Linkage: The Narrows of Time Read online

  The lead MP opened a pair of handcuffs. “My orders are to detain both of you. Turn around and place your hands behind your back.”

  Lucas tightened his grip on the doorframe and braced his feet.

  The other MP pressed the open end of the barrel against Lucas’ forehead. Lucas stood firm. He didn’t believe the soldier would shoot.

  The MP cocked the rifle and flared his eyes. His face burned a deep red color. “Just give me a reason, asshole.” He pressed the barrel hard against Lucas’ scalp, pushing Lucas’ head back until it hurt.

  “You really need to let me cuff you before my trigger-happy partner decides to redecorate your face,” the lead MP said. “Trust me. He’s usually not this patient.”

  Lucas didn’t respond. He needed a moment to think.

  “You don’t have a choice here, Dr. Ramsay. You’re both coming with us—one way or the other. Doesn’t matter how.”

  “Okay, okay. Just don’t hurt my brother,” Lucas said, throwing up his hands. The MP pulled the rifle back. Lucas turned and overlapped his wrists behind his back. He heard the ratchets closing around his wrists as the shackles were tightened against his skin.

  The white MP pushed past Lucas and went into the apartment. Drew was confronted by the soldier the moment he rolled into the room in his wheelchair.

  “Hold it right there!” the MP shouted, aiming his gun at Drew. “Hands up where I can see them.”

  “Drew, just do as they say. These guys mean business,” Lucas said.

  Drew nodded and put his wrists together above his lap and allowed the MP to handcuff them to the arm of the wheelchair. The soldier stood behind Drew as if he were getting ready to push the chair, but instead, opened a Velcro pocket along the front of his equipment vest and pulled out a syringe. He jammed the needle into Drew’s neck.

  “What are you doing?” Lucas screamed, struggling to wriggle free from his captor. The Hispanic MP grabbed Lucas’ head and pushed it to one side. He felt a sharp pain on the exposed side of his neck, followed by a warm sensation spreading out under the skin. He was about to pass out when a black hood was pulled down over his eyes.

  * * *

  Sometime later, Lucas felt someone splash a cold liquid on his face. He thought it was water—not a lot, maybe a cup full. It hit him right between his eyes, which were closed, then trickled down his cheeks and pooled beneath the side of his head.

  “Time to wake up, Ramsay,” a male voice said.

  Lucas opened his eyes. Two sets of car headlights were lit maybe twenty feet in front of him, burning his retinas before his pupils could adjust. His right cheek was lying in loose dirt and his hands were restrained behind his back. He could see frosted breath each time he exhaled.

  Someone grabbed the back of his shirt, forcing him to sit upright. He couldn’t see anything beyond the vehicle headlamps except the indistinct silhouette of a three-fingered saguaro cactus rising up to block a portion of the star-clustered sky. Two desert bushes were in view, one between the two vehicles in front of him, and another just to his left.

  Drew was sitting on the ground to his right, ten feet away. Lucas made eye contact with Drew, who tried to speak, but couldn’t with a gag in his mouth. Behind Drew was a rectangular hole about six feet in length. Next to it was a pile of brown dirt with a long-handled shovel sticking out of the top of it.

  A slender silhouette of a person approached Lucas, possibly a man judging by the size, interrupting the high-beam glare as he moved from right to left.

  “Who are you?” Lucas asked, squinting to catch a glimpse of the man’s face.

  “I’m Major General Rafael Alvarez, commander of the Arizona National Guard,” the man said as if Lucas should know who he was.

  Lucas thought about Larson’s cryptic phone call in NASA’s conference room just before the science lab was leveled. He flashed back to Larson talking to someone named Rafael and wondered if this Rafael was the same person. “Larson’s Rafael?”

  “He’s my brother-in-law,” Alvarez said with a slight Spanish accent.

  “What do you want?”

  “Payback.”

  “For what?”

  “Jasmine Lynn Alvarez.”

  “Who?”

  “My daughter.”

  “Sorry, but I don’t know who the fuck you’re talking about.”

  Alvarez grabbed the underside of Lucas’ chin and lifted it up with force. “You killed my sweet innocent girl, you son of a bitch. The least you could do is acknowledged that you knew her.”

  “But I don’t, I swear.”

  “You two were on a date the night she was killed, were you not?”

  Lucas finally realized who the general was referring to and replied, “Jasmine? The stripper?”

  He got whacked on the left side of his mouth, sending him crashing into the dirt. He spat out blood and dirt before someone pulled him back up into a sitting position. His head was ringing, and his jaw was stiff with pain—he hoped it wasn’t broken. He tried to loosen it up with several open-mouth jaw extensions.

  “She was a bartender, you asshole,” Alvarez said, shaking his right fist in Lucas’ face.

  “Okay. Okay. We were on a date, but it was a blind date. I never actually met her.”

  “I doubt that. Her personal journal mentioned you by name and included explicit details of your relationship.”

  Jasmine must have been as nuts as her old man, or else she was stalking him. Maybe Abby and Jasmine were both stalking them, setting up him and his brother for whatever was going on. “I don’t know what she wrote, but it was obviously made up. I didn’t even know her name until that day.”

  “Stand him up,” the general said to one of the two soldiers with him.

  Lucas looked over his shoulder and realized that the man holding his arm was the same soldier who’d drugged Drew earlier in the apartment. Just behind the soldier’s feet was another six-foot hole in the ground.

  “Wait a minute,” Lucas said, trying in vain to pull away from the guard. “You’ve got this all wrong. I didn’t kill your daughter. It was an accident, we—”

  “I know all about your supposed lab accident. Randol filled me in on all your lies,” Alvarez said, pulling his sidearm from its holster. He checked its ammo clip, then cocked it. “Gag him, Thompson.”

  “Wait, you don’t have to do—” Lucas replied, but he couldn’t get any more words out before Thompson stuffed a thick cloth into his mouth.

  The general walked to where Drew was sitting and pressed his weapon against Drew’s left temple. Alvarez told Lucas, “You took my precious little girl away from me, and now I’m going to return the favor.”

  Before Lucas could even blink, the general pulled the trigger, and the weapon recoiled as the gunshot echoed across the barren landscape. The far side of Drew’s skull blew apart, sending his limp body tumbling sideways into the unmarked grave. Lucas dropped to his knees. His heart wanted to weep for his brother, but his brain and mouth had other plans.

  “Motherfucker, I’ll kill you!” Lucas screamed into the gag, but his words were dulled to an indecipherable level. He tried again to shake free from Thompson, but again failed. Alvarez fired two more shots into the hole where Drew’s body landed.

  Alvarez turned to Lucas, pointing the weapon at his forehead. “Now you know what it feels like to have a loved one ripped from your life. Before I kill you, too, you’re going to watch us piss on your brother’s body and then smother him with dirt.”

  The general’s cell phone buzzed and then rang twice. Alvarez looked at the phone’s display and promptly answered it. “Alvarez here.” A minute later, he climbed up on the roof of his Humvee and looked off in the distance. “Yes, I see it.” Ten seconds later, he ended his call with, “Yes, ma’am, right away.” The nimble general jumped down from the vehicle, before telling the second soldier, “Rodriquez, you’re with me.”

  “Is something wrong, sir?”

  “That was the governor. Another energy field is he
ading toward the capitol building. She wants us there ASAP.”

  “Sir, what do you want me to do with this one?” Thompson asked, still holding on to Lucas’ arm.

  “Finish it, and then bury them both,” Alvarez said before sliding into the front passenger seat of the Humvee.

  “Gladly, sir.”

  Rodriquez sat behind the wheel and started the truck. He shifted it into reverse and spun the tires hard, sending a hail of rocks and dust at Thompson and Lucas. The Humvee made a one-eighty, before darting off in the same direction as the general had been looking when he was perched on top of his vehicle.

  Blue-white rage battled with screaming grief and coursed through Lucas, making it difficult for him to think straight. He stood up and tried to turn around to attack Thompson, but the soldier punched him in the left kidney before he could complete his spin. Lucas gasped and fell to his knees.

  Thompson leaned in close, forehead to forehead and, pressing the razor-thin edge of a long-handled knife to Lucas’ throat, and said, “Britney and Carl, Junior,” he said with fury in his words.

  “What?” Lucas replied with half breath, trying not to scrape his throat muscles across the man’s blade.

  "My wife and unborn son. Two of the people you killed on campus,” Thompson said.

  Lucas’ mind filled with a vision of the pregnant woman and her friend being swallowed up by the energy field eating its way across the grassy mall.

  Thompson pushed in close to Lucas’s face. “I’m going to enjoy bleeding you, slow.”

  Lucas rammed his forehead into the soldier’s nose, making Thompson stumble backward and land flat on the ground, face up. Lucas sprang to his feet and hustled to Thompson’s position. He jumped high into the air, aiming both of his knees at the man’s face. He heard a crackling snap when they made impact.

  Lucas rolled off the soldier, dodging a steady stream of blood jetting out of the man’s nose. Thompson’s eyes were closed and his limbs weren’t moving, but Lucas could see the soldier’s breath puffing into the night air. Thompson’s knife was a few feet beyond his head, thrown clear by the man’s tumble.

  His heart howled for revenge, demanding that he finish Thompson off for his part in Drew’s death. An eye for an eye, his heart screamed. Go ahead and do it; do it now. No one will blame you. This man, along with Alvarez and Rodriquez, deserved to die.

  Lucas agreed and was eager to play the role of the Reaper. He raised his right foot until his thigh was level with his waist, ready to crush Thompson’s face. The instant before he unleashed his wrath, sanity broke through the cyclone of rage consuming his thoughts. He stared at Thompson’s bloody face, seeing him not as a guilty soldier, but as a young husband, not much older than Lucas was. He thought about Thompson’s pregnant wife and unborn son who were killed by the rampaging dome. If they had been his family, wouldn’t he have responded the same way? In fact, wasn’t he about to do the very same thing—wield the sword of vengeance for a loved one? If he took Thompson’s life, he would be no better than those who just murdered his brother. He wasn’t a killer; he was a scientist. If he snuffed out this man’s life, how could he live with himself?

  Lucas lowered his leg slowly and backed away. No longer consumed with exacting revenge, his heart swelled with an overwhelming desire to hold his little brother in his arms—he needed to say goodbye. Then he intended to take Drew’s body back home for a proper burial.

  He knelt down next to Thompson to search the man’s pockets. Lucas’ hands were still cuffed behind his back, making it difficult to see what he was doing. He found an aluminum key in a third pocket; he hoped it was the right one. He fumbled with the key, trying to insert it blindly into the handcuff’s keyhole. It took several attempts, but he finally managed to unlock the restraints and free himself.

  He removed the gag from his mouth and ran to Drew’s grave. When he looked into the hole, his brother’s body wasn’t there; only a muddy pool of red liquid remained along the bottom.

  “What the hell?”

  He heard rustling behind him. He turned to see Thompson’s limbs moving slowly, but not all at once. He ran back to the solder and punched him in the jaw, making sure Thompson stayed unconscious. He used the handcuffs to secure the man’s hands, then stood up to admire his conquest.

  He was proud of himself for not killing Thompson when he had the chance, but decided that a smashed nose and sore jaw wasn’t sufficient punishment. He picked up the soldier’s KA-BAR knife and used it to carve Drew’s initials, DR, into Thompson’s forehead. It would serve as a constant reminder of what had happened today.

  Lucas searched in and around the clearing for his brother’s body, scouring every inch of dirt within a two hundred foot radius, but he found no evidence that Drew’s body had been carried or dragged away. Somehow, Drew’s corpse had vanished.

  Chapter 17

  Tuesday Night, December 25

  Lucas opened the driver’s door to Thompson’s Humvee and found the keys in the ignition. When he started its engine, the dashboard displayed the time as 11:11 PM.

  The GPS system installed into the center console beeped twice, then booted its operating system. Moments later, he knew his exact location—thirty-five miles northwest of the Phoenix metropolitan area. He used the GPS interface to plot two courses: One was to the capital building in downtown Phoenix where he knew General Alvarez was headed. The other was to his mother’s home in north central Phoenix.

  Both destinations required that he take the same route southeast to Phoenix until he ran into Interstate 17, giving him at least thirty minutes to decide on his final destination. If he chose to go home, he still had time to make it there before midnight to wish his mother a Merry Christmas, and give him time to rehearse what he was going to tell his mother about Drew’s death. If he decided to hunt down Alvarez, he’d just barely have time to devise a stealthy approach.

  He stepped on the gas and drove off across the desert in the same direction as General Alvarez and his driver. The dirt road, if you could call it that, was filled with gullies, sand, and rock, sending his head crashing into the Humvee’s padded ceiling numerous times. Tumbleweeds, bushes, and a few cacti caromed off the truck’s grill guard as he plowed through whatever was in his path.

  Just about the time when he thought the uneven terrain would never end, he came across a paved, two-lane highway. He turned left and headed southeast toward the freeway.

  A few minutes later, he drove over the crest of a steep hill near one of the state’s manmade lakes, allowing him to see a skyline view of the Phoenix metro area. It was a stunning nighttime panorama except for the twin energy domes glimmering in the distance. One appeared to be devouring the downtown Phoenix area, while the other was near Scottsdale, a suburb thirty miles east of Phoenix. Pockets of the city’s power grid were offline, leaving featureless voids in the brilliant nightscape.

  * * *

  Twenty minutes later, he arrived at the north side of Phoenix where he turned right and took the south access ramp onto I-17. Downtown Phoenix was straight ahead, ten miles or so. He jammed the gas pedal to the floorboard, plastering his back against the driver’s seat.

  The opposite side of the freeway was crammed with a long line of cars and trucks filled with people trying to get out of the city. He appeared to be the only one dumb enough to be heading south, directly toward the chaos. He was nearing the point in his trip where he needed to make a choice—General Alvarez or his mother? A mile ahead was the Thunderbird Road exit, the point of no return if he wanted to drive to his mother’s house.

  The terrain blurred by his window, seemingly speeding up the passage of time. Only fifty feet remained before the exit ramp; it was dead ahead. Suddenly, the Humvee seemed to drive itself, swerving at the last second to steam down the Thunderbird Road exit ramp. He was only minutes from his mother’s house. He knew what he must do—get her out of town and away from the energy fields.

  * * *

  He arrived home just short of mid
night. Dorothy was normally in bed around 9:00 PM, but Lucas figured she was still awake. He imagined her sitting on the plastic-covered living room sofa, staring out the front window, sipping on a coffee mug filled with eggnog. She had to be worried after they failed to show up in time for Christmas dinner. There was probably a pile of homemade oatmeal cookies sitting on the coffee table, next to a cold glass of milk. Oatmeal Crispies were his favorite and Mom made them for him every year. He was hungry and could use a sugar fix. He checked the vehicle’s center console and found two power bars tucked under a pair of sunglasses. He opened the wrappers and ate them both in seconds.

  When he turned onto her street, his right foot eased off the gas pedal when he saw a white van parked along the curb in front of his mother’s house. The streetlights were still blazing, providing him with ample light to identify the vehicle—a campus security van. If its driver was someone he knew, it would make explaining the night’s events all that much easier.

  He intended to pull behind the van and park, but changed his mind when he saw two armed guards standing next to it, on the side facing the house. He saw his mother escorted out of the house by another two men; one walked alongside her, supporting her right arm as she moved, and the other two steps behind, carrying a pair of suitcases, and a knapsack over the left shoulder.

  When he cruised a little closer, he realized the person escorting his mother was Bruno, and the man carrying the baggage was . . . him! He had to look twice to convince himself his eyes weren’t playing tricks. They weren’t. Who the hell was this imposter, and what was he doing with his mother?

  He lowered his head and drove past the house, hoping not to be spotted. There was plenty of ambient light from the full moon, but nobody seemed to notice him or the Humvee creeping by the house. At the end of the street, he turned off his headlights and made a U-turn, parking behind a dented and scratched, four-door GMC Dooley truck on the opposite side of the street. A stack of inner tubes was tied down inside the bed of the gas-guzzler using bungee cords, and its front wheels were parked up on the sidewalk, at a sharp angle, probably due to the driver having one too many six packs at the indoor water park only a mile away.