Chapter Twenty-Five
Cameron snapped his laptop open as he heard the particular chime he had marked for Patient Zero, otherwise known as Lakan Strongbow. He swiped the screen to reveal a rotating image of a DNA helix superimposed over a map of Idaho.
“Jesus,” he whispered. “What is this kid?”
Chase’s head swiveled. “Doctor?”
“Load up your guys and head back to the plane. I have a reading, a strong one…in Idaho. Near the National Park.”
Chase’s reaction was almost the same as the doctor’s. “Idaho? How the fuck did he get to Idaho?”
“I’m guessing…on a plane?” Cameron retorted. Chase called in his men and they left the casino complex in a flurry of squealing tires and disgruntled employees.
Aiken’s men watched them retreating and reported back, was told to meet up with their leader to follow Chase’s team. When they saw that they were returning to the airport, Aiken remarked that Dr. Cameron must have gotten a trace on the subject.
Chase and his team boarded the Lear Jet and it took off ten minutes later, bumping several commercial flights. Aiken heard the waiting passengers complaining in the terminal as he called his contacts and asked if the jet had filed a flight plan and where. He requested a chopper and was told that one would be waiting at Terminal 5. The contact also reported that the subject had been spotted in Idaho in the company of a troop of camping Boy Scouts.
NSA had picked up several phone conversations between the Boy Scouts and their parents, about two teenagers walking out of the Badlands Park after falling off their raft on the Snake River. One boy had actually mentioned the teen’s name and snapped a cell phone image of the boy…Blake. The girl was named Rachel and an Amerindian.
Aiken said that was the name of the CEO’s niece, Rachel Little Bear. “She must have helped him get away,” he said. “Probably walked right past us dressed as two girls. He’s not very tall for a 14-year-old.”
Martin replied he hadn’t seen any teenage Indian girls in the casino or airport and would have noticed because they would have stood out as underage. Besides, he would damn sure have noticed a pilot under the age of 21 if he was suggesting she had flown Lakan out of the city’s airport.
The chopper waiting for them was a commercial /agriculture bird. The pilot said he mostly flew for ranchers to locate lost stock but was under government contract on a ‘will call’ basis. He explained that he’d only been called out twice before - both times for lost tourists in the desert. Both had been found dead of dehydration one hundred miles from nowhere after leaving the broken down vehicles and trying to walk for help. He told them cheerfully that more than one mobster had left behind in the desert a new resident skeleton and ghost.
Martin was spooked as he climbed into the seat nearest the team leader. As the chopper lifted, he leaned close and spoke into Aiken’s ear. “Just what is this kid, Sarge and what can he do? I thought we were after a runaway half-blood that’s related to Hamilton?”
“We are. But he’s so much more,” Aiken returned. “Which we don’t need to know about.”
I
Chase worried his lip, sucking part of his cheek into his mouth and chewing on it. His eyes seemed even colder and more mercurial than ever. Twice, he got up and spoke to the pilot, then returned to his seat to once again worry his cheek. Cameron finally went and told the agent that the trace hadn’t moved significantly in the last two hours; it was solidly planted in the middle of the Snake River Plateau in Idaho but not on Federal Reservation land.
“Just what do you think this kid is capable of, Doctor?”
Cameron hesitated. “I know he’s never caught a cold or a childhood disease even when I tested him and he was a brain-damaged patient. He was inoculated for everything but never even had a head cold. He never seemed to have cuts and scrapes nor broke any bones playing. As a child, he was capable of intense concentration for hours but at simple tasks, like threading his shoelaces or putting pins in boxes. He never once showed any sign of intelligence higher than 65. He rarely spoke. I tested him extensively and he was brain damaged, his IQ 62.”
“He was faking it?” Chase asked. Cameron shook his head.
“No. That’s what makes him so valuable. Once a brain cell dies, it’s dead. It can’t be repaired or replaced like bone cells or blood cells. Yet, he did it. Which means if we can find out how he did it, we can do it too.”
“So? We fix retarded people?” Chase shrugged.
Cameron sneered. “Your brain renews itself, your cells renew themselves, your body doesn’t break down or age. You extend your lifetime for virtually forever and you don’t get dementia.”
“Immortality? Bullshit!”
“I don’t think it’s bullshit. Even if he isn’t immortal, he can create microchip designs that are lightyears ahead of the rest of the world. His solar array on his great-grandfather’s house is still working maintenance free. We reverse-engineered it to build one of our own. Right now, his designs are powering an entire military complex in the South using less than $40 a day.”
“What did Hamilton want with him?” Chase was curious as to what the director of the CIA intelligence committee wanted with him.
“He’s the last remaining link to her son, Michael,” Cameron said.
“I thought he was the President’s son?”
“No. We lied to her, we wanted to drive a wedge between them, split them even further. She applied for divorce right after he won the second election and she kept the news of the boy quiet because the president promised to appoint her head of the CIA for a second term.”
The pilot announced that they were over Boise where they would land near a waiting helicopter from the Parks and Rescue people. It would take them to the plateau where the tracer originated. Ground agents were also on the way with ATVs and horseback. There was no way the pair of teens could escape the net that was closing in on them.
II
I looked at Rachel, at the Boy Scout leader who had insisted he drive us to the supposed rendezvous with the Senator’s chopper and spoke. In Abenaki, I asked, “what are we doing here, Rachel Little Bear? No one is coming for us, not from the time and temperature phone call you made.”
She answered me in Siouan which I did not know she spoke. “I didn’t know what else to do,” she admitted. “We can’t go back to the reservation, call the police or the casino. I remembered that a cousin lived out here on a sheep ranch. I thought we could walk there and ask him for help. I didn’t think the belangi would bring us here and stay until we were picked up.” She used the Indian word for white man.
“Some people have a sense of responsibility, Rachel. There’s no way he could leave us here and justify it to his conscience.” I stared at Mr. Scolari and felt a shift inside my brain. My senses told me that he was nervous, unsure and didn’t quite believe in us anymore. I resonated my brain waves with his and slowly, his thinking became more relaxed. I could feel his emotions and even read his surface thoughts. Which prompted me to try something else. I pictured in my mind the image of a helicopter approaching, the noise of the rotors, the smell of the engines, the turbines blowing the bunch grass heads into the legs of our borrowed jeans. It was as real as I could make it and I caught Rachel staring up into the perfect blue sky with her mouth hanging open as she saw the fake image too.
“Look at me,” I told her and the minute she dropped her eyes, her face tightened as her brain reacted in pain at the wrenching pull out of the hallucination I was creating.
She stared at me as I manipulated Mr. Scolari’s mind into seeing us board the chopper, wave goodbye and take off. Without another word, he mounted the ATV and left us there alone without any means of travel except for our feet.
“How did you do that?” She demanded. “How did you make me see what wasn’t there? Do you read minds, too?” She looked afraid. “Can you see inside my head?”
“Hell, Rachel. I’m not sure what I just did myself. All I know is that he was expecting a helicopter and I gave him one.”
“Couldn’t you make him leave the ATV?”
“Not and explain why he walked back on foot. They need the ATV more than we do. I can always call Buffalo Humpback.”
“We’re 100 miles from his territory. There should be some BLM mustangs out here. Can you horse-whisper them?”
“Oh sure. You want a paint or an Appy?” I retorted and smart-ass that she was, she ordered a leopard ap mare for herself and a bay medicine hat paint for me. I closed my eyes and let my mind drift out, caught the telltale emanations of equine life and coaxed it towards us.
“It’ll be a while,” I said doubtfully. “They’re a long way off. We might as well start walking.”
I put one foot in front of the other and headed north for the ridge of mountains I could see in the distance. What looked like flat grasslands were a broadly rolling series of gullies and washes. In the deeper washes, small trees and brush competed for the little rainfall the collected during flash floods out here.
I saw dung – mostly from range cattle but out here it took nearly 20 acres to support one steer and ranches were upwards of 200,000 acres or more. Mostly leased from BLM land. Wild horses were common and when they grew too numerous, the government rounded them up and sold them across the US. Those animals were incredibly tough and savvy mounts. Sadly, they were still shot and left for varmints because they took grass away from the more profitable beef steers.
I heard a hum in the background and it didn’t register for a while because of the image I had put into Mr. Scolari’s head. I heard the muffled beat of helicopter blades and passed it off first as my imagination but when Rachel heard it too, I stopped to stare at the sky.
A green and yellow Park Service chopper was coming straight at us from the east. My heart thudded and my stomach dropped as adrenaline flooded my system. I didn’t stop to question the sudden fear that hit me, I grabbed Rachel’s hand and ran.
I didn’t know where I thought we could go, the only cover for miles were the washes and they would only hide us for seconds. “I thought your people removed the tracer!” I yelled and Rachel’s reply was unintelligible. I realized I was dragging her more than she was running and jerked her up onto my back piggyback style so I could run faster. Her weight seemed negligible and I put on a burst of speed. The chopper caught up and I dodged down into a wash but the footing was loose and treacherous. Rachel screamed in my ear.
“Lakan! Run!” I ran but it was useless. As fast as I was, I couldn’t outrun a helicopter and finally, I staggered to a stop as my body simply refused to go another step and fell to my knees. Rachel slid off my back as the chopper landed in front of us and discharged six men. I recognized one of them. Dr. Cameron. His grin was huge and predatory as he stalked up to me.
“Lakan. Do you know how fast you were running?”
I stared at him and the calculations were in my head. “Not fast enough,” I said and he pulled out not a shot but a Taser. Before I could do anything but gasp for breath, he zapped me. I remember falling over, my muscles spasming and my brain misfiring like when I’d seized. I didn’t even hear Rachel scream.