“Shh.”
The kitchen hand froze, eyes riveted to Mitch’s gun.
“You keep that door locked. I’ll be back soon. If it’s open, I’ll be using you for target practice!”
The kitchen hand’s eyes widened, then he nodded mutely, paralyzed with fear.
They left the kitchen hand to guard the door while they hurried past hanging pans and stainless steel benches to the alley beyond. Just as they stepped into the alley, Christa caught a glimpse of the kitchen hand standing next to the door waving away another kitchen worker who wanted to use the door.
“I wonder how long he’ll be guarding that door?” Christa asked amused.
“Until they blow it out from under him!”
When they reached the street, they turned and ran toward the bus stop two blocks away. Before they were halfway to the first cross street, they heard a muffled explosion that signaled the kitchen door being blown off its hinges, falling at the feet of the terrified kitchen hand.
Mitch spotted the bus stop ahead, where several people stood waiting. A bus came rumbling past them, slowing as it neared the bus stop. When it stopped, the waiting passengers began filing on. Mitch raced to catch it, pulling ahead of Christa who was fighting vertigo from the pounding in her head. He heard the hydraulic exhale of the doors closing, then before the driver could put the bus in gear, Mitch slapped the door’s glass panel with one hand while he slid his gun into a pocket.
“Wait!”
The driver looked down with a weary expression, then nodded, and the doors slid open again. Mitch jumped onto the step, then stopped and waited while Christa jogged toward the door.
“You getting on buddy?” the driver asked.
“Just wait!”
Christa jumped on and moved to a seat, as Mitch paid the driver for the tickets. He joined her as the bus pulled away from the stop, turning to keep watch through the rear windows. Their pursuers appeared in front of the hotel, looking up and down the street. Mitch knew they hadn’t seen them board the bus, but McNamara was talking into his sleeve calling for backup. They waited anxiously while the bus slowly put distance between them and McNamara, then they heard the beat of rotors overhead. Mitch stole a glance through the window, just enough to confirm the helicopter that had appeared outside the hotel window was passing overhead. He pulled back, turning his face away from the window.
“Chopper,” he whispered.
The helicopter passed low over the roof of the bus, then dropped close enough to see through the bus’ windows. Christa threw her arm around Mitch’s shoulders, pulled his face to hers and began kissing him. Mitch was taken by surprise, then wrapped his arms around her and returned the kiss with equal vigor, being careful to use his arms to mask their faces. The helicopter drifted over the bus to observe the windows on the other side. Passengers, astonished by the low flying helicopter stood, leaned toward the windows to get a better look, partly obscuring Mitch and Christa’s side of the bus. Several men, armed with rifles fitted with telescopic sights crouched in the helicopter’s open door covering the bus, searching for a target. The helicopter maneuvered to avoid overhead wires, and several trees, then banked away above the traffic.
Christa pushed Mitch back roughly. “It’s gone.”
“Is that what they teach you at super spook survival school? When the bad guys approach, lock lips on the nearest irresistible hunk?” He smiled with approval. “Very effective.”
“It was the quickest way to hide our faces.”
“Personally, I'd rather shoot it out of the sky.”
“Of course you would.”
“I guess, being locked up by Uncle Gus for ten years has left you needing a bit of . . . excitement.”
“You guess wrong.”
“Maybe the ice Princess isn’t as cold as she let’s on. But then, I do have a certain Neanderthal charm.”
“Don’t flatter yourself.”
“Don’t worry, Princess, your secret’s safe with me.” He said with a wink.
She looked at him incredulously. “You really live in a fantasy world, don’t you?”
“You’re still here.”
“Only because I’m ordered to be. No other reason.”
Mitch grinned. “Okay, if you say so.” He settled back amused, and started wondering how long they should stay on the bus.
* * * *
They found a diner with a booth that couldn’t be seen from the street, with a clear view of the entrance.
After they ordered breakfast, Mitch leaned toward Christa. “Play time’s over, Princess, I need to know what’s going on.”
“I’m not authorized to tell you more than what Gus already has.”
“Are you authorized to get your brain fried? Or killed by renegade spooks?”
She fell silent, her face drained of color. Slowly, she started to massage her forehead.
“How’s the head?”
“It’s no longer a sharp stabbing pain, more a dull throbbing pain.”
He watched her a moment, realizing it was taking her a long time to recover from what hit her in the hotel. “Look, I don’t know what the score is, but it’s obvious our side isn’t doing too good. If you want to get into this game, you’ve got to work with me. I’ve got to have some idea what we’re dealing with, or next time, we won’t be so lucky.”
“Is that what you're counting on, luck?” She asked with a sense of exasperation.
“If that’s all I’ve got in my favor, I’ll take luck. But I’d rather have a few solid facts and a loaded gun.”
Her face showed indecision. Christa’s training told her to remain silent, but her instincts told her something different.
“You don’t believe I can make a difference?”
“I don’t like the way you operate. Everything is so . . .” She struggled to find the right words.
“Unorthodox?”
“Reckless.”
Mitch smiled. “Have you considered the orthodox, conservative way of doing things isn’t going to work? Maybe that’s why your guys are getting their butts kicked. They’re too predictable. Maybe Uncle Gus is smart enough to know he’s got a chance if he plays a wild card. Something unexpected. Something reckless.”
Her eyes widened, as if the thought was a revelation to her. “If so, why didn’t Gus tell you more?”
Mitch winced. “Because he's so stiff, he probably starches his underwear. He recognized he needs me, but he doesn’t know how to use me. He’s been working from the inside for too long. He’s a bookend!” Mitch sighed, exasperated. “Listen, Princess, if you want to win, wise up. Trust me.”
Christa stared at Mitch thoughtfully for a long time, then finally, she nodded.
“Good! Let’s have it.”
“I still think you’re a Neanderthal.”
“I still think you’re a first class pain in the ass, so we’re even.”
She let the hint of a smile appear on her lips, then sobered. “There’s a lot we don’t know. We suspect someone has developed a new, exotic, convergent technology. There are theories, but we really don’t understand how it works.”
“Has it got anything to do with that electrostatic sound Gunter recorded?”
“Perhaps,” she replied uncertainly. “We think the research started toward the last years of the Cold War when we were trying to figure out how to shoot down missiles in space using directed energy weapons.”
Mitch looked skeptical. “You’re not trying to tell me this is related to Star Wars technology, are you? Everyone knows that was a scam to bust the Soviet economy.”
“That’s what they want you to think. You don’t know how big a disinformation campaign the government ran to convince everyone it was a con. They wanted to hide just how far they'd taken the technology. We still have a monopoly on it. The only thing that was a con, was the claim it was a con.”
“Mouse would like that.”
“The early technology was radical, and very expensive, but the Cold War ended bef
ore it was perfected. They’d spent a fortune on directed energy research, and they were trying to figure out what to do with all this stuff they’d invented.”
“They?” Mitch asked. “Who’s they?”
“The military industrial complex. They’d grown fabulously rich on the Cold War, and suddenly, defense budgets were being slashed. They needed a lifeline. Research directions were changed. Dr Steinus found correlations between the way electrical impulses moved in the human brain and the way energy was being manipulated in some of the radical weapon systems being developed. We think they figured out a way to converge the manipulation technology with advanced neurological science. Whatever happened, entire projects, teams of scientists and enormous amounts of research data disappeared. There’s no trace of where it’s gone.”
“Do you think they’re developing some new kind of anti-terrorist weapon?”
“It’s possible.”
“If there’s a high tech way of frying a fanatic from ten thousand feet, we’ll invent it. Sounds like a good idea to me. Where can I make a donation?”
She gave him a serious look. “Defense budgets climbed again after 9/11, but the extra money just made it easier to hide the funding for this thing. We don’t know of any connection between this thing, and the war on terror. After all, you don’t need Star Wars weapons to fight terrorists.”
“Yeah, a good bullet will do,” Mitch muttered sourly.
“We know this research is still ongoing, because the scientists involved have never surfaced. We can only assume they’re still hard at work. How far they’ve gotten is open to speculation, the security covering this thing is tighter than on the Manhattan Project.”
“So how did you find out about it?”
“By accident. One of our monitoring teams found references to Cold War programs that had simply vanished. That was before they knew we existed. Once we started investigating . . .”
“You drew attention to yourselves.”
Christa nodded. “Now they’re trying to eliminate us.”
“If this morning is any indication, these people know what they’re doing. What about the rest of the intelligence community?”
“Neutralized. Key people have got to be keeping a lid on this thing. We don’t know who, and we don’t know if they’re willing or unwilling. What we do know is that all the usual lines of communication to all of the publicly known intelligence organizations are closed.”
“All of them?”
She nodded.
“That’s incredible.”
“You would normally think it’s impossible. But we’ve been cut off for months now. Quarantined might be a better word.”
Mitch was thoughtful as he struggled to grasp the implications of the entire intelligence community being neutralized. “So what’s the purpose of the research? What are they trying to do with it?”
She hesitated. “That's a difficult question to answer.”
“Why?”
She shook her head, indicating she couldn’t say more.
“Christa, why is it difficult?”
She looked down, almost a hint of embarrassment.
Mitch studied her, perplexed, then it hit him. “You want it? Your people want to get control!”
Her cheeks flushed. “Not for us, not for our organization, not even for the intelligence community. We want it for the country.”
Mitch looked disgusted. “For the country! We’ve already got the most powerful country on Earth. How many more God damned weapons do we need?”
“Mitch, once a technology exists, there’s no going back. If we don’t get control of it, someone else will.”
“Maybe, but how long will it take? Ten years? Fifty? Jeez, it’s the birth of nuclear weapons all over again.”
“It’s got the potential to be more powerful than nuclear weapons. Whoever has this technology will use it, and no one will ever know.”
“That’s nuts. People always know. We bombed Hiroshima, and Nagasaki. You think there was any way the whole world wasn’t going to know about it, even if we wanted to keep it quiet.”
“It’s not a bomb, nothing so crude.”
Mitch calmed himself, silently making up his mind. “Okay Princess, this is the deal. Either you tell me what the hell this thing is, or you’re on your own. I mean it. You and Knightly, and all the eggheads and spooks can go play your cloak and dagger games someplace else, and me and the boys will disappear. And believe me, you won’t find us.”
“You made a deal.”
“Yes, and it’ll be the first one I’ve ever broken, unless you can give me a good reason to help you get control of the world’s next terror weapon.” The look of determination on his face surprised her. “I’m betting Knightly is banking on us big time, so if I walk, he’s in shit city.”
Christa hesitated. “Okay, here it is. Doctor Steinus discovered how to artificially generate what is called an electro neural pulse. ENP for short. It’s a subtle form of directed energy that can modify the electrical pathways of the human brain.”
Mitch watched her, waiting for more. When none came, he looked astonished. “Is that it? No planet killing bomb? No end of the world apocalypse?”
Christa couldn’t mask her frustration. “I knew you wouldn’t understand.”
“I understand. Some asshole in Washington has figured out a way to melt my brain! Hell, I can get that for free, just by watching television!”
“It’s not about melting your brain. What happened to Rayborne was a mistake. It’s not supposed to work like that. But the technology is still so new, as far as we can tell, there's only about a twenty to thirty percent chance of success. When it fails, that happens.”
“When it fails? Rayborne was as good as dead! That’s a pretty damn good anti-personnel weapon, but it’s not exactly Armageddon.”
“It’s not supposed to destroy people’s brains. It’s about mind control, or will be when it’s perfected. It’s very complex, and it doesn’t work on everyone. We have no way of knowing who it works on, and who it doesn’t. But when it fails, you end up like Rayborne, or you end up dead. So they can’t use it whenever they want, at least not yet. It would show their hand if lots of people started having brain hemorrhages.”
Mitch sobered. “Mind control? You’re serious?”
“Brainwashing techniques have been around for a long time. Whether it was religious brainwashing, like in cults, or brainwashing prisoners of war, it’s a proven capability. The difference is now, someone is developing a machine to do it quickly and efficiently. It’s the industrialization of the process. It will mean brainwashing, or mind control, will be possible on a massive scale. And in total secret.”
“Mind control,” Mitch said again, pondering the implications. “Doesn’t really fit with the whole land of the free, home of the brave crap, does it?”
“No, it doesn’t. The thing is, whoever controls this technology, can control . . . well, anything on Earth.”
“So I could make my bookie forgive my debts?” Mitch asked laconically.
Christa locked eyes with Mitch, deadly serious. “Or we could take control of every terrorist leader on Earth, and have them spill their guts, tell us every secret there is. Game over! That’s why we want it.”
“If for a minute, I believe what you say, it’s tough to imagine someone hijacking all this technology.”
“The Star Wars research was highly compartmentalized for security reasons. Move a compartment away here, then one there. Because they were so isolated, no one realized. When our people stumbled on the missing projects, we initially thought it was just some bureaucratic mistake. Then several of our people disappeared and one turned up like Rayborne.”
“They were attempting to seal up the breach in secrecy?”
“Yes. We sent two more people to follow up the investigation, and they ended up severely brain damaged also. We had no idea what they were doing with our people. We thought it was some kind of punishment, or torture. We sent another i
nvestigator, who found nothing, and returned to us unharmed.”
“They went underground?”
“No, they succeeded with him, and that’s when things fell apart. We didn’t realize it then, but each time we’d sent someone to follow up, they used the ENP technology on them. It took a number of attempts on our people before they succeeded. Now they know everything that agent knew.”
“Damn!” Mitch clicked his fingers in a flash of realization. “Knightly said he needed me because he didn’t know who he could trust. I thought it was BS, but he meant it!”
“Yes, he did.”
“You’ve got plenty of people qualified to do this job, but they know too much about your organization, whereas I know nothing. If they got their brains melted and spilled their guts, you’re in deeper trouble than you are already. Whereas, me and my guys know dick about your operation. If we get caught, and they melt our brains, who cares. That’s it, isn’t it? That’s why you guys don’t want to tell us anything.”
Christa nodded. “Yes. I’m sorry, we had no choice. We can’t use our own people.”
“But you’re their ‘people’. What are you doing here?”
“I’m sensitive to the effects of this technology.”
“Yeah, I noticed.”
“No, not like that, not the thing from the helicopter. When someone has had the electrical pathways in their brain altered, it affects the free flow of thoughts and feelings a person has. It’s like when you break your leg, and the doctor uses splints to keep the bone straight and in position. It’s hard to explain, but I can sense those splints. I’m like the canary coal miners used to take into mines to smell the air, telling them it was okay to breath.”
“That’s not a good analogy, Princess. If there was gas, the canary died.”
“I noticed the ‘splints’ first on our agent who became controlled. I didn’t realize it at the time, I’d never sensed anything like that. I just thought he was having emotional problems. But later, when we knew he had changed sides, that’s when I figured it out. By then, he'd already done a lot of damage to us.”
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