The Chimera Vector tfc-1

by Nathan M. Farrugia

  He heard voices not far behind him. They sounded about his age. He recognized one of the voices as Ernesto’s. It wasn’t surprising: the olive grove was no secret and lots of kids played here. Damien sped up just a bit, not too much in case it caught Ernesto’s attention.

  Not that it mattered. Ernesto had already seen him.

  ‘Damiano!’

  Damien ignored him and kept walking. This was the ‘pretend to be your best friend’ part. He could hear them stomping through the grass behind him. He stayed his course and let Ernesto sidle up to him and slap him on the back.

  ‘Damiano, I have to ask you something.’

  Damien kept walking. He knew Ernesto’s boys were surrounding him. He’d thought that if he stayed quiet and kept from drawing attention to himself, Ernesto’s gang wouldn’t notice him. But they had. Last time, Ernesto had told Damien he could beat him in a fight. Damien knew that if he disagreed, Ernesto would want to prove it. So he’d agreed. But Ernesto had just pushed him over and laughed.

  Damien had never fought anyone before. He had an older sister and no brothers to fight with. But he’d seen his father punch a few grown-ups. He’d held his thumb outside of his fist and aimed with his knuckles to the side of the face. Damien wasn’t sure he could do that to Ernesto. But if Ernesto tried to punch him, he couldn’t just stand there.

  Damien’s heart pumped faster. He gripped onto his schoolbag with his right hand. If he was going to punch anyone, he’d be better with his left. He was left-handed, and kicked the ball with his left foot.

  Ernesto spent most of his time with his finger up his nose or scratching dandruff, but this time his meaty hands dangled at his sides.

  ‘Damiano, are you heterosexual?’ he said.

  Damien didn’t know what a heterosexual was. It had to be something embarrassing, he guessed.

  ‘No, non credo.’

  Ernesto burst out laughing. His boys joined in. They slapped Damien on the back and shoved him around as they laughed. He continued walking, making sure to keep his steps steady so he wasn’t knocked over. He could hear voices at the far end of the olive grove. If he could make it that far he’d be alright.

  ‘You’re a fag!’ Ernesto said, and shoved Damien’s schoolbag hard from the side.

  Damien moved quickly, leaping to the left. Just managed to keep his footing. But another boy was waiting for him and shoved him back the other way. He stumbled towards Ernesto, tripped in the long grass and fell on his side. Ernesto kicked him hard in the back. Damien’s schoolbag absorbed the blow.

  He quickly got to his feet. The wind whistled through the grass, making it ripple around him.

  Ernesto grabbed clumps of Damien’s shirt at the shoulders. He swung Damien around, trying to make him lose his balance again. As Damien staggered past, one of the boys extended a foot. Damien stumbled but managed to stay upright. His bag came free, dropping into the long grass. Ernesto and his boys surrounded him, chanting together, ‘Fag!’

  ‘I bet I can beat you in a fight,’ Ernesto said.

  ‘I guess so,’ Damien mumbled.

  Ernesto laughed. His right shoulder rolled back, then his meaty arm hooked through the air. He wanted to prove it.

  Damien didn’t know what to do. His knees bent and he ducked the fist. Before he even realized what he was doing, he launched forward, his arm stretched out. His fist didn’t hook through the air like his father’s punches, but it still connected with Ernesto’s nose. A direct strike, like one of those jack-in-the-boxes.

  Ernesto stepped back. Not from the punch, it wasn’t powerful enough, but out of surprise. Blood poured from his nose.

  ‘I’m sorry!’ Damien said. ‘I’m sorry!’

  Someone grabbed him from behind and kicked his feet out from under him. He fell backwards, swallowed by grass. The boys started kicking him. Pain flared in his stomach and ribs. He curled up, arms over his face. One kick glanced off his forearm, grazing the skin and drawing blood.

  Blood stained his shirt, but it wasn’t his. Ernesto was on top of him, fists raining down, smashing into Damien’s thin forearms. The other boys grabbed Damien’s wrists and stretched him out so he couldn’t defend himself. Ernesto wrapped one hand around the front of Damien’s throat and pulled his other arm back, ready to punch him in the face. Blood dripped from Ernesto’s contorted lips onto Damien’s lips.

  Damien bucked underneath him, breathing faster, trying to draw in air. He managed to pull an arm free and tried to pry Ernesto’s hand from his throat. Damien could barely wrap his fingers over the boy’s thick wrist, let alone pull it off. Ernesto’s grip was too strong. He reached out and covered Ernesto’s eyes instead, delaying his punch. Growling, Ernesto pulled Damien’s hand away and went to punch again.

  Damien pressed his hand against Ernesto’s forehead. He focused on a part of Ernesto’s brain; he could see it in his mind. He had no idea what he was doing, but he found something. His hand tingled.

  Ernesto blinked. Sweat poured from his beet-red face. He started to cough and his grip relaxed.

  Damien inhaled the deepest breath he’d ever taken.

  Ernesto’s arms shook uncontrollably. His whole body trembled. He looked as if he was possessed by the devil. The other boys fled without a word.

  Damien had seen the hero take down the big bad guy in movies, causing the other bad guys to run away. He’d never thought it could happen in real life. But it just had. What had he done?

  He peeled his hand from Ernesto’s forehead. Ernesto collapsed onto his side, giving Damien just enough room to wriggle free. By the time he got to his feet, a woman was standing there, shouting. She knocked him aside and kneeled before Ernesto.

  Ernesto’s body had stopped shaking. He lay still.

  The woman pressed her fingers against Ernesto’s neck. There were more people in the grove now: mothers, fathers, children, their attention all on Ernesto.

  The woman stood and gripped the crucifix around her neck. ‘Ragazzo del diavolo!’ she cried, pointing at Damien. ‘Ragazzo del diavolo!’

  Devil boy.

  Other grown-ups echoed her words. Some of the kids from school joined in.

  Damien felt his cheeks flush red, wet with tears. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry.’

  He hadn’t wanted to kill Ernesto. He hadn’t wanted to kill anyone.

  * * *

  With a six-pack of Coronas in one hand, Jay walked down the corridor to Damien’s quarters. Another operative was coming towards him, probably heading to the mess for a late-night snack. Food at the Desecheo Island R&D facility — Project GATE’s forward-operating base — was available at all hours, which Jay regularly took advantage of. The operative strode past him. He’d had a few beers, but still managed to recognize her from a previous operation in the Balkans. Grace. He winked at her. She glared at him from under her sharp black bangs.

  It took Jay a while to find Damien’s room, which he blamed on his blood alcohol level. He knocked twice, then heard Damien yell something in Italian. He sounded upset.

  ‘Hey!’ Jay said. ‘Damien?’

  He tested the door handle. It was unlocked. He opened it and stepped inside. Damien was lying on his bed, asleep. He screamed something in Italian.

  Jay slammed the door shut, hoping to wake him. It worked. Damien opened his eyes and jolted upright.

  ‘Are you OK?’ Jay said, planting the six-pack on Damien’s desk beside a small bowl of M&M’s. He scooped up a handful and stuck them in his mouth.

  Damien rubbed his eyes. ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘Why the fuck were you talking in Italian?’

  ‘Just a dream. Don’t you dream in Spanish?’

  Jay rolled his eyes. ‘Portuguese. And hell no. It’s only good for the ladies. Except the one I just passed in the corridor, Grace — she doesn't like me.’ Jay dropped his voice to a whisper. ‘Probably a lesbian.’

  Damien blinked at him.

  Jay ripped two beers from the six-pack. ‘These aren’t going to op
en themselves.’

  Damien groaned and got to his feet, disappeared into the kitchenette. Like Jay’s own quarters, the place was just big enough to swing a cat in. A bottle opener flew out of the kitchenette. Jay caught it and put it to work.

  Damien came back with a saucepan filled with water and drank from it. ‘Aren’t you supposed to be in Italy?’ he said.

  ‘Finished,’ Jay said. ‘Why are you drinking from a saucepan?’

  Damien looked surprised. ‘It’s refreshing.’

  Jay shrugged and handed him a beer.

  ‘What was the op in Italy?’ Damien asked.

  ‘Nothing big,’ Jay lied. ‘Just another day, another terrorist leader.’

  He’d had one chance to take the crucial shot but he’d fucked it up. He was beginning to worry that something had gone wrong with his retraining program. The last thing he needed was to still be defective.

  He turned to Damien’s laptop for distraction and noticed an extraordinarily long hair on the desk. He held it up in the light.

  ‘This isn’t your hair,’ he said to Damien. ‘I thought you were celibate or something.’

  Damien didn’t answer.

  ‘Who is it?’ Jay said. Then he realized. ‘Oh no. Not a chance. Grace? She was over here? She actually talks to you? Since when?’

  ‘Since recently,’ Damien said.

  ‘Are you serious?’

  ‘She’s been round a couple of times.’

  Jay threw his hands up in the air, almost spilling his beer. ‘A couple of times? You don’t even have a freaking TV! What do you do? You both drink from saucepans together? Fucking hell. So she’s not a lesbian?’

  Damien glared at him. ‘I know what you’re thinking. And no, we haven’t slept together.’

  ‘Good.’ Jay pointed his finger at Damien. ‘Because that would annoy me. A bit.’

  He reached forward with his beer and clinked it against Damien’s. ‘Cheers.’ Beer swished from his bottle onto the carpet. ‘You know, you’ve always been a loner,’ he said, taking another swig.

  ‘What makes you think that?’ Damien said.

  Jay shrugged. ‘You don’t hang out with anyone except me. Otherwise, you keep to yourself.’

  Damien snorted. ‘And you don’t? Since our retraining, you’ve hardly talked to anyone. You go to the gym by yourself, you swim by yourself, you’re at the firing range by yourself. You even eat by yourself. In fact, I’m pretty sure I’m the only person you talk to.’

  ‘And that’s evidence of what?’ Jay crossed his arms. ‘You think I’m losing my mind because I want a bit of privacy when I eat my cheesecake?’ He took another slug of beer. ‘Actually, one of those would be pretty good right now.’

  He emptied the bowl of M&M’s into his mouth instead, then laughed. ‘You know, when I first met you, I thought you had a stick up your ass. But I was wrong.’

  Damien raised his eyebrows. ‘When I first met you, I thought you were an arrogant prick.’

  Jay paused to consider that. ‘Yeah. Well, you weren’t too far off.’

  Damien took a mouthful of beer. ‘What if the world knew what really happens?’ he said. ‘What we really do?’

  Jay rolled his eyes. ‘They wouldn’t understand. That’s why we don’t tell them.’

  ‘I just wish it could be different.’

  ‘What’s with all this touchy-feely talk?’ Jay said, perching on the desk. ‘You don’t like the secrecy any more? You want to tell someone all about how hard your job is, Double Oh Sensitive?’

  ‘It’s not a job,’ Damien said. ‘It’s an entire life.’

  Jay was silent.

  Damien took another swig of beer. ‘Denton wants us on a flight to Paris tomorrow. For a briefing.’

  ‘You know what the op is?’

  ‘No.’ Damien looked at Jay. ‘But I know what your last one was.’

  Jay washed down the last of the chocolate in his mouth with more beer. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You shot Sophia.’

  Jay opened his mouth, then shrugged. There was no point hiding it.

  Damien put his beer down. ‘So we’re hunting her now?’

  ‘Yeah.’ Jay suddenly felt awkward. ‘I guess we are.’

  ‘No bets for guessing why we’re going to Paris then.’

  Jay exhaled and leaned back on the desk. ‘Why do you care anyway? She’s a terrorist now. You know, hates the world, hates our freedoms, crazy, blows up random people. All that crap.’

  ‘That’s what Denton told you?’

  Jay had the bottle at his lips. He held it there for a moment, then lowered it. ‘Yeah, that’s what he told me. And if your guess is right, he’ll tell us again tomorrow. And we’re not in the desert any more so you can trim that embarrassing excuse for a beard.’

  ‘Maybe.’

  He picked up his remaining beers. ‘I should probably get some sleep. I don’t sleep well on planes.’

  ‘The whole scared-of-heights thing, right?’

  ‘Uncomfortable with heights.’ Jay opened the door, then hesitated. ‘Do you like her?’

  ‘Who, Grace?’

  Jay rolled his eyes again.

  Damien took a moment to respond. ‘Yeah, I do.’

  Chapter Eighteen

  The thick, humid air hit Sophia like an invisible cushion. She breathed deeper to quickly acclimatize herself as she disembarked the tanker and walked down the pier to Belize City. Belize City’s version of a marina was less recreational and more fishing boats. As her sneakers hit earth for the first time in a week, she noticed the tourists actually outnumbered the locals. Over her shoulder, she could see two goliath-sized cruise liners anchored beyond the coral shelf.

  The tourists were anxious and excited while the locals seemed exceptionally relaxed. The men wore western-style shorts and T-shirts, and the women wore colorfully trimmed dresses and skirts with embroidered blouses.

  Passing a legion of buffet-fattened tourists sucking back papaya smoothies and double servings of lobster, Sophia headed straight for the hiking store listed in the Lonely Planet guide. She had to get her kit together. That meant appropriate clothing that would breathe well and still afford protection from stings and bites, a decent pair of hiking boots and a lot of water.

  She managed to get most of what she needed from the hiking store, including a GPS device that sucked up half her remaining cash. She hit an internet café and Google Mapped her potential locations. Unsurprisingly, Google didn’t let her zoom in very far. Right about now, she would’ve loved to have Fifth Column access to any military satellite she liked. Instead, she analyzed what she could from one mile above, plotted out her route, then used the café’s scanner to scan every page from Adamicz’s diary. She needed a digital backup in case she lost it or it was destroyed. She uploaded the scans onto a draft email on an anonymous email account and left it there for safekeeping. Then she wiped the computer’s free space and paid for an hour’s use at the register.

  So far, she had clothing, boots, compass, a roll of twine, flint, water-sterilizing tablets, intestinal sedative, needle and thread, butterfly sutures, a general-purpose folding knife with a wooden handle and a sheath, a small block of sandstone to sharpen the knife, 550 paracord, a pencil torch and two sets of batteries for it, GPS, and six liters of water in plastic bottles. In this climate, she’d probably go through more, but she didn’t want to slow herself down any more than necessary. She decided to take the cheapest, most portable food she could get her hands on. Bonus if it didn’t taste half bad cold.

  There was an unusual abundance of Chinese restaurants and they all seemed to agree that the most popular dish was ‘fry chicken’. She grabbed a serving to eat now, and for her future meals bought two small takeout packs of rice’n’beans: a combination of white rice, red beans, black pepper and grated coconut. Finally, she bought some cheap chocolate bars from a supermarket.

  While she was there, she decided to grab a few other things. Plastic wrap, waterproof matches, bobby p
ins, elastic bands, Band-Aids, disinfectant, bug spray and a pack of black garbage bags. Seeking out the privacy of a toilet cubicle, she changed into her new clothes: an undershirt, a long-sleeved, loose-buttoned shirt, loose cargo pants, long socks and boots. She unwrapped the chocolate bars and wrapped them in plastic wrap, removed the garbage bags from their packaging, and then packed everything in her bag exactly how she wanted it. She inserted batteries into her torch, tested it, then re-inserted them the wrong way around. She’d learned the hard way what it was like to have the torch turn itself on inside the bag and drain the batteries.

  With only ninety US dollars to her name — or false name — she picked a few more pockets for good measure, took a bus to Placencia, which was the closest town to where she wanted to go, and then hired a bicycle there. She pulled her socks over her cargo pants and used the elastic bands to keep them there, then replaced her shoelaces with paracord. She took the bicycle down the Southern Highway, GPS tucked away in her cargo pants. The citrus orchards rushed past on her left, the thick jungle on the other.

  She turned onto an unpaved road and, rechecking her GPS, stayed on it for two miles before turning right again, continuing another two miles, then left. She reached a walking track that took her in the approximate direction she needed to go. This was as good a place to start as any.

  She concealed her bike under fronds and whatever else she could find, rehydrated, then took an intestinal sedative. The last thing she needed after ripping into some rice’n’beans later on was a bout of diarrhea and the severe dehydration that came with it. With her bag over one shoulder, she checked her watch — eleven in the morning — and set off on foot.

  She walked two miles due north before spotting the river. She checked her bearing, then consulted her GPS again. She was on the outskirts of her suspect area. She was sweating constantly, her arms slick and her face trickling with beads of sweat. Her eyebrows kept most of the sweat from stinging her eyes. Instead, it dripped off her nose and chin. The track was long gone now and she was moving through undisturbed jungle, wishing she had a parang blade handy.