She made the call and twenty minutes later Rogers was being rolled into another room, still in intense pain. He was laid in a tube and run through a scanner.
Jericho studied the screen showing the inner workings of his body. “What level of pain are you feeling, Paul? Please be as precise as you can. And what is the frequency of the attacks?”
“Fuck you!” he screamed.
“We’re wasting valuable time. I don’t know when you might have another episode like this.”
Rogers didn’t answer. Evidently frustrated with him, Jericho continued to study the screen.
“This is truly fascinating,” she said. “I can already see where improvements can be made.” She began to jot down some notes on an electronic tablet. “I’m going to pull up your old records and compare them to what I’m seeing now. This will allow me to dig further into the progression. Do your joints hurt? We were using composites before anyone knew what they could really do. Stronger than steel, more malleable than plastic. But the scan does evidence some breaking down of the limb structures. But the brain implant is the most fascinating.”
“Shut up!” screamed Rogers.
She went on as though she hadn’t heard him. “Do you know that your brain has woven a nerve circuitry around the implant? And also pierced it.” She paused and then added excitedly, “Your brain is inside the implant. That may be the source of—”
“Shut up!”
She fell silent, but her lips moved as she apparently was talking to herself. Her eyes shone with the wonderment of all that she was seeing, while Rogers lay there in utter misery.
As the pain began to subside he looked over at her engrossed in the screen.
He just wanted to put an end to the madness.
To her.
And then to himself.
“That wasn’t Ballard,” he said.
This got her attention. She turned to him.
“So it was you who threw him out the window.”
“And I don’t think the other guy is either. So where is he?”
“Don’t worry, Paul, it’ll all be over soon.”
“A lot of things will soon be over,” he said.
Including you.
“I’ll be back,” she said. “I just need to check on some things.”
She left the room and Rogers stared up at the ceiling. He tried to move his arms and legs, but nothing worked.
Shit!
He was running out of time and options.
When the door opened again he didn’t even turn to look at her.
“Paul?”
Now he did turn.
Suzanne Davis was standing there.
She walked over to him and looked down.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I wish I could do something to help you.”
He shrugged. “Is she the ‘rich’ one who adopted you?”
“Yes.”
Rogers looked away and shook his head. If he could move his arms right now he would reach into his head and rip the thing out.
“She ever give a reason?” he said.
Davis looked away. “Maybe she was lonely.”
Rogers turned to stare at the ceiling again. “You need to think about that some more. At some point, she’ll get tired of you. And then…?”
“Can you move?”
“They got me shot up with shit. Where are we, by the way?”
“Same place.”
“Where’s Ballard? The real Ballard?”
She shook her head.
“Can’t or won’t tell?”
She just shook her head again.
“It doesn’t matter, I’m dead anyway.”
She ran her finger down his arm. “Why did you come back? You could be anywhere else.”
“Do you know what she did to me?”
“A little.”
“Then you should understand that I had to come back.”
“I guess I do.”
They heard a noise from somewhere nearby.
Davis leaned down and kissed Rogers on the cheek. “I’m really sorry.” Then she turned and left.
Rogers slowly looked back at the ceiling.
And started to count.
Chapter
65
YOU THINK HE’S in there?”
Knox was watching Puller, who was looking through binoculars at Building Q from a hiding place across the street.
“Maybe.” Puller lowered his binoculars. “If he is, Jericho has to be there too. But we have to be sure.”
“Okay, how do you propose doing that?”
“Well, the direct approach might be best.” He handed her the binoculars. “If I’m not back in twenty minutes, call the cops.”
She looked startled but nodded.
Puller hustled across the street and up to the front gate. When the guards headed out to confront him he held up his creds and badge.
One of the guards said, “You were here before.”
“That’s right. To meet with Claire Jericho. She called and asked me to meet her right now.”
The guards looked puzzled. The one who had recognized Puller said, “But she’s not here.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’ve been on duty since oh six hundred. She checked out last night and she has not signed back in.”
Puller looked confused. “I don’t get it. She called maybe thirty minutes ago and said to meet her at Fort Monroe.” He looked over their shoulders at Building Q. “This is the only facility she works at here, right?”
“Far as I know.”
“How about Josh Quentin? I know him too.”
“No. He hasn’t come in yet.”
“Thanks.”
Puller hustled back across the street and joined Knox. He quickly explained what the guard had told him.
“Where, then?” asked Knox.
“She needs a private, secure place.”
Knox snapped, “Ballard’s place.”
“That’s what I’m thinking.”
* * *
Two hours later they were back in the Tar Heel State. Puller had called his brother and filled him in on what they had found and where they were going.
“Please tell me you’re not going to break into Ballard’s mansion,” said Robert.
“Okay, I won’t tell you,” replied Puller.
“Holy shit, John, will you just take a breath and think about this? Now instead of screwing your career, you could go to jail. Or even be killed.”
“Thanks, Bobby. God knows I’m not used to putting my life on the line,” he added dryly.
Puller put the phone away and checked his watch. “We’ll wait until dark and then recon the place. I’m sure it’s well guarded, but every facility has weaknesses.”
Day drifted to night. They sat in their car in a public parking lot off the beach.
Puller checked his watch. It was eleven.
“Let’s go.”
He popped the trunk and pulled out from his duffel a set of NV goggles.
“Good thing I didn’t have my duffel in the car when we went into the water.”
“Yeah, good thing it was just us in the car,” shot back Knox.
They hoofed it as close to Ballard’s place as they could without the possibility of being seen. Hidden behind a sand dune, Puller powered up his goggles and took a sweep of the place.
“Initial conclusions?” asked Knox a minute later.
“My brother was being quite literal when he called it a fortress.”
“Great.”
“High stone walls. Big gate, exterior security, and I’m betting internal sweeps. No doubt they have electronic surveillance as well.”
“Just another quiet, relaxed day at the beach.”
“Paul said he got in there.”
“Yeah, well he’s Superman and Spider-Man rolled into one, remember?”
“Let’s time the security sweeps for the next hour and go from there.”
Puller shimmied up a tree and viewed th
e interior of the compound’s courtyard.
A few minutes later an SUV pulled down the road and the gates opened to admit it. Puller watched as it swung into the courtyard and backed up to a set of French doors. Men got out of the vehicle and opened its rear doors.
The French doors opened a moment later and Puller watched as a gurney was rolled out. It was quickly loaded into the back of the SUV.
Puller climbed back down. When his boots hit sand he grabbed Knox’s arm.
“What’s going on?” she said.
“They’re transferring a ‘patient.’”
“What patient? Ballard?”
“Not Ballard. Paul.”
“You’re sure?”
“I saw him.”
They reached their car as the SUV passed. Puller slipped in behind the other vehicle.
“Where do you think they’re taking him?” asked Knox.
“We’re not going to find out.”
“What!”
“Hold on.”
Puller sped up, cut to the left, hit the gas, paralleled the SUV, and rammed it with his car.
“Shit, Puller!” exclaimed Knox as she grabbed a handhold on the ceiling of the car.
The SUV veered over and rammed Puller’s car back.
The bumpers locked, which was what Puller had been hoping for. He hit the brakes and forced the other vehicle to slow and then go off the road. He slammed the car into park and jumped out, gun in one hand and his badge in the other.
“Federal officers, get out of the vehicle. Now!”
Knox had emerged from the passenger side and had her gun out too.
“Now!” barked Puller. “Or we will open fire. You are completely surrounded and we have a chopper coming in.”
The two front doors of the vehicle opened and two men got out, hands up.
Puller said, “On the ground, facedown, hands behind your head, fingers interlocked. Do it. Now!”
The men hit the dirt and did what he ordered.
Knox cleared the rest of the car. It was empty except for Rogers in the far back.
Puller cuffed the two men and then ran to the back of the SUV and threw open the doors. Rogers looked at him groggily. “What are you doing here?”
“Saving your butt. Can you walk?”
Rogers shook his head. “Temporary nerve blockers.”
Puller hefted Rogers over his shoulder and carried him to their car and put him in the backseat, buckling him in.
“Hey!” screamed one of the cuffed men on the ground. “What about us?”
“Hire a good lawyer,” replied Knox.
Puller managed to disentangle the bumpers and then he pointed the vehicle back toward Virginia.
From the backseat Rogers said, “They took Josh Quentin and Helen Myers. They were with me when Jericho came and gassed me.”
“Why were they with you?” asked Puller.
“I wanted to use them to get to Jericho. But she tricked me. She took me somewhere and performed all these tests on me. She wants to figure out what went wrong and then restart the program. She’s fucking nuts.”
“Where were you when she took you?” asked Knox.
“At Quentin’s, or now I know it’s Myers’s beach house. You know where that is?”
Puller nodded. “Yeah, but what time was that?”
“Around eight in the morning.”
“We got there at nine and searched the place. There was no one there. But we did see Myers’s and Quentin’s cars in the garage.”
His phone buzzed. It was his brother.
Puller took a couple minutes filling him in, but it appeared his brother was just waiting for him to finish before conveying his own information.
“We just found out something,” said Robert.
“What?”
“Josh Quentin’s body washed ashore on the Outer Banks this afternoon.”
Puller sucked in a quick breath. “Homicide?”
“Clearly.”
“Cause of death?”
“Appears his skull was crushed in.” He paused. “Maybe like some of the dead women.”
Puller glanced in the rearview at Rogers.
“Thanks for the info, Bobby.”
“What are you going to do with him?”
“Right now, I’m not sure.”