Origin (19 page)

Lynn looked across at Adams, then back to Ayita. ‘Me too,’ she said, aware that her ex-husband would be less than happy at the suggestion.

‘I’m not sure that’s a good idea,’ Adams interjected immediately. ‘You’re not used to surveillance operations, and someone really needs to stay here and wait for those lab results, and—’

Lynn held up a hand to silence him. ‘Stephen Jacobs sent the men who killed eight of my friends,’ she said. ‘I want to be there.’

Adams was about to protest further when Ayita raised his own hand. ‘Thomas is waiting for you already,’ he said, turning to Lynn and smiling. ‘
Both
of you.’

Adams looked up and rolled his eyes, pointedly ignoring Lynn’s own triumphant smile.

T
HE LARGE MAHOGANY
desk was swamped with papers, and Stephen Jacobs sat behind it with a large glass of cognac. There were twenty-three names on his list, and he had to decide on one of them soon.

Normally such selections were made at the annual Bilderberg Group meetings, and indeed up until last night they had their full complement of one hundred individuals, as agreed all those years ago. But last night one of the ‘Bilderberg Hundred’ had been hit by a car and killed instantly, which left a small gap that had to be filled.

He hoped when the offer was made, it would be accepted. Nine times out of ten they were; the people approached were carefully vetted, and their acceptance was virtually guaranteed. The promise of near immortality and undreamt-of power was the sort of thing that was not in the nature of such people to refuse.

But over the years, there had been some who had refused, who had demonstrated what could only be termed
horror
at the group’s real plans, as if the sacrifice of human life was something abhorrent. In the main it was, of course; but for something so incredible, such sacrifice was nothing.

But the fact remained that there were the odd refuseniks, people who subsequently had to be dealt with by Eldridge and his Alpha Brigade. It was not that Jacobs regretted the killing of such people; rather, it was that if a selected candidate subsequently refused, they would have to waste time selecting another in their place. And with the device just about ready, time was something that they were quickly running out of.

Jacobs supposed it wouldn’t be the end of the world if they didn’t get one hundred people; after all, it would hardly affect
him
. But it was in his nature to deal and bargain and negotiate, and when he had been in the early stages of his negotiations with the group – who referred to themselves as the
Anunnaki
– he had been offered the survival of just the steering committee.

Jacobs put down the dossier he was reading and chuckled to himself. The first offer had been basic survival, and for just twelve people. By the time Jacobs had finished, he had negotiated for one hundred people and the conferring of equal status and powers as the Anunnaki themselves.

He wanted the extra people not only to make a point to the Anunnaki that they couldn’t dictate terms to him, but also because the more like-minded people he had behind him, the more secure was his own position. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust his partners – although it was true that he didn’t do so entirely – it was just that his long decades of practical experience had taught him that the more people you had in your corner, the better. If the Anunnaki were to try something, he would rather have ninety-nine capable people with him than eleven.

The whole thing was a gamble, of course; the Anunnaki might well renege on their deal, and he and his people might well end up dead, along with the rest of the world’s population. But if he hadn’t said yes all those years ago, somebody else would have, and he would have eventually been killed anyway. At least this way, at the forefront of the mission, there was the very real possibility of the big reward, and rewards truly came no greater than what had been finally negotiated.

Jacobs took a sip of his cognac and picked the dossier back up from the desk, when the voice came into his head, crystal clear as always.

He looked across the room to the metal box by the door, one of the machines built out at Area 51 according to the specifications of the Anunnaki.

‘How are preparations?’ he heard the voice say in his head, and he wondered at this ‘voice’ as he always did. It was not a voice in the normal sense of accent, tone and inflection; instead the words appeared directly in his brain, fully formed, almost like thoughts of his own.

‘Good,’ he said out loud. ‘The device is almost complete.’

‘When can we expect it to be operational?’

‘One week from now,’ Jacobs said with confidence. ‘And then we will meet properly for the first time.’

The journey to DC took less time than expected. Adams had figured they would have to use roads rather than fly, due to the need to avoid airport or any other kind of security. This would have taken about two days, though, and he was relieved to find that Ayita had his own helicopter, kept round the back of the warehouse. Lynn, however, was less sanguine about boarding another helicopter. Adams had seen the fear in her eyes, but her resolve soon overcome her wariness – the time they would save would be well worth going up in the air again. At least this chopper wouldn’t be stolen, or flown by remote control.

Ayita flew the helicopter himself, stopping for fuel only once at a friendly airstrip in the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma. He finally landed just outside Fredericksville, well short of DC airspace. There, a nondescript Toyota sedan was waiting for them, and Adams and Lynn transferred quickly to the car, while Ayita refuelled once more and made his preparations to return to their home base, to monitor everyone’s activities from a central point.

An hour later, the pair had arrived at Potomac Plaza Shopping Centre in Woodbridge, where one of Najana’s three brothers met them. They left the sedan in the parking lot, and joined Ben Najana in his large SUV.

After introductions, Adams got straight to the point before the 4x4 had even pulled on to the main road.

‘So what have you found out so far?’ he asked.

‘Security’s good, man,’ Ben said seriously. ‘Better than the schematics we had. We’ve had a quick recon but didn’t want to go in too far. The woods connect up to Mason Neck State Park and look to have some sort of body-heat sensors strung out between the trees. Cliff access looks impossible due to the breakers below – you couldn’t even get close to the cliff base even if it wasn’t under surveillance, which it is. The driveway is patrolled by guards and dogs, as is the lawn which backs up on to the cliffs.’

‘Anything else?’ Adams asked.

‘The security guards are good. We estimate about a dozen of them, plus a couple of personal bodyguards. All good, professional people, the kind you’re not gonna find sleeping on the job.’

‘The dogs,’ Adams asked next, ‘what kind are they?’

‘Doberman Pinschers, well-trained. There are four canine teams, one security guard with two dogs in each. They run alternate routes, swapping teams for both the driveway and the lawns.’

‘OK. Where are you based now?’

‘Camping up in the park. We’ve tried to approach the fence to his property a couple of times during the night, but it’s a bitch to get over.’

Adams nodded his head. ‘OK, let’s get to the camp and we’ll see if we can come up with a plan.’

B
Y NIGHTFALL, THE
plan had been drawn up and rehearsed, and everyone was ready.

Lynn looked at Adams, her eyes displaying all sorts of emotions – fear, concern, belief, love – and Adams willed her to trust him. He would be going in by himself; he knew it would be safer that way. The truth was, he was the best there was at this sort of thing. It had been true before he had ever joined the Shadow Wolves, and it was true again now, his powers fully returned to him at last.

There was no need for words, just the exchanged looks of two people who had been through so much together, and realized that they still wanted to go through more. A tear rolled down Lynn’s cheek, and then Adams turned on his heel and was gone, through the treeline and into the thick woods of Mason Neck Park.

The fence to Jacobs’ property was an eight-foot stone wall topped by blades and razor wire, with CCTV cameras placed along its length every twenty feet. As Adams looked at it, he considered that perhaps the cliffs wouldn’t have been such a bad choice.

It was a cloudy night, and at first the wood had been pitch black. Adams could have used night-vision goggles – Ayita could certainly have found some for him – but he had never liked them, as they cut off peripheral vision and made you vulnerable from the flanks. He preferred to rely on the abilities that nature had given him, and had spent the first half-hour in the woods squatting on the cold ground, letting his eyes adjust to the dark.

The simple fact was that there was really no such thing as
pitch
black, that was just how things appeared before you let the eyes adjust. Even with clouds covering any available natural light source such as the moon and the stars, manmade sources of light were ever present, especially so close to a major city like Washington DC. Even though he was in a state park, surrounded by huge trees in an area many people would feel was in the middle of nowhere, the truth was that the nation’s capital was only twenty miles away, and Mason Creek itself was separated from several major towns by only a relatively small body of water. The result was that, if you let the eyes adjust for long enough, there was enough light to see clearly with no technological apparatus whatsoever. You just had to be patient, a quality Adams had in abundance.

He also knew
how
to see things in the dark, looking at just the right angle to whatever object he needed to see, never directly at it, to maximize the effect of the available light on his retina. It was one of the skills he had learnt long ago on the plains of the Badlands.

The coating he had applied to his entire body was another. Some of the night creatures out in the Badlands, including the deadly prairie rattlesnake, relied on a type of heat-sensing vision, and he and his friends had regularly coated their bodies with cold mud when on night hunts, in order to avoid unfortunate accidents with such predators. He had done the same to himself now, every inch of his body covered with cold mud drawn up from the thick pools back at the campsite. It wouldn’t necessarily fool the body-heat sensors that were supposed to be located all about the property, but it was a good back-up to his main plan, and with security like this, every little helped.

His eyes now fully adjusted to the conditions, he studied the wall, the barbed wire, the cameras, and the trees that surrounded them. It was as Najana had described: the trees from the park ran right up to the wall, while the treeline on the private side had been cut back ten feet for security reasons. He was pretty sure Jacobs would have wanted the park’s side cut back too, but Adams was pleased to see that the man’s influence didn’t seem to extend to cutting down acres of woodland in a state park. Adams supposed the public outcry would have outweighed the beneficial effects to security. Jacobs’ primary safety mechanism was probably that nobody knew where he was, and a public scene would destroy that in an instant.

The people responsible for security at Jacobs’ estate would have been concerned about people simply crossing over from tree to tree, circumventing the wall by going over the top of it, which is why they had cut the trees back on their side. It wasn’t going to stop Adams, though, and he examined the trees closely, walking down the line of the wall – careful to remain out of camera shot – until he came to what he thought was ideal. A big oak, whose huge, thick branches came to within ten inches of the property, four feet above the wall.

Wasting no time, Adams clambered up it, scaling the thick trunk in seconds and hauling himself along the chosen branch until he was hanging within inches of the wall. Legs clamped tightly round the branch, lying flat on top, he looked out across the barbed wire for his first real glimpse of the estate beyond.

As he suspected, both CCTV and body-heat sensors were scattered along the open space between the wall and the treeline, ready to catch anyone foolish enough to jump from the state park side. But the sensors were designed to catch someone landing on the ground, and that wasn’t Adams’ intention at all.

The ten feet between the trees was too far to jump – at least in a straight line. But from a height, jumping
down
, Adams knew he would be able to cover more than ten feet.

And so he reversed back to the big trunk and kept on climbing – twenty feet, thirty feet, until he was forty feet above the ground, the branches thinner now, his position precarious as he manoeuvred out towards the end of his chosen platform.

He looked down to the trees on the other side, so far away it seemed, although they were as tall as the ones on his side. He studied the trees opposite, looking for a landing site. He knew the tree he wanted, now it was just a question of where on that tree.

The location selected, he crouched down on his branch, coiling his body like a spring, and then he released himself, launching out across the void like a jungle cat.

His extended body sailed high over the wire-topped wall, and he could feel himself plummeting to the ground with alarming speed. But the tree was also coming nearer – nearer,
nearer
. . .

Adams dropped thirty feet for the ten that he made across the clearing, and then he was at the tree on the far side, hands grasping wildly, seizing hold of branches, twigs, anything that he could, his leg catching on a thick branch, his fall broken. Then he was swinging, hands clasping other branches, until he had a secure hold, swaying upside down between two branches, still ten feet above the ground but now ten feet inside Jacobs’ property.

As he lay there swinging, looking back across the monitored clearing, he allowed himself a brief smile. He had made it.

If he had been running on a track, it would have taken just a couple of minutes or so to cover the half-mile between the wall and Jacobs’ house. The method of locomotion Adams had chosen, however, was going to take a lot longer.