“Now you’re getting the picture.”
“Yeah. I could be pretty formidable. With a little time to set myself up in some hidden evil lair and gather my minions around me, I could be . . . Well, I could be— ”
“A veritable one-man army,” Megan finished for him. “You could give Superman a run for his money.”
Hall grinned. “He’d still kick my ass in a fight, though.”
“Maybe. But you could rob him blind, learn his secret identity as Clark, and call in an air strike on him.” She raised her eyebrows. “Kryptonite-laced missiles?”
Hall laughed, and then excused himself to make use of one of the Glandons’ bathrooms. His expression was somber when he returned. “Now I know why someone might choose to kill me rather than capture me. I’m potentially very dangerous. But you have to wonder if I’m already the bad guy here. What if I did set up an evil lair somewhere and the men after me—at least the people pulling their strings—are trying to stop me for noble reasons. Like if the Joker wakes up one day without a memory and wonders why this evil Batman dude is trying so hard to kill an innocent guy like him.”
“I don’t believe that for a second,” said Megan, shaking her head vigorously.
Hall looked unconvinced. “Why not?”
“You’d make the worst supervillain ever,” she said. “You don’t know anything about weapons. You risked your life to save someone you didn’t know. And while fighting for survival, you’re determined to repay a few hundred dollars to some paramedics as soon as you can.”
Hall sighed. “I hope you’re right,” he said. “You have no idea how much I hope you’re right.”
Megan had meant what she had told him earlier. She really did believe that when all was said and done, only experience with a person could give you a sense of their spirit—their values, their dreams, their demeanor, and their sense of humor. And she had already gotten a strong sense of Hall’s spirit. So much so that she was willing to bet her life that he wasn’t the bad guy in these proceedings.
She swallowed hard as she realized that she couldn’t bet her life on this.
Because she already had.
17
Colonel Justin Girdler entered his office, as he did on most Saturday mornings. And Sunday mornings as well. He was in the middle of more important projects than he could manage in two lifetimes, but he guessed this went with the territory.
The colonel had been head of PsyOps for six years before being asked a year earlier to do the same from the Black Ops side of things, which he supposed suggested a certain level of trust in his judgment.
He had to admit it was a great change of pace. The projects were more interesting, on the whole, and his power was virtually unlimited. Being completely off the radar did have its advantages. First and foremost among these was not having to suffer the ridicule he knew many poorly informed members of the military heaped on him and his unit behind his back.
PsyOps used to have a glamor to it. An intimidating, nefarious connotation. You really couldn’t find a cooler sounding name, even though many of its responsibilities were pretty mundane. It stood for Psychological Operations, under the purview of special forces. It dealt in deception and mob psychology, among other things, to sow dissension in the ranks of the enemy, lower morale, and exploit psychological weaknesses, although he had heard the term “mind fuck” used in conjunction with his group on more than one occasion.
The great Chinese strategist and tactician Sun Tzu had probably been the father of PsyOps, and Girdler had made everyone in his command memorize what he believed to be a central tenant of PsyOps, written by Sun Tzu thousands of years earlier:
All warfare is based on deception. Hence, when able to attack, we must seem unable; when using our forces, we must seem inactive; when we are near, we must make the enemy believe we are far away; and when far away, we must make him believe we are near.
And even though fictional, the Greek’s use of a wooden horse to breach an enemy’s defenses was a striking example of the power of a simple PsyOps mission; one that had ended the ten-year siege of Troy.
In popular culture, psi, with an “i,” stood for psychic phenomenon. It stood for the paranormal. For parapsychology. Psy with a “y,” on the other hand, was just plain old psychology. PsyOps: Psychological Operations.
Yet many had come to believe the military spelled its Psy with an “i,” especially after the turn of the century when the organization had been painted as a bunch of loons, helped along by books and movies such as The Men Who Stare At Goats. This movie may have been the single biggest public relations blow PsyOps had ever been dealt, and had the military of a hostile country wanted to conduct their own PsyOps mission to hurt the standing of America’s PsyOps branch, they could not have done a more impressive job than releasing this film.
So in 2010, PsyOps had been renamed, for the stated reasons of making the name more user friendly, more descriptive, and less intimidating at home and abroad. The group officially became Military Information Support Operations, or MISO—and jokes about Japanese soup abounded—although, after all this time, the new name still hadn’t been fully adopted, since PsyOps personnel tended to hate it.
Colonel Girdler had disliked the name change as well. But having been high up in the organization at the time, though not quite yet its head, he had to publicly pretend otherwise, something he had detested. He and his group found ways to exploit the political nature of those they opposed on the world stage, but he personally hated politics. Which was one of the reasons moving over to Black Ops had been so appealing. The less accountability, the fewer political games that needed to be played.
He was sipping his second cup of coffee at his desk, having spent the first several hours of the morning with his nose buried in printed briefings, when Maggie, his PDA, interrupted him. “Colonel Girdler, you’ve been forwarded an eyes-only e-mail message, marked urgent. Please acknowledge.”
“Acknowledged,” said Girdler. “Forwarded by whom?”
“No human has seen this message yet, Colonel,” replied Maggie’s flawless female voice pleasantly, “so there is no whom. But there is a what. It was forwarded by the NSA’s Expert System in Fort Meade.”
“Very interesting,” mumbled the colonel to himself. “Did Nessie forward it to anyone else?”
“NSA’s Expert System forwarded it to you as the primary recipient,” replied his PDA, her programming not allowing her to use the computer’s nickname unless Girdler instructed her to do so. “Major General Nelson Sobol was cc’d. No one else received it.”
This was unusual, thought Girdler. Nessie had obviously intercepted the original message and decided to limit the group who received it to only two people, him and Sobol. Nelson Sobol was his boss, although Girdler rarely reported to him and functioned almost entirely autonomously. But Sobol was technically in charge of all American Black Ops units around the globe, and while his job didn’t officially exist, only a handful of people on earth wielded as much power as he did.
“So when you said no human has seen the message, you just meant that Sobol hasn’t read it yet?”
“Correct, General Sobol has yet to acknowledge receipt. And given that he is at his annual three-day retreat with high-ranking members of Congress and the military, this status may not soon change.”
The colonel smiled, reflecting once again how lucky he was. Sobol could have his power, but Girdler would rather have acid poured in his eyes than attend a retreat like the one his boss was at now.
“Would you like me to read the message to you?” asked Maggie.
“No. But put its history on screen.”
He glanced at the data now on his monitor. The e-mail message in question had been sent two mornings earlier to a Fresno, California police hotline, and to thirty-eight high level civilian and military leaders in such agencies as the NSA, FBI, CIA, and HSA; to publicly disclosed e-mail addresses in each case. Colonel Justin Girdler had not been among the intended recipients.
But the message had obviously undergone a major change in status since this time. The colonel was tempted to ask Maggie what had prompted the change, but he decided to read it first before digging any further.
“Maggie, display the message please.”
The e-mail message appeared on his screen below the background information Maggie had already placed there.
From: Nick Hall
Subject: Urgent, life in jeopardy
I awoke this morning in a locked warehouse without any memory of who I am, hearing voices in my head. I may be insane, in which case I’m only imagining sending this message. If you receive this then I am not insane. A man was here when I awoke, and he left ten minutes later, but I was able to read his mind. Not just read, but fish anything out of it I wanted to. I know how all of this sounds. But bear with me.
Girdler looked up from the screen and barely suppressed a groan. Are you shitting me, he thought angrily. He had read somewhere that more than half a percent of the population was schizophrenic, which amounted to well over two million people in America alone. And the colonel was pretty sure he had heard from every last one of them.
But this message had been delivered by the NSA’s top computer, which integrated data from thousands of government, military, and civilian sources. It was also the most advanced computer ever built, and its software had been allowed to evolve itself to maximize efficiency. It weighed countless pieces of data and countless probabilities to reach its decisions.
Even so, it almost seemed like the computer was playing a practical joke on him. If it were April first he would have been sure of it. Sure, send the message from the ESP nutcase to the head of Black PsyOps. Very amusing.
It was true that PsyOps had once experimented with parapsychology, but enough educated people believed there was something to it that it would have been malpractice for the military not to at least have attempted to investigate this area. But they had abandoned these projects years ago, even though the ridicule they had sparked still remained.
But this wasn’t a practical joke. Because the NSA’s Expert System didn’t make mistakes. Not mistakes this big. There had to be more to this than met the eye. But what?
There was only one way to find out. As silly as he felt, he needed to finish reading, and then ask Maggie why the most impressive computer system ever built was suddenly taking this crazy message seriously enough to warrant his urgent attention.
18
Megan Emerson waited impatiently for the hostess to seat a young family.
“A table for two, please,” she said when the woman returned. “I have a friend coming to meet me.”
The hostess, a tall brunette, led her to a table, while Megan concentrated on counting diners. The four-star restaurant was small, dark, and cozy, and several blocks from any other concentration of people, which was ideal for their needs. Megan thanked the hostess, sat facing the door, and took a proffered menu that said, The Maple Terrace, and under this, Award-Winning Fine Dining.
“How’s it going in there?” came Hall’s telepathic thought.
“I need a few more minutes,” she replied. A waitress brought her a glass of water with a lemon slice already in it, which was a pet peeve of hers. Even when she specifically requested no lemon, half the time she got it anyway.
When the waitress left, Megan rose from the table and walked the short distance to the kitchen, barging in before anyone could stop her. A young woman with her hair tied back into a bun, wearing a white chef jacket, looked up from where she was plating a piece of salmon covered in glazed walnuts and spinach. To the chef’s left, a single busboy was placing a drink order on a tray.
“Can I help you?” said the chef, looking perturbed. “Customers really aren’t supposed to come back here,” she admonished.
“Sorry about that,” said Megan. “I was looking for the restroom.”
A quizzical expression came over the chef’s face, as though she couldn’t believe anyone could be so stupid as to confuse the kitchen with the restroom, especially in a restaurant that was so small and had only a single dining area.
Megan apologized and quickly headed back to her table, stopping at the restroom along the way to be sure no one was inside.
As she was reseating herself she broadcast to Hall. “Okay, I’ve got the count.”
“Good. So I’m reading eighteen people, including you.”
“That’s right,” she replied with a smile. “There’s a waitress and hostess in the main restaurant, and a busboy and cook in the kitchen. Along with me and thirteen other customers, that makes eighteen. How far away are you?”
“The odometer says I’m exactly a half mile.”
“Have you noticed any loss of ah . . . intensity?”
“None. And while I can detect the usual babble from all around, I can focus in and detect individuals in the restaurant in isolation of the others.” There was a pause. “I’m going to go out to two miles.”
After their conversation in the family room of their borrowed home, at Megan’s encouragement, they had tried numerous experiments under the category of, “What other tricks might Nick Hall be able to do?” He had complained the entire time that he felt like a total idiot, but he had been a good subject and had given it his all.
In the end, they were unable to discover a single new ability. He couldn’t move anything through telekinesis. He had strained until Megan thought the veins in his neck would burst, but he couldn’t even get a piece of facial tissue to move a hair.
He couldn’t start a fire with his mind, which wasn’t surprising after his failure at telekinesis. He tried teleportation for fifteen minutes. Nothing. Levitation. Nothing. Transmutation. The same. Megan had brought in a black ant on a stick from the yard, but try as he might, he wasn’t able to kill it with his mind, or even slow it down.
Then, getting inspiration from the X-Men, Megan had forged a tin-foil helmet several layers thick for Hall to wear, but it hadn’t stopped the voices swirling in his head in the slightest. She wanted to try lead as well, and he agreed that the next time they came across a bank vault or other lead-lined room, he would do the experiment. No matter how ridiculous he might feel by the attempt, no one was more eager to find a way to turn off the voices than he was.
“I’m two miles out,” broadcast Hall. “I’m still reading eighteen people. And they still seem to be the same intensity.” There was a pause. “Are you still reading me telepathically as clearly as before?”
She told him that she was. They continued their range-finding mission with great success. They learned that their ability to communicate telepathically ended rather abruptly at just over five miles.
With respect to others, Hall’s ability to pick up the thoughts of the people in the restaurant was lost at between six and ten miles, with most dropping off his radar at six or seven, and only one managing to hang in there until mile ten. Before the experiment had begun, they had bought untraceable, disposable cell phones, which allowed them to communicate after Hall was out of telepathic range.
Hall finally joined her at the restaurant, a little more than an hour after she had arrived. When the waitress approached to take their order, Hall tried one further experiment. He thought the word stop at her, at the top of his mental lungs.
“Did you hear that?” said Megan to the waitress. “I could have sworn I heard someone say stop. But I’m not sure from where.”
The waitress looked genuinely perplexed. “I didn’t hear a thing,” she said.
“Oh my god, there’s a tarantula on your arm,” Hall thought hard at the waitress for good measure.
The woman calmly thanked them for their order and left.
“Well, Megan, it’s looking like you’re one of a rare breed who can read my directed thoughts. I tried to reach seve
ral other people telepathically while I was on the road, also, with no luck.”
He sighed. “I’m beginning to think that maybe you’re more wired for ESP than average, rather than less. Maybe part of it is that your mind is just naturally able to block me. Instinctively. Like a Venus fly trap that closes when it feels a touch.”
Megan shrugged. “Maybe. But if so, I have no conscious awareness of it.”
There was a long silence, during which Hall seemed lost in thought. “Who knows,” he mused finally, almost to himself. “Maybe you’ve got some Neanderthal DNA in you somewhere.”
“What’s that supposed to mean? Are you saying I look like a Neanderthal? Or that I’m as dumb as a Neanderthal?”
Whoops, thought Hall. “Sorry,” he said, wincing. “I wasn’t saying either of those things. I mean, you’re super petite. Nobody looks more like a Homo sapiens than you do. And you’re obviously very bright,” he added for good measure.
“Nobody looks more like a Homo sapiens than me?” she repeated. “Wow. That’s one I’ve never heard before. You really know how to flatter a girl,” she added wryly, her eyes sparkling in amusement.
Hall couldn’t help but smile. Whoever he was, he knew one thing for sure: he wasn’t very smooth with women. “Let me explain. I told you I researched ESP last night at the poker table, when I wasn’t in a hand.”
“Go on,” said Megan. He didn’t need to read minds to know she was wondering what this had to do with Neanderthals.
“I came across a fascinating blog that postulated that Neanderthals had psi powers. Before Neanderthals went extinct, they shared the globe with Homo sapiens. For well over a hundred thousand years. Although they were geographically separated for most of this time, with Homo sapiens inhabiting Africa, and Neanderthals Europe and Asia. There are a number of theories about what happened to them. But many years back, a science fiction writer named Ben Bova wrote a novel called Orion. Apparently, in the novel, Bova wrote about a meeting between the narrator, a human, who had traveled back in time, and a group of Neanderthals. I read a fascinating passage from the book that really got me thinking.”
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