Allegiance: A Jackson Quick Adventure (23 page)

“You’re making some assumptions based on hearsay,” George states. He sounds like a lawyer.

“Maybe,” Ripley acknowledges. “But the rumors are persistent enough they’re believable.”

“You’re trying to mimic what Nanergetix is doing and beat them to the marketplace?” George asks. “That way the oil companies can control it?”

“Quite the opposite,” Ripley says, closing his eyes. “I’m being paid to stop it.”

***

The shades are pulled against the single-paned windows of the lodge. The wind outside is howling with such intensity it sounds as though the glass might shatter at any second. The night winds in the Ft. Davis Mountains are fierce.

With only the lamps beside the bed and on the desk lighting the room, and George with his small flip cam aimed at Ripley, it’s as though I’m in an Oren Peli film. All we need is a poltergeist attacking us to complete the effect, though the kind of stuff the scientist is explaining seems unreal enough.

“Nano markers are little invisible serial numbers,” he explains. “We insert these markers into anything commercial – make-up, processed leather goods, food, pharmaceuticals, refined oil, etc.”

“Why would you do that?” George asks.

“The market would let you know what you’re buying is the real deal. It prevents the sale of counterfeit…anything, really. If I tested a batch of Prozac I knew had this marker in it, and the marker doesn’t pop up, it’s clear the medicine didn’t come from Eli Lilly. Or say, for instance, I bought barrels of what I thought was oil from Saudi Arabia, but the marker indicated it was from West Africa, then we have a problem. It’s protection for the manufacturers and the consumers.”

“At the same time,” Ripley continues. “If you could mimic the marker of the original product, and attach it to the counterfeit—”

“An untraceable black market,” I say. I get it.

“Yes,” nods Ripley. “Or a fuel that doesn’t really go as far as you think it should. Reducing the efficiency of gasoline by an almost imperceptible amount changes the balance sheets by billions of dollars over time.”

“So you’re trying to copy the marker in Nanergetix improved gasoline.” George gets it too. “By doing that, the oil companies can pretend they’re refining the oil using the new nanoparticles, but they’re really not.”

“Yes.”

“The oil companies are paying you to do this?” I ask.

“Sort of,” Ripley replied. “They’re funding the project,” he says, still looking at George’s shoulder. “But they’re not alone. Your boss is involved. He’s the one who first approached me, who misled me about what I would be doing.”

My
boss
.
The
oil
companies
.
The
iPods
.
The
money
. It’s adding up.

“What did you think you were doing?” George asked him.

“Well,” Ripley glances into the lens before averting his eyes again. “I
thought
I was working on creating a marker that would identify products refined in Texas. It would help with business and taxes and other stuff I don’t really remember. The idea, as the Governor sold it, was to help Texas define itself from the rest of the industry.”

“Then you found out what you were
really
working on?” My question.

Ripley nods. “I started asking too many questions. I was warned against it. I couldn’t help myself. I threatened to quit, to go public.”

“Buell gets shot, your dad gets framed, and you disappear,” George again.

“Yes.”

We stand in the dim light quietly for what seems like forever, the wind threatening to crash through the windows. None of us, I guess, know what to say next.

George hits the stop button on the flip cam and lowers it to his side. He sidesteps to the chest of drawers and leans against it.

Ripley folds his arms, closes his eyes, and tilts his head back toward the ceiling. He exhales deeply.

I sit on the bed trying to quickly process what we’ve learned. It’s a lot to take in.

“You think the same people who want me dead also want you erased from existence?” I don’t look at Ripley when I finally speak, but he knows I’m talking to him.

“I guess. I don’t know. I mean, clearly the Governor is not happy with me. Apparently the oil companies don’t like me. If, as you think, they’ve hired some undercover agents to kill you, what would stop them from wanting to do the same thing to me?”

“It doesn’t make sense that they’d want you dead,” I say. “You’re
their
key to beating Buell. You are the one working on their project. If they kill you, they’re back to square one. They wouldn’t do that.”

“Then different people want us dead?” Ripley stands up from the desk. “Somebody wants you dead and some other faction wants to kill me? That doesn’t make sense either.”

“What’s our next move?” George pipes in. “We can debate who wants who dead all night, but we’ve got to come up with a plan. We have to get out of here. We need to get back to Houston to the newsroom. We can protect both of you from there. At least until we sort the rest of it out.”

At his core, George is trying to figure out how to break this twisted story, but he is right. We have to get somewhere safe.

***

It is nearly dawn and the sun is about to come up. Ripley is standing at the window. We each slept for about an hour, in shifts. George is the one resting now.

“It’s time to go,” I say. “Do you have a car here?”

“Yes. It’s outside the lodge. What’s your plan?”

“We’ve gotten some sleep,” I said, knowing it wasn’t nearly enough. “I imagine whoever is waiting on us did too. The best bet is to split up and meet back in Houston. You can’t hide out here forever.”

“Not now that you’ve led them to me.” His back is still to me, but the anger dripping from his words is hitting me in the face. “I’m going to die here for something I
wouldn’t
do. My father will die in prison for something he
didn’t
do.”

I rub the exhaustion from my eyes. “We’ll make it out of here if we’re smart. I’ll take your car and you go with George. If you’re with him, you might be better off. Maybe.”

“Maybe,” he snorts, laughing at the absurdity of it. “I deal in absolutes, Jackson. I’m a scientist. I see it or I don’t. I can find it or I can’t. I’ll survive or I won’t. There’s very little room for maybe.”

“You believe in theory.
Theoretically
you can survive this if we get you to George’s newsroom. They’ve got security there. They’ll protect you until all of this gets sorted out.”

“What do you propose exactly?” Ripley said. There’s a soft red glow warming the side his face from the sun peeking over the mountains.

“You and George fly out of El Paso. Same flight. Maybe you fly to Austin and drive from there. Maybe you go straight to Houston. That’s up to George. Once he lets his station know what’s going on they’ll be able to help.”

“Then?”

“You get to the station and wait for me. We can regroup from there.”

“What if we don’t make it?”

“I thought you dealt in absolutes?” “Theoretically.” He turns toward me. His eyebrows are still bunched together. His lower lip is pouting, revealing a slight under bite. At least he’s looking at me.

“Then we’ll have to assume we’ll make it,” I effect a smile I imagine is hardly convincing.

George stands from the bed and stretches languorously. “You know reporters can’t assume. We get in trouble for that.”

“I’m not a reporter,” says Ripley. “Let’s get this over with.”

George rolls his eyes, fixes his shirt and belt, and walks to the small bathroom. Ripley moves to the dresser and picks up the gun. He opens the cylinder and closes it.

“Loaded still?” I ask.

“Yes.” He checks the safety. “Shotshell. Six of them.”

“You said that when we first got here,” I said, remembering what he’d told us after pointing the gun at us through the door. “You mean ammo like a shotgun?”

Ripley nods. “I’m not a good shot. With the shotshell, I don’t have to be particularly accurate. That is, as long as I’m close enough. It’s not really meant for distance shooting. Are you good with a gun?”

“I dunno,” my shoulders shrug almost involuntarily. “I don’t shoot much.”

“Much?” Ripley’s brow arches with interest. He’s still holding the gun, waving it toward the door without much thought.

“Well, I have fired a gun. A rifle. Some other stuff. I wouldn’t say I’m a good shot or anything. I try to stay away from them.”

“Why?” Ripley places the pistol on the chest of drawers, spins the barrel toward the wall and turns his attention back to me.

“Just do,” I mumble. “Look, we’ve got to get going. Now is as good a time as any. The faster we get to an airport, the more flight options we have to get out of here.”

“I’m ready,” Ripley sighs. He’s probably trying to convince himself of it.

George appears from the bathroom. “So am I.” His hair is slicked back, his face is pink, and his eyes bloodshot. He looks like hell. “Let’s do this.”

I sling my backpack over my right shoulder. “George, you should go with Dr. Ripley in his car. I’ll take mine. We can switch at the gas station.”

“What do you mean switch?” Ripley asks.

“We left my rental at a gas station about forty-five minutes from here,” George tells him. “I guess if we’re getting tailed, we could switch it up and confuse them?”

“That is the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard,” Ripley says, a vein in his forehead exposing itself. He’s clearly about to explode. “You two have no clue what you’re doing.”

“Well, I wouldn’t say—” George tries to interject.

“No, really,” Ripley says in a strained whisper, trying not to raise his voice, “you two are absolute morons. You find your way to me, you bring with you trained killers, you’ve got no weapons, you’ve got no plan – my life is not a game.”

“I think you’re—”

“What would make either of you think this could work?” His forehead vein is purple and thick. “You are clearly out of your league. Now you want to ‘switch cars’? You want to ‘maybe take a plane into a different airport’ to avoid these professional head hunters? How can you be so naïve? Neither of you
look
like idiots, but you must be.”

“You’re right,” I admit.

Ripley, his chest heaving from the adrenaline of his rant, looks bewildered.

“What?” George looks at me with confusion and maybe some hurt.

“We’re idiots,” I repeat. “I mean, we really
don’t
have a plan. We don’t know what we’re doing. We’re no match for professional killers or whatever. We didn’t think this through. The truth is,
our
lives are in danger too. Something bad is happening. Too many people are keeping secrets. It could be your nanocrap, it could be something we haven’t thought about. I still don’t know.”

“Yes, clearly y—” Ripley starts.

I raise my hand at the scientist to stop him. “My turn. You had yours.”

Ripley glares at me.

“So what if we brought the heat with us?” I propose. “What were you going to do? Hide out here forever? If
we
so easily found you, do you really think professional killers would’ve taken much longer? Then you’d be alone. Now at least, you’ve got some help. We do have a plan. We want to get all of us to the safety of George’s newsroom. Nothing’s going to happen to us there, if we can make it.”

“I feel like a trapped rat.”

“A lab rat?” George asks snidely.

I look at George with a glance that tells him to ease up on the sarcasm. “You can blame us all you want. You can call us idiots or whatever. The bottom line is, we’re all still alive. We need each other. What do you want to do? It’s your call, Doc.”

Ripley looks at the floor and then at me, a hint of what I imagine is guilt in his eyes, before he glances at George and the floor again. He leans over at his waist, hands on his knees, and begins to sob. It’s an ugly cry, the kind no man wants to witness of another. I can’t blame him. He
is
a lab rat. He’s a nerd. He’s not equipped to deal with this.

I’m
not
equipped
to
deal
with
this
either
.

George looks at me and starts to reach for Ripley, to comfort him. He stops short and we stand there, the scientist crying himself dry.

There’s a knock at the door that stops the sobbing. Still bent over, Ripley looks at the door and stands erect to look at us. He grabs the gun from the chest of drawers and uses the back of his sleeve to wipe his nose and eyes free of snot and saline.

There’s more banging on the door, this time louder and more insistent.

“Who is it?” he asks, trying to sound composed.

“I need to speak with you,” says a voice through the door. It’s a woman. She sounds scared.

***

Ripley inches to the right side of the room’s door. “Who is it?” he repeats, more urgently this time.

“Nancy,” the voice says shaky. “I’m the, uh, caretaker here.”

“What do you want?” Ripley has positioned himself with his back to the wall, his right arm up with the gun pointed toward the door. His hand is shaking.

“I need to speak with you about your room,” she says. “Could you, uh, open the door please, Mr. Palance?”

Ripley looks at me for an answer. I shake my head. Not a good idea.

“I’m not feeling well,” Ripley says, his eyes still fixed on me. “Is there a problem?”

“Well, sir,” more hesitancy, “w-we’re overbooked. I need to speak with you about your room for tonight.”

“It’s a little early for that, isn’t it?” Ripley glances at the red numbers on clock next to the bed. 6:05AM. “I mean it’s—”

The door explodes, knocking Ripley backward against the wall. George shrinks behind the chest of drawers at the entrance to the bathroom. I fall back onto the bed as Ripley’s gun spins in the air and lands next to my head.

I grab the gun and slide off the bed on the far side of the door. I’m inches from the window.

From behind the bed, another explosion. It’s clearly a gunshot. A blast, maybe, from a large caliber weapon. To my left, splintered wood flies past. Lying flat on the ground and looking underneath the bed to the doorway, I can see a body. It may be Ripley. I can’t tell.