EXOSKELETON II: Tympanum (4 page)

3

Thursday, 7 May (6:30 a.m. CST – Chicago)

William Thompson glanced back just as the hooded figure turned the corner a block behind him. His nose burned from breathing the exhaust of the morning traffic for two hours.

Convinced the man was following him, Will climbed the three concrete steps to his right, and moved out of the cold Chicago air and into the busy café. The thick aroma of freshly ground coffee filled his nostrils, and voices and espresso machines produced a drone that gave him a sense of anonymity.

His eyes adjusted to the dim lighting as he crossed a line of people placing orders. He spotted a sign for the restrooms and headed toward the rear of the establishment. He weaved around a cart with a tub of bussed dishes, and entered a narrow hallway. He passed the restrooms on his left and a door labeled “utilities” on the right. The hallway then turned 90° to the left and terminated at a large metal door. He extended his hand to actuate the press-bar handle but stopped an instant before he made contact; at eye level was a red sign that read “Emergency Exit Only – Alarm Will Sound.”

Damn
.
He had a minute at most. His pursuer had been only 100 yards behind him and would have picked up pace as soon as Will entered the café. He concentrated on what he’d learned during the past weeks. Every operation had elements of improvisation. His attention turned to the smell of food.

He took off his jacket and retraced his path past the utility closet and restrooms. He picked up a half-full cup of cold coffee from the tub of dishes on the cart at the mouth of the hallway and poured it on his left arm, soaking his left sleeve. He walked into the main room and approached the end of the drinks counter, near a set of double doors that led to the kitchen. He caught the eye of one of the baristas and waved her over.

The young woman approached and looked at his coffee stained sleeve with an expression of concern.

“I think I burned myself,” Will said, wincing. He cradled his left arm. “Someone’s in the restroom; can I get a wet towel from the back – maybe with some ice?” He nodded towards the kitchen.

The woman seemed to read the desperation in his face, nodded, and walked into the kitchen. She didn’t object when he followed.

She led him past two women in white aprons preparing food to a stainless steel utility sink against the far wall. He rolled up his sleeve and rinsed his arm with cold water as the barista disappeared into a nearby room. He heard her scoop ice, and a few seconds later she emerged with a plastic cup and a thin towel. She placed the towel over the mouth of the cup and turned it upside down, filling the towel with ice. She finished by twisting it to form a makeshift icepack.

“This should do it,” she said and handed it to him.

Will put it on his arm and thanked her as she exited the kitchen. The busy cooks seemed to hardly notice him as he looked for an exit. He walked into the small room from which the barista had retrieved the ice, and discovered an ice machine and a door with an illuminated exit sign above it. This one had the same warning sign as the first one he’d encountered, but a sliver of light shone between the door and its frame. It was propped open.

He pushed it open and peered out. It led to a narrow alley between the café and the adjacent building. He set the icepack on the ice machine, put on his jacket, and stepped out, onto a small concrete porch. His nose alerted him to a bucket of sand mixed with hundreds of cigarette butts located just off the stoop, next to the building. To his left, the alley terminated with a red brick building: a dead end. In the direction of the storefront, a dingy green dumpster partially blocked the view of the street. The sweet-sour stench of its leaking contents nearly overwhelmed him as he stepped off the porch and crouched behind it, keeping his eye in the direction of the street.

A clicking sound alerted him that the door had closed behind him. Big mistake. He should’ve made sure it remained propped. Now he was trapped.

He pulled out his targeting device and started the “snapping” program. At that instant, his stalker stepped into view and looked down the alley. Well concealed, Will remained perfectly still and held his breath. He hoped his pursuer wouldn’t decide to check out the dead end.

To his relief, the hooded figure continued toward the store entrance and was soon out of view. When Will was confident that the man wouldn’t double back, he stood and walked quickly toward the street, stopping at the edge of the building. He peered around the corner to the right just as the man removed his hood and peered into the window of the café.

Will held the device around the corner and, through its view-screen, centered cross hairs on the side of the man’s head. He pushed a button, withdrew the device, and looked at the screen – a perfect headshot. He waited for a few seconds and then looked around the corner just as the man entered the café.
Perfect
, he thought. Got him without being seen.

Will turned left out of the alley, and walked quickly. At the next block he turned right, crossed the street, and entered a small public park. He sat on a bench and used his phone to send the picture to his instructor.

A minute later, he got a call.

“Well done, Thompson,” the gruff-voiced man said with a tone of approval. “Now I’ve got one for you.”

Will’s phone vibrated, indicating that a message had arrived. He pushed a button and opened the incoming file. His heart sank. It was a picture of
him
with cross hairs superimposed on his head.

“What the hell?” Will asked, annoyed.

The man chuckled. “There were
two
this time,” the man explained. “We’ll be there in a few minutes.”

Will hung up. He slapped his knee and cursed under his breath.

Five minutes later, a gray SUV pulled up. Its brakes squeaked as it stopped.

Will climbed into the back seat and sat next to the man he recognized as Renaldo, his pursuer from the café.
One of his pursuers
. Someone he didn’t recognize, a fit man in his mid fifties with short gray hair and sunglasses, sat in the passenger seat.

The man turned around and extended his hand behind the seat. “Nice to meet you, Dr. Thompson. I’m Roy,” he said. “I got you at the art building on the corner of Milwaukee and Kimball.”

Will remembered the six-way intersection. “Call me Will,” he said and shook the man’s hand.

“This was an important exercise,” Will’s instructor, Perry Dunlap, said from the driver’s seat. “Never overlook the possibility of there being more than one pursuer.”

“It also illustrates the effectiveness of a coordinated team,” Roy added. “Losing two people is tough. Surveillance and pursuit is often done in teams of two, or more – up to a dozen.”

“We’ll analyze the exercise in detail later,” Perry informed. “Your psychiatric evaluation isn’t until 10 a.m., so we have time for breakfast. Anyone object?”

Ten minutes later they were in the café, sitting in a booth next to the front window – the same one through which Renaldo had peered 15 minutes earlier.

“Your limp made you easy to track,” Roy explained as he took a sip of coffee. “That permanent?”

Will thought the limp had gone away, but he’d been working it pretty hard. He rubbed his right thigh even though the aching was in the bone and therefore unreachable. “No, a fractured femur,” Will replied. “Healing quickly.”

“How’d it happen?” Roy asked.

“Motorcycle accident,” Will lied. “Four months ago.”

Roy nodded.

He could tell Roy didn’t buy it.

Renaldo shook his head. “How did you double back on me?” he asked.

Perry put up his hand indicating that he’d answer that question for everyone. He took a laptop out of the leather knapsack that never left his person and started it. A minute later a map of the area appeared on the screen along with three moving, colored dots. “The green one is Thompson, and the red is Roy,” Perry explained. “You’re the yellow one, Renaldo.”

Perry fast-forwarded to the point where Roy snapped Will, and then stopped it. “You should never expose yourself on a corner like this – you’re extremely vulnerable here,” Perry said as he traced an area on the screen with his finger. “This is why you were snapped.”

Will nodded. Watching it all unfold from above was revealing.

Perry forwarded to the point where Will ducked into the café. He switched to a display mode that exposed a rough layout of the building’s interior so they could see Will’s movements.

“How did you get into the kitchen?” Perry asked.

Will described his coffee trick.

“Not bad,” Renaldo said.

“And he followed the rules,” Roy added. “We do exercises here often, and I know this place well. You could’ve bolted out the back door, but that would have set off the alarm.”

“Then it would’ve become a foot race – something you always want to avoid,” Perry chimed in.

Roy huffed. “Especially since you’re currently lame.”

Will nodded. “I need practice.”

Perry shook his head. “This was your last exercise. You’re as ready as you need to be for relocation.”

For an instant, Roy’s face distorted in an expression that Will interpreted as panic. The instructors had been informed that he was a relocation case, but even he didn’t know exactly when that would happen. There was something about Roy that alarmed him. Will shrugged it off. It didn’t matter; he’d soon be somewhere else.

4

Thursday, 7 May (9:32 a.m. EST – Antarctic Circle)

Captain Chuck McHenry weaved his way through the narrow corridors from his quarters to the sonar station where three young sailors, pressed shoulder-to-shoulder, stared at a computer monitor. A handful of others craned their necks to observe from their respective stations. McHenry cleared his throat and all but the man seated at the sonar station scattered and returned to their posts. “Hear it, Finley?” he asked.

The young sonar technician nodded as he tweaked some controls. A mess of multicolored curves appeared on the computer screen.

“The signal is there, sir, loud and clear,” Finley explained as he pointed to various locations on the screen. “About one pulse per second.”

“Can you locate it?” McHenry asked.

“It’s strange,” Finley explained, “the frequency spectrum of the signal makes it difficult to pinpoint its source – even with filtering – and we’re getting too many reflections from the ice. All I can say is that it’s deep.”

“How far?”

“A thousand meters, maybe more.”

It was surprising. McHenry knew that that was beyond the crush depth of most vessels, although specialized vehicles could certainly go that deep. “On the floor?”

Finley shook his head. “Floor’s at 4,000 meters. The source is at 1,200 at the most.” He turned away from the screen and faced McHenry. “If we switched to active mode – ”

“No,” McHenry cut him off. He wouldn’t ping the area and reveal their location to every vessel in the vicinity. They were an attack sub, not a science vessel. “Anyone else in the area?”

“A few small boats on the surface. That’s all,” Finley responded. “Unless there are sleepers – running quiet like us.”

McHenry was certain the Russians were in the area. They had ears, too. “Get a good recording, and mark our spot.”

“Sir, an absolute location might be difficult. We’re close to magnetic south, and these currents – ”

“Give me your best estimate,” McHenry responded.

In the nine years he’d served as commander of an attack sub, he’d never been given such odd orders. Antarctica as the location was certainly out of the ordinary, but even more so was the objective. They’d been sent to investigate a signal that had been detected by a science vessel. That had occurred more than two months earlier, and the captain of that vessel claimed that a Russian submarine had threatened to sink them. Why hadn’t the incident been investigated earlier? It was unusual for a submarine to surface and scare away little boats. “I’m sure you’ll be getting another shot at this, Finley,” he said.

It was time to leave the area and get to radio depth. He needed to report their findings to Naval Command.

5

Thursday, 7 May (11:50 a.m. EST – Washington, DC)

Daniel Parsons paced in front of his large office window and gazed into the horizon over the evergreen forest. It calmed his mind, although he knew his brain was always working in the background, making connections his conscious mind was too distracted to find. His stomach grumbled.
Lunchtime
.

Spending most of his waking hours there, he appreciated the aesthetically pleasing Space Systems building. The name was a front for a deep-cover CIA complex. The many hundreds of Space Systems personnel were “identity sensitive,” and could not be seen anywhere near the CIA headquarters. It was well known that foreign operatives catalogued everyone going near the Langley facility. This wasn’t a problem for public officials or intelligence analysts who never left the country. However, it was a grave threat to operatives who traveled abroad, especially in the age of face recognition software. It wasn’t a concern for Daniel since he was no longer allowed to leave the country, but he had to remain in deep cover for a different reason – for what was in his brain.

But it wasn’t just his knowledge of dark secrets that made him unique; it was that he knew
truths
. Truths had deeper implications than secrets. A truth could be used as a foundation from which to extrapolate conclusions, or
origins
, with the highest degree of certainty. The things he’d discovered as an Omniscient had profoundly changed his life. The world looked different to him now. More correctly, the world
was
different from what he had thought it was. Now, even the shadows of clouds passing slowly over the dark green forest carried a different meaning to him. And his questions about the world ran much deeper than those he’d had during the earlier part of his life. There were new truths to be unveiled.

His research that morning had only whetted his appetite. He’d started more than two weeks ago with what he’d been given: Operation Tabarin
.
As he’d suspected, it was only the tip of the iceberg. As with every other project he’d been assigned, he was sure that Tabarin would lead to some complicated mess of things that eventually converged to a fundamental objective. If he’d learned anything in the past two decades, it was that actions and their consequences were difficult to conceal. Objectives and motives, however, could lie dormant like spores in frozen soil, maybe never to see light. It was these causal motives that he sought.

Antarctica.
What on earth did they want in Antarctica?
He’d dug up much information on Operation Tabarin in declassified sources. It was a secret British mission to the southern continent initiated in the midst of World War II, during the southern summer, November, 1944. They’d constructed outposts along the way: one on Deception Island in the South Shetland Islands, another in Port Lockroy in the Palmer Archipelago, west of the Antarctic Peninsula, and finally set up shop at Hope Bay, on Antarctica’s Trinity Peninsula in 1945.

Daniel understood the scientific interest in Antarctica. In the current day, scientists of all types, from physicists to biologists, frequented the bottom of the world to study everything from the unique animal life to particle physics. In the 1940’s, however, science was scarce in that part of the world, not to mention it was wartime. Research not related to the war effort, of the Axis or the Allies, would have been the last thing on anyone’s minds.

His heart beat in his chest like a bass drum.
Something was there
.