Power Trip
Page 19
From my usual spot on the bow I watched as we approached Vita Solis that morning, beginning as a dark line on the horizon and finally revealing a lush, tree-covered paradise. Against the pale blue of the sky, the landscape jumped out with a dazzling variety of greens, yellows, and brown. It was hilly without that single majestic tall mountain we expect to see dominating tropical islands. Birds screeched overhead.
An hour before docking, with a gusty wind in my face, I scanned the large complex of buildings that rose above the treetops. It matched what I’d seen in the satellite photos, an imposing place, a tropical dreamscape that masked the headquarters of a demented duo. Minus that dark underbelly, Vita Solis was a poster for paradise.
The ship’s crew went into overdrive, prepping the vessel for final maneuvers. I went back to my room before anyone could ask me to lend a hand.
It was LeMan who tapped on my door and announced that we were disembarking. He didn’t stick around for me to answer or open the door.
With bag in hand and Glock tucked under jacket, I was one of the last ones down the gangplank. The task of unloading cargo was ramping up, with at least a dozen workers scrambling like ants to get everything rigged. I moved past them and down the dock to the shore. The first person I saw was Lucas Ormond, sitting in a golf cart, drinking what looked like lemonade. I couldn’t blame him; the heat was oppressive. He only knew me as scrawny Conrad Dean, not as bulky Mirco Mayer, so I never broke stride as I walked past and began to look around.
Like any good castle there was only one entrance I could see funneling into the main building, and you had to pass through a gauntlet of stone to reach the narrow passage. All it needed was a portcullis and a few banners flapping in the breeze to make it seem like Arthur and Guinevere’s place. That was Prime Real Estate A.
Beyond the main building but outside its walls were three smaller structures I took to be dorms. This is where all the hired help probably stayed, including the warriors. These didn’t interest me much. However, I counted four towers, each about 60 feet high, with others perhaps hidden behind trees. Two men were stationed in each one. If they had heavy weapons, those were out of sight. I assumed they did.
The entire area was buzzing with activity, and not just unloading the newly-arrived ship. I had no idea what everyone was up to, but there was purpose here.
LeMan approached with two more mercenary types and motioned for me to join them. He led us to one of the secondary buildings where we were checked in, you might say. When they asked for my personal phone and other devices I told them I didn’t have any with me. There was an awkward silence and looks were exchanged, but my new reputation prevented any further pressure. They nodded assent. Inside I laughed.
Just as we were about to be directed to our rooms, Parnell entered. She found me standing to one side and crooked a finger at me, then walked back out. I picked up my bag and, without a word to anyone, followed her.
She was waiting for me, arms crossed.
I said, “So I take it your offer was not rescinded.”
“Shut up, Mayer. Let’s go.”
We walked through the bustling crowd and climbed the incline to the main building. Passing through a large double door I felt the cool relief of air conditioning, enhanced by another giant turbine blade lazily spinning overhead. No fancy waterfall, though. I reminded myself that everything I saw was powered by wind, sun, and tidal generators. It was impressive as hell. To my right was another curving stairway, obviously a favorite design of the Ormond family. Reminded me of a Hollywood musical.
At the back of the sprawling main room a door opened into a hallway, which took us past numerous bolted doors. At the end we came to what was clearly a dorm room, but a large, generous one. Four beds, one in each corner, were granted the privacy of curtains, while a sort of living room occupied the center of the room. Two couches and a TV had been set up. Against one wall there was a kitchen and long table, and across the room a door let into a bathroom. Nothing lavish, but not exactly spartan, either. I didn’t care. I didn’t plan on staying long. The only room I wanted to see was Ground Zero for their murderous operation.
It was December 22nd.
“Leave your stuff here. I want you to meet some people,” Parnell said. And we were off again, this time toward the sweeping staircase. I felt an adrenaline uptick.
Not a surge, though, and that’s the funny thing about adrenaline. It’s a critical hormone in human evolution, and it saved many of our ancestors from becoming a predator’s entree. They call it the fight-or-flight hormone. But to me it’s more like smart-or-stupid juice. I’ve seen people use it to save their ass from a really shitty scenario while others get so jacked up on it they rush headlong into an impossible situation. Just like you can train your body to run a certain distance or to ignore food cravings after 7pm, I happen to believe your mind can be trained to govern its application of adrenaline. There are more than a handful of people I come across who get addicted to the high, but they have no discipline in containing it. They’re junkies.
And they’re usually easy kills. When he was leaning over my bunk with his Buck hunting knife and boiled-egg breath, Brandt’s adrenal system likely had him as juiced as Barry Bonds. It takes forever to leach out of the system, which is why on the deck, when he lunged at me, I could calmly pierce his medulla and hoist him into the sea.
Anyway, whatever the mental firing discipline that transfers with me into each new body, it somehow includes my ability to sip this hormone rather than gulp. That keeps me in control while still prepping my muscles and cardiovascular system for action. I’m not claiming to be better at adrenaline than you, but . . . okay, yeah, I’m better. That’s why I’m a paid killer and you’re very good at accounting or darts, which I’ve never been able to master.
I needed complete control now as Parnell escorted me up to the nerve center of Vita Solis.
As for who she was introducing me to, it had to be Lucas. No way Gillian would lower herself to make small-talk with the hired help. I don’t recall her uttering even a syllable to the staff during dinner at her house; I think she’d gestured once or twice. But Lucas was a hyped-up puppy, constantly on the lookout for a new leg to hump.
Obviously I wanted to mingle with the sibs with the braided bloodline, but mostly I wanted eyes on the command center.
That didn’t happen.
I was ushered into a sort of lounge, minus the bar, since the twins didn’t drink. There were couches, puffy chairs, coffee tables with stuffy coffee table books, and magnificent floor-to-ceiling windows providing an eye-popping view of the Caribbean. I glanced at the top of the windows and found what I expected: a retractable shutter system of thick metal. That would allow the main building to be sealed off from devastating tropical storms, as well as from a conventional attack. I doubted the servants’ buildings were as thoughtfully defended.
As we waited like dutiful peasants I stood at one of the windows and studied the turquoise water. For the moment this idyllic locale seemed wasted; no one’s attention was on the beach. The LoGo whip had them scurrying to get everything battened down, while somewhere just over the horizon Fife and a Special Ops team waited for the go-ahead to crash the party. My hope was to verify everything and get a signal out well in advance of the drone attacks. If that became problematic and I couldn’t get the team here in time, it would be up to me to keep Uncle Sam’s lights on.
Parnell eased alongside me, hands on hips, following my gaze out to sea. “They say somewhere not too far north of here are ships from a Spanish convoy that went down in a storm. Late 1700s, I think.”
“Full of treasure, no doubt,” I said, feigning disinterest. The reality was I loved stories like that.
“Maybe. Lots of disagreements over whether they were inbound or outbound.”
I thought about that. “Outbound meant they were full of gold and silver, right?”
She nodded. “Inbound they would’ve carried things from home, like olive oil or wine.”
Parnell turned to look up at me. “Not officially.”
Before I could ask for clarification there was a bustle at the doorway and Lucas breezed in, accompanied by a familiar face. Richter moved deliberately, which meant he wasn’t fully healed from the round I’d put into him. But he was here. The dude played hurt, which I appreciated. Of course, all the appreciation in the world wouldn’t stop me from putting one between his eyes, and it helped that now I didn’t have to hunt him down on the mainland. I liked my targets handy.
“Come on,” Parnell said, pulling at my arm.
We walked over and waited while Lucas talked and talked with someone, his trademark smile punctuating almost every pause. When it was our turn introductions were made and I discovered the person Lucas had been chatting up was a guy named Harning.
Harning. I turned the name over in my head until it registered: the man Kyra’s boyfriend had answered to at LoGo. They truly did have all the rotten eggs in one tropical basket.
Lucas spoke to Parnell warmly, but with a definite air of superiority. The benevolent boss who wants both respect and adoration.
“Ms. Parnell,” he said. “Welcome back. I take it you and LeMan got along this time?”
“He behaved himself. He’s a fast learner.”
Lucas smiled, but then grew serious. “I heard some buzz that there was drama on the high seas. You lost someone?”
Parnell glanced at me for a brief second, but I noticed that Richter picked up on it. She gave a brief version of my scene with Brandt — editing the narrative to skip over my determined march up the steps to confront my roommate while playing up Brandt’s aggression and my smooth self-defense. Throughout the story Richter sized me up, his face a blank mask. I mirrored his expression, so we looked like two of those ridiculous boxers at weigh-in, the ones who get up in each other’s grill and really try for ocular intimidation. So dumb.
“I thought Mr. Mayer could be helpful up here on Richter’s squad,” Parnell added.
Lucas put on a fake dazzled expression at my exploit. “That’s up to Mr. Richter.” He turned to his henchman. “Do you still need someone?”
“No,” Richter said, and for a moment I thought that was that. Then he added a postscript to placate his boss: “We’ll find something for him.” To me he said: “What’s your name again?”
“Mayer.”
“No, your first name.”
“Mirco.”
He seemed to roll that around, and I realized he was accessing an internal rolodex of killers. I waited patiently, listening while Lucas, who had zero interest in the hired muscle, fell into another conversation with Harning. After thinking about it, Richter said, “I’ll be back in an hour. Don’t get lost in the meantime.”
He nodded to Lucas Ormond, and with one more quick look at me he walked stiffly out of the room.
It was the look that bothered me. In essence he conveyed with his eyes that he didn’t trust me at all, and I certainly wasn’t going to kiss up to him.
Oh well. I may not have been granted total access, but I was further along than I had a right to expect. Quanta wasn’t paying for someone who had everything handed to them.
With Richter gone and Lucas occupied, I once again stood alone with Parnell. I turned to her and said, “What was all that about you and LeMan? You had some trouble?”
A slight smile creased her face. “Just once. He visited my room with ideas.”
“Oh. Like you visited mine.”
“That’s right. And we both came away empty-handed. But at least I left on my own.”
I grunted a laugh. “You threw LeMan out of your room? Well, I’m surprised he even made a move. Seems rather a sexless creature to me. Let me ask you something. After what happened last night, why the invitation upstairs?”
“I’m near the top of this organization, Mr. Mayer, because I can separate business from pleasure. Regardless of what happened in your room, I still judged you to be an asset. Am I wrong?”
“I guess you’ll find out.” I looked around. “So, no beer. Or, what did you say? Not officially? Where does one find an unofficial beer on this island?”
She retrieved the half-smile again. “In my room.” Then she walked away, joining a group of people who’d just entered. I sighed. Parnell, it seemed, was not conceding defeat. My mind turned that over a few times, searching for an angle I could use to my advantage. Nothing occurred to me, so I set it aside for the time being.
The room had filled up in the last few minutes, a collection of two dozen people who looked like they belonged at a stockholders meeting rather than at the headquarters of a terrorist operation. From the snippets of conversation I heard, few of them actually worked for LoGo, yet they all had a connection of sorts. I began to sense this wasn’t just a casual social gathering on the second floor. With two days to go — or even less than that if the operation took place before dawn on the 24th — perhaps we’d all be treated to a few words from the freaks.
And yet I couldn’t see this many people being privy to the plan. Loose lips, and all that. So if they didn’t know what was coming, what story had they been told? Why were they all here? It couldn’t be as simple as a Christmas holiday.
Servants appeared with trays of beverages and hors d’oeuvres. I passed on the fishy-cracker combo but gladly took a glass of what looked like champagne. It turned out to be a tropical fruit juice. My first reaction was a grimace, but only because of the expectation. After another sip I had to admit it was quite good, and on the third try I decided it would make a great mixer with vodka.
From the corner of my eye I saw more movement at the door, and in walked Gillian Ormond. She kept her gaze on a small tablet she carried, but I could tell that was purely to protect her from conversation. She joined her brother, shared a quick, whispered exchange, and then there was a call for quiet in the room. People formed a half-circle around the twins and waited.
Naturally, it was Lucas who spoke. “Thank you very much for joining us on Vita Solis. I know my father always had a grand vision of the potential of this island. It breaks our hearts that he wasn’t able to see that vision through himself.”
At this the crowd shifted uncomfortably, and there were murmurs of sympathy.
“Gillian and I have worked hard to do two things to honor our father. One is to develop Vita Solis in a way that would make him proud. The island is 100 percent energy independent, with not one ounce of fossil fuels on the premises.” There was light applause. “But that only serves a larger purpose for LoGo. This island represents what we think is the future of the entire world. Everything, every home, every business, every form of transportation, all powered by the sun, the wind, the ocean, and the core of the planet itself.” No applause this time, but polite mumblings of assent.
“Your companies have been tremendous partners with LoGo for several years, and I’m not telling you anything you didn’t already know. But we hope you’ll develop an even greater appreciation for the strength of our global plan. We’re glad you’re here. We’ll talk more in the next few days. In the meantime, enjoy yourselves. Soak up the sun, relax, and let us know if there’s anything we can do to make your stay more comfortable.”
Of course. Suddenly it made complete sense. LoGo wasn’t just planning to wipe out various power grids of the strongest nation on Earth. They were using it as a sales demonstration, setting themselves up to dominate all forms of energy around the entire planet. These 20 to 30 people were no doubt in charge of the peripheral businesses that would help LoGo spread its domination once traditional fuels and energy systems were questioned in the wake of a national emergency. Never mind that the damage wasn’t in the source of the energy, but rather the distribution systems; LoGo would swoop in, with the help of these suppliers.
The twins would be gone, hiding behind the extradition restrictions on foreign soil, no doubt a
country that held no great love for the United States. Sure, the U.S. could invade, but by that point it would be for retribution purposes only, not defensive.
Maybe I was getting way ahead of myself. This was all speculation, and there was no direct confirmation of the diabolical plot — I still had no concrete proof. But in my opinion it should be enough to move against the island. At the very least, if I didn’t summon Fife and the Special Ops team, I could relay this news to Quanta. Someone far above my pay grade could make the final call.
The cocktail-party-without-cocktails resumed, with a buzz of chatter now filling the room. I used the opportunity to walk over to the window and, glancing around to make sure I was unobserved, removed my phone. It showed no signal, which wasn’t unusual. But Q2’s technology involved a satellite linkup, and that would work anywhere in the world.
Except it wasn’t working now.
I set down my fruity drink and found a door opening onto a small patio. Once outside I tried again. There was no signal at all. Nothing worked.
“Trying to call your wife?” I heard. Parnell came up behind me and leaned against the patio railing.
“Ordering a pizza,” I said. “Finger foods don’t do it for me.”
“Oh, I’m sure the kitchen staff can arrange something similar to a pizza,” she said. “But you can put the phone away, the one you told us you didn’t have. It won’t work here.”
“No?”
She shook her head. “No. Part of the island’s defense is a complete digital shield. Nothing in or out.” She walked back toward the door. “Might as well come in and enjoy the party, Mr. Mayer. Or whoever you are.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
The first time I met Quanta she fed me a spicy noodle dish and sake. I don’t mind telling you my initial impression of the new boss was enthusiastically supportive.