One mind.
One body.
Unity.
Chapter 18
HE HADN’T RETURNED to his quarters to go to bed, choosing instead to remain in front of the monitors.
Kavanagh stared at the multiple screens, eyes darting from one to another, searching desperately for some sign that his plan had been successful.
“How much longer are we going to wait?” Wells asked, standing in the doorway of the room, eyes red from lack of sleep.
Kavanagh gnawed at the skin at the edge of his thumb, pulling away a painful strip of flesh with his teeth, but the pain was nothing compared to what he was feeling at that moment.
The pain of failure, now, that was excruciating.
“What do you think went wrong?” Kavanagh asked.
Wells pushed off from the doorway, coming into the room. “Do you actually want me to answer, or are you just going to get all pissed off and tell me to shut my mouth when I give you my opinion?”
Kavanagh turned his head slowly to fix him with an icy glare. “I wouldn’t have asked if I didn’t want to know what you thought.”
“I think he got caught,” Wells answered. “Simple as that. I think he gave it his best, but sometimes your best just isn’t enough.”
“There was a lot riding on this,” Kavanagh said. “We’re going to look like fools to the community.”
The community. It was like they were talking about an organization of local businessmen—Earl down at the five-and-dime or Big Bobby who owns the filling station across the street, Kavanagh mused. Instead of a loose conglomerate of the world’s most dangerous terror organizations.
“I’d rather look like a fool than wind up back in Pandora custody,” Wells said. “We’ve given it enough time. I think it would be wise to put our contingency plans into effect and get the hell out of Dodge. As far as we know, they could be on their way here now, and that’s not good.”
Kavanagh knew that his friend was right, that the longer they stayed in one place, the better their chances were of being caught, and he was damned if he was going to let that happen, but he couldn’t get past the idea that he was running away for a second time.
Briefly he imagined being in custody at a Pandora facility, being questioned by Tremain. Oh, you’d like that, wouldn’t you, Kavanagh thought, imagining a smug smile on the director’s weathered features.
No, he couldn’t stand for that, but to avoid it, he had to run.
A Kavanagh doesn’t run, boy, he heard his grandmother croak from her big old bed.
“I’ve had just about enough of you,” the man muttered aloud.
“This is what I mean,” Wells suddenly said, exasperated. “You ask for my opinion, I give it, and then you toss it away like—”
“I wasn’t talking to you,” Kavanagh interrupted.
Wells went silent, knowing better than to ask who it was exactly he’d been speaking to. Wells was good like that.
“Have the explosives been placed?” Kavanagh asked.
“The day we got here,” Wells responded faithfully.
Kavanagh nodded. The Janus Project was dead; he’d pretty much come to that sad conclusion the moment he suspected that Sleeper One had not completed his assignment. He would go elsewhere, review his options, and see what he could salvage from the years of research.
Janus was dead, but Brandon Kavanagh was more than alive.
He looked at his watch. “Give the evacuation order and prep the explosives for detonation,” he said, getting up from his chair. “I’d like to be out of here and on my way to someplace where they serve those fruity drinks with the umbrellas within the next two hours.”
Wells nodded. “I think I can swing that,” he said, reaching for the small walkie-talkie on his belt.
Satisfied, Kavanagh had started for his office when he heard the sound of a distant alarm. He stopped short.
“What’s that?” he asked with caution.
Wells clicked off his walkie-talkie and went to the television monitor control station. “It appears that we have company,” the head of security said, switching from the news broadcasts to the cameras outside the base.
A jeep had stopped at one of many fences that surrounded the seemingly abandoned military base, and somebody was standing outside the vehicle.
“Tyler Garrett!” Kavanagh exclaimed.
“What’s he doing here?” Wells muttered.
As if in response, Garrett reached under his bloodstained shirt, producing a silver canister, which he held up, showing it to the hidden camera.
Kavanagh’s eyes widened; he knew full well what the youth had in his possession. “I want to know what he’s been up to,” he said. “Put together a team and bring him down here,” Kavanagh added, unable to pull his gaze from the Janus Project’s crowning achievement. “Perhaps things aren’t as bad as they seem.”
“Do you really think that’s a good—”
“Bring him,” Kavanagh barked, eyes fixed to the monitors. “I want to know what he’s been up to.”
Wells nodded begrudgingly, reaching for his walkie-talkie as he strode toward the exit.
“And Wells,” Kavanagh called out. “Be extra careful with the canister. We wouldn’t want what’s inside getting out… at least until I say so.”
Wells might have lost the ability to feel pain, but it did nothing to quell his sense of suspicion.
Something didn’t feel right about this situation, and he instructed his team of four to be on their toes.
Disembarking from their jeep, assault rifles at the ready, they approached the gate where Sleeper One was still standing.
“ ‘Bout time you showed up,” the young man said. “I was just considerin’ turning around and heading back to Pandora, see what they would trade me for this.” He held up the canister of Kamchatka virus. “Think they might be interested?”
Wells sensed his men tense, aiming their automatic weapons.
Sleeper One smiled widely. “Just kiddin’,” he said. “I knew you guys would be out here to get me eventually.”
“How did you know to find us here?” Wells asked. “Our base of operation was never revealed to you.”
The sleeper smiled slyly. “And that’s where a little initiative comes in handy,” he said. “Before bustin’ out of Pandora, I took the liberty of using some of their tracking equipment and triangulated the general whereabouts of our boss man’s cell signal, y’know, just in case. And I would have to say it came in pretty handy.”
Wells didn’t like this at all.
“You shouldn’t have come here,” he said. “Your instructions were to break into the Crypt, liberate the virus, and release the contents in the town of Plainville.”
Sleeper One moved closer to the fence. “Yeah, but I ran into a few unexpected obstacles,” he explained. “Not sure how they knew, but Pandora was riding my tail most of the time.” He held out his arms, showing off the condition of his clothes. It looked like he’d seen some action—he was a mess, his pants and shirt spattered with blood. “As you can see, I barely got out of there alive. If I had tried to execute the Plainville objective, they would have easily been there to stop it.”
Wells tilted his head, scrutinizing the young man on the other side of the fence. “And using a little more of that initiative you mentioned earlier—”
“You got that right,” Sleeper One blurted.
“You decided to bring what you stole here.”
“Better in the hands of my employer than the enemy is what I always say.”
Wells motioned for one of his men to open the gate, and Garrett entered with a swagger.
Wells blocked his path. “Hand it over,” he ordered, holding out his hand.
The sleeper planted his feet, bringing the hand holding the silver canister close to his side. “Can’t do it,” he said. “I may have had to deviate from my original orders a bit, but I promised myself that I’d deliver this little package directly to Kavanagh.”
Well
s’s men raised their weapons again.
“What if I insist?” he asked.
“Then we just might have ourselves a situation,” Garrett said coldly.
Wells eyed him for a moment, knowing what the teen was capable of. “All right,” he said with a nod. “We’ll let you hold on to it—for now.”
“Much obliged,” Garrett said as the soldiers escorted him to the jeep. “I knew we could work this out like gentlemen.”
They rode back to the mess hall in complete silence.
“And here I was thinking you were taking me for a bite to eat,” Garrett said, breaking that silence as they cut through the abandoned cafeteria on the way to the elevator that would bring them back down into the installation.
They all entered the elevator, and the door slowly slid shut with a mechanical hum before the cab shuddered and they began their descent.
“So what’s the story with this place?” Garrett asked, speaking to no one in particular. “This where they kept them crashed UFOs, or is this one of the places that the world’s elite were supposed to come when the bombs started to fall?”
Wells remained silent, as did his soldiers.
“I see how it is,” Garrett said, looking up at the ceiling. “I’m not part of your little club, so you treat me like a piece of dirt.”
Wells glared at the boy, resisting the urge to draw his pistol and put a bullet in his skull. He hated the personality they’d created for this sleeper assassin; that whole good ol’ boy thing was like nails on a blackboard to him. He’d always wondered why Kavanagh had allowed the techs to go that route.
“Shut up,” Wells ordered.
He felt his heart rate begin to quicken as Garrett smiled and then started to laugh.
“Did I say something amusing?” Wells asked, his finger twitching on the trigger of his automatic weapon.
“It’s the accent, isn’t it?” Garrett said suddenly, raising the silver canister to chest level. “If I can’t stand the sound of it, I can just imagine what it sounds like to everyone else.”
And without any explanation, he twisted the cover on the metal canister, releasing a billowing mist that filled the inside of the elevator in a choking cloud.
I should have shot him when I had the chance, was the last thought Noah Wells registered before dropping into unconsciousness.
The Dragonfly transport craft hovered over a section of the Mojave Desert, advanced stealth technology rendering it undetectable to Kavanagh’s base of operations a little over three miles away.
The craft’s vertical takeoff and landing systems, VTOL for short, kept it floating above the desert floor, suspended on columns of air created by the craft’s four shielded rotors extending outward from the body of the vehicle.
Plans for the Dragonfly, as well as its highly advanced stealth technology, had been liberated from a Middle Eastern research facility that Pandora had suspected had ties with one or more terrorist organizations. Though the facility had been cleared of any wrongdoing, the plans for the VTOL transport were retained and the designs perfected by a Pandora development team.
It was expected that the Dragonfly would become part of the military’s arsenal by 2010, but until then, the prototype was being utilized by the Pandora Group on any number of its covert desert operations.
Tremain ejected the clip from his Glock, checking the amount of ammunition he had for what could have been the tenth time. Seeing that it was still satisfactory, he slid the clip back into the gun.
“Did the number of bullets happen to change this time?” Victoria Lovett asked from her seat across from him.
“What?” he replied, annoyed that his thoughts had been disturbed.
“The bullets in your gun,” she said, pointing. “Did they happen to change?”
He barely smiled. “A nervous habit,” he told her, slipping the gun back into the shoulder holster beneath his arm.
“How about letting me have one?” she asked.
Agent Mayer’s forehead creased with concern.
“You’ve been brought along on an advisory level,” Tremain said. “There’s no reason for you to be armed and—”
“I’m going in with your team,” Victoria interrupted.
“No, you’re not,” Tremain corrected, starting to get up from his seat. “My trust can only be extended so far, Ms. Lovett.”
She reached out, grabbing hold of his arm. Agent Mayer stood, but Tremain just shook his head.
“What about my trust, Mr. Tremain? The trust I had when I helped you to bring in my Tom,” she said, her gaze boring into his. “And where is he now, sir?” she asked him. “Where is my son now?”
He gently removed her hand from his arm and looked over at Agent Abernathy, headphones over his ears, fiddling with a portable tracking system.
“He’s in,” Abernathy said, giving a thumbs-up.
“I must be allowed to help my son,” Victoria Lovett said with complete conviction, drawing Tremain’s attention back to her.
The intensity in her gaze is nearly overwhelming.
“Fine,” Tremain said. Looking at Agent Mayer, he continued. “Bring her along, but under no circumstances is she to have a weapon.”
Tom pressed the collapsible air filtration mask to his face, waiting for the elevator to finally arrive at its destination.
He’d helped himself to a pistol, an assault weapon, and multiple clips of ammunition.
Can never have too much of that.
Looking at the unconscious men lying on the floor of the elevator cab, he was glad that he’d decided to go with the gas. Originally there had been an argument about the rigged viral canister’s effectiveness versus a straight physical assault. He, of course, had been arguing for the straight physical assault, Tremain and Abernathy for the latter.
If he actually managed to make it out of this situation alive, he’d have to pass the information on that they had been right. Tom smiled wistfully with the memory of his last conversation with Madison. She had made him promise—crossing his heart and hoping to die—that he would be safe and come back to her.
Tom had no choice but to comply; she wasn’t about to turn him into a liar.
The elevator came to a stop. He flipped off the safety on the automatic weapon just in case and waited for the doors to part.
He’d come awake on a transport plane, feeling like he’d been electrocuted, which, in a way, he kind of had.
The weapons that the Pandora assault team had used on him—on Tyler—at the Crypt had been a new kind of Taser, a weapon capable of shocking his body into oblivion with multiple, fifty-thousand-volt hits of electricity. Not enough to kill, but plenty to take him down for the count.
What had happened after Tyler had been captured was a little vague, but he knew that it had something to do with the place—the mansion that his other half had built somewhere inside his head—and a little boy.
He remembered the little boy, but after that, things got sort of hazy.
All he knew was that Tyler Garrett was gone—No, not gone. He was definitely not gone. Tom could sense his presence in just about everything he did now, what he knew, the way he moved, his attitude toward life. No, Tyler Garrett had finally become a part of him—two distinctly different colors blended together to create an entirely new one.
Despite Sleeper One’s return to roost, Brandon Kavanagh had come to the decision that he still needed to pull up stakes and relocate his operations elsewhere. The likelihood that Pandora was close to pinpointing his whereabouts was probably greater than he would like to imagine, and even though he could hear his dear old grandma’s sage advice to never run from a fight, he was about to do just that.
What’s the old adage? he thought. It’s better to run and live to fight another day? Or some such nonsense.
The security team filed into the lobby of the facility, each taking up position in front of the elevator doors just in case.
He would relieve his agent of the Kamchatka virus and proceed with the p
lans already set in motion to leave the stronghold that had served as Janus’s core base of operations for the last five years. This was where the true work had been done, the dirty stuff that Pandora didn’t need to know about. It would be sort of sad to see what he’d worked so hard to build destroyed, but he cheered himself with thoughts of the days ahead. With the Kamchatka virus in his possession, he believed that a bright future in the lucrative field of biological weaponry could be waiting for him.
The doors to the elevator opened with a hydraulic hiss, a billowing white gas flowing out into the lobby of the main level. Kavanagh reacted instinctively, moving toward the doorway to begin his escape, but something slowed his progress, practically holding him in place.
Sleeper One emerged from the choking cloud, weapon firing. He was truly something to see, his movements so fast that Wells’s handpicked security team could barely get a bead on him, the gunfire from their weapons riddling the surface of the concrete walls instead of delicate flesh, muscle, and bone. Every time they seemed to believe they had him in their sights, he was already on the move.
Kavanagh watched with rabid interest as his creation took down the elite security team with disabling gunfire but not, it seemed, with the intention of killing.
Something had happened to his bloodthirsty teenage assassin, he thought, observing the boy with growing fascination. He recalled the numerous training exercises that the Tyler Garrett personality had undergone to perfect his efficiency and how many of them had ended in slaughter. This wasn’t like him, not like him at all.
One of the team didn’t have the good common sense to lie down and accept defeat. Struggling to his feet after being shot in the shoulder and leg, the mercenary drew his knife and attempted to dispatch his young attacker.
Kavanagh knew that he should have been gone at this point, retreating to his office to retrieve the last of his private and professional effects, but he stood transfixed.
The soldier lunged with his blade, Sleeper One responding almost in unison. He avoided the attack with ease, darting forward to take hold of the soldier’s arm, and broke it with one quick jerk. As the knife dropped harmlessly to the ground, the sleeper sprang back, spinning his body around and delivering a sidekick to the man’s face, putting him down for the count.
Sleeper Agenda Page 16