MindField

by D S Kane

  He wore a ghillie suit as sniper camo, making him nearly invisible in the moonless night. Underneath it, he wore a black tee shirt. He knew he’d have to remove the camo before he charged the compound.

  He studied the compound. Three guards walked their rounds. When his wristwatch chirped once at midnight, he took aim at one of the guards during the guard’s route.

  He squeezed the trigger and watched for the bullet to cross the quarter mile to the compound. He heard no sound as the guard’s head disappeared in a blush of red.

  Skorkin watched as the second guard approached the point where he had another clean shot. The second guard died thirty feet away from the first.

  He needed to kill the three guards who were outside doing their rounds and then—before the guards in the guardhouse tried to communicate with the guards making the rounds and found that they weren’t answering—he planned to charge silently to the compound’s walls, scale them, and kill the other three guards in the guardhouse before any of them had a clue he was there.

  Then, when he’d terminated all the guards, Skorkin planned to enter the building where Frank would be asleep.

  A simple plan. Skorkin took aim at the third guard.

  Chapter 37

  Starbucks, Stanford Mall, Palo Alto, CA

  November 15, 6:45 p.m.

  When the dust settled after Glen’s “accident,” Jon counted the dead and thought, we were lucky.

  He walked to his final meeting with a startup CEO, Arthur Creeg of Underwire Software. Jon bought them coffees and found a quiet place in the otherwise busy and noisy coffee bar.

  He’d expected the meeting to take less than an hour. “So, I’m glad you’re alive. As we agreed, the Mossad will offer you two million for a seed round of thirty-five percent series A convertible. If you can produce a piece of computer code that is capable of hacking the Ness Ziona’s web servers, we’ll buy the code and talk about other projects. Okay so far?”

  Creeg nodded.

  “Although I’m pretty sure you won’t need a protection detail after this month, we’ll need to provide one until we’re sure. Is that okay for you and your cofounders?”

  Again, he nodded.

  “Good. I’ve instructed your detail to escort you to New York where we have a system of safe houses. Please tell your cofounders to pack for a stay of about two weeks.”

  Jon thought, soon, all this will be over. Soon.

  * * *

  On the flight to JFK, Ann sat in the row with Glen and his cofounders. She was pleased he’d accepted Jon’s offer. Glen’s group would be in a safe house in Brooklyn Heights with three other groups and a team of seasoned United Nations Paramilitary Force mercenaries.

  She remained troubled at Glen continued denials that there was any real danger. He told Ann, “There never has been any danger.”

  When he told Ann, “I think you’re unhinged,” she stifled the rage she felt. She turned away and watched the clouds skip past the aircraft.

  * * *

  Skorkin took aim at the last guard doing rounds and then pulled away from the scope to make a small adjustment after he detected an unexpected breeze. Once again, he took aim, and then slowly squeezed the trigger.

  He felt the satisfying tug on his shoulder and watched through the scope as the final guard’s head exploded. He dropped the sniper rifle. He’d have plenty of time to pick up the Dragunov and disassemble it when he left. He racked one round into the chamber, then pulled the clip from his 9mm Ruger and pushed a bullet into the clip where the racked round had been. The he reloaded the clip, giving him one extra round for a total of eighteen. He began trotting toward the guardhouse. The guards relaxing there would be surprised when he opened the door and slaughtered them all. He knew he could kill all of them before they could react.

  As he neared the guardhouse, he screwed a silencer onto the handgun’s barrel. The door wasn’t locked. He opened it and saw three men intently watching a series of monitor screens. The first two were dead before the third noticed he was there. But that last guard in the entryway hadn’t even time to open his mouth before he, too, was dead.

  Skorkin just nodded and moved on to the small barracks with nine bunkbeds. He saw two sleeping and one not present. Skorkin shot the sleepers on their beds, then walked to the door to the bathroom, where he knocked on the door and waited.

  “Gimme a minute, I’m washin’ up.” The last guard opened the door and died.

  Skorkin placed his 9 mil in his jacket pocket and drew his Benchmark knife from its sheath on his belt. Now, on to the main house to complete this part of the assignment.

  * * *

  Robert Randall reviewed his files of unauthorized evidence and tried for the umpteenth time to figure out some way to take down Daniel Strumler. I could sell it to someone. I know that no journalist with a shred of ethics would buy it, but perhaps the Russians would want to save Strumler enough to pay me what I’d need to retire.

  But, in the end, he decided his best idea was the one he had thought of days ago. He sent an email to Strumler bouncing it through a set of servers located around the world:

  Sir—

  It has come to my company’s attention that you are interested in the acquisition of a venture capital firm that invests in weapons technology. Ours has been successful in developing products for over two years and a listing of our portfolio of products is attached to this message. We are about to auction the company and retire with the funds. If you are interested in a preemptive bid to purchase our company, the price will be twenty-five million USD ($25,000,000.00). We have attached the documents you must sign, scan, and return as attachments in an email, and also the details of our receiving bank, for your convenience. This price remains effective until the end of today.

  Sincerely,

  Board of Directors

  InTelQ Investments

  The sun had set into a scattering of clouds before he felt his level of frustration ebb.

  Next, he cleaned and dumped a copy of the transcript files of Strumler’s conversations onto a virgin thumb-drive and pocketed the drive in his suit-jacket pocket.

  He heard his desktop beep an incoming message. Strumler had signed the agreement and sent the cash.

  He waited until his boss was out of the office. He entered and dropped the drive on the center top of his boss’s desk.

  Then he exited and waited for holy hell to break loose.

  Chapter 38

  Lucessi compound in Areguá, Paraguay

  November 15, 7:01 p.m.

  Laura heard strange noises and woke from her trance. She rose from her bed and moved toward the door into the hallway.

  As she walked, her visions returned. She voyaged without volition, without footsteps. She saw their old furniture and she could smell the aromas of the meal her father had cooked for them earlier that night. Onions, some kind of inexpensive beef, and potatoes. She drifted through the hallway and heard more noise.

  As she moved toward the noise, her dream momentarily faded. She saw herself standing in a different hallway, this one in Paraguay. When the dream returned, she had entered her parents’ bedroom. In front of her, she saw her mother being stabbed by her father. He raged at his wife, screaming his own name. But then her father transformed into herself and now it was Laura stabbing her mother. Laura tried to scream but she couldn’t. She saw her mother scream as blood sprayed from her neck.

  Laura watched her mother fall to the floor. Laura remained rooted to the floor where she’d been standing. Her dream-self finally mustered the power to scream and flee, as her father entered the bedroom, telling her to stop. Now she could feel the sharp edge of the shattered glass vase she had just used to murder her mother.

  A muffled sound broke through the dream once again, and now, her eyes sprang open wide. She heard a shot, followed by another. She found herself at the doorway from her Paraguay bedroom looking into the hallway. Now she was able to move, able to walk. She was no longer imprisoned in her dreams.
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  * * *

  Frank heard shots in the distance. He ran from Laura’s bedroom to his own, picked up his cellphone from the nightstand, and called the guardhouse.

  There was no answer. He trotted to the gun safe near the bathroom, and opened the safe, removing a 9mm Beretta and a clip.

  He ran back to Laura’s bedroom, worried about her safety.

  On the way down the hallway, he saw a camo-dressed man carrying a knife in one hand and a gun in the other. The man was huge, his face painted in camo. The interloper now stood in front of him.

  In a soothing voice, the man said, “Mr. Lucessi, I’m Alan Skorkin. I was sent here by our Mr. Randall to make your acquaintance. He told me to tell you that your project has been cancelled, and, unfortunately, you are a loose end. Randall gave me strict orders to execute you. So sorry.”

  Frank realized he held his Beretta in his hand. He took aim but, as he began to pull the trigger, the man laughed and kicked the gun from his hand.

  * * *

  Laura heard muffled voices in the hallway. She still had fragments of the dream screaming “danger” at her. The vase she had bought at the art gallery in Asunción stood on her nightstand in easy reach. She picked it up and walked silently through the doorway, into the hallway.

  She saw a stranger confronting Frank. Though she was behind him, she could see that the stranger held a gun and a knife. He kicked a pistol from Frank’s hand and moved closer to him.

  The scene in front of her swirled and she was now back in her dream, with her mother holding a knife, about to stab her father. She stepped forward and brought the vase down on her mother’s head as hard as she could. The vase shattered, stunning her mother. Laura now held just a large pale-blue edge of glass. She plunged the shard into her mother’s neck. Laura said, “Goodbye, Mother. Now you can never hurt Daddy again.”

  Once more she stirred from her dream and saw a strange man sprawled at her feet, his eyes bulging and blood spraying out of his neck.

  Chapter 39

  Lucessi compound in Areguá, Paraguay

  November 15, 7:22 p.m.

  Laura rubbed her eyes, unwilling to believe what she saw in front of her. A man she had never met appeared to be dead. She could see that she held the shard of glass that killed him, but she could not remember anything that happened.

  She opened her mouth and tried to speak. “Who? Who he?”

  Frank ran to her side and held her gently. “He said his name was Alan Skorkin.”

  “Who is?”

  “He said he was sent here by someone I’d been working with. Thank you, Laura. You saved my life.” Frank gently pried the shard of glass from her tight grip. Then he guided her to a chair.

  “I did what?”

  “You saved my life. You killed him before he could kill me.”

  “No. No! I didn’t kill anyone.”

  Frank stood speechless.

  Finally, he found words. Words might clear this up for both of them. “What’s the last thing you remember?”

  “I was starting to hate you for leaving alone me in this godforsaken place. I left the compound and needed to walk, to refresh myself and have a chance to think. But I got lost and started wandering.”

  “That was five days ago. I returned and found you missing. I organized a search party and we found you two days ago. You were catatonic until now.”

  Laura could see the body and the pool of blood on the tile floor in front of her. She just couldn’t figure out what had happened. “I did that?” She pointed to the body.

  Frank nodded. “I need to get a crew here to do some cleanup.”

  * * *

  Avram Shimmel shook hands with the last startup’s CEO and cofounders. “When the aircraft lands in Tel Aviv, there will be a Mossad team to meet you at Ben Gurion. They will guide you through the process of relocation.”

  The CEO smiled. “Thanks for saving our lives. How long until we have office space in Herzliya?”

  Avram shrugged. “I’m not sure, but not too long. You’ll have enough funding to complete your product, and the IDF has already promised that if it works to their satisfaction, you can live in Israel permanently as the senior executives of your own company.”

  He watched them board the El Al aircraft at JFK. This was the last startup group of the nearly hundred that Jon and Cassie had been able to save. He took a deep breath as he watched the aircraft disengage from its boarding gate.

  Samuel Meyer, the Mossad’s director, had made the decision to move them to Israel so that the products produced by the startups could be more closely monitored. He had personally negotiated the terms of the deal with each startup CEO while Avram was kept out of the loop. That way, there would be less chance for the United Nations members to discover just how powerful a background role Israel had within international corridors.

  Nearly two hundred cofounders had been viciously slaughtered. Avram shook his head. What a waste.

  * * *

  Ann felt uneasy about her next plan. She sat in Glen’s apartment, waiting for him to return after his second day at work. The dinner she’d cooked for them was cold and ruined. It was nearly midnight. She’d eaten without him. She heard the door to the apartment unlock and she waited, a 9mm Beretta Nano concealed carry in her hand tucked under her leg. She still feared the danger they had just avoided. I hope it’s Glen. But if it isn’t…

  When Glen appeared, she uncocked the trigger and placed the handgun in her purse on the table next to her. She rose and hugged him. “You’re late.”

  “Um, sorry. It was my second day back and I had a massive backlog of things to get through.” He sniffed the air. “Smells like dinner. Sorry. I picked up a sandwich from the fridge in the office kitchen.”

  “Glen, you’re not taking your safety seriously. There could still be a cleaner out there.”

  “Ann, that’s a crock. Just because I fell in the street doesn’t mean—”

  “Yeah, but it doesn’t mean we were wrong. According to Avram, nearly two hundred of InTelQ’s startup teams were butchered. Every one of the rest of them has been relocated to somewhere outside the United States.”

  “None of my cofounders wanted a relocation program. And neither do I.”

  She considered everything that had happened since she had become involved with him. It isn’t working. It never really worked. She sighed. “Okay, then. I guess we gave it our best shot. Look, I’ve packed my stuff. I plan to be gone in a few minutes. I’ll see you in class.”

  She walked into the bedroom and lifted her rolling spinner suitcase off the bed. Glen wouldn’t look at her as she left.

  * * *

  Samuel Meyer read the report Avram Shimmel had filed on his computer. He shook with rage. Shimmel had cost Israel tens of millions of dollars with a return payback that was problematic at best. Worse, there was still the risk from intelligence agencies in Iran, Germany, UK, and China developing their own versions of InTelQ. Although Russia hadn’t been part of the rumored move to seed weapons development through venture capital, he was sure they would soon join the fray. And the final failure was that, according to Shimmel, at least one of InTelQ’s cleaners was still out there.

  He plucked the secure landline receiver from its cradle and called Shimmel. “Avram, is there any news on the cleaner InTelQ has been using?”

  “Nothing. He was recorded at the airport in Paraguay, but since then, no traces.”

  “Can you have one of your hackers trace all the messages to or from Robert Randall?”

  “I have my best person on it.”

  “Get back to me as soon as anything develops.”

  * * *

  Avram had left a voicemail for Ann. She saw the message while she was getting seated for her computer forensics class. The move back into her old apartment had taken most of the morning and this was the only class she could attend today, so she left the message unopened for the duration of the class.

  She took notes while the professor droned on.r />
  Then, as the class broke up, she put the phone to her ear and listened. “It’s Avram. I had Michael Drapoff track the Bug-Lok devices that were in the group that had Glen Sarkov’s device. Please call Drapoff and have him send you the details of every other device placed from that Bug-Lok group. I need to know who each device was placed into and if possible, get transcripts of every word said and where it was said. Then I need you to destroy their Bug-Loks so whoever was tracking them can no longer do it. Avram out.”

  She sighed. This would take all night, at least. She walked to her apartment. I’ll do it after I eat something.

  She sat in thought but then frowned. She called Michael Drapoff. As she sat at her desk eating a ham-and-cheese sandwich on toasted sourdough, his phone rolled into voicemail. The voicemail announcement was in Hebrew, so the only word she understood was “Drapoff.”

  “Hello, it’s Ann Sashakovich. Avram asked me to call you about the devices you tracked for him. Please call me back ASAP so I can finish this assignment and get back to my studies.”

  She waited. Then her cell buzzed. “Hello, Ann. It’s the middle of the night here. I was asleep. What details are you wanting?”

  “I think Avram wants to know literally everything. Like who was the host for each device, and a list of every transcript for every device.”

  “That’ll be a ton of data. It was over sixty terabytes at last count.”

  “Can I download them?”

  After a long silence, Michael said, “It will take forever and you’ll need several storage devices. I’m setting you up with a temporary account. Username “leveya,” password “bat9327.” I’ll keep the account active until I return to work in five hours. That should be long enough for you to download everything. Oh, and one more thing. It turns out that your president-elect currently walks with one in his brain. Happy hunting.”

  Ann wasn’t even given the opportunity to say “thanks.”