Дэвид Балдаччи - No Man's Land

“Well, I know, even though I’m not cleared.”

“You said you told me everything,” she said, obviously annoyed.

“I lied. How’s it feel to be on the receiving end?”

She let out a long sigh. “It feels shitty.”

“Good.”

“Will you tell me now?”

“They’re building exoskeletons to make soldiers run faster, jump higher, and be far stronger. They’re going to make their brains work better while under stress. They’re going to put them in liquid armor that stiffens to titanium when a bullet hits and then repairs itself. And that’s probably just the tip of the iceberg.”

“Super-soldier stuff, then?”

“It’s not exactly a secret. You can Google DARPA and find out that stuff too. At least generally. They don’t tell you how they’re doing it, of course. But they do have pictures. The woman who works at Atalanta Group told me about it.”

“But how they’re doing it is the key. And you can’t just Wikipedia that. At least not the specifics.”

“But this isn’t about stealing DARPA secrets. This is about women who died thirty years ago. So, did a guinea pig go wild and become Ted Bundy, only with super powers?”

“You mean did they have a super-soldier program three decades ago?”

“I think they did. And I think he might have been the bouncer at the bar.”

“We have got to find this guy.”

Puller had a thought. He called the number for the Grunt and was surprised when someone answered. It was one of the bartenders whom he’d met while he was there. He identified himself. “How’s it going?” he asked.

“Well, we won’t be open for a while. In fact, I’m not sure we’ll ever open after what happened. Stupid, senseless violence. If you want to talk to Ms. Myers she’s not here.”

“I know that. I was actually calling about Paul, the bouncer. Is he there?”

“Paul? No. I haven’t seen him since last night. Why?”

“I was just trying to see if he needed anything. He was wounded and then he just disappeared. I don’t think he received any medical attention.”

“Damn, I didn’t know that. There’s just so much going on…” The bartender’s voice trailed away.

“I know, and I don’t mean to add to your burden. I can try to locate him. You happen to know what car he drives?”

“Car? Yeah, I saw him pull into the parking lot last night when I went to take a smoke before my shift started. It’s a white van.”

Puller tensed. “A van. You mean like a soccer-mom van?”

“No, like you see workmen or contractors use. Although there were no signs on it or anything.”

“You wouldn’t happen to know the license plate? I can trace him that way.”

“No, I don’t. I don’t even know his last name. I don’t think anybody here does.”

Puller clicked off and looked at Knox.

“What was all that about a van?” she asked.

He quickly explained about seeing the van at some of the locations where the bodies had been found.

“Holy shit, Puller. He has got to be our guy!”

“It’s looking that way. Now we just have to find him.”

“You know this could cost us both our careers,” she said.

“Personally, I think if that’s all we lose, we’ll be lucky.”

“I was actually thinking the same thing.”

“And knowing all that, why did you come back?”

“I thought that would be obvious.”

“Not to me.”

“I’ve grown accustomed to having you around.” Before he could respond she added, “And I would never go over to the dark side, Puller. I might bend the rules to get the job done, but I didn’t join up to do bad things. Or to see really bad things covered up. Like the deaths of four women. Or the disappearance of your mother.”

A long moment of silence elapsed.

“I appreciate that, Knox.”

“But you still don’t trust me?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“You didn’t have to. The look on your face says it all.”

“You risked your life to save my brother. Ordinarily, that would be enough for me to always believe you’re on the up-and-up.”

“Ordinarily.”

“Part of your job is to lie, to deceive. I never know when I’m on the receiving end of one of those mortar rounds, Knox. It’s just how I see it. I’m sorry. It’s just how I’m wired.”

She nodded. “I guess I can understand that. So where does that leave us?”

Before he could answer his phone rang. He looked at the screen. “Don’t recognize the number.”

“You better take it anyway. Maybe it’s Super Paul.”

“Hello?”

“Agent Puller, my name is Claire Jericho. I’m with Atalanta Group. And I believe we need to meet.”

ONE BREATH, TWO breaths, three breaths, four breaths.

Rogers had turned the water on in the shower until it was near scalding. He was rubbing the soap so hard against his skin that he could feel the flesh tearing and starting to bleed.

He was trying to erase all the scars.

He finally realized he couldn’t, dropped the soap, and leaned his forehead against the fiberglass wall of the shower. A few moments later he reached down, turned the water off, and just stood there, his head against the wall. His eyes were scrunched closed, his lungs heaving, his muscles twitching.

Five breaths, six breaths, seven breaths, eight breaths.

That was the ritual they had instilled in him when they were making him what he was.

It was painful. All of it was painful. Even when they put him under to do the innumerable surgeries he would wake up in the most incredible pain.

Breathe, they had told him. Count the breaths. Focus on the numbers, not the pain.

He was told painkillers were not an option because they had to accurately measure what he was feeling. And the only way to do that was to make him experience it the whole way.

When he asked they told him it was all about replication and scale , two terms with which he had no familiarity.

In his mind’s eye a thirty-year-younger Claire Jericho looked down at him as he lay on the hospital bed, writhing in so much pain that they’d had to shackle him to the bed like a prisoner.

And it had become clear fairly soon thereafter that he was a prisoner.

She had taken off her glasses, wiped a spot clear, put them back on, placed a small hand on his bucking shoulder, and told him in the calmest tone possible that what he was doing was for the greater good. That philosophy had become like a second heartbeat or an additional way to breathe.

When he had finally risen from the hospital bed and gone back to his room, he found a small box there. Inside was the ring. He opened his eyes and held up his right hand. He gripped the ring there with his other hand and wrenched it over the lumpy knuckle, leaving a trail of ripped flesh and blood in its wake.

He looked at the engraving on the inside of the band.

For the greater good. CJ.

CJ. Claire Jericho.

She had given him the ring when he’d recovered from the surgeries.

It symbolized their bond, she had told him.

She was his mentor. He was her prized pupil. Together, they could accomplish great things. Books would be written about them. They were, together, the tip of the spear in a brave new world.

And I bought every fucking line of the poison she spewed.

He had come from nothing, having traveled over an ocean as a stowaway in a cargo ship to get there. He had no friends, no contacts, and no prospects. No support.

And then he felt his luck had changed when he’d answered an ad for a job and run smack into Jericho.

He didn’t know he was to become a guinea pig as a way to achieve her vision for what the world in the future should look like.