“Yer lyin’, lad. Even if ye had a GPS that would ’ave worked beneath all that ice, the Barracuda didnae have enough battery power left nor air tae breathe for ye tae complete the eight-hundred-mile journey. So how did ye do it?”

“Don’t get on that boat, and I’ll tell you everything.”

True smiled. “Ye don’t ken yerself, do ye lad?”

He tossed me aside, then climbed aboard the twenty-eight-foot boat and gunned the engines, sending the cow carcass flying into the water past a stunned Jim Clancy. The two of us watched as True motored half a mile out before circling the bait into a tight figure-eight pattern.

That’s when I knew…

There was one other craft tied off at the wharf—Brandy’s old tour boat. The engine was shot, but the radio worked. I climbed aboard, hurrying to the pilothouse—

—Waaa-boom!

The blast tossed me to the deck. Seconds later, a bloody stew of flesh and innards rained across the windshield, adding a lasting stain to the boat, wharf, and tarmac.

I emerged from the cabin in a daze, Brandy’s boat rocking violently beneath me. I heard the report of wood landing on the rock-strewn shoreline, so I didn’t need to look out upon those tea-colored waters now running crimson, or inventory the collection of floating debris, to know what had happened.

I already knew.

I already knew…

I already knew…

“What did you know, Zachary?”

“Sir, he’s still under the effects of the medication. It’ll be another—”

“Wake him.”

A rush of ice water blasted through my veins, forcing me to swim to the light.

“Huh?” I awoke, disoriented. I was inside a chamber, seated upright before a machine that resembled something an ophthalmologist might use to examine one’s eyes. My wrists and ankles were strapped to the chair.

Seated next to me was Colonel Stephen Vacendak.

27

“In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex.
The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.”

—President Dwight D. Eisenhower

There were electrodes attached to my temples and forehead, and an I.V. bag dripped into a tube in my left forearm.

“Dr. Stewart, your patient’s out again.”

“Sorry, Colonel. We’ve got enough Dilaudid in him to numb a horse, but I’ll hit him with another shot of B12.”

“I want him coherent, not in a stupor. Give him something with a little kick.”

“Huh!”

My eyes snapped open. My heart was racing, my lungs heaving to catch up. I was dressed in surgical greens, my wrists and ankles strapped to a leather lounge chair.

Before me stood a big man about my father’s age dressed in surgical greens and a white lab coat. He had long, graying blonde hair and a goatee. My eyes focused on his identification badge.

“Dr. Chris Stewart. Levels twenty through twenty-six.”