PSI/Net

by Rob MacGregor

  Wiley looked amused. "Don't panic, Max. I won't be here long." He picked up one of the covers on the cart, revealing a pasta dish and steamed broccoli. "Very healthy. I told the waiter that I was a friend and that I'd deliver the meal myself as a joke. When I gave him a twenty, he didn't complain about me borrowing his coat and cart."

  "What if he recognized you?"

  "He didn't."

  "What do you want?"

  "I've got an assignment for you. What else? I need your boys to play some games with the new G-man in charge of finding me."

  "Did you have to do it this way?" Maxwell stuttered. "I thought we had an agreement. No face-to-face contact."

  "We also had another agreement," Wiley snapped. "While you worked for me, you would remain low-key. Talking to these governors doesn't quite fit my idea of low-key."

  Rage flickered within him. Deep, long-held resentments surfaced. One of the women who had accused Wiley of sexual misconduct had been Maxwell's courier, a lieutenant whom Maxwell himself had taken to dinner a couple of times. He'd been hoping the relationship would develop further when he'd found out from Wiley himself how he'd forced her to perform for him on her knees after she'd delivered Maxwell's secret sheath of papers.

  "I've got my own agenda, George. I'm not one of your fat-ass, racist soldiers. I think for myself and I act for myself. I've helped you out long enough. If you don't like it, that's tough. Now you better get the hell out of here while you've got a chance."

  Wiley laughed. "Ah, a little hot under the collar, are we, Max?" He shrugged off the tight-fitting white coat. He filled his chest with air, showing off his admirable physique. Wherever he was hiding, it must include a weight room. It looked as if he spent a couple of hours a day working out.

  "I'm going to walk right out of here as if I own this place. And guess what? If I'm caught now or tomorrow, or the next week or next month, I'll blame it on your petty aspirations. You will go down with me. That's a promise, Max. So you better pray for me. Pray hard."

  Chapter Three

  Calloway hunched over the picnic table outside his silver Airstream, a beer in front of him, a couple of empties to one side, and a portable radio on the other. The software guys had packed up and left the Sand Island campground for an all-night drive to California. A troop of Boy Scouts and their leaders who'd arrived earlier in the day had settled into their tents. Calloway quietly thanked the Scouts for rafting on their own without a guide. That meant he could sleep in the morning. He sipped his beer and listened to the yammer on AM radio.

  "You keep blabbing about this great, nonviolent movement, about all the people in the West someday coming to their feet and turning away the federal government by referendum. .

  "Hallelujah!" the talk show host interrupted.

  "That's all fine and good. But it ain't gonna happen that way. You seem to think that all the Jewish bankers, the corporate internationalists, and world government promoters are going to just sit back and let us create Freedom Nation and go our merry way. Uh, uh. No, sir. I'll tell you that now. They won't allow it."

  A distant flicker of lightning followed by a rumble of thunder interrupted the broadcast. Calloway cast his eyes upward. The sky appeared clear overhead, but he knew that thunderstorms could come up suddenly.

  "So what do you think is going to happen, Joe?" the broadcaster asked. "You've got all the answers. Let's hear it."

  "Now I know you're not going to like hearing this, Brian, you being the moderate voice and all and trying not to make this a race issue, but let me tell you what I've picked up on the Internet. The government has a special program in Los Angeles, New York, and Chicago in which they are training black gang members in techniques for invading houses and disarming residents."

  "Ha, ha. That's a good one, Joe. Do you think they really need to be trained?"

  Joe wasn't laughing. "I tell you that the last straw will be when they come to get our guns. That's when I end my nonviolence and so do my neighbors. We're not going down without a fight and we're getting ready now."

  Calloway turned off the radio and reached for another beer in his cooler. Ever since the talk show hosts had gotten wind that the president would be going to Denver this week to speak at the Western Governors Conference, the rabble-rousers had been taking their potshots. Brian Hawkins's show, in particular, attracted militia types who wanted to form their own country in a few western states.

  "So, Calloway, you like listening to that racist shit?"

  He turned and saw Art standing in the shadows a few feet away. Tall and lanky, his hair in a ponytail, he wore an unbuttoned flannel checked shirt over a T-shirt.

  "I thought you guys left."

  "A couple of us decided to leave in the morning. I was thinking of visiting your boss before we left and having a little chat with him."

  Christ, the bastard was going to tattle on him like a damned school kid. Calloway wasn't about to apologize. Or beg him not to tell Miller what happened. That was exactly what Art wanted to hear.

  "You know, if those militia guys ever got their way, the whole country would probably fall apart," Calloway said. "It would be like the end of the Soviet Union—American-style—the West, the South, Northeast, the Midwest, all separate little nations complaining and pushing and shoving each other. What a fucking mess."

  Art stared at him. "Yeah. I suppose."

  He turned and walked away into the night.

  Calloway thought back to the incident and admitted to himself that pushing Art had felt good—at least for half a second. His thoughts drifted to the Indians on the riverbank. They had looked like flesh-and-blood beings from the past who had somehow penetrated time. Normally, such a mystical experience would intrigue him. But the startling appearance and disappearance had left him feeling uneasy and he couldn't figure out why.

  Ask the river about it. He smiled at the thought. A couple of weeks ago, as he'd sat here with a beer, an old Navajo had wandered up to him. He'd looked out at the river, then turned to Calloway. "You know, a river will never lie to you," he'd said in broken English, then walked on.

  Calloway ambled over to the riverbank, beer in hand, and gazed down into the swirling torrent. "Okay, river, I need some answers," he said tentatively. He felt foolish talking aloud to the water and looked around to make sure he was alone.

  Then he squatted on the riverbank and continued, "I need to know the truth about something. Why did I see those Indians? What was that about?"

  He stared intently at one spot in the river and watched the flow. Minutes passed. He felt the power of the water pumping like blood through the land. He listened to the gurgling that lapped at his ears, listened for several minutes. He felt chilled in his T-shirt; his legs ached from squatting. A river may never lie, but it might not talk to you, either, he decided.

  He reached for his beer, stood up, and crushed the nearly empty can in his fist. He started to hurl it into the water when a blinding flash of lightning strobed the night, instantly followed by a pummel of thunder that slapped hard against his chest. His left foot slipped on the loose gravel. He lost his balance, slid down the embankment. He bounced his head, scraped his palms, and plunged into the icy water up to his knees.

  He groaned, dragged himself out of the water, and lay back against the embankment. He gazed up and something shimmered in front of him. He blinked his eyes. Not an angel, not a glimpse of heaven. No uplifting message from the gods. Just a number. It stood out against the dark sky and seemed to hover in front of him.

  962-033.

  It wasn't a phone number, or part of his social security number, or any number he recognized. Yet, there was something familiar about it, something vaguely upsetting.

  He rolled over and crawled up the embankment. He smelled sizzled wood and saw a thick, lower limb of an immense cottonwood split open. Smoke wafted from the tree; an electrical charge hung in the air. He brushed the dirt off his clothes, noting that he'd been standing less than ten feet from the tree. Too close.
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br />   Once was enough. He'd been hit by lightning years ago while on leave in South Florida, and he'd survived. But his life had taken a dramatic shift after that. He'd recovered, but even though he could function as a normal person, he'd never been quite the same. At first, he thought his air force career was over. But when he discovered that he knew what people were thinking and he could see what was going on elsewhere, his career had taken a new turn.

  He walked back to the trailer, tugged off his boots and jeans, then peeled away his T-shirt. He leaned over his sink and splashed water in his face. His nut brown skin looked grizzled in the mirror.

  "You're lucky you're still alive, Calloway," he told himself. "That was close."

  He gently probed the tender spot where his head had struck the ground and winced at the pain. He lay back on his cot and took several long, deep breaths and with each exhalation he imagined the throbbing sensation receding. He relaxed, allowing his eyes to close slowly. Just as he started to drift off, he saw the numbers again: 962-033. They loomed on the underside of his eyelids—white digits on a black background—as if they'd been tattooed there.

  Stop ignoring it, he told himself. Maybe the river had spoken to him after all, reminding him of his past. He'd wanted to dismiss the numbers as unimportant and now he knew why. Six-digit numbers played a major role in the world he'd once lived, in the world he'd abandoned and had tried so hard to forget. From time to time he thought about using the skills he'd gained during his last several years in the air force, but that inevitably brought back bad memories of how it had ended. Memories of Colonel Gordon Maxwell and the death of Bobby Aimes.

  He sat up in bed, kept his eyes closed, and focused on his breathing. He figured the numbers related to one of the targets that he'd been given. But what target, and why had they appeared to him today? He gradually sank into his zone, the state of mind where the body was relaxed, the mind quiet but alert, his launch pad for finding targets. When he had worked in Project Eagle's Nest, he'd always been guided by a monitor. They'd typically followed a rigorous protocol—an established set of procedures—so that as he sank deeper and deeper, he gradually perceived more and more difficult information about his target. But he didn't want to go through stages now. He just needed raw data on the numbers.

  He repeated the six digits to himself over and over again, waiting for an image to appear. Nothing happened. Maybe after his four-year hiatus, he'd lost his ability to remote view. He realized he was thinking again. He released his concerns and focused on his breath. After several minutes, he noticed pillars and wondered how long he'd been staring at them before the image had registered. The instant his thoughts kicked in, the pillars vanished.

  Calloway is working again.

  He blinked open his eyes and looked around, half expecting to see someone standing in the trailer. "What the hell was that?" he asked aloud. The words had sounded as if they'd been spoken by an invisible person standing next to him.

  First, the Indians, then the numbers, and now a voice. The appearance of the Indians from the past had foreshadowed the numbers, and the numbers indicated something else, something more than he'd glimpsed. But where did that voice come from? He'd even sensed emotion—surprise and concern. But it must've been a part of him, his subconscious thoughts surfacing, expressing his own feelings about what he was doing. It certainly wasn't the river and he doubted that it was the Indians.

  He stared at the ceiling of his trailer, too restless to sleep. He still felt a dull pain when he touched the spot on the back of his head, but the throbbing had vanished. At least the remote viewing had resulted in something positive. That was more than he could say for his years of psychic spying for the military and CIA. He'd changed from his easygoing old self, a man who loved his wife and had looked forward to starting a family, to one more and more obsessed with his work and suspicious of everything outside it.

  He and Camila had carried on a long-distance relationship, even though both lived in the same house. When they did see each other, they'd argued. Sometimes, he'd inadvertently brought home his work and had actually taken on some of the traits of the people he'd remote viewed—terrorists, drug dealers, megalomaniacs. Not only did he and his colleagues psychically spy on their targets, but at times they sank into the targets, assuming their thoughts and emotions, literally donning their self-images.

  He recalled the day that he'd nearly assaulted Camila just an hour after targeting Saddam Hussein. He was supposed to remain in the facility for three hours after going into a subject, but he'd snuck out a back door and rushed home, certain that he would catch Camila in bed with another man. He'd found her folding clothes in the laundry room, but that didn't deter him. He'd accused her of having affairs, of plotting to end their marriage. She'd denied the accusation and he'd barely stopped himself from grabbing her throat and throttling her.

  He'd blamed Saddam for the incident and promised it wouldn't happen again. But a week later, he'd renewed the accusations when Camila had come home late from work. Even though he hadn't remote viewed that day, he'd raved and nearly grabbed a butcher knife from the kitchen drawer. That did it. He knew the next time he might lose control, and so he'd left.

  Since then, he'd feared getting involved with another woman, and after retiring, he'd taken up the nomadic lifestyle, constantly moving to avoid commitments.

  Chapter Four

  Calloway gradually became aware of a vehicle moving slowing into the campground. He rolled out of the cot and headed for the door. Halfway there, he stepped on an empty beer can.

  "Ouch. Shit."

  He danced a couple of steps holding his barefoot. He pushed open the door, expecting to see Ed Miller's white pickup. Instead, he gazed out at a blue Explorer. The engine shut down. The door opened and a woman stepped out. He couldn't see her face well, but he glimpsed her short hair and wide girth and that was all he needed.

  "Oh, no," he muttered under his breath. "Doc? Is that you?"

  "Trent Calloway!" The big woman's voice boomed across the campground. She moved into the light and a smile stretched across her features. "I just knew I'd find you here."

  He held up a hand. "Hey, don't wake up the Boy Scouts."

  She laughed, moved forward, and hugged him, her pillows of flesh pressing against him. "Great to see you, Calloway."

  He stepped back, forced a smile. After four years, she just drops by. "Yeah. So how are you?"

  "I'm okay." She studied him a moment in the faint light from the trailer window. "You don't look so good. Are you all right?" "You woke me up. We go to bed early here."

  "Sorry. But you're awake now! I got your card, you know."

  "What card?"

  "The one last Christmas. I sent a card to your P.O. box in Albuquerque and you sent one back, said you'd be here this summer, and that I should stop by. So here I am."

  Yeah, he remembered, but he never figured she'd actually look him up.

  "We've got to talk, Trent. It can't wait any longer."

  "What can't wait?"

  She looked past him to the trailer. "Can we go inside?"

  He shrugged. "I wasn't expecting company, but c'mon in."

  She followed him into the Airstream and took a seat at one end of the narrow table. "Do you want something to drink, a beer or water, Doc?"

  "Water's fine."

  He moved over to his tiny kitchen area and filled a glass of water from a bottle in his compact refrigerator and popped open another Bud. "Doc, is it something. . . something from before?"

  "Of course it is."

  Her words, or rather the way she said them, reminded him that he had often found Doc an overbearing, know-it-all from their days at Eagle's Nest. She seemed about to say something further, but held back. Not like her, he thought. Reticence had never been one of Doc's traits.

  He thought again of the voice he'd heard when he'd tried to remote view and its cold assessment of his action. He realized it wasn't exactly an invisible presence, nor was it his subconscious. Some
one had been looking in on him from elsewhere, remote viewing just like he used to do. But why on this night? That person, in one manner or another, had addressed a third party, and Calloway had picked up the message. Calloway is working again. A chill raced through him. He thought he'd left the world of psychic spies behind forever, but maybe he was kidding himself.

  Doc sipped her water and began by telling him about her quiet life in the precipitous town of Ouray, Colorado, high in the Rockies, where she and a niece ran a bookstore.

  He recalled that her real name, Miriam Boyle, rarely had been used during her tenure with Eagle's Nest. She held a Ph.D. in psychology, and after she'd been introduced as Dr. Boyle on her first day she'd been dubbed Doc. The name, it turned out, had fit her well because, in her own way, she had been a healing force within the secret project—a know-it-all who mothered "the psi-gang," as she called the other remote viewers.

  "I've been cutting down on my hours lately, though," she explained. "Actually, I try to stay in the house as much as possible. I can do the accounting and ordering new stock right from home."

  He guessed that something was missing from the story, and waited patiently for her to get to the point of her visit. But she seemed content to dance around the matter.

  "So, what do you do when you're not leading these rafting trips?"

  "I only do the trips in the summer. Then I drive from campground to campground, town to town. Down to Baja. Then in the spring, back up here."

  "You're a free bird, Trent. But I don't think I could live like that. Not for long."

  She finished her water and gathered her thoughts. "Have you talked to any of the others?"

  He shook his head. "You're the first since I left."

  She nodded. "That's what I thought. You need to know what's happened with everyone. It's important."

  Good old Doc, he thought. Already telling him what was best for him. He didn't need it. "I'm not interested. I've put that time behind me."

  "Like hell you have."