Wormhole - 03

by Richard Phillips

  Freddy nodded. “You’re early.”

  “Get on.”

  To Freddy’s credit, he never hesitated, at least not for longer than it took him to get his good leg over the seat behind Gregory. The motorcycle pulled into traffic, turned left on New Jersey, leaving the Union Station Plaza behind as it accelerated northeast.

  Two hours later Freddy found himself in Linthicum, Maryland, sitting on a couch in Jack Gregory’s room at the BWI Homewood Suites.

  “Coffee?” Gregory asked, lifting the in-room pot.

  “Black.”

  Setting a steaming cup in front of Freddy, Gregory filled his own mug, then settled into the armchair across from the sofa. Freddy didn’t know what he’d been expecting from the killer, but this wasn’t it. At the moment the man looked nothing like any of the pictures Freddy had seen of him, and they’d been all over the television and print media. His ruddy brown complexion and medium-length coal-black hair gave him a distinctly Native American look that went fine with his jeans, boots, and Western shirt.

  Gregory moved in a relaxed, easy fashion that reminded Freddy of a prowling lion. Freddy just hoped he’d make it through the evening without becoming the prey. Well, so far so good.

  “Your meeting with Dr. Sigmund on the night she killed herself; tell me about it.”

  Freddy sucked in a breath, his heart rate shifting up a notch. How did Gregory know about that? Not through his old NSA ties. Those were as dead as Jonathan Riles. A light dawned in his mind. Tall Bear.

  “What do you want to know?”

  “Why you arranged the meeting, everything Dr. Sigmund told you, your thoughts and impressions about what she was telling you, why she killed herself. Everything.”

  “Why should I tell you when I didn’t tell the NSA? Your note mentioned a quid pro quo.”

  Jack reached for the fruit basket on the coffee table, grabbed a shiny red apple, and slowly began peeling it. Freddy hadn’t noticed when the survival knife had appeared in his hand, but there it was, the thin red apple skin curling away from the black blade in one long, thin strip.

  “I’ve read your investigative work. Impressive stuff. You show me that same level of attention to detail and I’ll reciprocate.”

  “And if I don’t?”

  “Then you’ll find the front page a little sooner than you planned.”

  Freddy remembered a line his father had told him. “Son, don’t ask a question if you don’t want to hear the answer.”

  Freddy Hagerman shrugged. “Fair enough.”

  At two thirty a.m., Jack Gregory leaned over and handed Freddy the room’s key card, then rose and walked out the door. A minute later, Freddy heard the roar of a motorcycle as it pulled out of the parking lot and drove off.

  As exhausted as Freddy was, he felt no inclination to sleep. Instead he stared down at his digital recorder, the one he’d played for Gregory earlier in the evening, the one on which he’d subsequently been allowed to record the Ripper’s narrative.

  “Jackie boy. Now that’s one hell of a story.”

  Jan Collins finished printing the vehicle pass, handed it to the government contractor waiting on the other side of the white counter, and pressed the button that incremented the “Now Serving” display.

  “Number 207,” she called out, as a middle-aged man arose from one of the blue-upholstered chairs that filled the waiting area and limped toward her station, a pink numbered slip of paper in his fingers.

  “How may I help you?”

  “Need a one-day vehicle pass.”

  “You could have gotten a one-day pass from the Reece Road security guards. You really didn’t need to come inside the Visitor Control Center.”

  “Damn. So I wasted twenty minutes in line?”

  Jan smiled. “Looks like. But since you’re already here, I can issue the pass. I’ll need your driver’s license, ID card, registration, and proof of insurance.”

  “It’s a rental car.”

  “Then I’ll need to see the rental agreement.”

  The man laid the documents on the counter along with a retired military ID card. Jan looked through the papers, made a few entries in her computer, and compared the face on the card to that of the man who stood before her. Six feet tall, hair beginning to gray at the temples, he looked to have packed on a few pounds since the ID card had been issued. The brown eyes were the same, though, as was the man’s disarming smile. Something about his eyes made her uncomfortable. Then again, maybe it was just the humidity that had her edgy today.

  “And the reason for your visit?”

  “Just stopping by to see an old friend who’s stationed here.”

  “OK, Major Hanson,” she said, handing him the printed vehicle pass. “Stick that on your dashboard and you’re good to go.”

  “Thanks.”

  Hanson picked up the pass, smiled, and limped toward the door.

  Jan pressed the button, advancing the count. Glancing at the board, she saw that Sheila, the lady who worked at the next station, had already finished two people while she had helped the retired major.

  Raising her voice, Jan called for her next customer.

  “Number 210. Come on down.”

  Jack Gregory limped through the small parking lot outside the Demps Visitor Control Center, clicked the UNLOCK button on the red Camry’s key fob, opened the door, and slid into the driver’s seat. The clock read 10:25 a.m. and it was already hot enough to make the facial and body disguises uncomfortable.

  Starting the engine, Jack pulled back out onto Reece Road, getting into the line of cars stopped before the security gate. The black-clad security guards were contractors, commonly used at American military bases to free up soldiers for war-fighting missions. As he flashed his retired military ID, the guard took it, looked through the window at his vehicle pass, and then motioned him to pull forward into a vehicle inspection lane.

  “Pop your trunk and hood, open your glove box, step out of the car, and open all the doors.”

  Jack did as instructed, stepping back to allow the inspectors to do their work. While one guard slid a long mirror under the vehicle, the other made his way around the car, looking in the engine compartment, inside the open doors, and in the trunk.

  “OK. You’re clear.”

  Jack nodded. Then he closed up everything he’d opened, slid into the driver’s seat, and began his leisurely drive onto Fort Meade proper. Turning left on Rose Street, he drove behind the PX and commissary, taking a left into the Burger King parking lot. Might as well grab a little brunch before the place packed up with the lunchtime crowd. After that, he figured he’d check out the PX and commissary, hit the National Cryptologic Museum, maybe even stop off at the base library. Might as well enjoy a leisurely day.

  After all, he had ten hours to kill. The items hidden inside the hollowed-out backseat cushions would have to wait until dark.

  Twenty-three hundred hours on the dot. Jack backed the Camry into the open parking slot at the Sleep Inn and swiped his key card in the side door, feeling the cool breath of air-conditioning fight back the outside humidity as he stepped into the carpeted corridor that led to his room. The faint smell of mildew didn’t bother him. The hotel was clean and well kept. Besides, it was damned hard to keep all traces of mildew out of a Maryland hotel in summer.

  His room was a ground-floor suite he’d rented by the week, nicely appointed, as these midpriced hotels went. It had a fridge, microwave, coffeepot, and couch. The coffee table wasn’t anything fancy, but it beat eating at the desk. The shower had good water pressure, and the bed was comfortable. All in all, not bad mission accommodations.

  Slipping out of his shirt, Jack unhooked the midriff fat suit, tossed it and his shoulder holster on the bed, and walked into the bathroom. When he walked out again twenty minutes later, he was tan, blond, and naked. If not for the crazy quilt of scars that covered his torso, he could have passed for a member of the Australian Olympic beach volleyball team.

  He walked over to
the dresser, stepped into a pair of striped boxers and a Baltimore Ravens T-shirt, grabbed a Diet Coke from the fridge, and sat down in front of the laptop waiting on the desk. It was a basic black Toshiba laptop he’d picked up at Best Buy last week for $427. Good enough to serve his purpose, but not worth stealing.

  Pressing the recessed power button, Jack leaned back, cracked open the pop-top on the Coke, and lifted the not-quite-frosty can to his lips. Not great, but about the best you could expect from a hotel mini fridge.

  Three miles down the road, Heather, Mark, and Jennifer were locked inside separate cells at the top-secret NSA supermax facility code-named the Ice House, buried deep beneath an underground parking garage adjacent to the black glass headquarters. While the bleeding hearts complained about prisoners kept at Guantanamo, they had no idea that the worst terrorists were housed at the secret prison-laboratory at Fort Meade, a facility constructed with funds from the black budget, a place where the oldest coercion methods were mingled with the latest experimental data-extraction techniques.

  Jack knew the place like the back of his hand, had taken part in many of those sanctioned interrogations. Ironically, the NSA thought it now held three young people who could help it find the Ripper. What it didn’t know was that it had the real prize, the most dangerous trio on the planet. And as far as Jack was concerned, that even included Dr. Donald Stephenson.

  It was only a matter of time until those highly trained and augmented young operatives took that place apart, irrespective of the world’s most sophisticated security systems. Jack wasn’t worried about that. When it happened, it would be like taking candy from a baby. Jack was here to make sure nobody realized just how dangerous those three were.

  As the laptop finished booting, Jack logged in, then plugged an SRT dongle into one of its USB slots. Holding down Control-Alt-Y, he launched the application that gave him access to the Fort Meade Military Police wiretap he’d installed two hours earlier. Although he was now tethered to this hotel room for the next few weeks, he had all the groceries he’d need for the virtual stakeout.

  One thing he knew. When the shit hit the fan, all that C4 he’d strategically placed around Fort Meade was going to go a long way toward making the government believe Al Qaeda was back in the US terrorist business. Hopefully that, plus a little luck, would make them miss the obvious.

  Jack picked up the telephone, glanced at the number written in blue ink on the hotel notepad, and dialed. Hearing the expected response on the far end, he began speaking.

  “This is Karl Kroener in room 127 at the Sleep Inn in Laurel. I’d like a large Brooklyn-style pepperoni-and-mushroom. For delivery. Cash. No. That’s it. Thanks.”

  Mark had been waiting for thirteen hours for some kind of reaction to tearing down the closed-circuit camera. But it was as if no one even noticed. At six p.m. a bouncing flashlight beam preceded a guard down the dark corridor. The circle of light danced as the man shoved a food tray under the door, then moved on without ever shining on Mark. The light and the footsteps retreated. In the distance, a heavy door opened, then slammed shut, the darkness once again complete.

  Moving to retrieve the food, Mark lifted the tray to smell its contents. The odor wasn’t unpleasant, but it wasn’t good either. It was the smell of his standard meal. Mark knew the tray held the bland meat-and-vegetable mush that provided sufficient nutrients to keep him alive, while depriving him of the basic pleasure of eating. It was another aspect of his solitary confinement’s sensory-deprivation regime.

  But he was hungry, so he ate.

  With his fingers, Mark shoveled the stuff into his mouth until every morsel was gone. Then he licked the tray clean. Holding it out in front of him, Mark let the tray fall. The clatter radiated out from the point of impact, the bright sound waves bouncing off the walls, the bars, the sink, the toilet, the corridor, his augmented brain processing the reflected echoes into a three-dimensional color image. It was beautiful, far better than his Spartan surroundings looked through his eyes.

  Mark had seen infrared satellite images of the Earth, where reds and yellows indicated warmer waters sandwiched by cold blues and purples. But this was different, producing lush, real-time 3-D imagery in which the echoes enabled him to see around corners and, to some extent, through walls. It didn’t take the clatter of the tray to produce the effect, but the volume the tray provided made everything much brighter.

  Mark smiled. They could keep him in the dark, but they couldn’t keep him from seeing if he needed to.

  He picked up the tray and slid it through the slot out into the hallway, then retrieved his clothes from where he’d hung them on the sink to dry. His touch found them damp, but dry enough for his body heat to finish the job, so he slipped into the orange pj’s and sat down against the far wall.

  For the first time in weeks, Mark felt the urge to let sleep claim him, to let his conscious mind slip away into that vast nothingness where time had no meaning, into a dream world of his subconscious mind’s making. The thought settled over him like a fuzzy blanket on a winter night, an enticing siren’s call to lie back on the floor and sleep.

  But what was wrong with that? There were no more interrogators torturing or drugging him for information, no reason to stay alert. Besides, he could bring himself back to full strength at a moment’s notice. It happened so rapidly Mark barely noticed. As easily as he slipped into his meditations, his consciousness melted away around him.

  He didn’t think he was supposed to feel things while dreaming, but he felt this. A familiar nudge, like a sharp elbow in his side.

  When was the last time he’d felt it? A lifetime ago. His father’s garage in White Rock. Jennifer had been at the workbench with Heather. Mark had just finished making one of his brotherly jibes designed to get under Jennifer’s skin and Heather had dug her strong, sharp elbow into his shoulder.

  There it was again. Not really in his shoulder, but something about the feeling reminded him of Heather.

  He turned to see her, but a mist shrouded his vision. He thought he could just make out her outline, but when he tried to reach out for her, she faded away. Mark stopped trying, letting the dream current carry him along.

  The command deck on the Bandolier Ship materialized around him, his body enfolded by one of the four supple couches. Smoothly curving walls dissolved around him, leaving Mark hurtling through space, just like the first time he’d tried on the alien headset. They’d all tried on the alien headsets: Heather, Jennifer, and Mark. And in that state, they’d established a common link that enabled them to share each other’s thoughts and feelings. It was one of the things Jack had encouraged them to explore. It was one of the things they’d all learned to block.

  But if he was linked into the ship, where were Heather and Jen? And where was the ship’s AI that had attacked his mind? He’d thrown up every block he could muster to try to protect them all from that attack. Mark ran through a quick mental diagnostic. Apparently, after releasing all his rage at the AI, he’d restored his own mental shields and left them in place. Maybe that was why he couldn’t feel the girls’ presence through his headset.

  Remembering how it felt to touch Heather’s beautiful mind, Mark dropped his mental defenses. The vision of himself hurtling through the vast emptiness of space achieved a new level of clarity, so many stars in the blackness, tiny pinpoints of light, pulsing with an energy all their own. He could feel their energy ripples softly brush his awareness.

  Suddenly, the surrounding space-time warped violently as a powerful vibration distorted the blackness. In a rush of realization, Mark knew...he wasn’t alone anymore.

  She had him! The rush of joy almost broke the nascent mental link, but Heather wasn’t about to let that happen. She opened herself completely and their minds flowed together. As frightened as she’d been of letting Mark invade her innermost sanctuary, she now welcomed the sharing of all that was right and wrong about her. Neither was she repelled by Mark’s dark thoughts and embarrassments. After all, that
mixture of good and evil, beauty and ugliness, was a big part of what it meant to be human.

  “I love you,” Mark’s thoughts whispered in her mind.

  Funny. Despite how they shared each other’s thoughts, mental conversation still came most naturally.

  “Right back at you.” Heather felt Mark smile at her response. “Always have. Just didn’t know how much.”

  “How’d you manage the mind link without our headsets?”

  “Jen led me to it. I would have managed sooner if I hadn’t tried to overanalyze it.”

  “You made my day. I’ve missed you.”

  Heather’s eyes welled up. “Me too. But I feel you now.”

  “So you ready to get the hell out of here?”

  “I’m working on a plan.”

  “They’ve turned on the laptops, at least one of them.”

  A vision of Mark typing commands into the stolen cell phone played in their joint minds. The fact that the laptops had been turned on meant every electronic system in the building now had multiple back doors through which Heather, Mark, or Jen could take control of the system.

  “We’ll need access to a networked computer. I need a facilities layout so I can see exactly where each of us is being held. Jennifer’s been playing her mind tricks with one of her handlers, but they’re drugging her so heavily she’s been fading in and out.”

  Heather felt Mark scan her memory, his anger a gathering storm. “Heroin? They’re intentionally addicting her?”

  “You thought they’d play nice?”

  “Guess not. Still makes me mad as hell.”

  “That’s fine. Use it, but don’t let it use you. Our chance is coming. One other thing, I think Jack’s nearby.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I don’t. But it’s what my visions tell me. I think he’s out there waiting for us to make our move, putting himself in a supporting position.”