Wired

by Douglas E. Richards

  “What if he lied?” said Desh in desperation. “What if they have a sniper watching the back as well?”

  “He’ll miss,” she said simply. “I’m covered head to toe by a jumpsuit, goggles and a ski mask, all designed to completely block my heat signature. I’ll be invisible to thermal imaging, from snipers or from the air.”

  Desh shook his head. “That’s impossible,” he insisted. “The military has been trying for years. There is no such technology.”

  “There is now,” replied Kira smoothly.

  Desh’s eyes widened. Could it be true? If she could be believed, she had dramatically enhanced her own intelligence. Had she turned her amped-up genius to the problem of defeating thermal imaging technology? If this were true, it would go a long way toward explaining how she had managed to remain in the US and elude the manhunt for so long.

  As this was flashing through Desh’s mind, Kira approached him and quickly sawed at his restraints with a knife until his hands were free, retreating from him rapidly once they were, despite being armed and having the advantage of sight.

  “I have to go,” she said hurriedly. “I’ll leave the knife and gun in the bathroom of the adjoining room. By the time you shuffle over there and remove your ankle cuffs, I’ll have gotten the head start I need.”

  Desh allowed himself to breathe again. Would she really let him go?

  “Damn!” she fumed again. “There’s much more to tell. We should be leaving together as allies!” Kira gathered herself. “They’ll know I took the risk of kidnapping you,” she mumbled rapidly, “but it’s unclear how they’ll interpret this. They may decide to kill you or they may decide just to use you. I don’t know.” She paused. “I know you’re still not sure about me. But even if you think every word I told you was a lie, your survival depends on believing this: don’t trust anyone. Be prepared for anything,” she warned anxiously.

  Kira gathered her bag and rushed into the adjoining room. After a ten second detour into its bathroom, she unlocked the room’s outer door. “We’ll have to finish our conversation at another time,” she called to Desh through the doors between the two rooms.

  There was a slight pause. “Be careful, David,” she added earnestly. “I hope you’re as good as I think you are.”

  And with that, Kira Miller opened the door and stepped out into the night.

  PART THREE

  Fountain

  15

  Desh moved the instant the outer door of the adjoining room was shut. He scooted to the other side of the bed and reached out cautiously, probing for the lamp on the other end table. It was identical to the one whose cord had been ripped from the wall. His hand connected with it and he fumbled for the switch at its base, managing to find it and flip it on. Although the lamp was on the dim side, after several minutes in darkness he was forced to squint until his eyes adjusted.

  The door frame at the room’s entrance was shattered where the lock had been, and the door itself hung awkwardly from a single hinge; a splintered mess. The two intruders were awkward heaps on the thin carpet, and neither was moving. Desh slid from the bed and pressed two fingers into each of their necks in turn, feeling for their carotid arteries and signs of a pulse. Both were still alive. Satisfied, he shuffled as quickly as he could to the adjoining room, his ankles still bound. Making sure not to turn on any additional lights, he entered the bathroom, unsure of what he might find there.

  He waited until the bathroom door was closed and flipped on the light. No use sending out a beacon to any onlookers that would remind them of the possibility of front-to-back adjoining rooms. True to Kira’s word there was a Browning semiautomatic, its clip full, and a combat knife lying on the floor. Desh was shocked to also find the keys to the Ford and what must have been a spare pair of night-vision goggles next to the weapons. She knew he would be coming after her, despite her brief head start, so why arm him and provide him with night-vision and a car?

  Desh frowned. Because she was confident it wouldn’t matter. She knew he couldn’t catch her, even still. She wouldn’t have planned an impeccable ambush and a way to exit the motel undetected without planning an escape route as well. He had no doubt she had another car ready to go, parked and waiting for her just on the other side of the stretch of woods that abutted the motel.

  Desh pocketed the gun and keys and made quick work of his ankle restraints with the knife. It was a relief to have complete freedom of movement again. He strapped the goggles on his head and grabbed a neatly folded towel from a small shelf in the bathroom. He rushed back to the wounded man as he lay unconscious, wrapping the towel tightly around his thigh.

  The men had carried identical guns that were now lying on the floor near them. Desh picked one up and examined it, surprised that he didn’t recognize the make. As he pulled the clip his eyes widened. It was a tranquilizer gun! Designed to shoot darts instead of bullets.

  He patted both men down. While neither possessed any personal items or identification, which didn’t surprise him, they each carried semiautomatic pistols along with the tranquilizer guns. They had possessed lethal firepower but had been intent on taking their quarry alive. Interesting. But who were they, exactly? And what were they doing here? Kira Miller’s explanation that he was being followed by his own people was the most likely, but still didn’t make sense. It wasn’t as though he couldn’t be trusted to report back once he had found her.

  What now? He could charge after her, but he was certain he wouldn’t catch her. Desh knew he didn’t have much time before the police would be arriving. The man she had shot may have been lying about the sniper, but it was just as likely he hadn’t been. And Desh didn’t have her supposed ability to become invisible to thermal imagers. He wasn’t about to be the first heat-emitting humanoid to rush out the front door. Still, he had to regroup, and the last thing he needed was to be in the room when the police came calling. This left only one choice: he had to leave out the back, through the adjoining room, as she had done.

  Kira Miller had told him to trust no one, and regardless of what he might think of the veracity of anything else she said, this was sensible advice. He was in far over his head, and until he had a much better sense of what was happening and who the players were, he wasn’t prepared to trust his own shadow.

  Desh pocketed the shorter man’s cell phone and tranquilizer gun and wrapped the other tranquilizer gun and the two pistols in a towel. He moved into the adjoining room, tossed the towel on the bed, and closed both doors, plunging himself yet again into darkness. He felt for the dead-bolt, locked the adjoining door on his side, and then flipped open the cell phone he had taken. The phone’s glow provided enough illumination with which to dial and navigate the room. He had memorized Jim Connelly’s private home number and dialed it rapidly.

  The phone rang three times while Desh waited anxiously.

  “Hello,” rasped Connelly sleepily.

  “Colonel, it’s David Desh.”

  “David?” mumbled Connelly in surprise. “Jesus, David, it’s three in the morning,” he complained, but then began to awaken more fully as the significance of the call registered on his barely conscious brain. His voice picked up strength as his adrenaline levels spiked. “Are you okay?”

  “Yes, but I need to know something,” said Desh in hushed tones.

  “Are you under duress?” said Connelly carefully, now fully alert.

  “No, I’m alone.”

  “We need to get to a secure line,” insisted Connelly. “I know you remember our discussion. I hadn’t expected to hear from you,” he added pointedly, as if Desh needed reminding that Connelly had given him explicit instructions not to call him and to stay well clear of military channels.

  “Yeah, we wouldn’t want to tip off our quarry,” said Desh sardonically. He paused and then added, “Unfortunately, it’s a little late for that.”

  “She knows you’re on the case?”

  “You could say that,” replied Desh. “In fact, you could say that I was j
ust abducted,” he continued. “And it wasn’t by aliens.”

  “What?” whispered the colonel in disbelief. “But why? It makes no sense.” He paused in thought. “Unless she thought you were getting close.”

  “She didn’t, and I wasn’t,” continued Desh hurriedly, acutely aware that the police could arrive at any moment. Worse still, the two men in the adjoining room could regain their consciousness, or their sniper friend could lose his patience with his colleagues and come to investigate. “She tried to convince me she was innocent. I have very little time, so I’ll tell you about that later. But I need to know something. Two military types crashed the party and ran her off. Were they yours?”

  “I didn’t know about the party, so I sure as hell didn’t send the party crashers,” he replied.

  “Did you set them up on their own recognizance to tail me?”

  “Why would I do that?” said Connelly, genuinely confused. “You aren’t the target here, and I have every confidence you’ll do your job and then call your contact.”

  “Then who are they?”

  There was a long pause. “I have no idea,” came the uneasy reply.

  Desh nodded. “I have to go, Colonel. Do me a favor. Investigate this entire Op from top to bottom. Something’s not right. Starting with the party crashers. Make sure you have the straight skinny on this deal.”

  “After what you’ve just told me,” said Connelly, “you don’t need to ask.”

  “Good. I’ll be in touch,” said Desh, ending the connection.

  Desh pocketed the phone and pushed aside just enough of the curtain to be able to peer out of the window. The coast appeared clear, although this guaranteed nothing.

  Desh heard heavy footsteps coming from the adjoining room and jerked his head away from the window, his senses hyper-alert.

  “Holy Shit!” bellowed a man in the other room, his shocked voice easily carrying through the wall. “Are they alive?”

  “I’ll check,” said another man. “You call for back-up,” he added anxiously.

  Desh guessed from their reaction to the two unconscious men they were uniformed cops with no military experience, which was somewhat of a relief. Even so, he didn’t wait to hear more. He opened the outer door and cautiously stepped outside, crouching low and keeping to the darkness.

  16

  David Desh entered the woods near the back of the motel, the night vision equipment that Kira had provided now firmly over his eyes, and picked his way through the trees as quickly as he could. The woods at night provided a spectacle few would ever witness, requiring both the interest and expensive IR night vision equipment to maximize the experience. Desh had been lucky enough to be properly equipped on many occasions and see the woods come alive at night as nocturnal birds, amphibians, mammals, and reptiles scurried onto the stage under cover of darkness, unaware that technology could now offer night-blind humans a peak at their previously hidden universe. Warm-blooded bats, normally invisible against the night sky, now showed up clearly as they winged after insect meals, and owls terrorized rodent populations, often swallowing their prey whole.

  Tonight, though, Desh didn’t have the luxury of letting himself get distracted. His entire focus was on plotting a path that would allow him to traverse the quarter-mile wide strip of trees as quickly as possible. Ten minutes later he emerged from the trees. A road paralleled the woods, but Desh stayed close to the tree line and out of sight of headlights, continuing to put distance between himself and the motel.

  After jogging for a few miles he spotted the steeple of a church across the road, with a small parking area in front, and hurriedly approached it. He passed a sign that read Saint Peters Lutheran Church. Pushing aside feelings of guilt, he forced the lock on the front door of the brick building and slid inside.

  He went straight to the main sanctuary, stepped onto the altar, and deposited the cell phone he had removed from Kira’s assailant behind the pulpit, leaving the phone closed but still on. Within minutes he was back just inside the tree line, staying out of sight and watching all access points to the church carefully.

  Desh settled in for what he expected to be a long vigil. Periodically, he retreated farther into the woods and did jumping jacks to keep his blood flowing and to generate warmth on the chilly autumn night. He had the odd feeling that if Kira Miller had had an extra coat in her magic bag, she would have left that in the bathroom for him as well.

  So what to make of her? Could her story have been true? It was impossible to say. But regardless, Desh had to admire her competence. She planned brilliantly, was quick on her feet, and was decisive.

  But was she too decisive? She had shot one of the intruders to get information with a ruthless efficiency. Few people were capable of acting so callously. On the other hand, she could easily have killed them all. A true psychopath wouldn’t have hesitated. Unless for some unfathomable reason it continued to be of importance to her to convince Desh she was innocent, so much so that she was able to sublimate her psychotic nature.

  Or was she not a psychopath at all? Had she really been a model citizen before she had altered her own brain chemistry? Maybe. But even if she was, it was equally possible that the changes to her nature she claimed to have come about as a result of her experiments had become permanent, despite her assurances to the contrary.

  But this still wouldn’t explain the deaths of her parents and uncle and teachers, Desh realized. Even if the murder of her brother and her collaboration with terrorists could be explained as a result of self-induced psychopathic behavior, a horrible side effect of the rewiring of her own brain, these earlier murders could not be. Could it be that she honestly was unaware of her own true nature? What if she had suffered from schizophrenia and had developed a split personality at a young age? Maybe it had always been a Dr. Jekyll, Mr. Hyde thing with her, with the changes to her brain chemistry doing nothing more than allowing the Mr. Hyde personality to become more dominant.

  Desh shook his head, annoyed with himself. Why was he trying so hard to identify some part of her that was innocent! He knew that she was getting to him, but he hadn’t realized just how much until now. Along with a powerful intellect that he found stimulating and those soft, expressive eyes, there was a charm and sincerity to her that was undeniably appealing, even though he knew it was nothing but an accomplished acting job. He had to hand it to the ancient Greeks: they knew that a treacherous woman who could still captivate a man was far more dangerous than the most powerful of sea monsters. How many others had been mesmerized by Kira Miller’s siren song, he wondered, letting down their guard and crashing against the cliffs. If their paths crossed again, he had better find a way to tie himself to the mast if he wanted to have any chance of surviving the encounter.

  He was still lost in thought, forty minutes after he had abandoned the cell phone, when a large, two-door sedan pulled off the road a hundred yards before the church. Two men with night-vision equipment of their own jumped out and without a word began to double-time it to the church, leaving the driver waiting in the car. They had taken the bait already. Impressive. Whoever they were, they were exceedingly well connected. Despite the police presence in the motel, they had been able to pull the required strings to retrieve their men and track the missing cell phone in record time.

  Desh pulled out the tranquilizer gun he had borrowed. Despite the fact they had been tailing him, they were still most likely friendlies. He wasn’t exactly in a trusting mood, but he wasn’t about to consider lethal force, either, until he knew who they were.

  Desh sprinted along the tree line in the opposite direction from the church so he could circle back around behind the car. As the two men entered St. Peters, Desh cut quietly across the road and noiselessly lowered himself into a military crawl. He inched forward toward the passenger door, not even allowing himself to breathe. He was betting the driver had not locked the car.

  Desh let out a slow, preparatory breath and quietly removed his goggles, leaving them on the groun
d next to him. Then, in a single fluid motion, he shot up from the ground—catching the door handle on the way up—and yanked the door wide open. It wasn’t locked! Wasting no time congratulating himself, Desh pointed the gun at the startled driver, who had just begun reaching for his own weapon. “Hands on the dash!” he barked fiercely.

  17

  The driver studied Desh thoughtfully, and then calmly placed his hands on the dash as instructed. The tip of Desh’s tongue protruded just slightly through his lips as it tended to do whenever he was engaged in any physical activity that required his absolute concentration. He slid through the car’s open door and into the back seat, his gun never wavering from its target.

  “Slide over and close the door,” commanded Desh in hushed tones.

  The man did as he was told.

  “Now slide back and get us on the road. Quickly!” demanded Desh. “Head farther away from the Church.” Desh had no interest in passing the man’s colleagues who he knew would be exiting the church at any moment after they discovered they had been set up.

  The driver did as instructed, and the church rapidly receded in the rear-view mirror.

  “Very impressive, Mr. Desh,” the driver allowed. “But then, I have heard good things.”

  “Who are you?” demanded Desh. “And why were you and your people following me?”

  “Call me Smith,” said the driver, a short, wiry man in his late thirties, with short brown hair and a two-inch scar under his ear that followed his jaw line. “After a session with Kira Miller you get a little paranoid, don’t you? Don’t know who to trust or what to believe.”

  “Smith, huh,” said Desh to himself. The man was unmistakably military. And along with the obvious alias, there was a peculiar arrogance about him, as though he considered himself above it all; unencumbered by rules that might apply to lesser men. “Black Ops, then?” guessed Desh.