Mythical (Stone Soldiers #1) Page 9

  And Colonel Kenslir was still out there.

  Now, Campbell was getting yelled at on the phone by his superiors.

  “He has amnesia,” Campbell explained to the General on the other end. The very unhappy General that had co-opted the FBI’s capture team and now had to answer to some Senators on the Oversight Committee.

  “No, we don’t know why,” Campbell admitted. It made no sense. Kenslir was supposed to be able to recover from any wound. He’d had whole limbs blown off before. How could he possibly have amnesia?

  Campbell was given a long lecture on the cost of the current debacle. Not just in FBI manpower, but in making sure the media didn’t become aware of the situation.

  “I told you we couldn't stop him,” Campbell said in frustration. He regretted it the moment it escaped his lips.

  Major Campbell had to move the phone away from his ear at this point. He regretted the privilege to speak freely his former commander had granted him. It had gotten him into a bad habit that might just land him in the stockade if this situation didn’t get turned around fast.

  The General on the other end finally eased off on his tirade. Then he said something scarier- there was a debate going on about whether or not to use lethal force to stop Kenslir. The problem was, no one could come up with a lethal force that didn’t also involve the chance of killing the teenagers he was now traveling with.

  “My recommendation is that we follow him- at a safe distance- and see what happens,” Campbell said.

  The General didn’t find that a helpful suggestion. He began yelling again.

  “Yes- I know our Target is still out there. I have the ghost walkers scouring the region,” Campbell finally said when it was his turn to talk again.

  He had caught a lot of flack for that earlier as well. SOCOM’s Command Center had just about sent armed men over to lock him up when he cut off their ghost walker support. It was only when he mentioned the name of the General now screaming at him that SOCOM had backed off.

  “Yes, I'm aware of that,” Campbell said. The General had just reminded him of the importance of the original mission. The mission Kenslir had failed to complete.

  “Is that wise? Given what little we know of the Target? Can't we call off the trip?” Campbell asked.

  The General reminded Campbell that Majors, even those at the 1039th, didn’t make decisions like that, or question them. They supported decisions and were expected to produce results. Or they would be replaced.

  “Yes, sir,” Campbell said. He knew now it was only a matter of time before he got fired, arrested or both.

  Major Campbell hung up the phone and reached for some antacids. He’d stocked up on them, putting several rolls in his pockets when this had all gone south. Major Campbell popped three antacid tablets in his mouth and crunched on them, before turning to an Airman seated nearby.

  “Get me patched into that truck, pronto!” Campbell barked at the Airman.

  ***

  Jimmy was driving through the desert in his truck once more. Josie was seated beside him, wearing a bright sundress. She was laughing at something funny he’d just said.

  He couldn’t remember what.

  They were driving on a long highway, speeding toward Arizona. They had to get there quick.

  And this suit was really itchy.

  Suit?

  Jimmy glanced down, and realized he was wearing a black suit, white shirt and tie. Which was odd, considering he had never owned a suit.

  When he looked back up at the road, Jimmy realized he wasn’t looking across the hood of his truck anymore. It was the hood of some sedan. He was driving a four door.

  Jimmy turned to Josie to ask what was going on.

  Josie was no longer wearing her sundress. She was now wearing a suit just like Jimmy’s. And dark sunglasses. She had her hair cut short, and pinned up. Instead of a tie, she wore a loose, white silk blouse.

  Josie was saying something. Something about Mark Kenslir. About recovering him.

  “I don’t care how strong they say this guy is,” Josie remarked. “We can take him down just like any other. What I want to know is why the military wants him so bad.”

  Jimmy shook his head. This didn’t make any sense.

  Now Josie was wearing a bikini. And her hair was once again long. She smelled like flowers.

  Josie smiled at Jimmy, and leaned back in her seat. She seemed very relaxed.

  Jimmy noticed there were hands on her shoulders. Massaging her neck and shoulders. Large, tanned hands.

  Jimmy turned his head and saw Mark sitting in the back seat. He was once again shirtless.

  “Hey, sport,” Mark said, reaching down and picking up a bottle of suntan lotion.

  Jimmy realized he was standing on sand. They were all on a beach. Josie was sitting on a blanket while Mark rubbed lotion on her back.

  “Jimmy,” Josie said. “Jimmy? Are you alright?”

  Jimmy didn’t know what to think. He was no longer in the black suit. He was wearing baggy swim trunks. His skin was sunburned and he was even skinnier than he remembered.

  The sunburn seemed to be increasing in intensity. Smoke was coming off Jimmy’s arms and legs. The smoke burned his nostrils and made him cough. Jimmy started to panic and tried to put the smoke out by slapping at his arms and legs.

  “Jimmy,” Josie said.

  Jimmy suddenly looked back up. Josie was pointing a pistol at him.

  “I’m not your girl, Jimmy,” Josie said. Then she shot him.

  ***

  Jimmy awoke with a start. His eyes, throat and nose were burning. He sat up suddenly, wondering where he was.

  “Jimmy?” Josie’s voice calmed Jimmy. He finally realized where he was.

  Jimmy was on the back seat of his truck. He’d been laying down, his head in Josie’s lap. Mark, now wearing a dark blue shirt, was driving in the front seat.

  “He awake?” Mark asked from the front seat. He kept his eyes on the road, glancing up to the rearview mirror occasionally.

  “Yeah,” Jimmy croaked. His throat hurt really bad. Did stunguns do that to you?

  Josie reached around Jimmy and handed him a bottle of water.

  “Just relax, Jimmy,” she said, pulling him back.

  Jimmy leaned back against Josie and drank the water.

  “Where are we? What happened?” Jimmy asked between drinks.

  “We had some complications after we left the mall,” Mark said. “You feeling alright?

  “I can't believe you stunned me!” Jimmy blurted out. As the burning in his throat died out, he realized he had a massive headache.

  “Would you have rather I let that brain jockey keep riding you?” Mark asked. He again glanced into the rearview mirror as he talked to Jimmy and Josie.

  Outside the truck it was night. They were on a highway.

  “No. But, man, that hurt!” Jimmy said. He was fully awake now. He remembered the whole terrible ordeal. The telepath taking him over and trying to convince Colonel Kenslir to return to base. The telepath telling them Josie was his girl.

  Jimmy felt embarrassed suddenly. Then angry. That was not how he wanted Josie to find out how he felt about her.

  “Trust me, he'll feel it a lot longer than you,” Mark said. “He should be out of commission for a couple of days.”

  Good, Jimmy thought. He didn’t think he was going to be able to look Josie in the eye for days. Especially since she’d made it so clear how she felt. God, he was such an idiot.

  “I can't believe the government has a telepath- and a sorceress,” Josie said. “Those guys were Feds, right?”

  Sorceress? Jimmy thought. What did I miss?

  “They weren't suit salesmen,” Mark said.

  “So why didn't you just go with them?” Jimmy asked. He’d been wondering that the whole time the telepath was controlling him like a puppet.

  “Because I don't know if I can trust them.”

  “Because y
ou can't remember everything?” Josie asked.

  “No, because I remember the important parts.” Mark waited a moment, then spoke again. “This is your chance to go home- but I'll need to keep your truck for awhile, if you don't mind.”

  “Why aren't they coming after us?” Josie asked. She eased Jimmy back down into her lap and started rubbing his temples.

  Jimmy closed his eyes. He was embarrassed to look at her. But also a little confused. What was going on here? Why was she being so nice?

  “They're tracking us from orbit. Or maybe with a ghost walker.”

  “Ghost walker?” Jimmy asked, keeping his eyes closed.

  “Astral Projection is the technical term,” Mark said. “Couple that with a telepathic handler and you have a spy that can circle the globe and relay real-time information.”

  Jimmy panicked at the mention of a telepath. He sat up suddenly and began looking out the windows. Josie did the same thing. They could see nothing but darkness surrounding the truck.

  “You can't see them,” Mark said. “Not unless you've got a touch of clairvoyance yourself.”

  Jimmy didn’t know what clairvoyance was, but he relaxed a little. He was ready to lay back down in Josie’s lap, but she was leaning forward, her arms on the back of the seat, listening to Mark.

  “Why didn't they just take your mind over? Why'd they have to give me the headache?” Jimmy asked.

  “I'm immune to telepathy.”

  “How convenient,” Jimmy responded. “Anything you can't do?”

  “So now what, Mark?” Josie asked.

  “Well, I remember my mission. Mostly,” Mark said. Something about the way he said it worried Jimmy.

  “And who killed you?” Josie asked.

  “That too. Sort of.

  “But I don't think you want to know.”

  Okay, now Jimmy was really worried. That definitely didn’t sound good. If he ever saw Carlos again, he was going to kick him right in the butt for talking Josie into that motocross trip to the desert.

  “Oh, c’mon! We're fugitives now!” Josie said. “You've got to tell us!”

  Fugitives? Jimmy panicked. It wasn’t bad enough he’d been taken over by a telepath, tasered and his deepest, most secret feelings about Josie revealed. Now he was a fugitive as well? How was he going to explain this to his parents?

  “That guy on the phone made it sound like we'd disappear if we knew too much,” Jimmy said. He had suddenly realized that there were worse things than merely being on the run.

  “Jimmy!” Josie said.

  “Hey, I watch TV, I read the blogs- I know what happens when you cross the men in black...”

  Mark interrupted. “No one's going to disappear you kids.”

  “How can you be so sure? “ Josie asked.

  “Because I'm that Campbell guy's boss. Amnesia or not, I'm in charge.”

  “Wha-?” Jimmy asked. This was making no sense.

  “I'll keep it simple for you. My team and I were hunting a shapeshifter.”

  Jimmy immediately was struck by the whole team thing. He pictured multiple Marks. All flexing and posturing and distracting Josie.

  “Shapeshifter?” Josie asked.

  “Team? What team?” Jimmy asked.

  Mark had decided. It was time to tell these kids what was going on.

  “I started hunting parahuman threats, for the military, back in the 50s, fresh out of West Point,” he started. “I've worked with other parahumans over the years.

  “A couple of weeks ago, my team and I tracked a shapeshifter here to Arizona.”

  “Here?” Josie asked. “What's it doing here? Where'd it come from?”

  “We don't know where it came from. We think- thought- it was in Arizona to assume the Vice President's identity. We tracked it to a hotel in the desert. Not too far from where you found me.”

  “How would it take over the Vice President’s identity?” Jimmy asked.

  “It rips the hearts out of living subjects and consumes them, then takes their form.”

  “That's disgusting!” Jimmy said.

  “It tried to eat your heart?” Josie asked, remembering the stone heart in the desert.

  “Yes. After my team and I failed to stop it.”

  “What happened?” Josie asked.

  “First it killed my men, then it killed me.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  It had started with an ocean exploration vessel, the Lady Jane Franklin, being found adrift near Miami. The Coast Guard boarded the vessel to find all thirty passengers and crew dead. With their hearts ripped out and missing.

  Over the next two weeks, several more, similar murders were reported by the FBI- from Florida to Arizona. A string of twenty-three more bodies, all with their hearts ripped out, but with no connection to each other. The work of an apparently-random serial killer.

  Then the FBI had brought in a specialist. A parahuman, with the ability to postcognitively see events by touching items- or corpses. What he reported from his investigation terrified the Postcog and had the FBI seeking military assistance.

  A shapeshifter was to blame for the deaths. The Postcog had relived the death of the many victims over and over again. Each time, a new face doing the killing. Normally the face of one of the previous victims.

  The shapeshifter was murdering people, then assuming the identities of his victims.

  The trail led to Arizona. Facial recognition software searched for the many deceased, and finally found one, staying in a hotel in the desert, uncomfortably close to where the Vice President was scheduled to be spending a vacation with his family.

  Ordinarily, the FBI had capture teams for situations like this. Contractors hired for their own paranormal abilities, coupled with human support agents. But a shapeshifter was something different. Something that hadn’t been seen before.

  There had been the mystics, with their spells to create the illusions of shapechange. There were the various were-creatures that could turn from a man, or woman, into an animal or something in between. But this was something different. A being capable of taking the identity of a victim- of many, many victims.

  The military had people trained for that sort of heavy duty response. So the FBI passed the case on to them.

  Within twenty-four hours, Colonel Mark Kenslir and his squad found themselves in Arizona, sneaking up on a remote, roadside motel.

  It was a simple, one story, long, rectangular building, with an office on one end, and rooms stretching to the other end, built back to back. Some rooms faced the road that ran through the small cluster of buildings making up the very small town of Freedmont.

  Across the street from the motel, a row of buildings sat dark. A diner, a souvenir shop and a small convenience store. All were closed at 2:00 AM when the team arrived silently on foot. They had parachuted into the area two miles away, then moved in on foot for maximum stealth.

  Satellite reconnaissance showed twenty people staying in the motel. Weary travelers just wanting somewhere to stay. Noncombatants who had to be removed from the situation.

  The team had a telepath attached to them, call sign Echo. He was dressed as a vagrant and sent in to remove the noncombatants, while Colonel Kenslir and his four man squad surrounded the motel and waited.

  Echo shambled up to the motel, staggering along, feigning intoxication as he reached out telepathically to those sleeping inside.

  It was an easy process. Seize control of the sleepers’ minds, plant a command for them to get out of bed and walk across the street. It was something like inducing sleepwalking, and the weary travelers would never remember it had happened.

  One by one, the sleepers quietly sat up in their beds and proceeded out of their rooms and across the street. Where Colonel Kenslir waited for them at the diner.

  Kenslir wore black combat pants and boots. His shirt was skin-tight, black- made of a material similar to what standard troops wore. A garment designed for maximum comfort, able to
wick away sweat- not that he ever really sweated. The shirt bore a name tag over his right breast: ANTAEAN.

  Over his shirt and pants, Kenslir wore a dozen different straps and belts, supporting a variety of weapons and gear. A large submachine gun hung on his right thigh. Ammo pouches were on his left thigh. A huge, semi-automatic magnum hung under his left armpit, just above his belt. More ammo pouches hung under his right armpit. On his belt, grenades and more ammo pouches were aplenty.

  But Kenslir liked reliable, ammunition-less weapons as well. Like the twin, twelve-inch Bowie knives hanging on his chest, handles-down, supported by his combat harness. And on his back were two simple iron rods- each twenty-inches long and nearly an inch in diameter. Heavy, but as useful as any hammer, baton or any other crushing weapon ever designed.

  Kenslir supplemented all this equipment with his main weapon. A modified M82A1, semi-automatic, anti-vehicular sniper rifle, firing .50 caliber rounds that were capable of penetrating armor plate or engine blocks. Instead of the small ten-round magazine conventional forces used with the heavy rifle, Kenslir had a special drum magazine over a foot in diameter holding a hundred rounds.

  The Colonel watched the mesmerized travelers come across the street one by one through large, goggle-sized, wraparound sunglasses. The glasses was equipped with a heads up display, earpieces and microphone so he could stay in contact with his team. The tactical targeting visor also provided night vision and real-time satellite feeds.

  After the first few travelers had gone into the diner, sat down at tables then laid their heads down and resumed sleeping, Kenslir leapt onto the roof of the building. He was careful to land as light as possible. With all his gear, and his own immense weight, he tried to avoid property damage whenever possible.

  Kenslir set up his massive rifle to cover the room the target was staying in and waited. Echo was nearly done with his removal operation.

  For Echo, the whole thing was a little unnerving. He wasn’t used to field work. As rare as telepaths were, he was used to being in an office, with subjects brought to him for memory retrieval. The few times he’d left a secure facility, he’d been under the close supervision and protection of at least a dozen armed men.

  Echo also wasn’t sure about his new commander. It was unnerving for a telepath to meet someone who’s mind could not be read. Truth was something Echo had grown up with- no one being able to hide their thoughts, or lies, from him. He wondered just what the Colonel really thought of him and this mission. And whether he had been given all the details.