Origin (22 page)

Thomas got straight on the secure radio to Benjamin on the main road. ‘Ben, what can you see?’

‘Not sure yet,’ Benjamin’s voice came back, crystal clear. ‘But I’m pretty sure that was nine-millimetre fire, and the Secret Service carry forty cal.’

‘You think Jacobs’ men have opened fire on the agents?’ Lynn asked incredulously.

‘It’s possible,’ Thomas replied. ‘I don’t know what the hell is going on but I’d be ready to believe anything right now.’

Adams gently lowered himself from the top shelf, silently touching down on the floor.

He had outstayed his welcome and was going to have to leave. If he read the situation correctly, Lowell’s Secret Service agents were all dead. It would be standard procedure for Jacobs’ security team to now comb the building to make sure it was secure.

But what had he learnt? Adams began to think, but a rattle at the outside laundry door made him go instantly alert.

Damn
! He chastized himself; there would be plenty of time for reflection if and when he managed to escape from this place. For now, he had to concentrate his resources on survival.

Reacting on instinct, he hauled himself back up to the topmost shelves again, lying flat just below the high ceiling. It was cramped and dark in the store cupboard, but if anyone looked directly up, they wouldn’t fail to see him.

Adams concentrated on his breathing, consciously slowing it, putting himself into a state of reduced metabolism, less likely to make any unnecessary movement that would alert anyone who came into the cupboard. At the same time, he removed the blackened knife from the sheath on his belt, holding the wicked blade flat against his forearm.

Outside, he could hear two men looking around, checking around the laundry room. He heard the laundry chute he had slid down earlier being opened, the men obviously looking up into it. He heard it swinging shut, and then the next thing he knew, the cupboard door was flung wide open and a burly, short-haired security operative armed with a short-barrelled submachine gun entered the small space.

Adams watched from above in a state of heightened anticipation as the man looked through the lower shelves, knowing that if the operative looked upwards, he would have no choice but to dive straight on to him and kill him with the knife.

But the man just moved two tubs of bleach to one side in a half-hearted gesture and then muttered to himself, turned on his heel, and left, closing the cupboard door behind him.

Adams waited a few moments more until the men had left the larger laundry room, and then exhaled slowly.

He was about to slide back down to the ground when voices from above caught his attention.

‘What are we going to do with the bodies?’ Adams heard, recognizing the voice as that of Eldridge, the security guard who had searched Lowell earlier.

‘Round them up, put them in their own cars, and drive them out to Pahosa Point,’ Jacobs said in reply. ‘I’ve just spoken to GT, he’s going to meet you up there with an oil tanker. Rig up a crash, make sure all vehicles are involved and incinerated by the tanker exploding. It’ll look like they died on their way here.’

‘Sir,’ Adams heard Eldridge say in protest, ‘those bodies are full of bullet holes. One body alone has over thirty rounds in it. It won’t look like an accident for long.’

‘We don’t need it to look like one for long,’ Jacobs replied. ‘Just for a few days, and we can use our resources to slow down any investigation. After that, it won’t make any difference at all.’

‘Yes, sir,’ Adams heard Eldridge reply, but he didn’t even consider
why
it wouldn’t matter in a few days’ time that an entire cohort of Secret Service agents had just been massacred; instead he latched on to something else Jacobs had just said.

The cars
. They were going to move the cars.

And in an instant, Adams realized he had a way out.

‘OK, drag them inside,’ Eldridge ordered the guards, pointing towards the government SUVs. The men nodded grimly and started to load the bodies into the large 4x4s.

The bodies of the Secret Service agents had already been recovered and arranged in front of the entranceway, a thick trail of blood and entrails leading from the house.

The agents had gone around the house, rounding up the guards by relying on their presidential authority. They had forced the guards to drop their weapons but had failed to cuff them or check them for back-up pieces, which they all carried.

When Eldridge had sent the message to retaliate, the men had simply drawn their weapons and shot the agents dead. So confident were the Secret Service men in their inviolable authority, they had been caught completely off guard, and only one agent had managed to get off a shot of his own.

Killing over thirty members of the elite presidential bodyguard would have unnerved most men, but Eldridge remained unmoved, as did the security guards; after all, they knew that the world’s ultimate power was not possessed by any government.

Being one of the hundred ‘chosen’, Eldridge himself knew even more. He knew exactly why the deaths of all these men mattered not one bit.

They would all have been dead in the near future anyway.

Adams manoeuvred himself through the house as quickly as he could, aware that even though Jacobs’ men were otherwise occupied, he could still be discovered at any time. He saw bodies being dragged through the house, blood still pumping across the tiled floors from the bullet holes that riddled them, but managed to remain undetected. And then he was at the window of the dark kitchen, staring out at the well-lit courtyard outside. The eight SUVs were parked up in a semicircular arc around the turning circle directly outside the front entrance, the bodies lined up in front of them.

Despite himself, Adams was impressed; the Secret Service agents had outnumbered Jacobs’ own men by more than two to one, which meant that they would have had to shoot at least two men each before the agents could react. And although perhaps overly confident, Secret Service agents were no slouches, they were well-trained professionals.

Jacobs’ men struggled to load the heavy, blood-soaked bodies into the row of cars, under the watchful eye of a large, intense man that Adams assumed had to be Eldridge. He guessed Jacobs would still be ensconced in his study, probably with Jones, trying to achieve some sort of damage control. A professional cleaning team would need to be on-site as soon as possible, for a start. All traces of the Secret Service having been here would have to be eradicated.

Adams checked the layout of the vehicles, and knew he had to make his choice quickly; although loading the bodies was a slow process, it wouldn’t last forever. There was a long shadow stretching from a bush just outside the utility room all the way to the SUV on the far left side. It was possible that he would be able to slip out of the window unseen and crawl to the car within the shadow.

Adams was just about to move when he sensed them behind him. Perhaps it was the smell, perhaps the breathing, or perhaps even the feral energy, he didn’t know which he picked up first; but he knew that two of the Doberman Pinschers had just entered the kitchen.

With all of the guards involved in the clean-up operation, they must have just let the dogs off the leash within the house. He wondered where the other two were, and hoped they were still outside.

He turned slowly, carefully, until he saw them, staring at him in anticipation, tails still, ears pricked, alert and ready to act. The teeth were not even bared in warning, and Adams knew that these dogs did not want to scare him but were primed to kill if necessary.

Adams stood his ground, eyes not meeting the dogs’ directly but instead lowered slightly, non-confrontational. Without moving his body at all, he started to emit a low, almost inaudible hum. The dog on the left tilted his head, curious about the sound, and the dog on the right retreated a half-step.

Adams read the signal and advanced a half-step of his own, raising the pitch of his voice, looking up further, and raising his right palm slowly up in front of him.

Both dogs looked as if they were trying to resist some unseen force, but then both capitulated at the same time, sitting down like show dogs, tails starting to move, mouths now open and tongues out as they assessed their new master.

Adams smiled as he looked at his new friends, quickly calculating how they could help him.

E
LDRIDGE’S HEAD SNAPPED
round at the sound of panting and scurrying feet, and was amazed to see the two guard dogs that had been let into the house come bounding out down the stone steps and go sprinting off into the darkness of the trees that bordered the long driveway. The guards also noticed, pulling their heads out of the cars to watch the two animals race into the woods.

‘Thompson, Greer, Jenkins, Marquez,’ Eldridge ordered just moments later, ‘get after them, see what they’re after.’

He watched as the men drew their weapons and raced off after the dogs into the treeline. The Dobermans were well-trained guard dogs, they wouldn’t have gone tearing off through the estate just for the fun of it; there must be something out there.

‘Ellison, Carter,’ Eldridge said after further reflection. ‘You too.’

The two other guards gave chase to the dogs.

Eldridge turned back to the remainder, who stood looking after their comrades. ‘Back to work!’ he ordered gruffly. They still had a schedule to keep to, and the oil tanker would be at Pahosa Point in fifteen minutes.

Adams was well-secured under the chassis of the big SUV when the now breathless guards returned to their vehicles. He had used the distraction of the dogs to come out of the utility room window and follow the shadow to the car. He could have tried to use the guards’ preoccupation with loading the bodies to make his escape back into the treeline, but without the security of height, he was worried that the estate’s sensors would pick him up. He wanted to leave the estate with no trace of his ever having been there, so he had decided that he would ride out with the guards themselves, hiding underneath one of the vehicles, knowing that they would have no reason to check there.

‘And?’ he heard Eldridge shout.

‘Nothing, sir,’ one of the men replied. ‘They’ve just gone crazy, barking at the moon. Ain’t nothing out there ’cept us and the dogs.’

There was a pause, and Adams could imagine Eldridge mulling things over. ‘Probably just freaked out by the shooting,’ he said finally. ‘Happens sometimes, even to trained animals. OK, let’s move out.’

‘Yes, sir,’ Adams heard the men reply, watching the booted feet marching to the other SUVs in the line and climbing aboard.

Soon, the engines started, and then the government vehicles were moving, crunching the driveway gravel as they turned towards the driveway.

Towards freedom.

‘The cars are coming back up the driveway,’ Lynn and the two Najana brothers heard Benjamin announce over the radio.

‘Can you see who’s in the cars?’ Thomas asked immediately.

‘Negative,’ his younger brother announced. ‘Headlights are on full and side glass is smoked.’

There was a pause, and then Benjamin’s description continued. ‘They’re now at the main gate, about to turn . . . They’re going right, must be headed for Pahosa Point.’ Silence followed for several moments more. ‘They’ve gone past, headed up the main road, all eight cars. Still couldn’t see who was inside. I—’

Thomas’ hand gripped the radio tight as the connection went dead. ‘Ben?’ Thomas whispered urgently down the broken line. ‘Ben?’ he asked again helplessly, before putting the radio down, his eyes meeting Lynn’s and Jacob’s.

Lynn reached out and put a hand on the arm of each brother. ‘I’ll stay here,’ she told them. ‘You go.’

‘Son of a bitch!’ Benjamin laughed, punching Adams in the arm.

Adams had dropped from the bottom of the SUV as soon as it had proceeded on to the main road, rolling unseen towards the grass verge on the opposite side to the estate. He had then worked his way in the dark through to Benjamin’s observation point, creeping up behind him and putting a hand over his mouth.

Benjamin had immediately tensed, releasing the radio, turning round ready to strike, when he saw Adams standing there smiling at him. Benjamin was himself a highly regarded tracker and guide, and thought of himself as untouchable when it came to operating in the field, but Adams was truly something else.

‘I better call my brothers back before they come down all guns blazing!’ he said only half jokingly.

Adams nodded his head, looking forward to relaxing in the plush seats of Thomas Najana’s vehicle.

Even more than that, he was looking forward to seeing Lynn.

I
T WASN’T UNTIL
they were all safely inside the rented warehouse in Tucson that Adams gave his full debrief of events.

Back at base camp, Lynn had embraced him with tears in her eyes, and Adams had held her tight, until their shared warmth had started to melt the mud that still covered his body. They kissed as they broke apart, and soon the whole party were packing up and moving towards their car.

There was a further change of vehicles, this time in Dale City, before Ayita picked them up in his helicopter at a friend’s private airfield near Manassas. During this time, the group had mainly slept, and so by the time they arrived back in Tucson, Adams’ adventures had been barely touched upon. But now, with everyone well rested, he gave a detailed, blow-by-blow account of what had happened.

‘So we were right about Jacobs using the Bilderberg Group as a recruitment centre,’ Stephenfield said.

‘It certainly seems so,’ Adams agreed. ‘But we still don’t know what for, exactly.’

‘But we can certainly hazard a guess, from what you’ve told us,’ Stephenfield replied.

Lynn nodded her head, the scientist in her processing the information quickly. ‘It would appear,’ she began, ‘that there was some sort of alien contact back in the late nineteen forties, which enabled communications to be opened up between us. It is also clear that Jacobs and at least some element of the Bilderberg Group are creating a device that will enable this group to come to earth, presumably en masse. The talk of genocide is disturbing to say the least, and an agreement has probably been reached whereby Jacobs and his cohorts will be spared for assisting them. And perhaps this is what Jacobs is recruiting for – the group of people who will be allowed to survive. This could explain why some people felt it was morally abhorrent and refused to be any part of it, and why these same people then met a mysterious end soon after, before they could tell anyone else.’