Numa Files: Ghost Ship Part 30

"You tried to smash it with the chair but the gla.s.s would not fall. Instead, you did."

He was pushed onto his back.

"The yacht is rolling over. You've run out of time."

"No!"

"They're pulling you out!"

"No," Kurt shouted. He felt himself being drawn backward. His mask was ripped off. And then the back of his head slammed against something once again.

But instead of finding himself out in the sea, he realized, through the haze in his mind, that he was still on the bridge.

He saw the woman and the others walking away. He heard her speaking to someone by radio. "Open the sea c.o.c.ks. Sink this ship. And let's get out of here."

"What happens when he starts to remember?" another of them said.

"He won't," she insisted. "Not until we let him."

Kurt lost track of them and tried to move. He had to get out of there, he had to escape. He tried to stand, but his arms felt as if they were made of lead. His legs were useless.

The water began rushing away from him. The ship was rolling. Suddenly the harness pulled taut around him, dragging him toward the door. It pulled him free and then snapped with a loud tw.a.n.g.

He dropped back into the sea.

Dazed and barely conscious, he tried to kick for the surface but knew he was going deeper, pulled down by suction from the sinking yacht. The flashlight on his arm pointed downward, and Kurt saw the blurry outline of the yacht disappearing into the darkness below.

He turned his gaze upward, caught a glimpse of the silvery light, and then watched the darkness close around it. Everything went black. Until a hand grabbed him and pulled him above the waves.

Kurt woke up quietly. Unlike all the other nights he'd woken from the memory/nightmare, this time he returned to consciousness in a state of peace. He could hear a soft beeping and the sound of a ventilating duct. He opened his eyes slowly and found himself bathed in blazing light.

He was not at home but in a hospital, with a white ceiling, walls, and floor. His pupils, dilated by some medication, were letting in vast amounts of light that turned the dimly lit room into a blazing solarium.

He raised a hand to block the glare, but the IV line taped to the crook of his arm made it awkward. He let his arm fall and noticed a pulse meter attached to his finger, which was in turn connected to the monitor emitting the soft beeping sound.

He guessed that meant he was alive.

Looking through the glare, he saw a figure across the way. It was Joe, sitting in a chair, on the far side of the small room.

Joe looked like he'd been up forever. Three days of stubble covered his face, dark circles rested beneath his eyes. He had a cup of coffee in one hand and a comic book across his knee.

"Didn't know you were a Manga guy," Kurt said.

Joe looked up, a warm smile cutting through the haggard look. "I just look at the pictures," he said. "Especially when the words are in a foreign language. As far as I can tell, this one's about an orphan robot who befriends a boy and girl with mutant powers who have a penchant for samurai swords and cupcakes . . . Though I could be wrong about that."

As Joe held the comic up, Kurt could see the surreal drawings and the Korean lettering in bright red. "Sometimes pictures don't tell the whole story," he said, thinking about his own experience. "What am I doing in a hospital?"

"Don't you remember? Your girlfriend tricked you into zapping yourself."

" 'Zapping myself '?"

"In the tunnel under the DMZ."

It took Kurt a minute to recall the extracurricular activities beneath the DMZ, but thankfully he did. He even remembered falling after pressing the b.u.t.ton on the screen of the woman's remote. "Considering the quality of care," he said, "I'm going to a.s.sume we're in the South. How'd we get back here?"

"We made a run for the border, Zavala style," Joe said. "Basically, I saved you . . . once again. And you missed the whole thing . . . once again."

"I'll take your word for it," Kurt said. His eyesight was returning to normal. "How long have I been out?"

"Three days," Joe said.

"Three days?"

Joe nodded. "They did some minor brain surgery on you," he explained. "I pointed out to them that any brain surgery on you would have to be minor, but they didn't get the joke. Lost in translation, I guess."

Kurt chuckled. "You've been waiting for me to wake up just so you could say that, haven't you?"

"Pretty much," Joe said. He put down the comic book and slid his chair over to Kurt, presenting him with a clear plastic vial. Inside was a tiny metal fragment half the size of a Tic Tac. A microchip.

"What is it?"

"Simple device," Joe said. "It emits an electronic signal that short circuits your brain every time they expose it to a certain frequency. The doctors say they've tried similar systems on patients with Parkinson's to control tremors. Or on people who've experienced emotional trauma, in an effort to rewire the recollection and reduce the emotional pain."

Kurt looked at the chip. He wondered if its removal had allowed his memory to clear or if the jolt Calista had given him was so powerful that it had somehow overridden the false memory.

"According to the docs, the little thing has to be triggered by a transmitter," Joe added. "Hearing that, Dirk sent a team to sweep your house. They found a transmitter hidden in your garage."

Kurt considered all the trouble the tiny chip had caused him. "That's why the nightmares stopped once I left D.C. And, I'm a.s.suming, why I can remember being on the yacht now. I even remember you pulling me out of the water."

"That alone has to be worth all the trouble," Joe said.

Kurt nodded and told Joe the memories he'd finally recalled. "Some of it's still fuzzy," he added, "but Calista was definitely there. They had Sienna. They had her husband and her children, which makes me wonder what he's doing back in the States."

"You mean . . ."

"I mean if they're forcing her to do something by holding the children hostage, what are they forcing him to do?"

"You didn't hear it from me," Joe said, "but I'm told the CIA is already wondering the same thing. Supposedly Westgate's about to get the chance to explain himself in person."

Kurt considered that progress. He sat up and pulled the pulse meter off of his finger, causing the monitor to flatline. An alarm sounded, bringing a nurse. She shut off the chirping, checked Kurt's vitals, and called a report into the nursing station.

As she left, new visitors arrived: Hale from the CIA with his ever-present partner, Col. Lee.

"You're lucky to be in a hospital," Hale said, "and not in a North Korean prison camp."

"Or one of ours, for that matter," Col. Lee added. "You two almost caused a second Korean War."

"Technically," Joe said, "the first one never actually ended. There was no peace treaty, only a cease-fire. So it would really be a continuation of the first war."

"You think this is funny?" Col. Lee asked.

"No," Joe said. "But I think the fact that Kurt and I discovered a threat to South Korean security in the form of a secret tunnel from the North has to count for something."

Hale gave Col. Lee a look that said He has a point.

"You're both very lucky," Col. Lee said. "Lucky you didn't end up dead or in a North Korean gulag. Lucky that Kim Jongun is denying any such tunnel exists and claiming these are all imperialist lies rather than admitting two dozen of his men were killed in the skirmish. Lucky that calmer heads prevailed. It's taken three days for the sides to calm down. But tensions are almost back to normal."

Kurt was glad to hear that. "Maybe we went too far," he said. "We'll definitely be more careful next time."

"Sorry, Kurt, but there's not going to be a next time," Hale said. The words were delivered with a tinge of regret, even sadness.

"What are you talking about?" Kurt said. "We've proved Sienna is alive. We know these people have her and the other hackers on that list. We have to go after them before they do something terrible."

"The trail's gone cold," Hale explained. "There are no leads left to follow. Than Rang is locked up in a maximum security prison, surrounded by guards and lawyers, and he's not talking to anyone. Your mystery woman and the hackers have vanished without a trace."

"What about Acosta?" Kurt said. "He took our tracking device. You should be able to activate it and find him."

"We tried that," Hale said. "No luck."

"This country is a peninsula," Kurt pointed out. "Considering the roadblock to the north, it might as well be an island. They can't just drive off into the sunset, especially when they're supposed to be under surveillance."

"We're watching the airports and all the major harbors," Hale said, "but we've seen nothing so far."

Acosta wouldn't be fool enough to book a commercial flight. There were too many other ways to get out. Hundreds of merchant vessels steaming in and out of Korean ports every day. Beyond that, there were thousands of small watercraft or privately owned jets.

"And even if something does turn up," Hale added, "it won't be your job to follow up."

Kurt narrowed his gaze, all but burning holes in Hale with his eyes.

"I've been on the phone with your boss back in D.C.," Hale said. "He agrees with me that NUMA's involvement in this situation has run its course and is now at an end. If any other leads do surface, they'll be followed up on by Central Intelligence or Special Forces personnel under the direction of the NSA."

Kurt knew the sound of a dismissal when he heard it. It sucked the air right out of him. He glanced over at Joe.

"I spoke with Dirk too," Joe said. "He wanted you to know, 'It's time to let this go.' "

Kurt leaned back against the bed. If there was an emptier feeling on Earth, Kurt hadn't felt it. They'd been so close. He'd finally found Sienna. He'd actually had her in his arms. Now she was gone . . . again.

"The doctors insist you're ready to be discharged," Hale said. "We're going to move you immediately, since we have reason to believe that Than Rang or even Acosta may have agents hanging around who'd like to kill you both. You'll be flown out of here at dusk on a military C-17 headed for Guam. From there, it's on to Hawaii and some R & R. Enjoy it, if you can."

Kurt didn't respond, and Hale straightened up and made his way toward the door. He stopped to offer one more comment before he left. "I'll give you this, Kurt. You put on one h.e.l.l of a show."

As dusk fell, Kurt and Joe were driven to an American air base and a battleship-gray C-17 that sat on the tarmac, illuminated by a series of floodlights.

They entered from the tail ramp, cleared by a loading officer, who was busy strapping down a Humvee and some other tarpcovered equipment, and were offered seats near the front.

Kurt dropped into his seat, dejected and exhausted. Joe offered a few jokes to cheer him up, but Kurt didn't have it in him. He sat in silence and stared straight ahead as the huge four-engine transport taxied and then took off into the dark sky.

As they climbed to alt.i.tude, Joe fell asleep, but Kurt found he couldn't close his eyes. He racked his brain for one more avenue to explore, one tiny thing they might have missed that could lead them to Sienna, the other hackers, and whoever was behind a plot that Kurt was certain hadn't truly begun to unfold yet.

Try as he might, he came up empty. And as the drone of the engines and the chill of the cabin numbed him, he stood and walked toward the front, stopping to stare through the small window in the aircraft door.

The sky was dark up ahead, but with a line of light on the horizon. Silver lining, Kurt thought, how ironic. As drained as he was, it took Kurt a minute to realize that there should not be a silver lining up ahead. If they were headed to Guam, they would be flying into the teeth of the night. They'd only been airborne a few hours and, despite the time zone change, it couldn't be anywhere near dawn yet.

He looked backward. The sky behind them was pitch-black. "We're going the wrong way," he said to himself.

Before he could hazard a guess as to why, the c.o.c.kpit door opened and a familiar figure stepped out.

"Hiram?" Kurt said.

Seeing Hiram Yaeger outside of the NUMA building was like running into the high school princ.i.p.al out on the town somewhere. It was off-key somehow. Adding to that effect was Hiram's clothing: instead of his trademark T-shirt and jeans, Yaeger was zipped up in an olive drab military flight suit, with his ponytail tucked up into an Air Force ball cap pulled down tight over the top of his head.

"Are you undercover?" Kurt asked, half joking.

"In a way, I am," Yaeger replied. "Dirk wanted me to brief you in person."

"Brief me about what?"

"The mission."

Kurt paused. "I thought there was no mission," he said. "In fact, Tim Hale gave me the distinct impression that if I pushed it any further, I might end up in a stockade somewhere."

Hiram laughed. "Hale is actually rather fond of you, from what I hear. He was very impressed with everything you two accomplished in such a short time."

"So why the cold shoulder?"

"It was for Colonel Lee's benefit," Yaeger said. "And anyone else who might have been listening, for that matter. We think the Korean Security database has been hacked. And we're not too sure about our own or the DOD's. So we figured we'd lay out a story for Colonel Lee to enter into his system while I came here with handwritten notes to get you up to date."

"Handwritten? That must have been hard for you," Kurt joked.

"You have no idea," Yaeger replied. "Might as well be using a slide rule or an abacus."

Kurt laughed, happy to see a friendly face in an unexpected place for the second time in as many weeks. "So what tidings do you bring, O messenger of the realm?"

Yaeger waved at a pair of seats that faced each other. Kurt took one seat as Hiram sat across from him and zipped the flight suit down far enough to pull out a manila folder he had tucked inside. "An awful lot has happened while you were napping in that Korean hospital."

"Good or bad?"

"A little of both," Hiram said. "As soon as Joe positively identified Sienna Westgate among the group of people that had been smuggled out of North Korea, the administration went into overdrive. Brian Westgate was called in to explain himself. In the middle of a tirade about how Phalanx was unbreakable- even if someone had Sienna in their clutches-he suffered a mental breakdown of some kind and what we thought was a stroke. Turns out he'd been given the same treatment as you. They pulled a chip from his occipital lobe. A team from the FBI found prescription drugs in his house that had been tampered with and laced with memory-inhibiting compounds. He's recovering and under guard for his own protection."

"Does he remember anything?" Kurt asked.

"Not much. Seems they worked his mind over worse than yours."

Kurt sat back. He'd harbored a natural dislike of the Internet billionaire ever since he'd learned of Sienna's engagement to him. And from the beginning of this mystery, he'd been certain Westgate had some part in it. Finding out that Westgate had been given the same rough treatment and had been used as a p.a.w.n in some bigger scheme put Kurt in the odd place of feeling he'd misjudged the man. He could only imagine what was going through Westgate's mind at this point.

"They pulled him from the yacht," Kurt said, remembering what he'd heard. "After they escaped in that pod and the storm had pa.s.sed, they put him in that raft and waited for someone to find him."

Yaeger nodded. "Seems likely," he said. "The thing is, with both Brian Westgate and Sienna compromised, it's become obvious to everyone that Phalanx cannot be relied upon to protect the computer systems and networks it's been tasked with guarding."