The Forever Man: A Near-Future Thriller (27 page)

Today, after shopping, they had lunch in downtown, but never got any further than the three gin and tonics they ingested on empty stomachs. No problem. They’d stop in the village,
get a sandwich, and straighten halfway up before they went home.

And what if they didn’t? So what? At twenty-six/sixty, and forty-one/seventy-two, it’s great fun to be bad girls now and then. They deserve it. Screw the world.

“It’s coming right up,” the Surgeon announces as he glances down at the navigational display. He’s switched to driving and the other man is in the back of vehicle, putting on his working gear. He’s contract military and prefers to be called Colonel although it’s unlikely he was ever an officer in anyone’s army. He presents himself as a combat specialist, an individual who has frequently dwelled near the tip of the national spear. His credentials in this regard are impeccable. Kazakhstan, North Korea, Venezuela, Nigeria, Yemen.

The Colonel pokes his head out of the back and surveys the scene out the windshield. “Stop for a minute,” he commands the Surgeon, who complies. “Okay, I want you to pull forward and back into the driveway about thirty feet. I’ll take it from there. Give me ten minutes and you’ve got your product.”

Ah yes, the product. Always a cut above what the market expected. A grade-B liver extraction done by the Surgeon sold as grade A. A grade-C pancreas removal moved up to Phase Two. Some on his team thought that it was the cumulative effect of a finely honed process and superb execution, but the Surgeon himself thought otherwise. He firmly believed it was the EEG, the brainwave pattern, that made the difference.

In traditional organ harvesting, the procedure was done when the patient was technically dead, that is, when the EEG showed a complete absence of brain activity, the classic flatline. Of course, that didn’t mean the subject was dead in the fullest sense. The more primitive parts of the nervous system often carried on quite nicely. Heart muscles still contracted, lungs admitted air, and so on. Which also meant the organs were suffused with oxygen and nutrients right up until the time they were yanked out: an ideal situation.

But not ideal for the Surgeon. He had a deep suspicion that brain death at the higher levels had a negative impact on robustness of the organs. Although he had no empirical proof, he was convinced that an ideal brain state for organ extraction lay not far below the normal sleep state. He made a careful study of the anesthetic procedures required to achieve this state, and learned how to apply them in his particular situation. It was a delicate balancing act. If you went too low, the subject might slip into a more suppressed state and might even flatline on you. Too high, and the patient might be pulled back to full consciousness in the process of being disassembled, which profoundly disturbed bodily harmony.

The Surgeon was skillful enough that he’d never experienced the latter, but occasionally the level of sedation had wandered enough that he noticed a fluttering beneath the subject’s eyelids. The REM state of sleep, the dream state. For the briefest moment, he tried to imagine
what these dreams might be like, but then thought better of it and went on with his work.

“Ten minutes,” the Surgeon confirms and reaches to put the vehicle back in gear.

“What’s Bill gonna think?” Anita asks Betty as they float down the tree-lined road past an occasional gate. She’s referring to Betty’s fussy husband, who won’t be happy at all about his spouse’s inebriated condition.

“Fuck Bill,” Betty proclaims woozily. She peers down her nose over the top of the steering wheel.

Anita guffaws, reaches into her purse, and lights another cigarette. Fuck Bill. Then she remembers that she’s already done exactly that, at that party at the Stevensons’ last year.

And in a great burst of drunken candor, she spits it out. As a joke, of course. After all, they’re on a roll, so why slow down and ruin it?

“Boy, lady, your husband’s one lousy lay,” she says and waits for the reciprocal burst of laughter from Betty.

Betty whirls toward her in disbelief. “What’d you say?”

Anita quickly backtracks under Betty’s withering gaze, and struggles to rebound. “I simply said … that …”

“You simply said you fucked Bill, you bitch. You—”

The collision alarm bellows and brakes automatically activate. Still, by the time Betty turns her attention back to the road, it’s too late to take any action. All she sees are the two glowing brake lights on an ambulance as they collide squarely with its rear bumper and the airbags inflate.

The Surgeon and the driver have been concentrating on the driveway and are completely surprised by the force of the collision. The Surgeon bounces in his seat belt and the Colonel is thrown back into the interior. The female paramedic shrieks.

“Son of a bitch!” the Surgeon yells as he unbuckles himself and throws the door open. Due to the bulk of the ambulance, he can’t see what hit them. The Colonel comes forward and thrusts the other door open. “I’m going in. Gotta go before he comes down here to see what’s going on.”

“And just what am I supposed to do?” the Surgeon asks.

“Security will be here pronto. You handle it while I take care of business. I’ll hold the product until you’re clear.” He adjusts his armored vest and chambers a round in the compact combat weapon he carries.

***

Lane is just about to give the voice command to call Autumn when the explosive thud of the collision rumbles across his deck. It comes from out on the street in front of the house, but he can’t see that far through the foliage. He hurries through the house and starts down the driveway, which curves downhill. He rounds the bend, and the accident scene comes into view. An ambulance with a sedan piled into the back of it, steam and smoke pouring from under the crumpled hood.

Then, the problem. A man with a combat vest stands next to another man beside the ambulance, both apparently oblivious to the accident. The man with the vest reaches into the vehicle and pulls out a weapon of some kind. Lane quickly retreats back around the bend, and watches from concealment. The man starts up the driveway, weapon at the ready. It’s obviously a combat rifle, and has a hefty clip thrusting out the underside.

Lane turns and runs back toward the house. The rifleman will hear his footsteps, but that’s the least of his problems. He sprints in past the open door and retrieves his pistol from his coat hanging in the anteroom. It possesses considerable stopping power but will be no match for the other man’s armament.

He’ll get one shot, if he’s lucky. He extends his pistol and steadies against the door frame. The man comes around the bend in the driveway and spots him instantly. Lane aims for the center of the chest as the other man swings the rifle in his direction. A head shot at this distance is too risky. If he misses, he’s dead.

He squeezes the trigger and the muzzle blast roars down the driveway. The man flies backward and out of sight around the curve.

Lane doesn’t stop to investigate. He grabs his coat, runs through the house and out the back door. At best, the incident is over. At worst, he’s bought himself some time before they regroup and come after him.

The Surgeon hears the shots as he starts around the ambulance to investigate. He didn’t expect such rapid action. Maybe they can wrap this up quickly enough to avoid local security. So far, no one has seen them. He reaches the back, sees the wrecked sedan, and hears feminine wailing and moaning coming from within, where the air bags are wilting from their state of electronically triggered tumescence.

It’s two women, two well-dressed, well-coiffed women, blubbering and terrified. When the Surgeon opens the driver’s door, he smells the booze. Some things never change. The driver’s a rejuve, an expensive one. His expert eye calculates her at about thirty-five/sixty. Not a
lot of value there, but better than nothing. They’ll take her just in case they miss the primary target. He looks past her to the other woman, who appears to be about a forty-five/seventy. No value at all. They’ll just put her to sleep right where she sits.

“It’s all right now,” he purrs to the sniffling Betty. “I’m a physician. We’ll have you out of there in no time. Just relax.”

He strides to the front of the ambulance, where the paramedic is climbing out of the driver’s side. “We’re going to need to pull forward so we can get the back doors open,” he informs her. Just then, The Colonel appears, coming down the driveway on shaky legs. A big hole in the outer fabric of his vest exposes the point of impact.

“Jesus! What happened?”

The Colonel ignores the question. “Pull forward. I need to get in,” he commands.

The Surgeon nods to the paramedic, who moves the vehicle forward, disengaging it from the sedan. The ambulance has a big industrial-strength bumper and has sustained almost no damage. The Surgeon follows the Colonel to the rear and watches as he enters and then exits with a large backpack.

“We’re moving to the contingency plan,” he informs the Surgeon. “Go ahead and leave. Once I’ve secured the product, I’ll contact you.”

“How long do you think it’ll take?” the Surgeon asks.

“Don’t know,” the departing Colonel says. “It all depends on how good he is.”

Lane stands on the slope of a hill covered with low-slung forest and islands of dry, yellow grass. Overhead, the clouds have blotted out the last traces of blue and carry the gray promise of rain. About thirty feet in front of him is the security fence that defines the outer perimeter of Pinecrest. Barbed curls of razor wire top its thick steel mesh as it snakes along the slope.

But the most formidable barrier of all is the hole scooped underneath the fence, a curved cavity maybe a yard deep and just as wide. The product of digging by a dog, a special kind of dog.

Sure enough, Lane spots three large mastiff-like canines loping along the outer edge of the fence. Enhanced. A few extra genes make them extraordinarily bright and extremely dangerous. Even from sixty feet away, he can see it in their eyes. He removes the pistol from his jacket, clicks off the safety, and backs into the bush before they spot him. Fortunately, he’s upwind from them and they haven’t caught his scent.

While he waits for them to depart, he speculates on the origin of the shooter outside his house. Crampton comes to mind. Maybe the Institute did a little probing of its own and he was exposed. And what about Autumn? She was connected to Mount Tabor, and so was Johnny, who tried to make a deal with the Green people to blow the lid off the place. Lane sighs. It’s all speculation on his part, nothing more.

The dogs have disappeared from sight, so he bolts up and runs to the hole in the fence. A brief bout of crawling puts him through. The dogs will eventually detect the scent of his escape and report it to Pinecrest’s security apparatus. But by then, he’ll be long gone. Besides, the security people aren’t the real problem.

The real problem is the man who came up the driveway, weapon in hand. If he’s hardcore military, Lane’s bullet into his armored vest is nothing more than a setback. The final assault is yet to come.

The Colonel hears the ambulance depart as he clears the last room of Lane’s house. The open back door suggests that the product has fled on foot into the woods. So be it. The assault will now become the hunt. He quickly moves to the dining room table, where he deposits the backpack and extracts the components of a portable .50-caliber sniper rifle. With practiced
hands, he assembles the bolt-action weapon, screwing on the barrel and flash suppressor.

He reaches back into the pack and pulls out a 3 x 9 scope with its big 70 mm objective that gathers maximum illumination. After fitting it to the rifle, he puts the weapon down and extracts a plastic box with a single switch and a power indicator light. The light winks on as he activates the device. He plugs in a slender wire that leads to what appear to be two thimbles the diameter of pencil erasers. He puts the box in the backpack with the wire trailing out, and then shoulders the pack, pulling the straps taut.

The Colonel grasps the protruding wire and carefully inspects the two thimble-like devices, which are held in a small, flexible plastic frame. At close range, he can see that most of their surface is actually a screen of fine mesh. He braces himself for what comes next. It will take all his discipline to withstand the initial shock. He inserts the thimbles into his nostrils while slipping a retaining band over his head to keep them in place.

The twin nasal amps pour an almost unbearable cascade of odors into his brain. He has entered a dog’s world, where smell jumps forward in the priority of the senses and takes its place right alongside eyesight. He closes his eyes and grips the edge of the table while he struggles to become acclimated. The micromechanical structures embedded in the mesh of the nasal devices is sampling airborne molecules, then increasing their impact by several orders of magnitude inside his nose.

He can now smell Lane Anslow. After several minutes, he releases his grip on the table and walks to the bathroom, where he finds a clothes hamper. In fact, he could smell him even in the middle of the living room. Now, as he opens the hamper lid, the product’s signature scent leaps out, shoots up his nostrils.

Time to go hunting.

Once the ambulance has cleared the gate at Pinecrest, the Surgeon drives to a preselected site that ensures privacy. He pulls into the parking lot of the withered remains of an old strip mall. Faded signs advertise pizza, new nails, video rentals, submarine sandwiches, pet supplies, and much more. Boarded windows and drifting refuse suggest otherwise.

First things first. He establishes a heavily encrypted and compressed link with the contracting party. A grainy video shows the man’s face, which appears Indian.

“Are we done?” Khan asks.

“Not quite,” the Surgeon says. “We’re moving to a contingency operation, but I don’t expect any further delays.”

“It will be more than just an economic calamity for you if you fail to deliver. I hope you understand that.”

“I do, and I can assure you that we
will
deliver, even though it’s now a Phase Two
project. I’ll stake my reputation on it.”