The Sam Reilly Collection Volume 2

by Christopher Cartwright

  “Senator Croft?” Sam looked perplexed. “What does she know about the research?”

  “Everything. She was the Senator who lobbied for the proposed research in the first place. I assumed you knew.”

  Sam swore. “She never said anything about that to me. Which means she lied to me – she’s behind this.”

  “Samuel.”

  “Yes?”

  “Have you been following the election?”

  He shook his head. Still dazed by the latest deception. “No. I’ve been trying to save everyone’s asses! I don’t have time to follow the stupid election. Why do I care which politician gets in and maintains the current status quo of lies and deceit?”

  “Because Senator Croft is about to become our next President.”

  The words struck him like the final shot. He couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Croft had betrayed him, while playing straight into his generosity. He’d kept her in the loop, and the whole time she’d been planning the attacks.

  “Now what?” he asked.

  The Secretary of Defense looked at him. Smiled wickedly and said, “Now you find me the evidence. Give it to me and only me. I don’t want the word to get out that we’re having trouble with our own government. Christ, the backlash if the general public knew we spent 100 billion on research into a devastating weapon, which is now being used to hold us hostage, would be terrible. Let alone that it was orchestrated by our next President.”

  Chapter Ninety Eight

  Sam couldn’t believe what he’d heard. “But Luke Eldridge was involved in alternative energy sources! I was told that he had discovered a new source of energy. Something so plentiful that the oil companies had joined together and offered him and his partners something to the tune of 20 billion dollars to crush the research lines. I was told that was why he was killed.”

  “What you were told was wrong. We gave him a 100 billion dollars to build a weapon that could sink an entire navy. Think about it. He was a leading expert in environmental manipulation. He employed oceanographers, hydrologists, meteorologists. If anyone could build a rogue wave, Luke Eldridge could. And a rogue wave could wipe out an entire navy at one hit. Every sailor knows the ocean is bigger than any ship – and we were going to own the ocean.”

  “So what went wrong?”

  “He came to us after two years of research and told us he was having trouble. The nanobots were having problems maintaining their programing codes.”

  “Of course they did. We just didn’t have the technology to produce such complex devices. He must have been feeding you his ideas knowing that Defense has an unlimited budget.”

  “No. His ideas were simple. The programing was to be simple. They would encode solid and fluid states of being. A radio device would activate their density control and several miles of fast growing plankton flagella would sudden tense up. A wall of water would be created. Then, another radio wave would transmit a message to tell the nanobots to deactivate, causing the water to become fluid again.”

  Sam recalled Veyron providing a similar theory. “And by choosing which side to render inactive first, he could manipulate the direction of the wave.”

  “Precisely.”

  “But somewhere along the way it evolved. It decided it didn’t just like changing from a solid state to a fluid one. It wanted more. And now it’s at war with us, and owns most of the east coast of America.”

  She clenched her jaw. “Yes, and I would like you to get it back for us.”

  “Are you kidding me? After all this, you want to capture it so you can continue your research and development?”

  She didn’t hesitate with her reply. “If you knew the Atomic bomb was out there, would you ignore it, and hope that it would go away? Or would you spend every last dollar making sure that you were the one who wielded it?”

  It was common military rhetoric that Sam had heard his entire career. The winners have the biggest, newest, best weapons. Entire nations have gone bankrupt with the concept. It’s a self-fulfilling cycle. Each country spends more on its military, which means its neighbors have to follow suit in fear of getting left behind. It was proof that mankind was driven by fear. And if it never learned to evolve from that stance, Sam figured, it probably didn’t deserve to survive.

  He wasn’t sure where he fitted into this stance, but either way, he had a lot of work to do if the human race was going to survive this round.

  “Good bye, Madam Secretary.”

  Chapter Ninety Nine

  Senator Croft picked up her office phone and dialed a number from memory. It rang three times before a man answered.

  “Hello.”

  “Timothy, where have you been? I’ve been trying to call you all day!”

  “I’ve been busy rallying the college students to vote, that’s all. I hear you’re in the lead. Why? What’s going on?” He sounded worried.

  “Your Frankenstein creation just tried to fucking kill me!”

  “Oh my God. I’m sorry Vanessa. Jesus, where were you?”

  “East of Fort Lauderdale in a Coast Guard vessel, campaigning at the site of the near disaster of the supertanker Mississippi! Timothy. Why would it even want to attack a Coast Guard’s ship?”

  Timothy ignored her. “Really? I thought you destroyed the Bimini Road?”

  “We did. I certainly wouldn’t have gone anywhere near the area if I thought your wretched things could form a rogue wave without the Bimini Road!”

  “They can’t, as far as I knew.”

  “So what went wrong?”

  Silence.

  Despite being one of the brightest minds on earth, the 76-year-old professor of nanotechnologies was too shaken to speak. “Christ! Timothy, they’re your creation – you don’t have control of them anymore, do you?”

  He started to talk and then stopped short. “No, they took out a couple of cargo ships before I could stop them. At first I thought they were working off their simple programing, then when they took out the third cargo ship, I realized they were picking their targets, growing their numbers, and literally waging a war on all other lives in the ocean.”

  “But you still had enough control to lead them to target the oil tanker?”

  “Yes, but that was good luck more than any actual control. At that stage I still duped myself into believing that I was in control. By surrounding the ship with smaller vessels the nanobots assumed it to be their greatest threat.”

  “So where are they now?”

  “The hive’s moved again. I thought I’d lost them after the oil tanker. We returned to the Bimini Road and discovered no trace of their unique bioluminescence. For a few days I thought they’d naturally died out. It was always a high possibility. By the time a week had gone by and we hadn’t heard of any more accidents I hoped they were dead – but now you are telling me they came after your ship.”

  “Yes. My ship! Why the hell would they have come after my ship? It was smaller than most other vessels in the ocean, what made it come after us?”

  “There’s a chance… a very small one… I’m sorry, you’re not going to like it very much.”

  She paced in her office. “What?”

  “There’s a chance that they came after you specifically.”

  “Me, how the hell did they know I was aboard? And more importantly, why the fuck would they have come after me?”

  “When I originally programed them I included wireless connectivity to their programing, so that they could work as a collective, and so that we could direct them toward a specific ship via wireless transmissions.”

  “So? I thought you said that the system hasn’t been working since we used them to kill Luke?”

  “It hasn’t. Actually, that’s not technically correct. It appears they’ve been receiving our messages, but instead of acting upon them, they’ve been ignoring them.”

  “Ignoring them? I thought you said these were exceeding simple machines.”

  “Yeah, well my simple machines appear to have matched
up with the collective minds of the other simple plankton in ways that we never could have predicted.”

  “Okay, so what does it matter if they are still wireless?”

  “It means that they are getting our emails. They’re on the same secret channel that you and I use.”

  “Are you telling me they know that I sent you the order to destroy them after the oil tanker fiasco, so that Sam Reilly could save the day?”

  “Yes, and it also knew that you were aboard the Coast Guard Vessel – Florida II.”

  “Your creatures tried to assassinate me!” She looked furious. “I don’t care how you do it, but I want them shut down, before this becomes one natural disaster for which I can’t deliver a solution to the American people. Christ, do you realize what would happen if all the shipping lanes were closed to American ports?”

  I’m about to take Office at the brink of the worst disaster in history.

  “I’m sorry Vanessa. I’m so sorry. I never meant for anyone to get hurt.”

  She heard his sobs in the background and hung up.

  Timothy Locke was no longer useful to her.

  Chapter One Hundred

  Sam picked Luke up in front of the Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport. He’d hired an inconspicuous car. A Toyota Prius. There were a hundreds of them in the Capitol. Everyone trying to look like they’re doing the right thing, while no one actually gave a shit what it cost the environment. Compared with the other cars he like to drive, they were boring. But imitation of the masses is the best form of camouflage.

  He opened the door and Luke got in. Sam put his foot down and the car silently drove off. “Tell me you’ve got some hard evidence about your buyer.”

  Luke grinned. “I’ve got it. Irrefutable evidence.”

  “Good, because yesterday I found out that you were being funded by the Department of Defense.”

  Luke went silent. Swallowed hard. “We were never specifically working on fuel sources. We were working on a contract to build a weapon for the U.S. Department of Defense that would keep us ahead of the game for the next century of wars.”

  “You were building a rogue wave?”

  “Yes, but we thought we were a long way off – apparently not as far as we thought.” He obviously didn’t miss the irony.

  “What about Elixir Eight? I thought this was all because you pissed off the oil industry?”

  “Elixir Eight was a secondary discovery. One that would prove much more valuable than anything we could produce for the military. I told the truth when I said the nanobots created them and lined the surface of their nest with them. I never could work out why. Then when I tested one and discovered it was a complex thorium-based battery cell capable of providing trillions of AMP hours, I knew we’d hit the jackpot. In terms of research, we’d just won Powerball. Twice.”

  “So who made the offer?”

  “I thought you knew?”

  “Humor me”

  “Senator Vanessa Croft.”

  Sam sighed. “You mean the President Elect!”

  Chapter One Hundred and One

  Sam pulled over on the side of Pennsylvania Avenue. The White House stood proud in the distance. He put the hazard lights on and placed the car in park. “Show me exactly what you’ve got.”

  Luke reached into his carry bag. A leather shoulder bag seen around college campuses. Inside he pulled a series of documents. “It’s got everything inside.”

  Sam quickly riffled through the photographs, financial records, and names of people involved. Some powerful people were involved in the Offer. All funding traced back to one person’s election campaign – Vanessa Croft.

  “This was never about saving the planet. Vanessa Croft wanted the ticket. She used this entire thing to fund her campaign. She’s in bed with the Oil Industry. No wonder she beat the Republicans in a landslide win. THEY had bought both sides of the game.”

  Luke had tears in his eyes. “No, I believe she wanted to help the world. In fact this entire thing was molded out of revenge. When she realized she couldn’t simply change it by providing evidence of a better way of doing things Vanessa discovered the only way to truly have an effect on the world, would be through politics. And if she really wanted to make a substantial difference, she would need to get to the top.”

  “So she sold her soul to the devil in the hope that she could make amends once she reached the top.”

  “Yes. Only now she has a long list of companies she ‘owes favors to.’”

  Sam flicked through the rest of the papers. “How did you get all this?”

  “Timothy and I were best friends. This was our brainchild. We had worked on it for years before we brought Benjamin White in on it. And then he betrayed me for the oldest motivator in history – money. He recently found out that his creation was at war with us – all of us, America and the rest of the globe. He was already intoxicated by the time I reached him.”

  “Go on,” Sam said.

  “When I showed up, he was so surprised to see me alive he nearly shat himself. We talked. He spoke about a number of things he’d promised himself that he’d tell me if I was still alive. In the end, he handed me all the documents. You see, he’d kept them in a safety deposit box, just in case the group had come for him.”

  Luke sighed. “And then, right there in front of me, he hanged himself.”

  Sam said, “What would you like me to do about all this?”

  Luke unbuckled his seatbelt and then opened the car door. “I want you to fix it. So that I don’t have to hang myself.”

  With that, Luke got out of the car and walked away into the night.

  Chapter One Hundred and Two

  Sam met the Secretary of Defense twenty minutes later in Washington. She looked more concerned about the interruption than about the discovery that President Elect Croft was responsible for everything.

  “Show me what you have on her,” she demanded.

  Sam Reilly gave her an envelope with all the information she needed. He’d read it all. It connected all the dots. There was no denying her involvement. Or the other names in the list. She read each of them out loud. “There are some powerful men in this list. A Saudi Prince, a CEO of one of the largest oil companies. There was quite a concerted effort to maintain the status quo of global reliance on fossil fuels. A loathsome thing to do.” She virtually spat the words out. “And President Elect Croft is at the foul center of the lot of it.”

  “What do you think we should do about this?” he asked.

  A military aide walked into the room. “I’m sorry to interrupt, Madam Secretary.”

  “Go ahead Frank. It’s the night for interruptions.”

  “Madam Secretary. We’ve just had reports of another three ships that have been sunk near the Bahamas. Two cargo ships and one barge.”

  “They’re attacking all of our ships now!” Sam said. “Do we know what they were carrying?”

  The military Aide looked at his notepad. “I don’t have the manifest for the two cargo ships, but the barge ran ashore right on to the beach in Miami. According to bystanders, it was carrying a massive rectangular stone, at least forty feet wide by twenty high.”

  “The key stone!” Sam looked at the Secretary of Defense. “It’s hunting THEM. It went for Senator Croft, now it’s attacked someone who was working for her.”

  She looked at the Aide. “Thank you Mr. Renwick. You may leave now.”

  Frank Renwick turned and left her office. “Good night Madam Secretary.”

  She waited until he’d left the room and closed the door. “So first she becomes responsible for blocking the development of a new energy source to free mankind from fossil fuels and now she’s purchased a weapon that’s threatening to shut down our own shipping lanes!”

  “If it makes you feel better. She’s no longer in control of the weapon.”

  “No it does not make me feel any better.”

  Sam stood up. “Okay then. My team’s currently hunting the collective hiv
e down. We have a large EMP designed to incapacitate the nanobots. It’s only a matter of time before we destroy it. What do you want me to do?”

  “We can’t go public. It would be a political nightmare. They’d be fighting about her involvement and if she’d broken any real laws for so long that she’d probably end up completing two terms in Office before anything was done.”

  Sam smiled. It wasn’t every day that the Secretary of Defense surprised him. “So you want her to disappear?”

  “Of course we need to get rid of her, but how? She’s President Elect – we can’t just have her assassinated!”

  “Why not?” Sam laughed.

  “You know damn well why not! We don’t go around killing our Presidents and we certainly don’t assassinate our President Elects!”

  Chapter One Hundred and Three

  Sam’s cell phone rang at exactly 11:30 a.m. the next day.

  Sam picked it up and smiled. “President Elect Croft. I hear congratulations are in order. To what do I owe the pleasure of this call?”

  “We need to talk.” She spoke in short, fast words.

  “Sure. Do you want me to come to you?”

  “No. Not in public.” The cell went silent for a moment. “I need to know what you have found. I need to know that we’re getting somewhere with this outbreak from the hive. I’ve just been informed that another eight ships have been attacked along the east coast. Some as far north as Carolina.”

  “It’s trying to break out of its current environment!”

  “Exactly. The nanobots are allowing the plankton to leave the warmer equatorial waters.”

  Sam looked at his watch. It would be lunch soon. “Where would you like me to meet you?”

  “There’s a private security room. It’s below the White House. If you go to the White House I’ll have someone escort you there.”

  “When do you want to see me?”