by Steve Alten
Five minutes later he had secured her wrists and ankles to the four bed posts using an assortment of belts and ties. When he was finished, he glanced at the clock on the end table.
Almost one a.m. Better pick up the pace, Shariak.
He unzipped the front pocket of the backpack and removed a small medical kit. Inside were two syringes and a small vial of clear liquid. Unscrewing the cap, he punctured the foil top with the needle and drew 20cc’s of the elixir into the syringe.
Then he rolled up the counter-intelligence agent’s sleeves, examining the veins in her forearms …
* * *
Kelly Kishel’s eyes rolled forward as she inhaled fumes from the ammonia-soaked paper towel Adam held beneath her nostrils. A second later her head snapped back against the bed board, the impact causing her to wince.
She attempted to wipe tears from her watering eyes, only to realize her limbs had been bound. “Kinky.”
“Where is Jessica?”
She looked up at Adam, her voice inflection flirtatious. “What do I get if I tell you?”
“You get to live.”
The agent smiled. “Am I supposed to be scared? We ran your psychological profile … I think we both know you’re not going to hurt me. Unfortunately the people I work for don’t share the same love for humanity. If I don’t report back at the top of the hour you can say bye-bye to the future Mrs. Shariak.”
She wrinkled her nose. “My face feels funny.”
“That’s probably the Scopolamine kicking in.”
She squirmed in her bonds, attempting to view her left forearm. “You injected me with truth serum?”
“Actually, this stuff is better than sodium pentothal. With Scopolamine you won’t remember any of this.”
“It won’t work, Adam.”
“It will if you want to tell me, and I think you do. That is why you sent me that cell phone, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“So then, why am I here?”
She closed her eyes, attempting to focus through a barbiturate fog. “There’s a movement among many of the members of MAJI to release zero-point-energy to the masses; the challenge is smuggling one of the devices out of these underground military bases. We finally managed to do this—with the help of your fiancé. The device should arrive sometime before dawn.”
“And you wanted me to have it?”
“God, no. I’ve arranged a buyer … an Indian billionaire with strong government connections. If you’ve ever been to New Delhi, you’d understand his interest.”
“Where is Jessica?”
“She’s in one of the underground complexes.”
“Which one?”
“Dulce. It’s a shithole town in New Mexico. The facility is located beneath a mountain. There are access points that will take you through the natural canyons to security checkpoints. Of course, Delta Force isn’t about to let you inside.”
“Is she being held against her will?”
“I don’t think so.”
“If you’re not giving me the device why did you ask me to meet you here?”
“You’re the reason the pilot agreed to risk bringing the ZPE unit on this run; he thinks he’s delivering it to you.”
“Who is he?”
“I don’t know, my boyfriend set the whole thing up.”
“Why meet me out here?”
“The farm is a drop point.”
“For what?”
“Drugs. The CIA moves a couple hundred billion dollars of coke and heroin into the States every year through MAJI depots like this one.”
She paused to listen as a vehicle turned into the farm’s driveway, its wheels grinding gravel. “They’re early. Guess it’s bye-bye time.”
Adam peeked out between slats in the Venetian blinds as a black van rolled to a stop in front of the barn. Two men and a woman exited the vehicle, all three dressed in leather and jeans.
“Looks more like a motorcycle gang than Men in Black.”
Kelly Kishel’s jaw dropped. “Bikers? Are you sure?”
“I said they look like bikers … they’re driving a van.” Remembering the night vision binoculars, he fished them out from beneath his sweat shirt and zoomed in on one of the men as he opened the van’s rear doors. With his back turned, Adam was able to make out an insignia on the big man’s jacket.
“Devil’s Diciples.”
“The Diciples? Are you sure?”
“They spelled Disciples wrong, but yeah … I’m sure.” As he watched, one of the bikers rolled back the interior carpet and unlocked a hidden panel … revealing a cache of weapons.
“Shit.”
“Shariak, the Diciples are MAJI’s hired assassins.”
“No kidding.”
“Shariak, listen to me! If the colonel sent the Devil’s Diciples then he must have put out TWEP orders on both of us.”
Ignoring her, he dumped the contents of his backpack on the floor. Searching through the pile, he located the tactical flashlight he had rigged to power on when Kelly had fled the farmhouse.
He froze as one of the gang members kicked open the front door.
“Shariak, untie me! You’ll need my help.”
Pulling the 9mm from his waistband, he aimed it at the blonde. “Quiet.”
* * *
Brent “Snowman” Snowden was a 280-pound bull of a man, his shaved head and thickly-muscled tattooed arms bulged out from the sleeveless black leather Harley-Davidson jacket. Stepping over the downed front door, he entered the farmhouse, his eyes immediately burning from the remnants of tear gas.
Rather than retreat, he simply positioned his white bandana over his nose and mouth so that the fabric’s skull design aligned with the lower half of his face. Holding the Mossberg .12 gauge shotgun out in front of him with the heel of the gun’s butt pressed to his right shoulder, he motioned to “Big Tommy” Thompson to enter.
The former Army Signal Support Systems Specialist fought to see the miniature screen of the electronics device in his hand, its direction finder pinpointing the location of the cell phone that had led them to the farm. He quickly found Kelly Kishel’s iPhone on the dining room floor next to her laptop.
A creak in the floorboards overhead caused both bikers to look up.
Snowden took the lead, ascending the stairs two steps at a time. Reaching the landing, he crouched low and listened.
“Hello? Will somebody help me?”
Big Tommy recognized the woman’s voice, having eavesdropped on her cell phone conversations on the ride over from Detroit. Signaling Snowman to wait, he held the .38 snub-nose revolver with the barrel up as he crept to the closed bedroom and kicked the solid wood door off its eighty-year-old hinges.
For a moment the biker just stood in the entrance, staring.
“Well? Is she in there?”
“Stay there … I got this.” Big Tommy entered the master bedroom, his watering eyes drifting from the open window to the blonde agent. Spread-eagled on the bed, she was completely nude, her wrists bound to the bedposts with a pair of silk men’s ties, the quilt concealing her legs from the knees down.
Kelly looked up at the biker. “Are you here to rescue me or eye-fuck me?”
“Where’s Shariak?”
She nodded to the open window.
Big Tommy looked out in time to see a man in a gray sweatshirt lower himself out over the ledge of the A-framed second story roof by holding on to the rain gutter.
When he turned back, his biker pal was staring down his .12 gauge shotgun at the naked agent.
“Snowman, Shariak’s on the roof, northeast side of the house. I got this, go help Sasha!”
The big man nodded and left.
Big Tommy circled the foot of the bed, his eyes transfixed on Kelly Kishel’s body. “Now what am I gonna do with you?”
“What would you like to do with me?”
“I’m supposed to kill you.”
“But if you do that, who will get all the money?”
“Drug money. That’s why I’m here, I’m a courier.”
“How much money we talkin’?”
“It’s usually somewhere between five and seven million. My job is to report the amount and deliver the cash to a private bank in Detroit.”
“Why do they want you dead?”
“Obviously they think I’ve been skimming off the top. I haven’t been, but that doesn’t matter anymore if they put out a TWEP on me. So let’s make a deal … I’ll take you to the drop zone and you free me with my cut of the cash.”
“Why should I trust you?”
“Why should I trust you? You’ve got the gun. I’m lying here, tied up and naked. Either way I’m screwed.” She glanced down at her vagina. “We’ve got a few hours until the drop … see anything you like?”
Sitting down next to her right leg, he placed his right hand and the gun flat on the mattress by her left leg and leaned over, burying his face in her groin.
Kelly moaned—
—her right hand releasing the loose necktie and snaking its way beneath the pillow …
Sensing movement, Big Tommy looked up—his right eye staring into the barrel of the Glock.
“Nighty-night.”
The shot blasted a Rorschach pattern of brains, blood, and skull fragments against the back wall of the bedroom and out the open door.
Kicking her legs free of the dead biker, Kelly hurriedly pulled on her pants, grabbed her shoes and sweater, and peeked out into the dark hallway. Hearing nothing, she slipped the sweater over her head and the shoes onto her feet and then entered the hall—
—managing two strides before a swarm of steel buckshot plastered parts of her neck and sweater to the age-yellowed wallpaper.
The counter-intelligence agent dropped to her knees, gagging on a stream of blood rising from the back of her throat. Still holding the gun, she aimed the Glock into the darkness, getting off three rounds before her body slumped over sideways.
Brent Snowden rose from his seated position at the top of the stairs. Pumping in another round, he placed the barrel of the .12 gauge shotgun inside the dead woman’s open mouth and fired, splattering her remains across the upstairs hallway.
* * *
Adam was dangling twenty feet off the ground when he heard the first shot. Forcing himself to stay focused, he worked his way hand over hand along the length of rain gutter, his target—the thick limb of an oak tree. Feeling something solid beneath his right shoe, he released the gutter, managing to maintain his balance long enough to squat and then straddle the thick branch.
He was crouching on the ground when he heard two more shots—these from a shotgun.
Ducking by a pile of firewood, he retrieved the night vision glasses from around his neck and quickly looked around.
There were three bikers. From the sound of the fired shots Kelly had taken out one of them before the second had most likely killed her.
That left two Devil’s Diciples … and the pilot—whoever he was.
Adam had a full clip and a bullet in the chamber. The night glasses offered him a slight advantage, the woodpile served as temporary cover from anyone approaching him from directly ahead, but he remained vulnerable from behind where one of the bikers could use the northeast corner of the house for cover while blasting him with their shotgun.
The sound of the kitchen door being kicked open sent him hobbling on his prosthetic leg to the northwest corner of the dwelling, the gravel driveway, garage, and barn now visible up ahead.
Targeting the black van, he leaned out to see around the corner of the house—
Whomp!
* * *
Sasha Moulder straddled the unconscious man. Spitting on his back, the female biker raised the shotgun over Shariak’s skull to strike him again when Brent Snowden grabbed her wrist.
“No, babe. We need him alive.”
“MAJI wants him dead.”
“I heard the girl telling Big Tommy this farm is a cash drop zone. Shariak may know the details. We’ll waste him after we get the money.”
Handing Sasha his weapon, the big man grabbed Adam Shariak by the arm and tossed him over his broad shoulders like a fireman.
“Snowman, where’s Big Tommy?”
“Dead. But don’t shed any tears; he went out with a smile on his face.”
37
Subterranean Complex—Midwest USA
JESSICA DUCKED INSIDE the clear plastic tube and stepped on a round platform covered with quarter-size holes. She gripped the rails by her side, prompting the onboard computer.
“Good evening, Dr. Marulli. Please state your destination.”
“Genetics Complex.”
Jessica felt the rubber soles of her shoes being suctioned to the porous floor a split second before she was transformed into a human bullet, soaring straight up, then sideways so fast she lost all orientation—
Stop!
Somehow she was upright again. The suction eased, her legs wobbling beneath her as she stepped out of the tube to a transportation hub, the six vertical shafts now aligned across from four elevators.
Dr. LaCombe was waiting by an impressive polished steel vault door. “Are you all right?”
“From now on, let’s take the stairs. Where are we? Fort Knox?”
“The vault contains a Faraday chamber which blocks out all electric and electromagnetic waves.” She pressed her face to the rubber housing for a retinal scan.
Eight bolts situated around the steel vault simultaneously retracted, the huge door whisper-quiet as it swung open.
“There are white noise dampeners inside; we’ll receive headsets before we enter. Make sure you keep yours on at all times.”
Jessica followed Joyce inside the vault entrance, immediately registering a faint buzzing sound in her ears. Ahead was a set of smoke-glass doors adjacent to another Plexiglas control booth, a male security guard seated inside. As they approached, a metal box similar to the ones found at a bank drive-thru ejected from inside the checkpoint.
Joyce reached in and removed two headsets wrapped in cellophane. She handed a pair to Jessica, who quickly secured the device over her ears.
The white noise disappeared, replaced by the guard’s voice, which was crisp and clear. “Evening, doc.”
“Good evening, Monroe. I assume you received security clearances for Dr. Marulli?”
“Yes, ma’am, she’s all set. I alerted Dr. Lara that you just arrived.”
“How much time do we have?”
“Prep started twenty minutes ago. At your request, the procedure was moved to TDS-2 so your friend could watch.”
“Excellent. Tell him we’re on our way.”
Joyce headed for the glass doors which were already parting outward, releasing a stream of cool air. Once inside, she turned left down a corridor, Jessica hustling to keep up.
“Procedure?”
“A little something that falls under the description Weird Science and Frickin’ Magic. Since we still have some time before the show begins I thought I’d show you a bit of history.”
The wall on their right illuminated into a ten-by-twelve-foot section of smart glass. As Jessica watched, a slide show began, featuring black and white photos taken of the 1947 UFO crash site in Corona, New Mexico. These were augmented by 16mm footage showing the remains of the vessel, along with military personnel recovering the dead bodies and the extraterrestrial vessel’s lone survivor.
The scene jumped to a series of graphic autopsy slides of the deceased ETs, which were narrated by the Army’s Medical Examiner.
“… as you can see, the EBEN’s brain possesses eleven different lobes as compared to the eight lobes of a human brain. The optic nerves are also larger and far more sophisticated than ours, and their eyes operate from different parts of the brain.
“In regard to the EBEN’s internal parts, one organ appears to function as both a heart and set of lungs. Multiple sto
machs are responsible for different digestive processes. There is also an organ designed to remove the moisture from whatever they eat, eliminating the need to consume a large amount of fluids. The reproductive organs are internalized; the vocal cords nonexistent. While communication between the surviving EBEN indicates female Greys do exist, the ETs aboard the crashed vehicles all appear to be male.”
Joyce tapped her shoulder. “We need to cut this short; Dr. Lara is ready to begin.”
The two women followed the corridor signs heading for TDS Suites 1-4. Glass doors parted with a hiss of air pressure and they entered what appeared to be a hospital wing, the corridor walls covered in green tile.
Joyce led Jessica up a narrow flight of steps to an observation galley. Below was a surgical suite that looked like it had been designed by a modern-day Dr. Frankenstein.
Half-a-dozen six-foot-tall, sickle-shaped transformers surrounded a rubber-insulated surgical table like an electronic ribcage. Strapped to the table was a balding Caucasian man in his mid-forties, sporting an unkempt brown beard and mustache and wearing a pale-blue dressing gown. He was unconscious; his right leg covered in rubber pads connected to electrodes which ran from the exposed flesh of his lower right limb to a circuit board situated outside the central dais.
Jessica could see that the man’s left leg was gone, having been amputated above the knee. Just like Adam …
The only other person in the suite was a dark-haired man dressed in black scrubs who was seated at a computer terminal.
Joyce switched channels on her headset to converse with him. “Dr. Juande Lara, say hello to Dr. Jessica Marulli. Dr. Lara is our resident specialist in TDS … Transdimensional Surgery.”
The Spaniard continued typing out commands on his keyboard, never bothering to look up. “Tell me, Marulli, are you familiar with TDS?”
“Never heard the term until you just mentioned it. From the looks of your lab, I assume it has something to do with the zero-point-energy field.”
“Correct. Scientists have known for decades that animals use bioelectrical signals to regenerate body parts—this is how tadpoles regenerate their tails. Two components are required: a proton pump to remove hydrogen ions out of the cell surface, and sodium ions which flow across the cell membrane. This bioelectric state stimulates regeneration-specific genes to multiply, allowing nerves to develop in the direction of the new growth and new cells to replace the damaged ones—including those in the spinal cord, essentially reversing paralysis.”