SKELETON

by Peter Parkin

  Mai had finished most of the house, and was now concentrating on Mr. Chambers' third floor office. He hadn't spent any time up here over the last twenty-four hours. She knew he'd use it as his refuge for the next little while though. Once his dear mother was at rest.

  Mai also had one more room than usual to clean, with Mr. Chambers' sister, Melissa, staying over. But she didn't mind—she liked Melissa.

  Mai noticed that the door to the fire escape landing was unlocked. Unusual—perhaps Mr. Chambers had taken up smoking again? She wouldn't be surprised, with the terrible stress he'd been under.

  She opened the door and looked out. Quite a few leaves had piled up on the landing—not safe at all if Mr. Chambers had to use the escape. He might slip.

  She took her broom outside and began sweeping them down to the lawn. Then she noticed something—an object lying on the next landing down. She carefully negotiated her way down the spiral staircase and picked it up. Mai could tell that it was an electronic gadget of some kind. Mr. Chambers must have dropped it when he was out here smoking.

  She went back up the stairs and into the office. There was one shelf on his bookcase where he kept some electronic things: mini stereo, cellphone, Blackberry, coffee maker. She decided to just put the thing there, a logical place where he would see it.

  She smiled. Mai loved taking care of Mr. Chambers and putting his things where they should be. Sometimes she even felt as if she was his wife. She smiled again.

  *****

  Brett's night-vision goggles were working like a charm. But aside from a few worms squirming around in the moisture of the lawn, there was nothing to see. He checked the fire escape and noticed it had been swept clean of the leaves that had caused him to slip. He checked down in the flowerbeds and in the grass—it was gone. He had to assume it was in the hands of Dennis Chambers now. He had to assume the worst.

  He cursed his clumsiness—unusual for him to ever slip up. And unusual for him to tolerate a loose cannon like Felicity. Now that the recorder had most likely been played by Chambers, she had become a huge liability. She could identify him. The death of Lucy was, at the very least, manslaughter— and he had been a party to it. The DOD wouldn't protect him, because officially he wasn't even working for them. For them, he didn't really exist. So, Brett had to clean up the mess.

  Felicity had to disappear, one way or another.

  *****

  Dennis sat in his office staring out the window. He felt empty inside. It had been a long few days and putting his mother in the ground, while inevitable, still broke his heart. She had been mentally gone for so long now, only making brief appearances in the last few weeks. He felt guilty because he had used those brief appearances mainly to probe her mind about the mystery. He had used her, and now she was dead.

  Melissa moved in the day after Lucy's death and she was still here. He was glad to have his big sister around, but regretted that it took the death of their mother to prompt them to spend time with each other. He had chatted with Mel already about mom's lucid moments, but didn't want to volunteer too much information to her yet. He hadn't told her anything about a supposed 'package,' or Lucy's ramblings about Apollo 19, 18 or Shackleton. He intended to keep that to himself for the time being.

  Felicity had been so upset. He felt sorry for the poor girl. Apparently, she had heard the crash from the kitchen and came running in to discover Lucy face down on the floor. He was grateful for her heroic attempts at CPR to bring her back to life. The medical examiner had confirmed that aggressive attempts had been made—three of Lucy's ribs were broken, which was not unusual with aggressive CPR. He knew she'd tried.

  The cause of death was confirmed as a massive coronary. Dennis had waived his right to have an autopsy conducted. What was the point? At her age, Dennis knew it had only been a matter of time, and the Alzheimer's only made things worse. There had been no quality of life for her anymore, so in a way it was a blessing. At least that's what Dennis told himself. It made him feel a wee bit better.

  He got up and went over to the coffee machine. He needed a serious jolt of java.

  Hello? What's this thing?

  He picked it up and recognized it right away as a personal recording device. It wasn't his. He had never even owned one of these things. How did it get into his office?

  He sat down and hit the power button, then 'rewind,' then 'play.'

  He listened.

  As he did, his stomach tightened into a knot, a knot that he knew only vomiting would cure. The forefingers of both hands instinctively stiffened into rigid shafts, and the toes of his feet curled back in unison.

  As the tape progressed it became harder and harder for him to breathe. He tried to generate saliva to soothe his dry throat, but it was impossible.

  And during this time that his bodily functions were playing tricks on him, he thought of only one person. A person who just a few days ago he had thanked profusely for trying gallantly to save his mother's life.

  *****

  Felicity Dobson was tired. Carrying her packages back from the all-night grocery store, she thought about how quickly she had been assimilated into a new assignment already: a lesbian diplomat attached to the Russian Embassy. Olga, or whatever her real name was, had secrets that the DOD needed to learn. And she had a weakness—a weakness for young women who looked like Felicity Dobson.

  Felicity didn't fancy women in the least—but she fancied power and money. And she would do anything for either one. It was just a job. And one day she would be the one handing out assignments like this one to other young women. She would have earned her stripes and the others could do the dirty work. She could hardly wait for that day to come.

  In the meantime, she would be content to prostitute herself. For the United States of America.

  She actually loved her job with the Defense Intelligence Agency. They had recruited her in college, paid for her education and set her up in the nursing service, The Casper Agency. All of the nurses at Casper worked for the DIA. The Casper Agency was simply a division of the DIA, a front for spying activities.

  And the work she did was intriguing to say the least. But it required her to work with, and defer to, operatives like Brett Horton from time to time. She could tolerate that—he was an asshole as far as she was concerned, but she could work with assholes. Most people trained by the government were assholes and she included herself in that description. It took one to know one, and she knew what she was.

  The most annoying part of Lucy Chambers' death was having to give up her cellphone to the police. Confiscating her phone was the first thing they did once they heard her story. Felicity knew it was just routine, but it meant she now had to go out and get another phone. And she had liked that old phone. She had just become accustomed to all the features. At least she didn't have to worry about anything incriminating on it. Felicity was always careful how she used her cellphone. Whenever she had talked to Brett, she'd used a landline.

  She opened the front door of her downtown brownstone with her free hand, and walked down to the kitchen. Ginger, her beloved Siamese cat, was waiting patiently for her. Felicity opened her back door and let Ginger out. She wouldn't be out long. Ginger was a sophisticated house cat, not a wanderer. Within two minutes on the nose, she'd be scratching on the door.

  Felicity carefully put her groceries away and then checked her phone messages. Nothing but annoying telemarketers. She thought about Dennis Chambers as she deleted the messages, wondering if she'd hear from him in the next few days. She would love it if there were a message on the machine from him. Even though her assignment with him was over, she'd try to arrange to bump into him again. He seemed to have bought her story hook, line and sinker, and was clearly enamored with her heroic efforts to save the old bag's life. A night out with him, then a night in, might be very pleasant indeed.

  She checked her watch. Ginger? She'd been outside for ten minutes now. Very unusual. She opened the door and called her name. No sign of her.

  F
elicity put her jacket back on and went out into the yard. It was dark, but she knew she could easily see Ginger just by the white of her eyes. She scoured the yard with her eyes.

  It felt like her head was being drilled from behind. The impact came at the base of her skull, penetrating her spine. She could feel her body lurching forward, then her head flopping back. In that instant she knew she had a hole—she could feel it. The back of her neck was getting wetter by the millisecond and she could do nothing other than flop helplessly to the ground. Felicity felt the dew of the grass on her cheeks and knew without a doubt that her life was slipping away.

  Just before her eyeballs rolled upwards never to be seen again, she glanced up and saw a dark figure kneeling beside her. He sighed. Then his arm moved at lightning speed, and she felt as if her forehead had been jackhammered.

  Felicity's tongue shot out of the corner of her mouth and tasted the dew. And she wondered...where's Ginger?

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  John Switzer said, "Brett, if you're buying the beer, I'll be there!" So Brett was buying. They were meeting at a very quiet and classy bar located in the far east end of the city, well away from political and military eyes. But in Washington, you just could never truly be sure, safe, or nonchalant. They were indeed everywhere—who 'they' were could be anybody.

  For a man in his mid-eighties, Brett thought that John sounded pretty sharp, especially considering that he'd probably been drinking his life away the last ten years. His wife was long dead, and John had never married again. So he was alone—which for most people was not a good thing. Brett hoped that a few beers and the natural cynicism that usually set in at old age, would allow John's tongue to wag. And wag a lot. And John's tongue had always been loose to begin with.

  Brett checked his watch—still a couple of hours before he was to meet John. Time enough to do some more Internet surfing, to help give background and ammunition to the questions he was going to ask John today.

  Surfing the word 'Shackleton' brought up two things: one that fell under the 'who cares' category, and the other one...well, it caused Brett's heart to skip a beat.

  Ernest Shackleton had been an Anglo-Irish explorer of the South Pole. On earth.

  But there was another 'Shackleton.'

  On the moon.

  A crater on the moon was known as 'Shackleton Crater,' named after the noted explorer, presumably because it was on the moon's South Pole and good old Ernest had staked his claim on the earth's South Pole.

  But this wasn't just any old crater. It was immense: twenty-one kilometers in diameter and over four kilometers deep; about as deep as earth's oceans. Due to the orbit of the moon, the interior of the crater lies in perpetual darkness. But...the peaks along the crater's rim are exposed to almost continuous sunlight.

  It is suspected that a huge comet caused this impact crater, and since the composition of comets is primarily ice, it is likely that the extreme low temperature interior of 'Shackleton' functioned in such a way as to trap and freeze the remnants of the comet. Measurements taken by orbiting spacecraft indicated higher than normal amounts of hydrogen inside the crater.

  Ergo—ice, water.

  Brett made himself another coffee, and checked his watch again. Good, still another hour before he had to leave to meet John. He was reading so fast, his eyes were starting to sting. He retrieved some eye drops from the bathroom and applied two to each eye. The soothing cool feeling was a relief. He couldn't stop reading—excitement was surging through his veins, the more he read about 'Shackleton.'

  He clicked on a couple of additional articles, some fairly recent. Apparently, there was serious talk about future mining projects at the crater, to capture deposits of hydrogen in water form. Also, there seemed to be plans for a large infrared telescope to be placed on the crater floor. The extreme low temperatures made it ideal for infrared observations. And solar cells placed on the perpetually illuminated rim of the crater could provide eternal power to any new observatory built on the crater floor.

  The last important notation that Brett read was NASA's interest in making 'Shackleton' the site for a future lunar outpost—possibly to be up and running by 2020 and staffed by a permanent crew by 2024. It was considered an ideal site due to the continuous sunlight at the rim of the crater and outwards on the surface of the moon's south pole. Solar power would be easy, and the mining potential of the crater was immense.

  Brett took a deep breath, and said out loud, "So, this is what 'Shackleton' is."

  But he knew this wasn't enough—there was more to this. More than met the eye and more than the Internet was revealing. And Lucy knew about it. And he was 100% certain that John Switzer knew about it—whatever it is.

  Then his quick brain retrieved information once again. "Rebel's Cause." That's what Lucy had said 'Shackleton' had been called originally. She said the name was changed in 1994.

  Brett's mind began connecting the dots.

  During the discussion ten years ago over beers with John Switzer, John had said he'd worked with 'The James Dean.' Lucy said Apollo 19 flew in 1977. The Russians tested a nuclear bomb on September 30th, 1977. The moon's communications equipment was shut down on September 30th, 1977. James Dean died on Sept. 30th, 1955. And Lucy had referred to 'Shackleton' as having been called 'Rebel's Cause.'

  The iconic actor's most iconic movie was 'Rebel Without a Cause.'

  *****

  The black van cruised slowly down Elm Street, passing by a high school, then turned slowly into a mall parking lot. Fraser Benton pulled into a parking spot close by the entrance to a twenty-four hour convenience store. This was where he did some of his business several nights a week. Stupid kids hung out here waiting for him and others like him. He didn't care—it was just a business.

  He sold heroin. And he killed young people. Or, at least his product did.

  Fraser had been in and out of prison most of his life. Why they kept letting him out, he had no idea.

  He was tapped into one of the most lucrative drug trades in Washington, D.C. The business was always waiting for him when he got out. He had stashed at least five million dollars away in safe places over the years, money that the crooked cops could never get their hands on. God knows they'd tried. Tried to make deals with him, cut him loose if he shared. He always refused. He figured the only people in the world more despicable than him, were the ones who pretended to be honest and tried to profit from him.

  This mall was just one of many locations in Washington that were his turf at certain times of the day and night. Drug dealers knew each other and for the most part respected each other's right to earn a living. Sometimes there were problems, but for the most part it was civil.

  Fraser got out of the van and walked around to the passenger side where the sliding door was. He opened it and took a quick glance inside—he had it filled with tarpaulins, cases of pop, and of course his stock. He sat on the edge and waited. Waited for the throng of kids who knew enough to show up at this time, at this place.

  Ha, so predictable. Three waif-like girls were crossing the parking lot heading straight toward him. He'd seen these girls before, they were regular customers—couldn't be more than seventeen. He was still offering them the discount versions of the product.

  Heroin was actually cheap on the streets, cheaper now than the prescription drugs which had become so popular lately. Their popularity caused the prices to rise, and heroin's price to drop. But what was necessary was to get the kids hooked, and to do that he had to sell it to them cheap for the first few weeks or months. Then, once they were hooked, his price would rise—dramatically.

  He thought it was just like fishing. Tease, tease, tease. Then set the hook—once he was able to complete that fishing process, they were loyal customers for life. Then they would kill, steal, prostitute—anything at all to get their fix. That's when the spin-off revenue would start. He didn't just make his money from selling heroin. He made some by selling kids to pimps, thieves, and killers. The kids became u
seful once they were hooked. Robots who would do anything to get high, and it was profitable business. Kind of like corporations that did strategic alliances with other corporations.

  Fraser was a corporation.

  He studied the girls as they got closer. God, they were almost at the point where he could set the hook. He could tell just by their frail, gaunt appearance. They looked a mess.

  Fraser had promised himself a long time ago that he would never ever take this shit himself. He would sell it, but he wouldn't take it. He didn't want to get fucked up—he didn't mind fucking up other people, but he wouldn't do it to himself.

  He wondered to himself if these girls ever got screwed—like, who would want them? They looked like skinny little sacks of shit.

  They stopped in front of him. Didn't say anything. Didn't need to. They knew that he knew why they were there. Fraser took a quick glance around him. Coast was clear—it usually was. The D.C. police were severely understaffed and hopeless at their attempts to stop men like him. He had pretty much a free ride.

  Fraser reached back into the van with a big smile on his face. Reached for his bag of tricks.

  He watched in shock as a tarpaulin was shed and an arm shot out faster than he could blink. A figure dressed in black from his head to his toes slammed Fraser's forearm with his own. He heard the snap and saw the jagged edges of bones sticking out as his arm broke into two useless pieces, resembling a broken branch after a windstorm.

  The girls screamed and ran—Fraser figured in that instant that the man wanted to not only hurt him, but wanted also to scare his clients into perhaps thinking of buying ice cream next time instead of heroin.

  Strangely, he felt no pain—just numbness and shock at seeing the abomination that used to be his arm. He looked up at the figure in the van. He was wearing a balaclava.