GHOST_4_Kindle_V2 (19 page)

As a Special Agent tasked with solving violent crimes, Rez had seen her share of peculiar events. She’d been the first on the scene to uncover a serial killer’s “trophy room.” She’d witnessed terrorists being virtually disintegrated by advanced tactical weapons while hostages remained unharmed. She’d even seen an ultra-secret surveillance drone aircraft in action, a sight that had left her breathless and precipitated more than a hundred UFO reports to local law enforcement. But she’d never seen anything like what she’d witnessed in the alley earlier that evening.
 

This Ghost character, John Spector, or whoever he really was, had fought with virtuosity against a murderous foe cloaked in invisibility. He’d healed from a chest wound that would have disabled most others. And he claimed to work for someone higher than the Executive Branch.
 

Anything at that level, she knew, was ultra-classified and meant to stay that way. But she couldn’t just drop it, couldn’t just
not
investigate.
Besides,
she thought,
I’ve already rankled all my superiors. Might as well push it up the line.
 

She opened her laptop, clicked to the Bureau site, and went through the ten step sequence that would grant her access to the classified databases she wanted. After half an hour sifting of names and info, she found exactly zero information about her John Spector. Ironically, the FBI employed a man named Jon Spector. But he was 5 foot 3, with a thinning black comb-over, coke bottle glasses, and enough spare tires to outfit a Humvee.
 

Weighing the risks for at least three seconds, she decided to go a little deeper. There were other government databases she could access from the Bureau site. She had the clearance, barely. But some of these agencies were known for being obnoxiously protective of their records. Knowing the next three clicks would leave an indelible digital trail, she clicked anyway.
I hope this doesn’t come back to haunt me,
she thought, rolling her eyes at the pun.
 

The ‘weighted search’ began. A gray pinwheel appeared in the center of the screen as the computer worked and the internal protocols and calculations used by the databases checked and rechecked Rez’s query. After five minutes of supercomputer convolutions, the application came back with two hits. Both were marked Top Secret and carried Directive 7 Restriction, thankfully just within her reach.

The first file concerned a captured French spy nicknamed Spectre. He’d run a high end brothel in D.C., and many of his
employees
had gathered some pretty embarrassing intel from certain government officials. Eyebrows raised, cheeks reddening, she thought,
Interesting, but not what I was looking for.
 

The second file seemed more promising. It concerned a special operation in Afghanistan, codenamed: Ghost. In 2009, the US had sent an elite unit into the Khyber Pass in the Safed Koh Mountains where a particularly aggressive al Qaeda leader named Khalid al-Maghreb was rumored to have built his center of military operations.
 

Rez looked at the dossier and the only photos provided. One of the men in the unit might have been John Spector. He was taller than the others and very pale. Behind sunglasses and camouflage BDUs, it was impossible to tell for sure. Apparently, the team carried out its mission, leaving al-Maghreb buried in the rubble of his own base. But before the team could be extracted, they met unexpected resistance and fled into Pakistan. And there, on the outskirts of a town called Landikotal, the team had been ambushed by al-Qaeda sympathizers…and killed. There were no survivors.

Rez sighed. Not only had she struck out but she’d absorbed a ton of information she wished she’d never read. Bleary-eyed and exasperated, Rez clacked the keys ten times harder than she usually did and performed a simple web search. The results flashed onto the screen. Rez sat up straight and leaned toward the screen. Having come up empty on the classified pages, Rez couldn’t believe what she saw.

867,000 hits. Some of the pages were duds, just compilations of ghost stories and hauntings where people had misspelled specter as spector. But the third page of links had his name: John Spector. Rez clicked the link for
realghoststories.weebly.com
. It looked like some of the others, a combination of text entries and peculiar photos. She almost clicked back to the search page, but froze as she read one of the accounts dated just the previous year.
 

It told the story of a low income family living in the worst part of South Central Los Angeles. Their youngest son had been kidnapped by a drug lord. The scumbag held the five-year old captive to force the family to work for him. Worse still, he’d gotten the child addicted to heroin, basically enslaving him and his family to his product and his employ. A man named John Spector showed up. He bought everything the family had to sell…and destroyed it. Then, he went and got their son back. In the process, he’d killed the drug lord and more than a dozen of his bodyguards. And he’d done it all with little more than his silver suitcase.

Rez froze. This was her man. She read post after post, some going back ten years or more. Each one told of the pale stranger who showed up at just the right time…and came when no one else would help. He did extraordinary things for people in desperate need. Whatever the problem was, Ghost solved it…often closing the case with a lethal exclamation point.
 

An answer to prayer, some called him. A modern knight in shining armor. A teenager called him “one scary dude.” There were links to other pages, a forum, a blog, pictures, requests. It was crazy, almost like a fan page. Then Rez noted something odd about the photos: she couldn’t see his face. There was a shot with Spector standing in front of an orphanage in what looked like an Eastern Bloc country. His face was completely obscured by a wide-brimmed hat. In another photo, he was standing behind a police car in front of a convenience store. He was looking away, staring into the shattered front window of the shop. Still another, Ghost knelt by a woman on a stretcher. He was holding her hand, but the IV bag hid his face.
 

Several of the shots showed that silver suitcase of his. His build was right too: just short of pro-wrestler mass and tall. It had to be him. There was a whole page devoted to photos. Rez started clicking on the thumbnails. The image jumped to full screen. Rez got chills. It was the perfect shot. John Spector, his shirt torn and bloody, was just turning toward the camera when the shot had been taken. There was nothing in front of his face. But his face was gone. It looked as if the air in front of his face had been distorted as if by intense heat, like the vapors on a desert highway. But you couldn’t see his face with any clarity, just warbled, almost molten features. Rez clicked through a dozen more photos. It was the same thing every time.
 

She rubbed the gooseflesh on her forearms. The hotel room seemed so much colder now. She went to the AC unit by the window and went to turn it to a warmer setting, but it was off. Completely off. Rez had a flash of the strange image she’d seen in Spector’s hotel room. With a shudder, she shut down the laptop. After getting ready for bed, she snuggled beneath the covers like she did when she was a little girl. She went to flick out the bedside light, but thought better of it. In fact, she switched on the television and went to sleep to the Cartoon Network.

Chapter 18

“I got home as soon as I could!” Dr. Gary said, his voice as taut as surgical stitches. “Where is she?”

“She won’t leave her house,” Jack said, stepping into the elevator, inserting the key. “There’s a lot of blood.”

Dr. Gary got in. Jack turned the key. Half turn left, half turn right. The doors shut.
 

“You’re angry,” Dr. Gary said, reaching for Jack’s shoulder.

“Of course, I’m angry,” Jack said, shrugging him away. “You botched the procedure. You rushed. I told you it could wait for the weekend.”

“Why does it matter?” Dr. Gary asked. “To you, I mean? You take no real pleasure from our pets. Or has something changed?”

“You bastard,” Jack hissed. “How dare you—”

The doors opened. Dr. Gary grabbed Jack by the shoulders and slammed him against the side of the elevator. “You…need…to…calm…down!” he said, his voice powerful and grating, like the grinding of stone against stone. “We cannot afford to lose our grip, not now with so much at stake.”

“I know,” Jack whispered. “I…know. It’s just I saw the blood, and Erica…she doesn’t look good.”

“I did not botch the abortion, Jack,” Dr. Gary said. “There’s always a risk. You know that better than anyone.” He released Jack’s shoulders, stepped back, and straightened his tie.

Jack stared at the floor and nodded. “I just don’t want to see anyone wasted.”

“And I don’t intend to waste anyone,” Dr. Gary said. He shrugged quickly out of his lab coat, rolled up his sleeves, and snapped on a pair of latex gloves. “Now, let’s see to Erica.”

Jack led the way to kennel. There was weeping. Someone cried out, “Why are you fighting?”

“We’re not fighting, Midge,” Jack consoled. “It’s just that this is an important time. Don’t you worry. I’ll give you a new patch later.”

Dr. Gary looked at the blood smears on the floor outside of one of the houses. “Erica, Erica, do you hear me?” he called.

“Dr. Gary?” came a weak reply. “Oh, you’ve come…you’ve come…I knew you would.” There was a pause. “I hurt. Please…please save me.”
   

“I will, dear,” he said. “I will.”

* * *
   
* * *
   
* * *
   
* * *

“How bad is it?” Jack asked.
 

Dr. Gary shook his head. As he brought the coffee mug to his lips, his hand was shaking. He swallowed. “She won’t make it through the night.”

“Isn’t there anything you can do? Can’t you…can’t you open her up?”

“Not here. At the hospital, maybe I could save her. But we don’t have the equipment here.”

“This shouldn’t have happened,” Jack muttered.

“Look, I did my best. I tried—”

“But all the new implements, they were supposed to be the safest yet.”

“I understand your sensitivity to this,” Dr. Gary said. “I’ve got the best record in the clinic, but sometimes…it happens.”

Jack grit his teeth and wiped the corner of his eye. “What now?”

“We’re losing the battle,” Dr. Gary said. “I don’t think we can wait another cycle to be…to be more overt.”

Jack sighed. “By the time this litter is of age, the courts could overturn everything.”

“We’re going to change things. We’re going to change things, tonight.” Dr. Gary’s pronouncement hung in the air.

“What do you mean?” Jack asked, a trembling smile appearing on his lips. “If Erica’s dying, how can we—”

“We will give up her body,” Dr. Gary said, putting his hand on Jack’s. “Erica will send the most telling message of all.”

“Are you sure we’re ready for this step?” Jack asked.

Dr. Gary laughed. “In every revolution…there are martyrs? Isn’t that what you said?”

Jack nodded. “It won’t take long, will it?”

“As foolish as they’ve been over the years,” Dr. Gary replied, “they aren’t fools, not really. Once they find her, I imagine we’ve got a few weeks, maybe as much as a month.”

“Will it be enough to complete the Manifesto?” Jack asked.

Dr. Gary looked down at his coat. He touched a dark spot, and his finger came away glistening crimson with Erica’s blood. “It…it will have to be.”

Jack’s expression became very grim. “Where will we take Erica?” she asked. “Where will we make…the reveal?”

Dr. Gary nodded. “I’ve been doing some research. I know the perfect place.”

* * *
   
* * *
   
* * *
   
* * *

Four Seasons Marina wasn’t nearly as posh as I expected it to be. Maybe thirty or forty years ago, it would have been. It sprawled in a vast letter L shape, raggedly covered berths and deep jetties next to an aging, high rise hotel with the same name. Music sauntered out of the restaurant’s tri-tiered decks that looked to need a good sanding and staining. Colored lanterns hung from the eaves and dressed the place up. Sort of.
 

At the crook of the L, just at the edge of the parking lot, a two story gatehouse waited. Other than climbing a rickety-looking chain link fence, it was the only way in that I could see.
 

I made sure Agent Rezvani’s Glock was invisible under my nifty new sports coat. She and I had spent an hour on Thursday shopping for some much needed new clothing. Turns out, she had definite opinions on my wardrobe choices. That was a special time, I can tell you. And I spent $240, leaving me with just $694 for the rest of the mission.
 

“How do you want to play this, Agent Rezvani?” I asked.
 

“Call me Rez,” she said. “Not by flashing my badge.”

“Are you sure?” I asked. “I’m kind of fond of the shield-in-the-face technique.”
 

Rez laughed, a musical, girlish sound I hadn’t heard from her before. “Don’t think I don’t enjoy throwing the
big letters
at perps,” she said. “But Smiling Jack and his partner are too smart not to employ someone careful at the gate.”

“Agreed. How, then?”

“We blend in. Guests of another yacht owner.”

Ah,
I thought,
that would explain the need for the sports coat.
“If they’re that smart,” I said. “Still, they won’t let us in just because we dressed nice. We don’t know any of the other yacht owners.”

“I have that covered,” she said. “Walk behind me like a friend, not a date. Just follow my lead.”
 

I followed her lead.
 

I was relatively certain that when Agent Rezvani strolled the hallowed halls of the FBI in Northwest D.C., she didn’t wear outfits like the summer dress she wore tonight. It revealed her upper back and shoulders…toned, very feminine, and bronze tanned. If there was a guy in that security gatehouse, he didn’t stand a chance.