She studied the panoply of compositional elements which showed on the monitor in front of her; revealing the basic building blocks constituting the bots. All of them were synthetic material, much as one might find in a computer microprocessor chip.

It suddenly dawned on her – why were the bots still active, she wondered? Even if they had been injected into every girl in the past twenty-four hours, they should have been discharged by now, as a result of the physiological processes of the body. And yet, paradoxically, these bots were still very dynamic and very much alive and that perplexed her even more.

She made some notes on her small paper pad, an old habit she had not discarded in spite of the age of computers and hand-held devices. Then she placed the pad in the pocket of her white tunic.

There came an audible grumbling emitting from her stomach, reminding her that she had not eaten for many hours. Anxious to get back to her work, and certainly happy to dispense with sleep, she decided on a quick bite.

As she stepped from the lab she failed to notice the figure of a man who had slipped noiselessly up behind her. He placed a hand over her mouth and then twisted her arm painfully behind her back.

Mia LaCombe tried to scream but he squelched it with his gloved-hand and then dragged her back into the lab.

Moments later he re-emerged. In his hands he carried the blood samples for each of the young girls and a small computer which had been appended to the microscope used to examine the bots.

Behind him lay the scientist, face-down in a contorted heap. Her throat was slit from one side to the other, and a pool of crimson formed around her now lifeless form.

 

 

With choreographed precision, demarking their lethal skills, two figures silently mounted the stairwells, arriving at opposite ends of the 2nd floor hospital wing.

Emerging through the exit door with viper-like speed, they executed a synchronized and brutal attack. Before either RCMP officer guarding the floor could act, their larynxes were pierced from behind - spilling blood into their lungs.

Several minutes later, all twenty-nine girls had been forced, at gunpoint, from their somnolence.

Their faces reflected their abject shock and utter terror at having fallen back into the hands of the captors once again.

Huddled like sheep, they were shoved down the stairwell, stumbling and falling, and then pushed into several waiting vans, wherein they disappeared, like ghosts in the night.

 

 

Sadda Patel had not been able to sleep for even one second, as the exhilaration coursed his veins, like an injection of heroin.

All he could think about was the startling and astonishing fact that in his hands he had the first, ever known nanobots, extracted from a living human being.

Sadda had emigrated from India in order to pursue a career in the burgeoning bio-robotics field. For two years now he had studied at the University of Toronto, assimilating every drop of information he could find in this field – but none of it compared to what he was now seeing. This small vial of blood from the RCMP had stretched the proverbial envelope by light years – bridging hopeful research to an actual, tangible reality.

In spite of the admonishment to keep the matter confidential, he was uncontrollably compelled by some other force than logic. Like the bewitching smile of some exotic and mesmerizing woman who would surely lead him to his doom – it taunted him.

Under the mantle of a dim October dawn, he searched the internet, locating two private firms which engaged in nanotech research in the Greater Toronto Area. One of them seemed reputably large enough to possibly have the means with which to buy what he could offer them – and he was quite sure that they would jump at the opportunity.

By 8:30 a.m. he had made contact with the receptionist at AGS Inc. She put him on-hold and then returned to the phone moments later, confirming that their Chief of Development was indeed interested in meeting.

One hour later, Sadda Patel was seated in front of Gerald Hansen, who anxiously requested to see the sample. Gerald disappeared to a small on-site lab and returned just twenty minutes later to the exuberant young Indian.

‘How, may I ask, did you come to possess this?’

‘It is a reputable source, I assure you,’ he answered, trying as he did, to hold his cards close to his chest.

Gerald proceeded with his usual candid and scientific manner, omitting any social platitudes. ‘Unfortunately, these very bots were developed by me.’

Sadda Patel felt his entire world suddenly imploding. Like an all-consuming dark-star, his enthusiasm, his vaulting dreams of fame and wealth, seemed to disappear into a black vortex. He shook his head with a look of confusion. ‘You are sure of this?’

‘Absolutely; in fact, the structural design of these bots are based on a unique process which we developed. My question remains, how did you get this?’

Sadda let out a long sigh as despondency replaced exhilaration. ‘I was given the samples by the RCMP.’

Gerald’s eyes opened wide with shock, ‘The RCMP?’

‘Yes,’ nodded the young man. ‘The sample came from a fifteen year old girl whom they have in custody. I know no other details about the matter, only that they wanted me to analyze her blood.’

Hansen looked at him disapprovingly, ‘And surely they did not intend for you to attempt to sell it to the highest bidder?’ he challenged.

Sadda looked away, feeling the bite of guilt.

On the same token, Hansen himself felt a turmoil of confusion and anger at the very thought that the RCMP was investigating his development. All of which conjured up the worst sense of betrayal, pointing a boney finger towards Thomas Raihn.

He stood, straightening his tie and shirt with a somewhat conservative stance. ‘I must consult with someone – can you wait?’

Sadda nodded with a hang-dog look.

Hansen proceeded directly to Raihn’s office, knocked and entered, finding him engaged in a conversation with his Security Coordinator, Billy Tanker. Both men looked up at him.

‘What is it, Gerald?’ asked Raihn.

‘Are you aware that there is a young interne in our conference room, who possesses a vial of blood with our nanobots in it?’

Raihn was sincerely shocked.

‘You are sure of this?’

‘I recognize my own work. My question,’ asked Hansen with repressed angst, ‘is how the hell did my nanobots get into the hands of the RCMP?’

That comment sent Raihn into a quiet rage. He rose, paced behind his desk and then turned back to face his CDO.

‘RCMP?’ he chimed.

‘Yes, someone from the RCMP asked him to analyze the blood sample.’

Raihn abruptly turned to BT, ‘Go talk to this man. Find out everything you can,’ he mandated with a tacit look which betrayed his unspoken intent. When BT had left the room, Thomas Raihn gritted his jaw and faced off with his CDO.

‘Sit down, Gerald. You will not like what I am about to say, but you have left me with no other choice.’

Gerald Hansen eased into the chair. He listened with foreboding shock as Raihn detailed the broad strokes of their human testing at the secretive camps. That was followed by the even more sobering news that he had sold Nb83 for general use to two nations. With each new revelation, he felt his heart sink and his soul submerge even deeper.

While Raihn engaged his Chief of Development in the sordid conversation, Billy Tanker and two of his men escorted Sadda Patel to a back office. There they questioned him and discovered everything they needed to know.

The young interne disappeared and was never to be seen or heard of again.

 

 

Kelly was on the phone as she drove to work, waiting patiently while someone at the University of Toronto looked for the lab techie.

It had not occurred to her the night before that there could be any complication in leaving the blood sample in his hands. And yet, as she sat there waiting, her mind began to play its usual tricks. With satanic-like machination, it conjured up all the very worst of scenarios.

Tired of waiting any longer, she called the security officer at the University, asking if he could look for the missing intern and to check their security footage.

As she entered the office, Jake looked up from his computer.

‘What’s got your titties in a twist, zipper head?’ he asked, seeing the look of frustration on her face.

She lit up a cigarette and exhaled a cloud of angry smoke, ‘That intern has not shown up yet. Something is wrong.’

Jake was about to comment when Keeno stepped into the office with Janene by his side.

‘The plot is thickening,’ announced Keeno as he dropped into his chair. ‘Colm Sanders, the Aussi who disappeared from that camp up at Mississippi Lake, is a real tool. Not only has he been involved in trafficking but he is also wanted for various sexual assaults on women and minors in Thailand and Malaysia. And someone went to a lot of trouble to falsify his documents in order to get him into Canada.’

‘What about the Chinese scientist?’ asked Jake.

‘Her background is not so transparent and is buried in the convoluted bureaucracy of the Chinese system.’

‘Which means what?’

Keeno shrugged. ‘It’s all suppositional right now. It could mean that she is working for the PRC because of her loyalty to the party, or it could mean she is being privately bankrolled. She is a poster girl for a Chinese loyalist. Her uncle ranks high in the Shanghai communist party, and during her teens she was a member of the Youth Communist League. Personally, I think Uncle Mao handpicked her for this job, which means that in some way, the PRC is complicit.’

Just then, Ross Fletcher charged through the door like an enraged bull. His face displayed anything but its usual calm demeanour. Behind him followed the Ops-Off.

‘The girls at the Kingston Hospital were abducted last night,’ he announced with a look of desperation in his eyes.

Keeno responded with shock, ‘What! I thought there was an RCMP detail guarding them?’

‘They’re dead, as well as the scientist who was flown in to analyze their blood samples. They took everything, leaving no traces.’

As the news sifted through his mind, Keeno suddenly felt his inner sense screaming out at him. He looked about the room, ‘Where is Eleina?’

Jake answered. ‘I left her downstairs with the receptionist. I was planning to take her out for breakfast.’

Keeno charged from the office, like a bullet shot from a gun.

For a split second everyone stood in shock, wondering what the hell had just happened, and then Jake got it and was out the door too.

Emerging at the ground floor, Keeno looked around for Eleina. Not seeing her – he approached the Receptionist ‘Where is the young girl who was here?’ he demanded.

‘She said she wanted to get some fresh air,’ she pointed to the receding figure in the distance.

Both Keeno and Jake turned, watching as Eleina stepped from the building and onto the street. A car suddenly screeched to a halt in front of her. A large man stepped out from the passenger side, grabbed her and then dumped her into the backseat, like a sack of potatoes.

‘Shit!’ yelled Keeno as he sprinted at full speed through the lobby with Jake on his heels.

As they emerged from the building, the car was already speeding down the street, zigzagging its way through the dense morning traffic.

Keeno drew his gun and fired a shot, aiming for the tires. Jake did the same.

A multitude of early morning bystanders screamed and ran for cover as the busy street morphed into a war zone.

The driver, seeing no way to get past the wall of cars ahead, pressed down on the gas pedal while jerking the wheel with a hard left, spinning the car into an acute turn.

The engine screamed and roared as the rubber bit angrily into the pavement, emitting a cloud of deep black smoke and then the vehicle plummeted back, like a rocket.

As the car speared into them, Jake dove to one side, landing on his back with a painful crunch. As he did, he squeezed off several rounds, one of which impaled the driver through the temple – killing him instantly.

He slumped forward into the steering column as the speeding car yawed to one side and then ploughed into a parked vehicle with a thunderous crash.

The man in the passenger side struggled to open the door, but the impact had crushed it. He reached out with his gun in hand in an attempt to shoot at Keeno - when suddenly the engine block burst into flames.

The man attempted an escape, but within seconds the red hot blaze had flashed into the passenger compartment, and his screams were consumed by its wrath.

Jake and Keeno converged on the car, yanking on the back door to free Eleina from the smoke-filled vehicle. But the crushing impact had jammed it tight. Several bystanders came to the rescue, and together they jerked with ferocious strength until the rear door crunched open.

Air rushed in, fuelling the flames to even greater fury.

Keeno dove in, grabbed the unconscious Eleina and snatched her from the car just as the flaming maws consumed the interior.

As they ran from the scene the car exploded – sending a flaming inferno twenty feet into the air as the gas tank ignited.

Crowds watched on as a pall of thick black smoke roiled upwards and as the thunder echoed off the nearby buildings.

He laid Eleina’s motionless form on the ground and waited anxiously as a paramedic team descended on her.

 

 

Colm Sanders sat with his feet pressed against one edge of the heavy oak table.

Built in the early 1820s, at the same time as the house within which it stood, the table was as solid as the day it had first been fabricated. It was the only remaining relic of the history of this old house, testimony to the families who had lived and died on this plot of land.

Only recently purchased by AGS Inc, the dilapidated farmhouse was perfectly situated off the beaten path – where it would serve as a safe-house.

Colm stared about the inside of the 17th century relic, with its empty walls and dimly lit corners, attended by a cavernous tomb-like echo, which seemed to follow his every movement. It unnerved him. Combined with the blasted cold outside and the heatless interior, he shivered, wanting to get away from this place as soon as possible.

At a glance, Colm Sanders would have repulsed most anyone, except possibly those of his own ilk.

His demeanour was intimidating - one which had been hardened by a lifetime of crime. He was an utterly humourless man, with pencil-thin lips, beady, shark-like eyes and an air of hatred which oozed from him. His head held a thinning mop of sandy hair, revealing incipient baldness, while his face was pulpy and pockmarked by small cater-like pin-holes.

It was as if Colm Sanders had been born to hate the world, because in fact, he did. Lacking any sensibility or moral compass, he would probably sell the daughter of his neighbour if he thought it was worth it.

Following their successful recovery of the girls from the RCMP at the Kingston Hospital, his team had been directed to this very property. Located some twenty minutes north of Odessa, in fact just an hour from the Kingston Hospital itself – it was the perfect hideout.

In an adjacent room, the Chinese scientist was busily checking the blood samples from each of the twenty-nine girls – a process which was slow and could not, he was told, be sped up. And so, he continued to smoke, drowning the laborious and painful hours with the numbing sensation afforded to him by the bottle of Jack Daniels whiskey.

Just then his cell phone rang, yanking him from his mental maundering.

‘Ay mate,’ he started off with his distinctive Australian dialect. Its twang, although probably sounding the same to an untrained ear, was peculiar to the northern territory of Australia.

‘Is everything ok?’ asked his boss, Billy Tanker.

‘It’s all good, no worries,’ said Colm. ‘Just waiting for the Chink to finish up her work so I can get these lit’le bitches the hell out of here.’

‘Ok. Just keep your eyes open. I don’t want any more trouble up there.’

‘That makes two of us, captain.’

BT continued, ‘We know where that runaway girl is and we also know who got her out from under your nose,’ he said with purposeful intent at pushing the man’s buttons.

Colm deflected the subtle insult while kicking his feet to the ground. ‘Now you’ve got my bloody interest,’ he twanged.

‘The RCMP Toronto has her. In fact, two agents, one named Keeno McCole and the other Jake Williams. I suspect that they were involved in that mess at Mississippi Lake too.’

‘How d’ya’ know that?’

BT continued with a smile and a suffused sense of pride, ‘I did some homework on that Indian your boys killed. He was a friend to Keeno McCole, who, by the way, heads up the Anti-Terrorism-Unit here in Toronto.’

‘No shit!’

‘The old Indian probably called him when he found the girl and one thing led to another. Anyhow, I had a couple men watching the RCMP offices yesterday when that very girl stepped out of the building.’

‘So you have her, then?’

‘No,’ he hissed, ‘McCole and his sidekick showed up and killed my men.’

‘You’re sure it was them?’

‘Lots of bystanders witnessed the gun fight and posted videos on the internet. It wasn’t hard to track their identities from there.’

‘Why the fook are we going to all this trouble anyhow, that little bitch isn’t that important?’ hissed Sanders.

‘We’re being paid to protect these assets – your pay check depends on getting those girls to their buyers,’ said BT with some authority.

‘You don’t sound that convinced,’ he remarked as he lit up a cigarette.

‘If it was my call, I would put a bullet in her head, but that’s not my decision,’ answered BT.

Colm tipped back a shot of whisky and let out a loud sigh of satisfaction.

‘I plan to her back from the RCMP and then to you. I want her checked by Mai Lin and then shipped off with the other girls. Once that is done your contract with us is finished.’

‘Fair enough, mate,’ Sanders conceded, thinking about the chunk of change he would soon inherit in his account.

‘I’m sending you pictures of McCole and his sidekick. If you see them, shoot to kill.’

A small sardonic grin formed on Colm’s lips. ‘Fook’n gladly, mate.’

He tossed the phone onto the table, poured himself another shot of whisky and tipped it back in one gulp.

Colm’s cavalier attitude was fueled by the knowledge that his future seemed assured. The growing global market for young teenage virgins was astronomical - all of which would keep his bank accounts full.

Mai Lin Heng emerged from one of two nearby rooms. She shook off the thin hygienic gloves and dropped them into an empty box. Then she smoothed her white blouse and black utilitarian pants, the same way she had done countless times before.

He watched her with unstated disdain.

He didn’t like the Chinese, which was only to say that he did not like most people. The truth was that he only felt comfortable in the company of his own kind – criminals.

In spite of Mai Lin’s exposure to western culture, she was unequivocally loyal to the Chinese system and to its Communist ideology. It was because of that loyalty and her unique scientific background that she had been secretly called upon by an esteemed member of the Party to participate in this project.

Mai Lin Heng was the epitome of austerity. She manifested absolutely no sense of or proclivity toward fashion. Her hair was clipped close to her skull and she wore no make-up whatsoever – making her appearance both dull and vapid.

She sat across from him, somewhat prim and proper and announced, ‘They are ready.’ Her native vernacular caused her to slip on her enunciation of the English “r”, sounding more like an “ahh”. ‘None of them show any negative reaction to the injections. You can ship them out,’ she said with a business like smile.

 

 

When Jake looked up from his desk, he realized that he was alone. That is, with the exception of Kelly, who was silently engaged at her computer.

He felt the urge to throw a cutting remark her way, but the parrot tattooed on the side of her neck stared back at him with a challenging, if not disconcerting look.

Decidedly, he left the office. Using the GPS tracking device on their phones he located them at a coffee shop on University Avenue. And with the grace of a gorilla he slumped into a chair next to Keeno.

‘Am I interrupting anything?’ he leered both purposefully and playfully.

Keeno shook his head with a look of mock annoyance, ‘You know, partner, you really need to get a woman in your life,’ he said with a covert wink at Janene.

She took the cue, adding with an affected tone of concern in her voice, ‘I heard recently that the shrinks have come up with a new mental disease to add to the list of over 400 disorders they have dreamed up; it’s called FOCD?’

Jake’s face contorted with evident confusion. ‘Fucked? What the hell is that supposed to mean?’

‘No, it’s not fucked, it is FOCD, spelled F-O-C-D – it means Fear-Of-Commitment-Disorder. It refers to people who cannot engage in long-term relationships for fear of being rejected.’ Even as she said the words, she could barely suppress the urge to break out in laughter at seeing the sudden look on his face.

Jake’s bull-shaped head stiffened on his thick neck and he eyed her with suspicion, ‘Are you saying that I’m gay?’

‘No,’ she bit her lip, ‘I am just ...’

He cut her off with a firm wave of his hand, and then pointed an accusative finger at them. ‘Listen you two Freudian freaks - this shit isn’t going to work on me. Besides, I’ve had my share of women. And, to be honest, I’m just waiting for a clone of Janene to come along,’ he leered once again with a hopeful longing in his eyes.

Janene continued, ‘What about Kelly, now there’s a beautiful woman right under your nose?’ Her statement came with both purposeful and mischievous intent as Kelly quietly stepped up behind the unsuspecting Jake.

He leaned back in his chair, crossing his thick muscular arms across his chest, as if to assert his manhood.

‘That’s the point, she’s under my nose. And besides, that frigg’n parrot on her neck is just creepy. I mean, can you imagine waking up to that thing every morning?’

‘I heard that,’ interjected Kelly as she leaned over the table, casting a playful grin at both Keeno and Janene. ‘And what exactly is your type, Rambo?’

Jake threw his head into his hands while Janene and Keeno broke into a fit of laughter, enjoying the abuse they were inflicting.

Kelly pulled up a chair and placed a gentle and somewhat patronizing hand on Jake’s arm. ‘It’s alright - we all know that you have women-issues.’

He tugged his arm from her hand and declared, ‘Ok, the “Kick-Jake’s-Ass-Hour” is over. I came by to tell you that those two dead retards, who tried to take Eleina this morning, have been officially identified by the coroner. Both are former Canadian military, and like the others, they were guns for hire.’

Keeno’s tone suddenly changed. ‘Do we know who hired them?’

‘No and whoever is pulling their strings is going to a lot of trouble to make sure that they cannot be traced. ’

‘And spending a lot of money too,’ added Janene. ‘These guys don’t come cheap.’

Keeno sighed with frustration, thinking as he did that they were still no closer to apprehending the doers than the day this had all begun.

Janene turned to Kelly. ‘What about that lab-tech at U of T, did he resurface?’

‘No. We’ve had police check his apartment and the U of T security people have searched the whole campus for him. However, their security footage did reveal that someone broke into the lab this morning and took the blood sample for Eleina.’

‘Wow, these guys are good,’ said Jake.

Kelly continued, ‘And, I just got a report from the RCMP team in Kingston. After the clean-up detail at the hospital, they found a note pad on the floor of the lab where that scientist was murdered.’

‘And…?’ Janene probed.

‘She had noted that in each of the blood samples she reviewed that the nanobots were still active.’

‘What does that mean?’ asked Jake.

‘She seemed to think that the bots had out-lived their shelf-life.’

‘But how serious could that be?’

‘Although theoretical, it has been suggested that there could be the potential of uncontrolled permeation.’

‘English, please!’ interjected Keeno.

Kelly conceded with a slight nod, ‘Simply put, if you fabricate a synthetic entity or pathogen, capable of affecting living tissue, what is to say that it won’t continue indefinitely. A virus or bacteria will eventually die, because it is a living organism. Our bodies can fight those, and we also possess antibodies against such. But if the intruder is synthetic, such as nanobots, there is always the potential for indefinite permeation, or what some have referred to as “The Gray-Goo Theory.’

‘What’s that?’ inquired Jake.

‘It means that the bots could go on for months, years or even decades, with no way of stopping them,’ answered Kelly.

 

 

Ross called the ATU to an emergency meeting in the CIC conference facility.

‘This whole affair has taken on another color,’ he said as he tipped his head at his Ops Officer. ‘Calvin will bring us all up to date.’

Calvin took his cue, launching his oratory with his characteristically scholastic fashion. ‘Our lab tests confirm what this missing intern from the U of T revealed to Kelly and Jake; that there are, in fact, real nanobots in Eleina’s blood. Moreover, two blood samplings, taken twelve hours apart, showed that the bots were seemingly as populated and active as they were when first viewed. They also discovered traces of them in her urine. The concern of course, is that this could point to potential transmission or contagion, and as no one has any earlier experience with this field, we have no idea what this portends.’

‘But certainly the limited number in her system could not pose a major threat,’ posed Janene.

‘Presumably, yes. But the picture changes significantly if one considers what would happen if this formula was injected into thousands or even millions of people.

‘An epidemic,’ said Kelly.

Calvin tipped his head at her, ‘Precisely.’

The room was silent for a moment.

‘But why inject young girls who are trafficked from other countries?’ voiced Keeno.

Jake mumbled something which sounded incoherent, but which in fact turned all eyes to him.

‘What did you just say?’ asked Kelly.

Jake shrugged his shoulders. ‘It just occurred to me that if they are buying and selling young girls through the human pipeline, then what would raise their market value?’

‘Are suggesting that the bots are being used to sterilize them, is that it?’ said Calvin.

‘That’s what I was thinking.’

Ross spoke, ‘Maybe it would be wise if we had this young girl, Eleina, checked, to see if her ovaries have been affected.’ He turned to Keeno. ‘Meanwhile, how are we going to get ahead of this before it turns into a disaster?’

Keeno had been thinking the same thought and already, an idea was forming. He cocked his head, with a small, somewhat mischievous grin.

Jake caught the gesture from his peripheral vision. ‘The last time I saw that face, you had us jumping from a plane in the middle of the night and landing on the Skylon Tower hundreds of feet above Niagara Falls.’

‘Yeah, that was quite a trip,’ said Keeno as he turned to Ross. ‘Whoever is behind this operation is going to a lot of trouble to recover every girl. And we have something they want.’

‘Eleina,’ answered Ross.

‘Right. I think they will try to get her back if we give them the opportunity to do so.’

‘Are you suggesting a sting?’

‘Yes. Assuming that they still want her, we can also assume that they have some people watching our building as we speak. So, we make it easy for them and let them take us to the snake’s pit.’

‘But how,’ asked Kelly.

‘We find someone who approximates Eleina in stature and appearance and we use her to draw them, like rats, into the trap.’

‘But why not just do more surveillance on the people who might be watching us right now?’ Kelly posed. ‘We could put enough electronics on them to see them picking their noses.’

‘Yes, but at what cost?’ challenged Keeno. ‘That could take days to get anything, especially considering how effectively they are at covering up their tracks. In that same time they will have moved those other girls and their entire operation, greatly reducing our chances.’

Keeno continued, pressing his point home, ‘Keep in mind that Eleina is just one of the thirty girls they had at that camp. With the exception of Colm Sanders and this Chinese scientist, we can assume that no one else can identify her, since most or all of them are now pushing up daisies.’

‘Until they test her blood and find no bots,’ Janene added.

‘That’s the chance we take,’ responded Keeno.

 

 

Thomas Raihn stepped off the plane onto the Tarmac at Aruba - a tiny Caribbean island, just a short hop from the north-eastern shores of Venezuela.

Although not more than thirty-three kilometres in length, Aruba still sported a consistent flow of tourists from around the globe.

Emerging from the air-conditioned plane, he was instantly enveloped by the sultry air, the aroma of tropical flowers and the panorama of palms waving lightly in the wind.

Although poorly timed – the meeting was unavoidable. He had to put up a good face. He could not permit his financiers to sense any doubts about their investment, especially considering that the bulk of his funding was coming from the Chinese government itself.

A large Chinese man escorted him to a waiting vehicle and then drove him directly to the Hyatt Regency Resort and Casino.

After a short reprieve to freshen up, he was ushered to one corner of a spacious open deck, overlooking the crystal blue waters and white sands of Aruba. Several men sat at one table, imbibing drinks and engaged in hushed dialogue.

Five other rather daunting looking characters, sat at a nearby table, perched like vultures, watching the movement of everyone in the vicinity. One of them, a rather gruesome looking brute, turned to face Raihn. He attempted a smile, appearing more like a hollow-eyed crocodile with a sharp-toothed grin.

Raihn approached the table with the three men. They stood in unison. ‘Welcome Mr. Raihn. Please, have a seat,’ said one of them. He waited until Thomas was seated and then continued with a somewhat chilly manner about him.

‘We have just been discussing your accomplishments,’ began the man.

Thomas Raihn felt himself at the disadvantage in this particular gathering. It was a position he preferred to avoid for the simple reason that his narcissistic personality took great pleasure at being at the helm at all times. He still found it difficult to differentiate their faces or to remember their names. For him a Wang was the same as a Tang or a Wong. But of the three, he knew who was most important. His name was Wei Ton, a man of considerable power and influence within the economic and banking machinery of the PRC.

Wei Ton was rarely, if ever, seen in the public eye, and certainly never in the media. He was one of the most influential people within the core of the communist party. Simply stated, his job was to advise his government on how to wisely spend and invest its vast sums of money in order to leverage power, control and of course, profit.

Everything from buying real estate in other lands, foreign investments and even the loaning of large sums to allied governments, were the domain of Wei Ton and his team.

It had been Wei Ton himself who had set the wheels in motion to convince his government to back AGS Inc. He knew that the country which broke the sound barrier in that field - would be holding the aces for many years to come.

Although consumed with multiple projects around the globe, Wei Ton kept a special watch over AGS Inc. He did not particularly trust Thomas Raihn – whom he knew to be a man of immense greed; and yet, a greed which could be leveraged.

With news of their recent strides forward with Nb83, it was time to remind Raihn that they were still very much on his radar, which is why he had called for this meeting.

Raihn answered with mock conservatism, testing the waters to see which way the conversation was heading. ‘Yes, we do seem to be off to a good start.’

‘Indeed, and we are happy to see that these client-nations are moving ahead with the test modus. Our concern, however, is that we have heard of this raid on your camp by the Federal Canadian law agency.’

Raihn clamped his jaw, thinking to himself - how was it possible that the Chinese had already learned of this?

‘Yes, unfortunately one of the test-girls escaped, which raised a red flag. But the matter is under control, I assure you.’

The three men stared back at him with a discomforting silence. It was one of the things he disliked about doing business with the Chinese – they were so damn difficult to read. Maybe, he thought, if he had grown up in their world and had learned the subtle disparities which defined their emotions and the nuances of their body language, it would be different. But, by the very nature of their communist upbringing, these men had developed special social skills. They were expert at keeping their emotions bottled up and their tongues tighter than a frigid virgin.

Raihn continued with an assuring tone, ‘Production of Nb83 continues, undisturbed, and there is no way that the RCMP can trace anything to us. I have people making sure of that.’

Wei Ton made a subtle nod of his head. ‘Our investment in your development has considerably more importance to us than the mere fact of the hundreds of millions of dollars which we have provided to you. The money itself is a relative pittance. Our objective remains primarily in ensuring that our long term strategic goals for nanotechnology are secured for China.’

Raihn nodded. ‘And they are.’

‘How many people have been injected so far?’ asked another.

‘Approximately three quarter of a million.’

‘And the estimated target?’

Thomas Raihn paused to recall the figures. ‘Just over one million in this test modus.’

Wei Ton nodded somewhat sagely as he did the math in his head. ‘Given that the average birthrate in at least one of these nations is upwards of six to twelve children per woman - that would mean a reduction of roughly eight to ten million newborns just from this one test-modus.’ He smiled. ‘This is impressive, Thomas. It puts predictive population control well in-hand.’

Wei Ton raised a singular finger as he casually glanced from side to side to ensure that their privacy was uncompromised. ‘Once these test-nations have proven the broad-scale workability of Nb83, we too will want to start the process within our very own borders.’

Raihn lifted a brow at that comment. He had suspected that the PRC might be interested in Nb83 for use within China, but the subject had never before been broached.

Wei Ton continued, noting the slight change in Raihn’s demeanour. ‘This should come as no surprise to you. Population control in China is a problem of such magnitude as to make other nations look like nothing in comparison. More children are born in one week in China than in months in many other nations. As we expand, we must deal with our own surfeit. Our one-child policy, which we introduced in the late 1970’s, has become antiquated and difficult to enforce. And even so, one child per family in a nation with over one and half billion people is a tremendous strain on our system. It is far easier to simply sterilize select populaces, especially those who are not economically capable of supporting more than one child, if any at all.’

The conversation plied back and forth, like a ferry between two docks, covering many logistical aspects of the operation. Their questions were both incisive and blunt. After an hour, and more than his share of Whiskey Sours, Thomas Raihn felt his head starting to bob as the alcohol took its toll.

Wei Ton informed him that in view of the recent incursion by the RCMP, that they would be providing extra precautionary security measures to assist in the operation.

He pushed an empty glass toward Thomas Raihn and poured some champagne.

‘One final toast to celebrate your success,’ he said with a toothy grin.

 

 

Billy Tanker watched the screen of his laptop, like a hawk waiting for the first signs of movement before diving for its next meal.

The live feed was coming from a camera mounted inside one of two cars. The cars were located just up the street from the RCMP headquarters in downtown Toronto. In fact, just some blocks from where he now sat at the AGS headquarters on the third floor of the Richmond-Adelaide Centre.

Even though he had two hired guns inside each vehicle, BT was taking no chances this time. His ego, although he would have referred to it as his pride, had been badly bruised by the incursive actions of the RCMP, and in particular, by Keeno McCole.

Even now, as he sat watching, he quietly fumed over the matter, stoking the flames of his anger with methodical intent. When the time came, he would face McCole and even up the score.

The sudden eruption of chatter inside one of the two vehicles pulled BT back from the world of his alter-ego.

‘That looks like her,’ one of the men said as he pointed to a small figure emerging from the building.

BT leaned forward and stared at the screen. The girl was hooded, and escorting her out of the building was none other than Jake Williams.

Both vehicles crept down the street in silent pursuit as the two figures turned into a nearby parking lot and then stepped into a car.

‘Don’t lose them,’ barked BT.

 

 

 

Jake glanced in his mirror, easily distinguishing the two vehicles following them from the myriad of others. For one, they drove identical cars, and secondly, they paced him - neither falling back nor coming too close.

Certain that they had him in their sights, he swung the car onto the Don Valley Parkway, heading north.

Sitting next to him was Linda, a twenty-one year-old RCMP data technician who worked two flights up from his own office. Even though she was not officially a field agent, she had, as with all other RCMP personnel, undergone and passed boot camp, which included learning the basics of weaponry and self defence.

Her stature and her physique more or less paralleled that of the young Eleina – which made her the perfect choice for the mission. She was small, tiny for a woman, but still cute to his way of seeing things.

By removing all signs of make-up and letting her hair hang down, she would pass, at a glance. Of course a more thorough inspection could easily betray her.

‘When this is over, maybe we can have a beer or two,’ he suggested.

She shook her head with an impish smile on her lips. ‘I was warned about you when I took this assignment.’

‘Oh really, and who would that be?’

She turned to him, ‘Keeno.’

Jake shot a surprised look back at her. ‘Keeno?!’

‘He said that you’d probably hit on me.’

‘Don’t listen to him – he doesn’t know crap.’

Her head bobbed playfully, ‘Nonetheless he was right, wasn’t he?’ she bantered. ‘But maybe I will still take you up on that offer.’

Once again he glanced at the rear-view mirror, watching as the two black cars maintained their distance. Not far behind them, was Keeno’s familiar Jeep.

‘Ok, they’re staying with us, just as we predicted. Are you ready?’

She tapped her finger against the Beretta Px4 Storm which was taped to her side and camouflaged by the loose fitting sweater.

‘They won’t be expecting a fifteen year-old to be packing,’ she smiled.

‘Just remember to act like a helpless fifteen year-old girl. And keep your head down to avoid eye contact.’

‘I got it. Just make sure that you two are there when the bullets start flying.’

Jake pulled off the highway and into a cheap motel, the one they had specifically picked for the ruse. Moments later, they disappeared into a ground floor room at the far end of the rundown structure.

Billy Tanker watched as his vehicles approached.

‘One of you take the front, the other the back,’ he ordered.

Within a few minutes, Jake re-emerged from the room, looked cautiously about and then headed towards some vending machines at the far end.

As he disappeared around the corner, two men stormed the room, grabbed the girl and threw her into the back seat of their car. Within seconds both vehicles had sped away.

When Keeno pulled up - Jake hopped in.

‘That was smooth.’

‘Is the tracker working?’ asked Keeno with concern in his voice, knowing that Linda was now in the shark’s tank.

‘Perfectly,’ answered Jake as he looked at the handheld GPS unit. The signal was coming from a tracking device sewed inside her pants.

‘They just took the on-ramp for the 401 east.’

After nearly two hours, the cars turned north, off the McDonald-Cartier Freeway and came to a stop.

Keeno pulled his Jeep to one side of the road, atop a knoll and looked down at a farmhouse half a kilometre away. He dialled Janene, ‘Do you have them on satellite yet?’

‘Yes. We can see the house. You could probably approach from the west – using the trees as your cover.’

Keeno eyed the dense forest. ‘I agree.’

‘Ross wants you to know that the back-up team from Ottawa is already on its way, with an ETA of twenty minutes.’

‘Good.’

Keeno pointed to the tree-line which skirted the backside of the property. ‘I’m going in from that cluster of trees over there. Wait until you hear from me, or gunfire, whichever comes first, and then you’re welcome to join the party. The cavalry should be here in about twenty.’

Jake snapped a clip into his gun. ‘I love a good old-fashioned man-party,’ he said with a grin.

Keeno slipped off his shoes, replacing them with a pair of Indian moccasins made of thick leather. With them he could move noiselessly through the forest, a trick he had learned from K-Joe in fact, when just a young boy.

He turned and sprinted down the knoll.

 

 

The vehicles braked to a stop in front of the old farm house, enshrouding them both in a thin veil of dust.

They yanked Linda from the car and pushed her towards Colm Sanders. She stumbled about, purposely trying to appear both helpless and terrified.

Sanders appraised her with a grim face, like a slave-trader assessing his latest human wares.

‘You fook’n bitch,’ he intoned angrily. ‘You caused us a lot’a trouble.’ He swung his right hand outward, landing it against her face with a sharp smack.

Linda reeled from the blow, crashing to her knees as the crushing pain coursed her whole body. Her eyes watered and blood erupted from her split lip.

‘Get ‘er in the house before I put a bullet in her fook’n skull,’ he barked.

Once inside, Mai Lin approached her, rolled up her sleeve and plunged a needle into her arm and then extracted some blood.

‘How long will this take?’ demanded Colm as he lit up a smoke.

‘Not long,’ the scientist answered, and then disappeared to another smaller room where she had the equipment with which to analyze blood samples.

For Linda, every agonizing second was like an hour. The anxiety and fear were catalyzing inside of her, like a volcano about to erupt.

She stole a glance at Sanders. His beady eyes were trained on her, like a shark eyeing its next meal. She flinched.

In the next room, Mai Lin Heng studied the blood she had just taken from the girl. As she did, her forehead bunched up with manifest confusion. Something was wrong, she thought.

Opening a portable refrigeration unit, one which housed all the blood samples she had taken, she found the very last one for this particular girl – just before her escape. Placing it under the microscope, she was doubly shocked to discover that the blood types did not even match.

A moment later she stepped from the room and looked at Linda. In that split second Linda knew that the ruse was over.

‘So?’ asked Colm with some anticipation.

‘She is an imposter.’

Adrenaline poured into Linda’s system, sparking an internal fuse which sent her reflexively fumbling for the gun. But Colm Sanders was already on her, lurching from his chair, like a tiger charging a doe.

He smashed into her smallish form, crushing her into the floor and then he lashed out with a brutal blow to her face.

As she slumped back into unconsciousness, he yanked the hood from her head. Seconds later he discovered the gun taped to her side.

With gritted teeth he hissed, ‘It’s a fook’n sting.’

Just then, gunfire erupted outside.

 

 

 

 

 

Keeno sprinted through the woods.

It seemed as if he was drawing energy from the very forest itself; infusing him with exhilaration and raw power. He knew that necessity was the main driving force, because Linda was in the tiger’s den now, and it was his job to ensure that she made it out safely.

Slowing to a stop at the edge of the tree-line which bordered the house, he stood and scanned the perimeter. His eyes caught the subtle movement which betrayed the presence of a man standing amidst a small cluster of trees to the right. Slung to his shoulder was a military-grade assault rifle, the same used by the other men at the Mississippi Lake encampment. His stance and his eagle-like gaze marked him as a professional.

Considering that each of the men he had fought so far were ex-military, it suggested that they had probably triangulated their defensive play. He suspected that they would have at least two more men set up on the perimeter of the property; one to the left and one in front of the house. It was a common military tactic which allowed them to form a net, within which they could pin any enemy without being caught in the crossfire of their own weapons.

Keeno picked up a rock and tossed it into the woods to his right. The mercenary jerked his assault rifle up to a shooting position. Then he turned and stepped cautiously in the direction of the noise.

Using those seconds, he dashed across the small clearing, and then quickly circumvented one side of the house, arriving to the front corner.

Standing by the vehicles ahead were four men, in fact the same four they had followed.

Stretching the entire length of the front of the house was an old-fashioned wood porch. A banister, constructed of thick wooden balusters, formed a skirt around it.

Slowly, so as not to attract attention from the men standing nearby, nor to alert anyone else inside, he raised his head and peered through the window. In clear view, he could see Linda sitting in a chair. Across from her was a large man, the stature and profile of whom Keeno instantly recognized from the photos he had earlier seen.

As he watched, a woman stepped from a nearby room and turned to look at Linda. There was no mistaking the look in her face. She uttered a few indecipherable words and instantly, Colm Sanders was on top of Linda, striking her a brutal blow.

Keeno was about to act when a bullet pinged by his head. He dove over the banister, hitting the wood-planks of the old porch just as more bullets speared by, crashing into the wood-framed house with a thundering concussion.

He cautiously eased his head up from the floor when another slug smashed the baluster in front of him. The centuries-old hand-carved stanchion was pulverized by the impact, sending wood-dust and chips into his eyes. He gasped.

As he struggled to clear his vision, he heard a subtle movement to his right. Keeno turned just in time to see the shape of a large man looming over the rail.

The mercenary shoved off, knife in hand, stabbing downward like a gladiator charging in for the kill.

 

 

The concussion of gunfire shattered the otherwise silent and idyllic country setting, sending Jake bolting across the open field at a dead-run.

Using the tall growth to mask his approach, he struck a diagonal track straight for the farm house in the distance. As he neared it, he spotted several men crouched down in the clearing ahead, their guns aimed at the front of the building. Lying face-down on the porch was Keeno, pinned in the cross-fire.

‘Classic,’ he muttered with a slight grumble, thinking that once again he was going to have to save Keeno’s bacon.

Jake trained his Walther P99 on the nearest man and put two bullets in him. The others scattered, like ants, and then returned fire at him.

Suddenly, from seemingly nowhere, like ghosts out of thin air, several more men appeared - each of them sporting even heavier weaponry. They unleashed a literal wall of deadly metal which churned up the tall growth around him like a shredder.

Jake hit the ground as a dozen slugs screamed by his head, barely missing him.

As he lay there, listening, he felt the dull throbbing sensation, one he knew all-to-well. He reached down with his left hand and touched his leg and was met by a spasm of intense throbbing and the wet of his own blood.

Focusing his attention away from the waves of pain now pulsing from his leg, he saw the rippled pattern of men approaching through the tall growth.

Sweat broke out on his skin, like a sudden fall of rain, as his body fought to conserve itself against the injury. Already the pain and the flush of blood were taking a toll.

Face-down in the dirt, Jake watched and waited. He had to stay focused, and yet, the wound in his leg was bleeding out profusely, and already his head was feeling light. The tall growth around him was becoming like a kaleidoscope of motion, as blood-loss deprived his brain of needful oxygen, creating a miasma of changing imagery ahead.

If he didn’t act soon – he would be hemmed in and that would spell certain death, especially considering his injury.

A faint cracking sound ahead alerted Jake. He fired and heard the moan and sudden crash of a man falling to the ground. Without waiting, he fired off several more rounds, both left and right – hoping to buy himself a window of escape.

He lurched to his feet with a painful grunt and then ran, somewhat hobbled by the hole in his leg, toward the house. It was a desperate move but his circumstances dictated it.

Shots cut the air around him, one of them slicing through the right arm of his jacket, and just missing his skin.

He ducked down to conceal his location, crawled a distance through the tall growth, and then once again he stood and bolted for the house. More shots rang out from behind. Fortunately, his smallish stature had been his saving grace, making it difficult to see his body bobbing through the field.

As he neared the house he saw another man moving stealthily along the south wall, inching closer to where Keeno was now engaged in hand-to-hand combat with yet another.

He pushed himself with all the strength he could muster, when suddenly, a mercenary stood up ahead with his gun aimed straight at him.

Jake did the only thing he could – he ploughed into the man like a train.

 

 

It was a rare moment when the hub, comprising over two hundred people, was unilaterally distracted by one event – but this moment was one of those times.

RCMP personnel stood in abject silence, with their eyes transfixed on large wall monitors - watching the real-time battle.

The satellite, nearly two-hundred miles above the earth, transmitted a surrealistic, alien-like view. Its infrared imaging clearly showed the figures of both Keeno and Jake, out-numbered at least three to one, with bullets flashing by them, like speeding fireflies lighting up the night sky.

Ross stood, utterly tense, watching as numerous men assailed his two agents.

‘Where the hell is that assault team?’ he yelled.

‘About ten clicks to the northeast,’ responded the Ops-Off.

‘Tell them to speed up,’ he barked, ‘otherwise they will only need body bags.’

Janene and Kelly stood off to one side of the War Room with their eyes glued to the monitor. Neither of them had ever witnessed the boys in action before now, and certainly never in a lethal gun battle. It was horrifying to Janene to think that at any moment Keeno could die. She wanted to scream out at him, to warn him, but all she could do was stand there, frozen, waiting and silently hoping.

Keeno, dimly identifiable by his slim stature, was engaged in hand-to-hand combat, against another man. Even from their perspective, the man he fought had the girth and size of a large bear.

Suddenly, the image of yet another mercenary appeared from the other side of the house, crawling along the south wall, approaching the very porch where the two men battled.

As he raised his assault rifle towards Keeno, a collective sound of muted horror erupted from the mouths of nearly everyone who watched on.

 

 

The lethal military knife, easily eight inches in length, screamed by his side, missing his torso by centimetres as it plunged into a wood plank.

Keeno had managed to twist his body by a bare fraction, but a fraction nonetheless. In his haste to avoid being impaled, his gun slipped from his hand and skidded off to one side.

While the mercenary pried his knife from the floor board, Keeno lurched to his feet, spun his body and landed a kick to the man’s jaw. A definitive shudder coursed Keeno’s leg, testimony that the man was built like brick-shit-house.

The man grinned, with a sardonic leer, ‘Let’s dance,’ he said as he lunged forward – swinging his knife with powerful sword-like swaths.

Keeno drew back just as the tip sliced into his arm, spilling blood. But pain and threat of death were never precursors of failure for Keeno, but rather, they catalyzed him into action.

‘Hurts – don’t it?’ the other sneered.

‘Don’t let it go to your head, Bambi’ said Keeno with an indifferent and undaunted glare.

The giant grimaced with a baleful glint in his eye and then he came in faster and harder, with the full force of his Herculean form. Keeno let the dynamics of gravity and physics work to his advantage. He dove to one side as the hulk jabbed into the empty air, throwing him momentarily off his center of balance - like a Tyrannosaurus Rex suddenly listing on one foot.

Keeno used that precious second to dive for his gun which lay nearby. He snatched the weapon as he plowed into the floor, letting his right shoulder take the brunt of the impact. Twisting his body, he aimed with his left hand and fired into the man, emptying the last two rounds into his chest.

The hulk grunted as the bullets tore through his heart. With a painful look of disgust, the man toppled over face first, with a resounding crash which sent up a small cloud of dust.

As he reached into his pocket for his last remaining clip, Keeno caught the movement in his peripheral vision. For some reason the old saying, “When it rains – it pours” came to mind.

He turned and looked down the barrel of an assault rifle levelled at his head.

 

 

 

Jake hit the man just as he was about to pull the trigger on his weapon. The collision sent both of them smashing into the ground.

Jake swung his right elbow into his jaw, a blow which would have knocked most men out of their senses, but which seemed to do little more than irritate the other.

The man pushed back with powerful arms and threw him to one side, and then reached for his snub-nosed assault rifle.

Like some scene from an old cowboy film, the two simultaneously raised and fired their weapons.

Jake’s bullet tore through the man’s skull, while the reciprocal slug slashed a nasty gash in the side of Jake’s neck, spilling blood onto his shoulder – blood which he simply could not afford to lose.

For a long moment, he hovered there, teetering as he leaned on one elbow, and as his world began to spin uncontrollably.

His leg was drenched in red. His hands and feet were numb and cold as blood pooled to the center of his body in a last ditch attempt to preserve itself.

Thinking of Keeno, he desperately tried to raise himself to his feet, but he could not find the strength.

Jake slumped back into the ground and then spiraled into the deep dark pitch of oblivion.

 

 

Tallie stared down the barrel of his assault rifle with a sense of triumphant victory.

Ever since the RCMP had invaded their camp at Mississippi Lake, he had been looking forward to a chance to even up the score. And now, he had the infamous Keeno McCole in his sights.

‘Too bad about your Indian friend, McCole?’

Keeno said nothing as he gritted his teeth.

‘You know, I’ve been looking forward to this moment. We even placed wagers on who would be the first to put a bullet in your head, and I guess I’ll be collecting on that bet.’

Keeno shrugged, ‘Whatever! If you’re going to hold the gun on me, then either shoot or piss-off, asshole.’

Tallie squeezed back on the trigger, but was suddenly distracted by the thundering whoop emitting from the AH-64 Apache helicopter which broke the tree line just behind him, like a lion suddenly roaring in for the kill.

He turned and raised his gun at the Apache but the advanced infrared system aboard the chopper had already locked on its target and the missile was streaking through the air before Tallie could take his next breath.

Keeno saw it coming. He pitched to one side, grabbing hold of the nearest baluster and dropped his head to the floor.

The rocket hit the ground, shaking the earth and gouging out a crater where Tallie had stood – not to mention taking out a portion of the porch which evaporated in the blast.

As a cloud of dirt rose into the air, the chopper pilot pulled his Apache a hard left, and then aimed his guns at the two remaining shooters below.

The mercenaries hefted their assault weapons, letting off a wave of bullets, but the pilot unleashed his own, scorching the ground and cutting them down in just seconds.

Keeno pushed away the remains of the shredded porch, choking up a mouthful of dust and wood bits.

As he sat up, four RCMP agents poured out of the Apache.

One of them approached, ‘Are you ok, sir?’

Keeno flexed his arms and hands, ‘I am now, thanks.’

Without delay, he snapped a new clip into his gun and then stepped over the debris and pushed open the door.

The house was ominously silent, with absolutely no signs of Colm, nor even the Chinese scientist. On the floor nearby, lay Linda.

He checked her vitals and found her to be quite alive, although her face was badly bruised on one side and her lip was swollen. He motioned to one of the men to tend to her.

A noise suddenly erupted from another room, like the muted cry of a woman.

Keeno approached, listened briefly and then pushed open the door with his gun aimed straight ahead.

To his utter surprise, if not amazement, a covey of young girls stood looking back at him. At their feet lay Mai Lin Heng, gripped by terror - her hands covering her blood-spattered face.

 

 

When Thomas Raihn arrived back from his meeting in Aruba, he called for a meeting with his two company bastions - Gerald Hansen and Billy Tanker.

As if he had a captive audience interested in his verbal diarrhea - Raihn began to talk. Like most narcissistic, self-centered personalities, he simply loved the sound of his own voice. His words were like a drug to him, intoxicating his already perverse soul.

‘All seems to be well in Beijing. Although I must admit that I find it difficult to read the faces of men whose eyes are bare slits. Nevertheless,’ he said with a chirp in his voice, ‘the Chinks are planning to use Nb83 on their own populace – so I’d consider that a feather in our cap,’ he smiled.

Staring despondently at his reflection in the black glass-topped conference table, Gerald Hansen was hardly listening to a word of what Raihn was saying.

The spectre which looked back at him was a pallid, white-faced ghost; the dismal shadow of the man he had once proudly been.

Several years ago, then on the verge of discovering his nano-thread, Hansen had been filled with vibrant and hopeful energy. He regarded his incipient breakthrough as the beginning of a new era in science. Today, that pride was replaced by abject repulsion. And his dreams of resolving major issues in the world were fading into some dark oblivion.

He could barely bring himself to listen to the cacophony emitting from Raihn. In fact it made him sick to his stomach to know that his discovery, his lifetime achievement, was now being used to exploit and destroy young girls around the globe.

How had this all gone so wrong, he asked himself for the hundredth time? And moreover, how could he put it to rights without endangering his own family?

It was now manifestly clear what kind of man he was dealing with in Raihn. He was a profiteer, a pirate, a bloodthirsty shark in the waters of global business. No one was indispensible when it came to the achievement of his goals; just like the young intern from the U of T, who had simply disappeared.

With a flourish of his hand, as if making some grand statement, Raihn announced, ‘Now that Nb83 is going so well, it is time to release the nPill.’

Those words gripped Hansen, catapulting him up from the dark well of depression.

‘That is not going to happen,’ he declared, while driving his fist into the table top.

Thomas Raihn looked at him with the countenance of a king who had just been repudiated by some mere citizen. ‘What are you saying, Gerald?’

Hansen ran a sweaty palm through the last remnants of his thinning hair. ‘The nPill is not ready to be released and certainly not for human consumption.’

Raihn glanced over at BT who stood watching on with a rather calloused and unsympathetic expression.

‘I don’t understand the sudden outburst - you tested the nPill successfully on primates - right?’

Hansen reluctantly nodded, trying to stem his anger.

‘So what is the issue? If it works on the primates, then it should work on people, just the same as Nb83.’

Hansen gripped the arms of his chair with white-knuckled hands and then answered with a more controlled cadence. ‘You talk as if I have any real knowledge of your human testing projects,’ he cast a disgruntled look toward BT. ‘You two have kept me in the dark about the human testing modus, because you knew I would object to it. How do you think that makes me feel?’

Raihn said nothing as he lit up a cigarette.

Hansen continued. ‘Three years ago, when you said you would back up my discovery, you led me to believe that we would follow a humanitarian path. Then you forced my hand with Nb83, saying that it was the necessary direction in order to continue the funding. I stupidly compromised because I desperately wanted to see my discovery to fruition. But now you have crossed the line, Thomas. The nPill is not ready – it needs further testing, and not,’ he glared, ‘by forcing it down the throats of more young girls.’

Raihn leaned back in his chair, with a condescending smile on his face. ‘Are you quite done?’

Gerald took in a deep breath and gritted his teeth.

‘You are right, Gerald, I have purposely kept you out of this particular arena in order to protect you.’

Hansen’s forehead furrowed with a confused look on his face, ‘Protect me - from what?’

‘Yourself, I should say,’ uttered Raihn.

‘Gerald, you are a principled scientist, and I respect you for that. I, on the other hand, am a business man, possibly not so principled - but certainly knowledgeable in the ways of international commerce. Those are two entirely different worlds. Your particular strength is your brilliance in this field, and it has been my task to keep you focused on the next renditions. My job, my skill, has been to bridge your discovery over to the real world; to find the most lucrative means of exporting it.’

Once again, Hansen could feel the cold manipulative tendrils of Thomas Raihn slithering over him – choking off his will to fight back.

‘Do you really expect me to believe that?’

‘You may believe whatever you wish to believe, Gerald, but I assure you that my motives are not as evil as you may think.’

Hansen shook his head in quiet disgust. Talking to the man was like trying to convince Hitler that he should try to be more humane towards the Jews. Raihn simply could not see the wrong in his ways – and that blindness justified his criminality.

‘We are not talking about selling cars or televisions, Thomas. You are putting something onto the open market which kills young girls. Your frame of reference that this is just “business” is sickening to me, and it shows no regard for human life.’

Raihn shrugged lightly, letting the words roll off of him like water off a duck’s back. ‘All new science and knowledge comes with a price. In the process of developing penicillin, in the development of heart transplants and other organ transplants, in the timeline of any great and ground-breaking discovery, there is and always has been collateral damage. The few always pay the price so that the many can benefit. That is the way of our world.’

‘But…’

Raihn cut him off with a threatening glint in his eyes. ‘While I did keep you in the dark about our camps and the sale of Nb83 to several nations, it was, and is because you are incapable of dealing with the world in the manner with which hard-nosed business requires. You are a brilliant scientist, with a passion to change the world, but frankly, you are too much of an idealist to be pragmatic. The bridge across the chasm from your whiteboard schematics, to reality, has required countless millions of dollars. You would still be standing on the street, with a fucking cup in your hand, looking for sponsorship for your discovery. I was the one who got those dollars, not you. So stop lecturing me about my moral compass. You didn’t complain when I built your lab, when I hired the best specialists in the nation to work as part of your team. And you certainly didn’t whine when your bank account started to fill up. Call me a criminal if you will – but you,’ he pointed a finger, ‘are just as complicit.’ Raihn paused to light another cigarette and inhaled on it and then he continued.

‘Our world runs on money. Nanotech research and development requires more money than even you realize, Gerald. I cannot promise you further development without building the spans of this bridge. And those spans require that I sell Nb83 and the nPill to provide us with a continuous cash infusion.’

Gerald Hansen stared blankly at Raihn with a hangdog face, his verve to fight back weakening by the second.

Raihn leaned forward, crossing his arms on the table in front of him with a great display of amiable control.

‘Gerald, you have been utterly instrumental to AGS Inc. You are the man who came to me with the ideas to advance nanotech, and I believed in you and I went to great lengths to make it possible. You have become a very wealthy scientist as a result, with a good life for you, your wife and your two daughters. I have never questioned you along the way, and now, I am asking you not to question me.’ The statement came with a distinctive nuance which was both subtly incisive and threatening.

Sweat suddenly broke out on Gerald’s face.

 

 

‘We saw everything,’ said Ross in a dry manner, as if he had just watched a Sunday afternoon football game. ‘I must admit that I have never seen you two in action on live satellite-feed, until just today.’

Keeno was a little stunned by the revelation that most, if not all of the RCMP Toronto, had just watched their gun battle at the Odessa farm.

‘Well, I hope you guys enjoyed the show,’ he said with a dismissive resonance in his voice. ‘Thanks for getting that backup team from Ottawa when you did – timing was perfect.’

‘How is Jake?’

‘He’s lost a lot of blood – but he’ll survive.’

‘Good - and Linda?’

‘She’s got a nasty bruise or two, so I doubt she’ll be doing much dating for a while.’

Ross continued, ‘By the way, during the gun fight we saw a man climbing out of a window.’

‘That would be Colm Sanders – I recognized him just before the shooting started.’

Keeno watched as the RCMP team loaded Jake into the chopper. Jake was fighting them every inch of the way, insisting that he had to stay back with Keeno, but he was too weak to make his case stick.

‘I’ve got Mai Lin Heng inside the house. I’m going to question her and see what I can find out?’

‘Ok, we’ll talk later,’ said Ross.

Keeno waited until all twenty-nine of the young girls had been loaded into yet a second and larger chopper. This time, he had been informed, the girls would be taken to the RCMP compound in Ottawa, where no one, short of a small army, could get to them.

The Apache and the large Merlin lifted off, sending a blast of air swirling about like a small tornado.

Several agents stayed behind to clean up the carnage.

Keeno stepped back into the empty house where he found Linda sitting at the old table, massaging her bruised face. In front of her was the bottle of whiskey, courtesy of Colm Sanders. She poured a glass, gulped it and then let out a gasp as the brew burned her throat. Seeing Keeno standing there, she tipped her eye at the bottle, ‘Want some?’

‘No thanks - how’s the face?’

‘I won’t be posing for Playboy anytime soon, but I’ll live. How’s Jake?’

‘He’s ok.’

He turned his attention to the sullen and terrified form crouched in one corner of the room. The Chinese woman was still shaking from head to toe as she wiped the smear of blood from her lips. Her eyes were filled with a sense of unspoken consternation, still gripped by her recent trauma.

He tipped his head at her, ‘Care to talk?’

She nodded.

Keeno directed her to a chair. She eased herself into it, feeling the aches and pains of the bruises she had incurred.

He pushed a glass of whiskey across the table. ‘Drink that, it will help numb the pain.’

She did so, gasping as the brew burned her insides.

‘Now you know what it feels like to be at the receiving end of abusive treatment? I gather that those girls didn’t particularly appreciate your handy work, did they Mai Lin Heng?’

Her eyes met his with sudden surprise, ‘How do you know my name?’

‘I know a lot more than your name. I know that you are a Chinese nationalist, that your uncle is a high official in the communist party in Shanghai. I also know that in spite of your education at an Australian university you are still loyal to the communist party and that you salute its manifesto. I would say that is a good formula for someone with another agenda?’

She peered at him with silent resentment.

He sat down across from her, with Linda to his left.

‘Logic tells me that you’re not working with these pimps to make some extra pocket money. And certainly you’re not here for humanitarian reasons. That leaves only one option - you were hand-picked for this project by Uncle Mao!’

‘I have nothing to say,’ she said with mock determination.

‘Well, you can talk to me, or I will send you back in that room with those girls and let them finish off what they started,’

Her eyes widened in terror. ‘You would not do that.’

‘Would I do something like that, Linda?’ he subtly winked.

‘In a heart-beat,’ she answered painfully - challenged by her swollen lip and bruised jaw.

Keeno held up an empty vial labeled as Nb83 and a needle, both of which had been discovered in an adjacent room.

‘Or, maybe we should just inject this stuff into you and see how you like it?’

Her eyes bulged again.

‘Where is Sanders?’

‘I don’t know. He told me to watch the girls – that is the last time I saw him.’

‘Ok, then who else is involved besides that piece of rat-shit?’

‘I never met anyone else besides Colm and the men guarding the camps.’

‘Camps - how many?’ he demanded.

‘Five.’

‘And how many girls did you personally process at these camps?’

She clamped down, refusing to say more.

‘Look, Mai Lin, you have committed a crime in our nation which is tantamount to human trafficking, and, possibly even worse. Once we have all the information we need, it will be very embarrassing for your family and those involved from your party back in Mao’s Disney Land. When we release this to the press and the inquiries begin, you will be hurting a lot of people. Or, you can cooperate and we will do our best to keep this under wraps. I’m not guaranteeing anything – but do you really want to be known as the next Joseph Mengele?’

‘You’re bluffing!’ she said with renewed determination. ‘You cannot prove the involvement of anyone else.’

He stood, grabbed her by the arm and led her to the front door. He flung it open and made her stare at the corpses which the RCMP officers had piled nearby. Their bloodied and disfigured remains lay in a myriad of grotesque configurations.

‘My government is going to hang you for this, unless you cooperate – do you get that?’

She lowered herself back into the chair with the images of the dead men, a horrifying specter, still clinging to her mind.

Keeno looked her in the eyes. ‘I know where your loyalties lie. But, if you really want to minimize the damage to your comrades back home, then tell me what’s going on. If not, I will put your name up in lights tomorrow morning, with press releases that go from here to Beijing and back, announcing the PRC’s collusion in this whole operation. Is that what you want?’

Her mind raced at that point, for in fact, Keeno had just pressed the one live chord which meant anything to her.

‘You tell me who you are working for, and what the plan is, and I will arrange some moderation on your sentencing. But if you don’t cooperate, you will get the book thrown at you and you will spend the rest of your life in a prison cell.’

Her sluggish apathetic eyes stared back at him, as she envisioned her entire future collapsing into a dark abysmal hole. ‘I have never met the man who heads this operation. Colm Sanders was my only contact and handler,’ she reiterated.

‘How did they recruit you?’

‘I cannot say.’

‘Well, at least that confirms that it must be someone in an embarrassingly high position, someone you have to protect.’

She squirmed.

Keeno held the vial up to her face, ‘What does the injection do?’

She hesitated and bit down on her lip.

Slamming the palm of his hand into the table, he reiterated, ‘What does it do?’

‘It destroys their reproductive systems,’ her words effused from her lips with seemingly a will of their own – as if in some pallid attempt to ease her conscience.

‘Let me get this straight, they purchased young girls through the human trafficking pipeline, injected them with something to destroy their ovaries, and then what – sold them?’

She nodded abashedly.

By now, Linda was scrolling through a mobile phone she had found in a nearby jacket. ‘There seem to be a lot of conversations happening between Mai Lin and a Dr. Adeyemi.’

Mai Lin’s face tensed.

‘Who is Adeyemi?’ asked Keeno.

Mai Lin stared at the table with a catatonic and glazed look in her eyes.

Linda turned the phone so that Keeno could see it. ‘Recognize that area code?’

‘No.’

‘I do, it’s Nigeria.’

He turned back to Mai Lin. ‘Anything more you want to say, because we are going to find out anyhow?’

The Chinese scientist sighed with a defeated tone, ‘I advised him on some matters having to do with Nb83.’

‘What matters?’

‘Some of the girls were dying from the injections,’ she uttered with an air of defeatism.

Keeno’s faced expressed his sudden shock at hearing those words, ‘What do you mean dying?’

Mai Lin’s eyes flitted nervously about. ‘Some of them experienced negative effects from the injection,’ she mumbled.

‘What kind of negative effects?’

‘I don’t know. We just started having discussions in the past two days. It appears,’ she paused as she collected her thoughts, ‘that the bots were attacking adjacent organs.’

Keeno pondered for a second, ‘But if you were injecting girls in these camps, you must have seen the same thing.’

‘I never inspected the deaths. If a girl succumbed to the injections, her body was simply taken away – that was it.’

‘So there are flaws with Nb83?’

The Chinese woman flicked an eyebrow somewhat dismissively. ‘Every new development has flaws.’

‘Yeah, remind me of that line when it’s your daughter being injected,’ said Keeno with an incisive edge. ‘How many people have died?’

‘He didn’t say.’

‘Ok, how many injections have they done in Nigeria?’

Once again Mai Lin’s eyes flicked nervously, evidence that she was avoiding telling the truth.

‘Mai Lin, whether you tell me now, or we use other channels, we will find out. The difference is this, if you cooperate, you might get twenty-five years as opposed to dying in a prison. It’s your choice.’

For a time she simply stared at the floor as reality infused her with the unavoidable fact that her future was utterly destroyed.

‘Many.’

Keeno leaned in closer, ‘How many?’

‘I don’t know exactly - maybe half a million girls.’

Keeno felt a stony-cold consume him.

 

 

Forty-five year-old Terrence Wilson lived a moderately successful life - at least according to contemporary standards.

A family man and manager of a large grocery store, he had a house, two cars, a devoted and caring wife and two kids in their early teens.

Terrence spent every Saturday coaching a little league baseball team - the epitome of a good American husband.

Unfortunately, if one scratched below the social veneer, one discovered that he had a disturbing and secret vice.

Terrence had a perverse urge, and that obsession had sent him in search of something which could fulfil it. Through the internet, he had discovered a house in a residential district of Chicago’s greater suburbia, much the same as any other house might appear, except for one major difference. Within its confines were young girls, mostly between the ages of twelve to seventeen; girls who had been trafficked from their homes overseas and then forced into a life of prostitution as sex slaves.

For a price he could entertain his sexual fantasies with teens, or mere children, who had been abducted from Thailand, east and southeastern European nations, Africa and even China, and had secretly done so many times over the past two years.

No one knew of his sordid affairs, and Terrence did his best to live up to an image of normality, in spite of his illicit sexual encounters with minors.

But his cryptic depravity caught up to him one day, when, arriving home from work, he found his wife huddled on the floor in a pool of blood.

She looked up at him with tears streaming from her eyes and pain racking her.

‘It won’t stop bleeding,’ she cried out as she looked down at the dark red patch leaking from between her legs.’

He picked her up in his arms and took her to the car and then raced to the nearest hospital.

After an anguishing wait, a solemn-faced doctor approached him. His countenance said it all, even before the words emitted.

‘I’m sorry, Mr. Wilson, we did the best we could.’

Terrence dropped into the chair with tears in his eyes.

The doctor sat next to him and waited with professional courtesy until the man’s grief was spent.

With eyes red and swollen, he asked, ‘Why?’

‘Quite honestly, we don’t know. Something was eating away at her ovaries, causing severe internal haemorrhaging. We tried to ease her pain, but I am afraid that she suffered a terrible death.’

In due time, the autopsy would come to reveal the existence of the intrusive nanobots in her system. All of which would lead to many more questions. Terrence Wilson would eventually be forced to reveal his deep dark secret. And on that day, he would also face the brutal and crushing reality that he had killed his own wife.

 

 

After dropping Linda off at her apartment in the city, Keeno headed straight to his ranch.

It was late and he was tired – both physically and mentally.

He prepared a batch of fresh coffee – his strongest. Depending on his state, coffee could either speed up his system, or numb it, and in this case, it was the latter. With his cup in hand, he collapsed, exhaustedly, onto his couch.

He stared through the large bay-window at the night-sky. A starry mantle of countless galaxies flickered back at him. Specks of light which had travelled countless light years appeared in a flash and disappeared before his eyes. It soothed him, reminding him that the problems he dealt with, were so insignificant when compared to the cosmos.

As the minutes passed, he felt the omnipresent silence slowly and inextricably permeating him. And as always, that inarticulate quiescence acted like a breath of fresh air to his soul. Like the gentle murmur of a brook, it eased his mind of all the violence, pain and death - and soon he was asleep.

Early morning announced itself with a gentle rap at his door, rousing him from his somnolence. In his hand he still held the empty coffee cup.

As he sat up, his body groaned and ached; signaling the new bruises and cuts which he had incurred from the day before. Not to mention the intensely painful groove at the base of his neck where a bullet had creased the skin, leaving a nasty gash.

As the door swung open, Janene pressed into him with a warm kiss.

‘You missed your exit by about thirty kilometres.’

She stepped past him. ‘I had to see you,’ she said. ‘Do you have any idea how nerve-wracking it was to watch that live satellite footage of your little gun-fight? I just about had a frigg’n heart attack.’

‘Well, now you know what it’s like to be in my shoes. Want to trade?’

She cast a threatening eye his way. ‘It’s not funny.’

Keeno eased into the chair. ‘I quite enjoyed the fight myself.’

She shook her head with an incredulous look on her face. ‘Seriously - do you really expect me to believe that you enjoy these life and death altercations?’

‘I don’t look forward to them, but I don’t avoid them.’

‘I was in pain just watching the whole thing – how do you put up with it?’

‘I would feel more pain if I had to sit in that office all day, like you – so frankly, the action is a better alternative for me.’

She quietly huffed. On this particular issue, their worlds did not match. Janene had grown up in the west end of the city, in a safe neighbourhood, amidst the upper middle-class culture. Her entire road had been paved in gold and she had never had to deal with violence or pain beyond the usual teenage turmoil or the occasional breakup. She was still learning about Keeno’s world. He was intensely private and had not opened up to her, tending to keep his past and even his violent altercations buried deep inside. But what little she knew, she used to help piece together the puzzle about the man she loved. Hoping that she could find some middle-ground where she felt she could understand him better and feel more at ease with his proclivity for a life of insane danger.

She dished out the food. The aroma of pan-fried eggs, back-bacon, hashed potatoes, and a side of flapjacks with real Canadian maple syrup, wafted upward - tantalizing his taste buds.

She sat next to him as he ate.

‘Thanks for the breakfast,’ he said. ‘And by the way, you look great.’

Janene smiled. He wasn’t one to dish out false commentary or fluff, so when he paid a compliment, he really meant it.

With her chin resting on one hand, she eyed his unshaven face and dishevelled hair. ‘When was the last time you shaved and showered?’

‘It’s my new look, do you like it?’ he mumbled as he eagerly imbibed the food.

Her head toggled disapprovingly, ‘Forget it, buster – I want the clean looking guy – not this imposter.’

‘Any word on Jake?’

‘He’ll back in Toronto later this morning. In fact, Ross wants to hold a meeting with everyone after lunch to recap and strategize our next move.’

Keeno sat back in his chair. He sipped on the hot coffee which she had included in her surprise package.

Eyeing her with a mischievous glint in his eye, he asked, ‘So, do you still want to bet all your chips on a life with me? You can bail out and go find yourself an attorney or a scientist, you know, someone with a calm and predictable lifestyle.’

She canted her head to one side, ‘That really does sound appealing. I mean, what woman in her right mind would anchor her life with a guy who lives on the edge of death every day – right?’

She leaned over, planting a soft kiss on a bare spot where his thick and unshaven gristle would not prick her. ‘I’m not going anywhere – so you’re stuck with me, cowboy.’

 

 

The RCMP War Room was packed, not only with the ATU, but in fact, with many other RCMP personnel, including of course, Ross and the Ops-Off.

The case, which had started out with one small girl found in the woods, had now escalated to a crisis, with potentially global ramifications.

Even Jake had shown up.

Slipping into the chair next to Keeno, with his injured leg both stiff and painful, he forced a smile. From his pocket he pulled out a small bottle of pain killers and popped two pills.

Keeno tipped his head at him. ‘I figured you might have found yourself some cute nurse to hang out with for a day or two. I really wasn’t expecting you back so soon.’

Jake rolled his eyes with a look of suppressed pain. ‘Are you kidding me? The nurse attending me was some old battle-axe named Betty, ex-military, with biceps bigger than my thighs. She scared the shit out of me.’

Keeno restrained from laughing out loud as Ross began.

‘I want Calvin to bring us up to speed on this operation from an Ops overview,’ at which he deferred to the Operations Officer.

Calvin stood, as if he was about to deliver a formal speech. With his crisply ironed shirt and perfectly knotted tie, his image was diametrically opposed to that of both Keeno and Jake. As usual, Keeno sported one of his a typical outfits; a button-down denim shirt, denim jeans, a black leather jacket and a pair of black cowboy boots. Jake on the other hand wore blue jeans, a tee-shirt with a washed-out image of the rock group U2 printed on it, and a pair of Nike running shoes.

Calvin started in with his explication. ‘Everything we know so far clearly suggests that whoever is behind this operation is in fact selling Nb83. According to the phone records recovered from the Chinese woman at the Odessa farm, she has engaged many conversations with a Dr. Adeyemi, who heads up a branch at the Kobi Research Centre in Lagos, Nigeria. Adeyemi has been involved in several cutting-edge programs, none the least of which included bio-research into the human genome, cloning techniques designed to create the perfect human being and of course - nanotechnology. How and why he got involved with this particular program is not yet known, but clearly, his intentions are questionable.’

‘You mean he’s scum?’ Jake intoned.

‘Certainly a suspicious character,’ Calvin modified.

‘What about the PRC, any other leads there?’ asked Keeno.

Calvin shook his head. ‘There is no direct evidence to suggest that the Chinese government is involved with this - except circumstantially.’

‘But if they were financing this operation, would there be a way of tracing the funding to them?’

‘That is questionable. The Chinese banking system is not entirely transparent. If they want to hide such a matter, they could easily do so behind layers of firewalls that no one could hack through,’ Calvin replied. ‘But our analyst section did offer up an interesting hypothesis, one which might lend some credibility to the idea. First, there is the Chinese scientist, Mai Lin Heng. Her uncle holds a very senior seat in the inner sanctum of the Chinese Communist Party. He is, in fact, just several notches down from the President of China himself. It is conceivable that if the Chinese government invested in some private development of nanotech, that Mai Lin Heng, being an advanced student of the subject, should be selected. Secondly, if one considers the fact that the Chinese have been following an aggressive plan to establish themselves as the dominant economic power on the planet, then it is also conceivable that they would be interested in Nb83. The first nation to successfully break the nano-code – would take a quantum leap ahead of any other.’

Keeno began, ‘We know from Mai Lin that Adeyemi has apparently injected this stuff into hundreds of thousands of girls by now. Is it fair to assume that Nb83 has been sold to other nations?’

‘A fair assumption,’ responded Calvin, ‘but hypothetical at this stage.’

The discussions went back and forth for some time as different factors were weighed and assessed. Finally, Ross had made up his mind. He began with a somewhat authoritative stance, ‘It would seem that all roads lead to Nigeria at this point and that we have no choice but to take a closer look at what is going on over there.’

He turned to Keeno and Jake. ‘Are you boys up for a trip?’

Keeno caught Janene looking at him, her face already reflecting her concern. He smiled at her and then turned to Jake. ‘How about you, partner?’

‘I’m in,’ said Jake, putting up his best face - in spite of the throb emanating from his leg.

Keeno looked up at Ross. ‘That’s a green light for us.’

 

 

Akudo, a twelve year old Nigerian girl, lived with her mother and three siblings in a densely populated portion of the capital city of Lagos, Nigeria.

She had intensely black hair, a pretty face with large brown orbs for eyes and a captivating smile.

In spite of the abject poverty in which she lived and which surrounded her, she was not the poster-girl for privation. She often smiled and laughed, making the best of her life, in fact, having no idea of any other life.

Her single mother worked hard to provide for her four children in spite of their circumstances. Living in a hut, constructed of scraps wood and a piece of thin sheet-metal for a door, Akudo simply knew no other luxury.

Very little happened in her part of the world where people engaged in survival. Whether selling, buying or bartering for the essentials of existence; doing menial or manual labour; or whether engaging in the more nefarious aspects of the underworld, selling drugs, prostitution or crime, life somehow seemed to go on in spite of the conditions endured by these people.

On this particular morning the usual cacophony of sounds was abruptly interrupted by several military trucks coming to a screeching halt in a small clearing nearby.

Several soldiers emerged, flaunting high-powered guns. The men barked at the local merchants, ordering them to move their stalls from the clearing, and then promptly set up tables. Within the hour another truck arrived, from which came several men and women dressed in white tunics, and carrying boxes of sorts.

The soldiers systematically went from hut to hovel, informing the parents that girls between the ages of twelve and seventeen were being administered a mandatory injection, to ensure their good health. After just short conversations, assuring their parents that it was in their best interests, a line of young girls had formed in front of the tables.

One by one, they each received an injection in their left arm. Most of the girls simply chattered and laughed at their good fortune.

Akudo was finally ushered to the same line where she summarily received her shot and then ran off to her tiny shack. Her mother smiled at her, assuming, as any mother might, that her daughter would benefit from such an act.

However, as the hours marched on, Akudo had felt anything but healthier. In fact she began to notice a small trickle of blood seeping from her vagina.

She withheld it at first, not wanting to worry her mother unnecessarily. But try as she did to suppress her growing discomfort, the blood simply continued to flow in more copious amounts. By late that evening the spasms of pain had spread within her abdominal region, causing her to shudder uncontrollably.

Seeing her daughter’s worsening state, and the profuse bleeding, the mother panicked. She had no money for expensive hospitals, beyond the few scraps required to keep her children fed.

The mother picked up her girl, now weak and feverish, and carried her through the crowded streets. After an agonizing time, she arrived to a small tented area where a non-profit organization provided free medical treatment to the impoverished locals.

There she waited in a queue. Her anxiety and fear mounting by the second as the small body of her daughter grew progressively torpid.

After a time, the mother slumped to the ground, gingerly placing the lifeless form next to her.

Tears gushed from her very soul – like a river overflowing.

Her anguish was barely noticed as people shuffled by, completely unaware that yet another child had just passed from this world.

 

 

Keeno was pensive. And clearly, as evidenced by his relative silence, he was mentally engaged in something else.

Janene saw the emptiness in his eyes – signalling his mental preoccupation elsewhere. She could hardly be offended by his lack of attentiveness. She had come to know him well enough to endure these particular moments, when nothing seemed to shake his focus, including, even her.

‘What are you so busily thinking about as I sit here jabbering like a parrot?’

He grinned, shaken from his reverie by her question, ‘Just stuff.’

She reached over and touched his hand with the tip of her finger, ‘Let it go for a while, you can’t solve the world by yourself. We’ll nail this as a team.’

He flicked an appraising brow at the comment.

‘Ahh,’ she tipped her head at him, ‘there is that word that you love so much – team.’

‘I’m not that sensitive about the semantics.’

‘No, but at the same time you like to do things your way. And yet, you wouldn’t be sitting here today if the “team”,’ she emphasized with two fingers, ‘hadn’t shown up and put a missile between that shooter’s legs.’

‘True, but my issue is not with team-work, it is with the associative propaganda. I don’t like it when the whole “team mantra” is used to manipulate people into collective thought-agreement, just because of some lousy and pretentious management structure.’

‘Nonetheless, there is still a sensitive side to Keeno McCole.’

He eyed her with mock suspicion, ‘You’re beginning to know me too well – maybe it’s time for me to move on?’

With a light kick to his shins, she answered, ‘Not a chance, buster, and besides, you know the saying, behind every successful man is a more successful woman.’

‘I don’t remember that particular version.’ He paused. ‘To be honest, what I was thinking about was something that K-Joe and I were discussing just before the gunfight.’ His eyes clouded slightly as the moment was recalled to mind.

She cocked her head gently to one side, listening.

He seemed momentarily coy. ‘Actually, I feel more comfortable facing a gun than telling you this,’ he hesitated. ‘You were right about the bomb blast, I was pretty stressed after that, and I didn’t understand why. I have survived worse. It wasn’t until K-Joe correctly pointed out that I was being too careful – that it began to make sense to me.’

‘What does that mean?’

Keeno pinched his lips.

‘Earlier, you asked me how I put up with the constant violence. I just never worry about it. Obviously, within reason, I try to be careful, as I’m not very fond of having bullets go through my forehead, but at the same, I just don’t think about it.’

She listened, without making a sound.

‘Sometimes I get a sense on things – I know when something is about to happen, maybe just a second or two beforehand. That cognizance has saved my life more times than I can remember, giving me that one or two second edge to jump, to move by a fraction – but enough to let the bullet pass by. I can’t explain it. It is like when you are driving a car and someone suddenly brakes in front of you. You don’t stop to think about what to do, because there is no time to think - you just do what seems right.’

‘Are you being careful because of me?’ she asked with a deeply concerned look on her face.

Keeno grinned, ‘Not you, it’s me.’

She cocked her head with a confused look,

He smiled, as he reflected, ‘You know, for years I resisted getting involved in a serious relationship. Fortunately, most of the women who gave it a shot with me, tended to agree; although their words were not so gracious. If you think about it, what kind of future is there for any woman who cashes in her chips on a guy who routinely dances with death? Who can live like that, right?’

She shrugged with a slight flick of her brows.

‘Then you came along. I really tried to resist you at first. But the more I got to know you, the more I wanted you, and the more I wanted you, the more I resisted. I didn’t want you involved in my life – because my life is no life for a woman like you.’ He paused to collect his thoughts.

‘After that near miss with the bomb, I got worried that I would lose you and I don’t want that to happen. At the same time, that attitude just doesn’t work for me – and it will get me killed. So now you understand my dilemma,’ he smiled disarmingly.

Janene asked, while suppressing a trembling lip. ‘So how did you resolve this dilemma?’

He smiled, with a raised brow, ‘I decided to keep a few extra gals on the side, so there was no scarcity.’

She tipped her head, with an insistent look in her eyes.

‘Uncle Lou once told me that if you have a problem, it means you’re not facing it – you’re either running away from it or trying not to see it. So,’ said Keeno with a tip of his head, ‘I decided that as I could never run away from you, I’d have to deal with it.’

Touched by his words, her lips trembled uncontrollably, while tears pooled in her eyes and then rolled down her cheeks.

She leaned over and kissed him. ‘Don’t worry, I will never ask you to dial it down. Just stay alive.’

 

 

When they returned from a late lunch, they found Ross and Kelly deep in sombre conversation.

Ross looked up at them, ‘Bad news,’ he announced, his eyes reflecting his growing stress.

‘What?’ asked Janene.

‘Our labs have confirmed that the bots from Eleina’s blood are contagious. They just tested the solution on several primates at a nearby facility and the bots killed one of three within the hour. The autopsy showed that this female’s ovaries were decimated in the process, not to mention collateral damage to other organs.’

‘If that proportion is consistent, it means a lot of potential deaths,’ remarked Keeno.

Ross nodded, his face showing the depth of his restrained anxiety. ‘You and Jake should prepare to leave for Nigeria right away. This changes the entire picture.’ He looked Keeno in the eyes with a slight pleading tone, ‘And please keep it diplomatic; no shooting and no dead bodies.’

Within thirty minutes the two were en route to the airport.

Keeno suddenly exited the Gardiner Expressway at the Jane Street exit and drove into a residential area.

‘Uh, the airport is the other way,’ said Jake with a confused look on his face.

‘Just a quick detour – we have time.’

A few moments later they came to a stop in front of a modest and nondescript looking house. They were greeted by two large, rather bear-like RCMP officers who sported assault rifles.

Inside, sitting comfortably on a sofa and watching a film, was the young fifteen year-old Czech girl, Eleina.

At seeing them, she jumped up and gave Keeno and Jake a warm hug.

The light of the room revealed the cuts and bruising she had endured from the near fatal car crash; but the fear which had consumed her just days before, was no longer evident.

Keeno sat across from her.

‘We are leaving for a couple days. I just wanted to tell you that once this is all over, that I will personally make sure that you get back to your home.’

Her lips formed a radiant smile as she nodded her silent understanding. Her bright eyes and her girlish innocence had been restored in just a few short days, reminding him of the magic and buoyancy of the human soul.

At the same time, it also pressed home the urgency of their mission, as he feared that there were hundreds of thousands of girls who were not so fortunate.

 

 

 

 

The office of the ATU was utterly silent at this particular time of night; like a taciturn reading room in some library. Only the muted background noise of cars passing by on the streets far below could be heard.

Kelly sat alone, long after everyone else had left for the day. She found it useful to be ensconced in total silence in order to let her mental processes work without interruption.

Under similar circumstances she had managed to solve some of their most difficult cases. Such as the Montreal Bomber who had left a trail of devastation across Quebec and Ontario; or the man responsible for spreading the deadly virus which nearly decimated Toronto. Each of them had met their eventual fates as a result of her mental faculty for solving the “unsolvable”.

She lit up another cigarette and sat imbibing it in her solitude – letting her mind empty out of all the facts and details of the case.

She maundered in a relaxed way, ambling through the corridors of her memories without reason or process. Finally stopping at the door leading to those days when she had tromped the learned halls at the University of Toronto. It had been there that she had honed her mental faculty for solving mysteries, both through her forensic studies and her artful application of algorithmic logic.

She was an avid believer that people and things had relative connectivity; separated by only six degrees of difference. In essence, that any man, woman or tangible fact, could be connected to someone or something, by six relative factors. So in effect, she herself could be connected through her own network of friends and family to the Queen of England; and by contrast, the Queen of England could have friends or family associating her to Osama Bin Laden.

With that mindset, Kelly was always working the algorithmic equations, looking for the associative logic; and as a consequence, the associative conclusions.

She smiled as she recalled the admonishment she had received from a senior faculty member at the U of T, when he had chided her for her general appearance. His judgmental eyes hastily swept over her body like some demigod. Stating as he did, that because of her proclivity for tight t-shirts containing lurid statements over her “endowment”, his euphemism for her breasts, and her many tattoos and body piercings, that the university was decidedly hesitant to spotlight her as a student icon - in spite of her notable grades and a brilliant mind, of course!

Nonetheless, the lecture had not daunted her spirit. Quite the opposite occurred, in fact. She went on to add several more body piercings to her collection, not to mention the green and yellow parrot now inked to her neck.