The Remote Traveler (The Remote Series Book 1) Read online

  “I only did it twice. I’m not sure that I can do it again.”

  “Will you try?”

  Edward nodded his head, “I will need a quiet place.” Jeff had a private retreat in his studio.

  Alex took Edward to the futon. “I need to see where the van goes and where they take the bodies.” One sure thing is that they will not take them to the County Morgue.

  Edward closed his eyes and started to quietly count his breaths starting to clear his mind. It was not happening.

  “I think that you need to leave the room. Your presence is confusing the mood.” Alex quietly left the room without saying a word. Edward began again. This time he started to leave his body without much resistance. He looked down at his body, and when the tether stopped him he released it without hesitation floating up through the ceiling. In a blink of an eye, he was in the parking garage where Alex had parked the van. There were several Chevy Suburban’s parked around the van. The bodies were still in the van. Two Agents were talking at the back door. Edward could not hear what they were saying, but there was a great deal of excitement. Finally, one of the agents climbed in the van and drove off. They drove off through Los Angeles and took the I-10 toward Antelope valley. The van over heated and one of the agents was smart enough to wrap the radiator hose with duct tape. They turned on to I-15 taking Highway 138 into Antelope valley. The van turned off on to a side road, pulled into a farm finally pulling into what appeared to be a chicken coop and stopped with steam rising out of the engine compartment. The driver hopped out of the van cursing and proceeded to kick the side of the van for several minutes.

  The inside of the building was anything but a chicken coop. Edward could see a forklift pulling up to the van. All of a sudden Edward snapped back to his body. It took a few minutes to say anything. “Alex, come in. I have a location.” Alex rushed in the room. Edward had been out for over an hour. Jane followed Alex in the room carrying a recorder.

  Jane took charge, “We need to get his impressions recorded, or it starts to fade, just like a dream.” She sat down on the futon and cradled his head on her lap. Edward relayed what he had seen in as much detail as he could remember laughing at the thought of a van full of bodies stranded on the I-10. When he was finished Edward smiled at her.

  “Earlier today I lied to you. I know who the mysterious woman in my dream was.”

  “Who was it, your mother?”

  “No, it was you. I knew that if Doctor Swift found out, he would pull you off the project.” Jane hugged his head tightly, and lay down next to him. Alex decided to leave. He had listened to what Edward had to say more than pleased that the radiator hose trick worked and they had the recording. He was finding Jane easy to like.

  Agent Black was storming up and down next to the Van randomly kicking the side panels violently. He had lost three of his best sweeper teams. Twelve top men were dead. When the call came through from Washington he put all of his assets on the job. They were fully trained and never missed. Whoever took them out had advanced notice that they were coming. He did not have the chance to do a careful examination. However, he had seen enough to know that they were ambushed by some heavy fire power. By their wounds they were hit by fragmentation rounds at close range. This was a sophisticated adversary. They were supposed to take out a medical clinic and the staff. They were provided with a layout of the clinic and pictures of the staff. He was instructed to confiscate the files on one Edward Caster and burn the clinic. Agent Black received the highest priority, so he sent all three of the teams assigned to him. These boys didn’t get much action in southern California. This would be a good exercise to sharpen their skills. Five or six civilians and some interrogation work should be a piece of cake. Now, he was looking at twelve irreplaceable agents dead on the floor. Eight were full of bullet holes. The other four were wearing vests. It was not readily apparent how they died. He ordered those four agents to the clinic first. Evan Black was particularly pissed at the sabotage on the van. The thought of a van load of bodies stranded on the I-10 gave him chills. Thank god his clean up man had a head on his shoulders. Whoever he was up against was an advanced player.

  Evan Black made a quick call to Washington to report the disaster. The phone rang several times before a female voice answered the phone.

  A pleasant woman’s voice answered. “This is the Clearing House, Pauline speaking. Who am I talking to?”

  “This is sweeper one. Let me talk to the ‘Foreman’.” Evan made no attempt to hide the anger in his voice. He was put on hold for a few minutes. Finally, a man’s voice answered.

  “This is the Foreman. What can I do for you?” Evan did not waste time on preliminaries.

  “You miserable son of a bitch, you set me up. The whole thing was an ambush. I am looking at three dead Sweeper teams.” The director tried to calm him.

  “In this line of work we all know that there will be some collateral damage.” The director did not hear Evan clearly. “You lost three men. We knew that damages could occur. How many are dead and how many are wounded?”

  “Collateral damage your ass! I have twelve dead men in front of me. I said three dead teams. They were ambushed and left at the disposal point planned for the targets. Hell they even stuffed them in body bags, nice and neat. They cleaned up the van and removed all of the Doctor’s files. It was a fucking ambush. They knew we were coming.”

  “That’s impossible.”

  “I have twelve corpses that you can tell that to. They knew that we were coming! It was an ambush!”

  “Our end is secure. The leak must have been at your end. Do your investigation and give me a full report. Put some more resources on this right away.”

  “You say it like, you are telling me to send out for pizza. My resources are dead! We have no resources in the western United States. All I have left are the lab rats at the base. It takes time to build a team to do this kind of work. It’s not like you can take out an ad in the paper.”

  “I will send out another team. Do your investigation and try to have the information by the time they get there.” The Foreman hung up the phone before Evan could make further comment.

  2.

  FRUSTRATIONS

  Evan slammed the phone down on the receiver and stormed down to the clinic finding that the doctor had one of the agents on the operating table lying face down. He held up the vest with six bullet holes on the front.

  The doctor started his summary, “He took six rounds in the vest, but they did not penetrate since they were fragmentation rounds. He was struck in the face with a blunt instrument. After some examination, we found this.” The doctor brushed back the man’s hair and pointed to a small hole at the base of his skull. “He was killed by a small probe entering the medulla. Only a few people know how to use this technique effectively. It is a precision move, and whoever did this was not fishing. It was a single stroke on each victim with identical results. The job was a top professional hit.”

  Evan did not understand, “What do you mean a small probe?”

  “We are talking about something similar to an ice pick. It was not a knife. He was not killed by the ambush. By the bruising I would say that he was killed sometime afterward, maybe twenty minutes or so.”

  Evan was worried, “Do you think that he was interrogated?”

  “It is possible.”

  Evan pushed, “What else can you tell me from a quick investigation?”

  “The rounds were nine millimeter fragmentation rounds from a fully automatic weapon. You don’t pick this stuff up at the local gun shop. It’s even a special deal to get this stuff for military use. It is against the Geneva Convention. My thought is that it was black ops. We need to analyze the slugs, but I can tell you that there was more than one weapon. I had a quick look and the other three bodies all had the same hole at the base of the skull. Once again these four were executed after the ambush. It was deliberate and professional. The ice pick trick requires detailed anatomical knowledge. They weren’t just fis
hing in the dark. The kill was done in one stroke each time. I mean that was real skill.”

  Evan hung his head in thought, “Does it look like another sweeper team?”

  “It was definitely not homemade. Most folks don’t sit around their house watching TV with automatic weapons on their laps. One of the other bodies in the garage was hit by armor piercing rounds. There had to be more than one automatic weapon and one of the other bodies show signs of a brutal interrogation. It would be my guess that he is the one that talked. That was your team leader.” Evan had to consider that one or more of his team had talked. They were trained to deliver false information, but he had to acknowledge the point that this site could be compromised. Evan was regretting bringing the van back to the farm, since it had been parked in the garage for a reason. He called up to the receiving area.

  “Sweep the van for electronics.” A wave of paranoia swept over Evan, as he took time to think.

  Jeff was finished with the pictures getting enough information to start the back ground.

  “Alex you might as well let these folks get some sleep. I have all that I need to work with from them. Cassandra and I can finish the papers. I will have Father Cash start on their back grounds tomorrow. Call me about three in the afternoon. I will have an accurate estimate on when you may expect the finished product then.”

  “Thanks for this. I can’t tell you how important it is.”

  “I am not sure that I want to know how important it is. Now get out of here.” Everybody loaded into the two cars driving to the townhouse.

  Anna showed Bill and Stephanie to the guest room. “This will be your room. There are toiletries in the bath room for your use. If you need anything else, we can get it in the morning.” She turned to Jane. “You will be in Edward’s room.” Edward began to smile. “You can sleep on the couch tonight.” Alex took hold of Bill’s arm before he went up the stairs.

  “I need some help on one more detail.”

  “Why not, what do you need?”

  “They have a description of Jane’s car we need to get rid of it.”

  “That is her pride and joy. It is the first car that she picked out and purchased on her own.”

  “It will be tough on her, but I will replace it.” Alex took Bill out into the garage. “I will drive Jane’s car and you can follow in mine.” The first stop was the gas station. Alex split two gallons of liquid soap between three other empty gallons and topped off all of the five one-gallon plastic jugs with diesel fuel. Filling the gas tank with every drop that it would hold he hit the freeway. Alex took the I-Fifteen to Highway 138. He found the turn off and parked the car in the middle of the road. They loaded three of the gallon jugs of diesel fuel and soap mixture in the passenger compartment of the car, one under the hood and left one in the trunk. He went to his car and grabbed one of the Mac 10’s switching it to full automatic. He switched to armor piercing rounds and burned off a full clip using short bursts into Jane’s car.

  Alex replaced the clip handing it to Bill. “Have some fun. I don’t want them to have anything that they can use.” Bill sprayed the car with a full clip using a single burst. Alex took a lit cigarette and folded it in a book of matches placing the matches in the growing pool of gasoline from the cars gas tank on the ground. He and Bill drove down the road.

  “Alex what was with the book of matches?” Alex stopped at the top of the rise.

  “The cigarette acts like a fuse. We can be a long way from things before the matches go up.”

  Bill was unsure. “It seems kind of simple. Are you sure it will work?”

  Alex reassured Bill, “I am a fan of low tech. This little trick has never failed me yet. Give it a few more minutes it takes longer when nobody is puffing on the cigarette.” They looked down the road for a few more minutes. Suddenly there was a huge fire ball just off the road. “The timing is not exact but it is dependable.” Alex threw the car in gear and started the drive towards Bill’s house.

  “Why did we have to set it off way out here and what was with the soap in the diesel fuel?”

  “They took the bodies down that road. We had to stop at the beginning of the road. They probably have sensors along the way. Their base is out here.” Bill was not a happy camper with that news. “The combination of diesel fuel and soap adds five hundred degrees to the fire’s temperature over straight gasoline. It burns much hotter than gas. Remember we are starting a fire not a car.”

  “Why in the hell do you want to fan the flames?” Bill asked in exasperation.

  “I want to let them know that we have their location. Now they will have to use a portion of their manpower for security. They should know that we interrogated their men, but not what we were told. I want them to know that their people talked. People tend to fear what they don’t know or can’t see. They are going to come after us anyway. I want them to keep some of their people at home.” Alex pulled back on the road. “How much do you like your house?”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “They will be at your door until you return. I doubt that you will trade your life for it.” Alex kept his eyes on the rear view mirror while he talked. “The car seemed to have set the desert on fire.” He continued calmly, “I will buy your house from you at market price and throw in $30,000 for the furniture.”

  “What about the ID’s that Jeff started tonight?”

  “I will throw that in with the deal.”

  “How much were they?”

  “They were $60,000 each and that was the family discount.” Bill choked when he heard the price. By the time that they reached Ontario the two men had worked out a deal.

  “Bill we have about an hour to get any personal items. Just concentrate on the personal items that cannot be replaced.” They pulled in the drive of the Baxter residence after a stop at the gas station. Bill ran around the house gathering the important papers, photos and emptying out his safe. He quickly filled two suitcases finally he went to the top shelf of the closet and pulled a large flat box off of the shelf. Alex rigged the house to burn to the ground while Bill did his collection. He swept the inside of the house with the Mac 10 using two more clips of fragmentation rounds making sure he hit the appliances. He set a candle fuse in the garage and finally broke a gas line in the kitchen propping the garage door open. Leaving quickly Alex drove three blocks down the street and the two men waited until the house erupted in flame.

  Bill had to ask, “Why were you using fragmentation rounds and why did you shoot up the appliances?”

  “I used the fragmentation rounds because they are almost exclusively used in black ops. I shot up the appliances because they will not be consumed by the fire. I want a black ops signature on this all the way.” All of the evidence that needed to be burnt went up in flames with the house while the appliances and the slug fragments remained. Alex looked over at Bill.

  “We will take care of the transaction first thing in the morning.” Bill hugged the lock box on his lap. His whole life was loaded in the back seat of Alex’s car.

  Evan sat behind his desk preparing a team to search Jane’s house. He wanted to get them there before four in the morning. That would give them an hour to search for any clues as to what happened before the sun came up. He was shocked to find that one of his men was stabbed in the throat with a screwdriver which was a particularly vicious signature. Evan was considering his options when one of the men preparing to search the house ran into his office.

  “A car caught on fire out on the road. The brush caught on fire and it is moving this way!” Evan was up instantly.

  “We have a good fire break around the compound and we have a fire pond for water. We will just have to let it burn around us.” There was a strong wind and it carried the fire to the farm within an hour and had completely burned past them in two hours since the desert didn’t provide much fuel. By four AM they could travel down the road. Evan took eight men with him in two Suburban’s. He reached the end of the road where he found the County She
riff looking over the car. The Sheriff tried to stop him, but Evan flashed his badge.

  “Hey Evan, somebody shot the shit out of this VW. I’m surprised that you didn’t hear anything. Did the fire do any damage to your place?”

  “No the fire break held. It burned past us rather quickly and we had a fire pond for water. Nothing was even close.” Evan walked over to the car. There had to have been sixty bullet holes in it. Judging by the rising spray pattern it was applied by an automatic weapon. The rounds looked like they were nine millimeter some of them went all the way through the car, so I believe that they were armor piercing. Evan started to write down the license number.

  “Save your ink. The car is registered to a Jane Baxter. When LA police went to her house, the fire department was trying to put it out. We think somebody dropped her in the desert and torched her car. Her mother and father are missing to. I am surprised that they weren’t in it.” A gust of wind blew some smoke in their direction. “Do you smell that sweet odor in the smoke? They used some kind of accelerant with diesel fuel. Look how the steel started to sag at the roof line that is some real heat. This one was a hundred percent pro. The car burns gas, but with the addition of the diesel fuel there is no doubt that this is more than your casual torch job.” Evan drove back to the Farm and went to the gym. He spent a half hour punching and kicking the body bag and screaming curse words. His paranoia was fully inflamed. He grabbed a few hours of sleep on a cot in his office and called the Foreman at six.

  “I want to talk to the Foreman!”

  “He is in a meeting.”

  “I don’t care if he is talking to god. Get him on the line.” There were a few minutes wait and the Foreman came on the line.

  “What is your problem?”

  “My problem is that I was fighting a fire last night. The son of a bitch that killed my agents torched the girl’s car upwind of the farm and set the desert on fire.”

  “How do you know that it was her car?”