Rory stood up.
“For burns like these, infection’s your main worry. If you get swelling, redness or a lot of pus, don’t listen to Captain America here.” He playfully booted Keats in the shin with his metal foot. “Hightail your ass straight to the nearest emergency room.”
Rory went to the bedroom, returned shortly with jeans, a long-sleeved plaid shirt and fresh underwear and socks. He handed the clothes to Aiden. “We look about the same size.”
“Thanks. I really appreciate this.” He reached for his wallet. “I can pay you–”
“Forget it. I owe Deke big time. Because of him, I’m still suckin’ air.” Rory’s face buckled into a clumsy smile, as if embarrassed by the revelation. “But hey, it all works out in the long run. Karmic balance, circle of life, pay it forward. Shit like that.”
“Since you’re in such a munificent mood,” Keats said, “I need a couple more favors.”
“Shoot.”
“Something to eat. An hour or so alone with Aiden. Oh, and I don’t think anybody’s going to come asking about us, but in case they do–”
“You were never here,” Rory finished. “Got toast, cereal and breakfast bars, not much else. Cindy’s hitting the supermarket on her way home from work this afternoon.”
“That’ll do fine.”
Rory headed for the door. “I’ll be at the McDonald’s down the road if you need me. You gonna be gone before I get back?”
“Expect so.”
“Deke, if you need an extra hand on this one…”
“This is some bad shit. You don’t want a piece of it.”
“Offer stands.”
Keats nodded. Rory left the trailer. Through the screen door, the click-clack of his artificial knee faded into the distance.
NINETEEN
Aiden was famished. After changing into the new clothes, he drowned cereal in milk and trucked the bowl to the bedroom. Keats sat at a compact desk using Rory’s laptop to search for Tarantian. Aiden perched on the bed within viewing distance and attacked breakfast.
The search engine revealed Tarantian to be a geosciences term used in stratigraphy. It referred to a recent stage of the geological time scale, from roughly twelve thousand to one hundred and twenty-six thousand years ago, a period characterized by the appearance and recession of glaciers, the global spread of humans and the extinction of many animals, such as mammoths and saber-toothed tigers. It seemed obvious to Aiden that the term somehow related to whatever Marsdale had been working on at Tau Nine-One.
Keats picked up on something about his reaction. “Mean anything to you?”
Aiden shook his head.
“I’ll check with my sources in DC, see if Tarantian is a known code name. Might be some DOD or CIA op that Nobe tapped into.”
“Is that who sent you after Nobe and Farlin?” Aiden asked. “The Pentagon or the CIA?”
Keats turned off the computer. “You look like you’re feeling better.”
“Yeah, pain’s not nearly as bad. Rory’s pill definitely helped. And the food.”
“Good. Then it’s time to come clean. For starters, I want to know why they snatched you. And I want to know everything that happened in that garage.”
“Information’s a two-way street.”
“Fair enough. You first.” Keats folded his arms in a stern pose and waited.
Aiden gobbled the rest of his cereal while considering options. Despite Keats having saved his life, he still didn’t fully trust the man. And if he started talking about chunkies, Keats might well think he was a nutjob. Yet Aiden also knew he needed help, and that his life could depend on it. A leap of faith was required.
He told Keats everything that had occurred in the past few days starting with his father’s letter. He talked about his manifestations, his adoption, his recurring green dream that signified his color name, and Tau Nine-One. He described the encounter with Marsdale and what the professor had revealed about the quiver kids experiment and its possible connection to the field of geology. He ended his revelations with the details of Red’s interrogation in the garage.
When he finished, Keats gave a thoughtful nod. “So this Red seems to believe you have some other kind of psychic power, something more than just making these chunkies. And you figure that’s why they tortured you?”
“Yeah. He was trying to force me into telling him or showing him what I could do.”
“I never believed in psychic stuff. Thought it was bullshit. In fact, not too long ago I would have taken you for a genuine whack job. But my thinking on the subject has evolved.
“Last month there was a deadly incident near Tau Nine-One. Three men – two railfans and their guide – were out hiking. They were trying to get pictures of the train that shuttles workers back and forth. The hikers ended up in the wrong place at the wrong time. They ran into Nobe and his right-hand man, an electronics expert named Kokay. Another nasty piece of work.”
Keats swiveled toward the bedroom window, his attention drawn by movement at the neighboring trailer. Two children were playing hide-and-seek. The boy jumped out from behind a recycling container and swung around a washline pole, startling the girl.
“Nobe murdered the guide and one of the railfans. The second railfan, Henry Carpousis, was trying to escape when he had a close encounter with a grizzly.
“The hikers’ bodies landed at the bottom of a ravine. Henry Carpousis was mauled and bleeding bad so Nobe left him there. Probably figured that by the time a search party found him, he’d be dead, and that the searchers would assume the hikers had run into the bear at the top of the ravine and fallen to their deaths. It’s a story that likely would have held up to routine scrutiny.
“But leaving Henry Carpousis alive turned out to be a mistake on Nobe’s part. It took three days, but this badly injured, mild-mannered railfan managed to crawl his way out of that wilderness.” Keats shook his head. “Lots of guys I know couldn’t have done what he did. Happens to some folks when they’re pushed to the brink. Hidden courage and strength awakens, and they turn into real meat-eating SOBs.”
“I don’t recall hearing about any of this on the news.”
“The incident was hushed up in the name of national security. Henry Carpousis was persuaded to lie about what really happened. Standard operating procedure. Keep black sites like Tau Nine-One as far from media scrutiny as possible.
“But here’s where it gets weird. Henry Carpousis ran into more than just Nobe, Kokay and a pissed-off grizzly.”
Keats told Aiden about the ghostly projection, the figure with the King Kong mask that may have been some new kind of hologram.
“Nobe referred to it as a shadow. That mean anything to you?”
“Red mentioned the word. But that’s the first time I heard it, at least in that context. Could this Henry Carpousis have been hallucinating?”
“That’s what the military interrogators concluded. Three days alone in the wilderness, badly injured, can mess up your head, jumble fantasy and reality. But I have some contacts at the DOD, and one of them slipped me the video of Henry’s debriefing. He might have misinterpreted what he was seeing but my gut tells me it was real.”
Aiden added Keats’s fresh information to what, over the past few days, was a relentlessly expanding mystery. The only thing that seemed clear was that Tau Nine-One was at the center of it all.
“So what were Nobe and Kokay doing near Tau in the first place?” Aiden asked. “I’m guessing they weren’t taking pictures of old trains.”
“Best guess by the debriefers was that it was a recon mission, maybe to gauge Tau Nine-One’s defenses. They theorized that the mercs were following the tracks toward the facility. Kokay was carrying instruments of some sort. It’s possible his gear was being used to locate Tau Nine-One’s outer-perimeter sensor net.”
“They were looking for a way in?”
Keats nodded. “That’s the theory. Still, there are some big holes in it. First, it’s hard to imagine they could actua
lly penetrate that place. It’s well protected. State-of-the-art sensors, satellite sweeps, not to mention a detachment of Marines. But whatever Nobe and Kokay were up to, it was important enough to risk the murder of those hikers to keep it under wraps.”
“Do you have any idea what goes on there?”
“Over the years a few files crossed my desk at GAO. Tau is under DARPA’s purview. Much of the research involves metamaterials engineering. They develop advanced battlefield materials to protect soldiers and equipment.”
“But that’s just smoke and mirrors.”
“No, it’s genuine. But there’s something else there, a project above my clearance level. It’s a SAP – a Special Access Program – and one of the blackest ones I’ve ever come across. Even its budget is classified. It doesn’t show up in GAO files except as a code number.”
“Tau’s big secret,” Aiden murmured. “Any chance your Washington connections can get us through the door?”
“Forget it. And since the incident with the hikers, security’s been tightened even more.”
Aiden began pacing the small bedroom. “We need to figure out why Red is killing quiver kids. That’s got to be the key to everything that’s happened. Which means we have to find the other four. Gold, Magenta, Cyan and White.”
“You’re presuming they’re still alive. Red may have gotten to them already.”
“I don’t think so. When he talked about Blue, this Rodrick Tyler, I had the sense he was bragging. I think if he’d killed the others he’d have enjoyed telling me about it.”
Keats warmed to the idea of tracking down the other quiver kids. “If we could locate just one of them, we could set a trap for Red and Nobe.”
“Sounds like a plan. But first, you need to tell me who you work for.”
“That’s classified.”
“I think you mean not officially sanctioned. I’m guessing that explains why you were the only one coming to rescue me. After what happened to those hikers, I’d have thought there’d be a major investigation underway.”
“There is. Homeland Security and DOD have agents out questioning anyone with past or present links to Tau Nine-One.”
“But that’s not your job, is it?”
Keats turned back to the window. The children had left the neighboring yard. A pit bull was now tied to the washline pole. It looked mean and hungry.
“No,” he said quietly. “Not my job.”
“This whole mess could end with Red and Nobe captured and put on trial,” Aiden said. “But I’m guessing not everyone in our government would want such a public spectacle, even decades later. If word of the quiver kids experiment ever leaked out…”
Keats didn’t answer. He didn’t have to. Aiden’s darkest suspicions seemed to be confirmed. Keats wasn’t like those other government agents. He hadn’t been dispatched to bring Red and his cronies to justice.
He’d been sent to kill them.
PART 2
THE CLERK
TWENTY
Michael de Clerkin gazed out the west windows of his Century City penthouse office. It was an early Sunday afternoon in the Los Angeles basin and the skies were clear, an inversion layer having swept the smog out to sea. Beyond the buildings and freeways visible from his fortieth-floor perch he glimpsed a swath of Pacific Ocean.
At the moment, the sea was tranquil. But should some cataclysmic offshore event occur, such as the fracturing of a suboceanic fault line, that serenity would vanish in an instant. A monstrous tidal wave would crash ashore, possibly killing millions.
Michael liked the sea, liked its latent strength. He and the sea were similar in that respect. At the moment, he too was serene. But that could change the instant he donned a shadow and utilized its special power. And, if Wednesday’s long-gestating events went according to plan, that power would undergo a spectacular expansion.
The thought was so pleasant it turned him on. He beeped the desk phone for Trish, his newest executive assistant.
The door opened. Trish Belmont peeked around the edge. Her reticence brought to mind a nervous child entering an adult sanctum.
She was petite with short blond curls. A loose pantsuit from some knock-off designer veiled attractive curves. Michael was intrigued by her combination of camouflaged sexuality and natural beauty. Even after a few years out of some no-name Midwestern religious college, Trish remained less worldly than his previous assistants, most of whom had been unabashed social climbers eager to become the first Mrs de Clerkin. Although all of them ultimately had surrendered to his sexual demands, none had come close to getting their claws into his fortune.
A short career as his executive assistant at Krame-Tee Corp was a given. His last one had left after threatening Michael with a lawsuit. The aggravating incident had occurred at an arts fundraiser sponsored by the company.
The assistant had contradicted him in public, in front of a US senator and some business associates no less. Later in the limousine, he’d lectured her to the point of tears, then driven the lesson home with a kidney punch. His fist barely knocked the wind out of her but she’d quit the next day. As in previous incidents, his promise of a generous out-of-court settlement with an ironclad nondisclosure agreement was enough to buy her silence, keep her from getting all self-righteous and trying to out him with that hashtag-me-too bullshit.
“Sir?” Trish asked. She stood awkwardly on the other side of his desk, waiting for a response.
Michael drank in her beauty, aware he was making her anxious but enjoying making her wait. When it looked like she couldn’t stand another moment without peeing her pants, he smiled and handed her a sheaf of pages fresh from his printer.
“Revisions in maternity leave and daycare policy,” he explained. “More generous benefits. Keeps us competitive with what other companies are offering. Not to mention it’s the right thing to do.”
Michael could care less. His legal department had requested the changes to align corporate policy with the latest changes in way-too-liberal California law. Normally, one of his VPs handled such things. Michael had only bothered making a printout to convince Trish he was a caring person.
Besides, he liked paperwork, liked the feel of cellulose pulp. Paper was something real. Computerized data propelled the twenty-first century economy, yet gazing at a screen wasn’t the same as holding a printout. It was the difference between a window and a door, between a thing you merely looked through and a thing you could actually touch.
A window and a door. He was struck by the analogy to his own power. Today he was a window, able to transmit a shadow of himself – essentially a live hologram – to practically anywhere on the planet. Yet he couldn’t physically interact with a destination environment, only observe.
In three days, however, years of effort would be rewarded when Tarantian reached fruition. Once he had the prize in hand, perhaps he would become a door, able to transmit not just a mere shadow but his entire physical being. That alone could make him the most potent and extraordinary human on the face of the Earth. But it might represent only a start. There was no telling what fantastic abilities would cluster to him.
He’d felt for a long time now that he was in possession of a great latent power. That power was just waiting for the right impetus to burst free, to bloom.
It’s my destiny.
He grinned, pleased by the thought. Trish, not comprehending the reason for his expression, reacted with a tentative smile.
Naïve yet sexy. Such sheltered women were few and far between. Seduction took extra effort with girls like Trish, who wore their decency like a cloak of armor. But Michael trusted his persuasive abilities. Eventually, she’d come around.
And if Wednesday went well, Michael could be on his way to a state mirroring divinity. Gods, by definition, transcended the petty rules of society. Gods implemented their own agendas. Perhaps then he’d no longer bother with seduction games. Perhaps he’d simply fuck women like Trish when and where he pleased.
“Have Lega
l vet the policy,” he instructed. “Oh, and thanks again for coming in on a Sunday. I hope I didn’t spoil your weekend.”
“Not at all, sir.”
She turned to leave but was startled by a man standing in the doorway.
Michael scowled. “It’s all right, Trish. I know this gentleman.”
Nobe wore uncharacteristic attire: a gray suit with a gaudy chartreuse tie. He grinned lecherously at Trish as she slipped nervously past him and closed the door behind her.
“What are you doing here?” Michael demanded.
Nobe settled his lanky frame in the office’s four-thousand-dollar Eames lounger and propped his feet on the coffee table. “That doll doesn’t look your type. Too wholesome.”
“I asked what you’re doing here.”
He and Nobe had flown in from West Virginia this morning on the corporate jet after taking care of business with Green in that garage. By now, the merc should have been boarding a commercial flight to Montana to make final preparations for Tarantian.
Nobe squirmed in the chair, trying to get comfortable. There was something fastidious in his movements, a trait that worked to his advantage. Opponents often underestimated him, not realizing until too late just what sort of deadly predator they faced.
“Well?” Michael was losing patience. Nobe’s attitude could be tiresome.
“Well what, mate? Can’t stop by for a friendly visit to the Clerk?”
Michael restrained his annoyance. He didn’t care for the nickname the mercs had given him. Nobe was the only one bold enough to use it to his face, however. He had to admit, the man was fearless. Even when Michael had created a shadow in his presence for the first time, Nobe hadn’t been intimidated. An imperious self-confidence seemed to immunize him against normal human reactions.
Nobe finally got to the point. “Kokay and I needed to finish some business downtown. Had to see a man about a grenade launcher.”
“I thought you’d already purchased all the equipment.”
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