The Athena Factor

  “Uh, boss, you might let him catch a breath,” the accomplice said mildly. “If you suffocate him, it’ll take hours to rummage through all of his papers to find the right notes.”

  “Right, Sid.” Lymon let up, allowing Felix to turn his head far enough to gasp a quick breath.

  Sid—looking big in the corner of Felix’s vision—bent down to stare. The look of disdain in those hard brown eyes sent a shiver through the lawyer’s soul. He might have been an insect—one with interesting wings, but an insect nevertheless.

  “Where is she?” Lymon repeated, a bit more leniently this time. “Where did she go?”

  “I can’t tell you. Lawyer-client priv—” He ended in a scream as Lymon twisted him into the leather again.

  “That doesn’t help,” Sid chastised from the side. “You don’t want to piss Lymon off. I’ve seen him rip a guy’s arm clean out of the socket when he gets really pissed. We had an Al Qaeda rag-head one time that cried for a day and half before Lymon finally lost his temper and broke his neck.” A pause. “You know, the CO was so torqued off we had to walk patrol for two weeks in the hills after that.” His voice dropped. “Are you feeling careless yet, Lymon?”

  “I just might be.”

  Sid added, “Mr. Baylor, maybe you’d better just tell him. That way you avoid all the pain, the surgery, the pills, the time in physical therapy.”

  “Where is she?” Lymon hissed into Felix’s ear.

  “Lymon, you’re making a terrible mistake,” Felix managed to mutter against the leather. “I’ll have you up on charges for—” Lymon pushed his face into the cushions and wrenched the arm. Leather stifled the scream.

  “Felix,” Lymon said softly, “I’ll tell you this once. Whatever she’s gotten herself into, she’s not up to it. So, you’re going to tell me what she’s doing … where she’s gone. I don’t give a rat’s ass about privilege, because if anything’s happened to her, I’m going to break your silly little neck.”

  “I’d listen to him, boss,” Sid added solicitously. “Lymon’s the kind of guy who’ll twist your head off, shit down your neck, then screw your head on backwards just out of sheer cussedness.”

  “How’d you get in here?” Felix’s stumbling mind tried to latch onto something, anything, to give him a lever on the way to recovery.

  “Locks were a hobby of mine in the military,” Sid answered. “Yours weren’t very challenging.”

  “Felix? You going to tell?” Lymon added.

  The last of Felix’s resolve drained away. He went limp, tears of frustration beaded at the edge of his vision. “Genesis Athena. She’s after them.”

  Lymon released his hold, grabbing Felix’s collar and turning him so that he sat facing forward on the couch. Looking up into those eyes gave Felix’s stomach a cramp. “She asked me to set up an account under the name Jennifer Weaver.”

  “After the character she played in Joy’s Girl?”

  “Yes.” Felix closed his eyes, looking down at his rumpled shirt. The fine silk suit coat still looked pristine.

  “Where did she go?”

  Felix shook his head. “I don’t know. Honest, Lymon. She didn’t tell me. She had me set up an account, obtain an ID, credit cards … Hell, I built an entire identity for her. Driver’s license, everything.”

  Lymon drove a fist into a hard palm. It sounded like an oak beam snapping. Felix flinched. “She’s going to have your ass, Lymon. Just like I’m going to.”

  “I want the file. You’ve got a copy.”

  “At the office.”

  “Then we’re going to the office.”

  Felix swallowed hard, his mouth dry. A terrible violence lay behind Lymon’s eyes, a look he’d never seen there before. “Why are you doing this?”

  “Because she’s in way over her head.” The faintest thaw hovered around Lymon’s lips. “Bless her heart, she thinks she can do something about it, maybe figure a way to get Christal back, but she’s walking into a snake’s den.”

  “She didn’t want you to know,” Felix added. “Not you, not Rex, not Tony, nobody.”

  “Yeah,” Lymon muttered. “I figured that out. But for the fact that Tomaso loves the lady almost as much as I do, she might even have gotten away with it. She scared the shit out of him when she made him drive her to the airport in his little Toyota.”

  Felix raised a hand in defeat. “Let me up, Lymon. Don’t hurt me again. It’s in my computer. I’ll print you a copy of everything I’ve got.”

  Lymon reached down, pulled him to his feet, holding him close so that he could stare into Felix’s eyes. It sent a deeper chill down Felix’s spine. “One last thing, Felix. What happened here tonight, it’s between you and me. Alone. Do you understand?”

  Felix nodded, averted his eyes, and almost stumbled as he walked toward his desk to retrieve the files.

  40

  Lymon led the way up the back steps to his second-floor office. Sid’s heavy feet thudded on the metal behind him. As Lymon fished for his key, he asked, “Are you sure you want to be part of this?”

  Sid stopped on the next stair down, his round face illuminated by the yellow security light The night was alive with the sound of traffic, distant sirens, and the hum of the building fans. In the parking lot below, Lymon’s Jaguar gleamed in the light.

  “Yeah. I helped get Christal into this mess.”

  Lymon turned, slid his key into the lock, and opened the door. He took a right, flipping on the light as he walked through the storeroom to the safe in the back corner. He heard Sid lock the outside door before following him.

  The dial turned as Lymon input the combination. “You’re a government employee, Sid. A federal agent. If this gets sticky, you don’t have the approval of your supervisor. They could get real nasty with you.” He looked back as he turned the handle to undog the latches.

  Sid had a pensive look on his face. “Sometimes, Lymon, things just get out of hand. It’s the LA Field Office’s case, but this Genesis Athena thing, it’s related to my stuff. I can feel it in my gut.”

  “You know what they do to agents who go out on a limb?”

  “They whack it off just to see how far they fall.” Sid rolled his lips over his teeth. “I don’t have time to fill out the 302s and jump through the hoops. If this works out, I’ll get a reprimand, but I’ll still break the case.” He grinned sheepishly. “Uh, if you’ll recall, we’ve had reprimands before.”

  “The problem is; we’ve got to be right You understand that, don’t you? You break the rules and fuck up at the same time, they hammer your ass.”

  “If it gets that bad, I hear that there’s some guy in California wants to offer me a job.”

  “If you really fuck up big league, they throw you in jail.”

  “Let’s try not to fuck up that much, okay?”

  Lymon turned his attention to the safe. A rack of six HK Compact .40-caliber pistols rested on the padded top shelf. Boxes of CorBon .40 S&W cartridges were stacked next to a collection of high-capacity magazines. The lower shelves were filled with files of confidential correspondence, several sacks of bundled bills, agreements, and official LBA documents. In the bottom rested a black plastic case secured with a combination lock. This, Lymon bent and retrieved.

  Sid frowned. “Is that what I think it is?”

  “Yep.” Lymon turned, plucking two of the magazines from the shelf and dropping them into his pocket. He then added a box of .40-caliber ammunition and finally slipped one of the HK pistols into his coat pocket. Locking the safe door, he lifted the lid on a storage box by his feet and retrieved a shoulder holster before leading the way to the hall and on to his office.

  Sid was eyeing the heavy black plastic case that hung from Lymon’s right hand. “I’m not going to ask if you’ve got a Class Three license for that thing.”

  “I do. All nice and legal.” Lymon walked into his office, flopped the heavy black case on the desk, and unloaded his pockets of pistol, mags, and ammo before sloughing his coat off. He
slipped his arms through the holster straps, opened the box of ammunition, and began thumbing cartridges into a magazine.

  “So,” Sid asked, “what’s the plan? You know, since Nine-eleven, you’re not walking onto any airplane with a holster rig and magazines, no matter what you’re licensed for.”

  Lymon glanced up as he slipped a magazine into the HK, worked the slide, and dropped the mag to top it off. “She’s traveling under the name Jennifer Weaver. We’ve got her account number at Genesis Athena. When I pushed the redial on her phone, I got Delta Airlines reservations. They confirmed she boarded the five p.m. flight for New York. Work it out.”

  “We’re going to New York?” Sid made a face as he studied the black case. “You’re outfitting for an operation into the Biqa’ Valley, not the Big Apple. I don’t want to be the one to rain on your parade, but you don’t have any legal leg to stand on if they catch you there with a pistol and an MP5.” He pointed to the black case. “Assuming, that is, that you can even get past airport security with that stuff.”

  Lymon’s grizzled brows lifted. “Oh, ye of little faith.” He slipped the loaded pistol into the holster riding under his left arm, flipped through his Rolodex, and began punching numbers on the desk phone. He smiled at Sid as he raised the receiver to his ear.

  It rang three times before a familiar voice answered, “Hi. Vol Aviation. Bernie here.”

  “Bernie? It’s Lymon Bridges,” Lymon began. “We’ve got an emergency. How soon can we be in the air for New York?”

  “An hour and a half,” Bernie answered after a slight hesitation. “Uh, where did you say we were going again?”

  “New Jersey, actually. Teterboro.”

  “Right. I’ll get the flight plan filed … fuel the jet. How many people?”

  “Two.”

  “Right. Any special considerations?”

  “Nope.”

  “I’ll be ready.”

  “See you then.” Lymon hung up the phone, grinning at Sid. “Charter, my friend. It’s expensive as all hell, no security hassles, and I can guarantee you, the food’s better.”

  Sid cracked a smile for the first time. “I could get to like this. Assuming, that is, that we don’t get our tits into one hell of a ringer.”

  “You’ve read the files.” Lymon finished loading his second magazine and dropped it into the holster’s magazine pouch. “We’ve got to get to that marina in Brooklyn. We’ll find her there.”

  “You’d better hope.”

  “Yeah, well, if not—if they pick her up first—Verele’s going to have a very bad day until he spills his guts about Genesis Athena.”

  Sheela sat in seat 4A and stared vacantly out the plastic window. She had seen the Mississippi pass below before the overcast closed in over Illinois. Now as she looked down, it was to watch a blanket of fluffy moonlit clouds roll slowly under her high-flying 767. The paperback novel she held remained unread. She’d picked it up at the newsstand—something about archaeology and Southwestern witchcraft. The subject had made her think of Christal, but try as she might, she couldn’t keep her attention on the story.

  To her consternation, the in-flight movie was Blood Rage. She did everything she could to avoid seeing her image on the small screens at each of the other seats. Would anyone glance up from their little glowing screens, notice her, and begin pointing?

  She reached up, absently fingering the brown wig she wore. It was a quality job, as good as money could buy—and God alone knew she’d had enough experience with the finest makeup artists in the world to know how to make a wig look real.

  She fought the urge to get up and walk to the lavatory. She’d already been there twice to see that her brown contacts hadn’t slipped, to check her makeup and ensure that she hadn’t smudged the olive complexion she’d so laboriously applied.

  She was Jennifer Weaver now, a desperate and lonely woman traveling cross-country to fulfill a fantasy.

  Bullshit! With each passing minute she was growing ever more frightened, wondering what passing insanity had driven her to attempt this foolishness.

  I won’t let you down, Christal. The image of her father’s bloated face floated in the back of her mind. It left a tightness around her heart.

  She ran her fingers along the edges of the paperback novel, looking at the stylized image of Kokopelli embossed on the foiled cover. Where are you, Christal? What are you doing?

  She closed her eyes, thinking back to Christal’s self-assured smile that day. God, she’d seemed invincible. But twenty-four hours later she’d been spirited away to where? The nightmare fantasies kept spinning in Sheela’s mind. They were filled with brutality and rape. In each, Christal suffered in filthy and degrading conditions.

  “I’ll make them give you back,” she whispered under her breath.

  A sudden image of Lymon levered its way into her wheeling thoughts. She could see his disapproving expression, trace the lines of worry that would be forming there in the next day or so when he finally discovered that she’d disappeared. He’d be frantic. They all would. But she could count on Felix to keep a lid on it. He’d make sure they didn’t do anything silly, like report her as a missing person.

  Not telling Lymon hurt the worst But she’d make it up to him. In the end, they’d have their day. She’d go, find out about Genesis Athena, decline their service at the last moment, and pay them enough to make it all right. Then she’d have the inside story. From there, Felix and his minions could apply the screws and break the whole damn thing wide open.

  She closed her eyes. For the first time in years, she was doing something. Not for others, but for herself. For Christal, who’d offered her friendship without strings. For the little babies who would be born of this malicious procedure. Yes, it was worth being frightened,

  By God, a person’s DNA should be sacrosanct, private and personal! It was hers, as it was Julia’s, and Sandra’s, and Mel’s, and Brad’s, and all the others. Intimately part of their lives and bodies and souls. Why had no one seen this coming? Why had Congress, in all of its hearings, with all of its expert testimony, not preempted this? Where the hell had the Solons been when the news percolated with stories of genetics?

  If only she weren’t so scared. If the fear would just loosen from around her guts. Damn it, this wasn’t a movie. This was for real, with people who’d dared to kidnap someone as tough as Christal Anaya from right under their noses.

  Genesis Athena had no idea that Jennifer Weaver was anything but what she seemed. It would be the role of a lifetime—only no one would ever know.

  No one but me—and after all, who the hell else is there in the end?

  One by one she thumbed the pages of the novel, the words unseen on the pages as her jet whisked ever eastward.

  Christal reveled in her newfound freedom. Earlier that morning McEwan had shown her the length and breadth of her current universe. After seeing the security arrangements, she wondered why the hell they’d bothered to lock her into her cubicle in the first place.

  Her world now consisted of a small segment of H Deck on the ship’s port side. A series of cabins were inhabited by various staff, most of whom Gregor had introduced her to. Each had been pleasant, professional, and reserved. English was obviously their second language, and from their reaction to her, Christal could tell that outside of the same coloration and complexion, they were from different worlds.

  She had played dumb when Gregor introduced her to Brian Everly. It was apparent from Brian’s expression that he’d rather engage in an intimate relationship with cholera than be in the same room with the Scottish geneticist. Two points for Brian.

  There was one way in, and one way out, and it passed through a monitored “go, no-go” steel hatch. The thing had been modified like the common jail access where only one door could be opened at a time, and then only when a security officer pressed the right button. The hallways were studded with video cameras. She could now walk to the cafeteria, to a small home theater with a DVD collection of the
latest movies, to a common lounge with its TV, comfortable chairs, pool table, and games. A compact but complete gym and the attached women’s locker room with its attendant showers was also available for her use.

  The security camera in the women’s shower had caused her some concern. She had to assume that it worked and that some man was watching. Modesty won out. She glowered up at the camera, then down at the stained pits on her blue blouse. It wasn’t like they’d brought a wardrobe for her. She had what she’d been wearing the night they’d kidnapped her.

  After McEwan had left, she’d availed herself of the gym, pounding out her aggression on the weight machines and treadmill. Flushed and dehydrated, she walked out into the hallway. With the towel hung over her shoulders, she dabbed at the perspiration beading on her face and throat. Her muscles had a deliciously loose and warm feel, and she absently studied the hoses, cables, and pipes that ran along the companionway ceiling. Was there some way she could exploit them? How?

  “Christal?” a familiar voice called. She turned to see Brian Everly stepping out of a cabin.

  “Brian.” She let her towel hang and held her hands up. “Look! I’m free! Ready to fly away just as soon as I can cut a hole through the hull.”

  “What have you been doing?”

  “Exercising. I’m hot, sweaty, and smelly, but I refuse to use the women’s shower with that damned TV camera staring down.”

  He glanced around. “They know you’re out?”

  “Gregor unlocked my door.” She stepped in beside him.

  “He thinks he’s got a chance to convert me to the side of money, greed, and corruption. That or throw me over the side to the sharks.” She motioned around. “Besides, I’ve been up and down the halls. I’m not seeing anything I can fashion into a clever tool to make an escape.”

  He chuckled. “Good on you. But believe me we’ve been at it for five years. If there were a way, we’d have found it. I’m off for the cafeteria. You up for a bite?”