by Larry Hoy
“Then how can you be certain all of this is real?”
“I saw the boy, too,” Warden said quietly, as if remembering something terrible. “He was just like Luther says.”
“Erebus kept calling it ‘my son’ and ‘my boy.’ Teri had hogtied his hands and the…ghost, or whatever, cut Erebus free using that knife you’re holding. Then he disappeared. One second he was there, the next he wasn’t.”
“He’s telling the truth, Mom. Like I said, I saw the kid, too. Right before that psycho stabbed me in the leg.”
“Is that the only ghost you’ve ever seen, Mister Sweetwater?”
Reluctant to say more, Sweetwater shrugged. “No, I’ve seen them off and on my whole life, but the others kept coming around after they’d been dead a while, and…I don’t know how else to put this, but they looked as rotted as their bodies must have been.”
“I see,” Witherbot said. “Thank you for telling us that, it changes things a bit. Can you summon these ghosts at will?”
“I don’t know, I never tried.”
“I think it’s time we find out.”
Chapter 35
On Final Approach to a Private Airfield near Downtown Dallas, TX
Steed laid a blanket over Robert’s corpse. Technically, his death wasn’t a police matter because he’d been killed by the target of a legal contract, which made him both collateral damage and an LEI licensed operative in pursuit of executing said contract. Therefore, preserving evidence wasn’t necessary.
Once finished, Steed stood and gave him the Gunner’s final salute. Making a pistol with his fingers, forefinger extended straight with the other three tucked, and thumbed cocked, he held it in front of his face, pointed it out at a 45-degree angle, and pretended.
“Well done, Shooter. Be seein’ ya.”
He turned to see Sweetwater watching.
“Remember that,” Steed said.
“Please, take your seats,” the captain said over the intercom. As Steed turned to walk away, Sweetwater saw him reach back and take something out of the pouch affixed to the bulkhead, over the bench where they’d strapped Erebus.
Once seated, Sweetwater looked at the window as the ground rose to meet them. Aside from an adjacent runway, he only saw a distant chain-link fence.
“This isn’t DFW,” he said.
“No, it is not,” Witherbot answered. “This field belongs to LEI. We are its owner and sole user.”
“But we’ve been flying over the city for a while now.”
“We have indeed. Before other matters distract me Luther, I want to thank you for standing against Adrian Erebus. You gave me the time I needed to call the pilot. I had to use my satellite phone, and that takes longer to connect. I realize you are still weak from your previous encounters, so again, thank you.”
“Wow,” Sweetwater said, “I don’t know what to say.”
“Don’t spoil the moment, please, Mother,” Warden said.
Witherbot lifted an eyebrow, then spoiled the moment. “But we still must discuss your previous actions.”
The aircraft skipped twice off the runway, then settled and taxied toward a small glass building with several vehicles parked in front of it, among them two ambulances.
“As should be obvious by now,” Witherbot said, “our plans are no longer relevant, and we have no concrete ideas on how to find our information salesman, unless one of you have had a sudden epiphany? Mister Sweetwater—Luther, you seemed to have had an idea earlier.”
“I don’t know, ma’am, it’s pretty out there.”
“Your ghosts?”
“You’re not as surprised as I expected.”
“The world is far stranger than you imagine, but the paranormal is outside my realm of experience. That vile man on the floor, you two, Mister Steed, our mole, budgets, stockholders, all of those types of problems, I can deal with. But the spirit world, if such a thing exists, is beyond my scope of knowledge. So, please forgive me for repeating myself, but do you have any idea how we can find the mole?”
“Maybe,” Sweetwater said.
“I do,” Warden said at the same instant.
Witherbot pointed for her daughter to go first. The plane turned off the runway and slowed.
“Instead of hiding what happened in Memphis and on the plane, what if we go the other way? Blast the news through LEI, hold a press conference, tell everybody that Erebus came to Dallas to cut a deal, and that he’s here to finger the mole. Watch to see who bolts.”
“Part of that is good, but he wouldn’t need to come to come to Dallas to give us the name. We also can’t announce company-wide that we have a mole. That information can never get out. If it did, our customers would lose faith in us. Our confidentiality is the real service we offer. If we couldn’t secure the secrecy of our contracts, LEI would be out of business.”
“You’re all overthinking it,” Steed said. “You don’t announce anything and there’s no deal involved. We drag Erebus into the Kremlin and show people who they’ve been tracking as a way of including them in his capture. Then we announce we’re about to interrogate him the LEI way. If the traitor is in that control room—and he’s either there or in Mexico—he’ll know what that means. Have security seal the building.”
“And if he’s in Mexico? Or Cuba, or someplace else with no agreement of cooperation?”
“Then we cross-check border crossing and airline records against the company’s absentee list. There can’t be that many people who know how to intercept phone signals.”
Witherbot snapped her fingers. “No, there cannot. That’s how he did it then. All right, that’s plan A then. Luther, stand by; you’re plan B.”
The moment the jet’s staircase touched the ground, EMTs swarmed the aircraft and loaded Warden and Sweetwater into one ambulance and Erebus into another for the trip to LEI Corporate Headquarters. The convoy took only 15 minutes to reach the down-sloping entrance to the building’s secure underground parking garage. Guards armed with shotguns stood on both sides of heavy iron gates, the approach to which had to be navigated through a series of concrete pylons. Beyond the gates, a GAU-8 Avenger 30mm, seven-barrel Gatling-style gun covered the entire driveway from a steel-reinforced concrete bunker. A humorous sign low on the bunker wall read “No Truck Bombs Allowed,” with a diagonal line through the words.
“I’m still surprised you allowed that,” Steed said, when the armored Mercedes sedan he was sharing with Witherbot passed the bunker.
“I didn’t,” she said. “I had it painted over.”
Steed raised his eyebrows. “He overruled you on that? It seems too trivial to attract his attention.”
“He does that sometimes, to remind me that I’m only the assistant director.”
“Huh. Well, he’s a hard man to read. He’s got the perfect poker face.”
“Being dead has that effect.”
“Is he? Dead?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know? You don’t know?”
“That’s right, I don’t know.”
“You know who might find out, don’t you?”
“I thought of that the moment he mentioned speaking with the dead. Luther Sweetwater may turn out to be more useful than he appears at first glance.”
Beyond the entrance defenses, stood two large doors marked “Authorized Personnel Only. All others will be shot.” Iron-faced guards fingering automatic weapons ensured there would be no mistaking it for another humorous message. The ambulances pulled up in front of the doors and the EMTs took their passengers into a small but lavishly equipped trauma center. Several of Witherbot’s assistants met her and Steed outside the doors and led her off to a private office. Left alone, Steed found a waiting room with four chairs and checked his messages.
A few minutes short of an hour later, Teri Warden found him and sat down.
“You look exactly like her,” he said.
“I’ve got your chin.”
Steed cocked his head to both side
s and studied her face. “You do, don’t you? I—I’m not even sure what to say, what to call you.”
“Anything but Teresa.”
He laughed. “Fair enough.”
“I’m gonna call you ‘Dad.’”
“Don’t be insulted if it takes me a while to answer. That’ll take some getting used to. My last girlfriend was your age, maybe a little younger.”
“We’re swerving into creepy-perv-dad territory here.”
“Why don’t we save this discussion for when this is over?”
“I think that’s a good idea.”
“You and Luther, are you two a thing?”
“A thing? Seriously? You already sound like a dad. Not that it’s any of your business, but no, we’re not hooking up.”
She smiled and smacked his arm and Steed flashed back 20 years, to a time when Cynthia Witherbot had the world’s sexiest British accent and her sense of humor hadn’t yet been hammered into a perpetual scowl. He started to say that when Witherbot’s administrative assistant found them.
“The assistant director would like you to join her and Mister Sweetwater.”
Once inside an examination room, Steed saw Sweetwater being attended by a frumpy nurse whose application of fresh dressings to his wounds was closer to an art form than medicine, and a youngish doctor whose erect bearing and manner of speech indicated a military background.
“I have just finished reviewing the data supplied by the trauma center in Memphis, and it appears Mister Sweetwater exacerbated his injuries during today’s HTHC—”
Sweetwater saw Witherbot raise an eyebrow, and interrupted at the exact instant Steed did the same thing.
“Hand-to-hand-combat.”
“Yes, correct,” the doctor said, allowing his tone to vent displeasure at being interrupted.
Must’ve been an officer, Steed thought.
“As I was saying, Mister Sweetwater’s wounds partially reopened during the altercation, as did Miss Warden’s. Both will need light duty, or no duty, for four to six weeks, with continued physical therapy. I am putting both on oral antibiotics as a precaution.”
“What about Mister Erebus?” Witherbot asked.
The doctor crossed his arms and leaned against the sink.
“According to what I’ve been told, Erebus has sustained multiple mortal wounds both today and in the recent past, yet he is still alive. I have not studied the previous wounds in much detail, but either one of the two fresh gunshot wounds or the acute laryngeal trauma should have been fatal. I cannot tell you how he is still alive, Madam Assistant Director. If medical science has an answer, it is beyond me to understand.”
“Could medical science have an answer?”
“I reached out to a colleague at the Wake Forest School of Medicine who is a researcher for the CDC and other organizations. She has no explanation either.”
“So, it’s a miracle?”
He shrugged. “If you believe in such things.”
“Is he awake?
“Against all odds, yes.”
“Thank you. I’ll send for him when ready. And doctor? Take no chances. Adrian Erebus is a very dangerous man.”
“With all due respect, he is at death’s door, Madam Assistant Director.”
“Yeah, well,” Sweetwater said, “he’s been there before.”
Chapter 36
LifeEnders Inc. Worldwide Corporate Headquarters, Dallas, TX
Once the nurse finished rewrapping Sweetwater, Witherbot led them through a series of locked doors and elevators. Finally, they came to a steel elevator door. There was no elevator call button, but there was a keyhole to the left of the door. Witherbot pulled a thin billfold with the LEI logo, exactly like a Shooter’s credentials’ wallet except in black leather not red. Inside, along with her LifeEnders badge and license, was a laminated ID card which she pressed against the wall over the keyhole. A sliding door six inches wide and eight high opened, behind which were located additional sensors. After she pressed her fingerprint on one sensor, let a retina scan read her eye, and used a proffered swab to get DNA from the inside of her cheek, which she inserted into a slot, a blue light flashed four times and turned green. The doors of the elevator opened.
“I’ve seen witch doctors with simpler rituals,” Steed said.
“If that’s how you open the door, what’s the lock for?” Warden asked.
“That’s how we turn the lights on.” Witherbot held out her hand, inviting the others to board. Three seconds after they boarded, the doors closed.
Sweetwater instinctively looked for a row of buttons. All the walls were made from sheets of diamond plate steel. There was recessed lighting along the elevator’s ceiling, but there were no other markings or controls. He could feel the elevator moving in his stomach, but he couldn’t tell what direction they were moving. “So, are we allowed to talk yet?”
“Yes. From here on you will be in one of the most secure facilities in the United States. I might say the world, but that is a hard thing to judge. No one really wants to share information on their secure facilities.”
“When I was upstairs, I had no idea any of this was here,” Sweetwater said.
“What you have seen so far is nothing, Luther. Just a secure garage, doctor’s office, and elevator. What you are going to see is an altogether different matter.”
Sweetwater nodded and started counting the trip, a habit from his childhood. Times had sometimes been tough, and it was a way of distracting his mind from pangs of hunger. When he reached 47 the doors opened. The first thing he noticed was that the walls were lined with copper mesh. Steed noticed his wrinkled eyebrows.
“It’s called a Faraday Cage,” he said. “The mesh is designed to block any electromagnetic fields. There’s no way, outside of an access port, to reach the rest of the world.”
“What about the SAT phone?”
“An external antenna, Luther,” Witherbot said, having overhead them. “Welcome to the Kremlin.”
Four guards awaited them when the elevator stopped. Two stayed behind, the other two led the quartet down a short copper-clad hallway that ended in double blast doors. Ten feet before reaching them, Witherbot went through the same procedure along a section of blank wall as at the elevator. Once finished, a hidden side door of six-inch-thick steel opened, and she stepped through. More guards were waiting inside.
“What’s in there?” Sweetwater said.
“Everything,” Witherbot replied, a tinge of pride to her usual laconic tone. “That is the Kremlin, the administrative heart of LifeEnders, Incorporated. This is the War Room.”
The room was a techie’s dream. Workstations were grouped in rows facing a wall of enormous monitors, with a long table in front of them that held a giant mixing board. The opposite wall was floor-to-ceiling glass, separating it from a stadium-shaped area beyond. Recessed spotlights shone down on rows of desks that faced a speaker’s podium and a giant monitor.
Sweetwater stopped in the doorway, stunned at such a display of advanced technology. Steed nudged him ahead, so he joined the others at the mixing board, where a pale man in his early thirties awaited them. Fluffy black muttonchops covered his cheeks.
“This is Jason,” Witherbot announced. “Jason is our communications supervisor.”
Her eyes went to Steed, who gave a curt shake of his head.
Jason started pressing a row of buttons, which brought the wall of monitors to life. Their glow illuminated that side of the room.
“I have asked Jason to channel all the security camera feeds down here,” said Witherbot. Each monitor displayed an entrance to the building or a group of workers.
“Where’s Denton Poole?” Steed said, cutting his eyes to Warden and Sweetwater. “Denton’s the head of security; shouldn’t he be here?”
“He is coordinating our response from the field,” Witherbot said.
Warden pointed at the video feeds. “What’s our time frame here?”
“We are about thirty minutes befor
e the announcement of your touchdown at the airfield,” Jason said without looking up from the screens. “I wanted to get a visual baseline. The displays are running three times live. The announcement reached us at approximately sixteen hundred hours, roughly the middle of the second shift, so there shouldn’t be much activity at the exits.”
Sweetwater located the monitor showing the front door to the building. Where he had stood less than a year ago, working up the courage to come inside. On the screen, Sweetwater saw Jason enter the building. “That’s you?”
“Yes, I work first shift, which is 0400 to 1200 hours, but I couldn’t stay away.”
On the screen, others started entering the building, from the front door and through the basement parking area. Other cameras focused on the secure entrances that fewer employees had permission to use.
“I’m guessing this was when the news went out?” Witherbot said.
“Yes, ma’am, about ten minutes before. Most are the extra security you requested.”
“And you are certain that everyone heard that Mister Erebus was cooperating?”
“Yes, ma’am, absolutely.”
They each scanned the monitors, looking for anyone leaving the building. There was activity in all the rooms, and there were people at the entrances, but they were all entering the facility.
They kept watching. Soon enough they saw their own convoy navigate the basement security maze.
“C’mon, c’mon,” Sweetwater said, “he’s gotta be there.”
“Don’t assume it’s a man,” Steed said, pacing back and forth, his arms folded.
“This was our chance!”
“How unfortunate,” Witherbot said. She thought for a few seconds and motioned Steed over for a brief whispered conference. Steed’s face betrayed nothing. He nodded when she finished, headed for the door, and motioned for Sweetwater to follow. Surprised, the younger man fell in step. On his way into the hall, he heard Witherbot speaking to Jason.
