by Rob Horner
Buck didn’t need a doctor to tell him that another coughing fit might kill him.
The pain had returned, oddly enough. It was Mother Nature’s final laugh at him, a forceful reminder of his own imminent demise.
Well, he’d show them all.
Forcing his hand to follow instructions, he pressed X, then the numbers 1, 0, and 4.
Fighting to keep his eyes open, he forced his hand down to the X and the C key.
Just one more button, he thought, his hand starting its final quest for the ENTER key.
The door leading to the hallway opened, revealing a tall, blurry figure holding a stick.
11
Stepping into the computer room, Lieutenant Barnes needed less than a second to process the scene in the terminal room. A dead security guard on the floor. Blood splattered everywhere. An ashen Agent Travers, dark eyes sunken into his skull, blood running in rivulets down from his nose. His mouth was pulled back in a horrible rictus grin, blood-stained teeth pressed together. His left hand was raised above a computer keyboard.
Less than a second, and then something overrode any sense of humanity or morbid curiosity.
Raising the Mossberg, Lieutenant Barnes fired point-blank into Agent Travers torso, blowing him back and away from the computer terminal, ending his brutal life.
12
The shotgun blast startled Travis. Sherry’s hand tightened reflexively, showing her surprise.
“You two don’t need to see that,” Barnes said as they moved into the room.
A large man dressed in the white shirt of a security officer lay face up on the floor, his features unrecognizable, his corpse riddled with gunshot wounds.
“God,” Sherry breathed.
Further in the room, another large man, this one black, was splayed out on the floor, his bottom laying on the backrest of an office chair which had tipped over with him in it. His shirt and head were mangled, shredded by the recent shotgun blast.
“Is that—” Travis began.
Lieutenant Barnes nodded. “Special Agent Buck Travers, Central Intelligence Agency.”
“The guy who shot me,” Travis said.
“He’s the one who said he’d kill my mom,” Sherry whispered.
Dropping Sherry’s hand, Travis advanced into the room, aiming a kick at the bloody corpse. When that wasn’t enough, he kicked again, driving his toes into Travers’ left side. “He.” Kick. “Did.” Kick. “Kill.” Kick. “My.” Kick. “Mother.”
Sherry hurried to Travis’s side, wrapping him in an embrace, moved by the sobs racking his body. Seeing the man responsible for so much of their misery finally brought it all home to Travis. He had his family back, but it was sadly diminished.
“I’m so sorry,” Lieutenant Barnes said, turning and leaving the small room. He could have been referring to anything, Travis thought, and he might have meant it for everything.
Still sobbing, vision doubled by tears, Travis looked up at the back wall of the room, beyond the wall, to where thick cables of blue emerged from large rectangles made black by the absence of light around them. Smaller forms were stacked atop one another in three tall racks of shelves. The larger forms were power supplies. The smaller boxes on shelves were server racks.
All of it would burn!
Gathering his will, Travis pushed at a point between the power supplies and the electronic equipment they served, driving current in both directions. Sherry could feel what he was doing, could see the blue lights growing brighter, but she didn’t feel any draining, no pull on her strength. This was all Travis.
It always was you, she thought in wonder. This part was. I think this is your unique gift, and I have the healing. We can borrow each other’s talents when we touch, but whatever power we use drains only the person who owns it.
That felt right to Travis, and because of his loss, it felt right that he should be the one to do this.
Straining harder, he pushed the current in a direction it wasn’t meant to go. The blue lines brightened, changing to cobalt then lightning white. He set his will against an unconscious force of energy and felt his will asserted.
First one power supply and then the second exploded behind the far wall. Sherry grabbed him, pulling him out of the computer room as a third electronic component spewed its guts through its plastic casing in a burst of fire. The heavy door separating the terminal room from the server racks blew outward, belching heat and acrid smoke.
A fire alarm activated. Orange lights began spinning around hanging nozzles in the ceiling.
“We need to go now!” Lieutenant Barnes said, grabbing Sherry’s free hand and tugging her away from the computer room. “Those are halon nozzles. In about sixty seconds, we won’t be able to breathe!”
It’s not enough, Travis thought desperately, still holding onto Sherry’s hand. It all has to burn.
He cast his gaze upward, watching the brilliance of the blue lines fading as the power system failed. Those lines fed upward into the rest of the building. There were other rooms full of equipment that could be salvaged.
As long as this place is usable, it isn’t enough!
Snagging a mental hold of one of the thickest lines he could see, Travis drove power into it, lighting it back up, increasing its brilliance, pulsing a surge of power into the facility above. He overloaded circuit breakers, sent arcs across natural opens in the circuitry created by blown fuses and tripped surge protectors, pushing and straining until fire spat from every outlet in the building above. Light bulbs popped and sparked. Computer monitors blew outward, shredding the air. Life support equipment overheated, remaining functional long enough to sound their individual alarms before they smoked and died.
Two dozen electrical fires started in locations as varied as the monitoring room on the second floor and the microwave in the staff break room on the third. A hollow boom sounded from the elevator shaft as the motors holding tension on the steel cables depolarized and failed. The overhead lights stuttered and went out, casting the basement into darkness.
“What the hell!” Debbie shouted, running out of the lab and back into the hallway as millions of dollars’ worth of equipment powered up, overloaded, and caught fire.
13
Everywhere Sherry looked were pulsing blue lines, power surges happening faster than thought. The quickness with which Travis changed targets was amazing; the bursts of power he generated far outstripped anything she’d been able to accomplish. This really was his power, and he was far stronger in its use.
But his grief was clouding his judgment. Smoke filled the basement, and the lieutenant was right about the halon. If it deployed, it would negate all oxygen, the most efficient way to break a fire triangle and extinguish a flame. Fire licked from the glossy plastic casings of the larger pieces of equipment in the lab. The lights were gone in the surgical suites, so she couldn’t be sure what was happening back there, but from the looks on the faces of those around her, it was probably bad.
“We need to get out of here,” Brian shouted over the cacophony of sounds, explosions and fire alarms.
Pulling on Travis didn’t seem to be doing any good. His face was a mask of grief and pain. By the strobing light of flashing equipment and fires, Sherry could see the glistening trail of tears running down his cheeks.
Travis, you’ve done it.
It’s not enough! he shouted back in her mind.
It has to be. We need to leave.
They took everything! My life! My family! My mother!
I know, baby. But I’m here. Your father is here.
I just want—” he sobbed.
I know you want to bring her back. We can’t do that. But we did stop them. They can’t hurt anyone else. Now we need to leave so we can be together, so we can start a new life.
Travis turned his face to hers, and his anguish was written on his features, his pain as new and raw as if he’d just witnessed his mother’s death. But underneath that was his love for her, just as raw, and equally powerful
. This man would tear hell itself apart for her, and she relished that knowledge.
Pulling him again, she felt him give in, his feet shuffling as he moved to follow. Debbie and Brian pulled out smartphones and activated the flashlight functions. With the elevator out of commission, they headed into the narrow tunnel which moved away from the basement, running beneath the outer buildings of the Recruit Training Command.
The halon system failed, another casualty of Travis’s thorough destruction.
Sherry, Travis, and Lieutenant Barnes followed the wobbling lights, as a righteous fire destroyed the facility behind them.
14
The tunnel wasn’t that long, thankfully, because a wall of heat followed them, drawing closer by the second. There was a stairway at the end, blocked by another door with one of those palm readers. Sherry activated it, allowing them to ascend. Hurrying now, the group came out into a wide janitor’s closet. Brian closed the door behind them and wasted no time joining the rest in a small medical clinic.
“I remember this place,” Sherry said as soon as they were out. “I think this is where I walked the needle gauntlet.”
“You had one of those, too?” Barnes asked. “I thought they only did that to officers.”
“Nope,” Brian said, surreptitiously rubbing his shoulders as if in remembered pain. “We got the needle gun treatment.”
“Plus, the penicillin peanut butter in the butt,” Sherry said.
“Don’t remind me,” Brian said.
They pushed their way out of the clinic, emerging onto a deserted street on the eastern side of the training base. A haze of smoke rose in the air a few hundred yards away. Flashing red and white lights lanced through it like laser beams at a rave. Sirens filled the air as emergency crews rushed to combat the fires threatening to engulf the Great Lakes Medical Research Facility.
“Burn, baby, burn,” Debbie said softly.
“Amen to that,” Brian replied.
The five stared at the smoke a few moments longer before beginning the walk back to the visitor’s center.
Epilogue
Thursday, 10 days later
Lieutenant Barnes
It took almost two weeks for Lieutenant Barnes to find a way to take a few days off. Military life was not like civilian employment. He couldn’t just call out saying he was sick then run off somewhere to have fun. A sick day required a visit to Medical, and a bona fide work excuse from a doctor. Family emergencies required a lot of paperwork and would be declined without proof. Every other business in the world would be more efficient if they instituted these measures. Still, the military wasn’t necessarily unsympathetic. With a little motivation, a period of leave could be approved on short notice.
Thankfully, nothing to do with Project Heritage was linked to him in any official manner. The fire at the old warehouse, what Harry jokingly called The Watchtower, was chalked up to bad wiring and armed vagrants. Those vagrants must have surprised Captain Ortega, shooting him in the parking lot before ramming two police vehicles and escaping the base. The captain passed away later that same day in a Virginia Beach hospital. The coroner’s report cited a myocardial infarction as the cause of death, presumably brought on by the stress of his injury.
One of the vagrants was apprehended when he presented to a different hospital for treatment of a broken arm. The reporters were unable to find the person who notified the police of his location. He raved about being a federal agent but had no identification to prove it. After setting the arm, the hospital released him to police custody. If he had accomplices, they were never found.
Two days later the Virginia Beach Herald ran a second story about the handsome vagrant. He’d been found dead in his cell, dangling from an improvised noose made from bedsheets.
Lieutenant Barnes learned a lesson by following these events. It was often what didn’t get reported that was more important than what did.
Either no one was asking the right questions or, if they were, the answers weren’t being printed.
Why was Captain Ortega at the warehouse?
How did the police know to come there?
Why was there no mention of Angela Bassett’s death?
How did a man with a broken arm manage to hang himself?
Considering the “if it bleeds, it leads” mentally of most media outlets, the salacious details of Angela’s death should have prompted statewide coverage, a pretty blond shot dead in her home. But there was nothing.
There was a lesson in this lack of coverage, just as there was one in how the other matters were covered. Lieutenant Barnes walked a tightrope and was about to step out over an open gorge.
“The Director will see you now,” the pretty blond receptionist said, meeting his eyes over her tall desk.
Rising from the couch he’d been sitting on for almost twenty minutes, Lieutenant Barnes surveyed the waiting room, which would have been at home in the office of any power broker in New York. Rich carpet that cushioned the feet, beautiful art prints on walls painted a muted, earthy tan, spot lit by cleverly-concealed lights, decorative plants in the corners, a panoramic view out spotless leaded glass windows in a suite thirty floors above street level—it all spoke to the near-limitless money and influence the man he was about to meet commanded.
The secretary flashed a perfect smile at him and indicated a door in the far wall. Carrying the portfolio Captain Ortega gave him elevens days before, Lieutenant Barnes walked toward the door.
It opened from within a second before he could reach out to twist the knob, inviting him into a room dominated by an enormous black desk, a standing United States Flag to the right, and a standing Central Intelligence Agency flag on the left. Stepping into the room, Barnes turned to see who’d opened the door and was surprised to find no one. As he cleared the threshold, the door closed automatically, softly, leaving him alone with not one, but three people.
The view of the New York skyline seemed brighter in this room, as if the floor to ceiling windows on the right had less tint than those in the waiting area. The walls here were decorated with an hierarchy of photographs similar to those in his office back in Virginia Beach, though these were bigger and shone like oil paintings: President Trump at the top, Vice President Mike Pence below, then individual portraits of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, followed by images of the men leading various government agencies. The picture of the man behind the desk, occupying a place almost directly above his head, didn’t do him justice. It couldn’t capture the feeling of power, the raw authority, which he exuded. Without needing to say a word, the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency controlled the room, demanding respect.
Flanking the director, standing in a position of easy grace with their hands folded in front, were two of the most perfect people the lieutenant had ever seen. On Robert’s right, which would be the director’s left, was a remarkably beautiful young woman. Tall, with milk chocolate skin, she looked flawless. She also looked…familiar. But she couldn’t be. He’d remember having met her before. No man could forget her.
On the left was a man several inches taller than Robert, white but perfectly tanned. His features…well…Robert had never been able to understand what could attract one man to another in a sexual fashion. But this guy! He embodied physical perfection. Short brown hair, slightly mussed in that “I just got out of bed and don’t you wish you’d woken up beside me” style so popular with the younger crowd, piercing blue eyes, and a brilliant smile made Lieutenant Barnes feel distinctly…inadequate.
Both the man and the woman wore cream-colored button up shirts, tucked into black slacks.
“Do you remember them?” the director asked, the smooth, even timbre of his voice calling the lieutenant’s mind back to where he was, and who he was meeting with. The director didn’t exude physical perfection as his two—were they bodyguards? —did, but he didn’t need to. Dressed in a navy-blue power suit over a white shirt and red tie, his look screamed politician. His brown hair had just the right number of gr
ay streaks, his face had the perfect amount of fine lines at the corners of the eyes; even the smudges under his blue eyes looked like make-up. This was a politician and an actor rolled into one. A man who—oh, by the way—managed the country’s elite spy network. He had global reach and influence and the power to tell reporters that no, they did not want to ask that question.
“I…I think I should, sir,” Lieutenant Barnes stammered, stopping before the black desk. Was the desk made from rock? Or was it wood painted to look like rock?
“Please, Lieutenant, have a seat,” the director said, indicating a plush leather-upholstered armchair just to Robert’s right.
“All right. Thank you, sir.”
As Barnes sank into the seat, the perfect pair glided forward, coming around the black desk to stand between it and the lieutenant. Looking up at them, Robert was too blinded by their physical perfection to be alarmed. They reached toward each other, the white man taking the black woman’s right hand with his left. Thus joined, they leaned forward and touched Robert’s head with their free hands.
With a jolt he shoved the chair back and jumped up, shaking. They…he’d seen them at the airport! They had…they had…touched his chest, and then…
“You remember them now, I see,” the director smiled. The man and woman turned and walked back to where they’d been standing, once more assuming a state of peaceful wariness.
Lieutenant Barnes remained standing, trying to sort through his memories. He’d wanted to take over the program, to elevate himself above Captain Ortega and they… When they touched him, he forgot all about his ambitions. They’d given him a laser-like focus on killing Agent Travers instead, and on making sure Travis and Sherry remained free. My God, he’d sabotaged the entire program. He’d let those terrorists destroy everything!
“Please, Lieutenant. I know it’s disconcerting. But please, won’t you sit back down? We’re going to be here a while, and I don’t have all day for this.”