Day 50 (The DMT Series Book 2) (21 page)

“Got it all,” he said, throwing the backpack onto Dr Drecker’s lap.

“Careful,” Dr Drecker yelped, quickly checking that Adam had collected the correct items before transferring the DMT over to a more suitable battery-powered mini freezer.

“Everything good?” Adam asked.

Everything good,” Dr Drecker replied, pulling out Dr Kovacks’ notebook.

57

Alejandro smiled as he studied the computer screen in front of him. One of the advantages of Codyism was that it appealed to a range of different people. It was true that most of the devoted followers were from poor backgrounds; unemployed young people, disillusioned with the Western way of living. But although Codyism offered a sanctuary from the relentless pressure to perform in modern society, it also attracted some very high achievers. Often they found a simpler life in Codyism, a life in pursuit of spiritual richness instead of material wealth. And Alejandro was an expert in utilising those high achievers. The social media division of Codyism was on par with the best media organisations in the world. He also had some incredibly gifted hackers at his disposal. And this had proved invaluable in the cat and mouse chase he had to play with the US government from time to time, not to mention the strategic value it had when it came to keeping tabs on Codyism’s own member base.

When Cody had reached out to Alejandro, offering Cameron and Adam in exchange for the freedom of Drecker and himself, Alejandro had immediately thought it was a setup. Cody couldn’t possibly be stupid enough to believe Alejandro would ever let either him or Dr Drecker leave, or live for that matter.

But then Alejandro’s team of hackers had figured out how Cody and Dr Drecker were communicating. They were using innocent posts on a Reddit forum, and by analysing those posts Alejandro had become convinced that Cody was actually being truthful. He was just incredibly naive. Sometimes Alejandro forgot who Cody really was. Alejandro had spent so much time talking him up, putting him on a pedestal and pretending he was this Prophet he obviously wasn’t, that he had forgotten that Cody deep down was nothing but a loser. A twenty-eight-year-old kid who had achieved nothing in his life before his dad gave him that shot of DMT.

DMT didn’t make you any smarter though.

It did a lot of things, but it didn’t make you any smarter or more mature.

And Alejandro would use this knowledge to his advantage. He had accepted Cody’s offer. And he had pushed back the date for his own event. It was in fact perfect. Alejandro knew the Temple where Cody had suggested to hand over Cameron and Adam quite well. It would pose a perfect background for the live streamed broadcast of Alejandro’s revelation to his followers.

First Alejandro would dispose of Cameron, Cody and the rest. Then he would address his followers. And the world would never be the same again.

58

The air was cool in the hotel lobby where James Carter was waiting for the senator. He decided to keep his jacket on, even though he had been sweating like a pig only two minutes earlier. He was in downtown Las Vegas, and a steady stream of gamblers and tourists came shuffling through the revolving doors.

“James, good to see you my old friend,” said the senator as he sat down in one of the leather chairs opposite James Carter. He didn’t offer to shake Carter’s hand.

Carter remained seated, nodding politely.

“You promised me an easy election. What happened?”

Carter put his drink back on the oval table separating them. “I didn’t promise you an easy election. I promised another term for our president.”

“And how is that going to happen now? There is just over a month left until Election Day, and we’re polling behind by 15 points.”

“Things take time. But the chips are lining up for us at the moment.”

“I gave you the additional funding you asked for. I want results. Not excuses.”

“We have intel that a massive terrorist act will be committed the day before election night. Just make sure that the president is prepared to act presidential when he learns about the event, and nobody, nobody will even consider voting Democratic the following day.”

“And you can promise me this?”

“I can.”

“What sort of terrorist act are we talking about?” the senator asked.

“It is better you don’t know.”

“OK. But don’t try to cross me, Carter. I’m not going down alone. If there is a new president come the end of next month, and he decides to investigate old Black Ops, then I won’t protect you.”

“You don’t have to, Senator. And I can assure you: There won’t be a new president.”

Carter studied his watch as the senator left the lobby. He wished he could control the timing, but he couldn’t. MKULTRA had intercepted another message from Alejandro to Cody. A date had been set for when Cody would hand over Cameron and Adam to Alejandro. Cody had proposed the time and place, and Alejandro had accepted. He had even planned to hold his large gathering the very same afternoon.

All the pieces were falling into place.

There was even a good chance MKULTRA didn’t have to get its fingers dirty. That Alejandro and his band of misfits would do the work for them. Carter had no illusions Alejandro would actually keep up his end of the deal; to let Cody and Dr Drecker go in exchange for Adam and Cameron. Cody would have to be desperate if he thought that would ever fly.

The moment Alejandro caught sight of Cody and Cameron he would kill them both. Adam and Drecker didn’t pose any threat on their own, but they too would have to be eliminated. Reports had been streaming in from various intelligence agencies across the globe. People had started to go missing from Codyism camps. So far no charges had been laid out, but there were serious concerns that the organisation had taken a turn for the worse.

Carter knew the intel was correct. MKULTRA had prepared a report on Alejandro six months ago, and it had been scary reading. Alejandro had been the real leader of Codyism for years; he had been playing both Dr Drecker and Cody like puppets.

And Alejandro wasn’t just some nobody, some frustrated misfit like most of the other Codyists were. He was a very dangerous man, a brilliant strategist, a master in propaganda, and a fanatical psychopath.

Carter hadn’t been able to get accurate intel of what act of terrorism Alejandro was planning for his big event, but he had a good idea what it could be.

Daesh in Syria had been instructing its followers to commit random acts of terror for years, to become lone wolves who attacked cops and military personnel with whatever weapons they had at their disposal. The leaders of Daesh had known that such acts would instil great fear in the populations of the Western world. Westerners didn’t care what happened in Africa or the Middle East. One had to bring the battleground to their home turf.

But Daesh’s lone wolf strategy had never really gathered any momentum.

The followers simply weren’t smart enough to plan anything without getting caught.

And now Alejandro had instructed all his followers to bring a sharp knife to the gathering. No information of what the knives were to be used for had been provided. But Carter had a good idea.

He expected the psychopath, Alejandro, to instruct his followers to go out and commit random acts of terror, just like the leaders of Daesh had done.

And when they did, they would change the world forever.

The tide and support for terrorism would cease to exist overnight.

And the American president would have no problems getting re-elected the following day.

59

Drecker was feeling exhausted. He had been up since three am, studying Dr Kovacks’ notebook. He regretted not having done it before. If he had known what he now knew he could have made a real difference for Dr Kovacks and the death row patients. Or maybe he couldn’t have? The penny hadn’t dropped for Drecker until the nurse had started reading from the Old Testament for him. An entire year of lying on a bed like a vegetable had provided him with ample opportunities to think about the DMT problem. It was true that thinking was beginning to become a lost art form. Dr Drecker had been so busy at his job at the New York State Hospital that he seldom had found the opportunity to ponder on a problem for more than ten minutes. On average he had to respond to more than two hundred emails each day, and then there were all the other responsibilities of his job. Two hundred emails. That meant he had less than three minutes to spend on each email during normal business hours. No wonder he hadn’t been able to come up with any scientific breakthroughs during the last twenty years.

He was surprised he had been able to even function at all in his job.

Albert Einstein had spent ten years thinking about one single problem. That was how he had come up with his elegant Theory of Relativity. It wasn’t a massive intellect that had caused Einstein to become one of the most widely admired scientists in history, because to be honest, he had been a bit of a school failure. It was his single-minded focus, his unwillingness to accept anything but the correct answer, and his courage to stand by his convictions once he had made up his mind that had made Albert Einstein who he was.

What Dr Drecker was going to propose would go against all conventional wisdom. He was certain most of the established scientific community would laugh their heads off if he claimed it to be true. But he intuitively knew it was.

And just as Einstein’s hunch had been proven correct twenty years after he had performed his mind experiments, the scientific community would eventually acknowledge Dr Drecker’s proposal as the truth as well.

Even if the world still wasn’t ready for his revelation, it would eventually be.

Timing was everything.

There was a perfectly good reason DMT was one of a select few compounds the brain would exert energy to let into its confines. The brain allowed glucose for fuel, and certain amino acids for protein synthesis, to pass through the blood-brain barrier. It also allowed DMT through. Why?

Because humans needed it to be conscious.

DMT was the basis for consciousness.

Without it humans would simply be animals.

Without DMT humans wouldn’t be able to perceive the world as they did.

This realisation was of extreme importance. It explained so many of the events in the Old Testament that Dr Drecker had been listening to over the last twelve months. Proximity to death had catalysed prophecy in so many occurrences in the Old Testament. Elijah was lying down to die when an angel roused him. Hagar, Sarah’s expelled maidservant was about to die of thirst when an angel appeared before her. Then there was Jacob, who prophesied for his twelve sons while on his deathbed, and Joseph who believed he was about to die when he predicted the great exodus from Egypt.

And who could disregard the fact that Moses was eighty years old when God first appeared before him? Fragile and old he had his visions of the burning bush. A burning bush! Couldn’t that be a DMT-containing acacia bush, the vaporized fumes of which Moses would have inhaled when he was appointed by God to lead the Israelites out of Egypt?

Dr Drecker was convinced. There were too many similarities to be just coincidences.

And it wasn’t restricted to the Old Testament. Jesus Christ dying on the cross. Couldn’t the experience of crucifixion have elevated the levels of DMT in Jesus’ body?

All the clues were there.

One just had to look closely enough.

Cody smiled when he was read Alejandro’s reply to his proposal. Alejandro had accepted to trade Adam and Cameron for his dad. He had just added one single condition. Cody and his dad would have to agree to re-join Codyism. Cody had expected nothing less from Alejandro. It had been unrealistic to believe that Alejandro would just let Cody and his dad leave Codyism.

If Alejandro had accepted Cody’s proposal without objections he would have known it was a trap. But Alejandro making counterproposals, attempting to force his will upon Cody, that was exactly the sort of behaviour Cody had expected.

That was the Alejandro he knew, the one he knew he could work with.

“I need to get stronger, Guzman,” Cody said. “I need to get strong enough to go on a small jungle trek in four weeks’ time.”

Guzman nodded. He had no idea what his master was planning. But he didn’t like it, not one bit. Alejandro was a snake. And you should never make a deal with a snake.

“The date has been set,” the agent said.

“When?”

“28
th
of August. Four weeks from now.”

“Location?”

“Unchanged. The Temple in Argentina.”

Carter leant back in his chair and cracked his neck. “I wish I knew what they were planning.”

“We know what they are planning. They think they are meeting Cody. They have no idea he is doublecrossing them and has made a deal with Alejandro.”

“It’s not that simple. We’ve been chasing these guys for years. They’ve never done anything stupid before. Why would they suddenly start now? No, they have to have a plan.”

“They’ve been lucky. That’s what they’ve been.”

“They’ve taken out two agents. I don’t call that luck.”

“So, should we call it off and apprehend them now instead?”

“No, we have to see this through. We can’t afford to let Alejandro and Cody get away. But we need to be certain that we get them all this time. Set up an appointment with the Senator for tomorrow.”

“What should I tell him it is about?”

“Tell him it is regarding the possibility of using military drones outside America,” Carter replied. He had four weeks to plan the operation. He knew the place they would meet. It was in the middle of dense jungle. Minimal risk of civilian casualties. If he could get authorisation to launch a drone attack he would solve all his problems with the press of a button.

PART 4

60

4 weeks later

Argentina,

August 2015

“I can’t believe how easy it was to cross the border,” Dr Drecker said.