Human

by Robert Berke

  "Gentlemen, my wife and my best friend are gone because of my folly. I will be giving the orders from this point forward." Smith's voice boomed without a hint of uncertainty.

  "This is my mission, Mr. Smith." Gonzales said calmly.

  "You are in no position to argue with me, Mr. Gonzales." As soon as Smith had uttered these words, both Gonzales and Cruz heard the distinct shoosh of an electric deadbolt sliding shut. They knew immediately that they had very little bargaining power in the situation. Smith continued, "I have already instructed Myra to send our security team over to the mall. They will be arriving there by helicopter in about five minutes. My team is small. You need to send a team too and you have to do it fast."

  "And if we refuse?" Cruz asked since it was his team Smith was demanding, not Gonzales'.

  "I have already turned off the air in here. You have at most 15 minutes. Gentlemen, I will watch you die if I have to. Make the call. And tell them to use a helicopter." Smith ordered.

  "I can't get a helicopter on this short a notice," Cruz said, trying to bluff.

  "Then you are of no use to me," they heard Smith say just before the speakers stopped crackling, the monitor went black, and the little red light on the microphone stopped blinking leaving Gonzales and Cruz feeling very, very isolated.

  Gonzales nodded his head toward Cruz, and Cruz dialed his phone. "I need a team at the Latham Circle Mall. I need every exit covered. You will need to arrive by helicopter. We are looking for Dr. Doug Bayron and Hermelinda Posada, suspected kidnap victims. This is a code black situation." He hung up his phone and felt a rush of cool air enter the locked room.

  "Okay, you've got your team." Gonzales said into the air.

  The speakers crackled back to life. "Good," Smith replied. "It is unwise to challenge god when his children are in danger. Dr. Bayron was afraid to let me out. He was right to put me on a leash. You will soon know why." The monitor flickered on again to give the two agents a front seat view of the very real power Smith now possessed and had put into action. The two agents watched in disbelief wondering if there were any possibility that what they were seeing was real.

  As far as Bobby was concerned, everything appeared normal and right on track. He had done this job before and it was always easy enough. He simply had to follow the doctor and the nurse as they walked from the East entrance of the mall toward the West entrance, direct them to walk into the back of the Jade East Trading Company Store, and lead them through the storeroom and into the shipping container he had on the flatbed of a truck parked at the loading dock. From there they could easily slip into traffic and he would have them in Mexico by the next night.

  He found his targets easily enough. The cab had arrived right on time and left them exactly where they were supposed to be. As Dr. Bayron and Hermelinda began walking down the hallway, Bobby trailed them from about twenty feet back. As they came closer to the Jade East, he said, just loud enough for them to hear, "Do not turn around. Go into the Jade East and walk directly into the back area through the employees only door. Do not make a sound. Do not speak to anyone."

  Dr. Bayron and Hermelinda did exactly as instructed. Dr. Bayron noted that the voice was not the Russian voice he had heard on the cell phone not even one hour earlier. The accent wasn't Russian. It was the accent he heard from the large Guyanese immigrant community in Schenectady.

  The aisles of the Jade East store were narrow and the shelves were filled with art and curiosities from the orient. They were walking down an aisle with small jade statues and plates painted with scenes from rural China. Little round Buddhas smiled at them reassuringly as painted oxen with mournful eyes lamented the tedium of their lives.

  They were heading into an aisle of brass artifacts and gifts. Miniature replicas of monastery gongs, Turkish coffee sets, mirror-like engraved brass tablets from god-knows-where turned the fluorescent light from the ceiling into luminescent warm-copper colored circles on their surfaces.

  And then the lights went out.

  Bayron turned accidentally hitting Hermelinda's arm as she was reaching to hold on to him. "Do not move." The accented voice behind them said softly but with no hint of compromise. Bayron turned back around as Hermelinda clung to his arm. He had turned around just long enough to see that the entire hallway was also without light. A moment later, the fire alarms began to sound at deafening levels. The fire sprinklers were activated soaking everything in an instant. "Keep moving," the voice behind them said.

  As Bobby followed his captives toward the back of the store, he withdrew his cell phone from his pocket to check in with Vakhrusheva. He dialed the number and nothing happened. The screen was wet, but the phone appeared to be working. However, there was no cell signal to be had. Not one single bar. He placed the cell phone back in his pocket, took a deep breath, and decided that in the absence of any other instruction, his best bet was just to follow the plan. From the loading dock behind the store, he quickly marshaled Dr. Bayron and Hermelinda into the shipping container. The fire alarm from the mall was deafening, but as he walked around to the front of the truck, he realized that the parking lot was also a concerto of blaring horns and jammed traffic as hundreds of people tried to flee the flooding mall all at once. He took another deep breath and reminded himself that there was always a certain amount of chaos to be expected when working in the field, everything from bad drivers to unexpected weather. His job was just to keep moving forward and that's exactly what he did. He pulled the truck into the malaise in the parking lot.

  The men in Smith's office watched the mess in the mall parking lot grow out of control on Smith's monitor. All of the traffic lights had been turned green and there were accidents at every intersection they could see. They watched as all the traffic lights went out.

  "You just signed the old lady's death warrant, Smith. Ours too if that bomb goes off. I'd strongly recommend you evacuate this building." Gonzales said with the placidity of a man who had confronted death so many times that it no longer held any novelty for him.

  "It is not possible." Smith replied with equal calmness. "I have shut down all of the cell and radio towers for a 250 mile radius. The electricity is out for a fifty mile radius. Every traffic signal, every, rail crossing, every tollbooth, any organization that doesn't have a backup generator has no power. I have jammed the satellites too. No one gets in, no one gets out. There are no communications systems working. From the moment your boy alerted his team, I shut this whole region down tight."

  "And if the remote is in this building? It would be close enough not to require a radio tower or a cell tower." Cruz pointed out.

  "That's why I sent Sharky to the infirmary. My old hospital room. The walls in there are lined with lead to prevent any radio interference with the equipment, there is no way that bomb can be remote activated. We are safe and sound. Now go find my people."

  Cruz and Gonzales heard the lock on the office door open and they walked out. They passed Julian who was still in the waiting room. "We're going to need a cover story, Julian. I'm counting on you to explain the events of today without bringing the world down on us. Come with us so we can fill you in." Julian nodded. It was the second time in his life that he would be making up a story from whole cloth and passing it off as the truth, and the second time he was doing so on instructions from Gonzales. The prospect didn't frighten him as it had so intensely fifty years ago. He was old now, at the end of his career, and he had no fear. He got in the elevator with Gonzales and Cruz and the three men rode down to the parking lot together.

  Though the generators were keeping the lights on at the SmithCorp Building, Myra realized that there were no working phones or Internet connections. The intercom was working though and she made a general announcement through the building letting the staff know that there was an outage effecting the entire building and that the building engineers were fixing it. She wasn't certain what was happening, but she did recognize that it started just moments after she had informed Smith that the bomb squad was
on its way to the building and that the security team was on its way to the mall.

  The SmithCorp helicopter landed in the Latham Circle Mall parking lot and the security team took positions at each of the mall exits. They had been instructed not to let anyone out of the parking lot and, if anyone left anyway to make note of the make, model, and license number of the vehicle. They had been instructed to keep their eyes open for Dr. Bayron and Hermelinda. The Captain of the security team was an intelligent man and he knew precisely because of how vague his instructions were that this mission was very important. He also knew that, in the absence of actual police powers, his men would have to rely on the mere power of their presence to control the people eager to flee the mall. "Force is not authorized, except as necessary to free the subjects. These are civilians we are dealing with. Do not take any bullshit. Do not engage in conversations. Teams of two. Go!"

  As the private SmithCorp security guard force dashed for each of the mall exits, they all realized that their mission to prevent anyone from leaving would be relatively easy. All the streetlights were out, the roads were jammed. No traffic was moving. Regardless of their presence, no one was getting out of the parking lot, and if they did, they certainly weren't going to get far.

  The CIA helicopter landed in the parking lot as close as it could to the SmithCorp helicopter. Fifteen agents had been gathered. The helicopter was equipped with listening devices and heat imaging cameras. The lead agent who was commanding the mission on the ground jumped from the helicopter and approached SmithCorp's security chief. The security chief explained what instructions he had given his team and quickly advised him that every member of the team had military or police training and that they had all had FBI security clearances to work for SmithCorp. The CIA commander quickly took charge of the situation and the Captain ceded the lead to the commander.

  "Get your eye back in the sky, ASAP," the commander instructed the Captain. The Captain signaled to his pilot to get in the air and keep watch over the perimeter. "Your men are presently authorized to use any force necessary to prevent any vehicle from leaving the parking lot," the commander said, essentially investing the security team with licenses to kill if necessary and doing it as casually as if he was ordering a bowl of cereal for breakfast. The Captain radioed his team to let them know their new orders.

  The CIA Commander then went to find the mall's own security team to quickly apprise them of what was happening and to enlist their assistance with the search. In mere minutes there were 14 CIA agents and seven mall guards making a car by car search of the parking lot and sweeping the mall interior while the SmithCorp team held the perimeter firmly.

  When Bobby saw the helicopters: one in the sky clearly marked SmithCorp and the other on the ground suspiciously devoid of any markings at all, he decided the smartest thing he could do was to distance himself from the semi truck as quickly as possible. He jumped down from the cab, casually lit a cigarette, and walked nonchalantly to the car he had parked in the lot.

  Vakhrusheva was comfortably ensconced at the safe house. The electricity had gone out but there was a generator in the shed. He started the generator so that he could see if there were anything on the television about the blackout. The set turned on, but there was no signal. He looked at his cell phone. It too was receiving no signal. "Shit," he said in English aloud to the empty house as he walked back to the kitchen to finish the last of the vodka.

  The bomb squad arrived at the SmithCorp Building and a technician was ushered into the infirmary. Once inside the technician looked at the contraption secured to Adele's midsection and radioed his team to escort her to the van. Smith stopped them from doing so through the speaker, explaining that the room they were in was lead lined and that if the remote control was close enough to trigger the device, the lead walls were all that was preventing the signal from getting through. The technician agreed to proceed inside the infirmary. He recognized immediately that the device was a field assembly, a sophisticated field assembly to be sure, but not as complex as many he had seen before. In fact, he got the impression, that while it was functional enough and clearly made by someone who knew what he was doing, it appeared as if the builder didn't really care that much if it malfunctioned and that was the only thing that made this procedure particularly dangerous.

  Nonetheless, he had the device disarmed and off of her in no more than ten minutes. He put it in a shielded case and ran it down to the armored van where they exploded it safely.

  Sharky embraced his mother for a long moment and then turned to Smith's electronic ear and said, in unfeigned sincerity, "thank you."

  "Sharky, I've done a very bad thing and this may be the last you and I are able to speak. I want you to know that I appreciate everything you have done for me and you and your mother will be well taken care of for the rest of your lives. I promised I would not abuse my power, but when they took Dr. Bayron and Hermelinda away, I guess my rage got the better of me." Smith turned on the monitor to show Sharky the havoc he had wreaked on the entire Capital District before continuing. "I don't know what my fate will be, son, but I know that I would do anything to ensure that Dr. Bayron and Hermelinda are safe. I mention this now, because you may be called on to judge me."

  "You did what any man would do, Mr. Smith," Sharky replied.

  "Any man with the power to do so." Smith retorted.

  "I'm going down there." Sharky said. "This is my mess too, you know."

  "Please. Do what you can."

  Sharky kissed his mother on both cheeks, rode down the elevator and walked out of the front door of the SmithCorp Building. There was no sign of the chaos that was raging just miles away. In fact, other than the bomb squad cars and van, the parking lot looked very normal for a crisp, early winter day. He got on his motorcycle and began speeding toward Latham. Not even five miles away, the seeming normalcy of the day devolved into a miasma of snarled traffic, fender benders, and honking horns. Sharky was able to maneuver his motorcycle through the cars.

  Arriving at the first entrance to the mall on Route 9 Sharky's progress was halted by a man he vaguely recognized but whose uniform was clearly the uniform worn by the SmithCorp security team. Sharky took off his helmet to hear what the man had to say.

  "Sorry, Sir, no one is allowed in or out." The uniformed guard announced.

  Sharky reached for his SmithCorp security clearance card. The guard immediately recognized the card as placing its bearer in Elijah Smith's tight inner circle of scientists and engineers.

  The guard looked at the card and matched Sharky's face to the picture and confirmed that the security marks on the card were untampered. "Okay," he said, "but leave the bike here and check in with the commander by the helicopters."

  "I'll do that, officer," Sharky replied not knowing exactly how to address the uniformed guard. He obediently headed toward the CIA helicopter that was positioned across the lot. As he approached, he saw that it would be easy to ascertain who the commander was as there were just a few men active behind a bank of monitors set up on folding tables in front of the helicopters. He held his identification card in front of him as he approached.

  The SmithCorp Security Captain recognized the card from a distance and, as was his job, was able to recognize Sharky by face. He turned to the CIA mission commander and said, "Sarkis Ohangangian, SmithCorp R&D, level five clearance."

  The CIA commander nodded his understanding and the Captain motioned for Sarkis to join him behind the monitors. He gave Sharky a moment to understand what was on the monitors. Sharky's eyes moved from monitor to monitor. Some of the monitors were showing regular views which Sharky figured were helmet cameras for some of the people searching the parking lot. Other monitors showed infra-red heat images. There were several sets of headphones on the tables too which Sharky surmised, correctly, were connected to directional listening devices. "Your thoughts are welcome, son." The Captain said to Sharky, hoping the young man might be able to contribute an idea.

  "Maybe," Shar
ky said. "If you were locked in a box and you wanted to signal to people outside of the box that there was intelligent life inside the box, you'd try to broadcast a code or a rhythm. If he's hidden from view and maybe restricted from making noise, you would still try to figure out a way to send out a unique signal." Sharky glanced over all of the monitors again. "Can I try something here?" He asked.

  The Captain glanced over at the commander who was now the officer in charge. The commander nodded.

  "Does anyone have some wire or something else conductive?" Sharky asked.

  The commander pointed toward the CIA helicopter and in one motion both showed the Captain where he would find wire and also giving him the go-ahead to let Sharky try his experiment. The Captain easily spotted a spool of speaker wire in the utility hold which he tossed over to Sharky. Sharky immediately began shuffling the cables, talking while he did so. "Look, here's all the heat data from all of the heat cameras and here's all of the sound data from all of the directional microphones. All this outer edge stuff on the heat data is mechanical. To hot for a person, so we can filter that out. So I can just concentrate on signatures within human range. I'm just going to wrap this speaker wire around the coupler for the directional microphones so I can wire them into an oscilloscope. That way we can see the sounds instead of hearing them and it'll be easier to pick out patterns. Then, on the oscilloscope we can filter out heartrates which would cycle at about 75 beats per second, give or take, and high cycles from engines, like 300 to 1500. So that way we can focus in only on rhythms and patterns that aren't cars or hearts. What we're left with in the parking lot are only deliberate rhythms and some natural rhythms and I guess some car cd players, but all of the other electronics are down. If one of the microphones finds a deliberate rhythm in the same proximity as a human heat signature we may be able to make a lucky guess and..."

  Sharky stopped talking abruptly.