Project- Heritage

by Rob Horner

  Travis shut the car engine off before turning in his seat. Wordlessly, Sherry gave him her hand. Most of the lines of current had disappeared, though there were still a few active lines going to the rear of the car. Travis removed his foot from the brake pedal, and two of the lines went dark. On the driver’s side, near the rear passenger seat, were the three blue circles surrounding a smaller circle of red, something with its own power source, completely independent of the car’s battery.

  Well, what do you know? he mused in her head.

  Is that it? Sherry wondered.

  Doesn’t look like anything I’ve ever seen before.

  Are we going to remove it?

  Hell yes! But first, let’s go ahead and take care of our banking.

  Sherry raised her eyes to Travis’s, strengthening their bond with the additional contact. He smiled at her, and she couldn’t help but smile back, seeing the small line crinkle at the corners of his green eyes. His good humor enveloped her. Still smiling, they broke contact, exiting the car. When they met again in front, walking toward the bank’s entrance, it felt completely natural for Travis to put his arm around her waist, just as it was natural for her to reach her arm around him, pulling him marginally closer.

  8

  Agent Travers returned to the Durango, his face a thunderhead. “How’d he know to short out the transmitter?” he asked.

  “He’s an electronics technician,” Lieutenant Barnes offered, then wished he’d stayed silent. The look Agent Travers turned on him made him feel very small, like an ant hoping to avoid a boot.

  “It’s a good point, Buck,” Agent Kirkson said, consulting his iPad. “Top scores on the ASVAB, top of his class in Avionics school. It’s certainly plausible that he’d figure out how to prevent it from sounding an alarm when it was removed.”

  Agent Travers reached his right hand into his sport coat, pulling out a wicked looking pistol with an elongated barrel. A silencer, Barnes realized. Travers placed both hands against the top of the SUV, the pistol resting against the frame as he leaned in. He looked for all the world like a man wrestling with a decision. Barnes couldn’t take his eyes off the pistol. It was sleek and black, with a wicked sort of serrating at the base of the forward frame, just below the barrel.

  He didn’t consider himself a gun enthusiast, but that serrating was sharp, like a steak knife, rather than squared like most pistols. A CZ model, then, imported from the Czech Republic. The silencer looked different than what he’d expected, innocuous, like a plain cylinder of black metal attached to the end of the pistol. Shouldn’t there be ridges like in the movies, something that looked like a baffle? Perhaps insisting on being with these agents was a bad idea after all.

  “All right, so how did he know it was there?” Travers asked.

  Barnes remained silent. He didn’t know the answer. It pained him to admit, even to himself, that he would say something if he knew what to say. Since he didn’t, anything he said would only draw Travers’ attention back to him. He’d like to avoid that, if he could.

  “We haven’t picked up anything to explain that,” Agent Black said. “Nothing we’ve seen or heard explains how either of our two birds knew to pick up and leave today. There’s nothing in the recorded logs either.”

  “One thing would explain it,” Travers said in a growl. “She told him.” He waved his left hand, the hand not holding the gun, in the general direction of the apartment building.

  “Now wait—" Black began, before being interrupted by Kirkson.

  “It’s a good assumption,” Kirkson said. “Our transmitters have limitations. There’s no telling what she might have said to him or whispered into his ear. Just because they had a fight today doesn’t mean she didn’t tell him before we started listening. Hell, she could have told him anytime in the last six months.”

  It wasn’t like that, Barnes thought. She was loyal, at least until today.

  He didn’t say anything, however.

  “Guess I’m going to have to go ask her then,” Travers said, pushing away from the SUV.

  “Want backup?” Black asked.

  “No, wait in the car.”

  Lieutenant Barnes stepped forward, but Travers’ face made him stop. The thunderhead was gone. The dark features were now calm, the face of a man who’d made his decision. “You too, Lieutenant.”

  He turned back to the apartment and started walking up the sidewalk.

  Robert Barnes sank into the front passenger seat, suddenly very cold, despite the eighty-degree morning.

  9

  Three sharp knocks at the door to her apartment drew Angela out of her grief and despair. He came back! she thought, the pain and misery of the past thirty minutes forgotten, replaced with joy. She tripped over the pile of blankets and cushions but managed to keep her balance. Jerking the robe straight, reaching up reflexively to pat her hair, she tried and failed to keep new tears from falling.

  He came back!

  “I knew you—” she started to say as she grabbed the knob, giving it a turn. Then she staggered back into the living room as the door was pushed violently from outside. She stumbled, righting herself, looking up into the face of Agent Travers as he bulled the rest of the way into the apartment.

  “You!” she whispered, feeling a surge of terror as a smile spread across his features, touching everything except his eyes. Those remained locked on her, brown steel in white, a gaze full of hatred and disgust.

  “Angela Bassett,” he said, his deep voice filling the room, “the Agency can tolerate neither traitors nor sympathizers. You’ve proven yourself to be both.”

  Backing up, pulling her nightgown close around her, as if it might protect her from this man, Angela began trembling. “No…wait…Travers…I can explain,” she began, then stopped as he moved his right hand from behind his back, revealing the silencer-equipped CZ P-07 handgun. “You don’t understand,” she pleaded, unable to look away from the wicked weapon as he aimed at her.

  “And I never will,” he replied softly. He fired two shots into her chest, staggering her backward, spraying the couch, the carpet around it, and the wall behind with her blood. She tripped over the sprawled cushions, falling to the couch, then rebounding off it and face down onto the floor.

  Agent Travers didn’t bother checking the body.

  He turned as she fell, letting himself out of the apartment.

  Chapter 14

  Preparations

  1

  Following Travis’s example, Sherry withdrew almost everything from the joint savings and checking accounts she shared with Stan. She wondered how much of it was money she’d earned. How much of it was his? Was any of it?

  When they created a marriage for her, did they also create this nest egg? Since she couldn’t remember ever having a conversation with Stan about money, it seemed reasonable to assume someone else had been doing the bookkeeping for them.

  How would those invisible people feel now, knowing they helped finance her escape? She smiled vindictively as she signed the Cash Withdrawal slip.

  Though the majority came from Sherry’s accounts, Travis had a decent amount saved as well. The life of a single E-5 living in the barracks and whose only bills were a car payment and car insurance left a lot to play with. When all was said and done, they had more than thirty thousand dollars between them.

  Travis couldn’t relax, despite his certainty the only thing remaining in his car was the listening device.

  Holding his hand, Sherry felt his thoughts wandering through the possibilities of modern technology. His realization that anything capable of transmitting could be located by triangulating its source wasn’t reassuring.

  He flinched anxiously as their withdrawals were entered into the bank’s computer system. Considering how much trouble had already been expended on their behalf, it was probable their bank accounts were also being monitored. With any luck, it might be some time before whoever was after them thought to check them.

  Despite Travis’s misgiv
ings, Sherry found herself enjoying the side effects of the physical contact. She thought the pulses of blue light running through the walls were beautiful, like small streams branching off, sometimes joining rivers, which became seas as they flowed along their winding paths under the carpet, up into the bodies of free-standing desks scattered throughout the bank, powering computers, lamps, cell phone chargers. She watched as the bank teller’s keystrokes sent new bursts of blue light flowing from the keyboard and into a processing unit below the desk, which then sent bursts of energy to other computers, all daisy-chaining the energy into a huge ocean of cobalt blue running beneath the floor.

  Probably to a server, Travis said.

  Surrounding everything, so faint at first she’d missed it, but slowly growing brighter, were faint lines of green. Unlike the straight paths the blue lines followed, these green lines waved in the air, undulating like snakes. They made the air hazy, as if filled with a teal fog. Sherry couldn’t figure out their purpose at first, except to note they didn’t seem any more dangerous than the lines of current. The green waves surrounded everything, flowing through everything, including people. It wasn’t until she focused on a single woman standing at one of the counters in the middle of the large room, pen in one hand and smartphone in another, that she understood.

  Some of the green waves were originating from the phone, while others danced around it, avoiding it.

  The teal waves were airborne digital signals, transmissions of energy that penetrated everything, affecting nothing, until they reached their destination. With that figured out, Sherry noticed changes in the waves, modulations in the signal. They flowed away from the phone when the woman’s mouth moved and flowed back when she stopped speaking.

  Interesting, Travis thought, sharing Sherry’s realization.

  That was something else she needed to adjust to. How often had she wanted a man who truly listened to her—hell, how often did every woman wish for a man like that—who was interested in hearing her most idle thoughts? And now, suddenly, she was sharing the very essence of her personality with Travis, who was likewise sharing everything with her. It was confusing, certainly, and a bit disconcerting. She loved knowing what Travis was thinking, due in no small part to her growing attraction for him, just as she loved being listened to.

  But some things were being lost as well. Take, for example, that small sidetrack his mind had taken in the car, when he wondered what it would be like to make love to her. She’d been wondering the same thing, but hearing the thought robbed it of its mystery. Some things were better left until their proper times.

  She was learning, however.

  It was like Travis said, they could control what they listened to. Her idle thoughts would reach him—there probably wasn’t anything they could hide from each other—but he could determine at what point they were strong enough for him to pay attention. Any thoughts she deliberately sent were instantly picked up, whereas her mental wanderings would seem like nothing more than a low buzzing in his head.

  It worked both ways. She could hear him mentally calculating his account balance, though she didn’t understand that’s what she was hearing until she focused on it, because it wasn’t a directed thought.

  All in all, it was more than enough to make her head swim with endless possibilities, as well as a small headache.

  There’s some Goody Powders in the glove box.

  She smiled at that, because it showed he was paying attention to her comfort.

  Compliment accepted.

  Just don’t let it go to your head, Sherry admonished him, then realized the irony in her words.

  Now that’s going to be kind of hard, don’t you think?

  Sherry laughed softly, knowing the teller glanced at her curiously and not caring. Despite the danger which had so suddenly been thrust upon them, she felt light-hearted and carefree.

  It’s like a dream come true, Travis said.

  Yes, that was a good way to describe it.

  It took twenty minutes for the bank to scrape together their money—the employees acted as though their withdrawal was literally going to break the bank—but finally Sherry and Travis were ready to leave. A clock above the big double doors informed her it was half-past eleven. As if reminded that she hadn’t eaten breakfast, her stomach rumbled loudly.

  Hungry? Travis asked.

  A little. I haven’t eaten yet. You?

  I had breakfast, but my stomach knows its lunchtime. Well, we’ll just have to do something about it.

  Like what?

  Tell ya when we get to the car.

  You know I could just read it, Sherry threatened lightly.

  Travis turned his smile on her, and Sherry couldn’t help returning it. There was something so incredible about him, that he could be in a good humor even at a time when they were about to go on the run.

  Just stubborn, I guess, he said in response to her thoughts.

  Yeah, how dare they take the fun out of life?

  Exactly.

  Sherry laughed again as they left the bank building, not caring who looked at her, thinking only of the simple joy in the moment. In response, Travis tightened his grip on her hand.

  And that was perfect, too.

  2

  In the small room that served as the heart of surveillance operations on NAS Oceana for Project Heritage, in the building humorously dubbed The Watchtower by one of the surveillance technicians, a red light began flashing on a small black box, which resembled nothing so much as a Wi-Fi router. There were several other lights, all oblong but lined up vertically, and shortly after the first began flashing, the adjacent light also began to pulse. Lisa removed her headphones—there was nothing happening either in Travis’s car, or in Sherry’s, and the audio feed in Angela Bassett’s apartment had finally gone silent. Hopefully that one was all cried out.

  Lisa rolled her chair over to the small box. This was a curiosity for her; she’d never seen any of its lights activate before. Each indicator had a sticker above it with small numbers printed on it. It was a computer file monitor, indicating something had changed within one of the files routinely monitored by the surveillance program. As far as Lisa knew, none of the programs were street legal, but that was the Navy’s problem. Rapidly striking keys on the keyboard attached to the far-right computer, she pulled up a screen that would show her what changed.

  Their monitoring systems utilized the Internet and several illegal back-door hacks to keep tabs on both subjects’ bank accounts, driving records, police records, credit card transactions, and a hundred other things that might indicate a changing pattern of behavior. Whenever one of these computerized databases was altered or updated, Watchtower personnel were notified. Looking at the screen and matching the indicator light to the appropriate tab number, Lisa noted the subjects’ bank accounts had been flagged. Striking still more keys, she waited while the computer pulled the necessary files from the bank.

  When the screen blinked again a moment later, filling with neat rows and columns of data showing all recent transactions, she muttered a soft curse and pressed a key to open communications with Lieutenant Barnes and the trio of agents.

  3

  Leaving the Harbor Crest Apartments, Lieutenant Barnes felt ill at ease.

  He knew, without having to ask.

  He knew Agent Travers had killed Angela Bassett.

  He hadn’t needed to be there to hear screams of pain or cries for mercy. He hadn’t needed to hear the soft whumps of the silenced pistol or see the quick recoils as the barrel jumped up and was pulled back down. It was written plain as day on the agent’s face when he returned to the SUV.

  When Travers headed up to the apartment, his features showed grim determination, a man with a job to do. When he returned, his features were clear, a small smile on his face, a man who’d carried out his duty and could live with the results. Robert had a moment to think he should say something, maybe speak up for the pretty young woman whose biggest crime was falling in love wit
h the wrong person. But what could he say? And what difference would it make?

  Besides, he told himself, he didn’t know all the details. Perhaps she pulled a weapon and threatened the big agent.

  Or perhaps he was afraid he’d share her fate if he dared question the agent.

  For once he was content to be ignorant.

  The car’s speakers sounded a tone like a text alert on an iPhone, a cue that meant Watchtower wanted to patch in; it flashed on the in-dash display like an incoming phone call. Agent Travers pressed the ACCEPT button.

  “Hello?” he said.

  “Agent Travers? This is Lisa at Watchtower. Is Lieutenant Barnes there?”

  Lieutenant Barnes had to clear the dryness in his throat before he could answer. “Yes, Lisa, what is it?”

  “We got an alarm on the subjects’ accounts, sir.”

  “Credit card accounts?” Barnes asked.

  “No, sir. Their bank accounts.”

  “Well, what happened?” Travers asked quickly.

  “They cleaned them out, sir.”

  “Completely?” Travers asked.

  “Pretty much.”

  “About how much did they withdraw?” Agent Kirkson asked from the back seat.

  Doing a quick estimation, Lisa said, “Somewhere just shy of thirty k.”

  “Damn,” Travers said.

  Lieutenant Barnes asked, “Anything else?”

  “No, not now. But I’ll keep watching.”

  “What about the bugs?” Agent Travers asked.

  “No sounds from either car. We lost the signal to Travis’s car maybe fifteen minutes ago, but the girl’s is still at her mother’s house.”

  “Don’t worry about Travis’s car,” Lieutenant Barnes said. “He removed the transmitter and disabled its security. We found it and turned it off.”

  “All right, sir, I’ll stop that tracking program.”

  “Thank you, Lisa.”

  Agent Travers pressed the END button.