Read Codename: Omega (feat. The Apiary Society) Online
Authors: Bernard Schaffer
Sean Price slammed the heel of his palm up into the hilt of the knife, sending it into Kramer’s brain stem. He stepped back and watched him fall to the floor, waiting for the blood to stop spurting so he could retrieve his knife.
***
Jonas Salk rose from the floor and watched his rescuer pick up a clean lab coat and wipe the blood from his knife on it. “What in God’s name is going on? Who the hell are you?”
“Emily Watson sent me.”
“Emily?” Salk said, “Is she wrapped up in this? Please tell me that she’s all right.”
“They’ve got her. She wanted me to make sure your vaccine is safe. From what I’ve seen, we’re going to have a hell of a time pulling that off.”
Dr. Salk inspected his bleeding, purple toe and said, “God, this hurts.”
Price opened the office cabinets and began removing items until he found a roll of tape. He pulled out a length of it and told the Doctor to be still. Price bound the injured toe to the one next to it and said, “That should do until we can get you some treatment. Let’s try to get your shoe on.”
“If you can get me out of the building, I can get us to a safe place. After that, it will be too late for them to stop me.”
“There’s a field team of CIA operatives crawling all over this place, looking for your vaccine, Dr. Salk. I wouldn’t be so sure that anywhere is safe right now. All I’m concerned about it getting you out of here.” A muffled voice barked orders down the hall, and Price said, "Regis is coming back. I need you to walk. Can you do that?"
Salk took two steps forward, favoring his injured foot. "I can make it. What do we do?"
"Get over by the door, but off to the side. Try to get behind something sturdy. Don't come out until I tell you to." Price removed the Beretta from the holster inside of his shirt. He waved for Salk to get down.
“Please, no more violence!” Salk said. “I do not want anyone else to be hurt.”
Price pushed him away, telling him, “Get behind those lab coats in your closet.” Chuck Regis’ dark silhouette appeared in the door’s glass. Price hurried to the door and pressed his back flat against the wall, keeping his gun straight out with his finger wrapped around the trigger.
Regis turned the handle and stopped just as he was about to walk in. "Hang on,” he called down the hall. “I’ll be there in a second. I’ve got to see if the Doc saw the light yet.”
The door opened and Regis walked in, stopping at the sight of Victor Kramer’s twitching, bloody form. Price put the barrel of the Beretta against the side Regis’ neck. Regis put his hands on his hips and chuckled lightly, “You’re good, Price. I’ll give you that. Snuck right in here under our noses.”
Price removed Regis’s gun and threw it across the room. He started to squeeze the Beretta’s trigger, ever so slightly, just enough to eliminate the slack. Soon, the hammer would drop and a .25 caliber bullet would spiral into the back of Regis’s skull. “Thinking about shooting me, Sean? You really gonna kill a Federal Agent of the United States of America? There won’t be a backwater mud hole on God’s Green Earth deep enough for you to hide in. Listen to me, pal. Let’s talk sense, okay?” Regis turned around with his hands raised, staring directly into the mouth of the Beretta’s barrel.
“This isn’t even your problem, see. It’s a bunch of nobodies that don’t mean squat in the grand scheme of things. As far as I’m concerned, as far as the
entire
US government is concerned, you took out several members of the Giancana crime family who were threatening the life of Jonas Salk. That makes you a goddamn hero. We’ll get things straightened out with your boss, send you home with more medals than you can fit in one suitcase. Sounds good, right?” Regis said. Price didn’t move and didn’t lower the gun.
“Look, forget the damn experiment. It’s off. Done. Okay? Dr. Salk can give those kids all the polio-juice he wants, and we’ll go test it on a few more inmates. Rapists and murders. How does that sound?”
“Let him go, Mr. Price,” Dr. Salk said, stepping between the rack of lab coats that Price had thrown in front of the cubby hole. “He said he wouldn’t hurt the children.”
Price glanced at Salk for just a split second to tell him to get back, but Regis moved quicker than he could pull the trigger. Regis sent a heavy fist against Price’s temple, splitting his eyebrow wide open. He yanked the Beretta out of Price’s hands and slammed him in the knee with a vicious, sweeping kick.
Price crumpled to the ground and Regis lifted his foot high in the air over his head and stomped.
***
Someone was speaking.
Price’s eyes were crusted with dried blood and nearly glued shut. He forced them to open and instantly reeled back at the smiling face of Chuck Regis kneeling directly in front of him. His hands and feet were duct taped to a sturdy wooden chair. There was a piece of elastic tape stretched across his mouth. Price looked around and realized he was inside the laboratory’s warehouse, surrounded by shipping containers. There were a dozen agents in biohazard suits, carrying boxes that were marked
Operation Paperclip
.
Regis snapped his fingers in front of Price’s face several times and said, “You back now? Good. I want to make sure you can appreciate what’s about to happen here. The historical nature of it all. You a fan of history, Sean?” An agent walked by carrying a box stamped
biohazard
. Regis waved to him in greeting. “Anybody who knows history knows that the people in power aren’t really the ones in power. They’re just the faces we put on the money. It’s the behind the scenes people who really make things happen. Take this outfit. The CIA is the organization, with bosses and budgets and buildings, but really, it’s nothing. In every agency, every government around the world, it’s like that. Even your Majesty’s little Secret Service. You’ve got the worker bees buzzing around running errands like you, and you’ve got the select few who are doing the real work like me. We’re the ones making the hard decisions. Doing what is necessary.”
“See, we’re under attack over here,” Regis said. “The queers, the negros, the women’s libbers, the immigrants, the goombahs, the Commies, you name it. And that’s just from within. But it won’t just stay here, Sean. It will spread. Like a virus.”
Price mumbled through the duct tape. Regis grabbed an end of the tape and ripped it off of Price’s lips. Price tasted blood instantly. “I said, where is Jonas?”
“Right now he’s looking at photographs taken by some very special people. I’m hoping when he sees the looks on the faces of his closest loved ones he realizes it’s time to cooperate.”
Price spit into Regis’s face.
Regis slapped Price across the mouth, busting open his lower lip. Price sucked some of the blood into his mouth and spat that at Regis as well.
Regis said as he pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket and mopped his face. “I tried talking sense to you, you dumb son of a bitch. You aren’t leaving me any other option.”
He pulled a switchblade out of his pocket and flicked it open with the press of a button. He bent over and started to cut through the sleeve of Price’s shirt, then tore the fabric the rest of the way. He found a length of rubber tubing and tied it around Price’s bicep.
“Since you want to be part of this thing so badly, I’m going to give you the honor of being the official first Polio Pioneer.” Regis tapped the inside of Price’s forearm until a thick blue vein rose, then he pulled a syringe filled with red cloudy fluid from his pocket and popped the cap off. Fluid dripped out of the needle’s tip and leaked down the length of its spine. “There’s enough LSD, mescaline, and scopolamine in this needle to scramble your eggs forever, you limey bastard.”
Regis put the needle against the inside of Price’s forearm and slid it into one of his veins. He put his thumb against the butt end of the plunger and paused, looking up with a slight smile. “Don’t worry, Sean. I’ll come visit you in the hospital. I’ll tell them when your diaper is full, make sure they change your bib, all that. You know, that reminds me. I never did meet Jack Ivor. Just wanted to clear that up before I send you to never-never land. I did speak to him once. He called my office to tell us he was going to investigate that warehouse you two were working on. He said he’d key in within the hour if all went well.” Regis’ smile turned sinister, “How did you think those folks knew to get their shark ready?”
Price thrashed against his bindings, trying to rip Regis’s throat out with his teeth. Regis laughed, trying to hold the needle straight. “Goodbye, Sean.”
“Agent Regis!” a voice boomed from the warehouse door. Paul Grimley came storming through the door with a revolver aimed at both Regis and Price. A team of uniformed federal police filed into the room behind him.
“Chief?” Regis said. “What the hell are you doing?”
“Victoria Regina,” Grimley said. He squeezed the trigger and Regis’ head snapped backwards, bursting apart like an overripe melon. The syringe, still full, dangled from Price’s skin.
***
“Are you sure you want to go in there?” Emily said.
Price looked into the hospital room but could only see the edge of the gurney. He took a deep breath and nodded.
“He isn’t awake. He probably won’t even know you are there.”
Price tapped her hand and said, “I’ll know.” He removed his hat and went into the room. Jack Ivor was wrapped head to toe in bandages. The still complete half of his face was left revealed, and his eyes were closed peacefully. “Hello, Jack,” Price said. He sat down on the visiting chair, twirling his hat in his hands. “I was in a tight spot not too long ago. What’s funny is that all I kept thinking was that the one thing I would regret was not chartering a boat for us to take fishing. To get drunk and forget about all this madness. Men like us aren’t suited for friends and family, Jack. It doesn’t fit well with the world we are forced to live in. But I saw myself trying to convince you that now you have a chance to put it all behind you. To find a good woman and raise hundreds of little happy Texans. That’s a good life, Jack, whether you’ve got two arms or just one. When you get better, I’ll tell you all about how your friend Paul Grimley called my boss and set him straight. He managed to save my job and even earn me a little time off.” Price stood up and put his hat on, “With pay.”
***
Emily slid her hand through his as they drove and said, “So where are we going now?”
Price held up a pair of first-class tickets to Santa Lucia. “Courtesy of the United States government. I knew Jonas was a beekeeper, but Grimley as well?”
Emily rolled down the car window to let the wind play in her hair. “He was just waiting for the right chance to root out Regis. MKULTRA will continue, but they’ll have to play a little more carefully now. And two million children will receive the proper vaccine. That’s a good day’s work, I should say.” She looked down at the tickets and frowned at the names printed on them. “Mr. and Mrs. Morningwood?” she said. “What kind of name is that?”
Price smiled as he drove and said, “You’ll find out soon enough, my dear. Soon enough.”
As a teenager, Bernard Schaffer starred in Nickelodeon’s “Don’t Just Sit There,” musical productions, television commercials, and a skit on Saturday Night Live. He left acting to pursue a career in law enforcement. Since 2000, Schaffer has worked as a patrolman, detective, and narcotics officer in the suburbs of Philadelphia.
In 2012, he released a series of books titled SUPERBIA about a dysfunctional police department. As a result, he was stripped of his detective rank.
Schaffer is the founder of the Kindle All-Stars. The project’s first release was an anthology titled RESISTANCE FRONT that starred Harlan Ellison and Alan Dean Foster. All profits from that book are being donated to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.
Connect with Bernard Schaffer Online
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The following books are available from Bernard Schaffer via Amazon for your Kindle (paperback also where indicated) and free for members of Amazon Prime.
$2.99 Kindle, $9.99 paperback, Free on Amazon Prime
(Also available in a Collected Edition featuring Book 1 and 2)
"Ed McBain for the 21st Century."
Matt Posner, author of School of the Ages
"Schaffer is the very best independent author I have ever read...with Superbia, Schaffer has taken his game to an entirely new level."
David Hulegaard, author of Noble
“Step to the side, Joseph Wambaugh."
5-Star Customer Review
"Schaffer's writing is top notch. He is funny, dark and tortured throughout. I was laughing at one page and then crying the next."
The Book Nook Club
A deadly shooting leaves police officer Frank O'Ryan with a shattered knee and a growing addiction to Percocet. Upon his return to duty, he is assigned to assist the most despised person in his police department, Detective Vic Ajax.
Together, the two officers will encounter everything from drug stashes hidden inside dirty baby diapers to geriatric child molesters. They will journey into a world of madness, crushing isolation, and unsung heroism from which so few return.