Big Three-Thriller Bundle Box Collection (14 page)

The door opened slowly interrupting Xiang’s reverie. A rotund Oriental man with hat in hand and cue ball head stepped in
— Consul General Meng Juhong.

Xiang felt his lip curl uncontrollably.

*  *  *

Still in his den at the Double R, President Mason gazed out blankly, overwhelmed by the thought of
psychic assassins
killing off heads of state of allying countries — perhaps he was next. He had been discussing the situation with his four most trusted cabinet members for over two hours and, during that time, little new information came in from any of their intelligence sources.

A moment of silence had passed when Mason finally turned to Chief of Staff Thurman. “Eddie, I want
Marine One
warmed up. We’re going back to Washington.”

“Good, Mr. President,” Thurman said as he stood up. “We can provide better protection in the White House’s Presidential Emergency Operations Center. Going to “Site R” at Raven Rock or staying aloft in Night Watch would be even better, though, sir.”

“Protection, hell. Things are about to hit the fan. I want to be able to talk to the people. I’m not going to cowl underground in the PEOC bunker or fly around in the National Airborne Ops Center wasting taxpayer’s money like some kind of chicken shit.”

“As you wish, sir. I’ll be prepared to implement Enduring Constitutional Government measures should you decide, Mr. President.”

As Thurman left for the spare bedroom converted to a communications center down the hall, Mason asked, “Where’s Greta?”

CIA Director Winston checked his watch. “Mrs. Mason should be in the air about now, just out of LAX. I believe her next stop is Dallas for the start of her children’s hospital tour in the Midwest.”

“Cancel that,” Mason said. “I want her with me. And get a hold of Secretary Zimmerman. Homeland Security needs brought up to speed on this, as well as the rest of the cabinet. Instruct Zimmerman to put the country in Condition Orange and prepare to move it to Red at my order.”

“Yes, Mr. President,” Winston said as he departed for the Com room.

In the doorway, Defense Secretary Jacob Banks moved aside to let Winston past and then stepped back into the room. He’d been outside the President’s study, speaking on the phone with Dr. Ultar about the video hookup.

“Jake, while we’re waiting on this video feed from Ultar, fill me in on the players.

“Good timing, Mr. President,” Banks said. “That’s exactly what I was about to do. I’ve referenced the names I just got from Dr. Ultar with our intelligence database.”

The President asked, “First of all, who’s behind this? It must be sanctioned by a foreign government or political concern.”

“We have several possibilities, sir,” Banks said. “They’re the usual suspects — Arabs, possibly Al Qaeda or Taliban, Iranians. Could even be Chinese or North Koreans. We’re looking at other possibilities, even domestic, but still nothing more than speculation, yet.”

“Brief me on the names, then
— everyone your RVs have come up with in this mess, both ally and enemy.”

Banks said, “You already know as much as we do about Daniel McMaster, Major Lionel Jackson, Master Gunnery Sergeant Bernard Sampson and our mysterious Mr. Robert Weller.” He opened a notebook he’d been carrying and began scanning the information. “The name Dr. Xiang Gao comes up quite often. He came to the U.S. in 1958 at the age of nineteen. A Chinese child prodigy, he attended Peking University and Shanghai Medical University, earning a PhD in psychiatry. It’s thought that his rich foster parents then secretly helped him defect and sent him on to Stanford to broaden his education. He was there for ten years prior to the start of U.S. government studies in the paranormal. He’s thought to have had some involvement in MK-ULTRA, although we can’t find corroborating documentation.”

The President’s eyes grew wide. “He worked with narco-hypnosis — the mind-control experiments?”

“We believe so, sir. Studying the effects on unsuspecting students after they’d been administered mind altering drugs like LSD, mescaline, scopolamine, BZ and sodium pentothal, as well as radiation, electric shock
— electroconvulsive therapy. He may have been involved in the latter experiments with the
stemoceiver
remote-control, electronic implant.”

“Judas Priest,” the President said, shaking his head in disbelief.

“Then, he headed up Stanford’s research in psychic phenomena and specialized in brain-wave projection. Our predecessors actually considered hiring him to help manage our studies there when we started them in 1969. After he originally defected, the background check we did on him didn’t throw up any
red
flags, so to speak. But, in 1970, after a second thorough background check, it was discovered he’d been implicated in the 1958 murder of his foster parents back in China, and there was some concern that he might have had ties still with his homeland — that he was a Chi-Com here as a spy. He must have been tipped off because he disappeared with ten million dollars of donated and grant-derived project funds before he could be either tried and imprisoned or extradited back to his homeland.

“Our best guess is that he’s now hiding out in a remote area of the Rockies and has somehow perfected his experimentation. And now he’s using some form of brain-wave projection to psychically assassinate special targets. Our greatest fear at this point should be that Daniel McMaster has aligned with Xiang, and together they’ve contrived a very frightening scenario.”

Mason clasped his hands against his chin and said nothing, soaking in the information. He still couldn’t believe all this paranormal crap. It was fiction.

“Dr. Yumi No is a former Stanford alumna and was also a faculty member in the early nineties after she completed her PhD in neurophysiology. She is believed to be Xiang’s right hand woman. Nothing on record of it and a bit contrary to this information, our RVs are linking her name with
Falon Gong
, an ancient Chinese discipline that has become a voice for their human rights movement. It’s been banned in their home country.

“Captain Vanzandtz was a U.S. Army lieutenant in charge of
talent discovery
also at Stanford in the early eighties until her psychic research project was terminated in 1986. She was promoted to Captain and transferred to personnel in DC. A month later she resigned her commission and disappeared. Funny thing is, now our remote viewers are saying she’s either no longer involved in the scenario, or will be out of the picture soon. Regardless, she’d built up a database of hundreds over her four years at Stanford — those who had psychic potential. And with her personnel job, she had access to a good number of the names of those involved in the Army’s research in psychic phenomena through the years. Some from the Stanford study were recruited into the
Grille Flame
project — a precursor to
Star Gate
and what we now know as
Thousand Eyes
.

“Daniel McMaster was one of those taken into
Grille Flame
from Stanford. That’s also where McMaster met his wife Sunny. From what our
Thousand Eyes
RVs are saying, Robert Weller is suspected of going through the talent discovery phase at about the same time, but we’ve been unable to find any record of it, nothing with his name on it. He could have been using an alias, or is now. Or perhaps our RVs are barking up the wrong paranormal fruit tree.

“Daniel McMaster’s wife Sunny took part in the study briefly, but she didn’t seem to offer much promise psychically and dropped out. She has an MS in Physics. Her expertise is holographics. We believe she is accompanying Major Jackson and Gunny Sampson, now.

“Most of the other names the RVs are coming up with — we’re unsure of. Might just be combinations of letters that mean nothing. Wu, Shekhar, Mish. We find no connection to these names with any other aspects we’re investigating except an obscure possibility with a Dr. Rajiv Shekhar who’s been missing for about two months. He’s a Pakistani immigrant — former head of neurosurgery at Mayo Clinic. He and his family seemed to have just disappeared one night.”

Mason laid his hands flat on his desk. The remote viewers had come up with much more than their intelligence agency siblings, still it wasn’t nearly enough to put together this conundrum
— and their guessing was just too incredible.

Banks continued, “I’m leaving the most curious for last. The remote viewers have come up with the name Meng Juhong several times. He just happens to be the Chinese Consul General of New York.”

“New York?” Mason repeated and turned to the large window behind him. He stared out at the silent woods, not pleased with the implications.

Chapter 11

It was about eleven a.m. when Mike Wu stopped in the store. Taller than the average Oriental man, my brother-in-law wore a big grin, blue jeans and a dark-blue T-shirt. I was happy to see him.

“Hey, Mr. Lucky!” He slammed an open, greenback-stuffed envelope onto the counter in front of me.

I couldn’t help but smile. “Ninety bucks, huh? Finally, something good this morning. I hoped my luck would change before Michelle and I go to see Will this afternoon.”

Mike frowned back. “What’s wrong, brutha, bad day?”

“Yeah. You know, the two deaths. You’ve heard?”

“Sure, I have. But what’s that got to do with you?”

“I was there both times. It’s like I’m a jinx or something.”

Wu frowned sympathetically. “That’s a shame, man. But you know that’s gotta be a coincidence. They were both heart attacks, right?”

“Yeah, right.”

“There you go then. Hey, you and Mish up for another football game in two weeks? The Broncos and the Chiefs. It ought to be a good one. Lucy and I’ll get the tickets
and
drive.”

“Sounds great, Mike. But can we get back to you on that? I mean with things up in the air with Will and all. And the concussion, well . . . how about if we let you know by this Sunday?”

“Sure, Rob. You know I’m pulling for Will and you guys.”

I was reminded of how good of a friend Mike had been. “Yeah, Mike. By the way, thanks again for redoing our shower. Nice job. And for bringing over the UPS packages.”

“Hey, no prob, bud,” he said. “What’re brother-in-law, slash, friends for?”

He shook my hand and at the same time reached across the narrow counter with his other hand to pat my shoulder.

I don’t know what got into me, but I drew back like before with the woman in the street. Maybe it was something about the way he had his hand cupped. When I looked into his eyes, I saw alarm, maybe concern about something, as if he didn’t know what to do next. His expression startled me, and I let go of his hand and stepped back.

“You okay?” I asked.

“Yeah,” he blurted and recoiled two steps. It looked like he placed something in his pocket from that cupped hand. His other hand was now behind his back. “It’s just that . . . I’ve got to go. I just remembered I have an appointment at the
Gazette
.”

I got that tingling in the base of my neck again. My ears began ringing. My temples ached.

Mike frowned at me, his eyes growing intense.

I became dizzy. The tingling on my neck amplified.

Mike stumbled back. He seemed as confused as I was.

From all around us came a sort of harmonic hum. The resonance slowly increased to a roaring reverberation. In front of the store, the three large picture windows cracked one at a time. The front door glass fractured. Six feet to my left, the Seiko watch display case shattered. My skull vibrated. My lungs became heavy and my breathing burdened. My heart hammered in a sudden arrhythmia. Fiery heat enveloped me. I felt as though I was spinning, and my vision blurred making only the center of my focus clear.

Mike kept his forceful stare on me until my eyeglasses not only cracked, but burst out, fortunately sending the shards away from my face. His eyes went wide. He gasped as if it were the first breath he’d taken after surfacing from a long dive to the ocean’s depths. His hands now to his throat and chest as if he also was having trouble breathing, he bolted and rushed toward the door. His shirt was above his belt in back, and something stuck out that looked like the handle of yet another pistol.

Everyone’s got guns,
Harvey said.
It’s like Dodge City!

Wu swung the door open wide and rebounded off the doorframe as he went through as if he’d been body checked into it. In a staggering trot, he left.

A bit off balance myself, I hurried to the doorway to see if he was all right. He was gone. A late-model, blue Ford pulled away from the corner, but he hadn’t had time to get into the driver’s side and start it. Someone, maybe his wife Lucy, had been waiting for him. But I didn’t recognize it as their car — I couldn’t even remember what kind of car they drove.

The pain inside my head subsided quickly. The hum diminished like a jet engine shutting down, and the ringing in my ears went away. I went back to my chair at the desk behind the counter, collapsed into it and considered the strange morning. What was wrong with me, with my head? Could the humming and ringing really be caused by a concussion? But what about my glasses breaking, the windows and display case? And what was with everybody else? Why were people carrying handguns, especially Mike? In what kind of world had I awakened?

I tossed the empty eyeglass frames to the side, took out my old pair of cracked spectacles and put them on. Reaching for the phone, I thought about calling Mike at the
Gold Rush Gazette
newspaper, where he was editor, to make sure he was okay — or maybe try calling him at his home. But I began questioning Mike’s friendship. I didn’t know why. He was my best friend, had been since grade school. He was best man at my wedding and me at his. He was Michelle’s brother, my brother-in-law. He had fixed my shower so I wouldn’t fall and hurt myself again, and he’d given me ninety dollars and invited me to a football game. Why would I doubt his friendship?

I couldn’t put my finger on it, then Harvey did.
He was afraid of you, Superman. And he was packing heat.

I told Harvey he’d been reading too many Raymond Chandler novels, as if imaginary talking rabbits could read. At the same time, I was becoming more and more confused by it all. And my abundant disarray had spilled over into something much more unnerving
— terror. I began to tremble again, a shiver at first and then uncontrollably.

Should I go next door and call Chief Dailey?

No,
Harvey said.

Am I going mad? Do
I have some sort of disease? Should I call Dr. Xiang, or the emergency room?

No.

What then?

Hang on. Help is coming. You’ll know soon.

My eyes shifted around my store. There were no customers. Harvey’s voice was still crystal clear. Where was it coming from? It couldn’t be my own thoughts. Yes, it was inside my head, but there was more to it — more to all of this. I began worrying for my own safety. For Michelle’s. For Will’s. Something very strange was happening in Gold Rush, and I seemed to be the focal point.

I stood up and quickly went to the door, locked it and flipped over the door sign to say
Closed
. After backing away from the entrance, I shrank to the floor behind the counter, and sat in the broken glass of the display case. I prayed whatever was happening would be temporary, caused by my concussion, and it would soon dissipate . . . and I tried to hang on, afraid of what I was hanging on for.

*  *  *

Defense Secretary Banks opened the large wall cabinet opposite the President’s desk and turned on a wide-screen TV. President Mason came around and sat on the desktop, and the rest of his advisors turned their chairs to better view the demonstration. Banks pressed the remote control several times. He stepped back as the screen lit and several figures quickly materialized.

“Dr. Ultar, Jake Banks here with the President and some of his staff. Can you hear me okay?”

On the TV, a balding, dark-skinned man in his early sixties turned to look up into the camera. He adjusted his thick glasses. His voice came over the speaker sounding as if he were talking into a can. “Fine, Mr. Banks. Mr. President, it’s truly an honor to be able to give you a little video tour of our project.”

President Mason went fishing. “Dr. Ultar, I’m pleased to meet you. I’ve been wanting to learn more about your work. I understand there’s no one else with your kind of experience and expertise in the field of remote viewing in the world.”

“Thank you, Mr. President. I wish I could say that’s so. Since Dan McMaster left our project seven years ago, I try to get by.”

Mason frowned at Banks then looked back to the TV. “So what about this demonstration? Are you ready to give us a show?”

“Yes, sir.” Ultar stepped away and the camera pulled back showing more of the white-walled room. Five large containers filled with water were arranged like wheel spokes in a five-point star at the center of the room. Inside each of the clear aquarium-like boxes was a floating human body, clad only in bathing suit, electronic leads fixed to various points of the cranium, neck and torso.

The camera zoomed in on Ultar as he approached the tanks. “These are our sensory deprivation tanks.” He rested his hand on the side of one. “We’ve tried about everything over the years
— hard wooden chairs, big, plush recliners. It seems with our RVs inside the SDTs they are distracted the least and find better focus.” He motioned across the room with his hand. “Even the white walls are relatively new. For the longest time, we thought complete darkness would be more conducive to concentration. We found the white walls stimulate brain function and alertness without disrupting attention.”

“Are your RVs awake?” Mason asked. “From here it looks as if their eyes are closed.”

Ultar smiled looking over his aquatic team of three men and two women. “In literal terms, awake yes. However, they are all in a self-induced, altered state of conscious. Notice the thin covers over their ears. They’re unable to hear us — a soft electronic noise is being piped to them. It is neither rhythmic nor tonal. Note the microphones near their mouths. You’ll see their lips move slightly on occasion. They quietly speak what their subconscious mind sees, and that information is recorded for their debriefing. That’s where they draw out what they’ve seen onto paper, and we help them interpret it. It is not a science, more of an art at this point, really.” Ultar smiled at the five RVs. “They are completely involved in their assignment.”

“And that is?”

“They’ve been instructed to remote view Gold Rush and to find Daniel McMaster.”

Mason was confused. “Of course you know we’ve determined McMaster isn’t in Gold Rush, Colorado.”

“Yes, Mr. President. We’re well aware of your physical findings; however, all five of our remote viewers are unbudging about the locale — perhaps there is another Gold Rush or a place with a similar sounding name. Anywhere, Montana . . . far south in the Andes . . . Asia, Europe, or even in our own backyard — the Appalachians, the Adirondacks.”

“Ridiculous,” Chief of Staff Thurman said under his breath.

Remembering that the RVs had conjured up the name of the New York Consul General from China as a part of this assassination scheme, Mason glanced at Defense Secretary Banks for assurance and got a skeptical head shake in return. Even the thought of the possibility such a plot was being carried out a stone throw from the nation’s capital or the nation’s largest city caused a shiver.

Ultar continued, “Regardless, I’ve decided not to tell our RVs any different as they seem to be finding a considerable amount of other information.”

“Considerable?” Mason asked.

“Well, Mr. President, it is considerable for us as remote viewers. You see, this process cannot be rushed. The information we glean from a remote viewing session comes in precious small quantities. It materializes in images, shapes and forms that must be further analyzed before its true meaning can be learned and attested to. And the sessions themselves are exhausting. We’ve determined that any more than two, at the most three, fifteen minute sessions over a twelve-hour work day is as much as a human body can stand without serious physical health risk.”

“Is it that taxing on all remote viewers? Do they all go through this process?”

“Well, no, sir. There are those rare and gifted few
— like McMaster for instance — who actually see and seem to experience their target assignments in a realistic, three-dimensional view. They seem to move through the ether with relative ease. McMaster compared to one of our current RVs would be like pitting a marathon runner to a Sumo wrestler in a footrace around the DC beltway. There are only a handful of those special remote viewers in the world. Many are considered shaman, prophets, conjurers or witchdoctors in their cultures. McMaster was second to none as far as I know.”

“Tell me more about McMaster.”

“Daniel was special — he was an RV of the third protocol. He could transcend into the universal matrix and connect to it upon a whim, travel through space and time freely.”

“Do you expect me to really believe that, Dr. Ultar?”

Ultar smiled again into the camera. “That makes no difference to me, Mr. President. I know it is true, and I speak only the truth. What you do with that truth is up to you. I would suggest, however, that you keep an open mind. I’ll only ask you if just because you don’t see something in your everyday life, does it mean that it doesn’t exist?”

“Okay, say I believe you. Why did he quit if he was so good?”

“Perhaps I’ve made it sound too simple — too easy. Daniel’s trips into the ether were not without cost. Although the physical effects to him were relatively minor, the emotional and psychological ones were very exhausting. To see the true past, to experience it as if you are there, to learn the lies, is an incredible shock. To see the suffering that has happened, see the faces of the tortured dying. To hear their pleas for only one thing — to live, and to realize that their words are futile, that you can do nothing about it, and their suffering will be long and hard until they die. To see the future, have knowledge of it and learn what is to come is no less stunning. And with this knowledge, what do you do? Change the present so that this or that does not occur in the future? Then what? How have you affected the future? Have you made it worse? Who are you to say what should and shouldn’t happen, who should and should not live? The responsibility was overwhelming.”