BRAINSTORM

by Gordon Kessler

  I looked away. “I am thinking. And the only thing I can come up with is that, somehow, you’re involved.” Facing her again, I narrowed my eyes. “You’re too cool about all of this. And this accidental meeting all of a sudden in the middle of a shit storm. All this bullshit you’re pumping me with—that we were friends or whatever it is we used to be. I think you know more than you’re telling me, and . . .” I quickly reached up and placed my hand across her throat. I was gentle but firm. I didn’t like two-stepping to a tune I didn’t know, and this one I couldn’t even tap my toe to. “ . . . and you’d better start spilling it, or I’m going to have to hurt you. I don’t like getting screwed without getting kissed.”

  She placed her hand gently on my wrist. “Don’t be ridiculous, Robert. I’m here to help you.” She moved my hand away as if it were a helium balloon. She looked at me longingly. Her eyes were like those nonlethal weapons she was talking about, and she knew how to use them. I quickly felt disarmed.

  She leaned to me and planted a lingering kiss on my lips. Although I didn’t give her one in return, tendrils of warmth spread through my body tickling my nerve endings and leaving me weak with passion. I pushed her away without really wanting to. I was married, and anyway, I should keep up my tough guy act in order to find out more. And I was sure she knew much more.

  “It must have to do with something you’ve done or seen,” she said, still gazing at me.

  I nearly shouted, “There’s nothing. Nothing.” I stared at the floor.

  She pulled my chin up and gazed at me again. This time she took off my glasses. “Do you really need these? The lenses are all cracked up, anyway.”

  I glanced around the room actually considering her question. “I’m blind without them,” I said but almost felt as if it was some sort of conditioned response. I seemed to see everything in the room just fine. I could actually read the In Case of Fire sign next to the door, all the way down to the fine print, even though it was a good ten feet away. I could see her face clearly although it was mere inches from my eyes. I didn’t need the glasses. I wasn’t blind without them.

  “I don’t understand it,” I told her. “I can see fine without the glasses.”

  “You have beautiful eyes,” she said. “I like you better without the specs.” Then she seemed to examine the eyeglasses. She rubbed over a burned spot on the bridge. “Hmm,” she said, and then snapped them in two.

  As I began to protest, she raised the broken frames up for me to look at. Another even smaller computer chip stuck out from one of the broken pieces, as if I hadn’t seen enough computer chips today. It appeared burnt.

  “I’ll bet this is some kind of tracking chip,” she said. “I think they call them transponders.”

  I didn’t understand how she could possibly know that. But she seemed to know a lot more about all this than I did. She discarded the glasses, tossing them into a small wastebasket in the corner of the room, and then placed her hand on my cheek.

  I frowned at her and shook my head. “I don’t get it. It’s like I’m in a tunnel with no light.”

  As if on cue, at the same time the words slipped from my lips, bright lights blared through the drape-covered windows.

  Chapter 16

  Sunny went for her backpack on the other bed in the motel room. She flung open the pack’s flap and reached inside as I stood up and started toward the curtains.

  “Don’t!” she said, and when I turned to her, she pulled out a little .32 caliber, Beretta Tomcat pistol. I knew exactly what it was, but I didn’t know how I knew, not remembering ever shooting a gun in my life.

  “There’s a window in the bathroom,” she said and ran to it, taking her backpack with her.

  When I followed, I saw the small window high on the wall between the sink and the shower. Maybe, just maybe, she could fit through it, that is if she were slicked up with Vaseline first.

  “No way,” I said, and as I did, something crashed through the window in the living room. I had the presence of mind to pull Sunny under me and protect our faces.

  An incredible explosion and flash of light followed. My guts and lungs trembled violently. It felt like I’d been slapped on both sides of the head. We were both staggering. For a moment I thought Sunny was screaming but soon realized it was my own ears. Flash-bang grenade. I knew what they’d hit us with, but again, I didn’t know how I knew. Luckily, our eyes hadn’t been exposed to the blinding light.

  This was only the start. The room lights went out, and I tried the wall switch to no avail. The only light we had was coming through the small window from a cloud-veiled full moon until Sunny pulled a flashlight out of her backpack.

  They’d be crashing through the front door any second, and there was no other apparent way out of the tiny motel room except that same door.

  Sunny seemed to realize it also. She searched in her backpack of tricks again and produced a smoke grenade. That confirmed it. Carrying a pistol, a smoke grenade and who knew what else—she wasn’t at all what she appeared.

  She stepped from the bathroom, pulled the pin out like a pro and tossed the smoke canister under the bed nearest the front door.

  Thick yellow smoke began filling the room, and the bedcovers ignited like kindling. I pulled her back inside the bathroom, yanked the door closed behind us and pushed in the lock button on the knob. The dense smoke and fire might buy us an extra ten or fifteen seconds as our unidentified adversaries fumbled through it. The doorknob button lock wouldn’t add any more than a couple of seconds to that.

  “You won’t fit!” Sunny yelled, looking at the tiny bathroom window. She’d screamed out the words, and I wasn’t certain if it was to ensure I could hear her over the ringing in my ears or because of the ringing in hers. She turned toward the door and set the flashlight on the vanity, it’s light beam on the doorknob. Keeping the small pistol at the ready in one hand, in the other she held what might have been some sort of medallion under her T-shirt. It was a little large for a Saint Christopher’s.

  I looked below the window at the bare wall between the tub and the toilet and instinctively went at it with my foot. Memories of building a house flashed like an old, black-and-white Charlie Chaplin movie through my mind—in and out, in and out. It was just another snippet from my past mostly lost to my concussion, I reasoned. If the construction was conventional and contemporary we might be in luck. Few people realize how easily even an outside wall can be busted through.

  With the first kick, the sheet rock cracked. I stepped back against Sunny in the small room and gave the drywall three quick snap kicks about waist high. The sheet rock gave way.

  Sunny got the idea and turned the flashlight on the sink top, shining it toward the hole I’d made. She assaulted the wall directly under where I had. After she kicked it twice more, we both tore at the wallboard like starving coyotes after a prairie dog, yanking pieces of the wall out and pulling away large chucks of pink insulation. A section of sheathing over a foot wide and three feet tall was exposed between the wall studs. Again, we were fortunate. It wasn’t plywood or wafer board, instead it was Celotex-like fiberboard as I’d hoped. Used for its insulation properties, it was much softer than wood and easier to break through.

  Again, I attacked the wall, but as my sidekick made contact, I heard the front door slam against the inside of the front room and glass crunch under running feet. My foot went through the sheathing and the siding up to my ankle, and Sunny had to help me get free. I stepped back and kicked twice more, the wall finally giving in, and my leg busted through past my knee. I knew they would soon make it through the smoke, past the flaming bed and up to the bathroom door. Still they did not say, “Police! Open up,” or “Don’t’ move! You’re under arrest.” They said nothing.

  I put my weight against the door, hoping they would try to break through and not shoot through, and I shoved Sunny toward the hole.

  Hurried footfalls came from the other side of the door.

  Sunny didn’t take time to snatch
up the flashlight but did snag her pack and went at the opening as if she were chasing her own white rabbit. She punched the edges of the hole, making it a few inches larger, and wriggled her way mostly through. But the broken siding caught her left foot. She struggled briefly as I watched the doorknob turn slowly. Finally, her Nike slipped off, and her socked foot disappeared. A crash came from what sounded like trashcans below.

  As I lunged for the hole, I swiped up the flashlight along with Sunny’s shoe and dove head first like my unwanted nickname, Superman. The bathroom door splintered behind me. My head, arms and shoulders made it out into the cool night, but I became lodged there, caught up by my belt buckle. I was writhing to get through when I felt hands clutching my legs.

  Sunny stood ten feet below, reaching up, leaping and grabbing at me. I dropped her shoe but hung onto the flashlight. Our hands slapped at each other as my captors pulled me back inside.

  But I was ready. I only saw two of them, helmeted, in body armor and dark-blue fatigues like SWAT team members. Somehow, I recognized the guns slung on their shoulders as silenced MP5 assault rifles—and they wore night-vision goggles. As they pulled me back and my extended arms cleared the hole, I yanked away more of the siding and sheathing from the opening with my free hand. I flopped back onto the floor, turned quickly, jabbed Sunny’s flashlight at their faces and tossed the building material from my other hand at them, too.

  They both took a step back with one hand shielding their night-vision goggles then flipped them up and out of the way. Still, they said nothing, and as they attempted to restrain me, I regained my feet.

  I had that sharp pain inside my head again, but it didn’t impede me. For a moment I had my balance and one arm free. It was time enough to place a roundhouse punch alongside the closest intruder’s neck right below his helmet. My fist knocked his Kevlar pot off, and he fell against the vanity.

  I ducked and rammed my shoulder into the midsection of the other guy. His feet left the floor as he went back through the door they’d recently smashed. I took no more time to fight, but did briefly shine my light into the faces of three more of his body-armor-covered companions who had caught him from behind in the smoke-filled room.

  As I rushed back to the opening, my light found my first combatant, sitting against the bathroom vanity, his eyes staring back, blank and lifeless—his sewn-on nametag said Sgt. Qian.

  This time, I dove through the hole without encumbrance like a jungle cat through a burning hoop. I cleared the trashcans Sunny had fallen into, but when I landed, the flashlight busted into pieces as I rolled on the grassy ground below the window.

  The next thing I knew, rapid-fire snaps from the silenced assault rifles filled the air, and the motel’s siding fell off in chunks. They’d decided if they couldn’t catch me, they’d kill me.

  A familiar smell came to my nose and even under the deadly circumstances, I felt the need to pause and consider it. Gunpowder, the unmistakable scent of burnt nitrites and sulfur—but not the kind in fireworks, the kind in bullets. Still I couldn’t recall ever firing a gun.

  Sunny’s hand was on my shoulder as dirt and grass leapt from the ground around us. A crimson light beam shown from the hole in the wall we’d created. It made a pencil-thin line that searched through the gun smoke then ended up on the center of my chest. They were using laser sights in the darkness. A fraction of a second later, two more red lasers beamed out from the opening.

  Chapter 17

  “Come on!” Sunny said, yanking me out of danger.

  A burst of shots whizzed by.

  We broke for the trees and soon were running down the steep, wooded hill behind the motel. At first, I didn’t ask where she was leading me and simply followed her blindly. So far, I figured, it had worked—I’d followed my emotions, ignored everything else as lies, and somehow, stayed alive.

  Fog had set in, and the air became heavy and moist. It lay like a thick, wet blanket on the side of the hill, getting denser the farther down we ran. On top of the naturally composted ground were patches of crusted-over snow, making footing unsure. Nevertheless, even on the steep descent, it did little to slow us down.

  After nearly a half mile of dodging pine trees and stumbling down the slope in the dark, I finally panted out, “Where?” as I grabbed her hand.

  She squeezed mine back, still running all out with the little Beretta in her other hand. “My car,” she said, breathing heavy. “About two more miles.”

  It wasn’t a good time to ask more questions, but why would she park her car two and a half miles of rugged terrain from her motel—as if it really was her legally acquired motel room? I was sure to find out soon.

  Seconds later, lights shot through the white mist from above us. The roar of helicopters drew nearer. Brilliantly glowing shafts of white descended the hill from behind us, giving life to the trees’ shadows that capered in a surreal and dizzying waltz of light and dark.

  “Shit,” I said, losing hope we’d gotten away.

  Sunny looked over her shoulder toward the lights. “No time for that now. They’re not our choppers.”

  “We have choppers?” I said more to myself than to Sunny, then slid on the slick forest floor. As I regained my balance on the run, I asked, “How can you see where you’re going?”

  “Pure instinct,” she said, and in the next second she also slipped on the loose ground cover.

  I was able to catch her and quickly pull her back on her feet. We raced on, this time with me leading, and something like a flashback shot through my mind. I didn’t know when or where, but I remembered running through the darkness, a helmet on my head and something heavy like a rifle in my hands. On my back, I’d had something much heavier, something like a large pack—no, a body.

  The beating helicopter’s rotor wash pounded down on us from the treetops, and a searchlight blazed through, snatching me away from my reminiscence. Seconds later, a second and then a third chopper joined in, but still none of the intrusive beams caught us for more than an instant as we ducked limbs and dodged the small trees.

  When we came to a dried up ravine our antagonists seemed to have lost us temporarily, their searchlights wagging through the woods to our left. I hesitated. Sunny let go of my hand and started into the ditch, going farther down hill.

  “This way,” she said. “Only a little ways more.”

  Most likely, this ravine was the same one that ran about a hundred yards behind my house. I looked up the gully and considered going home. They’d probably leave my house alone, now. Whoever was after me had most likely been there already and gotten anything they wanted. Michelle, too. If they were the police, the good guys, I figured she’d be okay. I wasn’t sure these guys were so good, though.

  I had to go. I had to see if she was all right. However, it might be too late. If the bastards had hurt Michelle, I didn’t know what I’d do.

  They were surely searching for us downhill, where we now headed, not at my place. These people were organized and well armed. How much of a chance did we have if we went in the direction they were expecting? My car was in my garage. We could get Michelle and use my Buick instead of Sunny’s car to make our getaway to the authorities in the next county. Besides, with what little I knew of Sunny, her car was probably hot—stolen. She was good with door locks, probably knew her way around a car ignition, too. At my house, I might find some clues as to what these people wanted. Maybe, if they’d left Michelle alone, she would know something.

  “I’m going home,” I said. “They won’t expect us to do that. My house is about three miles up this creek bed.”

  “Robert,” Sunny exclaimed, “are you crazy?”

  “No, come on. It’s not that far. They won’t expect us to go that way. We can get my wife and car and drive to the sheriff’s office in Summitview.”

  A dog barked wildly from below.

  “Damn!” I said. “They have dogs. Let’s go. Hurry.” I held out my hand to her.

  “No, Robert.” She brought the little
Beretta up and pointed it at me. “You’ve got to go with me. Don’t make this ugly.”

  “Jeez, Sunny. Make it ugly? What the hell is this?”

  “Come on, Robert. We’re running out of time.”

  We stared at each other from about fifteen feet apart. I backed up several steps slowly.

  “Robert! Please! I’m ‘they’ from the note.”

  “You’re ‘they’?”

  “Yes, Robert. Me and a rescue team—at the foot of this hill.”

  “You left the note in my shower?”

  “No, but whoever did knew we were coming. They were trying to get you prepared. We’ve come to rescue you and dozens of others.”

  “Rescue me—dozens of others?” I realized that she’d been deceiving me. She was probably lying to me now. How could I trust her? “Sorry, Sunny. I guess you’ll have to kill me, instead.”

  I turned and began running up the gully, my head ducked in anticipation of a shot I hoped wouldn’t come. I’d made it about a hundred feet when I heard running behind me and thought she’d changed her mind. I didn’t know if that would be good or bad, now.

  I turned back quickly. “Sunny . . . ?” I couldn’t see anything through the milky mist until a figure appeared lower to the ground than I expected. It was a dog—a large German shepherd charging full bore.

  “Sarge!” Sunny called out from far below, her voice faint and muffled by the distance and the fog. “Sarge, come here, boy.”

  The dog didn’t respond to her so I quickly scanned the ground around me for a stick to defend myself. There was nothing but twigs.

  At fifteen feet, I braced for his attack and yelled, “No! Stop!”

  Suddenly, the dog stopped, almost rolling over from his momentum.

  “Go back!” I ordered firmly.

  The dog faltered and sat down. He was a magnificent animal, ears erect, eyes large and intelligent, and I couldn’t help but admire him fearfully. Panting, he cocked his head and blinked as he watched me. For a moment, I thought he too might have been affected by my disease. If he was, it didn’t last long or produce the same deadly results it had previously on the five humans. He whined a couple of times, stood up wagging his tail, turned and trotted back in the direction he’d come.