3 Thank God it's Monday (10 page)

C
larence was sick of George’s excuses. It was enough that
Clarence had already had a bad day. He had received the call from the
Consortium just after he had arrived in this swamp of a state. His mood had not
gotten better after the news that the President still lived. News reports were
wild and imaginative. Some were hitting close to home. Clarence had thought that
they were untouchable. Now, he wondered.

The unease did not abate with Mr. Beckworth’s chilly
reception. He seemed preoccupied and could not keep his eyes off of Giselle. Clarence
had found it difficult to part with her. She was a wonderful companion in this
state. She did not talk. She seemed demure and even compliant. His mind was
distracted by the possibilities.

“We have reviewed our agreement and I believe we are meeting
the parameters we established. We are on schedule for a December delivery.”

Clarence swept his arm outward, indicating the immense
facility around them.

“Your manpower is at half of its capacity and you say you
are on schedule? How can that be?”

George smiled and his eyes drifted to Giselle. She sat in an
old metal and leather chair set against the wall. Her legs were crossed primly,
but the skirt she wore exposed much of her legs. She wore a blank expression.

George shook his head as if he had just woken up from a
dream.

“We have developed new techniques and mechanical processes that
facilitate our manufacturing with less personnel. You wanted a work force you
could trust, nothing better than a machine.” He glanced back at Giselle and
then meaningfully allowed his gaze to drift back to Clarence. A smile played at
his lips.

He is mocking me!
Clarence thought.

“I am glad you have found a way to meet both of our demands
in such an eloquent way, Mr. Beckworth. Now, are the other items we discussed
under way?”

He smiled, pride beaming from his features.

“We are finished, actually.”

“Finished? Can I see?”

“Of course.” He approached a door marked “R & D.” Clarence
followed. Giselle stood up and followed. Her skirt stuck to her thigh. She
seemed not to notice.

“Once we mastered the code for the design and got past some
manufacturing truisms that did not apply to this technology, then it was a
snap,” George continued. “There is an amazing amount of public cooperation for
projects like this. We discovered a virtual gold mine of tinkerers who shared a
passion but work under the radar, so to speak. The printers do all the rest of
the work. You can almost say it was a community project.”

“I don’t know if I like the sounds of that,” Clarence said.

George smiled condescendingly.  They descended stairs to
what seemed to be a new addition to the facility.

“Don’t worry. Each individual worked on separate parts of
the project. Come see what we came up with.”

He opened another door. The factory was dirty and old. It
had an odd mix of tools that were several decades old and machinery on the
cutting edge of technology.

Florescent lights came on, their ballasts popping loudly. The
harsh light lit several rows of tables with large black boxes with blinking
lights and glass fronts.

“These are our 3D printers. State of the art. We use the
smaller models so we don’t have to register them. We make every part separately.
They are completely functional. We have three models.”

“Testing?”

“Of course. Come with me. The testing lab is over here.”

“Ammunition?”

“Standard .22 ammunition for most of the models. We found
that structural efficacy of the model can withstand tolerances up to four
15-round magazines with approximately sixty percent accuracy.”

“Not much stopping power. Anything bigger?”

George stopped and pulled a photo from his lab coat pocket.

He held it out to Clarence. Clarence took it by the corner
gently. It was an old fashioned technology, actual photo paper.

“I took this with an analog camera. I am sentimental. So, I
thought it would best, with moving parts like this, to make a revolver. More
stopping power, fewer snags, no springs. Less metal. Like I said, I am
sentimental. That was the first model my great grandfather produced.”

“This is the spread at what distance?” Clarence asked
pointing to the three hits close together.

“Twenty yards. Note the size of the entry. That is what a
.45 can do. Stopping power in spades.”

“What’s the drawback?”

George took back the photo and placed it in his pocket. He
sighed.

“The barrel melts after four shots. The first four shots are
100%. The next two are Russian Roulette.”

“Failure?”

“Deadly so, yeah. But we solved it. Our newest model only
holds three bullets. Smaller profile. When the chamber is pulled back to
re-load, a new barrel is inserted as part of the reloading process.  It is part
of the new magazine chamber.”

“Reload time?”

“Six point three seconds.”

“They will be dead.” Clarence was not a gun expert, but he
knew that by modern reloading standards, six seconds was too slow to be
effective for the demands they had in mind for their use.

“Not if they don’t miss with the first three.”

“Granted. What else do you have?”

George could not conceal his excitement.

“That’s what I was about to show you.”

He led them to a group of long, glass-walled rooms with a
modern security-access.

“What is this room?” Clarence asked. Giselle was just behind
him. He could smell her skin. It was very distracting.

“It is where we test the weapons.”

“I don’t see a target,” Clarence noted.

George indicated a table that held several blocks of what appeared
to be gelatin. The room had numerous cameras all aimed at the table. Computers
lined the room and a stand held a long black barrel with a weird contraption at
the end. It appeared to have an electric trigger.

“We use computerized ballistics. No need for a paper
target.”

“But in the picture you had a paper target.”

George shrugged.

“Early testing. Personal log. I am nostalgic, remember?”

“You were working on this before I came to you.”

George smiled.

“That is a good guess.”

“What is this?” Clarence asked, indicating the weapon being
held in vice. It was pointing to a table with the blocks of gel. He noted
several dark circles on the wall at the back of the room.

“It is a new weapon. We looked at the ammunition first. All
our current designs were built around emulating current design techniques.
Ballistics were built around those models. Then, we thought, what if we used
another material for the ammunition? It completely changed our designs. We just
needed to figure out the propellant, trajectories, and velocities.”

“Plastic bullets aren’t new tech. And they are rarely
lethal.”

“That is how I thought at first. But, a plastic bullet and
our high-strength carbon-tipped ammo are designed differently. And, we have
three different designs: flat, blade, and barbed.”

George placed a four-inch long plastic “bullet” in
Clarence’s hand.

“It is so light,” Clarence remarked.

“Part of the secret. This is exciting stuff.  Here watch
this,” he said, pulling up a video log and putting it on a terminal nearby.

Clarence watched as a tech pulled a trigger and the gel
block on the screen moved slightly. A puff of smoke at the back of the room was
the only indication that anything had happened. He continued to view the
results as several other technicians clapped their hands and hooted. He
realized then that the weapon made no sound.

“It made no sound,” Clarence noted.

“Yes. Watch.”

One tech in a blue overcoat approached the block and stuck
his finger in a small hole with one finger and then placed his finger in
another hole on the opposite side, holding it up to his mates. They all smiled
and watched as another tech approached the back wall and pulled the “bullet”
out of the concrete.

“It does not break down. It is so light, it cuts through
everything but the densest materials.”

“That will be devastating. How is it so quiet?”

“We found that...”

Before he could finish, a claxon horn sounded and several
red revolving lights lit up the hall behind them.

“What’s going on?” Clarence asked.

George looked sick.

“Security breach. We have to leave now!”

Clarence agreed but was rooted to the spot. He had thought
they were untouchable.

“Do you have one of these guns?”

“Only the test models of that one. And limited amounts of
ammo. We have several of the...”

Clarence ignored him and wrenched the weapon from the vice. It
felt like a kid’s toy. He hated violence. Detested it. But it was a means to an
end.

“I
’m no expert, but we need to bury this place,” Hallie
said.

Jake agreed. Across the swamp the sounds of machinery and
vehicles barely resonated over the sounds of nature. The cacophony of
whippoorwills, crickets, and frogs was like a low moan. It was in some ways
more soul-destroying than the noise of the city. It was a constant drone.

Gary sat behind them, working on his phone.

“I had a signal, now it is gone. It is like this swamp just
swallowed it,” Gary lamented.

Hallie said nothing. She wanted to leave him behind. That
was impossible. They were broke. At least, they could not access their money
without giving away their position. Gary was paying for everything without
complaint. It was an uneasy alliance.

They had to part with Natalya, though. Things were about to
get rough, and she would have come in handy. However, there was some sort of
misunderstanding with her passport, according to Gary. Jake suspected she was
here illegally.

The jeep they had rented from a dealership in Pascagoula. The
ordinance they had purchased from a dealer in Gautier who specialized in
dealing with government agencies. He gave them his Secret Service discount and
“bypassed” the paperwork.

Jake strapped on a soft Kevlar vest and put two FNS-9
automatics with Trijicon night sights in holsters on his hips. He slung a
Remington pump action 12 gage shotgun across his back and then a bandolier with
20 extra slugs over his shoulder. He held an H&K G36 with a reflex sight on
a single point sling across his body. Ten extra magazines sat in various
pouches at his chest, waist and legs. He felt forty pounds heavier, but this
was an assault, not an assassination. Shock and awe. Guns blazing. Gunpowder
and lead.

He looked over at Hallie as she put on her skin-tight
poly-rayon BDUs and zipped up her knee-high soft leather boots. He had
purchased two FNH Five seveNs with four extra magazines for Hallie. They had
lower recoil and fit her hand better than the bulky FN-9s did.

He had also splurged, buying a fully automatic AA-12 CQB
model shotgun. With a 20-round drum magazine and low weight and no recoil, it
was the perfect breaching shotgun when using only three operatives. Hallie was
unfamiliar with the weapon, and since it fired from an open bolt, she carried
it with fear. This was good. Jake tried to push the thoughts of their unborn
child in her womb from his mind.

Gary gripped a HK MP7. He held it like he had never used it before.

Hallie smeared some eye black on, pulled on a boonie cap and
nodded to him. Jake took solace in her professionalism and confidence. She was
a capable agent. Just the fact that she was here prepared to do something that
she had sworn never to do again, oddly put Jake at ease.  Jake’s only concern
was that he would perform with their family in mind, rather than the mission.
He put it from his mind and nodded back to her, a cocky grin slipping easily
into place.

The sun had dropped behind the trees and they had the cover
of dark. Over two dozen vehicles had driven down the newly paved gravel road to
the north. They had come from the west, driving down a rutted muddy road,
taking their time.

They jogged down the road and cut across a dry spot in the
swamp, stepping carefully over cypress knees and rotting logs. The smell was
moist, musty, green, and thick.  Evidently, green equaled death in a swamp. 
Everything was in some sort of wet decay.

Soon, they were at the rear approach to the two-story
facility. It appeared to be about 25,000 square feet with almost no window
entry. Jake pointed to a dock door with a hidden side entry under a canopy.

He wished he had schematics, threat assessment, or at least
a plan. No time. The crème colored Bentley in the guest parking space around
the side of the building meant that Clarence was here. Gary had briefed them on
who Clarence was and why he mattered. He also got them up to speed on the
entire operation. He explained the Sychol programming and his own role. It was
a long, sordid tale. It made Jake’s head spin.  It was all he could do not to
reach across and strangle the man.

Despite this his candor and full explanation, Jake could
tell he was holding something back. Hallie knew it, too. She would just as well
dump him in the swamp than continue on with him at their backs. She had
whispered as much to Jake as Gary made a potty break earlier.

But here they were with their backs to the wall, indicating
to Gary to pull out the bolt cutters. He snapped the lock off the door and
dropped the cutters in the mud with a plop.

“Get back,” Jake told Gary. He put his back to the building
behind him.

Jake made eye contact with Hallie and nodded. He watched her
swallow nervously as Jake opened the door with the barrel of his G36. Hallie
swung around and entered with the AA12. She looked right and then left, the
barrel of the shotgun swinging with her head.

The thing looked ridiculous in her hands. It was so huge. Its
stainless steel construction was light, however.

Jake glanced at Gary and nodded. They entered, turning to
Hallie’s exposed side as she turned right.

“Clear,” Jake said. His heart pounded in his chest and his
mouth was dry.

“Clear,” Hallie whispered.

“Through here,” Gary said. He started to walk ahead. Jake
barred his way with the rifle and shook his head.

“Not how we roll, Dr. Forsythe. Slow. Controlled. Safe. Hallie,
take the lead through the next door. Gary, guard our rear. Keep your ears
open.”

Hallie moved ahead. Gary did as he was told.

They were in a warehouse area with boxes stacked and several
forklifts working. A half dozen men shuffled around looking at boxes, and writing
numbers on clipboards. They all wore hard hats and heavy gloves, but no weapons
were in sight.

Hallie shook her head and pointed to a catwalk above them. Jake
assessed the situation and made a quick judgment.

“We can’t risk them seeing us. I don’t see an office. We
should go back to the control room and exit out the back.”

Hallie crossed past Gary who was looking bewildered.

“We’re going back through there,” Jake explained. Gary
shrugged. His knuckles where white gripping the MP7.

What a team
, Jake thought.

In the next room, the door led out into a long hallway. They
passed two bathrooms, a lab, several vacant offices and a break room. This was
the night shift. Fewer workers and more shadows in which to hide. The factory
looked like an old building that had been repurposed. Lead paint on the walls,
doors with key code machines and some with brass handles and skeleton key
holes.

The hairs on Jake’s neck stood on end. He grabbed Hallie and
motioned to an open door into a darkened room. Gary followed them.

Footsteps sounded down the hall and passed them. Jake peeked
out as two workers in lab coats passed, talking quietly.

“That was close,” Gary said.

The lights in the room came on.

“What are you doing here?” A female voice exclaimed from
behind them.

She had entered through a door in the back of the room. She
was in her early twenties and appeared as though she may have failed
cosmetology school. She arms were covered in tattoos, needle marks, and various
piercings.  She stood with a bundle of files held in front of her.

Gary brought his MP7 around and Jake swatted it down just as
a burst of bullets tore through the desk between them.

The woman screeched, dropping the files and ran out of the
room.

Gary looked at him with shame in his eyes.

“It’s fine. The gig is up. We need to work fast now. Try not
to shoot anyone who isn’t threatening us.”

Gary appeared stricken. Hallie looked pale.

“Where to now?” She asked.

“There are stairs up to the second floor down the hall. I
heard them coming down them when we ducked in here.”

“OK.”

Hallie moved out into the hall. She looked back at Jake and
he nodded.

“Run.”

He followed right behind her as she ran, the shotgun
swinging back and forth in front of her. They reached the stairs and she looked
up.

“I’ll take the lead. You follow right next to me. I will
kick the door in and step back and you come in shooting. Got it?”

Hallie nodded. Her eyes were opened wide and her nostrils
flared. Adrenalin and fear were a potent mixture.

“Gary? Gary!” Jake snapped in a harsh whisper.

Gary came up, his breathing ragged. He stood with the MP7
pointed at his feet.

“Yeah.”

“Guard our backs. Yell if you see a target. An armed target.
You get me?”

“Yes. I was just scared.”

“I know. It’s fine. We just don’t want to make any mistakes
here. Let’s hurry.”

Jake ran to the top of the stairs, his feet panging on the
steel stair treads. He slipped a pair night vision goggles down on his head and
turned the dial to heat vision. They were a poor model, but he could see
through windows and about forty feet ahead. Good enough for the work they
needed.

Several offices were at the top of the stairs. One door was
open about thirty feet away, light spilling out into the dark hallway.

“This way,” he said, hoping they were close.

He saw the sign on the door and he almost broke into a smile.
The guy put his name on the door. “George Beckworth, Owner.” What an
egotistical jerk. Jake had never even met him. He knew the type, though.

Jake used hand signals to warn Hallie and Gary. He slowly
stepped to the side of the door and then pivoted as he switched to the other
side. His quick glimpse inside showed him nothing. A well-lit room. No sounds
from within. Hallie hugged the wall on the other side of the door and Gary
stood at the corner of the hall guarding the stairs. Hallie took a deep breath
before sliding into the room.

She stood with her feet planted apart and squatted as she
pulled the trigger, the blast of the shotgun deafening. He watched her send the
first three shells flying and then he pivoted into the room, turning to cover
her left side as she poured more buckshot to the right.

No one there. The room was empty. Just a hazy green in his
goggles.

“Well, that was fun,” Hallie quipped.

The end of the barrel and the open bolt smoked and plastic
shell casings rolled quietly on the tile floor.

“They are here somewhere,” Jake said.

Then they heard shouting outside the door.

The burp of the MP7 sounded and Gary was ducking as bullets
whined off of the plaster and lathe walls.

“Help!” Gary said. “Security guards!”

Jake waved him on.

“This way!  They aren’t here!  Come on, we’ll hold them
off.”

Hallie threw down the shotgun and pulled her Five seveN.

“Go with Gary to the other end of this hall. I think it
turns. Yell if you need help.”

Hallie grabbed Gary by the hand. He looked frightened. His
glasses were askew on his face and were covered with debris from the wall.

“And help him get a new mag in that MP7.”

Jake ducked into the doorway of an adjacent room for cover. Just
then, two security guards in full uniform appeared.  They held their Python
.38s at their waists as they came around the corner. Jake almost felt sorry for
them. They looked as nervous as Gary.

He allowed them to come nearer and he dropped his G36 to his
side and pulled out a short wooden baton from a holster on his belt. He let
them pass and then he stepped out silently and brought the baton down on the
neck of the tall one. The man dropped as though his legs went out from under
him. His partner did not notice.

Jake pecked him on the shoulder. As he turned, Jake could
see the horror in his eyes. The underpaid security guard knew it was over even
before Jake brought the heel of his palm under the man’s chin, snapping his
head back around with an audible click. He collided with the wall and then fell
heavily onto the tile of the hall. Jake reached down and checked his pulse. He
was out, but alive.

He heard the other guard groan.

He had bought them some time.

Then the alarms sounded and red lights flashed from above
doors and exit signs.

He let out a curse.

“Jake!? What’s happening?”

“They know we are here, dear. Don’t worry. We will find
him.”

He ran and caught up to them. The hall here was not as dark
and so he took off his goggles.

“Where to now?”

“Down here. They have to have a firing range or something. Maybe
they are there,” he surmised.

She and Gary followed him as he took two steps at a time,
the claxon sound of the alarm gritting his nerves.

They exited into a large room full of glass partitions. He
saw two men across the room. One was holding what looked like a length of pipe
with a handle. The other had a lab coat.
George and Clarence,
Jake
thought
.

“Hallie!” Jake warned. He saw the man with the pipe raise
the barrel and point it in their direction.

The glass in front of him exploded and something hit him in
the shoulder hard enough to turn him around.

“Jake!” Hallie yelled.

As he rolled to the floor, he saw Gary duck behind a desk. Hallie
collapsed next to him, her eyes worried.

“Got me in the shoulder,” he said through gritted teeth. It
felt like something hot had cut him. He looked at the wound. It poured blood,
but his shirt was ripped and the wound looked like an ugly gash. Oddly it
appeared like a knife wound.

“What was that?”

He shook his head. He did not know or care. The man holding
that weapon would be dead soon. He felt it in his bones.

“No matter. We came to do a job. Let’s do it. Get to cover
over there. That thing can shoot through a wall, I think.” He pointed to a
heavy metal desk.