Adam took the inkless pen and signed his name on the tiny screen.
The delivery man scanned the package’s barcode and handed the small box to Adam. “Say, aren’t you—”
“No!” He slammed the door as he eyed the label, his heart racing as he saw Jessica’s name under SENDER. Expelling a grunt, he tore open the four-by-six inch cardboard container.
The iPhone rang the moment he removed it from its bubble wrap.
“Hello?”
“Do you recognize my voice?”
Female… definitely not Jessica. “Give me a clue.”
“I gave you a reach-around in Phoenix.”
The blonde from counter-intelligence… what was her name? He searched his wallet and found her card… Kelly Kishel.
“What do you want, Kelly?”
“Paybacks are a bitch; I thought you deserved one. I’m texting you an address. Memorize it and then dispose of this phone. I’ll see you there in twenty-four hours. Come alone.”
The home office was windowless and sound-proof — a pentagon-shaped room with a two-story-high ceiling. Three of its five walls were covered by oak bookshelves, the upper levels of which were accessible by a matching built-in ladder on wheels. The wall directly before the horseshoe-shaped desk displayed a five-by-seven-foot flat screen television, along with six smaller monitors, the signals of which were fed in from two large satellite dishes situated in the backyard.
When asked about the enormous objects, Yvonne Johnston told the homeowners association that her husband was an avid sports fan.
Of course, the only sport Colonel Johnston ever engaged in was psychotronic warfare.
The black and white images rotating across three of the small monitors were originating from two different spy satellites and a drone. Only a few members of Council’s governing body knew the colonel had tapped into the NSA’s network, but the rumors alone were enough to maintain a healthy dose of paranoia among the junior members of MAJI.
The cabal’s tentacles reached throughout all branches of the intelligence services and the colonel never hesitated to eavesdrop on the private conversations and texts of those Council members whose “politics” were suspect. When former CIA director William Colby had asked a personal friend in the military to contact Steven Greer, the colonel’s response had been swift — the TWEP order issued before the long-time member of MAJI could deliver a black-shelved ZPE generator and $50 million in start-up capital to mass produce the clean energy device. It was a professional hit involving two wet teams; the first one assigned to kidnap and kill Colby and safeguard his remains long enough to allow the victim’s internal organs to decompose beyond the point of identifying a cause of death. The other team planted his sand-filled canoe along a Potomac River shoreline so it could be discovered the next morning. As with any TWEP on a public figure, there were unanswered questions — why would Colby choose to take his canoe out on the river so late at night; how had it taken the authorities nine days to locate the body so close to where the canoe had been found less than twelve hours after he had gone missing. In the end, the coroner had ruled death by drowning, the suspicious circumstances swept away as conspiracy theory.
The colonel’s latest challenge was a bit more complicated.
Like Colby, Jessica Marulli’s parents had powerful allies in Council and the evidence against their daughter was circumstantial at best. Moreover, the importance of Project Zeus could not be understated. If a technical problem arose, the engineer’s expertise would be needed, therefore, she could not be sanctioned.
Dr. Death’s solution: Psychotronic intervention.
A Level-3 abduction was ordered two days after the subject had been admitted to the infirmary. The time-released drug that had been injected into the subject’s artery was a powerful hallucinogenic developed by the CIA as part of Project MK-Ultra. This enabled Colonel Johnston’s psychotronic warfare team to implant a holographic scenario directly into Jessica Marulli’s subconscious — in this case a staged alien abduction intended to put “the fear of extraterrestrials” into the scientist’s psyche.
Similar “abductions” had been used over the years on family members of royalty, politicians, and billionaires in an attempt to sway their opinion about Earth’s interstellar visitors. What had made Dr. Marulli’s experience especially effective was the Grey alien’s knowledge of her pregnancy — a secret she had yet to share with the fetus’s father, but which had been discovered through the clinic’s blood tests. The emotional and psychological trauma the Zeus director had experienced virtually guaranteed Dr. Marulli would not be a risk to MAJI after she left the complex.
Her fiancé, however, was proving to be quite the nuisance.
Colonel Johnston tapped his right index finger atop the armrest of his chair, his eyes glued to the large flat screen projecting a real-time black and white image of morning traffic moving along Interstate 495, the spy satellite locking on to the signal coming from Adam Shariak’s iPhone.
Johnston knew Shariak was a passenger inside the Uber-registered vehicle heading to Dulles International Airport. The round trip airline ticket to Phoenix had been purchased the previous night at 21:23 hours using his VISA card, but there had been no prior calls in the last week referencing the flight or his ultimate destination.
The fact that Shariak had been to the Wrigley Mansion in the last thirty days was not lost on the colonel, but the face-to-face meeting had taken place at a scheduled MAJI event and there were no personnel of importance permanently stationed in the area.
There were also no direct flights to Phoenix. Shariak’s American Airlines itinerary would take him by way of Minneapolis and then Chicago’s O’Hare airport en route to Sky Harbor International. It would be almost twelve hours before he arrived at his destination — the now jobless former Under Secretary of Defense forced to ride all three sold-out flights in a middle seat in the back of coach the entire way.
The colonel smirked. As soon as he arrives in Phoenix, we’ll put him out of his misery.
The United Airlines baggage check-in line inched forward. Adam waited until he was two passengers from being called before switching his iPhone to airplane mode. Unzipping his suitcase, he shoved the device deep inside the load of dirty laundry.
“Next.”
Adam handed the female attendant his ticket.
“One way to Phoenix. Are you checking any bags?”
“Just this one.” He lifted the suitcase, placing it on the scale.”
“That will be thirty-five dollars.”
She swiped his debit card and gave him his receipt and boarding pass. “Gate 27C. Have a good flight.”
“… and so I think it is imperative that we launch the other satellites and complete the array as quickly as possible, before the Interstellars detect the advanced energy devices aboard the Zeus satellites and destroy them.”
Jessica Marulli finished reading her report and looked up from her iPad. There were seventeen Council members in the chamber and six following along on Skype. Most were male and Caucasian, the exception being an Indian couple, herself, and Lydia Gagnon, who was seated at the oval table on her right.
General Cubit, being the most senior member in attendance, had been asked to chair the meeting, and he was clearly not pleased by his protégé’s comments.