by Dom Testa
He laughed. “What kind of bullshit is this? Things could get dangerous so I should wait at the hotel while you charge in? Maybe I’ll watch a movie and order room service.”
I didn’t answer, and instead went back to watching the white stripes.
“Hey,” he said. “Seriously. What’s this about?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe some new tweak in the investment technology. Or maybe it’s been too soon since my latest death. I just don’t want some nut job like Deele or Conor Wood to pop one of the only friends I’ve got in this stupid business.”
He threw me another glance. “Damn, Swan. If you’re not careful I’m gonna pull this car over and give you a big hug.”
I laughed. “Shut up, Fife, before I shoot you myself.”
As more miles passed, though, I couldn’t get it out of my mind.
“Let me ask you this,” I said. “We barely touched on this before, but . . . why are you opposed to investing? I mean, even doing an upload for them to store. You know, just in case.”
He was steering with one hand and rubbing his forehead with the other. And he seemed to really be considering the question.
“Look,” he finally said. “I’ve been with Q2 since the very beginning. I’ve put in some time on the 2nd floor, got moved up to operations on the 4th, and I’ve kept track of you, in particular, since your audition.”
“Nebraska?”
“Yeah. Part of my training is in behavioral science. I think Quanta appreciates the fact I’m not only a cop-turned-government-agent, but a student of the human psyche. I’m not privy to any of your psychological evaluations, but I still think I understand some of the stresses you live under.
“And believe me, I’ve thought about requesting an upload many times. But I know I never will.”
“Why?” I asked.
He let out a long breath. “I’ll tell you why, but remember, I’m just speaking for myself. I’m not projecting any of this on you.”
“Okay.”
“I know God Maker and Quanta—and probably you—believe there’s a physical body and a separate state of consciousness. And God Maker proved you can lift that consciousness out of one human shell and drop it into another. You’re obviously walking proof the science works. And I won’t deny that, other than your looks, you are the same pain-in-the-ass Eric Swan in this shell as you were when you left for South America in a different body.
“And yet, I can’t let go of the feeling that the connection between body and mind is more intricate than that. More intimate, too. That we weren’t built emotionally to let go of one home and trade it in for another.”
He looked at me and shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s hard to explain. I’m probably not making any sense.”
I kept staring ahead. “No,” I said. “You’re making way more sense than you think. And I—”
I was on the cusp of telling him all of the fears I’d carried around since the very first time I invested. The dread I toted around from body to body, afraid that I left behind little pieces of my mind each time I died and hit the reset button. I wanted to tell him how Devya had basically confirmed this was happening, before assuring me it was better now.
Yeah, it was all better now.
Right.
The only people in my life who’d heard these fears were Miller and Christina. And what could either of them say? I mean, who really knew if I was becoming a monster, even if it was incrementally? Since he already had thoughts on this subject, was it fair to bring Fife this far into my circle? He was a member of Q2. He was a great agent. And he was my friend.
I shook my head. Maybe someday. Not now.
I had to finish my sentence. “And I totally understand your reluctance.”
We didn’t speak about it again. But I know it was on both of our minds.
Fife’s hotel room was nothing special, but it did have a table. We spread our tablets and file folders across it. Our beers sat on the floor beside us.
“Here’s what we know,” I said. “Deele has a place somewhere in the state, and he refers to it as his vacation cabin. I don’t see why it wouldn’t be an actual cabin.”
“That way it could be anywhere, and be far removed from prying eyes,” Fife said.
“He landed at the private airstrip here,” I said, stabbing my finger to a map. “He refueled and left, heading for who knows where. But I’ve been in this plane, and I know it wouldn’t need an actual runway to take off and land. It could be done on a long stretch of road, even a dirt road.”
“Which leaves about a million choices.”
“Maybe we can narrow it down a bit more. Where are the notes from Culbertson’s work?”
Fife tapped on the keyboard of his tablet until he pulled up a spreadsheet. These were the official notes the FDA agent had turned into his department, and the last ones had been about two hours before he disappeared. The notes listed his activities, including addresses of the places he went. There hadn’t been time to have the data transferred to a map, so I used a yellow highlighter to mark the areas as Fife read them aloud.
When we were almost finished, Fife said, “Of course, if he was planning on extortion with Deele, he’d probably leave the really important locations off this sheet until he knew if Deele was playing ball or not.”
“True,” I said, taking a swig from my beer and setting it back on the floor. “But he may have already recorded a nearby route before he knew the significance of the location.” I put the marker’s cap back on. “All right. Now, where on this map would we find the crops that were originally poisoned?”
It was Fife’s turn to mark up the map. He used a blue pen and circled a spot east of Des Moines, just north of I-80. I sat back and studied everything, then spun Fife’s tablet around to look at Culbertson’s itinerary again. He’d spent the bulk of his time in and around the capital, but ventured out to the rural areas a few times. Glancing back and forth from the spreadsheet to the map, I looked for anything that might seem unusual. Then it occurred to me.
“Wait a minute,” I said. “We’re overthinking this. If Culbertson found something he could use to pressure Deele, then he’d probably stop looking after that, right?”
It took a moment before it dawned on Fife. “Well, yeah. So we don’t have to worry about everywhere he went.”
“We just need to focus on the last place he went,” I said, nodding. “Because once he found what he was looking for, he was done. He could start putting the screws to Jason Deele.”
I looked back at the tablet, then took Fife’s blue pen and circled an area that had already been marked with the highlighter. “Somewhere around here.”
The FBI agent nodded, his eyes darting around the areas we’d marked on the map. Then he sat back and said, “You know what really sucks about this? Culbertson really was a good agent. He could’ve saved all of us a lot of time and trouble—”
“And death,” I said.
“And death. All he needed to do was bring his information to his bosses, or turn it over to the FBI. Instead he made an important discovery and tried to fund his retirement with it.”
I called Poole and gave her the approximate coordinates of Culbertson’s final expedition.
“We need an immediate infrared scan of this area. Highest priority. We’re looking for an isolated cabin, and probably an airplane parked nearby.”
“Right away,” she said, and hung up. She didn’t bother to explain how this would be accomplished. With Poole it would just get done.
“It might be a few hours before we hear anything,” I said to Fife. “But I doubt Jason Deele will waste any time. He’ll want to dust those crops under the cover of night. Probably between midnight and five, I would think.”
I glanced at the time. “Nine o’clock now. I say we get going. We can at least get within fifty or seventy-five miles and wait for Poole’s call. Got everything you need?”
“What are you talking about?” he said with a grin. “I have the country’s greate
st secret agent in the passenger seat, don’t I? That makes me practically invulnerable.”
30
The miles sailed past. I sipped a high-caffeine beverage and began visualizing how everything might go down in the next few hours. Somewhere in the vicinity of Iowa City or Cedar Rapids, a small team of people loaded a deadly dose of Jaclyn Stone’s homegrown fungus into canisters attached to the bottom of the Amy Leigh.
Then, while hard-working farmers slept, their life’s work would be utterly destroyed with one or two low passes overhead. They might not even hear the drone of the engines through their sleep, or, if they did, they wouldn’t think much of it. Not until two or three days later, when they faced wilting crops and a devastating future.
That would lead to fresh negotiations between Deele’s people and a growing number of nervous farming conglomerates, all anxious to switch their supply of soy to Deele’s new miracle strain that seemed impervious to recent fungal infestations. There would be outcries from some, and accusations made by many. And those would lead nowhere; or, at best, wind up in court for years.
Deele had managed to camouflage his brazen, outrageous behavior beneath a sly coating of well-planned strategical moves. His foothold in South America lent an air of validation to his product and his program. All he needed were a few more players to fall into line and the momentum would be too great to govern any longer.
Jaclyn Stone’s part intrigued me, though. Steffan Parks had warned me she was a dangerous player, and yet so far she’d been a mostly silent partner. True, she’d developed the formula, and no doubt was thrilled to see her own vindication taking place so quickly. But I couldn’t help wonder if this was merely a first step for her. Just as Deele used her to build his empire, I felt confident Stone was quietly using him to bankroll what she had planned next.
She’d definitely flown under the radar. Now, as I stared through the windshield at the headlights splashing across I-80, it struck me that this lethal member of the Arcetri was just warming up. My guess was she would take her earnings from this gambit and break away to do her own thing. And if her opening salvo was this horrific, who could imagine what she had in store once she no longer answered to anybody?
We stopped at an all-night cafe just outside Iowa City for coffee and a quick bite. There wasn’t much to say, so we didn’t bother with small talk. Both of us understood that everything hinged on what happened in the next six to eight hours.
Poole did not disappoint. My phone vibrated just after midnight.
“Map coordinates are on their way to you. It’s a cabin west of Cedar Rapids.”
“Hold on,” I said to her. Fife and I had already paid the tab. We hustled out to the car and kicked up gravel as we tore out of the lot. I shared the map info with Fife, who gave one quick nod.
“All right,” I said to Poole. “We’re en route. What’s the story?”
“Property has been leased for one year under a trust that might take time to peel apart. But it’s isolated, and satellite imagery shows a small plane parked about fifty yards north of the structure.”
“Okay, that has to be it,” I said. “Better have FBI standing by, just in case we’re able to confirm everything.” After a pause I added, “Probably not a bad idea to have Sanitation on stand-by, too. We probably don’t want to explain anything to the local authorities.”
That’s what the mysterious teams in Sanitation took care of for Q2 agents who created a bit of a mess. They cleaned up. They covered up. They sanitized. Once they quietly arrived on a scene, you’d never see or hear anything in the media. I’d used them plenty of times, and to this day I had no idea how they pulled it off as smoothly as they did. I eventually decided it was simple: I was highly trained in what I did, and they were masters of what they did. And that was all anyone ever needed to know.
I ended the call with Poole and asked, “ETA?”
Fife looked at the map on his phone. “Forty-one minutes.”
We fell back into silence. I pulled out the Glock, did a quick check, felt for the spare magazines in my jacket pocket, then stowed it all away and got my mind right.
It didn’t look like much. A ramshackle building, more like an oversized shed than an actual cabin. But a light shone from one window, evidence that someone was here in the middle of the night.
Fife and I knelt in a dense field atop a nearby hill. Naturally, the plants around us were soybeans. We’d parked the car well off the road a mile back and trekked to this point. So far we hadn’t seen anyone walking around, but through a special pair of night-vision glasses Fife spotted the Amy Leigh on the far side, resting on a long straight stretch of a private road. Someone leaned against the side of the plane, fiddling with something. He was likely a lone sentry left to guard the plane, or just one of many, with the rest inside the cabin.
Things were quiet, so I kept my voice low. “Here’s the way I see it. We need to find out what’s inside, and we need to scuttle that plane.”
“I don’t know enough about airplanes,” Fife said. “You handle that, and I’ll start on the cabin. Meet you there in about fifteen?”
I gave a small salute and, crouching behind the plants that stood about four feet tall, made my way around to the right. It took a while to get into position on the far side of the aircraft. I peered out from a distance of 100 feet, but, in the weak moonlight, no longer saw the person who’d been waiting there.
A breeze had kicked up, which worked to my advantage; it would help to cover any sound I made scrambling from the crops to the plane. I just wished I could see where the sentry had gone.
Then he appeared. He’d been inside the rear compartment, the space where I’d endured my near-death experience during the Houston test flight. Now the man jumped out, but leaned back inside, intent on securing something. His preoccupation with the interior provided the break I needed.
Keeping low, I took off for the far side of the craft, and covered the ground quickly. The man’s torso was halfway inside the back compartment, and as I approached I saw a gun tucked into his waistband.
So this certainly wasn’t some innocent farmer preparing to eliminate a few pesky grasshoppers.
With his attention still focused on the plane’s interior, I veered and made straight for him. If he heard me at the last moment, it was too late. I had him down and asleep in a flash. Then, stepping over him, I stole a peek inside the aircraft’s rear cabin.
The seats were empty, but several containers, about the size of suitcases, were stacked against the far side. There were also two medium-sized gym bags. One was open, the source of my sleeping friend’s diligence. A quick glance revealed it held nothing more than the contents of an overnight bag. I chuckled; the sentry may simply have been snooping through one of his associate’s private things. Well, then he’d had the punishment coming.
Next I knelt down and inspected the underside of the plane. There, toward the rear, I saw the mounted canisters. The Amy Leigh had indeed been fitted with the tools necessary for crop dusting. There could be no more doubt about Deele’s mission.
The solution would be easy enough. I’d tear out some of the mechanisms attached to the canisters, leaving work that would occupy mechanics for a day or two. That should be enough time to—
A shot rang out from the direction of the cabin. I tensed, then got back to my feet.
The same faint glow leaked out of one window, but there was no movement.
Shit.
I pulled out the Glock and hurried toward the small building. It left me vulnerable, but there was nothing to be done about it. I planted myself against the side of the cabin, got my breathing under control, then edged toward the window, which was cranked open. After listening intently for a full 20 seconds, I peeked through the screen.
Agent Fife was on his knees, facing me. A ragged hole in his upper right chest had spewed enough blood to coat his upper half. His face looked drawn and ragged, as if he were on the verge of passing out. Which he probably was.
; One of Deele’s muscle men, the one who’d guarded the stairwell at the hangar in Houston, stood behind Fife, holding his head up with a firm grasp of the agent’s hair.
That’s when I heard the familiar voice.
“You should come on in,” Deele called out. “Unless you want Tyler to go ahead and put a bullet through this man’s head.” He was out of sight, probably in the hallway to the left.
I pulled back from the window, silently cursing. I could try to make a run for it, but that would only guarantee Fife’s death. And just how far could I run?
Before doing anything I pulled out my phone and hit the shortcut that would send an emergency text to Poole. With that finished, I flung the phone as far into the weeds as I could, followed by the gun.
Then I walked around the corner of the cabin toward the door. I automatically raised my hands so there’d be no confusion or deadly knee-jerk reaction. More than likely it was all pointless; Deele wouldn’t possibly spare two agents who’d stumbled across his operation.
Reference Culbertson.
Yet when I stood in the doorway, hands high, Deele stepped out of the shadow of the hallway, smiling. Fife made eye contact, but he looked close to passing out. The man named Tyler shifted his gun barrel from Fife to me. A moment later I was pushed into the cabin from behind. Conor Wood followed me in.
They’d been prepared all along. One look at Deele must’ve conveyed my confusion, because he raised an eyebrow. “Did you think because it’s an old rat trap that I wouldn’t protect this place?”
He walked toward me, sizing me up along the way from top to bottom. “There are more than enough security cameras and other gadgets wired in a full perimeter. I’ve got way too much riding on everything.” He stopped in front of me. “Who are you?”
“Bug-B-Gone Pest Control,” I said. “Got a call you might have a bunch of spiders here.”
The smile flickered for a moment, then disappeared altogether. I could tell he didn’t know what to make of me, or the curious spider comment. But after a few seconds the corners of his mouth twisted upward again.