a nickname by the Empress, or someone on her staff. It was done to preserve anonymity and downplay national origins. It wasn’t uncommon to meet a Hispanic woman named “Wang Wei,” or a Chinese man named Frederick.

  When Lukas responded, a similar device in the guard’s ear translated from English to Italian. “I’m just checking the radio and cell-phone chatter from our militants. There are some odd stories circling the camps. Have you noticed anything strange on the perimeter?”