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  “Shhhh,” the one in the corner repeated as the Eagles softly sang New Kid in Town.

  Chapter 20

  The dark figure reached toward my face. I ducked away but found his other hand firmly, yet gently catching the side of my head, and I decided I’d better submit to him. He fumbled with what I thought might be an earpiece in my ear, and I helped him place it. Seconds later, from the earpiece I heard a soft voice.

  “Sir,” it whispered, “do not speak. I repeat, absolutely, do not make a sound. Nod if you hear me.”

  I watched wide-eyed and panted with excitement at the other dark shape in the corner. His hands covered his mouth as if he might be the one talking and not wishing his voice to carry into the room around us.

  “Do you hear me, sir?”

  I nodded slowly.

  “Cup your hand over the earpiece, sir.”

  I did as told.

  “Sir, I am Major Lionel Jackson of the United States Air Force Special Operations Command. Lieutenant Carpenter and I are here with a search and rescue team to get you out.”

  The Air Force Academy was at Colorado Springs. It made sense they were the ones to come here, but why? Why was I so important to the U.S. government?

  More whispering came through the earpiece. “Listen carefully, sir. You must do as I tell you and get yourself out of here. That’s whatever it takes, everything in your power, and at any cost. If something should go awry, you must do your best to escape on your own. Do not, I repeat, do not under any circumstances fall back into these people’s hands. As last resort, sir,” he said, his whispering voice lowering, “you must bite into the pill the lieutenant is handing you and then place it under your tongue.”

  The figure across from me held out his hand in front of my face. Contained in a single bubble pack between his fingers was a small pill. It looked gray in the darkness, but I imagined it was as shiny red as my son’s racecar bed.

  “Put it in your shirt pocket, sir.”

  I complied, but I had no intentions of using it.

  “Now, sir,” the man who called himself a major said. He paused, looking at his wrist. I heard a light, tearing noise as if he’d pulled back a Velcro flap that covered his watch dial. “In exactly six minutes and thirty seconds, our helo will be at the clearing about a hundred meters behind this house. Do you know where that is, sir?”

  I nodded again and thought of the clearing. I didn’t know whether I would follow whatever orders he had for me even if that area was big enough for a chopper to land, and I was sure it wasn’t.

  The major continued. “It might be too late. An opposing force is on its way back here now. But you must do everything you can to get to that helo. We will hold off the enemy as long as possible. But sir, do not go within two hundred feet of that clearing until the helo lands. Also, do not wait for us or any part of our team to get on board. We are all expendable. Do you understand, sir?”

  I was stunned.

  “Sir?”

  I nodded once more, wishing he would quit calling me sir, at least in such a precise military fashion. However, I couldn’t understand how he or any of his men could be expendable, and I wanted to ask him what was going on, to shout out in frustration.

  The major seemed to be looking over my head and out the window. The lieutenant still faced me, and although I could only see green dots, I was sure his eyes were on me.

  The major spoke again. “We have little time, sir. I need answers, direct and honest. I must now ask, what is your involvement in the Brainstorm Project? Answer me softly, sir.”

  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 eve
rything 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 qui
ckly, 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.