Kill on Command (18 page)

VI
I

So long Morgantown

Sunday

It was around 9 A.M. and Sandy and Sean decided it was the right time to head out.  Before leaving the Mountainlair, Sean pulled on the backpack and stopped back at Dunkin Donuts to get refills on their coffees and a dozen donuts.  Glazed mostly.  Sandy stood with the duffel on her shoulder and watched him, thinking that if his metabolism ever slows, he’s going to get really fat.  He walked towards her holding the coffees and the snack.  They left the student union and got into the silver pick up parked in the adjacent garage.

“I’ll drive,” Sean said.

“Fine by me. Get us to I-79 and head south, with no detours this time.” 

Sean started the truck, left the garage from the rear entrance and pulled onto North High Street, slightly up the hill from one of the older dorms on campus, Boreman South.  Sean nodded as they passed the dorm. 

“Yeah, yeah, I know.  You and Brian lived there,” she said.  They proceeded past the Chi Omega house and came to the light at Willey Street.  Sean looked around.  He really loved Morgantown and wished his visit were under different circumstances.  The light changed and they moved down High Street passing the Dairy Queen and the Boston Beanery.  Turning right on Walnut Street, then left onto Don Knotts Boulevard which took them out of town and up towards a hook-up with I-79.  Sean accelerated to 70 MPH and began fiddling with the radio. 

A steady rain was falling.

“This has XM.  Can you get something on the radio?” he asked Sandy.  She was slightly irritated.  He was taking everything so lightly.

“No.”

“Come on, are we going to ride in silence?  Do you want to talk?  I can tell you more about Pittsburgh and then later, more about Morgantown.”

“I’ll find something on the radio,” she said, leaning forward and working the tuner of the satellite radio.

“Try XM 34,” Sean said, pointing at the display. Sandy found the station, sat back in her seat and sipped the hot coffee.  With the rain coming down outside, the hot coffee and Sean running his mouth inside, the windows started to fog.  Sean flipped on the defroster and the windows cleared. 

“Sandy, why do I know how to speak at least two foreign languages? Oh, and lets not forget that I can fly a helicopter,” he asked with a little concern in his voice.

Sandy not really knowing when to begin finally decided to give him the headlines.

“We needed disposable killers that could remove people who posed a direct threat to the United States,” she replied with an almost clinical tone.

“Who is ‘we’?”

“A man named Robert Waters.  He’s CIA.”

“Never heard of him.”

“And you wouldn’t have.  He is running programs that don’t make CNN.  He sent people like you out to assassinate targets that are on a list he generated.”

“What?  That’s nuts.  I have never killed anyone.”

“You have.”

“Not possible.”

“You have eliminated nine targets on a list of nineteen names, plus another sixteen people that were considered collateral damage.  All of your travel was based around intelligence we received surrounding the targets on the list.  Singapore, Berlin, London.  All of those stops were where you were sent on missions.”

“No! No! No!  Not possible.  I don’t remember any of it,” he argued, visibly shaken.  Sandy began to wonder if they should pull over.

“I’m sorry Sean.”

“Don’t give me this sorry shit!  You’re one of the people who did this.”

Sandy was quiet.  She was unsure if she should explain her role.  She definitely didn’t want to tell him that she was there to kill him if anything went wrong.  It was kinda hard to find the right time to talk about something like that.

They rode in silence for several minutes.

“I don’t know how to kill anyone,” he insisted, biting his lower lip and white knuckling the steering wheel.

“We gave you the knowledge.” 

“What? Gave it to me?  How?  When?”

“I am not 100% on the science.”

“Come on!  Don’t give me that crap!”

“It has something to do with hypnosis.  During your first week of training in Boston, the doctor running the program came in to speak with you one day at the hotel.  All of the cameras went out for nearly an hour.  I have no idea what he did or how he did it, but it worked.  The other procedure was done when you were in the hospital for dehydration.   The reality is you were drugged and passed out in your room and taken to a lab.  No dehydration.  There was nothing wrong with you.”

“Drugged me?  When?”

“You ordered room service and they slipped something into the food.  They carted you off to the lab that was run by a doctor named Seamus McFarland.  He’s the brains of the operation.  He implanted something in select sections of your brain.  Skills.  Things you otherwise would not have.  Skills you needed to carry out the missions they planned for you.”

“I don’t like this.  You said you cared about me, and you let this happen?”

Sandy reached across and put her hand on his leg.

“Sean, this was at the beginning.  I didn’t know you . . . .”

“How can you know me?”

“I was with you everyday.  I was right by your side.”

“How come I didn’t see you?” 

“I am really good,” Sandy replied.  She didn’t want to bring up their encounter in Berlin.  She was not sure he would remember it.  She had noticed that his mind was blank on the fringes of each assignment.  The memories from several minutes before and after he was activated seemed to be lost.

“But, I didn’t know you were there everyday.  That kind of makes you a stalker.”  His tone of voice had changed.

“Don’t say that.  Earlier you said you wouldn’t mind me stalking you,” she said, trying to smile.

“That was before I learned I was some sort of killer guinea pig,” he paused.  “You said I was disposable.  What do you mean disposable?”

“You were not supposed to survive one mission.  Bodyguards would kill you or you would be mortally wounded executing the mission.  The people running the program wanted these people dead, but did not want the CIA, or Special Ops troops involved.  Some of the targets were members of supposedly friendly governments.  If random people committed a random act of violence, it would be hard to implicate us.”

“So, I obviously survived.”

“Yes.  You surprised all of us.  During the evaluation process, it was determined that you could handle two advanced implants. They drilled into your skull with a special piece of equipment and pierced two specific areas of your brain with organic implants that would leave little or no trace once they were inside your head.  The implants supposedly dissolve, but the muscle memory, combat and language skills remain. The implants contained skills that would help you execute more and more complex and dangerous assignments.  The others were only given a simple skill like advanced shooting or hand-to-hand combat.”

She took a breath.  “McFarland did not think most of the candidates could handle more,” she said, slightly above a whisper.

Sean grimaced.

“Well, that explains the headaches,” he said.

“And the OCD.”

“I don’t have OCD!”  Sean snapped.

“You do push-ups until you pass out.  You run until your feet bleed.  Your OCD manifests itself through an unconscious need to constantly be doing something.”

“Hmmmm.  Could be worse, I guess.”

“You are lucky.”  Sandy thought back to some of the stories she had heard.  Awful things.  Men who scratched themselves to death.  Others committed suicide.  When things went wrong, they just disappeared. She decided to hold off on telling him about the injections McFarland had given him to increase reaction time.  It was too much too soon. His body seemed to have metabolized it, but the long-term effects were unknown.

“I don’t remember any of this.  I thought I was working for an international consumer research company as a consultant.  I guess I should not put this on my resume,” he said, his voice drifting off.

“You will start to remember,” she said.

“How did it work?”

“They used trigger words or phrases to activate you.  By the way, your reports were quite good, I read them all.”

“Well, thank you.  What words?” he asked and added a fake smile.

“I don’t know.  I only know bits and pieces.  I think that when you were smashed in the head by that douche bag at the lacrosse game, it broke the trigger.  They can’t tell you what to do anymore, and the skills now are live. Ergo, the French and Italian, which I love by the way,” she explained, smiling at him.

“Please don’t use the word ‘ergo,’ I hate that word.”  Pausing a moment, staring at the road he gathered himself and continued, “Our government did this to me?  Isn’t that a violation of my rights?”

“This is an unauthorized action by a rogue segment of a government agency.  Only a handful of people know this happened.  By the way, they don’t care about your rights, or mine for that matter.”

“Happened?  It’s over?”

‘Yes.  You and another man are the only ones left.”

“Who is that?  He’s got to be pissed.”

“They called him Number One.  His real name is Oscar Pasco.  From what I know he is a very nasty individual.”

“Number One?  I’m not Number One?”

“You are Number Two.”

“How do I get to be Number One?”

“Sean, it is not a contest.  Numbers were assigned at the beginning of the program, based on a series of test scores.  Pasco has a genius level I.Q.  However, he is a seriously flawed man. They saw his flaws as a way to manipulate him.”

“Flawed?”  Sean asked.

“Seriously flawed. We don’t want to run into him. He is extremely dangerous.”

Sean was silent.  It was a lot to absorb. 

“I assume they are going to kill you too?” he asked, looking across at her.

“They are going to try.”

They didn’t speak for a couple of miles.

“How do you know you are pregnant?” he asked, breaking the silence, staring straight ahead at the road.  This scared the shit out of him.

“I took a test.”

Sean tried to get back to being himself, but it was getting more and more difficult.  He paused, smiled and said,

“OK, but I am cutting you off from all sex for the next several minutes.  I am mad at you.”

“That’s just plain spiteful,” she said, playfully.

Sean kept driving.  He still couldn’t make sense of it.  He did know he didn’t want anyone to hurt her.  He also knew she could take care of herself.  He was mad.  Mad at himself for getting into this mess.  “Did I really kill all of those people?  This is crazy!  There’s no way this is happening,” he thought.  He didn’t want to believe it, but then again, here he was flying down I-79 in a pick-up with some sort of hot blonde 007. 

They were making good time and rode listening to the stereo for nearly fifty miles without speaking. 

Finally, Sandy looked over at Sean.

“Why are you involved in this in the first place?  How did they recruit you?” she asked.  Obviously, it had been a big question on her mind since she first met him.