by Neal Martin
He looked up at the portrait of his father hanging over the fireplace. "This is it, father," he said with excitement. "This is it! Your work can finally be completed. We can beat death!"
If it works.
It would work. He was certain of that. The equations fitted together like long lost pieces of a complex jigsaw puzzle.
They made perfect alchemical sense.
Mason stood up again and walked to a phone that hung on the wall by the door. Lifting the receiver, he dialled the extension for the lab.
"Yes?" said one of the assistants.
"Prepare the lab," Mason said. "Set up the oldest, most decrepit body you can find. Do it right away."
"Yes, Professor Mason. Right away."
Mason hung up the phone and looked at the notepad in his hand one more time as if to check that he wasn't still dreaming. Sure enough, the formula he had written seemed kosher.
It remained to be seen how effective it would be on a human test subject.
He went to the elevator and headed to the lab.
Mason's personal lab, although not overly big, was fully functional and state of the art. Despite all the equipment he had gathered over the years, for his main project—codenamed Project Red Falcon by his father before him—he still needed more specific kinds of equipment, namely laser spectroscopic equipment that would allow him to manipulate individual molecules, which he had bought and then made modifications to himself. He also built his own imaging spectrometers, machines that could track the movements of individual molecules while taking measurements at the same time. Given the kind of research he was doing, such equipment was essential.
For the next hour, Mason went to work in the lab, mixing chemicals based upon the equations he had written down earlier. By the time he had finished, he had a full vial of dark orange liquid, a liquid that he hoped—that he knew—would change everything.
Putting the vial of liquid into the breast pocket of his white lab coat, Mason went next door to the other lab, where his two assistants already had a suitable test subject set up.
"Are we ready to proceed?" he asked, as he moved towards the human test subject strapped to the stainless steel table.
"Yes, professor," the male assistant said. "Ready when you are."
"Good. Very good."
Mason looked down at the test subject. An old woman slightly younger than himself who was taken from an old people's home and bundled into The Crow a few days ago. The old woman was naked, a bag of bones and not much more. Her rheumy eyes, although open, didn't seem to be taking much in, much less processing what was going on. Mason asked for a prognosis as the female lab assistant stuck electrodes all over the old woman's flabby body.
"Acute Alzheimer's," the male assistant answered, as he turned knobs and pushed buttons on the machinery that surrounded the test subject. "Also chronic arthritis and angina."
Mason nodded. "Good, good," he said. He smiled down at the old woman as he took out the vial of liquid from the breast pocket of his lab coat. "Hello, dear. If this works, you'll be thanking me. If not, at least you'll be out of your misery."
The old woman stared up at Mason like a frightened child. Mason ignored her as he spoke into the microphone hanging above his test subject. "This is Professor Gabriel Mason about to test formula 118 of Project Red Falcon. Subject is in a state of extreme degradation with all cells appearing to be on the verge of failure."
He took a syringe off the steel table beside him and filled it with the serum from the vial he was holding. When he was done, he said, "And here we go."
Without hesitation, he stuck the needle into the old woman's neck and injected every drop of the serum into her system, then he stood back, his blue eyes intensely focused as he waited on a reaction.
Seconds after the formula was administered, the old woman arched her back and gave out a long wheezing breath as if it was her last. Then her body began to jerk and convulse like she was having some kind of epileptic fit.
Reaction is the same.
Mason didn't know if that was good or bad.
He continued to watch and wait. "Vitals?"
"Heart rate is elevated," the female assistant said. "Temperature is also rising considerably."
The old woman's skin was very nearly glowing a reddish orange colour now, as she stopped convulsing and strained against the straps holding her down.
Come on, come on…
"Temperature continuing to rise," said the female assistant. "Levels are dangerous."
Mason clenched his jaw as the old woman's skin turned a darker shade. Her entire body was oozing moisture like it was trying to excrete every drop in her.
Then the EKG machine began to beep. "Subject is crashing!" said the male assistant.
"Don't do anything!" Mason ordered. "Wait!"
He didn't want to administer shock treatment, or do anything else that would interfere with the serum.
"Subject is about to die!" the male assistant pressed.
"I said wait!" Mason barked.
A second later, the old woman stopped moving completely, and she let out a long, sighing breath, like air being slowly released from a tire. The female assistant looked at the machines.
"Is she dead?" asked Mason.
The female assistant shook her head. "No, she's stabilising."
Mason's heart missed a beat. "Stabilising?"
"Yes, sir."
"Take a blood sample. Now."
The male assistant took a syringe, stuck the needle into the old woman's arm and extracted a vial of her blood. Then he handed it to Mason, who took the blood over to a microscope on the table that ran along the back wall. He put a small drop of the subject's blood on a glass slide before putting it under the microscope. After staring into the viewer of the microscope for a moment, he lifted his head up, hardly able to believe what he had just seen. "Her cells are regenerating," he said quietly. He turned to his assistants. "It worked."
The two assistants stared back at him, no sign of any emotion on their faces. Not that Mason expected his them to be full of jubilance. He didn't program them for that. They were programmed to be worker bees, nothing more.
Mason walked back to the table and looked down at his test subject. The once flabby skin was beginning to tighten up around the bones underneath, and muscle tissue seemed to be knitting around the bones themselves, seemingly from nothing. "I didn't expect it to work this quick," he said. "Truly remarkable."
"What would you like us to do now, Professor?" the male assistant asked.
"Run tests," Mason said. "Have the results sent up to me. I want every single thing documented and recorded."
"Yes, sir."
Mason left the lab and went straight back to his living quarters. He went to the leather armchair by the fireplace and sat down, looked up at the portrait of his father. "It would seem we have succeeded, Hauptsturmführer. I can hardly believe it. After all these years."
A single tear fell from Mason's eye. He wiped it away, sniffed and then took a syringe containing the serum. He stared at the syringe a moment before placing it on the arm of the chair. Then he took of his white lab coat and rolled up the shirt sleeve on his right arm.
This might kill me. Or it might make me immortal.
He stuck the needle in his arm and injected himself with the serum.
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
Edger and Black said very little to each other on the drive from Lisburn to Armagh, which took them about forty minutes, and brought them through the preceding towns of Lurgan and Portadown. Black drove the red Audi A3 while Edger sat in the front passenger seat, mostly staring out the window as he tried to focus himself for the mission ahead. Normally, he had no trouble getting his head in the game. In places like Iraq or Haiti, or any of the other places he did CPO work, his mind would automatically snap into gear, and his only concern would be doing the job and doing it right.
On the journey from Lisburn however, Edger spent most of the time trying to sort out his con
flicting emotions. Before, when he laid his life on the line in the various war zones in which he worked, he didn't have a daughter to think about. It was just him. If he died, there was no one to leave behind, no one to mourn his loss or despair that he wasn't around any longer. Even though he knew Kaitlin existed, she wasn't a part of his life until he came back to Belfast. Up until then, it was easy for him to forget that he had a daughter at all. Before he got to know Kaitlin, she was just someone in the background who barely made it on to his radar most days. The missions were always his primary focus.
Now that was no longer the case. His circumstances had irrevocably changed. Now Kaitlin was not only a big part of his life, he was all she had left in terms of family, her ageing grandparents aside. She needed him and he needed her. If he got killed, to all intents and purposes, Kaitlin would be left alone. That made going to the Red Falcon Country Club to walk into a possible death trap much harder than it normally would have been for him. As a soldier, he had always reconciled to himself the fact that he could die at any time during the course of his duties. Death was a fact of life when you were a soldier, one which you got used to carrying around with you after a while. Death was always there in the background of every mission, and very often, right in your face. So close in fact, that you sometimes felt death's icy fingers brush your face, or in the case of his last mission in Iraq, ride on his shoulders just waiting for the bullet to hit that would finally end his life.
As Black drove the car out of Portadown and on towards Armagh however, Edger made a concerted effort to find the steely focus he knew he would need if he was to have any hope of surviving what he was heading into. The only way he could do that was to tell himself that if the worst did happen, and he was killed, then Kaitlin would find a way to go on without him. She would survive in his absence, having already proven herself to be strong and resilient in the face of horribly adverse circumstances. She was stronger than he ever was at her age, and that gave him some comfort at least.
"Almost there," Black said, as he drove the car up the main Armagh Road. "You alright Edger? Thinking about your daughter, are you?"
Edger nodded. "I'm fine, Black."
"Can't get my mind of my own daughters either. Fuck, I'm going to miss them."
"You're talking like you're going to die, for fucks sake."
Black took a cigarette from the pack on the dashboard and stuffed it in the corner of his mouth. "I'm under no illusions, Edger. I'm dying anyway. That tends to make you a little fatalistic." He lit the cigarette with the car's cigarette lighter. "You're welcome to remain optimistic, of course. This is your thing anyway, isn't it, shooting the fuck out of bad guys?" He smiled.
Edger shook his head and smiled back. "Not exactly. You watch too many fucking films. You ever had to kill anyone, Black?"
"Never. Rankin was the first person I ever had to shoot. I know you were away for the most of the Troubles over here, but it wasn't like the Wild West, you know. The soldiers did most of the shooting anyway. Those guys loved it. Did you?"
"Did I love killing people?" Edger shook his head and started to roll his own cigarette. "No, I didn't. I don't."
"But you don't have a problem with it either."
"Sometimes you don't have a choice. Like now."
Black nodded. "Well, if anyone deserves to die, it's the cunts we're about to meet."
"Agreed," Edger said, lighting his cigarette.
"Any advice for me?"
"Advice?"
"Yeah."
Edger wasn't sure what he meant, so he just said, "Shoot to kill."
"That's it?"
"That's it."
They said nothing more until they arrived at their destination.
Mason's estate where the Red Falcon Country Club was apparently situated, stood on the outskirts of Armagh City, about three miles outside of the small city itself. The main entrance to the estate was just off the main Armagh Road. As Black slowed the car, they saw the road leading towards the estate, but they couldn't see the main gates or the estate itself. The tall trees at either side of the road leading up to the estate meant they couldn't see anything beyond. Black idled the car in the lay-by of the main road for a moment, just down from the turn off. As they sat, a black stretched limo came up behind them and turned to the right towards the estate.
"The guests are arriving it seems," Black said.
"At least Rankin was telling the truth about tonight," Edger said, as he watched the tail lights of the limo disappear around a bend in the narrow road.
"We obviously can't just drive up to the main gates. Something tells me we wouldn't be warmly welcomed."
"No. We can't sit here either." Edger took out the map he had had a chance to study while at Donna's house earlier. "The whole estate is surrounded by forest." He pointed to a location on the map. "I was thinking we make our entry here, at the edge of the forest. It's a bit more discreet than shooting our way through the front gate. I want to stay covert for as long as possible."
"You're the soldier, Edger. Whatever you think is best."
"First though, I want to get a look at what we're heading into." He motioned for Black to drive the car on up the road for another mile, until they came to a narrow road to the right. Edger told Black to take the turn off. On the right side of the road, there was a ten foot stone wall that closed in the forest within it. The wall represented the edge of the Mason estate. Black drove the car slowly for another quarter mile until Edger told him to stop. "Pull over."
Black pulled the car over next to the stone wall and they both got out. "You intend to climb over that wall?" Black asked. "I don't think men with terminal cancer should be climbing high walls."
Edger shook his head, unsure if the ex-cop was serious or not. "But its okay for men with terminal cancer to go on a black ops kill mission?"
"As long as it's not too taxing."
"Fuck off, Black," Edger said, smiling. "I'll give you a boost."
"A fucking boost. What are we, kids again?"
Edger went to the boot of the car and popped the lid. From inside the large green military bag he took out a pair of night vision binoculars. He also took out a Beretta 92 and a suppressor. He screwed the silencer into the barrel of the Beretta and holstered the gun beneath his jacket, then he went to the wall and linked both his hands together for Black to put his foot on. "Up you go."
Shaking his head, Black put his considerable weight onto Edger's linked hands while Edger pushed him up so Black could get a grip on the top of the wall. After much huffing and struggling, the ex-cop finally got himself up. He sat there, out of breath, looking down at Edger. "I hope you don't expect me to pull you up."
Edger tossed the binoculars up for Black to catch. Then he found a foothold in the stone wall and used it to boost himself up so he could grab the top edge. A few seconds later he was on top of the wall with Black, and then they both jumped down to the soft forest floor below. While Black remained crouched against the wall, holding his chest like he was in pain, Edger took the night vision binoculars and began to scan the forest around them, looking for any security guards that might be around. After a few moments of looking, he was satisfied they were alone, for the time being at least.
"Let's go," he told Black, and they both moved off into the forest, making their way through the tall pine trees, their feet crunching the twigs and pine needles beneath their feet.
A noise to his left startled Edger, and he spun around pointing the Beretta in the direction of the noise. Beside him, Black froze. A second later, a black and white head protruded out of a tangle of briars. A badger.
Edger lowered the gun and looked at Black, who shook his head.
As they went to carry on walking again, the dark figure up ahead seemed to appear out of nowhere. It was a man, dressed in black, standing half behind a tree while he appeared to be relieving himself.
Beretta already half raised, Edger saw the guard freeze for a moment in surprise. Then the guard stepped out from t
he tree and went to grab the gun that was strapped over his chest.
Edger didn't hesitate. He brought the Beretta the rest of the way up and fired off two shots in quick succession, the silencer suppressing most of the noise, but the shots still gave a crack that echoed of the trees around them. The figure up ahead dropped silently to the forest floor as a cloud of gunpowder smoke billowed up around Edger.
Both Edger and Black crouched low to the ground as they looked around for more guards. After a few moments of tense surveillance, they saw no one else.
Still crouched, Edger moved swiftly towards the person he had shot, stopping when he got to the body. It was a man clad in black combat fatigues. Unluckily for him, he wasn't wearing body armour, and both of Edger's bullets had penetrated his chest. Looking at the weapon that hung from the strap around the dead guard's neck, Edger was surprised to see that it was a Scorpion machine pistol.
Jesus. These guys don't mess around.
"Nice shooting, Edger," Black said as he crouched beside him.
"Security," Edger whispered. "They must be all over the perimeter. Stay alert."
Before they went any further, Edger took hold of the guard's body under the armpits and dragged the corpse back several feet behind a clump of bushes, hoping the guard's presence wouldn't be missed for a while.
Both men began to move forward once more, coming to a slight slope in the forest floor where the trees appeared to be more widely spaced. They climbed the slope and stopped just at the top. In front of them was some thick undergrowth, which they crouched behind, Edger looking around for signs of more security, but seeing none.
Beyond the undergrowth they were hiding behind was the manicured lawns of the Mason estate, sloping down from the perimeter of the forest, before flattening out and running towards a large driveway that curved around towards the main gates of the estate. At the end of the driveway, it opened out into a kind of car park, where at least a dozen cars were parked, mostly executive cars like Jaguars, Mercedes and a few limos. From his vantage point about a thousand yards away, Edger could see Close Protection Operators loitering around the parked cars, and more security personnel standing around the steps that led up to the house itself.