The Siren Project (10 page)

“Did you hurt your head?” Mitch asked
moving to take a look at the back of her head.

She stopped him with her hand. “No! . . .” She
used her fingers to examine the base of her skull apprehensively, then relaxed.
“It’s nothing, I’ll be okay.”

The freight elevator clunked to a halt,
then the metal door rumbled open. Dark gray concrete walls lined with metal
pipes stretched off into the gloom, broken occasionally by a dim bare light
bulb. The mechanical hum of the hotel air conditioning compressors filled the
air with a distant drone.

Mitch glanced at her uncertainly as he
changed ammo clips. “What do you think? Anyone out there?”

She shrugged helplessly. “I don’t even know
what day it is.”

The ringing of an unseen telephone broke
the muted sounds of the underground basement. Mitch hesitated, peering out into
the gloom, spotting a wall mounted telephone ten feet from the elevator.

“Come on,” he said, helping Christa to the phone,
which he snatched up without hesitation. “Yeah?”

“What took you so long?” Mouse demanded.

“I had to wash my socks. And some asshole
blew my phone up!”

“Yeah, I saw your phone melt. That's freaking
crazy technology.”

“Where to now?”

“Go left from the hotel phone. You’ll come
to stairs leading up to the kitchen. There’s a door to a back alley. At the end
of the alley turn right, run two blocks. A bus is due to pass there in six
minutes. If you miss it, go a block further to a phone booth. I’ll call that
phone in eight minutes.”

“Got it.”

“And Mitch, get your ass out of there. I
just lost control of the elevator.”

Mitch turned to see the freight elevator
door had closed and was climbing toward the fifth floor. He slammed the
telephone down.

“This way!” he yelled, dragging Christa as
he ran.

When they reached the stairs, Mitch climbed
them two at a time to find the door at the top locked. Behind them, the sound
of the freight elevator door rumbling open echoed down the dark passage. Mitch
tried the door with his shoulder, but it was a heavy wooden door and wouldn’t
budge. He aimed his gun at the lock.

“If you shoot that gun,” Christa said, “They’ll
know which way we came.”

“If they can take the elevators away from
Mouse, they already know everything.”

A moment before Mitch fired, there was a
click, and the door unlocked. A small Chinese kitchen hand opened the door
while he balanced a cardboard box on his shoulder. Mitch pushed past him, forcing
his way into the kitchen. Christa stepped through after him and locked the door
behind them. The kitchen hand started yelling at Mitch in a stream of Chinese
until Mitch pressed his gun against the kitchen hand’s nose, holding a finger
to his lips.

“Shh.”

The kitchen hand froze, eyes riveted to
Mitch’s gun.

“You keep that door locked. I’ll be back
soon. If it’s open, I’ll be using you for target practice!”

The kitchen hand’s eyes widened, then he
nodded mutely, paralyzed with fear.

They left the kitchen hand to guard the
door while they hurried past hanging pans and stainless steel benches to the
alley beyond. Just as they stepped into the alley, Christa caught a glimpse of
the kitchen hand standing next to the door waving away another kitchen worker who
wanted to use the door.

“I wonder how long he’ll be guarding that
door?” Christa asked amused.

“Until they blow it out from under him!”

When they reached the street, they turned
and ran toward the bus stop two blocks away. Before they were halfway to the
first cross street, they heard a muffled explosion that signaled the kitchen
door being blown off its hinges, falling at the feet of the terrified kitchen
hand.

Mitch spotted the bus stop ahead, where
several people stood waiting. A bus came rumbling past them, slowing as it
neared the bus stop. When it stopped, the waiting passengers began filing on. Mitch
raced to catch it, pulling ahead of Christa who was fighting vertigo from the pounding
in her head. He heard the hydraulic exhale of the doors closing, then before
the driver could put the bus in gear, Mitch slapped the door’s glass panel with
one hand while he slid his gun into a pocket.

“Wait!”

The driver looked down with a weary
expression, then nodded, and the doors slid open again. Mitch jumped onto the
step, then stopped and waited while Christa jogged toward the door.

“You getting on buddy?” the driver asked.

“Just wait!”

Christa jumped on and moved to a seat, as
Mitch paid the driver for the tickets. He joined her as the bus pulled away
from the stop, turning to keep watch through the rear windows. Their pursuers
appeared in front of the hotel, looking up and down the street. Mitch knew they
hadn’t seen them board the bus, but McNamara was talking into his sleeve calling
for backup. They waited anxiously while the bus slowly put distance between
them and McNamara, then they heard the beat of rotors overhead. Mitch stole a
glance through the window, just enough to confirm the helicopter that had
appeared outside the hotel window was passing overhead. He pulled back, turning
his face away from the window.

“Chopper,” he whispered.

The helicopter passed low over the roof of
the bus, then dropped close enough to see through the bus’ windows. Christa
threw her arm around Mitch’s shoulders, pulled his face to hers and began
kissing him. Mitch was taken by surprise, then wrapped his arms around her and
returned the kiss with equal vigor, being careful to use his arms to mask their
faces. The helicopter drifted over the bus to observe the windows on the other
side. Passengers, astonished by the low flying helicopter stood, leaned toward
the windows to get a better look, partly obscuring Mitch and Christa’s side of
the bus. Several men, armed with rifles fitted with telescopic sights crouched
in the helicopter’s open door covering the bus, searching for a target. The
helicopter maneuvered to avoid overhead wires, and several trees, then banked
away above the traffic.

Christa pushed Mitch back roughly. “It’s
gone.”

“Is that what they teach you at super spook
survival school? When the bad guys approach, lock lips on the nearest irresistible
hunk?” He smiled with approval. “Very effective.”

“It was the quickest way to hide our faces.”

“Personally, I'd rather shoot it out of the
sky.”

“Of course you would.”

“I guess, being locked up by Uncle Gus for
ten years has left you needing a bit of . . . excitement.”

“You guess wrong.”

“Maybe the ice Princess isn’t as cold as
she let’s on. But then, I do have a certain Neanderthal charm.”

“Don’t flatter yourself.”

“Don’t worry, Princess, your secret’s safe
with me.” He said with a wink.

She looked at him incredulously. “You
really live in a fantasy world, don’t you?”

“You’re still here.”

“Only because I’m ordered to be. No other
reason.”

Mitch grinned. “Okay, if you say so.” He
settled back amused, and started wondering how long they should stay on the
bus.

* * * *

They found a diner with a booth that
couldn’t be seen from the street, with a clear view of the entrance.

After they ordered breakfast, Mitch leaned
toward Christa. “Play time’s over, Princess, I need to know what’s going on.”

“I’m not authorized to tell you more than
what Gus already has.”

“Are you authorized to get your brain fried?
Or killed by renegade spooks?”

She fell silent, her face drained of color.
Slowly, she started to massage her forehead.

“How’s the head?”

“It’s no longer a sharp stabbing pain, more
a dull throbbing pain.”

He watched her a moment, realizing it was
taking her a long time to recover from what hit her in the hotel. “Look, I
don’t know what the score is, but it’s obvious our side isn’t doing too good. If
you want to get into this game, you’ve got to work with me. I’ve got to have
some idea what we’re dealing with, or next time, we won’t be so lucky.”

“Is that what you're counting on, luck?” She
asked with a sense of exasperation.

“If that’s all I’ve got in my favor, I’ll
take luck. But I’d rather have a few solid facts and a loaded gun.”

Her face showed indecision. Christa’s
training told her to remain silent, but her instincts told her something
different.

“You don’t believe I can make a difference?”

“I don’t like the way you operate. Everything
is so . . .” She struggled to find the right words.

“Unorthodox?”

“Reckless.”

Mitch smiled. “Have you considered the
orthodox, conservative way of doing things isn’t going to work? Maybe that’s
why your guys are getting their butts kicked. They’re too predictable. Maybe
Uncle Gus is smart enough to know he’s got a chance if he plays a wild card. Something
unexpected. Something reckless.”

Her eyes widened, as if the thought was a
revelation to her. “If so, why didn’t Gus tell you more?”

Mitch winced. “Because he's so stiff, he
probably starches his underwear. He recognized he needs me, but he doesn’t know
how to use me. He’s been working from the inside for too long. He’s a bookend!”
Mitch sighed, exasperated. “Listen, Princess, if you want to win, wise up. Trust
me.”

Christa stared at Mitch thoughtfully for a
long time, then finally, she nodded.

“Good! Let’s have it.”

“I still think you’re a Neanderthal.”

“I still think you’re a first class pain in
the ass, so we’re even.”

She let the hint of a smile appear on her
lips, then sobered. “There’s a lot we don’t know. We suspect someone has
developed a new, exotic, convergent technology. There are theories, but we
really don’t understand how it works.”

“Has it got anything to do with that electrostatic
sound Gunter recorded?”

“Perhaps,” she replied uncertainly. “We
think the research started toward the last years of the Cold War when we were
trying to figure out how to shoot down missiles in space using directed energy
weapons.”

Mitch looked skeptical. “You’re not trying
to tell me this is related to Star Wars technology, are you? Everyone knows
that was a scam to bust the Soviet economy.”

“That’s what they want you to think. You
don’t know how big a disinformation campaign the government ran to convince
everyone it was a con. They wanted to hide just how far they'd taken the
technology. We still have a monopoly on it. The only thing that was a con, was
the claim it was a con.”

“Mouse would like that.”

“The early technology was radical, and very
expensive, but the Cold War ended before it was perfected. They’d spent a
fortune on directed energy research, and they were trying to figure out what to
do with all this stuff they’d invented.”

“They?” Mitch asked. “Who’s they?”

“The military industrial complex. They’d
grown fabulously rich on the Cold War, and suddenly, defense budgets were being
slashed. They needed a lifeline. Research directions were changed. Dr Steinus
found correlations between the way electrical impulses moved in the human brain
and the way energy was being manipulated in some of the radical weapon systems
being developed. We think they figured out a way to converge the manipulation
technology with advanced neurological science. Whatever happened, entire
projects, teams of scientists and enormous amounts of research data
disappeared. There’s no trace of where it’s gone.”

“Do you think they’re developing some new
kind of anti-terrorist weapon?”

“It’s possible.”

“If there’s a high tech way of frying a
fanatic from ten thousand feet, we’ll invent it. Sounds like a good idea to me.
Where can I make a donation?”

She gave him a serious look. “Defense budgets
climbed again after 9/11, but the extra money just made it easier to hide the
funding for this thing. We don’t know of any connection between this thing, and
the war on terror. After all, you don’t need Star Wars weapons to fight
terrorists.”

“Yeah, a good bullet will do,” Mitch
muttered sourly.

“We know this research is still ongoing,
because the scientists involved have never surfaced. We can only assume they’re
still hard at work. How far they’ve gotten is open to speculation, the security
covering this thing is tighter than on the Manhattan Project.”

“So how did you find out about it?”

“By accident. One of our monitoring teams
found references to Cold War programs that had simply vanished. That was before
they knew we existed. Once we started investigating . . .”

“You drew attention to yourselves.”

Christa nodded. “Now they’re trying to
eliminate us.”