“Because they’re manipulating you! Just like they are me!”
She exhaled. Nervous. Thinking to herself. Planning her next move.
“What’s in the injections anyway? Why were you injecting me?”
“I was told they were only somnambulism tests,” she said. “I swear that’s the truth.”
“Sonombu—” Hal botched it.
“Sleepwalking tests. All the candidates had experienced some level of sleepwalking in their past. The injections induced and intensified their sleepwalking.”
“Why? What’s the program you work for?”
“Are you familiar with Project MKUltra?” He shook his head. “It was a CIA mind control experiment from the sixties. It got out of hand and was shut down back then. Its purpose was to break down enemy combatants during interrogations with a combination of psyops and psychotropic drugs. I work with the Scientific Intelligence Division of the CIA. We used MKUltra research on proactive mind control — to advance our own research on controlling people during sleepwalking episodes. But they told me it was only R&D. They showed me all the equipment— including a virtual reality trainer with an omni-directional walker. I even tested it out! They let me observe tests with subjects, and I collected data on a couple of your tests.”
Hal was stunned. Absorbing it all.
“They never told me it went live! Cloudcroft was for testing and research they said!”
“Cloudcroft?”
She exhaled. Not believing she just gave up the classified name. “The project name. Now you know all I know.”
“We’re far from that. What exactly did you do?” Hal asked.
“Like I said. I was under the belief you were a chemist. Our goal was to increase your productivity during REM sleep and subconscious thought. We injected you with a cocktail of drugs designed to make you sleep while stimulating subconscious brain activity— the most creative part of the mind. In this state, we can program sleepwalkers like you to carry out simple commands. They instructed me to never speak to you or communicate in any fashion as it may alter the programming experiment. Only one of the controllers could speak to you.”
“Controllers? Like a CCT?” He saw she didn’t know the abbreviation. “Combat Control Technician. Pararescue controller?”
“I assume so.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know his name. He goes by a call sign— Beacon.” The name didn’t register with Hal, but he thought it sounded familiar. Like the name of a neighbor from decades past.
“My job was done after administering the injection,” Jennifer said. “You were out of my hands and I was ordered to leave. I only saw you on a couple occasions during the VR testing. I have no idea what they did with you after I left.”
“Who are the other subjects—” Hal noticed a bright red dot from a targeting laser on the back of her head. He grabbed her shoulder and tugged her down just as the windshield exploded from a suppressed bullet. “Scoot!” He helped her crawl over to the passenger seat, staying low.
Hal tugged the driver’s seat release, pulling the seat down flat, and crawled forward below window level to turn the ignition on. “Stay down!”
Bullets pinged off the roof and riddled the back of the car. Hal threw it in gear. Ducking low with one hand on the gas and one on the wheel. Driving blind. They took off out of the bushes. Hal driving from memory of the alley. Keeping the car straight. Branches scraped the side of the car. Bullets smashed out the back windows. Jennifer’s eyes screamed in terror looking up at Hal. He looked back for an instant with the expression that seemed to reveal his thoughts, I hope we’re going in the right direction.
The passenger window exploded from a gunshot, starting Jennifer. She screamed. Hal angled his head oddly, while flooring it. “What are you doing?” Jennifer asked in a panic.
“Listening.”
With the windows shot out, he could hear the wheels on the dirt. When he heard the car going into thicker bushes he cut the wheel back. Keeping it in the dirt alley. Hal reached up to the rear-view mirror and tilted it down. He saw a black pickup truck on his tail. Two men inside and one in the back, leaning over the cab with a sniper rifle. The man in the passenger seat fired a suppressed machine gun. Taking out the rear-view mirror.
Hal heard the wheels hit a gravelly texture. Then a bump and the sound softened. Pavement. Hal blindly whipped the wheel to the left. A horn BLASTED from an oncoming car. Its wheels screeching as it dodged Jennifer’s car.
Hal felt the car dip to the right, touching the gravel shoulder. He edged the wheel back, peeking his head up enough to see the road from the side window. He slammed the pedal to the floor. Creating distance. Then glanced in his side mirror and saw the shooters lower their weapons out of public view. Hal slid forward into the seat and tilted the back up enough for him to see a sliver of the road over the dash. Hal sped up.
“Who was that? Why are they shooting at us?” Jennifer asked.
“Don’t worry. It’s all part of my hallucinations.” He looked over at her. “Think you can believe me now?”
“Who are they?” She started to raise her head to look.
“Stay down!” he snapped.
Hal watched them through the side mirror. Trying to figure it out. From this distance, they were three silhouettes. The road cleared of cars as they passed through a flat farming area. No witnesses, he thought. Lowering in his seat. “Keep low!” Hal spotted the sniper laying his rifle over the cab. Lining up a shot. He fired. Demolishing Hal’s side mirror. Hal turned his head from the spray of glass and debris. Oncoming traffic appeared and the sniper ducked down in the back.
The road reached the outskirts of Alamogordo, entering the rural desert scrub. Flat terrain on both sides of the road. No hiding places, Hal thought. “Put your seat belt on.” He latched his own seat belt, eyeing the flat desert on his right. He cut hard right into the desert. Wheels spinning on the caked earth, producing a massive cloud of brown dust. Some of it wafting into the windowless cab. The black truck took a more cautious turn. Slowly following. Keeping to the left of the dust cloud.
Hal swerved the larger clumps of weeds and sagebrush, but it was still a bumpy ride with both of them bouncing around. “Where are you going?!” she asked.
“I don’t know,” he yelled back over the loud thumps coming from the undercarriage. The car’s suspension was not exactly designed to bounce over desert terrain. “There’s no cover anywhere!”
Hal looked back. Noticing they were avoiding the plume of dust that created a natural smoke screen. It gave him an idea. He veered the wheel back and forth from ten o’clock to two o’clock. It created a massive dust cloud that obscured the vehicles from each other.
Weng was driving the pickup. “Roll it up,” he said to Charlie and they both rolled up the windows. Matt, the sniper in the back, pulled his shirt collar up over his mouth and nose, filtering out the dust.
“Should we go around?” Charlie asked. The smoke plume was large and there was no sign of the other vehicle in it.
“No,” Weng said in Chinese. “We go where it’s the thickest.” He accelerated into the thick brown cloud. Charlie held the rugged laptop on his lap, but details of the satellite image were too difficult to see with all the bouncing.
Snaking the car back and forth had concealed them in the cloud, but also caused them to slow considerably. Hal thought the pursuing truck was either way off or right behind them. He made the cloud even thicker by hitting the brakes, cutting hard left and stepping on the pedal at the same time. The wheels spun with velocity. Churning and spitting a rooster tail of dirt and dust as the car spun in a circle. After a couple “donut” revolutions, the car was completely obscured inside.