by Jay Falconer
He got out of the stolen Humvee and snuck along the street until he arrived at the house next to his mother’s. He crouched down behind the three-foot-tall hedge separating the two lawns, giving him a clear view of the van’s driver’s seat and open side door.
Bruno opened the door and helped his mom into the front passenger’s seat, then walked around to the driver’s door, carrying a black laptop computer case, which Lucas recognized as his from the LA Kings’ hockey sticker on its front pocket, something he’d added only a few weeks before.
The red-haired man impersonating him approached the vehicle’s side cargo door. The charlatan handed both suitcases to one of the armed guards already inside the cargo door, then stepped up and entered the vehicle himself. Seconds later, the other guard joined them inside and the side cargo door slammed shut.
Lucas sneaked back into the Humvee and waited to turn on his headlights until after Bruno flipped a U-turn and drove down the street in the opposite direction. Lucas followed behind them for the next hour as Bruno crept through traffic across the north side of town. Lucas kept the Humvee back at a safe distance, trying not to be spotted as a tail. His plan seemed to work. It wasn’t difficult to blend in with the numerous Army trucks interspersed within the civilian traffic.
Bruno drove south along the access road bordering the Loop 101 Freeway until he reached the Glendale Hockey Arena’s front-side parking lot. The van drove down a sharp incline and disappeared into an underground garage. To the right of the ramp’s entrance was a twenty-foot-wide sign that read:
ARENA RENOVATION
General Contractor: BTX ENTERPRISES
Lucas had heard that Dr. Kleezebee’s development company had purchased the vacant hockey building and was in the process of renovating it. He’d never set foot inside the arena, but had seen it on TV many times, the last being two years earlier, right before the Arizona Coyotes filed for bankruptcy—a second time—and then relocated to Mexico. Nobody expected the financially strapped team to thrive in Mexico, but it did. He never got used to saying “Los Coyotes.”
Lucas waited five minutes before driving the Humvee down the entrance ramp. Inside, he only found one other vehicle—Bruno’s security van. It was parked backward in the very last row, only twenty feet from his current position. He could see the empty front seat of the van and its cargo door. The van looked abandoned.
He looked around to see where Bruno and crew had taken his mother. Only four exits existed on the sublevel, including the entrance ramp behind him. At the far end of the garage was the main elevator and its adjoining stairs, but Bruno’s van wasn’t parked anywhere near them. The only other choice was a closed orange door, which was about ten feet on the other side of Bruno’s van.
Lucas pulled forward slowly and parked the Humvee nose-to-nose with the van. He set the parking brake, got out of it with the soldier’s gun in his right hand, and looked through the van’s driver-side window. No one was home. He tried the van’s rear windows, but they were heavily tinted and the garage’s lighting was poor. He couldn’t see much of anything inside. He tried to open the double doors, but they were locked.
He walked to the orange door and reached for the doorknob with his left hand, but didn’t turn it—he heard voices coming from the other side. He leaned in close to the door with his left ear to listen. One of the voices was a perfect rendition of his own—the imposter’s—having a friendly argument with Bruno about who ”should go first.” They were kidding around like old chums at happy hour. He listened for his mother’s voice but didn’t hear it.
A handful of seconds later, an electrical hum rattled the doorframe, startling him for a second. Inside, a female voice said, “Please step onto the pad. Activation sequence will begin in thirty seconds. Remember not to hold your breath.”
Lucas slowly twisted the doorknob, trying to open it, but it wouldn’t budge. Again, he heard the same female speak. “Please step onto the pad. Activation sequence will begin in thirty seconds. Remember not to hold your breath.” Both of the times she spoke, the woman used the same inflections and timing, making her voice sound artificial, like it were a recording.
He listened for another five minutes, but heard nothing else from the other side. He tried twice, unsuccessfully, to kick the metal door open.
He needed a new plan.
He searched his Humvee for tools, finding a heavy-duty scissors jack stuffed inside a recessed sidewall compartment behind the rear seat. A three-foot-long tire iron with a tapered end like a screwdriver was wedged inside a form-fitting cutout just below the jack. He grabbed the steel bar and returned to the orange door with the intention to use it as a crowbar.
He took aim, then jammed the bar’s tapered end into the doorjamb with a single thrust, splitting the metal seam next to the lock. He wiggled and pushed the tire iron farther into the crack before leveraging all his weight against the bar. It worked; he pried the door open.
He put the bar on the cement floor and walked inside with the loaded gun out in front of him. He sneaked along the brick wall lining the hallway until he came to a chamber about the size of a 7-Eleven convenience store. Inside, he discovered two stacks of blinking electronic equipment with a metal desk and computer console sitting in front. He checked the room, but there was no sign of his mother or anyone else. He was alone.
A clear cylinder about the size of a phone booth was standing in the center of the room. It was a few feet taller than Lucas, and resembled an oversized pneumatic tube, like those used by a bank in its drive-through lane. On the left side of the tube, a bundle of gray-and-black cables snaked their way along the floor, connecting the tube to the electronic equipment. The cylinder’s base was a round pad about three inches thick and four feet in diameter. Its surface was shiny and appeared to be made of glass, or possibly an acrylic. The pad was sectioned off into four, pie-shaped triangles of different colors: red, blue, orange, and green.
When Lucas approached the cylinder, its enclosure rotated automatically, revealing two clear, overlapping glass tubes, one inside the other. The glass rings continued moving in opposite directions until a man-sized opening appeared. He was tempted to step inside to see what might happen, but decided to wait.
He walked to the computer desk, where a rotating 3D font was spinning on the computer’s twenty-inch monitor. The phrase BTX ENTERPRISES danced across the screen in block letters, taking turns bouncing off the four edges of the display. He didn’t see a mouse or keyboard, so he touched the screen to deactivate the screen saver. The computer screen showed:
“Jump Pad Thirteen . . . Comm Sync . . . Buffer waiting,” he mumbled aloud. The device must be some type of streaming communication system, and it was connected to a silo. Apparently, not the only one Kleezebee owned, either.
He used his finger to press the ENGAGE button. A female voice said, “Please step onto the pad. Activation sequence will begin in thirty seconds. Remember not to hold your breath.”
“Pretty fucking cool!” he said, taking a step back. He realized the machine was some type of telepod or transporter. “They must have taken it to Silo Three, wherever that is.”
He walked back to the vertical cylinder and considered his options. He needed to either step onto the pad and take a ride, or abandon his intention to rescue his mother. If he gave up, where would he go? After a moment of deliberation, he decided the only choice was to take a road trip.
He stepped into the device, making sure the handgun he was holding did not damage the glass. Lights flashed and a high-decibel alarm blared through the room. Then the same female’s voice said, “This is a weapons-free zone! Please discard your weapon immediately. You have twenty seconds to comply or a nerve agent will be released.”
A steel door slammed shut from the ceiling above, blocking his access to the entrance hallway. He was trapped inside the room. Then a four-foot-wide metal drawer slid open along the wall next to the electronic equipment.
Lucas didn’t need to be told twice. He scooted of
f the pad and ran to the deposit drawer, and tossed in the handgun. The drawer closed as soon as the weapon clanked along its bottom. He listened for the computer to respond, but she didn’t.
“I just gave you the gun,” he shouted to the room. No answer. When he didn’t hear the sound of gas being released, he decided he was in the clear. He stepped back inside the Jump Pad. This time its enclosure rotated closed without any alarms or warnings. He let out a sigh of relief.
He closed his eyes and waited for the machine to do its thing. He concentrated on his breathing, making sure to inhale and exhale normally as the computer told him to do. Everything was going fine until he started thinking about the 1986 movie The Fly. He suddenly worried that he might come out the other end of the telepod as a hybrid organism, like the movie’s Brundle-Fly creature—half-human, half-fly. He opened his eyes and listened for insects buzzing around the telepod. There were none.
Then the equipment powered up before he was ready, making him hold his breath. He began to feel lightheaded as if he were in a dream, floating above the clouds. It was almost a spiritual experience, which was more than strange since, unlike his brother, he didn’t believe in a supreme being. He preferred the hard reality of science. He couldn’t fathom how his mother and brother could blindly follow church doctrine without a shred of proof or assurance.
A long second later, he heard the same computerized female voice say, “Welcome to Silo Three.”
Lucas opened his eyes and pressed his hands against the clear glass enclosure to catch his balance, at least until the enclosure began to rotate open. He was in a room much like the one he’d just left: Electronic equipment installed in wall-mounted enclosures along one side of the room, and a stubby computer desk with a flashing monitor sitting on top of it.
He stepped off the pad and felt around his body, checking to make sure all of his parts were intact and in the correct location. They were. He walked to the only door, opened it, and stepped into a hallway.
Two people—a thirty-something male and younger female—were approaching from his right, dressed in white tunics and turquoise-colored surgical pants. They were shuffling their feet forward at half-speed, obviously in no hurry to get where they were going. The woman was eating a bagel while her colleague carried the conversation.
The man smiled at Lucas. “Hello, Dr. Ramsay. Enjoying your visit?”
Lucas glanced at the man’s nametag. “Yes, I am . . . Dr. Khoury.”
The couple walked past him, down the hallway to the left. He decided to head in the opposite direction, following three, colored floor stripes—red, orange, blue—which were painted down the middle of the cement floor. When the stripes branched off from each other, he chose to follow the red stripe, his favorite color. It led him down a connecting hallway where a half-dozen closed doors lined the walls.
The first door was labeled with a sign that said LAUNDRY. He kept on walking until he came upon another door that said SUPPLIES. He opened it and went inside. The room’s interior was just as he expected, two floor-to-ceiling metal shelves with cleaning supplies on one and office supplies on the other. There was a janitor’s mop and bucket, several worn yellow sponges, a pair of dirty sneakers that appeared to be older than he was, and a handful of fly-fishing magazines sitting under a box of Handi Wipes. A blue baseball cap with a crusted ring of sweat was draped over the end of the mop’s handle.
Several waist-high rectangular signs were leaning up against the wall next to the door. Some of the printing was faded beyond recognition, but Lucas was able to make TITAN II MISSILE SITE 3 stenciled across the top of each sign. Just below the title was a single number, varying from 1 to 8 depending on which sign he looked at. Below each number was a floor plan with footprint icons leading to exterior doors.
Lucas had visited the Titan Missile Museum just south of Tucson during his freshman year. The tour guide explained that when the Department of Defense decommissioned missile silos, they often sold the property to citizens at pennies on the dollar. He wondered if Kleezebee’s company had bought one of them and refurbished it.
“Okay, I’m underground in an old missile silo, but where?” He inspected the office supplies and found that they were all from the same supply store in Tucson. He recognized the address as just south of campus on Broadway Boulevard.
He continued down the hall and turned right around the next corner. He could see an elevator at the far end of the corridor; a woman stood in front of it. To his immediate left, there was a door marked ARMORY.
“Yahtzee!” he quipped before ducking inside the door. The room was slightly larger than the bedroom in his apartment but much better stocked. An overcrowded weapons rack with machine guns and semi-automatic handguns was hanging on the far wall. In addition, there was a generous supply of other combat gear, including handheld radios, ammunition, night-vision goggles, smoke and flash grenades, helmets, and Kevlar protective vests. He had hit the motherload.
On his way back to the rifle rack, he bumped into a case of odd-looking handheld weapons sitting on top of two black, corrugated storage containers. The guns were dark gray, almost black, with a blocky, right-angle appearance, much like that of a police-issued electroshock weapon. He picked up one of the weapons; it was much heavier than he’d expected.
A pea-sized lever stuck out on the side of the gun just above the handgrip. He pressed it with his thumb, releasing a two-inch, rectangular cartridge from the bottom of the stock. The cartridge was glowing green, warm to the touch, and fit into the palm of his hand. He snapped the cartridge back into its chamber, then pointed the weapon at the empty wall next to the closed door.
He pulled the trigger, sending a silent blast of white energy out of the gun’s barrel. When the energy ball hit the wall, it scattered across the surface like static lightning frolicking across the night sky.
“Oh, yeah, I’ve got to get me one of these!” he said, using his best Will Smith imitation. He tucked the gun inside the back of his waistband and pulled his shirt down over it to conceal the bulge.
He also grabbed a black, 9mm handgun from the weapons rack and checked its ammo. All fifteen rounds were loaded into the magazine, which he rammed into the gun’s stock. “Let’s rock and roll,” he said, feeling damn good about his progress thus far. He stuffed the 9mm inside the front of his belt and returned to the hallway. He continued down the corridor to the elevator, keeping track of the armory’s location in case he needed to return.
When he reached the end of the hall, the elevator’s door opened and out walked a whistling security guard. “Can I help you find something, Dr. Ramsay?”
Lucas cleared his throat, trying to act cool. “Have you seen Bruno?”
“Last time I saw him, he was down on Eight, in surveillance.”
“Thanks.”
“Of course, anytime,” the guard said, walking away. Then the man stopped and turned around. “Hey, didn’t I just see you down there?”
Lucas ignored the guard’s question as he stepped into the lift, hoping that the guard thought he didn’t hear him. He just needed the doors to close before the man asked him a second time. He pressed the Number 8 button on the panel, then smiled at the guard as if everything was normal. He stopped holding his breath when the doors closed and the elevator started its descent. He had been on Level 5.
The elevator’s bell chimed right before the doors opened on Sublevel 8. Lucas expected to see another hallway, but instead the lift opened directly into a warehouse-sized room filled with a grid of twenty video screens covering the far wall. A group of six men was seated side-by-side in front of a video control station that stretched from one side of the room to the other. Like the three men standing behind them, they were facing forward, with their backs to Lucas. No one seemed to notice his arrival.
Lucas recognized all three of the men standing with their heads tilted up toward the active screens. One of them was Kleezebee, who was leaning on crutches, wearing his patented flannel shirt and blue coveralls. One o
f his pant legs was cut off just below the knee to make room for the white cast wrapped around his broken ankle. Bruno was standing in between Kleezebee and the imposter who had carried his mother’s suitcases from the house.
Before the elevator doors closed, Lucas quickly moved forward, aiming his 9mm handgun at the back of Kleezebee’s head. “Someone mind telling me what the fuck is going on here?” he shouted.
Chapter 18
Reflection
Kleezebee turned around, as did Bruno and the imposter, all three of them facing the business end of Lucas’ gun.
“L?” Kleezebee asked, before extending his hands out in front of his chest. “Wait, it’s not what it looks like.”
“Yeah, what does it look like?” Lucas replied. It startled him that Kleezebee called him “L.” He’d never done that before.
“Please, put the gun down and let me explain,” Kleezebee said.
“Where’s my mother?”
“Your mother is safe and sleeping upstairs.”
Lucas pointed the gun at the imposter. “Who the hell are you?”
“I’m you . . . the real you.”
“What?”
When the elevator’s bell chimed again, Lucas didn’t turn to look at it right away. Instead, he slid four steps to his left to maintain a defensible position against all parties in the room. When he saw who came rolling in out of the elevator, he lowered his weapon without thinking, almost letting it slip through his fingers. “Drew?” A smile erupted across his face, but it vanished when he realized the person sitting in the wheelchair could be another imposter. “What the hell’s going on here?” he asked, pointing the gun at the person in the wheelchair, then at Kleezebee, then at his double. He kept switching targets, waiting for something to happen.
