Ben translated quietly as he felt the split fingers quickly spin and twist, “Like Kels said we’re not finished going through all the files yet, but deep in the subfolders are copies of hundreds of heavily redacted reports. There’s only snippets of info left on each of the thousands of pages of blacked out lines, but while scanning the docs I noticed there must not have been uniform agreement on what should be purged. The redactions weren’t consistent across my sample. Maybe they just got sloppy as the program failures mounted and the project end was eminent. I’m still assembling like-formatted topics and keywords to build a picture of their true end game.”
“Of course you are,” Ben said.
“He’s your dog,” Kelcy said.
Spot grumbled and Ben said, “Sorry buddy, go ahead.”
He continued signing as Ben quietly translated, “As I was saying, what we’ve discovered so far is they had a plan to move quickly to a phase two protocol. It appears the process to create a serum had already been figured out, they just needed a detailed genome map from an accelerated subject that was both viable and stable. Their goal was to develop a serum that would directly act at the genetic level and not have the horrible, lethal side effects of those merely infected with the raw compound. If the extrapolations in the files are correct, the very nature of the accelerating serum itself would mean the adoption rate of the acceleration in a target host would be almost immediate.”
“Well that’s just great,” Ben said as he took a handful of Spot’s snout and gave him a rub, “If they can make this stuff work perfectly, and immediately…well it certainly explains Barton’s interest…and no wonder that nut Semion wants to get his hands on you.”
As Ben pulled Spot in for a long hug he asked, “So how hard is it to make this serum, I mean, like, how long would it take?”
“We don’t know, and we don’t know” Kelcy said, “And there probably isn’t enough non-blacked out details of the actual process to assemble the answer. Barton had joked that DARPA probably pilfered whatever tech they needed from the NSA’s surveillance programs, and Dad guessed the heavy redactions were probably done by the project team to protect themselves from prosecution. Spot suspects both are probably very true. He found evidence they stole intellectual property from anywhere they could get it…universities, corporations, even other governments in some cases.”
Spot nodded and signed, and Ben translated for him again, “So there probably isn’t much useful info left in these files. We have no idea how much Orthus knows about the process to make the serum, or how ready they are to start phase two…but we do know they’d only need a little of our blood to try it.”
Chapter 27
“See, I told you. Nothing to it,” Kit said as she leaned over the center console from the back seat. She punched the driver, her roommate Narny, on the shoulder as she said, “My brother’s a moron and he’s done this a dozen times.”
Kit’s boyfriend Hale was sitting next to her in the back seat. He tugged on the back of her hoodie and the pretty college student let herself get pulled back into his arms. He gave her a big kiss as he put his stocking feet through the gap between the front seats and said, “Baby, you’re the motherfucking bombardier.”
Narny smiled at the couple in the rear view mirror and watched the little border crossing station and the ‘Welcome to Canada’ sign shrinking behind them.
They had crossed back into the states at the tiny town of Forest City, Maine where the Customs and Border Enforcement office was only open office hours each day, and looked like a drive-thru coffee hut. The agent barely looked at the cardboard box of maple syrup and jelly jars on the passenger seat before waving the three college students on. She had given Narny and her German passport a quick second glance, but the agent didn’t even look up when scanning Kit and Hale’s.
Hale shot a quick look over his shoulder and then leaned forward and pulled the pillow from behind his back. He unzipped the pillow’s case and removed a plastic bag roughly the size of a loaf of bread. He pulled the zip lock apart and buried his nose into the dark green clippings.
“Ahhh,” he said as he pulled his nose out, “BC gold. Heaven in a hit, joy in a joint, fun in a fatty, bliss in a spliff...”
“Glee und da gras,” Narny chimed in from the front seat.
“Ja gut!” Hale said.
“Bliss in a blunt!” Kit said with a big smile.
Hale’s face dropped and he gave Kit a sour look. He said, “I already said bliss, tardo.”
Kit hit him, and snatched the bag from him. “Just look at that lovely fucking thing. Let the good times roll!” she yelled as she tossed her head back and shook her long hair in his face. She drummed her feet on the floor of the car and then dove over his lap to grab her purse and fish out rolling papers and a lighter.
Hale cracked the opposite rear window so they wouldn’t get wet from the drizzle.
It had been crappy all day. The rain couldn’t decide if it wanted to be snow or sleet, and there had even been some thunder and lightning when they stopped at the little stand to buy the syrup and jelly.
As Kit rolled a fat joint Narny checked the GPS on her phone. Into the rearview mirror she said with a smile, “Six and one half hours to Harvard, we will be back in Elm Yard before the kitchen closes.”
“Yah, und veel be many dollars rrreeecher,” Hale said, mimicking her accent.
The lanky student sparked the joint and took a long pull into his lungs before he exhaled into Kit’s waiting mouth.
About an hour earlier, as the three college students were leaving the St. Thomas College campus in New Brunswick after buying the weed from Kit’s brother’s buddy, border control agent Ollie Coleman was in a cafeteria sixty miles to the south scolding his canine partner Snyder while wiping at the spreading coffee stain in his lap.
“You stupid little French fuck,” Ollie said, “I’ve told you two hundred times it’s just a little lightning. If Hamish could see what a chatte you’ve become he’d happily give me my fifty bucks back.”
Ollie took another handful of napkins from the dispenser and blotted the dark spot on his tan pants. He sighed and straightened up as he folded his massive dark arms across his chest. He looked down his six foot three frame to the very guilty looking border collie hiding under the table.
“Look what you did, Snyder. Shit, I’m going to have to change,” Ollie said, “If you’ve made us late it’s coming out of your allowance.” He stomped off to grab his spare uniform pants from his locker.
Snyder curled up on his blanket under the break room table and stared with trepidation at the windows while a fresh batch of thunder quietly roared at him.
Ollie exited the men’s room a few minutes later just as his supervisor was entering the women’s room. “You still here?” she asked.
“Yeah Cap, peed myself and had to change my drawers,” Ollie said.
“The lightning again?” she asked.
Ollie nodded and said, “I gotta confiscate some more drugs for him.”
“You want Sue to run you up in the chopper?” she asked.
“No, the weather’s turning south again. It’s fine, we’re leaving now and should make it there by the time they get setup.”
“Just barely,” his captain said looking at her watch, “Drive carefully, and don’t take away all of his allowance.”
As the big border agent pulled onto the main road and sped north a fresh flash of lightning and clap of thunder sent Snyder into the back seat and under his blanket.
They were heading to Forest City, a little town in the center of a long isthmus cut in half by the border. With only one road and an abandoned rail line running its length the southern end of the isthmus was a perfect spot for an impromptu inspection roadblock. There was nowhere to run, except back to the border.
Narny stretched her arm into the back seat to pass the joint back to Kit. As she turned back to the windshield they crested a hill and she saw a short line of cars stopped a half mile ahead. In fron
t of the queue were two border enforcement vehicles with their orange rotating lights on. The trucks were parked at odd angles on the side of the road so they created a narrow, single lane pinch-point at the front of the line. As Narny watched one of the border agents motion for the next car in line to pull forward, a third border patrol SUV pulled up and a large dark man and a black and white dog got out.
“Du hurensohn!” Narny yelled, “Look! Fuck fuck fuck.”
Hale and Kit sat up and both tried to fit through the gap between the front seats.
“Shit!” Hale yelled and scrambled to zip up the bag of weed as Kit lowered both back windows all the way and tossed the joint out.
“Did you just toss that out?” Hale yelled at her, “What the fuck did you do that for? That was a fat fucking jay!”
Kit blew a stream of smoke out of the open window as the sleet soaked her face. The smoke was quickly pulled away into the freezing rain before she turned around to scream at him, “Fuck you Hale, really? Are you shitting me?”
“Give it a rest you two,” Narny yelled, “What the fuck do we do?” She was almost crying.
“Turn around!” Hale yelled.
Narny had already considered that but the two lane road was narrow and there was a raised rail line running close to the opposite shoulder. The officers would certainly see her trying to make a three point turn.
A large white box truck had come up behind her. She had slowed to a crawl so the truck was right on her tail.
“Okay, okay,” Kit said, “It’s cool. The weed’s back in the pillow, there’s no smoke in the car. We’re good.”
The truck’s horn tooted and Narny looked in her side window to see the bearded driver waving her forward. She gave the car some gas and moved down the hill to join the queue.
Border Agent Ollie Coleman put his clear plastic covered wide brimmed hat on and joined his team at the head of the line as Snyder circled the first car.
They heard a horn, and watched a big white box truck closely following a small foreign sedan down the hill at the back of the line.
“It’s about time, Ollie,” one of the agents said quietly to him, “I don’t want to be out here either.”
“Sorry Mike,” Ollie said, “how’s your wife and Randy’s kids?”
The other officer looked up from the driver’s side of the car at the head of the line and smiled. Shaking his head he handed the driver her passport back, thanked her, and saluted to her waving kids as they pulled away.
Ollie relieved Randy and checked the next few cars as Mike observed from the shoulder.
Casually keeping his thumb on the release strap of his service pistol Mike scanned each occupant’s hands and faces, and the insides of their vehicles. He looked for any of the hundreds of signs indicating something was out of line. He also kept an eye on the line of waiting cars, scanning the oncoming faces and noting eye and body movement. He also watched his fellow agents for any of their cues.
Mike had gotten a shot of adrenaline with the very first car they stopped. The small car was packed with people and he saw just a flash of a small black rifle in the back seat as it pulled up to them. He started to draw his pistol but noticed the red tip at the end of the rifle’s barrel and immediately realized a young man in the back seat had just snatched it away from his complaining younger brother. Mike had taken a deep breath, checked his watch, and thought about the beer he’d crack later as he went back to watching the faces of the inconvenienced vacationers and impatient cross-border business people stuck in the line.
As he watched Ollie, and waved to little kids as the cars came and went, Mike tried to push out thoughts of the agent that had been killed this past summer at another routine border checkpoint not far from this one. It had also been raining that night as well, and the shooter was a woman in a nicer car wearing a cocktail dress. She had an old outstanding warrant for a relatively minor case, but she’d been drinking heavily and taken a fistful of competing pills and her foggy, racing brain thought the road block was setup just for her. She opened fire as the agent approached her car, creating a widow and three fatherless kids in less than one stupid, senseless second. The agent had just relieved Mike a half hour earlier, and was killed just as Mike was cracking one of those beers.
Snyder circled the cars, sniffing, while Ollie chatted up the drivers. Every agent had a different style to poke and prod for inconsistencies in the few moments they had with each interviewee. Ollie tended to pepper his questions with humor and a big smile while he watched factors like pupil size, respiration, facial tension, pause to answer, and even micro-expressions. Some tells lasted less than a fifth of a second. Ollie also knew his physical presence and dark skin were often enough to make some travelers a little nervous, and he was experienced enough to quickly separate those responses. The way people laughed, or didn’t laugh, was usually enough for him to read them. Even with all his skill and training he knew border agents, and law enforcement in general, had less than a fifty percent accuracy rate.
And then there was the other kind of driver, like the one in the next car in line. Ollie saw her coming from three cars back as she checked her makeup in her rearview mirror. This kind of perp didn’t even bother to hide her tells. She was just around the bend from middle aged, and had somehow slipped a top button when she pulled up to Ollie.
“Well good afternoon, officer,” she said, giving him a long look from his strong thighs to his broad chest, and lingering for a moment in the middle. She turned down her eighties music and handed him her passport. She said, “Shame to have you boys out in the rain like this.”
“Just another lovely Maine day in January, ma’am,” Ollie said, scanning her passport, “Where you headed?”
“Oh, I’m on my way to visit my sister,” the woman said, “She’s just over in Lincoln. Staying with her a few days while our lesser halves are up hunting.” She looked into Ollie’s sunglasses and smiled a big demure smile.
“Best onion soup in the world is there at Wickham’s,” Ollie said as he handed back her passport and returned the smile.
“That’s Howland dear. Wickham’s is in Howland, but you’re right, I just love that place. Of course the Pikeway in Lincoln makes a nice cup, too,” she said. She tucked her passport back into her wallet and took a deep breath. She looked back up at him and said, “They have great margaritas. Heading there tonight, actually. Two for one’s after eight, and I could use a stiff one.”
“You drive safe ma’am, especially after one of those stiff ones,” Ollie said as he rapped softly on the roof of her car.
As she slid up her window and pulled away with a wave Mike gave Ollie a look, and a smile. Synder took one last sniff of her perfume, and that other smell, and gave Ollie a look, too.
“That’s enough out of you, lightning boy,” Ollie said to his wet, wagging dog.
As they finished the next few cars Ollie and Mike exchanged a different look. They had both noticed the small foreign sedan when it was several cars back, and now it was rolling up between them. The men had worked together for almost eight years and didn’t need to speak.
Snyder keyed in on both of the border control officers’ body language, but he didn’t need their input. He had already caught a whiff of the weed when the sedan was still two cars further back. He’d even identified it as BC gold, the good stuff from British Columbia popular with the affluent college crowd here in the Northeast.
Randy appeared next to Mike, having cut his break short. Even through the rain streaked windshield of his pickup he’d taken one look at the blonde driver’s face and put down his sandwich and reached for his hat. He’d worked the job for ten years and could almost see contraband written on a college kid’s face as well as Snyder could smell it.
Narny rolled the car to a stop and cracked her window. She passed out their three passports with a tight smile to the big black officer towering over her window. Kit and Hale were sitting in the rear seats, not moving, with their seat belts fastened. The radio wa
s off and Narny stared straight ahead with her hands at ten and two.
Ollie noticed the rain drops on both rear passenger window sills and a few wet hairs stuck to the face of the young woman in the back seat. He motioned for the driver to drop the window a little more as Snyder finished his circle of the vehicle and came up next to him.
Snyder didn’t even bother to indicate what he’d smelled, he could tell Ollie had figured it out. He just judged how hard he’d have to jump to make it through the driver’s window.
Snyder watched Mike walk around to the back of the vehicle, and could tell by his face he’d figured it out as well.
Mike stopped between the sedan and the front of the large white box truck. He bent down a little and caught the blonde driver looking back at him through her rearview mirror. She quickly looked away.
He smiled as he straightened, and turned to give a little nod to the bearded driver of the white truck and his Asian passenger.
The driver behind the wheel of the truck, Carver, nodded through the rain streaked windshield to the border agent before he turned to Harley and said quietly, “I don’t like this. They didn’t stand in front of any other cars.”
Harley didn’t look at Carver. He held his phone in his lap and said calmly, “We’re fine, nothing to worry about. The dog doesn’t like something about the car in front of us. It’s not us they’re interested in. Everyone just relax.” Carver didn’t notice Harley reach down and pull up the flap on the side of his seat so he could easily reach the handle of his double barreled dragon pistol.
On the back wall of the cab between him and Carver there was a small sliding panel. It was covered by a mesh security grate, and the panel was slid open a crack.
The four cousins stood together, back to back in the three foot deep opening behind the cab. Through the grate Tian watched the car with the college kids and the border agents standing around it.
The cousins’ hiding space was dark except for the crisscross pattern of light coming from the small sliding panel and a slight glow from Jixi’s phone. Boba and Mu were on the ends bracing themselves against the walls to keep all of them centered and silent.
Let Slip the Pups of War: Spot and Smudge - Book Three Page 13