by Calvin Wolf
Chapter Two
1
FBI agent Roger Garfield swiped through hundreds of three-dimensional holograms of the crime scene. “Robert Smith was lucky that the psychopath never thought to reload. His last shot killed the computer guy, and it looks like Smith surprised him just a few seconds later. When he discovered that he was out of bullets, he chose to pursue Smith on foot instead of reloading and trying to take him at a distance.”
The Ph.D. student was in a coma, having leapt from the third floor stairwell in an attempt to land on the second floor landing and gain some quick distance from his pursuer. Unfortunately for Smith, he had landed wrong and struck the side of his head on a metal pillar. The fall from the second floor landing to the ground floor had given Smith a skull fracture and cracked a half dozen ribs. Seconds later, the strike team had swarmed into the stairwell and rescued the young man from certain death.
“We heard the impact,” a sergeant had declared in his statement. “When we got through the door, we saw the suspect disappearing into the second story entrance. We had the building secure in thirty seconds, but he was already gone.” When asked if he had ever heard of a fugitive being able to move so fast, the sergeant had responded in the negative.
“He must be some master track star. Our teams have busted ex-pro athletes on speed and steroids who didn’t move that fast,” the sergeant had explained.
The sergeant and his team had disappeared into the night, leaving only a business card. “And you thought the new administration was going to be transparent,” Garfield’s new partner sniffed. “How are we supposed to put this in our report? Everything is classified.” Only three weeks after being transferred to the Denver office, Garfield was running ragged and subsisting on caffeine and sugar. I think I’ll put in for retirement at the end of the year. This is too much for me.
“It ain’t always easy being the good guys,” Garfield replied softly. Having arrived only minutes before by plane, he was under the deputy director’s orders to keep local law enforcement in the dark and keep things calm until another team arrived. Once the new team arrived, showing the right documents and providing the right passwords, Garfield and his agents were supposed to depart immediately and return via plane to Denver.
Rolls of police tape had been strung around the Engineering Building, and a handful of wandering co-eds had been turned away. Otherwise, the night was quiet. The rain had stopped, and FBI crime scene techs were collecting mind-boggling amounts of data. Garfield took another gulp of coffee and waved over a hovering tech.
“What’ve you got?” he asked, though it mattered little. All data was to be handed over to the new team as soon as it arrived.
“Everything. This guy didn’t even try to hide from the cameras. Take a look.”
Amazed, Garfield watched on the tablet screen as the perp stalked from laboratory to laboratory, swiftly shooting down his prey. Guy’s so fast and accurate that it doesn’t look real. Like a movie or a video game. The last few seconds of video showed the perp, who was dressed entirely in black, calmly following a terrified man and woman into a corporate-looking conference room. “That last room isn’t a lab, so there’s no camera in there,” the tech explained.
Next, the tech showed the camera feeds revealing Robert Smith’s entrance onto the third floor. The man entered calmly, headed down the hallway toward the carnage, and stopped when he saw blood. As Garfield watched the screen, he saw Smith pull out his phone and fiddle with it. He paused the video and called over his partner. “Find out who Smith called,” he ordered, and the agent agreed to run Smith’s iPhone through the machines.
As soon as the younger agent hurried off, Garfield continued the video and saw Smith stop at an open doorway, presumably leading into the conference room where the perp had killed his last two victims. Smith stared, shocked, eyes wide. Seconds later, he bolted, sprinting. Shortly afterward, likely delayed by his own shock at being out of bullets, the perp ran after him. Just at the edge of the camera’s range, Smith’s feet could be seen leaving the hallway and going into the stairwell.
A split second later, the perp reached the same spot. “And Smith’s a young, fit guy. I’ll bet his student ID card reveals that he hits the gym five times a week or more. Yet this perp, who looks to be at least forty-five, almost caught up to him over a distance of fifty meters,” Garfield marveled. “This MIST stuff is no joke.” He fingered his lapel mic and asked for an update on the laboratories.
“We get any of the stuff? The MIST? It’s supposed to be kept in armored cylinders, heavy glass. Perhaps in coolers of liquid nitrogen. The info we’ve got about it is in the file marked ‘recovery.’” After several minutes, the team leader upstairs confirmed that the lab was clean. “We found the coolers, and they’re empty...but open, and it doesn’t look like by accident. They’ve got about two dozen latches, and all have been unlatched.”
“Security camera doesn’t show our perp carrying a bag or pack. Any chance the cylinders are small enough to be carried in a vest or jacket?” Garfield asked.
“Uh, yeah. Cylinders are about eight inches tall and two inches in diameter. About the size of a twenty ounce can of Red Bull. If the guy’s over six feet tall, he could probably carry them in a utility belt without them being too noticeable underneath a jacket.”
Damn.
Garfield sat down on a stone bench and hastily typed out a text message to his superior. As soon as he was done, he received a text himself. His partner had discovered the last message of Robert Smith, upcoming Ph.D.: A phone call to the personal number of a reserve UWPD officer, a man Roger Garfield knew quite well.
2
The sealed satellite capsule landed hard in the Davis Mountains at fifty-eight minutes after midnight, its landing chutes providing just enough braking capacity to prevent the craft from being destroyed. NORAD and NASA were going ballistic, particularly because the satellite was not registered in their systems. “Someone call the Russians, the Chinese, and the European Space Agency!” a department head roared from a computer lab in Florida. “We need to know who owned that damn thing!”
An employee ran over with a phone handset, and the department head suddenly found himself talking to the night manager of the McDonald Observatory in west Texas. “An outside system took control of our computers and used it to guide that thing down,” the manager explained. “I saw the fire trail myself. It’s a big one, we’re talking massive. I’ve called fire crews, but we don’t know where it hit.”
They gave it three more minutes, waiting for news of any visual confirmation, and then decided to call the White House.
“Sir, we’ve got an unknown satellite that has made a hard landing in the Davis Mountains of southwest Texas,” the department head explained as soon as the sleepy president bade him speak. “It’s not registered, and the McDonald Observatory folks say it’s quite large.”
“Russian? Chinese?” the president yawned. “Is this landing an accident?”
“We don’t know whose it is, but the landing appears intentional. It landed hard, but did not crash. And someone hijacked the computers at the observatory to guide the craft down. This was no accident.”
The president used language not normally heard at state dinners and hung up the phone.
“Now what do we do?” a young engineer asked, his face flushed and excited. Situations like this did not occur often, and everyone was abuzz. Although nobody was talking alien invasion or anything so outlandish, many were anxiously awaiting the arrival of the news networks. If the satellite was Russian or Chinese, the incident could be dubbed the spark of a new Cold War.
“Find where the thing landed and keep civilians away from it.” The department head began barking for his staff to find the phone numbers of all local, state, and county first responders in the area of the Davis Mountains and inform them of the situation.
3
The Chevy Tahoe roared over the cat
tle guard and its headlights revealed the small blaze coming up from the ravine. “Thank God we had that rain this evening, or this would be a hell of a lot worse,” the blond state trooper told his partner. “Just a week ago, this place was dry as a bone.”
The other trooper, a bald man with goatee, nodded. He didn’t talk much.
Taking the opportunity to off-road on company time, the blond driver left the pavement and trundled over the rocky dirt. After cresting the edge of the ravine, the SUV’s headlights suddenly revealed a battered and smoking metal cone. Attached to its tip were steel cables. The trooper stopped the vehicle and put it in Park, then flipped on his searchlight. He swung the light from side to side until he found the white-and-red parachutes that had slowed the cone’s descent.
“Fuckin’ A,” the driver crowed. His older partner grinned. This was a story to tell the grandkids someday!
“This is car thirty-eight, and we’ve located the bogey,” the bald passenger said into the dash mic. “The craft is intact.”
When prompted to give their exact location, the trooper hesitated. “I’ve gotta check the map. We’re off on ranch road 1832, but I don’t know at which stream crossing.”
“That’s no problem for road crews, but try to double check for the helicopters. We’ll have crews inbound,” dispatch replied.
Both troopers clambered out of the cruiser, flashlights in hand. They had driven hundreds of yards from the highway, and the older trooper began berating the younger driver about the possibility of puncturing tires on mesquite thorns. “I didn’t hear you complaining when I was driving,” the blond man snapped. “Plus, it adds to the story.”
They trudged to the pavement and shined their lights on the flood gauge down below. The number in small type atop the gauge revealed the number of crossings, starting at where the road diverged from the state highway. “We’re nine in,” the bald trooper said. “Let’s go back and report.”
As they stomped back toward the car, its lights shining like beacons in the night sky, the metal cone down in the creek began beeping and clicking, its sounds grating above the babbling of the water. “What the hell is it doing?” the blond trooper asked. Instead of heading to the cruiser, he began climbing down the ravine.
“Don’t do that! It’s not safe!” his partner hissed.
“It’s not a UFO, you pansy! I just want to get some pictures of it before NASA or the Air Force hauls it away!” That rationalization seemed to do the trick, and the bald trooper began clambering down the hillside behind him. Both men pulled out their phones and were ready to snap epic photos.
“A door’s opening on the side!” The source of the clicking and beeping had been revealed. Taking a deep breath, the blond trooper began aiming his flashlight directly inside the square hatch that had been revealed. “Idiot - that’s probably sensitive camera equipment in there!” the other man yelled. “We’ll have to get close and use our phones. We don’t want to get sued for ruining film or something.”
“Film or something? How old are you?” the blond one laughed.
Seconds later, the duo bounded up next to the craft and approached the square hatch. “Smells like burning,” the bald one remarked, and his partner informed him that that was the smell of re-entry. “Space is intense, dude.”
They aimed their cell phone screens at the open hatch. An instant later, they gasped in horror.
4
“We’ve got two males inbound to Midland Memorial on mediflight one-eight-eight from Big Bend Regional Medical Center,” came the radio crackle. Names were mentioned and the two men were identified as state troopers from the Pecos station.
“Holy shit,” said Hector Rodriguez, somewhere into his fourth beer. He and Hank Hummel were drinking at the 24-hour bowling alley, with Rodriguez’ police radio chattering softly on the table next to them.
“All units in the area urged to stand by. Do not approach the satellite. Preliminary tests negative for chemical air contamination, but use extreme caution. I repeat, extreme caution. Full gag order in effect on anything involving the satellite. Direct all civilian or media inquiries to Department of Public Safety spokesman-”
Rodriguez and Hummel looked at each other.
“Holy shit.”
“Satellite?”
“Yeah. You think?”
“Probably not, but I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”
Both men took another swig of beer. “There’s no way that stuff could have survived outer space. And then re-entry? No way.”
“Then what sent those guys to the hospital? The only things in that capsule were the men who were infected with MIST. It was a hollow prison.”
The bowling alley suddenly seemed very loud. Balls clattered, pins crashed, and machines beeped. “I feel sick,” Hank Hummel announced.
“What do we do?”
“I don’t know.”
5
The man in black knew he had an RFID signature as blatant as a bright yellow school bus, so taking the time to dye his hair and otherwise disguise his appearance was out of the question. Speed was the name of the game. He had evaded the goons twice in Laramie, but they would inevitably increase their efforts. Eventually, they would start using some heavy equipment.
I’ve probably exhausted their restraint. They won’t be worried about collateral damage much longer.
He picked up the phone and called a New Mexico area code.
“I’ve made it out and got the stuff. I need to ditch the hounds, and I’ll call as soon as I do. You still tapped into the old network?”
“You know I am,” the former diplomat said from his rural cabin.
The man in black ended the call and snapped the phone in half with his gloved hands. He pulled out the sim chip and threw it out the open window, wagering that it would never be found.
Returning his focus to the road, he kept his stolen ride aimed south, adhering strictly to the speed limit. He knew exactly where he needed to go, and why. As for what what and how, he would figure it out along the way. He hadn’t become one of Langley’s most valuable agents simply by having good luck, that’s for sure. When Uncle Sam needed arms twisted, nobody could apply leverage like he could.
Then there’s a coup, and you go from having an unlimited expense account to being labeled an enemy of the state. From pensioned to prisoned. How many people who ended up testifying against me benefited from my hard work? Mentally, the man in black ran through a list of
General officers and high-ranking bureaucrats who had advanced because of his handiwork.
Today, most of those esteemed men and women won’t admit that I ever existed.
Driving, he thought and thought. His MIST had stabilized, but nobody really knew what that meant. The files he had accessed were of little help. If only I had gotten the drive. That son of a bitch pulled a fast one. Not fast enough, but damn! The man in black, despite his anger at being defied, was impressed with his final victim. Most of the lab nerds had offered zero resistance, but the computer engineer had been packing heat.
Not too surprising, given that he got a call from Jack. He and his wife should have run faster, not tried to play hero. Where could that drive have been?
It didn’t matter much now - the whole building was buried under a mass of federal agents. A surprising number were his former colleagues, men and women he had worked with in places like Eastern Europe and the Middle East. He had led teams of them. Well, that doesn’t matter too much...they never knew my real name. Nor I theirs, come to think of it.
On the passenger seat, a dozen glass cylinders of silvery swirls clinked and clattered softly in a stolen duffel bag. Though the glass was strong, the clinking would be unnerving if not for the fact that the driver was already completely infused with the mysterious substance the cylinders contained. Fully energized, he had not slept for twenty-six days.
“Get to Fort Davis. Find what was on that satel
lite. Track down what I need to. Sell the cylinders.”
6
“He’s gonna screw us,” the Diplomat said. “From what I’ve pieced together, he’s completely full of this stuff. This MIST. It’s the acronym for Microtronic Infrastructural Symbiosis Technology. You heard of the six million dollar man? From the seventies? Add about three more zeroes to that. I think he’s gonna hold out on us.”
“We thought of that contingency. This guy is a hard breed, and smart as a whip. And with that stuff in him, he can learn and process at an increasing rate. Fortunately, we have been working on a backup plan. If he won’t come to us to sell willingly, it is possible to trap him.”
“Don’t do something stupid. If I start hearing about this in the news, I cut the line. I’m not going to get dragged into some cowboy shit. I’ve got a long-term plan and I’m plenty comfortable where I am. Before you start with some hard-ass speech, let me promise you that you need me more than I need you.” The Diplomat knew when to be polite and when to turn the screws. The powerful woman on the other end of the line was silent, a sure sign that the speech had done its job.
“We know what we’re doing,” the Diplomat’s client insisted, her voice calm but angry.
“Then what do I need to know?”
“He’s got an ex. Former corporate superstar type. Ivy League, attractive, type A. Basically him, but the civilian, female, non-assassin version. They’ve got a little girl. He’s still carrying a torch, we think. These two ladies are his Achilles heel.”
“I’ll find out what I need. Remember, don’t send me any documents. Nothing that the NSA can copy-and-paste,” the Diplomat cautioned. He disliked phones, but using e-mail was too much of a liability these days. Unfortunately, many of his clients were eager to try to send him reams of digital documents, any of which could end up in an electronic security sweep. Phone calls were much harder to pick up in real time.
The Diplomat ended the call and breathed in deeply, inhaling the scents of alpine nature. He stuck his stockinged feet into his hiking boots and grabbed his liter bottle of spring water. Without a second thought, he bounded out of the cabin and headed into the woods. After every important call, he reconnected with nature.
Half of his post-call wilderness jaunt routine was to clear his mind and rejuvenate his spirit. The other half was to keep his clients waiting and increase his own power. Less is more. Less supply equals higher price. As the primary link among numerous factions of the fallen titans of the deposed regime, his time was extraordinarily valuable.
Well, not so much my time, per se, but the fact that I left Foggy Bottom with one of the few uncrackable servers in existence. If you need absolutely untraceable research, I’m your man.
The State Department was undoubtedly searching high and low for its missing server, but Washington was fractionated so badly that the White House may not have even been informed of its loss. With indictments and depositions rippling through the Beltway, it would probably be months before anyone was brave enough to tell the president that the regime change had resulted in the loss of lots of sensitive equipment. If you have a culture of shooting the messenger, eventually the messenger stops telling you what you need to hear.
Taking a swig of water, the Diplomat walked down the old trail he had discovered. It looked perfect, both quaint and powerful at the same time. Beautiful, yet not overwhelming. It was just the way he liked it. He heard a snuffling sound and looked down the hillside. A black bear was overturning rocks to search for insects. Silently, the Diplomat watched the animal’s powerful forelegs push and flip rocks that easily weighed fifty pounds or more.
He did not know much about MIST, for even his powerful system could not breach those firewalls and classifications, but he knew there was unimaginable demand for the ability to augment the human body. The bear can hibernate and lose almost no muscle mass. How much would people pay to never lose muscle mass? He watched the bear roll over a boulder. How much would people pay to have endless strength?
The bear looked up the hill, chuffed at him, and scrambled away.
7
“So what’s going on?” Whitney demanded. “A funeral?”
“Yeah, Frank Parsons at the sheriff’s department. Accident at his ranch, a real freak thing. Terrible. I had to go to the hospital to see him,” Hank Hummel lied.
“They even want the reserve deputies to be there? Do you even know this guy?” Hank’s wife was suspicious.
“I don’t really know him, but these old southern boys put a real premium on brotherhood. And with everything that’s happened, I have to be a team player.”
“Hank, I want you to quit. Tell the university you’re not going to be a reserve deputy any more. You’re not getting any younger, and that job just keeps getting you into trouble. Michael’s older, and he’s talking about doing something like that when he’s an adult. Some of those kids he hangs out with, you know they’re the type who are going to pressure him to show them your guns.”
Hank lied profusely and tried to calm his wife, agreeing that she was absolutely correct and assuring her that he would let his peace officer certification lapse. Eventually, she sighed and told him to do his best to cheer up old Frank Parsons.
“You better hope she doesn’t Google that name,” Hector Rodriguez warned from the driver’s seat. “I bet dollars to donuts that the Midland County Sheriff’s Department doesn’t have any such deputy.”
“Actually, they did. Real pain in the ass. Hassled all the reserve deputies during their summer shifts. But I don’t think he has a ranch. He’d be too fat to ride a horse!”
It was pre-dawn when Rodriguez’ old pickup squealed to a stop in the hospital parking lot. According to the radio chatter, the helicopter had landed thirty-four minutes ago. Both patients were stable but unresponsive. “I can’t tell if that’s good or bad,” Hummel said. His friend just shrugged. They don’t exactly write how-to articles about situations like this.
“Do we just tell them at the front desk what they’re dealing with here?”
“I think we’d get involuntarily committed for seventy-two hours if we went that route. ‘Excuse me, but you just admitted two men who probably got dosed with a super-secret nanotechnology symbiote. And we don’t know what it does or what it could do. Oh, and by the way, we have that stuff in us, too...and the government’s lying to us about it being gone.’” Both men began giggling, and then laughing.
“‘Oh, and we know all this because we were the original test subjects. And we know all about that satellite because we were there when they shoved all those nanotech-infested people inside and launched it into outer space! Oh, and the former president of the United States was one of those folks. You saw on the news that he fled to Russia? Guess again!’” The laughter continued until there were tears and aching stomach muscles.
“Yeah, we better not tell some desk jockey that story,” Hummel concluded.
“We should just focus on trying to find out what these two guys saw, and whether or not they’re infused with MIST. How we do all that, I have no idea,” Rodriguez said.
“And what do we do if they are infected with the MIST?”
“Hell if I know. I mean, we’re still infected with the MIST!”
The two men climbed out of the aging Silverado and walked to the front bumper. “Isn’t it scary as hell that we don’t know what to do?” Rodriguez asked.
“It’s even scarier that nobody else seems to know what to do, either,” Hummel answered. “If they did, that satellite wouldn’t have come back down. It wouldn’t seem like the world was falling apart every few years.”
“Few years? Try every few months. It’s like having kids: They look at you like you’re supposed to know everything, when you’re still just faking it and waiting for the lightning bolt moment when you actually understand life. You always think the people up the chain know what’s going on...but what i
f they’re just faking it and waiting for that lightning bolt?”
“Damn, Hec, that’s deep. You get to guest lecture in my next class.”
8
“So the body of the former president is inside the spacecraft?!” the president yelled. “What the shit is this?!”
“It was a crazy situation,” the Director of Central Intelligence explained. “The MIST was starting to get out of control, and we were right by a commercial launch station, so we…”
“So you launched it into outer space?! Like this was a B-grade sci-fi movie?!” The president frowned, shook his head, and pounded his fists on the Oval Office desk. Then, he smiled and laughed. “Hell, that actually doesn’t sound like a bad idea. I like you, Parker.”
Parker, a former National Guard commander from Alaska, had been on the ground in Midland and helped depose the former president and his legion of well-armed cronies. He had been handsomely decorated and promoted for his bravery, but had yet to fully explain what had happened that fateful night. The more he explained, the more ludicrous it sounded.
“Thank you, Mr. President.”
“So you launch the bad stuff into orbit, and then someone de-orbits it back down. Who did this, and why?”
“We think it was one of the MIST scientists in Laramie. For some reason, these guys all thought the project was still ongoing.” Parker handed a manila folder stamped Microtronic Infrastructural Symbiosis Technology to the president, and the older man began flipping through dossiers of numerous scientists, programmers, and engineers. “It’s that one, the lead computer engineer. He knew all about the satellite and was monitoring the MIST on board. We think he de-orbited it right before he was killed. You see, his wife died first, so he may have de-orbited the satellite to avenge her death or something.”
“That doesn’t make much sense, Parker. But you wouldn’t be telling me all this if you didn’t have a theory. So let’s hear it. Keep the crazy train running.”
“The killer, an old wet works guy who dresses like Johnny Cash, is all amped up on MIST. He’s virtually unstoppable man-to-man, so putting him down means risking lots of civilian casualties and spreading MIST all over the place. As a result, nobody can stop the killer on his own. But if the subjects we sent up into space somehow retained their sentience, perhaps they could stop the killer.”
The commander-in-chief mimed his brains exploding, indicating that the theory was far too fantastical.
“So this computer nerd thinks that the psychos you launched up into space will kill his wife’s murderer for him?” the president asked.
“Something like that. Again, I’m not saying it makes sense, just that we believe that to be what the scientist believed. He might have been out of his mind with grief.”
Lacing his fingers together, the president put on his proverbial thinking cap.
“You’ve been reading the files, Parker. What’s your gut feeling on his guy?” The president pulled out the computer engineer’s dossier and scanned it. “Stanford and MIT, both private and public sector experience. Forty-nine years old, three children. Moved his family to Laramie to work on the MIST project from its very inception. Several references and commendations, no demerits or warnings of any kind. What say you?”
Despite finding his own beliefs strained by the radicality of recent hours, Parker responded that he believed the computer engineer to be of sound mind. “Guy’s no kook, sir. He knew more about MIST than anyone, which is probably why the killer went after him last. If the idea of the subjects remaining sentient sounds crazy to us, maybe it just means that we weren’t getting the full picture about what this MIST stuff was.”
“That makes some sense,” the president agreed. “A lot of those special projects type like to play things close to the vest. Probably for more job security and whatnot. So, scientist de-orbits your imprisoned evildoers to neutralize the man who killed his wife? How does he expect this to work?”
Parker had no idea.
“The computer guy must have been able to send some sort of message to the satellite, and presumably whatever was sentient on board. Before he de-orbited the damn thing. Instructions, perhaps. The identity of the killer.” The president rose from his chair, his mind racing. His trademark gesticulations came out, and he pontificated at will.
“We know the real identity of the killer, but not a lot about his personal life. Guy was a textbook sociopath. And there’s always a chance that some of our political enemies could be erasing more of his data right now, trying to create some distance. Every hour that goes by means the trail could be growing colder. But maybe the computer guy knew stuff we don’t, and he sent some of that info to the satellite.”
Parker smiled and nodded, impressed with the old president’s mental faculties. Though many pundits questioned the chief executive’s vigor, especially as his eightieth birthday approached, the man’s neurons were clearly capable of rapid-fire. “We’ll scour every electronic device in the labs and find any message he might have sent,” the Director of Central Intelligence assured. “In the meantime, what should be do about the people who have seen the satellite and the bodies inside? Eight local and state cops got to it before our choppers arrived, and we’ve got them doing paperwork and debriefing in Monahans. We’re delaying as long as we can, but soon these guys are going to want to go home.”
“We’re not thugs like our predecessors, Mr. Parker. Urge them to sign the usual nondisclosures. If they don’t want to, invite them to bring their families for an all-expenses-paid trip here to D.C. We’ll butter them up so good that they’ll feel guilty as sin spilling the beans. And the nicer we are to them, the more outlandish their story will seem if they run to the media.” The DCI felt a wave of relief - the previous president would have ordered the men disappeared.
9
Roger Garfield sat down next to the hospital bed and listened to the updates from the doctors. The news was pretty grim for Robert Smith, Ph.D. The double strikes to the head had caused some swelling of the brain, and it was difficult to determine the extent of the damage. A silver lining, if you could call it that, was that Smith’s respiration and heartbeat remained strong and steady. His head engulfed in bandages, the young man looked small and frail. A myriad of cords ran from under the bandages and his blankets, feeding computers information on his brainwaves and organs.
The doctors left the room, giving Garfield ten minutes to try to talk to Smith. “We ordinarily wouldn’t do this, but we heard it’s an intense situation out there. He might murmur something of use, but don’t pressure him. Under no circumstances should you try to shake or touch him, understand?”
Garfield agreed to their terms and announced that he and Smith knew each other. “Listen, I’m not just some cartoon G-man here to get information out of him. I owe him one. Hell, we all do.” Of course, the doctors did not understand the last sentence, nor would they. Smith’s computer wizardry, which had helped prompt the downfall of the former president and his reign of terror, would be forever classified.
“I’m sorry, Robert,” Garfield said as soon as they were alone. “I’m really sorry about all this. This should never have happened. Somebody dropped the ball, and that’s why all this spiraled into happening. But we’re not going to leave you alone, you hear? We’re finding people to come visit you, to sit with you.”
Smith’s eyelids flittered but did not open. Garfield felt his chest tighten and his eyes grow hot.
“I really don’t know what else to say, buddy. We don’t know each other that well, and I wish I knew you better. We were political prisoners together.” Garfield chuckled wryly. “Political prisoners, imagine that! When I was your age, I never thought America could have gotten to that point.”
The aging FBI agent looked at the grad student’s smooth and unlined face. The law enforcement officer had more than twenty years on the thirty-year-old. It was a tragedy that a good kid with a bright future w
as fighting for his life in a hospital bed, especially when he had already seen such misery. Having read Smith’s file after both men survived a brief stint in the Home Guard prison in Colfax County, New Mexico, Roger Garfield had learned about Jim Smith’s untimely death. Robert Smith had been substantially impacted by the murder of his older brother, and their parents had never recovered emotionally.
“You think things get fixed, but it looks like some stuff never gets solved. I don’t know why they were making this MIST stuff. Supersoldiers? Medicine? Whatever it is, it’s all about the money.” The machines beeped, hissed, and clicked. Garfield sat in the rolling chair by Smith’s bed and listened to the electronica. “I’m sorry you got caught up in this. You’ve had more than your fair share of being caught in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
“But if it wasn’t for you, I probably wouldn’t be here. So you can bet your ass that I’m gonna make this right, Robert.”
With a bang, the door to the room flew open and Roger Garfield jumped to his feet, hand reaching under his sport coat for his 9mm compact. “Easy there, suit,” the burly criminal justice professor said, holding up his palms. “That was a touching speech you gave to the boy.” Before the FBI agent could react, the professor had enveloped him in a bear hug.
“I was listening outside the door, just for safety sake. I didn’t know who was in here trying to talk to Robert. Glad it’s one of the good guys, you know?” the prof whispered.
“What’s got you so worked up?” Garfield asked, cocking an eyebrow.
“I’ve got some info, man, big info. We need to talk in person, in public. I brought some UWPD buds over to watch the room and make sure nobody tries to manhandle our boy while we’re gone.”
Surprised, Garfield protested that changing the room guards was not standard procedure. “When you hear what I have to say, it’ll make perfect sense. For now, you’re in charge. In fifteen minutes, it’ll be some pencil-pusher from D.C. Change the guards to my guys, and it’ll let us have more control over what’s going on. I swear to God, it’s big.”
Nodding, Garfield turned on his lapel mic and ordered the agents in the hallway to relinquish control to the UWPD officers.
10
The professor insisted on returning to campus, and he dragged his old FBI acquaintance to the Half Acre gymnasium. “It’s open twenty-four hours a day, so we can go walk on the upstairs running track,” he explained. Despite the pre-dawn hour, there were a surprising number of exercise-obsessed college students sweating it out over weights or cardio. Though he was happily married, the tenured prof did enjoy the occasional glimpse of an attractive coed in form-fitting exercise clothing. Nothing wrong with yoga pants at all, he thought as he and Roger Garfield climbed the stairs to the running track behind a couple of curvy, glistening twentysomethings.
“I don’t think any black ops spies were planting bugs and hidden cameras in the university gym,” Garfield gasped, winded by the stairs and Laramie’s high altitude. “Can we talk yet?”
When they finally emerged onto the track, rather ludicrously attired, the professor told his friend to take off his sport coat and button-down. “Down to the undershirt, pal.”
“What?! You don’t trust me?!” The grizzled G-man seemed genuinely hurt.
“After what happened less than a year ago, I don’t take any chances. The good guys may have won, but I have a feeling that a fuck ton of ‘winners’ may be secretly working for the bad guys. Some real ODESSA files, Nazi rat line shenanigans going on. Have you been following the news? Read any of those op-eds about all those bigwigs who fled Washington after the crisis?”
“I read you loud and clear, professor. I assure you, I’m clean.” Garfield removed his tie and button-down and laid them carefully over the running track safety rail that overlooked the basketball courts. The professor, satisfied, gestured that they should begin walking. As they walked, the professor talked.
“Listen, Roger. As you know, I got a phone call from Robert Smith when he was on that third floor. Maybe he thought he was going to text me, but he called instead. I heard everything. I ran up there as fast as I could, and I was the first responder on the scene. I was up there for about two minutes before the federal SWAT guys arrived, probably because I could hear them running around on the second floor looking for that maniac.”
Roger Garfield nodded along, indicating that he understood the chain of events.
“I saw the bodies of the man and woman scientists in that office, and I went over to the man. Turns out, he wasn’t dead. Before he died, he told me two things: The location of the hard drive that the killer was after, and not to trust anyone. His last words were that the killer wasn’t working alone.”
“So there’s more than one killer?” Garfield asked, excited.
“No, no. I’m sure he meant that the killer, who’s cranked up on that science experiment in his bloodstream, is in cahoots with others. He didn’t murder the whole crew of scientists because he was angry! There is a purpose for this madness,” the professor hissed.
11
“I don’t know what movie or TV show you got this idea from, but damn,” Hector Rodriguez whispered as he and Hank Hummel cruised through the hospital hallways in doctor scrubs and masks. It had taken some ingenuity, but the campus cop and the college lecturer had figured out how to freely roam the building. After following a nurse into a supply room and silently slipping a credit card into the metal border around the strike plate, both men had feigned ignorance and apologized profusely. They left the supply room, waited around a corner for the nurse to leave, and then enjoyed the fruits of their handiwork. The credit card trick granted them instant access to the room again.
Within moments, both Rodriguez and Hummel had found surgical scrubs that fit decently and were on the move.
“The state troopers are on the fifth floor, surgical wing,” a nurse informed them after Rodriguez had used his best doctor voice on her.
Walking quickly, eyes hard and breathing rapid, neither man talked. What the hell do we do? Will our guns set off an alarm? Are there metal detectors? What if the wing is locked? Are there cops on duty?
“You bring your piece, reserve deputy?” Rodriguez whispered, and cursed when Hummel responded in the negative. “What do we do, then?!”
They reached the elevators and rode in silence to the fifth floor. As soon as the doors opened, they ran into a crowd of silent and nervous state troopers. Those two in there might not be your buddies anymore, Rodriguez thought. Oh, if only you knew. Seeing doctors arriving, the troopers parted quietly to let them maneuver through. Taking a deep breath, Rodriguez plunged toward the nurses’ station, followed closely by Hummel.
“We need to see the two troopers who were brought in,” Rodriguez charmed behind his mask.
“Which consultants?” the young nurse asked, looking at a computer screen. Rodriguez drew a blank, but Hummel threw out the term “cardiothoracic” and got them waved through. The nurse pressed a button on her desk and the doors to the surgical suite hallway unlocked with a loud thwik. Gritting his teeth, Rodriguez went through the door.
“I think we have to scrub up,” Hummel said as the door closed behind them, gesturing to a handwashing station. Not knowing what else to do, Rodriguez joined his friend in a hand-to-elbow scrubbing that he mimicked from every medical drama he had ever seen. “Glove up,” he said, and Hummel handed him a pair of surgical gloves.
“And now we find these guys and think of a plan.”
Feigning nonchalance, the two men went from suite to suite, looking in on things. With no medical expertise, neither man knew what he was looking at. Despite their ignorance, it took only a few minutes to stumble upon the operating theater containing the two state troopers and a bevy of scrub-wearing medical professionals.
“There they are,” Rodriguez whispered. Who knows what the MIST has done to them? Has it shredded their neurons? Are they veget
ables? Or did the MIST override their brains, turning them into-
“Hank Hummel and Hector Rodriguez, get down on your knees with your hands behind your head,” a woman’s voice said softly but firmly. Rodriguez did nothing, mind racing through his limited options, but his ears picked up at least a dozen pairs of boots behind him. The sounds of tasers and stun batons being readied finally convinced him to comply, and he nodded for Hank to do the same.
“I admire your efforts, gentlemen, but we anticipated this reaction of yours. We’ve been able to track you due to your unique RFID frequencies,” the woman continued.
Hector Rodriguez felt a hot wave of anger roll through his brain. We’ve been nothing but fancy science experiments to them. Unable to help himself, he sprang to his feet again, ready to demand answers. He heard the release of the steel barbs, and felt the electricity rippling through his body.
