Project StrikeForce (5 page)

The timer started counting down and the mesh
slowly turned from red to green. The first ten minutes crept by, the audience
sitting on the edge of their seats, fascinated.

Eric saw another twitch in Frist’s eyelid.

This time, Smith noticed. He cleared his throat.
“Nathan, are you sure the subject is unconscious?”

Nathan nodded. “Of course. You can see his vitals
on the screen. He’s completely unconscious. Notice the blood pressure, it’s
105/60. He’s out. If he wasn’t, he would be in agony and his blood-pressure
would be through the roof.”

Dr. Oshensker stood and walked behind the machine,
threading his way through the cables and IV tubes, inspecting them. “Everything
looks good,” Dr. Oshensker said. “The diagnostic data is correct. Blood flow is
continuing as expected.”

Eric stood. “Doctor, something isn’t right. Please
check again.”

“Feldman, run a high level diagnostic,” Dr.
Oshensker said to a technician on the other side of the room.

Feldman typed quickly, then looked up. “Everything
looks good, doctor.” He turned his attention back to the computer. “Wait.
That’s not right.”

Dr. Elliot hurried to the workstation. “What’s not
right?”

Feldman looked up, his face concerned. “See this?
It’s being fed from an external database. It’s not live telemetry.”

Dr. Elliot grabbed him by the shoulder. “What?
How?”

“I don’t know,” Feldman stammered. “I don’t
understand. Let me clear the connections and reset the diagnostics.”

Everyone turned their eyes to the monitor.
Everyone but Eric. Eric stared at the nurse, Kara, who smiled coldly.

There was a gasp from the crowd.

“My God,” a woman shouted, “his blood pressure is
off the charts. He’s awake! He feels everything. You’ve got to stop!”

“We can’t stop the Weave,” Dr. Elliot said. “If we
stop now, the program will crash. It will kill him.”

Eric stood and pointed. “It was the nurse,” he
said. “She’s the one.”

Everyone stared, first at him, then at her.

Her eyes were wide. “He deserves it,” she snarled.

An armed guard appeared beside her and firmly
grabbed her arm.

“He deserves it,” Kara said as the guard hauled
her away.

Both of Frist’s eyelids were twitching, and his
left hand started to tremble.

Smith stood. “Dr. Oshensker. Sedate him. Now.”

Oshensker grabbed a syringe, his hands shaking. He
managed to fill it and plunge it into the IV drip.

Frist’s eyelids slowed their twitching, his hand
tremor slowing to a stop, his blood pressure falling back to normal. The
countdown timer continued its descent.

“Eric,” Smith said, “interrogate that woman.
Nathan, continue the procedure.”

* * *

John woke, his body on fire,
burning from the inside. He wanted to scream. A glow filtered through his
eyelids and he knew that beyond that glow was life. Someone who could help.

He tried to twist, to move. There was something
hard and round in his mouth. A tube or a hose, going down his throat. He wanted
to gag but even that was denied him.

And, through it all, the pain!

People were talking, indecipherable. If only he
could block out the pain, even for a moment, maybe he could make sense of it,
understand what was happening, why he was forced to suffer.

He heard a voice. Something about…weave?

The word held no meaning. Just when he thought it
could not get worse, he found that what came before was just a prelude. In that
moment of agony, he felt a million pinpoints of sharp, prickly needles
burrowing through him.

He tried to scream, to make them stop, and then he
heard a voice, an old man’s voice, powerful and confident. The pain lessened
and he realized, as the torment finally ended, the voice had called for
sedation.

* * *

Eric strode through the room,
people jumping out of his way.

The nurse, Kara, stared at him, blue eyes shining.
He stopped to compose himself, then nodded at the guards. They hustled people
out of the room and shut the door, leaving them alone.

He glared at her. “You know who I am?”

She nodded. “You’re Wise. You’re the new base CO.”

“I’m only going to ask once. Once, you
understand?”

She nodded again, her eyes losing some of their
fire.

“Why?”

She swallowed hard. “I don’t regret it. Can you
imagine the pain he felt? The torture?”

Eric waited, silent.

She turned away from him, biting her lower lip. “My
cousin. Her fiancé’s son was on a class trip. He died in the blast.”

Eric said nothing.

She continued, “I knew when they brought Frist in.
A military man, shaggy hair and stubble on his face. They kept him unconscious
until the Implant. I had access to his records, so I dug. Why this man? Then I
realized. They had found the man responsible for the Red Cross bombing, the man
who killed all those people.”

“Smart. So you swapped out the telemetrics for
prerecorded data? Then swapped out the anesthesia?”

“Yes,” she admitted. “I changed the anesthesia. He
only got the paralytic. He was conscious, but couldn’t move.”

One thing bothered him. “You knew you would be
caught. What did you hope to accomplish?”

“Nothing. I just wanted him to suffer,” she said.
“Can you understand that?”

He imagined the anger and the pain, the desire to
balance, at least somewhat, the cosmic scales of justice. Yes, he
could
understand it. “You’ve put me in a difficult position. I can’t just re-assign
you. You know too much. Do you understand what I’m telling you?”

“You’d have me killed. Or buried in a hole. I know
how the Office works.” She shook her head, resigned. “I knew it was a
possibility before I started. I could tell you I would return to my job and do
exactly as ordered, but how could you trust me?”

Eric pondered that. “Would you do your job? Could
you put aside your feelings?”

“Have you really thought this project through?”
she asked. “We’re going to take a monster—a killer and murderer—and make him a
better killer and murderer. Doesn’t it bother you?”

“I have my orders. Just like you.” He leaned close
to her. “I’ve been out in the world, fighting for my country. It’s not always
pretty, but even in my darkest hour, I believe in America. I’ve done some
horrible shit, things I wonder if I can ever get off my conscience, but in the
end I do it because I have faith.”

Kara’s lower lip trembled. “It’s funny. That’s why
I joined the military. I’m not asking you to plead for me. Whatever happens,
happens. But, I’d do my job. I wouldn’t like it, but I’d do my job.”

Eric took her hand in his and squeezed it. “Maybe
that’ll be enough. I can’t make any promises, but I’ll talk to Smith. You have
to promise me, though, that nothing like this will ever happen again.”

She nodded. “I promise.”

He left the room and snapped his fingers at the
two guards outside. “Make sure she doesn’t do anything stupid,” he said.

* * *

Smith’s office was big, with a real
oak desk, made when furniture was still built my men with skill. It glowed a
rich brown from the reflected light of the flat-panel computer monitors. The
chairs were soft leather, the carpet a brown weave. Eric sat stiffly across
from Smith and sighed. “Her cousin’s fiancé had a son. He was killed, along
with his classmates.”

Smith shook his head. “Of course, the school bus.
Twenty three children, I believe.” He stood and poured a cup of hot coffee,
delicately added cream and sugar. “Coffee?”

He shook his head. “No, thanks. I interrogated the
woman. She wanted him to suffer. Nothing else.”

“There often isn’t,” Smith said, as he returned to
his chair. “You plan and prepare, but there is one variable you can’t account
for. The human. The human is unpredictable. It’s the best of us and the worst
of us. Emotion, passion, justice. It can elevate us to great heights, or take us
to great depths. The Germans learned this.”

“The Germans?” Eric asked.

“I interviewed a member of the SS, once, a guard
in one of the death camps. He was living here, in the United States. This
particular man had found influence. His exposure would be…undesirable. We
captured him and interrogated him before we turned him over to the Israelis. I
looked in his eyes and asked how could he do something so wrong. So evil. He
didn’t have an answer. He made excuses. Justifications. Then, he told of the
humiliation, of how the world treated his country after World War One. How
Hitler inspired them, made them feel proud. Gave them purpose. How Hitler would
right the wrongs against them. How the Aryan race would triumph.”

Eric felt nauseous. It was one thing to read about
history in a textbook, but Smith had actually lived it. “That’s what motivated
him?”

“It turned him into a monster,” Smith said. “We
must keep that kind of insanity from happening again. People are unpredictable.
Mr. Frist, for instance. A young man, by all accounts, a patriot, obsessed with
revenge for an imagined slight against him. How much was it the shock and
horror of war? Or was it the damage to his mind? But now he is here, and the
young nurse, Ms. Tulli, is here as well.”

“Yes, she is. She says she’s willing to continue
working with the program and that she would never do anything like that again.”

“Do you believe her?”

Eric paused. “I know it sounds crazy, but yeah, I
do.”

“Listen to your instincts. What are they telling
you?”

“They say we can trust her. Besides, what are my
alternatives? Have her locked up? Terminated?”

Smith blinked softly. “Eric. I’ve watched you for
years. You’re a good man. If you believe she needs to be terminated, it’s your
decision. If you should free her, that’s your decision as well.”

A dull ache settled in the back of his head. He
believed Smith. He could order the death of Kara Tulli. The guards would
execute her, a cover story crafted. As head of project StrikeForce and as the
base CO, he could order the complete removal of another human being.

He shook his head. “We’ll keep her working on the
project. She won’t cause any more problems.”

Smith nodded. “See that she doesn’t. Dismissed.”

rist slumped in the chair, his arms
and legs held by leather restraints, his head strapped to a thick plastic
cross-beam. The monitor in front of him displayed a pulsating test pattern.

Eric watched through the observation window as Dr.
Barnwell and Dr. Elliot worked the computers. Dr. Barnwell was the base
psychologist, a soft, doughy man in his late sixties, but Eric had read his
jacket and knew the doc had been with the Office since the Vietnam war.

“How long will this take?” Eric asked.

“Several hours,” Dr. Barnwell said. “This is a
fairly ambitious Wipe. We’ve got to find the trigger, the memory of the
bombing.”

“You’ll just erase it?”

“Hardly,” Dr. Barnwell said. “We used to think
there were hundreds of thousands of neurons associated with the formation of a
single memory. It turns out there are fewer than a thousand. The problem is
they cross-link with the neurons around them.”

Frist groggily opened his eyes. The monitor
started playing idyllic scenes of the countryside. First stared at the monitor,
unable to turn his head.

“The sedative is working, he’s conscious, but not
fully awake,” Dr. Elliot said.

“Good,” Dr. Barnwell said. “The procedure is
fairly simple. We’ll play images from his life, pictures of where he grew up,
his grade school, that sort of thing. The fMRI maps the blood flow levels in
the brain tied to neural activity. We’ll map the neuron clusters associated
with various memories to construct a model of his brain. Then, we’ll play back
images of the Red Cross bombing. When we have those clusters mapped, the
cyclotron will send two streams of high-power particles, and where they meet,
the resulting energy will destroy those neuron clusters.”

Eric shuddered. “Sounds dangerous.”

“Not necessarily. The real problem is that one of
the neurons might also contain a link to the word bomb, the overall memory of
bombs, how to make bombs, or even something completely unrelated. We don’t want
to destroy his entire memory, just excise certain aspects of it. What good
would he be if we turned him into a drooling idiot?”

“How safe is this?”

Dr. Barnwell smiled. “Everything about this
project carries a risk. I thought you understood that.”

“Sorry, Doc. If you told me a month ago that you
had this kind of tech, I would have called you a liar.” Eric shook his head.
“What about his time in Gitmo?”

Inside the room a deep and loud thrumming shook
the floor. The pictures changed, morphing from image to image, first a small
bungalow, bicycle in front, then pictures of an early seventies Ford LTD. Dr.
Elliot’s computer lit up with a three dimensional map of Frist’s brain.

“When we are done with the Wipe, we’ll administer
a drug called an HDAC2 inhibitor. We can’t completely erase his memories of the
past year,” Dr. Barnwell continued, “especially memories that have a high
emotional content, but the HDAC2 inhibitor will help stimulate the formation of
new memories, memories that also have high emotional content. We’ll blame any
lingering problems on his concussion. His mind will fill in the blanks.”

“It’s funny,” Eric mused. “The one person who
should never forget what he did, and he won’t remember a thing. He completely
escapes punishment.”

“It’s not my job to punish him,” Dr. Elliot said.
“It’s my job to make him ready for training. Your job is to make him a weapon.”

The images slowly shifted—a grade school, a high
school, a recruiter’s station. The map of Frist’s brain continued to build, a
blazing display of bright-colored threads. Dr. Elliot glanced over his
shoulder. “This is going to take some time. We’ll call you when it’s done.”

Eric stood and walked to the window of the control
room. He watched as the images morphed, Frist unable to turn away. “Doc? You’re
sure he won’t remember Guantanamo?”

Barnwell shook his head. “Not after we’re
finished. Why do you ask?”

Eric shrugged. “No reason. Keep me posted.”

* * *

Deion was jet-lagged and more than
a little edgy when he entered the room. The hard-boned man with the intense
brown eyes waited, a man he worked with once before in Afghanistan, a man he
had almost forgotten until the previous week. “Steeljaw. I should have known.”

Eric smiled. “Glad you could make it, Freeman. I
thought you might like a change of pace.”

He felt a surge of anger. “Great, one hot shithole
to another. I’m supposed to thank you? That it?”

Eric grinned. “We spend most of the time inside
the mountain. It’s quite comfortable in here.”

“Uh-huh,” he said. “So you sent a hot piece of
tail to sweet-talk me into joining this outfit. What is this place?”

Eric sat up straight, his grin vanishing. “First,
don’t ever say anything like that to her face. And second, her father just
might disappear you. Like, off the face of the earth.”

“You’re kidding, right?”

“I’m not kidding,” Eric answered solemnly. “Sorry
for pulling you into this, but I need your help. Welcome to the Office of
Threat Management.”

Deion had never heard of the agency. Until
yesterday. “What does that mean exactly? I worked with you five years ago, then
you show up on a prisoner transfer. A week later I’ve got an offer extended. I
was told someone vouched for me. But Area 51? Isn’t this place full of aliens
and shit?” He knew the CIA had many active intelligence programs, but had never
heard of one this big, and certainly not buried under a mountain at Groom Lake.

“Walk with me,” Eric said. “I’ll explain
everything.”

Eric led him through the maze of tunnels. “No
aliens here. That was just a cover story cooked up by the CIA while they were
testing the Oxcart, the precursor to the SR-71. I’m surprised you’re not up on
that.”

“Sorry man, they didn’t cover ancient history at
the Farm. It was a need to know basis and I didn’t need to now. What’s with
this place?”

“The Groom Lake facility is still run by the Air
Force but the Office runs the underground installation, and it has a single
mission. To find and prevent threats that no one else can find, and keep them
from escalating. You know what a Black Swan event is?”

“No idea.”

“It’s an event that has a massive impact and was
completely unpredicted, but, in hindsight, was glaringly obvious. It’s the
unknown unknowns. That’s why we exist, to prevent these from spiraling out of
control.”

Deion was pushing to keep up with Eric’s long
stride. They moved quickly through the base, finally stopping in front of a
large door guarded by an armed MP.

Eric pressed his palm to a reader buried in the
wall and the door opened. He showed his badge to the MP who studied it, then
motioned him through the door. They entered a small room with a wall of glass,
another MP ensconced behind it. The door shut behind them. They stood there for
several moments until the guard behind the glass spoke. “Name?”

“Eric Wise, escorting Deion Freeman.”

The guard watched them intently, then keyed a
button and the far door opened.

“This is one hell of a man trap,” Deion said.

“You’ve no idea,” Eric said. “If something’s not
right, we’d be locked in until an armed squad showed up. The glass is bullet
proof. Not bullet resistant, but bullet proof. Not even a 50 cal would
penetrate it. The doors and walls could stop a suicide bomber. If the guard
thinks I’m being coerced, he can evacuate the air in the chamber, rendering us
unconscious. The guards will then shoot first and ask questions later.”

“What the hell?”

Eric motioned him through the door. “You’ll
understand in a minute.”

They stepped through the door into a massive room
with stepped flooring. The far wall contained row after row of monitors. Dozens
of people sat at workstations, hunched over their keyboards. A tall man stood
to the side, the officer on duty, who nodded at Eric and barked, “Commander on
deck.”

Eric nodded back, then turned to Deion and spread
his arms. “Welcome to the War Room.”

Deion stared. “Holy shit.”

“Holy shit,” Eric agreed. “More information flows
through this room than any other place on earth. The people here monitor every
piece of information in the world. Everything the CIA knows, we know. The NSA.
The Pentagon. We have network taps in all the big telecoms, and they stream the
data to us. But, it’s more than just the data. We process it all and look for
the patterns, the thing that can’t be seen. When we find it, we act.”

Deion was speechless. He looked from one giant
monitor to another. One displayed a data-stream from a satellite over the
Koreas, another a topographical map of Iran, red boxes on the map in a constant
flux of motion. Phone numbers scrolled by on another, faster than the eye could
see.

In fact, everywhere he looked he saw an
overwhelming amount of information. He tried to focus on just one screen, a
graph of electronic gaming equipment being purchased through phony accounts and
shipped to Syria, but trying to keep up with the flickering text made him
lightheaded. He gave up and turned back to Eric. “This is what you do here? How
could anybody make sense of this?”

Eric grinned. “Beats the hell out of me. But here,
in this room, we protect the United States. Here we protect the world.”

Later, after Eric had shown him his quarters, they
sat at the small table in the kitchenette.

Deion shook his head in disbelief. “Get the fuck
out. Truman?”

“Scouts honor,” Eric said. “They created the OTM
back in the fifties. Been doing it ever since.”

Deion let it sink in. He would call bullshit on
just about anybody, but Eric was one of the squarest shooters he had ever met.

He remembered asking a Delta operator called
IronMan, a wiry little man from Cleveland, about how Eric got the call-sign
Steeljaw. IronMan just smiled. “Wise doesn’t shoot the shit or fuck around with
the rest of the guys. When your ass is in the fire, he’s the guy you want. He’s
a stone cold motherfucking killer. I’ve seen him hold a kid, pat him on the
head while we led the kid’s old man outside and threw him in a truck. When we
got outside the village, he blew the old man’s brains out. Then he wrapped the
body up in white cloth and dug the hole himself, then buried the old fuck. We
asked him why, said it was his job, his responsibility. No, if you want the job
done, he’s your guy.”

Now he listened as Eric told the story of his own
recruitment, how Smith blacklisted him, then showed up on his doorstep,
offering him the job. Then Eric told him about Project StrikeForce, the Wipe,
the Weave, the Implant.

“You have to understand, the Office operates in
secret. There’s no accountability. If things go right, nobody knows we exist.
If things go wrong, people die. We have to do some questionable things to keep
that from happening.”

Deion took a sip of coffee, a deep roast that
danced across his tongue.

You can always tell a first-class operation by
the quality of its coffee.

“We’re going to create some kind of super soldier
to take care of these kind of situations?” he asked.

“You could say that. Only, he’s not super. He’s
just a man with some enhancements and really good equipment.”

“Who is this lucky man?”

Eric paused. “John Frist.”

Deion jumped from the table, knocking his chair
back. “No way. Absolutely not!”

Eric watched, calmly. “You’re all in now, Deion.
Frist is the man. Don’t worry, after the work they’re doing, he won’t be the
same man. They’ll undo him.”

“Undo him? What the hell does that mean?”

“I wish I could explain it, but I barely
understand it myself. Let’s just say they’re messing with his mind. He won’t
remember his involvement in the Red Cross bombing. When we’re done, he’ll be
perfect. Look, I need your help on this.”

He tilted his head. “What if I say no?”

“You can’t say no to this,” Eric said quietly.
“You’re part of the team now. You’re still CIA, but you belong to the OTM. When
Nancy recruited you, she told you the assignment was unusual.”

“I hear that shit all the time. I never expected
it to be true.”

“You’re going to say yes to this, and you know
why? You love your country, you love the CIA, and this is the singular most
important thing you could ever do for your country. You
want
to be part
of this. Besides, I need help.” Eric stared down at his hands. “I need help
training him. I need you to watch him. I need you to see the things I can’t
see, and if it goes bad, I need you to help me clean it up.”

He sat back down, contemplating Eric’s offer. It
was all true. He
did
want to be part of it. He
did
want to help
his country. He liked it best when the stakes were high. “Well shit, when you
put it like that, how can I say no?”

* * *

Kandahar, Afghanistan

Abdullah taught Koshen how to grind
pellets of fertilizer into a powder using a mortar and pestle, burlap sacks
piled high around them. The afternoon air was warm in the small warehouse, and
sweat dampened his face. His arm ached and his shoulder burned from the
repetitive motion, but he would not complain in front of the young man.

Naseer entered the room. “How many more bags will
we need?”

“At least another four,” Abdullah said. “How goes
the separation?”

“I’ve just removed the last batch from the water
and set it out to dry.”

“Good. If the Americans hadn’t convinced them to
add calcium carbonate, we wouldn’t have to wash it.” He noticed dismay on Naseer’s
face. “What is the problem?”

“The Taliban asked for more money. Only a few bags
are smuggled in at a time on each motorbike.”

“Why is this a problem? Many motorbikes cross the
border every day.”