Enhanced

by Ben Brown

  “There, there, Peter it’ll be all right.” Dominic’s voice was little more than a whisper. The hand that so lovingly stroked the boy’s head fell still. Peter’s sobs had diminished to a mere whimper; Dominic had comforted him.

  “You see, Lea, this boy is going to be a god to us one day, and man can only prosper if he removes all false gods.”

  Dominic never took his eyes from Lea. She now returned his gaze with adoration. The fingers on Dominic’s hand began to stretch. The fingers grew in length as they began to envelop the boy’s head. The boy, who was now so serene, apparently failed to notice the sensation of Dominic’s fingers enclosing his head. Dominic’s hand enveloped him in much the same way as a parasitic plant envelops a host. Soon Dominic’s fingers had all but enclosed the boy’s head. Dominic smiled at Lea, she returned the smile.

  Lea could feel that the boy’s death was imminent, and she wanted him dead. She wanted that more than anything else.

  Dominic twisted his head with a vicious flick of the wrist.

  He now held Peter’s mangled head facing backwards over the boy’s shoulders. He was dead. Dominic dropped the small lifeless body with all the disgust that someone might have for a rotten piece of meat.

  “Come, my dear, we have much to do. We have an old friend of yours to deal with.” Dominic released Lea’s restraints and led her from the truck.

  Lea squinted in the bright sun. Her eyes seemed more sensitive than normal; she covered them with one hand.

  Dominic approached two men and a woman, who were waiting just a few yards away. “Claire, take the truck and its escorts, and head down the highway. Don’t stop for anyone. Just keep going until the fuel runs out. Do not allow anyone to stop you, am I clear?”

  The woman in the group said nothing. She simply bowed her head; then she and the two men headed for the front of the truck. Thirty seconds later the truck was gone.

  A small Suzuki 4x4 sat by the side of the road. Dominic headed for it as Lea followed. Both jumped in, Dominic behind the wheel. The small 4x4 bounced off down a dirt road, which led away from the highway.

  13

  Zac took a deep breath and opened the door. His heart pounded as he stared into the rear of the semi. Moments passed in silence, but then overwhelming anger grew in him as he spun to face his companions.

  “Fuck, fuck — FUCK!” He exploded.

  Martinez and Jacobson rushed to his side as he slumped to the ground. His head was spinning; his wounds were hurting, and Lea — was gone.

  He had felt certain he would find her in the truck. The connection which existed between them had assured him of that. Now that connection was broken, and he didn’t know why.

  Zac had felt a symbiosis with Lea, right from the first moment he laid eyes on her, but now — now he felt nothing. He had assumed she was unconscious, or Dominic was blocking her in some way. Clearly she wasn’t here, and he had no idea what to do next.

  Martinez decided to leave Zac with his thoughts; he jumped into the cavernous rear of the trailer section.

  “Hey — this is the kid that took Lea off the battle field," shouted Martinez.

  Zac regained his composure as he slowly got to his feet and gazed into the dark interior of the trailer. He hadn’t spotted the small body crumpled on the floor; he jumped up to take a closer look. He knelt down beside the tiny body with Martinez; the boy’s head had almost been ripped off.

  “What kind of a person could do this?” Martinez asked without looking away from the tiny corpse.

  “A sick motherfucker, that’s who,” Jacobson replied as he joined them.

  Zac stood and started to look around. A table with restraints and an I.V. sat in the middle of what seemed to be a lab setup. He approached the table to take a closer look at the I.V. The clear bag attached to the I.V. was empty, but the tube dangling from the bag still had traces of fluid in it.

  “James, could you get one of your men to bring me the portable lab from the chopper, please?” Zac asked as he eyed the tube.

  Jacobson barked his orders into his throat mike. A second later, a soldier jumped up into the truck with a small case.

  Zac opened it and took out a small microscope and a device to test blood. He placed a blood smear from the tip of the needle in the small device; instantly it began to analyze the sample. He then took a drop of the fluid from the tube and placed it on a slide, which he then placed under the microscope.

  Zac looked through the eyepiece and saw the thing he was dreading … nanites. The fluid was full of them.

  He picked up the blood-testing device; it still had twenty seconds to run. However, he already knew what the results would confirm.

  “Dominic has infected Lea with his nanites. That’s why I can’t sense her anymore. I’ll bet any money you like that the blood on the needle is hers; I expect the blood test to confirm it.”

  He sat on the edge of the bed feeling weak and lost. The device beeped and he looked at its display. Zac held the device up, showing it to the two men stood with him. It confirmed his fears.

  “What’s our next step?” Martinez asked with desperation in his voice.

  “I’m not sure.” Zac stared at his feet. He was at a loss, and felt scared out of his mind. What did Dominic have in mind for her?

  “Is that it? All of this was for nothing? You’ll just give up the chase because the trail has gone cold?” Jacobson said with a degree of anger in his voice. “Come on, think! What’s that lunatic up to?”

  A soldier stuck his head through the door and said, “Sir, Chinwendu has come to. You said you wanted to know as soon as she was awake.”

  “Thank you, Private,” Martinez said as he stared at his frustrated companions.

  Zac lifted his gaze from his feet and shouted, “Africa! He’s heading to Africa!” He jumped from the truck and ran to the stricken chopper; Martinez and Jacobson were close behind him. Zac jumped in the chopper and found Chinwendu sipping on a canteen.

  “Chinwendu, please think. Can you remember any aid workers, in particular, a French woman? You would have been young, but please try.”

  Chinwendu looked shocked at the question. “I’m not sure, there were many aid workers. I can’t reme …”

  “This one in particular is important — she was killed by rebels.”

  Chinwendu’s brow furrowed as she concentrated. “I remember something — yes, yes I do. Not long after that, the aid relief dried up because it became too dangerous to get to our region.”

  “Did Dominic come to Africa just to find you and your mother, or did he have another reason? Did he say anything about why he was in Africa?”

  Chinwendu thought for some time. “Dominic did say that the region held a place in his heart, but he didn’t say why. Now I think about it, he had mentioned on several occasions about returning to the Congo to deal with some unfinished business. I didn’t give it much thought at the time because Dominic has business all over the world.”

  Zac looked up at Martinez and Jacobson. The two men still looked puzzled.

  “Doc, can you hear me?” Zac hit the implant in his neck and waited for Doc’s voice. “Doc, are you there?” Still Doc didn’t respond.

  Zac looked at Martinez. “Are we still being blocked?”

  Martinez keyed his mike and instantly got through to Kennedy; he shook his head.

  “Doc, come in, please come in!” Zac was looking at Martinez; he gave it a couple of seconds. “Contact the British authorities get them to check on Doc, but if I’m right Dominic’s people already have him. I know his location is being kept from almost everyone, so here’s the coordinates for his lab.”

  He handed over his iPhone, which displayed Doc’s location through its cracked screen.

  Martinez took the phone and relayed the coordinates to his team in New York, who in turn contacted London.

  “I’m still not clear on what’s going on,” Jacobson had a bewildered look on his face.

  “Dominic’s mother was killed in the Cong
o, and he has never forgotten that. In fact, it haunts him. He went to Africa to level a score with his mother’s killers. That’s when he stumbled across Chinwendu and her mother. We had assumed he’d gone there to get both of them, but think about it. Why would he go on such a risky mission? He couldn’t hunt down all his subjects in person, because that would take him a lifetime. No, he had other reasons to be in Africa. Chinwendu was found in the village of the rebels who killed his mum. He was reaping his revenge, not looking for subjects.”

  Martinez nodded as he listened to Zac’s theory. “It’s plausible, but it’s a stretch, Zac. How can you be sure? Nothing that we’ve found here points to them heading to Africa.”

  Jacobson just listened.

  “I expect he’s taken Lea for one reason — he wants her to kill Doc. He knows his father looks on Lea as a daughter, and it would destroy him to know that his son has corrupted her. It would be worse than Dominic killing him himself. Doc would expect that,” Zac said as he worked over all the possibilities in his head.

  “Okay, let’s say this is true. Why go all the way back to the Congo, why not bring Doc here?” Jacobson asked as Martinez nodded in agreement.

  “I think he wants to kill his father where his mother died. He probably sees that as some kind of justice. In addition, I think Doc greatly underestimated Dominic’s numbers. Consider this — where better than Africa to start selling his skills and his people?”

  Zac knelt down at Chinwendu’s side again and asked, “Can you remember where the woman was killed, which village?”

  Chinwendu thought for a while. “The village is on Mont Nabeba; it’s about fifty kilometers from our village. It happened there.”

  As Chinwendu spoke, Zac gestured to Martinez to give him back the iPhone. He went to the Google maps app and keyed into the search bar, ‘Mont Nabeba, Congo, and Africa’. It gave him the coordinates, 1° 51′ 0″ N, 13° 59′ 0″ E,

  He held up the phone to show the others. “I think this is where we should go next.”

  “Wait a minute; we need more than a hunch before we start jetting off around the world!” Martinez was obviously becoming impatient with the new chain of ideas.

  Zac jumped from the chopper and called one of the cops over. “Officer, there are dirt tracks all along the sides of this highway. Where do they lead?” he asked.

  “Well, lots of places. Some lead to creeks, others lead to old homes, and …”

  “Can you get to an airfield of any kind?”

  “Well, sure you can. There’s a private airfield about ten miles that way.” He pointed behind them. “It’s small, just for choppers and crop dusters, that sort of thing.”

  Zac looked at Martinez and said, “Thank you officer that will be all.”

  The cop walked away.

  “I think Dominic and Lea got off the truck before we caught up with it, then they headed for the airfield. I’ll bet if you checked you’ll find a flight of some kind left that airfield and headed for New York.”

  Martinez held up his hand. He placed his other on his earpiece; he looked concerned. “British Intelligence just informed me that Dr. Skinner is missing. They were already at his facility when we made contact. A silent alarm alerted them to its location, and his predicament. There were signs of a struggle.” Martinez looked in the direction of the small airfield.

  “Damn it, Martinez, I think Zac is onto something!” Jacobson said. “At least go and check to see if any flights have left from that airfield. I’m going to call up a chopper to get us out of here.”

  Martinez conceded with a simple nod and began to talk quickly into his mike.

  Zac returned to the chopper to wait for Martinez’s decision.

  “Do you really think Dominic is heading back to the Congo?” Chinwendu asked.

  Zac shrugged his shoulders. “I’m not sure, but I think it’s our best bet. If Martinez comes back saying no flights took off from the airfield then — well, I can’t think of what else to do.”

  He looked at Chinwendu and smiled.

  Chinwendu simply patted his hand.

  They both sat in silence as they waited for Martinez to return. It took about two minutes for Martinez to hear back from Kennedy.

  He beckoned to Jacobson as he headed back to the downed chopper. The two men met at the door.

  “Okay, it would seem that a Cessna 400 Corvalis TT took off from the airfield over two hours ago; it headed to a private hanger at the JFK airport.

  “We have found a link between a subsidiary of one of Dominic’s companies and the owner of the hanger. Two people, a male and female, were seen boarding a Bombardier Global Express XRS. That plane is owned by a Russian weapons company. According to its flight plan, it was heading for London. However, as soon as it left U.S. airspace it turned off its transponder and severed all communications with air traffic control. We can extrapolate from its last known position that it is quite possible that it’s heading to Africa.”

  Jacobson laughed. “You’re right on the mark, Zac. I guess we’re off to Africa!”

  Before he spoke, Zac considered their options. “We’ve been two steps behind Dominic at every turn. This is our chance to take the lead. We need to beat him to Africa, but we’re over two hours behind him; so how are we going to do that?” He looked at each of his three friends, one at a time.

  “Well I have that covered,” Martinez said. “As soon as Jacobson’s chopper gets here we’ll get it to drop us at the McGuire Air Force Base. We have a plane waiting for us there. It’s fast, and it has stealth capability. As soon as it’s dark we can take off.”

  “Why wait until it’s dark, that’s nearly three hours away?” Jacobson asked.

  “The plane is still black ops so it doesn’t officially exist. It won’t take off in daylight. The plane is taking over from SR-71 Blackbird; it’s over twice as fast and can carry a limited number of passengers.

  “Its code name is, Aurora. It has a maximum speed of Mach 6.1. We’ll get to Africa well before Dominic; his flying time is a little over thirteen hours. Our flying time will be less than two and a half. Our feet will hit the ground about five hours before he even lands,” Martinez finished.

  “Wait — what do you mean our feet will hit the ground? That sounds ominous,” said Zac, sounding concerned.

  “The nearest airport to the village is a four hour drive, so that totals a nine hour advantage for us. To keep that advantage we’ll need to do a high altitude drop some miles from the village. We’ll be jumping from 80,000 feet.”

  As Martinez spoke, Zac could feel the color drain from his face. Jacobson and Martinez grinned at each other.

  “I’ve never parachuted in my life!” he exclaimed.

  “My men and I can give you a crash course when we reach McGuire,” said Jacobson with a barely hidden smirk.

  “We can only take five men, so you will need to pick two of your best men, James,” said Martinez.

  Jacobson nodded then headed off to his team. The sound of an approaching chopper could be heard in the distance.

  “See you when we get back. Keep safe.” Zac kissed Chinwendu on the cheek.

  She gave him a weak smile as he left for the waiting chopper.

  The flight to McGuire was reasonably quick, about thirty minutes. They all sat in silence, partly because all were exhausted, but also because they were all apprehensive about the next stage of their mission.

  Up until now, the sheer numbers and force of the resistance was far more than anyone had anticipated. Now a small five-man team was heading into the devil’s lair. Dominic now had Lea under his control; she alone was a powerful force. If she came up against them, how would they deal with her? Would they have to kill her? Zac closed his eyes; he didn’t want to think about it, it was too unsettling.

  “Wake up, Zac, we’re about to land.” Martinez shook him by the shoulder.

  Zac opened his eyes and saw the two men Jacobson had chosen looking at him. He nodded. They in turn simultaneously nodded back me
chanically.

  It then struck him how young the two were, maybe early twenties; both looked stern and intense. They looked very alike; Zac looked at their dog tags, J. Platt and M. Platt.

  “Are you brothers?” he asked.

  “No sir, we’re cousins. Our fathers are brothers. They both went through the Marine Corps, and we wanted to follow suit,” J. Platt answered.

  “What are your names?”

  “I’m Matt and he’s Jason. We’re looking forward to working with you, sir. You have some very unusual skills; we’re hoping to pick some of them up,” Matt Platt responded.

  Zac raised his eyebrows. “I just hope we all get out of this mess in one piece. And, I hope they have food at the air base, I could eat a horse.”

  Both men nodded in unison.

  14

  The chopper touched down and the small team left the Black Hawk. Two air force officers, one male and the other female, stood waiting to greet them. The male officer looked in his sixties; he was quite overweight. The female was young and slim, she looked efficient.

  “Gentlemen, I am General John Simpson, base commander. This is Major Chelsea Brown. She’s in charge of assisting you in any needs you might have while you’re here. I’ll be leaving you in her capable hands. Now, if you would excuse me, I have a base to run.”

  Martinez, Jacobson, and the two young soldiers saluted, as did Major Brown.

  Zac felt awkward, he didn’t know whether to salute or not — after all, he was a civilian. He chose not to.

  As Simpson walked away, Major Brown turned to them. “Welcome to McGuire, gentlemen. We have your briefing arranged, as well as a meal. You are due for take-off at twenty-one thirty hours, so you have time to clean up and get some rest if needed.” She turned on her heels. “Follow me please.”