From Filth & Mud (33 page)

“Tim you are losing Doug here and me frankly; what’s your point?”

“Doug and I were out here when he mentioned the glowing wake behind the ship. I told him that it was bioluminescent plankton that glows when it is agitated by the churning water as we pass through it. I was just pointing out that Europa might be the first world where we find alien life outside of our planet. Europa has a large ocean that contains more water than Earth; a lot more, about 2 to 3 times the volume. Now the problem is that we would have to dig deep down under miles of ice to access the ocean. And in a world of darkness like that—I would imagine—that although their genetic composition would be different, Europeans might resemble the very same glowing plankton that we churn through so dismissively here in the Gulf.”

Jacob half expected Tim to finish with ‘
Duuuude
!’

Doug peered down at Jacob again. “See what I was saying? Little green men from Jupiter. Ain’t that some shit?!” Doug pulled off his night-vision and handed it to Jacob to take a look.

Jacob looked through the lenses out into an undulating see of darkness; the crest of the waves flickered in and out of existence as they temporarily reflected the light of the crisp full moon, which loomed large over the calm waters of the Gulf. He then raised his gaze into the eternal abyss now bathed in a light-green hue by the photosensitive detectors of the night-vision device. The night twinkled and shimmered with all manner of natural and man-made light. The moon was so bright that it nearly cut out the night vision. The stars now joined by many of their previously unseen celestial kin conquered the sky, leaving almost no portion of it devoid of twinkling light. Intermittently one of them would descend from the heavens and streak across the Persian sky. In that instant, he was transported back to the genesis of civilization when the life-giving waters of the rivers Tigris and Euphrates bathed the land in bounty, then met to spawn the Shatt Al-Arab. Here, he now stood. This was the very sky under which all of the Biblical patriarchs and matriarchs had lived, loved, and died for generations back to the garden of Adam, Eve, and Lilith, before her. He shuttered.

Tim took another long drag of his vaporizer and spoke more to the stars than to anyone, “I wonder what it would look like?”

“What
what
would look like?” Jacob was too overwhelmed in the heavenly scene to stop himself from indulging in the stoner talk.

“A European whale.”

Jacob grabbed the vaporizer from Tim and inhaled deeply from it. He was soon contemplating this and the other great mysteries of life with Tim as the
Jonah
steamed back to Manama with a new life form coursing through him and its creator safely stowed in the steel-hulled bowels below.

- - - - - - -

Eckert’s phone rang in his office for perhaps several minutes as he completed his meditation. He knew what tidings the call would bring.

“Sir, we’ve got Monte-Alban and the crates. They are on the way to Manama as we speak. We should be airborne by tomorrow afternoon.”

“Good. As always, I commend you on a job well done. Please hand the good doctor off to the Chinese and please ensure that they know that he single-handedly attempted to sabotage delivery of their purchase.”

“Will do, Sir. What about the teams? Jacob and his team especially might get suspicious.”

“Well, Mr. Harrington has too much to lose to take a chance on a whack-job doctor. He is a good Marine; he will follow orders. As for the others, they are too in the dark to know what’s going on, and they have no skin in the game either way. They are mercenaries, after all, and I will pay them for a job well done.”

“I also want to report that there are no loose ends. The Chinese saw to it that the rest of the lab employees did not make it out.”

“Good, now there’s just one last thing to take care of.”

Irina sat in the master bath, propped against the large stonework bathtub. Her tools glowed and hummed all around her. There was not much more that she could do. Aiden was on his way to Bahrain. Sarah was laying low for the time being. Karen had decided to rescue what remained of her work in Boston before it was destroyed. And she,
she
was trying her best not to dismantle the entire BioSyn and XPS operation from her bathroom. Aiden had convinced her to leave it alone because it would be more valuable forensically as an intact network than a pile of rubble. He had warned General Davenport that Eckert was dealing on the side of his extremely lucrative contract with Central Intelligence, but he had not informed her about the imminent transfer of a novel, biological weapon to the Chinese. That was valuable information, and he was going to keep it under his hat until he could cash in on it.

Irina had set the wheels in motion, and she enjoyed watching the drama unfold, but she felt strangely unsatisfied. She hurriedly disabled her systems and waited for the memory dumps to be complete. Her concern over the fate of her current subjects had equally disappeared. An hour later, she began to furiously write her single-most beautiful code, and she would continue writing for nearly a week without interruption. She had always been a voyeur, but one day soon, she would be much more than that.

- - - - - - -

Karen awoke, her head crushed with constricting pain that vised around her temples. Nausea tsunamied into her weary consciousness as a wave of bile ascended into the back of her esophagus and into her nasal passages. She gagged, and tears burned in her eyes. Bending forward in her agony, she realized that she was alone. The sudden cold sent her into yet another convulsion as a second wave of bile, phlegm, and mucus spewed from her mouth and nose. She grasped for stability with her cracked and bleeding nails, her arms shakily attempting to support her weight. She flopped down, floundering on a wet floor. She would not die. Not yet.

Time evaporated. Her body yielded to the cold. Her mind fled the torture. She had been ravaged.

“Mr. Eckert is disappointed in you, Dr. Mayfield,” a chilled, deep, female voice pierced her pain induced hallucinations. Karen silently willed herself to remain conscious.

“Dr. Mayfield, normally I would just keep asking you these questions, but I’ve already gotten my answers from you, though you probably don’t remember. I bet you remember this.” A sharp pain shot through Karen’s side as Jak drove a cattle prod into her right kidney and fired a bolt of electricity. Her hair was violently pulled back, and she felt the breath of her tormentor hot against her cheek. “The truth is this, Karen, I’m going to enjoy this. Mr. Eckert only wanted me to kill you, something quick, less involved. But for you,
Karen
, and I say this girl to girl, it’s nothing but the best. Think of it as a girl’s day, and you are getting your mani-pedi done.” The room was suddenly awash in the buzzing of a Dremel saw blade, and a sudden crunch as it cut through fine metacarpal bone. Karen’s screams would have been unbearable had anyone heard them. She was alone and unprepared for the inevitable death, which she saw so clearly now. It frightened her to her very soul.

“Please, please stop. Please stop,” she cried aloud, but her pleas for mercy were ignored and once again the saw blade bit. “Sarah!” she cried out. “Sarah! Please, please help! Someone help!!!” Her death came slowly, unimaginably so, and the harder she begged for it, the more she was denied its merciful embrace. It finally came for her in the fine blade of a stiletto.

Sarah had laid low in John’s Georgetown apartment for a couple of days since John had called and told her about the danger they were all in. Tovarich had reached out to him and he had coordinated Jacob’s and Manny’s escape. John assured her that he would protect her and the boys the best he could, once he arrived in D.C. Sarah sent the boys to stay with her parents, who were temporarily living in an apartment in Bethesda. She told them very little, but just enough to get them properly scared and to take precautions on their trip to Maine where Tim’s family would be waiting for them. She looked at her phone nervously, tempted to make a call, but she knew that doing so would most likely be fatal. Karen had gone into hiding months ago after their hotel meeting, but had checked in every few weeks to let her know that she was okay. Sarah had talked to her a few days earlier and had told her to leave her mother’s house in Connecticut. That was John’s advice. He had left a few days earlier to find her, but he too had been incommunicado.

Her phone suddenly buzzed with a text from John. He was just outside. Sarah was starved for news about Jacob and the boys and so she ran quickly to the door, opening it at the first knock.

To her surprise, on the other side of the doorway stood a large, intimidating woman dressed in black, whose smile gave more fright than comfort and who Sarah immediately knew to be Jak Stanton, from Jacob’s description of the aloof and powerful woman. Sarah tried to move but couldn’t and in that moment of hesitation, Jak walked through the threshold into the apartment.

“Where’s John?” Sarah was quickly flipping through every scenario in which she might survive this encounter.

“He’ll be right up,” Jak closed the door behind her as she spoke. “He sent me ahead to make sure that everything was okay. How are you doing, Sarah?” The question rang with the concern of a snake to a mouse.

Sarah forced herself not to search for her purse where her snub-nosed revolver lay concealed. She knew it was there. She had to trust that it was there at this very moment, where it had always been. Jak walked into the kitchen of the studio apartment and made a demonstration of preparing a cup of coffee. Sarah was overcome by an indescribable unease. Her heartbeat quickened, and her ears filled with the pounding of her throbbing pulse. Her vision tunneled toward the powerful woman who was now out of sight. The distinct sound of a coffeemaker gurgling to life momentarily allayed her fear, but when Jak emerged from behind the kitchen wall, Sarah appreciated the seriousness of her predicament. Jak stood in the entryway of the kitchen, her hands now gloved, one holding a large, blackened-steel stiletto.

“Sarah, at this point you probably know that Jacob is dead. You don’t have to worry about him. You should worry about yourself and your two sons. If you listen to me and do as I tell you, you will be fine. You will survive this and be reunited with them. Do I have your cooperation?” Jak’s affect was devoid of emotion.

Sarah understood that Jak had no intentions of letting her live. She thought about her bag. How quickly could she reach it and draw her revolver? She knew that she couldn’t do it in time. Jak was menacing her from about fifteen feet away, and she would certainly cover that distance before Sarah could reach the gun. Jak was a confident, trained killer. Jacob had talked about her impressive skills. She was also an imposing physical specimen who probably outweighed Sarah by fifty pounds of solid muscle, so she stood no chance in a fight. Her only chance was that gun.

Jak stalked from the kitchen around the far side of the living room and opened the door to the bathroom. Jak looked back at Sarah with the dark, dead, cold stare of a great white shark.

“Please step inside, Sarah. You’ll be safe. I have been instructed to keep you here for a few hours until we find Dr. Mayfield. I promise no harm will come to you. We will let you go as soon as we find her. She stole some valuable property from our client, and we want it back, that’s all.”

Sarah attempted to delay unsuccessfully. Her time was now, but Jak read her mind like the well-trained predator that she was. The adrenaline dump that coursed through her body was unlike any other that she had experienced. Her body was numb as she whirled around and dove back toward her handbag on the far side of the couch. She felt the vise grip of Jak’s outstretched hand wrap around her ankle as it lifted her foot off of the ground and vaulted her, wind-milling into the coffee table. She landed with a bone-crushing thud as her wrist fractured upon impacting the hardwood floor. The pain was immediately dulled by her panic. Fleeing was no longer an option. Sarah flailed for her purse with her frantic fingertips as she kicked away at her attacker, but the powerful hands wrapped themselves around her calves.

Sarah was yanked away from the couch by Jak’s monstrous arm and came to a rest directly underneath her hulking attacker. Jak menaced her once again with the blade as she kneeled down confidently on top of her, straddling and pinning her knees. Sarah clutched her purse tightly; she could just make out the shape of the revolver inside. Jak ran the stiletto along Sarah’s inner thighs as she began to cut away at her skirt.

“Please don’t!” Sarah cried out as Jak pulled away her tattered skirt and inserted the cutting edge of the stiletto into her panties. The lace gave way immediately, exposing the tender flesh underneath. Sarah thrust her hand inside of her purse. Jak reared back to plunge the stiletto into Sarah’s heart as a bullet exploded through the purse and into the skull of her attacker sending chips of skull and gray matter cavitating through the newly-blasted void and into the ceiling above. Sarah pulled the trigger of her revolver five more times, emptying its deadly contents into Jak’s contorted face. Jak’s body dropped dead onto her. The blood flowing from the opened skull bathed Sarah as she lay shaking on her back. Her hand held firmly onto the revolver as it smoked through the stippled leather of her purse.

- - - - - - -

For John, there was no choice in the matter. Jacob was in trouble. Jak had no doubt discovered the connection between Karen and Sarah. Eckert would have undoubtedly called for Sarah’s death. He had to protect her. He had no illusions as to how he had come to this point. His hands were bloody, and he accepted it. He’d been acting out of his own self-interests since he left the Corps. He had lost his humanity long ago, but here, in this moment, he found it. Something called to him, something he could only describe as
love
. He loved Jacob. He had loved him for years, but he had always taken it for granted. Today was different, though. His friend was threatened, and today he was willing to sacrifice everything for that love. Jacob was on his way to stop Eckert and he would succeed. John willed himself to come through for him as faithfully as he’d ever done.

John slammed the brakes on the car, sending the sedan into a prolonged skid, the wheels sprayed rocks from the gravel driveway, coming to a stop inches away from Jak’s SUV. He hoped that he was not too late. John stepped out of the car and heard the gunshots. A cold panic shot through him. He feared that he was too late to save Sarah. He drew his pistol from its holster and ran toward the front door of the XPS-owned apartment building in the heart of Georgetown. He bounded up the interior stairs of the brownstone, reaching the third floor in a flash. He sprinted down the narrow hall toward his apartment, smashing his shoulder into the door as it sprang off of its hinges, ripping the lock from the door jam. He tucked into a combat roll and slid across the room, sweeping it with his pistol at the ready. He steadied himself against the far wall of the room before noticing the four feet protruding from behind the couch. Jak’s massive calves were unmistakable; the other slighter pair began to move. John rose from his knees and pulled Jak’s body off of Sarah who was astonishingly steady in her resolve.

“Where’s Jacob?”

“He’s okay. He’s on his way to stop Eckert.”

“You have to help Karen. They are going after her next.”

“Sarah, are you okay?” John checked her body for injuries. She was bathed in blood and was possibly in shock.

“John you have to protect Dr. Mayfield. Jak told me that they were already on their way to get her.” Sarah grabbed her phone from her purse as she got to her feet and reclined on the couch already dialing her parents.

John nodded. “Okay, but first let’s get you out of here and get your boys. I’ll get you guys somewhere safe. I’ve got to let Jacob know that you guys are okay.” John spared her the details of Karen’s death.