The Omega Project

by Ernest Dempsey

  They ordered their food, collected it a couple of minutes later, and found a seat in the back of the building, around the side where the restrooms were located. There, the employees wouldn’t be able to stare at them, and that particular part of the restaurant didn’t have any cameras mounted in the corners near the ceiling. One thing Sean had learned long ago was that while it was okay to be seen, it wasn’t okay to be memorable, especially when you were trying to keep a low profile.

  He was a fugitive. The longer someone stared at him, the better chance they’d recognize him. Then it would only be a matter of time before they were surrounded by blue lights and sirens, cops with guns, and a slew of federal authorities.

  Sean unwrapped his burger halfway and took a bite. He was surprised at how good it was. The place wasn’t part of a national chain. Rather, it appeared to be a local or regional franchise, which might have explained the quality. He took another bite of the salty, chargrilled burger and then washed it down with a sip of his drink. He greedily stuffed a handful of French fries into his mouth, suddenly realizing how long it had been since he’d eaten.

  The two pulled out their phones as they ate and checked the connection.

  “Might as well try to figure this out here while we have service,” Tommy said.

  Sean nodded and began typing in different search terms on his phone. “I still can’t figure out what it means,” he confessed. “Disappointment dwelling in the hearts of men? I mean, I know that we talked about Lewis and Clark being disappointed that they didn’t find a water route all the way to the Pacific, but a specific location?”

  Tommy took another bite of his sandwich while his phone performed the search. The screen went blank for a second, and then it populated with a series of results. Sean’s did the same, though with different search results than his friend’s.

  Tommy chewed his food while he scrolled down through the list with his free hand. He flicked the screen slowly until he came to the bottom, then quickly rolled it back up to the top and tapped the first result.

  “Got anything?”

  “Maybe.” Tommy scanned the page and then spun the phone around. He slid it across the table to Sean. “Take a look at that.”

  Sean read the headline at the top of the page and realized immediately that his friend was onto something. He swallowed the big chunk of food in his mouth, probably a little too soon, and it caught in his throat. To avoid choking, he took a drink and felt better.

  “Camp Disappointment?” His eyes lifted as he looked questioningly at his friend, peeking under his eyelids.

  “I can’t believe I didn’t think of it. I mean, to be fair, it’s kind of an obscure location for most. Not the locals and not aficionados of the Lewis and Clark expedition, but for the rest of us…” His voice trailed off.

  “I don’t recall ever hearing about this place, either in school or working for you.”

  “It’s not mentioned much in contemporary history, but if you’re a historian specializing in that era, and in regard to the Corps of Discovery, then you’d know about it. I’ve read about it, but it was a long time ago. I’m certain I have several friends who know a ton more about it than I do.”

  “But you have heard of it.”

  Tommy nodded. “Yeah. So, and keep in mind I haven’t read up on it in a long time, but Camp Disappointment was the farthest place they went to the west in hopes of discovering a river to the Pacific. It’s where one of the primary objectives for their mission proved to be a failure. There is no river connecting east to west, thus their disappointment and the moniker that followed.”

  “Understandable. But what about the serpent’s head? That’s a tad strange, right? Any clue what that might be about and why the references to snakes two times in the clues? Not to mention why there isn’t one referred to in the third part of the riddle.”

  “Let’s try to stay focused on the task at hand. We’ll worry about part three when we get to it.” Tommy took a big bite of his burger and chewed while he kept talking, throwing traditional social convention to the wind. “I’m not sure why it keeps referencing a serpent unless it has something to do with a double meaning.”

  “Double meaning?”

  Tommy’s head bobbed up and down. “Yeah. So, think about it. Back in those days, the whole timber rattlesnake thing was still a big deal. In the American Revolution, the timber rattler was more of a national icon than the bald eagle. Snakes were everywhere. Eagles, not so much.”

  “Hence the Gadsden Flag with ‘Don’t Tread on Me’ written on it.”

  “Right,” Tommy jabbed a finger at his friend. “So, it could be talking about that in some vague way, but I have another theory.”

  “Can’t wait to hear it.” Sean shoved another clutch of fries into his mouth.

  “The river.” Tommy swallowed his food and waited a second, Sean guessed to build dramatic effect. “The river is like a snake. Rivers are referred to as serpents or snakes throughout history. If you look at them on maps, that’s exactly what they look like. So, it might be that the head of the serpent we’re trying to find is actually the head of a river.”

  “And at the head there’s a stone that doesn’t belong, hence why it says a stone misplaced long ago.”

  “Precisely.” Tommy pointed a fry at his friend and then stuffed it into his mouth.

  Sean thought about the solution and then looked back down at Tommy’s phone. He tapped the screen, scrolled up until he found a small square representing a map, and then tapped on it. The screen blipped again, and then the map of Montana appeared, focused tightly on the area surrounding Camp Disappointment.

  There was a monument there as a tribute to the Lewis and Clark expedition. Sean zoomed out of the close-up and looked at the distance between Billings and that spot.

  “Gonna take a while to get there,” Sean said. “Might need to hole up here for the night and then get after it early tomorrow morning.”

  “Yeah, I don’t know if there are many places to stay in that area. It’s kind of out there.”

  “Not to mention this weather is getting worse.” Sean glanced out the window at the snow flurries beginning to fall through the glow of the street lights. “I don’t mind driving on snowy roads, but at night it’s too hard to tell where the danger is, especially if there’s black ice. Most of these roads are taken care of, from what I can tell, but once we get out there off the main highways, I don’t know if we’ll be able to get through.”

  Tommy shook his head. “I doubt we can. I know it’s slower, but we may have to take the interstate as far as we can before cutting off onto any of the side roads.”

  Sean had been afraid of that. He’d made the trip out this way once before and recalled that many of the roads that weren’t considered main thoroughfares to travelers were actually some of the best and fastest ways to get through the vast state.

  His eyes shifted as he noted the headlights of a car pulling into the restaurant parking lot. The sedan came to a stop near their SUV and switched off the engine. A large man with a big beer belly hanging over his belt got out of the car and waddled inside. He lumbered up to the counter to place his order, and Sean immediately forgot about him, figuring the man was not a credible threat.

  There was another glimmer of light out beyond the parking lot. It was the residual corona of headlamps from another vehicle. The car was stopped, Sean assumed, behind another building across the lot. It appeared to be an appliance repair shop. Was it the owner closing up for the night? Or was it something more sinister?

  Sean had been watching for someone following them during the entire drive from Atlanta. He’d not seen anything yet, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t someone out there.

  The good news was they hadn’t attacked yet. But if President Dawkins’s kidnappers were following Sean, that meant he might have a chance at capturing them and getting information that could lead to the president’s location.

  “What?” Tommy asked, noting his friend’s sudden distr
action. He turned and looked at the large customer at the counter who was now waiting on his food and holding a massive cup of soda in his hand. “What’s the matter?”

  Sean had switched his gaze back to the big man in the restaurant, but he’d done it so Tommy wouldn’t immediately look outside where the headlights of the mystery car had now disappeared. The vehicle didn’t drive off; he would have seen it. The beams would have veered and turned, pointing in a different direction if the driver had backed out and spun around. Whoever was in the vehicle had simply shut them off, as if aware that their quarry had been alerted to their presence.

  “Don’t look right away,” Sean said. “There’s a car on the other side of that repair shop across the lot. It’s hidden. You won’t see it.”

  “How do you know it’s there, then?” Tommy masked his look of concern with a veil of curiosity.

  “Just saw the lights turn off.”

  “You think they’re following us?”

  “Maybe. But I’m going to find out.”

  Tommy frowned and looked down at his half-eaten meal. Then he lifted his eyes to meet his friend’s. “What are you going to do?”

  “I’m going to see if I can get anything out of them.”

  Tommy sighed. “I had a feeling you were going to say that. And what do you want me to do?”

  Sean’s eyes flashed to the window once more and then back to his friend. “You feel like working off some of those calories you just inhaled?”

  Tommy’s eyebrows lowered as he frowned. “Hey, you ate the same thing. And by the way, I’ve been staying in great shape. It’s hard to get a healthy meal when you’re on the road. I mean, come on, man.”

  “You done?” Sean’s eyebrows shot up. “I wasn’t making fun of you.”

  “Oh.”

  “I have a plan. But it’s going to require a little running.”

  Tommy pursed his lips and then nodded. “Okay, lay it on me.”

  28

  Billings, Montana

  Tommy took one more bite of his burger for good measure. He knew that it could be a while before their next meal, if they even got one, and he wanted to make sure he had enough energy.

  Sean laid out the plan, and while Tommy wasn’t sure it would work, purely from the sheer simplicity of it, he agreed that it had a shot.

  He stood up and walked to the bathroom, disappeared inside for a few minutes, and then returned. He glanced out the window and then down at his friend, gave a nod that he was ready, and then walked around the corner to the front of the restaurant.

  The workers were busily cleaning up, mopping the floor, wiping down tables, and putting food away that would be served first thing when they opened the following morning.

  Sean watched as his friend vanished around the corner. He knew what was going to happen next and didn’t want to alert the driver should the person be watching. Truth was; Sean knew they were. If they had a tail, that asset wouldn’t take their eyes off the two.

  He often wondered how someone like that got any sleep, how they functioned. He’d done the job only a couple of times while working for Axis. He’d once been assigned to follow a high-level Swiss banker who was purportedly funneling money to a Russian hacking operation.

  He’d followed the banker for a full thirty-six hours, only getting about four hours of sleep during the entire mission. He’d eaten twice and found that one of the biggest difficulties was finding a way to use the bathroom without being noticed. It was the little things, Sean thought, that could make or break a clandestine operation. Stuff that people took for granted or never even thought of became extremely challenging when a person had to do their best not to be spotted. Not to mention that the simple act of going to the restroom could lead to the target being lost for good.

  He’d acclimated, adjusted, found a way to get the job done, but Sean never wanted to go on a hunt like that again.

  A big part of him had considered sitting there in the restaurant until it closed and then going out to the SUV and catching some shuteye, forcing the tail in the other vehicle to wait it out.

  There were, after all, two of them and only one of the enemy. On the other side of the coin, however, was the chance that the person in the car behind the repair shop was simply the owner, there to check on their inventory or do some routine task that Sean couldn’t imagine.

  Sean hoped that was the case. There was, though, a part of him that prayed the person in the car was following them. Chasing down a two-hundred-year-old riddle in hopes of finding some crazy person’s archaeological dream had a ton of room for failure. Getting intel out of someone who knew the location of President Dawkins and shortcutting to the source of the problem was a better option in many ways.

  It was worth a try.

  Sean watched as Tommy walked over to the SUV and stood there for a moment. He opened the door and looked inside, then closed the door and walked around to the back of the vehicle. He glanced over at the road and waited until a car appeared, going toward the interstate. It was a random vehicle, just a minivan whose driver was probably going home after a long day of work. It didn’t matter. Tommy just needed a car to come by, any car. The minivan worked fine.

  He abruptly spun around and jolted toward the back of the parking lot and a chain-link fence that ran along the perimeter. There were tall trees surrounding it, planted just on the other side. Tommy sprinted as hard as he could, his legs pumping hard and his feet pounding the pavement.

  Sean crouched down and made his way hurriedly to the rear exit and slipped out the door. If someone was watching, they’d have their eyes locked on the man running across the lot.

  Sean reached the corner of the building and stayed low for a second, watching the place where he was sure the car still remained. It took less than five seconds for the driver to switch on the beams and pull out of his spot.

  Tommy’s head swiveled toward the sudden bright lights. They blared at him like twin suns, momentarily blinding his vision. When he looked away, back to the fence ahead, he could still see the residual glowing circles in the darkness, the image of the headlamps temporarily burned into his eyes. He kept running, dipping in and out of the light, doing his best to dive back into the evening darkness as he pushed harder toward the fence a hundred yards away.

  The car bore down on Tommy, racing at him as the engine whined and groaned, the gears shifting as the vehicle gained speed.

  Tommy reached the fence and slammed into it, his weight causing the barrier to give a little. It rippled and waved for a couple of seconds as he clutched at the links and started to climb. His feet slipped, and for a moment he hung by his fingers, though only a couple of feet off the ground.

  The fence was taller, around eight feet high, and its sharp spokes on the top rose menacingly as a warning to any who were foolhardy enough to try to climb over.

  A squeal behind him, accompanied by the brightness of the lights and the sound of the motor, brought Tommy’s head around once more. The driver had caught him.

  The door opened and a man got out. Tommy couldn’t tell how old he was, just that it was a man based on the outline against the backdrop of the headlights.

  “Down. Now,” the guy ordered. Tommy could make out the shape of a pistol in his hand.

  Tommy looked at him, forlorn. “Take it easy,” Tommy said. “I don’t want any trouble.”

  “Off the fence.” The guy wasn’t much of a conversationalist. “Now!”

  Tommy hesitated for a moment and then let himself slide down. He turned slowly toward the gunman, raising both hands in the process.

  “I don’t know what you want, but I don’t have much.” He wasn’t lying. He’d left his money, weapons, pretty much everything in the car except for one firearm strapped to his right ankle. It was a 9mm subcompact. Tommy had no intention of making a play for the gun. He’d be cut down in an instant if he were to try something stupid like that. Besides, that wasn’t the plan.

  “What are you doing?” The man emerged from
the shadows and into the light enough that it caught his face. He had a strong, sharp jawline that ended at the point of his chin. His lips were thin and firm, clamped shut like a bear trap. “Why are you running?”

  The guy’s accent was Northeastern. Not New York or Boston, definitely not Jersey. If Tommy was correct, his initial thought was the attacker was from Philadelphia. He’d met his fair share of guys from that part of the country. One of his good friends in college was from there. He’d run a couple of bars and nightclubs, always shifting from one building to another once a joint had run its course.

  This gunman sounded exactly like Tommy’s friend from Philly.

  “I…I don’t know,” Tommy said. He actually wasn’t lying. He’d run because Sean told him to. Now that he thought about it, maybe Sean should have been the one to take off toward the fence. Tommy was in the best shape of his life, but he was no match for Sean’s fitness level. Sean had been through intense training, both for fitness and for combat. He’d experienced things Tommy could only imagine. Through the years, Sean had maintained that exercise-and-nutrition regimen—well, except for the occasional burger like the one they just ate. As he thought of the meal, a swelling burn climbed up through Tommy’s esophagus. Where was Sean?

  The answer came within seconds.

  “You don’t know why you’re running?” the gunman asked. “Well, that’s fine. I don’t need you anyway.”

  “Because you only need me?” Sean said from a few feet behind the gunman.

  The younger man with the gun made the only mistake Sean needed him to. He turned his body slightly, which took the gun’s sights off Tommy for the briefest of moments. The second he did, Tommy lunged out of the way.

  The gunman started to switch back to his captive, but it was too late.

  Sean clicked his tongue as a warning. “Uh-uh,” he said, adding another layer to the implied danger. “Don’t move now. I’m going to need you to toss that weapon.”