The R.E.M. Project_A Thriller Read online

  This is wrong, Colin. All wrong.

  Over and over, the voice grew louder. That was the problem with getting voices in one’s head, because no matter where people went, they had to take their heads with them.

  This operation. Ramírez. Cline. They’re all wrong.

  It was insanity, thought Kovic. A decade’s service in the CIA, and he was finally going insane. He’d heard of past agents going through the same ordeal. Some blamed it on the stress of the job; of making sacrifices for one’s country only a handful of people at Langley would ever know about; of never being able to maintain normal relationships or a normal home life. But as Kovic paced and sweated and waged a war inside his head, the tiny sliver of rationalization that was faintly calling from deep in the back of his brain was blaming his mental state on one thing, one group:

  The outliers.

  But how could he be affected by anyone using the free-market Ocula way out here in the boonies? And what were the odds someone would be randomly dreaming about him in the first place?

  That’s when Kovic thought about the two closest outliers he knew of: Claire Connor, who was supposedly on her way to the facility, and the four outliers inside the facility. Mrs. Rogers and Mrs. Everly had already been tapped for Project THEIA, per Lancaster’s orders, leaving the remaining two outliers fresh and ready to target whomever his colleagues inside pleased.

  Had Cline lost faith in Kovic? Was Ramírez getting into his head?

  Unlikely. Kovic began to think it might be Claire, out there in the woods somewhere, more than close enough to deploy those pesky little brainwaves into the unsuspecting skull of her new nemesis at the CIA. Problem with that theory was the fact that Ocula 1.0 led to haphazard results that were random and oftentimes unpredictable—not unlike our dreams and nightmares.

  The kind of skill it would take to use the first version of Ocula to target specific individuals was something Kovic (and Tanner and Doyle for that matter) had never encountered, hence the need to synthesize Ocula 2.0 to be more receptive to external persuasion.

  Sure, there was also the chance that Claire could have influenced Kovic through coincidental dreaming, but that notion was quickly shot down the moment the crowd of voices ringing in Kovic’s ears was interrupted by the crunch of leaves coming from the logging road ahead.

  It’s showtime, Kovic. Get your shit together.

  Kovic put his hand up for a visor and looked toward the strolling figure moving closer and making brief appearances between the trees. He called out, “Connor? That you?”

  “The one and only,” Claire said. She drew closer, and Kovic noticed the 9mm attached to her hip.

  “You know there’s really no need for—”

  “I’ll be the judge of that,” Claire said.

  Kovic asked, “Why are you here, Claire?” He tried to mask the nerves in his voice, but the question leaked out clumsily before he could regain his composure.

  Claire walked up the steps to the front porch, closing in on the field agent. Kovic knew he looked troubled. Bothered. Sweating and nervous, like an amateur poker player trying to run a high-stakes bluff when he’s got no business sitting at the table in the first place. She leaned in and asked, “Something on your mind, Kovic?”

  It was the understatement of the year. Still, Kovic was a professional, and he wasn’t about to let a guilty conscience get in the way of the task at hand.

  “First off, I just wanted to apologize for the incident in Costa Rica. I know there’s no way I can really—”

  “Apologize?” Claire cut him off short. “You betrayed me, Kovic. Got Aguilar killed, all to cover your tracks. I’m lucky to be alive, and you want to apologize?”

  “Now hear me out, Claire. The drone strike wasn’t my call. I got word from the top that Project THEIA was getting a reboot and was reassigned to this hellhole in the woods. I never would’ve authorized a strike until I knew you were safe.”

  “So who made the call?”

  Kovic sighed.

  “Hello? Earth to Kovic—who made the call?”

  Finally, “My boss. Stephen Cline.” He looked over his shoulder toward the camera mounted in the corner of the porch and shrugged. Claire looked, too, picking up on the fact that every movement and every word spoken was likely being scrutinized by a room full of people inside the facility.

  “Is this Cline inside watching right now?” she asked, never taking her eyes off the camera.

  “Yeah. He’s inside. So’s your old buddy Ramírez.”

  “Well,” Claire said as she walked to the front door, “who doesn’t love a good reunion. Shall we?”

  Kovic nodded, entered his codes, and the two walked inside.

  Chapter 32:

  Behind Enemy Lines

  Inside the lab, the team of scientists and lab techs and physicians and field agents had been working nonstop since the reboot of Project THEIA. Mrs. Rogers and Mrs. Everly had produced an ocean’s worth of data that had to be analyzed. A medical team reviewed the physiological effects of Ocula on patients from injection to half-life to full metabolism and expulsion. An engineer who specialized in electromagnetic consulting for federal contracts was brought in to gather radio data to determine just what exactly was going on across the airwaves when outliers began their R.E.M. sleep cycles. The CIA was there to manage the process and keep Langley informed. Computer fans whirled, centrifuges spun, and shoes clacked and shuffled across the spotless linoleum floor of a lab functioning at maximum capacity.

  That was before Kovic showed up with his new guest.

  The moment the steel door lifted and the two entered the lab, eyes widened, jaws dropped and the chatter stopped. The once-energetic staff had turned to stone statues, gray faces in long white coats frozen at the sight of Kovic strolling in with an outlier.

  Not just any outlier, either. This girl was one of the originals, freshly poached from the wilderness, wild and untamed. Upright, conscious, and coherent. Not like the other four, who had been tripping on Ecstasy between Ocula doses for the last two months.

  Those had been tainted. But Connor was pure.

  Cline stood with Ramírez on the back wall of the lab, facing a six-by-six grid of monitors displaying feeds from the facility’s closed-circuit security cameras. He noticed a change in the atmosphere behind him, but there was little need to turn and look toward the lab entrance some forty feet away. He and Ramírez had watched the entire scene unfold the moment they caught a glimpse of Claire walking under one of the infrared cameras mounted in the trees and lining the outer perimeter, about a mile up the logging road from the facility. They had also witnessed Kovic’s strange behavior prior to bringing Claire inside, but weren’t sure what to make of it. Heat exhaustion. Sleep deprivation, maybe. Either way, they both vowed to keep a close eye on him.

  Kovic led Claire down the main aisle that split the lab in two as stunned workers looked on from their desks and workstations. Cline and Ramírez were at the end, finally turning around to greet their new guest.

  “Hola, Ms. Connor,” Ramírez said. “It’s been a while, hasn’t it?”

  “Not long enough, you piece of shit.” She fought against every impulse to strangle the double-crossing son of a bitch right then and there, but the feeling of Kovic’s grip tightening on her arm reminded her that that would be a mistake.

  Cline said, “Now, now, Ms. Connor. There’s no need for that kind of language.”

  Agitated, “Why isn’t she in handcuffs?” Ramírez asked.

  “Aw, now there’s no need for that,” Cline said. “After all, we’re all on the same team here. Right, Ms. Connor?”

  “Oh, you mean the team that murders its own players the moment things don’t go as planned?”

  The Atlanta station chief had already known this was coming. “Listen, Claire. About the Costa Rica incident. We cannot begin to tell you how sorry we are for your loss, and how appreciative we are for your resilience and tenacity during this trying time. Your country owes you a great d
ebt of grati—”

  “—Oh, for fuck’s sake, Cline. Like I haven’t heard that same cheese-dick line straight out of every bad war movie that’s ever been made. You screwed me on this one, and you got my friend killed. You think a debt of gratitude is going to make me forget about all that?”

  Cline shoved his hands in his pockets, head down, eyes and eyebrows up and looking at Claire. Let her talk, he figured. He was holding all the cards, after all. Of course, she had to know that, but it wasn’t stopping her from venting a little. So, let her vent. Then we’ll proceed . . .

  “And another thing,” she continued, “what’s stopping me from blowing the lid off this whole operation? You know I’ve got files out the ass on this illegal use of taxpayer money. How do you think it would go over once the general public caught wind of illegal genetic experiments performed on American citizens and conducted by the CIA in cooperation with one of the wealthiest pharmaceutical companies in the world?”

  “Told you we should have put her in cuffs, jefe,” Ramírez said.

  “No, no.” Cline put his hand up. The chief was genuinely intrigued by Claire’s wealth of knowledge, almost entertained. Life at the Atlanta station was mundane. Boring. A glorified desk job that amounted to little more than managing field agents and filing paperwork. This, however, was exciting. Cline was craving a challenge, and Claire Connor would do just fine.

  “You’ve risked a lot coming here, Ms. Connor,” Cline said. “What exactly is it that you want?”

  “Only what I was promised to begin with,” she said. “A full pardon. A clean slate. Give me my life back, and you can be assured those files will never see the light of day. Should something happen to me, I’ve got three colleagues working for the three biggest papers in the U.S. ready to release these files the moment I fail to contact them on time.”

  Cline pursed his lips, brows tense in thought. “A clean slate.” He looked at Kovic, then Ramírez. “Well, it certainly sounds reasonable to me. Especially after all you’ve been through. I think we can find a way to put this all behind us.” He stepped out of the aisle and gestured toward the end of the hall leading to the offices. “Would you mind joining us in one of the private rooms down the hall? We’ve certainly got a lot to talk about.”

  Claire waited for them to turn around, then snuck a smile as the party of four walked toward the entrance to the rooms beyond the lab. Reed’s blueprints showed that each room from the offices to holding cells to storage was designed just like the holding cells in Costa Rica. Rooms that protected management from the outliers housed in the same facility. Rooms designed to prevent the kind of electromagnetic radiation the outliers emitted from getting out and harming susceptible minds nearby.

  That also meant nothing could get in.

  ***

  The wind gusted and howled at the top of Skyline’s summit as Paul trekked up the last incline before the treeless mountaintop leveled off. He reached the high clearing and looked back, satisfied and relieved the arduous terrain he had just conquered was behind him. The last hundred yards had been fraught with loose rock that seemed slicker than ice at times, testing Paul’s footing as he swept the precarious marble-sized stones back down the mountain with every step toward the top.

  Out of every other mountain he could see below, Skyline must have been the steepest. The distant hills were also thick with greenery from the lowest valleys to the highest peaks—but not Skyline. The summit was bald and gray with scrambles of large granite boulders circling the peak and choking the path to the facility’s transmitter. Just getting to the tower meant squeezing through a narrow thirty-foot pass at trail’s end—or scaling over it.

  Paul chose to squeeze. He threw off his pack and held it to his side, clothes wiping the rough granite clean as he carefully sidestepped through the narrow and shadowy pass. The stone walls were damp—a fact that likely helped Paul through more than a few places. It was a tight fit, but nothing a hiker fit enough to crawl up the mountain couldn’t handle.

  He emerged from the wall of boulders on the other side and immediately spotted the prize: the small six-by-ten communications building next to transmitter tower. He wiped his sweating brow with his forearm and breathed a sigh of relief. Finally, he’d made it. Directly below him (2000 feet below, to be exact) was the lion’s den, where Kovic and his goons were planning to use outliers—American citizens—for God knows what. (It would be days before Paul would realize that Project THEIA was already underway and yielding unbelievable results from certain parties across the D.C. area. A lot was going to change between now and then.)

  Paul set down his pack and pulled a walkie talkie from the front pocket. He tuned into Channel 30, then clicked to talk. “Okay, Fenton,” Paul said, “I’m at the tower now. Do you copy, over?”

  “Yeah, Paul. Loud, but not so clear.”

  Windy mountaintops weren’t the best place to make calls. Paul cupped the microphone and huddled against the boulders. “Better?”

  “Yeah, that’s better. Can you tell me what you see, over?”

  Paul scanned the area. “The tower is in front of me now, the base is probably twelve by twelve. There’s a building next to it, maybe six by ten. It’s metal, with a keypad next to the lock on the door, over.”

  “Anyone else around?”

  The question made Paul’s hand to drift down to the pistol holstered on his hip. He gripped the gun with his left hand, walkie talkie in the right, slowly stepping away from the wall of boulders toward the small metal building a few yards ahead. Without thinking, he approached the door, jiggled the handle, then quickly stepped out to the side, gun at the ready, waiting for a response.

  Nothing happened.

  He reached over and jiggled the handle again. Still, nothing. Either someone was inside, watching and waiting to make a move on their terms, or the place was empty.

  There was no time for doubt or hesitation. He simply had to take a chance.

  “I think the coast is clear,” Paul said. “Now walk me through this keypad thing, over.”

  “Okay, do you see a port on the underside of the keypad? You may have to feel for it, over.”

  Paul swiped the underside of the metal box housing the keypad and felt a square hole near the corner. “Yeah, I’ve got it.”

  “That’s where you’re going to plug in the key logger. It’s going to run a sequence that evaluates the last several thousand keypad entries to determine what a valid code is. It shouldn’t take but a second, over.”

  Following Fenton’s instructions, Paul pulled the key-logging device from his pack, a bundle of wires dangling from its port on the bottom side. He worked through the bundle, trying to find the right connector for the keypad’s socket, and coming up short. Just as he was getting nervous that maybe he’d hiked all the way up here for nothing, a plug fit and the program on Fenton’s machine started running.

  Damn, that was close, thought Paul. He radioed Fenton and said, “The machine’s plugged in and working, over.” On the screen, six columns of numbers blurred as they scrolled vertically at lightning speed. Within seconds, the far-left column stopped, locking in on the first number of the passcode. Paul relayed the info.

  “Shouldn’t take long now,” Fenton casually replied.

  Paul could make out the smacking jaws between his words. The teen sounded more focused on a candy bar than the mission at hand. “By the way,” Paul asked, “where do you get these wonderful toys?”

  Fenton answered with his mouth full. “Trade secret. If I told you that, I’d have to kill you.”

  Paul was about to tell Fenton he’d have to take a number, when the locked clicked. The light by the lock turned green, the deadbolt clanked and receded back into the door, and it slowly swung open.

  Hesitantly, Paul peeked into the metal communications building. No one was inside. He breathed a sigh of relief and stepped in. The building was small, but not a single square inch was wasted. Every wall was lined with open metal cabinets full of humming box route
rs and battery packs and broadcast units connected by a web of colorful interwoven coaxial and fiber-optic cables, draping from the ceiling and branching off from larger bundles hung from the top. It was a room packed with heat-producing electronics—a fact the poor exhaust fans at the top of the rear wall didn’t seem to be equipped for. Outside, it was a ninety-degree day. Inside, the temperature was easily in the triple digits.

  “I’m in,” Paul said, voice rising over the hums and purrs inside the high-powered communications shack working overtime. Fenton had jotted down a crude set of instructions detailing how to use the transmitter tower in their favor, just in case they weren’t able to communicate. Paul took the note from his back pocket and unfolded it. Inside were scribblings and diagrams and some cursive-like language he didn’t quite understand. One look at Fenton’s instructions and he was glad the walkies were still working.

  “All right, Fenton. You’re going to have to walk me through this one step at a time, over.”

  Fenton leaned back in his office chair back at the hotel and dove in. “So there are basically two things we’ve got to do here if this plan’s ever going to work. First, we’ve got to make sure the antenna portion of the tower is working so we can pick up on Donny’s dream. Second, we’ve got to amplify the signal by piggybacking off the main transmitter’s power supply so it sends Donny’s message from the antenna back down the mountain and into the facility, over.”

  “And we’ve got to do all of this as soon as we know Donny’s asleep and dreaming,” Paul said. “You remember what to look for?”

  Fenton said, “Yeah. Eyeballs jerking back and forth and going nuts under his eyelids and shit like that. Rapid eye movement, over.”

  “You got it. Once it starts, that’ll mark our best chance of getting through to the facility.” Paul paused, then said, “Man. Hope Claire’s got her watch on her.”

  “I’m sure she’ll be fine,” Fenton said.