Eddy's Current (45 page)

“Yes, yes I have. But I don’t understand. Only the most elite, well–known and dedicated agents are chosen for service in the Force.”

“Your record is good, and you have been selected. I’ll show you the office you will have if all of this works out for you.”

Hall showed Hernandez an office that would have satisfied the ego of any Fortune 500 corporate CEO. It spoke loud of prestige and power and respect—all things Hernandez believed he deserved but had been unable to attain. It was all before him on a silver platter.

“Tell me more,” Hernandez said, as the two of them sat down in the new office’s guest chairs. After several hours of negotiations, Hernandez was sold. He really had no choice. He was already too far in with Peterson to reject an offer from him.

Things would move quickly, he was told. He would begin his new job right away. He would have top secret clearance and would answer directly to Hall. By the time Hall was through with Hernandez, his ego was so bloated that he was puffed up like a narcissist on supersteroids. He strutted from office to office, almost floating in his newly created fantasy world. He couldn’t imagine that the world owed him any less than this new position. It hadn’t taken long for him to embrace his new sense of entitlement. “How had it taken so long for the world to notice?” he wondered. Now that it had noticed, Hernandez was basking in the notoriety.

Hall wasted no time getting down to business. Hernandez would be told that there was an opportunity to hurt River, deeply, and that Hernandez should head it up as his patriotic service to the new world government.

Hall’s first meeting with Hernandez began in Hall’s office on the second day of Hernandez’s work in his new job. “We have a person who believes he is above the law, a person who believes that he is above Mr. Peterson. Your job is to dissuade him from any further action against us. Do you understand?” Hall explained.

“Define dissuade,” Hernandez replied.

“No, Mr. Hernandez. That’s not how this works. You define dissuade. Then you go out and dissuade. Do you understand?”

“What are the rules? The boundaries? The restraints?”

“No, no, Mr. Hernandez; you’re missing the point entirely. This will not be like your previous work for us. You define things now. We don’t want to know. The only rule that matters is the rule that says that those who are uncooperative with Mr. Peterson’s government must be stopped. You’re only out of bounds if you don’t do enough to stop the challenges to Mr. Peterson.”

“And the restraints?”

“There are none. We don’t want restraints. There are to be no restrictions placed on your creative thinking.

“Oh, and there is one other thing. You do what you do and you don’t report it to anyone. Keep your mouth shut. I don’t want to know and I don’t want anyone else to know. We can’t know details. Just get your stuff taken care of. You will be judged on whether or not threats have been eliminated. That’s it. That’s the bottom line. We have no interest in judging you on the procedures you choose to use to accomplish your tasks. Your rewards will be great, Mr. Hernandez. Your punishment for failure will be severe. So don’t fail.

“I’m ready.”

“Your first case will be a tough one. You can’t fail and you can’t even slip up. Do you understand? We are throwing you right into the fire.

“River Warwick,” Hall said simply.

“Yes,” Hernandez replied.

“He must be stopped,” Hall said. “He has demonstrated disdain for Mr. Peterson’s authority. We have to make sure that he fully understands that he must stop his work at USFIA and that he must change his ways. Here’s the deal. We can’t have him harmed directly. It would be too obvious. Besides that, he is surrounded by USFIA security. We’ll be caught and then exposed if we go after him directly. We don’t have full control of USFIA yet, although we expect to have that control eventually. USFIA is the last holdout of independent authority in the U.S. government. We need to send them a message that any disloyalty on the part of their personnel will result in unpleasant consequences. Warwick’s too popular for us to go directly after him like bulls in a china shop. Any action against him personally would expose us. Too many people are around him who would realize what we’re doing and expose us.”

“I thought I was on my own with regard to the details,” Hernandez said.

“You’re on your own when I say you’re on your own. If I happen to change the rules, Mr. Hernandez — and you may find that I do that quite often — you will be flexible.

“Now, I’m going to give you some options, ways you might want to get at Mr. Warwick, to send him a message loud and clear. You will not be given this many options for future missions. I’m helping you to think creatively because this is your first assignment in your new position. After this, you’ll have to come up with your own options.”

“Okay. Go ahead.”

“After I’m done giving you these options, you’re on your own and you must succeed in sending the message without any trace back to us. They must get the message without getting it. Understand?”

“Yes.”

“Warwick has a wife and twin children. We don’t give a damn about any of the three of them, but just remember that we don’t want public outrage. Whatever happens has to send one message to the USFIA and another to the general public. The public has to believe that a horrible crime occurred, and that we are in full control, and in fact we will prove to be the heroes.

“At the same time the public is eating that crap and believing every word of it, USFIA has to be sent the message that, while there is no chance that they can prove that we’re involved, they still understand that the unfortunate event was a result of the actions of their personnel. Nothing means as much to Warwick as his family. Nothing.

“Oh, and one more thing. You may want to save one or more of the three of them for insurance purposes. Sort of an unwritten agreement between us and Mr. Warwick that if he behaves, he might get to see the survivors again.

“You need to get to work now. Have a nice day.”

Things had become much more complicated for River and Eddy. Now the top agent for the USFIA, River was no longer foolishly youthful. He was a highly skilled professional. He was good at his job, and he still believed in the ideals of his country and in the ideals learned in the USFIA academy. The USFIA was the only remaining source of power, integrity and independence in the entire U.S. governmental structure and, for that matter, in the entire world. River had to be careful. He was not allowed to shine too brightly. He and Albert knew full well that Peterson would work to dismantle the USFIA. The USFIA was Peterson’s only remaining obstacle to absolute world dominance. Peterson was coming after them. They could hear Peterson and his army marching deliberately towards them without even placing their ears to the ground. Perhaps their own Governing Council members were marching with Peterson towards them.

River loved Eddy more than ever. They had given up nearly everything in hopes of bringing Eddy’s dream for Emily’s Angels to fruition. And, they had sacrificed a great deal for River’s career. In spite of the world’s chaos, they were satisfied that they were doing as they should to ease the suffering of others. Their lives seemed full. Something was about to go wrong, though. It was about to go terribly wrong. It happened fast, and it shattered River’s world.

12 April 2026. River and Eddy were in San Antonio for a few days of rest. River was tired and was enjoying one of his famous naps back at the hotel while Eddy took the kids for a walk. Eddy was relaxing along the Riverwalk with the twins, enjoying a lunch with them under a shade tree, down near the edge of the water. She was worried, but no more so than at any other time. Would she be abducted? What if something happened to River? What if someone did something to harm the twins? Who is this madman, Peterson, who’s running things now? Is he as dangerous as he seems? Will he demonstrate restraint now that he has so much power?

Eddy quietly sipped her water, ate her sandwich, and wondered. She fell into a deep sleep, something she seldom did in the middle of the day. The twins were secure in their stroller, locked in by the safety straps. The wheels of the stroller were locked in place. The twins were napping.

As soon as Hernandez and his agents were certain that their spiked water rendered Eddy unconscious, they moved in. They calmly highjacked the stroller with the twins in their places. The agents disappeared from the stream, out onto the streets, loaded the twins into a waiting van and casually drove away. Eddy awakened thirty minutes later, looked around, and screamed in horror.

She had chosen a secluded spot for lunch. They suspected that she would, and they liked it that way. No surveillance cameras were anywhere near Eddy’s lunch spot to record the kidnaping. There were few others walking in the area. One witness would later say that she saw two men with a stroller but that they seemed so calm that she presumed they were out for a casual walk.

The San Antonio police took Eddy to the hospital to have her examined and sedated. River met her there. River suspected Peterson, but didn’t know for sure. He felt powerless to do anything. The local police were not permitted to investigate Peterson’s office. Any suggestion by River that Peterson or his agency was involved in the kidnaping would have been considered outrageous. The police would have ignored him as they would a nut promoting a conspiracy theory about a murder on Venus.

River could try to explain that he was a secret agent with the USFIA. That would have been a laugh. The Venus story would be more believable. He called Albert. “Sydney, you have got to do something. Now they have our twins. Eddy is in shock. What am I supposed to do?”

“Where are you?”

“I’m at Good Samaritan Hospital in San Antonio.”

“I’ll be right there. I’ll bring al Qatari with me.”

“Thanks. Please hurry.”

When Albert and al Qatari arrived, Eddy was indeed in shock. She was sedated, but something much more serious was wrong. She was not the same Eddy they all knew just a few hours before.

“How much medication did they give her, River?” al Qatari asked. “She’s sedated well beyond the point she should be,” he said.

“Nurse, nurse, please come here, please,” River called out. “How much medication did you give to my wife?” River asked.

“A very large dosage; the ER doctor said to give it to her because her doctor ordered it and you said that you believed she had no narcotics in her system. Look, it’s right here on the order sheet,” Eddy’s nurse replied, pounding the paper with the tip of her finger.

“I made no such statement, and Eddy’s doctor isn’t even here. We haven’t called him yet. For God’s sake, her doctor isn’t even in this city,” River explained.

One of Hernandez’s agents had contacted the ER doctor, posed as Eddy’s doctor, and made the request. Eddy was overdosing. Between the drugs in her water and the medication given to her to sedate her, her body contained toxic levels. She went into convulsions and began to hemorrhage.

Her nurse screamed out, “Get her out of here and get her treated immediately for overdose!”

Doctors and other nurses rushed to her bedside. Within minutes Eddy lay comatose, drain tubes protruding out everywhere, heart pumps chugging away and oxygen tubes carrying life into Eddy’s lungs. A respirator contracted and expanded her lungs, pulling the oxygen in, then pushing out the toxic air. Every life support machine available was connected to Eddy’s body in one way or another, it seemed, yet they were holding her to life by a single, very thin thread.

Eddy’s doctor, Dr. Stephen St. Johns, was exhausted. He had been on duty in Houston for twelve hours when he got the call from San Antonio. He drove to San Antonio, normally a three hour drive, in two hours and fifteen minutes. “I need to speak with you, right away,” Dr. St. Johns said to River after tending to Eddy for only fifteen minutes, just five short hours after the kidnaping.

“Your wife probably will not make it through the night, Mr. Warwick. I know she’s a fighter; she’s been a patient of mine for more than a decade. But she won’t beat this. Whoever did this to her did it on purpose to drag it out. They could have gotten the same results without putting her through all of this. They did it to torture her and you. I am so, so sorry.”

Dr. St. Johns patted River’s shoulder, then quietly turned and walked out the door. Once in the open doorway, he turned back and said to River, “I need your decision within the next day as to what to do with the life support machines.”

River went to the waiting room with al Qatari, laid his head on the arm of the old couch there, and cried uncontrollably. “What do I do now, Aamad?” River pleaded. “What do I do? She is everything to me. She is my wife, my best friend. She’s my protector. She loves me. I’m out of options. Where are my twins? What do I do, Aamad? What do I do?”

Aamad was quiet, but he was planning to make the best of a completely hopeless situation. He responded to his friend directly. “You will decide what to do about Eddy, you will find your children, and you will defeat Peterson. You alone must decide what to do about Eddy. However, you will not be alone when searching for your children and you will defeat Peterson with us at your side.

“But in order to bring honor to Eddy’s memory and legacy, we will not do these things out of vengeance. We will not act out of anger with brutality. We will do for her as she would have done for you. We will take action to protect her. Except that we will be protecting her legacy because she will not be here in bodily form. Her legacy — her dignity — will remain in tact. Honor paid to a person’s legacy is equally as important as honor paid to the living. Please don’t ever forget that.

“Others will know that the world was saved from this madman Peterson. But they must see that the world was saved without the madman or the world being blown up. That’s the way Eddy would have done it. The world will know that we acted civilly and that we acted with our brains and our hearts, just as she would have done. We will fight hard, though. I will make certain of that.

“Let’s go to Dr. St. Johns now and tell him what you wish to tell him. Then you can be alone with Eddy while I wait down the hall. River, River, look up at me. Listen to me. We are going to find your twins. They are smart enough not to hurt them. Even though they’re barbarians, they won’t harm them. And we will find them. We will.”