Chris Mooney - World Without End

"You know, I thought you, of all people, would be happy that I decided to do something like this." He had the wounded look of a man who had shared a deeply held secret only to have it ridiculed.

"Dixon, listen to me."

"No, you listen to me, Steve. I'm going to do this. You can stay here if you want, but I'm going to do this. Understand?"

"Dixon, look at the ground. You're throwing up blood."

"This conversation is over."

"No, it's not. You're going to listen " "End of discussion, Steve."

"Goddammit, Dixon, you're not making any sense."

"I said end of discussion!" Dixon stormed off to the bubbler.

The pilot and one of the jump instructors, Chris Evans, looked up in their direction, both of them staring.

Something's wrong.

What are you hiding, Dix?

Conway's pager vibrated against his belt. Had to be Pasha. Good.

Maybe she had figured out what the fuck was going on.

Conway left Dixon and walked behind the back of the Snack Shack and kicked open the bathroom door. Soft yellow blades of early morning sunlight poured in from the window on his left, reflecting off the scuffed gray-linoleum floor that was peeling in the corners and the chipped white walls decorated with graffiti, crudely drawn images of male and female genitalia, and names with phone numbers advertising blow jobs. He checked under the stall, found no one, and locked the door.

His pager, the cell phone that was in reality hooked up to a satellite, his Palm Pilot all of it was strapped to his belt under his yellow jumpsuit. He yanked the zipper down, removed the phone and then dialed the number displayed on the pager's screen. While he waited for the encryption technology to engage, he looked outside the screen window above the urinals and watched Dixon pace with his head down.

A beep as the encryption engaged, and then Pasha's voice burst on the line: "Back off. You're getting him worked up."

Dixon's Citizen's diver's watch, a gift from Conway, not only contained a transmitter and a hidden microphone that listened in on all of Dixon's conversations, the micro sensors placed in the watchband measured his pulse, which could be read by the IWAC surveillance team.

"Crank up his heartbeat any more and you'll launch him into a panic attack," Pasha said.

"Ease up. Now."

Conway kept his voice low and his eyes on the window.

"He's hiding something."

"Raymond went over this with you."

"And we're about to go over it again. I know Dixon. The guy calls in sick when he wakes up with a headache. Now he's outside throwing up blood and wants to go skydiving? Come on. We're missing a piece of the picture."

"Stephen, everyone at the school checks out. Name, pictures, everything. We ran Dixon's voice through the machines. He's not lying to you, he's not keeping anything from you."

"Then what's this stuff about him getting the idea for skydiving "

"From your friend John Riley. I pulled the tape. The whole conversation is there, only you were too drunk to remember."

"I'm not buying it."

Pasha sighed.

"It's an easy read, Stephen. Dixon's father had dreams that his only offspring was going to be a big football star that's why he stuck Dixon with that ridiculous name, Major. Only genetics had a different agenda. Dixon grew into this frail, awkward-looking weakling who has no interest or talent for football or any other sport, but what he does have is a brain that operates on a different plane than everyone else's. So what does the father do? Washes his hands of his son.

Classic family drama.

"Now you step into his life, you develop a friendship, Dixon starts to confide in you. He can't measure up in his father's eyes, so what does he do? Tries to measure up in your eyes, the only guy who's taken an interest in him, the only person who accepts him for who he really is and doesn't judge him.

"The problem is, Dixon can't compete. You're good-looking, you're in shape, you're social, and women find you interesting you're everything Dixon wants to be and can't. He's not going to back down because he doesn't want to look like a failure in your eyes. It's basic psychology, Stephen."

"You're giving me too much credit."

"Explain this: You come into Dixon's life and suddenly he's going to UT football games with you, taking an interest in the sport responsible for most of the pain in his early life. Why do you think that is? So he can patch up things between him and his father?"

"It's not that simple. Look " "Human behavior is simple. Take yourself. After the shooting you got back into the game. Why? To prove yourself to the team. And to me."

It was the second time today someone had questioned his professional judgment; the fact that it was now Pasha, his lover and confidant, who was testing him sparked his anger.

"I'm getting tired of the cheap analysis," he said.

"This gig is going south. Mark my words."

"I'm tired of baby-sitting. Go and do your job," Pasha said and hung up.

Conway pulled the phone away from his ear. His face burned. He ran his tongue over the edges of his bottom teeth and stared at the wad of chewing tobacco that someone had recently left in the sink.

The morning air was suddenly splintered by the sound of the Cessna's engines coming to life.

Conway walked to the window and looked outside. A thin, wiry man with spiked blond hair and a lit cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth was jogging over to them: Chris Evans, Dixon's jump instructor and partner.

Conway went back outside and rejoined Dixon, who refused to look at him.

"Time for takeoff," Chris Evans said in that long, trademark Texas drawl. His eyes shifted down to the breakfast splatter on the ground.

A grin tugged on the corner of his mouth.

"You boys sure you're up for this?" he asked.

"I am," Dixon said and moved past Conway without a glance or word and trotted down the slope of grass that led to the runway. Evans watched after him, taking a long drag off his cigarette.

"Puking always happens the first time out," Evans said.

"Better he got it out now than when he's falling through the air. I can't tell you how many times that I've had jumpers spew all over me."

Evans turned to Conway.

"But I guess you've seen all that, since you've done this before. I see you packed your own chute."

"I had it in the car," Conway said, not really hearing himself.

Unconsciously, he scratched the scar on his collarbone.

Dix couldn't stay mad. Once he got to the plane's door, he turned around and, typical Dix, he smiled and motioned for Conway to join him.

Evans said, "Time's ticking, my brother. We got a full docket today.

You joining us or bowing out?"

Not right, it still doesn't feel right, goddammit.

Decision time, yes or no?

Conway boarded the plane.

Deep in the woods, less than half a mile away from the runway, Gunther Prad sat with his back against a tree, his hands folded across his lap, his entire body covered by a blanket that was in turn covered with actual leaves and tree branches. The blanket was critical in another way; it prevented a satellite from picking up his heat signature. As long as Gunther stayed under it, the CIA wouldn't know he was here.

Strapped across his shaved head was a pair of Viper binoculars. They were hooked into a specialized computer part of the army's MARS. system. The computer took what Gunther saw on his headset and transmitted the real-time images directly to the computer screen in Faust's Austin condo. From the open hole in the blanket, Gunther watched as Steve Conway, lead team member of the secret CIA unit called IWAC, boarded the small Cessna.

Gunther had wanted to break into Delburn, the fictitious consulting company back in Austin. All those computers hooked directly into the CIA; man, the place was a gold mine just waiting to be tapped. It wouldn't take much to figure out a way to bypass the building's security. Once inside he could hack his way inside the company's computer network. Gunther was no script kiddie; he was a professional hacker. Bypassing the security and then raiding the databases to see what the CIA had on Angel Eyes, Gunther could do it blindfolded. After that, he would plant a sniffer program on the line that would record the group's passwords, activities, you name it, and then encrypt the info and bounce it all over the Internet so it couldn't be traced. A simple process, he had done it hundreds of times and not once had he got caught.