by James T Wood
She pushed the door open to the darkened room where we’d left the doctor sleeping. I edged the door closed as quietly as possible to avoid waking Grosskopf and then turned back to Anka. In a moment my hands were under her shirt feeling the hot tension of her skin under her sweater. I felt her hands against my belt when a sound came from the bed where the doctor was laying.
I’d heard that sound before; it was the sound of a bullet being loaded into the chamber of a semi-automatic pistol. We froze.
“I’ll kill you if you try anything, just get out and you don’t have to die,” Grosskopf threatened us.
“Doctor, it’s us,” Anka said.
“Yeah, Grosskopf, don’t shoot. It’s just us.”
“Oh.”
He flicked on the light and I quickly pulled my hands out from under Anka’s sweater. She pushed me away slightly and we both blushed.
“OH! That’s what was going on,” the doctor said, “I thought you were waiting at the door to see if I was asleep so you could kill me. You took so long to come in that I suspected the worst. I didn’t know that you two were humping like rabbits.”
My face turned even redder at his crude description. I risked a glance at Anka and noticed her staring at the floor.
“We met the Cuban, Gutierrez, he’s going to help us get into the NSA. He’ll join us here tomorrow morning at seven. We should get some sleep.”
With that, Anka walked into the bathroom and closed the door. I contemplated shooting Grosskopf again. I figured I would wait for Grosskopf to fall asleep and Anka to come out of the bathroom so we could resume our activities. I crawled into the second bed and, after a while, the doctor reached over and turned off the light. The next thing I knew it was morning and Anka was shaking me awake. I found her prodding me from sleep with her head on my chest and my arm around her shoulders. I never wanted to move from that spot with her warm and snuggly against me. But she insisted. With a playful kiss and a squeeze of my side she launched me out of the bed.
I groggily rubbed my eyes and reached down to put on my clothes that were piled by the bed. I looked back when Anka flipped on the light in the bathroom and I just caught a glimpse of her in her bra and panties before she closed the door. That image drove everything else from my mind for several minutes as I struggled to figure out how my shoelaces were supposed to work.
Across from me, Grosskopf snored loudly. I contemplated waking him, but I didn’t see much point right now. It’s not as if he could do much to get ready and the extra sleep would help him heal faster. I glanced at the clichéd red LED alarm clock on the nightstand to see that it was six-thirty.
Fund Raising
Gutierrez showed up precisely at seven. Anka was showered and looked like nothing had happened. I managed to pull myself into some semblance of normalcy. Grosskopf was a pale, unshaven, rumpled manatee. I tried to determine if it was a step down or up from his usual appearance.
“Well,” El Tigre began, “first we must get some money. I speak with my Chinese friends and they sell me a drone machine that will help us, but it won’t come cheap. All of my money is in Cuba and I can’t get to it. Do you have any way to help?”
Slowly Grosskopf looked at me and then Anka. I could see his dejection when he realized that neither of us had any money.
“Yeah, I’ve got some money stashed away. It’s in some offshore accounts. But I don’t have the numbers on me.”
I pulled out my phone and found the picture of his spreadsheet.
“Will this help?”
He glared at me.
“Yeah, that’s them. I see you broke in to my office.”
“Um, you zapped my brain with a treatment that could kill me and you didn’t ask permission or tell me what you were doing.”
“Touché. I did give you fifty bucks though.”
“Yeah, thanks for that. I didn’t know what my life was worth before. It’s comforting to be able to put a price on my existence.”
“Shut up.”
“So, how do we get the money? Do we have some sort of briefcase exchange in the park with the Chinese agents?”
Anka, Gutierrez and Grosskopf all looked at me like I was an ill behaved child asking questions about the sexual practices of Galapagos turtles humping slowly and noisily at the zoo.
“No,” Gutierrez said, “We transfer the money and they send us the codes to the storage locker where the drone machine is. I can email them now if you want.”
“Great, let’s do it.” Anka was ready to head out the door.
“How much do they want?” Grosskopf asked.
“Five hundred thousand.”
“Damn you all.”
“So, fifty dollars is okay, but five-large is more than my life is worth to you? Thanks man, I’m touched.”
The doctor just glared at me while he said, “Where do I send the money?”
“Let me email them and find out the details.”
Antonio pulled out his phone and tapped out a brief message. Within a few minutes he had a reply back with the instructions. Grosskopf sent off the money and we got the address and code for a storage facility in Tacoma.
“Are you riding with us or are we riding with you?” I asked Gutierrez.
“You have that Suburban out there? I have an Escalade. Which would you rather ride in?”
“Alright, thanks for the lift El Tigre.”
I clapped my hands as I got up and headed toward the door. Everyone else fell into line and we left the hotel on the lake in Centralia. We piled in to Gutierrez’s Cadillac with Anka and I in the back, Antonio driving and Grosskopf riding shotgun. I was tempted to see if we could make use of the back seat, but Anka didn’t seem open to the idea. I was contented with holding her hand for the hour and a half drive up to Tacoma. She has quite nice hands, especially for holding.
We pulled off the freeway at South Tacoma Way and headed in to one of the myriad self-storage facilities in the neighborhood. This one had orange garage doors instead of green like the one down the street. Gutierrez keyed in the code to get us in to the facility and then found the unit from the emailed directions. There he entered the combination given, popped open the padlock and rolled up the door. I was wholly unprepared for what I saw inside.
It was like the forklift exoskeleton from Aliens mixed with an X-wing from Star Wars. I just stared at it while Gutierrez walked in to the storage unit. He chuckled at my gaping mouth and walked over to a small chest in the corner.
“You couldn’t afford it, even if you knew what it was.”
I desperately wanted to get into the cockpit of the thing, wherever that was, and figure out how to make it work, whatever it did. It has so many buttons that I just wanted to press. In a few minutes, El Tigre found a shiny metal box in the chest. He locked up the chest, shooed us out of the storage unit and then locked up the unit.
“We have it, we can move on now.”
“What is it?”
“This is a transmitter/receiver that will allow us to take control of the NSA’s drones.”
“That little box cost five hundred thousand dollars?” Grosskopf sounded sick.
“Yes, and it was a bargain, because the Chinese like me so much.”
“What was the rest of that?” I asked.
“You don’t need to know and I don’t need to tell you.”
“But the Chinese just have a storage locker filled with all sorts of technology. Shouldn’t we report this to someone?” I was aghast.
“Who?” Anka asked, “The NSA?”
“Right, good point.”
“Okay, how do we use this thing, and how does using it get us into the NSA facility,” Anka turned to Gutierrez.
“I can explain on the way. There are cameras here.”
We piled back in to the Escalade and got back on to I-5. Gutierrez seemed to know exactly where we needed to go.
“So, what’s the plan?” Anka insisted.
“We can use this transmitter to take over the NSA drones and then
use those drones against them. That will trigger an evacuation of the facility and then we can sneak in and use the lab.”
“That sounds simple enough,” Grosskopf approved.
“Yes, it sounds simple. But we will have to set up at a radio tower within a mile of the NSA headquarters, take control of the tower without being detected by the NSA, and once the evacuation is triggered, we’ll have thirty seconds to get inside.”
“Last time I tried it I think I hit a seven minute mile,” I chimed in from the back. “I don’t think I can shave six and a half minutes off my time in four days.”
“Yes, you are right. You will need to be much closer than a mile away. I will be at the tower and you three will need to hide near the entrance to the facility.”
“Wait, wait, wait,” I put my hands up, “Our plan is to go and hide near the headquarters of the people currently trying to kill us and wait for the person who used to be trying to kill us to take over the weapons of the people currently trying to kill us?”
“That about sums it up, yes.” Anka didn’t sound perturbed.
“This will work?” Gutierrez asked
“I don’t have a better option? Do you Alfred?”
“Alfred? Who’s Alfred?” Grosskopf looked at me quizzically.
“Nobel? First name Alfred? The man whose eponymous prize you want to win? Never mind. I guess that means you don’t have a better plan.”
“Uh…”
“Exactly. By the way, you might want to write out that acceptance speech ahead of time. I don’t suggest winging it on the spot.”
“Thanks.”
“So, you described the types of places we need to be, but you didn’t give us any specifics. Where, exactly, are we going?” I asked.
“I do not know,” Gutierrez replied, “I’ve never been to the NSA headquarters in Seattle. I was hoping our young agent here could give us an idea of where to go.”
We all turned to look at Anka but she just stared straight ahead. I could see her weighing the balance in her head and trying to determine which betrayal was worse, hers to her country or her country’s to her. Finally she replied.
“Go to Queen Anne Hill in Seattle. There are radio towers there that will be close enough to do the job.”
“Yes, but I will need to know where to point my transmission.” Antonio complained.
“You will, but not now. Besides, we still need to figure out how to get within thirty seconds of headquarters without being caught. You’re not providing us much help on that front.”
“I do what I can. I do not what I cannot.”
I muttered under my breath, “The more you know. Ding!”
Anka chuckled with me. I don’t know if she got the reference or if she just liked that I was making fun of Gutierrez. I hoped it was both.
Nosebleed
I dreamed I was running down a long corridor. It was like the one in the mall, but it just kept going without turning to the left or the right. Behind me Smith kept shooting and I would do the Parkour wall-run to dodge, but every time it would hit Jones at the opposite end of the hall. I kept running toward Jones’ face being exploded by bullets or then his heart would be torn from his chest. No matter how fast I ran, I couldn’t get away from Smith behind me and I never got to Jones ahead of me. The escape of the loading dock door was always just out of reach behind the man who died endlessly in front of me.
Without warning the earth started shaking and drove us all to our knees. The bullets kept flying and Jones kept dying, but we were all trying to not fall over too. The floor, instead of being solid, felt like Jell-O and it moved at different times than the walls and ceiling. I stared at the corners looking for cracks to form, but they never did. Instead the joints of the hallway got stretched out like an old sweater. Wrinkles and sagging took the place of the sharp corners.
The shaking got more violent and we were all driven flat to the ground. I tried to move. I tried to keep moving down the hallway toward freedom, but it eluded me. I felt the shaking creep inside me. It stopped being an external event in my dream and filled my body. My arms shook, my legs quaked, my neck and back twitched wildly. I felt my throat seize up and I made wild, grunting sounds in the chaotic rhythm of my diaphragm.
I don’t know when the dream stopped and when I woke up to the seizure. Gradually I recognized Anka’s face over me instead of Jones’ gaping wounds. She stared down at me with terror in her eyes and shouted back over her shoulder. My ears heard the sound but couldn’t make out the words. She cradled my head in her lap and stroked my hair. Overall I wasn’t dissatisfied with the situation.
Finally I stopped shaking and took a ragged breath. Anka smiled down at me the way one would smile at a bald child in a cancer ward. Dread welled up inside me as I started to become aware of the wrongness of my body and the sudden shift from having a conversation to having a seizure.
“What…” the words felt odd on my tongue, “what happened?”
“You had a seizure, but you’re okay now.” Anka stroked my hair.
“Wow…how long was I out?”
“It was about two minutes. Long enough for us to pull over and get you on the floor.”
Grosskopf looked back at me from the front seat.
“Do you have a history of seizures? You didn’t report it on your medical history.”
“No, I’ve never had one before. I don’t know anyone in my family who has.”
“I see.”
“So? What does that mean?”
I struggled to get to a seated position. Anka protested at first, but then a nod from the doctor changed her mind. Grosskopf sighed.
“It means we need to get to the lab even sooner than we thought.”
“What? I thought you said I had five days—four now. What’s going on?”
“Your brain is in flux. The initial treatment created a cocktail of neurotransmitters in your brain that, essentially, supercharged your mirror neurons. We all have mirror neurons, it’s how we learn to speak, walk and do most things. We watch and learn. But for most of us we need to watch something several times. The mirror neurons fire in our brain like an echo of what we saw. It’s not as powerful as actually doing something, so it takes more echoes to stack up to the real thing.
“The way the system is supposed to work is that you see it, do it, see it and do it again. It’s a feedback loop where your brain can compare the mirror neuron activity against physical activity to check for accuracy. The treatment took out the loop part. But all that activity needs to go somewhere.
“Your brain is creating electrical impulses every time you use it and the mirror neurons expect to see a response in normal neurons. That hasn’t been happening so your brain is confused. A seizure is basically a short circuit of the electrical impulses of the brain. Yours got overloaded and blew up. That’s why you need additional treatments.
“When the mirror neurons have been re-trained to work at the accelerated level, I can re-tune the neurotransmitters back to a normal mixture. It takes a few days, usually, to sufficiently alter the brain structure so the changes are permanent. But if the neurotransmitters stay altered, then the changes will continue and your brain will shut down altogether.”
I just stared at him for a long time before speaking.
“Fifty bucks.”
“Yeah, I’m sorry. Okay?”
“So, now how long do you think I have?”
“I’d give us a day, maybe two, before your brain collapses completely.”
“Great. Thanks for this.”
Anka interjected, “The important thing is for us to just get through this. We can figure out who’s to blame later. Right now maybe we should get back on the road to Seattle.”
“Yes, you were going to tell me where the NSA headquarters is located.”
“No, Antonio, I wasn’t. Why do you need to know that?”
“If I am to hack into the drones I must know where they are.”
“Why’s that? You’re going to be broadc
asting from one of the most powerful radio towers in the region. It seems to me that any drones in range will be affected. You don’t need to know exactly where they are.”
He said it under his breath, but I heard Gutierrez say, “¡Puta!” Anka just shook her head and helped me into my seat.
“Head to Queen Anne Hill and hook up to the radio towers there. We’ll take care of our part.”
“Yes.”
Gutierrez started the Cadillac and pulled back onto the freeway. I wiped my nose on the back of my hand and pulled it away to see a long streak of blood. I pinched my nose and asked for napkins or Kleenex. Grosskopf found some old McDonald’s napkins in the glove box and handed them back. I applied them to my face and leaned back in my seat contemplating how long it would take for me to bleed out through my nose.
A few miles north of Seattle-Tacoma International Airport we hit traffic. I didn’t drive much and it was even more rare for me to drive to Seattle, but even I’d heard of the near-ubiquitous traffic. It felt very un-super-secret-spy-like to be stuck in traffic while holding fast food napkins to my nosebleed in the back of an SUV. It felt much more like I was the unfortunate recipient of a facial in soccer and on my way home from practice while my mom picked up snacks for the birthday party we’d be attending later that day. On the scale from lame to badass, this was about an FDR.
“Hey, Anka, what’s the best time for us to try to get into the NSA headquarters? I mean, do they all head out to Applebee’s for happy hour at five? When will we have the fewest number of people to deal with?”
“There’s not really a great time. There are people on twenty-four hour surveillance. Remember, the official mission of the NSA is monitoring foreign communication, so we’re up all night and all day.”
“Crap.”
“Yeah, I’ve been trying to figure out something.”
She reached over and took my hand again as I held the other one to my nose.
“So, once Tony here triggers the evacuation we have thirty seconds to get inside. What’s going to make that the easiest?”