24 Declassified: Head Shot (2009) (25 page)

“What plans?”

Jack said, “Look at the time element, that’s the critical factor. The Red Notch disappearance took place early on Thursday morning the day before the start of the conference. This morning a hit team liquidates the lone witness to the disappearance and tries to do the same to Neal and me because maybe we heard something. Today a team goes out to Silver-top and finds the blue bus and a mass grave. A strike force shows up almost immediately to eliminate the evidence and its discoverers. It was so important to the plotters that the evidence be concealed that they must have left a spotter in place to sound the alert if anybody got too close. The spotter killed Holtz, blew up the shaft, and sent for the kill squad, not necessarily in that order.

“The blue bus and mass grave were found out. Killing our team and blowing up the shaft only underlined the fact that something important is hidden in that grave. It’s only a matter of time before it’s unearthed and exposed. How much time? A day, maybe two at the most? That’s when the Round Table ends.

“I’m saying that a plot is aimed at the conference. A deadly plot that needs the facts to be concealed while Sky Mount is in session.”

Garcia knitted his two fists together and leaned forward, putting his weight on his thighs while he thought it over. “It’s possible. Prewitt’s crowd hates the Round Table members like poison.”

Jack said, “I’ll tell you something else. That strike force was no motley crew of cultists turned shooters. They were professional guns.”

Garcia had been looking down at the tops of his shoes. He raised his head, turning those big-bore, gun- sight eyes on Jack. “Which brings up another question: how’d you escape when no one else on the team did?”

Jack said, “A fair question and I’ll give you the answer. Because I was the only one who knew what was going to happen when Reb fired the gas grenade.”

“Reb?”

“The leader of the strike force. A big, humongous dude with a dyed platinum- blond crew cut.”

“How come you know his name?”

“That part of the story comes later.”

Dr. Norbert took out a pocket digital recorder and set it down on a countertop. “The rest of this concerns me and my part of the operation. I’m going to record it if you have no objection.”

His last remark was directed at Garcia. Garcia said, “Go ahead. We’re in this together.”

Nobody asked Jack if he objected to being taped. He didn’t and let it pass. He went on, “The grenade exploded, releasing a cloud of green gas. I knew it was dangerous because of what Lobo had said about a gang of hog-faced demons loosing a green cloud on the compound. As soon as I saw it, I knew the only chance was to get away from it.”

Garcia accused, “You ran and left the others to die!”

Jack took it without flinching. He was more than a little contemptuous. “Don’t be childish. You know how the game is played. Better that one should escape to tell what happened than all should die.

“The gas grenade detonated on the tunnel level where Anne and the others were. I was on the next level down where the gas hadn’t reached yet. They were done for. What good would it have done for me to make a heroic last stand and throw my life away in vain? If I escaped then at least somebody would know the truth.

“By the way, there’s an ore cart on the level below the tunnel that I used for cover as my shooting point.
If you check it you’ll find fifty or more slugs smeared across it.
In case you were wondering where I was while the shooting was going on.”

Garcia looked away, rubbing the lower half of his face with his hand. After a while he said, “You’re right, you’re right, of course. You did what you had to do, what I would have done if I’d been in the same position. It’s just that I’m so damned pissed about what they did to Anne and the others!”

Jack said steadily, “How did they get it?
”

“
Shot in the head at point-blank range. Cold-blooded murder!
”

“
I’m sorry. I liked Anne, liked them all. They were good teammates, good agents.
”

“
I’ve known them all for years. I’m the one who’ll have to tell their families.”

There was nothing to say to that. Jack went on, “The killers gave them the coup de grâce. It was as easy as shooting a sitting duck. Easier, because the duck’s not drugged up. The team would have been totally out of it, helpless as babies from the green gas.”

Garcia said, “The strike force did worse to their own. Blew their heads apart with shotgun blasts. No facial or dental identification there. Then they cut their hands off and took them away with them. No fingerprint ID. We don’t know if they did it just to their dead or if they killed the wounded, too.”

Jack said, “Delay. There it is again.
Some if not all of the bodies will eventually be identified by their DNA, height, weight, and age, distinguishing body marks such as scars and tattoos, but it’ll take time.
Time enough for them to accomplish their purpose.”

“Which is?”

“Something massive with the Round Table on the receiving end.”

Dr. Norbert cleared his throat, said, “You were lucky to get out alive, Jack.”

Jack nodded. “I thought the green gas was some kind of knockout gas but it’s not. It’s a hallucinogen. I got a whiff of it and it sent me rocketing clear out of this world for a while. Anybody that got a lungful of it would’ve been knocked flat, too tripped out to do anything but lie there and look at the pretty color.

“That must be what happened at Red Notch. A strike force—maybe the one at Silvertop, maybe another, I don’t know—bombed the compound with gas grenades and rounded the cultists up while they were helplessly tripping out. Some might have tried to resist or been too crazed to control so they were killed there. That explains the seemingly random dispersion of bloodstains at Red Notch. I don’t think they were all killed there, not enough blood, but who knows? Dead or alive, the Zealots were loaded onto the blue bus and taken to Silvertop where they were finished off. They were thrown down the shaft and covered with dirt, not to be found until after whatever is supposed to happen at Sky Mount happens. That was the plan, anyway.”

Garcia said, “You’re making a lot of sense for a guy that was blitzed with a psychedelic bomb not too long ago.”

Jack grinned. “You should’ve seen me earlier, I was flying like a moon bat. Before that I made my break by going over a ridgetop and tumbled into next valley. I climbed the next hill and went into a forest.”

“Pine Ridge.”

“If that’s what it’s called. The strike force must’ve seen me get away because the leader and one of his sidemen came after me. I wandered around the pines in a daze, not knowing what I was doing. I didn’t know Reb and his buddy were dogging me. The stuff started to wear off but I was still pretty wasted. I stumbled into a clearing and came across a mama bear and her cub. I guess it was a mama bear but I don’t know for sure.

“That’s where Reb and his pal found me. I didn’t even know they were there. One of them stepped on a twig and broke it. Mama bear charged me and I dodged right when Reb’s pal tried to shoot me in the back. He missed, but the gunshot spooked the bear into going for the shooter instead.” Jack shook his head. “Frith was right.”

Garcia said, “The tac squad leader?
Where’s he fit in with all this?”

“Earlier he said that bears were fast. He was right. That bear moved like an express train. It knocked the shooter down and ripped him up like he’d fallen into a threshing machine. He cried for help to his partner—once. Called him Reb. Reb was busy hightailing it out of there.

“I got out, too. The bear didn’t bother with Reb or me. It had what it wanted and was slicing and dicing him with those wicked claws. Seeing that pretty well straightened me up and brought me to my senses. I followed Reb out of the woods. He didn’t know I was there. Once he started running he never looked back. I lost sight of him but could hear him in the distance up ahead, crashing through the brush. Good thing, too. I’d lost my bearings, and without his lead I’d have had a tough time finding my way out.

“He emerged from the pine forest and went down the hill. I hung back under cover, watching him. A pickup truck was cruising the valley looking for him and picked him up. They drove south out of the valley and must have come out on Dixon Cutoff. I stuck to the cover of the tree line, making my way south along the hilltop, figuring to make my way to the highway.

“I was in the valley near the roadway when a Humvee turned in and saw me. I didn’t know if it was the killers coming back to look for me or not, but when they got closer I saw they were too military to be part of the gang. Even with civvies on you can’t disguise the look. I know; I was Army myself.

“They picked me up and brought me back here to Pike’s Ford. The rest you know. Dr. Norbert gave me some shots that neutralized what was left of the drug in my system, and he and his nurse patched me up.”

Jack turned his face to the doctor. “That’s my story. Now it’s your turn, Doc. You knew what that stuff was in me and had a hypodermic full of the antidote before I said a word. What’s it all about? What is that green gas? And where do you and the Army come in?”

THE FOLLOWING TAKES PLACE BETWEEN THE HOURS OF 4 P.M. AND 5 P.M. MOUNTAIN DAYLIGHT TIME

Pike’s Ford, Colorado

Dr. Norbert said, “The drug to which you were exposed is called BZ.”

Jack said, “Never heard of it.”

The medic nodded. “I’m not surprised. Few people have, and for good reason. BZ is an incredibly potent psychedelic. It’s a byproduct of the LSD craze of the 1960s. BZ is like LSD on steroids. In its unadulterated form it can produce ‘trips’ lasting up to a week. Luckily for you, you got it in a diluted form. One that was diluted by close to forty years. I’ll explain why in a moment.

“Even in the sixties with its ‘anything goes’ mentality, BZ never caught on with the drug-taking public. It’s too strong for the most hard-core ‘recreational’ drug user. Which is why it was of interest to the military. The research was, in a sense, benignly motivated. The thinking was that BZ could be used as a nonlethal weapon to incapacitate enemy forces, allowing our troops to achieve a bloodless victory.

“Before judging the attempt too harshly, keep in mind the spirit of the times. It’s no secret that the CIA conducted its own extensive research into the use of LSD for interrogation, hypnosis, and mind control. See the files on Project Artichoke if you’re interested. The Army experimented with BZ for possible battlefield use. It was found that BZ could be delivered in the form of a gas. The drug itself was present in microscopic amounts in an inert aerosolized carrier format of highly compressed vaporous gas. The gas would be contained in artillery shells, grenades, and canisters.”

Jack said dryly, “Obviously the research progressed beyond the theoretical stage.”

Norbert said, “Ah, quite. The BZ experiments reached a dead end for the same reason as CIA’s work with LSD as a mind-controlling drug. It doesn’t work, not in that way. Psychedelics are too unpredictable in their effects on human subjects to be depended on. They work on different people in different ways, depending on the individual’s psychological makeup and the setting in which the drug is administered. Some react violently, others are incapacitated. The same subject can have wildly different reactions to identical doses taken at different times.

“The hope was that enemy troops hit with a BZ bomb would be rendered pacified and incapable of resistance. The reality was that it was just as likely to transform them into a horde of raving maniacs, maniacs with guns.”

Dr. Norbert tilted his head, the overhead lights reflecting off the lenses of his spectacles to render them temporarily opaque. “Apart from the practical side, there were political considerations weighing against BZ’s use in combat conditions. It would have been a propaganda coup of the highest magnitude if the other side could prove that we used a psycho-chemical gas bomb in the field. That’s why it was never used by either side, since the Cold War Soviets conducted similar lines of research and could have disseminated their versions of BZ bombs to their client states for use against our troops.

“The BZ research was filed under ‘Project Canceled’ and forgotten as the world moved on. Unfortunately a number of prototype delivery systems had already been made, including a BZ gas grenade. Grenades are used in relatively close combat conditions, so the gas incorporated a green coloring agent that made it highly visible.
Our troops would have been wearing gas masks or nose filters when using the weapon; the green coloring would allow them to see where the grenades had landed on a battlefield and react accordingly in real time.

“When the project was canceled, the BZ weaponry was ordered destroyed. The vast majority of stocks were.
However, a certain number escaped destruction due to bureaucratic oversight,
misfiling, snafus, and just plain human error.
The BZ gas grenade was produced in 1970 and a handful of crates of it have been sitting in chemical warehouse arsenals for almost forty years now.

“This year during an exhaustive inventory of existing stocks of all CWS a quantity of BZ gas grenades came to light. Their extreme age created the added