Callsign: King - Book I (A Jack Sigler - Chess Team Novella)

by Robinson, Jeremy; Ellis, Sean

  The R-73 missile, NATO designation AA-11 Archer, dropped away from the wing and shot through the sky at Mach 2.5. The pilot kept his targeting sight on the fleeing aircraft until, a few seconds later, both the missile and the helicopter exploded in a ball of smoke and flaming debris.

  Sigler is dead.

  >>>Understood. What is your status?

  I’m back in Addis. I have Sara Fogg and Felice Carter with me. Fogg believes that Carter can infect others by some unknown vector. We’ll need to keep her isolated.

  >>>Transportation will be arranged. Bring the women to the Brainstorm facility.

  Are you sure that’s a good idea?

  >>>Your inquiry is irrelevant. It is the only logical course of action. The vaccine must be developed. The facility has been upgraded to ensure the highest probability of success in accomplishing that goal.

  ENDGAME

  24.

  Unknown Location

  See that ball of fire down there? That’s your boyfriend.

  Fulbright’s gleeful pronouncement still echoed in Sara’s ears. She had kept a brave face, denying the rogue CIA agent the pleasure of watching her cry. In truth, she hadn’t wanted to believe him.

  That was, she knew, the first stage of grief: denial.

  As an intellectual matter, she did believe him but her heart wasn’t ready to deal with it just yet. There would be time for tears later, if she survived.

  A Gulfstream V jet had been waiting for them at the private airfield used by the contracted commandos. Still unconscious from the sedative injection, Felice had been buckled into one of the rear seats, while Sara had been allowed to sit where she pleased, but always under Fulbright’s watchful eye. How long they flew, she could not say, but when they arrived at their destination, it was mid-morning, and the physical environment did not seem that much different than the place they had just left.

  A fit but pale-looking middle-aged man got out of a dark green Range Rover and greeted them as they descended from the jet. His hair was gray, but Sara couldn’t tell if he was in his late forties or his early seventies. When he approached and introduced himself, Sara got the impression that it was as much for Fulbright’s benefit as for Sara’s.

  “I’m Graham,” he said, affably. “I kind of keep things running around here.”

  “Just take us to Brainstorm,” Fulbright answered impatiently.

  “As you like.” Graham chuckled then turned to Sara and extended a hand. “A pleasure to make your acquaintance, Miss…?”

  Sara narrowed her eyes, appraisingly. Despite his attempt at charm, Graham—was that his first or last name?—had given her no reason to think he was anything but another villain in Brainstorm’s employ. “It’s ‘doctor,’ actually. Dr. Sara Fogg.”

  “Ah, yes. I’ve heard wonderful things about you, Dr. Fogg. I think you’ll be pleased with the research facility here.”

  “I’ll be pleased when I’m not being held prisoner.”

  Graham inclined his head. “Touché. I do hope that, in time, you will see that benefit of the work you will do here far outstrips the sacrifices you have made.”

  “I’m not the only one who was sacrificed.”

  If Graham heard her muttered comment, he chose not to acknowledge it.

  # # #

  The main house—what Fulbright had called the ‘Brainstorm facility’—was a palatial two-story villa that might have been transplanted from the south of France or the Catalina hills of California. Sara was escorted to a luxurious private room where Graham invited her to “freshen up” and join him for a meal if she was so inclined. A closet full of clothes, ranging in style from dress casual to blue jeans and T-shirts—all of them clothes that she might have purchased for herself, every garment the correct size—was provided, and the bathroom was stocked with her favorite brands of toiletries. Someone had been doing their homework.

  No demands were made of her, but there was little question that she was a prisoner. Nevertheless, she took advantage of the chance to shower away the residue of her plunge into the Indian Ocean and the general grime of days spent in the field.

  As the hot water cascaded down on her shoulders, she pondered her next move. Things were so much clearer in Jack’s world. If you were captured, you would fight back, resist, try to escape or confound your enemy’s goals in any way possible. But it was different for her. Yes, she wanted to escape, but she could not afford to so easily dismiss what her captor was attempting. Even if she was being lied to, even if they were secretly trying to turn the discovery into a weapon, the opportunity to do research on the contagion and to find a way to counteract it, was not something she could easily pass up.

  It was the best way she had to fight back, resist, and confound her enemy’s goals.

  The door was locked from the outside, but as soon as she knocked, it popped open revealing an empty hallway. As she stepped into the hall, Graham appeared on the staircase landing, midway down the hall. “This way, Dr. Fogg. Lunch is already set.”

  The kitchen furnishings, like everything else in the house, were modern, giving the whole place the feel of being on a space station designed by a 1950’s science fiction writer. She found Fulbright seated at the oval-shaped glass dining table, pensively eating a sandwich.

  “I can only provide light fare right now,” Graham apologized. “But I promise dinner will be superb. I don’t get the chance to entertain here very often, so I will be pulling out all the stops.”

  “I’d hate for you to go to any trouble,” Sara replied, with undisguised sarcasm.

  Fulbright looked up at her, but said nothing.

  “No trouble at all.” Graham elected to ignore the venom. “There’s no reason your stay here has to be unpleasant.”

  “That sounds like something he might say.” Sara jerked a thumb at the rogue CIA officer. “As a threat,” she added.

  “Please understand, Dr. Fogg. You have important work to do here. Work that will benefit us all; the entire human race.”

  Sara settled into a chair and started assembling a sandwich from a plate of assorted cold-cuts and cheeses. “Fine,” she said at length. “I’ll play along, but I can’t have you telling me how to do my research. You need to give me whatever I ask for.”

  “Within reason, of course.”

  “First, I want you to stop sedating Felice Carter.”

  Fulbright looked up sharply. “Weren’t you paying attention back there? She can infect people, maybe without even thinking about it. If she feels the least bit threatened…” He snapped his fingers. “Poof, we’re mindless drones.”

  “That’s exactly why I need her awake and alert. Just because she’s unconscious doesn’t mean that her fear response is turned off. She needs to know that she isn’t in any danger. I can explain that to her. More importantly, I need to be able to talk to her in order to figure this thing out. The answers are all in her head.”

  Graham was about to say something, but was interrupted by a buzzing noise from his pocket. He took out a smart phone and looked at the display for a moment, then tapped a few keys and put it away. “I’m sorry. Unrelated business. With respect to your request, Dr. Fogg, I certainly think we can accommodate you if you feel it’s that important. I trust you will take all the necessary precautions.”

  Sara looked at the older man sidelong. She couldn’t quite figure out just what his role was in all of this.

  “You need to run this past Brainstorm,” Fulbright declared, clearly unhappy about what Sara was demanding.

  “And that’s the other thing I need,” Sara broke in, quickly. “I’m tired of dealing with lackeys…I’m tired of dealing with him.” She pointed an accusing finger at Fulbright. “If you want me to do this, I need direct access to Mr. Big himself. I need to be able to talk to Brainstorm.”

  Graham gave an odd smile. “Done.”

  # # #

  After the meal, she was taken to the laboratory facilities, which were she surmised, in a basement level beneath the villa. The
lab was accessible only by elevator, and she was pretty sure that it had gone down, not up, but the spacious windowless area could have been almost anywhere.

  Graham showed her a computer workstation and logged her in. “This terminal is linked to a pair of Cray supercomputers which you can use for gene sequencing, and any other applications that will help you design a vaccine. And this icon here—” He clicked on a tab on the desktop display—“This allows you to send instant text messages to Brainstorm.”

  “I don’t want to text Brainstorm,” Sara countered. “I want to talk to him. Face to face.”

  “Good luck with that,” Fulbright remarked.

  “All communications from Brainstorm are via text messages,” Graham explained, “but I’ll activate the text-to-voice translator. I’m afraid that’s about as close as you can get to actually having a conversation with Brainstorm.”

  Sara stared back at him. “So it’s true. Brainstorm is just a big computer—artificial intelligence.”

  Graham spread his hands equivocally, and then stepped out from behind the workstation. “Dr. Carter is in the isolation room. It’s equipped with Level A hazmat protection, if you feel the need for such measures. On the other hand, if you feel that she poses no threat, I’ll arrange guest quarters for her later.”

  “Do that. I’ve got it from here. I’ll let you know if I need anything more.”

  The two men lingered in the lab a while after she dismissed them, but as far as Sara was concerned, they were already gone. She gave Felice an anti-narcotic injection then sat down and waited for her to stir.

  Despite her confident demeanor, she was very worried about Felice’s transition from drug induced sleep to wakefulness. Indeed, as the sedative in her bloodstream was bound and rendered inert by the anti-narcotic, Felice came awake as if emerging from a night terror.

  “Felice, it’s okay.” Sara risked physical contact, gently holding Felice’s forearm. “You’re safe.”

  Felice’s eyes darted back and forth as she tried to take in the unfamiliar surroundings. “Where am I?”

  “I wish I knew. But we’re safe for now. You need to relax and stay calm. I’ll explain everything.”

  The roving gaze finally settled on Sara’s face. “I know you. You’re the CDC doctor.”

  “That’s right. I’m Sara. I feel like I know you well, but I guess we only got to meet for a few minutes. A lot has happened since then, and I’ll tell you when you’re ready to hear it.”

  “Where’s Jack?”

  The question caught Sara off guard, and emotion welled up in her throat. After a false start, she managed to croak: “That’s part of what I have to tell you.”

  “Tell me now.”

  Sara started with Fulbright’s act of treachery. She only gave the barest of details about what had happened to Sigler, and it was evident from Felice’s reaction that she understood why it was so painful; she had, after all, witnessed their affectionate reunion.

  Once Felice understood that they were both being held hostage, Sara turned her attention to the contagion—if a contagion it indeed was. Sara wasn’t convinced of that. “We need to understand exactly how this…effect…is being spread. I’m thinking that maybe it’s linked to a pheromone.”

  Felice shook her head. “Sara, I need to tell you a story; a story about elephants.”

  25.

  Somewhere over Africa

  A black wraith-like shape tore through the sky high above the dark continent. Anyone looking skyward would have immediately recognized the tiny speck as an aircraft by the long contrail—the product of water vapor in the jet exhaust instantly freezing into ice crystals high in the stratosphere—but such sights were common almost everywhere in the world. Anyone watching a radar display would have seen absolutely nothing. The stealth transport plane, code-named Crescent because of its unique, radar-scattering half-moon profile, was for practical purposes, invisible.

  King sat in Crescent’s communication center, just aft of the cockpit, where two pilots from the USAF Nighthawks special operations wing, were waiting for their next destination. Unfortunately, King didn’t yet know what that would be.

  One of the two computer screens on the workstation showed photographic imagery from a satellite in a geostationary orbit above northern Africa. Deep Blue had accessed the feed from the National Reconnaissance Office and cued it up to approximately the moment where King’s helicopter had been shot down by a missile from one of the Ethiopian fighter jets. King wasn’t interested in the crash though; he already knew how that ended.

  With the realization that he would not be able to fool another missile attack, King did the only thing he could: he cut the engine and let the helicopter fall from the sky. The plunge was only about sixty feet, and the helicopter was engineered to withstand hard landings, but even so, the impact was like getting hit by a bus. Battered, bruised, but thankfully not broken, he had half-fallen out of the crumpled cockpit and taken off across the scrubland in search of cover. A few moments later, a second missile had homed in on the helicopter and blown it to smithereens. The concussion wave had sent him tumbling, adding a few more bruises, but the ploy had worked. The Sukhoi fighters had turned for home, satisfied that, even if he had survived, the elements would finish him off.

  Fortunately, King had his Chess Team phone. Rescue, in the form of Crescent, traveling halfway around the world at Mach 2, had arrived a few hours later. Now, he was tracking the other helicopter, the one that had borne Sara and Felice Carter away.

  “That’s where they landed in Addis Ababa,” Deep Blue observed from Chess Team headquarters in New Hampshire. His face was visible on the second computer screen and his voice was a tinny electronic reproduction in King’s headphones. “That compound belongs to Alpha Dog Solutions, a private security firm that’s doing counter-terrorism operations under contract for the CIA.”

  “Sara told me that Fulbright might be a CIA officer.”

  “I couldn’t verify that. If he really is with the Company, then he’s probably NOC, and information on that is too closely guarded for me to root out with just a discreet inquiry.” The acronym stood for “non-official cover” and was reserved for intelligence operatives working deep undercover espionage missions. “Or it could just be an alias,” Deep Blue added.

  King rubbed his eyes. Despite his ability to thrive under the worst conditions, fatigue was finally starting to take its toll. “What else do we know about Alpha Dog? Do they have other clients?”

  “In that region, they also do site security for a number of petroleum companies. Curiously enough, it looks like they received several payments, all from different clients and all in the last three days. If I had to guess, I’d say someone was trying to hide the actual size of a very large payoff by splitting it up… Oh.”

  “What?”

  “The men who attacked you on the road from the airport, when you first arrived, were Alpha Dog contractors, not Gen-Y.”

  “I guess they knew I’d make trouble, and wanted me out of the way.” King glanced back at the satellite feed, where a group of tiny figures moved between the now stationary helicopter and a small private jet. A few frames later, the jet taxied for take-off. “Do we know who owns the jet?”

  Deep Blue consulted his own computer screen. “A shell company. I’m starting to get the sense that someone is trying very hard to cover their tracks.”

  “So what do we know for sure? This guy, Fulbright, was able to call out the CDC through official channels; let’s assume that means he really does work in some government agency, but he’s gone rogue. His real employer has almost unlimited resources, and the ability to channel money through a number of different corporations. And let’s not forget, somehow they were keeping an eye on what Manifold was up to. They knew what Felice Carter brought back from the elephant graveyard almost from the start.”

  “That kind of reach takes a lot of money; more money than multinational corporations, more money than most governments.” Deep Blue’s e
yebrows drew together in a perplexed frown. “When I was in office, there was chatter about a… I guess you could call it a ‘metacorporation’—an entity that was secretly insinuating itself into other corporations, the really big multinationals, using shell companies and phony proxies to take over, essentially creating a gigantic global monopoly.”

  “How would you keep something like that off the radar?”

  “Logistically, it would be almost impossible. One person couldn’t run something so complex, and if you had a board of directors…well, eventually someone would slip up, or get greedy and break away…or they would just make bad decisions and it would all come unglued. But that never seemed to happen. There were rumors that the whole thing might be controlled from cyberspace by a sentient computer network. Artificial intelligence would be one explanation for the level of control that’s been exhibited.”

  King shook his head. Global conspiracies were the last thing on his mind right now. “What does any of this have to do with Sara? Or with what Felice discovered in that cave?”

  “If it involves bioweapons research, then I can think of at least one nightmare scenario. Radical depopulation. Selective reduction of undesirable elements in the population as a way of increasing control and bringing about economic stability.”

  King thought about what he had witnessed in the cavern. “So, give the ‘desirable’ people the vaccine, and then turn the rest into zombies. A drone workforce that never complains, never rises up in revolt, and will defend you without question.”

  Deep Blue nodded. “That’s exactly how a computer would reason. The economically disadvantaged represent a constant source of social instability. From ancient times, kings and emperors controlled the masses with distractions—gladiatorial games, circuses, daytime talk shows—but now there’s the potential to simply switch off the part of the human brain that causes discontent.”