Halon-Seven (29 page)

“Yes, well—” Underwood was searching for the right words. “It might not be all that surprising. Walter burned many bridges in Washington over these last few years. His project was considered a matter of national security for many decades. But in recent years, he was feeding the powers-that-be information, supporting a conclusion that the project was no longer viable.”

Now it was Cyrus’s turn for silence. He was at a loss for words. “I don’t understand.
We know it works
.”

“You’ve no doubt given some consideration to the economic and political fallout that would ensue, should such a technology be controlled by any singular power?”

“Oh…” Cyrus now understood. “He knew that his government wouldn’t be any more altruistic with the technology than any other?”

“Precisely.”

“So he kept the work to himself and took it underground?”

“More or less. He didn’t need to hide the work, once he turned in enough reports showing how and why the project goals were wholly unattainable. He didn’t want the technology brought to market by any single player. No matter who controlled it, not only
could
it be perverted, it most certainly
would
.”

“He was going to open source the technology?” Cyrus finally understood. “Free to everyone… Something no one person or nation could control?”

“Precisely!”

Cyrus considered this information. “And it got him killed,” he concluded.

“I fear you may be right,” the old man agreed. “And when Walter passed, he left the project in your hands. He believed you were the only one who could see the project through to completion.”

“But I’m not a scientist.”

“Walter knew that. The team doesn’t need another scientist. It has those in spades. Walter did the heavy lifting. As I understand it, the hard science is complete. He wanted someone who could protect the team. He needed was someone trustworthy and altruistic. Someone to see this through. What he needed, is exactly what you have to offer. It was his life’s work in every sense of the phrase.”

Cyrus considered the magnitude of the undertaking. It wasn’t really that much more responsibility than he had already assumed. A wise man would walk away from all of this. But that sort of wisdom wasn’t a part of his DNA. As much as he hated where this responsibility might take him, this was the right thing to do. He had no choice in the matter. He would see Meade’s work through to the end. There was a good chance it would land him back on the Coalition’s radar, and that would have consequences. But right now it was a triage situation. He would worry about the here and now, and he would sort through the rest as it came.

Thanking Underwood for his help, Cyrus disconnected. He slid the phone back into his pocket and pulled into traffic. He had his work cut out for him.

Bakersfield, California

Thursday, 1:22 pm (2:22 pm Colorado Time)

Cyrus used the Colorado platform to teleport to a self-storage unit near the western side of Santa Barbara. It was one of those lockers the size of a garage stall, with an overhead retractable door. Only the day before, he and Reese had relocated a transport platform from the office, setting it up in the storage unit prior to declaring the office off limits for the time being. The storage space provided them anonymity and the ability to come and go unnoticed day or night. The locker also made it easy to hide the ten-year-old Jeep Cherokee Cyrus had bought just for the move.

Driving the Jeep to the nearby airstrip, Cyrus rented a helicopter with seating for six and made the short flight to Bakersfield. The trip took less than twenty minutes, where the journey by car would’ve taken closer to three hours. Landing in Bakersfield, Cyrus rented a Chevy Suburban, using a credit card under a false identity. He drove to the motel on the outskirts of the city limits.

The No Tell Motel was every bit the classless dive the name suggested. The sign along the street was ancient plastic, cracked and broken by a rock or gunshot. Maybe both. The motel looked ten years overdue for being condemned. As Cyrus pulled into the parking lot, he was struck by the same sense of despair he’d felt when depositing the team the prior afternoon. Heartache and dread permeated the place.

The motel was a single story, a long plaza, rooms one next to the other, stretching maybe three hundred feet from end to end. A dilapidated manager’s office was located at the left end with a large plate glass window overlooking the parking lot. That window looked like it hadn’t been cleaned in two presidencies. The front door was propped open with a crumbling cinderblock.

There were perhaps a dozen doors spanning the front face of the structure. Each was covered in cracked, peeling paint and was labeled with a brass room number that had oxidized with decades of neglect.

Cyrus had phoned upon landing in Bakersfield. He wanted the team packed and ready to roll when he arrived. After he parked the large SUV in the middle of the parking lot, he climbed out and took in the area. There wasn’t a car to be seen. His was the only vehicle in the entire lot, just as it had been the day before. When he spoke with the clerk the previous day, he learned that his people were the only customers registered. Evidently nothing had changed.

He had taken the rooms furthest from the office, located on the far right of the building. He’d parked the SUV at the center of the lot as a precaution. Parking directly in front of the unit you were using was considered bad tradecraft. It was like a virtual arrow pointing to your exact location and was the next closest thing to wearing a t-shirt with a target stenciled across it. These basic precautions were still second nature and too deeply ingrained in his personality to be forgotten. His head swiveled as he crossed the parking lot and approached room twelve. He was on alert for something out of the ordinary, signs of observation, or anything out of place. Old habits died hard.

When he reached the door of room twelve, nothing had raised his suspicion. As soon as he knocked, the curtain of the window beside the door pulled back slightly. He heard the click of the deadbolt and the slide of the door’s security chain. Dennis Driscoll opened the door. Unfortunately, the man’s normally pudgy neck-bearded face and ruffled appearance hadn’t improved after a night in the dingiest of cheap motels.

At least his smile was sincere. “Mister Cooper! Come to rescue us from this squalor, I hope?” Driscoll said with a chuckle.

“Call me Cyrus. And yes. Not a moment too soon, I take it?”

Cyrus was glad it was Driscoll who answered the door. Sanjay had taken his call from the airport, and as usual, the man was insufferable. Before Cyrus could deliver his brief message asking the team to gather their things, he was made to sit through Sanjay’s long-winded bemoaning of the accommodations. For the second time in two days! It wouldn’t happen again.

A change of the expression in Driscoll’s eyes caught Cyrus’s attention and instantly brought him to alert. Cyrus saw Driscoll’s eyes shift to a position over his shoulder and flash with concern. Cyrus reacted by spinning around while raising a bent elbow to eye level. As he did, he heard the crackle of electricity and felt his elbow impact with the side of a man’s head.

As his eyes caught up to the sudden burst of motion, Cyrus saw a large Hispanic man drop a Taser and collapse to the sidewalk. The fallen man was instantly replaced by a second, this one more stout. He looked as a fireplug would if someone disguised it in a sweat-stained wife-beater and gold chains. The man instantly swung a fist, catching Cyrus in the solar plexus. With the wind driven from his lungs, he struggled to stay on his feet. Cyrus saw the shorter man draw back his fist in preparation for another swing. The man’s fist was wrapped in a set of brass knuckles.

No wonder a single gut-shot had nearly leveled him!

As the shorter man threw what Cyrus knew would be a knockout-reinforced fist to the head, he reacted on pure instinct. With no oxygen in his lungs and his vision darkening, he parried the street brawler’s devastating swing. The fireplug put so much power into the right hook that he was thrown off balance when it failed to connect. Cyrus took advantage and gave the man a shove with his left hand while drawing his gun with the right. Without a moment’s hesitation, he fired a single shot into the shorter man’s upper leg. It took him right out of the fight. The bastard would live, but only because Cyrus was careful to avoid his femoral artery.

As Cyrus turned to ensure the first attacker was still down, he felt cold metal pressed against the base of his skull. Then everything went black.

—————

Cyrus collapsed to
the concrete, just beyond the open door to room twelve. A third Hispanic man had made a sprint across the parking lot in the time it took him to drop the other two. The third man was also armed with a Taser baton. He placed it against the base of Cyrus’s skull and sent 50,000 volts into his body before Cyrus could react.

“Back inside. Now!” the man yelled, as he shoved his chrome 9mm in Driscoll’s face and shouldered him through the door.

Olivas quickly surveyed the gathered group of scientists. After spending the last ten hours watching the hotel from the bushes across the street, he was ready for some action. Twenty minutes ago, the two neighboring rooms were vacated. All of the occupants had congregated in room twelve. That event prompted a phone call to the boss who had agreed with his assessment of the situation. The geek squad was preparing to move out. When the black Suburban pulled into the lot and the lone man approached the room, the Hispanic thought they had lucked out. He figured they would make short work of the newcomer, grab the hostages, and be on their way. But looking at his friends still lying on the concrete, he decided they’d been overconfident.

He herded the five hostages to the back of the motel room before returning to the door. Pulling his two friends inside, he needed to get them out of sight before they attracted attention. Ancho Menza, the larger of his two friends, was just starting to show signs of life after taking that elbow to the head. But Poco had taken a bullet to the leg, and he was bleeding all over the place.

Olivas, the only one left standing, held his gun high for everyone to see. “Everyone stays quiet, and nobody gets dead! Stay in the back and don’t move, less I tell you different. Come near me and I’ll shoot you dead!”

They seemed to get the point. He knelt beside Menza. The big guy was still dazed. Olivas slapped the side of his pudgy face, trying to draw his attention. When he saw Menza’s eyes focus again, he knew the big man was back with him. “Go get some towels. Poco’s shot. You gotta stop the bleeding.” He pointed to the bathroom in the back corner of the room.

Poco was holding his leg, trying to stem the flow of blood. It did little to reduce the flow of thick plasma that continued seeping between his fingers. If they could stop the blood loss the man would live, but there was no question the wound hurt like hell. Olivas wished he could just shoot the white guy and leave with the hostages. But the boss wanted them all brought back alive, especially the guy who had just arrived.

Olivas rolled Cyrus face down on the concrete, still just beyond the threshold of the door. He bound his hands behind his back using a large plastic zip-tie. “You and you!” He pointed to Dennis and Chad. “Put him in the back!”

Finally having the front of the motel clear, Olivas closed the door, blocking out the only natural light. Two small lamps on either side of the bed lit the room’s dreary interior. Menza tied off Poco’s wound using a belt as a tourniquet.

Pulling a cell phone from his pocket, Olivas glared at the hostages. It was a silent dare to any of them to make a noise. Satisfied his malicious sneer was sufficient, he turned his attention to the phone. He tapped a series of buttons on the screen and raised the phone to his ear. “Si. We have them… No. We’re missing the girl. The gringo turned out to be a handful. Two of my boys are down… Si, that’s the man… Si.” He taped a button on the phone, ending the call.

—————

Cyrus listened to
the one-sided conversation from his position on the floor. His eyes were closed. Judging by the sounds of the room, he was along the back wall. The team was standing between him and the bastard who tased him, and from the sound of it, two of the attackers were in bad shape following their scuffle. Bolts of pain continued to surge through his head. He could still see strange shifts of light on the inside of his eyelids. A Taser. He’d been hit before, but this time was more intense. The burning feeling on the back of his neck confirmed a suspicion that the device had been applied to the base of his skull. No wonder it felt like his brain was being poked with flaming needles.

Cracking his eyes open, he found his situational assessment to be correct. He was face down on the stained carpet near the sink outside the bathroom. He took it as a good sign; it didn’t appear he had been unconscious for long. Not long enough for his attackers to stick them all in a van and cart them off—or kill them. He still didn’t know what they wanted, though the one-sided phone conversation he’d just overheard suggested they’d be taken into custody. Preventing that would be the first order of business.

Glancing over his head, Cyrus saw the legs of the research team. Everyone was standing with their backs to him. They were focused on what was happening at the front of the room. Tipping his head further brought a staggering rush of pain. Once his vision cleared, he saw one of the thugs tending to the wounded leg of the other.

The man in charge put his phone away. He looked over the group and waved his gun threateningly in their direction. It caused the group to take a collective step backward. Satisfied with the group’s submissive behavior, the man grinned. He turned his attention to his two friends working on the gunshot wound at the front of the room.

When the group took a collective step back, someone’s foot hit Cyrus’s shoulder. He looked up in time to see Tracy Clark glance down at him. She’d almost stepped on him. She nearly said something aloud, but he quickly shook his head and squinted his eyes—a silent
 
shush before she made a sound.