Chapter Seven

Seven Years Earlier in Afghanistan…

Although his vocabulary was limited to speaking Dari, one of two languages spoken by Afghanis, the prisoner seemed to understand the American serviceman guarding him. He was telling him to run.

The guard had volunteered for the D.A.R.P.A. (Defense Research Projects Agency) experiment and was certain the prisoner understood him. The prisoner must have been imagining freedom, home, and family - all the things most men longed for.

The next stage of the experiment was for the guard to inject himself with a drug that changed him from an ordinary soldier into a killing machine. The prisoner was his prey and the chase began today.

The prisoner, sweating and stumbling, faced his guard with one question on his face. The guard nodded his answer and used a remote control to unlock the gate of the Parwan Detention Facility in Bagram. The Afghani wasted no more time. He ran hard and fast, plumes of dust rising in his wake.

The guard ran to the gatehouse first to report the escape and give the prisoner a sporting chance. He stuck a needle in his thigh. It hurt, but the pain became ecstasy almost immediately. On Hyzopran, he felt like God, and God was very, very angry today.

I am invincible. I will capture my prisoner, and he will die.

He heard the awe-inspiring voices of angels. They promised to guide him directly to the doomed man. In seconds he watched as a map unfolded inside his own head, complete with longitudinal and latitudinal coordinates. The guard was the blue dot and the Afghani was the red one.

The angels sang, “You are the executioner. No one may stop you!”

His strides grew more and more elongated until he thought he might bounce off the planet. His body was as weightless as his conscience. In less than half a minute, the escapee was in full view. He didn’t have to wonder what the prisoner was feeling; he knew, but he felt no concern or responsibility for what he would do to the enemy when he caught him. He would kill, and the prisoner would die. That was all.

A hunting knife tucked into a small leather case tethered to his waistline found its way into his hand. He grabbed the prisoner from behind and spun him around. The prisoner’s screams died with him as the guard stabbed him viciously and repeatedly. The prisoner crumpled to the ground holding up his hands as a last defense, but they both knew this was the end. The guard lifted him half off the ground by his hair and sliced his neck in half like a ripe melon. Fountains of blood arched ten feet above them before falling back down on the soldier roaring and beating his chest. It was both sublime and monstrous.

A new, more expedient type of warfare for the U.S. military had just been born and would soon be used all over the world. Numbers of prisoners would plummet. Resources used to keep them alive would be used to feed our own people. Death rates would rise like the sun. The use of Hyzopran meant no one ever had to go home emotionally damaged for doing his or her duty ever again.

The guard looked up at a camera drone hovering in the sky, and roared his rage and triumph until he had no voice left.

McLean, Virginia

Clayton Artemus Montgomery stroked his beard while watching a video recorded by a camera drone in Afghanistan one month earlier. “This video brings your thesis to life, Dr. Blake. This is the argument that will convince the JASONS your project is critical to ongoing and future war efforts.”

“I still have reservations.” Dr. Katherine Blake, a promising, young biochemist, shook her head as she watched the guard butcher an escaped prisoner with nothing but a hunting knife and an enormous dose of Hyzopran.

“What kind of reservations?” Montgomery didn’t wait for Blake’s answer. “Remember, you can’t show any weakness in your presentation.” Scopolamine, a natural hallucinogenic compound discovered in the wood of the South American Borrachero Tree, had been blamed for causing victims to surrender their bank account numbers without hesitation. A chemically altered and refined version of the drug was said to be responsible for making its victims ‘zombies’. Montgomery was fully aware that Hyzopran was styled along those lines, but further refinement would allow humans to perform murderous yet necessary tasks without the crippling burden of guilt and shame which usually followed. It was a brutal solution, but not as brutal as the slow death of a prisoner of war or the lifetime of night terrors returning veterans dreaded.

Montgomery believed in Blake’s dream. He was a Proposal Manager for the Meese Corporation, a non-profit organization that contracted with the Department of Defense, the overseer of D.A.R.P.A. Located within the walls of Meese was a government think tank of top theoretical physicists and professors that were once known as the JASONS, named for the Greek hero who sailed to the end of the world to search for the magical golden fleece of good fortune.

The JASONS were founded in 1960, two years after D.A.R.P.A. began deciding which projects would receive further funding and development for government utilization. The JASONS would take over that process – at least, that was their original purpose. Naturally, the group was top secret, so top secret that no president was ever informed of their separate identities. Just in case the shit ever hit the fan.

The group had access to limitless funds. After the first few years, they realized accountability was a non-issue since no one knew who they were, where they were housed, or how they operated. All except a chosen few, like Monty Clayton. Since money was no object, the JASONS based their decisions on the ideas that appealed to them rather than cost/benefit or risk analyses. Once they tasted ultimate power like that, there was no going back.

Blake was a rising star for Meese. Her synthetic version of scopolamine was sheer genius. If she delivered a weak presentation now, at the start of a promising career, it could ruin her chances of ever having a project considered again.

Montgomery rubbed his hands together. “Think of Hyzopran as your baby. Would you hesitate to bring a beautiful and gifted child into the world?”

Blake allowed herself to smile. It softened her face and warmed up her eyes. A blush painted her skin baby-pink. She turned to watch the video on a 72-inch screen. “It’s the example we’re using to sell the idea that I have a problem with. It shows the very type of brutality we are trying to stop. And if I have a problem with it…”

“Ah, I see, the JASONS will too. Well, they won’t. Unfortunately. The moment you started working for Meese, your project became their intellectual property. You know that. You knew that. These old codgers are no boy scouts, Katherine. They might have been, back in the 60’s, but with the money and power they have now, they’re nothing short of demi-gods. If they like an idea and they decide to fund it, research it, and use it, well, they can do any Goddamn thing they want to with it. It’s top secret, so you have no recourse whatsoever. And if you get in their way, I guarantee you’ll end up in a federal prison wearing a number for a name. You have to decide right now if you think this drug is important enough to humanity to fight for. If you do, stow your scruples. The JASONS are only a means to an end, Katherine. Once the drug is developed and eventually mainstreamed, they won’t care what you do with it. So what do you say, Katherine? Hyzopran for humanity?”

She shook his hand. “Hyzopran for humanity.”

“Let’s knock the ball out of the park, kiddo.”

Montgomery cared for his protégés as if they were his own children. They might not be perfect or behave the way he wanted them to all the time, but he did his best to influence and guide them. Their purity of intention and altruism kept him on his toes and on the straight and narrow when he might easily have become a self-serving elitist.

When he was a young man, Monty inherited a fortune of 8.7 million dollars from an uncle who’d been an art collector and who’d once told him that money was like fertilizer; you had to spread it around to make things grow. He could have spent the rest of his life doing nothing, but instead, he chose to do everything. He became a philanthropist and a humanitarian.

There was a special place in Monty’s heart for the Impressionists. The artist painted things the way he saw them - not necessarily the way they really were. A million dots and dabs of light and shadow looked messy and grainy up close but became perfectly smooth and clearly defined from a distance. One of his favorites was Cezanne’s Still Life with Fruit Basket. The basket overflows slightly to showcase abundance, good fortune and largesse. That was how Monty felt about life and his waistline.

***

Arleen and Monty liked to read in bed.

“Scientific American? I thought you had the audible version.”

“Dr. Blake gave it to me before I left. There’s an article I want to read on South American insects that use venom to daze…” He sighed. “Never mind; it’s just bug stuff. Nothing.”

“Yugh.”

Monty tossed the magazine in the direction of a chair. Turning slowly toward her, he growled. She giggled uncontrollably. Then he pounced.

Montgomery turned out the light. “Ahhhh…”

“What is it, baby?”

“Nothing.”

“Umm, hmm. C’mon, give.”

“How do you know something’s on my mind?”

“The same way I know everything that goes on in your mind, dear. I’m clairvoyant. Now come on, really, what is it?”

“Well, it’s Dr. Blake. She made a proposal to some folks at the office today who can approve funding to test and develop a compound she discovered and copied synthetically. It could be a miracle drug, Arleen, but it has to be studied on a much wider scale and for a much longer period of time. You know that if they approve it, they own it.”

“Yes. Everyone knows that. You mean to say she’s balking now?”

“Well, a little. Just worried about what it could do if it was misused, but she made the pitch today, so it’s out of her hands, now. Do you think I did the right thing by convincing her to make her presentation to those twelve lunatics?”

“Who made the final decision, Monty?”

“She did, of course.”

“Monty, you remember that Cezanne painting you always loved so much?”

He nodded.

“Haven’t you said a thousand times that when you see the picture from further away it comes into perspective? You’re standing too close. Take a few steps back.”

“You mean you actually listen to all the crap that comes out of my mouth?”

“Not all the time, dear. Now listen to me; she’s a big girl! You made her aware of all the arguments for and against the approval, you told her what the negative aspects were if she moved forward with its testing and development, and she made the choice. It’s not yours to make, and that’s the long and the short of it. At least she has you to look out for her, and you have a degree of oversight. If you can’t live with that, Monty, then quit. So now that you’re standing far enough back to see the big picture, you blockhead, go to sleep.”

“Yes, dear.” He hugged her tight, kissed her good night and rolled onto his stomach, but he didn’t fall asleep for a long time.

Arleen’s right, but she doesn’t know the whole story either. And I can’t tell her. If she knew what these geezers were capable of, she’d think I was out of my mind. If she ever finds out what this compound is for and that I helped it along the pipeline, she’ll leave me, and I won’t blame her.

I want to quit, but I have to stay. I need to document everything I know so far and make them understand that I’ll be documenting the rest of it, too.