BRAINSTORM Read online

  I shook my head. I knew nothing of a Brainstorm Project. “Never heard of it,” I whispered.

  “What about Daniel McMaster? Have you seen him? Do you know where he’s being held?”

  Sunny’s husband—I remembered. “I hadn’t heard of him until today,” I told him. Then, I said something that I’m sure was confusing to the major, “In a dream.” I quickly added, “A woman named Sunny said that was her husband’s name—and two guys asked me about him this morning.”

  “So, you haven’t seen him? Don’t know where he is?”

  “No,” I said. “Unless he’s where they’re keeping my son—at Rocky Mountain Biotronics.”

  Although I couldn’t see his face, couldn’t hear emotions in his low voice, I was sure the major was disappointed by the way he shook his head and bowed it thoughtfully for a moment. I heard him take a deep breath before saying, “One more thing, sir. No matter what happens, do not give up. Your country, the free world and God himself may be depending on you.”

  Heartache Tonight came on the CD player.

  I finally realized they had the wrong guy. All of this was about someone else. I’d never been involved in anything in which “my country, the free world and God himself” would have to depend upon me. I knew nothing of a project called Brainstorm. I’d never been to Stanford. These yahoos and the woman who called herself Sunny had screwed up. I was a freaking dry goods storeowner, for Christ’s sake!

  Still, it was not a good time to tell them. Sure, I could stand up and call out, Hey, you’ve got the wrong guy. Check your records. Take my fingerprints and you’ll believe me. Now, let’s all quit this silliness and go home. No hard feelings, right? Whadayasay, boys? That would’ve only gotten me about twenty pounds of lead added to my ass at this point.

  I was beginning to wonder if maybe my first group of pursuers was responsible for the deaths—more accurately the murders. Maybe someone like a sniper with some of those tiny darts as in the movies, someone with some sort of deadly electronic device that not only stops hearts but breaks glass, or somebody with a kind of a biological weapon was responsible for the six deaths, including Michelle’s. It could’ve been something they had done to me. But no way had all these people died solely from something I had or was doing. And they, whoever they were, would pay. On that, there would be no doubt.

  I would give total support and trust to my new captors, for now. The entire situation was too mind-boggling for me even to begin to figure out. At least these guys hadn’t tried to kill me, up to this point. Once aboard their helicopter, I would explain the situation—that I was the wrong man. Maybe they’d believe me, and I could straighten this all out and save my son. If not, I was sure when I got to where they were taking me, I would be able to talk with the officials and rectify the situation. Then, when I had all the chips and it was my turn to deal, we’d play a little game called payback. I’d have whoever was responsible slapped with criminal charges—murder—so hard, it’d make their helmets spin.

  I thought about that crazy woman again, Sunny, she called herself. She was so very attractive. I found her alluring. She had helped me, maybe. Was she tied in somehow to the major? Or were they on opposite sides? Was she alive? There was one way to find out.

  “Sunny?” I asked in a low voice.

  The major whispered, “She’s safe.”

  They were allied with her. She was okay. I was relieved, and my trust in them grew quickly with that news. “Who is this Dan McMaster?”

  The young lieutenant glanced back at me and the major. The major shot a look back to the lieutenant.

  “Keep watching,” he told him, and then he turned to me.

  I didn’t know what kind of game we were playing, but I wanted to know at least a few of the players.

  “They kidnapped him, like you,” the major said. “And we won’t leave this place without him or you,” he said. “You can be sure of that.”

  I shook my head. “I wasn’t kidnapped. I live here.”

  “Do you?” the major asked.

  Those simple words caused my thoughts to spin again. Do you? Of course I did . . . didn’t I? I couldn’t help but raise my voice and say, “Where the hell did I come from, then?”

  The major held his hand out in an attempt to calm me down. “Please, sir, whisper.”

  “What about the others?” I asked, fishing more than anything.

  “We’re going to do everything we can,” the major said checking his watch. He stood and looked to the street in front, then down the hall toward the back of the house. He motioned for me to stand, also. But when I began to obey, the lieutenant planted his hand on my shoulder and shoved me back down.

  In my earpiece a different voice said, “No!”

  “What?” Major Jackson whispered.

  “The one in the car, he’s gone,” Lieutenant Carpenter answered. I imagined him much younger from the tone of his voice.

  “Shit,” Jackson said. “Go!”

  The lieutenant stepped over Michelle and hustled to the front door. He stood to one side then the other, looking through the small, diamond-shaped window in the top of it.

  “No one,” he said.

  The night was quiet except for the Eagles softly singing Hotel California. I thought I could hear the clock ticking. It sounded louder than before, even though I was farther away from it—but the ticking stopped. The two military officers said nothing as each of them moved about the room.

  Major Jackson began pulling me up and then suddenly yanked me toward the hallway. It hadn’t been the ticking of a clock I’d heard, but the bolt of an MP5 chambering a round and its safety being released from outside the house. The major’s voice came through the earpiece in a yell that made my ear hurt. “Window!”

  It was too late. A figure stood opposite the large front window. The plate glass suddenly exploded into shards as silenced bullets broke through. They struck Lieutenant Carpenter’s body armor, but also his arms and legs. Carpenter turned to his assailant as he fell, his M-16 spitting out a volley of rounds, its voice loud like a chainsaw. They hit the cop, and so did the charge from the lieutenants grenade launcher fixed underneath his rifle barrel. It shot not a grenade, but what must have been a much softer projectile—I thought immediately, beanbag—that hit our attacker in the helmet. The man’s protective cover flipped backward into the yard and he fell into the room face first. At the same time, something pelted me like pebbles. The tiny projectiles had bounced around the room and thumped me on the chest, arms and legs, and I happened to catch one of them in my hand. As I ducked, I squeezed the small pellet that had ricocheted off the cop or the wall. It was made from some kind of hard rubber. The lieutenant had fired rubber bullets and a beanbag—nonlethals.

  Major Jackson was already at Carpenter’s side. Dark streams lined Carpenter’s face, and the arms and legs of his dark fatigues glistened from the streetlights now glaring through the vacant window frame.

  Outside, several patrol cars screeched to the curb one after another, sirens blaring, like half a dozen cats fighting in a gunnysack.

  Jackson turned back to me as I stood hunched over in the doorway. His voice was loud and clear. “Go,” he said, “get to the chopper.”

  He looked to the cop lying about ten feet from him. The cop groaned and his arms began thrashing. Jackson took three quick steps to the man and gave him a sharp tap on the jaw with the butt of his weapon. The cop’s arms fell to his sides, and he lay still.

  As Jackson hustled back to his comrade’s side, I saw the young lieutenant facing me, his goggles and helmet now under one limp arm. His hair was closely cropped, his skull thick and angular. I hadn’t actually seen his face, couldn’t now because of the shadows, but I imagined it. He was a warrior in the highest tradition. Tough, dedicated and patriotic. He could have marched with Washington, ridden with Lee or Jackson, driven tanks with Patton, charged up bloody hills with Chesty Puller. He was true and blue, and as American as Harley Davidson.

  But why was
his weapon loaded with nonlethal, rubber bullets and a beanbag?

  Lieutenant Carpenter’s voice came to my earpiece. “Get out, sir. Don’t let me die for nothing.”

  I couldn’t help but pause there as I gazed at his dark form, but what he was saying finally sank in. I turned and ran for the back door. As I did, the lieutenant’s voice continued in my ear. It took a higher pitch as he wrestled death and said, “Get out of here, major!”

  At the kitchen doorway, I found another colorless figure squatting next to the back door. His hand came out to halt me.

  “Stop, sir,” he said. “I’ll clear your way.”

  The soldier opened the door carefully and scanned the back yard.

  I glanced back and saw the major halfway down the hall dragging the lieutenant’s limp body by the shoulder straps beside him. Major Jackson stopped, turned toward the front and lowered his big-barreled weapon. Large projectiles spat from it and burst onto the floor and walls several yards out in front. The foamy-looking covering that the projectiles produced grew to nearly a foot thick.

  The soldier at the door tapped me on the shoulder, and when I turned, he was already out in the yard about twenty feet, kneeling and sweeping the trees beyond him with the muzzle of his rifle.

  I had to look back again.

  The major had made it to the kitchen with his fallen buddy, but light from the front, which seconds ago had illuminated the hallway with a soft glow, was now blocked by several silhouettes. At first, they ran toward us, their weapons spewing bullets.

  I ducked as the doorframe next to me splintered.

  The shooting stopped as soon as they stepped into the major’s foam. They fell into the gooey froth, and it pulled them in farther. It was clear now there were three men, one against the wall and two on the floor, all fighting the sticky-foam, struggling to move like bugs on flypaper as the fast-curing substance hardened.

  I turned to the backyard and ran up to the soldier waiting there.

  He motioned me on and stood up as I passed.

  When I made the tree line on the way to the clearing, I heard those snaps again, so I swung behind a large tree trunk and glanced back.

  Half a dozen of our adversaries had come around the side of the house. Fifteen feet behind me, the soldier I’d passed was down on the snowy ground, arms and legs strewn awkwardly, motionless.

  I left the path, not wanting to make it easy to be followed, and stomped through the mulched floor of the woods. Bullets snapped over my head and limbs fell around me. I zigzagged, using the small tree trunks to pull myself from side to side. After a hundred feet, the arm of a black field jacket appeared in front of my chest like a crossing gate. The man caught me, and I could only hope he was one of the major’s men.

  The bullets cracked around me again, and my new protector got between them and me. The only move I could think of was to run to the clearing. It would be the best thing to do for the rescue team and for myself.

  But I remembered what the major had said. “Don’t go near the clearing until the chopper lands.” If the helicopter was on time, I couldn’t have been much more than a minute early.

  I was twenty-five feet away from the landing zone when I found out why the major had been concerned about me arriving too soon. An explosion lifted me from my feet, and it seemed like the walls of the world itself were falling down around me.

  * * *

  Tree limbs. Snowflakes dancing dreamily, floating above. Silence—loud silence. I am face up, on my back. I smell—taste cordite. I watch the falling snow. Down the white crystals come, playing in the air, then finally land, cold and sharp, stinging my face.

  It took a moment of viewing the pleasant, lazy scene before a crystalline flake crashed into my ear like a wrecking ball, and I snapped to. The pain in my ears was tremendous. They had used detonation cord to knock down the trees. A single wrap of the quarter-inch explosive cord would fell a twelve-inch-thick tree. These trees were mostly less than a foot. All of the trees within fifty feet of the smoke-filled clearing were cut down neatly at about eighteen inches high. Several seconds passed before I realized I was lying in a pile of them, a six-inch trunk against my chest.

  A kind of hollow ringing blared in my ears, and when I reached up to touch them I found my earpiece was missing. Soon, the ringing turned into a soft thumping noise, and the wind from a helicopter’s rotor blew into my face from overhead. It came in quickly, stopped and hovered within four feet of the ground. Two soldiers dropped from the chopper and ran to each side of me. I thought I was dreaming, because, they looked familiar. They were the two GI Joes I’d met on the sidewalk on my way to work this morning.

  “Good to see you alive, sir,” the taller one said and the shorter, stocky one nodded to me.

  They lifted the fallen tree trunk from my chest. Each man took an arm and whisked me toward the rotorcraft while I hung from them, feet dragging, still in a stupor from the explosion.

  When we had made it to within twenty feet, a rush of air shot past me. It rattled my lungs and vibrated the very ground under us. Inside the gun door of the dark-gray Pave Low helicopter, I noticed what had caused the strange sensation. Instead of the typical machinegun, the gunner manned some sort of long-barreled weapon with a diameter of about eight inches. Reverberating charges of air pulsed from it.

  At the cargo bay doorway, one of the men inside the helo—I guessed he was the crew chief—stretched out and grabbed my collar. I finally came around and reached for his arm as he hauled me aboard. The guy yanked me in like I was a feather pillow and slung me to the back of the cargo area. Still a little shaky, I stood up and held onto one of the webbed hand loops hanging from the back bulkhead.

  Several clanks came from the shell of the helicopter as we took fire from the enemy in the woods. Over the gunner’s shoulder I watched as two low-toned whooshes bent light, rippling the air as more of the sound missiles launched at our attackers. No fire spat from the barrel, no visible projectile. Outside, trees quaked and the unseen force slung from the weapon threw several men to the ground. I was in awe.

  The taller of the two men who carried me to the helicopter flopped aboard but Major Jackson hadn’t shown up yet. We lifted, suddenly, leaving terra firma at a stomach-tossing rate, and I peered over the edge of the doorway to see why the second man hadn’t gotten on. He’d been struck by the gunfire and lay still on the ground, pools of darkened snow growing around his body.

  Within five seconds, we were hovering outside of the back door of my house, and I was glad we were going back for the major. To the left of the door gunner was a steel-encased box with an open front and a computer screen inside. It appeared to be a part of some sort of infrared heat-sensing device. On it was a red outline of what was likely my house below. Inside the outline were several blurry, red figures. Soon I realized they were the major, the lieutenant who was laying spread eagle and was probably already dead, and their three SWAT-team-like enemies in the hall. In the front room was a prone figure, smaller than the others and a cooler orange and yellow. Michelle. Nearly two-dozen red blobs surrounded the house, their bullets riddling it.

  “Get down and cover your ears, sir,” the gunner yelled into his microphone. At first, I thought he meant me, but then realized he was speaking to the major.

  The gunner fired his acoustic weapon six times in the proximity of the house, and the results were incredible. First, the men in the backyard slammed to the ground as if they’d been thrown. Next, the guys in the front yard got their turn. The front porch collapsed. My garage exploded, and I saw that my car had been inside, because the Buick’s trunk flipped end-over-end through the air. Propelled by my car’s gas-tank detonation, the lug wrench shrieked by the chopper like a Fourth-of-July firework.

  “My God!” was all I could think of to say.

  One at a time, the police cruisers became fireballs.

  I stood directly behind the gunner now, hanging onto a strap on the ceiling. I was within arm’s reach of the cockpit, and I coul
d hear the pilot arguing over the radio.

  “What, sir?” he yelled, seemingly in response to the major’s orders. “No, sir, I can’t do that Major Jax. No, sir. I won’t do that, sir!”

  As bullets whined around us, the man who hauled me in yelled to the pilot, “He said, ‘Go!’”

  It was only a couple of seconds before the pilot gave in, shook his head and finally responded. The chopper banked radically to the left.

  I squeezed the handgrips and couldn’t believe we were leaving the major behind. You just don’t do that, I thought. Why was I so important?

  As we sped away, a fiery stream came up from below. An explosion rocked the helo from outside the open cargo-bay door. A surface-to-air missile had hit our main rotor, directly aft of the right turbine nacelle. The whirlybird we rode pitched and shuddered. It then began to spiral—fluttering like a wounded dove—down to a deadly end.

  Chapter 21

  From three hundred feet, the helicopter whipped in a terrific helix on a rapid descent. I kept a grip on the hand loops, but the crew chief wasn’t as lucky, flung into the darkness from the open side door.

  I held on for what I was sure would be a tremendous impact, and time stretched. Another flashback came. I remembered men, faces covered in war paint—camouflage grease paint—sitting on benches along the sides of a helicopter. I remembered standing and facing the lowered cargo ramp on the back of the thing and seeing only a shadowy nightscape hundreds of feet below. I remembered a man standing to the side looking wild-eyed and yelling, “Go!” And I remembered myself running off the end of the ramp and into the dark sky.

  The flashback ended when we crashed into the trees. A jarring encounter, the chopper tipped to one side as it fell. The hand loops I held pulled loose, and I tumbled from the opening and into the bough of a large evergreen tree. What was left of the helicopter’s rotor blades shattered against the tree limbs around me, and the pieces became deadly projectiles, swishing through the air.