Aegis Incursion (27 page)

“If you don’t mind, Mr. Sanchez, would it be alright if we took a look at your crops while you’re away with Jag?” Aari asked.

“Sure. Don’t know what you can find, though. Authorities scanned dozens of acres but found nothing.”

Mariah stared out of the window. “It’s strange. The crops look just fine.”

Hugo nodded earnestly. “That’s what I told Julia, too, when she came rushing in. But when you see it close up, it crushes you. The stalks are there, alright. But it’s as if someone has cut away every single wheat head. They’re all gone.” He lowered his gaze.

“Is there really no trace of anything?” Aari prodded. “No sign of what caused this?”

“None.”

“Did you see anyone come by? Or hear anything funny?”

Hugo seemed mildly tickled by Aari’s investigative queries. “I haven’t. And no one else has, it seems. I checked my crops the evening before we lost them and they were fine. That seems to be the pattern. But if you want to hang around here, be my guest.” Hugo wiped his mouth with a napkin. “So how was California?”

“The . . . beaches were nice,” Tegan said, trading furtive looks with the others.

They finished the meal quickly after that. Aari and Mariah jumped up to gather the plates despite Hugo’s protests, then went into the kitchen to wash the dishes.

Jag ran to get the keys to Hugo’s truck. Hugo looked at Marshall and smiled slightly. There was something about the man that was both inscrutable and comforting. “Guess we’re off to the hospital.”

Marshall returned the smile. “Thank you so much for dinner.”

“It’s nothing, really.” Hugo stood up and joined Jag, who was waiting impatiently at the door. “We’ll be back in a couple hours. If you’re going to go outside, there are some flashlights in the closet to the left of the kitchen.”

Marshall, Tegan and Kody watched as grandfather and grandson walked out of the house. The others joined them as soon as the truck’s taillights disappeared from sight.

Marshall slowly pushed his chair back and looked them all in the eyes. “Let’s see if we can find out what we’re dealing with here.”

PART THREE

“O
ne. Simple. Task. That’s it. That’s all the job required.”

The temperature in the conference room had plummeted the moment Tony stepped in. He observed the three men standing before him with icy disgust. He’d handpicked them himself for his unit, having seen them perform excellently many times in the past.

And yet, they’d been outsmarted by a couple of teenagers
.

None of the three men would look him directly in the eye. Hajjar stood off to the side, thick arms folded over his equally thick chest, a bandage wrapped around his head and another around a hand. He appeared somber.

Tony hefted a four-foot length of steel pipe he’d picked up in the underground construction zone and arched his eyebrow at the red-haired Australian. “Liam.”

The Australian briefly met Tony’s gaze in acknowledgement. “Sir.”

“You told me the girls escaped you once. You recaptured them, tied them up, and locked them in again. And you had an extra pair of eyes and hands to help guard the door. Right?” Tony spun the pipe like a staff, not expecting an answer. “Tell me, how in hell did they manage to hoodwink you to escape the second time around?”

“They obviously had help, sir,” the Australian said. “The first time they got out, someone hit me in the back of my head with a microwave oven.”

“And did you find out who it was?”

“No, sir.”

“Of course you didn’t.” Tony worked the pipe around his palm and over his knuckles. “This is incompetence. Stupidity. Ineffectiveness. Do I need to go on?”

The Australian shook his head.

“What am I going to do?” Tony’s words dripped acid. “Losing the girls, colossal damages . . . I have to report all of this to the boss. I left you in charge, Liam, but I will be taking the flak for your ineptitude. I
despise
having my leadership and my judgment questioned by the boss. I‘ve worked too hard for that.”

The Australian stared over Tony’s head at the wall behind him.

Tony shoved his free hand into the pocket of his skinny jeans. “And then, for reasons I will never comprehend, fortune brought
all five
of them right into your hands. And what do you do? You lose them,
again!
How? You were armed and had three other men with you!”

“There was a man with them,” the Australian responded weakly. “He wasn’t much of a problem, but weird things happened.”

“Yeah, I heard,” Tony snapped. “Trucks disappearing and all that crap. What were you guys smoking?”

“I was with them,” Hajjar interjected calmly. “I saw it, and I was completely sober.”

Tony spun the pipe around his hand again.
Ohh, the partially-blind guy thinks he can nullify this situation.
“And I’m supposed to tell the boss . . . what? That you got distracted by your hallucinations, thereby allowing the five to escape? Who knows where they are by now!”

He jabbed one end of the pipe under the Australian’s jaw. The man froze, eyes darting from the pipe to Tony.

“Careful, Cross,” Hajjar sneered. “Keep that little demon inside you on a tight leash.”

Tony turned to him sharply. Hajjar smiled. “I’m the head of security here, Tony. I don’t have to stand here and watch your BS. Take it somewhere else, if you must entertain your sadistic urges.”

Tony clucked his tongue and took a deep breath. “I’ve had it under control for four years now, Elias,” he said, “but I do have to dispense some sort of consequence for this unacceptable failure.” He looked back at the Australian, prodding the pipe against the man’s throat. To his credit, the man didn’t budge.

“This is your mess,” Hajjar said indifferently. “Don’t leave me another pile to clean up here. I’ll be topside checking up on things.”

Tony waited until the giant had left the room before studying the three underlings. He was livid, yes; but even more so, he was disappointed. “The more I’m around all these ignoramuses,” he said to himself, though the others could still hear him, “the more I appreciate the boss’s plan for the future. A world without fools. I really can’t wait.”

The men remained still.

“You two, out.” Tony nodded to the men on either side of the Australian. “Liam and I need to have a little chat.”

The Australian stiffened, eyeing the pipe under his chin. Tony noticed and tossed the pipe to one of the men as they left the room.

The flame-haired man’s shoulders dropped in relief and he let out a small laugh. “I thought you were gonna hit me ’round the head with that.”

Tony turned so his back was to the Australian. “No,” he said, staring down at his penny loafers. “Of course not. That’s cheap.”

“Sir, I really don’t know what to say. I—”

“They were girls, teenagers. They were locked up in a room after being nabbed. You figured they’d be weak, knees knocking together and curled up in a corner. You figured they’d just sit and do as they’re told. Is that it, Liam?”

“Y-yes, sir. That was probably it.”

Tony leisurely turned around and stepped closer so he stood within six inches of the other man. “You most likely also thought, then, that since they looked like easy pickings, you could relax, drop your guard a little.”

The other man was ashen. “I—perhaps. I mean, quite likely.”

Tony placed his hands on the Australian’s shoulders, feeling him tense up again. “Do I pay you to slack off, Liam?”

“No, sir.”

“Every assignment we’ve taken on prior to this demanded a high level of commitment. Why would this be any different?”

“It . . . it wasn’t. It shouldn’t have been.”

“I’ve seen you, all of you, perform excellently before. This is why I depend on you.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“Will you be able to perform to my expectations again?”

“I can guarantee it, sir. This is one slip-up. We know our jobs and we do them well.”

“I’m glad to hear it.” Tony removed his hands from the Australian’s shoulders. “You can go now. But before you leave, let me warn you that this is not over. If the boss demands a pound of my flesh over this fiasco, I will tear two out of you.”

T
egan walked with Mariah through the wheat field, shining her flashlight alternately at the ground and at the headless stalks. The sky overhead was speckled with bright stars and the moon cast an ethereal sheen on the six-hundred-acre farm. Every now and then an insect or some creature would emit a noise which kept the girls on their toes.

“This is depressing,” Tegan said, running her fingers over the stalks. “I feel so bad for Jag’s grandparents.”

Mariah knelt to take a look at the dust-covered soil. “Me too.”

Tegan looked around for Aari and Marshall and spotted their flashlight beams a couple of hundred feet away. Kody was on his own a little further down from them, using his night vision ability to scan the crops.

As they walked, a thought crossed Tegan’s mind. “Are there snakes out here?” she asked.

“I sure hope not,” Mariah mumbled.

“Let’s check with our resident know-it-all. Hey, Aari!”

“Yeah?” Aari yelled. “You found something?”

“No! Just wondering if there are any snakes in Kansas!”

“Um . . . Yeah! Lots! Mostly harmless, like gopher snakes, but some are pretty deadly!”

From somewhere in the depths of the field, they heard a scream from Kody. “
There are snakes here?
”

“Just be careful,” Marshall called.

“Gah!”

They continued on, hoping to find something that the investigators from the government agencies might have missed. Tegan was skeptical of that objective.
If the experts couldn’t find anything, what are the chances we will?

It was nearly an hour later when Kody suggested calling it quits. Tegan and the others readily agreed; they were still exhausted from the events of the past couple of days and, at this point, wanted nothing more than to put their feet up. They headed back to the house and fell onto the sofas in the living room just as the clock struck eleven.

Lady trotted in after them and lay down by Marshall’s feet. The Sentry reached down to pat her head warmly.

“Where’s the remote?” Aari asked. “I want to see what’s on the news.”

Tegan located the remote between the sofa cushions and turned the television on, flipping through different channels until she came across a cable news station. An interviewer faced two people who appeared to be government officials. Judging from the sunlight outside the TV studio’s wide windows, the panel was pre-recorded. Not surprisingly, the topic of discussion was the crop failures.

“We are still working on identifying the cause of the outbreak,” a woman who was identified on screen as a U.S. Department of Agriculture spokesperson was saying. “We have gathered samples from a large number of affected areas across the country, but test results remain inconclusive.”

“So far we haven’t identified any specific chemical or biological contaminants in the samples,” the male official from the Environmental Protection Agency added.

“So is this a natural phenomenon, or is there something more insidious at play here?” the interviewer asked, laying down her papers.

“Our test results remain inconclusive for now,” the woman repeated. “What we do encourage, though, is that people in the affected areas remain vigilant, especially farmers.”

The camera focused on the interviewer. “What do you want them to be vigilant of? What should they be looking for?”

“We don’t feel that we should rule out anything at this point,” the EPA man said. “Any observations citizens make that seem out of the ordinary may provide important information.”

“That’s really helpful,” Kody remarked dryly. Tegan let out a snort.

“What we do know so far is that the effect on crops is very specific, as your viewers saw in the clips you ran earlier,” the man continued.

“Turn it off,” Aari said suddenly.

Tegan, though surprised, obliged. “What’s up?”

Aari went to stand in front of the television. “I’ll tell you what’s up. The knee-jerk reaction to explain this whole crop failure phenomenon circles around the bug or disease theory. We can’t blame people for thinking that way because we
are
dealing with crops here, so what they’re naturally looking for is something biological in nature, or possibly chemical. You can tell from their conversations that they’re searching for something organic, something that occurs in nature. But what if they’re looking at it from a completely wrong angle?”

“Meaning?” Tegan asked.

“Think about this.” Aari started to pace. “From what we’ve gathered from Marshall’s account, there is clearly a human hand behind this. What if the destruction of the crops is being caused by something created in a lab?”

“Diseases can be created in labs,” Mariah said, shrugging.

“True. But if I remember clearly—and Marshall, correct me if I’m wrong— when you were making that warehouse delivery you heard them talking about a Class One cleanroom and something they called fenixium, which, by the way, sounds like a kind of mineral to me.” He stopped pacing and raised a finger. “Here’s the thing. You don’t need a Class One cleanroom, which is hundreds of times cleaner than a surgery room, and minerals to create bugs or diseases. You do that in a bio lab with bacteria and other organisms, not in a manufacturing facility. So the question becomes, what were they producing in there?”