BRAINRUSH 02 - The Enemy of My Enemy (26 page)

Doc’s eyes narrowed. He went over the definition in his mind as he considered it. A factorial is the product of an integer and all the integers below it. A factorial prime is a prime number that is one less or one more than a factorial…Yes, Timmy was correct. Doc pointed to three of the numbers.

“Right,” Timmy said. “All but three of them. There’s no way that’s a coincidence.”

It was hard to disagree with that statement, Doc thought. Everything about the artifact reeked of exacting purpose, right down to its dimensions. Their laser measuring instruments had confirmed that it was perfectly equilateral down to the nanometer, or one billionth of a meter. Timmy was right—there must be a distinct reason for those three symbols being different. He tapped the stem of his pipe against his chin.

“All right,” he said, the scientist within still skeptical. “How did you translate the symbols into numbers in the first place?”  

“It sparked last night when I was channel surfing. I caught the end of a special on autism on the Discovery Channel. They were discussing synesthesia. I followed up with an all-nighter on the Net.”

“Explain.”

“It’s a neurological condition in which stimulation of one sensory or cognitive pathway leads to automatic, involuntary experiences in a second sensory or cognitive pathway.”

“Go on,” Doc said warily. He suspected he knew where this was headed.

“It’s found in rare cases among people with autism or spectrum disorders. They see numbers differently than we do. Where we see a string of digits, their brain sees distinct shapes, with defined textures, colors, and depths.”

“Timmy, you’re a lot of things, but a synesthete isn’t among them.” Warning bells sounded in his head.

“Well, no,” Timmy said, shifting in his seat. “The truth is, I’m not the one who translated them. Uh…I got some outside help.”

“Tim—!”

“Don’t worry, Doc,” Timmy said. “I didn’t divulge any top-secret stuff to anyone. I just shared photos of the symbols with a really cool dude they talked about on the show. He doesn’t have a clue where they came from.”

 “For Christ’s sake, Timmy,” Doc whispered. He leaned over so he wouldn’t be overheard. “You could get yourself thrown into prison for a stunt like that!”

“Doc, Doc. You gotta chill,” Timmy said. “Sometimes you gotta stretch the boundaries, you know? Be bold. We’re here to change the world, right? Besides, it’s what we needed to crack this baby.”

Doc noticed Colonel Brown making his way toward them. He was moving fast.

Terrific.

Timmy continued, pointing a thumb at the approaching man. “So, do you want to me to keep working to solve the riddle here, or are you going to have Fester lock me up in a federal penitentiary with a bunch of pervs?”

Doc straightened to face Brown. Out of the corner of his mouth, he mumbled, “One of these days, Timmy…”

The lieutenant colonel had a backpack slung over one shoulder. It appeared heavy from the way the strap stretched the fabric of his camo utility uniform.

“I’ve got a little surprise for you, Doc,” Brown said. He plopped the backpack on the desk beside Timmy’s console. He unzipped the top, reached in with both hands, and removed a dull metal container about the size of a tackle box. There was a battery meter embedded in the top of the box. Its indicator wavered just above the red zone. The box’s single thumb latch was unsecured.

Setting the box on the counter, Brown said, “One of our teams searched Bronson’s apartment. He was long gone, but we found this hidden under a floorboard.”

Doc was unable to curb his excitement. Ever since he’d learned that Jake Bronson was responsible for the launching of the duplicate artifact in the mountains of Afghanistan, even mention of the man’s name got him going. “Have you opened it?”

“Oh, yeah,” Brown said, his normally somber manner replaced by a Cheshire grin. “And you’re not going to believe what’s inside.” 

Like a poker player eagerly gathering his chips, Timmy pulled the box toward him and snapped open the latch.

“Hang on,” Doc said. He slapped his palm on the lid. “We’d hardly be following scientific protocol if we simply examined it on your desk without setting up some proper controls.”

“Doc,” Timmy said. “It’s time to be bold. Remember?”

The kid was right, Doc thought.
When had I become so damn conservative?

With a tight-lipped nod, he lifted his hand and said, “Go for it.”   

As soon as the lid swung open, a beeping noise sounded from the speaker at an adjacent console.

“Doc,” the technician at the station reported excitedly. “I’ve got some sort of signal coming from the shroud!”

Another scientist across the room shouted, “Same here! Harmonic waves of some sort.”

Doc heard the words, but his mind shoved them aside for the moment. His awareness was captured by the three-inch black pyramid lying within a nest of electromagnets in the box.

“I’ll be damned,” he muttered. His mind raced through a myriad of possibilities, all of which revolved around the obvious conclusion that the mini-pyramid must have originated from the larger one launched into space.
How had Bronson separated it from its mother? Why had he kept it in an electromagnetic cocoon? What was its purpose?

He slammed the lid of the box closed. “Colonel,” he said, “I don’t care how you do it, but you simply
must
find this Bronson character!”  

Chapter 47

Puerto Peñasco, Mexico

P
uerto Peñasco—also known as Rocky Point to the many American tourists who streamed in from Arizona and California—was a small municipality situated on the strip of land that joins the peninsula of Baja California with the rest of Mexico. Only a hundred miles from Arizona, its warm beaches and picturesque setting on the Gulf of Mexico made it a haven for American retirees. In this second week of June, the town bustled with its annual influx of summer tourists.

Jake peeked through the blinds that covered the second-story window of the small hospital room. The panel truck that had brought them into the city was parked on the curb below. He caught a glimpse of Becker standing watch in the shadowed recess of a small shop across the street. The truck’s owner stood beside him smoking a cigarette.

The local man was uncle to one of the boys in Papa’s former L.A. gang. It seemed the former gang leader’s tentacles reached far and wide throughout Mexico, a fact that had led Jake to the Mexican narcoranch safe house in the first place. Jake had called Papa as soon as Cal picked them up in the CV-22. Papa made a few quick calls and within minutes was back to Jake with a plan. An hour later, the CV-22 landed at a remote spot five miles outside Puerto Peñasco, where they met up with Papa’s contact. Cal and Kenny stayed with the plane.

Marshall, Lacey, and Bradley kept the children occupied on the far side of the room. They’d cleaned up as best they could in the adjacent bathroom, exchanging their soggy clothes for an assortment of colorful T-shirts, slacks, and shorts that their driver had picked up for them at a local tourist shop. Lacey’s forehead was properly bandaged and the flesh wound in Bradley’s arm had been stitched up.

The relief they felt was reflected in the children’s relaxed manner. Josh listened wide-mouthed as Sarafina gave an animated account of her plunge through the underground river. Even Max seemed lighter on his feet. His tail wagged as he moved from hand to hand for a scratch behind the ears or a pet along his back.

Tony brushed up beside Jake and squeezed his shoulder. “She’s going to be okay, man,” he said softly. “We got here with time to spare.”

Jake turned to face his friend. “I pray to God you’re right.”

Francesca was lying in the next room, an IV drip inserted in her arm. An insistent nurse had ushered Jake from her side as she and the doctor conducted the more intimate portion of a physical exam. At first, the doctor had resisted using the drug Jake had taken from the airport hangar. By process of elimination, he’d quickly identified which of the three vials had the antidote, but he’d insisted that more tests were necessary before administering it. The fact that Jake’s tattered and worn group—two children and a dog included— had filed in through a seldom-used maintenance door at the rear of the hospital hadn’t done much to set the doctor’s mind at ease. But a handful of cash and a peek at Tony’s handgun had transformed his attitude. The doctor had barked a quick series of orders and the nurse escorted the group to the treatment area of the small but clean hospital.

Jake prayed they got here in time. Would the drug save their unborn child? Would Francesca be able to conceive again? 

When his wife and daughter died over a year ago, Jake had spiraled into a deep depression. It lowered his defenses to a point where the cancer he’d fought off a decade earlier had been able to find its away in again. If it hadn’t been for the freak accident in the MRI, he’d be dead by now. Even so, the loss of his family had remained an open wound. He’d found it impossible to imagine a time when the emptiness it left wouldn’t overshadow everything. But Francesca had changed all that. She had given him hope. Now she carried their child.

“Why’d they do it, Jake?” Tony asked. He kept his voice low to keep from being overheard by the children. “Why inject Francesca at all?”

“Based on what I overheard,” Jake said, “I don’t think it had been a part of some master plan or anything like that. The bastard doctor acted on his own, probably overzealous in seeing if his drug worked. They knew she was pregnant.”

“It still doesn’t make sense to me. Why use an exotic drug? There are a lot of simpler ways to end a pregnancy.”

Jake shuddered, remembering what he’d learned about the drug after reading the doctor’s private notebook.

“There’s a hell of a lot more to it than that,” Jake said, speaking more loudly than he intended. “Ending a pregnancy is only a side effect of the drug. Its real purpose is far worse.”

Lacey rose and approached the two men. Marshall was quick to follow, leaving Bradley to sit with the children.

“Say that again,” Lacey said, her voice hushed.

The four huddled together. Jake blew out a breath as he prepared to give his friends the highlights of what he’d discovered. Even with his expanded mental capacity, he found it difficult to grasp the enormity of Battista’s insidious plan.

“I’m guessing it’s the brainchild of one of the two remaining implant subjects who made it out of the mountain,” he began, then told them what he’d learned from the journal.

“One drop of undiluted serum is enough to infect an Olympic-size swimming pool of drinking water,” he concluded.

“And if you drink it?” Lacey said.

“One sip is enough to render a woman infertile. Permanently.”

Lacey gasped.

“Jesus,” Marshall said. He wrapped his arm around her.

Tony’s face narrowed to a fist. “What the hell are they planning to do with it?”

“I don’t know. But whatever it is, it’s happening in L.A.”

Tony took out the sat-phone and pressed
redial.
Another busy tone. He clipped the phone to his belt.

“We’ll stop ’em,” Lacey said. Her eyes were daggers.

“We need to contact Homeland Security,” Marshall said, reaching for the phone.

Jake stayed his hand. “Not so fast. It’s not as simple as that. First of all, what would we say?  We don’t know where in Los Angeles the terrorists are based, or how and when they intend to insert the compound into the water system. And Homeland is not going to believe some anonymous tipster over the phone. We sure as hell can’t identify ourselves, can we? Like it or not, we’re all fugitives. Hell, after our guns-blazing escape at the Torrance airport, not to mention the theft of a fully-armed CV-22 by Cal and Kenny, we’ve probably made it to the top of the government’s Most Wanted list.”

“But we didn’t do anything wrong!” Marshall said.

“Sure,” Tony grumbled. “And after two or three years of confinement and heavy interrogation, they might actually believe you.”

“Turning ourselves in isn’t an option,” Jake said firmly. He thought about Francesca in the other room and he imagined thousands—make that millions—of other women going through the same agony if Battista’s plan succeeded. They couldn’t allow that to happen.

He studied his friends. As much as he’d like to safeguard them from what was to come, he knew he couldn’t do it alone.

“We’re going to have to deal with Battista on our own,” he said. “Once and for all.”           

A hush fell over the group as the enormity of Jake’s words kicked in. Even the children, who had been chatting nonstop until now, quieted as if they sensed the tension in the room.

Tony was the first to break the silence. “We can’t stick around here much longer.”

“Yeah, I know,” Jake said, encouraged by his buddy’s matter-of-fact acceptance of the situation. “We need a place to hole up and strategize.”