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  “You’re like a brick wall,” he said.

  “I meditate a lot,” I said. I lowered the bill of my hat and started walking. I had done the same thing many times after liquidating a target for the Shop. Most people react slowly to surprises, especially violent surprises. The violence stuns them into inaction.

  I knew some would point at me or at the very least track me with their eyes. They didn’t count. The people who did count were the backup to the needle-man. Why would he pick me out of the crowd today? Because someone had ordered him to, that’s why.

  I’d gotten sloppy following Kay. To whom did the needle-man belong?

  I kept scanning as I hurried to the last place I’d seen Kay. Did the attack on me mean others would try for her?

  Then I saw Kay running, dodging cars as she crossed the middle of the street. She looked back once—not at me, but at someone else that I couldn’t spot. Cars honked. Brakes squealed. Then Kay was on the other side of the street. She ran past watching people and slipped into the nearest tourist store as an angry driver flipped her off.

  I scanned the crowds, looking for someone too controlled, too studious and alert. Either they were better at this than I was, or there wasn’t anybody.

  A siren blared in the distance. It was time to move.

  At a crosswalk, I hurried across the street and to the knickknack store Kay had entered. It was good to get out of the blazing sun. A few people looked up as I entered. A chime sounded, announcing my appearance. Then the people returned to looking at tiny trolley cars and good luck charms. In a moment, I realized Kay must have exited through the back.

  I strode that way, heard an exasperated clerk say I couldn’t go there and then I stepped out the back exit. There were cardboard boxes piled too high against the rear of the store. I looked right and left, but there was no sign of Kay, although a black cat licked its paw and studied me.

  I soon exited the alley and saw that the throngs of people had returned to normal. Had Kay spotted me before? Was someone still following me?

  I acted as if I still trailed her, but she was gone. I stopped at a Burger King window, eying the people inside eating fries and slurping Dr. Pepper. Changing my focus, I used the window as a mirror. A black-suited man in the distance with an English bowler hat turned away too quickly. I turned too, but he disappeared into the crowd. It felt to me as if he’d realized I’d spotted him.

  It struck me then, the reason for the needle-man. It made little sense for him to belong to Kay. The suited man in the bobby hat meant others were tracking her. Likely, they’d tracked her to my boat.

  I muttered a curse and headed for the Alamo. Why pump me with drugs? The answer was obvious. So I would go to sleep and give intruders time to ransack my cabin cruiser with impunity.

  I increased my stride. Bones were going to break if I found people going through my stuff.

  -4-

  I hurried down wide concrete steps, passed dried blood droplets on the cement and soon walked onto my pier. The Alamo was still tied down, and I didn’t see anyone prowling about on my deck.

  Several slips over, a woman stood high in her conning tower, behind the wheel. The water near her inboard engines gurgled as she eased the big motorboat into the harbor. My boat was a quarter of its size, but it was big enough for my needs.

  The feeling that prowlers were inside my cabin cruiser was strong. The ex-con had tried to use a needle to inject me with a blue solution. That meant planning. The suited man with the bobby hat was likely connected to the needle-man. The fact they’d used a regular needle was comforting, implying they didn’t realize how my greater density had toughened my skin. A more suspicious part of me had an unsettling thought. Maybe they’d used a regular needle to lull me into thinking what I did. But trying to second-guess everything soon led me down mind-numbing rabbit-holes.

  I jumped the gap between the pier and my boat and landed heavily on the main deck. If there were people inside, they would have heard that. There was no way I could have jumped lightly onto my boat. I drew my Browning and headed for the lounge door. A single glance showed me it had been forced open. Anger flared in my chest. Kay had led filth onto my boat, into my life.

  You wouldn’t have that life unless Kay had opened your cell door in Italy, the better half of me whispered.

  True, but that didn’t calm me.

  I slipped into the lounge. The box was gone, but that was because I’d already taken it down to the bedroom. Cushions were strewn about the floor, desk drawers were open, a nightstand lay on its side and two closest doors were open. Through the galley I saw a light down in the bedroom or maybe down in the head.

  I gripped my Browning and quietly moved into the galley. Cabinets were open, revealing my cupboards. Slipping my sunglasses into my shirt pocket, I started down the short stairway. Steps creaked, a dead giveaway, so I bounded down, deciding on speed over surprise.

  An unseen man shouted a warning from the guest cabin. I raised my gun but hesitated as I saw a bald man come out of my bedroom. He held a bulky flashlight—at least I thought it was a flashlight. It had a small yellow plastic box, a handgrip and a shiny reflector and glass lens.

  “Lay on the floor!” I shouted.

  The bald man wore corduroy pants and work boots. He had a smudged tattoo of a dagger on the forearm of the hand holding the flashlight. It was a prison tattoo, likely inked long ago. He stared at my gun, hating it but not intimidated by it.

  “If you insist,” I said, aiming the Browning at his forehead, deciding I’d like him better with a hole in it.

  A second man appeared out of the guest cabin. He wore a shiny silver jacket and had to be the whitest person I’d ever seen, including all Canadians and Russians. There wasn’t a hint of a tan on his skin, and his hair was so blond it was platinum.

  “Do it,” he said.

  For a second, I thought he meant me, that I should shoot his friend.

  Then the bald man’s thumb moved on the plastic handle of the flashlight. A switch clicked and a whomp sound came from the small plastic box. The reflector flashed brighter than the sun. The exploding light felt as if someone smashed a hammer against each of my eyes. It surprised me, shocked me, and I cried out in agony as I stumbled backward.

  Reflexively, I fired my Browning. In the confined spaces, the shots rang out loudly, hurting my ears. The smell of cordite bit my nostrils. I kept pulling the trigger, moving my aim into what seemed like the right locations. Soon the gun no longer bucked in my hand—I was out of ammo.

  Purple spots exploded against the lids of my closed eyes. My head throbbed and nausea threatened. I couldn’t hear a thing. With my head down, I crawled toward them. My stomach heaved then, but I clenched my teeth. That only made the pain worse. Whoever had sent them had given the bald man a device specifically designed to deal with me. That was bad.

  My hands roved over a prone body. It twitched convulsively. I shouted and lunged onto him, clutching his throat, squeezing as hard as I could. Then I realized blood flowed against my elbows, the ones on his chest. Some of my bullets had struck. Despite the gruesomeness of it, I crawled over him, feeling with my hands until I found the ultra-flashlight.

  I flicked the switch and the whomp sound occurred again. The intensity against my eyelids stopped and I sagged with relief. This thing must have a super-battery.

  I listened, but couldn’t hear the second man, the one with the shiny jacket.

  Tentatively, I opened my eyes. Splotches made it impossible to see anything. Had they blinded me permanently?

  I kept moving around, searching, until I found the second man. He’d stumbled back into the guest cabin, or he’d fallen back into it. With my hands, I explored his torso and then his neck and head. I grunted and pulled my hands away. He lacked pieces of his face. I’d shot him at least twice in the head.

  Shop experts had trained me to fire blind, using memory and sound to guide me. Realizing I wasn’t in immediate danger, I propped myself against a bulkhead and
waited. Others outside might have heard the gunfire. If police showed up—

  I climbed to my feet and experimentally opened my eyes. Between various splotches, I saw dim images. My eyesight was returning.

  “Thank you, God,” I murmured. The idea of being blind—I shook my head. That made me groan, and I clutched my aching head.

  I never wanted to face one of those flashlights again. I think I’d rather have taken a bullet in the leg or arm.

  I slid down to my butt, put my head between my knees and tried to think this through. Who were these two? They must have been searching for Kay’s box. It was in my bedroom, so they must have found it. Why hadn’t they taken it from Kay before she reached me? Why wait until she’d left it here? Were these two with Polarity Magnetics?

  I tried my eyes again, and saw a little more. I needed to get out of here. Rising, I stumbled into my cabin. They’d put the box on my bed.

  I wanted to rip off the tape and see what was inside, but I waited. I needed to get out on the water for several reasons, not the least of which was to dispose of the two bodies. There was another reason to wait. What if the box contained something bad? Bad as in a bomb, contraband or a supervirus? What if I was supposed to open it? What if Kay had hired these thugs to make me over-curious?

  Too much had happened today. It made me extra-paranoid. For all I knew, cops were already on the way, a SWAT team or someone worse like a Shop clean-up crew.

  I tore off my bloody clothes and shoved them into a plastic garbage bag. Then I showered and put on fresh clothes. For the next twenty minutes, I unhooked the water hoses, waste and electrical lines and removed the mooring lines. Afterward, I fired the twin diesels and backed out of slip C-11. I had to wait for a huge yacht named Cerberus to work its way out of the marina ahead of me.

  As I waited, I hurried down to my cabin and took a palm-sized locator from a hidden floorboard. Turning it on, I let it beep, searching for radio signals, for hidden bugs. I found one, and crushed it with my heel.

  After putting the locator away, I waved at the captain of the Cerberus. He was a huge man with an admiral’s cap, and there were efficient sailors briskly manning his boat.

  As the yacht’s wake washed against my hull, I let my engines rumble and began to ease out after him. In time, I pushed the twin throttles and felt the surge of power. The breeze was low today, the waves were small and the Alamo thumped over them. I soon passed under the Golden Gate Bridge and enjoyed the view of the Presidio. Then I entered the Pacific Ocean. Japan waited on the other side. The waves increased and I quickly left the seagulls behind.

  My tension eased. No cops had appeared, which was surprising now that I thought about it. People must have heard shots. Why had no one investigated?

  I shook my head. I had plenty of questions but few answers. I wanted some answers, and wondered if Kay’s box would supply some.

  I waited until San Francisco was a smudge on the horizon. Then I turned off the engines, threw out the anchor and took a deep breath. It was solitary out here, peaceful, with the hypnotic sound of waves slapping against my small island of wood, plastic and steel. The motion, the sway, relaxed me so I yawned and felt my eyelids grow heavy. The cold breeze felt good on my skin and the cloud cover brought blessed relief to my eyes. Despite my sunglasses, they were more sensitive than usual.

  It was time to work, however. I went below and brought up the bodies. They both lacked wallets, but both had compact guns that lacked any metal parts. They should have come out of the cabins at me firing. I fired one of the pistols now. The bullets seemed ordinary enough. After I was finished shooting, I pitched them overboard, watching each one plop into the sea.

  The one body had more smudged prison tattoos on his person. They reminded me of the needle-man’s tattoos on his neck. As I thought about it, it also reminded me of the purse-snatching junkie. The connection seemed to be ex-cons, bikers or druggie losers. The corpse with the shiny jacket, how was it connected to the others? It was white, stark white, just as the junkie had been a tan-less white.

  Who used bikers or ex-cons? That didn’t fit with high-tech weapons. Well, there had just been the one: the flashlight blaster. The hypo-attacker had been practiced. Maybe he was a professional kidnapper and a home invader. Those were nasty trades practiced by evil people.

  I brought up a pair of binoculars and scanned the sky and the ocean. There was a big cruise liner on the horizon. Otherwise, I was alone. I brought up rope, cut off the needed lengths and tied each line around a corpse. Next, I attached several twenty-five-pound weights to each. I’d read somewhere that sailors at sea during the Napoleonic era had used two twelve-pound round-shot on a body to ensure it went down. I didn’t know these two, and I didn’t like them. I was sure they were vile individuals. Still, I said a short prayer for each, for their souls. I’d killed them, after all. By praying for them, I hoped in my old age that their deaths wouldn’t come back to haunt me. Then I slid each body overboard, watching each slip underwater.

  Lastly, I ripped out bloody carpet, anything bloody and shoved it all into a duffel bag. I piled weights into the bag, tied it tight and hurled it overboard.

  Only then was I ready to inspect Kay’s mysterious box. I’d already thought all kinds of things concerning it. Bomb, supervirus, heroin, tainted cash or bonds, I had no idea what waited for me. Dave had liked Kay back in Geneva. She’d always seemed nice enough to me then, if tightly wound. One thing I didn’t like about her was that she’d helped the Shop run experiments on us in Italy. What kind of person did that? It’s true she hadn’t helped them with the worst experiments on me, but I had no idea what she had done to the others. After my experiences this afternoon, I wasn’t going to trust her about the box.

  I sighed as I entered my bedroom. The small, microwave-sized box was still on my bunk. The cabin tilted as the ocean waves washed against the hull. The rolling waves moved my boat, and therefore the cabin, back and forth, and today the motion gave me a touch of nausea. Normally, I didn’t get seasick. It must have been a lingering effect of the flashlight blaster.

  It was interesting to me that the intruders hadn’t opened the box, but simply placed it on the bed. I leaned against a wall as the cabin continued to tilt various ways. I watched the box and I noticed how it pressed against my blanket. What was inside? I wanted to know. I was curious. The fact the bald man had used a weapon specially designed for me made me even more curious.

  Polarity Magnetics: I’d like to know more about the company. Did they work on magnets or was it simply an interesting name? The particle accelerator had used huge magnets. Did Doctor Cheng and her people study dark matter there in Long Beach?

  I cracked my knuckles and knelt on the edge of the bunk. I listened, but couldn’t hear anything from the box. Kay had walked with it. She’d jumped the gap between the pier and the boat with it. The two intruders had lifted the box. I’d lifted it earlier, putting it in a closet. It had weighed nearly twice as much as a microwave its size.

  Blowing out my cheeks, I climbed into the galley, selected a sharp steak knife and returned to the cabin. First, I moved the box onto the carpet. Then I squatted by it and set my hand on top. Clear tape seemed to have been hurriedly wound around the box. Gingerly, I eased the steak knife against a tape-strand and slowly sawed back and forth. If I was about to kill myself, I was an idiot. It seemed like the smarter thing would be to dump the box into the ocean and forget about it. I could take my boat to Mexico and disown any part of this.

  That would have been the smart thing, but I was curious, and I owed Kay. Therefore, I kept on sawing the first strand. It parted. I jerked my hand away and waited. Nothing ominous happened. I put my ear to the box, listening closely. Frowning, I cut another strand and then a third. I wiped my wrist against my lips, grabbed a cardboard edge and slowly pried it open. There was something silvery inside the box.

  My heart was beating hard by then. I shouldn’t be doing this. I should hurl the box into the ocean. I was playing with
things that I had no idea they did. Look at what had happened to me in Geneva.

  “Remember what happened to Dave,” I whispered.

  Hadn’t Kay said this box had something to do with Dave? He phased in and out. Was it a phase bomb? I had no idea what a phase bomb would be able to do, but I didn’t like the sound of it.

  I studied the box for a full thirty seconds. Finally, I began cutting strands again. Knowing I was a fool but unable to help myself, I opened a cardboard lid to see more fully what I had.

  It was silvery, cube-shaped and was completely metallic and reflected a distorted image of me. I didn’t like it at all. I chewed my lower lip and finally dared touch the surface. It was cool and smooth. Part of me suggested I tap it. I vigorously shook my head. There wasn’t a chance I was going to do that.

  It was a prototype, whatever it was. It was supposedly fashioned at Polarity Magnetics and Kay would never have helped develop it if she’d known what they were building. What was it then? What would a silvery cube this size do?

  I couldn’t help but think it was some high-tech bomb.

  Polarity Magnetics: the name gave me an idea. I went up to the lounge and rummaged in my desk until I found a small magnet. I squeezed the magnet in my hand and weighed it thoughtfully.

  “Don’t be reckless,” I whispered.

  I returned to my cabin and debated with myself. Finally, I pressed the magnet against the silvery cube. It didn’t stick. This was metal, but it was nonferrous.

  I don’t know why, but that frightened me. I pocketed the magnet. Then I decided on one more test. I retrieved my bug-finding locator, wanting to know if this cube sent out radio signals. Switching it on, I pointed the locator at the cube.

  Nothing happened.

  “Good,” I muttered. Then I noticed that the locator’s red light wasn’t on, nor did it beep as it was supposed to. I flicked the switch several times. I opened the lid and took out the dead batteries. Going to my small freezer, I ripped new batteries from a package and slotted them into the bug-finder.