Quantum (4 page)

JUNE 23

South Bend, Indiana

‘What the fuck?’ the driver of the semi growled when he noticed the flashing blue lights in the mirror cluster on his door.

‘Problem, Jimbo?’ the skinny young man seated next to him asked.

‘Yeah, a cop.’

‘Shit, were ya speeding?’ the third man on the bench seat asked.

‘I don’t think so. Potholes are so bad ’round here, I’d jar my teeth loose if I went more than five over the limit. Must be down on his ticket quota and I’m the only thing on the road right now.’

The driver carefully took the semi off to the side of the two-lane county road, put the rig in neutral, and switched on the hazard lights. A white, unmarked Chevy Blazer pulled up behind the truck. A moment later a uniformed Indiana state trooper stepped out from behind the wheel. In the mirror, the driver watched as the trooper slowly approached.

‘Looks like a real hard-ass, Jimbo,’ the skinny man said, craning his neck to get a view in the mirror.

‘Yeah, a real tough guy,’ the driver replied anxiously, his heart racing.

‘His partner’s coming up on my side,’ the third man announced. ‘Looks just like the other one. I guess they’re cloning cops now.’

‘License and registration, please,’ the trooper said in a tone of bored superiority as he reached the driver’s door.

‘What’s the problem, Officer?’ the driver asked as he handed over the requested paperwork.

‘Just a routine check. Would the three of you mind stepping out of the cab?’

The troopers stood back from the doors, carefully keeping one hand on their holstered pistols. As the driver shut the engine off and slid out from behind the wheel, the two other men stepped down on the passenger side.

‘Let’s go around to the other side,’ the trooper said, indicating that the driver should lead the way.

‘Open up the trailer, please,’ the trooper demanded as they reached where the second officer stood with the other men.

‘Sure,’ the driver replied as he unlocked the trailer’s side door. ‘There’s nothing inside ’cept our dollies and some padding. We were just on our way to a pickup.’

The driver swung the door wide open.

‘See, just like I told ya.’

‘I’ll be the judge of that,’ the trooper said sternly. ‘Step inside, please. All of you.’

The three men complied and stepped up into the trailer. They began to sweat, as much from nervousness as the rising temperature inside.

The three men watched as the two troopers climbed up into the trailer.

‘Take a look around,’ the senior officer said to his partner.

The younger man moved to the front of the trailer and began searching through the pile of padded blankets.

‘What’re you lookin’ for?’ the driver asked.

‘Drugs,’ the trooper answered. ‘We got a tip that a local dealer is using moving trucks to bring his drugs in. Where’s your pickup?’

‘Notre Dame. We’re moving some guy’s lab to a research park off campus.’

‘How’s it look?’ the trooper asked his partner.

‘Clean.’

The trooper nodded.

‘Is that it?’ the driver asked expectantly.

‘Just one more thing.’

In a blur of motion, the trooper drew his weapon.

‘Jesus, no!’ shouted the driver.

The trooper placed two 9-mm rounds from his suppressed Glock into the skinny man’s forehead; the back of the man’s skull exploded onto the metal wall of the trailer in a Rorschach of blood, bone, and gray matter. He then adjusted his aim to the right, sweeping to his next target, and fired another double tap between the driver’s eyebrows. The younger trooper shot the third mover with equal efficiency.

Both men closed the distance between themselves and the movers. The three young men lay absolutely still as the last seconds of their lives ticked away.

‘Clear,’ Dmitri Leskov announced. ‘Pavel, go get the others.’

‘
Da
,’ Pavel acknowledged as he jumped down from the trailer.

Pavel was halfway to the unmarked Blazer – blue strobes still flashing – when three men, all dressed in the same tan uniforms that the movers wore, emerged from the rear of the vehicle. The men quickly moved to the back of the Blazer and unloaded a nested set of three orange plastic barrels, three battery-operated caution flashers, a bundle of large gray mats, and a ten-foot-long sausage shaped object emblazoned with the PLG corporate logo at regular intervals along its gray fabric exterior. Pavel grabbed the sausage, retrieved a large canvas gym bag from the Blazer, and then followed the others back to the trailer.

‘Hand me the bag,’ Dmitri called out from the open door. ‘Then feed the Pig to Vanya.’

Pavel tossed the gym bag up to his older brother, then lifted up the end of the sausage. The coarse fabric of the Pig chaffed against his neck and shoulders as Vanya pulled it into the trailer.

‘Quickly, Yuri,’ Vanya said as he pulled the full length of the Pig into the trailer, ‘contain the blood before it covers the whole floor.’

Yuri nodded and laid the Pig on the floor to act as a dam around the perimeter of the slowly expanding pool of blood. Vanya then ripped open the package of mats and spread a blanket of thin gray quilted rectangles atop the red-black liquid. Like the Pig, the mats immediately began absorbing the blood.

The fifth man, Josef, had the three orange barrels set with their open bottoms facing up.

‘Keys?’ Dmitri asked.

‘I have them,’ Josef replied, patting the key ring in his pocket.

Dmitri and Pavel picked up the skinny mover’s body by the arms and legs and carried it over to the first container.

‘Steady the barrel, Josef,’ Dmitri barked as he and Pavel lifted the body over the open end.

Carefully, they lifted the mover’s arms and legs, folding his body at the waist as they lowered it into the barrel. When the body reached the bottom, they folded his arms and legs until the man disappeared into the drum.

They repeated this maneuver twice more as Yuri and Vanya wiped down the trailer walls and floor with the absorbent mats. Drawn by the blood, flies began to swarm annoyingly around them.

Dmitri checked his watch. ‘Let’s wrap this up,’ he announced.

The other men nodded and went about finishing their assigned tasks. Dmitri and Pavel stripped off the police uniforms and stuffed them into one of the barrels.

‘Here,’ Dmitri said as he tossed his brother new clothes from the gym bag.

Pavel pulled the snug-fitting work shirt over his broad shoulders and looked down at the embroidered company logo over the left breast.

‘I feel like I’ve been demoted,’ Pavel said with a laugh.

Once the trailer was wiped clean of blood and gore, the soiled mats and the sausage were stuffed into the barrels, and Josef snapped the thick plastic lids closed. The men then carefully turned the barrels right side up. The movers’ bodies slumped to the bottom, but the lids easily held the weight.

Yuri and Vanya jumped down from the trailer and took the barrels, one by one, from Pavel and Josef.

After Pavel and Josef exited the trailer, Dmitri handed them the three flashing caution lights and the gym bag that contained the two suppressed Glocks. He then leapt down and closed the trailer’s side door.

Between the trailer and the Blazer, Dmitri’s men arranged the barrels around a wide, deep pothole near the pavement’s edge. Snapped in place, the orange caution lights began blinking.

‘Let’s go,’ Dmitri announced, smiling to himself that the barrels might actually do some good.

JUNE 23

South Bend, Indiana

Nolan Kilkenny and Ted Sandstrom stood leaning against the wall beside a large window as the movers wheeled another cart of boxes from the nearly empty lab. They heard Kelsey and Paramo engaging in a rapid exchange of words out in the corridor, their voices growing louder as the pair neared the lab’s door.

‘Problem, Kelsey?’ Nolan asked.

‘Just a friendly debate,’ she replied.

Paramo smiled. ‘Kelsey and I were mulling over some of Guth’s work on false vacuum theory.’

‘False vacuum theory?’ Nolan repeated. ‘I’m almost afraid to ask.’

‘It’s one of the more recent theories kicking around about how a universe forms,’ Kelsey offered.

Nolan held his hands up as if to push any further explanation away before it could reach him. ‘Stop right there! My head still hurts from last night’s little after-dinner discussion about M-branes and eleven-dimensional multiverses.’

‘Wimp,’ Sandstrom said with a laugh. ‘Hey, Raphaele, did the movers get those boxes out of our office?’

‘Everything went down with the last load,’ Paramo replied.

Kelsey eyed the blue plastic cooler near Nolan’s feet. ‘Anything left to drink?’

‘There’s one can of Diet Coke with your name on it.’

Kelsey fished the last can from the slush of melted ice and sat down on a lab bench. ‘How long before we’re done here?’

‘Not long. All that’s left are those two boxes. It’s a short drive to the research park,’ Nolan said, running through a mental checklist. ‘I figure a couple of hours to unload at the new lab.’ Nolan picked up the cooler and dumped the icy dregs into the lab sink, shaking the last few drops out before closing the lid. ‘I’m going to take this down to my truck so we can reload it at the gas station. I’ll be back in a minute.’

The hallway echoed with his footsteps, the building nearly empty on this early-summer Friday afternoon. Kilkenny took the stairs and exited Nieuwland Science Hall around the corner from the loading dock. A semi filled the single bay, its trailer flush with the elevated concrete dock. The four-wheeled carts were nearly empty; the five-man crew had made quick work of this job.

Kilkenny’s truck was parked at the far end of the loading area facing the dock. He fished the key fob out of his khaki shorts and pressed the button that unlocked the lift gate.

As he placed the empty cooler into the back of the SUV, he observed one of the movers pull two canvas bags from the white Blazer parked near the semi. The man then carried the bags back to where the rest of the moving crew waited. Another of the movers crouched down, unzipped one of the bags, and extracted a pistol holster.

‘What the hell?’ Kilkenny cursed quietly as he watched the distribution of weapons and other equipment among the men.

Using hand signals, the leader of the crew ordered the others into position. One remained on the loading dock while the others went back into Nieuwland Hall.

With his SUV screening him from view, Kilkenny searched the cargo area for a weapon. In the row of bins where he kept his tools, he found a combat knife – a memento from his navy days. He strapped the sheathed blade to his right thigh and carefully closed the lift gate.

As the mover paced along the elevated platform, Kilkenny surveyed the area between the loading dock and the rear of the semi trailer, timing the man’s movements. The short span of the platform meant that the trailer blocked the man’s view of the parking area for only a few seconds in each circuit.

Realizing that he would have to move quickly, Kilkenny crouched behind his truck, tensed and ready. When the man turned at the far end of the platform and began walking back toward the semi, Kilkenny sprinted across the entire lot using the trailer as a shield. His heart pounded as he slipped under the truck, adrenaline coursing through his body and his senses charged. Loose gravel and chips of broken glass dug at his forearms and shins as he stealthily snaked his way beneath the trailer to the platform.

When Kilkenny reached the space between the double axle at the rear of the trailer, he pulled himself back on his feet and again began timing the man’s movements. As the man turned away, Kilkenny shifted closer to the platform, hiding in the space between the right-side tires and the steel-frame bumper.

Soon the man turned facing the driver’s side of the semi, walking back toward the open trailer doors.

Kilkenny slipped out from beneath the vehicle and stood next to the rear tires. Carefully, he unfastened the door catch. As the sound of the man’s footsteps grew closer, Kilkenny timed it perfectly and thrust the heavy metal door forward. The sudden rush of the door caught the man broadside, striking hard against his shoulder.

‘Blat!’ Vanya cursed as he rolled from the force of the blow.

Kilkenny followed the rotation of the door forward and leapt up on the platform behind it, releasing his grip on the handle and unsheathing his knife to press on with the attack.

Despite the burning pain, Vanya reached for the Glock 9-mm pistol strapped to the left side of his chest. He snapped a glance over his battered shoulder in time to see Kilkenny emerge from behind the steel door.

‘Krasny adín!’
Vanya shouted as he twisted the holstered weapon up and fired from beneath his armpit.

The first round drilled through the muscle of Kilkenny’s left thigh, a point-blank shot that struck at almost the same instant it left the Glock. After boring a bloody tunnel, the bullet erupted from Kilkenny’s leg and ricocheted off the concrete dock. A second shot flew just inches wide because of the recoil of the first.

Momentum still carrying him forward, Kilkenny grabbed the holster strap and held tight as he drove his combat knife into the man’s back. The knife shuddered as its serrated back edge sawed through the cartilage that connected a rib and vertebrae.

Vanya’s grasp on his pistol weakened as his heart spasmed, the blade puncturing the muscular walls of the organ. Kilkenny pushed the knife sideways as he extracted it, widening the gash in the man’s blood-soaked back. Vanya’s legs gave out, and Kilkenny let him fall to the dock.

Kilkenny then rolled the body over onto its back; a blank, open-mouthed stare gaped back at him. Using his knife, he cut two strips of cloth from the man’s shirt and hastily wrapped a pressure bandage around his thigh.

Kilkenny found a German-made military-grade radio transmitter clipped to the man’s hip, the kind of communications equipment favored by special forces. He flipped the SEND switch into the off position, then removed the earpiece/lip mike component from the man’s ear and slipped the gear on himself. His right ear filled with a faint hiss of static, then two sharp clicks crackled harshly in the ear-piece. The clicks repeated a few seconds later.

These guys are operators
, Kilkenny thought as he ignored the clicks – a request for the dead man to report in to his commanding officer.

A quick pat search of the man revealed little. The mover carried a silenced 9-mm Glock and two spare clips of ammunition. Kilkenny found no identification of any kind. He pocketed the two ammo clips, chambered a round in the Glock, and carefully moved back into Nieuwland Hall.

One shitbag down
, he thought,
four more to go.