The Olympus Device: Book Three (15 page)

The next set of commands issued by his panic-filled brain was to run. That too proved impossible, his body lifted effortlessly off the ground by a force that felt like steel bands gripping his chest in a human vise.

Andy felt his body tipped sideways, his physical struggles and deep breathing spreading the foul-smelling drug through his body, weakening his limbs. He landed on some hard surface, the impact jarring his tingling body.

Inside the hood, Andy struggled to maintain brain function, to remember the details of the attack. All he could see was a horizon of virgin white, the brilliant hue filling his mind’s eye. He tried squinting, but his baby blues were already closed. Slowly the color faded, a void of darkness consuming the light until there was a single, star-like pinpoint of reality.

Then the world went black.

“They must be having trouble with the gas in the dorm,” commented one of the FBI men. “That Western Gas van is parked in a fire zone.”

His partner looked up from his listening equipment, annoyed at the interruption. “What?”

“That van over there. It pulled up a couple of minutes ago and parked in the fire zone. It’s from the gas company.”

Blinking some focus into his thoughts, the technician shook his head. “There’s no gas in the dorms. When I was installing the bugs and phone tap, I wanted to use the gas lines, but the building is 100% electric.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, I’m positive. Why would there be a gas truck here?”

The oddity sent a surge through the agent behind the wheel. “I’m going to go check it out. Call that phone number on the side of the van, and see if they dispatched a repair crew here.”

“Sure.”

The driver exited, looking both ways before jogging across the street. He’d watched the offending van pull up, but no one had exited the vehicle. “Probably just a wrong address,” he reasoned, walking briskly to have a word with the gas company tech.

Before he was halfway across the dorm’s significant grounds, two men appeared around the corner, pushing what appeared to be a large laundry cart, complete with a toolbox strapped to the front. “What the hell?” the agent whispered.

Whatever was in the cart was heavy, the two men in gas company uniforms struggling to push it across the sprinkler-dampened grass.

Realizing they were making for the idling van, the agent perked alert, knowing something just wasn’t right. Reaching for the handheld radio in his jacket, he sensed the sidewalk jogger too late.

A telescoping baton snapped to its full length, extended with a flick of the runner’s wrist. In the same motion, the well-muscled arm coiled for the strike, just as the agent began to spin in order to face the threat.

The FBI man had time to note the physical conditioning of the approaching jogger, a question forming in his mind why a member of the college football team would attack a federal officer.

White, vibrating lines of pain shot through the agent’s head as the baton’s lead weight struck his temple with a sickening crunch. As his legs gave way, the last memory embedded in the victim’s mind was of a tattoo on the attacker’s arm. The ornate, beautifully scripted letters, accented by a single, vertical lightning bolt, read “CAG.”

The four men in the gas company van drove off the sprawling campus, the driver keeping to the traffic laws while his comrades prepared Andrew for transport.

The still-unconscious student’s hands were bound with a nylon tie as a man with medical training checked Andy’s vital signs for any trauma associated with the anesthesia delivered via the hood. That garment was sealed in a plastic bag to prevent the substance’s ability to affect any of the team.

Master Sergeant John Millard, retired, supervised the squad’s efforts with a keen, professional eye. All waste, including the sterile wipes he’d used to clean the blood off his baton, were bagged and sealed for disposal later. Every team member wore gloves. No one spit, smoked, snacked, drank, or left any indisputable DNA evidence to be recovered later.

Two miles from the dorm, the driver pulled into a car wash. The site had been carefully selected; the vacuum islands at the rear of the facility were difficult to see from the street. A mini-van was parked nearby, the nondescript transport stolen less than an hour ago from a large shopping mall.

“Clear,” snapped the driver after scanning the immediate surroundings, the one-word report signaling there weren’t any witnesses around to report the transfer. The back doors opened, two of the burly kidnappers hopping out casually and then turning to pull Andy’s limp form from the back of the cargo area.

Acting as if they were helping a drunken friend walk the short distance to the hot mini-van, the young Weathers was buckled in the middle of the backseat in less than 20 seconds.

A few moments later, only the driver was left in the original getaway vehicle. After watching his colleagues drive away, he quickly pulled the gas company’s service van to the vacuum hoses, and with a pocketful of quarters, began cleaning every speck of evidence from every square inch of the interior.

Fifteen minutes later, the now spotless van was left in a busy grocery store parking lot. The driver exited calmly, strolling over to the nearby mini-van and springing into the passenger seat.

By the time the snatch and grab team rolled into the safe house’s driveway, Andrew was beginning to moan weakly and roll his head from side to side.

It was the student’s pounding headache that eventually caused him to climb from the drug-induced depths of dreamland.

Bolts of pain cascading through Andy’s head brought him out of the fog. The foul, chemical taste in his mouth initiated waves of nausea through his gut. Near the edge of vomiting, he opened his eyes and was again assaulted by pain.

Slowly his body fought off the aftereffects, his mind clearing bit by bit. From Andrew’s frame of reference, there hadn’t been any passage of time since his last memory, standing in front of his dorm room’s door.

Images of the black hood started coming back, half-formed visions that were more emotional than physical. A surge of adrenaline cleared his head even more, giving the bewildered kid the strength to roll over and sit up.

He found himself inside of a small room… no, actually it was a closet. There were the long poles where clothes would usually hang, an empty shoe rack in the corner, and several hooks along one wall. A small, single bulb burned in the plain fixture above.

Andy found a 5-gallon bucket, roll of toilet paper, two bottles of water, and three protein bars sitting in the middle of the space. There was a small packet containing two aspirin and a neatly printed note.

Blinking away his still-cloudy vision, Andy read the message: “You have been kidnapped. We are watching you. Don’t pull any bullshit, and you won’t be harmed. Take the aspirin, keep your mouth shut, use the bucket, and you’ll be treated fairly. Try anything stupid or be a pain in the ass, and you won’t like the results.”

His first reaction was to scan the tiny room for a camera. It was on the third pass that he spotted a pinhole sized black dot in the ceiling.

His next move was to test the door, but as expected, it was locked. While the knob turned freely, there was zero budge.

He toured his cage one last time, looking carefully for any possible way out. There was none.

Resigning himself to the fact that there was little else he could do, Andy tore open the aspirin and then unscrewed the top from a bottle of water. Making a motion to toast the camera, he downed the aspirin and then sat on the bucket, wondering which would kill him first. Boredom? Or the men on the other side of the door.

Sergeant Millard entered the kitchen’s small breakfast area, eager for a glass of water after finishing his patrol of the rental home’s perimeter.

Bordered on two sides by Lake Travis, the property was a nearly perfect hideout. As a vacation rental, it was well furnished, more than capable of accommodating the four-man team and their captive.

Located at the end of a small finger of land extending into the manmade lake, the home was not only isolated, but also practically impossible to approach without being detected. There was significant foliage between the estate and its neighbors.

The vast 3-car garage now held the stolen minivan, as well as the Hertz rental from the airport in Austin. It had taken Millard’s men only two days to prepare the master bedroom’s closet for their guest, stock 20 days’ worth of food into the cupboard, and upgrade the home’s security system to an acceptable level.

“Yah, he’z awake. Already vallowing de painz medications,” reported the man monitoring the closet-cam from the kitchen table, his thick, German accent reminding Millard of old black and white WWII movies he watched as a kid.

Glancing at his watch, the sergeant nodded. “That’s about the right recovery time for a 170-pound person. I don’t think we did any brain damage.”

Millard watched Andy over the operator’s shoulder for a moment, his hawk-like gaze noting every detail of the captive’s movements as he sat quietly chewing on a protein bar. “I kind of feel sorry for the kid. He’s the innocent in all of this. When you deliver his meal, ask him what kind of books he likes to read. It will help pass the time.”

“Ya, vol.”

“Carry on. I’ve already informed HQ of our status. Now we sit and wait,” replied the team leader.