Читать книгу Imminent Domain - SEAN KOPING - Страница 4

April 14^th 2021

1045 hours

Stanford University

California

Have you ever seen a James Bond movie? You know the part where Bond gets to the bad-guy’s hide-out and there are tons of bad guys there waiting. So he calls in the cavalry and about fifty or so nameless and face-less good-guys show up. And while they battle the bad-guy’s army of goons James Bond makes off, kills the bad-guy and runs off with the girl. Well, I’ve been one of those nameless and face-less guys… a mere cog in a giant wheel of misfortune. ……

….At the time, it all seemed a simple enough assignment; at least on paper. Ox, Cougar and my-self were assigned to ‘invite’ and escort a professor Edward J. Schuller from his offices at Stanford University. Schuller was a multi- discipline child-prodigy whose radical theories on laminar flow technology revolutionised deep-sea submersibles design and made him famous in the process. According to his bio he was once touted as this century’s Albert Einstein until he fell out of favor with the scientific community preferring now to focus on Global Climate Change and other personal pursuits.

The most recent addition to the team, I felt like the odd-man out among the more experienced operatives. That, and the fact that Cougar seemed to be assessing my every move made me more uncomfortable about my “provisional” status on the team; but nevertheless I was still pleased that my first mission with the A.C.E.S. Unit would be a proverbial “cake-walk.”

Having arrived forty-five minutes ahead of our scheduled meeting with the Professor we left the black Audi A-12 in the University’s parking lot and went in search of the Professor.We found the professor in the middle of a lecture. Ox took up position at the main door to the lecture hall while Cougar and I took up two empty seats, among the students, on opposite ends of the lecture hall.

Graying at the temples, Edward Schuller had just turned forty, a scrawny shell of a man, glasses and all. Even-though his hair was slightly tousled and clothes un-ironed the professor stood at the lectern with all the practiced confidence and arrogance that came with academic over-achievement. And then-some.

“On earth all energy is derived from the sun’s light. As you know, it gets hot outside if the sun is shining brightly on a summer day. The reason it warms up is because the earth is absorbing some of that solar energy.

However, not all of the energy is absorbed. Some energy is reflected back into space in the form of light. This reflection allows the earth to be seen as a star from other parts of our solar system, just like we can see the moon and other planets. Energy also leaves the earth in other forms like heat, for example, which is called infrared light.

In order for our earth to stay the same temperature from year to year, the energy arriving at the earth - solar radiation - must be the same as the energy leaving the earth - infrared radiation. If we have more energy leaving than arriving, the earth will cool down and we could have another ice age. If we have more energy arriving than leaving, we will have global warming.

The reason the earth retains more energy than it gives off has to do with the air around us and what it is made of. When we burn wood, coal, or gasoline in our cars, carbon dioxide (CO2), is released. Carbon dioxide is a gas that can’t be seen or smelled, but it does trap some of the infrared energy emitted from the Earth and prevents that energy from going back out into space. If the amount of CO2 in the air goes up, the earth will heat up; we refer to this as of global warming.

Because CO2 absorbs energy emitted from the Earth and prevents it from going back out into space, it is called a greenhouse gas. There are several other greenhouse gases. Altogether, these other gases absorb about as much infrared energy as CO2 does.

The result- shorter winter periods, longer summers, more intense drought, melting polar ice caps, higher sea levels, and modified weather patterns. Why is all this important you may ask?

Everything is inter-connected and right now we have contributed more to the problem, of climate change, in the last hundred years than at any other point in our entire history. In short, boys and girls, as far as the planet’s eco-system is concerned - we are the weakest link. In fact some scientists believe that we are witnessing, albeit in slow motion in geological terms, the first part of a human triggered ‘extinction-level’ event; an event that will wipe out all life and change the planet as we know it…”

As the professor droned on I couldn’t help but notice how attractive Cougar looked in her black and white ensemble. Even-though we all wore black-suits with white shirts and black ties, Catherine ‘Cougar’ Dowling looked more like a runway-model in her black ladies pant-suit and dark sun-glasses. Her raven-black hair neatly pulled back into a shoulder-length pony-tail. Her facial features were soft and exquisitely feminine. This was one of the few times I’d seen her face not smeared with black and green camo-paint.

She looked at me and smiled. On the inside I melted like a ten year old school-boy with a crush on his teen-age baby-sitter.

I smiled back, shyly.

She frowned and discreetly tapped her ear with a slender finger. Embarrassed, I switched on my short-range radio ear-piece.

“Sorry, Cougar I….,” I stuttered lamely as she cut me off.

“What’re you doing? We’re on the clock here. Remember?” her prim and proper New-England accent ripe with irritation.

“Quit the chatter you two,” Ox chimed in. “Status?”

‘Ox,’ was short for Oxford University; his almamater. Ox was a West-point graduate with a 180 I.Q. and was built like a tank. He was second in command of our squad and was a surgeon with a M249 S.A.W.

“It looks like the Professor is winding up now,” Cougar replied.

“All right, Rabbit, look alive. Intel told us to be ready for anything today. So, eyes open.”

“Yes, sir,” The words were barely out my mouth when the student next to me got up from his seat, along with the fifty or so other students, and started to exit the hall.

The professor stood alone at the lectern packing his notes into a worn-out leather brief-bag. Ox came across “the COM.”

“Ok, Cougar, time to go introduce ourselves.”

A few minutes later we were in the professor’s office. The professor’s cluttered office was a 16 x 14 room on the second floor of university’s administration building. The room had one large rectangular window, which overlooked the parking lot and most of the university’s well-manicured grounds, and a frosted-glass door with professor’s name and title emblazoned across it. The room’s Spartan furnishings consisted of over-flowing book-shelves, a desk covered in papers and coffee stained files and two padded chairs on either side of the desk.

I took position by the door. Ox went to the window and closed the blinds. The professor obviously annoyed at this went to the window and re-opened the blinds defiantly. Cougar, amused, waved Ox “off.” He let it go.

The professor offered Cougar a seat as he hung his jacket on the back his chair and sat. Framed certificates and honors adorned the wall behind him. The professor looked impressive. A showing no doubt meant to awe any students who sat before this human bastion of knowledge.

“What can I do for you?”

Before Cougar could respond the Professor’s personal assistant barged in startling us all. Ox’s grin said it all as Cougar rolled her eyes, shook her head and turned back to face the Professor.

Of the three of us I was the only one who had reached for my gun. A“rookie” move I would no doubt be lectured about later.

Molly, seemingly unconcerned by our presence, gave Schuller his mail and the day’s itinerary and left.

“Professor, we’ve been sent to ask you come with us.”

“Sent by whom may I ask? Am I in some sort of trouble?” The professor’s tone was a mix of condescension and lack of concern.

“No. You’re in a very specific type of trouble,” she quipped. “We’ve been sent here by the N.S.A. We believe that your life may be in danger.”

“Is that so? And how, pray tell, is it that my life is suddenly so important to national security?” Schuller asked condescendingly, brimming with arrogance.

I listened as Cougar explained to the Professor that several of his colleagues and prominent scientists in the Fields of Marine-Biology, Marine-Crypto-zoology, Cold –fusion Physics, Geneticists and even Medicine had gone missing or dead within the last few weeks; all under mysterious circumstances.

Behind me I could faintly hear Molly, as she played her role as Professor Schuller’s gate keeper, to a couple of overly persistent students.

Ox moved from the window and came towards me.

“What’s going on out there?” Ox whispered

“Students,” I responded. “Want me to check it out?”

“Nah. I’ll go, kid. Watch the window.”

As he stepped past me he paused for moment and half-whispered to me,

“Relax, kid. You’re making me nervous,” he joked. “You’re doing fine,” he added. And with that Ox left the room. And I took up position at the window.

For a moment I wasn’t sure what was happening. But a moment was all it took… for everything to go to hell.

As the Professor and Cougar spoke I saw the jelly stain on the professor’s shirt pocket shift a fraction of an inch to his right. At first I thought it was a trick of the light. . But Cougar had seen it too.

Without warning or word she launched herself over the desk and tackled the startled professor.

“Sniper!” she yelled dragging Schuller to the ground behind his desk.

At the opposite side of the room there were two quick explosions and the frosted-glass door to the professor’s office shattered into a million pieces, as Ox came flying through it backwards; with a hole through his back and chest the size of a basket ball.

Cougar pinned the confused Schuller to the ground behind his desk while the wall above their heads suddenly became riddled with jagged holes from silenced sniper-fire that shattered the windows to Schuller’s office.

Meanwhile two men came through the doorway to the office wielding sawn-off double-barrel shot-guns. Dressed like Janitors they fired wildly.

I took the first one down with two shots to the head. As he went down I dove toward the doorway, for a better angle on the second target. In the process I emptied the clip of my H&K USP46 into his chest of the second man causing him to stumble backward through the doorway.

I landed hard on my chest right at the feet of a third armed assailant. He pointed his shot-gun in my face at point-blank range. The assassin’s finger tightened around the trigger as he muttered incomprehensibly. I knew I was a dead man.

“…free will is an illusion…the maker’s will is all…”

BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM!!

He went down in a lifeless heap beside me. Cougar yelled at me. Smoke rose from the muzzle of Sabre’s Sig Sauer.

“Goddammit!! Rabbit, this isn’t a Hollywood movie,” She crawled over, closed the blind and checked Ox’s body. Without a word she then tossed me his gun. It was a USP46 just like mine.

“Cover the door. Stay low and clear of the window there’s a sniper out-there somewhere.”

While the learned professor cowered under his desk, Cougar crawled over to each of the three dead-men and pulled out a pocket- knife. Staying low, she straddled each of them, emptied their pockets and cut off their thumbs. Wrapping them in a handkerchief she shoved the blood-stained cloth in her jacket pocket and turned to me. I didn’t even realize that I had not moved.

“Re-load. I’ll take point. You bring the Professor.”

As I scanned the room my eyes became transfixed on Ox’s dead body. Threads of smoke rose from the gaping hole in his chest filling the room with the stench of burnt flesh. His dead eyes stared past me.

That could have been me. Oh God, by all rights, it should have been, I thought.

“Rabbit,” Cougar said calmly as she grabbed me roughly by my tie. “We will come back for him,” she said firmly. “But for the next few minutes I need you to focus right now. Okay?”

Swallowing hard all I could manage was a nod.

“Okay then,” she said letting go of me, “Let’s move out.”

Weapons in hand but concealed at our sides we moved quickly down the halls and past offices and the teachers lounge to the emergency staircase. On our way down Cougar activated a fire alarm and set off the building’s automatic sprinkler system. The school administration building went from utter chaos to total pandemonium as students and teachers ran to and fro in front of the administration building, soaked to the bone, trying to figure out what was going on. A crowd of onlookers began amassing around the front of the Administration Building as people tried to locate their emergency muster points.

We exited the building partially hidden by the multitude of students who, like everyone else, tried to cover their heads with papers, binders, sweaters and whatever was at hand, at first from the water from the sprinklers and then from the glaring heat of the noon-day sun. The throng of confused teachers and student were perfect cover against a sniper that was hunting for specific targets. We moved quickly through the thick throng of confused students and university staff. In no time we made it, with Schuller, to the parked Audi and got the hell outta dodge.