PHOENIX: Spooks

by Howard, Paul

  “Woods,” he continued, “San Quentin. Talk to the guards, forensics, anybody who knew anything about these three guys.” He handed a folder to Woods and looked right into his eyes.

  “You are to get absolute cooperation up there,” White ordered. “Anybody who tries to stonewall you is going to talk to me, and they won’t like it if they do. You got that?”

  Woods nodded. “Right, Boss.”

  White moved to Larsen and handed him the rap sheet for Mike.

  “I want you to check out Wurshaw,” he said, “He’s got a mother living in Temple City and used to have a girlfriend in Baldwin Park. Sniff around and find out what they know. Check out any of his friends you can locate, and watch your back! This guy was into some very rough company.”

  Larsen took the file and nodded his head.

  “David,” White said, “You’ve got Steven Romer. The same deal.” David approached White and took the file.

  White looked back at his team and rubbed his hands together as he spoke.

  “Right! Keep your mobile units on and constantly in touch. The minute anything comes up, you check in with me right away.”

  He clapped his hands together and leaned against the wall. “Let’s get moving!” The team started to move out of the room and Sam approached White slowly. After the others left he snickered.

  “That Morrow really cuts to the chase,” he observed sarcastically, “She’s something.” White looked at him very seriously.

  “Yeah,” he agreed, “But it was Woods who may have hit the button. I’ve been thinking along those lines myself.”

  “Phoenix?” Sam gasped. “Isn’t that kind of a long shot?’

  “Yes it is,” White agreed, “But why else would they take Morrison’s body? We’re gonna have to play the long odds, Sam.” Josephson nodded his head and looked into his partner’s face seriously.

  “What do you want me to do?” he asked.

  “I want you to get on the uplink with Interpol,” White replied, “Check out all shuttle flights over the past seventy-two hours. Also the files for anybody scheduled for a spook-job at Phoenix for the last week. Check for irregularities of any kind, no matter how small. And I want you to contact Phoenix and see if they know anything.”

  “Phoenix!” Sam exclaimed. “That’s really a long shot! What are you going to do?” White straightened his tie and put his hands in his pockets.

  “I’m going to start at the Coroner’s Office and take a look at the John Does they’ve got down there,” he answered, “We might come across something.”

  *****

  Before the Great Collapse everybody used to worry about energy resources like an obsession, pumping endless toxic muck out of the ground and burning it like they had no alternative. After the fall, when the world became afraid to use oil, it was discovered that there was no shortage of energy on a planet parked so close a yellow dwarf. It was cheap and plentiful for anybody who made the effort to develop it.

  The age of the private automobile had ended. The freeway system of L.A. was now reconfigured for light rail and electric busses, but two lanes still remained for use by official vehicles and trucking, all of which were either electric charge or solar.

  It wasn’t enough. In the height of the rush hour the freeways were still choked with heavy traffic. Leonard White, seated in his Solar 3 Cruiser, found himself stuck on the 10 eastbound for nearly ninety minutes.

  Now a stretch of paved concrete running through a miasma of impoverished humanity, the 10 freeway was, in its own way, a symbol of the way things were: a tiny strip of order in the middle of encroaching collapse. Nobody entered the neighborhoods around it that didn’t have to. Limited social services and healthcare units would offer services, and trucks would show up in the mornings looking for cheap labor. Otherwise most of downtown L.A. was a land of shoeless, ill-fed children, and people clinging to life any way they could.

  Stuck in traffic, and surrounded by a sea of improvised tents and rundown fabricated homes, he had time for his own thoughts. His mind drifted to his parents for the first time in weeks. Half Irish and half African-American, he thought about his father, who told him not to follow into police work. Three years later he was killed in the line of duty.

  His mother made no objection when Leonard chose to join the force anyway. He had always wondered why she reacted that way, but never sat down with her and got around to asking why. He knew how she felt about his father’s death, and of his ambitions in life, but he never knew why she hadn’t expressed her feelings about his choice. Maybe it was time for them to have the talk he had been putting off for so many years. He decided to pay her a visit as soon as he could get some time off. It seemed like he never did.

  When he finally reached the County Coroner it was getting well into late afternoon. He expected Dr. Campbell would still be on duty. Campbell always was. White sometimes wondered if he ever went home.

  When he checked in at the facility Campbell was in the lab. He looked up at White and gave him the half-hearted frown he usually greeted him with. “Just when I thought I could get a break, you show up.” Campbell said.

  “Glad to see you too, Doctor,” White replied with a smile, “I need to take a look at your John Does.”

  Campbell got up and moved to his data screen. “All of them? We have sixty-four as of this afternoon.” Campbell replied. He began to access his database. White shook his head.

  “Not all of them,” White said, “We can rule out homeless and homicides, also accidents and drunks.”

  “That narrows it to about nine.” Campbell replied.

  “We can also rule out non-whites. Anglos only.” White added. Campbell revised his search. He squinted at the results.

  “That leaves us with four.” Campbell said.

  He pulled up the photos of the four John does. White studied them closely. Two were women. One was a young man. The fourth was much older. White concentrated on the older one. He seemed to look familiar somehow.

  “That older one,” White began, “Does he look familiar to you, Doc?” Campbell crossed his arms and stared at the picture for a moment.

  “Now that you mention it,” he said, “he kind of does.”

  “I’d like you to run a DNA match on his blood sample,” White said, “Let’s see what the database has on him.” Campbell grinned.

  “You mean right now?” Campbell responded. “I’m really busy today.”

  “It’s important, Doc,” White pleaded, “I need it now and I want you to do it yourself. I also need to see his personal effects, whatever came in with him.” Campbell made a note from the screen and switched it back on standby.

  “Downstairs!” Campbell said as he began to walk into the other lab.

  “Number 2613!”

  White went down to Property and gave the number to the Clerk. A few minutes later a bag came out to him. He opened it and found that all it contained: a folded suit.

  “This is everything?” he asked. The Clerk looked at his notes.

  “Yeah, that’s it,” he replied, “He was found in an abandoned house in Van Nuys.” White checked the lining of the suit; it was very fine, and the label surprised him.

  “Brookes Brothers,” White said aloud, “He had no shoes?”

  “Only what you see here.” the clerk replied. Campbell rang in on White’s mobile unit from upstairs.

  “Positive match on the DNA,” Campbell said, “His name is Holt, Arnold C., no wonder he looked familiar. He was some high mucky-muck with the Environmental Reclamation effort, due for a spook-job at Phoenix. What’s he doing here?”

  White’s heart sunk to his feet as the meaning set in. His worst fear was half realized by this news. Morrison must have somehow managed to substitute himself for Holt. Now he could only hope that he hadn’t made it to the shuttle. The hope didn’t last long. Less than one minute later; Sam called in with the results from Interpol.

  “You’d better brace yourself, Lenny,” Sam started, “It’s really ba
d.” He then recounted the murder and escape from Phoenix, putting the image from the infusion record on White’s mobile; John Morrison.

  “Interpol is tracking the shuttle on the way in,” Sam continued, “It’s due to reach Earth in ten hours.”

  “I’ll meet you at Central Traffic Control,” White replied, “Contact the FBI and the Sheriff’s Office, they’re gonna want in on this. Then, notify the State Department just in case he tries to take it down in somebody else’s backyard.”

  Chapter Eight: Setting the Trap

  The meeting at Central Traffic Control got underway two hours later. It consisted of White and Jacobson, two FBI agents, two from Interpol, one from the State Police, and three from the County Sheriff’s Office, including Harbor Division. They were all gathered around the tactical plotter studying the possible entry trajectories.

  They were able to rule out Europe and Asia. The shuttle approach vector clearly was for the Americas and the general consensus was for the northern hemisphere.

  “He has to come down someplace that is outside of the L.A. Basin,” Agent Pedrillo from Interpol suggested. “Otherwise we could just track him in and arrest him as soon as he touched down.”

  Special Agent Murray of the FBI disagreed. “He would have thought of that,” he said, “My guess is he might try for the eastern seaboard or the Midwest.”

  “But there’s nothing there.” White replied.

  “My point exactly,” Murray responded, “He could set down anywhere back there.”

  “And do what?” Sam asked. “There’s nothing but thousands of square miles of glacial wasteland. He’d have to slog across hundreds of miles of ice. Spook or not, he can’t fly.”

  “The Midwest is out too,” White added, “Most of it is covered with the Missouri Sea and the rest is all wetlands and mud. Then there are the storms, even an ecto can’t function in three hundred mile an hour winds. He’s got to come down in the west, where there’s roads and civilization.” The argument went on for a few minutes when White’s mobile went off with a call from Morrow in Ventura County.

  “Boss, the abandoned hearse is from Forest Rest,” she began, “It’s a standard Tesla 3500 Commercial. It was abandoned on a side road just off the old 101. It had less than two minutes of charge left when they dumped it.”

  “Is that it?” White asked.

  “No,” she replied, “I went over it myself. There was no sign of a body, but they must’ve taken the car for quite a joyride. There were candy wrappers and beer bottles in the front and a couple of used condoms in the back. We’re still running DNA on the condoms, but the finger prints on the bottles and paper are definitely Romer and Wurshaw’s.”

  “You can bet the condoms will check too,” White replied, “Anything else?”

  She yawned and stretched. “It looks to me like they took the body to the terminal in Thousand Oaks,” she said, “The records show the last shuttle to Phoenix was launched from there. That’s all I have here.”

  “Good,” White said, “Come on home and get yourself some rest. I’ll fill you in back at Central.”

  She hung up and White looked at the others, who had listened to her report.

  “That settles it. He’s coming in locally. My guess is that our two boys are right here in L.A. hiding out somewhere.”

  “What do you base that on?” Pedrillo asked.

  “That’s not the pattern of this whole thing,” Murray suggested, “They delivered Morrison to a mortuary in Burbank, dumped the body of Holt in Van Nuys, and got rid of the Hearse in Ventura.”

  Murray changed the tactical display to a map of Southern California. He marked the three spots with a tele-strater and drew lines between them. He then pointed to the center of the triangle.

  “That would put them in Thousand Oaks.” Murray offered. White smiled. “So we look for the two other perps in Thousand Oaks.”

  “Depends on whether you want to find them or not!” White replied. “Sam, do you remember when we worked the patterns on Morrison?”

  “Yeah,” Sam answered, “He gave us beautiful triangulation and was never in any of them. He wants us goose-chasing in the foothills.” White zoomed the plotter in to the area where the hearse was dumped. Less than a mile away from where they ditched it was a free rail station.

  “Romer and Wurshaw hitched a ride into town and they’re somewhere down here.” White said, waving his hand over the metropolitan area. “Since he can’t bring it down anywhere in this area, knowing we would track him and nail him, my guess is that he’ll try to splash it in. That could buy time to get away before we could ever reach him.”

  “Even if he’s a spook, the current could carry him out to sea if he tried that.” Sam suggested. White turned to the sheriff from Harbor Division.

  “What about that, Sheriff?” White asked. “Is there someplace he could splash without getting pulled out by the current?” The harbor officer looked at the tactical map and rubbed his chin in thought.

  “Yeah, I think so,” he said at length, “He could bring it down here at the New Port.”

  He pointed to Redondo Beach on the map. “King Harbor. All the ships that come in now are shallow draft because of the submerged structures of the old city. He could bring the shuttle in and set it right on the house tops of old Redondo Beach. There’s a breakwater so the tide wouldn’t pull him out if he left the ship. He could wade inland from there.

  “All the harbor and commercial activity would serve as perfect cover once he got down. We couldn’t track him for the last two hundred feet of altitude. That would be his best bet.”

  Everyone nodded in agreement as they studied the map of the harbor. Murray got on his mobile. “Give me the Coast Guard.” He smiled at the sheriff and asked for the harbor master’s office.

  “I want every boat you can spare out there, Sheriff.” White said. The sheriff nodded his head and smiled.

  “I’ll have so many police boats out there we’ll be able to walk to him without getting our feet wet.” he replied.

  Chapter Nine: Leviathans at Dawn

  As the long hours of boredom passed, the Earth gradually got larger and larger in the cockpit window. By the time it filled his view completely, Morrison’s boredom gave way to a sense of thrill and anticipation. The distinct outline of North America was clearly visible now. The controls began to register changes in front of him. Lisa’s program was still running smoothly.

  “My sweet, brilliant sister.” he said to himself. No sooner had he done so, when the sound of her recorded voice filled the cockpit once again.

  “This is it, John,” she said, “In a few minutes you will see the coast of Southern California right in front of you. The automated program is going to bring you down in the new port at King Harbor. Once it does, you will have to abandon ship and swim as fast as you can. They will be tracking you. Don’t worry about the acid in the sea water burning you; an ecto doesn’t have skin like living people. The foaming on your skin will be harmless.

  “Now, this is important; on the red panel in front of you is the radar display. Man-made objects will register as blue dots on the scanner. There should be dozens of large dots and a few small ones. Note where they are, because the small ones are probably Harbor Police. You must avoid them if you can. You will also notice that there is a large blue switch blinking on and off at the bottom of the center control panel; this is the Main Program Abort switch. If, for any reason, the program malfunctions or the landing goes wrong, activate the switch and terminate the program. This will disengage the engine and your momentum will cause you to splash down several miles to the south of your landing site.

  “If that happens, don’t be afraid, John. An ecto can auto-heal from the most serious mortal wounds, and you don’t have to be afraid of drowning either. You could walk the entire distance for miles underwater without injury of any kind. The most important thing is to avoid getting caught by the authorities. I will see you soon, little brother. Just remember that I love you. Good luck
, John.”

  Morrison strapped himself into the seat as he could feel the increasing pull of gravity upon the ship. Outside, the bright orange glow of the atmospheric friction obscured his view of the approaching coastline. He looked down at the radar screen and could see the distinctive outline of California growing until it filled the scanner. He looked back up at the window as the glow faded; the deep purple light of the pre-dawn sky majestically told him he was almost home. Hundreds of miles of dark coastline stretched before him accented by the twinkling lights of cities, and long stretches of highway going in all directions.

  The altimeter read less than ten thousand feet, as the radar display of the harbor was beginning to get clearer and clearer to read. He could now recognize King Harbor below him, dotted with blue structures. So many he could not make them out at first, but as he got down to less than a mile he could clearly see them; hundreds of tiny dots covering the harbor like a pin cushion. So many that he could not see an opening to bring in the shuttle at all…

  “The cops!” he exclaimed. “Thousands of them. The whole Harbor Patrol is down there!”

  This realization hit him with only seconds to act or commit to the program. He quickly hit the blue button and aborted the sequence. The dots smeared on the radar as a savage roar erupted from behind him in the shuttle engines. He immediately felt as if the shuttle dropped from underneath him and had only a few moments to look at the window. A blur of peninsula streaked below him and instantly the ocean slammed into his window. He felt the irresistible power of the g-forces pull him into the console in front of him.

  The belt broke or cut him in half, he was not sure which, in a fraction of a second. He experienced the instant sensation of his face splattering into the glass, and his chest compressing in what would have surely been a fatal crash that made him lose consciousness for a few moments.

  When he regained himself he could feel the terrible suction of air pressure above him, as the rush of thousands of gallons of seawater poured into the ship.

  He looked around for a moment and suddenly realized that he was practically splattered all over the cockpit. Blue ooze covered his chest and he could hear the bones in his neck crackle as they reformed inside of him. His right arm was almost completely severed and broken in many sections. He watched in amazement as it resumed its original shape and reattached itself. Looking down he could see his half torn off pant legs refilling in front of him.