“I’m asking you.”
“What makes you think I know?”
Aiden sighed. “Really?”
“Even if I did know, not my business to say.”
“That doesn’t cut it.”
Ned eased the wheelchair forward until the footrest bumped into Aiden’s ankles. Aiden didn’t budge.
“Keats implied he’s on some kind of secret mission to stop Michael and the mercs. He’s hinted that he wants to spare the government a messy public trial.”
“Bingo.”
“There’s more to it than that. Who sent him?”
“Are you going to move aside? Or do I have to run your ass over?”
“Look, I’ve already had two bad encounters with these guys. I figure my chances of surviving a third one are slim to none. If I’m going to get killed in some battle out in the wilderness, don’t you think I at least deserve to know why?”
Ned looked uncomfortable. Aiden was getting through to him, instilling some guilt. Aiden gripped the wheelchair’s armrests, leaned in close until their faces were a foot apart.
“You were a soldier once. I’m guessing you wouldn’t have put one of your own men in harm’s way without at least making sure he understood the reason.”
“A soldier does his duty, does what he’s told.”
“Yeah, but you still know I’m right. I deserve the truth.”
Ned’s body language betrayed his doubts. He was caught between maintaining Keats’ secret or doing the honorable thing.
He shifted his chair into reverse and backed down the hallway. Aiden wondered if he was positioning himself for a high-speed attack, run over the stubborn human blocking his path.
“I deserve to know,” Aiden insisted.
Ned’s fingers drummed the armrests, rhythmic evidence of his indecision.
“All right,” he said finally. “But this stays between you and me. Deke doesn’t learn what I’m about to tell you.”
Aiden nodded.
“A few months ago, his son came back east to visit his mother. Father and son had a bad falling out a long time ago. I’m guessing you’ve spent enough time with the man to know he can be one stubborn son of a bitch.”
Aiden was confused. He recalled eavesdropping on the conversation in Rory’s trailer. Keats’ son was in middle school. “I thought the boy still lived at home with them in Virginia?”
“I’m not talking about Tonya and her boy. This is Deke’s older son, the one he had with his first wife, Alexandra. The kid hated his dad and by association, the military and everything it stood for. He blamed Deke’s dedication to the service for making his mom crazy.
“That wasn’t the case. But that’s how the kid saw it. Bottom line, the two of ’em got along like fused dynamite and a BIC lighter. You know about Alexandra, about her being institutionalized?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Well, the boy comes to see his mom. He’d been living in the Midwest, didn’t get east very often. It just so happened Deke was visiting Alexandra at the hospital the same day and they run into one another. Turns out to be the first time the family – mom, dad, son – are together in the same room in years.
“Lo and behold, Deke and the kid don’t go for the jugulars. Maybe being in the presence of Alexandra, even if she is pretty much gone with the wind, makes ’em mind their ps and qs. They don’t exactly kiss and make up but it’s definitely the start of something. They leave the hospital, spend a few hours together, heal some old wounds. Things go well enough that they make plans to meet again.”
Ned paused. His voice grew solemn. “Deke was planning to fly out to visit the boy last month. Couldn’t wait for the kid to get back from his wilderness trip to Montana. In fact, Deke even helped him do a little background research on the area he’d be hiking through.”
Aiden connected the rest of the dots. “Which happened to be near a certain government facility known as Tau Nine-One.”
“Deke’s son was one of the three hikers. Their guide. According to that survivor, Henry Carpousis, the kid went down fighting. Deke had taught him to handle himself but it didn’t help. That bastard Nobe broke his neck and kicked his body down into a ravine.
“The kid hated guns, probably another way to prove he was different from his old man. Deke believes if he’d been armed he’d have stood a chance.” Ned shook his head. “Doubtful. Not against a trained killer like Nobe.”
Aiden recalled Keats’ revelations about his first wife and his dream involving Alexandra’s painting.
We were still living in this cramped, one-bedroom apartment. We were building the sandcastle and making it huge, giving it all these extra rooms.
Aiden understood the painting’s deeper symbolism. The couple had been dreaming of their future together, dreaming of a home big enough to raise their baby son. Alexandra likely was in the early stages of pregnancy.
It’s gone, Alexandra, Keats had muttered in his dream. It’s gone.
Keats had been robbed of his future, and more than once. His wife’s mental illness had put a strain on their relationship and caused feuds with his son. And just when he and the boy were on the verge of reconnecting, a chance encounter near Tau Nine-One had stolen his hopes.
“The kid’s name was Greg Mahoney,” Ned continued. “Used his mom’s maiden name. Deke didn’t have a problem with that, per se. But he was hoping that someday he’d make Greg proud enough to again call himself a Keats.”
Aiden registered the larger truth. Deke Keats wasn’t on any secret mission sanctioned by some clandestine agency. No one had sent him after Michael and Nobe. His impetus had nothing to do with sparing the government public embarrassment. Instead, he was driven by one of the most primeval of human emotions: vengeance. He wanted to kill the men responsible for his son’s death.
Ned glowered at him. “Happy now?”
“Almost. I need a favor.”
“Betraying the confidence of a friend isn’t favor enough?”
“I think I know what it took for you to do that. And I appreciate it. But this is important. I need you to track down a woman. Dr Ana Cho.”
After leaving Pinsey’s home, Aiden had used Keats’ phone to search for the quiver kids’ project director. But the name was common enough to generate an overabundance of hits. Without knowing more about her, no clear leads had been forthcoming. There was also the possibility Cho had married and changed her name.
Aiden provided Ned with the details. The old man looked annoyed but gave a grudging nod.
“Is that all? Maybe you also want me to yank out a couple teeth and give ’em to you as souvenirs? Or hop up from this goddamn chair and do some back flips for your entertainment?”
“If you’re up for it, by all means. But I’ll settle for Cho’s current address.”
FORTY-ONE
Ned’s small armory was beneath the garage and accessed through a disguised hatch. Keats descended the short ladder and handed up a selection of weapons and ammo. Aiden and Jessie carried them to the truck and put them under the back seat with the other weapons.
Jessie looked enthused at the sight of the four Heckler & Koch UMP submachine guns with folding stocks and a pair of older M16 rifles outfitted with scopes. But for Aiden, the weapons, combined with what he’d learned about Keats’ real motivations, filled him with an even greater sense of impending doom.
Ned hadn’t yet attempted to pry data from the mercs’ protected phones. He promised to work the problem after they left and get in touch if successful.
“That’s it then,” Keats said to the older man as they prepared to depart.
“I’d tell you to watch your asses,” Ned grumbled. “But since you’re determined to put them in places they don’t belong, I’d be wasting my breath.”
He handed Keats a phone. “It’s a burner and encrypted. In case you want to call and have me talk you out of this nonsense.”
The two men shook hands. Keats got behind the wheel of the F-150. Jessie hopped into the bench se
at beside him, leaving Aiden the passenger-door side. Even before they reached the bottom of Ned’s lane, Keats and Jessie were engaged in an animated conversation about the advantages of specific weapons for various tactical situations. She seemed to have a good handle on the subject.
“Where’d you learn this stuff?” Keats asked.
“My uncle, my mom’s brother. Ex-Army. He lived with us for a while and had a serious gun collection. Took me hunting and taught me how to shoot.”
Aiden knew enough about guns to get by but had little interest in the topic. Still, he acknowledged a tinge of jealousy. Jessie and Keats seemed to be bonding in a way that left him odd man out.
They reached the main road and headed north. Keats adhered strictly to the speed limit, wise considering what lay hidden behind them. Trying to explain to some statie who pulled them over why they were carrying a cache of automatic weapons would more than challenge their combined bullshitting skills.
As the crow flies, it was some four hundred miles to Jaffeburg. The small town was fifty miles west of Churchton Summit and Tau Nine-One. Ned had an old friend there, a retired navy captain who owned a hotel and restaurant. The man had agreed to put them up for the night, no questions asked. It was safer than the three of them having to show ID to check into some roadside motor lodge. For all they knew, a nationwide bulletin indeed had been issued for their arrests. Staying off the grid remained the safest course.
And if they somehow survived going up against Michael and the mercs, what then? No matter how events unfolded, they’d certainly be wanted for questioning. Engaging in a gun battle near a DOD black site no doubt carried a stiff prison term.
Aiden’s burned arms were starting to bother him again. He popped another of Rory’s pills and tried his best to get comfortable and settle in for the ride. But he couldn’t shake those bad feelings. His mind kept cycling through a trio of unpleasant futures, one of which he seemed destined for.
I’ll be dead, sent to prison or forced to go on the run the rest of my life.
Wading through those appalling prospects made him more depressed by the mile. Finally, he forced himself to squelch the negativity and focus on what lay at the heart of his entire predicament.
Quiver.
Everything that had happened to him, not just over these past few days but pretty much his entire life, was centered on that mysterious stone.
What was it? Were Maurice Pinsey and the Tau Nine-One researchers correct in their theory that the stone had been sent to Earth by some fantastic alien civilization seventy thousand years ago? If so, for what purpose? The reason had to involve something more profound than enabling a small group of human beings to experience various types of manifestations.
He recalled the words from his green dream, the words echoed by Bobbie Pinsey.
Singularity beguiles, transcend the illusion.
Who or what was behind that cryptic message? How and why did it apparently use Gold as its means of communication? More to the point, precisely what was the singularity beguiling Aiden and how was he supposed to transcend it?
The questions piled up. The only thing that seemed clear was something he’d acknowledged earlier. He was snared by forces beyond his control and was being propelled toward some unknown destiny. Although he didn’t know where he was bound, he sensed his journey revolved around deciphering quiver’s true nature. Yet he couldn’t see how that could be accomplished by taking part in a battle with hopeless odds.
“Bathroom break,” Jessie announced, ending a silence that had gripped the pickup for the past half hour. It was nearly nine o’clock. They’d been on the road four hours.
Keats turned into an all-night diner whose parking lot was dotted with eighteen-wheelers, pickups and a pack of brooding Harleys. Aiden didn’t like the look of the place but the diner was serene, belying his apprehensions. The crowd was a mix of long-haul truckers at the counter and families tucked into booths. The motorcyclists, huddled around a large table in the back, turned out to be a group of middle-aged mill workers reliving their youth via a cross-country trek from Chicago to Seattle.
Jessie told Keats to order her coffee and a slice of lemon meringue pie, and headed for the lavatory. Keats grabbed a booth where he could keep an eye on the pickup. A waitress with a ruddy face and no-nonsense attitude took their order.
Keats’ encrypted phone rang. He answered, listened for a moment. Disappointment marred his features.
“It’s Ned,” he said, handing the phone to Aiden. “He couldn’t get anything out of the mercs’ phones. He wants to talk to you.”
The old soldier wasted no words on pleasantries.
“Ana Cho. Second generation Chinese-American. Divorced, one adult son. Kept her married name, Hilbertson. Lives in Portland, Oregon. I have a street address.”
Aiden borrowed a pen from Keats and scrawled the address on a napkin.
“Learn anything else about her?” he asked.
“That’s it. And don’t go throwing my name around as a source. You have no idea where you got this information, right?”
“Absolutely. And thanks, I really appreciate–”
Ned hung up. Aiden returned the phone and pen to Keats, who looked skeptical.
“Waste of time trying to talk to this woman. Even if she knows something, stopping Michael and the rest of them is what’s important.”
“What’s important to you.”
Their food arrived a few minutes later. Jessie hadn’t returned. Aiden munched on a burger and fries and fought an urge to tell Keats he knew the real reason he was going after Michael and the mercs. Considering the stakes, the truth should be out in the open. But the promise he’d made to Ned compelled him to hold his tongue.
Keats wolfed down a heaping plate of meatloaf and potatoes, and finished his coffee. Anxious to get back on the road, he kept glancing toward the bathroom. Finally, he flagged the waitress and asked if she’d check on Jessie for them. She returned a minute later looking annoyed.
“Your girl told me to mind my own business. Told me she’d be done when she was done and not a moment sooner.” The waitress scowled. “She best not be doing drugs in there.”
Aiden assured her such was not the case. The woman didn’t look convinced and stared long and hard at Keats. Aiden had grown accustomed to his appearance. He’d forgotten just how much the man looked like some brutish heavy from a gangster flick.
The waitress left. They waited a while longer. Still no Jessie. Aiden volunteered to check on her.
A small corridor accessed a pair of unisex lavatories. He knocked on the first door.
“Jessie?”
There was no response. He twisted the knob. The door was locked. He knocked again.
“You OK in there?”
The lock clicked. The door opened a crack.
“Are you alone?” she whispered.
“Yeah.”
She let him in and redid the lock. The bathroom was compact, just a corner sink, urinal and a stall with a swinging door. Jessie had a strange expression. He couldn’t tell whether it signified bliss or constipation.
She gestured toward the stall. Aiden reached for the door handle, hesitated.
“Go ahead,” she urged. “Take a look.”
He swung the door open. The back wall above the toilet, just below the grating of a vent, was slimed with overlapping manifestations. Trails of brownish goo dripped slowly to the floor.
“Now stand back and watch this,” she said.
Aiden moved from her path. Jessie backed away from the stall as far as possible in the cramped bathroom and closed her eyes.
A manifestation appeared in front of her face, instantly shot away from her as if launched from a cannon. The dropper smashed into the vent just above the slimed barrier with a splat.
Jessie beamed with excitement. “I had it all wrong! Those experiments I was doing in the basement, I was obsessed with growing the droppers, like maybe I expected them to blossom into some sort of alien flower
s. But I was missing the whole point.
“Things started to become clear to me after I killed that merc. It took a while for it all to hit home, for it to coalesce in my head. But suddenly I’m in here doing my business and I know. I feel it to the core of my being!”
“Feel what?”
“My manifestations, they’re weapons! Suddenly, there’s this incredible energy inside me. I can create droppers within minutes of one another, rather than hours or days. I can send them shooting away from me like missiles. And those tentacles, they’re optional, only appear as needed. You remember how they broke that merc’s fingers, kept his hands from trying to get the dropper off his face? They’re like an anti-tampering system so when my missiles hit their target, they can’t be interfered with!”
Aiden kept his doubts to himself. Maybe she was right and her manifestations were weapons. But her enthusiasm reminded him of someone on a caffeine high. It left him feeling warier than ever of her
“Michael has a power and it’s potent,” she continued. “He can turn a manifestation into a shadow and project it, maybe anywhere in the world. But he can’t do what I can do!”
Aiden’s earlier suspicions returned. Did she want the quiver for herself, to give herself a second infusion?
Someone knocked hard on the door. The waitress.
“All right, enough’s enough! I don’t know care what the two of you are doing in there, you need to stop it and come out now.”
“Be out in a sec,” Jessie said.
A key snaked into the lock. Aiden shut the stall door to hide evidence of the manifestations.
The waitress barged in, scowling. Two beefy truckers stood in the hallway behind her, no doubt recruited as backup.
A splash came from inside the stall. The waitress shoved past Aiden and pushed open the door. Her scowl deepened as she gazed at the splattered wall.
“What the hell’s this?”
A gelatinous clump bobbed in the bowl. Part of Jessie’s last projectile had slipped from the vent’s grating and took a fortuitous bounce off the toilet tank.
Aiden shrugged. “You got some kind of nasty leak in your air handling system. Better get it checked.”
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