Painless (34 page)

Chapter 77

Sunday morning, they concealed themselves along the entry road to Jordan Plantation and waited for Jordan to leave. They didn’t have to wait long. By six a.m. he was on the move. They followed at a safe distance in the Camaro. Jordan arrived at his children’s hospital and remained inside throughout the morning.

Carolyn was incarcerated in the backseat. They couldn’t let her out, or even out of the car seat, in case they needed to bolt at a moment’s notice. And no matter how hard she negotiated to “play” in the children’s hospital, that wasn’t happening. Billy had rediscovered his resolve during another sleepless night, no longer willing to surrender to the relentless Operation Anesthesia. If they were going down, they were going down fighting. He knew that’s what Beth and Chuck would want when it came to Carolyn.

In mid-afternoon, Jordan returned to his office at Duke. This was much better for Carolyn because it allowed them to leave the car and mingle among the many students filling the festive campus. When they came across a “face painter” who was providing her services in honor of something called Midnight Madness, Billy saw it as the perfect opportunity to meld into the background. While Carolyn saw it as the final nail in her decision to skip kindergarten and attend Duke. All three of them had their faces painted blue and white.

At quarter past five, with the sun beginning to set, Jordan was on the move again. He strutted across campus until he came to a park-like area just west of the college called Duke Forest, and entered a parking lot that was practically empty. Billy noticed a sad-looking man in a wheelchair who was dressed in army fatigues. He held a sign that proclaimed himself as a war veteran, and begged for money.

Jordan walked past the vet without even a look and entered Duke Forest. Billy could tell by Jordan’s body language that he was distracted by something. Mr. Cool as a Cucumber was now a cat on a hot tin roof. He stopped at a row of picnic tables near a pavilion, reached under one of the tables, and removed a piece of paper. You didn’t have to be Sherlock Holmes to figure out it was planted for him. Jordan hastily digested its contents and began to hike up a dirt path.

With Dana at his side, and Carolyn on his shoulders in piggyback position, Billy followed Jordan at what he hoped was a safe distance. As they moved deeper into the forest, the thick trees blocked out the setting sun. The darkening sky became their friend, conspiring to help them remain stealthy. It was nice to have one thing on their side. Billy clutched his other friend in the pocket of his jeans—the gun.

Things then began to look familiar. Billy noticed that the path had looped back around to where they’d started. And up ahead near the picnic area, Jordan was engaged in a heated conversation with the man in the wheelchair. Billy couldn’t make out what was being said—the deep forest muffling their shouts—but he clearly saw the wheelchair guy pull out a gun. Billy handed Carolyn to Dana, urging them to get back, and then found a safe perch so he could watch the action.

Suddenly Jordan reached in his pocket and pulled out a gun of his own. The man in the wheelchair beat him to the punch. A gunshot echoed through the forest and Jordan fell in a heap onto the ground. The man killed Jordan!

Dana and Carolyn scurried back to Billy’s side, looking relieved he wasn’t the recipient of the loud gunshot. He put his finger to his lips to quiet them. It worked for Dana, but not Carolyn.

“Why is that silly man sleeping in the woods? Doesn’t he know he could get the lime?” she asked, referring to Jordan’s lifeless body.

Shhh.

“Whoa—a wheelchair. I really like wheelchairs!”

Shhh.

The man spun his wheelchair in their direction and locked his sights on them. Billy thought of running, but it was too late. The gun was already pointed in their direction. He didn’t even contemplate pulling his own gun—he’d seen what happened to Jordan when he tried that.

“Put your hands up over your heads and walk very slowly to me,” the man coldly stated. They followed his instructions. The man looked at them with unsure eyes, as if he couldn’t compute what or who they were. Since their faces were painted blue and white, he might’ve thought they were some form of aliens.

“This man,” he pointed at Jordan’s body laying on the ground, “just died for freedom. Do you want to be next?”

Unfazed, Carolyn pointed at the man in the wheelchair and asked, “Who is that?”

Billy had never met the man, but recognized him. He looked just like his brothers. “Carolyn, this is Calvin and Bronson’s brother, André.”

“Who are you?” he demanded, his voice filled with surprise.

“My name is Billy and this is Dana,” Dana actually smiled and waved at the gunman upon the introduction, “and this is Carolyn. She has the anesthesia and Jordan was after her. Calvin and Bronson tried to help us.”

“You saw them?” he asked, letting down his guard. “How are they?”

Their glum faces told the story. Reading their expressions, André threw down his gun in disgust, knowing his brothers were dead. Then he stood, not very well, and limped to Jordan’s body. He struggled with each step—the wheelchair was not a prop. He kicked Jordan as hard as he could, before his wobbly legs gave out. He fell to his knees and started throwing punches at the dead man’s chest.

“Wake up you sonofabitch so I can kill you again!”

Billy could feel his agony filling the forest.

Dana bravely approached André and tried to console him. She then helped him limp back to his wheelchair. He slumped into the seat and planted his face in his hands. He spoke in muffled a tone, “I warned my mother about getting them involved, they didn’t even know the outside or freedom, it was just a fairy tale to them. Operation Anesthesia was all they knew. But my mother believed that freedom was worth any risk or sacrifice.

“Bronson had the knowledge base. He always hung on my stories of the outside, and soaked up knowledge like a sponge. But he didn’t have the mental makeup to handle it. Calvin was just a pup in the woods. He was lost in this world.”

“I can tell you, André, that their short time in freedom gave them life for the first time,” Billy said.

He nodded, his regret temporarily soothed. He then seemed to regain his sense of purpose, and stated, “We have to get out of here before anyone discovers the body.”

 They ventured back toward the parking lot. Dana offered to push André’s chair, but he insisted on doing it himself. Billy figured it was the same intestinal fortitude that helped him escape Operation Anesthesia. You would think that leaving the scene of a murder would quicken the pace, but they all remained calm. They were numb to the whole thing at this point. And being an unofficial expert on numbness, this worried Billy.

André drove them in his van to a nondescript, one-room apartment in the neighboring city of Raleigh. It was a mess, but not in the unsanitary way Bronson’s was. It was the mess of someone doing work, sort of like when Billy was in the thralls of writing. André was already one step ahead of them.

He was planning on breaking into Jordan Plantation.

Chapter 78

Billy closely analyzed André during the drive over. The first thing he noticed was the rose tattoo on his bulging bicep, similar to his brothers. But one thing differing from his brothers was the cadence of his voice. More human, and less robotic. Billy remembered Calvin mentioning that André had come to the camp from the outside world.

Physically, André’s face was lined with experience. He carried the same burden under his eyes as his brothers, but while they appeared apprehensive and almost childlike, André seemed eager to plant his feet and fight the monster.

“I want to show you something,” he said to Billy, as he dead-bolted the apartment door behind them.

Billy turned to Dana. “Maybe you can get Carolyn something to eat. She hasn’t eaten anything since breakfast.

“That’s a good idea,” Dana said, catching on.

“I have peanut butter and jelly,” André offered.

“Between you and me, I’d rather eat than hear one of Billy’s stories.”

“No, the sandwich,” Dana explained.

“Now you’re talking. I love the PB and J!” Carolyn endorsed in do-ra-mi style, and then trailed Dana into the small kitchen.

Billy followed André’s wheelchair into the lone bedroom. It looked like a stalkers room, photos of Jordan were splashed everywhere. Like those long distance shots of a celebrity on vacation taken by the stalkarazzi. Jordan leaving the plantation—Jordan at the children’s hospital—Jordan on the Duke campus.

André had constructed a map of the plantation on what looked like an architect’s workstation. The drawing was amateurish, but his knowledge was anything but. He had marked areas where cameras and security stations loomed.

“My plan wasn’t to shoot him, it was to use him to get me inside,” he said, his eyes never leaving the map of the plantation. “I don’t have much time. With my knowledge base of their operation, I’m a lethal weapon to them. They won’t stop until they get me.”

“Why didn’t you go to the authorities?”

“Why didn’t
you
?”

“Because they believe I kidnapped Carolyn. And if I’m arrested, then there will be nobody to protect her from Operation Anesthesia.”

“What do you know about Operation Anesthesia?”

“I know the camp is located at Jordan Plantation, at least I think it is. I know they are after kids with CIPA, or the anesthesia, as you call it. I know they are trying to capture Carolyn. Calvin told me they train the kids to turn them into some military unit, and that’s what went down in Iran.”

André nodded, appearing impressed by Billy’s knowledge level. But his troubled eyes said there was a lot more to the story. “There are two parts to Operation Anesthesia. One is as you said, a military aspect that trains the children, turning them into relentless soldiers. Their painlessness might be a disadvantage in the civilian world, but it turns to an advantage when it comes to covert military operations.”

André continued, “The other part is a breeding center. They capture those who carry the mutated gene that causes the anesthesia, and breed them.”

“That’s why Calvin understood horse breeding terms like dam, foal, and stallion.”

“And why you are wrong to think Carolyn is the sole focus.”

Billy felt acid gather in the back of his throat. Beth and Chuck aren’t being used as collateral—they’re being used to breed!

“Breeding is the key to the operation. That’s how they get the numbers,” André confirmed his thoughts. “And speaking from experience, Carolyn’s initial role will to be used as psychological blackmail to make sure her parents accept their fate. She will then be trained as a soldier, her memories of the outside world washed from her brain. And once she reaches her teenage years, she will be sent on dangerous missions. Eventually, she will become a breeder herself.”

“So your mother and father are at the camp?” Billy asked.

“My father died years ago. He was a jazz musician who had come to America from France. He couldn’t handle being confined in that place, it was like prison to him. He stopped eating, and slowly withered away until he died. But yes, my mother is still there, along with fifteen of my brothers and sisters.

“They created a so-called utopian society. Families raising children without any financial worries or competitive stress. Most people give in, able to rationalize their loss of freedom.”

“But not you?” Billy asked, still trying to get his head around the number fifteen.

“I was already thirteen at the time I was captured. I’d been exposed to freedom. I’d rather live as a peasant with freedom than a king in shackles.”

Billy noticed a copy of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address tacked to the wall like a poster.

André caught his glance. “My mother made me memorize it when I was a kid. She told me it represented the universal fight for freedom. She’s a big fan of freedom.”

Billy nodded as he read:
A new nation conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

“So how did you pull off the escape? Calvin began to tell us—said that he and Bronson followed your lead—but as he liked to say, time was limited. ”

André smiled with pride. “A lot of things came together. First off, like I said, my mother was one of the three original women brought to the camp. She sired almost twenty children with Operation Anesthesia, and once even had six at one time. She built up so much trust with Jordan that he made her his personal chef when she could no longer breed. But he underestimated my mother.”

“But you escaped in Iran. I doubt your mother went with you on a mission.”

“There was no way to escape from within the camp. They can talk about all that utopian society stuff all they want, the reason nobody leaves is that the place has more security than the White House. I knew I had to get off campus.”

“So it wasn’t a coincidence that the three of you ended up on the Iran mission?”

“That’s correct. Because of the trust level my mother developed, she was able to learn how to manipulate the listening devices they implanted in everyone at the camp. She knew the camp had become arrogantly lax, overlooking certain security steps, which allowed us to talk freely and hash out our plan.”

Something clicked in Billy’s mind. “Did Jordan refer to your mother as Miss Rose?”

He looked surprised. “Yes, surnames at the camp are the first names of the mother, or dam, as they call it. My real name was André Boudreaux, but I hadn’t used it in so long I almost forgot it. My mother’s name was Rose Caldwell-Boudreaux.”

“I met her when Jordan had Carolyn over for dinner. She served the meal.”

His face filled with concern. “How long ago was this?”

“A few weeks.”

“Was it after Iran?”

“Yes.”

He blew out a slow sigh of relief. “I was worried they’d harm her after our escape.”

Billy got back on track. “How did you involve Calvin and Bronson?”

“We taught them to remove the listening device. They were hesitant at first—the camp was all they knew—but Mom convinced them. She was a great storyteller and without the restraints of the device, she could tell them stories of the miracles in Montreal. She made getting to freedom sound like they would be going to heaven. But there was still a big problem: I had already gone on my last mission and was scheduled to begin a life of studding.”

“Good work if you can get it. Sounds like they underestimated you, just as they did your mother.”

 “I asked for one last mission in Iran. I played it up to the trainers that I was from the outside and knew the threat of nuclear war and what Iran could do with those potential weapons. I told them I wanted my legacy to be putting an end to the threat. Luckily they bought it, and I was able to get on one final mission with Calvin and Bronson. Then all we had to do was wait for our opportunity.”

“They never suspected you beforehand?”

“I put my life on the line for them for twenty years. And my experience on a difficult mission like Iran could’ve meant the difference between success and failure. I was their most loyal soldier and have the debilitated joints to prove it. I had no idea the damage I was doing to my body because I couldn’t feel a thing,” he tapped his wheelchair to make his point. “They trusted in my loyalty. But what I’ve learned over the years is that loyalty will put you in harm’s way.”

The loyalty he talked of could’ve referred to his joints, or to the doctor his mother naively trusted, who had plotted to take them captive. Or perhaps he was warning Billy about the perils of his dangerous devotion to Carolyn.

Then like a professor, André moved to his detailed map of the plantation. He pointed out weak points where he thought they could best attack. Red Xs marked security cameras, while blue Ss signified security posts. Points of interests were highlighted, such as the slave quarters where the other CIPA soldiers were incarcerated. Also the stables in which the “stallions” like Chuck were kept, and entrances to underground tunnels where Beth and André’s mother were likely detained.

André indicated that they had a small window of opportunity to get in. He believed Jordan’s death would create a brief interlude of chaos as the trainers and doctors battled for control, in which the plantation would be vulnerable. But they would have to strike quick.

When class ended, they returned to the living room. Dana was focusing on the small screen of Beth’s BlackBerry. Carolyn was making quick work of her sandwich and washing it down with milk, the traditional white. They both looked like they were ready for Halloween, their faces still painted Duke colors.

“Does the name Hasenfus mean anything to you?” Billy asked André.

He shrugged. “Nobody actually gave their real names. They spoke in code, things like Lead Doctor, or Trainer #3. But through my mother, I learned two names. The lead doctor was Samuel Jordan, which allowed me to track him down. I’ve been in the area for a month doing reconnaissance on him.”

“What was the other name?”

 “The head trainer’s name was Stipe, but I’ve yet to locate him.”

Dana used Google to search the name Stipe. In between endless listings for websites devoted to REM lead singer, Michael Stipe, was a security company called Stipe Security. Dana clicked on the link and Franklin Stipe’s arrogant face filled the screen. “That’s Hasenfus!” she exclaimed.

Billy finally remembered the name of the man he’d met at the plantation. The one who was posing as an FBI agent at the train station. Franklin Stipe was listed as the founder and CEO of Stipe Security. Their logo was plastered all over the website—the two “Ss” that looked like vertical snakes—the same logo as the one on the chip implanted in Carolyn’s back.

It was all coming together now. Using some knowledge from his past life of Klein, specifically their endless quest to hide money, Billy figured Stipe Security’s real purpose was to act as a money laundromat, created by Operation Anesthesia to fund Operation Anesthesia. And whoever set up this company was the person in charge of the operation. Jordan and Stipe were just soldiers.

André appeared bemused by concepts like the Internet and BlackBerrys. “Wow, before I was captured the coolest thing we had was Atari,” he said with a sad shake of his head.

At that point, Billy truly understood André’s regret—his life had been stolen from him. So much had happened in those twenty years. He needed the past to matter. All the struggles had to somehow be worth it.

Billy knew all too well about having a life stolen away. But he also knew the danger of the rear-view mirror. There was nothing they could do about the past, but there was something they could do about the future. With that in mind, they headed toward Jordan Plantation.