System Seven (13 page)

“Agents Crawford and
Vasco, hands up and turn around,
now.
Face the wall.”

Agent Crawford
hesitated. “You need to go talk with Brodie. That’s all I can say.”

“Bullshit. Brodie
wouldn’t order this.”

“The
fuck
he didn’t Mac. Ask him yourself.
Call him right now.”

Crawford wanted to
distract him. A single moment is all they’d need.

“Kaiya, grab your
purse.”

Kaiya leaving
disturbed them. “You’re out of line, Agent Payant,” Vasco warned. “Put your
weapon down and we’ll get on the phone with Brodie. You may not like our
orders, but fronting your weapon is way out of line.”

Mac knew little about
the agents but knew the regional director wouldn’t order Kaiya roughed up. The
video orb in the corner of the room peered down. First doubts pressed in. It
appeared they’d acted with impunity.

“Hands above your head
and turn to face the wall,
now
. Kaiya,
go left down the hall. Stand by the door.”

“What, execution time?
Fuck you.”

An absurd suggestion,
a bid for talking time. He tracked their every expression, their every
movement. “Hands
up
and face the wall.
Do
it! Hands up!”

He watched them roll
their eyes and shake their heads. Vasco raised his arms wide in an exaggerated
fashion and turned. Crawford also turned and raised just one arm, faking the
other while he pulled on his pistol.

“Don’t do it–” Mac shot him in the knee. Crawford shouted
and fell onto the bed.

Vasco drew his weapon
in motion. Mac collapsed into a squat and fired – the round punctured the
agent’s forehead, scattering brain and skull fragments on the walls and
ceiling. Kaiya screamed in the hallway.

Time slowed to a
crawl. He’d just killed a fellow agent. Crawford’s weapon came up.

Mac flash aimed and
squeezed the trigger.

He entered the hallway in a rush. Kaiya
crouched by the door, hugging her purse. “Oh my god, you shot them?”

Mac keyed open the
door. “They drew, damn it. Come on.”

“Your arm–”

A flesh wound that
bled but not profusely. “Let’s go,
quickly
.”

He rushed through the
building and arrived at the security suite. He swiped his card but got only a
red light and beep. He tried again with the same result. He pushed the call
button.

No one answered.

“Jesus.” He struggled
with the implications. “Fuck.”

“What is it?”

He grabbed her hand.
“Let’s move.”

Mac’s sedan leapt onto
the country lane and accelerated towards the interstate in the dark of
predawn. That they’d made it out without being stopped was only a little
reassuring. Shit had hit the fan in the worst way imaginable.

Kaiya asked, “What was
that room? Why were you locked out? Talk to me.”

“I said I need a
minute.” He pulled out his phone.

Things were happening
too fast. Too damned fast. He called the director. Brodie answered on the
second ring.

“Mac? What’s up?”

He couldn’t tell if
he’d woken him or not. “Emergency, sir. I need to know what orders you gave
Crawford and Vasco regarding Kaiya.”

“Crawford and Vasco?
About Kaiya? Why? What’s happened?”

“Orders, sir?”

“Nothing about Kaiya.
Vasco has the case with orders to look into Brent’s status and the FBI
investigation. What’s going on, Mac? Out with it.”

“I just found them
working over Kaiya. Strangling, striking, groping. Threatened to hurt her
mother. They wanted Austin’s laptop. At gunpoint they said you’d ordered the
shakedown.”

Brodie responded
instantly. “Absolutely not. Where are they?”

Recounting the details
was tough. It sounded bad even to his own ears. “I went to Security but my card was denied and no one answered. Sir, you
need to secure the digital feed from the room. It’s all there.”

“Christ, Mac. Then
they are both dead?”

“Almost certainly.”

“Where are you?”

He hesitated. To feel
any doubt about Brodie stung. He scanned an intersection before running a red
light to reach the highway onramp.

“Mobile, sir. Kaiya is
with me.”

“Alright, alright.
Where are you headed?”

Not a difficult
question but again he hesitated. The regional director wanted to know where
they were going, had denied ordering the attack on Kaiya, and Mac
wanted
to believe him. The moment drew
long, an answer due.

“Westbound. Towards Regent’s Place, sir.”

“That’s fine. Prepare
your report there, submit it, and stay put for debriefing. I don’t want you in
any more situations.”

“Yes, sir. And sir, I
have a feeling about this. Kaiya’s mother needs protection.”

“I’ll look into it.
Now listen, Mac, don’t deviate. This is going to be a rough ride as it is.”

“Yes, sir. Just secure
the digital feed from the room. Please.”

“Of course. Stay out
of trouble.”

“I’ll do my best.”

He ended the call,
knowing the trouble had already begun.

“What is it?” she
asked.

“Do you want the good
or bad news first?”

“Oh hell. The bad
news.”

“The agency may be
involved but to what extent I don’t know. Maybe at the operational level...
could be from higher up.”
A lot higher up.

“Jeez...” She slumped
against the door and stared at the dash. “The good news better be damned good.”

“I don’t think it was
our government that actually took him.”

“Not our government?
You just said the CIA–”

“I said the CIA may be
involved. They want him and the laptop but they didn’t take him.”

“Then who did? And how
is it good news?”

He shook his head.
“I’m not sure yet. Someone else is involved, someone on the outside.”

“But why? I feel like
you know more than you’re saying.”

“I don’t. Trust me, I
wish I did. Everything revolves around the file. Are you positive Austin didn’t
download it or know what it was?”

“He said he didn’t
have time and I believe him. I didn’t like any of it and told him to get rid of
it. But did he listen?” She stared out into the darkness.

Mac drove with an eye
on the rear view mirror.

The serious
consideration of mind reading was old, dating back to at least the last
century. Both superpowers performed significant research into telepathy, remote
viewing, and related concepts starting in the sixties and seventies. The Soviet
Union started their research before the United States and by the late sixties
had an annual budget of twenty-four million dedicated to psi. The CIA funded
formal research starting in ‘72 and five years later the Army initiated its own
program. By the mid-eighties, word of the programs leaked and the Army
terminated its program only to have the Defense Intelligence Agency redesignate
it and fund it separately. Ten years later, the CIA took it over and sunk it
via a commissioned report saying no value had come from the research. He had
always wondered how, after spending years and millions of dollars on the
subject, it could be deemed of no value. That kind of money built entire
agencies, insured secrecy. There was more to it and could only be classified
beyond black.

Austin must have
stumbled upon real evidence. Hard intel of some kind. It stirred him on levels
he hadn’t felt in years. The lengths they would go to in order to keep it
concealed were limitless. Now that Crawford and Vasco had acted as they had in
front of the room’s surveillance camera, there was reason to fear his own
organization. Without the video, he wouldn’t have a defense.

He squeezed the
steering wheel.

It was all
wrong
... he’d broken his own rule of
staying off the radar. He’d earned a radar lock and the tone was deafening. He
looked in the rearview mirror at headlights coming up an onramp.

Waiting around for
inbound missiles just wasn’t going to work.

An option loomed,
weighing in ominously: going rogue. A dark thought but one he’d fostered over
the years. If ever his career went bad, he needed a way out, a method to
survive beyond the reach of the CIA. The plan was squarely in place, set up
years before with extraordinary care. However, the design was for his own
disappearance, not his and another’s.

Kaiya’s worry broke
the silence. “Where is Regent’s Place, Mac? What is it?”

A turn in the highway
revealed the valley lights below. “A safe house in Sacramento. Only I’m not
sure how safe it will be.” He met Kaiya’s gaze briefly. “I don’t mean to scare
you but I’m not going to lie to you either. Agents may take custody of you
there.”

“No, Mac. I want out,
now. Please. Get me out of this.” She looked ready to leap from her skin.

“Relax Kaiya, relax.
You have to keep your head. Don’t give in–”

“Relax? Mac! There’s
nothing
relaxing
about any of this.
This can’t be happening but goddammit, it
is!
Look at me – the United States Central Intelligence Agency just roughed me up
over computer files about
mind reading!
Hello? They threatened to
kill
me
if I didn’t cooperate. They’ll go
after my mom! She doesn’t know anything about this. She barely likes Austin for
chrissakes. Now I’m driving to a safe house where I’ll be taken into custody
and then what? Tortured? Raped? Over what? Proof of mind reading? Sure, just relax.
What the hell is going to happen to me? What would you do!”

With as much
conviction as he could muster, he said, “None of that is going to happen.
Things have gone nuts, yes, I know it. Other people know it, too. Losing our
minds now won’t help us – but it will help
them
.
I have a feeling they are counting on it.”

She looked to the
city-lit skyline, all fear and confusion.

“Kaiya, I will protect
you and I’m going to try to find Austin. But you’re going to have to trust me.
Can you do that?”

The lights of
Sacramento disappeared as the highway descended into the valley.

“I don’t think I have
a choice, do I? It’s the government. You’re all I’ve got. No offense intended.”

“None taken. Now, your
cell phone, please.”

“No. I have to warn my
mom.”

Mac thought about it.
“Tell her to stay at a friend’s house. She needs to be with people at all
times. Make the call short.”

Kaiya placed the call
but it rang to voicemail. “Mom, you need to go to Shari’s right now. Please
just go. Something’s happening here and you’re in grave danger. Don’t stay
anywhere alone. I’m sorry, mom, I can’t explain but please,
please
go. Just do it. I love you, mom.
I love you so, so much.” She hung up and fought off tears. “Damn this. Damn all
of it.”

“It’s all you can do
for now. I’m sorry, Kaiya.”

At the next exit he
pulled into a Denny’s and stopped alongside a tarp-covered utility trailer
towed by an SUV. He slipped an evidence bag containing their phones under the
blue wrap.

Back on the highway,
he glanced at her. “Time to disappear.”

Mac pressed a remote
and turned into the garage of a modest single-story house.

“Not what I’d imagined
for an agent,” Kaiya said.

“Follow me and stay
quiet. Not a peep.” He led her into the house and down a hallway into the
bathroom. Together they cleaned the ragged flesh wound on his upper arm and
covered it with a gauze band aid. He pocketed a bottle of antibiotics.

They entered a kitchen
with windows facing the backyard. Mac removed the top drawer from a cabinet and
reached underneath to operate two latches. He tugged upward on a section of
tile countertop to break a thin line of covering grout. From a shallow cavity
he withdrew a leather satchel and a cell phone with its battery and charger
taped to it.

Kaiya nodded approval.

He closed up the
hiding space and returned the drawer, then led the way towards the back fence.
He looked over his shoulder at his home of six years. It shouldn’t hurt so
much. The days of living on the edge abroad were long gone.

Not that long gone
. A fierceness surged, the hallmark of that
lifestyle. Confidence swelled even as fear paced the moment.

“Let’s go, over the
fence. Stay under the trees as you head to the right side of the house. Mind
the brickwork at the edge of the sidewalk.”

“Do we know these
people?” Kaiya asked after clearing the fence.

“Yes, my friend
Helen.”

He approached the
garage and opened the side door with his key. Inside, a single bulb illuminated
two cars. He opened the interior door to reveal a dining room dimly lit by a
nearby living room lamp. A cup of water and a book sat on the end table.