To Megan, he added telepathically, “When we leave, you two can go first, so I can reset the alarm and return the key to its hiding place.”
“You really think these people won’t know someone was in their home?” said Altschuler.
“They may notice some things out of place. Scratch their heads over some missing food. But trust me, they’ll eventually convince themselves they’re misremembering these details, since no other explanation could possibly make any sense.”
“Maybe they’ll think they had a poltergeist,” said Megan dryly.
The corners of Nick Hall’s mouth were beginning to turn up into a smile when they abruptly reversed course.
Hall gasped and sank to the ground.
He held his head in both hands, and his eyes appeared to bulge from their sockets.
The antidote had taken effect all at once. And like a wall of snow barreling down a mountain during an avalanche, his memories, his knowledge of himself and his past, came crashing down into his mind.
It was almost too much for him to handle, and he continued to reel from this terrible blow for several seconds.
“Nick?” said Megan worriedly.
Hall finally took a deep breath and picked himself up off the ground, rising to his full height. He had managed to absorb the blow and his mind had now righted itself.
His memories had returned! He didn’t even have the need to search them. He knew who he was.
“I’m back,” he whispered, and tears began to roll down his face.
He had been living a nightmare. Even he hadn’t realized how emotionally traumatic it had been to live without a past, without an identity, with his sense of self stripped totally away.
Megan gave him a warm hug. “I’m so thrilled for you, Nick,” she said, her eyes moistening as well.
“Thank God,” whispered Altschuler, and Hall could read in his mind how glad he was to be able to undo the damage suffered by at least one member of the Explorer expedition. “So it all came back? You remember everything?”
“Everything,” replied Hall happily.
But then a puzzled expression came over his face and he looked away. A few seconds later he looked back and said, “Well, almost everything.”
Nick Hall blew out a long breath. “There does seem to be this one little gap. . . ”
Part Two
“The dead keep their secrets. And in a while we shall be as wise as they.”
—Alexander Smith
“Who are you? Why do you hide in the darkness and listen to my private thoughts?”
― Juliet, from Romeo and Juliet, (modern translation)
30
Colonel Justin Girdler rushed up to the small military helicopter that had just landed inside Fort Bragg, a TH-67 Creek, ignoring the wind that blasted his salt-and-pepper hair as though he were in a wind tunnel. He shook the hand of the man who jumped out of the helo, his second-in-command, Major Mike Campbell—a man he had handpicked for this position, ruffling more than a few feathers by jumping him over others who had served longer.
Campbell was in his mid-thirties and almost seemed like a son to Girdler—the son he should have had. His own son, who had been born when Girdler was in his late thirties, was graduating high school with spiked green hair, tattoos and piercings covering his entire body, and no future.
Justin Girdler was disappointed in his only child. But more than this, he had deep feelings of guilt, believing that the path his son was on was largely his fault. Divorced. Rarely at home during the boy’s formative years. And worse still, a psychologist by training. He was the head of PsyOps after all. There was a saying he had heard on occasion: show me a shrink’s kid, and I’ll show you a fucked up mess. In his experience this was largely true. Even worse if the poor bastard in question was the kid of a child psychologist. At least his own son hadn’t had this cross to bear.
“I appreciate you coming in person for this one,” said Girdler.
“Not at all, Colonel. Of all the unusual shit we’ve been involved with, this has to take the cake. Worth a two-hour helo ride.”
In their line of work, it wasn’t unusual to be working on a Sunday morning, but Girdler appreciated Campbell’s attitude nonetheless. He could have had Campbell teleconference in, but he liked the personal touch. And he hadn’t seen the major in weeks now as their responsibilities seemed to have drawn them in opposite directions.
Girdler also wanted his second back at Fort Bragg so the major could man the main office while Girdler flew to Edwards Air Force Base, which happened to be just ninety miles outside of Bakersfield, where he also maintained an office. Girdler had no doubt Nick Hall had left Bakersfield behind since the time his fingerprints were found, but going to the last known location of one’s quarry was sound operating procedure.
Even if the man they were seeking had fled into the heart of the country, with the colonel in California and Campbell in North Carolina, one of them should be fairly close—at least measured in distances that could be covered quickly by military aircraft. In the days of electronics connecting people in numerous ways and flawless 3-D teleconferencing, which was now as simple to implement as a phone call used to be, geographical proximity was not as important as it once was.
But Campbell wasn’t sure if he fully embraced this development. He had read a short story when he was a kid about a future in which a teleportation device had been invented that had become as ubiquitous as the telephone. It was a miracle of technology, but the twist to the story was that it caused an increase in suicides.
Why? Because you could never get away from people you were desperate to get away from. Your ex-wife. Your mother-in-law, who could pop over for a quick lunch every day, no matter how many thousands of miles away you moved. When you could travel anywhere instantaneously, every person on earth was as good as your neighbor. Perfect 3-D teleconferencing was moving the world in this direction.
Colonel Girdler drove the major a half mile away to a private conference room with the highest level of security on the base, which was saying a lot. Bragg was home to the US Army Special Operations Command, of which PsyOps was a part. Now that Girdler headed the Black Ops version, he could base wherever he wanted, and in fact had offices at several military installations around the country, which he shared with Campbell—including the one at Edwards.
Major General Nelson Sobol’s 3-D image appeared on a thin screen that hung on the conference room wall, right on schedule. The general was inching toward the finish line of his endless off-site retreat, and Girdler could sense right away that he was in a foul mood. Perfectly understandable. But still unfortunate.
“Gentlemen,” said Sobol in greeting, nodding to Girdler and Campbell in turn. That was it for the pleasantries, as the general immediately asked for a status report on the Hall situation.
Girdler gestured at his second-in-command to begin.
“I’ll keep this short and to the point,” said Campbell, also sensing Sobol’s less than optimal mood. “If there is anything on which you would like elaboration, General, just let me know.”
Sobol gave a curt nod to acknowledge that this was understood.
“We began by investigating the warehouse described in the message. It was quite large, as Hall had indicated: twenty-five thousand square feet. It had also been cleaned out, and then torched, the day after Hall’s putative message was sent. A very professional, high-heat, high-intensity fire.”
While Campbell spoke, Girdler sent several photographs of the warehouse, inside and out, and the surrounding area to the corner of both their monitor and the general’s.
“How do we know it was cleaned out?” said the General.
“We found two witnesses—not easy to do, as Hall was right about the place being isolated—who saw several men loading up a moving van with items from the warehouse. Mostly chairs, beds, and interlocking steel panels.”
“I’m sure your witnesses didn’t get a count,” said Sobol, “but if you had to guess, would you g
uess there were twenty-seven beds?”
Girdler nodded. “There are alternative hypotheses to cover this, but this information is consistent with the warehouse being separated into twenty-seven . . . sleeping quarters would be a polite way to phrase it,” he said. “But a prison cell is a prison cell. So while this isn’t absolute confirmation, it is . . .”
“Consistent. Yeah, I get it. Go on.”
“We haven’t found the location of the incinerator spoken of in the message,” continued Campbell. “Yet. But we did find trace amounts of blood in the warehouse’s parking lot and a thin trail of gasoline beginning about fifty feet away from the blood residue,” he added, while Girdler highlighted the location of the blood and line of gasoline on one of the photos on the monitor.
“The blood workup came back two hours ago,” said Girdler. “The blood belonged to a man named Billie Peterson, the same name Hall mentioned in his message. Peterson is a mercenary with special forces training. Got drummed out because there were questions about whether he was overzealous in his use of force.”
Sobol nodded, almost imperceptibly, at the mention of Peterson, a man who had figured so prominently in Hall’s message, but his expression never changed.
“Assuming we can believe everything in Hall’s message,” continued Girdler, “and the warehouse and Peterson have certainly been borne out, there is an obvious scenario that would account for what we found.”
Sobol nodded slowly as he considered what scenario would best fit the data.
“Right,” he said after a few seconds of thought. “Peterson takes Hall to his car in the lot to drive him to where the incinerator is. He thinks he’s luring him there, like a helpless sheep to the slaughter, with promises of information, not knowing that Hall is aware this is a ruse. But Hall turns the tables, using his mind reading ability to get the jump on him. Who knows, maybe he slams the car door into Peterson, bends over and gets a large rock, whatever. But I’m guessing you would have told me if you found Hall’s blood. So somehow Hall bests this guy, who is ten times more capable than he is.”
“Right,” said Campbell. “Which is consis—supports the idea that Hall is smart and that this ESP might be real. Real enough to compensate for unequal skills.”
“Then Hall steals Peterson’s car and races off,” continued the general. “Peterson is injured, but gets a shot off, puncturing the gas tank, and leaving a trail of gas behind the car. Since gas tanks only explode in the movies, Hall drives on until he runs out of gas. Which still could have taken a while, depending on the location of the puncture.”
“That’s the reconstruction of events we tend to find most probable,” said Girdler.
“Find the car yet?”
“No,” replied the colonel. “Not surprisingly. Anybody who could pull off something like the Scripps Explorer would clean up after themselves whenever they could. The way they sanitized the warehouse is a good example.”
“Remind me of the name of this mastermind Hall fingered?” asked Sobol.
“John Delamater,” said Campbell.
“Right. Anything on him?”
“Nothing,” replied the major. “It’s almost certainly an alias. It didn’t light up any of the computers.”
“Our best guess is that the car ran out of gas in Bakersfield,” said Girdler. “Assuming, of course, that our analysis is on track. Which may well not be the case.”
“Bakersfield. That’s the location of the double murder where Hall’s prints were found, right?”
“Exactly,” confirmed the colonel. “And we’ve now identified the two victims as mercenaries—both with connections to Peterson.”
Sobol nodded slowly, his expression still grim. “It does appear to keep adding up, doesn’t it? If you had to bet, you’d bet big at this point that Hall’s message had a lot of truth to it.”
Girdler quickly ran down how they had looked into other murders around this time and had connected these in as well. A murder in a Shell gas station, and the murder of two paramedics.
“We pulled strings to have our people take over these investigations as well,” said Girdler. “We retraced the route the two paramedics took the last few days they were alive. And we spoke to witnesses. We’re almost certain the paramedics interacted with Hall. One of the men, Hector Garcia, had a girlfriend who told us he had insisted he met a man who could read minds. Perfectly. And fish out any information he wanted without any apparent effort. But the man had warned Garcia to keep this quiet, saying he would be in danger if he didn’t. Garcia also told his girlfriend he had dropped this man off, along with a woman, at the Bakersfield Amtrak station.”
The colonel nodded at Campbell to pick up the narrative. “We accessed all of the cameras in the train station,” said the major. “And sure enough, we did get a match to Hall. Using an image taken just before he boarded the Explorer. He was with a girl—turns out the same one who belonged to the office where the double murder took place. Megan Emerson. They stayed for a while and then left in a cab.”
“Have you found the cabbie?”
“Yes,” said the major. “His log shows that he dropped them both in the middle of Serene Oaks, a wealthy suburb of Bakersfield. Our guess is the girl had a car parked on the street there. Other than this, we can’t find any connection. We checked with the neighbors, but no one saw anything suspicious, nor did any remember seeing Hall and Emerson. One couple was out of town, but their doors were locked and their alarm set.”
The general eyed Campbell dubiously. “Please tell me you checked it out anyway, Major.”
“We did. We contacted the alarm company and broke in just before this call, but the place was empty.”
“So they were dropped off in a neighborhood,” said Sobol, “and either had a car there, met someone, or had another cab pick them up to confuse their trail.”
“That’s our guess,” said Major Campbell. “Although we haven’t found any evidence any other cabs had a pickup in Serene Oaks around that time. There are very few street cameras in this neighborhood, and none of them picked up Hall. We’ve been tracking cars that came into range of any cameras in the area, the night they were dropped off and even the next day. But there are a shitload of them, and we haven’t found anything noteworthy. We’ve also been accessing the cameras of any store or gas station in a ten-mile radius, starting a full day before the cab dropped them off and going forward. ”
“So basically the trail is cold,” commented the general, giving them no credit for their progress so far.
“For the moment,” said Girdler. “But we’ll pick it up again.”
“Hall sent out an e-mail. Have you tried to reply to it?”
“Yes,” said the colonel. “We sent a message. With a tag to tell us when it’s opened. So far he hasn’t read it. Why he hasn’t read it remains a mystery. Maybe he’s been too busy to check his messages. Maybe he canceled the account for some reason. But it could be that he doesn’t even remember he sent the message, or set up the e-mail account, so he wouldn’t know how to access the account or even think to try.”
“Yes, he did say he’d been given amnesia drugs,” said Sobol. “But it’s doubtful he was given another dose between the time he sent the e-mail and the time he escaped. What would be the point? As far as Peterson knew, Hall hadn’t learned or experienced anything that day he needed to forget.”
The colonel nodded. “This is true,” he said. “But we’re guessing they used a fairly new drug called Erase 190. If this is the case, further memory instability going forward, even without dosing, wouldn’t be uncommon.”
Girdler paused. “So that’s basically all we have right now, General,” he finished.
Sobol nodded slowly. “Okay,” he said. “So what are your thoughts on this, Colonel? And your recommendations going forward?”
Girdler took a deep breath. He glanced at Campbell, who shot him a look of encouragement. “I believe Hall’s e-mail message is accurate,” he said. “I believe some private citizen or co
mpany kidnapped those aboard the Explorer and brought them to a warehouse just outside of Fresno. I believe the kidnapper experimented on them all, resulting in the deaths of everyone but Hall. I believe whoever was behind this perfected what they were after, that somehow Hall developed ESP, and that he escaped. That’s what I think happened.”
The colonel paused and stared at Sobol for his reaction.
“I tend to agree,” said the general. “It looks like Hall’s message so far is checking out to be absolutely credible.”
“On the assumption this is the case,” continued Girdler, “my first and highest priority recommendation, therefore, is that we locate Nick Hall as soon as we can.” A pained look came over the colonel’s face. “And terminate him with extreme prejudice.”
31
Several seconds of total silence settled over the proceedings.
“Let me understand,” said Sobol dryly. “A team kidnaps the entire crew of an oceangoing vessel. Imprisons them for many months. Conducts illegal experiments on them. Then kills all but one of them. And your highest priority recommendation is to terminate the one surviving victim of all of this?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Major Campbell, do you agree with this recommendation?”
“Yes, sir, I do,” replied the major.
“Okay, now you have my attention. I’m sure you recognize that while Black Ops powers are broad, they aren’t unlimited. Killing an innocent civilian isn’t exactly in the charter—even if you stretch it far enough to cover the Pacific ocean. So on what grounds do you make this recommendation?”
“We’ve given this a lot of thought, as you might imagine,” replied Girdler. “These implants have led to mind reading. And not just surface thoughts. Hall could apparently dig out of Peterson’s mind anything Peterson knew. The same with Hector Garcia. Do you have any idea of the implications of this?”
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