ANOM: Awakening (The ANOM Series Book 1) (4 page)

As
for Hayden’s face, much like the rest of him, it seemed out of place for what
he said he was, a look that was more trailer park deadbeat than penthouse super
spy. His dark-blonde hair was slick with sweat and pulled back into a stringy
ponytail, and his blue eyes were spaced too close together and set back too deep
in his head. His jawline and throat were smothered in dark-blonde whiskers, and
from the corner of his mouth, one tooth twisted up and away from the rest so
that when he smiled his top lip would catch on the tooth and hang in place for
a moment even after his smile had faded.

Ellison
felt his shoulders and jaw tighten. He despised Hayden. Hated his accent. Hated
his laugh. Hated his cigarette. He hated everything about the man, and what was
worse, Ellison knew he would hate him from the beginning, but Hayden was also a
part of the mission.

*****

Hayden
stood waiting for the battalion just outside the first gate at Fort Blaney. As
the convoy arrived, Hayden stepped forward, and McCann got out of the Humvee to
meet him. Ellison followed.

Hayden
spoke first, “Colonel McCann, welcome to Fort Blaney, West Virginia.”

McCann
answered, “It’s good to be here. You’re Mr. Hayden, I presume?”

“That’s
right, colonel. I’ll be your liaison to the CIA.”

Then
Ellison spoke without thinking, and he remembered now just how much he wished
he had kept silent. “Liaison? Our mission parameters call for communications to
go dark. How are you going to be a liaison when you can’t talk to anyone?”

Hayden
smirked, “Don’t worry, Major, I’m sure I’ll find a way. Besides, the CIA makes
it their business to never be in the dark for long.”

Ellison
opened his mouth, ready to answer, but before he could begin, Hayden had turned
back to the colonel. “Colonel McCann, if you can come with me there are some
things we need to go over.”

Hayden
motioned for McCann to walk with him toward one of the gatehouses; Ellison
started to follow, but Hayden stopped short and wheeled back on him. “That’s
all right, Major Ellison. Why don’t you stay here and start checking in your
men? I’m sure the colonel can tell you anything you actually need to know.”

*****

Ellison
told himself that his hatred for Hayden had little to do with that first
dismissal—sending him off to check in the men as if he were a child to be
distracted by busy work—and for the most part, that was true. It wasn’t the
dismissal that turned Ellison against Hayden. The dismissal was only the
symptom. The real disease was the man’s flawed character, and Ellison could see
it all from that first meeting. Hayden was rude. He was short-tempered, too. He
was arrogant and self-indulgent, but worst of all, he was condescending. He
talked to everyone like they were stupid, regardless of rank, and he especially
enjoyed painting Ellison as the fool, showing him up in front of the men.
That’s when Ellison hated him the most.

Like
now.

Hayden
took one last drag on his cigarette, and then he flicked the butt to the floor
of the command center. He stepped forward and held out his hand, ready for the
tablet.

McCann
handed it over and turned his attention back to Ellison. “Let’s see it, major.”

Ellison
looked to his left. “Captain Reyes, bring the video up on the screen.”

“Yes,
sir,” Reyes answered, and then the monitor at the front wall of the command
center changed to a black and white picture from a traffic camera, frozen in
tableau. At the top of the screen, pointing down the street, they could see the
front half of a school bus. Farther down, maybe a dozen yards from the bus, two
boys were also in the street. The first seemed to be lying on his stomach in
the road. The second was bending over him.

Then
the video started to play. The second boy, the one bending over his friend
lying in the street, pulled the other boy back toward the sidewalk. Then he
dropped to his knee. The school bus was still coming. It slid forward, but
then, just as it made contact, it stopped; it stopped so suddenly and so
completely that the back end of the bus jerked into the air and swung to the
right, knifing the front corner of the bus into a parked car on the side of the
road. They watched as the boy staggered up to his feet, and more people swarmed
around him. Then he fell back into the street, and the video image froze again.

McCann
folded his arms across his chest. “A boy who stops a bus. That’s pretty good,
if he’s still alive.”

Ellison
nodded. “He was admitted to the Albert Einstein Medical Center at 8:17, still
alive. We’re waiting to get an asset into the hospital to verify his status
now.”

“Wait
there.” Hayden was shaking his head, pointing one of his long fingers at the
screen. “Right there. The bus hits a car, not the boy. Look. For all we know it
may not have touched the boy at all.”

For
the first time all morning, Ellison turned to face Hayden directly. “We’ve run
computer simulations, six of them so far, and in every one it shows the forward
momentum of the bus is stopped before it hits the car. That bus hits the boy
first, and then something else happens.”

McCann
unfolded his arms and rubbed his hand across his chin; he had made his
decision. “Major Ellison, Agent Hayden, I’ll speak with both of you in the
conference room. Everyone else, I want all eyes on Philadelphia. That boy,”
McCann reached out, took the tablet back from Hayden, and glanced down at the
screen. “Jeremy Cross is now our number-one priority.”

“Yes,
sir,” the men at the table answered in unison as Ellison, Hayden, and McCann
stepped into the glass room at the side of the command center. As soon as the
door closed behind them, magnetic locks slid into place, sealing them inside,
and the glass walls and door fogged over into opaque gray, hiding them from the
soldiers still working in the command center. McCann took the seat behind the
desk and motioned for Hayden and Ellison to sit. Hayden obliged, sliding into
the black leather chair on the right, crossing his legs, folding his hands, and
rocking back to get comfortable. Ellison, however, stood “at ease” in the
middle of the room.

McCann
started, “For the moment, let’s assume this boy is still alive. I want to hear
our options.”

Ellison
answered first, “Sir.”

“Go
ahead, Major. You can speak freely.”

Ellison
took a moment, measured his words, and began, “Sir, we are only six months out
from initiating phase three. At this point, when we’re this close, we can’t
afford to bring in someone new. He would be a liability at best.”

McCann
rubbed his chin. “What do you suggest, Major?”

“I
think our best option is to neutralize him.”

A
sharp laugh came from Ellison’s right; Hayden uncrossed his legs and leaned
forward. “Neutralize him? That’s your suggestion? Brilliant.”

Ellison
wheeled around to face Hayden, his jaw tight and his finger pointing down at
the man’s chest. “If you bring him in here—”

“
If
I bring him in?” Hayden feigned incredulity, touching his hand to his
chest. “You mean, ‘When I bring him in,’ because that’s the protocol.” These
last words were directed to McCann, as if Ellison were no longer in the room.

“There
are no options,” Hayden said. “We follow our orders. We follow protocol. What
if this kid turns out to be a level four? Or what if he’s a five? You want to
explain how you thought it was a good idea to ‘neutralize’ a level five?”
Hayden shook his head, more to himself than anyone else. “No, we follow the
protocol. Period.”

Ellison
struggled to keep his voice even. “So we follow protocol and bring him in. What
do we do if he becomes a problem?”

Hayden
turned back to face him, “Don’t worry about it, Major. If he becomes a problem,
I can handle him for you.”

Ellison
turned away, dismissing Hayden’s bravado, but once again McCann was decided,
“All right, Agent Hayden, we’ll follow your protocol, but I want you to
understand one thing: We are not bringing in anybody until they’re verified.
I’m not about to jeopardize this whole operation for someone who can’t even
help us. I want this boy tested.”

Hayden’s
upper lip curled over his stray tooth. “We can do that.”

“Sir,”
Ellison spoke up again.

McCann
turned. “What is it, Major?”

“If
we bring the subject in, I think we need to recall Mirror to Fort Blaney. She
should be here, on site.”

Hayden
twisted in his chair. “Well, that’s going to be more difficult, isn’t it? She
has a rotation. You know that.”

McCann
folded his hands on the desk. “Major Ellison’s right. I want her here too.
There’s too much that can go wrong with this. I want her here, on base, or we
scrap the whole thing. Protocols be damned.”

Hayden
forced a smile. “Well then, I guess we’ll have to transfer Mirror back to Fort
Blaney.”

McCann
pressed a button on the desktop, and the magnetic locks on the door slid open.
“Thank you, Mr. Hayden.”

Hayden
rose to his feet. “Colonel. Major Ellison. It’s been a pleasure, as always.”

Ellison
clenched his teeth and waited in silence as Hayden walked through the door.

Once
he was outside, Ellison brought his heels together and threw up a sharp salute.
“Sir.”

“Just
a minute, Major.” McCann’s voice was tired.

Ellison
returned to the position of parade rest. “Sir?”

“I’m
only going to say this once, Stuart, because I don’t think I’ll get a chance to
say it a second time. Do not lose your temper with Hayden again. Not once. Not
ever. Am I understood?”

For
a second Ellison said nothing, but when he answered, his voice was sharp and
crisp. “Yes, sir.”

McCann
waited without speaking, eyeing Ellison and letting his words fully register;
finally he finished, “You’re dismissed, Major.”

Ellison
raised his hand in salute, and the gesture was returned with a half-hearted
swipe of the brow by McCann. Then Ellison turned on his heels and walked out of
the conference room.

*****

It
was the middle of the night, and the bunkroom was dark as Ellison stepped
inside. More than a dozen beds lined the walls, and in each one Ellison could
see a sleeping soldier. He stood for a moment, straining his eyes to see if he
had woken anyone up, but no one moved and no one made a noise other than the
light snoring from the bunk closest to the door. Satisfied, Ellison stalked
down the row of beds until at last he found the one he was looking for.

He
clicked on his flashlight, and shining the beam full in the face of a sleeping
soldier, he shouted, “Lieutenant Brown!”

Brown
shot up straight in the bed, blinking against the light, disoriented. “What?
What are we…? Sir?”

Ellison
could hear the other men in the room moving in their bunks; he ignored them and
kept his flashlight pointed in Brown’s face. “Get up, Lieutenant! Put on your
boots and follow me.”

Brown
swung himself out of bed. Like most of the soldiers, he was wearing a white
t-shirt and PT shorts. He stepped over to his locker and reached for a pair of
gray camouflaged pants.

Ellison
barked again, “What are you doing, Lieutenant? I said put on your boots and
follow me! Now!”

“Yes,
sir.” Brown let go of the pants and instead reached down for his black,
standard-issue boots. He slipped them on his feet and followed Ellison out of
the room.

Outside
the bunkroom, Brown blinked again, this time against the white glare of the
fluorescent lighting. He looked down the hallway to his left, half-expecting to
see other soldiers stumbling out of their rooms in boots and underwear, but no
one was there. Then Brown turned to his right and hurried to fall into step
with Ellison.

He
looked sideways at the major. “Sir?”

Ellison
didn’t answer.

Brown
tried again, “Sir, is there some emergency in the command center?”

Ellison
still didn’t answer. Instead, he reached the end of the hall and pushed the
button for one of the elevators. They waited in silence until they heard the
ding of the arriving car and the elevator doors slid open. Both men stepped
inside.

“Sir?”

“No,
Lieutenant, there’s no emergency,” Ellison answered in little more than a
whisper.

The
elevator doors closed, and the car started to climb. Brown looked down at his
feet, letting the elevator race up several floors in silence before he turned
back to Ellison. “Sir, what time is it?”

“It’s
0145, Lieutenant.”

The
elevator stopped, the doors opened, and Ellison and Brown stepped out into a
long, open hangar. Two rows of olive drab Humvees lined both sides of the
darkened building. The wide doors on the far wall stood open against the cold of
the night.

Ellison
and Brown walked through the hangar, their footsteps echoing off the concrete
floor, and as they walked, from the corner of his eye, Ellison could see the
lieutenant start to shiver. They crossed the threshold of the building and stepped
into the outside world. Above them the sky was dark and clouded. Ellison let
out a long, slow breath, watching it cloud over in the cold night air. Then the
wind swirled, throwing a handful of snow flurries against their faces.