by Ward Larsen
“The facility has been shut down,” Benefield said. “Everything was removed.”
“And the team?”
“They’re all aware of META’s termination, and everyone will get a well-deserved severance package.”
They arrived at the restaurant fifteen minutes later. It was no surprise to Patel that the general had shunned Restaurant Ville in favor of something called Brandeis Schlossbräu, a beer house in the Baumgarten district. In spite of the chill evening air, Benefield asked to sit outside in the garden. Patel sat in a wooden chair beneath rows of carriage lamps that had been strung on wires. He didn’t complain when Benefield ordered beers for them both, and they arrived tall and frothing in the hands of a buxom waitress. Dinner was two slabs of beef that came on platters, sizzling with the smell of fat, and a heavy carving knife protruded from each like some medieval invitation.
Only then did Benefield finally get around to business. “You have the abort commands?”
Patel had his carving knife in hand, hovering over the set of ribs as if planning an assault. He set down the knife, pulled the hotel notepad from his pocket, and handed it over. The general flipped through, glancing at all three pages, then put them carefully in his pocket. More food arrived, the same waitress delivering a plate of sausage and sauerkraut to be shared. The two men suffered through challenged conversation for the course of the meal, Patel doing his best to deflect Benefield’s ill-informed technical questions. There was more beer, but thankfully no coffee or dessert, and at the end Benefield again picked up the check. Soon they were back in the Land Rover, Patel gorged with meat and beer, and sulking in the passenger seat.
“Have you seen much of Austria since you arrived?” Benefield asked.
“Hardly.”
“That’s too bad. It’s a beautiful country, and who knows when you might come here again.”
Patel saw a sign indicating that the A1, which would take them back to town, was one kilometer ahead. A bridge in front of them was backlit by moonlight, the high span arching gracefully between twin buttresses. Benefield suddenly veered the Rover off the road. He steered onto a gravel path but kept his speed up, and soon they were enveloped by darkness, the headlights flickering white over the forest ahead.
“What are you doing?” asked Patel.
“There’s something I want you to see, Atif.”
Patel looked outside, and the forest fell away. To one side he saw the fast-moving waters of a river. The only lights he saw were upstream, a row of streetlights at least a mile distant. Benefield pulled the Rover to a crunching stop on the gravel path. Patel looked squarely at a grinning Benefield, and was about to say something when the general interrupted with, “I’m sorry, Atif. This is not the end I envisioned for our mission, but it’s the only way.”
The window at Patel’s shoulder lowered, and he instinctively turned. A man appeared out of nowhere, a hulking figure dressed in a dark greatcoat. His arm swung up, and Patel instantly saw the long barrel of a silenced handgun. He shrank back into his seat.
It took only one shot from such close range, but of course there was a second for insurance. The killer was, after all, a professional. In no more than thirty seconds the body was in the water, carrying downstream and bounding off the occasional rock. The Rover began its steady climb back toward the A1 with the assassin in the passenger seat.
28
They worked through that afternoon, searching their respective databases. Lund took a law enforcement slant, but the hotel’s open internet connection was useless for accessing the secure networks she typically relied upon. That being the case, she began making phone calls to friends. DeBolt dove into the black pool of his mind, the depth and breadth of which was still undefined. He continued to make adjustments, organizing his thoughts for concise requests. For all its utility, META gave nothing on itself, which seemed a paradox of sorts. It was like a Google search on the word “Google” coming up empty.
Lund hung up after a lengthy phone conversation.
“So who was that?” he asked.
“A Coast Guard friend at the Pentagon.”
“The Coast Guard is under Homeland Security—since when do we keep an office in the Pentagon?”
“It hasn’t happened since World War II, but in times of war the DOD can assume control of the Coast Guard. So yes, we have a presence in the Pentagon.”
“Okay—so what did your friend say?”
“I had her look into the META Project. She actually found a listing for it under DARPA, the DOD’s research arm.”
“I’ve heard of DARPA.”
“Yeah, so have I. They work on cutting edge stuff. But my friend hit a roadblock after that. There were no details at all on the project, it’s totally black. Did you have any luck?”
“On META? No. In fact, I think I’ve only done one search that got me less information.”
“What was that?”
“Me—I input my name and discovered I wasn’t authorized access to myself.”
DeBolt was sitting on one of the beds, and she stared at him from across the room. “How weird is that—you can get intel on anybody in the world except yourself?”
“Apparently.”
Lund got up and stretched. “So how long do we stay bunkered up here?”
“Until we have something to go on, something that gives us direction. At least one night, I guess. After that we should probably move.”
“Move? How?”
“I bought a Buick.”
“A Buick.” Lund stared at him. She seemed about to ask for an explanation, but instead only sighed. “I need some fresh air. I think I’ll go outside.”
“Need a cigarette?”
“How did you know that? Checking my credit card purchases, or maybe what my doctor wrote in my medical records?”
“There’s a pack of Marlboros on the table—it fell out of your purse.”
She looked and saw them. “Oh, right. Well, the thing is, they ding you two hundred dollars if you smoke in your room.”
“Only if they catch you. But I get it. I’m feeling a little caged up too. Want some company?”
“Sure.”
* * *
Five minutes later they were walking a winding path across the commons in front of the hotel. The wind was coming from the east, steady and brisk, and the heavy scent of the sea mocked their urban surroundings. It reminded Lund of Kodiak, only on a far larger scale. She lit up a cigarette, then held out the pack to DeBolt. To her surprise, he took one.
“You smoke?”
“Can’t stand it. But I light up once a year to remind myself why. Usually in a bar somewhere after a few beers.”
She handed over her lighter, and DeBolt lit up with the deftness of a middle-schooler in a bathroom stall.
Lund said, “This system you have to get information—do you realize how many laws it must break? Not to mention the ethical and privacy issues.”
“If I’ve learned anything in the last few days it’s that there is no privacy—not in today’s world.”
They walked in silence for a time, until he pulled to a stop under an elm whose leaves had gone yellow. “Tell me something. Did you talk to any of the guys in my unit … I mean, after the helo accident?”
“About you?”
He took an awkward pull on the cigarette. “Actually, I was thinking more about Tony, Tom, Mikey—the rest of my crew. The guys who didn’t make it.”
“No, not really. But then, I don’t mix a lot with operational types. Why do you ask?”
“I guess I just wonder what everyone was saying. We were tight, and that’s a lot for a small unit to handle.”
“Yeah, I’m sure it was hard. But don’t forget, as far as anybody in Kodiak knows, there were four fatalities.”
He said nothing.
“There was a memorial service at the chapel. Pretty much everybody on the station came. Even me, and I stopped having conversations with God a long time ago.”
“Me too.
But times like that … they make you wish you were better, don’t they?”
“You mean more religious?”
He didn’t give an answer, but instead looked at her squarely, and said, “Why are you here, Shannon?”
“Because you convinced me over a cup of coffee this morning that you’re in trouble. And given the nature of it—that took some serious convincing.”
“That’s not what I mean. Why did you come in the first place? I’m an enlisted guy who’s technically AWOL. You should probably have me in custody right now. What made you drop everything, buy a ticket to fly across the country, and try to rescue somebody you’d only met once?”
She tried to think of a good answer. “That day, when we talked at the Golden Anchor … I don’t know. I guess I liked you.” She took a deep draw on her cigarette, then said, “No, it was more than that—I believed in you, Trey. I’d heard a lot about rescue swimmers, but you were the first one I got to know. I liked the way you talked about your job, as if it was no big deal. You put your life at risk for others. That’s a noble thing. Honestly, on the day that helo went down … I prayed it wasn’t you.”
“See? There it is again. Praying, but only when you need it.”
“Actually…,” she hesitated mightily, “there was something else. I did a little more than pray.”
He turned to face her, and she saw the unspoken question.
Lund pulled to a stop, but found herself looking at the ground as she explained. “You see … they put out the word at the station that you’d survived the crash, but were in desperate need of a blood transfusion. You weren’t going to make it without one, and they didn’t have any stock of—”
“O-negative,” he said, finally seeing it. “A pretty rare blood type.”
“So I’ve been told.”
DeBolt stood looking at her.
“They took me into your room to do it. You were unconscious, really beat up. You looked so different from the first time I saw you, and…” Lund’s words trailed off there.
He turned away and seemed to study an airplane taking off in the distance. After the roar of its engines died down, he said, “Thanks, Shannon.”
Lund grinned, then contemplated her Marlboro. It was only half gone, but all the same she dropped it on the sidewalk and twisted her toe over the remainder. “You’re welcome.”
* * *
Found early the next morning by a man walking his schnauzer, the body was stuck in a stand of aquatic weeds behind a small private school along a minor tributary of Vienna’s Wien River. The police were quick to arrive and cordon off the scene, and quicker yet to realize that the two bullet holes in the victim’s forehead were an assured marker of foul play.
The medical examiner was equally prompt, and he went about his responsibilities with the utmost of care. He recorded the scene meticulously, took DNA samples, and ascertained that aside from the two bullets, all remaining damage to the victim, which was considerable, was likely attributable to the body colliding with rocks in the river since the time of death—between nine o’clock and midnight yesterday evening. Everyone’s work was procedurally sound, and undertaken with the highest degree of professionalism. In truth, quietly more so than in most investigations, this due to the fact that the victim’s identity had been ascertained in the opening minutes. The responding officer had found a passport and wallet in the victim’s pockets. Four photo IDs, three government issued, left no room for doubt.
By ten that morning, the body of General Karl Benefield, United States Army, had been placed securely in the provincial morgue. The United States embassy was discreetly notified.
29
The killer sitting in front of Patel spilled out of a chair that was much too small for his bulk. He was an enormous man, tall and broad-shouldered, a feral counterpoint to Patel’s own stature. He was presently seated behind a desk, his arms crossed over each other like fireplace logs as he concentrated on the lesson Patel had given him today. He was a notoriously slow reader, yet absorbed a surprisingly high percentage of the material. At the very least, his concentration never ebbed. He was perhaps the only man Patel had ever known whose will was greater than his own.
Until three months ago he had been assigned to the First Marine Raider Battalion, the Marine Corps’ lesser-known counterpart to the Navy’s SEAL program. He was thoroughly trained in irregular warfare, and within his tactical squad he was—no surprise to anyone who knew him—a close-quarters combat specialist. Or as his commander had put it so succinctly in a training report, This is the last man on earth you want to make angry inside a closet.
He’d had a sterling military record before his misfortunes—plural because there had been two. The first was three years ago in Iraq. The small reconnaissance team he’d been leading had uncovered a cache of artillery shells in a shed outside Fallujah, and when the unit’s EOD specialist extracted one for inspection it began to leak gas. Of the three members of the squad exposed to the vapor, two were dead within a year. Patel’s killer, however, had survived, albeit with one aberration: he no longer had a hair on his body, every single follicle having dropped off-line. No eyebrows, no whiskers, nothing on his head or chest or arms. Complete alopecia, and something the doctors had never been able to explain. Not that it really mattered—shaved heads were all the rage. For its part, the Marine Corps was delighted to have such a lethal individual back, and they deployed him straight back into the field, rather like a howitzer with a new wheel.
The more serious setback had occurred the previous January when the dirt bike he was riding, somewhere near the Iraq–Syria border, struck a concealed IED. By witness accounts he was thrown thirty feet into the air, and the mere fact that he’d survived was a testament to recent advances in battlefield medicine. Survival, however, is not an outcome in itself. He spent two months in a coma before his family authorized the machines to be turned off. It was then, during that narrow window of administrative limbo when paperwork was being run and final arrangements made, that the gunnery sergeant was paid a visit by Dr. Abel Badenhorst. After a review of the case—in particular, an extensive series of brain MRI’s—Badenhorst thought the patient an ideal candidate for META’s experiments.
And indeed he had been.
The huge man turned around, his face as expressionless as ever. He handed Patel a yellow Post-it note on which he’d scrawled: I understand all of this except the satellite link.
Patel said, “You don’t have enough effective radiated power to connect to a satellite, but certain GSM repeaters may work.”
He thought about it, scribbled again, and handed over a second Post-it: How can I find these repeaters?
“Do a standard search for available signals. They should show up on the map with a red R.”
More scribbling: Can I get more power?
“No, you can’t,” said Patel. “The human brain runs on twelve watts of power, roughly one-third the requirement of a refrigerator lightbulb. Your power sources are nanowire fuel cells, catalyzed from enzymes that occur naturally in your body. Transmissions are the most demanding, so they’re compiled and sent in a burst format. You’ll always have modest limitations, but if you manage your requests with care, in particular by staggering the outbound caches, power should never be a problem.”
He seemed to absorb it all, then nodded and turned back to his studies, his anvil-like head bowing over the notes.
Like an amputee learning how to manipulate an artificial limb, Delta was making good progress. His brain was adapting, translating thoughts into electrical impulses and thereby connecting to META. As far as Patel knew, the man had but one limitation—he’d completely lost his capacity for speech. There was the occasional grunt to get attention, a few mumbled consonants now and again, but any aptitude to form words had simply left him.
Atypically, he displayed no concurrent language problems. He expressed ideas in writing as concisely as ever, and had no trouble understanding what Patel told him—all, at least, within preexisting
limitations. Patel and Badenhorst had performed dozens of cognitive evaluations on their subject, who’d been META’s first survivor. He had above average intellect, particularly—as Badenhorst was fond of jesting—for a Marine. The two of them had tried diligently to determine the source of the speech impairment, thinking it critical to distinguish whether the loss was a consequence of the explosion or something gone wrong in the implantation process. They’d sent the results of their tests to a number of specialists, necessarily holding back any images that displayed the neural implants, and without fail keeping secret their patient’s identity. As it turned out, Badenhorst had not lived long enough to see the responses to those inquiries. Patel had. And they suited him perfectly.
He watched the man study his notes, concentration evident in his hunched posture. He’d spent most of the morning in the hotel fitness center, which given his build was presumably a lifelong pursuit. He was slightly over six feet tall, but twice the width of a normal man, raw power in every pink, hairless limb. He reminded Patel of some great pelagic fish, a creature that spent its whole life moving and hunting in an endless blue void, never seeing the sky above or the bottom below—the place where it would inevitably come to rest.
Patel tried to recall his name. He’d seen it once, months ago, shortly after the first surgery. Gunnery Sergeant Thomas Something-or-other. It hardly mattered. Gunny Something-or-other would never use that name again. From this point forward, there would be only false identities, and those would change on a regular basis. Patel never bothered to keep up with them, and the reason was clear. The two of them had embarked on a journey together, one that had no return ticket. So intertwined, Patel had taken to referring to the former Marine by the only constant—his identifier from the META Project.
Of course, even that was a bit of a misnomer, as the sequencing of their test subjects had fast gone astray. The Marine had been the third subject operated on, but the first trail of Badenhorst’s novel implantation techniques. The first two procedures had been complete failures, Charley not surviving the surgery, and Alpha never recovering brain activity. But then, finally, success.