The REM Precept

by J. M. Lanham

  Kovic stayed silent and drove as the stadium lights from James Madison University illuminated a small stretch of Interstate 81 between Harrisonburg, Virginia, and Washington, DC. They were getting close now. He pressed the pedal and merged into the fast line, blowing right past the stadium exit and onward toward Langley. If he could keep up the pace, he’d have his two hostages in Lancaster’s office by midnight.

  That was, if he could get there before one of the persuasive passengers got in his head. Between Alex’s pleas for mercy, Cline’s insistence that mercy wasn’t an option, and an eight-hour drive going on zero sleep, Kovic’s mind was reeling. And while he was well-versed in the agency’s mind games, some of the things Cline had mentioned stuck in his mind like a shitty pop song on the radio, ranging from mildly annoying to slightly tormenting.

  One comment in particular had really taken hold. It was when Cline said he knew why he was behaving this way; why the sharp and tactful agent had become indecisive, conflicted, and emotionally confused.

  “Someone got to you, Colin.”

  The thought weighed heavy on Kovic as they passed a familiar exit ramp. Cline quickly realized where they were. “Shenandoah National Park. Next right … You remember Shenandoah, don’t you Colin?”

  No answer.

  “You know, it was always the perfect location for our Skyline research facility. Hidden in miles of forest, but close enough to DC to make a real difference, you know? No one would ever think that deep in those woods is the most influential technology known to mankind. A technology that can change the world however we see fit. But you want to shut it all down. And for what, Kovic? To save the world you know by destroying the very weapons needed to protect it?”

  “The director vowed to shutter Project THEIA, and I intend on seeing that through, no matter the cost.”

  “Always the good soldier, Colin; am I right?” He sighed as he shook his head, then asked, “Do you remember what I told you on the phone earlier?”

  “That whole spiel about one friend to another? Please. You couldn’t change my mind then, and you’re not changing it now. I’m handing you over to Lancaster—end of story.”

  The comment must have caused Alex to question where he fit into Kovic’s plan, even if it was already obvious to everyone else in the car. He turned to Kovic and said, “Look, man. We’ve been on the road for eight hours, and you still haven’t told me if you’re letting me go or not.”

  “Isn’t it obvious?” Cline said. “If Colin here gets his way, the only place you’ll be going is your new ten-by-ten condo at Guantanamo Bay.”

  “Shut the fuck up back there,” Kovic said.

  “True, isn’t it? And you still believe doling out life sentences to the very citizens you claim to defend is better than making the tough choices, the right choices, from the start, do you? You’re not thinking clearly, Colin. Like I said, the outliers got to you.”

  “And what is that supposed to mean, exactly?”

  “I saw the security tapes from Skyline,” Cline explained as he casually gazed out the window. “The ones covering the entrance upon Claire Connor’s arrival at the facility. Inside, all eyes were on you, and you were obviously distressed, pacing the porch, shaking your head … at one point you even gave that thick skull of yours a few hits with the heel of your hand. Or”—he cocked his head curiously—“do you not remember that part?”

  “Don’t know what you’re talking about—”

  “Then you muttered something. Something that confirmed what I already suspected: that you were being subjected to acute mental distress.”

  Kovic’s eyes met Cline’s in the rearview mirror. “So I talk to myself sometimes. Who doesn’t? Helps me think.”

  “Sure, Colin. Keep lying to yourself. Keep ignoring the fact that a motley crew of mind-controlling misfits pulled the wool over your eyes that day.”

  “I know what you’re doing, Cline, so you can stop trying to get in my head.”

  “I can’t get in your head, son. They already beat me to it.”

  “That’s enough, Cline.” Kovic grew more agitated as familiar voices began to rear their ugly heads once again. This is wrong, Colin. All wrong.

  “Deep down, you know I’m right,” Cline said.

  “I said that’s enough.”

  The thoughts persisted. This operation. Ramírez. Cline. They’re all wrong.

  “You’ve seen Ocula work,” Cline said. “Is it so hard to believe that they got to you? That they planted a seed of disinformation inside your head that’s causing all this confusion? Come on, Colin. You know I’m right, so why don’t you go ahead and pull over and give me the keys. Let me drive a while. We’ll get everything sorted out back at Langley. I can help you—”

  “I SAID THAT’S ENOUGH!” Kovic swerved onto the shoulder and hit the brakes, the screeching tires followed by a loud thud as Cline’s unbuckled body slammed into the back of Alex’s seat before slumping into the floorboard. He resumed driving, and a pained groan resonated from the back as Cline tried awkwardly to get back in his seat with zip-tied hands and feet. “You were saying, Stephen?” No response, just more grumbling from the back.

  Alex tugged at his seat belt and sighed in relief, thankful he hadn’t eaten the dash. He looked over at Kovic and half grinned. “Hey, man. The last twenty-four hours has been weird as all get-out, but I just wanted to tell you thanks for keeping this fucker in the back seat from taking me out back there at the motel—”

  “I’m not letting you go either, Freeman. Not gonna happen.”

  “So that’s it then? Cline was right? You’re just gonna take me to your boss where I’ll be locked up for nothing while you go on pretending this shit never happened?”

  “Not up to me,” Kovic said. “I’m just doing my job.”

  “You know, you can’t stop me from running. I mean, shit”—he toggled the door handle—“I could jump out of this car the moment you hit a red light.”

  Kovic tapped the driver’s side door locks. “Good luck with that, pal.”

  “Okay then, what’s stopping me from causing a commotion? Getting another driver’s attention? Grabbin’ the wheel and sending this car into the next gawddamn bridge abutment we come across?”

  Kovic held up the black mind-numbing device and gave it a shake. “You really want to go down that road again, Alex?”

  He didn’t, and for once on the impromptu road trip, both passengers were silent. Kovic relaxed back into his seat, one hand on the wheel, relieved the voices in the car had been replaced by the hypnotic white noise of the highway.

  The voices in his head, on the other hand, were just getting started.

  ***

  “Jesus,” Mercer muttered as he entered the cabin, walking into a grizzly scene that looked like something out of an eighties horror movie. The rustic front door had been busted in and the hinges ripped from the frame, the fallen door now a makeshift bridge over the crimson threshold in which Mercer and Sanders had crossed to get inside. They tiptoed around the darkened pool of blood surrounding the front door, then went room to room, treading lightly with guns at the ready just in case the perpetrator had decided to stick around.

  After a tactical room check, the agents confirmed that they were alone. Mercer holstered his pistol and surveyed the scene. Red-and-black blood trails painted worn wooden floors and led haphazardly from the cabin’s only bathroom to the front, matched by streaks of red fingerprints grazing the interior paneled walls above them. At first, it was hard to get a handle on exactly what had happened; only that a victim, bleeding profusely, had fallen just before making it to the door, leaving behind a quarter-inch-deep puddle of blood that was beginning to crust along the edges. From there, someone (or something) had moved the victim outside and into the woods, presumably to the victim’s final resting place.

  The smell that billowed from the cabin wreaked of the thick stench of death, intensified by the summer heat. Mercer instinctively pulled a handkerchief from his shirt pocket an
d covered his face while Sanders set up a mobile crime-scene kit on the hearth in the den.

  “Let’s make this fast, before I get sick,” Mercer said through the cloth. Sanders grinned, unbothered by the stench. He brandished a camera and started snapping photos of everything his partner processed. The walls. The floors. Every smudge, fingerprint, and drop of blood spatter from the curtains to the couches got a photo, a tag, and a number.

  The shallow, bloody pool had a rusty film to it that Mercer had to skim off before dipping a blood-test strip into the mix. Just a few minutes in and the agent had a blood type: B+. Not a common type, but not the rarest, either. Mercer dropped the strip into a plastic bag and sealed it, then turned to Sanders. “You got your rolodex on you?”

  “Yup,” he said, pulling it from his back pocket. “You get a reading?”

  “B+.”

  “B+,” Sanders repeated as he flipped through the name cards back to front. “Let’s see. Reed, Fenton. O+. Connor, Claire. AB+ … Ah, we have a winner. Mr. Donny Ford. B+.”

  Mercer nodded, then continued to process the scene. He knew as well as anyone that matching a blood type was a far cry from a positive identification on a known felon, but at least it was a start. He filed the evidence away as Sanders panned the camera lens back toward the entrance, zooming in on the exterior side of the door that lay just inside the entry and faced up toward the ceiling. Long lines revealed fresh oak and stretched the vertical length of the door.

  “You see that?” Sanders gestured to the door, and Mercer stepped over for a closer look.

  “Yeah, I see it.” He knelt down and almost ran his fingers along the lines before pulling back. Prints, you idiot. He leaned in closer. “Looks like … claw marks?”

  “Claw marks?” Sanders stepped over. “Like from a racoon or possum or something?”

  Mercer pointed at the long gashes. “You ever see a racoon that fucking big?”

  “I mean you’re right. Those marks, they’re huge. Say, you don’t think those 911 calls were …” He scratched his head, then said, “Shit, man. I don’t know what to think.” Both agents stood speechless and pondered the legitimacy of the unbelievable 911 calls that had come in just hours ago; calls that described several brazen mountain lion sightings in the area earlier that day. Now that they were staring at one of the goriest crime scene either mercenary for hire had ever seen, the calls (which had seemed like obvious pranks at the time) didn’t seem so outlandish.

  Finally, Mercer looked beyond the splintered threshold and out toward the woods, following the bloody trail that dropped off the porch and disappeared into a thick stand of brush some forty yards from the cabin. “What I think is that we need to go for a walk. See if we can find something out there.”

  Sanders agreed, stuffed his camera in his backpack, and followed Mercer outside. They walked along a weaving disarray of rustled leaves and crushed sticks crudely swept from one side to another on the forest floor. Blood spatter on bright green ferns nearby marked the trail and confirmed to Mercer that they were on the right path. After a brief walk, the trail disappeared into a stand of briar-wrapped rhododendrons that was thick enough to block out the sunlight. They drew their service pistols.

  “Eyes forward,” Mercer whispered as they tried to silence their steps, an effort that proved to be useless as they moved across the crunchy sunbaked leaves of an arid August day. Both men craned their heads as they tried to get a better look inside the thick foliage.

  Just then, Mercer noticed something. A flash of yellow. Or was it blue?

  He moved a branch to the side and the picture cleared. It was a piece of cloth, torn, just a few square inches of floral print dangling from a sharp barb on a thick and twisting briar. He pulled a latex glove from his pocket and grabbed it, then examined it in the light.

  Quietly, “What do you think?”

  “The bottom there,” Sanders said, pointing to a corner. “That blood?”

  “Looks like it.” Mercer peered deeper into the dark foliage. “Something must’ve attacked our friend back at the cabin, then dragged the body away.”

  “Think it’s really a mountain lion? Here?”

  “Could be a bear, too. Case of mistaken identity.”

  “But I’ve never heard of a bear or mountain lion or anything like that attacking someone inside a cabin, forcing its way in like that.”

  Mercer shrugged. “Maybe it was starving. Smelled food cooking on the stove. Who knows. Animals do weird things when they’re desperate.” The words came out of Mercer’s mouth, but even he wasn’t buying it. Something very strange was going on in these woods—he just couldn’t figure out what. He turned to Sanders and asked, “What did Cline tell you about the mission?”

  “Backup. Operational support. Details on a need-to-know basis, per the norm—”

  “No. I don’t mean the mission here in Georgia. I mean the mission.”

  “Oh,” Sanders said. “Well, on the director’s authority we’re working to shut down Project THEIA, eliminate known threats to national security, tie up loose ends … you already know all of this.”

  “Yes, yes. Of course. But did you ever stop to think about why in the hell we’re out here risking our necks to tie up loose ends in the field when Cline’s holding a handful of these so-called threats to national security on retainer at Skyline?”

  “You’re talking about the outliers brought up from Guantanamo.”

  “Exactly. Four of them. I think the youngest is some woman in her twenties. I mean here we are, stumbling through the woods, hoping to find a group of people whose very existence could wreak havoc on the world, but he’s keeping the detainees at Skyline alive?”

  “We’re getting paid, aren’t we?”

  “Yeah, but that’s beside the point. Just doesn’t make any sense.”

  “What are you saying? You think Cline’s operating off the reservation?”

  “Seems that way to me,” Mercer said. “Everyone knows the new director is foaming at the mouth to ghost the facility ASAP. No way she’s signing off on these hunting trips without giving Cline the go-ahead to get rid of the outliers in Virginia. They should’ve been the first to go.”

  “Well, doesn’t make a difference to me,” Sanders said. “We’re paid to do the agency’s dirty work, no questions asked. Personally, I’d rather not read the fine print, so long as the checks clear. Know what I’m saying?”

  Mercer was about to answer when a rustle came from deep within the bushes. He looked at his partner, then peered into the dark tunnel of twisting branches and ivy. Squinting, he could almost make out a pair of eyes.

  But by the time he heard the purr before the pounce, it was too late.

  Chapter 17:

  Snake’s Head

  Groundbreaking. Disruptive. The dawning of a new era in female empowerment in Washington. That’s how Margaret Lancaster had imagined her appointment as the first director of the Central Intelligence Agency without a Y chromosome. But as she pulled into the Peirce Mill historical site off Tilden Street in north DC at a quarter past midnight, she wondered if her tenure as CIA’s top official—a tenure that had been marred in scandals and conspiracies since Day One—would soon be over.

  To her credit, apprehension had never been one of her character traits, especially when it came to dancing the old Potomac two-step. Her ability to dodge the seediest of scandals and come out clean on the other side was a talent that had gotten her to the top of the most sophisticated intelligence agency in the world.

  But that was before she’d made it to the top. Now, things were different, and the confidence she’d once boasted while working for others had quickly diminished under the weight of the Ocula conspiracy.

  End of the line. The buck stops here.

  She let her car idle with the AC on and peered through the windshield, scouting the dimly lit scene in the middle of the night. Out front was the old Peirce Mill, a four-sided, two-story building constructed with stacked nineteenth-century granite quarrie
d from the surrounding hills and nestled on the banks of Rock Creek. The waterwheel that once powered the mill still hung over the bubbling creek waters, though it was long out of service.

  Tilden Street was to Lancaster’s right; a quiet and deserted stretch of road this time of night. She squinted to see a lone sedan parked up the street, a black four-door with tinted windows. In all likelihood it was Kovic’s. On her left was a vacant historical home situated in the trees; the only private residence for a quarter-mile.

  From the looks of it, she was in the clear. Not a soul in sight.

  There was a good reason the mill was one of several CIA rendezvous points in the DC area. It was part of the larger Rock Creek National Park, which, like any other national site in the District of Columbia, was typically buzzing with tour groups, joggers, lovers toting picnic baskets looking for a romantic day date in the shade … But that was during the daytime. At night, the area was a ghost town, illuminated only by a single streetlamp that marked the short gravel path leading from the parking area to the mill.

  She stepped out of her car and walked to the back of the mill, taking note of the dim glow of an oil-burning lamp situated in the northeast corner of the building along the way. It was a signal, the light faint but the message clear that another agent was inside. To the left of the back door, halfway between the threshold and the channel leading to the waterwheel, was a brick-sized granite stone, slightly darker than the others and protruding from the wall by a few millimeters. She gave the rock a tap on one end, then the other, loosening it enough to grab a fingerhold before pulling it out and setting it aside. Behind the stone lay an old rust-laden key; it was a perfect fit for the century-old deadbolt at the back.

  Once inside, Lancaster spotted Colin Kovic past a row of millstones in the far corner of the room about thirty feet away, leaning against one of the large timber-frame posts holding the roof up. Next to him was Stephen Cline, hands zip tied behind his back and sitting on a millstone, the scowl on his face curving up into a hopeful smile as the director walked in. Kovic heard the door and instinctively placed a hand on his holstered pistol. “You come alone?”