Immune (55 page)

That they were using GPS was oddly fitting. When global positioning data had first been made broadly available, the US government had partially corrupted the down-linked time data using a process known as dithering, part of what was called Selective Availability. The idea had been to provide the correct information only to classified subscribers, so they would have much more accurate location data.

As was often the case with such schemes, civilian users immediately came up with ways to correct the data, allowing almost the same accuracy for their users as that available to the US military and intelligence communities. Thus, the huge sum of money aimed at Selective Availability was essentially a complete waste. Another hundred-million dollar military toilet seat.

But now the GPS signal was being manipulated in a very subtle way, acting as a carrier signal for information transmitted worldwide. The data on the DVD disk containing this information had been extracted by the late Dr. Nancy Anatole from the personal laptop of Dr. Donald Stephenson. It was a disk she had hidden away with instructions that it be forwarded to a friend on the Senate Intelligence Committee should anything happen to her. And although the disk had eventually found its way into Kromly’s hands, he had not been able to unscramble enough of the information to discover the true purpose underlying the GPS embedding.

As the soft breeze gently tousled his gray hair, Garfield returned his gaze to the Washington Monument and the small flock of birds settling into the grass near its base.

Well, the pass had been made. He could only hope that the Ripper’s resources exceeded his own. The disk was Jack’s problem now.

“Prettiest pregnant lady I’ve ever seen.”

The voice lifted Janet from her chair and whirled her toward the door. As fast as she moved, Jack was quicker, sweeping her up in an embrace that somehow managed to be both powerful and gentle, like being wrapped in warm velvet rebar. Then their lips met and parted, the gentle flick of his tongue barely touching her own, sending an electric thrill through her body that left her breathing ragged.

As she pulled her head back, she laughed. “Careful. That’s how I got in this condition in the first place.”

“Thought I’d taken care of that.”

“Apparently, those nanites have been busy fixing what got snipped.”

Jack stepped back, holding her out at arms length, his eyes scanning her body from toe to head.

“So what do you think?” Janet asked, although a part of her feared the answer.

“I like it.” Then Jack dropped to his knees, placed his ear right up against her belly, and tapped it twice with his finger. “Hey, you in there. What’s your name?”

Janet laughed out loud. “I don’t think he’s going to talk back.”

“You sure it’s a he?” Jack asked, still listening for a response.

“Positive.”

“Woman’s intuition?”

“Tall Bear told me.”

“And he would know?”

“Some sort of Navajo spiritual thing. He says he got it from his grandmother.”

“Hmm,” Jack said, rising to his feet and kissing her once again. “Well, I guess we can’t argue with that. Jack Junior then.”

“That’s horrible.”

“Jack Senior’s taken.”

“From the way he’s been acting in there, I was thinking of an Indian name. Something like Kicking Donkey.”

A broad grin spread across Jack’s face, bringing a twinkle to his eyes. Lord she’d missed him.

“Looks like we better keep his mom and dad alive long enough to hash all this out.”

“Gonna disappoint a lot of people.”

“Can’t be helped.” Jack paused. “You know we’re going to have to get married for real now.”

“Can’t we just keep living in sin?”

“Nope. Can’t have little Kicking Donkey getting teased at school.”

Janet grabbed his hand and led him out onto the porch, pulling him into the swinging loveseat. The warm rays of the afternoon sun felt nothing like November, but given this fleeting moment of comfort and happiness, she wasn’t about to argue with the weatherman.

Jack’s face grew more serious. “What have you got for me that you couldn’t encrypt into a message?”

Janet sighed. The warmth of their moment had passed.

For the next forty-five minutes, she laid out the whole story as she knew it. How she’d finally pieced together the puzzle, how the whole time they’d been hunting their mysterious source in the Rho Project, it was right under their noses in the persons of Heather McFarland and Mark and Jennifer Smythe.

When she finished, Jack leaned sideways in the loveseat, absently petting her stomach with his right hand.

“So they’ve made no contact since they disappeared?”

“None.”

“And you think it has something to do with the second alien ship found in that canyon?”

“I’ve run a number of correlations. There are too many coincidences. That’s not far from the cave where the Rag Man took Heather. You said that guy moved like no one on this planet. Mark showed incredible coordination, and we both suspected he was holding back from his true potential. Then the kids’ project won the national science contest. Somehow, they just happen to be connected to a whole set of unusual happenings. Given that they disappeared right after that ship was discovered, if there’s a better explanation, I’m listening.”

“Not one I can think of. Whatever they stumbled upon has them running and hiding.”

“Which is why they couldn’t keep providing the hacker link we were using. They’ve been on the move.”

Jack paused, stroking his chin with his hand. “Just because they can’t keep that link up doesn’t mean they haven’t been checking in on us. Didn’t our source say to leave a message on your laptop if we needed contact?”

Janet sat up. “I forgot all about that.”

“I’ve got a disk full of data I need them to break for me.”

“Got it on you?”

Jack pulled the DVD from his jacket pocket, holding it out to her.

Getting to her feet, Janet took it and headed for the laptop.

“Then I guess we ought to put our message in the bottle.”

Don Espeñosa sat, tied to a chair next to Mark, his face an unreadable mask. They’d debated chaining him in the bathroom, but had decided it was better to keep him under Mark’s watchful eye, even if that meant letting the drug baron hear everything. It didn’t matter. Heather had seen Espeñosa’s future, and he no longer had any.

Don Espeñosa knew he’d only continue living as long as they needed him and had already gone out of his way to demonstrate the extent to which he could be useful. He’d placed a call to one of his cleanup crews, giving instructions to get rid of the human remains in the gym and to scrub it down so thoroughly no DNA samples remained. It was a risky thing, but far better than dealing with queries about the smell. This wasn’t exactly the first bloody cleanup to have occurred on this property.

Jennifer wiped at her swollen eyes with the back of her hand, as if she could scrub away the memories that haunted her. For the last two and a half hours, the story, begun haltingly, had spilled from her lips, sweeping Heather into a maelstrom of emotion.

Despite that she’d showered and changed into clean clothes, Heather felt sullied. A glance at Mark revealed a similar response. They could live with the illegal activities Jennifer had performed for the cartel. But this Eduardo person was something altogether different. Jennifer’s brief glimpse into his soul had been so horrifying it had left her at his mercy. Now he had both Jennifer’s headset and the Rag Man’s.

Halfway through Jennifer’s description of the man, the visions that assaulted Heather left her hands shaking so badly she was forced to grip the table to steady herself. Eduardo had tried on the headsets. The thought of what he was now in the process of becoming filled her with a thick dread. When Eduardo found out that Jennifer had escaped, he would pay a visit to White Rock and their wonderful parents would die.

“Dear God!”

Jennifer only nodded, her voice finally having failed her.

Heather turned toward Don Espeñosa. “Eduardo. Where was he going?”

The drug lord shrugged. “He didn’t say.”

Mark’s jaw tightened. “Bullshit! Just because we want you alive doesn’t mean I won’t hurt you.”

Espeñosa stiffened. “El Chupacabra has many clients. Whoever called him had more pressing need of his services than I did.”

“El Chupacabra?” Heather interrupted. “What is that?”

“A story mothers tell to scare their children. It’s Eduardo Montenegro’s favorite nickname. Most people know him as the Colombian.”

“So he’s a hit man?” Mark asked.

“The world’s most feared assassin.” Espeñosa grinned. “And the most expensive.”

“Last time we checked, the headsets were in D.C.,” Mark said. “What’s he doing in Washington?”

Again, the drug lord shook his head. “No idea. Maybe you should ask your government?”

Heather leaned forward, spinning the laptop to face Jennifer.

“We can do better than that, can’t we, Jen?”

A faint ray of hope dawning in her eyes, Jennifer licked her fingertips, then leaned forward and pressed the rectangular black power button. As the
Window’s Vista
logo splashed the welcome screen, Heather felt the first electrical pulse pass through the embedded special circuitry, a pulse instantly echoed in its quantum twin on the Mattaponi Indian Reservation, 2,300 miles to the north.

It took only minutes to discover the new message on Janet’s laptop.

“To Heather, Mark, and Jennifer. Jack and I know you are our secret Rho Project source. We also know about your connection to the Bandelier Ship and how it has altered you. Don’t be afraid. We need your help. I have placed the contents of an encrypted disk on my C-drive in a folder named Rho Project Data. The data was acquired from Dr. Donald Stephenson’s personal laptop, but we have not been able to decrypt it. Please respond.”

“Oh, shit!” Mark said leaning over Jennifer’s shoulder. “We’re toast.”

Heather scanned the text a second time. “I don’t think so. It only makes sense they would figure it out. I think they need our help as badly as we need theirs.”

Jennifer’s fingers moved across the keyboard so fast that Heather had to concentrate to follow her. “Let’s see what’s on the Stephenson disk.”

The monitor filled with binary data.

“It looks like a fractal encryption algorithm,” Heather said, leaning in close once more. “Can you make it auto-scroll?”

“No problem.” Jennifer touched a sequence of keys and the data began scrolling up from bottom to top.

There it was again, the same semi-random sequence Heather noticed earlier. “Faster please.”

“You’ve got it.”

The data stopped scrolling. Now each page flashed onto the screen for a fraction of a second before being replaced by the next. Suddenly, something clicked into place in Heather’s mind, the encryption fading from her awareness as she read. And as she continued, the meaning became clear.

Stephenson had designed a new type of nanite that could be remotely reprogrammed via a broadcast signal, assuming that the signal contained the correct encoding scheme. It was this new type of nanite that was now being mass produced and distributed, starting with the world’s poorest populations.

Even more shocking, an almost undetectable signal had been embedded in the worldwide GPS satellite broadcasts. And while the signal currently contained no reprogramming instructions, it was clearly intended to allow for rapid reprogramming of targeted populations.

Heather felt the future tilt on its axis, the shock pulling her into a vortex of competing realities. Something plucked at her shoulder, squeezing her arm so hard it hurt. But when she looked, there was nothing there.

Shift.

…She choked on the fetid smell of rotting vegetation. Campfires burned as semi-nude native dancers swayed in rhythm beneath the living bodies dangling from the trees above. With movements so precise that they seemed choreographed, the dancers sliced at their victims, the small cuts sending rich red rivulets running into pots below.

Shift.

…Screaming refugees pushed her to the ground in their frenzy to gather the few grains of rice that had leaked from the sacks at the distribution point. The sound of gunfire crackled overhead.

Shift…

…Clouds boiled overhead as she stared through the bars of a prison window.

Shift…

Shift…

Once again, the spectral hand gripped her, pulling her down into water so murky it felt like mud.

Heather struggled, but her strength was no match for the thing that held her, pulling her ever deeper into the blackness.

“Heather…”

The sound of someone calling her name came from such a great distance, she almost missed it. Like a whisper in the wind, she could almost believe she had imagined it.

“Heather! Snap out of it!”