The Six

by Calvin Wolf

  Chapter Ten

  1

  The moment was magical, and Adam Welsh could feel it working on his wife and daughter. The lighting was just right, the volume was just right, and the temperature was perfect. He could practically feel the flow of bonding hormones from the two females, snuggled on either side of him. I’ve done it. I have won them back.

  And he still had the five invaluable cylinders of MIST. A plan was formulating in his mind, percolating like fine coffee. In the morning, he would leave here with his family and begin his life anew. But where? Where would he, and his amazing body, be safe?

  Somewhere where they could never dare use something to disrupt or destroy the MIST cells. Near a hospital? A school? He imagined a place where he could live a quiet life, one of luxury, without the fear of being paralyzed from an electromagnetic pulse. But what could the government not dare destroy? I have seen them destroy so much, cause so much collateral damage.

  The Human Capital Markets. The original one, at Midland University. That one held over one trillion dollars’ worth of income shares on its servers, and was the automatic backup for any of the other HumCap markets in the event of a calamity. I knew I read those financial blogs for some reason, Welsh thought with a smile. I could move into one of the nice houses right across the street from the university and use false credentials to land a cushy gig on campus. Any EMP pulse aimed at me would destroy the servers, crashing the markets. The feds might be willing to kill a hundred hospital patients to get me with an EMP, but not their precious HumCap markets.

  His hand itched to pull out his phone and do an Internet search for real estate in Midland, but he knew better. A particularly touching part of the film appeared on screen, and he hugged his wife and daughter closer to him. Both murmured softly, happily. “I love you, Adam,” his wife whispered. “I love you too, Lauren,” he replied smoothly.

  Seconds later, his daughter began to cough. As Adam Welsh rubbed the girl’s back, his wife began to cough as well. Welsh’s heightened senses detected an odor of camphor, similar to the vaporizing rubs put on people’s chests during cold and flu season. He had encountered something similar before, when on assignment in the Middle East. Syria. Soman. It’s soman gas. His daughter and wife began coughing harder. Welsh’s ears could pick up coughing and choking sounds from the surrounding hotel rooms.

  “We’ve got to get you into the shower,” he announced, hoisting them up by their waists. They were sweating and gasping now, hardly able to breathe. Welsh inhaled and felt his lungs burn. The MIST was counteracting the thickening cloud of soman gas, providing him immunity. Most of the hotel guests, he knew, would be dead without quick thinking. He carried his wife and daughter to the nearest hotel room and kicked open the door. The room was unoccupied, and he bolted into the bathroom and turned on the shower.

  “We’ll rinse away the exposure,” he told his wife as he lay her at the bottom of the tub. As he set his daughter next to his wife, he noticed blisters forming on their skin. Grabbing a bar of soap, he began working up a thick lather. He could still smell the camphor, but he would not give up without a fight. He rubbed the soap over his wife and daughter, trying to scrub the deadly chemical agent from their skin. Outside, thunder rumbled.

  No projectile hit the hotel. The stuff came in from outside, probably through those open lobby doors. What was the target?

  2

  “The train has been compromised!” a colonel yelled, running into the Oval Office and causing the president to spill his espresso all over his tee shirt.

  “Jesus! How?! They stopped that cartel wave like it was nothing! What could have gotten through the guards?!”

  “Nerve gas, Mr. President. We’re receiving reports from all over the town of Alpine. Based on reports of an odor like mothballs, we think it’s soman. It’s a nerve agent more powerful than sarin, but less potent than VX.”

  “I don’t need a science lesson, colonel! What are we doing about it?!”

  “The storm is still going strong, so we can’t medevac. We’ve already scrambled every emergency vehicle in a two hundred mile radius from Alpine with oxygen masks and nerve gas treatment supplies.”

  “Just how compromised is the train, colonel? Do we know?”

  Swallowing hard, the officer announced that no defensive capabilities remained. “We’re no longer getting any communications. The train was not equipped with defensive air filtration aside from the cars dealing with Silver Six. Given the concentration of soman that seems to be used, anybody attempting to exit those sealed train cars will be dead in minutes.”

  Hanging his head, the president thought for a moment. “Try to send a signal to the sealed cars and tell the scientists to stand down. Do not attempt to escape or resist. We need them to try to stay alive. If we can get them back to us later, they can help with the MIST situation. If they try to play hero right now, they’ll be cut down.”

  “Play hero? You think someone will try to enter those cars?” The president rolled his eyes, harshly judging the colonel’s intelligence.

  “Of course! That’s obviously why they used a nerve agent. It incapacitated all of the Delta operators, because they were no longer wearing protective gear. Instead of shooting their way in, they gassed their way in.”

  The colonel left the office, his crisp walk now a panicked jog. The president closed the door behind the man and locked it. He sat down at his enormous desk and ran his hands over the historic wood. Slowly, he opened a secret panel and used his unique code to access the United States nuclear arsenal. He used manual selection to pick an underground silo in Nebraska. A voice recorder automatically activated to record the moment, a red light indicated that the president’s voice would be preserved in the archives.

  “To prevent Microtronic Infrastructural Symbiosis Technology, or MIST, from falling into the hands of domestic enemies of the U.S. Constitution, I am activating a twenty megaton warhead from silo NE71426. The target is U.S. Army special train AT623, which is stationed at...” the president grabbed his tablet and pulled up the coordinates. “At approximately 0145 hours, the target was attacked by enemies of the state with soman nerve agent, source unknown. We cannot defend the train with conventional means due to its remote location and surrounding adverse weather conditions. As commander-in-chief, I hereby approve this action and take full responsibility.”

  Using a second code, the president armed the warhead. He pressed a button on his desk phone and asked for the Secretary of Defense. A minute later, the woman was in his office. “Sir?” she asked. Despite the unpleasant hour, she seemed strong and vigilant.

  “I need Carl Hummel’s phone number. He spoke to you earlier, and now I need to speak to him. I’m about to launch a nuclear weapon against a target inside my own country, and I need to know that I have no other viable option before I press that button.”

  3

  They loaded the blond man into the back of the black Ford Expedition as rain poured down around them. “I can’t believe local law enforcement hasn’t shown up yet,” Carl said. “It sounded like the Battle of the Bulge out here just five minutes ago.”

  “I’ll bet most local law is part of the conspiracy,” Hector Rodriguez replied as they tied more rope around their angry and twitching prisoner. “This is Jeff Davis County, after all. As in Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederate States of America?”

  “I was a history teacher, Hec!” Hank reminded him. His knowledge of the Civil War was impressive, honed by a summer of visiting Virginia battlefields and Gettysburg when he was in junior high. In the cargo bay of the SUV, the blond man moaned and twitched. Though the high-speed impact from the Dodge Charger would have killed any normal man, the MIST was bringing Boris Elkanovitch back from the brink. If the prisoner was not properly secured by the time his body was reinvigorated, there was no telling what might happen. Fortunately, the mercenary company vehicle was impeccably equippe
d with various ropes, chains, cords, and plastic ties.

  “Got him tied,” Carl said. “Now let’s get Pastorius.” Pastorius was lying in the field, looking to be in even worse shape than the new-bodied Russian. He aimed a mercenary’s flashlight into the field and discovered, to his horror, that there was no body. “Guys! We’ve got a problem!” Hank and Hector began aiming their own flashlights, searching the field. Lightning flash and thunder boomed, but the temporary illumination revealed nothing.

  “He’s already fast!” Hector gasped. “Where could he go?!” With dead mercenaries and their armaments littering the field, Adam Pastorius could have his pick of weapons. All three men standing around the Expedition flinched, waiting for the Syrian to begin sniping. Though a torso hit would kill none of them, it would still be an unpleasant experience.

  “Do we search for him?! What do we do?!” Panic was beginning to set in. The man in the rear of the Expedition thumped and flopped, and Carl closed the cargo door on him. The trio shouldered their scavenged rifles and prepared to return fire, wondering idly where it might come from. Aside from the soaking rain, the night was silent.

  “No flashers. No cops. What the hell is going on?” Hector whispered anxiously. Crouching, he tried to find some cover in the tall grass near the car. His compatriots, taking his lead, did the same. They turned off their own lights, hoping to further disguise themselves.

  Behind them, near the highway, they heard the faint sound of a vehicle’s engine cranking. Whirling around, they saw an identical Ford Expedition turning on its headlights. “It’s him!” Hank yelled, standing with his rifle. As he sighted in, the driver’s window rolled down and a gloved hand waved a glass cylinder at them. “I knew there was MIST here! He found it,” Hank hissed. He fired a three round burst, but the sides of the SUV were armored. With a whirr of tires and a plume of mud, the Expedition reversed up the hillside toward the asphalt.

  “Get in the car!” Hank roared, and jumped into the driver’s seat. Carl climbed into the front passenger seat and Hector clambered into the back. He quickly slid the vinyl cargo lid over their prisoner, hoping to deprive the recovering man of information.

  “No keys!” Hank cursed loudly. He grabbed the ignition node and gripped it angrily. A second later, the engine roared to life on its own. Stunned, Hank the looked at his own fingers. For a brief moment, he could see faint silvery dots on the sides of the fingers that had been touching the metal. The MIST had started the car for him. He put the SUV in gear and roared forward, pursuing the other Expedition.

  “Where are we going?” Carl asked. “After that son of a bitch,” Hank replied angrily. “We’ve got Ben, and we need Pastorius. We shouldn’t have left him alone in that field! Whose idea was that?!” As they plunged through mud and muck toward the highway, the three men began to argue among each other.

  4

  They shoved him into a water heater closet and closed the door behind him. William Watterson quickly clicked on the bare bulb dangling overhead, noticing with annoyance that the State Parks had only sprung for forty watts. He gingerly tried the doorknob, knowing that it was probably locked. Of course it’s locked. You don’t not lock the closet door on the prisoner. The door was locked.

  Do I try to escape? Fight my way out of here in a blaze of glory? Watterson felt his midsection and noticed the extra twenty pounds he had recently accumulated. He was not quick enough to try to sprint and spin past any guards.

  The greying detective sat down on the concrete floor and pondered his situation. He listened to the old water heater click and hiss next to him. Water heater. Water heater. He reached over and turned the heat dial as high as it would go. Someone in the Balmorhea State Park complex was using water right now, hence the clicking and hissing, and Watterson could make that water scalding.

  He took off his tourist-y tee shirt and tore it into two pieces, wrapping each section of fabric around his hands. Earnestly, he began working on the thick pipe at the base of the water heater. Within minutes, the pipe began to loosen. Rivulets of steaming water began trickling down the outside of the pipe. Scooting close to the door, Watterson discarded his fabric hand wraps and waited.

  When he heard boots tromping toward the door, Watterson took a deep breath, grimaced, and opened his mouth. He stuck his fingers as far into the back of his throat as he could and triggered his gag reflex. He began to vomit. Please work, he hoped between heaves. Seconds later, the closet door began to unlock. The cop scrambled to his feet and got into position.

  With a bang and clatter, the closet door surged open. As the first guard walked in, Watterson vomited on the man’s neck and chest. Stunned and disgusted, the guard did not go for his gun. Instead, the black-clad goon began trying to wipe at the vomit. The second guard was also surprised, and Watterson grabbed the man and threw him into the rickety water heater. The pipe wrenched free and scalding water gushed over the stumbling guard. Screaming, the man collapsed.

  Braving the scalding water washing across the floor, Watterson grappled with the first guard. Puke on me. Gross. Watterson managed to seize the man’s gun from its hip holster and drive its butt into the man’s temple. With a grunt, the mercenary collapsed on top of his writhing partner. Reaching out, Watterson grabbed the doorknob of the half-open closet door and pulled it closed.

  “It burns!” hollered the second guard, and Watterson brained him with the pistol. With both guards unconscious, the police lieutenant was able to cobble together a new wardrobe. He pulled shirts and pants off his former captors and, after outfitting himself, used the remaining fabric to bind and gag the guards. Each second that passed without a new squad of guards bursting into the closet increased the likelihood that the scuffle had not been heard by others. After several minutes, Watterson calmly exited the water heater closet. He was proud of his mercenary disguise.

  In the distance, he could hear cheering.

  5

  The men slunk through the darkened hallways, seeking revenge. They had been given orders to terminate the two cops and reclaim the stolen cell phones. Most of the men were sheriff’s deputies, working on behalf of a thoroughly corrupt sheriff. The hired guns knew little, but the cash was nice...and plenty more was promised.

  “First floor clear,” one of the deputies finally declared, and the heavily-armed team began stomping upstairs. Flashlights painted the walls and ceilings in erratic, moving patterns.

  Roger Garfield pushed the king-size mattress off the top of the railing. In the darkness, it had been unseen by the corrupt deputies in SWAT gear. As the goons single-mindedly rushed up the stairs, they were suddenly tackled by the giant, heavy mattress. “What the fuck?!” one of them yelled. The men fell down under the weight. As they tried to wrestle free from the obstruction, a burly criminal justice professor from the University of Wyoming dragged a second mattress to the railing.

  “Heave!” he yelled, and hurled the mattress over the wrought iron in a display of strength that would have made his old UC football coaches proud. With a whump, the second mattress landed atop the first, knocking the wind out of the men underneath. The top mattress slid forward as the entire mass bumped and thumped down the stairs. The deputies, their weapons pinned under their torsos, hollered in confusion and agony. As the top mattress collided with more deputies at the foot of the stairs, FBI agent Garfield yelled “go!”

  Jumping down from the railing, Garfield landed atop the mattress and rolled and kicked. Beneath him, the team of assassins writhed and struggled. A second later, the heavier professor landed on the mattress. Frantically scooting and kicking, the two men slid down the two-mattress slide. Amazingly, all of the deputies were either trapped underneath or had been pinned against the side of the stairwell.

  “Fuck yo mama,” the professor snapped at a gawping deputy, the man’s arms pinned against his side between the thick mattress and the wall. Garfield rolled off the second mat
tress and planted his feet on the hardwood of the first floor. “Time to boogie,” he gasped to his friend as his heart pounded and tension sweat ran down his cheeks.

  Both men ran toward the front doors of the manor, feet pounding. A lone SWAT deputy with a halogen headlamp rounded a corner and tried to intercept them, forgetting that one of the targets was once an award-winning lineman. The professor dropped his shoulder and barreled into the goon, lifting him off his feet. With a crash, the deputy landed on an imported coffee table and shattered it. An earbud popped out of the man’s ear and angry words could be heard emanating from it.

  Quickly, Roger Garfield bent down and swiped the deputy’s phone and its hands-free headset. The professor grabbed the deputy’s sidearm and swept the area to make sure that more foes were not approaching. As they bolted through the front doors, escaping into the rainy night, Garfield slipped the deputy’s earbuds into his own audial canals.

  “Get done with those targets! We found the MIST at the Balmorhea State Park and are getting the birds ready. We need you to activate the Raton Air Base immediately. Do you copy, sergeant?”

  Taking a calculated risk, Garfield responded into the headset mic that he copied. “I think we’re going to the municipal airport,” he told the professor. “After that, I have no idea.”

  6

  Lucifer raced toward his destiny. He could sense that the MIST was in Alpine, along with the mystery assassin who had been sowing the horrible stuff. He put the pedal to the metal through the town of Fort Davis, leaving his brights on to blind any potential enemies. As he approached the Hotel Limpia, a small team of black-clad mercenaries shielded their eyes after making a halfhearted attempt to aim their rifles at him. With most of their colleagues lying dead at the fort, they know fighting is a lost cause.

  The highway forked and Lucifer hung a left, the heavy SUV almost drifting onto the shoulder. The road was wet and slick, but the rain was finally slacking off. Behind him, he could see the headlights of the pursuing vehicle. Hank Hummel is back there, on a mission. He thought he evaded me, but I am controlling this situation. I am nothing if not a master of manipulation.

  To that end, Lucifer intentionally did not evade the man who wanted to destroy him. Although his MIST was far more advanced than his pursuer’s, and he could have driven faster despite the rain and darkness, he needed to ensure that Hank Hummel was always close by. Four of the six human beings infused with the nightmarish MIST were in the trailing SUV, and Lucifer would never be redeemed if he could not destroy them. He had to lure them into his trap, and failure was not an option.

  The rain stopped entirely by the time Lucifer made it out of the mountains and onto the plains, the headlights revealing the distant glow of Alpine. Behind him, the other Expedition was gaining, Hummel apparently feeling emboldened by the respite from precipitation. Looking at the dash, Lucifer discovered that his engine was running hot and his gas tank was below one quarter full. Allah is testing me, and I shall not fail. Each second, the town grew nearer. More lights became visible, breaking up the peaceful desert night.

  After cresting a shallow rise near the outskirts of town, the Syrian saw a fleet of taillights far ahead, cruising toward the railroad tracks. Squinting, he used his superhuman vision to make out the dark, squared-off lines of black SUVs, probably uparmored. Ah, the main mass of evildoers. They are numerous but stupid, mere pawns on the great chessboard of fate.

  Before Lucifer could reach the convoy, which was moving far slower than he, his lungs and skin began to tingle. As a former member of Bashar Al-Assad’s forces, he was no stranger to chemical weapons. Unbidden, his mind flashed back to his use of such weapons on the campus of Midland University during its inauguration ceremony. He remembered the failed attempt, his physical and mental agony as the cloud of gas washed over him, and he felt shame. I was a monster, human filth. I still am.

  His mind flashed back further, to Qamlishi and the news about his wife and daughter. The American drone had sought a military convoy, but had struck civilians instead. He remembered signing his name to the documents transferring him to Assad’s elite intelligence forces, his mind seeking revenge. He had blamed America for its brutal, arrogant ignorance and Assad’s regime for its vicious, foolish mayhem. In the end, he had punished both...or tried to.

  The MIST recalled the memory of signing the papers in Damascus. His name, long forgotten, had been Ahmed Zuabi. He was from Latakia. His wife was from Homs, and they met at university. Painful memories, long repressed, were rolling back. Lucifer did not know whether it was the memories or the poison gas lingering in the night sky, but tears were rolling down his cheeks. Not my cheeks. Another man’s cheeks. I stole his body. He was a family man, and he deserved better.

  Angry, Lucifer stomped down on the accelerator, no longer worrying about his overheating engine or diminishing gas tank. The convoy up ahead turned off onto a side road, heading east. Lucifer continued straight ahead, roaring through the town of Alpine at high speed. While the buildings on the northern outskirts of town were deserted, including the federal courthouse, he quickly began seeing vehicles crashed and strewn along curbs and sidewalks. The chemical weapons had incapacitated many late-night drivers, including an ambulance crew. Smashed halfway through someone’s backyard fence, the ambulance’s flashers blinked mindlessly.

  Somewhere up ahead, a big mass of MIST was calling Lucifer home.

  7

  The oxygen coming through her mask was bitter and metallic, but she breathed it deeply nevertheless. Ava had her own mask, a model designed for a small child, and Whitney wondered if the girl was scared or crying behind the translucent Plexiglas. In the back of the upscale Hummer, sandwiched between two armed guards in WMD suits, Whitney did her best to calm her daughter. She could not talk through the thick mask, but she could rub her daughter’s back and give her reassuring squeezes.

  Keeping quiet, Whitney had gathered that the conspiracy had launched the chemical attack on the train in order to gain easy access to the MIST in its armored laboratory cars. They had disposed of plenty of their own men in doing so, stationing them in the area beforehand. This way they don’t have to share their ill-gotten gains with as many mercenaries. Who knows how many more of these hired guns will be taken out of the equation before this is over?

  How long before Ava and I will be taken out of the equation? Whitney thought of Michael, and prayed he was safe. He was probably with Hank’s parents, worried sick. Hugging her daughter, Whitney swore that she would see her son again. She would reunite Michael and Ava and they would grow up together.

  Peering up ahead through the wide-set front seats, Whitney saw a train appear in the distance, bathed in lights from flares and external spotlights. The front of the train was destroyed, blasted into charred and twisted metal. As the convoy drew nearer, the Humvees turned on spotlights and searched the outside of the train. Dead bodies were strewn across the landscape, anonymous men dressed in dark tactical gear.

  The vehicles eased to a stop and Whitney was told to stay in her seat. One of the two guards left the back seat, taking his assault rifle with him. Holding her daughter in her lap, Whitney watched as men in CBW suits quickly assembled and then approached the train with guns at the ready. There was a buzzing by her ear, and she realized that there was a tiny speaker in her mask.

  “I’m glad you’re here to witness this,” the old woman said, her voice tinny over the radio. “We just picked up six vials of MIST that our agent tried to hide for his own purposes. After we get what’s on this train and collect what’s ours from our double-crossing employee, we will have a monopoly on the future. You can still be a part of that.”

  “You stay the hell away from me and my daughter,” Whitney hissed, assuming that her mask also had a radio mouthpiece.

  “Listen, Whitney, it’s coming close to time for you to play ball. You’re here and wearing a protective suit only as insurance against y
our husband trying to play John Rambo. Once that use for you is done, why should I keep you around? I won’t feel like wasting a suit on you. Or Ava.”

  “Well, maybe I should just remove our masks, then! How do you think Hank will react when he finds out what happened? If the MIST is as powerful as you say it is, he’ll tear through your ex-military Call of Duty rejects like a hot knife through goddam butter!” Tears of anger welled in Whitney’s eyes, and she felt her words hit home. There was no response from her captor, only wounded silence.

  8

  Adam Welsh wailed over the body of his wife. He had fought, and he had lost. Though he had followed protocol and training fast, so very fast, it had not been enough. The soman had been potent, cloying, and the soap and water had been ineffective. Numb at first, he had carried their bodies back into the hotel room and set each on a matching twin bed. He had had such plans for them! Now it was worthless.

  “We would have been so rich, Lauren. Beyond our wildest dreams. We would have had a monopoly on investing in the leaders of tomorrow,” he whispered over her body. “I had it all set up, you see? We would know everyone who got the MIST. They would go on to become leaders in their fields - bosses, supervisors, CEOs, millionaires. Pro athletes, geniuses, congressmen and presidents.” He pulled out his smartphone and showed it to her unseeing eyes. The Google doc was already populated with a hundred names. By ten o’clock in the morning, there would be hundreds more.

  “They’ll come to swim and relax and make out and look at the pretty fish. They might feel a little tingle, but that’s it. They’ll go home, back to El Paso and Midland and Dallas and San Antonio. In days, they will start becoming something more.” Neither his wife nor daughter spoke, but Welsh felt the need to explain. How could his amazing plan be unsuccessful?

  “We’ll buy shares in all of these people. Before they know that they are becoming the best possible versions of what they could ever hope to be - faster, stronger, smarter than ever - we will own part of their profits! For life! Up to thirty percent. I’ll have aliases, front companies, generic-sounding portfolios. It will be foolproof, and it will set us up for life.”

  A tear fell from Welsh’s cheekbone and into his wife’s open eye. Snapping back to cold reality, the former spook reached out and used the heel of his hand to close her eyes. After wiping tears from his face, he walked over and did the same to his daughter. Now it’s over. They took this away from me. Fuck.

  He vomited on the carpet, then walked to the corner of the room and sat in a cushioned armchair. Like a gentleman, he crossed his legs and put his chin in his palm, his elbow propped on the armrest. Around the hotel, he could hear occasional coughs, gasps, and cries of pain. Those on the upper floors might survive. The chemicals were heavier than air.

  Welsh sensed something outside, a buzz that was more thought than felt. Someone else with MIST. This new MIST was different than the substance in the cylinders he had hidden in the parking lot, had a different signature. Parking lot. No.

  The man in black leapt to his feet and ran from the room. He sprinted through the lobby, catching sight of the dead desk clerk on the floor. The automatic doors slid open, and Welsh breathed in a fresh punch of soman. How much did they use?! He ran to the parking lot in time to see a black Ford Expedition driving off. The passenger window was rolled down, and he saw his Styrofoam cooler. A bald man in civilian clothes was driving.

  It’s the state trooper I saw on the news, the one who died in that crash. I would recognize that face and bald head anywhere. He’s supposed to be dead! A second later, he put it all together. The idea that his foes could change bodies by using MIST as some nefarious cut-and-paste of one’s consciousness was troubling.

  You can’t lose again, he told himself. Get the MIST back and follow through with your original plan. You are a winner, not a loser.

  Welsh ripped his car keys from his pocket and ran for his sports car. He was climbing behind the wheel as a second black Expedition tore past on the nearby highway.

  9

  The Diplomat crunched the numbers for the six cylinders of MIST. According to his figures, the six cylinders of silver magic were worth over ninety billion dollars. Each cylinder contained roughly seventy grams of suspended MIST, and MIST achieved critical mass at approximately three hundred milligrams in a localized spot in the human body. This meant they owned just over two hundred thirty doses of MIST.

  Who would be the two hundred top bidders in the world? As an impeccably well-connected former State Department employee, the Diplomat’s job was to find out. Convinced to remain at his post for the time being, trapped by a web of threats and his own curiosity and greed, the Diplomat dove into his list of black market contacts. These fringe characters, mostly lawyers and financial advisers, were the late-night phone calls of cutthroat CEOs, ruthless politicians, shady bankers, secret crime lords, and vile heirs and heiresses.

  “He’s got a kid with cancer,” the Diplomat explained to a disbarred lawyer and ex-cop who was now a private investigator to powerful CEOs who dabbled in corporate espionage. “How much would he pay for a guaranteed cure-all that would get that skinny kid an athletic scholarship at any university in the country? Hasn’t he been visiting different new doctors every week for the past two years?”

  “What is this, some sort of experimental drug?” the PI asked. The woman tried to sound calm, but there was an underlying excitement in her voice.

  “Of a sort. It’s unique, and very powerful. Guaranteed to work. But it’s gonna move fast. We have a very limited supply. Very limited. To be honest, nobody knows how to make any more. At least, not yet. But we control it all.”

  “You have all the patents?” The PI could be heard typing things down.

  “Yes,” the Diplomat replied with a smile. Patents. What a laugh. If only she knew…

  “I’m authorized to promise eighty million up front. It’s his standard offer for anything that will cure his son. He’s even been talking to quacks in Russia and China about experimental programs, real Cold War spy stuff. Secret cities in Siberia, underground medical labs in Beijing, et cetera.”

  Eighty is a little low, but you have to sell the first units at a bargain to start spreading positive word of mouth. And it’s not like we can advertise.

  “We’ll accept eighty. I’ll contact you later with the details. Of course, you can’t tell anyone. You breathe a word of this, and the deal is off. We know people who will pay a hundred, easy.”

  “Maybe, but we can pay cash. Lots of people make promises, but not many can deliver.”

  “That’s why we called you first, ma’am,” the Diplomat charmed. “The operation to give the boy this new medicine will have to be very fast, and in a remote location. We do not want to risk other people finding out about this.” The call ended and the Diplomat made a second call, this one to the lawyer of a billionaire U.S. Senator. The politician, a preppy heir to a pharmaceutical fortune, had bought himself the office at age forty-one. He was a notorious playboy who wanted a fountain of youth.

  “Opening bid is eighty-five million,” the Diplomat explained. “You can have it now at that price. If you pass, you’ll regret it. The price will rise. I know the good Senator does not like to be behind the curve.” After a moment of thought, the lawyer guaranteed the sum of eighty-five million, payable in cash or bearer bonds.

  An alert flashed on the computer monitors, warning that phone communications had been compromised. The feds were now scanning all cell traffic. Quickly, the Diplomat ended the call and took a deep breath. The remaining doses of MIST would have to be sold in person. But where to hold such an auction? In what city could you ever accumulate two hundred rich VIPs in secret that has no love for the feds? Looking at a map of the United States tacked behind the computer monitors, the Diplomat thought of one city: Midland.

  10

  Hector Rodriguez opened the sunroof of th
e Expedition and stood through the opening, his chest and shoulders above the roof of the car. Hefting the assault rifle, he tried to aim at the vehicle ahead of him. The noxious air made his lungs burn, and the howling wind and rocking chassis made it difficult to aim in the pitch dark. Squinting, he fired off a burst. Despite the aid of the MIST, his bullets did not connect. Annoyed, he aimed again.

  Ben, in the body of the blond state trooper, tore through the vinyl cargo cover and pulled the policeman’s legs out from under him. “Fuck!” he yelled as he grappled with his foe in the back seat. The M-4 clattered down inside the SUV and went off, shooting Carl Hummel through the seat. Distracted, Hank Hummel turned to check on his brother. Ben lunged forward, elbowing Hector in the face, and grabbed the steering wheel with his outstretched hand.

  Hank snapped Ben’s wrist and wrenched it off the wheel, but the damage was already done. The tires were no longer parallel with the road. On the wet pavement, the big vehicle began to drift. It struck something and flipped over. Inside the cab, everything was chaos. Heads and limbs caromed off metal and hard plastic. Flesh tore and bones cracked.

  Behind the tumbling Expedition, a sports car that had been roaring up from behind braked hard, trying to avoid a collision. Unfortunately, its brakes had never been serviced, and its stopping time was slower than it should have been. Though the driver’s reflexes were second to none, the impaired car still slammed into the flipping and rolling hulk. The tumbling Expedition, bulked up by expensive body armor, was heavy enough to flip the sports car when its rolling side panels caught under the Mustang’s front bumper.

  The two vehicles tumbled together, eventually rolling to a stop on opposite sides of the highway.

  Up ahead, the first black Expedition braked to a halt. Ahead of it were the lights of a fleet of Humvees, parked by the lit hulk of a disabled train. Behind it were two smoking wrecks. After the driver made a decision, the Expedition rolled forward again, gaining speed. Eagerly, it raced toward the train. With a silent click, the driver turned off the headlights.

  Gunfire erupted and muzzle flashes lit up the darkness, but it was not the arriving SUV that was targeted. Rather, the shooters were aiming at the men in CBW suits who were coming out of the train cars. How disrespectful, to eliminate one’s own fellow conspirators, the driver thought. A second later, the shooters realized that someone was approaching and turned to aim at the onrushing car. Due to the positioning of their own vehicles, the shooters struggled to draw a bead on the SUV that seemed to blend into the night.

  By the time the shooting started, the Expedition was nigh unstoppable. It plowed through a half dozen men in chemical warfare suits before the rest wisely scattered and retrained their fire. Raked with bullets from all angles, the SUV lost control and plowed into a black Cadillac limousine. Fire erupted and engulfed both vehicles.

  “We got him!” one of the CBW-clad gunmen reported through his helmet radio. “It’s a done deal!”

  The front door of the Expedition opened and the driver emerged, covered entirely in flames. He jolted and jittered as surprised gunmen shot him. He fell to the ground, motionless. “Now it’s a done deal,” one of the shooters corrected through his helmet mic. Suddenly, the radio network was filled with anguished screaming.

  “It’s her! She’s in trouble!” The armed gaggle of mercenaries rushed toward the smoking Hummer. Suddenly, the flaming body of the Expedition’s driver began to move again. Rolling over, the man sat up and tucked the butt of an assault rifle into his shoulder. With the uncanny skills of an Olympic sharpshooter, the burning man took down a target with each three-round burst.

  As the screaming continued to reverberate through the radio waves, the Expedition’s driver stood and lunged at his stunned and confused attackers. Quicker than a cat, he dispatched well-trained foes with martial arts moves learned in training centers in Damascus, Aleppo, Tehran, and Moscow. After five men fell limp, the rest fled into the night. It was very likely that they thought they were dealing with a supernatural being. And they’re not wrong, the driver thought.

  A steel case lay on the ground next to the train. From that case came a metallic hum, a homing signal. The driver of the Expedition grabbed the case and opened it. Inside were three glass cylinders, of a similar design to the ones in the Styrofoam cooler in his cargo bay. Remembering that his car was on fire, he ran back to it and opened the rear lift gate. The fire had not spread beyond the front seats, and the cooler was undisturbed.

  Holding the cooler in one hand and the steel case in the other, Lucifer realized that he had it all.