“Seriously? I know just the man.” Clayton breaks into a smile, exposing his tobacco-grayed teeth. “Cooper Dixon. He drives an eighteen-wheeler, hauling stuff into California all the time. He’ll drive all night too if you want—all he needs is a six-pack of Red Bull and a Willie Nelson CD and he’s good to go.”
“How’s the truck? Decent condition?” Nate asks.
“Excellent. It’s got one of those sleeper cabs. Coop even brings dates home to it. Let me see if I can get him on the radio.” Clayton tilts his head in the direction of the window. “It’s in the truck—the radio.”
“Oh—go. Go ahead,” Jan says, realizing that Clayton is asking for permission.
“How much should I tell him?” Clayton pauses at the screen door.
“What do you think’ll motivate him?”
“I don’t know—four thousand, maybe?” Clayton winces.
“Okay, listen,” Jan says. “We really need to get there, so I want you both really motivated. Here’s two thousand. That’s yours no matter what. And I’ll give you another two when you get him here and everything looks good. Tell him he gets four up front and four when he gets us there in—” Jan looks at his watch.
“Twenty hours,” Nate says. “I Googled it. If he drives all night that shouldn’t be a problem.”
“Four and four.” Clayton fans out the bills. “That’ll definitely motivate him.”
A moment later, through the venetian blinds, Jan watches Clayton raise the CB handset to speak.
“So, I take it we have internet.” Jan turns from the window.
“The ‘Barns-family-network’—apparently the neighbors.” Nate offers Jan his chair. “You’re going to want to sit for this: you’ve got mail.”
Dimitry’s message tells Jan that both NASA/GalactiTrek and Roscosmos are shooting for launches within the next forty-eight hours. The Russians have four possible launch windows; GalactiTrek has one.
“That’ll never happen,” Nate says. “NASA and Roscosmos are too large to cut corners, and GalactiTrek is too inexperienced.”
“Listen to this part,” Jan says, and reads: “NASA has ordered Commander Peters to confiscate the AWX apparatus and all its peripheral components. I’m no longer allowed inside the Leonardo module without an American accompanying me.” Jan stops reading. “At least the Message was fully extracted and he was able to get the backup drives hidden somewhere safe.”
“Sure—somewhere on the Russian side.” Nate goes over to the window, pushes aside the blinds. “I think it’s safe to say escalation toward World War Three has officially started.”
Jan writes back to Dimitry, letting him know that he’ll be contacting him soon.
“Clayton still on the radio?” Jan asks.
“Still yapping.”
“Hey, there’s a news report about our midair,” Jan says.
Nate rushes over. He reads: “Two F-16s collided during a regular training mission near Fort Worth, Texas. One pilot ejected, the other managed to land. Both men sustained only minor injuries. Nothing about us.”
“You realize what this means?” Jan says.
“Yeah, no songs about me taking out two F-16s with a Beechcraft.”
“No, it means that if I had died today there would have been nothing spectacular about it because the FBI covered it up.”
“Well, you did say that the Monty Hall Effect would only boost our odds.” Nate walks back to the window.
“That’s true,” Jan says. “And I suppose even with this cover-up, me suddenly dropping off the face of the earth still could have changed things for Monty Hall.”
“Maybe.” Nate peers through the blinds. “But I also think it might be time for us to start talking about Plan B.”
“Plan B? I’m not even sure what Plan A is.”
“Plan A is the works,” Nate says. “In Plan A, we sneak back to Mojave, launch, retrieve the AWX, and return—all without getting caught. Neither government gets the technology and we go on to secretly fulfill the Message’s request—their decades-long task, whatever that is.”
“And Plan B?” Jan asks.
“In Plan B, we say screw the Message, its task, and the probability curve, and we simply focus on keeping the AWX out of anyone else’s hands. That’s the most crucial thing we need to accomplish, right? So, we stop guessing at Monty Hall and we stop worrying about what’s probably impossible—I mean, seriously, how are we ever going to sneak aboard the ISS and then sneak back to Earth? To think that might happen is borderline insanity. Sorry.”
“I know, I know…” Jan looks off thoughtfully, then at Nate, who looks as if he has something more to add. “What else?”
“Nothing. I just can’t believe they covered up that F-16 story. You know, when I finally end up in jail over this, that would have given me some pretty good street cred.”
Jan nods. “Okay, I agree about Plan B—as a fallback. But, for now, we stay on Plan A. Besides, for either plan, our initial goal is the same: we need to get to the AWX. Even if all we plan to do is destroy it, we can’t wait around for someone else to return it. We do that and we’ll be fighting an army—literally.”
“Just one other thing about Plan B,” Nate says.
“I know.” Jan closes the laptop. “It’s a suicide mission.”
Chapter 9
Lauren and Ellis left Los Alamos National Laboratory with Dr. Watson’s promise of more answers in the morning. He and his team would be up all night analyzing Dr. Lee’s crystal. Lauren and Ellis found a local Ramada Inn.
After lunch and a light workout at the hotel’s gym, they met in the hot tub between the men’s and the women’s locker rooms.
“I was thinking about this Iceland Group—” Lauren began.
“Oh my God. Two minutes, just two minutes is all I ask before we dig back in.” Ellis sank below the water, then rose up through the bubbles like a sea monster.
“You need a shave,” Lauren told him.
Ellis felt his cheeks.
Lauren removed the tie from her ponytail and shook out her blond hair. Ellis relaxed, a hint of triumph on his lips.
“It’s interesting that this Iceland Group—”
Ellis sighed.
“—seems,” Lauren continued, “to be the only group working on Dr. Lee’s crystal growth method.” She reached behind her for her HoloWatch. Propping it up on a towel, she projected an image of Dr. Lee over the water. She adjusted the orientation ninety degrees.
“Sexy,” Ellis muttered.
“Apparently, for the first two decades after the bombing, just as Dr. Watson told us, no one would fund anything related to Dr. Lee’s work. Then…” Lauren changed the image to a woman in a lab coat. “… Dr. Jane Carrols stepped onto the scene.”
Ellis, again, sank below the water.
“Hey.” She tapped on the top of his head. “Ellis, this is important…”
He sat up and wiped his eyes. “All right, all right.”
“About ten years ago, Dr. Carrols founded the Iceland Group—which almost seems like some kind of secret society. They have all these big-name scientists involved, but they hardly publish a thing. In interviews, Dr. Carrols says pretty much nothing. And they’re incredibly well funded.” Lauren flipped to an image of a satellite. “This is a remote-controlled Space-Mod orbiting laboratory. The Iceland Group has one of these all to itself, and they’ve paid for eleven spaceflight service runs to date. Each of these runs costs a small fortune. I’m telling you, these guys have deep pockets.”
“Lauren, this is all very interesting, but the only thing Arthur’s going to care about is whether that capsule is actually Helios and whether there’s even the remotest possibility that Dr. Lee could have been on board. Then—and this is way, way down the list—whether or not the silver case had anything of value in it.”
“He’d be interested if we could prove this Iceland Group is up to something.”
“But—” Ellis chuckled. “Come on, you’re just fishing for something f
or your screenplay.”
“We can’t do this forever. Someday it’ll be all rocking chairs and lap dogs.”
“I like lap dogs.”
“No you don’t.” Lauren shut off her HoloWatch and pushed both it and the towel toward a potted palmetto plant.
“Well, I’ll probably just die drunk on a beach somewhere.” Ellis draped his muscular arms over the side of the tub.
“That’s your retirement plan? To die on a beach?”
“I just don’t think it’s so easy to become something else—to do something else. I can’t just pick up a paintbrush and decide to become a great painter.”
“But you could become a painter,” Lauren said.
“That’s just it. There’s a reason why we’re the deputy director’s go-to team. We’re not just a team. We’re the team. I don’t want to do something I’m just okay at.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah…” It was Lauren’s turn to sink below the water—or at least down to eye level with the choppy sea.
Lauren and Ellis had been chosen for special training because they had been determined to possess the elusive “Godfather gene.” The Godfather gene was not a literal gene, but a term associated with someone who had scored unusually high on loyalty and unusually low on empathy on their psychological evaluations. Empathy took work for Ellis and Lauren; it simply didn’t come to them the way it did to others. On the other hand, their decision-making was never hindered by concerns about people’s feelings.
In short, they were Arthur’s perfect robots. Well, not perfect. Perfect would have meant he didn’t fear they’d someday turn on him. And then there was that lust-fear thing Arthur had for Lauren. Of course, that wasn’t unusual—men tended to find her attractive. And, eventually, inevitably, they discovered the abyss.
She looked at Ellis. He wasn’t afraid of the abyss. He, too, was a creature of the deep.
“Ellis?” Lauren rose up out of the water, vapor rising off her shoulders.
“Yes?” He looked into her eyes.
At that moment, a door slammed inside the men’s locker room. Someone shouted.
“Never mind.” Lauren sat back and looked past the palmetto fronds and the glass wall that separated their steam-filled world from the workout area. Most of the equipment out there was unoccupied, much like the rest of the hotel. Lauren closed her eyes and let the humidity envelop her.
Ellis kicked her foot. She opened her eyes. Approaching from the men’s locker room was a skinny, dripping wet, and thoroughly naked old man.
“Hello,” Lauren coughed. She sat up.
“Well, hello there to you too,” the old man crooned.
Lauren moved away from the hot tub’s steps as the old man climbed in, lowering his pendulous extremities toward splashdown.
“Like hot soup,” he murmured.
“Boil your balls off,” Ellis quipped.
Lauren gave her partner a sour look.
“You two a couple?” the old man asked, his feet and other body parts bobbing in the water.
“Nope—”
“Yes,” Lauren cut Ellis off, glaring at him.
“I sense a bit of tension.” The old man slid off the steps toward Lauren. “Well, I happen to be sort of a therapist in these matters.”
Lauren inched around the tub toward Ellis.
“And,” the old man went on, “I know how to help a woman achieve her full sexual potential—”
“Gross.” Lauren halted him with the palm of her hand. “Okay, look. I could probably drown you myself, but—you see this man here? He’ll do it if I order him to.”
The old man blinked, looked at Ellis.
“It’s my job.” Ellis shrugged.
“So, she’s like some kind of movie star?”
Lauren’s HoloWatch rang.
“Enjoy,” Lauren told Ellis, stepping out of the tub and reaching for her towel. In the workout area’s glass wall, she could see the men admiring the economy of her sapphire bikini. She picked up her HoloWatch and turned. The men looked away.
“Special Agent Madison,” she answered, while for some reason taking notice of Ellis’s scars. Each had a story, and nearly all involved her.
“Lauren?” It was Dr. Watson. “I’m afraid we have a situation here.”
• • •
Lauren and Ellis dressed and were on their way to Dr. Watson’s office within minutes. On the tram ride over, Lauren brought Ellis up to date.
“Apparently,” she said, “two men claiming to be FBI agents came in, presented Dr. Watson with their credentials, and then confiscated the silver case and all its contents. They said they had orders to take it to Quantico. When Dr. Watson asked them if he could speak with us first, they threatened him, get this, with Tasers.”
“Tasers? They take all that risk and only arm themselves with Tasers?”
“Oh, and they took a hostage. When they left, they took one of Dr. Watson’s students so he couldn’t call security. They released the kid, though, right outside the front gate—as promised.”
“Weird.”
“Yeah, weird.”
At Los Alamos Laboratory, minutes later, Security subjected Lauren and Ellis to a four-point biometric screening, then escorted them in an electric autocar to the Applied Physics building.
As if sheer overkill could now right the wrong, Lauren mused. The problem wasn’t a lack of security, it was that security operations like these tended to become routine. You have to change it up constantly and without repetition—not double the guard after the fact. In the autocar, she smiled politely at the man across from her and then glanced at Ellis. Ellis would agree.
The setting sun, a blaze of orange, reflected off the glass door of the Applied Physics building. Lauren and Ellis followed the security officers to one of Dr. Watson’s labs, where a forensics team was busy taking samples, lifting fingerprints, and tweezing hair and fibers. The head of security was interviewing Dr. Watson and three of his graduate students.
Lauren, as diplomatically as possible, and Ellis, as intimidatingly as usual, took over the interview.
“You okay?” Lauren pulled a chair up to the workbench where Dr. Watson was sitting. She looked at the others seated behind him. “Is everyone okay?”
“Oh, yes, we’re fine,” Dr. Watson said. “I’m just so sorry—but I really don’t know what I could have done.”
“You did exactly the right thing. We’re just sorry for putting you and your students in harm’s way.” She glanced over her shoulder at Ellis. “Who would have guessed anyone would go to such lengths for a bunch of relics?”
“They said they had very specific orders,” Dr. Watson said. “And their credentials looked official.” He glanced back at his entourage. “And it kind of made sense. I mean, why not take the components back to Quantico? But when I asked if I could call you first, they became… aggressive. One pointed a Taser at me while the other unhooked the devices and put them back in the case.”
“And you’re absolutely sure it was a Taser?” Lauren asked.
“Oh yes. Of this I’m certain. We worked on the very same model a few years back—the FBI wanted to see if we could profile its usage.”
“Interesting. So then what happened?”
“Well, it had spent so many days in salt water—”
“No, with the robbery.”
“Oh, of course. Then they took Jason.” Dr. Watson patted a shaggy-haired kid on the shoulder. “They said they’d kill him if we called security.”
“With Tasers?” the head of security interjected from behind Ellis.
“You can most certainly kill a man with a Taser.” Dr. Watson leaned to his right so he could see around Ellis. “You can kill a man with a thumbtack if you put your mind to it. Ask these two. I wasn’t about to take any chances.”
“You did the right thing,” Lauren said. “When that man put everything back in the case, did you happen to have the crystal out of the cube yet?”
“Yes. And they took it along with everythin
g else.”
“But they knew? They knew to take the crystal?”
“They did.” Dr. Watson rubbed his stubbly chin. “At least the man who removed the crystal from the test fixture did. He knew exactly how to handle it, too. That’s interesting.”
“Yes. Probably not just a couple of antique hunters,” Lauren said.
“I’d say not,” Dr. Watson agreed.
“Did you get anywhere with the testing?” Ellis asked.
“We were just getting started.” Dr. Watson leaned forward and whispered. “Do you think it could be someone at the agency?”
“I doubt it. Anyone high enough on the food chain to pull this off would have simply ordered us to hand over the case.”
“Then who could it be?”
“What about this Iceland Group?” Lauren asked.
“To what end?” Dr. Watson shrugged. “Sure, it might be interesting for them—maybe they’d write a paper about it—but to go to this extreme? Besides, why wouldn’t they just ask the FBI for the crystal after we were done with it?”
“What about those conspiracy nuts?” Ellis asked. “The ones who think the government was behind the Space Station Bombing? They’re all fired up right now because of the Helios discovery.”
“But to fake FBI credentials?” Lauren looked at him. “And they must have had pretty good intel on where the crystal was.”
“That’s true,” Ellis said. “And they used just enough force to get the job done.”
“I agree,” Dr. Watson said. “These guys were smooth. And they sure knew their way around a lab.”
Minutes later, in a private conference room, Lauren and Ellis put a call in to Deputy Director Arthur Johnson.
“Tasers?” Arthur exclaimed. His 3D image hovered above the room’s oak table. “And they got everything?”
“Except for this.” Lauren showed him the index card with “Your Move” written on it.
The deputy director frowned. “Any word from Sea-Tac?”
“Just a brief memo.” Lauren glanced at her HoloWatch. “It says that they successfully helicoptered the capsule out of the woods and that it’s being trucked to Seattle. They’re expecting it sometime tonight.”
“Well, at least no one’s stolen that.” The deputy director took a deep breath. “All right, look, let the locals investigate the robbery. I’m betting they won’t find a thing; these guys knew what they were doing. You two go to Houston and check out NASA’s archives. Find out everything you can about this experiment and exactly who would be this interested in it.” Arthur emphasized the following points by counting them off on his fingers: “I want the Helios capsule turned inside out; I want to know what really happened to Dr. Lee; I want to know what the hell he was trying to pull off with this experiment; and I want the bastards who had the balls to steal this stuff right out from under our noses.”
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