Breaking Point nf-4 Read online

  Morrison felt the ugly truth of this flood into him like liquid oxygen, chilling him to his core. “I–I see.”

  “Not quite yet, you don’t. Before you push that button, let me lay out a few more things you have to know.

  “Once you get your money, Patrick Morrison has to disappear. You have to vanish so completely that the best agents in China and maybe the United States and half a dozen other countries can’t find you, because eventually they all might be looking. If you had visions of yourself being on the board of directors of some university and benevolently awarding grants to starving scientists or some such, you might as well erase those ideas now. The only way you are going to survive to spend that money is to become somebody completely different from the man you are. You will have to sever all links to your past — and unless your wife is willing to go along for the ride, which’ll get a little bumpy up front — that will include giving up contact with her, too. You’ll be a new man, in a new country, with a made-up background and history. You won’t even be able to read the same magazines you used to read, or practice any of your hobbies, because you can bank on it, somebody will try to track you from something as innocuous as those, and probably be able to do it. Say you subscribe to a small scholarly journal that thirty or forty thousand people get. You better read somebody else’s copy, because while it might take years to physically look at everybody on the subscription list, the Chinese are nothing if not patient. You only have to make one mistake, Doctor, and you lose the game. Patrick Morrison will have to die figuratively, or he will surely die literally.”

  Morrison stared at him. He hadn’t thought it through to this end. But as he heard Ventura speak, he knew what the man said was so. For a moment, it took his breath away. How could he have been so shortsighted?

  “That’s how it will have to be if you want to survive. I can help you do it, point you in the right direction, tell you the steps you have to take, but once you’re set, I can’t have any more contact with you, either. They might want to convince me to tell them, and better for you if I don’t know your new name and face.”

  “I didn’t even think about the risk to you,” Morrison admitted.

  “Don’t worry about it. I’ve had people looking for me for a long time, and I’ve managed to stay alive against the best. I came into this with my eyes open, and I’ve been living on borrowed time for years. But this is what you are facing. So the question you have to ask yourself is, Does four hundred million dollars justify you becoming an entirely new man? With that kind of money, there are places in the world where you can live like a king, have luxury, sex, the power of life and death — as long as you don’t stick your head up too high and get noticed. There are men who have done this before, men of wealth and power who had to go away for whatever reason, and they survived twenty, thirty, fifty years, some of them. Some of the ones who are very careful are likely still out there. The careless are for sure dead.”

  Morrison stared at the button, and a realization solidified in his belly like a lump of cold steel. He said, “It’s already too late to turn back, isn’t it?”

  Ventura gave him a thin smile. “Truth? Yes.”

  Morrison took a deep breath. “Fuck it, then.”

  He reached out and pushed the button.

  PART TWO

  All Problems are Personal

  21

  Sunday, June 12th

  Washington, D.C.

  At home, Jay came out of VR, took a deep breath, and removed his headset and gloves. It had been a milk run, a visit to a library, and no matter how skilled you were in creating scenarios, sooner or later, reading a pile of material came down to reading a pile of material.

  He had all he could find on Dr. Patrick Morrison, and while he had skimmed it as it was being copied, he hadn’t begun to take it all in. From what he’d gleaned so far, the guy was legit enough. Degrees, work experience, marriages, the usual living-life stuff. No trouble with the law, no beefs at work, pretty much Mr. Dull N. Boring right down the line.

  The only blot on an otherwise white-bread career was at the job he’d had before going to work for HAARP. He’d been doing some kind of behavioral modification experiments on chimps, working with extremely low-frequency radiation, a post-doc research project at Johns Hopkins, and it had apparently petered out. He failed to get the results for which he had been looking. His grant, as the report mildly and politely put it, had not been renewed, and he’d been out of a job.

  A small red flag went up in Jay’s mind, but when he thought about it, it wasn’t that big a deal. Yeah, the guy was into ELF stuff, but that’s what a lot of HAARP was about. If you were looking for a plumber, you didn’t hire a cabdriver, now did you?

  “All work and no play make Jay a dull boy,” Soji said.

  He smiled up at her. She stood there in a bathrobe. “Look who’s talking. You’ve been so deep into the web I haven’t been able to see anything but your back for days.”

  “Want to see something else?” She undid the bathrobe and held it open.

  “Oh, mama! Come here!”

  Before she could move, however, the phone played the opening strains of Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D Minor. Unfortunately, his phone was programmed so it played that particular tune only if the call was IDed as coming from Net Force HQ or Alex Michaels’s virgil.

  “Shit,” he said.

  Soji closed her robe and belted it shut. “He who hesitates stays horny,” she said.

  “Hey, Boss,” Jay said.

  “Better get to the office, Jay,” Michaels said. “There’s been another case of collective madness.”

  “In China?”

  “No,” Michaels said. His voice was grim. “Closer than that.”

  Sunday, June 12th

  Portland, Oregon

  John Howard watched as his son came up to make his throw. The boy stopped, rubbed his fingers back and forth, and allowed some glittery dust to fall to check wind direction. He held a stopwatch in one hand and his boomerang in the other. The judges waved Tyrone into the circle.

  Howard felt more tense than he’d thought he would. It was a big deal to Tyrone, of course, but it was just a game, after all. No reason to be digging his fingernails into his palms.

  Off to one side and behind Tyrone, Little Nadine stood, waiting for her turn to compete. She was three contestants behind Tyrone, so she’d know what time she had to beat. So far, the times hadn’t been very good, according to Tyrone, and both kids had done better in practice.

  The judge nearest the circle held up his hand in a halt sign, then called another judge over for some kind of consultation.

  “Come on, come on!” Howard said. “Let the boy throw before his arm gets cold!”

  Next to him, his wife said, “Asshole.”

  He looked at her. “You talkin’ to me?”

  “Not particularly, I was referring to the judge, but if the shoe fits…”

  That pissed him off. What was she on the rag about now? He hadn’t done anything. He glared at her. She glared right back.

  Tyrone stood there for another few seconds, then walked to where the judges were. Howard couldn’t hear what his boy had to say, but apparently the judges really didn’t like it.

  The head judge reached out and slapped Tyrone upside the head.

  “Fuck!” Howard yelled. “You see that? He hit our son!” Even as he spoke, Howard ran toward Tyrone and the judges.

  The second judge must have figured the slap was rude, because he hauled off and punched the head judge square in the mouth, knocking the man down. Certainly this was justice, but that irritated Howard even more.

  “Leave him!” Howard yelled as he ran. “That bastard is mine!”

  Tyrone stepped in and delivered a solid kick to the fallen judge’s ribs. It sounded like somebody dropping a watermelon, thoo-wock!

  Even as he drew near to the trio, Howard was aware of noises coming up the hill: horns honked, metal crashed into metal. He slid to a stop as the second
judge spun to face him.

  “Get off the circle!” the man screamed. “You can’t be here!”

  “Oh, yeah?” Howard said. “Hey, pal, I’m already here! What are you gonna do about it?”

  Tyrone gave the fallen judge another kick. Not as good as the first one; it had a flatter sound. Weak, son, weak.

  The second judge threw a haymaker at Howard, who ducked it, came up, launched a fast left hook to the face, then a right cross to the chin, bap-bap! That straightened the sucker out like popping a shoe shine cloth. The guy sailed backward and to the ground. Get off that, asshole!

  The judge Tyrone was kicking got to his feet and lurched at the boy, but before Howard could get there, both Nadines arrived. His wife kneed the guy in the crotch as Little Nadine latched onto his arm and sank her teeth into his shoulder.

  Irritated, Howard moved toward them. This was his business to take care of, he didn’t need the goddamned women getting in the goddamned way—!

  A car came across the field, lights on and horn honking, a big, powder-blue Cadillac. It plowed into a group of five men who stood there giving the driver the finger. The men flew like dolls in all directions as the driver gunned the engine.

  Not real smart to shoot the bird at a man coming at you in a car at speed.

  “Eat shit and die!” the driver screamed. Then he started to laugh.

  Four or five other people attacked the Caddy, slamming their fists and feet at it. The driver spun a donut in the grass, still cackling madly.

  Something wrong here, Howard thought. He shook his head, then looked at the man he had just decked. What was he doing?

  He looked down the hill and saw a dozen people fighting. One of them was a policeman. The cop pulled his gun, and a quick succession of shots—pop-pop-pop-pop-pop! — echoed up the hill. Gunshot victims fell, and added more screams to the din.

  Dazed, Howard looked up the hill. There were people there, too, but they weren’t fighting; they were watching, staring in surprise.

  Howard’s thoughts were fogged with rage, but something was trying to make its way through the anger: This was a bad place. Down the hill it was worse, but up the hill, it was better. Therefore…

  “Come on!” he yelled to his family. “We have to get up the hill!”

  “Fuck off!” Tyrone yelled back.

  Little Nadine released her hold on the judge, who was screaming in pain. She stared at Howard. “What is going on?” she said, her voice high and frightened.

  “I don’t know. Gas, maybe. We’ve got to get out of here. Help me.”

  His wife kneed the judge in the nuts again. The man gurgled in agony. Howard grabbed her, pulled her off.

  “Leave me alone! He hit my son!”

  Howard jerked her backward. “Tyrone!”

  The boy turned, and the mask of primal rage on his face slipped a little. He raised his eyebrows. “Dad?”

  “Up the hill, son, up the hill. Go, go!”

  Tyrone nodded. Little Nadine grabbed his hand and they started running.

  Howard had to pin Nadine’s arms to her side and he half carried, half dragged her away from the meadow. She kicked and screamed at him for a hundred meters before she stopped. She was a lot stronger than he’d realized.

  Finally, when they were two hundred meters away, Nadine came back. “J-John? What—?”

  “I don’t know, hon. But whatever it is, the farther away we get, the better. Come on.”

  They caught up to the children, and the four of them kept moving. Howard looked back as they ran. The Cadillac was lying on its side, and a mob had the driver out and on the ground, kicking him. He was a dead man. More gunshots echoed from farther below. Horns honked. Cars crashed. People screamed in voices full of incoherent fury. This beautiful park, what the locals like to call God’s country, had gone mad.

  It was the Devil’s land, now.

  Howard reached for his virgil. Who to call? The local cops were down there shooting people. They needed help, and they needed it bad.

  Sunday, June 12th

  Quantico, Virginia

  Toni had come with him this time, and he was glad to have her here. Along with Toni was Jay Gridley. It was seven P.M. on a Sunday, but they wouldn’t be going home tonight.

  “All right, here is what we have so far,” Michaels said. “It’s still kind of sketchy. Late this afternoon, people inside what appears to be a rough circle ten miles across and centered in the Westmoreland area of Portland, Oregon, went nuts. So far, there are sixty-seven confirmed deaths — murders, self-defense, traffic and freak accidents. There have been hundreds of people hurt bad enough to require hospitalization, and thousands more lesser injuries. Whatever caused it seems to have stopped, but the city is in chaos. The numbers of dead and injured keep climbing.”

  “Lord, Lord. How is General Howard?” Jay asked.

  Howard had been the one who’d called it in. He’d gotten hold of the National Guard, then Michaels.

  “He and his family are fine. They were apparently right at the outmost edge of the phenomenon’s effect. A couple hundred meters closer in, and they’d have been in a lot more trouble. What have you got for me?”

  Jay said, “If we assume this is coming from some very powerful broadcast station, then it’s a matter of figuring out which one, and who is running it. I played a hunch and put in a call to HAARP, talked to a guard there. They are supposedly on hiatus, except for some calibration tests.”

  “That’s what Morrison told me,” Michaels said.

  “Well, Morrison is up there right now running one of these tests. And guess what — according to the guard’s logs, he was running other ’calibrations’ on the same days those two villages in China went bonkers.”

  “Jesus.”

  “Yeah. Awful coincidental, ain’t it?”

  “Toni? What do you think?”

  “I think maybe you ought pick up this Dr. Morrison for a serious chat.”

  Michaels nodded. “I’ll get a federal warrant and some marshals on the way.”

  “You don’t want to toss this one over the fence to the mainline feebs?” Jay said.

  “Not yet,” Michaels said. “This looks like our mess. We should clean it up on our own if we can.”

  Maybe Morrison wasn’t involved with this, but given the situation in Portland, they couldn’t afford to take the chance. The next incident might happen anywhere — New York, Chicago, even Washington, D.C. While the thought of senators and congressmen beating each other to bloody pulps sounded fine as a joke punch line, the reality of it was different.

  Getting a warrant would be easy enough, and there were probably federal marshals somewhere in Alaska who could serve it. And while he was at it, he would give General Howard a call. After his personal experience, John might like to go along to have a few words with Morrison himself. In his position, Michaels knew he would.

  22

  Sunday, June 12th

  Gakona, Alaska

  Ventura looked at his watch. It had been six hours since the real test had ended, but Morrison felt he had to play out the fiction of conducting his calibrations. In the end, Ventura knew that wouldn’t matter, but Morrison felt the need. It was late, and Ventura, while not tired, was feeling somewhat edgy. There had been no contact from the Chinese, and he didn’t much like sitting in one place for so long, not this far into the game. The trailer had a stale smell to it, and the night had cooled some, because an electric heater kept kicking on and off.

  As the HAARP system did its automatic thing, Morrison himself was lying on the ugly brown fake-leather couch at the end of the room, fast asleep.

  Ventura’s com vibrated soundlessly against his hip. He touched the mouthpiece of the small wireless headset he wore hooked over his left ear. “Yes?”

  “We have company. Two cars, four men. They just passed Rim One.”

  “Talk to me.”

  “Tan Fords, unmarked, new, blackwall tires, what looks like government fleet plates. Three men, one woma
n, couldn’t get much more than that. Cunningham will get a better view with his digital scope when they go under the rail overpass.”

  “Got it.”

  Ventura felt chill bumps rise on his neck, the gooseflesh warning him of danger. Who would come here in the middle of the night? He looked at his watch again. If they were traveling the speed limit, they’d be reaching the overpass… right… about… now…

  The phone vibrated.

  “Go.”

  Styles said, “From the front, three men, one woman. Clean-cut, mid-thirties, matching dark windbreakers, blue maybe. Hold on, they are going past… Angle is bad here, I can’t see their backs. I got a flash of what looked like some kind of logo on the jackets from the side, can’t get it all, last letters look like H-A-L… That’s it. Plates are like Zach said, U.S. permanent fleet.”

  Sounded like feds. H-A-L. Last few letters of “Marshal,” as in reflective yellow letters on the back of a windbreaker: U.S. Marshal. Of course, if it was him coming to collect Dr. Morrison, this was the kind of thing he’d do. Disguising your kidnap team as cops or firemen or federal agents was clever. Who stops a fireman on the way to a fire? Or a cop on his way to an accident?

  Unless, of course, they were real feds.

  “Got it. Discom.”

  Ventura called the leader of the two men watching the gate into the compound. “Let them pass, but see if you can get an ear on the guard at the gate if he lets them in.”

  “Copy.”

  Ventura broke the connection, walked to where Morrison lay sleeping. “Wake up, Dr. Morrison.”

  “Huh? What—?”

  “Listen carefully. My people report that there are two cars that look like they belong to the feds on their way here.”

  The phone vibrated yet again.