Alien Nation #4 - The Change Read online

  Jack Rovitch rolled his fundament in the chair before the remote monitors and sneered out a laugh. “We’ll see how funny this all is when Ronnie Glass calls us in to explain why we spent the night sitting in the world’s largest pile of kitty litter instead of following up on the Rand story at China Lake. I tell you, that’s where the shit’s at.” He pointed a chubby finger at the monitors. They showed nothing but dark rooms and empty halls.

  Amanda Reckonwith raised an eyebrow and nodded toward the monitors. “There’s a story here, Jack. I’d stake my reputation on it.”

  “Reputation? The late night queen of the Slagtown beat? Don’t make me laugh. What’s this going to be, another where-are-they-now retrospective? A few years ago just huddled masses yearning to eat weasel jerky, now owner of his own dry cleaning establishment?”

  “I trust my lead. This shit is going to be good. Count on it.”

  “Hell, there’re ruts ten feet deep on the way to Roger’s Dry Lake from all the heads that’ve done pieces on the camp, related to the camp, looking back at the camp, looking forward from the camp, and just plain camp. Nobody cares anymore. People’re so bored about crap like that, they’re already talking like the Tencts are a cult or the result of some kind of disease. They’re bored.”

  “I don’t think this story’ll bore them, Jack.”

  “Really? Well, remember Father Maxwell’s dictum: to be good shit, it has to stick, it has to stink, and it has to smear. Who’s the lead? You can tell me now, can’t you?”

  “Now that we’re here, I can. It was Maanka Dak.”

  Jack Rovitch frowned. “The con who busted out of China Lake? So what? He’s yesterday’s cold potatoes.”

  “What if I told you he was the engineer behind the China Lake story you want to follow up?”

  “Eh?”

  “That’s right. He’s the one who turned Warden Rand into a killer. Which also means the McBeaver Massacre and the Wilshire Waste are his. The potatoes warming up for you, Jack?”

  “A bit. But for all you know, this caller is a crank, right? If it is Dak, that might even be worse. Maanka Dak’s a psycho, right? What if he’s been watching your show all the time he was behind bars and he’s got a real resentment?”

  Amanda flashed her famous smile and held out her hands. “He managed to blank out base security, didn’t he? All we had to do was hook up the feed, just the way he instructed.”

  “Amanda, baby, we already knew he was good with electrons. What we don’t know—”

  “A car is approaching now,” Maanka Dak’s voice said from an audio monitor. “It’s heading for the camp’s old administration area.”

  Jack froze for a second, then he reached out his hand and slapped the roof of the van. “Carlo! You see anything out there?”

  “No, man,” came the answer through the audio system. “And don’t slap the roof like that, okay, Jack? You scared the—” There was a pause, then one of the blank video monitors filled with noise, then settled down, showing a pair of headlights moving through the darkness. “I got it. It’s a car all right, Jack.”

  On one of the remote feeds controlled by Maanka Dak, a similar scene was shown through a light amplification system as a jet screamed overhead. Behind the blinding glare of the headlights were the fuzzy images of four faces, a driver and three passengers. The image was enhanced until the faces came into sharp focus. The camera controlled by Maanka Dak focused in on the driver, and a split-screen image showed a mug shot and stats on the driver, a human woman.

  “Are you recording this?” Maanka asked over the audio system.

  Amanda pressed the button to her feed and said, “Of course.”

  The data sheet on the driver showed her to be Mallory Brett, a hitter for the Cole organization based out of Baltimore. She was an expert in electronic security and was suspected in at least nine gangland slayings. She had never been charged with anything.

  Sitting next to her was Rick Tomas, a knife and explosives specialist suspected in eleven individual murders and the deaths of thirty-one men, women, and children in the Covina Celinist Church bombing the year before. He too had never been charged with anything.

  “Nice people,” Jack Rovitch muttered.

  The next face went up on the screen. It was Walter Rittenhouse, formerly of the New York advertising agency of Vernor & Price, former Washington correspondent for the Atlanta Herald, and former registered lobbyist for the Libyan government, currently public relations specialist employed by the NSA.

  Jack Rovitch cackled just a little. “Now, Amanda, that’s beginning to develop a bit of an aroma.”

  The fourth face came on the screen: Morton Lipscomb, former professor of communications at Georgetown, former media consultant to senators, cabinet officers, and even one presidential hopeful, currently media advisor to Central Intelligence. “Whew!” Jack said as he wrinkled his nose and mimed a horrible smell. “Well, the stink is getting there, but will it stick?”

  The car pulled up in front of the dilapidated administration area, parked, and the driver killed the lights. The occupants sat silently for a long time, allowing Maanka Dak to adjust the sound pickups. At last Rittenhouse asked, “Where is he? Aren’t you two going to look for him?”

  Mallory Brett said calmly, “You’re here and you’re alive. That’s all we’re being paid for. The orders from the doc are for you two to sit tight, but if you want to get out and look for that crazy son of a bitch on your own, you’re welcome.”

  Again the occupants fell silent until Lipscomb muttered, “You sure the Air Force understands everything?”

  “We’re invisible,” Rittenhouse said. “We’re not even here.”

  “Almost,” Jack Rovitch said, as though he were coaxing a reluctant lover. “Almost.”

  “Did you talk here at base security?”

  “I’m not an idiot. I cleared everything with General Van Zandt at Air Force Intelligence. The base commander just takes his orders like a good little soldier. As far as Edwards is concerned, this part of the base fell off the planet.”

  “Ooooo!” said Amanda. “Sticky, sticky?”

  Jack nodded, a grin on his face. “It is thickening up a mite.”

  “Did you deal with Van Zandt personally, or—”

  “Are you two assholes going to talk all night?” Tomas interrupted Rick. “The reason I ask is, if you plan to keep jabbering, me and Mall are going to go off in the shadows somewhere and wait until Dak wastes your asses. Then we’ll come back and tell Doc Norcross things just didn’t work out.”

  “Norcross?” Jack Rovitch asked.

  One of the video monitors filled with the image of and specs on Carrie Norcross, chief of neurosurgery, Walter Reed Army Medical Center, staff advisor to the Surgeon General, Director of MDQ. On another monitor appeared the data on MDQ.

  “C’mon, baby,” Rovitch begged. “More of a name. There’re lots of Doc Norcrosses in the world. Narrow it down for me. Lace it in. Sticky, sticky.”

  But the occupants of the car remained silent as the image changed to show another vehicle approaching the camp buildings. This one was a minibus carrying eight passengers, all of them hitters, all of them with ties to organized crime, all of them sitting grimly silent. The minibus stopped, two men got out, and the vehicle continued down the road fifty yards, where it stopped and let off another pair. They all carried automatic weapons.

  “Carlo?” Jack whispered into his headset.

  “What?” came the almost inaudible reply.

  “Get your ass down here, don’t show any lights, and don’t make a sound. Got me?”

  Carlo keyed his mike. As he was shutting down his operations atop the mobile unit, Jack faced Amanda. “Baby, we are in the middle of a gathering shit storm, and we got no umbrella. If I had any sense, I’d call it a day and get the hell out of here; and you know what?”

  “What, Jack?”

  “I got some sense. I say let’s call it a day and get the hell out of here.”

  “
It’s just getting interesting, Jack,” came Maanka Dak’s voice over their headsets.

  Jack held his hand to his headset and frowned at Amanda. “My mike isn’t keyed.”

  As Maanka’s laughter came over the headset, the sounds of helicopter blades beating the air filtered through the walls of the mobile unit. Amanda Reckonwith pointed at one of the video monitors. “Air Force.”

  Three DX-17 assault choppers flew over the roofs of the camp buildings, their powerful searchlights examining every street, window, and doorway. “Goddamn attack choppers! They’re going to find us,” Jack whispered. Suddenly a hand dropped on Jack’s shoulder. He screamed, twisted in his chair, and held up his hands to guard his face.

  “Jeez, Jack. You better switch to decaf.”

  “Carlo!” As Amanda giggled, Jack gestured angrily toward a bench built into the back of the mobile unit. “Why don’t you get on the recorders, asshole, and see if you can stay out of trouble.”

  Jack turned back to the monitors, took a deep breath, and let out a ragged sigh as the choppers landed facing the camp’s dilapidated administration building. Heavily armed men and women in civilian clothes piled out of the choppers and took positions around the building. One by one Maanka’s light-amplified camera picked out the faces and flashed the particulars. The ones who came in by chopper were all federal marshals, except for a lone woman clad in trousers and heavy jacket.

  A camera zoomed in on her face, and the data for Dr. Carrie Norcross appeared on the screen. “Ooooo!” Jack exclaimed, the images before his eyes overcoming his fears. “It stinks, it sticks, and sister does it ever smear. That’s what I call some good shit. How high’s it smear, though?”

  Carrie Norcross strode toward the administration building, her face grim. She was flanked by four marshals armed with assault rifles. Amanda sat back in her seat and frowned.

  “What is it?” Jack asked.

  “A hunch. Maanka’s setting himself up to be killed.” She keyed her mike, knowing as she did so that it implied a control that was literally out of her hands. “Maanka Dak.” There was nothing but silence through her headset. “Maanka, I know what you’re doing.”

  “Then pay attention, Amanda. You know there won’t be any retakes.”

  Jack Rovitch sat red-faced, his arms folded across his chest, glaring at the monitors. Amanda reached out a hand and shook his shoulder. “This is terrific stuff, Jack. What’s the matter?”

  “The matter?” He nibbled at the inside of his lips, shrugged, and shook his head. “The matter? I’ll tell you what the matter is. There’s nothing in this world that quite fills me with as much satisfaction as wrestling down the turnip and squeezing out a quart of blood, whether the blood’s there or not.” He waved his hand toward the screens. “There’s something wrong with this. It’s being handed to us. Everything down to and including the camera shots. It’s all spoon-fed.”

  “We’ll check it all out, Jack. We’ll verify everything through independent sources. Everything by the book.”

  Jack continued glaring at the monitors, his head shaking, as Carrie Norcross left her bodyguards behind and entered the front doors of the administration building. “There is good shit and bad shit, Amanda. I’m getting a whiff of something that’s maybe not so good.”

  The halls were thick with sand dust, the walls grimy and peeling. The lights of the choppers filtered through cracks and broken windows, showing the haze in the air. One of the monitors switched to show the interior of a cavernous room. Amanda recognized it as the Newcomer testing area where, years before, a much thinner Jack Rovitch had shown up with a mobile unit to delve into the sordid world of Tenctonese sex. Those were the days when Jack was in front of the camera and was considered the mogul of muck. As Amanda studied the interior of the huge room, she remembered answering Jack’s question, instinctively knowing what he wanted, and feeding him the slime he craved. He had hired her on the spot. At the time, she had looked upon it as the most thrilling thing that had ever happened to her.

  In the back of the room a door opened and Dr. Carrie Norcross entered. She walked until she was standing in the center, waited for a long moment, then said, “You wanted to see me, Maanka, in exchange for the data you erased. Very well, here I am.”

  “And here is your data, Doctor.”

  A light went on a few paces away, revealing a stack of plastic boxes on the floor. Dr. Norcross went over to the boxes, squatted down, and opened one. After examining the disks inside, she took a disk reader from her pocket, inserted one of the disks, and viewed the tiny screen. “I don’t understand, Maanka. Why did you break out? I was less than a step away from obtaining your release. Now you’ve ruined everything.”

  “Put a tic in your world plan, did it, Carrie?” came Maanka’s sarcastic reply.

  “Dak, you have simply no idea how far you could’ve gone. There was nothing—nothing—that would’ve been denied you. My God, the royalty trust fund on your inventions has current assets of over three hundred million dollars. And that’s nothing next to what it could have been once the neural transmitter was perfected. You could’ve gone so far.” She withdrew the disk and inserted another from another box.

  “You mean, we could’ve gone so far, don’t you, Carrie?”

  Maanka Dak came walking out of the shadows. He stopped twenty feet from Norcross, his hands at his sides. He did not carry any weapons.

  “Is he crazy?” Jack blurted. “That woman’s packing.”

  Amanda nodded as she adjusted a control. “He’s one crazy son of a bitch.”

  Carrie Norcross’s right hand stole into the pocket of her coat as she said, “Everything may not be over, Maanka.”

  “Enlighten me, Doctor.”

  “NSA has its own version of the federal witness protection program for national security assets. I’m certain I can get you in.”

  “Ah, me,” Maanka Dak said, “the life of a tract-house dweller for Maanka Dak, citizen at large. Three bedrooms, two baths, and a job assistant managing a Radio Shack in East Jesus, Utah, demonstrating discount plasma generators to holiday shoppers.”

  “She’s got a gun!” Jack said.

  “Of course she has a gun,” Maanka said, but the image of Maanka Dak facing Dr. Norcross didn’t move its lips. Norcross gave no indication of having heard Maanka’s comment to the mobile unit crew.

  “More than you deserve, Maanka. Do you realize how many deaths have resulted from your actions?”

  “Do you mean our actions, Doctor? I wasn’t the one who bypassed China Lake’s security to give all those toys to a psychopathic killer.”

  Her hand moved rapidly, withdrawing her weapon. She aimed and fired twice. Maanka stood there, laughing at her. “ ‘The regimen I adopt shall be for the benefit of my patients,’ ” he quoted from the Hippocratic Oath, “ ‘according to my ability and judgment, and not for their hurt or for any wrong—’ ”

  She fired again, and the image of Maanka Dak vanished. “What in the hell?” Amanda said as she looked in astonishment at Jack.

  “Rather simple, really,” Maanka said. “It’s an adaption of my high definition holographic imager. She was one of the principal supporters of my work in holographies. I didn’t think she’d fall for it. She’s probably under a great deal of stress.”

  Norcross stood silently as three of the U.S. Marshals burst into the room and spread out, weapons held at the ready. “He’s not here,” Norcross said, “but he’s close. That imager can’t project more than a few feet.” She turned her head and pointed at one of the men. “Get the others into the choppers and tell the pilots and gunners to stand by.” As he left, she pointed at the other two. “Gather up these disks and take them to my chopper. Be quick about it. You don’t have much time.”

  The two men picked up the plastic boxes and carried them from the room. Once she was alone, Dr. Norcross stood next to the illuminated area, her weapon held uselessly at her side. “I know you’re recording all this, Maanka. I also know there aren’t any o
utside feeds. We’ve swept the area, and whatever you have recorded is here or close to here. That means it will be destroyed within minutes.”

  “Hey, Jack?” Carlo said. “What’s she talkin’ about, man?”

  “Shut up.”

  The image of Maanka Dak walked into the light, leaned against a post and folded its arms. “What’s your point, Carrie?”

  She didn’t look at the image as her gaze searched the darkness surrounding her. “You have so much to offer, Maanka. Why throw it all away? For what?”

  “Well, as Amanda Reckonwith once said, I’m one crazy son of a bitch.”

  “Amanda Reckonwith?”

  “She’s a local TV reporter.” The image of Maanka pointed toward the screen. “She’s watching us now.”

  “Holy shit!” Jack exclaimed.

  Dr. Norcross glanced in the indicated direction, but could see nothing in the dark. She shook her head and said, “Not for long.” The doctor turned and walked quickly from the testing hall.

  “Not for long?” Carlo repeated. “What’s she mean, not for long?”

  “Stuff an avocado in it, Carlo,” Amanda ordered as she watched the image of Maanka Dak stand, pull a knife from its pocket, and draw the edge across the palm of its left hand. Pale Tenctonese blood dribbled onto the floor, then the image turned and walked back into the shadows, leaving the tiny splashes of blood behind.

  “That was Maanka Dak himself,” Jack said.

  Amanda nodded. “One crazy son of a bitch.”

  The sounds of the choppers revving up beat upon the outside of the mobile unit, and three of the monitors showed the three choppers lifting into the night. One of them turned north and headed straight for the airfield, while the two remaining gunships stood off the administration area and opened fire with rockets. In less than a second the camp administration area, as well as all nearby buildings, were thoroughly engulfed as the interior monitors went blank. The exterior cameras showed the choppers continuing the attack. Dark figures ran from the flames into the safety of the shadows, only to be met by more rocket fire.

  “My God,” Amanda said. “Those’re the goons that were dropped off to guard the area.”