Accelerated (14 page)

“Yes, yes, perfectly reasonable. But at least you see the possibilities now.”

“It has a mad logic of its own, doesn’t it?”

“Precisely.” Harris leaned toward me and lowered his voice. “Armed with this new knowledge, I began to understand something about what had happened to me. I should expect extrasensory abilities. Then to my delight, I discovered them.” His grin was huge. “Do you know that if a man, or a woman or child, speaks your name in earnest while in shadows and the radius—I haven’t discovered the limit of the radius. Perhaps each of us has varying degrees. The point is this. You can hear, in your mind, the speaking of your name.”

“Why in earnest?” I asked.

Harris slapped the table, leaned back and barked a “Ha! I wish I knew. That’s an excellent question. Are there latent telepathic powers within each human? I frankly doubt that’s the answer. I suspect it has to do with the underlying source of the universe. Scientists have hotly attempted to weigh and calculate such matter, but it has eluded their measurements. My theory is that vibrations are stirred within the unseen mass. Our ears or minds perhaps have become tuned to these vibrations. Not sharply tuned, but our ears have been unstopped. How exactly this process works, I haven’t deciphered yet. I am in the crude phase of understanding, simply recognizing the phenomenon without being able to explain it.”

“You called me here by speaking my name in shadows?”

“Earnestly speaking it,” Harris corrected.

“And you believe that called me?”

“As you said earlier, you are here.”

“Does it have to be another accelerated person doing the speaking?” I asked.

“Oh, you’re a quick fellow, Gavin. Yes, I believe so. Although—”

He stiffened, and his head swiveled sharply. It seemed then that he saw through the walls. Harris hissed between his teeth. “We have seconds left, I’m afraid. Quickly now, where is the box?”

I frowned.

That agitated Harris. “Tell me. You promised.”

“I did promise,” I said slowly.

He tried to match my stare. Then he swiveled his head again, as if glancing through the walls. He grabbed his bowler hat and umbrella and slid to the edge of the booth.

“Are you foresworn, Gavin?”

I had given my word, and I hated lying. “I dropped the cube in the ocean.”

“What?” he said. “What possessed you to do that?”

“Information for information,” I told him.

“Where in the ocean?” he asked urgently.

I picked up my shot glass, holding it before my eyes, twisting it this way and that. “Why the hurry?”

“I’m not ready for a confrontation with them yet,” he said. “I will speak with them once I have overwhelming power. Then I will root them out, every single slimy piece of them.” Harris thereupon slid out of the booth and strode for the rear exit.

Bikers, their women, the waitresses and the bartender watched him.

I took a last gulp of the Scotch and slid out of the booth.

Harris departed out the back door. Immediately, the bar’s attention focused on me. I looked a few of them in the eye. Bikers paled and glanced away. Maybe they thought I’d frightened Harris. Except for the heavy metal music from the jukebox, silence reigned in Neil’s Grill.

I kept wondering who had panicked Harris. When I opened the front door to look outside, I got my answer.

-14-

Several things puzzled me. The first was how Harris had known. Had he seen through the wall?

I didn’t buy his vampire theory. The world was crazy about vampires and Harris had caught the bug. Me, I only liked vampire stories where someone staked the undead creature through the heart, turning him into ashes in his coffin.

The idea that the accelerated could call each other by speaking the person’s name in shadow and in earnest—

Seeing that I had an immediate problem, I shelved the idea. An armored Cadillac DeVille was parked beside the Harleys. Jagiello’s two dark-suited killers had exited the car. The Chief was inside in the back, safely behind bullet-resistant ballistic glass. Jagiello sat behind the wheel, with his door and window closed.

The muscle drew PDW 7.92 VBR-B Compacts. The assassin with slicked-back hair screwed on a sound suppressor and pulled out the pistol’s extractable buttstock.

It was an interesting weapon. It looked like a bulky pistol and it could be used as one. Really, it was a modern machine pistol, with a foregrip mounted on a picatinny rail, meaning the shooter could use two hands for steadier fire. A selector switch let the shooter use semiautomatic or full auto fire. They were made in Belgium, constructed of polymers like a Glock and these likely used armor-piercing rounds.

I could hardly believe the Chief had come at night in a single car to take on Harris and a bar full of bikers. I had no doubt sawed-off shotguns and other weaponry sat in some of the Harley saddlebags. Some of the bikers inside were probably already packing.

Why would Harris leave?

As I stood in the doorway, thinking about it, motion caught my eye. Across the street were several old buildings, several of them two-story and some three. I saw vest-armored snipers setting up in some of those windows. They tried to stay in the dark, but to me they were gray and very visible, especially as they set up their deadly rifles.

Did the Chief want Harris or was this for me? If it was for Harris, did the Chief mean to simply execute him?

“I should kill you and collect my bounty now,” a biker said. I hadn’t heard him sneak up on me. He pressed the muzzle of a gun against my head. It was a .357 Magnum Colt Python, with a four-inch barrel. “Now walk out there before I change my mind.”

“This is a mistake,” I told him.

“Shut up!” He pushed the gun harder against the back of my head, forcing it forward.

I concentrated then. I was sure that going outside meant my death by a Shop sniper. The biker—he must be the reason the Chief had known Harris would be here. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn the biker had been turned and offered a large amount of money for tipping off the Chief.

“Get outside!” the biker shouted, pushing harder.

I stiffened my neck muscles so my head didn’t budge.

“I’m not going to tell you—what the hell?” he asked.

The bar turned dark. It was my doing. There was some light coming from outside and from the neon sign in the window. The darkness was a momentary distraction, and it was probably all I was going to get.

I jerked my head aside and heard the hammer click. An instant later came a terrific, ear-shattering boom. The heat of the bullet’s passage told me I’d survived by less than an inch. I swiveled around fast, with my head ringing. The biker—a thin man, with a pockmarked face and missing several teeth—tried to realign the Colt Python. I slammed a fist into his gut. He let go of the Python as his body curled around my hand and then he rocketed backward onto the floor. I dove, and I heard a retort like an engine backfiring. Then I heard several more. The door and the frame sprayed bits of wood as armor-piercing bullets drilled small holes.

Bikers bellowed in rage and fear. Some jumped up in the dark, brandishing weapons. Others dove to the floor.

By holding my concentration, I kept the lights dark in the bar, and now I included the neon sign. A dull throb had already started in my head. Before too long, it would become a sharp pain and then I would scream in agony.

I moved through the bar, avoiding people.

The shots had stopped, and I wondered if the Chief would send the two assassins into here.

When I reached the back door Harris had used, I released my hold on the lights. They flared into brilliance again.

Then I opened the back door, and I expected shots to ring out. Shadows and darkness reigned here, however. I moved like a dark blot in the shadows, and I sprinted along the side of the bar. I didn’t know if the Shop had developed the technology to see me when I was like this, but I acted as if they could.

Then I saw a gray shape move on a rooftop. I had no doubts it was a Shop team.

I darted across the alleyway. No shot came. It had to mean they couldn’t see me. I was in my element now. Maybe I was like a vampire. I was a living shadow, a part of the night, moving in its underside.

It didn’t take long before I was behind the old building, at least behind it in relation to Neil’s Grill. I climbed onto a dumpster, reached a service ladder and eased myself onto the roof. There they were—two Shop snipers in black clothing. One knelt as he spotted through a range-finding scope. The other lay prone on the roof, with his night-scoped rifle aimed at the bar.

The roof was composed of tarpaper and small gravel. It crunched as I moved across it. The spotter heard me first. He turned, saw me and clawed at his holstered gun.

I shot him in the face with my Browning. I had too much fear of Shop commandos to try to play games. The man wasn’t an innocent, but a killer many times over. He pitched over the edge of the roof, falling below so he hit with a thud.

“Don’t do it!” I shouted, rushing the shooter.

He froze prone on the roof. There was a jack in his ear and a microphone clipped on his shoulder for easy speaking.

I knelt on his back and shoved the Browning behind his ear. Then I tore out the ear-jack and put it in mine.

“Answer me,” Jagiello said. “What just happened?”

I pulled off the microphone next, clicking it as I said, “Put the Chief on.”

“Gavin Kiel?” Jagiello asked in my ear.

“Hurry,” I said, “or I’m killing this one, too.”

A moment later, the Chief whispered through the ear-jack, “What have you done?”

“I don’t like people shooting at me. Your spotter tried, and he died.”

“Where are you?”

“I’m not talking long,” I said. “Why did you try to kill me just now?”

“You compromised my inside man.”

“He pulled a gun on me and tried to march me outside to you.”

“You must surrender to me immediately.”

“If you see me,” I said, “you can kiss your life good-bye.”

Several seconds passed before the Chief whispered, “I told you to stay out of Long Beach. You have disobeyed me.”

“We’ve been over that.”

“Do not make me hunt you, Herr Kiel.”

“Wrong, sir, don’t make
me
hunt
you
.” I pressed my knee harder into the sniper’s back, as he’d been getting edgy and moved slightly. “You have an armored vehicle, I noticed. Where was it on the night of Kay’s death?”

“You suspect me of murder?” the Chief asked in surprise.

“How many killers do you have out here tonight?”

“You must use your reason, Herr Kiel. If I had ordered Kay’s death, she would not have stumbled before a truck. After the impact, she lingered in death, and possibly spoke about things I would wish kept silent. If I had ordered her killed, one of my men would have accomplished the fact with a bullet in her brain.”

“Then tell me why you had her body shipped to Geneva.”

“You are mistaken. I have done no such thing.”

“Wrong answer,” I said. “I saw the morgue order.”

“You were duped.”

I scowled. That was possible. Blake hadn’t discovered the whereabouts of her body. The airline had no record of a coffin. If Kay’s corpse hadn’t gone to Geneva, where had it gone and who had taken it? My scowl deepened. I wasn’t going to figure that out now. I need to stick with the priorities.

“Why are you hunting Harris?” I asked.

“It is no concern of yours.”

I saw the two assassins then, the killers with the PDWs. They peered around a corner of Neil’s Grill. I had no doubt the other sniper commandos would be trying to work over here soon.

I heard Harleys starting up. The Chief must have moved. Why had he exposed himself like that in the first place by coming here?

“What are you really after?” I asked.

“My goals remain the same: the safety of the human race. Surrender, Herr Kiel, or run far away from here, to place where I will never hear about you again.”

I swore softly under my breath. The two assassins sprinted for my building. I wasn’t ready to take on the Shop head to head. So I crushed the microphone and ripped out the earpiece. “No hard feelings,” I told the man I was kneeling on.

The commando tried to squirm free. Maybe he thought I was going to kill him. Instead, I hit him hard, knocking him out. It was time to leave. I’d let the Chief worry about clearing up the dead commando. He’d want to keep the State Department out of it, so I’m sure he wouldn’t advertise the presence of armed Shop commandos working on American soil.

Now I realized why Harris had been so eager to leave.

-15-

I took a chance and returned to the
Alamo
. Blake was grumpy when I shook him awake in the guest bunk. The little clock on the shelf with its red numbers said 2:44 A.M.

“Sit up,” I told him. “Pinch yourself. I don’t want you to forget what I’m telling you.”

“Huh?”

I gave him an edited rundown on Harris and the Chief. I left out a lot, even though I knew Blake would have loved Harris’s vampire theories. I’d tell him about them later.

“They actually shot at you?” Blake asked. “That’s serious.”

I laughed dryly. Everything about the Shop was serious. “I need you to do some footwork for me,” I said.

Blake nodded sleepily.

“I’m going to be looking over my shoulder even more than before,” I said. “It will slow me down. So I want you to speak with the paramedics who picked up Kay.”

“What if the Shop picks me up?”

“Tell them everything you know and say that I hounded you into this.”

“Great,” Blake said.

“They’re not looking for you. It’s me they want, and Harris.”

“Maybe they want the cube more than they want you.”

“Do you have some new ideas on what it does? Do you think it could be an anti-matter bomb?”

“Let’s hope no one was that crazy,” Blake said. “Otherwise, detonating it now would make people nostalgic for the quake of 1906.

He meant the legendary earthquake that had shattered San Francisco at the start of the Twentieth Century. At the back of every San Franciscan’s mind was the knowledge that someday another quake of that magnitude would occur. At least, that’s what the seismologists said. Blake had carefully explained to me before how precisely laid nuclear bombs on the ocean’s floor could duplicate the feat. I knew that anti-matter bombs—when scientists were finally able to construct them—would make nukes look like firecrackers. Man had a wonderful ability to create destructive technological marvels. For a moment, at least, I could sympathize with the Chief’s goal—if that truly was his goal.

“No,” Blake was saying, “anti-matter strikes me as too improbable. I couldn’t see Kay able to just walk away with a world-ending device.”

“We know it’s a weapon. Cheng said it would prove useful against Dave.”

“That doesn’t mean it has to be an anti-matter bomb. Maybe it’s a pulse bomb, as in EMP pulse that would destroy all electronics within—I don’t know, a fifty mile radius.” Blake gave me a sickly grin. “Maybe throwing it in the ocean was the best thing you could have done.”

“Not for Kay.”

“It wasn’t your fault they killed her.”

“That doesn’t matter now,” I said. “I’m staying away from the
Alamo
for a while. If you want to go home, I’ll understand. People are dying, and before this is done, more will die.”

“I’m staying,” he said.

“Then be careful and don’t take any chances.”

***

I went to a Hotel 6, paid with cash, entered my room, kicked off my shoes and lay on the bed in the dark.

I’d been thinking. The Shop had worldwide tentacles and dozens of ways to pressure anyone they wanted. If anything paralleled the fanciful Illuminati of popular conspiracy theories, it was the Shop. Yet with such a hidden and powerful agency, it had many cross-purposes. It had many powerful people in the organization with their own spheres of interest and authority. It wasn’t monolithic because any group that had so many different people couldn’t be one in mind. Humans weren’t ants, but combative, argumentative and envy-ridden individuals. Likely, there were those in the Shop who approved of what Polarity Magnetics did. Therefore, it must be more than the U.S. State Department pressuring them that kept the Chief leashed.

The Chief had tried to take out Harris, just as commandos had tried to take me out on three separate occasions in the last four years. It appeared that neither the Chief nor anyone else in the Shop had made such attempts on Doctor Cheng or against Polarity Magnetics—except for Kay.

In San Francisco, the Chief had told me he was running an investigation. Other than trying to kill Harris, did that mean the Chief hunted for dirt to use against Polarity Magnetics? He obviously disliked what they did, or his faction in the Shop didn’t like the direction Polarity Magnetics had taken.

Why might the Chief order Kay killed? There could be a number of reasons. He might have found out that she’d cheated him at the Reservation. She had let me escape. That might be enough. Maybe she had told Polarity Magnetics too many things about the Reservation. Maybe Kay had become the Shop’s inside person in Polarity Magnetics, and then Kay had tried to double-cross the Chief.

Why would Doctor Cheng kill Kay? Why would Stone or Harris?

I had it narrowed down to the Chief, Cheng, Stone and Harris. Harris was the wild card right now. What did he really want?

The Chief had the armored car, but it was a Cadillac, not a Mercedes Benz. Could Ortega have been wrong about the model? I doubted that. He was a mechanic.

Sometime while ruminating on these puzzles, I fell asleep.

***

I showered in the morning, ate a croissant and an apple, brushed my teeth and locked the door. I passed an arguing husband and wife, with two silent daughters in tow. The husband wanted to go to Disneyland. The wife wished to travel down to San Diego to Sea World.

I jumped into the cigarette-smelling Ford, drove into the city and parked on Heckendorf Avenue. Then I walked two blocks to Mission Laundry. It was an old square building and took up half the block.

There was a garage in back and seven parked laundry vans. The eighth van was in the garage, the hood up with a mechanic wrenching on the engine. A radio played mariachi music, much too upbeat for me this early in the morning.

“Excuse me,” I said, with my hands on the van.

A stout Hispanic mechanic pulled his head out. He wore a backward Dodgers hat, had an automatic grin and a silver tooth.

“Do you know where I can find Dan Lee?” I asked.

“Good morning,” he said in horribly accented English.

“Dan Lee?” I asked.

He shrugged good-naturedly.

“He’s a driver,” I said.

“Yes?”

“Do you know where Dan is?”

The mechanic shrugged again, and I began to suspect he didn’t know much English.

“Thanks,” I said. “I’ll ask up front.”

“Yes,” he said again. As I turned to go, he went back to working on the engine.

I walked around to the front on Samson Street, pulled open a glass door and immediately felt the heat. There was a counter and behind it was a curtain of heavy plastic strips that dangled from the ceiling to the floor. They reminded me of the ribbons in a carwash that thumped against your sides and windows as your vehicle rode the conveyer. Heavy binders lay on the counter and a chrome school-matron’s bell.

I dinged it. A few seconds later, a Chinese woman walked through the hanging plastic and to the counter.

“Can I help you?” she asked.

She was in her twenties, pretty in a fragile way, with long blond-dyed hair.

“I’m looking for Dan Lee,” I said.

“That’s my brother.”

“Ah. Do you know where he is?”

“Is he in trouble again?” she asked in a tired voice.

“No. I’m from the insurance company—”

“They’ve already talked to him,” she snapped.

“Right. I had a few follow up questions.”

She gave me a careful scrutiny. “Why do you really want to talk to my brother?”

I wondered where this girl had picked up her street savvy. “You can handle the truth?”

“Please,” she said, rolling her eyes.

“I’m a friend of the woman he hit.”

“It was an accident.” She said that part very fast. She was worried now and it made her seem younger and vulnerable.

“I’m well aware of that,” I said.

“So why are you hounding my brother? He feels terrible about it. Do you want him to start using—” The fragile-looking Chinese girl scowled. “What did you say your name was?”

Something about her manner reminded me of my brother the heroin addict. Ex-addict I should say. I’d had a normal life before I joined the Green Berets, before the accident. My brother was long dead because of AIDS transmitted through a dirty needle. She reminded me of me dealing with my brother…about a lifetime ago.

“I think the woman was murdered,” I said. “Not by your brother,” I said quickly, holding up my hands.

“Dan is the one who killed her.”

“His truck was the weapon used, yes. But who threw her into traffic?”

“Why did you think she was shoved?” the girl asked.

“Like I said, she was my friend. Her name was Kay Durant, by the way.”

“I read the newspaper.”

“Sure,” I said, nodding. “I knew Kay well. She wasn’t the type to leap into traffic.”

The Chinese girl nodded slowly, thoughtfully. “That would make my brother feel a whole lot better if he knew it wasn’t his fault.” She gave me a startled look. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to sound callous. It’s just that this accident has been eating away at Dan.”

“My brother was a heroin addict,” I said.

She stared at me. Her eyes finally narrowed and then she abruptly nodded. “I see. You know Dan has a drug problem.”

“From your reactions I do,” I said.

“You’re pretty slick, aren’t you?”

“No more than you.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” she asked.

“You knew I wasn’t with the insurance company. You knew something was up.”

She tapped the bottom of her class ring against the counter. “You know where 732 Lander Avenue is?”

“I haven’t a clue.”

She gave me directions. “It’s a bad place. Dan probably ran there. He has some friends that might give you trouble.”

“I’ll be all right.”

She gave me another scrutiny. “Tell him I’m going to kick his butt if he doesn’t get home soon. I’ll kick it right up between his ears.”

“Got it,” I said. “And thanks.”

She thrust out her narrow hand, and as gingerly as possible, I shook hands with her.

***

The sister might have been more accurate and said
disgusting
place, which meant it was a junkie’s paradise. There were normal older homes around it, the kind built in the Sixties, the ones inhabited by white-haired folk too stubborn or poor for urban flight. The trees were huge and ancient, putting everything into shade. Old ornaments hung from some eves, and a weathervane listlessly inched one way or another. Some houses had birdhouses, birdbaths and perfectly mowed lawns, the edges razor-sharp neat. Once, this had been a model community. Now it was a type of old folk’s home, and if you were nostalgic, you could almost smell an old muscular America in its heyday. Somewhere over the years, it had gone to seed.

The apartment complex smack in the middle of Middle America was rundown, with boarded windows and a sagging roof ready to collapse. A tremor could knock it down. Soon, bulldozers would do it and they would make a park from the remains or someone with more money than sense would make another apartment complex.

Moths fly to a flame and junkies slink to places like this. No doubt, some dealer had set up headquarters here. I could well imagine the moldy mattresses and the syphilitic sex that occurred on them.

I parked and headed around back. I picked my way over old boards and avoided barely stepping on a rusty nail. I pushed the back door and it squealed its way open.

That should have brought somebody to investigate. I entered a dingy, empty room that smelled of despair and defeat. I listened. Not even a rat scurried.

I began to explore and soon followed the inevitable zone of urine stench. I found needles galore, baggies, beer cans and other unmentionables. Why would Dan Lee come here when he could go to a clean home?

Heroin, meth, black crystal, it was all versions of the same useless escape from reality.

Blake had told me once about his high school government class. He was supposed to come up with a utopia. As a young intellectual, he had felt utopias were impossible. Each person wants something different. So how could a group of people all live in a perfect paradise? Then it had hit him, and he’d typed at night blueprinting a utopia. What it had amounted to was something like this: Machines and robots taught the babies until fifteen or sixteen years of age, force-feeding them all the knowledge they could. Then, the robots wired the human to a dream machine. He or she could live any fantasy their minds could conjure and thus each person lived in his own utopia, with no one to spoil it for them. Their bodies vegetated while their minds roamed free. Instead of an A, the teacher had given Blake a C. She’d scrawled something like—
I can’t believe you have such a dim view of humanity. I think you were just trying to avoid doing work
.

Whenever he told the story, Blake would scowl and belittle the teacher, calling her a propagandist and—

Maybe I’ll just leave it at that. Blake had some strong opinions on such subjects. My point is that we don’t need dream machines. We have drugs, and they’re as cruel as Blake’s utopian future.