by Thomas Shaw
“Turn to the left… turn to the right.
Keri Ann’s gaze became fixed on the light pattern that flickered in front of her eyes. After about a minute of this routine her conscious mind became bored with the little rays of light slowly flickered across her eyes as her lids grew heavy and began to close.
“Do it now,” SAM said.
“Just let your eyes close so you can relax into a deep trance,” Donny said, using the same cadence.
“Just relax into a deep trance… You’re doing fine,” he said, switching to Spanish.
“You are now in a deep trance; notice how relaxed and comfortable you are. I want you to listen to me very carefully… in a moment I’m going to count to three. Then I will ask you to open your eyes. When you open your eyes you will look at me and see an older man who is unattractive to you and you will have no sexual interest in. You will want to leave this room immediately. When you return to your room you will have no memory of this meeting.”
Keri Ann’s eyes were closed and she was breathing slowly when Donny slowly counted. “One, Two, Three… open your eyes.”
Her eyelids fluttered a little as she slowly opened her eyes. She blinked a couple of times as if to clear her thoughts, then turned her head so she was looking directly at Donny as he watched the look of discomfort and embarrassment collect in her eyes. “I’ve got to go,” she said in Spanish.
Without another word she quickly jumped off the bed, grabbed her clothes and was out the door.
“I hope she avoids the cameras,” Donny said, into the empty room.
SAM responded immediately. “She has probably done this many times and knows how to be discreet but I will let you know if I sense any problems.”
“I’m going to bed in a few minutes. Make sure I get a good night’s sleep,” was Donny’s last communication with SAM; but he had something else on his mind.
He picked up his cell phone and scanned through the address book until he found the number he was looking for.
Several seconds later the answering machine picked up the call. “You have reached the Wild Hair, we are currently closed, please leave your name and a phone number so we can call you back. Thanks for calling… have a nice evening.”
Beep.
“This message is for Debbie,” Donny said in French. “I just wanted to take a minute to tell you how much I enjoyed our meeting and look forward to a real dinner when I get back from this trip. I’ll call again in a couple of days… Chow,” and hung up.
Quantico, Virginia…
“What the Hell was that all about?” Dr. Merrill exclaimed, jumping out of his chair. Moments before, he had been dozing off but hearing Donny make that phone call had set off alarm bells in his head.
“SAM, what’s going on? I thought you deprogrammed him from any memories of what happened in California,” Ed shouted, causing other technicians to listen in.
“I erased all memories of the California event before we sent him on this mission. I can only assume that these memories somehow were retained by Jim’s subconscious mind and Donny has been able to tap into them. They must be able to share each other’s memories, which I do not understand,” SAM said, in her calm logic.
“What do you mean – You don’t understand!! This could jeopardize our whole mission,” he railed. “I want to know who’s in charge; is it Donny or Jim?”
“I feel confident that Donny is very much in charge of this mission. I can only make a judgment call that Jim may have or had an emotional tie with Debbie that we didn’t know about and has somehow caused this memory sharing,” SAM responded.
“I don’t want any more surprises, just make sure there is no further memory sharing,” Ed snapped, clearly showing signs of stress from the pressures of this mission.
16
Quantico, Virginia…
SAM had been listening for the last 3 ½ hours as the men in the study talked about the individual roles they played in the theft of the Anti-Matter fusion generator.
It was almost 3:30 am Eastern Standard time when Dr. Merrill gave up listening to this amazing story and headed to his bunk for some much needed sleep. Before he left the control room, he requested that SAM put together a summary of all the conversations they had been listening to throughout the evening.
This is the summary…
Six months earlier Juan Castaic had been approached by the President of Mexico to put together a small team of men to go to Brussels, Germany to steal the plans for a new breakthrough in the production of electricity using the highly controversial fuel called Anti-Matter. A group of scientists there had been working on this ultra-secret project for over fifteen years and had recently made some major discoveries. One of these scientists, for reasons unknown had approached the Mexican government with an offer to sell this information for five million Euros.
After six months of training Juan had put together five men to pull off this operation. Three weeks earlier Juan’s team had arrived in Germany and met with the scientist turned mole. They were given the location of a three story building on the outskirts of Brussels which was gated and surrounded with a 12 foot high electrified steel fence. There were guards at the gate and in the building 24 hours a day 7 days a week.
The Mexican Mafia, as they called themselves, rented a utility van that was large enough to easily hold the men and their equipment. This van was modified with a three foot by four foot false floor in the middle of the cargo area. It was on a Saturday evening about 11:30 pm when the van pulled up and stopped over a specific man-hole cover on a street adjacent to this building. Once the van was in position the false floor was removed and the man-hole cover opened, allowing five men to enter the storm sewer without detection. Following the map given to them by the “mole”, these men made their way to a basement access of the building, thereby defeating all the electronic surveillance above ground.
They were dressed like an American swat team, complete with the newest body armor and night vision technology. They used the latest Motorola headsets to communicate with each other and most importantly spoke only in English. Each was armed with a Mac 10 sub-machine gun, again American Army issue. The only foreign weapon was a LG-360 mini Gatlin gun made by the Israelis. It turns out that the LG-360 is one of the newest weapons in the Israeli arsenal. It has six barrels each one fourteen inches long from the ammo feed mechanism to the tip of the barrels and was three inches in diameter. It uses .22 caliber, magnum ammunition, and has a firing rate of 4,000 rounds per minute. The shooter carries a 60 pound backpack with enough ammunition for 90 seconds of continuous operation. There is a support person with an additional 60 pound backpack for additional fire power. This unique machine gun attaches to a special belt strapped around the waist of the shooter. He wears a remote control glove that operates the laser pointer and allows for different rates of fire. The mini gun is mounted on the right hip of the shooter and carried in a barrel down position when not in use. To activate the electronics and the remote control glove the shooter simply rotates the gun to the horizontal position which locks in place. By moving the glove with left, right, up and down movements the mini gun follows the built-in laser pointer. By watching where the red dot of this pointing device lands; he can see precisely where the bullets will impact. By using one finger to simulate a trigger pull the mini gun spurts out 10 rounds per pull. By using two fingers together the shooter utilizes the full automatic feature.
The five men, following the map, made the 100+ meter trip through the maze of storm sewer pipes to a point directly beneath the basement of the target building. The first commando climbed the short steel steps of a ladder leading up to the basement floor. With great effort he raises the heavy iron lid and slides it sideways opening enough room for the rest of the team to climb through. Once inside the basement each man attached his night vision apparatus to the swat style helmet. Using the stairwell the team made its way to the first floor, where one of the team stayed behind to protect their flank. The rest of the team contin
ued up the stairs to the second floor where yet another team member stayed behind.
Unfortunately, the “mole” was not aware of the motion sensing, infrared cameras mounted covertly in the stairwells. The guard station that monitored these cameras was located in the front of the building near the entrance. There were 32 cameras displayed on a large 42 inch flat screen TV. The system was programmed to display the image on full screen, if any camera, sensed motion after 6:00 pm. This image would stay on the screen for 10 seconds then automatically switch back to display all 32 cameras. The first two times the motion sensors were trigged the guard watching the monitor had turned to fill up a coffee cup from his thermos jug. As the remaining three commandos made their way to the top floor, the motion sensing camera in that stairwell alerted the guard that three unknown persons were approaching the 3rd floor. It was clear from the video that the three men were dressed in military garb complete with helmets and night vision goggles, not to mention the machine guns held at the ready.
The German guard immediately sounded the alarm to his six other counter-parts via his headset. There were seven men on duty that evening that had been entrusted to protect the contents in this building, even though they had no idea exactly what was in the building. The alarm given was a level 1, which gave the security guards the authority to shoot first and ask questions later. Four of the guards were dispatched to the 3rd floor at the opposite end of the hall from the intruders. The lights were out in this hall way and they had no night vision aids. One of the guards radioed the guard viewing the video monitor and asked for the position of the intruders.
By positioning themselves behind the entrance to the third floor hallway they were able to remain out of sight, as the intruders slowly made their way toward them. The guard, on the monitor, radioed back that the three intruders had stopped at the main laboratory door. At that moment three of the guards pulled the arming pins from their hand-grenades’ and threw them down the hall. Their motions were quickly picked up by the night vision goggles as the commando closest to the guard’s yelled “grenades”. One of the grenades stopped about fifteen feet from the commando armed with the LG-360. He immediately clenched his fist, activating the laser pointer and moving his wrist to put the red dot on this grenade, at the same instant squeezed both fingers. A blaze of bluish red flames spewed from the end of the mini gun. Dozens of bullets impacted the grenade sending it back across the floor like a rock skipping over the water. He frantically searched for the other grenades… spotting one only ten feet away, he moved the laser and again pulled both fingers. Immediately the mini gun roared to life sending the second grenade back to its senders in less than 5 seconds. All three grenades exploded as they reached the end of their seven second fuses. Two of the commandos were able to duck and cover but the third commando, the one with the mini gun, took the full blast of the final grenade which had stopped about twenty feet away. The other two grenades skipped back to the end of the hall and immediately exploded, killing one of the German guards and wounding two others. The commandos team leader shouted “Sound off”, issuing the command to report their position and situation. “Number 2… “I’m OK”, reported the commando carrying the extra ammo backpack while he picked himself of the floor. “Number 3… (pause) “I’m hit, but I think the body armor took most of the blast”, as he leaned against the wall for balance, his ears still ringing. “Number 4, I’m… (Suddenly interrupted by the sound of machine gun fire).
Two other guards had circled back toward the stairway to get behind the intruders and ran into the #4 commando as they opened the door.
“Number 5… OK.”
“Opening the lab door.” The lead commando said as he swiped the “moles” security card against the access control on the door. Two commandos entered the room, turned on the lights and removed their night vision goggles. They immediately went to the computer mounted in a rack that was illustrated on the map he held in his hand.
“Pull all the drives,” The commando said, as the second man removed three hard disk drives from the server and placed them in a small aluminum case.
Number 3 was just starting to regain his hearing when he felt his body jerking back causing his helmet to hit the wall. One of the guards on the 3rd floor had turned on the lights in the hall and was firing at him with his Uzi machine gun. His body armor was deflecting the onslaught of bullets but it would only be a matter of seconds before some of the rounds found an opening. He moved his wrist until the red dot lined up on the chest of the guard firing at him. He squeezed both fingers and the mini gun once again roared to life. The guard seemed to disappear in a red vapor as hundreds of bullets impacted his chest and upper torso. Without releasing his fingers, the commando moved the laser pointer to the corner of the wall, where the other guard was hiding, as he watched the wall disintegrate in front of his eyes.
“Set your charges!” The lead commando ordered. “Let’s get out of here.”
The commando on the first floor was unobstructed as he quickly placed his explosive charges on the wall every 50 feet and pulled the time delayed fuse. “Number 5… all set.”
“This is #4… I’m pinned down and can’t set my charges.”
“This is #5 I’m on my way.”
“#5, hold your position, we’re coming to you,” ordered the lead commando.
With charges set in the main lab and along the first floor, the lead commando ordered his men to withdraw. As they withdrew into the hall, the commander asked #3 how he was holding up. “I took some shrapnel, but I think I’m OK,” he said. The commander saw dark purple blood streaming out of his upper thigh down his leg and off his boot.
Just then #3 turned and let loose a torrent of bullets toward the end of the hall, followed by screams as another guard hit the floor. The team retreated to the stairwell, as #3 ordered, “Reload me!”
He slipped off his nearly empty backpack. Without missing a step, #2 replaced his backpack on #3 and tapped his helmet signaling that he was locked and loaded.
When they arrived at the 2nd floor, the 4th commando informed them that two guards were half way down the hall and would hit him with machine gun fire whenever he tried to open the door.
The #1 and #2 commandos continued down the stairs while #3 positioned himself beside the door and gave the signal for his buddy to push it open. Before the German guards could react there was a deafening roar from the stairwell, and the hallway was literally filled with bullets. Both guards were riddled with the .22 caliber magnum rounds before they could pull their triggers.
The remaining guard was busily calling for backup and informing the police they were under attack from an American military group.
All five commandos made it into the storm sewer and hurriedly made their way back to the waiting van. The #3 commando was getting weaker by the moment. He had stripped off his backpack and gun belt so he could move a little easier. He was the first one up the ladder into the van but was losing strength rapidly and had to be pulled onto its floor. The rest of the team scrambled on board and within in seconds were headed to a private airfield about ten kilometers away. They could hear the emergency sirens blaring as they turned and headed away from the building. Moments later there was a huge explosion as the secret laboratory was enveloped in flames and the building slowly collapsed on itself.
It turned out that the shrapnel from the hand grenade had severed an artery in number 3 and he bleed to death on the way to the airfield. The four remaining members of the team made it back to Mexico City without further incident. The one that didn’t make it was cremated and his ashes scattered in Germany. This was the main reason for the cigars and cognac each evening; to toast their efforts and remember the team member they lost.
“Here is what we know for sure,” SAM said, at the end of the summary. “One, we know for a fact the disks with the information needed was successfully stolen. Two, we know for a fact this information made it back to Mexico City and three, we think it’s somewhere in the Castaic mansion, but
don’t know where it is.”
17
Mexico City…
The alarm rang promptly at 5:00 am.
Donny took a quick shower was dressed and walking downstairs in less than 30 minutes. A couple of maids and probably the breakfast cook watched him through the kitchen door as he walked toward the front entrance. His driver was standing in front of the new Escalade and immediately walked around to open the rear passenger door.
Donny felt a little uneasy about riding in the backseat but didn’t want to challenge any politically correct issues he wasn’t sure about. Other than the “good morning” pleasantries, they rode in silence for the 30 minutes or so to the rolling foothills just South of Mexico City. The Spanish Bay Country Club was one of the most scenic and well-manicured golf courses he, or more accurately – Jim Peterson’s memory – had ever seen.
The Escalade stopped in front of the Pro-Shop, where a stocky built man, impeccably dressed like a 1950’s touring pro, was waiting at the curb. “Mr. Donny, what a pleasure to meet you,” said the sun tanned man, in a heavily accented English. “My name is Jose Jimenez. Mr. Castaic has asked me to set you up with the best golf clubs we have to offer.”
“That is very generous of Mr. Castaic,” Donny said, in Spanish with a slight Honduras accent, which immediately caught the attention of Jose – who just happened to be from Honduras.
Within minutes they were best friends, talking a mile a minute about Honduras, golf and how Jose had ended up here at this beautiful Country Club as their golf pro.
“I’m partial to “Ping” if you have any of their clubs,” Donny said, knowing that these were the same clubs Jose used.