Runaway Heart

FORTY-THREE

The room was small, locked, and windowless. The air-conditioner cranked freon-cooled air down on him through two large ceiling vents.

He'd been taken there in the van from the airport in Van Nuys-no stops-his head sacked up again like a bag of vegetables. Toward the end of the two-hour drive he'd felt the tires bouncing on what seemed like a badly paved road. He thought he smelled pine needles, but that could have been his imagination.

The van stopped, the door was thrown open, and he was dragged out and roughly pushed across some open ground by commandos who kept the conversation simple and guttural, sticking to phrases like "Shut the fuck up" and "No talking, asshole." Mind-expanding discourse.

He was shoved into a room where the temperature was around fifty. Only two places Jack knew of kept the thermostat that cold: the Polar Bear exhibit at the Los Angeles zoo and the LAPD Computer Center. Crude as his captors were, he didn't think he was about to be fed to a bear-so maybe he was in some kind of computer lab.

Detective reasoning at its tip-top best.

Taking it a step further, if this was a computer lab, maybe it was part of Octopus or Echelon.

After they pushed him into the cold room they uncuffed him and left. A few minutes later he decided, What the hell, go for it, and removed his canvas bag.

The room was concrete block-no windows, no chairs. Minimalist digs.

The hours ticked by while he grew goose bumps. He paced the room. He put his ear next to the concrete wall and listened. Something was humming faintly in two separate octaves behind the thick concrete. Water pipes? Power lines? Motown singers?

"Well, Jack, you've really fucked up big this time," he said to the humming wall.

Later, the same, dark-skinned, snake-cold Hispanic man he'd seen at the airport entered the room and closed the door behind him. "I'm Vincent Valdez."

Jack thought it probably wasn't a good sign that the man told him his name. Valdez stood close, not ten feet away, as if Jack posed absolutely no physical threat to him.

Jack stood and growled: "Before ripping your geek head off and shoving it up your ass, I'm required to inform you that I'm a black belt in four martial arts disciplines." Tired old bullshit, but there it was. The guy was pissing him off.

"Let's see what you got then."

Jack shrugged and gave him his best police academy hand-to-hand move, the old feint-to-the-left and pivot kick to the right. Before he got halfway through it he was flying backward, spinning wildly in flight, yelping something Three-Stoogish, like woo-woo-woop! He flew against the wall, landing with a thunk like a load of wet laundry, then slid down to the floor. Immediately, his worthless back went into a full spazoid convulsion. He was jerking around on the floor like a power company lineman with a handful of hot ends.

"I'm a fifth-degree black belt." Valdez was looking down at Jack, who was now desperately trying to get his lower lumbar region under control. "This might be a good time for you to tell me what you think you know," he instructed.

Jack finally stopped spasming and cleared his throat. "Okay… here's one thing I heard."

"I'm listening."

"Ashly Lynn may be getting out of porno."

Valdez didn't answer. He just glared and walked out of the room, relocking the door. No "Nice knowing ya," no "Have a nice day." He just froze Jack's balls with a look and left.

Incompetence pissed off Vincent Valdez more than anything else he encountered in life… more than stupidity, more than insanity or moral corruption. Incompetence was usually bred from a combination of careless thinking and bad tactics, both elements within the sphere of control. Failure indicated that you had not adequately foreseen problems inside your command venue. That reflected directly back on Valdez and made him angry with everybody around him, but mostly at himself.

This whole leak on the Ten-Eyck Chimera Project was totally unacceptable and had been getting worse with each passing hour. General Buzz Turpin had actually yelled at Vincent over the phone yesterday-something the whispering general had never done before. God only knew how many people now had information about the existence of the supersecret project, and all because of a silly lawsuit to protect a butterfly. The whole tangled mess had started there and had somehow gotten completely away from him.

He had no choice but to collateralize Wirta. They were in the middle of the Cleveland National Forest, at the Black Star Octopus Lab, and had good containment of the area. He would just march this wisecracking bozo out to the woods, crank a round into his fuzzy head, and bury him in a sack of lye. End of story.

He was getting set to give that order when the phone rang in the secure HQ. He snatched it up. It was the DARPA routing officer in D.C.

"Mr. Valdez?" she asked.

"Yes."

"I have a call for you. It came into our L.A. office ten minutes ago. I had to find you through Mr. Talbot in D.C."

"I don't want any calls."

"Mr. Talbot said you might want this one. It's from somebody named Herman Strockmire Jr."

"Yes. I do want to talk to him. Have you got an STL?" Referring to the Octopus designation for Satellite Trace and Location.

"Apparently he's calling from a cell phone and he's on the move right now. Octopus has him on the Hollywood Freeway just passing Sunset."

"Okay. Vector some units in on that location and put him through."

"I already have a team rolling on Mr. Talbot's instructions."

Then Vincent heard some clicks and the hiss of a cell phone.

"This is Valdez," he said sharply.

"Mr. Valdez," Herman said. "Are you the one quarter-backing this disaster?" Herman was in the passenger seat of another rental car looking at Susan, who was driving. They had just left Shane Scully at the Hollywood station where he had volunteered to scare up some friends to go out to the Cleveland National Forest and help look for Jack. The lights from the freeway signs strobed across the windshield. Herman pressed the phone tightly to his ear.

"Let me make you aware of something, Mr. Strockmire," Valdez said softly. "You are committing federal crimes and disrupting your country's national security."

"You're the one breaking laws and committing crimes," Herman snapped. "Kidnapping happens to be a crime; so is murder. I know you're holding Jack Wirta. I know you're evaluating your options. Before you commit to something you can't undo, I just wanted to tell you to be sure and read the Metro section in the LA. Times tomorrow morning. There's going to be an article about my restraining order against DARPA and the hybrid chimeras, including a great drawing my friend made of the one who attacked us. It's going to be about Jack Wirta and how he mysteriously disappeared after a federal arrest orchestrated under your command. Jordan Phoenix, a witness to the bust, has already given her sworn affidavit. In view of all this, I know you're going to want to keep Mr. Wirta in good condition."

"Is that it?" Valdez's voice was cold and menacing.

"That's it," Herman said. "Hurt him and you're going to have a lot of 'splaining to do, Lucy."

Valdez hung up without responding.

"Dad, I think somebody is following us… a gray sedan." Susan had been watching it suspiciously in her rear view mirror while listening to Herman's side of the conversation.

"Get off on Melrose and head back to the Hollywood Division," Herman instructed.

It took five minutes before they finally pulled into the Hollywood station on Wilcox Avenue. Herman asked the lot guard for Shane Scully and gave their names. After the officer made a call inside they were allowed to park behind the chain-link security fence. As they got out, the gray sedan cruised past.

"You know what pisses me off most?" Herman said as the sedan turned the corner at the end of the block and disappeared. "Those fucking guys are doing all this with my tax dollars."

"Dad, stop it. You're beginning to sound like a Republican."

They hurried past the parking guard and into the brightly lit lobby.

Valdez stood in the Black Star HQ with the phone still in his hand, listening to an update from his L.A. field unit. They had followed Herman and his daughter to the Hollywood police station and had just told Valdez that the Strockmires were inside.

"Okay, wait there," he ordered. "Call me when they move."

Valdez hung up the phone thinking he had to get rid of Jack Wirta, regardless. The man knew too much. He was troubled by Strockmire's threat of press coverage, so he would have to alter his plan-do it in a way that wouldn't produce too many questions. Wirta's medical file was in front of him. It included the blood work they had done on him out at Groom Lake. The file indicated that Wirta had a high level of some kind of powerful painkiller in his bloodstream. Apparently the ex-cop was taking a triple-hit narcotic. Percodan or Percocet. If that was the case, there would also be a medical record of the doctors who prescribed it. If he had run out of doctors who would write him, which was often the case with pain-pill addicts, then maybe there was even a trail of street dealers who could be found and convinced to make statements. If he couldn't find one of those, he'd get a volunteer of his own to make the allegation. People with drag histories made believable traffic fatalities.

He picked up the phone. "Get me Captain Pettis. He's in the lobby, out front."

"Yes sir," Pettis's voice came over the phone a moment later.

Valdez told the commando what he wanted: "We'll need to give Wirta a few tabs of Special K. Use the new designer stuff, the Ketamine-twelve, and round up a few unimpeachable witnesses. Get this done quickly. I need it set up in less than an hour."

"Yes sir."

Valdez hung up the phone. Anger swirled inside of him, filling him with poison. Valdez, a man who exhibited no emotion, was now seething. He knew that uncontrolled anger was dangerous… angry people made mistakes.

But no matter how hard he tried he was furious. For the first time in his life Vincent Valdez was dangerously out of control.