Tan showed no reaction to Naomi’s words, but the academic type next to him scowled. “As I told you earlier, Naomi, I don’t think that’s a good idea,” he said angrily.
With a tight smile at Jack, Naomi said, “This is Dr. Gregg Thornton. He’s in charge of...this place–”
“Damn right I am,” he interjected.
“–and we had a little disagreement over how to deal with your situation. But we both agreed that I would handle this,” she finished, turning to glare at Thornton, who glared right back at her.
If this is a good cop-bad cop routine, Jack thought, watching the two of them, they’re either really good, or really bad. He still wasn’t about to give out any trust points, but his instincts were telling him that their argument wasn’t just for show.
“You have my word,” he told Naomi, but was looking at Thornton, “that I won’t try anything. For now. But,” he went on, turning to meet Naomi’s gaze, “if I find out that any of you were involved in any way with the murder of Sheldon Crane or the explosion at the FBI lab at Quantico, I’ll tear your guts out.”
“This is insane,” Thornton muttered before stalking out of the room, slamming the door shut behind him.
“What’s his problem?” Jack asked.
Naomi only shook her head, then said quietly, “Tan, let him up, please.” Without a word, Tan removed the restraints, freeing Jack. Then he stood tensely next to Naomi, watching Jack carefully. “Thank you, Tan. You can leave us, now,” she said. He paused, uncertain. “It’s all right. I’m fine.”
With nothing more than a slight downturn of his mouth, Tan turned and quietly padded out of the room, softly closing the door. Jack was sure that he was now standing just outside.
“I know you have a lot of questions,” Naomi told him, “and I promise that I’ll tell you everything that I can.”
“How about we start with something to drink,” Jack said, catching sight of a carafe of what he hoped was water and a glass on a nightstand next to the bed. Alexander got off him and curled up on the bed. “I feel like I haven’t had anything to drink in a couple days.”
“That’s not far from the truth,” she said as she picked up the carafe and poured Jack some water, then handed him the glass. “You’ve been sedated for a bit over twenty-four hours,” she explained. “I’m sorry again for stunning and sedating you, but we had to move quickly and didn’t have time then for twenty questions.”
“Where are we?” he asked as he handed the glass back for a refill.
“California,” she told him as she gave him more water, “not far from a place called Live Oak, if you know where that is.”
“No,” Jack told her before he drank the rest of the water, which was finally making a dent in his thirst. He had been to some of California’s major cities, but Live Oak didn’t ring any bells. “So, did you shanghai me out here on a plane after knocking me out?”
“Basically,” she told him, leaning back and crossing her blue jean-clad legs. “You’re hard to carry and weigh a ton when you’re unconscious, Special Agent Dawson,” she told him with a grin. “Did you know that? Especially up the steps of an executive jet. It took the three of us plus the pilot to get you into the plane. Getting you down was easy, though. We just dumped you out on the ground.”
Jack snorted, which elicited a reproving look from Alexander, who was still purring loudly next to him. “I’ve suffered worse,” he said.
“I know,” she told him quietly, her face softening. “Sheldon told us a lot about you. He thought the world of you, Jack. I’m so sorry about what happened to him. We all are.”
Jack looked at her, his face rigid with renewed anger at his friend’s death. “So, I take it you had nothing to do with his murder?”
“We didn’t kill him, Jack,” she said, aghast. “Sheldon was working with us. He had been for weeks.” At Jack’s clear expression of disbelief, she explained, “He had been tracking down our attempts to hack into the New Horizons lab networks. We have some very bright people, Jack, but he was better. Much better. We knew someone was onto us, but we didn’t know who it was.” She shook her head. “One of our...sources finally figured it out, and we decided to try and recruit him, you might say, to get him on our side before he went to his superiors with what he knew.” She shook her head. “It was a close thing, Jack. Sheldon almost had us, and had he blown the whistle on our operation, it would have been a disaster of biblical proportions.”
Seeing Jack’s skeptical expression, she went on, “I know it sounds melodramatic to you now, but by the end of the day you’ll understand that it’s not an overstatement. Not at all.”
Alexander put out a paw in her direction, demanding her attention, and she leaned forward and scratched him under the chin. Jack caught a whiff, just a trace, of a lavender scent.
“Of course,” she went on, “just like you, Sheldon wasn’t willing to believe us at first, but after we showed him certain things...” She shrugged. “After that, he became a true believer in our cause. He turned the tables on New Horizons, and was able to succeed where we had failed. We knew that the key was the lab at Lincoln Research University, but we didn’t know exactly where to look. He volunteered to break into the lab,” she said, her eyes brimming with tears now. “He knew he was the only one who could find what we were looking for in the computers.” She reached out and took Jack’s hand. “And thanks to you, he didn’t die in vain. We have the corn samples and the other data he found. We have everything we need, now.”
“Everything for what, Naomi?” Jack said, frustrated. He couldn’t imagine what Sheldon could have seen to make him go rogue and throw in his lot with the likes of the Earth Defense Society. But Jack also couldn’t deny that he believed what Naomi was telling him. That scared him almost as much as anything else. “And who the hell killed him?” he demanded.
“You’ll see soon enough, Jack,” she said cryptically, letting go of his hand. “We have the security monitor recordings of the lab. I’ll show them...and other things to you soon.”
Jack opened his mouth to protest, to tell her that he wanted to know now, but she put her fingers to his lips.
“I promised you that I’d tell you everything, Jack,” she said, “and I will. I won’t lie to you or hold anything back. We need your help, just as much as we needed Sheldon’s. Maybe more, now that he’s gone.” She shook her head. “But there are certain things you need to understand first. I know it’s hard to be patient after all that’s happened, but you’ve got to trust me. Please.”
“I’m not going to say I trust you,” he told her, “because right now I don’t trust anybody but this silly cat.” Alexander ignored him, his attention focused on Naomi, who was still scratching him under the chin. “But I don’t exactly have much choice, do I? If nothing you tell me or show me convinces me to support your little operation and I wanted to leave, you wouldn’t let me go, would you?”
“No,” she told him quietly. “We couldn’t, Jack. There’s simply too much at stake.”
“Would you just kill me if I didn’t cooperate?”
“I wouldn’t support it, but there are others who would want to.” She paused. “But we’ve never had to do that, Jack, and I pray we never will. What you’ll see here will transform your view of the world, believe me.”
Jack said, “Okay, start talking.”
“First,” she began, “you need to understand that we’re at war, Jack. Like most wars, this one is for dominance, for control. The difference is that very few people realize that they’re caught up in it, and most of those who do don’t understand what it’s really about, or who the enemy truly is.” She sat back, folding her arms under her breasts, shivering slightly as if she were cold. “Everyone today is focused on the threat of terrorism. Before that, it was Saddam Hussein. And for decades before that we were consumed by worry over the Cold War and nuclear holocaust. The irony is that the corn that Sheldon found in that lab in Nebraska, if it ever gets loose in our biosphere, will be far
more devastating to humankind and the Earth as a whole than all the nuclear weapons ever made.” Her eyes took on that haunted look again that made Jack’s skin crawl. “We’ll be wiped out if we aren’t able to stop it, Jack. The human race will be exterminated.”
“How?” Jack asked, shaking off the willies. “It’s just corn, for God’s sake. And not much, at that: how are four little kernels of corn going to do us in?”
She shook her head. “These are just some of the prototypes, Jack,” she told him. “New Horizons got the rest back when they...killed Sheldon. Even if they hadn’t, they would have been able to recreate them. They have the genetic blueprints. Within a year there will be seed to produce corn like that, thousands of tons of it that will be shipped to every corner of the world. And wheat and other crops will be following right behind to help spread the devastation.”
Jack shook his head. “I say again, so what? Is it laced with poison? Is it carnivorous, the corn cobs chasing after people to bite their ankles? I’m sorry, Naomi, but I just don’t buy this. If what you’re saying was true, New Horizons would be shut down in a heartbeat, and the FDA and special agents from the Bureau would be in there, tearing those labs and offices apart and burning every bit of the stuff.”
She cocked her head, looking at him as if he had just said something incredibly dim-witted. “In an ideal world, that’s exactly what would happen, Jack. But our world isn’t ideal, is it? Your time in Afghanistan should have shown you that. And even if it hadn’t, the ordeal with Sansone should have been a wakeup call.” She paused, considering. “There’s a good reason that New Horizons hasn’t been shut down. Do you have any idea how many senior government and military officials have close ties to that company, either from prior or promised future employment, receiving major campaign contributions, or just good old-fashioned bribes?”
Jack shook his head. He didn’t like where this was going.
“We’ve been able to link twenty-six, Jack,” she went on. “That number includes the vice president, the deputy secretary of defense, five senior officers in the military, two supreme court justices, the head of the FDA, the chief of staff for Homeland Security...” She paused, looking pointedly at him. “...and the Director of the FBI.”
He felt like the world had suddenly fallen away, spinning off into space as he fell down the proverbial rabbit hole. Someone in the Bureau handed you over to Sansone and her goons, he thought bitterly. He hoped it wasn’t Richards, and prayed it wasn’t Clement. But if the director was caught up in this madness, it could have been anyone.
Then there was Kilburn at the lab: he had come from New Horizons, and Jack would have bet a year’s pay that he had played a role in Jerri’s death.
“Those are just the big fish, Jack,” Naomi continued. “There are a lot more out there, the people who carry out the policies that those senior officials make. All of those people do whatever is necessary for New Horizons to fulfill its agenda.”
“Which is?” he asked, not sure now that he wanted to know the answer. He felt like he was under water, his body being squeezed, crushed, his lungs unable to breathe.
“There are two parts to it, Jack,” she answered. “The first is to control as much of the world’s food supply as possible. The second, as I already told you,” she said grimly, “is to kill us.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
Before Jack had a chance to respond, an intercom set into the wall next to where he was sitting chimed.
Naomi stood up and reached across the bed to answer it, her face drawing close to Jack’s as she did so. He couldn’t help but breathe in her lavender scent, and when his eyes met hers, she held them steadily. It seemed to take a long time for her fingers to press the button.
“Naomi,” she said, still holding Jack’s gaze.
“You need to come see this,” Thornton’s voice, even more agitated than it was before, rasped through the grill, destroying the moment. “Right now.”
“On my way,” she sighed, giving Jack a wry smile. She stood up and told him, “Come on.”
“Where to?” he asked, more confused than ever.
“The command center,” she answered as she opened the door, which took quite a bit of effort to move. He quickly saw why: it was three-inch thick steel plate, and if he wasn’t mistaken, the walls were made of concrete even thicker. “It’s upstairs.”
As Jack slid forward on the bed to stand up, Alexander gracefully jumped to the floor and trotted out the door.
“Alexander!” Jack called, starting to chase after his feline friend, but Naomi caught his arm.
“He’s fine,” she told him with a quick smile. “Alexander had a chance to explore a bit while you were sedated. He can go where he likes here. Animals are welcome, and necessary, as it turns out. The others here will watch out for him.”
“Oh, jeez,” Jack sighed, wondering what mischief the big cat would get into as he stepped out of the room.
He found himself in a hallway that looked like it might have been in a modest hotel, except that it emptied into the yawning mouth of a brightly lit tunnel a dozen feet wide. There were doors along the hallway to rooms similar to his, along with a dining area near the tunnel entrance that could seat twenty or so people.
Where the hell is this? he wondered. He might be in California by rough location, but he’d never seen anything like this place.
As he closed the massive door behind him, he noticed a small name plate next to the door frame. Naomi Perrault. Christ, he thought, I was sleeping in her bed. That brought a set of images to his mind that he hurriedly shoved aside.
Tan, as Jack had suspected, had been standing next to the door, and he fell into line as Jack followed Naomi to a spiral staircase, trying to focus his attention on his feet rather than on her shapely lower body as she quickly took the steps ahead of him.
He was totally unprepared for what he saw upon reaching the top of the stairs. It was a circular room about seventy feet across that looked like the combat information center, or CIC, of an aircraft carrier he had once been on during his tour in Afghanistan. Computers and flat panel displays were arrayed in clusters that faced in toward a raised dais at the center. The walls curved inward to form a dome, with enclosed fluorescent fixtures hanging from shock mounts around the periphery and a matrix of sound baffles in the center of the ceiling. A dozen men and women were at the various consoles, and all of them were staring at Jack as he followed Naomi toward where Thornton stood at the central console.
He suddenly realized they weren’t staring at him, exactly, but behind him. Turning around, he saw that about a quarter of the room had been partitioned off by a wall that held a couple of doors and three floor-to-ceiling projection displays.
On the center display was his most recent official FBI photograph, now being broadcast by a national news network.
“Oh, shit,” he muttered as he turned to catch up to Naomi. As he passed the various workstations, he saw that some displayed maps of various parts of the world, while others showed what looked like network diagrams and computer code. Still others had only mundane programs like web browsers and chat programs running.
“Play it,” Thornton ordered as Jack took his place next to Naomi, Tan silently standing a few feet behind. A man sat at the circular console at the center that had half a dozen screens and several keyboard consoles. He clicked a control and the paused broadcast began to play.
“In what sources are reporting is a devastating blow to the nation’s premier law enforcement agency,” the newswoman announced, “the Federal Bureau of Investigation has put one of its own on their ‘ten most-wanted fugitives’ list.” A series of photos of Jack paraded across the screen as the woman went on. “Jack Armand Dawson, a former Army officer and special agent with the FBI for nearly ten years, is wanted for the murder of two fellow agents and the suspected kidnapping of a third. He is also the leading suspect in the lethal bombing of the FBI Laboratory at Quantico yesterday that left thirty-seven Bureau employees dead and mo
re than fifty injured.”
Suspected kidnapping of a third? Jack’s mind ground to a halt for a moment as he thought of what that might mean before the scene cut to show a mob of cameras surrounding Ray Clement as he stood on the steps leading to the entrance of the J. Edgar Hoover Building. Jack felt his gut twist in emotional agony as he saw how distraught his boss and mentor was, knowing that there was no way to tell him, or convince him, of the truth of what had happened.
“We have good reason to believe,” Clement began, pausing as he visibly fought for control, “that Special Agent Jack Dawson was involved in the murders of Special Agents Manuel Castro and Jacob Boardman, and was also responsible for the disappearance of Special Agent Lynnette Sansone.”
Jack looked sharply at Naomi. “What happened to her?” he whispered. “What did you do with her body?”
“Later,” she said quietly, her attention riveted to the screen.
“The three agents were sent to Dawson’s home to question him about the explosion at the FBI Laboratory,” Clement was saying, “where he had been handling, without authorization, evidence related to the murder of another agent, Special Agent Sheldon Crane, just before the bomb exploded.” He paused again, rubbing his eyes with one hand. “Dr. Jerri Tanaka, a colleague of his who worked at the laboratory, and with whom he had a close relationship, has been directly implicated in the bombing.”
Then Jack’s face disappeared, to be replaced with Naomi’s. It was the same photo that Richards had sent to Jack, and he could see her tense up as Clement continued with his statement.
“We believe that Jack Dawson is in league with an organization known as the Earth Defense Society,” Clement said, “which has been implicated in the death of Special Agent Sheldon Crane three days ago in Lincoln, Nebraska. This is a photograph of Dr. Naomi Perrault, who is believed to be one of the group’s leaders. Prior to these events, we have evidence to indicate that the Earth Defense Society, or EDS, has been involved in attacks against government and civilian computer networks for purposes of disruption and possibly industrial espionage.” His expression hardened. “We have added both Jack Dawson and Naomi Perrault to the Bureau’s top ten most wanted list, and are looking for any leads on them or other members of the Earth Defense Society. That’s all I have.”
Season of the Harvest Page 10