Wanting her husband to forget his worries she threw her pelvis up to meet his hand hovering over her pussy. She was eager as he, to feel the thrills and explosions of a shuddering climax with their built in toys. Burning would turn to pleasure rapidly then intoxicate them, quickly – both becoming practiced at their secret art.
“So, not now?” he always reduced her windy soliloquies to a few words, a habit from combat, which she hoped this wasn't, though she did like his large caliber weapon.
“Breakfast?” she fired first, beating him at his stoic response shtick. His languid response, for once, prompted her to hurry for the bathroom and first, longer session on the toilet. Still mentally a bachelor, he disgusted her by coming in behind her, ignoring her hard stare at being disturbed, flopping out his still hard cock and using the sink. “I wash my face in that!” to which he replied he didn't. Marriage was not all bluebirds and roses.
Chapter Eight
The only truly secure system is one that is powered off, cast in a block of concrete and sealed in a lead-lined room with armed guards.
G. Spafford
Albert showed up, spotted them and hurried over. He'd just arrived in Austin, flying in from where ever he hung out. They assumed Dallas, since it was a city with lots of hidden federal facilities, from a massive multi-story blockhouse they shared with various letter agencies, next to a major freeway, to the federal building downtown that took up an entire city block. After they'd waited for an hour in the hotel's modest restaurant, Jabo decided he wanted a second round now that Albert was here – of everything he'd already eaten for breakfast – which Cathy nixed, not wanting him to pudge out on her watch, turning into Marlon Brando. He settled, like most men, for more coffee and a side of pie, which she reluctantly allowed him.
They'd flown to Austin a day earlier, making it their new base of operations, closer to San Marcos as soon as Albert had shown them the company's logo, a sky blue twin helix topped by a red star. Flying Southwest, they'd snatched a nap, getting in late, booking a room in a decent hotel. They managed to sleep two hours before nature called, drawing them back together. A few hours of shut-eye normally refreshed him without fully recharging his batteries, how he lived in the field.
Adrenalin and the lure of the hunt energized his mind and body. Sex was turning into a nice addition to his arsenal of stimulants, along with very strong, extremely high quality room service coffee. Their quiet maid left them a full carafe, which he'd emptied once going over their notes from the last few days. A quick call to the desk produced an instant refill. Living at this level was a real amusement, this luxurious standard of service was exotic to him, used to the spartan stripped down rooms in the third world. He worried it could distract him from the goal – killing the unsuspecting assholes who'd messed with his family.
Their first hotel, where he felt spoiled was a short ride from their new one, impossibly, it was far nicer, a sybaritic, lushly luxurious hotel in sight of the Capitol and the tall tower that dominates the campus of the University of Texas. Everyone walks with a slight shudder with it in sight, if they know what happened over fifty years ago. It could happen again, given the number of loonies with guns and a mad gleam in their eyes.
When they'd switched hotels Albert had driven ahead of them, slow enough they easily followed him in their rental car. Once parked they took an elevator up to ground level from the basement parking garage. Albert had told them to go to the front desk and promptly disappeared, always on his own mission which hadn't rankled Jabo, yet.
They'd taken the elevator, pausing for a bathroom break on the way to the front desk. They asked for Apparent Technologies which advertised itself as a boutique investment firm. There were no investments since it was an unobtrusive cover for a variety of government agencies that operated around Austin, the Capitol of Texas. A quick elevator ride and a short walk down a very long hall brought them back to Albert, standing outside a deserted, glassed-in lobby. There was nobody manning the fort, confusing Jabo who looked to Albert for an explanation.
“We're among friends, we're safe, the folks who act like they work here aren't present at the moment.” It was spook talk, explaining nothing while seeming to. Albert produced a laminated card that made the lock change from red to green and opened the door for them, Cathy first. After they were inside, he led them through the empty lobby, the wall behind the front desk emblazoned with the fake company name and some framed smiling faces. It had the air of a company that had gone bankrupt the day before.
A desk and a few generic padded chairs were the only furniture. It's users were content to simulate a low rent operation or a very new start up, barely moved in. They headed for an unmarked steel door on a short hallway. This was the entry, hidden from anyone looking in from outside. It was clever, simple security that wouldn't draw attention. Jabo imagined he was in a scene from the movie 'Get Smart' or 'Men in Black'.
The unlabeled door looked like it led to a janitor closet. Albert swiped the electronic box by the door frame with the same plastic card and a light click told them it was unlocked – no green light this time – letting them step inside. Just inside the door a long hallway with no doors beckoned. It ended in a booth with thick glass panels and a single, sullen guard who looked up then stared at them without changing her mildly aggressive expression. Behind her was a short gun rack with a row of AR-15's, stacked vertically. It showed they were ready for a zombie apocalypse and would take no prisoners if someone tried to break in. When they were all inside the heavy steel door closed and clicked behind them, an ominous bit of information that told Jabo they were probably trapped inside the hallway. Small armored gun ports flanked her glass booth which had unusually thick glass – at least a few inches deep.
Jabo took a quick look back at the door's frame. There was no card reader inside. The female guard at the end of the hall inside the bullet proof cubicle was the only one who could let them leave, or, if she didn't like their credentials, a rifle off the rack would make short work of them. The extreme security had an odd effect of calming Jabo, who liked the take no prisoners thinking behind it all. These were his kind of people.
Albert acted like he didn't notice the deadly possibilities built into the long hallway. He walked up to the glass booth and flipped open his wallet to show his ID to the guard, pressing it against the thick glass. The closer Jabo got, following Albert with Cathy tucked behind him, the better he could make out the woman's features. She wasn't much to look at, very butch looking, female, tending to thick on most of her body, but it wasn't fat. He lost interest, noting her dark uniform, a bullet proof vest and loads of gear hanging off her waist, more than Jabo thought she'd ever need. She probably never left the small booth with its protective glass during working hours, but you never know.
They had a long ten second wait as she used a laser reader to scan the boxy code on the plastic card Albert had slapped on the glass, then a light chirp inside indicated they were friendlies, not that it changed her disinterested, almost sullen expression. She buzzed them in then returned to her phone screen, tilted back on a pop-out stand built into he phone case, doing what millions of other barely whelped millennial pups did at work, amusing themselves, zoning out on YouTube, Netflix, Hulu or one of the other video libraries that had replaced books, and, to Jabo's mind, thinking. If anyone ever figured out how to put brain software, a neural 'virus' in all those movies and videos being absorbed by millions of empty minds needing entertainment constantly, they'd run the world – maybe they already had. McLuhan had been way way ahead of his time.
“Here, it's clean,” Albert extracted a memo authorizing their use of a room from inside his jacket then signed it, dropping it in a narrow pocket on the wall, next to the door. “We need to get to work...” Once you were inside, procedures were very casual, how civilians operated, making Jabo's military mind grind, like sand in a gearbox, but this was Albert's world, not his. Albert kept operating like no one was in charge but assuring Jabo he was responsible, the op
posite of life on the teams, where everyone was in charge and could become the leader with absolute responsibility and control when required.
Three hours later, his butt sore from sitting so long, his eyes had grown red and bleary from staring at Albert's laptop, reviewing what his sources, he blithely never specified, had learned about LazaRuss and it's vast biotech operations worldwide. It was more than they'd ever need and worse, didn't point to any critical place to strike or indicate who was in their inner circle running things worldwide, or here in San Marcos. On those two fronts they'd drawn a blank, telling Jabo they had tight security. But they did know the bigger picture. Their data described a colossus with both financial and political reach, giving the opposition tremendous power. They sounded like the Google of innovative BioTech.
Forcing their operations here in the USA into the open, specifically in San Marcos, would require a Federal investigation. But doing that would alert the people running LazaRuss they were under scrutiny. It would scare them off and allow them to draw in their tentacles to restart their illegal operations somewhere less concerned about following the law, a country with rulers who were easily bought and paid for. Whatever advantages they'd enjoyed or needed, why they ran their labs here in the US, would be lost, but that wouldn't stop them. They were international and far too big.
Their only advantage was how clearly important the San Marcos facilities were – state of the art – their newest and latest investment. Walking away from them would set them back, hopefully years and hundreds of millions of dollars, the kind of hurt that mattered to people like them. They'd killed the man hiding in the desert subdivision, along with his family, for threatening this facility. Collateral damage had included his grandparents, something they'd soon find out was a tremendous mistake.
Jabo was now a far greater threat than the man they'd killed, or the collection of law enforcement agencies that suspected LazaRuss was doing something illegal or dangerous, like growing deadly, weaponized bacteria or viruses.
They had no direct evidence LazaRuss was doing anything wrong. That was the reason he had to go in, to steal reports and research results. After his initial research Albert was sure it had to do with cloning higher animals, mammals, perhaps even humans. If so, that meant something very illegal was done here, vital to their plans worldwide and very, very lucrative.
Jabo's plan, if Albert didn't stop him, was to take out their senior management and blow up everything they owned in the US. It reflected his direct approach to problem solving that worked well in the field. Unfortunately, what he'd be allowed to do would have to be more surgical – arrests and exposure of their illegal scheme – doable if he could get inside and plant the virus or whatever they called the high tech program they'd explained to him at least ten times. It made his head hurt until they realized he was a throwback living in the computer age, a caveman with a very nasty club who saw computers as metal boxes he could use to bash someone over the head.
“So Missange worked in San Marcos?” Jabo was desperate to sum up what he'd just sat through so he could turn it into an action plan. Unlike Albert whose specialty was researching operations to death, Jabo wanted to do something, inflict harm of the worst kind. He remembered a cartoon hanging in many an operations room in a dusty forward area. They were placea men hung out doing what they were doing here, fleshing out a plan of attack, at least he hoped that was what they were doing. A grim, hard eyed soldier, in torn up BDU's – what they called camo these days, the same shit they'd dressed soldiers in since somebody found out splotches were harder to see than solids – stared out, pissed off, saying 'I don't know what it is, but I'm gonna kill it.'
That was how Jabo felt at the moment, trying to understand what they were facing, a multi-faced, shape shifting monster – worthy of it's own Greek Myth. How do you fight a corporation that could buy a small country, and some did, for tax purposes?
“Yes, well I think he did have access, maybe even copies he intended to hand over. That would have provided leverage, enough they hid his family while he was being interrogated. It's something you don't reveal until the last minute. Whatever he had proved his case. As smart as he was he hid it somewhere – exactly where we'll never find out.“ Albert summed up his take on Missange and his family who'd been killed in the desert, the FBI's informant.
“They won't have any easily accessible records on what he revealed, verbally, which wasn't much, not now. By now anything close to that, on office computers in their headquarters has been 'Hillaried', erased a million times over, then smashed to bits, which makes it impossible to retrieve. That goes for any paper documents – shredded and burned long ago. LazaRuss zeroed everything out after Missange talked to the FBI, except for their server facility. Everything is there and more. Missange kept the good stuff for later and only gave them a general idea of what they were doing in San Marcos and other countries. And of course, what he told them was useless in court without his evidence to back it up – heresay.” Cathy nodded, agreeing with Albert as they both turned to Jabo, wanting his take on the situation.
“Which was? The evidence?” Jabo kept waiting for the punch line, tired of all the background information that didn't point to a weak spot or a person responsible for making the decision to hire the killer who'd truncated his family tree, loping off all the branches except him.
“That I don't know. I do know what LazaRuss did was large scale, cutting edge, very illegal, and has to do with cloning.” Albert wanted Jabo to fill in the blanks on this one, but the obvious answer still eluded their swordsman. Current events, genetic manipulation and the misuse of cloning had passed him by.
“You mean cloning humans?” Cathy asked, getting a nod from Albert as Jabo looked on, clearly wondering what the big deal was, since they'd just outlined the thirty different mammalian species LazaRuss had commercialized with perfect clones, ideal farm animals or show dogs, name your pick. Wouldn't humans be the logical and financially obvious next stop – super cows for milking then super human babies for picky parents, adding genetically enhanced capabilities like weapons makers added lethal functionality to an existing missile or fighter, as an inducement to buy this year's models.
“It's illegal worldwide, United Nations conventions, treaties, National laws in most countries, Europe, the US, Japan, Korea, China, everywhere.” Cathy looked at Jabo, seeing him as a primeval hunk he admittedly was, rather than a sophisticated, high tech warrior. Didn't he read stuff on the web? She had to admit the only book she'd seen him reading lately had turned out to be a military manual on building survival refuges for bad weather. Most people would bone up on how to change a tire for that new car they bought.
“Oh, so no armies of cloned humans, I guess Arnold is safe. He won't be back.” His joke failed, as most did, even the last, using his version of Arnold's trademark Austrian accent.
“More like replacing someone you loved and miss,” Cathy said, “think of what a billionaire would pay to have his dead child back, reborn.”
“Or make your own harem,” Jabo flicked his eyebrows, getting a small smile from Albert who seconded his sexual fantasy. Pick your favorite movie starlet, the hottest one, then imagine you can buy ten of them, all yours, since they hadn't been produced legally or with mothers who'd want to name them, raise them, launch them into their lives and destiny. Human cloning offered a very expensive and profitable channel to human sexual slavery, hidden behind closed doors, inside a mansion or a dungeon – custom built and invisible.
“Jabo!” Cathy looked at him, then saw him look at her, seeing her reproduced, like she was standing between two mirrors, making image after image, all the same, to infinity... and all his property, more or less. What man with weak or no morality could resist that? Jabo had seen slaves, freed many and dealt with their heartless masters in his own ways, but that didn't mean he couldn't understand the emotional and sexual power of that kind of absolute control over their fellow humans. It was technology equivalent to an atom bomb and apparently a don
e deal, for LazaRuss. No wonder they killed Missange and his family to keep it secret, and worse, use it.
If you could do that, you'd want to perfect it, then offer it, as a service for very select, very rich, very ruthless and immoral people who'd seen it all, done it all and wanted something new – something they'd never been able to buy before, but could easily imagine. The fact it was very risky and wrong would only add to its appeal and vastly raise the price paid. The Russian mafia probably had a hand in running LazaRuss, perhaps they were the source of the seed money as well as the enforcers and middle management who'd ignore the implications of what was being done by their highly educated workforce – people like Missange who were the wizards of this black art.
When they'd started it up the founders had found the biggest and best brains. The most advanced technicians and the best techniques in this ever changing biotechnology was in America and Europe. It had forced them to build their research and production labs outside of Russia. It was a risky venture, engaging in highly illegal primary research in a country that had laws against it, and law enforcement hard to corrupt. That meant the moment the method was documented and perfected they'd move it as fast as possible back to Russia where they could hide it then control and run it. But they had to figure how how to make it work first, which was why they'd set up shop here, specifically in San Marcos – building labs, headquarter, and most importantly, highly secured servers and hard disks in a hardened, locked down facility – that was their vault, where all the goodies were locked away.
“Their new labs in San Marcos were built to implement the most recent discoveries and technological break-throughs people like Missange had developed – for cloning humans?” Jabo asked, beginning to understand what they'd been talking about so heatedly, mostly Cathy and Albert as he'd listened for the last few hours.
Hell To Pay Page 20
