Paradigms Lost (52 page)

“I will certainly arrange it,” Morgan said. “But now, Master Jason, what is it that brought you here?”

“Something maybe associated with that deep past again. Not nearly so exciting, probably.”

Nothing would be likely to dent Verne’s good spirits, but he turned to me more gravely. “Then by all means, tell me.”

“Xavier Ross. I just received some more info on his case from Jeri, and some of it’s . . . pretty interesting.”

“Go on.”

“Well, before she died, Renee had pushed for further investigation on his disappearance; the whole thing had bothered the hell out of her, coupled with the fact that the
reason
the kid went out in the first place was that no one out on the Coast was willing to reopen the case of his brother’s murder. So she’d called in a few favors and from what I read here, she even put some of her own money into a couple of PIs to poke around and ask questions. Wish she’d mentioned it to
me
; I’d have kicked in a few dollars.”

I shrugged. “Anyway, knowing where they thought he got hit, they were able to interview people who might have been in the area, and they did find a couple of people who thought they noticed someone fitting Xavier’s description. One in particular is very interesting—a guy who works in an office facing the right area of the street.” I put down a couple of printouts, pointed to a paragraph midway down the first page.

Verne read aloud, “Interviewee David Ringo said that he recognized Xavier Ross from the photograph. ‘I especially remember because he was talking to this really tall guy, kinda a weirdo in a funny outfit and a strange hat.’” Verne’s head came up slowly. “Khoros.”

“Seems likely; but that’s only
part
of the fun in this one. Take a look at
this
later report. Apparently, Mr. Ringo called back to the station some months later and gave
this
tidbit. ‘Hey, I think I saw that kid you were looking for, Ross! He was right near where he was last time—I think he’d just come out of the alley. And that same guy with the five-sided hat was there.’”

Verne’s mouth tightened. “So Khoros is not merely peripherally involved. Did Mr. Ringo say where they went?”

“According to him, he ran out the door and tried to follow them, but they’d vanished around a corner, even though,” I continued, with a meaningful glance at Verne, “there seemed to be nowhere they could have gone.” I checked the dates once more. “And if the dates are right, it looks like this sighting happened one year
to the day
from the time Xavier Ross vanished.”

Verne muttered something in Atlantaean which I was pretty sure did not constitute a compliment to Khoros. “Then it
is
all related, my friend. Anything else?”

“Well, they did manage to find members of a gang that had apparently assaulted Xavier, but according to their testimony they never got to finish it because someone interrupted.”

“Khoros, of course,” Verne said, nodding.

“No, actually.” I
did
enjoy surprising Verne on occasion, and his eyebrows rose at my response. “The two punks interviewed both agreed on a bunch of things, once they stopped trying to pretend that nothing had happened. First, they
had
attacked this kid cutting through the alley. Second, someone had knifed the kid pretty bad—in the gut, probably. Third, just before they had a chance to finish him off, this old guy showed up out of nowhere, and beat the living
hell
out of the entire gang by himself.”

Verne blinked. “An ‘old guy,’ you say?”

“Yep. White hair, long mustache, they guessed he must be seventy at least. But according to the one guy they picked up . . .” I looked until I found the part I wanted. “Yeah, here. ‘That old man told Colt to stop it, standing there just like . . . like nothing could touch him. And when Colt went to shoot him, he just . . . was
there
, twenty, thirty feet from where he’d been and taking Colt’s gun away without even a
pause
, you know? We all went after him . . . and it was, you know, like we didn’t even
matter
to him.”

I looked up. “He goes on to say that he thought the old man killed three or four of them and knocked out the rest, except a couple like the witness who ran like hell when they realized just how badly they were outclassed. No one ever found any bodies . . . but Jeri checked, and the ones that the witness thought were killed were never seen after that day.” I shook my head. “Twenty-two people—gang members—against
one
old man? What the hell was this guy, and how’s he mixed up in this?”

Verne picked up the paper and studied it; a faint smile appeared on his face. “Perhaps . . .” he said slowly, with that smile brightening, showing the same hope I had seen in his eyes before, “just perhaps . . . the father came for his son.”

PART VII

Shadow of Fear

May 2001

CHAPTER 73

Rude Awakening

The scream was so piercing that I was up, cradling Syl in my arms even before I was fully awake. “What? What is it, Syl?”

She was shaking, and for a moment she couldn’t speak, just clung to me tightly, staring into the darkness of our bedroom as though something monstrous lurked there. As there was enough moonlight coming through the windows, I could tell that in fact there
wasn’t
anything lurking anywhere in the room.

Finally she relaxed her grip. “Something . . . something
happened
, Jason.”

“Not to be sarcastic, Syl, but . . . that’s not very clear on the ‘something.’”

“I . . .” She swallowed, reached out to the side table and grabbed the glass she usually kept there, and drained all the water left. “Better. Jason . . . I don’t know what it was. It was . . . a shock, a ripple, like the whole
Earth
was struck by something huge.”

“What? You’re saying . . . what, a meteor or—” I had the terrible image of a dinosaur-killer having hit somewhere on Earth and us being just minutes away from annihilation by fire or water.

“No, not . . . not struck Earth
physically
. It was almost like being hit myself, inside, where my Talent is.”

I blinked sleep out of my eyes, gave her another hug, and sighed. “Okay. Wish I knew what that meant, though.”

I waited until her shakes died down, then got out of bed and turned on the light, glancing at the clock. 3:25 a.m. “Hope we can get back to sleep in a bit, but I know neither of us is ready just yet.” I turned on my computer and switched on the TV; Syl often watches TV until she falls asleep, and I figured I could do some quick searches to see if there was anything I could connect to her “shock.”

As the TV came on, however, I realized I probably didn’t have to search, because the normal late-night programming wasn’t on; instead there was the serious face of a main cable news anchor, staring out at us, saying: “. . . no response as of yet, but current reports indicate a nuclear explosion.”

He cut to images—clearly taken with cheap, easily available cameras—showing a huge mushroom cloud rising over some forest or jungle. “These are the first images coming in from Gabon. They appear to confirm that a very large explosion has occurred somewhere within the country.”

I frowned.
Hard to think of this as coincidence, but I doubt that nuclear bombs would have some kind of psychic shockwave or whatever. And what the hell would someone be doing, bombing
Gabon
?
I checked some online maps. Making some guesses based on what the newscaster said as to the location of the images, it looked like the blast would have happened . . . basically in the middle of nowhere, rainforest without a single valid military or industrial target within at least a couple hundred miles.

The phone suddenly rang. I glanced at Syl, who was still riveted to the newscast, shrugged and picked it up. “Jason Wood.”

“Mr. Wood.” The rough-toned voice was instantly recognizable. “It seems you are already awake. Would I be correct in assuming your wife woke you up?”

“You would.”

“My sympathies to you both. I’d like to invite you to join the investigation.”

I nodded to myself.
Of course.
“You don’t think it was a nuke.”

“I’d bet everything on that, yes. And since you’re the world’s current authority on the strange, getting you in on it early will look properly proactive.”

“Not to mention,” I said, heading over towards my dresser as I talked, “if I’m working for you, you can tell me whenever you want me to look the other way. Harder to do that if I work for anyone else.”

The short chuckle indicated I’d hit the mark. “I’ll take that as a yes?”

“As long as Syl comes along. Face it, she’s more likely to be useful than I am.”

“If she wishes to accompany you, I won’t object.”

“Of course I’ll come,” Sylvie called from the other side of the room, where she was sorting out clothes and starting to pack. “Mr. Achernar has some of the Talent but I have
much
more experience in this kind of Sensing.”

“Excellent,” said Achernar. “By the time you reach the Albany Airport, I will have a fast transport waiting.”

I followed Syl’s instincts in packing—which suggested that we’d be there for a while.
I’ve never been
anywhere
in Africa. Shame this isn’t a vacation trip
. I made sure to pack stuff ideal for hot-weather bush-hiking; Gabon had actual rainforest and sat right in the middle of the tropics. It was a good thing that I always kept a travel pack of essential toiletries and such ready; saved me a lot of time.

It was well over an hour before we were in the car and on our way to the airport. “Wonder what Mr. Achernar will have arranged?” Syl mused.

“My guess? Something we won’t expect,” I answered, pulling into the parking lot. “He plays on a different level than the rest of—”

My new cell phone beeped. “Jason Wood here.”

“See you’ve arrived, Jason,” came the Jammer’s voice. “I’ll let Mr. Achernar know.”

“How the heck did you—”

“Traced the phone, cell tower triangulation, called once you stopped moving.”

Showoff.
“All right. You coming on this trip too?”

“No, I’m staying at HQ, actually. Not that I mind field trips, but the amenities out there in the bush aren’t going to fit my usual preferences.”

“Where am I—”

“Just go in the main entrance, you’ll figure it out.”

I rolled my eyes.
Super-spies employing wiseguy hackers really should stay in bad suspense novels
. “Okay.”

Syl was already pulling her luggage out of the trunk; I followed and the two of us eventually made it to the entrance—where I saw James Achernar waiting.

“You’re playing taxi
yourself
?”

“For something like this? Yes. I’ll brief you on what we know along the way.”

Waiting on the tarmac, far away from the usual commercial jets, was a plane of a type I’d never seen before—though with its shadow-black color and sleek, almost bladelike design, I could tell that the SR-71 Blackbird had to figure heavily in its ancestry, though there was something oddly out of place about parts of its engine mountings. “What is
that
?”

“HSC-2
Hermes
, high-speed courier aircraft. Only three like it on Earth,” Achernar answered. “Fastest operating aircraft in the world. She’ll get us there in under three hours.”

“That’s almost six thousand miles in less than three hours?” I said, trying to grasp what I was hearing.

“Correct.”

We entered
Hermes
and found that it was set up more as a small private jet than a military vehicle . . . though all the seats could be locked down and equipped for full military acceleration, and—I was able to see as I studied them carefully—also had full ejection setups; they looked like Martin-Baker manufacture with mods.

“Strap in,” Achernar said, and to my surprise he went to the pilot’s seat. “I want us in the air as soon as possible.”

“You know how to
fly
too, Mr. Bond?” I asked as I followed his instructions. Syl didn’t seem as gobsmacked as I was, probably because she didn’t spend a lot of her time thinking about technology and its limits.

He laughed briefly. “I have an . . . eclectic skillset, yes. Not, unfortunately, the equal of that particular gentleman, but I have advanced degrees in aerospace engineering as well as psychology, and training as a pilot and driver of multiple vehicles. And a few other less commonly useful skills involving things like handguns.”

The jet engines began their rumbling whistle—surprisingly faint.
Must have very good soundproofing here.
“And a master of the martial arts, I’d bet.”

Hermes
began to move slowly down the tarmac. “Tower, this is Courier Seven, requesting clearance for takeoff
,
” Achernar said into his headset, then in answer to my question, “Actually, no. I’m not completely incompetent in hand-to-hand, but in all honesty, our mutual friend, the Jammer, could probably beat me in that area.”

That was a bit of a surprise; I’d started imagining Achernar as the classic superspy, and his wide range of talents had seemed to fit with that. “Really?”

“Really. There are unfortunately a lot of things I don’t do well—which is why I need a team, after all.”

“Courier Seven, you are cleared for takeoff on Runway Two,” the tower said.

“Roger. Courier Seven cleared for takeoff on Runway Two,” Achernar acknowledged.

A few minutes later,
Hermes
roared thunder from both main jets and pushed us back in the seats with more force than I’d felt in any normal takeoff. Syl was wide-eyed at the power the plane demonstrated. Swiftly, the nose lifted and the plane streaked into the sky, the lights of the city dwindling away below us as we arrowed away towards the gray light of approaching dawn.

A screen deployed from the ceiling, and the lights dimmed. An image appeared of a green jungle with a huge, bare, perfectly circular crater in the center, surrounded by countless thousands of trees blown flat like matchsticks in a gale, radiating outward from the crater; a significant number were on fire, or had been, and smoke fogged the image. “Holy
crap
.”