“Before coffee, you boys need to see the fastest and prettiest bitch on the seas.”
Her uncle took them down to show off his boat. He seemed thrilled to be with high-end soldiers and elated to help.
Then they went inside for coffee. Troy gave everyone coffee and offered whatever food he had but really wanted to show them the gear he had if they were interested.
He had guns as well in a safe under the rug in his closet. The men already had arms, but they were very happy to have the latest in lifejackets, survival knives, and superbars with a longer lifespan than Twinkies.
Troy also had night goggles. And he gave Mora a waterproof sea bag for his medical supply, and Rainee a nifty side holster for her 9mm Glock, and two clips as well.
She could see that her guys were thrilled with her uncle. He was a commando team’s dream supplier. She got looks from all of them, looks that said
you have to be kidding.
Troy said, “If things don’t work out, the Galapagos Islands are really nice this time of year.” He got a big chuckle.
Keegan than programmed everyone’s earpieces with one of his “devices.” Man was a walking cloud of “devices,” inside and out.
But the fun stopped when Metzler got a call. It was from the van owner, the one they called Walrus, and the news wasn’t good.
“Let’s get out of here,” Metzler said. “They raided the camp. Men are being interrogated. It’s a matter of time before they find out we took the van. Then they’ll collect every form of aerial surveillance available to find out where it went.”
Troy said, “They can really do that? Track one goddamn vehicle?”
Keegan said, “It might take a few hours, but yes, if they have a connection that gives them access to the right channels of NSA and drone tracking by the major contractor companies, they can.”
“Those men being interrogated know where you were going?” Troy asked.
“No. But they’re looking for Doctor Hall and it’ll just be putting two and two together.”
“Then we need to get moving,” Troy said. “Not much use in me being around when they show up. Besides, you can’t handle my boat the way I can. I’ll get you where you need to go. I’ll drop you off, then go visit a friend in Peru for a year or so.”
He got no argument.
He brought out a backpack, then went to a heavy-looking coffee table, turned it over, and opened the bottom. He pulled out stacks of money that he stuffed in his backpack.
While he was doing that, she got more smiles from her comrades. She shrugged.
Keegan said, “This is going to be a long, hard grind. Especially once we get on shore. Everybody needs to be in a state of maximum alertness.”
He wanted everyone to take pills. She hated getting into that. She knew they would be way past the old generation of modafinils that had been the drug of choice for combat, pilots, and astronauts to keep them awake and alert but had been good for only about 40 hours or so at normal doses. These new pills were ten times more powerful and long lasting and only available to certain “dark” units.
Unlike the older “go” pills, the new ones not only could keep you running for days but they could do so without cognitive decline. Withdrawal was, of course, always a big problem.
She accepted. Once started on any form of powerful drugs, she’d have to stay on it for a long time, backing off very slowly. These would throw her into ketosis as they pushed her into a mental state of metabolic dominance as they were infused with other, powerful, long-lasting, meth-like enhancers.
It wasn’t long before she sensed the effects. Unlike amphetamines, these didn’t cause any sort of immediate noticeable high, just a general sense of growing alertness.
Keegan and Troy had worked out where in Baja would be the best insertion point for where they had to go on one of Troy’s coastal maps. They seemed to be bonding well, talking and laughing. An old warrior and a new one going off to war.
40
While her uncle was gassing up his speedboat,
The Sea Gnat
, Rainee and Keegan were coming down to the dock with their packs when Metzler came up to meet them. He looked excited.
“Your uncle has trained hawks in a cage onboard. They hunt pigeons that the Coast Guard uses like little living drones, flying around with minicams. Man’s got his thing down to an art. And he’s gung-ho and ready to go.”
Rainee nodded. He uncle was already a hero to these guys, perfect for the mission.
They got on board, the engines kicked into a forward thrust, and they headed out to sea as the sun came up full behind them.
Rainee watched her uncle joking with Mora and Duran. He looked positively elated. He loves this, she thought. They all do.
As they left land behind Rainee, sitting in the back, watching her uncle pilot his boat out to sea with these commandos, she thought about Raab and what a nice surprise it would be if they could get to him.
Metzler came back, settled beside her, and said, “If we pull this off—get in and get Raab and the records—we need your people to come through.”
“We get something strong, my main contact will know what to do with it.”
“Who is he?”
“His name is Jason Styles. He worked with me in the enhancement project. He’s a psy-warrior and a trainer at the base in Coronado. He’ll handle anything we can get.”
“You seem sure of him.”
“I am. He’s also the operative who was involved in shutting the project down after Raab committed violations. He’s a very big gun in special-ops intel. He’ll know who we can rely on, who can be contacted at higher levels if we bring back something of value.”
Metzler started to get up to go forward, but she grabbed his arm and sat him back down. They were flying over the waves, heading deep out to sea. She said, “Is Keegan on board?”
“What do you mean?”
Rainee shrugged, shook her head. “I don’t know. He’s getting us down to the Facility. Maybe it’s just a brilliant tactic, given he had no good alternatives, but he didn’t come up with it until I mentioned my uncle had a boat near the Baja border.”
Metzler shook his head. “I don’t buy it. I think you’ve had a big influence on him. I think he’s come over.”
“I was supposed to have that influence on you.”
Metzler nodded. “You win some, you lose some. Hopefully you’re wrong about Keegan.”
He reached back as he got up and gave her a little tap on the shoulder, then went up to the men with her uncle at the helm of the speedboat.
Rainee then settled back as the boat headed out to sea. She thought of Lester Raab, of the madness of the world, and felt a powerful sense of determination.
Then she sent an encrypted text to Jason Styles, a man who had connections to the activities of the “dark” world about as deep as anyone she knew. They had shared extensive communication before and during the hearings and got into an affair for a time. They’d gone their separate ways, Jason overseas, she into rebuilding her career after its near destruction.
She’d seen him on several occasions, but only in professional situations. He’d gotten himself a beautiful young wife and she’d had two subsequent trysts that were never headed anywhere.
41
For Doctor Lester Raab, an angry morning came accompanied by a harsh hangover, nasty headache, and a gastrointestinal track that had suffered from seriously hot Mexican food.
But it also came with the knowledge that he’d thrown a fantastic dinner for his guests that night before they flew back to the States.
For the party/celebration, Raab had brought in one of the top chefs and his staff from Tijuana along with a fine Mariachi band. He also had the governor of Baja there, a man who was their pick to become the next Mexican president, and who would, when the time was right, assist in the greatest merger since the Louisiana Purchase. And that would be just the beginning of what they saw as the new North America.
These secret “merger” talks had been going on for over a year. With Mexico’s resources and labor, and America’s vast industrial and technical infrastructure, it was considered a no-brainer by all the men present. It had to be. They joked about bringing Canada on board later as well, thus creating the empire needed to deal with the global threats Islam, Russia, and China.
They joked about it, but at the same time they had a seriousness lurking behind the joking.
Mexico had already become a virtual colony of the US in the past year. And it was the training ground for everything that was going to happen in the US.
He guaranteed his guest that the “problem” that kept him at the Facility would be resolved very soon.
Now, in the harsh steely morning, needing help from an Alka-Seltzer, he swung out of bed and grabbed a bottle of water, pouring it in a cup with two tablets.
Raab thought of General Snyder’s fine toast to him at dinner for creating the tip of the spear. “Survival and dominance throughout history are always a function of who has the superior technology and the leadership to use it,” General Snyder had added. “An unplanned society is an unmanned society.”
Raab revered General Snyder. The man had an iron jaw, a steel fist, and the unstoppable resolve to save his country. He was the selected leader to handle the martial-law transition. As fierce and passionate as he was, he had a commanding calm. He would set the stage.
The past year was the most exhilarating in all of their lives. They had moved out of intention into position. They had a proven force. Their time to take control, to end the idiocy, had arrived.
And they were maybe only weeks away from implementing Operation Chaos, the beginning of the salvation and resurrection of America.
After they had left sometime around midnight, Raab drank a little too much, then, knowing his sleep would be disturbed, he took a sleep aid. Then, before crashing, he took a last look at the pictures he had of Rainee Hall, the love of his life, and the woman he needed now more than ever.
And the bitch was again defying him. He finally dismissed her in his sogged brain and went instead into one of his fantasies of his lectures to the nation and across the globe about the new world order.
Now, shocked by morning, miserable, groggy, he called Colonel Tessler, demanding good news. It wasn’t.
Colonel Tessler said, “They dumped Keegan’s tracker in the sewer and Blacksnake teams chased that around for hours. Now we’re conducting interrogations of vets in a camp south of the city by the river, where they were last known to be.”
Raab struggled to grasp the news. “They’ve escaped?”
“We know the vehicle they left in,” Tessler, this greatest of manhunters, said. “Keegan, Metzler, Doctor Hall, and two other soldiers. We’re tracking aerial surveillance over the whole of Southern California for any and all VW buses of that era leaving the L.A. area. It’ll take a little time, but we’ll know within a couple of hours.”
“They can’t escape,” Raab said. “That can’t happen.”
“We’ll have them soon enough,” Colonel Tessler assured him.
“Keep me informed,” Raab said, his mood crashing. If they were on the run, that could mean they would attempt to “go public” or get completely out of the country. This just couldn’t happen.
Raab felt a little sicker. He knew that Tessler was a superior operator, a man who’d brought down some of the most dangerous men on earth, but he wasn’t hunting some Jihadists, or tracking some Chink. This was different. Keegan and Metzler weren’t ordinary men. And they were with Rainee Hall. How insane was this?
No woman, not his two wives, or any subsequent females, engaged him in the way she did. She was brilliant, and that gave her a real sexiness no other woman had.
Rainee Hall was a genius in neuroscience but an idiot in politics. She didn’t grasp the realities of power and purpose. Or the necessity of what he was doing.
If he had her, he could bring her on board, make her see the reality, and get her to solve the problem with the chip she’d designed in the first place. She’d created the foundation that led to the error. It was her responsibility to solve it and get on board. She could become a hero to the movement, or a traitor. And right now, it looked like it might be the latter.
Raab, looking for stability, went for an early morning “correcting” vodka and orange juice. His staff had been allowed to sleep in, as they had stayed up late to clean up after the party.
Drink in hand, he wandered through the soon to be closed down Facility, where he’d spent the last three years and done some of his very best work. He intended to keep this place as a vacation retreat once he moved to Virginia.
42
They were obsessed with every boat, plane, or bird, the sky both protector and hider of potential trouble. It wasn’t until they were maybe thirty miles from the coast that they relaxed even a little. And still, to avoid coastal patrols, her uncle continued his run out to sea, then south and way past their eventual entry point. They were off the coast of Chile before he turned and headed north.
Far out from the coast, the water, agitated by El Niño, surged and fell, but in a tolerable, low rhythm.
They slowed and drifted for the rest of the afternoon. Her uncle took a nip now and then from a flask. Nobody else needed to. They were all wired up from the hyperalert pills Keegan had provided, so anything resembling rest or naps wasn’t in the equation.
Finally, as afternoon faded into twilight—a massive sun hanging and then disappearing in the distant clouds—twilight gave way to night. They turned north for an hour and then headed toward shore. The air was heavy and the tension heavier as they closed in on the coast.
“El Niño is restless,” Troy said. “She will be here in force soon enough, her skirts high.”
Troy had a sophisticated sonar system, a Seascape Doppler he’d built into the boat himself and was very proud of. And his pair of pigeon-hunting hawks.
The sea became choppier now, but to their favor, as a light evening fog cloaked them as they turned and headed directly east for Baja.
Troy informed them of the schedules of Mexican police boats, which, he assured them, were synonymous with the Tijuana cartel. “The cartel is obsessed with drones. Hell, they have more than the government. Wait, they are the government.”