Allegiance: A Jackson Quick Adventure Page 16

  An hour later we were both cold despite the coffee. Then we saw the first buck. The Governor's eyes widened.

  "My oh my," he whispered, motioning for me to shoulder the rifle. "See the white spots on the back?"

  I nodded and slowly positioned the Ruger against my right shoulder.

  "That's a fallow," he said, binoculars still to his eyes. "It's a trophy, Jackson. A real find." He motioned for me to take a shot.

  The deer was a good fifty yards from us in a small clearing. It was stopped broadside. I kept both eyes open and spotted the deer through the scope. The Ruger’s butt was tight against my shoulder when I slowly, deliberately pulled the trigger.

  One shot cracked through the chill. The deer fell.

  "Jackson!" The Governor slapped me on the back a little harder than I'd have liked. "Right in the kill zone. In the shoulder, behind the heart and lungs. Beautiful! You say you've never fired a weapon?"

  "No sir."

  "You're a natural."

  My stomach turned when he said it. I didn’t fire the weapon again that day.

  ***

  George is finally beginning to calm himself as we drive past the Chihuahua Desert Research Station a couple of minutes from the McDonald Observatory Visitor's Center.

  I look at him for a moment to catch his attention fully. "It's good we are beginning to figure out the sides here. The guy who kidnapped me doesn't want me dead. Charlie doesn't want me dead. They both had opportunities and didn't kill me."

  "Okay," he says. His leg jitters have stopped.

  "The one guy I'm not sure about is that fake detective with the Marines tattoo. I don't know for sure if he's with Charlie or on his own."

  "Does it matter?" George asks. "He's against us."

  ***

  The Frank N. Bash Visitors Center is an adobe colored stucco building that sits low between the mountains that frame it. In the distance atop Mount Locke, barely visible against the dark skies post-sunset, are a pair of large white domes. They have the appearance of grain silos, but they are powerful telescopes. They’re the centerpiece of the McDonald Observatory.

  George and I walk up the circle drive to the entrance, hoping it’s open. The lights are on inside, and to our surprise, the doors are unlocked.

  “Welcome to the McDonald Observatory,” greets a cheerful, round woman upon our entrance. “How may I help you? Are you here for the Star Party?”

  “Yes ma’am,” I answer without thinking. “Do we need reservations?”

  “I don’t think so,” she looks at a piece of paper in front of her. “We’re light on attendance tonight.”

  “What’s a Star Party?” George whispers out of the corner of his mouth.

  “I don’t know,” I whisper back. “Maybe it’ll help us find Ripley.”

  The woman looks up as we approach her and she smiles. Her full cheeks are rouge red and her white shoulder-length hair is parted down the middle. She’s wearing a cardigan buttoned only at the top and horn-rimmed reading glasses on her disproportionately small nose.

  “You’re in!” she says. “Now, it’s right here at the Gale Telescope Park behind this building. It lasts a couple of hours. Since it’s clear tonight, it should be fun viewing. Now, that’ll be twenty-four dollars.”

  “What about the telescopes up the hill?” George asks and hands the woman the cash. She takes the money with one hand while pushing her glasses up her nose with the other. “Those are available on Special Viewing Nights. Those do require reservations. Would you like to make one for another night?”

  “No thanks,” I answer. “What about your lodging?”

  “If you are here for a Special Viewing Night or are a friend of the observatory, then yes. We do have a couple of rooms available. I happened to check with Nancy up at the lodge because we had a cancellation. Are you supporters of the observatory?” She smiles with her lips pressed together. Her eyeglasses slide down her nose again.

  “We’d like to be,” I offer. “What sort of donation would make us the kinds of friends who could stay at the lodge tonight?”

  “Hmmm,” she squints at George and at me. “It’s a little unusual, you know. Typically we don’t do this sort of thing, but we do have the room…”

  “We’re happy to pay the rack rate,” George hopes to seal the deal. “In cash.”

  “If you can both donate fifty dollars, you’ll be a friend at the Stargazer level,” she counters. “It’s our lowest level. It comes with complimentary Star Party passes, but since I already sold you those, I can’t cut you a discount. You could both have a room for eighty-eight dollars for tonight. There’s no rack rate. We’re not a hotel, sweetie.”

  “Sounds good,” I tell her. We both give her our names and the cash for the membership and the room.

  “Now,” she tells us as we start to leave, “when you head up to the lodge, you’ll need to check yourself in. Give it about thirty minutes. I’ll call up to Nancy. She’ll put your keys out in the great room. Sign in at the clipboard, take your key, and find your room. There’s snacks in the refrigerator and out on the tables. Breakfast is self-serve tomorrow morning.”

  We both thank her and head back to the SUV.

  “You heard her say there’s a clipboard for check-in?” I say to George as we step out of the visitors’ center and into the cool West Texas night. The temperature has dropped in the few minutes we were inside.

  “Yep,” George says. “Means we can find which room Ripley is hiding in.”

  “Yeah,” I say, popping the remote locks on the SUV and getting in. “It also means those black suits could find us.”

  ***

  The clipboard was on a small folding table at one corner of what the woman at the visitors’ center called the great room. There were eight other names on the list, none of them Ripley’s.

  “Let’s figure out these names,” I suggest. “G. Edwards, M. Harrold, F. Jackson, S. Blackmon, A. Johnson, J. Palance, P. Walker, Franklin.”

  “When I called from the lab,” George reminds me, “the woman said there was a Ripley registered here. Maybe he’s not here.”

  “He’s here. Where else would he go?”

  “If we led the spooks here,” George suggests, tapping me on my shoulder, “maybe they got him.”

  “Could be.” I study the names. “When you talked to the woman on the phone, she read a handful of names to you. Ripley was one. What were the others? Are they on this list?”

  George steps up to the table and leans over the clipboard. He runs his finger down the list of names and back up again. He points to Franklin.

  “I remember that one.” He points to Walker, “That one too.”

  “Ripley…” I mumble. “Ripley….” I flip the pages on the clipboard back and forth, noticing Ripley’s name was there the previous two nights. He was in different rooms each night. Franklin, Walker, and Johnson were in the same rooms. There were no other guests. I flip back to tonight’s sign-in.

  “Believe it or not,” George chuckles.

  I figure it out.

  “Room eight,” I tell him. “J. Palance.”

  “What?” George looks at the name on the sign in sheet. “How do you know that?”

  "Sign in and get your key." I scribble a pseudonym and take the key to room six. George does the same and picks room twelve.

  The long hall to our left is dotted with numbered doors on either side of it, odd on the left, even on the right. The hallway is dark, so it’s not easy to read the numbers.

  “Here it is,” I announce just above a whisper. “This is the one.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I thought it might be J. Palance,” I explain as we stand outside the door of room eight. “Because Jack Palance was the host of the Ripley’s Believe It Or Not! Television show in the 1980s. Pretty clever. I looked at the handwriting for Ripley and Palance. They matched.”

  “How would you know about that show? Aren’t you a little young for that?”

  “
Reruns. Sci-fi channel.” I knock on the door and hold up a finger to my lips, suggesting George simmer down. "I had time on my hands as a kid."

  There’s a shuffling in the room and a mattress creaks. Someone’s getting off the bed to come to the door.

  “Hello?” says a meek voice from inside the room. “Who is it?”

  “We’re here to help you, Mr. Ripley.”

  “My name is Palance.”

  George shoots me a look.

  “Jack is it?” I ask.

  “Uh,” there’s a pause. “Who is this?”

  “I know you are hiding here. I am too. We are running from the same people.”

  The floor creaks from inside the room.

  “My name is Jackson Quick. I am an aide to the Governor. I did stuff for him that got me into trouble. I’m on the run like you.”

  “I’m George Townsend. I’m a reporter from channel four in Houston. I interviewed your dad. He told me you were the key to whatever this thing is, that if we found you, you could help him.”

  Nothing.

  “Let us prove it to you,” I suggest. “I’m going to slip my license under the door. George is going to do the same. Then you know it’s us. We’re not here to hurt you. We’re not with the guys in the dark suits.”

  “Why would you say that?”

  “Say what?”

  “The guys in the dark suits.”

  “Have you seen them?” George asks.

  “They killed my friend,” I offer. “They nearly killed me. We know who they are.”

  George bends down on a knee and slides his license under the narrow gap between the floor and the bottom of the door. I follow his lead and do the same.

  “You see the licenses?” George steps back from the door. “We’re telling the truth.”

  There’s a click at the door and the sound of what’s probably the sliding chain of the door lock and the handle spins.

  “Don’t come in yet!” Visible through the small opening is the thick barrel of a gun. A pistol probably. George and I raise our hands in surrender and the door opens a bit wider.

  Peering from behind the door – and the pistol – is the younger Roswell Ripley. The nanoscientist. He doesn’t resemble the man in the photograph on the wall in his lab. His cheeks are drawn and almost translucent. He looks ill. His brow looks glued into permanent concern, his bloodshot eyes sad but alert. They dash between George and me, matching our faces to those on the licenses. He exhales and his shoulders slump. The tension in his face eases.

  He uses the revolver to wave us into his room. We slip inside and he quickly shuts the door before sliding a chair against it and up under the door knob.

  “Nice gun,” George hasn’t taken his eyes off of it.

  “Yeah,” Ripley glances down at it, “it’s my dad’s. A Smith & Wesson Governor. I’ve got it loaded with shotshell. You know, in case…” He walks over to a small chest of drawers, clicks the safety with his thumb and carefully puts the gun on top with the barrel facing the wall. The gun protecting him from my boss is called the Governor.

  The room is small but clean. There’s the chest, an unmade queen-sized bed and a small desk. The desk chair is the one propped against the door.

  “You can sit on the bed,” Ripley offers. “Why are you here? How did you find me?”

  “Your dad told me to find you,” George says. “I kinda blew him off at first, thinking he was nuts. You know, everybody’s a conspiracy theorist when they get in trouble.”

  “Right.” Ripley walks over to the desk and leans against it. “I get it.”

  “Jackson here calls me looking for help, and we start talking, trying to piece things together. That leads us to Dr. Aglo at your lab.”

  “You talked to Dr. Aglo? You’ve been to my lab?” Ripley folds his arms and stands. The questions sounded more like accusations.

  “We wanted to find you,” I say. “George knew Dr. Aglo. We reached out to him. He showed us your lab. We were looking for clues as to where you might be.”

  “What in my lab told you I was here?”

  “Auto redial,” George answered. “The last number you dialed from the lab was the visitors’ center here. We figured you might be hiding out here.”

  Ripley sits on the edge of the desk, relaxing the tension in his body. “Why are you here?”

  “I need your help.” I stand up from the bed and take a step toward Ripley. “What you know could save my life.”

  “The same might hold for you,” he says. “You might be able to save mine.”

  Chapter 8

  Ripley is pacing back and forth, arms folded. "There is no real definition for what I do. The feds have many definitions for it. It's a taxonomy for a kind of research at the nanoscale."

  "Which is?" I ask.

  "Picture it like this," he stops for a moment and holds his thumb and index finger up as though he's pinching something. "This is a millimeter. It's tiny, but not really. A nanometer is one million times smaller than a millimeter. Rationally manipulating or designing a material to perform a function at that scale is essentially nanoscience."

  "Like the carbon fibers they're building at Rice," George offers. "Enough of those nanoparticles strung together make a really strong fiber. A fiber you could use for a bullet proof vest or a more conductive power line."

  "Exactly," Ripley says without any hint of surprise. He's focused. He's lecturing. "Now there are endless possibilities for this kind of work. Take the medical arena…" He's pacing again in the small space between the door and desk. "You can take a nanoparticle that identifies, targets, and eliminates certain kinds of cells. You can use magnetic nanoparticles, injected into the blood stream, that help clarify imaging."

  "Like an MRI?" George is the good student; the attentive one at the front of the class.

  "Yes," Ripley acknowledges without pause. "Some of those medical advances are being used by the energy industry for subterranean mapping. The easier it is to see, the greater the chance there is of accurately predicting the presence of oil or natural gas."

  "There are other industrial uses," he adds with a tilt of his head, as though he is considering the alternatives. "Say, for example, the ability to inject a nanoparticle into household paint which helps it resist water penetration a touch better than before. These are all within the juxtaposed enormity of nanoscience."

  "I thought nanoscience was some magical new deal that sent little robots into tiny places to fight, or fix, or change stuff," I admit with an embarrassed laugh. "I had no idea."

  "Most people don't," said Ripley. "It's really not as romantic or as exciting as people think. We haven't even figured out how to create those 'nanobots' in such a way that they can perform under the heat, pressure, or chemical environment that exists ten thousand feet below the earth. I mean, we can make them, but they don't move. We can't get them to move."

  "Is that what you're working on?" I ask. "Is that what all of this is about?"

  "No," Ripley laughs as though the idea is ludicrous. "First of all, when I say ‘we’, I mean the nanoscience community. I'm not personally working on that part of the equation."

  "Then what are you working on?" George asks. "How would it be so important, or controversial, your dad gets framed for an attempted assassination?"

  "How would it endanger our lives?" I chime in. That's what I want to know. What really has us holed up in a small lodge in the middle of nowhere?

  "It's a long story," Ripley says. He leans against the desk again.

  George crosses his legs at the ankles, folds his arms, and settles in. "We're not going anywhere. We came here to get answers."

  Ripley’s eyes dart around the room as if he's searching for the words. "It's complicated," he says finally.

  "That's fine," George says. "Wait. I've got to record this."

  "What?" Ripley waves his hands in front of him. "No. I'm not okay with that."

  George stands and pulls out a small video recorder from his back pocket. It's lik
e a flipcam or something. "You want us to save you? Then this is your ticket. It's a bargaining chip."

  "It's also evidence," Ripley's voice is as a loud as a whisper can be without being a yell. "I'm not about to self-incriminate!"

  "Calm down, Dr. Ripley," I step between George and the scientist. “Nobody’s asking you to do that. It’s insurance. Okay?”

  “What do you mean by insurance?”

  “What if something happens to you?”

  He tilts his head, his eyes aim at the floor. He’s considering it.

  “Better yet,” I raise my finger, “what if something happened to me or to George? There’s got to be some proof of what going’s on, of what you’re involved in. I mean, if someone’s willing to frame your dad and force you into hiding, don’t you need an insurance policy?”

  Ripley bites his lower lip, his eyes still fixed down and to the left until he blinks himself out of his thoughts. “Fine. Record it.”

  My phone rings.

  George and I exchange looks. We’re the only ones with this number.

  It’s an unknown number.

  The Saint.

  ***

  “What do you want?”

  I step into the hallway outside of Ripley’s room. It is dark and empty, and there’s a slight echo.

  “I know it’s you.”

  “Very good, Jackson. You’re getting there, good man. You’re getting there.”

  “How did you get this number?”

  “Bribery works wonders,” he says. “Especially with a minimum wage electronics store clerk. I could have offered the girl a large cheese pizza and it would have worked.”

  “What do you want?” I repeat.

  “How’s the West Texas air? A bit dry?”

  “I don’t have time for this.” I lean against the wall next to Ripley’s door and look left, then right. I’m alone.

  “You are aware you’re not alone.”

  The hallway is still empty. “We know about Pickle and NewMex and Aleutian Oil.”