by Jack Murphy
“As I said,” the mystery man droned. “Just an interview.”
They walked through another set of automatic doors, Deckard's eyes frozen on the words above the entrance: Department of Neurology.
Footsteps rounded the corner behind them, the commando turning to see a trio of trigger men striding up from behind. Middle Eastern looking, wearing bootleg American clothing with knock off sunglasses perched on top of their heads. MP-5 sub-machine guns rested comfortably in their hands. He studied them carefully with just a glance, and they eyeballed him right back.
Hezbollah by the looks of them, flown in from Lebanon. Hopefully, they didn't recognize him. Deckard grimaced, knowing that he was none too popular in that part of the world.
Three more terrorists walked from a side room and took position to their front, effectively boxing them in. There was no turning back now.
Deeper into the empty hospital wing they crossed the final threshold, Deckard realizing what was happening with a shock. The placard on the door announced that they were entering the fMRI clinic. He had never been through the process himself, but had heard the stories about psychological torture sessions carried out on high level NSA and CIA officials.
The Islamic fundamentalists waited outside, standing guard, while Deckard and the suit went into the changing room. Lockers lined the walls, a hospital gown already laid out for him.
“The fMRI emits a magnetic resonance thirty thousand times stronger than the pull of gravity,” the mystery man stated. “It is required that you get changed and leave behind all metallic objects. Walk through that door as soon as you are finished and we will get started.”
“What about the shrapnel in my leg?”
“What shrapnel?”
“A souvenir from Burkina Faso a few years ago. Won't the MRI yank it out?”
“Probably. Luckily for you, we are in a hospital. We have people on staff who can attend to you if it rips out a vein or artery.”
Ouch. Sounds painful.
“Please hurry, Mr. O'Brien. We have people waiting and our time is valuable as I'm sure is yours.”
The suit exited the changing room, the door sliding shut with a click, leaving him alone under humming fluorescent lights.
Cursing, Deckard took his AK-103 off its sling and set it down. The rifle was filthy with mud but had held up just fine when he needed it. Next, he pulled the Glock out of its holster to lay it down next to the rifle. It was also thick with carbon and covered in dirt, yet no one had complained about the handgun's performance.
Shrugging out of his combat rig, Deckard laid it on the floor as well. The AK magazines in it were empty; the pouches that had held fragmentation grenades were hanging with loose flaps, empty as well. The cylinder shaped pouch that had held a thermite grenade was hanging open too. He had used the red colored device that had been inside to burn Peng's mansion to the ground.
Still other pouches held a water bladder, pistol magazines, sheathed combat knife, escape and evasion gear, a handheld GPS system, garrote wire, night vision monocular, and other tools of the trade.
Dumping his gear he did a quick circuit, opening the locker doors and finding nothing inside. Two were locked. Squatting down he unzipped the main compartment on his combat rig and retrieved his lock pick set. Going to work on the locked door, he placed the tension wrench in the lock and applied light pressure while flicking the tumblers with a raking tool.
Deckard knew he had to work fast.
The tension wrench turned, the lock opening. Inside were a pair of slippers and a white lab coat hanging on a hook. Rifling through the pockets he turned up nothing but lint and a ballpoint pen.
Peeling off his fatigue jacket, he cast it aside, where it landed with a plop in the corner of the room. The sweat and grime was setting in with the stench of rotting food.
Going to work on the next lock, he held his breath, hoping to find what he was looking for.
He was nearing the drone zone. Awake for nearly three days straight, the former soldier was having trouble concentrating. The bright overhead lights seemed to pierce his skull, his recall fading, making everything more difficult. The simple five pin lock would have been child's play under any other circumstance, but now he was struggling just to apply the correct level of pressure on the metal tools in his hands.
Looking over his shoulder, he expected the goon squad to rush in at any moment, forcefully dragging him out, and holding him down while the MRI scanned his brain.
Finally, the lock popped open. Flinging the door open, Deckard tore through the clothes he found inside before his eyes froze on a bottle resting on the top shelf. Snatching it in his hand, he looked at the label on the pill bottle.
Bingo.
“Mr. O'Brien.” The suit pushed open the door irritably. “Please, we don't have all day.”
Deckard was just finishing tying the drawstring on his medical gown.
“Sorry about that,” he replied with a nervous smile. “I smell like death warmed over.”
“This way, please,” his new handler responded flatly while holding the door open for him.
“Thanks,” Deckard grumbled as he passed by.
Immediately his eyes went to the doublesided mirror that stretched across the far wall. Quickly shifting his gaze to the fMRI machine that took up most of the room, he walked towards it. Swallowing hard, he was pretty sure he was screwed. Although he wasn't a doctor, he could read the label on the side of the machine.
It was a Siemens 3T Magnetom. He might not be familiar with the specific machine, but he did know that 3T stood for three Teslas, a unit of measurement that indicated that this was the most advanced type of model available, offering the highest resolution brain scans.
Nowhere to hide. Not even in your own mind.
“Please lay down on the table now.”
Deckard sat down on the cold slab hesitantly.
The functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging device worked by measuring the blood oxygen level dependence, or BOLD level in the human brain. Stimulation would cause the blood flow in the brain the change. Certain neural pathways would be activated, and the neural cells themselves would demand more glucose to consume, increasing the blood flow to that portion of the brain.
The 3T Magnetom would create an extremely powerful magnetic field that would measure the inner working of the mind based on BOLD levels and show a three-dimensional model of Deckard's brain on a computer monitor. As stimulus was provided, experts could analyze which parts of his brain were active and when.
The thought of a high tech mind fuck disgusted him, but it was too late, with too much at stake to blow it now. He'd do his best to spoof the system. If that didn't work, all he had at his disposal was a small fiberglass knife hidden in his sock. Not only were they reading his mind but had also found a way to make sure he was disarmed, all of his hidden party favors left with his fatigues and combat equipment with no metal allowed in the room.
Once he was lying down, the suit came up beside him and fastened several straps around his face to prevent Deckard from moving and throwing off their readings.
“Very good,” the spectacle-wearing man commented almost to himself.
Sliding the slab forward on its rollers, Deckard's head was now inside the machine as it hummed steadily, someone on the other side of the mirror starting it up.
“Try to relax, this should only take an hour or so.”
“Fucking hell!” Deckard screamed as several small metal fragments were torn from his calf muscle, ripping flesh before sticking to the side of the fMRI machine.
The suit calmly walked out and returned with heavy bandages.
“I'm sealing your wounds with medical glue. Keep an eye on it over the next few days. We don't want you getting an infection.”
“You're all heart, thanks.”
The door slammed shut leaving him alone. The half dozen Arabs who stood guard outside were probably confiscating his equipment in case things went bad.
Suddenl
y the speaker system came to life, the suit's calming voice speaking in his ear.
“Your name is Jake O'Brien.”
“Yes,” Deckard answered.
“Mr. O'Brien, please shut up. Your response is not necessary, just listen and stay still.”
They didn't need him to say anything, just measure his BOLD levels in response to each question. The fMRI would take one scan a second, it was a variation of an event-based MRI that would essentially read his mind.
“Your name is Jake O'Brien,” the voice repeated.
Several seconds passed allowing time for the scans. Like a polygraph, a series of control questions would be asked to establish a baseline. Precedents had to be formed, sample scans indicated, so that when the real questioning began, they could determine what his mind looked like when it was told the truth and what it looked like when it was told a lie.
“You were born in Raleigh, North Carolina.”
What the technicians running the lie detector test didn't realize was that he was working under alias and all of their control questions were lies from the get go.
“Your mother's name was Whitney Shepard.”
Deckard breathed normally and allowed himself to relax, making no attempt at subterfuge. The more convoluted the results the better.
“Your father's name was Danny O'Brien.”
The questions regarding Deckard's false past continued for what seemed like forever, but was probably only twenty minutes or so. After covering his supposed childhood and military career, they finally began getting around to recent events.
“You are the battalion commander of Samruk International.”
It was a struggle to keep his eyes open. He was completely exhausted and the grilling wasn't making things better.
“You did not conduct combat operations in Burma.”
Some negatives were occasionally thrown out to mix things up a little.
“You were involved in the murder of Stevan Djokovic.”
Deckard began reciting his seven times tables in his head.
“You plotted the execution of your Executive Officer.”
Seven times seven equals fifty...no, forty nine.
“You personally led the assault on a casino in Panghsang.”
“You allowed a situation to develop that resulted in the death of Stevan Djokovic.”
They kept coming back to Djokovic, once again confirming that he had been a plant inside the battalion. They were suspicious. No doubt, Djokovic had sent them scathing reports about Deckard before he was killed.
The questions kept coming, harder and faster then before, trying to trip him up.
“You will follow any orders given to you.”
“You will not disobey your instructions.”
“You have no moral objections to ordering your men to certain death.”
“You ordered two prisoners executed in Afghanistan.”
“You ordered the murder of Stevan Djokovic.”
“You were born in Raleigh, North Carolina.”
“The assault of the UWSA headquarters was successful.”
Deckard blinked hard, getting confused as the minutes dragged on. The baseline questions may have been invalid, but his guard was lowered due to exhaustion. He had one fail-safe, the one that was keeping him artificially calm.
“You fired on the Chinese military in Burma.”
Popping a couple of Valium pills in the changing room, they had taken effect just minutes later and would alter how his brain responded to questioning. With the basic physiology of the brain altered by the drug, the entire results of the tests would be skewed and invalid. The drug contained active benzodiazepines, which created a number of effects, including sedation, muscle relaxation, as well as anti-anxiety. With the Valium running its course, the blood oxidization levels in Deckard's brain would remain at a fixed rate regardless of the probing questions he was subjected too.
“You never question the validly of the orders you receive.”
At least that was what he speculated.
“Your mother's maiden name is Shepard.”
Two cognitive psychologists, two statisticians, and three MRI technicians poured over three-dimensional models of Deckard's brain from behind the double-sided mirror. What they discovered was as frustrating as it was bizarre.
The imaging was fed through a computer system that then displayed the graphical representation of the subject's brain while statements were given or questions asked. Different colors would show up on the three-dimensional model brain, indicating which neural pathways were currently active.
The team was the best in a very elite field of medicine and science. Usually they were tasked to evaluate high-ranking members of intelligence agencies or corporate executives of the Fortune One Hundred set. Billions of dollars and vital national security secrets rested on their shoulders on a daily basis.
In ten years they had never failed to identify a traitor or corporate spy. Zero false positives. Federal raids of the suspects' homes and property after the team's confirmation always validated their findings.
Tension filled the room. They were closing in on two hours, longer then they'd ever spent with a single subject in the past. The data shown on the computer monitors was opaque, strange, insane even. They were assured that the subject was a highly capable military commander, but the readings said otherwise.
Based on the scientific evidence alone, their subject was being told lies and truth all at the same time. They had only seen this sort of thing in medical studies performed on schizophrenics at mental hospitals.
One of the statisticians rubbed her hands nervously.
Who was he?
What was he?
Finally the lead psychologist, a PhD from Harvard University, hurled the paper readouts in his hand across the room.
“Fuck.”
Twenty Seven
“In other words Peng fucked them,” Frank summarized. “Just like Ramirez and Khalis.”
“Hold on,” Deckard said, rubbing his eyes. They sat in the S2 shack, or what passed for it inside Samruk's warehouse headquarters. The intel section had come a long way, with flat screen HDTVs mounted to the walls for presentations and laptops set up as workstations, but it was still just a glorified plywood cubicle.
“So JF finished interrogating Peng's accountant before we left?”
“Yeah, and he told us that Peng had had a falling out with his people across the border in Thailand. Drug money from the Golden Triangle is traditionally laundered through South East Asia to American and European banks located in Australia. The Western banks were demanding a bigger slice of the action, so Peng started looking to the East, towards China specifically.”
Deckard had only managed a few hours of sleep so far and was still trying to process the information. The ache in his leg wasn't helping.
“So the Burma mission was a consolidation, but of what? Wealth and power, but then the next question becomes, to what end? Why now?”
“Someone wants to bankroll a huge amount of money and fast,” Frank replied. “I'm afraid of what the end game might be, but it must be something big.”
“When I first took over the battalion, they had these guys doing nothing but cordon and search operations to conduct gun confiscations,” Deckard said, rubbing the sides of his head. “It was weird.”
“What are you thinking?”
“I'm afraid to say it.”
“You think this has all been preparation for something else.”
“I think the fringe benefit for our employers has been a consolidation of wealth, but they have a wider goal in mind as an end game,” Deckard said, shaking his head. “Sergeant Major?”
“Da.”
“Give me a SITREP on the battalion.”
“All companies are conducting command maintenance today. Statements of loss are being compiled as we speak. I will have them for you within the hour.”
“Initial damages?”
“Seven vehicles were rendered
non-recoverable during the mission. Six were destroyed by enemy aircraft, a seventh from Bravo Company drove over a landmine on the way back to RV at the field hospital. All weapons are accounted for except one missing AK that Charlie Company lost when someone accidentally dropped it in a river.”
The material losses seemed superficial compared to the dead.
“Killed and wounded?”
“Seventeen killed, twenty-four wounded. Of those twenty-four, eight are still in the hospital with long recovery times. The others should be back to work as soon as they get stitches removed or recover from concussions.”
“What about the dead?”
“Funeral arrangements are being made with families of the local men. Bank accounts are being established for families who don't have them so life insurance payments can be made. Tomorrow, the body of the only non-local will be flown back to the United States. Roger Llewellyn. He was killed in the truck that ran over that land mine.”
“He was the former Marine that Adam brought on board,” Deckard cursed under his breath. “Keep me updated.”
“Of course,” the battalion's senior NCO stated. His entire report was from memory. He knew everything that was happening in his battalion.
“What do we have for atmospherics?” Deckard asked, changing the subject.
Frank looked down at his notes. Atmospherics were general intelligence points, usually regarding a specific area or country. Today they had to take the entire global situation into account if they wanted to predict where they would be sent next.
“Gas prices back home just hit five dollars a gallon. The spot price on gold is up to two thousand. Almost twenty percent unemployment, with riots breaking out in Atlanta and Los Angeles.”
“Heading for hyperinflation.”
“It looks that way,” Frank continued. “Several states are reacting by putting the National Guard on alert, but get this, CDC is telling state governments that they need to start stock piling bodybags.”
“The left hand isn't talking to the right, typical government bureaucracy. Somebody knows what is going on and is jumping the gun. If the Center for Disease Control is getting in the act then this thing is going to be biological.”