Chasing Ghosts

by Lee Driver

  A scratching sound came from upstairs. Dagger froze. Slowly he pulled the Kimber from its holster and stood silently for several minutes, listening. The tapping and scratching were coming from directly above him. A staircase in the back ran along the side of the wall. Dagger moved cautiously, his finger twitching on the trigger. The scratching intensified as he climbed the wooden stairs. He stepped on the outer edges of the staircase to avoid weak spots in the middle that might creak under his weight.

  Daylight fell across the top of the stairs. This town was in the middle of nowhere. He hadn’t noticed any cars parked anywhere, although one could be hidden in back or in a garage. Perhaps he should have walked behind all the buildings first before venturing inside.

  The wood groaned under his foot. Dagger stopped as did the scratching sounds. He didn’t recall any fire escapes on the outside of the buildings so whoever was up here would have to go through him. With the gun at the ready, he peered over the railing, then rushed to the top of the stairs.

  A flash of feathers and loud cawing charged up from the floor. Dagger stumbled backwards, his finger almost firing off a round at the crows feasting on what looked like a dead rodent.

  The birds rushed through the open window leaving Dagger to chase his pulse back to normal. “Damn.” He avoided the rat as he crossed the floor. Two chairs sat in front of the window as though lookouts had been positioned here at one time. What were they watching out for? Or whom?

  There was another door to his right. Dagger should have brought a flashlight but he had left the gym bag in the car. He used the Kimber to tap the door open. He felt the wall for a light switch and flipped it on. It was a bathroom. The tub and sink were water stained. The toilet seat was up. He opened a cabinet above the sink. It had several toothbrushes and a used tube of toothpaste, some bandages, and antiseptic spray. A narrow closet behind him contained two towels and washcloths. One towel was draped over a towel bar by the tub.

  Dagger returned to the first floor and found the back door. It, too, had been left unlocked. He stepped out into a backdrop of more sand and empty prairie. The next building had also been left unlocked. The back room had scales for what might be used for weighing packages. He threaded his way to the front to find mail slots and a counter. The mail slots were empty. They had been careful not to leave any mail lying around.

  He stepped through the front door and made his way into the street. This couldn’t be a town. There were only eight buildings resembling army barracks. It was more like a guard station. A building at the end of the block confirmed his theory. Five stories high with an enclosed stairway, it resembled a watch tower. Was it a control tower for private planes? Dagger climbed the stairs two at a time. The top floor was walled with glass on four sides. A desk and one chair were against a wall. If he had hoped for a log book or notes, he was sorely disappointed.

  Dagger should have brought binoculars with him. His own well-stocked gym bag was at home but he had avoided going home first, preferring to grab what he could from Skizzy and get on the road. From the watch tower he could see a fenced in area the size of a dozen or more football fields. Short, round silos were spaced hundreds of yards apart. Gemini Missile Silo. Abandoned, forgotten. There were also several flat metal objects, what looked like square manhole covers. Escape hatches? Only one way to find out.

  “Open up. I know you’re in there.” Padre squinted through the blinds in the window. He pounded his fist on the door again. “HEY! Do you want the Health Department inspector to pay you a visit?”

  The door was pulled open a scant two inches. One hazel- colored eye stared somewhere over Padre’s shoulder, although Padre was sure it was supposed to be aimed directly at his face.

  “You know it’s polite to call and request an appointment,” Skizzy growled.

  “I have an appointment.” Padre held up his badge. “Now open up.” The cop pushed his way through. The door was immediately slammed shut and locked. “You owe me a report. Since you aren’t coming to see me, I’m coming to see you.”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Skizzy grumbled. “Did you ever stop to think that maybe I don’t have anything to tell you?” He weaved his way around the counter and barked, “Stay there.”

  Padre scanned the shelves lining the walls, his expert eyes looking for anything suspicious. He knew Skizzy was too smart to leave guns sitting out. Instead the showcases held jewelry, ivory-handled knives, colored glassware that he remembered his mother calling carnival glass, lamps with carved bases, pocket watches. “Hey, I thought you had a pawn shop here,” Padre called out. “It looks more like a garage sale or flea market.”

  Skizzy emerged from the draped doorway, paper in hand. “Are you disparaging my establishment?”

  Padre stifled a smile. “How the hell do you make a living selling this junk?”

  One bulging eyeball jerked up, making Skizzy’s face appear distorted. “I get by. Whazzit to you?” He slid the piece of paper across the counter.

  “That’s it? One sheet of paper?” Padre scanned the report picking his way through a crossword puzzle of words. “Not so surprising that the Pope is mentioned.”

  “It isn’t unless…”

  Padre tossed a withering glare and waited. But then his cop brain kicked into gear. “Nah.” He re-read the words. “You don’t think these are threats against the Pope, do you?”

  “Oh, so now I’m a psychic?” Skizzy snatched the paper from Padre’s fingers. “Dagger, being of the ever suspicious mind, thinks it might not be the cardinal’s flash drive. Did the cardinal mention his got stolen?”

  “He swears nothing is missing from his hotel room.” Padre wasn’t sure what he could do with this information. He couldn’t exactly call the Vatican. “No city, no date, no specifics.”

  “Yeah, pretty cryptic. Almost reads like a to do list—pick up the laundry, gallon of milk, kill the Pope.”

  “Dagger tell you the jumper had the same DNA as the guy dumped in the quarry?” He was fishing, he knew it, and Skizzy’s face was hard to read. The squirrelly guy’s one eyebrow lowered while the opposite one raised, like two flagships passing each other.

  “Government clones. I’ve been warning you people for years.”

  You people? Padre would have better luck talking to the residents of the Cedar Point Mental Hospital. “When’s the last time Dagger saw Doc Akins?”

  “You’d have to ask Dagger.”

  “I would but he left town.” “There you go.”

  There I go? “He’s not answering his cell phone.”

  “He’s probably on a religious retreat, maybe getting his inner feng shui recalibrated.”

  Padre didn’t have an answer for that. He just shook his head, waved his thanks, and left.

  Dagger crossed the field to the closest escape hatch. The gym bag he retrieved from the car contained weapons, the pick gun, and provisions. Unfortunately, the pick gun had been useless on the outer fence’s rusted lock. He had to shoot it off instead. Skizzy’s toy was clipped to his belt. It would scramble any surveillance cameras. Although the black sleeveless tee shirt provided some relief from the heat, the color seemed to absorb the sun’s rays.

  He gathered his hair into a ponytail as he studied the metal lid. It was much larger up close. The lid was split with two handles. He pulled on the handle and one half of the door opened with ease. Below him were metal stairs into darkness. He shoved the sunglasses in his pocket, flicked on the flashlight, adjusted the strap of the gym bag on his shoulder, and entered. Although Dagger welcomed the outside light, leaving the hatch open might draw unwanted attention. He wasn’t sure if anyone patrolled the area, but he didn’t want to take the chance and also didn’t want to get locked in. A piece of wood lay several feet away. He used it to prop open the hatch before proceeding down the stairs.

  The halogen beam sprayed light over stone walls. The shaft was the size of a freight elevator with a metal stairway. He cast a nervous glance at the steel hatch one flight up. A fragile stake of
wood propped open the hatch leaching a scant two inches of sunlight into the dark. Leaning over the railing, he aimed the halogen beam down the shaft revealing an endless number of stairs. How far did it extend and what awaited him at the bottom?

  With little more than stubborn determination, he continued down the stairs letting the beam of light search for signs on the walls to lend some clue as to what danger he might encounter. He stopped two stairs before the third landing and listened. Silence. Complete silence. Not one hum of a motor or patter of four-legged creatures. Not one hint of a whisper or soft sound of fabric rustling. Just utter silence.

  As he stepped onto the third landing a loud bang echoed through the stairwell. The flashlight skipped down the stairs as he dropped the gym bag, pulled his gun from its holster, and flattened his back against the wall. Three flights above the hatch door had slammed shut, breaking the wooden stake. Immediately light sconces on the walls clicked on in succession. His heart pounded in his chest as though trying in vain to escape. He pointed the gun first toward the closed hatch, then down the lit stairwell. He listened for sounds of footsteps running, doors slamming, voices shouting. But still there was only silence, except for the endless clicking of light sconces becoming softer, more distant, until he couldn’t hear them anymore.

  Looking up he contemplated sanity. Of all the reckless things he had done in his life, this had to be right at the top. He should retreat and trust that the hatch didn’t lock when it slammed shut. He should return home and forget about this ludicrous mission. But then the depths beckoned and his curiosity intensified. Insanity had gotten him this far. Why back out now?

  He looked down at his feet. What had triggered the lights? His weight on the landing? Maybe a timer after the escape hatch was opened. He holstered the gun, retrieved the flashlight, shoved it in the gym bag, and continued down the stairs. The walls looked like marble or cinderblock that some giant stone polishing machine had buffed to a smooth finish. There weren’t any cameras he could detect but for some bizarre reason he felt as though he were being watched.

  Dizzy from the endless flights, he collapsed on the stairs and pulled a bottle of water from the gym bag. Climbing down was one thing. Climbing up was a task he didn’t anticipate. Although he should have worked up a sweat, he didn’t feel hot. The temperature in the stairwell was relatively mild, not the cold dampness he had expected. The air didn’t smell moldy like the inside of a tomb or earthy like a grave. It actually had the fresh scent of the outdoors. It was as though the stairwell were humidity and temperature-controlled, yet there wasn’t a sign of a vent anywhere.

  His eyes were drawn to a number in black lettering on the wall. It was the second time he had seen the identical number 402. How many flights since the first time he had seen the number? He had tried counting the lights as he descended but lost track at sixty, or was it seventy? The monotony of the stairwell was getting to him. He could be trapped down here with nothing more than a gym bag of power bars, fruit, and water. How long could that last?

  He capped the bottle and dropped it into the gym bag. Picking up speed, he pounded down the stairs, no longer concerned about making too much noise. He just wanted to see an end to the metal stairs and stone walls. A third 402 in black letters was painted on the wall at the next landing. Figures bounced in his head — 402 times three equals 1,206. Was that feet? He had certainly descended farther than 1,206 feet. The muscles in his thighs burned. What could possibly be at the bottom of this shaft? Missile silos weren’t this deep. Chicago’s Deep Tunnel Project was only 350 feet underground. It took thirty years to build. How long has this shaft been here and how long did it take to dig? He may reach the bottom and find an unfinished shaft. If he had to turn around and run back up, he’d sooner put the gun to his head.

  Ignoring the pain in his thighs he increased his speed, taking less than one second per flight. He finally caught sight of a stone floor, an actual end to this monotony. Several yards from the last stair was a door. Breathing came in gasps, sweat glistened his skin. On the wall next to the door was the number 1,608, a familiar number. The number was in meters and equal to 5,280 feet. He was exactly one mile below the surface.

  With one hand wrapped around the gun, he grabbed the door latch and slowly pulled. Light burst through forcing him to shield his face. Blinking the burning from his eyes, he rammed the door open and stepped out onto a walkway. Gun at the ready, he checked to the left and right of him but didn’t see any movement. Stretched in front of him was a cobblestone courtyard as wide as a four-lane highway. If there were people here, did they run for cover when they heard him coming? Or did something chase them away years before he arrived? Someone or something had to be operating the lights.

  One-story buildings served as sentries on both sides of the courtyard, their marble fronts in an assortment of colors, metal doors painted. He ignored the fatigue in his legs while his senses picked up the chirping of birds in nearby trees, the rustling of leaves from a breeze that barely kissed his skin. Billowing clouds hung in a sunlit sky so blue it made his eyes sting. Stone benches lined the courtyard every ten feet. Dazed, he blinked quickly expecting the scene to disappear like a mirage, but it didn’t. Slowly circling like a lost tourist, his hand lost its grasp on the gym bag. It slipped from his hand and thudded to the cobblestone. Three-story buildings in the distance jutted toward the sky, chrome facades gleaming in the sunlight. As he wandered into the center of the courtyard he scanned the surrounding buildings, checking windows and rooftops. A variety of sweet aromas filled the air from nearby ceramic flower urns. Yellow petals too yellow, pink petals too pink. The entire area was an amateur paint-by-number scene.

  He holstered his gun, stumbled to the curb and dropped onto the nearest bench. He should have been questioning how all this could be happening. After all, he was sure he was a mile underground. Any normal person would have been questioning his sanity, exploring his surroundings, examining all possible explanations. Any sane person would have been mumbling impossible, ridiculous, absurd. But only one word came to Dagger’s mind:

  Home

  CHAPTER 26

  The man known as Donald Thomas stared at the strange numbers and letters on the computer screen. All he had done was run a decryption program and now it looked as though the characters on the screen were eating through every document. Somehow someone had sent a virus through the computer, destroying everything he had loaded off of the flash drive. They knew. They were onto him. He tried to quell the panic building. If only he could find the flash drive. It had to be somewhere. Then he remembered the news of the man who had jumped from their hotel suite window. Were the papers correct? Had the jumper been someone protesting the church’s handling of the abuse charges? Or had he been sent to retrieve the flash drive? Did the flash drive burn up with the body? Had to. The orders would have been to destroy it at all costs, even if it meant self-sacrifice.

  There was always a problem when there were too many chiefs, especially if they weren’t in agreement on actions to take, programs to pursue. The organization was fractured and people were taking up sides. Negotiation had never been part of the corporation’s tenet. Now their small splinter group had been compromised. Their leverage was gone, burned up in a parking lot and eaten up by a computer virus.

  Checkmate.

  “You ever see such posh digs before?” Skizzy moved in a circle, his head levered back like a Pez dispenser as though he were studying the artwork at the Sistine Chapel.

  “Just don’t knock anything over.” Simon set a silver tray on a cart and moved toward the dining room. “Stay close to me. God forbid they notice you don’t know what the hell you are doing.”

  “Whoa.” Skizzy’s head snapped forward as he saw the long buffet table, the glistening wine glasses illuminated by the chandeliers. His finger dug at the knot of his bowtie. “Feel like a penguin in this suit.”

  “You look like a penguin.” Simon set the tray in the center of the buffet table. “Awful lotta hoopla f
or just ten guests but the Tylers don’t do nothing small.”

  The floral arrangement in the center of the buffet table was four feet long and included some of the most exotic flowers Simon had ever seen. He watched as Skizzy started to light the candles on the table. As Skizzy’s shirt sleeve rode up, Simon saw something duct taped to his wrist.

  “What the hell is that?”

  “Huh?”

  Simon pointed at Skizzy’s wrist. “That.”

  “That detects people who have trackers in their bodies.” Simon rolled his eyes. “It’s a wonder you haven’t checked me out.”

  “Already did,” Skizzy replied with a grin. “When I was helping you on with your tuxedo jacket. You’re clear.”

  “Who do you plan to scan here? The cardinal?”

  “Yep, and whoever else gets near me.”

  Simon set individual crystal butter dishes at each place setting. He shook his head at the amount of wealth in this house, the furnishings, the grounds. “The rich and famous. All this wasted butter. All this crystal. Must be nice.”

  “That’s who you’ll find out is behind this BettaTec company. The richest people in the world. They pool their resources like all those medieval organizations—the Masons, Knights Templar, Skull and Bones, Illuminati, 33 Degree.”

  “You’re going pretty far back, aren’t you?”

  “Probably still around today. Just changed their names but they are behind everything that happens. It’s like they sit at some big chess game with the world map in front of them, moving all them chess pieces around.”