Project StrikeForce (3 page)

He grunted, then waved his hand at the files. “I
can’t believe we’re doing this.”

“He’s a psycho and a traitor,” she said, her voice
rising. “We’re going to recycle this piece of trash and make him useful.”

He shook his head. “It’s not that. I’m not saying
he shouldn’t pay for his crimes, but this is inhumane. It would be better to
kill him.”

“This is inhumane, but a bullet in the brain is
better? Don’t overthink it, just do your job.”

He glared at her. “I understand my job.”

She glared back. “You better.”

He squinted, frowning. “What’s your story, anyway?
I haven’t found a jacket for you.”

“You won’t, either,” she said. “I don’t have an
official capacity. Unofficially, I speak for the Old Man when he’s not around.
You’ve got as much authority over me as you can make stick. Everybody else has
to follow your orders. Me, I’ll go along with it. Until I don’t.”

“That could be problematic.”

Her icy blue eyes stared back. “Yeah, but it’s not
your problem. There’s only one person I answer to and that’s the Old Man.
Because, unlike everybody else, he really
is
my old man.”

His jaw dropped. “He’s your father? Your name is
Nancy Smith?”

“Yes. Now that you have some idea of who the Old
Man is, you can imagine my childhood. He grew up in hard times, he’d seen a
lot. He wanted me to be prepared.”

“Everybody has stories about their childhood.”

“Not like mine. Stay out of my way and we’ll get
along just fine.”

“So, this is the speech?”

She raised an eyebrow. “What speech?”

“Yours is bigger than mine speech.”

She laughed, and the smile made it to her eyes.

It finally hit him. She pinged his radar.

It was eating away at him since they first met.
She looked through him, not at him. The thousand yard stare, they called it.
The eyes stared off, not focusing, giving a better view of an opponent’s hands
and feet. She had the stare. He knew what it looked like because a lot of men
in Delta had the stare.

He had it himself.

Her smiled faded. “I like you, Wise. Let’s keep it
that way. Don’t get on my bad side and we’ll get along fine.” She stood and
headed for the cockpit. “We’ll be landing in an hour.”

Eric watched her go, and this time noticed the
bulge of the handgun in the side of her skirt. He turned to look at the
unconscious form of John Frist. “Between me and you,” he said to the
unconscious man, “I really don’t think I want to get on her bad side.”

* * *

Groom Lake, Nevada

It was near dusk when they landed
and taxied off the runway. A truck and Humvee waited for them. Eric stepped off
the plane and gasped as the heat took his breath away. The dry air sapped the
moisture from his lips and tongue, and he struggled to spit, the dust tickling
the back of his throat. He knew that soon the desert would cool, quickly
radiating its heat, but for now it was a furnace.

A pair of soldiers helped unload Frist and place
him in the back of the truck. Nancy motioned for Eric to get in the passenger
seat of the Humvee, and she drove while the soldiers followed in the truck.

From the files, Eric knew that much of the history
of Area 51 was deliberately crafted misinformation. The real base was buried
deep within the mountains. They roared toward the mountain following a road
invisible to the eye, but one that Nancy managed to negotiate. She glanced down
at an LCD screen, then placed her thumb over a small square.

The thumb-reader beeped and the ground began to
rise in front of them. He watched, amazed, as the desert floor blossomed open,
a long tunnel sloping downward underneath the false rock. They entered the
cavernous tunnel and continued down the slope.

“It’s not concrete,” Nancy said.

He stared dumbly. “What?”

“I bet you were thinking the tunnel is concrete.
It’s not.” The Humvee’s headlights played across the slick tunnel walls. Eric
turned to watch behind them as the false door shut, sealing them in. A long
string of fluorescent lights in metal cages glowed above, stretching off into
the distance.

“The original tunnel was hand cut,” she continued,
“but they enlarged it later with a nuclear tunneling device. They poured
concrete to level the floor, but the walls are actually melted rock.”

“Nuclear powered tunneling machine?”

“Don’t worry,” Nancy said, grinning. “It isn’t
radioactive. Anymore.”

He shook his head. “That really doesn’t make me
feel better.”

They continued through the tunnel until finally
entering a large cavern. Eric had seen caves, large and small, and this was no
cave. It was a long room, big enough for the Humvee and truck to swing
completely around. A large blast door stood open, guarding another tunnel.

The soldiers lifted the gurney out of the truck
and placed it on the flat bed of an electric cart, Frist still trussed up and
motionless. Nancy slid behind the wheel and motioned for Eric to take the
passenger seat. He was barely seated when she floored it.

The electric cart shot down the tunnel, the blast
door closing behind them. She spoke to Eric as she drove. “A lot of people
think we have aliens here, but trust me, it’s just us. They’d probably be a lot
more freaked if they knew the truth,” she said wistfully.

They drove several hundred meters before coming to
another door. It opened slowly, and was as thick as it was wide. An armed guard
stopped them and Nancy handed him identification. He nodded and they passed
through the door and were greeted by several white-coated technicians.

The techs wore lanyards with their faces
emblazoned on plastic cards. The first, a black man named Nathan Elliot,
directed two others to take the gurney with Frist. Eric recognized Elliot as
the lead scientist on Project StrikeForce, a burly man in his late forties who
would look more at home in a barroom brawl than in a classroom. He knew the
man’s looks were deceiving; he held two doctorates and was considered the top
in his field before being recruited into the OTM.

He saluted but Elliot laughed and shook his hand
with an iron grip.

“We’re not big on formality,” Dr. Elliot said. He
motioned to Frist. “He’s been asleep the entire trip?”

“Yes,” Eric replied.

“Good. We’ll get him to the lab and start
immediately.”

“That fast?”

Elliot grinned. “No need to wait, and I prefer him
unconscious. We need to run tests before we perform the Implant.”

Nancy led Eric through a labyrinth of hallways until
they reached his living quarters.

“This is yours,” she said, pointing to a door with
his name embossed on a steel plate. “Inside you’ll find a sitting area, a desk,
and a kitchenette. Your bedroom, bathroom, and closet are in the back. We took
the liberty of stocking everything you might need. There’s a million channels
to choose from, and we even have movies on demand.” She shook her head. “It’s a
shame you won’t have time to watch them. Read as much of the paperwork as you
can, but get some sleep, you’ll be observing tomorrow.”

She left and he opened the door with his
thumbprint. When he stepped inside he let out a long whistle. It was big, five
meters across and ten deep, and was decorated with dark wood furniture, not the
barrack-style steel that he expected. It even had recessed lights.

The kitchenette had a full size refrigerator. He
found the bedroom in the back, with a simple bed and a plasma screen hanging
from the wall. He was surprised to find a walk-in shower in the bathroom.

The toilet was functional, but he was most
impressed by the completely stocked vanity with several types of soap,
deodorant, toothpaste, and other sundries.

He opened the closet door and found it furnished
with both military fatigues and street clothes, a rack of boots and shoes on
the floor. He did not bother to check the fit. The Office did everything well,
it seemed, and he knew they would be his size.

He turned out the lights and went back to the
sitting room. “Might as well get to work,” he said to himself. He sighed as he
read the instructions for setting up his computer login.

It was going to be a long night.

* * *

Eric shook his head. The
subterranean base was huge. According to his briefing papers, it originally
housed America’s secret aircraft program, especially their fascination with
enemy technology. The US did a booming business in stolen Soviet aircraft
during the Cold War, and as the engineers worked furiously to reverse-engineer
and evaluate the jets, the hangars were soon bursting at the seams.

So, in the early seventies, CIA-designed boring
machines carved out the massive underground base. It was large enough to hold
thousands of workers, with cavernous rooms for testing equipment, numerous
machine shops, state of the art manufacturing facilities, and underground
aircraft hangars that opened to the desert floor.

Once Area 51 and the Groom Lake facility entered
the public lexicon, most of the operations had been shipped elsewhere and the
underground base mothballed. The Groom Lake facility still warehoused stolen
military aircraft, but the days of Russia or China making huge technological
leaps in aircraft design were over. It was easier for them to steal American
designs from outsourced vendors.

Smith realized that with the underground base
mothballed, and with the public fascination with Area 51 dwindling, it was an
excellent choice for the Office. Much of the traffic to and from Area 51 over
the past decade had been to update and revitalize the underground base.

While the above-ground facility was starting to look
shabby, the great rooms under the mountain were cleaned and refurbished,
billions of dollars of high tech equipment trucked in.

The base now housed over a thousand technicians.
It boasted a well-stocked cafeteria, two coffee shops, and a small theater.
There were lecture halls, large inviting rooms with stepped seating, plasma
screens and projectors, and conference rooms with multimedia capabilities.

He knew the budget for the project was large, but
when he finally read the report that gave the actual numbers, he was astounded.
The Office had invested heavily in the base, and even more in Frist.

he next morning, Eric followed the
map to a circular room full of lab technicians. Nathan Elliot was there, as was
Nancy, sitting at the conference table at the front of the room. The big-screen
monitor on the far wall was ablaze with charts and graphs, all of which could
have been written in a different language, for all the sense it made to him.

Nancy glanced over. “Glad you made it. We’ve got a
busy day ahead.”

Nathan looked up from his laptop, his heavy brow
furrowed. “We finished the diagnostics overnight. If we’re lucky, we’ll be
ready for the Implant.”

“How’s the data so far?” Eric asked.

Dr. Elliot smiled. “The MRI’s and CT scans show
more brain damage than expected. We have concerns about that, of course, our
procedures are highly experimental. We checked his leg where a small piece of
shrapnel was removed from the IED in Iraq. It healed nicely. Remarkable, given
the IED killed everyone else in his Humvee.”

Dr. Elliot paused. “He’s quite healthy—physically,
that is. Mentally? Given the trauma he experienced in Iraq it’s obvious that he
suffered from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.”

“A lot of soldiers suffer from PTSD. They don’t
all become terrorists,” Eric said.

“That’s correct. In his case, it appears the brain
damage combined with the PTSD caused him to fixate on the Red Cross.”

“That doesn’t excuse what he did,” Eric said.

Dr. Elliot shrugged. “I’m not saying it does. If
the Wipe is successful, the mental trauma he experienced will disappear. He
will be unmade. He won’t remember anything from Iraq until now.”

The Wipe was Eric’s biggest concern. He listened
as Elliot explained the groundbreaking studies that unlocked the mystery behind
human memory, and with that came another discovery—how to wipe memories and
replace them with false ones. The process was barely out of the theoretical
studies, but had been successfully tested on several death-row convicts.

“For the Wipe to work,” Dr. Elliot explained, “we
need Frist to maintain a sense of self, a sense of his life until he went to
Iraq. We need him to remember his training in the Army, to build on it. It
would be a disaster if we accidentally erased much of what made him who he
was.”

“You’re sure it will work?” Nancy asked.

“The tests have been encouraging,” Dr. Elliot
said. “First, we’ll install the Implant. It will allow us to remotely
administer drugs such as pain killers or stimulants.”

“Continue the tests,” Eric said. “I’ve got to
check the training preparations.”

* * *

Kandahar Provence, Afghanistan

Abdullah sat cross legged, waiting
for Naseer. The cave was cold and the tin stove provided little heat. The
chimney failed to vent all the smoke, and it settled on his worn clothes. His
teapot steamed upon the stove-top. A light, recharged through a solar cell,
provided just enough illumination for him to read his journal.

He had written much of it as a young Mujahideen,
when he had felt so lost and helpless, unsure if he would live to see the
Soviets driven away. He was barely older than a child during the war, blindly
following orders in the name of Allah.

Now he was a grown man fighting another war.

There was a scrabbling outside, rock scraping
against rock, soft voices whispering, and then a polite cough. Naseer entered
the room, a short young man no more than twenty-two, with oily black hair
plastered against his head. Abdullah had tried and failed to get him to stop
smoking, and he stank of clove beedis. The dying man, Fahad, followed behind.

“Abdullah, are you there,” Naseer whispered,
squinting in the dim light.

“Of course,” he replied patiently, “I’ve been
waiting for you. Is this Fahad?”

Fahad stumbled forward, and Naseer dragged him in
farther. “Yes, this is Fahad. He is honored to meet you. You must forgive him,
he is in much pain.” Both Naseer and Fahad stooped to shake his hand, then sat cross-legged
on the tattered rug.

Abdullah gazed thoughtfully at Fahad. The dying
man looked thin and papery, as if he could blow away in a strong wind. His
clothes were one step up from rags, and his sandals were so worn they offered
little protection for his feet. His glassy eyes focused momentarily, then
rolled away.

“Sit, please,” he said to the dying man. “Would
you like some tea?”

Fahad’s eyes found him. “Sir, I would like that
very much.”

Abdullah nodded. “That is good. A sick man must
drink tea. It helps the disposition.” He took the worn teapot, held together
with brass tacks, and poured three cups of black tea. He added a small spoon of
brownish-white sugar to each, stirred, and handed Naseer and Fahad their tea,
then gave them a piece of dried apricot from a cloth sack. While they drank the
tea and nibbled the fruit, Abdullah questioned Fahad. “Tell me, Fahad, what
sickness consumes you?”

“It is cancer,” Fahad said, warmth returning to
his face. “I have been to many doctors. They say the cancer will kill me.
Perhaps if I had money, they could give me medicine. I had to wait on a cot for
two days to see the doctor in Kandahar. The cancer is in my stomach and now my
lungs. He said that if I had money, there might be medicine that could help,
but I don’t have any money.”

“Money
is
scarce these days,” Abdullah
agreed. He refilled the teacups, delicately pouring so as not to spill a drop.
“Do you have children? A wife?”

“Yes, I have a wife and many children. I used to
sell wares in the street, but I became sick. I heard the Americans were
offering much money, and I begged them for a job. I am sorry, Sir. I know I
should not work for them—”

“Do not apologize, Fahad. Your family is
important. How many children?”

“Five children, all boys.”

“Five? That is good. You work for the Americans in
the base?”

“I clean their kitchen,” Fahad said. “I barely
make enough to feed my children….”

Abdullah refilled the teacups yet again. “I’m
sorry to hear that. I would like very much to help you with your sickness, but
I’m afraid there is nothing I can do. I can provide money, but I must also
prepare Jihad. You understand?”

Naseer nodded wisely, urging Fahad to nod as well.

“Yes, sir, I understand,” Fahad said. “Naseer told
me you could provide a small sum of money to my wife. To feed my boys.” Tears
streamed down his face, glistening against the pale skin.

“Fahad! Do not do this! You must not show such
weakness in his presence,” Naseer practically shouted.

“Please, Naseer,” Abdullah said, gently taking
Fahad’s hand. “There is no reason to be upset. He is only worried about his
family.”

“Thank you, sir,” Fahad said, gripping his hand
tightly. “Yes, I only care about my family.”

“Tell me, Fahad. You never made Hajj?”

Fahd shook his head. “No, and now I never will.”

“It is all right. You are not able-bodied. Naseer
tells me that you are a good Muslim. I believe him. This thing I will ask you
to do, this thing will be a great thing. Can you do it?”

“Naseer told me what you want. I can do it, Allah
willing.”

“I must ask you, Fahad. I want a truthful answer.
Have you been smoking opium?”

Fahad’s eyes darted to Naseer, who sat quietly,
then back to Abdullah. “I have been, sir. I have been. Only to help dull the
pain. I am so shameful.” He sobbed, interrupted only by a racking cough.

Abdullah nodded his head. “I thought so. There is
no reason to feel shame. You work hard for your family. The opium was to help
the pain. I can see that. But, I must ask you to stop. To complete this task
for me, your mind must not be clouded with opium. Can you promise?”

Fahad nodded, the sobs trailing off. “Yes, sir, I
promise. No matter how great the pain, I will never smoke opium.”

“Very good. Naseer, please show Fahad where to
wait.”

Naseer rose and led Fahad away, returning soon
after.

“Did you see the way I talked to him?” Abdullah
asked.

Naseer nodded.

“It’s not enough to learn to make bombs. You must
learn to plan. You must learn to inspire.”

Naseer frowned. “I must lie to people?”

Abdullah clucked his tongue. “I did not lie to
him. I comforted him. I will ask him to lay down his life and a few kind words
will ensure that he does. He is a man. He has a wife and children that he
loves. Every man should wish for that. Now he will perform his part, now that I
have met him and talked to him. He will do it for Allah, and for the money to
care for his family, and he will do it because I treated him with kindness and
respect.”

Realization dawned upon Naseer. “So, a kindness
will motivate them?”

“Yes, a kindness will motivate them. Kindness
motivates better than bullets, sometimes. And, a bomb is no good unless someone
is willing to deliver it.”

* * *

Area 51

Eric watched Dr. Elliot and Dr.
Oshensker through the observation window as they carefully sutured the incision
on Frist’s abdomen.

“The Implant was successfully inserted,” Elliot’s
voice rattled from the overhead speakers. “The main feed is connected to the
abdominal aorta. The Implant can now inject payloads directly to the blood
stream.”

Eric pushed the talk button on the wall. “How does
this help?”

Without looking up, Dr. Elliot answered, “The
Implant is smaller than a deck of playing cards. It can be remotely triggered,
and carries several compounds that Dr. Oshensker and I have developed. What do
you know of sea snails?”

Eric pushed the talk button again. “Not a damn
thing, Doc.”

Elliot stopped suturing and looked up through the
window. “I’m not surprised. Sea snails are wonderful creatures, the cone snail
in particular. They’re found throughout the world. They have the largest
pharmacopeia of any genus in nature. Their venom contains a chain of amino
acids called conotoxins. It forms the basis for a pain killer a thousand times
more powerful than morphine. In an emergency, this will allow the subject to
continue his mission rather than being incapacitated. Another will allow us to
increase or decrease the subject’s heart rate, attention span and combat
readiness. You can imagine how useful this will be.”

“I can see that.”

“Dr. Oshensker, if you will finish?” Dr. Elliot
turned to face Eric, lifting the magnifying visor over his head. “Another
series of compounds will interact with the subject’s brain chemistry during the
Wipe. They will alter the subject’s short and long term memory. During the
memory implant, we’ll inject another compound that will alter the subject’s
emotional well-being.” He smiled at Eric. “The effect will be to create a bond
between the subject and his handler, a sense of trust and kinship. Also, we can
alter the subject’s aggressiveness.”

“His aggression? Do I need to remind you what he
did?”

“I’m well aware. Dr. Barnwell has worked up a full
psych evaluation, and between his research and our own, the subject will
perform within parameters. This is all in your briefing materials. Did you read
them?”

Eric rolled his eyes. “I’m a little fuzzy on this
memory and personality mumbo-jumbo, and I don’t remember reading anything about
altering his aggression.”

“You’ve been in a one-on-one, fight for your life
situation?”

Eric remembered Afghanistan, his NVG’s on the
fritz, the darkness lit with machine gun fire, a Taliban fighter dragging him
to the ground, grappling, trying to choke him while he desperately reached for
his knife. “Yeah,” he said dryly, “I’ve been in a few.”

“Imagine if you could have increased your
aggression. Imagine being flooded with adrenaline, giving you hysterical
strength.”

Eric nodded slowly. “That would be useful.”

“Of course it would.” Dr. Elliot approached the
window. “And, among other things, the Implant contains a chemical that will
cause cardiac arrest. A kill switch, if you will.”

Eric smiled. “Now
that
I understand.”

Dr. Elliot turned back to the patient. “We’ll run
a diagnostic on the Implant and let you know when we are ready to proceed.”

* * *

“You really need this guy?” Nancy
asked.

“I do,” Eric said. “I could use the help.”

They were drinking coffee in the cafeteria. The
Implant was still being tested, and he had spent much of the ensuing time
preparing Frist’s training plan. “I could use the help,” he repeated. “I worked
with him in Afghanistan.”

Nancy sipped her coffee, her finger tapping the
red file on the table. “Deion Freeman, recruited right out of Harvard, a gift
for languages. Spanish and German in high school. Pashtu and Dari in college,
plus a focus on Arabic. Worked in the Counter Terrorist Center, handled some
key reports to the OSA, highly recommended to be the OSA station chief, got his
feet dirty in Afghanistan. That’s where you crossed paths?”

Eric nodded, remembering the mission to exfiltrate
the opium farmer for interrogation. Freeman had been key to arranging the
mission. “He’d be a good fit.”

“It’s your call. You’re the base CO as well as
head of the project. You can request whatever you need.”

He smiled. “I’ll bet you have your own opinion.”

She casually tucked wisps of straw-colored hair
behind her ear. “He’s good. He can help you with Frist. Plus, he’d be a boon to
the Office. You have to understand, though, there’s always a risk when we do
the approach. If we give them too much info and they say no, we’re in a bind.
We might have to drop him in a hole.”

Eric watched her eyes, waiting for the twinkle.
There was none. “You’re not kidding.”

“You’ve been doing your homework, you should have
an idea by now how this place works.”