Mirrored Man: The Rob Tyler Chronicles Book 1 (38 page)

Rob nodded and closed his eyes. To his
dismay, no numbers came to him as before. He tried the same numbers
that opened the gate, backward and forward, but to no avail. After
a few more attempts, he shook his head. “Get the keys and see if
there are any tools in the trunk.”

June did as she was asked and opened the
trunk. Inside were not one but four red toolboxes filled with all
sorts of tools.

“Oh, man,” she said.

“What is it?” Rob asked, joining her as his
eyes settled on a pair of three-foot-long bolt cutters.

“I hope all of this gets back to the owner
when they find the car,” June said, regretting even more her recent
career change to assistant car thief.

“I hope so, too,” he agreed. Stealing the
car was necessary, but Rob still felt guilty. He made a silent vow
to make it up to the young man if at all possible. He grabbed the
heavy bolt cutters. Returning to the locker, he wrestled the tool
in place and applied a fair amount of force. The lynch pin snapped,
dropping the lock to the concrete. Rolling the door up, they peered
in.

The ten by twenty storage room was
surprisingly empty. On the back wall were cases clearly labeled
“MEALS READY TO EAT” and other durable foodstuffs piled up from
floor to ceiling. In front of it were several large boxes filled
with camping equipment and other items. In the middle of the floor
sat a large leather-clad trunk and four suitcases. On the wall
there was what appeared to be a map of some kind taped to the
corrugated aluminum. Above, a string hung from the single light
fixture in the ceiling.

“Pull the door down, please,” Rob
requested.

June did as he asked and Rob tugged the
string, illuminating the unit with the light of the bare bulb. He
checked the suitcases first. Finding them unlocked, he unzipped one
of the bags and flipped it open. Inside was an assortment of men’s
clothing, all of them his size.

June followed suit and opened one of the
other cases. She found clothes belonging to a young girl. “Are
these your daughter’s?”

Rob didn’t look up, nor did he answer. He
wasn’t ready to deal with that particular subject. He checked the
bag for anything other than clothes and found a shaving kit, some
packages of trail mix, a Bible, and a manila envelope containing
several passports, all of different identities and nationalities
but with his picture.
His
. June moved on to one of the other
bags and found similar clothes to the first one she had opened, but
for a boy about the same age. Rob opened the remaining bag and
found women’s clothes. All four contained similar items to what Rot
found in the first suitcase.

“Why would you keep clothes for you and your
family in a storage room four hundred miles from where you
live?”

“I guess I'm paranoid,” he said. He was
becoming more and more convinced that she had told him the truth
about his predicament. “Just in case I felt that my family was in
danger and I needed to leave in a hurry, I’m assuming.” He eyed the
trunk, already suspecting what he would find inside.

“You remember?”

“No. But I have … I
had
a locker like
this one before. When I was stationed in Japan. But I don’t know
why I would have put this one here.” He turned his attention to the
children's bags. “Could you hand me the kids’ passports?”

Hesitantly, June gave one of each over to
him.

He stared at them for a long time. If their
dates of birth were correct and not a fabrication, they would be
seven years old. It seemed odd that their U.S. passports were
missing until he recalled that, while in Japan where he had
retained a similar locker, he had kept his and Carol's legal
documents at their residence. Easy access for short-notice travel.
And, as with his own forged papers, each of the children's foreign
passports had different names, further alienating them from his
memory. “What are their names?”

The sadness in his eyes was apparent and
June could only imagine what he was feeling at that moment.
“Christian and um … Caitlin Cecily. But you always called her C.
C.”

“Seven years old and I can’t remember
them.”

He held the passports there for another
moment and then gently handed them back to June.

“It’ll come back,” June said, placing a hand
on his shoulder.

“They look like their mother, praise God for
that.”

“Amen,” she agreed with a grin, attempting
to lighten the mood.

Rob turned his attention to the trunk.
Inside he saw exactly what he expected. Two Heckler & Koch
MP5s, a favorite close-quarter weapon of the SEALs, two Beretta
pistols, boxes of ammunition, a short-wave radio, and a box that
Rob knew without opening it contained various medicines, first aid
supplies, and water purification tablets. There was a pair of
night-vision goggles, and tucked into a corner were two Luminox
dive watches. The last item was a box that contained stacks of one
hundred dollar bills that amounted to fifty thousand dollars.

“Were you going to start your own coup?
What’s all the cash for?”

“Mad money. All of it’s for the unknown, my
just-in-case stash.”

“Looks to me like you were preparing for
World War Three.”

He turned to face her. “I was.”

With their backs to each other, they changed
out of their well-worn scrubs and into clothes from the suitcases.
Luckily, Carol liked loose fitting items, but even at that June
found them small. She found a pair of jeans with some stretch that
she managed to get in to, though they were inches too short, and a
royal blue cotton tee. As for the shoes, there was no way that she
could she could fit them, so she was forced to keep on the slippers
she had been wearing. Rob assured her that they would find some
clothes for her in town.

They unloaded the toolboxes from the trunk
to make room for the supplies that Rob felt he would need, and then
turned their attention to what they thought was a map taped to the
wall. It turned out to be an aerial photograph of the local airport
with all of the buildings and runways labeled. The third of five
hangers at the south end had a star drawn on it and some writing
that Rob recognized: 1966 DeHavilland DHC-2 MKIII Turbo Beaver.

“That’s my writing.”

“Is it some kind of a code?”

Rob smiled. “No, it's an airplane.”

“Well, that makes sense. We are looking at a
picture of an airport.”

“Actually, it's a float plane.” he said, not
sure how he knew it.

“A
float
plane?”

“The kind of plane that you can land on the
water.” He pulled the map of Florida from his back pocket.

June's expression turned grim as the wheels
in her head began to turn. They had been in such a rush to get to
Apalachicola that she hadn’t considered what they would do once
they got here. “What are you thinking?”

Without taking his eyes off of the map he
asked, “Are you hungry?”

“What?” June cocked her head.

“I'm starving. I feel like I haven't eaten
in two days.”

June thought about it. “We haven't.”

“I could use some rest and a shower,
too.”

“Yeah, you really could,” she said, nodding
as an exaggerated agreement.

Rob smiled. “How 'bout we get something to
eat and find a room for the night … with two beds … and get some
rest. We can go at this again tomorrow.”

“Okay,” she said apprehensively.

“Look,” he said gesturing to the storage
room. “We can hide the car in here.”

“You didn't answer my question.”

“I'm sorry. What was it again?”

“What are you planning to do, Rob?” she
asked, frustrated with his obvious attempt to dodge the
question.

“Did you ever see
Raiders of the Lost
Ark
?”

“Of course. Who on earth hasn't?”

“Remember when they were in Cairo and they
were trying to get the ark away from the Nazis after the plane blew
up?”

“Yeah?”

“Well, I'm doing what Indy did.”

“What's that?”

“Makin' it up as I go along.”

IT WAS THE NEXT
morning before
investigators were able to enter and explore the darkened facility
under the convenience store. They found the diesel engines in the
generator room still running, but the damage done to the conduit
made it immediately evident that the complex had been compromised.
Emergency lights had long since run out of juice, so the
investigators were forced to inspect the pitch-black facility by
flashlight until a team of electricians arrived to get the main
power back online.

Eddie was standing in the security office
where the single body that remained in the facility was found.
Jabrani was the young man’s name, Senior Airman Mike Jabrani.
During the weeks he spent inside, Eddie had learned that Jabrani
had dreams of joining the Air Force special operations command and
its para-rescue unit. Their primary focus was to rescue downed
pilots. Here was a young man whose one hope had been to serve his
country by saving others, but his dreams and his life had been
snuffed out in an instant.

When they found the blast door in the tunnel
standing open, Eddie’s fears had been confirmed. They had also
found that all but three of the complex’s doors had been wedged
open. The doors to Jimmy’s office and the two that led into the
cloning chamber were still sealed. It was obvious that there was
much more going on here than what happened out on the road.

At least we didn’t find everyone dead.
Surely whoever did this wouldn’t have carted all but one body
out.

He deduced that the assailants, whoever they
were, had come for one of two reasons. Either some government
agency had been monitoring the experiment with orders to act in the
event of an incident, or some other entity had somehow learned of
the project and was poised to take advantage of an opportunity to
gain access to the facility, and its personnel and technology. In
either case, he and everyone else who had been riding in the
trailer were also targets.

Did the truck crash simply provide a
diversion with unintended and tragic consequences?
Or was
it
the psychotic episode with Rob when they woke the clone?
Could it all just be a case of bad timing?

The bank of security monitors was dark. The
hard drives of the computers that stored the digital images had all
been removed. Any hope Eddie had of retrieving the imagery was
lost.

“God help us,” Talbot said as he entered.
Seeing Jabrani’s body, he crossed himself. “How many people were
down here?”

“Agents Hughes and Warren, Professor Yeoum,
Doctor Tiong, and seven airmen, not to mention the two who were
running the store. For pity's sake, even the chimps are gone.”
Saying the words out loud was more than the special agent could
take. Without warning, he lost control of is tightly guarded
emotions and slammed his fists on the desk, raking them across the
top. Keyboards, papers, and everything else that happened to be
there flew against the wall.

Talbot wasn’t prepared for the sudden
outburst, and instinctively reached for his sidearm, which wasn't
there, as he backed away from the distraught man.

Eddie continued his tirade by kicking a
chair over and then he finished by angrily slamming his fists on
the desk several more times as he growled, nearly toppling the rack
of monitors.

Keeping his eyes tightly closed, he gritted
his teeth. Eddie fought to think his way through his rage, and the
pain that he was feeling over the loss of his team.

Talbot remained silent for several minutes
before he asked, “Any ideas?”

When Eddie turned around, Talbot saw that
the bandage on his forehead was soaked with blood. “You're bleeding
again. Maybe we should get you to the hospital.”

Eddie shot him a tense look. “I have an
idea.”

“What's that?”

Eddie remembered that there was another
computer in the complex where the security system’s imagery might
still be stored, and it was inside one of the rooms that the
perpetrators hadn’t gotten to. “Get Jimmy Bennett down here.”

They learned that Jimmy was still at the
hospital and wouldn’t be released until later in the afternoon at
the earliest, so they joined the other investigators gathering
evidence inside the complex. They confirmed that the parlor was the
center of whatever activity had gone on in the place the night
before. There was evidence of a struggle, and some kind of chemical
residue coated nearly everything within. More of the residue was
found inside the chimp paddocks.

“What do you make of it?” Eddie asked.

Talbot frowned as he scrutinized the plastic
baggie containing a leaf collected from inside the habitat. “No
idea, but it won’t take long to find out.” He handed the bag to one
of his men. “Get this to the CDC and ask them to expedite an
analysis.”

“Yes, sir,” the airman replied as he spun in
his heel and trotted out of the room.

Several hours later, the same airman caught
up with them as they were comparing notes with the other
investigators. “Colonel, the sheriff’s deputies have reported some
things that happened last night that are just too
coincidental.”

“Report.”

“About a mile and a half west of the
accident site, they found the body of a local. The family lives in
one of the houses nearby. By all accounts he’d been working a late
shift on base last night. His vehicle is no where to be found.”

Eddie gave Talbot a knowing look. “Do they
have a BOLO out on it?”

“Yes, sir. Shouldn’t be too hard to spot.
It’s a bright yellow Hummer.”

“You said
things
.” Talbot prodded.
“What else?”

“A few miles further, there was
another
accident. An SUV flipped and landed in some poor
guy’s front yard. The homeowner said that her husband went out to
see if he could help and got himself shot for his trouble.”