BRAINSTORM Read online

  When the store was empty and I had time to myself again, I looked down at my hands as I stood at the register. They trembled.

  Don’t wor-ry, ba-by, Harvey seemed to sing in a whisper.

  My heart began to pound as if I’d just ran a hundred-yard dash.

  Everything’ll turn out all right.

  I wasn’t sure that I liked Harvey, anymore, if I ever had—or his choice of oldie’s lyrics. And, I certainly didn’t like these little coincidences in which I seemed involved. What is happening? I asked Harvey in my thoughts. Am I going insane?

  No, it’s the rest of your world.

  I looked forward to Mike Wu’s promised visit. At least then I could speak my thoughts to a real person.

  * * *

  Sitting at the control console, Doctor Xiang studied the figure in one of his few working monitors. It displayed a view of the inside of Gold Rush Hardware, the temporary proprietor watching as three customers left and then standing at the cash register and staring at his hands. Xiang wished he knew Subject 374’s thoughts. He would like to be inside that complicated head now. Was he frightened about what was going on around him? Did he understand any of it? How much did he know that was really happening? Xiang suspected he still knew very little, and soon he would ensure even those concerns would be wiped from Subject 374’s memory.

  Xiang pressed another set of three buttons and pushed Intercom Speak. Things were getting complicated with this subject. He was well worth the extra trouble, however. Xiang would ensure they regained his control, now. Subject 374 did have an equal, and his equal’s loyalty was not in question.

  After a few seconds a voice responded, “This is Wu, Dr. Xiang.”

  “We have lost yet another man. The Czech Jaworsky was only to watch our subject. He died while driving by the hardware store.”

  “I would like to help,” Wu said.

  “You were scheduled to meet with the subject yet this morning, anyway. I need you to go now and to complete the task Captain Vanzandtz could not,” Xiang told him, still staring at his motionless subject on the monitor.

  “Yes, Doctor,” Wu said. “I am ready. I will easily overpower him.”

  “No, you will not,” the doctor said quickly. “You are to only place a new antenna microchip on his collar as Vanzandtz failed to do. I do not want him dead—yet. We have too much invested to give up so easily. Your overpowering him could end up fatal, for one or both of you.”

  “I have the focusing plate. I am the strongest, sir. You said that yourself.”

  “Must all of my subordinates argue with me today?” Xiang had conceived and started this project over three decades ago—he thought he was the one in charge. Yet today, Xiang’s underlings had questioned him more often than in the entire past thirty-five years put together. “I said, no. You are only to place the microchip. Besides, his abilities seem more advanced than we realized. Do as I say and do it quickly.”

  Xiang pressed a different set of three buttons and then Intercom Speak, again.

  “Yes, Doctor,” came a feminine voice.

  “Yumi, have security send two of the Caucasians to watch our subject—perhaps the two young Russians.”

  With so many of Xiang’s monitors and microphones out, his people were not able to keep adequate surveillance, and he did not wish to put Chief Dailey in jeopardy. And to him, any Russian was expendable—countrymen of his father, the man who made him a bastard by screwing a young Shanghai whore and leaving her for the Japanese to torture and kill.

  Xiang said, “Instruct them to keep their distance, but ensure they understand that they cannot lose him—or there will be consequences.”

  “Yes, Doctor,” Yumi said.

  Xiang released the intercom button and watched the monitor as the subject sat down at a desk and covered his face with his hands. Xiang nodded understanding Subject 374’s confusion. He swiveled his chair away from the console feeling assured the project would soon be back in his complete control. He trusted Yumi and Wu. They had never failed him, only questioned his orders when their enthusiasm to please him spilled over.

  He thought of Yumi and smiled. How lovely she could be, how sweet her scent, the air of her presence. Xiang had many women before but hadn’t any sort of affection for any of them. He’d never wed—marriage was for lazy men and not for leaders. He’d saved Yumi for a special occasion, savoring the idea of their first sexual tryst, and he knew she would be as eager to please him in the bedroom as she was in the laboratory. Soon, he would have her in celebration, but more importantly, he would soon have all the power he could imagine. With no desire to rule the world, only to milk it for anything and everything he desired, he would leave that to the politicians and diplomats. But out of sight, above the world’s stage, he would be the one working the leaders’ puppet strings. And if any of them got in the way, caused him the least bit of problem, he would sever their strings.

  The door opened slowly interrupting Xiang’s reverie. A rotund Oriental man with hat in hand and cue ball head stepped in—Consul General Meng Juhong.

  Xiang felt his lip curl uncontrollably.

  * * *

  Still in his den at the Double R, President Mason gazed out blankly, overwhelmed by the thought of psychic assassins killing off heads of state of allying countries—perhaps he was next. He had been discussing the situation with his four most trusted cabinet members for over two hours and, during that time, little new information came in from any of their intelligence sources.

  A moment of silence had passed when Mason finally turned to Chief of Staff Thurman. “Eddie, I want Marine One warmed up. We’re going back to Washington.”

  “Good, Mr. President,” Thurman said as he stood up. “We can provide better protection in the White House’s Presidential Emergency Operations Center. Going to “Site R” at Raven Rock or staying aloft in Night Watch would be even better, though, sir.”

  “Protection, hell. Things are about to hit the fan. I want to be able to talk to the people. I’m not going to cowl underground in the PEOC bunker or fly around in the National Airborne Ops Center wasting taxpayer’s money like some kind of chicken shit.”

  “As you wish, sir. I’ll be prepared to implement Enduring Constitutional Government measures should you decide, Mr. President.”

  As Thurman left for the spare bedroom converted to a communications center down the hall, Mason asked, “Where’s Greta?”

  CIA Director Winston checked his watch. “Mrs. Mason should be in the air about now, just out of LAX. I believe her next stop is Dallas for the start of her children’s hospital tour in the Midwest.”

  “Cancel that,” Mason said. “I want her with me. And get a hold of Secretary Zimmerman. Homeland Security needs brought up to speed on this, as well as the rest of the cabinet. Instruct Zimmerman to put the country in Condition Orange and prepare to move it to Red at my order.”

  “Yes, Mr. President,” Winston said as he departed for the Com room.

  In the doorway, Defense Secretary Jacob Banks moved aside to let Winston past and then stepped back into the room. He’d been outside the President’s study, speaking on the phone with Dr. Ultar about the video hookup.

  “Jake, while we’re waiting on this video feed from Ultar, fill me in on the players.

  “Good timing, Mr. President,” Banks said. “That’s exactly what I was about to do. I’ve referenced the names I just got from Dr. Ultar with our intelligence database.”

  The President asked, “First of all, who’s behind this? It must be sanctioned by a foreign government or political concern.”

  “We have several possibilities, sir,” Banks said. “They’re the usual suspects—Arabs, possibly Al Qaeda or Taliban, Iranians. Could even be Chinese or North Koreans. We’re looking at other possibilities, even domestic, but still nothing more than speculation, yet.”

  “Brief me on the names, then—everyone your RVs have come up with in this mess, both ally and enemy.”

  Banks said, “You alread
y know as much as we do about Daniel McMaster, Major Lionel Jackson, Master Gunnery Sergeant Bernard Sampson and our mysterious Mr. Robert Weller.” He opened a notebook he’d been carrying and began scanning the information. “The name Dr. Xiang Gao comes up quite often. He came to the U.S. in 1958 at the age of nineteen. A Chinese child prodigy, he attended Peking University and Shanghai Medical University, earning a PhD in psychiatry. It’s thought that his rich foster parents then secretly helped him defect and sent him on to Stanford to broaden his education. He was there for ten years prior to the start of U.S. government studies in the paranormal. He’s thought to have had some involvement in MK-ULTRA, although we can’t find corroborating documentation.”

  The President’s eyes grew wide. “He worked with narco-hypnosis—the mind-control experiments?”

  “We believe so, sir. Studying the effects on unsuspecting students after they’d been administered mind altering drugs like LSD, mescaline, scopolamine, BZ and sodium pentothal, as well as radiation, electric shock—electroconvulsive therapy. He may have been involved in the latter experiments with the stemoceiver remote-control, electronic implant.”

  “Judas Priest,” the President said, shaking his head in disbelief.

  “Then, he headed up Stanford’s research in psychic phenomena and specialized in brain-wave projection. Our predecessors actually considered hiring him to help manage our studies there when we started them in 1969. After he originally defected, the background check we did on him didn’t throw up any red flags, so to speak. But, in 1970, after a second thorough background check, it was discovered he’d been implicated in the 1958 murder of his foster parents back in China, and there was some concern that he might have had ties still with his homeland—that he was a Chi-Com here as a spy. He must have been tipped off because he disappeared with ten million dollars of donated and grant-derived project funds before he could be either tried and imprisoned or extradited back to his homeland.

  “Our best guess is that he’s now hiding out in a remote area of the Rockies and has somehow perfected his experimentation. And now he’s using some form of brain-wave projection to psychically assassinate special targets. Our greatest fear at this point should be that Daniel McMaster has aligned with Xiang, and together they’ve contrived a very frightening scenario.”

  Mason clasped his hands against his chin and said nothing, soaking in the information. He still couldn’t believe all this paranormal crap. It was fiction.

  “Dr. Yumi No is a former Stanford alumna and was also a faculty member in the early nineties after she completed her PhD in neurophysiology. She is believed to be Xiang’s right hand woman. Nothing on record of it and a bit contrary to this information, our RVs are linking her name with Falon Gong, an ancient Chinese discipline that has become a voice for their human rights movement. It’s been banned in their home country.

  “Captain Vanzandtz was a U.S. Army lieutenant in charge of talent discovery also at Stanford in the early eighties until her psychic research project was terminated in 1986. She was promoted to Captain and transferred to personnel in DC. A month later she resigned her commission and disappeared. Funny thing is, now our remote viewers are saying she’s either no longer involved in the scenario, or will be out of the picture soon. Regardless, she’d built up a database of hundreds over her four years at Stanford—those who had psychic potential. And with her personnel job, she had access to a good number of the names of those involved in the Army’s research in psychic phenomena through the years. Some from the Stanford study were recruited into the Grille Flame project—a precursor to Star Gate and what we now know as Thousand Eyes.

  “Daniel McMaster was one of those taken into Grille Flame from Stanford. That’s also where McMaster met his wife Sunny. From what our Thousand Eyes RVs are saying, Robert Weller is suspected of going through the talent discovery phase at about the same time, but we’ve been unable to find any record of it, nothing with his name on it. He could have been using an alias, or is now. Or perhaps our RVs are barking up the wrong paranormal fruit tree.

  “Daniel McMaster’s wife Sunny took part in the study briefly, but she didn’t seem to offer much promise psychically and dropped out. She has an MS in Physics. Her expertise is holographics. We believe she is accompanying Major Jackson and Gunny Sampson, now.

  “Most of the other names the RVs are coming up with—we’re unsure of. Might just be combinations of letters that mean nothing. Wu, Shekhar, Mish. We find no connection to these names with any other aspects we’re investigating except an obscure possibility with a Dr. Rajiv Shekhar who’s been missing for about two months. He’s a Pakistani immigrant—former head of neurosurgery at Mayo Clinic. He and his family seemed to have just disappeared one night.”

  Mason laid his hands flat on his desk. The remote viewers had come up with much more than their intelligence agency siblings, still it wasn’t nearly enough to put together this conundrum—and their guessing was just too incredible.

  Banks continued, “I’m leaving the most curious for last. The remote viewers have come up with the name Meng Juhong several times. He just happens to be the Chinese Consul General of New York.”

  “New York?” Mason repeated and turned to the large window behind him. He stared out at the silent woods, not pleased with the implications.

  Chapter 11

  It was about eleven a.m. when Mike Wu stopped in the store. Taller than the average Oriental man, my brother-in-law wore a big grin, blue jeans and a dark-blue T-shirt. I was happy to see him.

  “Hey, Mr. Lucky!” He slammed an open, greenback-stuffed envelope onto the counter in front of me.

  I couldn’t help but smile. “Ninety bucks, huh? Finally, something good this morning. I hoped my luck would change before Michelle and I go to see Will this afternoon.”

  Mike frowned back. “What’s wrong, brutha, bad day?”

  “Yeah. You know, the two deaths. You’ve heard?”

  “Sure, I have. But what’s that got to do with you?”

  “I was there both times. It’s like I’m a jinx or something.”

  Wu frowned sympathetically. “That’s a shame, man. But you know that’s gotta be a coincidence. They were both heart attacks, right?”

  “Yeah, right.”

  “There you go then. Hey, you and Mish up for another football game in two weeks? The Broncos and the Chiefs. It ought to be a good one. Lucy and I’ll get the tickets and drive.”

  “Sounds great, Mike. But can we get back to you on that? I mean with things up in the air with Will and all. And the concussion, well . . . how about if we let you know by this Sunday?”

  “Sure, Rob. You know I’m pulling for Will and you guys.”

  I was reminded of how good of a friend Mike had been. “Yeah, Mike. By the way, thanks again for redoing our shower. Nice job. And for bringing over the UPS packages.”

  “Hey, no prob, bud,” he said. “What’re brother-in-law, slash, friends for?”

  He shook my hand and at the same time reached across the narrow counter with his other hand to pat my shoulder.

  I don’t know what got into me, but I drew back like before with the woman in the street. Maybe it was something about the way he had his hand cupped. When I looked into his eyes, I saw alarm, maybe concern about something, as if he didn’t know what to do next. His expression startled me, and I let go of his hand and stepped back.

  “You okay?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” he blurted and recoiled two steps. It looked like he placed something in his pocket from that cupped hand. His other hand was now behind his back. “It’s just that . . . I’ve got to go. I just remembered I have an appointment at the Gazette.”

  I got that tingling in the base of my neck again. My ears began ringing. My temples ached.

  Mike frowned at me, his eyes growing intense.

  I became dizzy. The tingling on my neck amplified.

  Mike stumbled back. He seemed as confused as I was.

  From all around us came a so
rt of harmonic hum. The resonance slowly increased to a roaring reverberation. In front of the store, the three large picture windows cracked one at a time. The front door glass fractured. Six feet to my left, the Seiko watch display case shattered. My skull vibrated. My lungs became heavy and my breathing burdened. My heart hammered in a sudden arrhythmia. Fiery heat enveloped me. I felt as though I was spinning, and my vision blurred making only the center of my focus clear.

  Mike kept his forceful stare on me until my eyeglasses not only cracked, but burst out, fortunately sending the shards away from my face. His eyes went wide. He gasped as if it were the first breath he’d taken after surfacing from a long dive to the ocean’s depths. His hands now to his throat and chest as if he also was having trouble breathing, he bolted and rushed toward the door. His shirt was above his belt in back, and something stuck out that looked like the handle of yet another pistol.

  Everyone’s got guns, Harvey said. It’s like Dodge City!

  Wu swung the door open wide and rebounded off the doorframe as he went through as if he’d been body checked into it. In a staggering trot, he left.

  A bit off balance myself, I hurried to the doorway to see if he was all right. He was gone. A late-model, blue Ford pulled away from the corner, but he hadn’t had time to get into the driver’s side and start it. Someone, maybe his wife Lucy, had been waiting for him. But I didn’t recognize it as their car—I couldn’t even remember what kind of car they drove.

  The pain inside my head subsided quickly. The hum diminished like a jet engine shutting down, and the ringing in my ears went away. I went back to my chair at the desk behind the counter, collapsed into it and considered the strange morning. What was wrong with me, with my head? Could the humming and ringing really be caused by a concussion? But what about my glasses breaking, the windows and display case? And what was with everybody else? Why were people carrying handguns, especially Mike? In what kind of world had I awakened?