Trev
"Px-7849320," I said, "Quite possibly one of the most illegal, unethical, just plain evil drugs ever to be conceived, designed, manufactured, and, God save us, used by mankind."
"What does it do?"
"This is worse than the stuff used in the Holocaust. It puts the combination of German thoroughness and cruelty to shame."
"What does it do?"
"Who in their right mind would want to keep a record of how to make this-"
Lyn grabbed my shoulders shook me, "What. Does. It. Do?"
I sighed, "I should have recognized it. This was the stuff that destroyed your memory."
She picked up the bottle with a newfound interest, starring intently at it. I continued, "It was a hyper-hypnotic developed by the CIA after word of the Soviet Union's psychic program got out. Grandpa was Special Forces working with the Studies and Observations Group in Vietnam during the waning days of the program. They took VC, fresh from boonies, and injected them with this stuff. Most of them died. The ones that survived, they spilled everything. Hyper-suggestive. If told to shoot themselves in the kidney they would do so. When the stuff wore off, they had memory problems. They couldn't remember what happened when they were under. Continual injections for almost a week destroyed any memory they had. They became babies, learning at an accelerated rate. Then, the CIA learned something else."
"What?" Lyn asked quietly.
"They learned that the ones that survived, they came from the same clan," I said, "There was a genetic predisposition to live when injected with the stuff. The most successful test subjects had the same grandfather. That's why it was shut down."
"How come?"
"At the time, genetics was an obscure, baby field within the scientific community. They didn't have the technology or experts on a large scale to create a project from it. And the head researcher was horrified with the project. He shelved it, hid the formula and the findings in a mislabeled box, ensuring no one would find it."
"Well, someone apparently did," Lyn said quietly.
"They must have found it when the records were computerized," I sat down on the couch, "They are still computerizing all there records. They have records going back to the OSS Jed Teams. Thousands of operations. Only a few personnel with the computer skill and the clearance to look at those files. And lets not forget the scientists who created the stuff."
I held out my hand for the bottle. Lyn reluctantly gave it to me, still staring with intensity at the bottle. I looked at it intently, almost feeling the Vietnam humidity and the stifling conditions of a CIA field base hidden in the jungle, "This stuff gave Grandpa nightmares for years after. He never flinched at the things he did in the bush. He was the rare psycho who could kill a man, torture him, and never feel a thing, yet not need to kill, not need to inflict pain. He could take the death of a friend in stride, believing that eventually he would join them. But after seeing the effects this stuff had on those Charlies, he would remember it for years after."
It took away identities, Jonny-boy, he would growl, It made them forget themselves. You can burn a man's face away, make him a skeleton to forever be unknown, at least the man knew who he was when he died. It made them forget themselves.
It scared the piss out of me as a kid. The thought that I could be made to kill my little brother was almost enough to make me puke. That I would forget my family, my pride, my everything, become a tool for another's will. It scared me. It still scares me.
I looked at my Luminox watch, "It's late. Get some sleep. We'll make a plan of attack in the morning."
"What am I, your daughter?" she said.
"I hope Jen never even thinks about working in something as dangerous as you did."
"You have a daughter?" she scoffed unbelievingly.
"Yes. Jennifer Jon Trevodur, eight years old, lives in Albuquerque with my sister," I think she is moving to Quantico to marry my former squadmate. I shall kill Tag later, "She actually looks a little like you."
"Really?"
"Yep," it was actually both endearing and creepy. In some ways, Lyn was what I wanted Jen to be like when she was older. Funny. Smart. A pain in the ass. Sweet. Moral. Deadly(any boyfriends will think twice about copping a feel when she can break their hands a hundred different ways).Beautiful. Yep. I can admit my... partner?... was beautiful.
But she was also things that I never want my daughter to be. Ruthless(I witnessed that firsthand on our first "mission" together.). Willing to lie, cheat, and steal to get the job done. Willing to kill. Somehow, this made me like her more.
She smirked and got to her feet, saying as she went through the door to her bedroom, "If this door opens even a crack, you will see how accurate my shooting is in the dark."
"Will you be aiming at the head?"
"Nope," My liking of her grew even more.
Hoping to protect my nether-regions, and because real sleep doesn't come easy for me, I took the silver briefcase and placed it on the table. I pulled out my Swiss Army Knife set lock-picks. A few minutes of this to calm my mind, and then some sleep.
The next morning
Lyn
"Damn it, Trev," I sighed as I saw him snoring at the table, a partially open brief case and what looked like a Swiss army knife with detachable lock picks instead of the usual blade and can opener. He must have stayed up hours trying to open that damn thing.
On the other hand, it was the only time I had ever seen him completely at ease. He told me that he was twenty-eight, yet he looked almost five years older. If he joined the Marines at eighteen, then he's had about ten years of increasing stress piled on his shoulders. It was amazing he survived this long.
He was cute, in a certain way, awake he was hyper-focused, always alert. Asleep, he looked more like a kid who was just settling down into the work force. Not a care in the world. Relaxed.
And then it all went away in an instant when he woke up. He just lied there and scowled, without opening his eyes, "How long were you watching me?"
"You're kinda cute when you sleep," I replied truthfully.
"Thanks," he deadpanned, trying to sit up, "Ow." he rubbed the back of his neck.
I smiled and offered, "Here," I looped my arms under his armpits from behind, resting my fingertips at the point where the jaw meets the skull. And, in a clockwise rotation, from base of spine to head, I bent him forward and back, causing his joints to pop like a machine gun and he gasped in momentary pain. I felt something funny, however.
"Oh my God," I gasped, "Trev, your knots have knots."
"I'm somehow unsurprised," he quipped, back to being the slightly annoying but ever reliable and somewhat entertaining ass I know and love, "Now let's see what was so important that they had to place it in this nearly unbreakable brief case."
I opened it and said, "What the hell?"
"I ran the slugs recovered from the car through the system, no matches," Natalia said.
"The fletché was a polished down piece of rebar," Calleigh explained, "I got nothing on national database, so I went Interpol. It's been used in almost six country's, and the British want in to help us catch this guy."
"He's carrying serious hardware," Ryan added, "Spectrographic analysis told us that this was 'off-the-shelf' High-Explosive. We managed to narrow it down to a specific batch. The company that made it reported it missing four years ago."
"We're still not done processing the contraband found in the Connex," Erick said, "What we've found so far is enough to run a hospital. A very... militant hospital."
"Calleigh, call the British, tell them to give us their file on this guy, and if we need more, we'll ask politely," Horatio said, "Erick, finish processing, I'll see if I can get a complete manifest from Mr Córtez. Ryan and Natalia will help you."
"Got it, H," they said as they went to work.
Natalia muttered, "Man, Walter can't get back soon enough.
"Now, Mr Córtez, you can either help us or-"
"You have nothing on me, Lieutenant," the smuggler shot back smugly, "I told you there would be a terrorist attack on the Port, I even told you exactly where. I never revealed how I knew that."
"Let me guess" Horatio growled, looking for all the world like the scariest, most pissed off asshole killer to roam the planet. The glare he was giving Cótez could scare babies out of bikers, "You overheard them?"
Córtez was either very stupid, very brave, or both, "That's right."
Horatio changed tactics, smiling that scary smile down at the short, fat Cuban, "The second you leave this building, I can no longer protect you from whoever stole your product. Or whoever your customer was."
How the hell did this man ever last this long? "I'm just an upstanding citizen of Miami."
Whistling to himself, and prideful of both his intelligence and the cops stupidity, Cótez parked his car and strutted up to his door at his very large and fancy house. He feeling so self assured, so indestructible, that he never noticed, or if he did, her didn't care, that his usual guards were no where to be seen. Indeed, the entire place seemed empty.
"¡Puta! ¡Hazme un sandwich!" he shouted as he entered the house, ready to order around his bitch wife and feeling like a good sandwich.
Only silence answered him, "Pu-"
Someone slammed him into the wall, and jammed the barrel of a gun into his face, "Where's the product?"
Instantly going from smug smuggler to cowering hostage, he cried, "I don't know! They took me, demanded to know where I was smuggling the product!"
"Did you tell them?"
He instantly started bawling, "The would have killed meeeee,..."
The captor slammed him into the wall again, "Who were they?"
"I don't know," he sobbed, "I don't know. Please beleive meeee..."
The captor calmed down, "Don't worry. I beleive you."
Whtick!
The sound of the slide was louder than the firing of the handgun. The Gemtech Oasis was a silenced, .22 Long Rifle handgun. The .22 LR was one of the smallest rounds in existence. When the round penetrated the skull, it lacked the velocitry and mass to carry it through to the other side. Instead, the round bounced around the skull like a little child of death on a sugar high, turning his already pretty useless brain to mush.
The man calmly walked out of the house to the street to be picked up by a nondescript town car.
He had to make an unscheduled appointment with the MDPD.
NOW, I HAVE HAD JUST ABOUT ENOUGH OF THIS. I SHALL NOT POST A NEW CHAPTER TILL I HAVE AT LEAST 1 REVIEW!