The Loop

by Wesley Cross

“I’ll continue working for Engel, but I’ll go dark on my handler. Not for too long. Maybe a few months.”

  “They won’t like it.”

  “I don’t care.” Connelly shrugged his shoulders. “I need to find my way out of this without being pressured to do things that will get me killed. At least now I have a place to hide if shit hits the fan, thanks to you.”

  “Is it because of Sofia?”

  “Yes, and no. I don’t know for certain, but I’m convinced that this,” Connelly nodded toward the hearse pulling up across the street, “is the work of Engel’s minions.”

  “You’re kidding me. I thought you were in on everything that’s going on in that cow cake.”

  “Not everything. It’s a huge organization. I’m plugged in, but they have a dozen other guys who run operations I know nothing about. This guy compartmentalizes better than Al-Qaeda. It’s a hunch, but it has Engel written all over it. This is how he thinks and now that he’s getting bigger, he’ll want to influence public opinion. Regardless, I need out, man. Spying on Engel is important, but at some point, we have to start throwing punches. I wish we could go back to Rovinsky and re-establish the Unit. We need to find some outside help. I can’t do it alone.”

  “Hey.” Doug reached across the distance between them and squeezed his arm. “You’re not alone, bud.”

  “I know. Thanks.”

  Another hearse pulled behind the first one and then a few moments later, the first coffin appeared from the funeral home’s entrance, carried by a few men in black suits. They loaded it inside the vehicle and went back to the building, only to emerge with another coffin a minute later.

  “Why do you think Rovinsky isn’t giving it the green light? You think he’s scared?”

  “No, man.” Doug let go of Connelly’s arm and sunk deeper into his chair. “Rovinsky is a lot of things, but coward isn’t one of them. He says the timing is wrong and with no support from the president, we’d only get ourselves in trouble. I see his point—it’s better to wait until we can make a dent than to rush into it headfirst.”

  “Headfirst?” Connelly turned to his friend. “It’s been a long time. Years. How much longer are we going to wait? And what exactly are we waiting for? For Engel to go on national television and say in plain English that he’s an evil prick who kills people to get what he wants?”

  “I wish I had answers.” Doug shrugged. “But I’m a grunt, not a planner. I’m good at getting things done with my hands. Tell me where the assholes are and give me something to shoot them with—I’ll take care of the rest. Grand vision? Not my thing.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “You don’t have to say that. I get it. Are we going to the cemetery?”

  “No.” Connelly shook his head. “It’s probably not a wise idea. She’s gone, and that’s that.”

  “Come with me to the party, then. It’ll take your mind off things.”

  “What is it again?”

  “It’s a fundraiser.”

  “I don’t know. It’s not my thing.”

  “It’s not your usual fundraiser. Most people are vets or family members. It’s low-key. There are not a lot of places where guys like us can be ourselves, but this is as close as it gets. Please.”

  “All right.” Connelly turned the key in the ignition and revved the engine. “What the hell, I’ll go. But I won’t stay long.”

  He pulled out of the parking lot and turned in to the street traffic. They drove up Third Avenue and then took the ramp onto Manhattan-bound I-278. The sky was overcast all morning, but now it was clearing up, and Connelly lowered the windows down. The air was cool and crisp, and for some time he drove in silence, letting the wind wash his face.

  “It’s funny,” Doug said, breaking the silence. “We go through all this trouble of opening a shell cab company and get cars that look like Engel’s and then boom, you tell me to burn the car wash down.”

  “It’s all right. I’m sure we can figure out some way to use them. I had no idea if I would come back from that trip.”

  “Hanson is a spook. I gotta say, I didn’t see that one coming.”

  “Neither did I. He had plenty of opportunities to let us know when we caught him with Zubair but kept his mouth shut. We could’ve killed him.”

  “I kind of get it,” Doug said. “Some of these guys work for years establishing their cover. If I were him, I wouldn’t trust it to a few assholes like us either.”

  “True. And by the way—it looks like the car wash hit was all for nothing.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I overheard Engel yesterday talking to somebody. It sounded like he’ll use the Chinese to distribute the goods for him.”

  “Isn’t it going to be less profitable for him?”

  “Probably.” Connelly shrugged. “But maybe he figured where he loses on margins, he gains on efficiency and also removes himself a bit further from direct involvement.”

  “Gives him some deniability?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Do you ever wonder…” Doug shuffled in his seat, as if uncertain how to phrase what he was about to say.

  “What?”

  “What would you be doing if you hadn’t picked our line of work?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “And?”

  “I don’t know, man. Maybe I’d try to go to college. Figure out what I liked there. A lot of kids do it that way, but I had no money, so it wasn’t an option. What about you?”

  “I’d be a sailing instructor.”

  “A sailing instructor?” Connelly chuckled, looking at his friend in amusement. “Somehow I never pictured you as a sailing kind of guy.”

  “I was in the Teams,” Doug said, feigning indignity. “What a hurtful thing to say. But, to be serious, it’s kind of great. You’re out there on the water. There are no crowds, no traffic. Just you and the ocean.”

  “And a whiney rich boy you need to teach how to sail.”

  “Eh.” Doug shrugged. “When I’m picturing myself there, it’s not a rich boy, but a hot girl who divorced the rich boy and took him to the cleaners. And now she wants to spend her newfound fortune on yours truly. Probably needs a strong shoulder to cry on, too.”

  “That changes the equation.”

  “You bet your ass it does.”

  “So why don’t you do it? You’re out anyway.”

  “It’s too late for me, man. I’d need to learn how to sail first, and somehow I’ve got the feeling that Rovinsky wouldn’t be okay with me using the funds for private lessons.”

  “Probably not.”

  “Look at this asshole,” Doug commented as Connelly accelerated past the eighteen-wheeler and went into the left lane, giving a black racing motorcycle who was trailing them for the last quarter of a mile some space. “I swear, most people who die in motorcycle crashes do that not because there’s less protection than in a car, but because they drive like idiots.”

  The bike revved behind them, accelerating through the gap between their car and the truck. As it drew level, the biker turned his head toward their window, his shiny black helmet reflecting their faces. Then, in one fluid motion, he pulled a handgun with a suppresser and squeezed the trigger.

  Connelly slammed on the brakes, making the motorcycle overshoot them. There was a screeching of brakes behind them, and then a split second later, a pickup truck smashed into the back of the town car, sending it spinning. Connelly wrestled the wheel, but momentum carried the vehicle into the concrete wall.

  The airbag exploded in his face, momentarily blinding him, and the car bounced off the divider, coming to rest sideways across the highway.

  Connelly heard the car horn, and then another truck slammed into his door. The car went airborne, spinning in the air and then landed on its roof, sending a shower of sparks, only to flip again as a white minivan clipped it at the trunk. It balanced on two wheels for a few long seconds, as the opposite wheels madly spun in the air, but gravity won and the vehicle toppled o
ver. It bounced back and forth a few times as the suspension fruitlessly tried to compensate for the wild gyrations until it finally came to a stop.

  “Are you all right?” He wiped the blood off his face with the sleeve of his jacket. Something must’ve cut his brow, he thought. It wasn’t deep, but the blood was gushing out and getting into his right eye. “Doug?”

  Doug’s head was thrown back and his eyes closed. There was no visible damage as far as Connelly could see except a small scratch on his neck.

  “Knocked you out, huh?” He reached out and patted his friend on the cheek, trying to wake him up. Doug’s head fell to his chest and rolled to the left and Connelly recoiled in horror as he saw a small hole in his friend’s temple. A trickle of blood ran down his cheek, disappearing inside his dark beard.

  Connelly leaned back in the seat and closed his eyes. There was a fire building somewhere deep inside his chest. His breathing caught as he tried to fight back, but the fire spread until it seemed to consume his entire being. A deep, low howl escaped his lips, and he punched the steering wheel. It hurt, but the pain felt good against the fire that raged inside him.

  He punched it again. And again. His scream rose until it drowned out all the noise of the outside world as he landed blow after blow on the unforgiving plastic of the car.

  “Are you okay, son?”

  He heard somebody’s voice snapping him back to reality. He looked up through the broken window. An older man was standing next to the car. He leaned on the roof for support and was looking in, his eyes scanning the inside of the vehicle. Genuine concern was written across his lined face.

  “Yeah.” Connelly tried the door, and to his surprise it swung right open. The man stepped back, giving him space, and Connelly climbed out of the vehicle. He looked around—the highway was jammed as far as he could see in both directions. Even if he had a working car, it would take him forever to get anywhere. He took a deep, cleansing breath. Then, ignoring the looks from the motorists, he started walking away from the wreck. There was nothing else to do.

  41

  Hong Kong

  “I’m sorry.” Tillerson waved the gun at her. “I didn’t want her to get hurt, but you left me no choice.”

  Helen cowered behind the desk as she stuffed the drive under her blouse and inside her jeans. The cold metal touched her stomach, making her shiver.

  “Get out from there,” Tillerson said. “Get out right now. I don’t want to shoot you.”

  She stood up, feeling exposed. From here, she could see Mandy’s body lying on the ground. The woman’s eyes were closed, her face peaceful. She could’ve been mistaken for sleeping if not for the red spot on her white blouse and the dark pool of blood under her body.

  “Come on,” he urged her again, pointing the gun in her face.

  She looked at him and slowly walked around the desk. To her surprise, she felt no pain of loss. At least not yet. As she watched Tillerson in his lab coat and ridiculous bow tie, all she felt was cold rage.

  You might be the one holding the gun, for now, she thought. But when this is over, you’ll be deader than Mandy.

  “Walk to the elevator,” he said. “I guess it’s time to show you the lower level.”

  She obeyed. They walked in silence to the elevator shaft and then Tillerson waved her into the small metal box when the doors opened. Helen hoped she’d get a break when he used the retina scanner, but he opened a hidden panel and pressed a combination on the keypad instead. The doors closed, and then the floor shook as they started their descent.

  “It’s all your doing, you stupid, stupid girl.” His cheeks, ordinarily pale, were now flushed with anger and his forehead covered with beads of sweat. “You have no idea what you’ve done.”

  “I have an excellent idea what you’ve done,” she said. “You’ve murdered a brilliant woman in cold blood.”

  “Shut up,” he screamed at her as the elevator stopped. “Shut up and get out.”

  The large room was cold and dark. Some complicated machinery with blinking lights took the back of the room, but that’s not what grabbed Helen’s attention. A row of four long surgical beds was installed by the wall, each one covered by the transparent protective casing that looked like a glass-made sarcophagus. Two of them were empty. But the sight of the other two made her reel. One of them housed a giant naked man strapped to the bed, a thick knot of wires and cables snaking away from his body and head. The other could have been a prop from a horror movie—the man’s arms and legs were missing and so was a big part of his torso—transparent resin covering a large hole in his rib cage with some of his internal organs on full display.

  “Look at this,” Tillerson barked, grabbing her by the elbow and forcing her toward the table with the giant. “This is Jupiter. You know what you did when you shut down Callisto? You killed him, that’s what you did. You wiped his brain clean.”

  Helen tried to pull away from Tillerson’s grasp, but his fingers only dug deeper into her flesh.

  “It took me three years to build him from the empty shell he was when we retrieved him from the prison, and then another year to program him and now he’s a clean slate. His body is alive, but you killed his personality. He was a vegetable; do you understand that?”

  “You were torturing him,” she said. “You created a personal hell for him he couldn’t escape.”

  “He was brain-dead, you idiot. Jupiter and Martin-the-horror-show over there,” he waved at the man with missing limbs, “are the first successes after a long series of failures. Countless failures. You have no idea how important these two are.”

  “Long series of failures? Countless? There were others?”

  “Of course there were others.” He scoffed. “I’m a scientist. Science requires experiments. Only in movies do people have significant breakthroughs on their first attempt.”

  “You’re a monster,” she said. “Not a scientist.”

  “Oh yeah?” He pushed her toward the second table. “What about him? He’d be dead if not for me. He was a soldier—blown up by a grenade and left to die, but here he is, and I’m going to give him a second chance. A purpose. He’ll be the best soldier to ever walk this earth.”

  “Does he know that?” She looked at the body. From this angle, she could see that a part of the man’s skull was missing too. A bunch of electrodes were sticking out of the brain tissue through the same transparent resin. “Does he want that?”

  “Who gives a shit, what he wants,” Tillerson screamed. “Did your parents ask your opinion before they had sex that created you?”

  “It’s not the same thing.”

  He hit her on the side of her head with the butt of the pistol. She saw it coming and managed to duck, turning a crippling shot into a glancing blow. Still, a bright display of fireworks went off in her internal vision as the steel connected to her skull. He pushed her toward one of the empty tables, and she let him guide her, going limp in his hands.

  “You’ll have to take Jay’s spot, that’s what we’re going to do,” he said, forcing her closer to the bed. “I need to finish calibrating the process, and you’re going to help me whether you like it or not. We’re too close to something significant to let some idiot derail my life’s work.”

  Helen turned, and before Tillerson had a chance to react, sunk her teeth deep into his right wrist. The gun went off in front of her face, the slide snapping so close to her cheek she could feel the heat. The angry zipping sound filled the room as the bullet ricocheted around the lab.

  Recovering from the shock, Tillerson punched her in the back with his left hand, but she wouldn’t let go, and the man’s hand opened, dropping the pistol to the ground. It landed with a loud clang and bounced under the bed.

  She dived after it, with Tillerson jumping after her, getting on all fours and grabbing at her feet, trying to pull her back. Her right hand closed over the textured handle of the gun, and she flipped onto her back to face the man. He tried to swat the gun away.

  Helen
pulled the trigger.

  The bullet struck him in the chest under the left collarbone. The man winced, a mixture of pain and confusion spreading on his face. He stood up on his knees and touched the wound with his fingertips.

  “Why?” he said.

  She pulled the trigger again. This time, it hit him in the face. A small hole appeared in his left cheek, and the white floor behind him suddenly looked like a page from a Rorschach test done in red ink. Helen watched as Tillerson’s eyes flickered and rolled. Then his body slumped back and hit the floor with a soft thud.

  She stood up and looked at the man at her feet. A sharp crackling sound made her jump, and she almost unloaded the gun again as she spun on her heels.

  “Shit,” she said out loud. The thick electric cables by the far wall were spitting large sparks and then, with a soft whoosh, the whole bottom section of the wall engulfed in fire. One of the bullets must have hit the cables, she reckoned. Helen frantically looked around for a fire extinguisher, but there wasn’t any. If she stayed there, she would suffocate. She stepped over Tillerson’s body and dashed back to the elevator.

  She pulled the lever on the fire alarm once she was back in his office, careful not to leave fingerprints, and started to walk to the door when she realized that she was still clutching the pistol in her hands. She looked at it, trying to decide what to do. Leaving it in the office was not an option, and after a moment of hesitation, Helen stuffed it into her jeans, next to the memory drive. She hoped she wasn’t going to end up like some of the idiots who shoot themselves while stuffing their weapons into their pants.

  The hallway was still clear of smoke, but the sharp smell of burning plastic was already seeping into the air.

  She stopped before the cafeteria long enough to make sure the killer bot was going toward the front door and ducked inside the offices running parallel to the deadly machine. She repeated the trick on the way out and stepped away from the bright lights of the entrance and started toward the parking lot as the sentinel began going back down the hall. She threw a last glance at the large bot sitting in the front yard and then she was by Mandy’s white SUV.