Operation Chaos (13 page)

Duran came over to them. “Our river taxies are coming, folks.”

“River taxies?”

“Well, dinghies. But they’ll get us down to the camps. Hopefully. And then maybe we can figure something out.”

Off to the north of the river, a chopper flew low and slow and they watched it. Then it turned and headed back toward L.A.

It the distance, she saw two boats edging up toward them.

30

Their water taxies turned out to be two rubber dinghies operated by scraggly looking older guys.

Keegan came over and ushered her into one of the boats, then got in with her. “We need to talk before we get to one of the camps,” he said.

They sat in the back seat of the dinghy. Duran and Mora took the middle seat.

The driver of their boat pulled out behind the one Metzler got in with four other men and they headed down the dark ribbon of water, away from L.A.

“If Metzler doesn’t come down off his mountain,” Keegan said, “it’s going to be really bad for his people. We can’t let that happen.”

They moved slowly through a junk-littered stretch before moving into a wider stream.

Where the river was more open and the sloped cement banks were steep, they moved fast, so as not to get out in the open with no easy escape.

The thin, fierce, older man who was driving the boat smoked a cigarette, referred to everyone as captain, talked nonstop, and reminded Rainee of her uncle.

She turned to Keegan, “I don’t know if that’s possible. Metzler doesn’t look like he’s going to be amenable. And he’s killed a Blacksnake team. So he might not be well received even if he was.”

Keegan didn’t look happy about her attitude. “You need to at least try and get through to him. It’s critical.”

She didn’t reply. As they moved downriver, the boat driver informed them all about “his” river, how they had failed to revitalize it, get rid of the junk. “Long time the goddamn Army Corps of Engineers refused to even call it a river. Water moving is what? Somebody taking a piss. You take it all the way to Long Beach, you could die from the goddamn pollution because they didn’t deem it worthy.” He went on and on about his “river.”

Rainee said in a low voice to Keegan, “He reminds me of my uncle—”

“Who was your uncle?”

“A riverine boat gunner in the Mekong Delta during the last years of the Vietnam War.”

“Still alive?”

“Very much so. He lives on the Silver Strand, which connects Imperial Beach with Coronado Island. Has his boat there. Goes up and down the coast fishing and who knows what. I think he has a lady in Peru. He’s the wild child of the family. Spent some time in jail in Costa Rica. Has alcohol and drug issues. I haven’t seen him in a while. But he’s one of my favorites. Doesn’t play games and does mince words. He’s as real as they come.”

They entered a wider channel with sloped sides and picked up speed.

“You really need to get to Metzler,” Keegan said. “It’s the only way to end this peacefully. This can end very bad for him and his people.”

“You want me to convince him to go with us to the Facility?”

“Yes.”

“In spite of what’s happened?”

“Yes. That won’t matter in the scheme of things. We’re not dealing with some small issue.”

“Killing a Blacksnake team won’t matter?”

“They’ll look at it as a mistake, collateral damage. It’s too big for something like that to interfere. What happened to him needs to be understood. It’s critical.”

“And if I fail?”

“Don’t. Look at it this way—your former patients, the ones you’ve been searching for, all depend on your success with Metzler. It’s as simple as that. What happened to him has happened to others. Some of them are dead.”

“From the work done on them, or from being assassinated?”

He didn’t answer. His face was severe, as if something had hit him hard.

Rainee was astonished that he had still had no doubt about the mission he was on. This was the wreck she’d pulled out of the Swat Valley. He was to her at the time just a mass of destruction fighting to survive. Now he was a soldier in an army that involved her greatest nemesis—the man she’d tried to take down.

They moved in silence and ease for a time. It was very strange being in the second largest city in the nation, yet here, just beyond its reach, it felt like it was some remote wilderness.

They passed quietly under an overpass and left behind beleaguered downtown, into a stretch that was dark and quiet. They occasionally bumped into floating debris. It felt a little like some post-apocalyptic venue.

The boats stopped. Something was happening on the banks ahead.

Metzler’s boat was almost beside them now. He was talking to somebody in a voice she couldn’t hear clearly.

They resumed and entered into the widest channel after going under what the graffiti announced was Cesar Chavez Avenue. That meant they were going parallel to the 710, heading in the direction of Maywood.

The silence was broken by explosions somewhere behind and north of them.

“What’s happening?” she asked Keegan.

“Mini-drones in action. We’re not involved.”

Moments later, the boats both retreated into the weeds on the bank. Keegan said they would walk from here to the camp nearby. She followed him up the bank and into the trees.

Rainee said, “Are we clear?”

“Not with certainty,” Keegan said. “We’re still signaling hot with the devices we have. But so much is out there that it’s difficult to differentiate. They can’t really know who we are.”

“What do you mean by ‘hot’?”

“Every device we have—encrypted phones, smart cards, biometric devices work on a level that’s like algorithms talking to higher levels of algorithms.”

It was that simple statement that hit her. Was that the future? Algorithms talking to algorithms? Maybe it was. She decided that Keegan understood the future maybe better, in some respects, than she did. But not in others.

After a short trek through undergrowth and palm trees, they reached the edge of an encampment full of tents, lean-tos, and a smoldering fire with a dozen men around it.

They stood on a bush- and tree-covered knoll above the river.

In the solemn, threatening dark of predawn, Metzler held everyone back short of the camps.

Something’s happening.

Keegan stood with her and waited.

Metzler came back to them and said, “National Guard is tightening their grip on the roads. They’re going to cut off every exit. We either return to the underground or get the hell out of here before all the freeways get closed off and L.A. is isolated.”

He walked over to Rainee and Keegan. “We need to settle this fast.”

Metzler then said he needed to talk to Rainee, if Keegan didn’t mind. Keegan nodded.

Metzler guided her away from Keegan and the others. “What is the situation with him and with you?”

He pointed to some rocks and stumps.

31

The moment Rainee had been waiting for may finally have arrived. The truth about what was going on.

She and Metzler sat in the dark, well away from the others. Metzler took a large rock, sitting with his arms crossed, then he uncrossed them, putting his hands on his thighs.

Rainee settled on a nearby tree stump and waited for the conversation, the revelation, the reality.

Metzler glanced at Mora and Duran in the trees some distance away, then turned back to her and said, “What you need to know is that there are highly trained cells in every major city waiting for their orders. They are vets who have been upgraded and trained. They are strike cells.”

“Their objective?”

“I’m sure you have already guessed.”

“I like confirmation,” Rainee said.

Metzler studied her for a moment, turned, and looked toward the camp, and Keegan. He came back to her. “Their purpose is, when ordered, to trigger chaos through assassinations and triggered riots. When there is a full-scale crisis all across the country, quelling it will demand military intervention and martial law. That’s the goal. That’s what it’s all about. And I was, for a time, as much a true believer as Keegan in the need for this.”

It was no shock to her. This was the dream of Raab and his generals. She’d just never paid serious attention. Rainee said, “These cells are in all the major cities?”

“Yes. They can create a crisis that will make those in South America, the Middle East, and Europe look like strolls in the park.”

She stared at him. “The cell leaders, are they—”

“Yes,” he said, anticipating her, “many of them are your former patients.”

She didn’t like hearing that.

“Z3,” Metzler said.

“Was that done at the Facility?”

“Yes. That is where I, and most of your patients, ended up. It’s where the beginning of training started for almost all the cell leaders.”

She stared at him. It was like her worst nightmare.

He said, “This is a very big operation. It was started by some very angry retired generals and a few who are still active. It spread to various branches of government and the intelligence agencies. They’ve been recruiting in Homeland, CIA, and NSA. And, I’m sure, others. I don’t have access to the full scope of the tentacles, but I know they’re getting ready to do what they’ve been planning for a long time.”

And that was no shock or surprise to her.

He glanced off. She saw the conflict on his face. He turned back to her and said, “I bought into it, as did so many others because we were cast aside. We wanted something to change and we were given that, and for a time, it was really great. I was as big a true believer in the need for revolution as anyone.”

“What changed you?”

He smiled, looked down, and shook his head slowly before answering. “Well, I guess that’s your job because I don’t have the answer. One day, I’m a diehard true believer and the next . . . I started getting uncomfortable in a lot of ways. First inside my head. Then outside. I saw things that I didn’t agree with.”

“What?”

Before he answered, they both looked off toward L.A. in the distance at some booms. Things were not going well in the City of Angels.

Metzler said, “There’s a master list of organizations, associations, political groups that the big boys want to crush. And maybe I didn’t like our training exercises.”

“Which were?”

“Every cell leader supervises training exercises. They take place in Mexico. Argentina. Ecuador. You’re sent there to conduct the exercises, often working with counterparts in those countries.”

“Doing?”

“Assassinations, riot creation. I can’t tell you for certain what it was. As a soldier you follow orders; it is our DNA. But we aren’t soldiers anymore. We’re instruments in something much different. When that got to me, it was the end. And now they need to kill me. And it’s gone wrong with others. So we have a big problem. And that’s where you, the creator of the Z set, come in. I agree with Keegan that we need you. I just don’t agree that the Facility is the place to deal with this.”

She stared at him. He hadn’t answered a very big question. She asked it directly: “And when is the big operation supposed to begin here in the States that will bring about martial law?”

“Very soon. Maybe in a week or so. I’m obviously not directly involved anymore. So it’s a guess.”

“L.A.?”

“No. That was triggered by two cop shootings. The rest is social media and flash mobs.”

Rainee said, “Keegan’s a serious true believer.”

“Yes. But he’s a dead man. He can’t go back any more than I can. You need to get to him. You did already, but now you need to go deeper.”

“To what end? What can be done that, at this stage, means anything?”

He nodded, frowned, and thought for a moment. “I don’t know. But if anything can be done, Keegan’s the one who can do it.”

“Why is that?”

“You have to understand that Keegan is so deep on the inside of things, so much a part of it all, that he’s really critical to any counteraction. But that would mean getting him to turn, and then getting a way to put this all out there where it would be accepted.”

“And you don’t believe that’s possible?”

He shrugged. “That’s not something I can achieve.”

They sat in a heavy silence for a long time. The only sounds came from nearby crickets, distant helicopters, and the murmur of voices in the camp some distance away.

“Let me talk to him,” Rainee said. She told him about her relationship with Keegan, and how she’d gotten through to him.

Metzler listened intently. He said, “I’ll bring him over. You talk to him, see where’s he’s coming from, and where he thinks this can go. But understand that I’m never going with him to the Facility, and I’m never going along with any of what his people want.”

“So what do you want?”

“I want to bring it down. I want the world to understand what’s happening. But I don’t have the power to do that. I don’t have the connections. Maybe you do. But that’s how you have to see this.”

Metzler got up and walked back toward the camp to get Keegan.

Rainee tried to prepare herself a second time for dealing with Johnny Cash. She was no more confident this time than she’d been back at the house, where he killed his assets. Maybe even less so. And she didn’t know to what end. And that was the big issue; Metzler had been very solid about that.

32

Keegan walked back, slowly, to where Rainee sat as she watched him, wondering what was in that big, brilliant, enhanced and disturbed brain.

Keegan, looking like he was in a major crisis, a man no longer sure of his course, took the same seat on the log that Metzler had been sitting on.

Rainee started to say something, but they stopped. She needed to get a fix on this.

Keegan seemed as conflicted now as when they were in the safe house just before he killed his assets. A man on the edge of destruction.

Once again, Rainee found herself struggling to find a way to break through, get him really opening up to her without sending him too far. She had to be careful, maybe even more so. But she had to also be very honest. She said, “I’m not going with you to the Facility. That’s never going to happen.”