Day 50 (The DMT Series Book 2) (5 page)

He checked his phone.

There were no messages. He thought that was odd. Surely he should have received some updates by now. Both targets were in the camp. Why hadn’t he received confirmation that both targets were either dead or incapacitated? Had something happened?

MKULTRA had almost been marginalised after the bomb explosion in New Mexico, and the incident outside New York. Strong forces within the government had demanded an investigation into all the Black Operations ever funded by the CIA, and it was getting harder and harder for James Carter to get things done. He had taken a calculated risk by authorising this operation before the new law was in place, but come Friday, when the Senate finally approved it, both Cameron and Cody would be dead, and the entire discussion would be theoretical. The latest intel had confirmed that Cody was well ahead in the process of establishing a new religion called Codyism. It was still small, maybe a few thousand followers, but James Carter knew it had the potential to grow a lot bigger. And once it got big enough to attract media attention it would be almost impossible for MKULTRA to take out Cody and his father. So far Cody had been smart enough to not inform his naïve followers of the true reason behind his healing abilities. But that was the problem with free will: You never knew what people would eventually do, how they would act. And at one stage Cody could very well decide to tell the world that he wasn’t divine at all, that DMT was the true source of his powers, that a drug could give any human being the ability to become immortal.

And maybe then someone would attempt to re-open the gates.

Perhaps someone would be successful in opening the gates Carter’s best agent Moses had closed when he killed
Patient F
at the MKULTRA facility two years earlier. Agent Moses had died a hero that day. He had ensured that the prophecy didn’t come to fruition when he killed
Patient F
. But there were still two DMT children out there in the world; Cameron and Cody. And they needed to be stopped.

They needed to be exterminated.

The old man gave a gentle wave to the driver, indicating that he should get moving. The old man had an airplane to catch.

9

Cody felt something touching his left cheek. It felt like a stick.

“He’s still alive,” a voice with a Mexican accent yelled out.

“Take him back to camp. Clean him up and feed him.”

The Mexican with the stick poking at Cody’s face nodded. Then he whistled for some of his crew to join him. The American was alive, but he was badly hurt. It looked like both his legs were broken, and he had scratches all over his face and upper torso. The black band that always covered his eyes was gone, and all that was left was two black holes. Two back holes disappearing into a deep abyss. The Mexican turned his gaze away. He had seen some pretty messed up things during his career. This was different though.

This was special.

Adam crawled up onto the shore of the river, and coughed up some water. His body had taken a severe beating. So much so, that he was surprised he was still alive. After spotting the choppers he had been carried by the river a good two kilometres farther downstream before he managed to spot Nina. Cameron had still been nowhere to be seen.

Then the river had started to pick up speed again. Adam had intuitively understood what it meant, and with the last strength in his body he had managed to manoeuvre himself next to Nina just before they reached the massive waterfall he had been expecting. The noise had been unbearable. It had been impossible to hear what Nina had yelled out to him, even though she was hardly thirty centimetres away from his face. He had understood what she was trying to say though. It had been, “I love you.” She had seen how the water just seemed to drop off the mountain a few hundred meters in front of them, and she had instantly known that they couldn’t possibly survive the fall.

It had been her goodbye.

Adam hadn’t given up that easily though; he had latched onto her arm, swearing that he would never let go.

And then they had dropped off the cliff.

Arm in arm.

It hadn’t mattered how hard Adam had tried to hold onto Nina’s arm though. When they hit the surface of the river below, after free-falling for more than eighty meters, he had lost his grip and broken his promise. He wasn’t certain, but he believed he might have lost consciousness for a few seconds as well. He had been submerged for so long that he had imagined he was already dead.

And then the river had spat him out again.

Coughed him up to the empty surface, where no one else was.

Adam had lost them both.

He had lost the two most important people in his life.

The only two people in his life.

Nina and Cameron.

Frantically he had been looking around. Looking everywhere. He simply couldn’t give up.

He could never give up.

He had fought the elements for what seemed like an eternity. He had swallowed what had felt like gallons of water, been pelted against rocks at the bottom, dragged under water and spat out again so many times he had lost count.

And then, finally, the river had again eased.

It had morphed into the most beautiful calm stream, one of those rivers he had always wanted to go kayaking on when he was a kid. How was it possible that something so beautiful could be so deadly, he had thought as he crawled up onto a sandbank, collapsing face down in the mud.

He had known he should attempt to stay awake, he had known he should be looking for his daughter and Nina. But he just hadn’t been able to keep his eyes open.

He had just wanted to sleep.

An hour later he woke to somebody touching his face.

“Dad, it’s me Cameron.”

Adam looked up and saw his daughter kneeling down over him. She looked so beautiful, so beautiful that for a moment he mistook her for an angel.

“Nina?” he asked.

Cameron shook her head, tears forming in her eyes.

10

The mosquito net was swaying in the cool breeze from the ocean. Every inch of Cody’s body was hurting. The soft touch of the wind seemed like ten daggers slicing through his skin. The pain was excruciating. He tilted his head to the side. Listened out for familiar sounds, smelt the air and applied the millions of small tell-tale signs that were always present to orient himself to his situation.

Almost immediately he understood where he was.

“Alejandro, did my father make it?” he asked. His voice hoarse.

Alejandro rose from the chair in the corner of the room. “No, Master Cody. I’m sorry to inform you that your dad didn’t make it,” Alejandro replied, softly approaching Cody’s bed.

“Are you certain?”

“Yes, Master Cody. Unfortunately your dad was killed by shrapnel from a grenade. I witnessed it myself. The Americans took his body when they left.”

“Took his body? Why did they take his body?”

“We don’t know. But your father may have been listed as a high-priority asset due to his connection to you. The chain of command most likely needed visual confirmation that he was dead. They took Marconi’s body as well. The rumour is that they dumped the bodies in the ocean. Gave them a wet grave like they did with Osama.”

“Bin Laden was a terrorist. What wrong had my dad ever done?”

“He was your father, Master. And you are a threat to them.”

Cody turned his body to the side. He desperately wanted to cry, but he couldn’t. The pain raged through his body like a desert storm. He should be screaming, screaming in pain and grief, instead he felt the pain and hurt fuelling his anger. It just kept growing. It was out of control.

“What happens to me now?” Cody asked. There was no emotion in his voice. Even the hoarseness was gone. He had just been told his protector, the drug lord Marconi was dead. He guessed Alejandro would either attempt to sell him off to another drug lord, or use him in an attempt to take over Marconi’s old gang, use Cody to stage a coup.

“We follow you now, Master Cody,” said Alejandro. “Our loyalty to Marconi was based on money and fear. Our loyalty to you is based on faith and hope. I speak for everyone. You have our eternal allegiance. We can be the army your father always wanted.”

“I don’t want an army, Alejandro. I just want to be left alone.”

“You father was right, Master, you can’t fight who you are. When we found you beneath that cliff, we all knew it was true. You are the Messiah returned. You are the promised prophet.”

“Why do you say that, Alejandro? It’s simply not true. Look at me. I’m a wreck. I’m blind. My legs are broken, and every bone in my body hurts. I’m not a prophet. I’m a mortal human being. A fragile human piece of garbage.”

“Your father wrote about this exact moment in the Holy Book.”

A sting of fear shot through Cody’s body. The Holy book. The book that his dad had been authoring, attempting to turn Cody into some kind of prophet for the new awakening, the new awakening of spiritualism. Cody had only heard parts of it, and what he had heard had been outright ridiculous. Cody’s dad claimed to have based the text in it on what Cody had been saying in his sleep. It was a bizarre collection of predictions and statements that were all so poetically and vaguely phrased that one could put a million different meanings on each sentence. It was worthless gibberish.

“Your father wrote that the day would come when the Son would fall from the sky, and awaken to his calling. This is exactly what has happened, Master Cody. Don’t you see it? All the predictions are coming true. We are all your loyal servants.”

Cody just lay there. How pathetic. They all considered him a God, but he couldn’t even go to the bathroom by himself. “And Cameron, did she get away?”

Alejandro nodded, although there was no one to see it. Cody was blind. “The girl and the man got away. The woman didn’t make it though. We located her grave next to the river, a few miles downstream. They had buried her before leaving the area.”

Cody smiled. At least Cameron was safe, the only person who could ever understand what he was going through.

“It was the girl that led the Americans here. It is rumoured she had cut a deal with the CIA; your life for hers. Well, it didn’t work out for her. You survived.”

“My life for hers?” Cody repeated. He had been a fool. He had let her in, believing she was there to warn him and his dad. She was the snake in the prophecy, the prophecy her father had authored.

“Don’t you see, Master Cody? It is all coming true. Every prophecy ever written.”

And Cody could see it now. He could see it very clearly.

He was the chosen one, the one selected to carry out the prophecies.

PART 2

11

One year later.

Mexico,

June 2015

The head of MKULTRA, James Carter, threw the report onto the solid oak table, and leant back in the black leather chair. “This is alarming news. It is growing a lot faster than we expected,” he said as he removed his oversized square glasses, before gently placing them on the edge of the table.

“Yes, Director. The growth seems to have gained momentum. There is no doubt about that.”

“Have we updated the growth projections based on the new data?”

“Yes, and it’s not pleasant reading. If the growth rate continues, Codyism could be among the top four religions within a decade. Within two decades it may quite possibly surpass Christianity and Islam.”

James Carter shook his head. He should have retired years ago, he should be sitting on the deck of a cruise ship somewhere in the Mediterranean with his wife by now. Instead he found himself still leading MKULTRA. He had planned to hand the reins over to his best agent, Moses, a few years back. Unfortunately Moses had been murdered by Cody Drecker, the same Cody Drecker who now threatened to destroy everything James Carter had worked so hard to build over the last five decades.

“We can’t allow that to ever happen,” he replied.

The other person nodded. He was used to nodding. Agent Fowler had been promoted to head the manhunt they had going to capture and kill Cody Drecker. After the incident in Brisbane, where he had led the team that blew up half a floor of the Royal Albert Hospital, Agent Fowler had expected to be sacked. Instead he had been pushed up the chain in MKULTRA. The two other agents involved had left the agency a long time ago. The official story was that they had sought out external opportunities, outside the agency. The true story was that they had never been MKULTRA material. They hadn’t been able to cope with the knowledge of those doctors and nurses dying in the explosion. That fact didn’t bother Agent Fowler, however. There were much bigger matters at stake than worrying about the loss of a few public servants. The victims of the explosion were collateral damage, casualties in the war MKULTRA was waging. Because it was a war they were fighting – an outright war. Agent Fowler hadn’t realised until his security clearance was upped two years ago and he was let into the inner circle, the circle that had knowledge of the threats humanity was really facing. In that perspective the loss of a mere thirty-seven innocent people was like a drop of piss in the vast Pacific Ocean.

“It won’t happen, Director.” Agent Fowler packed up his folders, and left the boardroom.

He was a good operator, Agent Fowler, but he wasn’t Moses. James Carter had realised a long time ago that he wouldn’t be retiring anytime soon. He would most likely die with his boots on, defending his country.
But that wasn’t necessarily such a bad thing, was it?
He would probably have hated being on a cruise anyway. There was a reason he hardly spent time with his wife as it was. She was dead boring. He couldn’t care a rat’s ass whose kid had been promoted to the CEO of some charity, or whatever it was she had tried to explain to him the last time they had dinner together. That was nine weeks ago. In MKULTRA you didn’t just marry your job, you stayed faithful, and you worked your ass off to make it the best relationship ever. Till death do us part. His wife had thought those words were for her. They had always been for MKULTRA. If James Carter had ever been presented with a choice like Moses, to drop a bomb on a building that would most certainly kill everyone in a radius of ten kilometres or so surrounding the building, or risk something like Cody disappearing into society, his choice would have been easy.