Mind's Eye (49 page)

Heather faced her new friend, who was taking a sip of coffee. “Okay, Megan. How did you pull this off?”

“I’m glad you asked,” replied Megan with a smile. “Because I’m dying to tell you. I was in telepathic contact with Nick when the three of you were watching coverage of the press conference. Just before I lost my connection with him, he managed to think the words,
sleep drug.
After that it was radio silence. I was totally panicked at that point. I thought about rushing back to the house, guns blazing, to save him. But there were problems with this strategy. I didn’t know if only Nick had been knocked out, or if everyone had. And if the two bodyguards were behind this and still conscious, this could end very badly. Besides, I’m just a graphic designer. The guns blazing thing really isn’t my strength.”

“Didn’t you only have one real gun, anyway?” said Heather with a smile.

“Yeah. There was that, too. So it would have been,
gun
blazing. So I decided to wait until Nick awoke, so he could feed me telepathic intel and give me instructions. Having him on the inside, guiding me, was the only way I was going to be able to help him. We never told you this, but that’s really how Nick and I managed to escape the colonel.”

Girdler winced. “And I’ve been trying so hard to forget that ever happened,” he said in amusement. “Thanks for bringing it up again.”

“You have to admit it was effective,” said Megan.

“Exceedingly effective,” said Girdler.

“Even so,” continued Megan, “it occurred to me I could use an ally. Someone who knew what he was doing. Not a graphic designer pretending to be a Navy Seal. And that’s when it hit me. Nick had told me telepathically about the breaking story on his ESP. The
Iowa Gazette
story. I realized this might change everything with the colonel.”

Altschuler pursed his lips in thought, and began to nod seconds later. “Good thinking,” he said in admiration. “Because you realized the genie was out of the bottle anyway. That this story was so credible, even without Nick Hall in the picture going forward, people would take it seriously. The ESP arms race the colonel feared was going to happen no matter what.”

“Right!” said Megan excitedly. “Given that, I thought it was worth asking the colonel if this would cause him to have a change of heart. Nick thought highly of him. So if he told me he’d consider sparing Nick, I decided I would trust him. Besides, I knew he was by far the best chance for us to survive.”

“How did you get ahold of him so quickly?” asked Heather.

“Along with the car, I had bought a disposable cell phone,” replied Megan. She turned to Girdler and rolled her eyes. “You know, to replace the one your men took from me.”

“Yeah. Sorry about that.”

“Anyhow,” she continued, an amused smile on her face, “I called the pentagon, told them I was Megan Emerson, and demanded to speak with Justin Girdler of PsyOps. They told me there was no one there by that name. I gave them my number and told them if he didn’t call me within five minutes, I wouldn’t be responsible for the loss of life.”

Girdler nodded approvingly at Megan. “That was more than enough to do the trick,” he said.

“Really?” said Heather.

“Yes. Our computers flagged her call immediately and brought it to my attention. They knew I had a keen interest in Megan Emerson. I called her back right away. I’d already seen the Internet story about Nick’s ESP and reached the same conclusions she had.”

“I thought he’d still be close by,” said Megan. “And he was. So he was able to helicopter out to meet me in record time. He arrived even before Fyfe revived anyone.”

“Must be nice to be able to get a helicopter on short notice,” said Heather.

“It
can
come in handy,” admitted Girdler.

“The colonel planned everything,” said Megan. “Thank God for that. If you want to plan a deception, you can’t do better than having the head of PsyOps on your side. So
I
didn’t capture Cowan. He did. With mind reading intel from Nick, which I passed along. Colonel Girdler came up with the idea for the candle.” She beamed. “You have to admit—
that
was pretty cool.”

Heather grinned. “Cool in a demented, horrific, Rube-Goldberg-device sort of way, for sure. But given I was handcuffed in a panic room with a madman at the time, I have to admit I was a big admirer.”

“Me too,” said Altschuler.

“It wasn’t real,” said Girdler. “We bought the containers of lighter fluid, but the casserole dish was filled with water. And the blanket and Cowan were soaked in water as well. Once we filmed the scene, I had a colleague helicopter in from Edwards Air Force Base and take Cowan to an interrogation facility.”

A half smile played across Girdler’s face. “So the burning alive thing was just stagecraft,” he said. “The
real
key to all of this was getting Fyfe out of the panic room. Before he killed anyone. Inside, there was no way we could touch him. Not if we wanted any of the innocent hostages to survive.”

“Speaking on behalf of the innocent hostages,” said Heather, “I’m glad this was a consideration.”

“So you presented a credible hostage exchange scenario and lured him out,” said Altschuler. “Knowing that he wouldn’t feel the least bit nervous going head to head against Megan.” He shook his head. “I knew the bastard would never let us walk. I thought Megan was being naive.”

“She knew he’d never let you walk as well,” said Girdler. “She was being naive on
purpose
. To make sure Fyfe was comfortable walking into our trap. And we have Nick Hall to thank for helping me get the drop on Fyfe, by the way.”

“Really?” said Heather. “You do know he was unconscious at the time, right?”

“Saving the day while out cold
is
pretty impressive,” said Megan with a grin. “But it was obviously his ability to plan ahead that did it. If I was going to be a fail-safe, Nick figured I might need a way back in. In case the, ah . . .
waste
. . . hit the fan. So he reprogrammed Tanya. To ignore me leaving. And, if she ever detected me
returning
, to immediately unlock the back door and ignore any breach there.”

Altschuler laughed. “This has to be the cleverest group of people I’ve ever known,” he said. “How brilliant is
that?
So that’s why you came in the
front
door like you did. I thought you were crazy.”

“Sure enough,” said Megan, “as soon as Tanya’s cameras saw me approach the front door, she unlocked the back door as programmed, allowing the colonel to slip right in. While Fyfe was preoccupied at the front of the house, convinced he had the upper hand and that I was a fool, I got the last laugh.”

“Incredible!” said Altschuler in admiration.

The room fell quiet as each member of the group reflected on how flawlessly Megan and the colonel had carried out their plan. Only sips of coffee broke the perfect silence.

“I have an idea,” said Girdler. “The three of you have had quite a traumatic day. Why don’t you shower, get into fresh clothes, and we can reconvene when Nick is awake.”

“That sounds great,” said Heather. “I guess you really do have a knack for planning.”

60

Hall’s eyes fluttered open. After a short while, he realized he was on the couch in the living room of the Sacramento safe house. A splattering of dried blood was on the front door and a trail of blood ran across the carpet, as though a recently deceased body had been dragged through.

Hall seized on the first mind he came to, belonging to Alex Altschuler, and quickly read what had happened, learning that his assessment had been correct.

Fyfe was dead!

They had outmaneuvered a grandmaster. They had stopped a man who was, without question, the most dangerous threat the West had ever encountered.
Hall was ecstatic
.

His mood was elevated even further when Megan, realizing he was awake, threw herself into his arms. They kissed, even knowing they were putting on a show, and then she sat down beside him, beaming. Heather and Alex, seated on the couch across from them, were smiling from ear to ear. Even the colonel, seated in a chair to the left of the couches, was in high spirits.

“Welcome back, Nick,” said Megan, uttering the first words spoken since he had come to. “Did you already use your ESP to learn what happened?”

Hall nodded. “I did.” When he had regained consciousness in the panic room, Megan had let him know telepathically that she was now working with Girdler, and described their plan. And while he had expected to be able to witness it unfold himself, he was thrilled to read how flawlessly it had gone. “What happened is that you saved my sorry ass. Again! You know what, Megan? I have an almost irresistible urge to tell you that I love you. How psycho is that?” he added playfully, but in such a way that he knew Megan would realize this hadn’t been said entirely in jest.

“Hey,” she complained, recognizing this exact line from the fake letter she had written. “That’s plagiarism. That was some of my best work.”

Hall laughed. If he could read her mind, he suspected that some of the letter was truer than she would like to admit. But what he had said to Alex was true also. He was never going to let this one get away. Never. Even
pretending
that she had left him had been a brutal blow to his psyche.

Hall turned to the colonel. “Thanks for helping Megan on this one,” he said. “And especially for not killing me.”

Hall could read that as upset as Girdler was by the
Iowa Gazette
story, he was also happy that the story was effectively a last-second pardon for Hall. At least now the colonel felt like he was on the right side of things,
helping
innocent people rather than trying to kill them. Now all he had to do was avert a possible global catastrophe. Hall also read that the group had filled Girdler in on Alex’s recent implant surgery while they were waiting for him to regain consciousness, so the colonel knew that ESP and cybersurfing were not two sides of the same coin.

Hall took Megan’s hand in his and turned to face her. “And thanks to you for being smart enough to see how that ESP story might have changed things after we were knocked out.”

“About that,” said Girdler before Megan could respond. He blew out a long breath. “You know what I’m about to say to you, Nick, but for the benefit of everyone else, I’ll still say it. Even though I don’t want to kill you, I’m afraid I also can’t let you be cured of ESP. The arms race is about to begin. The e-mail you sent to reporters, in conjunction with the flood of information Fyfe released about Gray’s experiments and the implants, is just too credible for the world to ignore. This arms race will be well under the radar, but numerous countries will mount programs. They’ll start by copying the placement of the implants Theia uses in their clinical trials, and begin tinkering from there. Trying to find the recipe for ESP. With horrible consequences if they do, as we’ve all discussed.”

He leaned in closer to Hall. “So what we have to do now is find an antidote. Which means we need your ESP to be working, so we’ll know if we’ve succeeded. We’ll assume someone will eventually find the recipe to unleash ESP, and we’ll dedicate ourselves to finding a way to block it. A simple formula we can share with the world. So even if someone does crack the code on the weapon of mass destruction that mind reading represents, we’ll have already discovered the shield.”

“With Megan being a big part of this effort, correct?” said Hall.

“I don’t know if you cheated on that or not, but that’s right.”

From Megan’s expression, it was clear this was a new one on her.

“Because she’s immune,” whispered Heather, having figured it out. “That’s why she’s so important.”

“Yes,” said Girdler. “She’s naturally resistant. There will be others in this category as well, but she’ll be the only one in the inner sanctum. But she, and these others, will be the key. We have to discover why they’re immune. Study their genes, their DNA. Test them. Study the nature of their resistance. Hopefully it’s something simple. But we can’t rest until we find it. And when we do, if there’s ever any evidence that ESP is out of the bag, we can give it freely to the world.”

“Until then,” said Heather, “just how secret is this program going to be?”

Girdler frowned. “You know the old joke that goes, ‘It’s so secret, if I told you, I’d have to kill you?’ Well, in this case, it really isn’t so much of a joke. Please keep that in mind. The five of us in this room, and my second-in-command, Major Mike Campbell, will be the only ones to ever know about this. I’d hate to kill someone over being a leak, but I will.” He gestured toward Hall. “Nick?”

“I’m afraid he’s serious,” confirmed Hall. He smiled at the colonel. “But the good news, Colonel, is that I’m reading their minds as well—everyone’s but Megan’s—and they
will
keep this secret.”