After Germany, he went into rehab and then into the program on the East Coast. His records were sealed.
He was stunned at the situation. He had gone dark after the snatch. Now he cut off all communication. Not even the men in Utah could read him.
Seneca stared at the van. In the background of his mind, the violent traces of memories long hidden now flared like lightning strikes:
A body ripped apart, lying on a smoldering piece of metal, cooking, and he felt a hand moving over his, and he felt his own intestines and blood and he didn’t know how in the sun, in this walled backyard, he could see such things, and he wondered if he was seeing something real or having one of those “mistakes” inside his mind that they had disconnected. How real?
Seneca forced himself to settle. He stood perfectly still. He wanted to experience the difference between the memories she’d disturbed and the reality of the now.
Johnny Cash. He remembered. There was no escape. She had messed him up. How had she been able to do that?
The eyes. Yes, it was her, the one who saved him. About that, he no longer had doubt.
Everything was going wrong inside his mind. He reeled from the impact. His heart rate increased, his breathing became irregular.
John Keegan, operational code name Seneca, knew he was in a major crisis. It felt like all the wiring and circuitry of his brain, infused with so many enhancements, was out of control and he had to bring it back. He didn’t want to become like Metzler or some of the others who’d been terminated.
He didn’t know how long he stood there, but in time, he felt some calming, some relaxation of the stress. And the return of reality.
Okay, you’re back, he tried to tell himself. She’s the solution to our problem. Take her to go to L.A. and she can deal with Metzler.
That’s what this was about. Convince Metzler to return to the Facility, where she could solve the problem they were having. That was the mission.
Yes. Okay.
Who had the assets been talking to after the last argument? The control would send a team! Protocol.
These and other seemingly random thoughts raged in his overheated brain as he turned back to the house.
No, he told himself. You will be okay. Fulfill your mission.
I’m trying to save Metzler and the ones who are Level Z3 enhancement, he reminded himself. I’m in control. This is my operation.
Soldier, get your act together. Keep focused, he commanded himself. The fate of your country is your mission.
He approached the porch and hesitated, facing a fierce inner debate that threatened to overwhelm him.
There is no argument, he insisted. Go on with the mission. He had to get her to Metzler in L.A. to bring him in. He wouldn’t deal with anyone else but the woman who’d been his neurosurgeon and mentor.
Nothing has changed, he told himself.
We need to do this before they have to send in Blacksnake teams to take Metzler down. That would trigger a war that would destroy not just L.A. but might threaten the whole national operation.
Seneca gathered himself. He knew that some of the metabolically enhanced features of his brain had issues, but he felt he could control them.
13
Rainee stared nervously at the bodies of the dead assets.
This is not good, she thought. He’s screwed up big time and he probably is going to have no choice in his mind but to blame me, kill me, and then create some kind of cover story.
She had to get free and get out of there. Being a witness to the death of two men by an efficient killing machine took away any confidence she had at making a positive connection to this guy.
She struggled frantically to get to the bodies and search for a knife. One of them had to have a knife and then, hands free, she could handle a gun.
Her wrists behind her had no give. Her ankles were likewise locked with a very good zip tie.
She moved in wiggles, adjusted, then worked over the body of the first man, pushing against him and realigning herself. She needed to get her hands and legs free before even considering going after one of their guns. But the idea of having to kill her greatest save didn’t sit well with her.
I’m sorry for any disrespect, she told the dead man. C’mon, you bastard. You have to have a knife.
She rolled over him onto the next body. Worked her way between them and struggled to find a knife in pockets, belts, but it was hard to move her arms, push her hands inside pockets.
Then she found a knife in one of the dead man’s front pockets. But even touching it with the tip of her fingers, she knew it was a folding knife. Getting it out, getting it open would be no easy task.
Then, between two dead men, she stilled for a moment, listening. She felt a growing panic.
You can do this. Be calm, sweetpea, you’re a fucking soldier and a neurosurgeon. You live at the top of the can-do food chain.
She now thought she’d made a big mistake disturbing the dormant memories and emotions in this enhanced warfighter.
Her intent had been to get him to awaken to the past so she could communicate, but that had gone terribly wrong.
He represented the problem neuroscience and the military faced. This was no comic book future, no Hollywood fantasy of the future.
This was right now.
This was taking men who had been seriously damaged and using them as guinea pigs, building something they weren’t really ready to build and society wasn’t ready to deal with.
Rainee Hall believed absolutely at this moment that she would most likely soon be dead.
Finally, she worked the pocketknife to where she had her fingers on one hand holding it so she could pull the blade open with the other. But opening it and finding a way to cut the ties had, so far, cut only her hand.
Cool, calm, and collected. Get it together.
She swore bitterly to herself, fought off any panic, and struggled to get the blade locked somewhere so she could use it without having to hold it.
C’mon! C’mon, dammit!
Then she tried to get her feet buckled up behind her so she could grasp the knife with her heels, then run the zip ties on her wrists over the blade.
She finally managed to get the handle locked in her ankles and had enough leverage to get a little bit of cutting done.
But it was too late. The light creak of porch boards told her that the big cat was back.
I’m a dead woman, she thought.
And the bizarre reality was that she was going to be killed by a soldier she’d once saved.
He walked in and he didn’t look friendly. He saw her, the knife, what she’d tried to do.
14
Rainee, certain of imminent death, blurted out, “Your mission, soldier, doesn’t end because of this incident. You need to understand this. I’m not going to be killed by the man whose life I saved. That’s unacceptable. Unthinkable.”
That damn prosthetic eye fixed on her like a gun sight.
She squirmed away from the dead men, who were already emitting that death smell.
Then he glanced at the dead men, at the knife she’d left on the floor between them.
She said, attempting to stay in command voice, “You’re taking me to see one of my former patients that you say has a problem that I can help with. That is your mission. What happened here, with these men disobeying your orders, coming for me, forcing you to do what you had to do, doesn’t end the mission. It keeps the mission on track. I have to find out what is wrong with the soldier. That’s my job.”
He gave no response.
“C’mon, goddamnit, soldier, listen to me. You have to register this. You have to connect to me, to the mission, your mission.”
The tension pulled hard at the muscles in his face. He was struggling with what he’d done. And what he’d remembered. And what was now his next move.
Rainee said, “You know above all else that you can’t kill the person who saved your life. And you know you can’t quit on your mission to take me to the soldier, or soldiers, who are having problems with the Z-chips.”
He didn’t respond.
She pushed harder. “I pulled the bone fragments out of your damaged cerebrum. I kept the blood flowing. I kept the oxygen where it needed to be. I just hope whatever the cause you’re involved in, you won’t have any trouble with killing the person who saved your life.” She searched his face for some kind of emotional response, finding little. “I worked for days to do it. I worked with a fanaticism. I was determined. You fought to live, and I fought to keep you alive. Now we have something we have to do together.”
He nodded. “Yes, I know you. I know what you did for me. What you did for so many of us.”
“Then let’s do this together,” Rainee said, trying to be cool and calm.
He stared for a moment at the dead men, nodded to something in his mind, and then he pulled a straight-blade knife from his ankle holster.
Jesus! Rainee seized up. He came to her, cut her arms and then legs free of their restraints, and helped her feet.
“This is a mess,” he said. “You coming to L.A. with me to deal with the problem?”
He’s asking, not telling me?
“Yes,” she said, saying it with a note of absolutism, yet she still hadn’t taken much of a breath.
Now she did. As he stripped the men of their weapons, cell phones, and a key ring and grabbed his backpack, leaving the syringe and bottle on the floor, she realized she wasn’t kidding. He was the door she had to go through to find out what happened to those patients of hers.
“Hey,” she said as they left the back room, “I need the bathroom before we leave.”
He pointed down a narrow hall. He said, “Hurry, we’ll have company soon.” But he didn’t follow her.
Rainee quickly emptied her bladder, washed her hands, looked at herself in the mirror, then glanced at the half-open window.
Then she looked at the door lock, thinking she could lock the door, get out the window, run like hell to the street, and flag down whatever traffic was there. She could make the break that she’d been trying to make.
Did he allow this purposely? Did he want her to run?
Rainee Hall stared at the window and told herself to be reasonable, take what he had offered, just go, get the hell out of there.
Sixty seconds or so later, she found herself following her kidnapper out of the house into a walled-in backyard. It was like he never even considered that she would actually run. Or felt she should at least have the opportunity. But she favored the former. He knew she wasn’t going anywhere if there was a chance to find her missing soldiers. The ones she’s worked so hard with, and then they just vanished on her. Now she wondered if they went voluntarily or were kidnapped. And what, then, happened to them?
She knew her logic for going with this killing machine, her way of thinking, was not rational by any normal civilian standard of sanity. But in her world, it was the only right decision. You don’t lose your people and you don’t leave them behind. Simple as that. Neuroscientist, combat surgeon, lecturer, soldier.
He clicked to open the doors of the van as they approached across the desiccated, grassless lawn.
The sun told her they were already heading into late morning. It surprised her that she’d been in that house for so long.
As they approached the van he said, “Doctor Raab has great admiration for you, for your work.”
A very odd thing to say, she thought. Like it was present tense, when in fact Lester Raab had been dead for years.
She replied, “Well, we had our disagreements for sure. When he died, I wasn’t sure if that was a loss or gain for civilization. I remember hearing about the boating accident and I didn’t really react. I didn’t know how to react.”
“He’s not dead,” her kidnapper said.
What the hell was this? “Doctor Raab, the neurosurgeon?”
“Yes. He’s very much alive.” Johnny Cash opened the driver’s side door. “All the men, the TBIs who disappeared, were taken into the program at the Facility run by Doctor Raab. That’s where we’re going after we bring our problem in.”
Rainee was so shocked, she didn’t know for a moment how to react. This was crazy. “You’re not talking about the advanced warfighter program?”
“I am. He and the program are very much alive.”
Rainee stood for a moment holding the door open, trying to get her mind around this and having a great deal of difficulty. This rabbit hole she’d been pulled down into was getting crazier by the minute.
She then climbed into the passenger seat as her kidnapper, her former patient, the miracle save, got behind the wheel and started the engine.
That Raab was alive and his program still operational, and this soldier was part of Raab’s world, a product of that world, was beyond stunning.
She had, under heavy questioning at the congressional hearings, admitted that there was enormous pressure from the military to push research into the future of war fighting beyond any oversight.
There were so many programs, some so dark that using former soldiers as guinea pigs was almost a given and the fundamental reason she’d turned against them.
Her testimony had been very honest and had been accepted as such. Her record, her military background, and her military parents kept her free of condemnation.
Nice, but apparently, it hadn’t eliminated the experimental activity by some of her colleagues and some of the secret programs under DARPA.
Doctor Raab, her sometime associate, was the one they were really after, but his reported death ended that investigation.
But that was then, and right now, she was in the passenger seat of the van she’d been kidnapped in with a man who was both the past and the future.
He didn’t leave yet. He was receiving some sort of input. He touched his wrist. He pulled out what looked like a smartphone from his pants, something no doubt much more sophisticated than anything available on the market. He stared at it and then put it in his shirt pocket.
She didn’t get where he was. But he looked tense.
“We’re likely going to have company real soon,” he said. “The assets’ pickup team is coming to check out what the problem is. They’ve been warned and now can’t get in contact with the assets, so they’ll assume the worst and come in hard.”