by Thomas Locke
“Come on, Kevin. Snap out of it.”
“Snap out . . . We’re employed by animals.”
Reese was a thousand miles removed from his distress. She was too intent on taking control of the last operation either of them would ever run for these puppet masters. Because Reese’s new intel held the opportunity to pave the way to a very comfortable future. Or render them stone-dead. She was certain there was no third option.
But she did not tell Kevin any of this. Right now, there was room for one thing only. Making the next step. And surviving. So she said, “That’s right. Animals who will kill us too. Unless every move we make is totally correct.” Reese leaned forward and gripped his arm. “I will handle the opposition. But I need you to stay tight. Okay?”
She was close enough to see the loose skin of Kevin’s neck tremble as he replied, “I won’t let you down.”
Vera kept them hanging for almost an hour. When she returned, her voice held a flat edge, almost resigned. She reported, “We can confirm that a personal check was written by Lena Fennan for five hundred thousand dollars and deposited in Bishop’s account. Lena Fennan was until this week an analyst at First American Bank’s Wall Street headquarters. She is now a fund manager with Baker Meredith. The branch manager of Bishop’s bank notarized what she thinks were three copies of a contract.”
Reese replied, “Lena Fennan is not your problem.”
There was another extended silence. The tension grew until Kevin was no longer able to be held by his chair. He rose and started toward the window, when a new voice came over the speakerphone. “Ms. Clawson, am I correct in assuming you have had training as an operative?”
Reese shifted forward, drawing her face close to the phone. “Affirmative.”
“Excellent. As one operative to another, may I suggest that we cut to the chase.”
The man’s English was both precise and very polished. But Reese heard the hint of an accent, almost impossible for an adult to totally lose. Kevin heard it as well, for he came back to the table and wrote a single word on his legal pad: Russian.
Reese said, “Can I ask your name?”
“Most certainly.” The man seemed to find something humorous in her question. “As far as you and your associate are concerned, I am Jones.”
“Bishop is now under the protection of a security specialist named Charlie Hazard.”
“Am I correct in assuming that you and this specialist have a personal history?”
“I’ve come up against him twice. Both times he and his team took us out.”
“This Hazard is behind your recent incarceration?”
“Directly responsible.”
“Is his team already in place?”
“They don’t need to be.”
“Ah. So this Hazard and his team are in possession of our technology.”
“They developed it. We stole it.”
“Hazard is in the employ of . . .” There was a rustle of pages. “Dr. Gabriella Speciale?”
“Correct.”
There was a brief pause. Kevin took the pad back and started writing. When he swiveled it around, Reese ignored it entirely. She remained intent upon Jones. Their survival depended upon her getting this right.
Jones said, “Be so good as to describe your previous encounters with this specialist.”
Reese gave him the sort of abbreviated account she would have used with a visiting general or head of state. In her previous existence, back before she was locked in the federal cage, this had formed a regular part of her world. She assumed Jones already knew everything. He did not come on the phone to discuss the past. He was here to take her measure. Decide whether she was part of the solution or just another loose end to be obliterated.
When she was done, Jones gave her a few moments’ silence, then said, “Very good. I assume you have worked out a means by which we can eliminate this Hazard.”
“Him and everybody else working with Bishop.”
“Because I would be quite displeased to think we have wired you two million dollars merely to obtain the doctor’s whereabouts.”
Reese laid out her idea. Six sentences. A pause. Three more. Then she stopped. She did not simply stop talking. Time itself seemed to freeze.
Finally Jones said, “This is most impressive.”
Reese opened her mouth wide, forcing her chest to unlock, drawing a silent breath.
“So where did you locate Dr. Bishop?”
“Hazard and two of Lena Fennan’s associates have driven him to Manhattan.”
“You have their specific location?”
“Yes.” Reese spelled out the address and described the building.
“Did their transport contain all of Bishop’s remaining items?”
“No. A box of the neural nets was already in Manhattan.”
“Ah. Which means they have already started monitoring your, shall we say, frequency?”
“There is no question. They know we’re coming.”
Jones’s sigh was almost theatrical. “Well, in that case I suppose a little noise is inevitable.”
55
Twenty minutes after Lena and Brett finished briefing the others about their ascent, Charlie’s three associates arrived. Charlie greeted them with what Lena had always thought of as a warrior’s embrace—thumbs-up handshake and free arm gripping the other’s back for barely a second. An easy dance of muscle and steel, an affirmation they were joined against whatever threat was beyond the horizon.
The trio was shaped by the same ferocious mold, tight and tattooed and shave-headed and deadly. The Anglo wore an ammo vest over massive shoulders, black drawstring trousers, and canvas paratrooper boots. The African American and the Latino matched him for build and tats and manners, but they both wore jeans and sleeveless hooded sweatshirts and leather lace-ups. The African American bore two scars that ran forehead to neck, like he had been raked by a dragon’s claw.
Charlie’s team was still unloading their gear when Roger Foretrain stepped through the door. He did not return his wife’s embrace because he was too busy dealing with the sight of the weapons. “Tell me this isn’t happening.”
Marjorie repeated what Charlie had told them. “These are our security. They’re here to make sure we stay safe.”
“They’re mercenaries.” Roger gave an angry swipe, as though he wanted to erase the whole thing. “This is Manhattan.”
“I told you the situation was serious,” Marjorie persisted.
“This isn’t serious.” His face was drained of blood. “This is war.”
Charlie stepped up beside her. “There are just these three. All the armament is designed for two purposes.”
“No. I do not want to hear—”
“Let him finish,” Marjorie said softly.
“Their primary job is to make noise,” Charlie went on. “The opposition will be after stealth. They want to sneak in, do their job, and leave unnoticed. This team is tasked with the job of waking up Manhattan.”
The Latino was handsome in the manner of a weaving cobra. What was more, he knew it. He flashed a smile at Robin and said, “We are very good at our job. Charlie, tell the lady how good I can be.”
Charlie went on, “I will be stationed across the street. The instant the opposition reveals their hand, I will phone the police, then take them from behind.”
Roger’s words rang through the cement chamber. “You are not putting my wife in danger.”
Marjorie snapped, “Roger. Upstairs. Now.” She wheeled about and drummed her heels up the metal stairs. When Roger did not follow, she shouted down, “Now!”
The handsome Latino murmured, “Adios, Roger.”
“Hector,” Charlie said. “Shut it.”
“Hey, I’m just—”
“That’s your quota all used up,” Charlie said. “We clear?”
Hector made a big thing of the shrug. “Sí, jefe. Claro.”
Lena remained downstairs both because she wanted to give Marjorie space and beca
use Brett was there. She stood a few feet from where he and Bishop continued their ongoing dialogue. The pair remained intent upon their quiet discussion. Brett sketched graphs and calculations in the air. Bishop tracked Brett’s finger like he could read the unwritten script.
Lena felt a faint electric charge compressing the air between Brett and herself. It was not desire and it was not impatience and it was not love. It was all of that and more. Brett shot her a look, freezing her solid and him as well, the finger poised in mid-stroke. The look was enough. For now.
Robin stepped to her other side and murmured, “I can’t even name half the gear they’re laying out.”
Lena’s attention drifted back over to where the Anglo broke down an assault rifle and cleaned each component carefully. The clink of metal on metal rang through the concrete chamber. She replied, “It’s not just the gear that fascinates you.”
Hector could not possibly have heard their conversation, perfected over months of hovering at the back of rooms, the gophers paid to disappear in plain view. Even so, Hector lifted his head and gave Robin a visual scalding.
“Like you’re one to talk,” Robin countered. “You and the scientist over there melting the walls.”
Lena glanced back to Brett and the surgeon. “We are, aren’t we.”
“So when did that start?”
Lena was saved from needing to respond by Marjorie appearing at the top of the stairs and calling her name. Hector polished the barrel of his rifle and sang a soft, “Leeeena.”
Charlie hissed. A cobra’s warning. Hector ducked his head and resumed his work.
Marjorie halted Lena on the top step, holding the apartment door shut with the hand not gripping the rail. Needing both grips to maintain her balance. “Roger is extremely upset.”
“I already got that memo.”
Marjorie indicated the action downstairs. “This couldn’t have come at a worse time. The board is gunning for him.”
Lena knew why Marjorie was saying this. “He’s taking you away.”
“He needs me to be with him.”
“Marjorie, I totally get it. Roger is worried about you. Did you tell him about the other thing?”
“Not yet.”
“That’s going to take his arguments to a totally new level.”
Marjorie might have nodded. “He won’t want to accept it now. He won’t hear me. So I wrote him a note. I asked him to wait and read it in a few days. After . . .”
“When it’s safe,” Lena finished. “When you can see a doctor and have it medically confirmed, and then you can tell him. And he reads the note, and he remembers how all this happened. Bring it home to him. Smart.” Then Lena realized what was behind the bleak expression. It had nothing to do with Roger making her leave. She asked, “Roger is going to fire me?”
Marjorie’s eyes glittered in a very New York fashion, the misery of city life barely held in check. “Be nice. Please. Accept this with grace. It’s coming from the board, not him. He fought for you. That’s why it took him so long to arrive. Maybe later he can rally enough support to reinstate you.”
Lena turned from the woman, the reality and the pain too great to watch her a single second longer. And the act saved Lena, for when she looked down into the main warehouse, Brett chose that moment to glance up. He had no idea what was happening, but the electric frisson sparked the air. The communication did not come from him directly, but rather through the act of bonding. Lena realized she was already moving into a new future. This was merely another step along the way.
She found the strength to turn and say calmly, “Let’s get this over with.”
“The granddaddy of brain stimulus methods is electroconvulsive therapy,” Brett said. “Its name pretty much describes what it does.”
They had returned upstairs. Lena was seated next to Brett on the sofa closest to the apartment’s open door. She could hear the mercs downstairs talking softly and laughing. Occasionally there was the clink of metal on stone.
“Over the past few years, the entire direct-stimulation concept has been transformed,” Brett went on. “There are now four entirely new methods being studied.”
Bernard Bishop was seated in a camp chair he had pulled over from the dining table. Robin sat on a throw cushion supported by the side wall. The central table was littered with remnants of midnight takeout. Charlie wandered around the apartment, checking the windows, padding downstairs to speak with his team, then returning to plant himself by the open door. Lena found his actions as comforting as the sounds drifting up from below.
“My least favorite method is vagus nerve stimulation,” Brett said. “A device is implanted under the skull, sending electrical impulses through the brain stem. Recently the FDA approved this as treatment for epilepsy, MS, and Alzheimer’s.”
What Lena most wanted from this moment was privacy, so she could wrap her arms around Brett and squeeze the man tightly enough that she could breathe with him. Have his presence fill the void where her job on Wall Street had resided. Her logical brain kept offering the reassurance of a job in Denver, the money in her account, all the reasons not to let this impact her. But Lena had never been fired before. Logic played no role in how she felt.
“Transcranial stimulation comes in two forms, electrical and magnetic,” Brett continued. Bernard Bishop listened with the first easy smile Lena had ever seen him offer, the experienced surgeon pleased with his new student. “Electrical is being considered as having the best possibilities for cognitive enhancement. Magnetic impulses take longer to have an impact, up to an hour, but human studies are currently under way for the treatment of migraines, severe depression, and psychosis.” Brett met Bishop’s gaze and added, “And then there is deep-brain stimulation.”
Lena was both involved and able to analyze her torrent of conflicting emotions. She remained hollowed by Roger’s official farewell. And yet Brett’s closeness only heightened the sense that she was accelerating into a totally new future. The danger she had twice witnessed when ascending, the smell of gun oil drifting through the open doorway, Charlie’s silent presence—none of this could stifle her sense of purpose. She reached over and pulled Brett’s hand into her lap so she could cradle it with both her own.
Brett broke off and gave her a look that brought to mind the word smoking. Then he glanced back at Bishop and said, “Where was I?”
“Stimulation,” Robin said. When Brett’s gaze tracked back to Bishop, Robin smirked at Lena and fanned her face with the takeout menu.
“Right. The current research on cranial mapping is in its infancy. We have the tools, the National Institutes of Health has licensed several new projects, but the spotlight is on the academics. As a result, they move forward carefully—”
Bishop spoke for the first time. “And all the while, patients are suffering from pain. They’re given the choice of agony or drugs that blanket all senses and carry severe side effects. Which isn’t much of a choice at all.”
Brett went on, “Bernard took a surgeon’s approach. He applied the scalpel to the entire academic world. He carved away all those artificial boundaries. He showed that if you combine the magnetic and the electric, and if you add the individual brain-wave patterns, you can create deep-brain stimulation without all the risks involved in drilling holes into patients’ skulls and implanting electrodes.”
Robin asked the surgeon, “What was the trigger? For you, I mean.”
“Five years ago, there was an article in Science.” Bishop sat like a man who had lost the ability to relax. “It proved that the same transcranial electrical and magnetic impulses caused completely opposite responses in patients, based upon age or sex or other causal factors. The researchers concluded they would need years to unravel the linkages.”
“Ridiculous,” Brett said.
“My word exactly,” Bishop said.
“So you ignored the question,” Robin said. “You decided to unravel the brain-wave patterns on an individual basis. That was . . .”
&
nbsp; “Brilliant,” Brett said.
Charlie stepped forward and inserted himself into the group. “Time to take another ascent.”
“I’ll go,” Lena said.
“Me too,” Brett said.
Robin asked, “What are you two smiling about?”
Charlie said, “From now on, we’ll need to make a recce every couple of hours. Toward dawn, I want this to become watch-on-watch.”
Lena caught the edge to his voice, and knew Charlie would soon split up her and Brett. Her last thought, as she fitted on the neural net and lay down on the pallet, was that she and Brett had not yet found a private space to talk about what was happening.
She was still reflecting on this when Charlie counted her up. The union was as blissful as before, perhaps even more so. This time Lena knew what was coming. She hungered for it. When Brett appeared, she flew at him.
And he at her.
There was no body, no vision, no touch. And yet the intensity of their moment-beyond-moments made all of this relatively unimportant. The harmony she felt was a vibration that caused her physical form to give off a tuning-fork hum, one she could sense from her position across the room.
This time it was Brett who pried them apart. The act of separation carried an exquisite distress for Lena. She wished she had the capacity to weep. And that Brett had hands with which he might dry her eyes.
Lena shifted away and refocused upon Charlie’s voice. The words flowed into a coherent pattern, and she followed them out, hunting.
The search took only as long as Charlie required to speak the words, “You will now determine who the opposition is, and when precisely they will arrive. You will remain in complete safety and control . . .”
Lena opened her physical eyes with the gasp of being drawn from a living nightmare. The room watched as she ripped off the neural net and flung it as far as the cables allowed.
Charlie demanded, “What did you see?”
Lena’s limbs did not feel capable of holding her full weight. She crawled over to Brett. Only from the safety of his arms could she look at Charlie and reply, “Monsters.”