Linkage: The Narrows of Time

Chapter 17

Tuesday Night, December 25





Lucas opened thedriver’s door to Thompson’s Humvee and found the keys in theignition. When he started its engine, the dashboard displayed thetime as 11:11 PM.

The GPS systeminstalled into the center console beeped twice, then booted itsoperating system. Moments later, he knew his exactlocation—thirty-five miles northwest of the Phoenix metropolitanarea. He used the GPS interface to plot two courses: One was to thecapital building in downtown Phoenix where he knew General Alvarezwas headed. The other was to his mother’s home in north centralPhoenix.

Both destinationsrequired that he take the same route southeast to Phoenix until heran into Interstate 17, giving him at least thirty minutes to decideon his final destination. If he chose to go home, he still had timeto make it there before midnight to wish his mother a MerryChristmas, and give him time to rehearse what he was going to tellhis mother about Drew’s death. If he decided to hunt down Alvarez,he’d just barely have time to devise a stealthy approach.

He stepped on the gasand drove off across the desert in the same direction as GeneralAlvarez and his driver. The dirt road, if you could call it that, wasfilled with gullies, sand, and rock, sending his head crashing intothe Humvee’s padded ceiling numerous times. Tumbleweeds, bushes,and a few cacti caromed off the truck’s grill guard as he plowedthrough whatever was in his path.

Just about the timewhen he thought the uneven terrain would never end, he came across apaved, two-lane highway. He turned left and headed southeast towardthe freeway.

A few minutes later, hedrove over the crest of a steep hill near one of the state’smanmade lakes, allowing him to see a skyline view of the Phoenixmetro area. It was a stunning nighttime panorama except for the twinenergy domes glimmering in the distance. One appeared to be devouringthe downtown Phoenix area, while the other was near Scottsdale, asuburb thirty miles east of Phoenix. Pockets of the city’s powergrid were offline, leaving featureless voids in the brilliantnightscape.

* * *

Twentyminutes later, he arrived at the north side of Phoenix where heturned right and took the south access ramp onto I-17. DowntownPhoenix was straight ahead, ten miles or so. He jammed the gas pedalto the floorboard, plastering his back against the driver’s seat.

The opposite side ofthe freeway was crammed with a long line of cars and trucks filledwith people trying to get out of the city. He appeared to be the onlyone dumb enough to be heading south, directly toward the chaos. Hewas nearing the point in his trip where he needed to make achoice—General Alvarez or his mother? A mile ahead was theThunderbird Road exit, the point of no return if he wanted to driveto his mother’s house.

The terrain blurred byhis window, seemingly speeding up the passage of time. Only fiftyfeet remained before the exit ramp; it was dead ahead. Suddenly, theHumvee seemed to drive itself, swerving at the last second to steamdown the Thunderbird Road exit ramp. He was only minutes from hismother’s house. He knew what he must do—get her out of town andaway from the energy fields.

* * *

Hearrived home just short of midnight. Dorothy was normally in bedaround 9:00 PM, but Lucas figured she was still awake. He imaginedher sitting on the plastic-covered living room sofa, staring out thefront window, sipping on a coffee mug filled with eggnog. She had tobe worried after they failed to show up in time for Christmas dinner.There was probably a pile of homemade oatmeal cookies sitting on thecoffee table, next to a cold glass of milk. Oatmeal Crispies were hisfavorite and Mom made them for him every year. He was hungry andcould use a sugar fix. He checked the vehicle’s center console andfound two power bars tucked under a pair of sunglasses. He opened thewrappers and ate them both in seconds.

When he turned onto herstreet, his right foot eased off the gas pedal when he saw a whitevan parked along the curb in front of his mother’s house. Thestreetlights were still blazing, providing him with ample light toidentify the vehicle—a campus security van. If its driver wassomeone he knew, it would make explaining the night’s events allthat much easier.

He intended to pullbehind the van and park, but changed his mind when he saw two armedguards standing next to it, on the side facing the house. He saw hismother escorted out of the house by another two men; one walkedalongside her, supporting her right arm as she moved, and the othertwo steps behind, carrying a pair of suitcases, and a knapsack overthe left shoulder.

When he cruised alittle closer, he realized the person escorting his mother was Bruno,and the man carrying the baggage was . . . him! He had to look twiceto convince himself his eyes weren’t playing tricks. They weren’t.Who the hell was this imposter, and what was he doing with hismother?

He lowered his head anddrove past the house, hoping not to be spotted. There was plenty ofambient light from the full moon, but nobody seemed to notice him orthe Humvee creeping by the house. At the end of the street, he turnedoff his headlights and made a U-turn, parking behind a dented andscratched, four-door GMC Dooley truck on the opposite side of thestreet. A stack of inner tubes was tied down inside the bed of thegas-guzzler using bungee cords, and its front wheels were parked upon the sidewalk, at a sharp angle, probably due to the driver havingone too many six packs at the indoor water park only a mile away.

He got out of thestolen Humvee and snuck along the street until he arrived at thehouse next to his mother’s. He crouched down behind thethree-foot-tall hedge separating the two lawns, giving him a clearview of the van’s driver’s seat and open side door.

Bruno opened the doorand helped his mom into the front passenger’s seat, then walkedaround to the driver’s door, carrying a black laptop computer case,which Lucas recognized as his from the LA Kings’ hockey sticker onits front pocket, something he’d added only a few weeks before.

The red-haired manimpersonating him approached the vehicle’s side cargo door. Thecharlatan handed both suitcases to one of the armed guards alreadyinside the cargo door, then stepped up and entered the vehiclehimself. Seconds later, the other guard joined them inside and theside cargo door slammed shut.

Lucas sneaked back intothe Humvee and waited to turn on his headlights until after Brunoflipped a U-turn and drove down the street in the opposite direction.Lucas followed behind them for the next hour as Bruno crept throughtraffic across the north side of town. Lucas kept the Humvee back ata safe distance, trying not to be spotted as a tail. His plan seemedto work. It wasn’t difficult to blend in with the numerous Armytrucks interspersed within the civilian traffic.

Bruno drove south alongthe access road bordering the Loop 101 Freeway until he reached theGlendale Hockey Arena’s front-side parking lot. The van drove downa sharp incline and disappeared into an underground garage. To theright of the ramp’s entrance was a twenty-foot-wide sign that read:

ARENA RENOVATION

GeneralContractor: BTX ENTERPRISES

Lucas had heard thatDr. Kleezebee’s development company had purchased the vacant hockeybuilding and was in the process of renovating it. He’d never setfoot inside the arena, but had seen it on TV many times, the lastbeing two years earlier, right before the Arizona Coyotes filed forbankruptcy—a second time—and then relocated to Mexico. Nobodyexpected the financially strapped team to thrive in Mexico, but itdid. He never got used to saying “Los Coyotes.”

Lucas waited fiveminutes before driving the Humvee down the entrance ramp. Inside, heonly found one other vehicle—Bruno’s security van. It was parkedbackward in the very last row, only twenty feet from his currentposition. He could see the empty front seat of the van and its cargodoor. The van looked abandoned.

He looked around to seewhere Bruno and crew had taken his mother. Only four exits existed onthe sublevel, including the entrance ramp behind him. At the far endof the garage was the main elevator and its adjoining stairs, butBruno’s van wasn’t parked anywhere near them. The only otherchoice was a closed orange door, which was about ten feet on theother side of Bruno’s van.

Lucas pulled forwardslowly and parked the Humvee nose-to-nose with the van. He set theparking brake, got out of it with the soldier’s gun in his righthand, and looked through the van’s driver-side window. No one washome. He tried the van’s rear windows, but they were heavily tintedand the garage’s lighting was poor. He couldn’t see much ofanything inside. He tried to open the double doors, but they werelocked.

He walked to the orangedoor and reached for the doorknob with his left hand, but didn’tturn it—he heard voices coming from the other side. He leaned inclose to the door with his left ear to listen. One of the voices wasa perfect rendition of his own—the imposter’s—having a friendlyargument with Bruno about who ”should go first.” They werekidding around like old chums at happy hour. He listened for hismother’s voice but didn’t hear it.

A handful of secondslater, an electrical hum rattled the doorframe, startling him for asecond. Inside, a female voice said, “Please step onto the pad.Activation sequence will begin in thirty seconds. Remember not tohold your breath.”

Lucas slowly twistedthe doorknob, trying to open it, but it wouldn’t budge. Again, heheard the same female speak. “Please step onto the pad. Activationsequence will begin in thirty seconds. Remember not to hold yourbreath.” Both of the times she spoke, the woman used the sameinflections and timing, making her voice sound artificial, like itwere a recording.

He listened for anotherfive minutes, but heard nothing else from the other side. He triedtwice, unsuccessfully, to kick the metal door open.

He needed a new plan.

He searched his Humveefor tools, finding a heavy-duty scissors jack stuffed inside arecessed sidewall compartment behind the rear seat. A three-foot-longtire iron with a tapered end like a screwdriver was wedged inside aform-fitting cutout just below the jack. He grabbed the steel bar andreturned to the orange door with the intention to use it as acrowbar.

He took aim, thenjammed the bar’s tapered end into the doorjamb with a singlethrust, splitting the metal seam next to the lock. He wiggled andpushed the tire iron farther into the crack before leveraging all hisweight against the bar. It worked; he pried the door open.

He put the bar on thecement floor and walked inside with the loaded gun out in front ofhim. He sneaked along the brick wall lining the hallway until he cameto a chamber about the size of a 7-Eleven convenience store. Inside,he discovered two stacks of blinking electronic equipment with ametal desk and computer console sitting in front. He checked theroom, but there was no sign of his mother or anyone else. He wasalone.

A clear cylinder aboutthe size of a phone booth was standing in the center of the room. Itwas a few feet taller than Lucas, and resembled an oversizedpneumatic tube, like those used by a bank in its drive-through lane.On the left side of the tube, a bundle of gray-and-black cablessnaked their way along the floor, connecting the tube to theelectronic equipment. The cylinder’s base was a round pad aboutthree inches thick and four feet in diameter. Its surface was shinyand appeared to be made of glass, or possibly an acrylic. Thepad was sectioned off into four, pie-shaped triangles of differentcolors: red, blue, orange, and green.

When Lucas approachedthe cylinder, its enclosure rotated automatically, revealing twoclear, overlapping glass tubes, one inside the other. The glass ringscontinued moving in opposite directions until a man-sized openingappeared. He was tempted to step inside to see what might happen, butdecided to wait.

He walked to thecomputer desk, where a rotating 3D font was spinning on thecomputer’s twenty-inch monitor. The phrase BTX ENTERPRISESdanced across the screen in block letters, taking turns bouncingoff the four edges of the display. He didn’t see a mouse orkeyboard, so he touched the screen to deactivate the screen saver.The computer screen showed:

“Jump Pad Thirteen .. . Comm Sync . . . Buffer waiting,” he mumbled aloud. The devicemust be some type of streaming communication system, and it wasconnected to a silo. Apparently, not the only one Kleezebee owned,either.

He used his finger topress the ENGAGE button. A female voice said, “Please step onto thepad. Activation sequence will begin in thirty seconds. Remember notto hold your breath.”

“Pretty f*ckingcool!” he said, taking a step back. He realized the machine wassome type of telepod or transporter. “They must have taken it toSilo Three, wherever that is.”

He walked back to thevertical cylinder and considered his options. He needed to eitherstep onto the pad and take a ride, or abandon his intention to rescuehis mother. If he gave up, where would he go? After a moment ofdeliberation, he decided the only choice was to take a road trip.

He stepped into thedevice, making sure the handgun he was holding did not damage theglass. Lights flashed and a high-decibel alarm blared through theroom. Then the same female’s voice said, “This is a weapons-freezone! Please discard your weapon immediately. You have twenty secondsto comply or a nerve agent will be released.”

A steel door slammedshut from the ceiling above, blocking his access to the entrancehallway. He was trapped inside the room. Then a four-foot-wide metaldrawer slid open along the wall next to the electronic equipment.

Lucas didn’t need tobe told twice. He scooted off the pad and ran to the deposit drawer,and tossed in the handgun. The drawer closed as soon as the weaponclanked along its bottom. He listened for the computer to respond,but she didn’t.

“I just gave you thegun,” he shouted to the room. No answer. When he didn’t hear thesound of gas being released, he decided he was in the clear. Hestepped back inside the Jump Pad. This time its enclosure rotatedclosed without any alarms or warnings. He let out a sigh of relief.

He closed his eyes andwaited for the machine to do its thing. He concentrated on hisbreathing, making sure to inhale and exhale normally as the computertold him to do. Everything was going fine until he started thinkingabout the 1986 movie The Fly. He suddenly worried that hemight come out the other end of the telepod as a hybrid organism,like the movie’s Brundle-Fly creature—half-human, half-fly. Heopened his eyes and listened for insects buzzing around the telepod.There were none.

Then the equipmentpowered up before he was ready, making him hold his breath. He beganto feel lightheaded as if he were in a dream, floating above theclouds. It was almost a spiritual experience, which was more thanstrange since, unlike his brother, he didn’t believe in a supremebeing. He preferred the hard reality of science. He couldn’t fathomhow his mother and brother could blindly follow church doctrinewithout a shred of proof or assurance.

A long second later, heheard the same computerized female voice say, “Welcome to SiloThree.”

Lucas opened his eyesand pressed his hands against the clear glass enclosure to catch hisbalance, at least until the enclosure began to rotate open. He was ina room much like the one he’d just left: Electronic equipmentinstalled in wall-mounted enclosures along one side of the room, anda stubby computer desk with a flashing monitor sitting on top of it.

He stepped off the padand felt around his body, checking to make sure all of his parts wereintact and in the correct location. They were. He walked to the onlydoor, opened it, and stepped into a hallway.

Two people—athirty-something male and younger female—were approaching from hisright, dressed in white tunics and turquoise-colored surgical pants.They were shuffling their feet forward at half-speed, obviously in nohurry to get where they were going. The woman was eating a bagelwhile her colleague carried the conversation.

The man smiled atLucas. “Hello, Dr. Ramsay. Enjoying your visit?”

Lucas glanced at theman’s nametag. “Yes, I am . . . Dr. Khoury.”

The couple walked pasthim, down the hallway to the left. He decided to head in the oppositedirection, following three, colored floor stripes—red, orange,blue—which were painted down the middle of the cement floor. Whenthe stripes branched off from each other, he chose to follow the redstripe, his favorite color. It led him down a connecting hallwaywhere a half-dozen closed doors lined the walls.

The first door waslabeled with a sign that said LAUNDRY. He kept on walking until hecame upon another door that said SUPPLIES. He opened it and wentinside. The room’s interior was just as he expected, twofloor-to-ceiling metal shelves with cleaning supplies on one andoffice supplies on the other. There was a janitor’s mop and bucket,several worn yellow sponges, a pair of dirty sneakers that appearedto be older than he was, and a handful of fly-fishing magazinessitting under a box of Handi Wipes. A blue baseball cap with acrusted ring of sweat was draped over the end of the mop’s handle.

Several waist-highrectangular signs were leaning up against the wall next to the door.Some of the printing was faded beyond recognition, but Lucas was ableto make TITAN II MISSILE SITE 3 stenciled across the top of eachsign. Just below the title was a single number, varying from 1 to 8depending on which sign he looked at. Below each number was a floorplan with footprint icons leading to exterior doors.

Lucas had visited theTitan Missile Museum just south of Tucson during his freshman year.The tour guide explained that when the Department of Defensedecommissioned missile silos, they often sold the property tocitizens at pennies on the dollar. He wondered if Kleezebee’scompany had bought one of them and refurbished it.

“Okay, I’munderground in an old missile silo, but where?” He inspected theoffice supplies and found that they were all from the same supplystore in Tucson. He recognized the address as just south of campus onBroadway Boulevard.

He continued down thehall and turned right around the next corner. He could see anelevator at the far end of the corridor; a woman stood in front ofit. To his immediate left, there was a door marked ARMORY.

“Yahtzee!” hequipped before ducking inside the door. The room was slightly largerthan the bedroom in his apartment but much better stocked. Anovercrowded weapons rack with machine guns and semi-automatichandguns was hanging on the far wall. In addition, there was agenerous supply of other combat gear, including handheld radios,ammunition, night-vision goggles, smoke and flash grenades, helmets,and Kevlar protective vests. He had hit the motherload.

On his way back to therifle rack, he bumped into a case of odd-looking handheld weaponssitting on top of two black, corrugated storage containers. The gunswere dark gray, almost black, with a blocky, right-angle appearance,much like that of a police-issued electroshock weapon. He picked upone of the weapons; it was much heavier than he’d expected.

A pea-sized lever stuckout on the side of the gun just above the handgrip. He pressed itwith his thumb, releasing a two-inch, rectangular cartridge from thebottom of the stock. The cartridge was glowing green, warm to thetouch, and fit into the palm of his hand. He snapped the cartridgeback into its chamber, then pointed the weapon at the empty wall nextto the closed door.

He pulled the trigger,sending a silent blast of white energy out of the gun’s barrel.When the energy ball hit the wall, it scattered across the surfacelike static lightning frolicking across the night sky.

“Oh, yeah, I’ve gotto get me one of these!” he said, using his best Will Smithimitation. He tucked the gun inside the back of his waistband andpulled his shirt down over it to conceal the bulge.

He also grabbed ablack, 9mm handgun from the weapons rack and checked its ammo. Allfifteen rounds were loaded into the magazine, which he rammed intothe gun’s stock. “Let’s rock and roll,” he said, feeling damngood about his progress thus far. He stuffed the 9mm inside the frontof his belt and returned to the hallway. He continued down thecorridor to the elevator, keeping track of the armory’s location incase he needed to return.

When he reached the endof the hall, the elevator’s door opened and out walked a whistlingsecurity guard. “Can I help you find something, Dr. Ramsay?”

Lucas cleared histhroat, trying to act cool. “Have you seen Bruno?”

“Last time I saw him,he was down on Eight, in surveillance.”

“Thanks.”

“Of course, anytime,”the guard said, walking away. Then the man stopped and turned around.“Hey, didn’t I just see you down there?”

Lucas ignored theguard’s question as he stepped into the lift, hoping that the guardthought he didn’t hear him. He just needed the doors to closebefore the man asked him a second time. He pressed the Number 8button on the panel, then smiled at the guard as if everything wasnormal. He stopped holding his breath when the doors closed and theelevator started its descent. He had been on Level 5.

The elevator’s bellchimed right before the doors opened on Sublevel 8. Lucas expected tosee another hallway, but instead the lift opened directly into awarehouse-sized room filled with a grid of twenty video screenscovering the far wall. A group of six men was seated side-by-side infront of a video control station that stretched from one side of theroom to the other. Like the three men standing behind them, they werefacing forward, with their backs to Lucas. No one seemed to noticehis arrival.

Lucas recognized allthree of the men standing with their heads tilted up toward theactive screens. One of them was Kleezebee, who was leaning oncrutches, wearing his patented flannel shirt and blue coveralls. Oneof his pant legs was cut off just below the knee to make room for thewhite cast wrapped around his broken ankle. Bruno was standing inbetween Kleezebee and the imposter who had carried his mother’ssuitcases from the house.

Before the elevator doors closed, Lucas quickly moved forward, aiminghis 9mm handgun at the back of Kleezebee’s head. “Someone mindtelling me what the f*ck is going on here?” he shouted.