The Zen Gene (23 page)

“Thank you sir. Drive safely,” he said.

The cop walked back to his car and got in and drove away. Zen was trembling with fear; he told her to get into the van while he stashed her bicycle in the back. The two of them sat in the van waiting to be sure the cop was gone and wondering what they should do next.

“I didn’t go inside the factory because I was afraid whoever was following me might see how I did it and follow me. Ty’s bike isn’t where he usually puts it but that doesn’t mean he isn’t inside,” she said.

He was trying to figure out what happened to the bio-suits and facemasks. He knew it wasn’t Andi who took them because they had only just decided what to do when the police bashed the door down and raided the house.

“We’ll go in and look for him but We’ll need some lights. There is no way I’m going in there and poking around in the dark,” he said.

She explained to him how they usually got inside the building but then he was faced with a new dilemma. He did not want to leave her alone outside but they could not both enter the building at the same time. He thought about taking her home but given the news about Western’s death he was not sure she would be any safer there. He could not let her go in first because who knows what might be waiting for them inside. The logical thing was for him to go first and make sure it was safe and then she could come in and that way she would be alone and exposed for the least amount of time.

None of these options gave him any comfort and he was still deciding what to do as he parked the van. She handed him a flashlight; she loaded the batteries on the drive back from the 7-Eleven. She knew the clerk working and asked him if he’d seen Tyler but he had not. It was time to decide which one of them should go inside. They walked to the loading dock keeping an eye out for the police and the dark sedan that was parked outside earlier. They ducked down and crab walked under the dock and Zen showed him the way in. She was about to go in first but he stopped her, it was her action that made him decide what to do.

“I think it’s safer if I go in first. We don’t know what we will find in there. When I see that everything is okay I’ll call to you and you come in. If I don’t call to you or you hear anything….” he hesitated looking for the right word, “disturbing coming from inside the building do not call out to me. Run away as fast as you can and when you are safe call the police. Okay?” he said.

When she did not answer he took her by the shoulders and looked into her eyes. Her young face was clouded with fear and he worried this was too much for her. “Okay?” he said.

She lowered her eyes and nodded her head.

“Good. And don’t worry, everything will be fine. I’m being extra cautious, you know, like a dad,” he said and smiled. She smiled back and nodded her head then demonstrated to him how to climb in. It was a tight fit and awkward with his injuries but he managed to wiggle along the vent. When he pushed himself over the edge and hit the bottom and quickly scrambled out and turned on the light. He peered around the dark room listening and determined it was safe for Zen to come in there was no one waiting in the shadows. He stuck his head back inside the vent and called to her to tell her it was okay to come down.

There was no answer.

He thought he heard scuffling sounds coming through the vent from outside. There was no answer when he called her a second time and that’s when he realized his mistake. He chose the wrong option. He did not have to try it to know he could not climb back up the vent. In a panic he ran to the stairway in the far corner of the basement. He ran faster than he could pick out obstacles using only one eye and the narrow beam of bouncing light and he tripped on a pile of debris and landed hard on the concrete floor. He picked himself up and ran up the stairs and cast the light around looking for a fire exit. He was disoriented but he spotted an exit with a push bar door and ran to it as precious seconds seeped away. He knew anything could be happening to her now.

He jammed the bar and flew through the fire door and was stopped dead by what he saw. Zen was lying on the ground outside the door not moving. Her eyes were closed and her face was smudged with dirt. She was out cold.

“Don’t move,” a voice said. It came from behind him and to his right. He started to turn and something smashed the side of his head.

“I said don’t move.”

The voice was male but with a feminine quality to it and the trace of an accent. He could not help thinking he heard it before. The man was standing only a few meters behind him but he knew he could not surprise him by throwing himself in his direction. He did not know exactly where he was standing because he was on the same side as his swollen eye.

“I can hear you thinking Doctor Mann. Don’t do it. I have a gun and if you want the girl to keep breathing do exactly what I tell you,” he said.

He stood holding the side of his head. The blow reopened the gash made by the police and he was feeling lightheaded and in danger of passing out.

“Where is Tyler Worthy?” he said.

“I don’t know,” he said.

“Okay. Where do you think he is?” he said.

“I thought he might be here,” he said.

Zen moaned softly and began to stir and he made a move towards her to help and something smashed his kneecap and he fell to the ground in agony. He saw bright shooting sparks of coloured pain behind his closed lids. His assailant had used some kind of club on him and he passed out from the intense pain only to awaken moments later sprawled on the ground facing Zen.

“Do exactly what I tell you or I will hurt her,” he said.

The voice was cold and bore no trace of emotion. When her eyes fluttered and she rolled over onto her back their assailant came into view and though his vision was unclear he knew he saw him before. He was vaguely European looking with dark hair and he was short. He wore jeans, a plain shirt, and a light jacket. He looked like nobody and most people would find him difficult to pick out of a police line-up. The first and only time he saw him was with Western when he accused him of being the creator of the virus. As he stared he wondered if he was looking at Western’s killer.

The man stood over the girl menacingly with one foot on each side of her rib cage. He watched helplessly as he jabbed the toe of his boot down hard on her breast and roughly shook her from side to side. Zen’s eyes popped open and when she saw him she screamed but her scream was brutally cut off with a yelp of pain. He anticipated her reaction and lifted her shirt and Tasered her below her left breast.

Her face went slack as her body jerked and then went into full body convulsions. He feared for her life wondering if a jolt like that would stop her heart. The man laughed at her as she thrashed in the dirt and then he looked over at him and said, “Where is Tyler Worthy?”

He rested the heel of his boot on her chest and stomped down hard. He could hear the air forcefully expelled from her lungs. The man put his heel on her chest again. He waited and then stomped down hard on her chest again this time coldly looking him in the eye as he did it. His message was clear: tell me where he is or I will kill her.

His flat emotionless eyes were locked on his as he began to repeat the words- “Where is Ty-“ before he could finish the sentence he heard the sound of something solid contact flesh and bone. Their assailant’s eyes went wide as he pitched forward and landed on top of Zen.

His vision was blurry he saw a figure come into view and stand with his back to him. He was wearing green coveralls and black rubber boots. He watched him bend down and grab their attacker by his jacket and roughly pull him off Zen. He dragged the inert form a few feet away from her and dropped him. That is when he saw the length of steel pipe in his hand.

“Is Zen dead?” Tyler asked.

He was wearing Patricia Hunter’s biohazard suit standing over the unconscious attacker with the pipe in his hand. He was afraid the boy was prepared to kill him if the answer was yes. “No Ty she is unconscious she is hurt but she will be all right,” he said.

Tyler stood for a long time over the prone man but came to a decision about something and threw the pipe down and Mann let out the breath he was holding. Tyler knelt beside Zen and gently lifted her head and held her.

“Do you think you can carry her, Ty?” He was gathering his wits trying to work through the pain as he watched Tyler gently pick her up and cradled her in his arms waiting for him as he struggled to get to his feet. He picked up the pipe and used it as a crutch to hobble over to the unconscious man who was lying in an expanding pool of blood. He felt his neck for a pulse but could not find one and worried that Tyler had killed him until he detected a thin racy pulse at his wrist. Mann was relieved he did not kill their assailant though he had no doubt the man intended to kill him and Zen after he got his hands on Tyler. He searched the man’s pockets and took everything he found: keys, wallet, gun, and Taser. He looked at the name on his driver’s license; Frank Sedulca. He rolled Sedulca on to his side to ensure he did not lose his airway after they left and he threw the keys and wallet into the long weeds and pocketed the weapons.

It was beginning to look like he was going to need them. He used the pipe to hobble along behind Tyler as he carried Zen to the truck. He drove awkwardly using his left leg and hand while Tyler held Zen on his lap in a surreal repeat of a few days earlier when he held Patricia Hunter in the same way.

When they arrived at her house Tyler carried her into her bedroom and allowed him to check her condition under his watchful gaze. She was breathing normally and there was nothing much he could do for her but wait for the effects of the Taser to wear off. He anticipated she would be in severe pain when she woke and he searched the bathroom for pain killers, took a few for himself, and handed the rest to Tyler with instructions to give her two pills when she woke and come and get him.

He left them and went to the kitchen where he found a full tray of ice cubes in the freezer. He wrapped a handful in a dish towel and alternately applied it to the side of his face and his knee to try and lower the swelling. He took two of the pills to ease the pain and decided to lie down on the couch for a few minutes until she woke up. He needed to get them all out of there and find a place to hide but he did not want to be driving with an unconscious girl and Tyler in case they got pulled over.

That was his last thought before passing out from exhaustion.

It could have been a minute, an hour, or a week he did not know how long he was out and it was only when he heard someone speaking in a loud voice nearby that he awoke. His non-swollen eye came slowly into focus and he realized someone was vigorously shaking his shoulder.

“You better wake up fella I’ve already called the cops.”

A woman was standing over him and she held a black baseball bat poised ready to nail him. She was big and she looked like she knew how to use it. He was disoriented coming out of a deep sleep and he wondered if this was a dream but before he could figure out what was going on he heard Zen’s voice.

“Mom, relax. He’s Tyler’s dad.”

The woman looked at her daughter then back at him.

“So what happened to you?” she said and grinned.

“It’s a long story,” he said.

Lady Spy

Ottawa, Ontario

Two men sat quietly waiting in an office on the fifth floor of a modern five-story low rise office building located in a primarily residential suburb of Ottawa. The building bore no external signage to indicate what kind of business was conducted within though it was common knowledge around the neighborhood that it was the headquarters for the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service. It was the office of Les Henry, the director of CSIS, and they were silent while Henry’s private secretary was pouring their coffees both waiting until the door closed behind her before resuming their discussion.

The man across from Henry was Charles Wyatt, the Western Regional Head of Operations. He was a little more than halfway through his report; he continued.

“Item number seven is emergent. Last Wednesday we received Intel from NSA, as part of the Open Borders Initiative, that an active duty Canadian Forces Colonel named John Western contacted one of their agents inside the Pentagon.

It appears this Colonel had a back-channel proposition for their agent who it turned out was an old drinking buddy. The call from this Colonel, who is the senior Intel officer at the Naden Naval Base, was routinely intercepted by NSA. The call was placed to a non-secure line inside the main Pentagon building from a cell phone located in Victoria, BC.

The US agent contacted is a mid-level analyst with a level 6 pre-retirement security clearance. The call transcript is in your briefing notes. It would appear the Colonel was calling him to set up a meeting to discuss some kind of new weapon based on a virus.”

Wyatt paused before he said the next part knowing the reaction he would receive.

“The weapon was reportedly created by-a teenager,” he said.

Henry looked up from his notes and snorted.

“Is this a joke, Charlie?”

“No sir. It is definitely not a joke,” he said.

Henry set his coffee down.

“Continue.”

“Have you seen any of the news reports about a multiple shooting in Vancouver yesterday?” he asked.

“I’ve been at the cottage for two weeks painting and Val forbids me to read the papers or watch the news at our camp. She says it is for my mental health. She dropped me off here an hour ago so no I have not heard or read anything about a shooting in Vancouver.”

“Four people were killed in a hotel room in downtown Vancouver and unfortunately one of them was in our employ.”

“Who?” Henry said.

“James Hamilton. He was the only asset available on the lower mainland at the time.”

“I don’t know the name is he new?”

“He is one of Mrs. K.’s new recruits and that may have contributed to the problem. He was inexperienced. It should not have been a problem since the meeting was supposed to be a simple meet and greet.”

“Go on,” Henry said, he did not look happy.

“The meeting was set up to discuss this viral weapon the details of which are sketchy. The Colonel’s initial call to his buddy was peppered with enough keywords to jangle the NSA pre-sets for domestic traffic. He said set off an automatic stage two terrorist alert.

When NSA interviewed the Pentagon analyst they discovered he and Western were friends from way back. The NSA got the analyst to roll over on Western and set up a meet. John Masse called me personally to propose this as a joint venture which I thought was nice of him considering the meeting was to take place in Vancouver.”

Both men smiled at that. They knew the Americans sometimes forgot to extend that courtesy when they were running operations in Canada.

“They sent the Pentagon buddy to the meet along with an unnamed US asset from Oregon who, it turns out, was a scientist and not a field agent and we sent our freshly recruited Mr. Hamilton, who it would appear possessed zero tradecraft.

The meeting was set up with Western and when he showed up something went sideways. Hamilton, the US scientist, and Western’s Pentagon buddy were all killed. Western did the shooting and he was also killed.”

“What happened?” Henry’s face had turned hard his jaw set with tension.

“As near as we can figure this Colonel, an experienced field operative, went rogue and started shooting people. The Vancouver police are keeping the details out of the media for the moment but someone is bound to leak something and when the media puts it together from the mix of victims, they will eventually come barking at our door.”

“What is our exposure?” Henry said.

“That is difficult to estimate at this moment. Western’s gun killed all the men in the room and he is an active duty soldier so the military will wear most of this. Some of the evidence seems to indicate our guy Hamilton killed the Colonel, which we will call self-defense, but there is a problem.

My contact in the VPD says forensics thinks Hamilton was already down when Western was killed. He said the site lines do not line-up and there was no powder residue on his shooting hand. The other odd thing was the weapon used to kill Western did not belong to Hamilton.

The weapon Hamilton signed out was a Sig 9 but there was a S&W .45 in his hand when the VPD showed up. I suppose, because he was an ex-cop, it’s possible the .45 was a ‘throw down’ but I don’t think so and neither does VPD. It seems more likely there was another person in the room. Someone pulled the fire alarm a few minutes after the shootings but it could have been a panicked member of the public. I’m waiting to hear more from my guy in Vancouver.”

“Or it could be the shooter covering his tracks,” said Henry.

“The best thing for us to do at this point is information manage the event. Clearly the reason for the meeting will not come up.”

“What are the Yanks saying?” Henry asked.

“Not much. They are waiting for us to tell them what went wrong at an event advertised as a simple meeting. It is a classic full-on cluster fuck and like most of those there is nothing in the way of logic or learning to be gained from it.”

“Are the RCMP interested?”

“No, sir.”

“Who do we have on it?”

“I’m sending Mrs. K. She is on her way here now.”

“Does she still do field work?”

“Only when the occasion warrants and this one certainly does.”

“What is her brief?”

“Contain and control. Find this weapon, if it exists, and ascertain the facts about the teenager, if he exists, and do what is necessary to contain the situation. We need to maintain deniability and keep the Vancouver situation separate and unconnected to the virus and kid. Mrs. K. will put a team together to debrief Western’s staff in Esquimalt.”

“Who is in charge of the base in Esquimalt?” Henry said.

“Steven Evans.”

“Good luck with that. Evans is a shit show. How worried are the Yanks about the viral weapon angle?”

“They take everything seriously these days. The interesting thing is Jed hinted at something that made me think they have someone on the ground in Vancouver working on this, but for obvious reasons, he did not come out and say that. He was short on details but I gather they’ve had an asset on the ground for some time and this asset reported there may be some truth to the weapon thing, including the part about the kid. Pepperdine didn’t give me any details because I don’t think he has much in the way of details. The only reason he told me as much as he did was because his deep asset is several days overdue reporting in and they have not been able to contact him. Pepperdine was grateful when I told him I would have Mrs. K. keep an eye out for him.”

The intercom buzzed on Henry’s desk and Eveline announced Mrs. K..

Both men rose as the door opened and Barbara Knight came into the office. She was a short powerful woman with intense hazel eyes which bore humour and intelligence and something else that could best be described as resolve. She started her security career during the Cold War and spent years undercover in Eastern Europe. Her brusque manner and expensive taste in clothes reflected this experience. She shook hands with both men and Henry pulled up a chair for her.

“Good to see you, Barbara. Coffee?”

She nodded and a few minutes later Eveline came in with a fresh pot.

“Charlie tells me you are leaving for Victoria. What will you need when you get there?”

She looked at Henry and smiled.

“I don’t know. This thing about a teenager is odd. I don’t know what to make of it and I’m just hoping it’s not my grandson, Earl,” she said and they laughed.

“Charlie, why don’t you continue,” Henry said.

“Well, to sum up, I think the viral weapon angle is weak. A teenager building an advanced weapon is hard to believe. I have a sixteen-year-old and he hasn’t learned how to make a sandwich. I believe what we have here is an unfortunate misfire. This Colonel Western must have been off his nut from the get-go and something or someone at the meeting must have spooked him and he started shooting.

We all know unexpected things happen in this business, and I think this is one of those times. We need to snip the cord on this mess and move far away from it. Hamilton was a D1 with solid cover in a different industry and his death won’t lead directly back to us. As for this kid thing we need to check it out but I have a bad feeling about it generally. Anything that involves a minor always has a nasty way of sticking to whoever touches it including this agency if we get on the wrong side of it. Barbara, you need to use a ten foot pole on this. If there is a kid and he has created a weapon you need to grab him on a security warrant. After we debrief him we can make the call about what to do about him.

The other thing we have to do is figure out who killed Western. If there was someone else in the room we need to find out who it was. From what Pepperdine was hinting maybe the shooter was his missing asset but at this point we don’t know anything for sure,” he said.

Mrs. K. finished her coffee, stood up, and smiled.

“My flight leaves in an hour but before I run there is something which strikes me as odd about this whole thing. What were the dead Colonel and the military’s connection to this kid? Did he try to sell the weapon to them?

“That we don’t know, we are hoping you can find out,” said Henry.

Mrs. K smiled at both of them.

“My daughter Gwen is married to the base commander at Comox AFB and she told me that all flights and personnel transfers from Vancouver Island bases have been grounded since early September and Naden Naval Base is in a virtual lockdown. If you start adding all this together the possibility of a viral weapon may be more real than you think. My gut says there is something to this kid thing.”

“Okay, I agree with Barbara. We need to discover the truth about the kid. Charlie, you find out what is going on with the military and let’s hope whatever this is it does not come back to bite us,” Henry said.