PART FIVE
Captured
32
David Desh awoke and absently shook his head to clear it, his eyes still closed, vaguely becoming aware of something uncomfortable stabbing into his cheek.
Suddenly, it all came rushing back. The helicopter. Kira falling. So they hadn’t used lethal force on him, after all. Either that or he was in heaven, which was unlikely since pain wasn’t supposed to be part of that realm, and the ache in his mouth was very real. On the other hand, perhaps he had ended up in that other place …
Desh opened his eyes, but only a crack. He wanted to appear unconscious for as long as he could. He and Kira were sitting on the floor, together, their backs against a concrete wall in a gray, dimly lit basement. The room’s only light was supplied by an uncovered bulb that hung down from the unfinished ceiling with a pull string hanging down beside it. Heavy steel rungs had been bolted into the wall at even intervals, and his wrists were bound together behind his back and through one of the rungs with plasticuffs. Kira was bound in a similar fashion to a rung five feet to his left. In one corner there was a sump hole, about two feet in diameter, with a pump inside and about ten inches of standing water at its bottom. Three steel poles rose to meet the ceiling in strategic locations to lend structural support to the house.
The basement was empty save a large wooden worktable in the middle of the floor, about eight feet away from the prisoners, with an assortment of tools hanging from a pegboard above it. An unfinished wood staircase at the opposite wall led to the first floor, eventually rising to a door that was out of sight.
They appeared to be alone. It was possible no one had been watching when Desh had first stirred, but he knew it was more likely that someone had picked up his return to consciousness on a video monitor and was approaching even now.
Desh instinctively sized up his position and considered options for escape, but came up empty. As he continued to explore every facet of his surroundings and commit them to memory, he noticed with alarm that a small section of Kira Miller’s skull, just over her right ear, had been shaved bald and was now covered by a white bandage.
He pushed at the heart-shaped locket with his tongue and repositioned it in the front of his mouth. As he did so, Kira began to stir. If his movements hadn’t been noticed, hers certainly would be. He had no time to spare. He tried to work open the locket’s tiny clasp with his tongue and by manipulating it with his teeth, but was unsuccessful. Finally he positioned the locket’s seam carefully between his incisors, hoping to force it open like a particularly stubborn pistachio. After a few tries he managed to pry the two halves apart, but only a millimeter. This would have to do. He was afraid of applying too much pressure and having the locket squirt out of his mouth and out of reach. His molars would be safer, but might seal it again for good rather than open it further.
He swallowed the locket whole—its point stabbing the inside of his throat on the way down—knowing his stomach acid would enter the miniscule rift he had opened and begin dissolving the gell that imprisoned Kira’s gene therapy cocktail. But how long would this take, given the gellcap was barely exposed? It was impossible to say.
Kira’s eyes came open with a start. She shook her head to clear it, wincing in pain as she did so, and turned to Desh with a puzzled expression on her face. But a moment later she must have remembered being at the gas station and hearing a helicopter just before she had lost consciousness. “Shit,” she said dejectedly. “They got us with tranquilizer darts, didn’t they?”
Desh nodded.
“I’m not usually hypersensitive to pain,” said Kira, “but it feels more like they shot an arrow into my head.”
“The dart hit your neck. That’s not what you’re feeling.” Desh frowned worriedly. “A small portion of your head above your right ear has been shaved. There’s a bandage there now.”
The color drained from Kira’s cheeks. “That would explain the intense pain, all right.”
“Any idea what they might have done to you?” asked Desh.
“None whatsoever,” she replied uneasily.
“Are you going to be okay?”
Kira paused for a moment and then nodded. “It hurts like hell, but not so much that it’s debilitating,” she replied stoically. “I’ll get by.” Her eyes darted around the basement. “Where are we?”
“I don’t know,” said Desh. He was about to continue when the door opened and two men walked down the stairs. As the first man came into view, both prisoners recognized him immediately. The wiry Black Ops agent who had called himself Smith.
The same could not be said for the man who followed him. He was in his late forties, of average height but slightly overweight. He was wearing gray suit pants, a blue-striped oxford dress shirt, and black wingtips. He had a small mouth and thin lips, and blond-brown hair that was parted down the middle. There was something about the man that was unsettling, as if the sight of him had set of subconscious alarms that he was a dangerous predator, despite his unassuming appearance.
“Kira Miller,” the man said smugly. “At long last.”
He put his back to the workbench and hoisted himself to a seated position on the table facing the prisoners, his legs hanging down casually. Smith remained standing, ten feet away from the workbench and facing in the same direction.
“Who are you?” demanded Kira.
“You don’t really think I’m going to answer that,” he said in amusement. “Call me Sam, and let’s leave it at that. And to anticipate your next question, we’re in what is called a safe house. There are four heavily armed men upstairs whose job it is to follow any order I give.”
Desh had no doubt from their respective postures that this was Smith’s boss, which meant he was also probably the man they had been calling Moriarty. And he had access to a safe house and considerable legitimate authority. Not surprising.
“So you must be government,” guessed Desh. “Sam as in Uncle Sam? Is that supposed to be cute or just psychotic?”
The man moved in a blur, much faster than his appearance would have suggested. He pushed off the table, took the few steps to where Desh was immobilized on the floor, and kicked him savagely in the gut, leading with the point of his black wingtip. Desh tightened his stomach just in time and tried to turn away, but his stomach took the full brunt of the kick, and he reeled from the blow. Pain signals bombarded his nervous system.
Sam, calm again, returned to his perch on the table. “I don’t like your tone, Mr. Desh,” he said, as if reprimanding a grade-schooler. “You will address me with the proper respect. My business is with Dr. Miller here. The only reason you aren’t dead yet is because I’m trying to figure out how you factor into this. But I would watch how you speak to me. I’m not that curious.”
Desh didn’t respond as the man who called himself Sam turned once again to Kira. “How’s the head?” he taunted.
“What did you do to me?” she demanded.
“Oh, we’ll come to that, never fear. But first we have some other business. I don’t suppose you’d want to make this easy and just give me the secret to the fountain of youth? The GPS coordinates for that buried flash drive of yours would work just as well.”
She said nothing but glared at him icily.
Sam held out his palms innocently. “I didn’t think so. Worth a try, though,” he said, shrugging. “I thought this might be a bit of a challenge. After all,” he added, the corners of his mouth turning up into a cruel smile, “you were willing to let me barbecue your brother.”
Kira’s eyes blazed like twin suns. “You son of a bitch!” she screamed hatefully, pulling against her restraints.
He raised his eyebrows and smiled. “Son of a bitch?” he repeated, amused. “I would normally take offense, but you are technically correct. Mom was a bitch. How did you know?” he added wryly.
“I will kill you,” she growled. “If it’s the last thing I ever do.”
Sam was unimpressed. “You’re hardly in a position to
be making threats, my dear.” He shook his head in mock regret. “But I see now that killing your brother probably ruined any chance for us to have a romantic relationship.”
Desh could tell that Kira was seething inside, but was fighting to stay calm so she wouldn’t give this Sam the added satisfaction of getting a rise out of her. The man was purposely pushing her buttons to cloud her thinking, and Desh knew he had to do something to intervene. “So you’re the one who broke into her condo,” he said, risking the point of Sam’s shoe to deflect the conversation from its current course. “And stole her treatment.”
Desh braced himself for an attack, but none came. “That’s right.”
“But you aren’t enhanced now,” noted Kira, having already regained her equilibrium. “Why not?”
“You of all people know that running your brain at warp speed takes a lot out of it. Can’t do it every day.” He paused. “But if your real question is, did I run out of pills? the answer is no. I didn’t. What’s more, I have a molecular biologist working for me who’s almost managed to duplicate your work. Another month and I’ll have a lifetime supply.”
“And will he be signing his own death warrant when he succeeds?” said Kira.
“Why ask questions to which you already know the answer?” Sam shrugged. “Everybody dies sometime.” He tilted his head and grinned. “Except for maybe me and you, my dear.”
“So who is the molecular biologist working with you?” she asked.
“Oh, I doubt you know him. He was in the bio-defense division at USAMRIID. I discovered he was conspiring with terrorists for money.” He rolled his eyes. “He also had a taste for young boys that was quite troubling. So I, ah … pressed him into service.”
“You mean you blackmailed him,” said Kira.
Sam ignored her. “I do have to hand it to you,” he continued, shaking his head in admiration. “Even with your lab notebook, even with the instruction manual right in front of him, it’s taken him years to duplicate your work.”
“Why not just enhance his intelligence?” asked Kira.
“I have. Several times. If not for this, he’d still be trying to figure out how to replicate what you did. But I didn’t want to give him too many pills. First, I don’t have that many left. Second, that kind of intelligence makes someone extremely difficult to control. You and I both know that. You can’t imagine the precautions I had to take each time I souped him up.”
Desh searched his own mind for any signs of a change but detected none. Part of him still didn’t believe her therapy would really work, but if it did, he had no idea what to expect when it began to kick in.
“How many people other than Desh know about the longevity therapy?” asked Kira.
“Good question,” said Sam, smiling. “The wheels are always turning with you, aren’t they. Always gathering intel. The answer is, only me. I clean up after myself very carefully. True, the entire US military has been after you, but I’m the only one who really knows what’s going on.”
“Other than me, of course,” corrected Smith.
With a burst of motion, Sam pulled a silenced pistol from a holster and put a bullet into Smith’s head at point blank range. The impact threw Smith off his feet and he landed roughly on his back, dead before he hit the ground.
Blood mixed with tiny bits of brain matter leaked from Smith’s head and began to puddle on the concrete floor next to him.
33
Kira Miller shrank back in horror as blood continued to pour from Smith’s head.
Sam returned his gun to its holster. “Now where was I,” he said casually, as if nothing had happened
Desh didn’t need to consult a textbook to know that this man was a true psychopath.
“Oh, I remember,” continued Sam. “I was telling you that I’m the only one who really knows what’s going on.”
Sam nodded at Smith’s glassy-eyed corpse on the floor and then his gaze settled back on Kira Miller. “Although, admittedly, there used to be two of us. But now that I have you, Dr. Miller, I won’t be needing him anymore,” he explained, and then frowning, added, “and to be frank about it, he wasn’t all that useful. I had you dead to rights at that motel and he fucked it up.”
Desh’s last reservations about the veracity of Kira’s story had now vanished. Everything she had told him was true. This was the man Connelly had been looking for.
“How will you explain Smith’s murder to your men upstairs?” asked Desh.
Sam grinned. “No need for explanations among friends. The men upstairs were handpicked and are all completely loyal to me. I pay them extremely well, but I’ve always believed in wielding a stick to go along with the carrot. None of them are big believers in the Ten Commandments and have unfortunately committed some major, ah … indiscretions … in their lives. I have enough dirt on each of them to put them away forever. And if I die, this dirt becomes public automatically.” A self-satisfied look settled over his features. “These men would do anything for me. And since they have absolutely no idea what’s going on, unlike our dead friend here, they don’t have to worry about, ah … early termination, so to speak.”
Desh knew that Kira had been badly shaken by the ruthlessness of Smith’s execution, but she appeared to have composed herself once again. “What’s the game here, Sam?” she said, spitting out his name hatefully. “You know you can’t get the secret of longevity out of me through torture or with drugs. And you’d better believe I’m not going to tell a psychopath like you anything of my own free will. So what am I doing here?”
“We’ve already established you won’t tell me the coordinates.” He raised his eyebrows and an amused expression came over his face. “Not even to save your brother’s life. But there are sacrifices that are far greater even than this. I’ve been working ever since that moron Lusetti lost you—paying with his worthless life—to find the proper leverage to get you to, ah … voluntarily … tell me what I want. And I found it. So here is the question: will you tell me what I want to know to save the future of humanity?”
Kira remained silent, not taking the bait.
“After Lusetti used truth drugs on you, he told me he had learned why you felt it was so important to keep your discovery secret. Overpopulation. Fear of societal upheaval. Well, you’re in luck. I can help you out. What if there were no longer any births in the world?” Sam smiled cruelly, quite pleased with himself. “That would solve this problem, wouldn’t it? Give you no excuse for not sharing.”
“What are you talking about?”
Sam raised his eyebrows. “Sterilization of every woman on the planet,” he said simply.
Desh heard Sam but didn’t react in any way. His mind had begun to feel strange. It had been painful at first, like a sharp headache, but now the feeling was electric, like the pins-and-needles feeling of a limb falling asleep, only in his head, a place in which he knew there were no sensory receptors of any kind.
Kira looked at Sam as though he were mad. This wild, over-the-top threat could have easily come out of the mouth of a villain on a Saturday morning cartoon. But sadistic and deranged though Sam was, he was clearly formidable, and she sensed that this threat was not entirely an idle one.
“You’re out of your mind,” she said.
“Am I? My enhanced molecular biologist doesn’t think so. He thinks mass sterilization is child’s play. Well, child’s play for a child trained in molecular biology with an immeasurable IQ,” he said in amusement. “A woman is born with all the egg cells she’ll ever have. Take them out and it’s game over.”
“How?”
“I’m not the expert, but I’m told that it’s pretty simple if you really make the effort. Lots of ways to target just egg cells. Hell, there are venereal diseases that lead to infertility all by themselves. All you need are determination and an artificially boosted IQ.”
As Kira thought about it, she realized he was right. Even a mediocre molecular biologist, his mind transformed by her treatment, could manage something
relatively simple like this. And the entire female population wouldn’t have to be infected at once. If an engineered virus was set loose, designed just to attack female eggs and nothing else, the attacks would go unnoticed for some time. Each woman infected would have her ability to reproduce destroyed without coming down with as much as a sniffle. And once all human egg cells were destroyed, that was it. Even cloning required an intact egg cell to work, albeit one with its own genetic material removed to get an exact carbon copy of the donor.
“I can see in your eyes that you’re beginning to fully grasp the implications of what I’m saying,” said Sam, gloating. “The only real challenge is a logistical one: making sure the hyper-contagious virus is spread to every corner of the world. But there are any number of ways to accomplish this.” He began ticking them off with his fingers. “Genetically engineered E. coli, designed to be able to out-compete and replace the E. coli found in every human gut—harmless other than having a gamete destroyer on board. Poisoned water supplies. Contaminated cigarette filters.”
Kira looked puzzled by this last entry.
“Don’t be fooled by the anti-smoking lobby, my dear,” said Sam. “Cigarette use is thriving in every corner of the world. Over five trillion are smoked each year. Do you think it would be difficult for someone with immeasurable intelligence to figure out a simple way to contaminate a majority of the world’s cigarette production lines with a hyper-contagious agent? With all the world’s smokers playing the role of Typhoid Mary, it would spread to every human on the planet in no time.” He grinned. “I guess second-hand smoke isn’t the biggest danger you can face from smokers, after all.”
Kira shook her head in disgust but said nothing.
Desh’s mind leaped! A massive acceleration of his thoughts occurred in an instant. Like one hundred billion dominoes falling into place at once; like a chain reaction leading to a massive explosion, his neurons had reordered themselves into a more efficient architecture. Thoughts arrived at a furious pace.
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