The Omega Project

by Ernest Dempsey

The man swore at Sean, calling him an unsavory nickname. Then he told Sean where he could go.

  “That’s not very nice,” Sean said. “Here I am extending an olive basket to you, and you’re spitting in my face.”

  “Olive branch,” Tommy corrected, now standing parallel to Sean about ten feet away.

  “What?” Sean’s head twitched to the side so he could see his friend better.

  “Olive branch. You said olive basket. The saying is extending an olive branch.”

  Sean’s head snapped back and forth. “Whatever. The point is: I’m trying to be civil, and you’re not being very accommodating.” Sean jabbed the pistol into the man’s middle back so that the muzzle came to rest on his spine. It pressed hard into the bone. “A bullet right here will render you paralyzed at best. In fact, I’m guessing it wouldn’t kill you. So, if you want to live the rest of your life without the use of your extremities, keep resisting, but I’m not going to kill you. I’m going to do everything I can to make sure you stay alive.”

  The man said nothing.

  “Again, please, drop the gun. Okay, pumpkin?”

  Sean could see the man’s jaw clench, release, then clench again. He was fuming, nostrils flaring open and shut with every furious breath. Maybe he didn’t understand how Sean and Tommy had gotten the better of him. Perhaps he was angry at himself for getting caught. Sean didn’t care. He just wanted the weapon on the ground.

  The man finally relented and tossed the gun several feet away. Tommy hurried to it and picked up the weapon, then raised it, keeping it level at his waist, aiming at the man’s chest.

  “That’s better,” Sean said. “So, now we’re going to play a little game.”

  “One where you ask me who I work for, where your friend is, who I am, that sort of thing?” The guy’s comment was sharp, a barb aimed directly at Sean so that all three men knew that this guy was no fool and that he’d been in a situation like this before. He was unafraid. Determination overflowed in the sound of his voice.

  “Oh, you know this game?” Sean wagged the gun in his hand, still standing behind his prisoner. He shifted his feet and circled around to face the guy. He quickly realized his initial assessment was correct. The man was indeed young, early to mid-twenties. Was he former military? Special Forces? Sean knew he wouldn’t get those answers. He could already tell this guy was stubborn, and getting any information out of him was going to be painfully difficult.

  The good news was that the captive was going to experience most of the painful part.

  “Since you know the game so well,” Sean went on, “why don’t you start with the first one you mentioned? Who do you work for?”

  The guy shook his head. “You idiots. You don’t understand. You’re working for them, too, only you’re not being paid for it. Not in cash, anyway.”

  Sean and Tommy both knew what he meant, especially Sean. They were working for whoever this guy worked for, only they were doing it pro bono, hunting down answers to riddles left long ago by former presidents and early explorers.

  “So, if we’re all in this together, maybe you should enlighten us as to who we’re helping out.” Tommy took a wary step closer to the man, still holding his weapon firmly in front of him in case the guy got any wise ideas.

  The prisoner shook his head. “You don’t understand. They’ll kill me. They’ll kill both of you.” He raised a threatening finger. “They will kill everyone you love and hold dear. They’re everywhere; don’t you see?”

  “You sure do talk a lot without saying much. Isn’t that right, Schultzie?” Sean snorted derisively at the man. “If you’re with us, no one is going to hurt you. Understand? Now, since you seem stuck on not telling us who you work for, why are you following us?”

  The guy shook his head once more. “They want progress updates. You’d do well to go back to looking for the artifact.” His voice was cool and calm, even-toned like he was reading the business section of the paper. He didn’t seem afraid despite the warning he’d just been issued and the knowledge that came with it, knowledge that he would be offed just as easily as these two. “It’s not too late. If you continue doing what you were doing, back on the trail, they will be none the wiser.”

  “And I suppose you’ll just go back to following us and not hurt us in any way.”

  “That was the plan. Although if I needed to hurt you I would have done it already.”

  Sean wasn’t sure if the guy was making a good point or just trying to overcompensate for the fact he was now at a significant disadvantage, unarmed and held hostage. Sean was leaning toward the second.

  He jabbed the gun deeper into the man’s back, pressing the cold metal hard into his spine.

  The guy winced, but he didn’t say anything.

  “Look, man. It’s cold out here. Just tell us what we want to know so we can get back on the road and figure out what it is we’re looking for.”

  A puzzled look came over the man’s face. It draped over him like a curtain, masking something deep within, an unspoken truth. “You…you don’t know what you’re looking for?”

  Sean and Tommy exchanged a curious glance.

  “What? You know what we’re looking for?” Tommy pressed.

  The prisoner started laughing. At first, it was a sinister chuckle, barely audible over the sound of the wind blowing across the lot and into the men’s ears. Then the laughter grew until he was going all out, his white teeth brandished in the light of the streetlamps.

  “Something funny?” Sean asked. “Why is it you know what we’re trying to find? Maybe you should be the one leading this little expedition.”

  The laughter started to die, and within twenty seconds the serious expression was back on the younger man’s face. “You don’t get it. We know what we’re looking for. We just don’t know where it is. Understand? That’s why we need you two idiots. You’re going to hunt it down for us, and when you do we’ll let your friend go.”

  So, they knew what Sean and Tommy were looking for. That certainly changed things. Sean wondered how they could know what he and Tommy were searching for if they themselves had never found it before. If they hadn’t laid eyes on it, how did they know the thing even existed?

  “What is it?” Tommy asked, bluntly.

  The captive shook his head. “I can’t believe you don’t know. Then again, maybe they didn’t relay that information on the video you received.”

  More confirmation this guy was legitimately working for whoever took Dawkins.

  The prisoner said nothing.

  “Look,” Sean said, pulling the weapon away from the guy’s back, “we don’t want anything to happen to Dawkins, obviously. But I know for a fact there are FBI agents on my trail. They’ve been looking for me ever since your boss pulled that little gem of a stunt and leaked that I was the one who abducted the former president.”

  “We needed to light a fire under you,” the man explained.

  “Fair enough. Being accused of one of the highest crimes in the nation is certainly one way of doing that. Or your boss could have just called us and asked what we charge.”

  Tommy nodded.

  The prisoner sighed, doing it in an overdramatic way that neither Tommy nor Sean would miss.

  “It won’t help you,” he said. “Even if I did tell you what it was they wanted, the only thing that will get you there is solving the riddles. My employer couldn’t figure it out, so he went after the two people who were world famous for that sort of thing.” He bowed his head to the two of them.

  Sean didn’t let on, but their prisoner had just given a clue, albeit a small one, as to the identity of his employer. The guy said he, so it was a man calling the shots. While that didn’t exactly narrow things down much, there was one other hint that got left out there in the open. He’d insinuated that all of the shots, the entire plan, everything was being called by one person. It wasn’t an organization or secret society behind all this. It was one man.

  “This person running the show,”
Tommy said, “who is it?”

  “See, if I tell you that then you’ll try to go run and tell your friends at Axis or in the government. Why are you worrying your mind with the inconsequential? It doesn’t matter who you’re working for. Just know that they’re extremely powerful, have access to pretty much everything, including the government, and that if you don’t get this done he’s going to kill you and everyone you love.”

  Sean’s first thought went to Adriana. He’d called her, but she didn’t answer. In a way, he was happier about that, although it caused him to wonder if these goons had done something. Then again, he should be more worried about the goons if they’d messed with her.

  “Tell you what,” Sean said. “You’ve been nice enough. Maybe we just load you into the back of our SUV, and you ride with us. Will be easier than driving yourself all over the country. Not to mention you could sleep. Looks like you haven’t slept in days, right, Tommy?”

  “Definitely.”

  “You don’t understand. I’m already dead.”

  “Already dead? Why? You haven’t betrayed anyone. You’re just helping out. I’d say your employer should be happy about that.”

  The prisoner shook his head. “No. Once he knows, he’ll—”

  The guy’s head twitched. His neck stiffened, veins suddenly rising through the skin. His eyes fixed on some distant point, and then he dropped to his knees and fell over on his side. The legs and arms shook momentarily before the entire body went still.

  Sean took a knee next to him within a second. He pressed the gun to the man’s head and two fingers to his neck where he’d normally check for a pulse. Then Sean stuck a finger under the guy’s nose. No breath came from the nostrils. Sean looked at his chest. There was no rise and fall of the lungs. He double-checked the pulse on the man’s wrist this time, but he already knew what the result would be.

  His suspicions were correct as he felt the still flesh. It was warm, but that would soon change in the freezing temperatures, especially at night.

  Sean looked up at his friend. “He’s gone.”

  Tommy’s face contorted into a frown. “What happened?”

  Sirens whined in the distance. They weren’t close, but that would change in a hurry.

  “I don’t know,” Sean admitted, “but we need to get out of here.”

  29

  Bismarck, North Dakota

  Petty got the call while he was in a hotel room in Bismarck, North Dakota. It was too late in the evening to leave right away. He was exhausted and needed to rest, so he took a twenty-minute power nap before loading up his gear, the small suitcase of clothes, and the few toiletries he’d brought along on the trip.

  He drove through the latest hour of the night and into the wee hours of the morning. The moon and stars occasionally poked through the dark gray haze overhead. By the time Petty reached the Montana border, though, there was no sign of the heavenly bodies and their comforting light.

  So long as the snow held off, he didn’t care.

  Petty didn’t do snow. He detested it. When he was a child growing up in New England, he’d seen his share of the white stuff. Early on, he loved having a white Christmas every year. He enjoyed playing in it, throwing snowballs, going sledding, but as he grew older he realized how much of an inconvenience snow really was.

  At the moment, there was only a thin layer of it on the ground, but that could change in the blink of an eye out here. He knew plenty about the weather in this part of the world and one thing was certain; they were going to get snow. It was just a matter of when and how much.

  There’d been warnings about a blizzard coming soon, but he didn’t have time to worry about that. He had a mission, and that was all that mattered. Sean Wyatt had taken the president and had, apparently, tried to stop a robbery at a diner in North Dakota.

  Now there was this.

  The call had come from one of his people back in Washington. They’d gotten the alert about a murder in a parking lot in Billings, Montana. Normally, Petty wouldn’t think anything of it. It was probably a meth head overdosing, or something along those lines. He didn’t care and didn’t see why the call was important until his contact laid the next set of details on him.

  Two men had entered the same fast food chain parking lot about thirty minutes before the body was found. They’d gone in, ordered burgers, and eaten half of them before leaving.

  The men hadn’t cleaned up their tables, which was strange since everyone knew to clean up their food at pretty much any fast food place in the world. When the men left, they did so one at a time, which was another thing that struck the workers as odd.

  Still, not much to go on or even warrant thinking about, that is until the guy in Washington told Petty the piece of information he’d been saving for last. One of the men who entered the restaurant had a very similar description to the man from the diner in North Dakota. It was a spot-on match. As far as he was concerned, Petty didn’t need to even cross-reference it. He knew it was the same person. He believed it was Sean Wyatt.

  Petty’s exhaustion vanished, and it hadn’t returned in the hours since leaving the hotel. By the time he reached Billings, the sun was starting to peek over the hills and prairies to the east, and Petty was feeling just fine.

  The scene in the parking lot was a familiar one, at least for a murder investigation. There were half a dozen police cars sitting around a single area near the back of the parking lot. Most of the lights were off except for two cars that were clearly trying to keep people away from the scene. There was an ambulance, and the coroner’s vehicle was also parked close by. Several of the cops were hovering around near the fence where another car, this one a civilian sedan, was sitting in the midst of the investigative work.

  Forensics analysts were taking samples. Petty could also see the coroner zipping up the body in a dark bag, preparing to load it into their van. Every person in the motley crew was dressed for the weather, each wearing heavy coats or parkas, heads covered in thick hats, hands gloved, and boots on every foot. The temperature on the dashboard said it was twenty degrees outside, which was probably mild compared to what these people experienced once the full brunt of weather hit. This was just the appetizer.

  Petty felt a wave of gratitude overwhelm him as he shifted the car into park and killed the engine. Where he lived in Virginia, it got cold in the winter. They even received their share of snow, but it wasn’t like this, and it never lasted. There were good summers there, mild springs and falls, and the winters were only bad for a short time. This, this was next level.

  He stepped into the freezing morning air, donned his FBI badge on a lanyard around his neck, and started toward the police line that was being passively guarded by two cops in precinct-issue coats.

  Petty pulled back his own coat—still unzipped—and nodded at the two men in uniform.

  The cops glanced at each other with bewilderment in their eyes and then pulled up the tape so Petty could pass through.

  One of them said something about Feds. The comment came with an explicit adjective. Petty didn’t even acknowledge it. He’d heard it all and knew exactly the kind of reception he was about to get.

  A detective in a trademark trench coat and what looked to be Isotoner gloves stood over the crime scene. The coroner raised the rolling gurney and started pushing it toward his vehicle.

  Petty glanced at the bag for a second but continued walking toward the detective.

  The man in the trench coat was a shade over six feet tall, had thinning hair with a smattering of brown, long lines stretching out from loose skin around his eyes, which were dark hazel in color. He was probably in his early sixties, possibly late fifties.

  Petty stepped up to him, flashed his badge again, and then went about fastening his coat to keep out the cold.

  “Agent Matthew Petty,” he said as the cop stared at the badge and then watched with disdain as Petty did up his jacket.

  “You the detective in charge here?”

  “Why in
the world would the Feds be here? Are we really going to do this whole song and dance? It’s my investigation, Agent Petty. I can’t imagine why you’d poke your nose in.”

  “I don’t want to get in your way, Detective…”

  “Krantz. Robert Krantz. And I don’t want you to get in my way, either. We have a handle on this, so you can run on back to whatever hole you crawled out of.”

  Petty ignored the barb. He’d been through this enough times to know what to expect and how to handle it.

  “I’m not trying to solve your case, Detective. And I’m not going to step on any toes. I just need to ask a couple of questions, and I’m hoping you can help me. We think that your killer here might be involved with a case I’m working on.”

  The detective raised one eyebrow and planted his palms against his hips, letting the thumbs hang from his belt.

  “Is that so?” He looked doubtful. It was clear this cop had either come across some thorn of a federal agent or he’d watched too much television.

  “Yeah.” Petty produced a picture of Sean Wyatt from his coat pocket and handed it to the detective. “This guy’s name is Sean Wyatt.”

  The detective’s face was red from the cold, but it flushed white within seconds. “Wait a minute,” he said, his voice gravelly. He looked at the image another couple of seconds and then raised his head to meet Petty’s gaze. “This is the guy they think kidnapped President Dawkins.”

  Petty glanced around to make sure no one heard the detective’s booming voice. “Try to keep it down, Detective. I don’t want to cause a ruckus. But yes, that’s the guy. We believe he is headed out this way, probably has the former president with him, maybe in the back of a van, an SUV, we’re not really sure.”

  “Not sure?” The guy guffawed. “You don’t sound like you know much about it at all, Agent Petty.”

  The last barb got under Petty’s skin. He stepped close enough that he could smell the cheap coffee and cheaper cigarettes on the detective’s breath. The coat the man wore gave off an odor such as Petty had smelled in some of the poorer areas he’d visited where he grew up, shelters mostly, when he went to work at soup kitchens on Saturday mornings.