Origin - Season One

by James, Nathaniel Dean

  “Is there any way we can get hold of you if we need to?” Jesse asked.

  “I’ll get to that.”

  Francis knelt in front of the bed and pulled out one of the crates. He picked up a small machine gun and handed it to Jesse.

  “It’s heavy,” Jesse said, turning the weapon around in his hands.

  “That’s an MP5 nine millimeter submachine gun. I wish I had time to show you how to use it, but I’ll just have to run you through the basics. You said you had a rifle, what was it?”

  “A Winchester Model 70 classic,” Jesse said.

  “Nice rifle. The single shot recoil will be slighter on that thing,” Francis said. “But it’s automatic, so it’s progressive. Meaning –”

  “I know what it means,” Jesse interrupted, “I played a lot of video games when I was a kid.”

  “Good,” Francis said, looking dubious. “So you know you need to compensate by holding it down. Keep it switched to burst fire, which means –”

  “Three rounds every time you pull the trigger,” Jesse said.

  Francis held up his hands. “Hell, kid. I’ll just leave you to it then. If I’d known video games were so good at churning out fighting men, I wouldn’t have bothered…”

  “Wouldn’t have signed up for the Navy SEALs?” Jesse suggested.

  “Wouldn’t have bothered saying anything.” Francis corrected.

  Francis took something else from the box and held it up. It looked like a combination radio and telephone with a thick rubber antenna folded down on one side.

  “This is a satellite phone,” Francis said. “Did you use any of these in your video games?”

  Jesse smiled. “No, Master Chief, I didn’t.”

  “Okay, it’s simple. You need a clear line of sight, so it won’t work under the tree canopy. If you need to use it go back to the lake. When you turn it on it will automatically begin looking for a satellite. Once it’s found one, the panel turns green and you’re good to go. I’m going to write down a number but it won’t get you straight through to me. Just let it ring a couple of times and end the call. I will call you back as soon as I can.”

  Jesse nodded and took the phone. Francis pushed the crate back under the bed and stood. “There’s a spare battery for the phone and three more clips for the MP5 in there. If you pull it out, you’ll also see I’ve got a couple of hand grenades. I strongly suggest you don’t play with them.”

  “What? You mean like pull the pin and see what happens?” Jesse said, clearly annoyed at being treated like a child.

  Francis gave him a stern look, then pointed at a board lodged between the bed and the wall. “One last thing. Behind that board there is a very narrow tunnel. It runs about thirty yards to the east. At the end there is about four feet of clearance with a metal plate in the top. Give it a good shove and it’ll open. I’m not trying to scare you, but I want to cover every option. You have any questions?”

  Jesse thought about it for a moment. “How long will you be gone?”

  “I’d say five days. A week at most.”

  “And if you don’t come back at all? What then?”

  “Seriously kid, I don’t know. I’d most likely be dead and you’d be on your own.”

  “So what? Go hunting with a submachine gun? Or maybe we could go fishing in the lake with your hand grenades?”

  “The town’s just across the lake. You know where the boat is. Or you could go on foot, but it would be a long walk. As for hunting, there’s plenty of game out here and you’ll find a ten thousand dollar hunting rifle under the floor in the cabin. Practically shoots stuff by itself. But it won’t come to that.”

  “How can you be so sure?” Jesse asked.

  “Because I’ve been doing this for a long time, and at the risk of sounding arrogant, I’m pretty good at it.”

  Jesse began to snigger. A second later he was flat on the floor with one of Francis’s knees on his throat and the blade of a knife pressed against the skin on the back of his neck. Francis bent closer until Jesse could feel his breath on his ear. “Do you know why I resented you calling me a SEAL earlier?” Francis asked.

  Jesse tried to say he didn’t, but the knee was pushing down on his windpipe so he shook his head instead.

  “Because the four men I killed back in your home town were SEALs, or something a lot like them, and frankly, I didn’t rate them very fucking highly.”

  Francis stood up and Jesse brought his hands to his neck. Francis held out a hand. “No hard feelings, kid. I was just trying to make a point.”

  But Jesse was in no mood for charity. The look on his face was one Francis had seen many times – the look of murder. Jesse rolled over and got to his knees then stood and glanced at the MP5 sitting on the bed.

  “You’d get maybe halfway there, maybe only a quarter,” Francis said. There was no menace in the words, just certainty.

  “What about later?” Jesse said, his face now turning red. “When your back’s turned?”

  Francis felt a little sorry for him. It had been a shitty thing to do, but he needed Jesse to understand that while his life might have been turned upside down yesterday, Francis hadn’t been born then. He thought his chances of doing something about the drive and the people who wanted it back were at least as good as they were bad. He needed Jesse to believe that or the two of them might go nuts out here while he was gone.

  “If you’re determined to kill me,” Francis said. “I’m sure you’ll find a way sooner or later. But maybe you’ll give me a chance to try and help you first. I can assure you of one thing, if I don’t come back, it’ll be because I’m already dead. Think of it as a win-win situation, if you like.”

  Francis saw Jesse relax a little and deliberately turned his back and walked to the ladder. If the gamble didn’t pay off, the gun wasn’t loaded anyway. But it would make things a little awkward, to say the least. Jesse made no move for the weapon. He followed Francis and looked up at the entrance. “We should get back. Amanda will be getting worried.”

  “I was meaning to ask you about that,” Francis said. “Do you think she’ll be okay out here?”

  “Are you kidding? She’ll be a lot more okay than me, that’s for sure.”

  “She’s a tough one, isn’t she?”

  Jesse nodded.

  “You’ve known her for a long time then?” Francis said.

  “Since second grade.”

  “It’s just that I thought you guys were, you know, an item.”

  Jesse looked down at the floor and Francis patted him on the arm. “It’s none of my business.”

  Jesse suddenly looked defeated. “It’s complicated.”

  “It always is,” Francis said and climbed the ladder.

  They closed the hatch and returned to the cabin.

  “You’ll need to brief Amanda on everything I showed you,” Francis said. “You can leave out the drop-kick and the stand-off though. That’s just between us fellas.”

  “I could have kicked your ass,” Jesse said. “I just didn’t want to embarrass you.”

  Francis laughed. “Gee, thanks. You’re a real sport.”

  They found Amanda asleep on the bed. She had found a candle and fixed it to the middle of the table. Next to it there was an empty can of tinned peaches.

  “What did I tell you?” Jesse said. “If you’d left me here, I would’ve been under the bed by now.”

  “Amazing,” Francis agreed.

  “Better go while she’s asleep or you might get another earful on your way out the door,” Jesse said. “I’ll wake her up and we’ll go back to the Batcave when you’re gone.”

  “Smart thinking. Let me just get my stuff together.”

  Francis put the things he had stacked up by the floorboards into an old canvas bag, then picked up some clothes and began to change by the fireplace. He put on a pair of tattered dark brown corduroy pants and a faded green sweater with the letters USMC still just about visible on the front. Then he pulled on a pair of steel-toe
d boots that would never be mistaken for anything else. Over the sweater he put on a black and white plaid zip-up jacket and topped the look off with a beanie that might or might not have been white at some point in the distant past. When he was done, Francis lifted his arms and posed. “How do I look?”

  “Like a bum.”

  “Good. The look I’m going for is really more tramp-cum-hitchhiker, but bum will do.”

  “Why?” Jesse asked. “Have you run out of quarters or something?”

  “Let’s just say I don’t want to attract more attention than I have to.”

  “America’s invisible poor?”

  “Yeah. Something like that. You all set?”

  “We’ll be fine,” Jesse said, sounding a lot more confident than he felt.

  Francis picked up the pistol he’d put down on the table, checked the breach and put it in the pocket of his jacket. He put two more clips in the other pocket, then threw his backpack over one shoulder.

  “Wish me luck,” Francis said and held out his free hand.

  Jesse shook it. “I hope you find what you’re looking for.”

  “I will. Don’t you worry.”

  – – –

  As soon as Francis was gone, Jesse felt his heart sink. He looked over at Amanda, who was still sleeping the sleep of the dead. He had never been a great believer in divine intervention, but he thought that might soon change. If she hadn’t been here with him, there was no way in hell he’d survive a day without going mad, much less a week. He sat down at the table and watched her sleep for a long time. When the silence was suddenly broken by a piercing shriek from somewhere outside, he stood up and walked to the bed.

  Chapter 28

  Skyline Defense

  New York, New York Wednesday 19 July 2006

  0100 EDT

  When he returned to his office, Marius was sitting in front of Jack’s desk with a small digital recorder in one hand.

  “What’s going on?” Jack asked.

  “You were right about Jessops. I put an intercept on Mike Banner’s home phone line. But I think we have a bigger problem.”

  “What?”

  “It looks like we may have a security breach.”

  “What kind of security breach?” Jack asked.

  Marius set the recorder down on the desk and pushed play. Jack listened to the conversation between Mike Banner and his wife.

  “That’s the first call to his wife in Phoenix,” Marius said. “The second is to a colleague of his in DC named Mitch Rainey.”

  Jack felt his stomach tighten as he listened to Mitch detail what he had found out about Bruce Jessops. Then Mitch changed topic in mid-sentence and the call abruptly ended.

  Marius stopped the recorder. “I ran back through the recording several times, looking for some sign of a trace. Whatever he used to intercept it, it wasn’t anything the FBI have. He must have had some kind of pulse sensor or signal delay tracking device. It’s the only way he would have been able to pick it up. If he managed to decipher the source values from the readings, he could trace them back to Darkstar.”

  “To Darkstar?” Jack said. “I thought that was impossible.”

  “Improbable, but not impossible,” Marius said. “I’m not saying he could follow the line back here. But if he knows Darkstar is still in orbit, we could have a major problem.”

  “Do we know where he is now?” Jack asked.

  “Sitting in a jail cell in Penn Hills. Local police brought him in last night on a DUI charge.”

  “I’ll deal with it,” Jack said.

  “You going to bring him in?” Marius said. “That’s what we’re supposed to do, right?”

  “Like I said, I’ll deal with it.”

  Marius picked up the recorder but made no effort to leave.

  “What is it?” Jack sighed.

  “When’s Titov getting here? I’m so fucking nervous I can hardly think. Carl came upstairs yesterday to ask me about something and I thought I was going to have a goddamned nervous breakdown. I’m no good with shit like this, Jack.”

  “He’ll be here tomorrow.”

  “I just don’t get what’s going on. First Carl, and now the FBI? And what does the Fed have to do with all this? They were talking about some kind of investigation.”

  “It’ll all makes sense in a couple of days, Marius, believe me. Just hold it together a little longer.”

  Jack put a hand on his shoulder and gently escorted him to the door.

  Chapter 29

  Chemin des Gagnon, Quebec

  Wednesday 19 July 2006

  0115 EDT

  Francis reached the road shortly after one in the morning. When his feet hit the tarmac, he stopped, put down his backpack and spent the next few minutes going through a vigorous stretching routine to cleanse his muscle tissue of lactic acid.

  He had left the cabin and headed not for the lake, but away to the east, toward the smaller road which rejoined Route 155 a few miles to the south. It had been a steady series of peaks and valleys across uneven ground and thick woodland. Several times he had come across a logging track or hiking path, and once he had scared himself half to death when he almost ran into an elk calf.

  Satisfied there would be no backlash from his limbs somewhere down the road, he walked south at a pace just below jogging speed. He reached a junction twenty minutes later with a small dirt road leading downhill through a break in the trees. He followed it, studying the ground as he went, then climbed the bank at the edge of the road, picked up a stick and began to tap the grass around him.

  He found what he was looking for a moment later. It was on old, rusting ammunition container with a length of thick rope inside that disappeared into the ground through a hole in the bottom. As he pulled it, the rope sprang from the ground in a straight line for several yards before going taught. He walked down the bank, planted both feet firmly on the ground, and pulled.

  At first, nothing happened. Francis pulled until the veins in his neck bulged and his feet began to sink into the soft ground. There was a series of ripping sounds as roots snapped, then a large rectangular section of the bank simply gave way and slid forward, revealing what looked like a square mineshaft.

  Sitting inside it was a black Land Rover Defender with balloon tires and two giant spotlights mounted to the grill. The license plate was Canadian. Francis squeezed himself into the narrow gap, climbed in and started the engine.

  Twenty minutes later he pulled back onto Route 155 and headed in the direction they had come from the day before. By five in the morning he was nearing Three Rivers. An hour after that, he reached Quebec City.

  – – –

  The man behind the counter at the Radio Shack repair desk studied the drive for a moment then handed it back. “I’m afraid we don’t sell anything old enough to read ESDI drives, sir. This interface was phased out years ago. You know what computers are like, old by the time you get them home and all that.”

  Francis thanked him and was about to leave when a younger man stepped out from behind the partition wall at the back of the room and said, “Can I have a look at that, sir?”

  Francis handed him the hard drive and the man inspected it briefly.

  “My dad’s got a pawn shop down in Beauport. Last time I was in there he had an old IBM PC that would read this. I doubt he’s sold it.”

  Forty-five minutes later Francis was standing in a room that appeared to have been overlooked by time itself. The long, narrow shop had shelves running all the way to the high ceiling along both walls. Nothing he could see looked as if it had been made before 1990. There was nobody behind the counter, but someone was having a coughing fit out back. He waited for another minute, then rang the bell above the front door again.

  The man who emerged from behind the curtain at the back of the shop was red in the face from strain. He looked about eighty and his clothes could have come off one of the store’s many shelves.

  “Bonjour,” he said.

  Francis returned
the greeting, explained his predicament and asked him about the IBM PC. The man, who introduced himself as Mr. Mouliner, considered the question as if it bore a great deal of importance. After a moment he walked back through the curtain, calling for Francis to join him. They unburied the old machine together and Francis carried it out to the counter.

  When it came to money, it seemed the man had no more joined the human race in ushering in the new millennium than his shop had. He wanted 350 Canadian dollars for the relic and made it clear that he would go no lower. Francis considered trying to explain that it was all but worthless, and put the idea aside. It wasn’t exactly true anyway, when you considered what he needed it for in the first place.

  – – –

  He found a small motel off Highway 40 outside the town of Pont-Rouge and wasted no time setting the computer up. Using his laptop to access the motel’s wireless Internet service, he spent two hours navigating various “how-to” guides online before he finally managed to get the drive to register.

  He had been expecting to find any of a number of things on it. What he did find had not been one of them. It contained about two hundred files in twenty-one folders with names that meant nothing to him. A few of the files had zip and rar extensions to identify them as compressed archives. These were no good as the computer had no decompression software. The rest were image files, and these he could open.

  The first few he tried resulted in an error message to say that the resolution of the monitor was too low to display them. When an image did finally appear on the screen it was a grainy black-and-white photograph of a submarine in drydock. Francis knew exactly what it was, a Russian Victor-class nuclear powered attack sub. He found several other images of the same submarine, pictures of satellites, rockets, space probes, mining equipment, several dock cranes, a Caterpillar diesel generator and one of a building in Zurich with Fraumünster Abbey in the background. Nothing classified, nothing secret and nothing that meant anything to him. One of the folders was named “DPFCS images” and contained four picture files, but according to the computer, these required a password to open.