The Collective Protocol (18 page)

“She… She’s chosen to disregard that part of the report.”

“Pretty important part of the report. Fourteen men all said that they heard her ask for you by name. Even more strange is that you were on a mission with a completely different precinct than your own
and
it was with a SWAT team when you don’t have SWAT training. There is no reason that you should have been there and there’s no way that woman asked for you by coincidence. I think you were talking to Paige Greene… And I think you were talking to Paige Greene the night your father was killed, Reagan.”

“H… How?” Reagan stuttered.

“My section has run into things of this nature before. Large groups of people throughout history have been led to do things that a sane person would never do. The Nazis, Jim Jones and the Jonestown mass suicide, the Branch Davidians in Waco… In order to keep things in a simple category, we say the leaders are ‘charismatic.’ Closer to home, there have been many cases of ‘mass hysteria’ where entire groups of people have come down with symptoms or behaviors outside of the norm. Remember the Salem witches?”

“What does all of this have to do with our investigation?” Detective Simms asked.

“What I’m saying is that what if these incidents weren’t cases of a charismatic person or hysteria? What if these cases were about mind control?”

“What the hell are you suggesting, Quintana?” Simms demanded.

“Why would millions of animals begin attacking people at roughly the same time? Hell, the Lockharts were trapped in their home by a horde of skunks—”

“It’s called a surfeit,” Reagan said quietly.

“What?” Juan asked.

“A group of skunks is called a surfeit.”

“Oh, okay… Anyways, all the homeless people and the military going crazy and killing exactly three people each before killing themselves. That proves
something
by itself. We don’t know what yet, but there’s no way that 300,000 people all do the exact same thing unless they are under strict control somehow.”

Juan turned towards his shoulder bag that he’d brought in with him. “Let me ask you guys something. Have either of you ever seen…” he dug through the bag and then pulled out something obviously heavy, “this?”

He held a metal object about the size of a small desk fan. Reagan was struck by how much it looked like a legless astromech droid from Star Wars. There were several small raised sections across the surface and there were wires running from a panel that flopped open as he held it up. “There was some circuitry inside here, but our analysts removed it and are studying that now. Better safe than sorry, you know?”

“What is that?” Jimmie asked.

“We don’t know. We found it down in Alabama near the site of some of the worst animal attacks; it was giving off some sort of sonar signal. Once we confiscated it, the attacks in that area ceased within a few hours. Coincidence? I don’t think so.”

“Okay, so just scan for sonar signals and pick those things up,” Jimmie said.

“We’ve been doing that. We’ve recovered three so far, the only problem is that if this device isn’t broadcasting when we scan a particular area with a satellite, then we skip right over it.”

“So, you think that these things have been used in an attack on the U.S.?” Detective Simms asked. It seemed like he needed some type of solid evidence, like the small machine that Agent Quintana held, to make him interested in the story.

“Without a doubt,” the agent stated. “The president believes it too. Except he’s convinced that it’s either the Russians or the Chinese. He thinks they did all of this to focus the world’s attention on us so they could start a war with each other and everyone else would be too worried about their own protection to intervene.”

“Hmpf, that’s a pretty wild theory,” Jimmie said.

“I don’t think it’s far off, except I think the perpetrators are a little closer to home.”

“The Canadians,” Reagan replied.

“Bingo, give that girl a cupie doll!” Juan said. When Reagan stared at him blankly, he explained, “It’s a doll that they used to give out for prizes at fairs and things when I was a kid… You know what, never mind. I think that the Canadians are behind this and your girl Paige in Calgary is evidence enough for me.”

“Wouldn’t that be suicide for them?” Simms asked skeptically. “We’re their biggest trade partners. Without us, they’d fall pretty far down the pole.”

“I don’t know. Would they? I’ve done some research, the Canadian government has made over three hundred billion dollars in wise market choices in the past two years. They’ve got themselves enough money to make it through a rough patch.”

“But why?” Reagan asked.

“Who knows,” Juan answered truthfully. “Maybe they hate our music, our environmental stance, our culture… There are a lot of things to not like about us, but I don’t know why they’d hate us so much. Hell, it may only be a small group of people, we simply don’t know yet.”

“And you think that Paige is somehow involved?” Reagan’s mother asked, finally getting involved in the conversation again.

“I’m certain that she’s involved. I don’t know how deep she goes though. Look, the evidence against her is bad enough. Both of you are certain that you talked to her as she occupied a third party’s body and did some horrible things while she controlled those bodies. That shows me that she’s a willing participant.”

“I think you’re right,” Reagan replied. “What do you need me to do?”

“I’m in as well,” Jimmie said. “Hell, I took her warning and quit the police force so… I guess that I believed in this whole mess on some level.”

“Alright! We saw her in a Calgary coffee house just two weeks ago. That seems to be her base of operations.”

“Wait, she wouldn’t have let someone see her if she didn’t want them to,” Jimmie said.

“You’re right. Our man on the ground disappeared, but she doesn’t control the security cameras. It’s not very hard for our guys to tap into the video feeds and then it was just a matter of time before we had her.”

“Freakin’ FBI,” Jimmie muttered.

“Yeah, well this is the best lead that we’ve got to stop all of this. If you’re feeling up to it, we can be on a plane to Great Falls, Montana by tonight. Since the border is closed, we’ll have to sneak into Canada from there.”

TWENTY-ONE

“The diversionary war is working splendidly. Better than we could have ever expected,” Brigadier Patel remarked. “They’re going crazy and killing each other by the thousands. No one in Europe is paying any attention to the United States crisis anymore. That was a nice touch with the massacre of the civilians.”

“I didn’t do that,” Paige countered.

“Eh? Oh well, they hate one another so much in that part of the world, I’m not surprised then. All they needed was for us to add a spark to the powder keg. Still, it’s a nice job.”

“Thank you, brigadier.”

“The PM wants us to move forward with Phase Five,” the officer stated. “Commissioner Dartmouth, is the border secure?”

“Hmm? Oh yes, it has been for quite some time.”

“Good. We don’t want a surprise force or group of refugees coming into our country to avoid the chaos that we’re about to visit on them.”

“How exactly do you plan to spread this message of yours?” Leclerc asked from across the table where he sat alone.

“The message has already been spread,” Patel gloated. “We’ve had the message implanted on their psyches for over a year. We’ve just been waiting for the right time to have Miss Watkins send out the activation message.”

“Why didn’t I know about this?” the French-Canadian asked.

“It was on a need-to-know basis and you didn’t need to know about this part of the Protocol.”

The intelligence agent threw his chair backwards and stood up to stare out the 25th floor windows. “Really, Leclerc. You of all people should know about the importance of compartmentalizing information,” Brigadier Patel called after him. “If any of us are compromised, the less we know the better.”

“Oh really, Mark? Everyone at this table knows everything about the Protocol except for me, apparently.”

Paige looked around the table to the other two members of the inner circle. He had a point, the three of them knew everything there was to know about the Protocol and Leclerc was on the outside of a few of the decisions. Until the general spoke, she didn’t think that it was on purpose. Now, she wasn’t so sure. She kept the little prison where Pammie had killed Blake a secret from
everyone
. Were there things about the Protocol that even
she
didn’t know about?

The CSIS man eventually returned to the table and sat heavily in his seat. “We agree that it is time to advance to Phase Five, but we’ve lost several amplifiers in the last month and we don’t believe there will be enough to blanket the entire U.S. like we’d initially planned.”

“Can’t be helped,” Patel stated. “As long as the major cities are covered, we can always shift the amplifiers’ location or simply wipe out those communities in Phase Six.”

Paige squeezed her eyes shut at the thought of the following phase. Phase Five would be relatively hands-off for her because she’d send out a few activation messages to various parts of the country, but Phase Six was entirely different.

Phase Six was the final phase before the Canadian Forces invaded America. In Phase Six, she would travel to individual towns and communities and oversee the mass suicide of everyone at their own hands. She’d be mentally imprinted on thousands of people when they committed suicide. Her powers had grown exponentially over the last few months of constant use and she no longer went into shock when one of her hosts died, but she still felt ill. She didn’t know how the death of that many hosts would affect her.

“So, you want me to go ahead with Phase Five then?” she asked in an attempt to change the subject back to the task at hand. Maybe this phase would be so successful that Phase Six wouldn’t be needed. It was wishful thinking.

“Yes, I’ve already told you that the prime minister wants us to move forward. However, I do have some concerns about your
extracurricular
use of the machine. Specifically, the incident right before Christmas. Who is this Reagan person that you’ve been visiting so frequently?”

Paige shot a glance to Gavin, who shook his head indicating that he hadn’t told anyone. “Don’t be so foolish, Paige,” the brigadier chided. “I built the Neuroactuator; do you really think that I’d allow it to be used without generating a report every time that it’s turned on?”

She reigned in her temper. Nothing good ever came of her losing her temper. “I understand that you want to know about the machine’s usage, however I also expect a certain level of privacy. I give everything of myself to this country and our shared cause. I should have the right to be able to visit whomever I choose.”

“I’m not saying that you can’t… yet,” he replied with a veiled threat to limit her access in the future if she didn’t do what he told her to do. “I want to know who that girl is and what happened that caused you to abandon the host so quickly. I have the audio of your side of the conversation, but I’m not sure what’s going on.”

“You have the what?” she asked with alarm.

“The audio. Please tell me that you knew about that?” She shook her head and he said, “No? When you’re hooked up to the machine, you speak out loud here in Calgary when you talk through someone else’s mouth out in the field It’s actually quite creepy when you’re controlling multiple people who speak at the same time. We don’t even understand how your larynx can produce all the multiple sounds at once, but it does.”

“I had no idea. So everything that I’ve ever said has been recorded and… and listened to?”

“Of course. This is a military project, held in a military facility and the Canadian Forces keep meticulous records,” the general replied matter-of-factly. “Don’t worry though. Your secret is safe with us. No one will ever know about your past… Much like no one will know about the woman you keep locked away on the 12th floor of this building.”

“You know about Pammie?” she asked incredulously.

“Of course I know about your former foster sister. That was quite a show that she put on with Mr. Lightfoot. She has such style and grace for as tall of a woman as she is.”

“Is my apartment videotaped and everything catalogued as well?”

“Yes, Paige. Nothing you do in this building is a secret. Not your affair with the technician. Not when you go to the bathroom… Nothing.”

She nodded her head in understanding, perhaps seeing things in their real light for the first time. “Reagan Lockhart is my twin sister…”

Paige proceeded to tell the inner circle of the Collective Protocol everything that she knew about her past and the girl who shared almost the same DNA as her.

TWENTY-TWO

The MD-80 revved its twin engines back up to full power and banked hard to avoid devastating crosswinds on the southern approach to the Great Falls International Airport. The tower had switched it up at the last minute on the pilots and ordered them to reroute and land from the north, causing them to make the adjustments.

Reagan
hated
to fly. It wasn’t simply a case of an overused verb, she truly hated flying and that little maneuver that the pilots just pulled did not help to ease her fears. She began to pray to
something
and continued doing so until the wheels touched down. She was raised in the Catholic Church so she always went back to her roots, but she also had a strong belief that the Church was wrong on a lot of issues. She believed that there was definitely a higher power of some kind, but not necessarily a “god” and the events of the last few months only made her question things more.

How could a deity with humanity’s best interest in mind have allowed these things to happen? In fact, over the course of human history there has been so much pain, suffering and death, how did that happen? Or was the higher spirit actually the Earth herself? Gaia in Greek mythology—Terra to the ancient Romans—the Goddess of the Earth. Was she responsible for the never-ending suffering caused by humanity as she tried to erase the scourge of our existence from her?

She knew that she’d never know the answer. But in times like this, when she prayed to a god that she didn’t really believe in, it made her wonder. As the plane slowed and taxied from the runway to the terminal she thanked
whomever
for the safe landing.

Through the small windows on the plane she could see the snow piled high on either side of the runway. The bright yellow lights of the runway cast strange shadows across the mounds that reminded her of the three drug addicts emerging from the darkness outside of the restaurant. It was disheartening because she’d always loved snow.
Would winter remind me of the death of my father and that I’ve murdered three people for the rest of my life?
she wondered.

“Okay, fun time is over,” Juan Quintana said. “I’ve got a few guys who will meet us at the terminal with gear and transportation.”

They’d briefly discussed their plan for the mission but there were still a lot of unknowns. The immediate goals were to make it across the border into Canada and then travel on into Calgary. It was about a hundred miles from Canada and then a little over two-hundred more to the city if they used the roads.

The FBI already had a team inserted across the border that would assist them with the crossing since the Canadian border had been officially closed since the animal attacks became rampant in October. They’d steadily been increasing the numbers of border police and regular Mounties along the U.S. and Canadian border and they’d even employed the Canadian Forces to help close the gaps in coverage and fully secure the border. Juan told Jimmie and Reagan that they had a way to get past the guards, not to worry.

Using hacked Canadian security footage, Quintana had been able to pinpoint a six-block radius that Paige and another woman, who was seen regularly with her, generally stayed within the east side of the city. This told him that she walked everywhere from where she lived. Reagan had asked how accurate that was since people who worked in downtown D.C. walked everywhere for lunch once they got there from their homes in the suburbs. He’d stared at her and then said that they at least had an area to start where they knew she frequented.

Inside the small terminal they met up with Janice and Dave from the Bureau and escorted the three of them to a maroon SUV that slowly left the airport, headed towards the city.

“What happened to the blacked-out government sedan?” Reagan joked in an effort to relieve the tension in the vehicle.

“Oh, we don’t buy those for the field offices anymore. Kind of conspicuous, especially in northern Montana,” Janice replied good-naturedly.

“Yeah, I guess so,” Reagan said and settled into the heated leather seat to look out the window. There wasn’t much to see in the dark, it was all snow and evergreen trees along the highway. They drove over a bridge and then turned into a residential neighborhood a few miles later.

Dave parked the SUV on a steeply-sloped driveway and unlocked the doors for everyone to get out. The wind blasted Reagan in the face and went directly down her jacket when she opened the door. It was the first time she’d felt the wind since the SUV had been in the garage at the airport. Even the short jog from the driveway to the front door made her have serious reservations about potentially traveling across the country in this weather.

The first thing that they did when they went in the house was to sit in a small room and take a photograph with a green screen behind them so Janice could make fake permanent resident Canadian identification cards. She told them that once all the pictures were taken, it would only take a little while for her to print them up. The hardest part would be to hack into the system and make them legitimate Canadian citizens. She’d done it two days prior for her and Dave, so she was confident that they hadn’t changed security protocols since then.

While she worked on the cards, she had them go to the back bedroom. It took about half an hour for the three of them to sort through racks of cold weather clothing to find outfits and boots that fit them well without restricting movement. Reagan thought the concept of a secret FBI hideout with all this gear in a residential home was neat, but they could have saved a lot of time if they’d sorted the clothes by size.
Oh well
, she thought as she pulled the suspenders of a nice pair of white ski pants over her shoulders. She decided to follow everyone else’s lead and
not
put the coat on until it was actually time to leave.

They ate a meal of grilled steak and noodles that Dave cooked while they were trying on clothes. The meal had been specifically chosen to give them protein and complex, slow-digesting carbohydrates, but Reagan secretly thought there was too much salt on the steak although she would have never said that to their hosts. After everyone was done, they gave Jimmie a pistol and she got an extendable police baton, called an asp, to use in case she needed to defend herself.

“What if we get caught by the border patrol? Won’t it seem suspicious that we have weapons and we’re trying to cross the border?” Jimmie asked.

Dave chuckled, “They’d think it was more suspicious if we didn’t have weapons. Almost no one goes backpacking out here without a gun for defense against the bears and those damn wolves that they reintroduced to Yellowstone a couple of decades ago. They’ve bred like rabbits and are all over the place out here now.”

“Besides, we won’t get caught,” Janice continued. Reagan wasn’t sure, but she thought that those two were either dating or had been partners so long that they finished each other’s sentences.

“We’ve been watching the patrol patterns for about a week since we got word that a mission may come our way,” Dave picked up the conversation again. “We have a spot picked out where there should only be three or four guards. If that still holds true, then we have the perfect weapon against them—”

“Wait,” Jimmie cut in. “I’m not going to be a part of killing a cop who’s just doing his job.”

“Don’t worry, neither would we,” Janice said. “A few years ago, the CIA developed a non-lethal method for infiltrating a site. It’s a tranquilizer dart that knocks someone out, but tests of their blood will show that they’re just drunk. All we do is knock ‘em out, set them up inside the guard shack and drop off several recently emptied whisky bottles. Voila! We have successfully infiltrated the country and nobody dies.”

Juan placed a reassuring hand on Jimmie’s shoulder. “This is an exploratory mission. It would be next to impossible for one woman to have done those things by herself, but we don’t have solid evidence that the Canadian government is behind this. We’re not about to start an international incident.”

The answer satisfied Jimmie’s protest and he busied himself showing Reagan how to use the asp baton. She took to the training immediately. It helped that she’d begun to like the former cop. He looked to be few years older than she was and had an easygoing demeanor and quick sense of humor that appealed to her. She purposefully pressed closer to him than was required when he stood behind her to show her how to flick the baton open and use it.

They went back and forth as she moved slowly through the motions that he showed her, while he used a couch pillow to deflect her blows and to throw counterpunches back at her. On one of her attacks, the baton slid effortlessly down the length of the pillow and she lost her balance, falling into him. They both fell backwards and she landed on top. The lighting in the room gave her hair a shimmering light purple hue that framed her face perfectly as she looked down onto his grinning face.

“Ahem… Ah, we’re ready to go guys,” Agent Quintana said from the doorway. “I’ll give you two a minute.”

Reagan looked longingly into Jimmie’s eyes.
This is it! This is the perfect opportunity for a kiss
, she told herself.

“That was good,” he said.
Kiss me you idiot!
“You, ah… ready to go?”

Dammit, if he isn’t going to do it, I am.
She leaned down and kissed him. He resisted in shock for a second, but soon began to kiss her back. He slid the hand that wasn’t trapped by the weight of the pillow over her ear, up through her hair and pulled her closer.

They finally pulled apart and she grinned down at him. She bit her lower lip like she’d seen hundreds of women in movies do without really knowing why until right at this moment. “Can we do that again?” she asked huskily. A thousand thoughts went through her mind at once.
God that sounded dumb! Why haven’t I had more practice at this? Oh man, I hope it wasn’t horrible. Did I screw something up? Oh no! What if I have steak breath?

Jimmie contracted his stomach muscles and leaned up to kiss her once more. It wasn’t nearly as intense as the first kiss, but she understood that it was meant to be more of a promise for later, but they had a job to do now. She slid off of him and used the couch to push herself upright.

He stood and placed a hand lightly at the base of her neck where it met her shoulder. “We’ve got to go face your sister. I’ve dealt with her power firsthand on a couple of occasions. Promise me that you’ll be careful.”

“I promise,” she replied truthfully and followed him into the next room.

*****

The infiltration into Canada proved to be easier than they’d anticipated. They parked their SUV three miles from the border and hiked northward. As they went north they continually angled farther away from the road and by the time Dave’s GPS told them that they were nearing the border they’d already sufficiently distanced themselves from the guard stations. They walked into Canada without firing a shot.

Everyone gratefully dumped the empty glass bottles from their packs once they were far enough away from the border area where they wouldn’t be heard. It was only a relief of a couple of pounds, but every little bit helped as their bodies rapidly burned up calories to stay warm.

From the glass dump site, they followed the GPS northwest to the beginning of the Twin River Heritage Rangeland Natural Area. It was about a six mile trek and Reagan was frozen by the time that Dave finally called a halt. The sun peeked over the eastern horizon and she hung her head heavily. They’d walked all night across rolling, snow-filled terrain and all she wanted to do was fall asleep.

Janice tapped her on the shoulder and said, “Stay alert. We’re in the middle of nowhere here and bear attacks are fairly frequent.”

“Wait, don’t they hibernate in the winter?” Reagan asked.

“The farther north you go, yes,” the agent replied. “It’s not unheard of this far south for them to only hibernate for a month or less, just depends on the food supply. Since this is an area that sees tourists year round, they may not hibernate at all if they can get food from hikers. You can bet your rear end if one of them hears us, it will come and investigate though, so keep an eye out.”

“I’ve got it,” Jimmie stepped in and told Janice. “I’ll keep watch for her. She just came out of a coma this morning. Hell, I’m surprised she didn’t shut down before we even crossed the border.”

Janice looked at Reagan with what she hoped was a newfound appreciation for her stamina. “I didn’t know that she was injured. Okay, try and stay awake if you can,” she amended.

Reagan unclipped the asp from her belt and held it in her gloved hand. She successfully stayed awake for several minutes before she rolled backwards into the snowbank and fell fast asleep while Jimmie sat beside her prostrate form.

She dreamed of fire-breathing dragons who screamed their hatred for mankind and knights in well-worn, battle-scarred armor who tried in vain to save a lilac-haired princess from being flung into a lake of fire.