Father of Fear (19 page)

After tucking Dylan in and telling him a story about the Spanish Inquisition, Thomas White decided to check in on his son. He keyed up the feed from the night-vision surveillance equipment embedded in the ceiling above Marcus’s head and stared at his youngest child. Marcus was naked and curled into the fetal position along one wall of his cell. Thomas pressed a button to initiate a violent electrical shock. He couldn’t resist the urge to smile as Marcus’s body convulsed. But once the initial shock stopped, Marcus didn’t scream out in anger. He simply whimpered, curled back up into a ball, and tried to go back to sleep.

Thomas chuckled. He had physically broken the boy, but there was still much work to be done on his son’s re-education. It would have been much easier to initiate the changes physically through surgery, as he had done with his apprentice, but those were invasive procedures, which produced the desired effects but also erased any trace of the person’s identity. It had taken many subjects and years of experimentation to perfect that procedure, but his current apprentice had so far been an unmitigated success. He had started by operating on the temporal cortex, the part of the brain responsible for the storage of episodic memory, then he had moved on to precision scarring and removal of certain sections of the left and right medial temporal lobes, the amygdaloid complex, and the entorhinal cortex. It was a long and painstaking process, but the end result was the perfect soldier—never complaining, never questioning, but still retaining enough humanity to blend in and complete its objective. Once his current project was complete, he planned to share his research with the world over the Internet. He suspected that terrorist groups and governments alike would find his methods and data useful.

But he would need to take a different approach with Marcus. He wanted to give his son a gift—to show him a world without fear—not steal the essence of who he was. He wanted to set him free, not turn him into another automaton. He would break Marcus’s mind, body, and soul. He would pour out all that he had learned and everything he was and recreate him in his father’s image.

Thomas checked his watch and looked back at Marcus. It was time that they started the next phase of treatment. But for that, he would need another subject to be used as an illustration, in much the same way that he had used the butterfly and spider during his discussion with Dylan. In this case, however, the subject would require slightly more work to procure. Still, he had time to do so this evening and be ready to start phase two the following morning. He had grown accustomed to sending his apprentice out on errands such as this, but sometimes there was nothing quite as exhilarating as rolling up his sleeves and getting his own hands dirty.

He clicked off the monitor, grabbed his coat and keys, and locked Dylan’s door on the way out. After all, the boy possessed his grandfather’s insatiable curiosity, and Thomas couldn’t have his grandson exploring unsupervised.

Audrey Moynihan’s eyes were red and puffy from crying. She still couldn’t believe that Brad was leaving her. After all she had done for him. After all they’d been through. How could he just walk away as though it all meant nothing? She had supported him while he went back to school to earn his degree, working two jobs to help with his student loans. And now that he had finally gotten his dental practice off the ground and they were seeing a return on the substantial investment, he had decided that he “needed a break.” She suspected that he planned to spend his “break” with the perky blond hygienist who had recently started in the office, but she had no proof of that. Maybe they had simply grown apart. Maybe—

Something struck the underside of her car as the wheels bounced over a large object in the road. Audrey locked up the brakes and let out an involuntary yelp. Her Hyundai Sonata skidded to a halt, and her gaze flew to the rearview mirror.

Her heart pounded, and her breathing became short and erratic. She searched the road for whatever she had hit. When she spotted it, she screwed her eyes shut and repeated,
This is not happening, this is not happening
. Then she said it to herself out loud like an incantation that when invoked would take back the last five minutes of her life.

It was a person. She had hit a person.

Audrey kept her eyes closed tight, not wanting to look again, not wanting to confirm her fears. Maybe it was a small deer? Or a large dog? Or anything else other than another flesh-and-blood human being. She cursed, not for the first time that day. This was Brad’s fault. If she hadn’t been distracted …

There was no point in thinking such thoughts, she told herself. It made no difference. It was done and over. She forced herself to look again.

This time she was sure. She could see the clothes. The flesh. The undeniable, unmistakable shape of a person lying in the road. A person who wasn’t moving. A person who was most assuredly dead. A person she had killed.

Her mind fought for a way out of the predicament, and a thousand different scenarios flipped through her head in the space of a few seconds. Maybe the person had already been dead? Maybe they were still alive and needed medical attention? Should she call 911?

And then the darker thoughts started to come. It was pitch black outside, and they were on a desolate country road. No cars or houses for miles. No witnesses. Audrey glanced at the ditches surrounding the roadway. They were deep and overrun with weeds and tall grass. She could easily drag the body into the ditch, and it could go undiscovered for weeks. It was probably some drunk who had wandered out and fallen asleep in the road. Why should her life be torn apart because of that person’s stupidity?

But such thoughts evaporated nearly as quick as they had come. She was an honest person. Brad had wanted to siphon Internet access from their neighbor’s unprotected network, and she couldn’t even stand the thought of that. It had been worth it to her to pay the twenty bucks a month not to feel like she was a criminal each time she checked her e-mail. It would tear her up inside whether or not the incident had been her fault.

The decision made, Audrey opened her car door and walked back to where the crumpled form lay in the middle of the roadway. Each footstep seemed like a great labor, as if her limbs were covered in concrete.

Finally she reached the pale form and bent down to feel for a pulse. The body was turned away from her, and all she could see was a matted mop of brown hair. When her fingers touched the person’s neck, her hand jerked back reflexively.

What the hell was going on here?

Audrey rolled the body over with her foot and gasped. The eyes were dead and wooden, but not because she had stolen the life from them. The eyes that stared back at her had never been alive.

It was a dummy. A very lifelike mannequin.

At first, relief and joy overwhelmed her. She hadn’t killed anyone. She was off the hook. But as the moment stretched out, the feeling of relief turned to anger. Someone had done this to her on purpose. Someone had placed a dummy in the road as some kind of sick joke. She wondered what the hell was wrong with people these days.

She looked around, half-expecting to catch sight of a snickering group of teenagers in a nearby field, but there was no one there. Then she realized that there might have been some damage to her car. She gritted her teeth and fought back a scream of frustration. She would need to file a police report, but she could call that in once she got home.

Grabbing a leg of the dummy, Audrey dragged it off the road and returned to her car. Maybe the cops could find a fingerprint on the damn thing and teach the little punk who had done this a lesson. She slid in behind the wheel and pulled the door shut. She grabbed her seat belt with her left hand and clicked it into place.

And then she felt the presence.

It was like seeing a flitting shadow out of the corner of an eye or having that strange animal sense of being watched. But whatever it was, she knew that someone was there even before her attacker reached over her left shoulder and started to strangle her with her own seat belt.

She fought back with all her strength, trying to pull the nylon strap of the harness away from her neck, but it was of no use. Her mind quickly kicking into survival mode, she changed tactics. Maybe she could reach the steering column and get the car in drive?

A strange pinch and pressure bit into the side of her neck, and her extremities began to tingle and go numb.

Audrey’s fingers raked against the handle that would throw the vehicle in gear. She stretched out and raged against the darkness creeping over her vision.

The man in the back seat spoke. His voice sounded deep and strange, as if he were a character in a movie being played in slow motion. In fact, the whole world was starting to feel slowed down somehow. And then Audrey realized the source of the pain in the side of her neck. She had been injected with something. She tried to reach out to the gear shifter again, but her arms were useless now. Her whole body had gone numb and cold.

“You know what I love about this, my dear,” the deep slow-motion voice said. “It’s the fact that I didn’t stalk you or choose you. It was completely random chance that you were the one driving down this road tonight. It could have been anyone, but fate chose you. Fate chose you to die.”

The Director pulled the Suburban right up to the front door of the dilapidated filling station. Graffiti covered the front of the building, and weeds had taken over the lot. Vines snaked up the sides of the old gas pumps. An oval-shaped sign still stood on a large metal pole out front, but the logo of the business was gone with only the skeletal structure of the sign surviving. He could understand how the place had gone out of business. They were miles from a town or any houses on a road that was barely traveled.

He could see through the station’s front window, and the light shining from the garage area betrayed the fact that although the building was not in service it was also not unoccupied. He pulled out his Beretta pistol and chambered a round.

From the passenger seat, Fagan said, “Let’s try to reason with him first.”

The Director nodded and put the Beretta back in its holster. “Of course. Just being prepared.”

As they exited the Suburban and walked toward the entrance of the abandoned filling station, a cold breeze made the hairs on the back of the Director’s neck stand at attention. He heard the clanging of a loose piece of sheet metal, and the rhythmic sound of metal on metal reminded him of the tolling of bells.

They entered through a small room that had served as the station’s storefront. Now, it was empty except for some racks that had once contained rows of oil, a desk, and an ancient cash register. Fagan was first through the door to the garage. The Director followed at his heels. Although he didn’t have his gun out, he still scanned the room in his mind in the same way he would have if they were breaching and clearing the building. Then his eyes focused on Andrew. Blood covered his friend’s face, but the worst damage was a foot that appeared to have been smashed by a sledgehammer that the Director spotted sitting upright nearby. The sight of it made the Director’s blood boil toward eruption.

Even in his ruined state, Andrew had enough presence of mind to think tactically. He caught the Director’s eye and then looked toward a small oak door at the side of the garage. The Director placed his hand over his gun and was about to move toward the door when he heard a voice behind him say, “Don’t. Take it out slowly. Two fingers and lay it on the ground.”

He glanced back to see a large black man aiming a pistol at them. The man wore the same kind of dark tactical clothing that the mercenaries at the farmhouse had favored. He had apparently circled around the building to get the drop on them when he heard their vehicle pull up.

The Director complied with the man’s demands and then said, “Where’s Craig?”

“Right here,” Craig answered as he emerged through the door that Andrew had indicated. His dark fatigues were pulled down around his waist, exposing a white tank top stretched tight across his thickly muscled chest. He held a blood-stained towel, using it to wipe one hand and then the other.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing here, Craig?” Fagan asked.

“My job.”

“I hired you to capture and contain Ackerman. Then you were ordered to eliminate him. You failed. Your job is complete. What would compel you to detain and torture one of my agents?”

The Director noticed the way that Fagan had taken ownership of Andrew as one of his men. Maybe there was hope for the bureaucrat yet.

Craig tossed the towel onto a nearby shelf. “I’m reacquiring the target, sir. And to be perfectly honest, the mission parameters changed the moment your agents decided to kill one of my men!”

Fagan shook his head and glanced over at the Director, accusation in his eyes. He said, “That’s unfortunate, and a situation that will be dealt with internally. Your services are no longer needed, but you will, of course, be paid in full. With an added bonus for the loss of your man.”

“Don’t bother. I’ll just take my payment in blood.” Craig pulled a gun from the small of his back and pointed it at Andrew.

The Director stepped forward, but Fagan stopped him with a hand on the chest. Fagan said, “Mr. Craig, we’re professionals here. Let’s not be rash. I’m sure that we can come to some mutually beneficial arrangement.”

“Can you bring back my friend?” Craig said, sighting down his gun’s barrel at Andrew’s bound form.

This time, the Director did step forward, placing himself between Craig and Andrew. He said, “You want vengeance? You want someone to blame? These are my people. Andrew’s my friend, and I’m responsible for him. You want an eye for an eye? Blood for blood? Take mine. Kill me and let him go.”

Craig stared at him for a long moment. The Director saw the barely contained rage bubbling just below the surface. Craig was only one step away from the men whom the Shepherd Organization hunted, and the Director wasn’t sure if there was any way to reason with him. He could very well kill all three of them without a second thought.

Craig’s finger tightened against the trigger, but then he lowered the gun and shoved it back into his belt. “Take him. He’s already told me where the others are headed anyway. And you can keep your blood. I want Ackerman. He’s the one who started all this. I want that bastard’s head mounted on my wall.” Craig gestured toward his man, and they gathered their things and left through the back of the station while keeping a cautious eye on the Director.

As they headed for the exit, the Director said, “Do what you feel is necessary with Ackerman. He can handle himself, and he probably deserves much worse than you can give. But if anything happens to Maggie, I’ll hunt you to the ends of the Earth.”

Craig didn’t respond. He backed out of the room without another word. Once they were gone, the Director rushed to Andrew’s side. As he worked at removing the bonds, he asked, “Are you okay, Andrew?”

Andrew looked at him as if the older man had lost his mind and replied in a rasping voice, “Not really.”