Sleeper Agenda

  Sleeper Agenda

  Sleeper Conspiracy

  Book II

  Thomas E. Sniegoski

  Scanned & proofed by the N.E.R.D’s.

  Cleaned, re-formatted & proofread by nukie.

  Converted to LIT by B.D.

  CONTENT

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Prologue

  KAMCHATKA PENINSULA

  SIBERIA. 1992

  BODIES—ANIMAL AND human—were scattered about the dirt paths of the tiny Chukchi fishing village on the desolate shores of the Sea of Okhotsk.

  Christian Tremain, director of field operations for the Pandora Group, felt an icy claw of fear slowly constrict around his heart as the Chinook helicopter banked to the left and began its descent to the inhospitable terrain.

  “Whatever it was,” Brandon Kavanagh said from beside him, “it worked fast.”

  Tremain didn’t respond, slightly disturbed by the hint of excitement he heard in the voice of his acquisitions director. Instead, he focused his attention on the village below.

  At precisely 0800 hours, an earthquake measuring 7.5 on the Richter scale had been detected in the northeastern region of the Siberian wilderness, namely, the Kamchatka Peninsula, a bleak, sparsely populated place. Ordinarily a quake like that would barely have generated an eyebrow raise from the Pandora Group, a covert agency whose sole purpose was to protect the United States from corrupt technologies developed throughout the world. But this village just so happened to be home to Vector 6, a biological warfare research station belonging to the former Soviet Union.

  “We’ll take a quick look at the village and then move on to Vector 6,” Tremain said, slipping into his decontamination suit.

  “Sounds like a plan.” Kavanagh flipped the hood of his own protective garb over his head and face and secured it at his neck. He peered out through the clear plastic face mask, giving Tremain a thumbs-up.

  The chopper landed with a bounce, and its back slowly dropped open. The security team, automatic weapons at the ready, were first to disembark, scanning the area for any threats—so far the Russians had been slow to respond, but who knew what kind of defenses they had set up around the village.

  Tremain was next to descend, a cold blast of wind from the Sea of Okhotst chilling him through the lightweight fabric of the protective suit.

  “Should’ve brought a sweater,” Kavanagh joked as he followed with the two Pandora scientists, Drs. Martin Rigby and Stephanie Lane

  . The trio were laughing, joking about how Pandora was too cheap to buy decon suits with heating units.

  Am I the only one who feels this? Tremain wondered. He looked through the faceplate of his suit at the frozen landscape and the tiny village ahead that seemed to have been dropped down in the midst of the cruel desolation of Siberia. Overwhelming dread.

  The first bodies they found were those of a young man and his dog. It was apparent that death had come quickly, but judging by the expression frozen on the man’s face, it had not been painless. The exposed flesh of his face and hands was covered with large, oozing sores.

  “Looks a bit like smallpox,” Kavanagh commented with a disturbing fascination. He knelt down and carefully unzipped the man’s heavy coat, then unbuttoned the shirt to expose his chest. It too was covered with bloody pustules.

  “It does and it doesn’t,” Lane answered. She set her metal briefcase down, flipped open the locks, and removed a culturette. “Death occurred in minutes; smallpox doesn’t behave like that.”

  She used the cotton swab to collect some samples of drying fluid from one of the man’s wounds.

  “Could be a smallpox that’s been genetically altered,” Rigby suggested. The scientist picked up a scalpel, and Tremain looked away.

  “It killed the dog as well,” he said. Sores were visible around the animal’s muzzle and on the bare flesh of its belly. “Looks like it kills indiscriminately—no species barrier.” Tremain gently poked a dead bird close by with the toe of his suit.

  “Interesting,” he heard Kavanagh say, and glanced over to see that the acquisitions director was looking skyward, watching a flock of birds overhead. “Seems like our killer might have a time limit.”

  Rigby was placing something that he had collected from inside the man’s nasal passages into his case. “That could very well have been built into the bug, like a fail-safe. If the virus only remains active for a specific amount of time, judging from when the earthquake hit, it must have spread within twelve hours. It allows for quicker deployment of troops within the kill zones—”

  “Report, Commander,” Tremain interrupted, addressing the head of the security team that had returned from the village. Even through their fogging face masks, he could see that they were upset.

  “There are no survivors, sir,” the combat-hardened soldier said, a slight tremble of emotion in his voice. “It’s … it’s pretty horrible.”

  “We did find something kind of unusual, sir,” one of the female operatives stated. “Just behind that house, over there on the right.” She pointed off into the village. “You might want to take a look.”

  The scientific team left the young man’s body and walked into the village, careful not to tread on any fallen bodies, human or animal. There was an eerie silence that added to Tremain’s sense of unease.

  “It’s over here, sir,” the soldier directed, leading them past an old woman who had fallen ill in the doorway of her home. She clutched a wooden crucifix in her bloody hand.

  Not even He could help you against this, Tremain thought, looking away to where the others had gathered, circling something lying on the ground. Carefully he made his way toward them.

  “Don’t think that those are native to this region,” one of the soldiers was saying as Tremain squeezed between Kavanagh and Lane.

  “Think we might have found our carrier,” Rigby said.

  A monkey lay dead on the ground, its sore-covered body twisted by rigor mortis, its mouth open in a silent scream of death. On one of its wrists was a plastic band with numbers and Russian letters written on it.

  Kavanagh chuckled, his laugh sounding odd through the speakers in the hood of the decontamination suit. “Do you see the bracelet—can you read it?” he asked.

  “My Russian’s a little rusty,” Tremain replied. “What’s it say?”

  “ ‘Death’s Kiss 75,’ ” Kavanagh read. “Our dead friend here was probably the test subject for the seventy-fifth version of this virus.”

  “Seventy-five versions of something that can do this.” Tremain surveyed the death all around them.

  “Practice makes perfect.” Kavanagh turned away from the simian corpse. “I think it’s time we get a look at Vector 6.”

  Vector 6 was a nondescript warehouse, less than a mile from the village across the desolate tundra. It could have been used by the villagers to store their fishing gear, but Pandora knew it had a far more sinister purpose.

  The corrugated steel walls had crumbled in the earthquake, revealing a concrete bunker that seemed to grow up from the ground. It too was cracked, its foundation warped, and a security door hung open, swaying noisily in the biting wind.

  Guns ready, the security
team approached the bunker with caution. The commander stood in the entryway, shining his flashlight beam into the murky darkness.

  “What do we have, Commander?” Tremain asked, moving to stand beside him.

  A set of cracked stone stairs led down to a landing, where the bodies of two Soviet soldiers lay. As the team began to slowly descend, it became obvious that the soldiers had died from the same thing that had killed the villagers—the disease carried by the infected rhesus monkey.

  Tremain found another heavy metal security door waiting for them at the landing. It had been twisted partially off its frame by the writhing of the earth. The opening wasn’t large enough for an average-size human to pass through, but something small and dexterous could have easily escaped.

  “Blow the door,” Kavanagh suddenly instructed the security team. “We need to see what’s inside.”

  Tremain looked at the man standing beside him. “Do you think that’s wise, Brandon?”

  Kavanagh’s eyes seemed to twinkle as he watched the soldiers set up their explosives.

  “We have to know what they’ve been up to here,” he said, motioning the scientific team back up the stairs for cover.

  “I say we detonate all of the explosives we’ve got—incinerate this entire warehouse and everything inside. Nothing good can ever come out of a place like this,” Tremain said.

  The first set of charges detonated, taking off the door, and they heard the sound of the metal falling heavily to the concrete landing.

  Kavanagh looked at Tremain, a sly smile slowly forming as he turned and headed back down the stairs.

  “All depends on how you define good,” the director of acquisitions said, now standing before the entrance to Vector 6.

  An ominous passage from his college days suddenly filled Tremain’s thoughts as he watched the acquisitions director climb eagerly over the rubble through the blown security entrance. Tremain believed it was from Dante’s Inferno and found the quote strangely appropriate as he watched Brandon Kavanagh pass through the doorway, swallowed by darkness.

  Abandon hope, all ye who enter here.

  Chapter 1

  KILLING WAS SECOND nature. He was good at it, whether with a knife or a gun or even his hands; Tyler Garrett was a natural when it came to the art of murder.

  And his skills were being put to the test this night as he approached the fenced encampment of the Brotherhood of the New Dawn—an anti-government militia group headquartered in Woolwine, Virginia. The group had been started back in the early nineties by a man named Elijah Cook, whose brother was slain during a raid by the government’s Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives on the family farm several years earlier. Cook hated the U.S. government, and there was more than a passing suspicion that he was on the verge of perpetrating a terrorist act against the country.

  Bright spotlights suddenly blinded Tyler, and he raised a hand to protect his eyes. His assignment was simple: to get inside and do what he did best.

  “Who’s out there?” a voice yelled, and Tyler caught the sound of a shell being loaded into a shotgun.

  He shivered and cowered in the glare of the spotlight. “I’ve come to see Father Cook,” he cried, putting a tremble into his voice for effect. “Please, I have to speak to him—it’s very important.”

  He squinted at the ground, trying to see beyond the intense light. He made out the shapes of two men approaching the gate, unlocking it, and then moving toward him. They were both armed—one with a shotgun, the other with a rifle. And by the way they carried themselves, the shifting of their body weight as they strode toward him, he guessed that they were carrying handguns as well.

  “Please, it’s important,” Tyler begged as they came up to him.

  One of the men stank of sweat and tobacco. He grabbed Tyler roughly, spun him around, and threw him to the dusty ground. It was hard not to react, but Tyler distracted himself with an amusing exercise where he tried to come up with as many creative ways to kill this guy and his partner as he could. As they wrapped the plastic restraints around his wrists, he was up to one hundred and thirty-five.

  “This is private property, boy,” the smelly one said. “And we don’t take kindly to trespassers.”

  The man hauled Tyler to his feet by his bound wrists, nearly popping his arms from their sockets, but the teen endured—it was all part of the assignment.

  The FBI suspected that Cook was involved in terrorist activities, but that was all they could do.

  Suspect.

  No matter how deeply they dug or how much surveillance they put him under, they could find nothing legally incriminating. Needless to say, the authorities were frustrated, their biggest fear being that Cook’s plans were already in motion and they had no idea who or what his target or targets might be.

  Which was how Tyler had become involved. His employer, Brandon Kavanagh, had once been part of the intelligence community, and although he no longer had any official standing in the government, he still maintained close ties. Kavanagh had heard about Cook’s activities and had thought that this could be an interesting exercise for Tyler. Since they weren’t bound by the constraints of the law, they could garner information where government agencies had failed. Tyler didn’t mind—in fact, he thought it might be fun.

  “My name is Brady Childs,” Tyler lied. “My daddy is Ryan Childs—he’s friends with Father Cook.”

  The man with the shotgun gave him a good shake while the other pointed his hunting rifle at him menacingly. Tyler instantly thought of twenty more ways to kill them.

  “Father Cook don’t like folks trespassing on his property in the middle of the—”

  “The government took my daddy a few days ago—they’re gonna ask him questions about Father Cook, about what he knows of the plans and all.”

  He watched as the expressions on the men’s faces changed, nervous sidelong glances telling him that he’d struck a nerve.

  The real Ryan Childs had been a close associate of Elijah Cook, although the two hadn’t had any contact for a few years. Still, the idea that they might have shared important information wasn’t all that farfetched, which was why Tyler’s bosses had arranged to have Childs, his wife, and his teenage son taken from their home in Alabama and hidden away until this assignment was completed.

  Cook hadn’t seen Childs’s boy in over three years; the plan was for Tyler to pass himself off as Brady Childs long enough to get close to Cook. Then it wouldn’t matter whether he uncovered the ruse or not.

  “Hey, Mike, better give Father a call,” the man aiming the rifle said to the rank guard still holding Tyler’s arms.

  “Don’t tell me what to do, Nate,” Mike growled. “He said he didn’t want to be disturbed unless it was an emergency.”

  Nate lowered his gun and scratched the top of his filthy John Deere baseball cap. “Well, I think this might be kinda important.”

  Mike seemed angry and took it out on Tyler, giving him a violent shake and poking his belly hard with the gun. “How’d you get here, Brady?” he asked. “I thought the Childses lived in Alabama.”

  “We do,” Tyler responded, looking down at the gun held against his stomach. “Once my daddy got taken, I lit out and hit the road. I knew he’d want me to get to Father Cook and warn him.”

  The two sentries were silent, and Tyler could practically hear the gears turning in their stupid, backwoods heads as they tried to figure out what they should do. Tyler was getting antsy. He had a lot to do tonight and was anxious to get started.

  Kavanagh had said that this would be his graduation test, a way to prove to the Janus Project that he was ready for the field. Sure, there had been other tests and he had passed with flying colors, but this would be his first assignment on American soil. That piece of information seemed to matter to Kavanagh, but as far as Tyler was concerned, killing was killing: he could do it on the moon and it would be the same.

  “Goddammit,” Mike barked. He removed a small walkie-talkie from his belt and t
urned away. “Papa Bear, this is Wolf Pack One. I know you didn’t want to be disturbed and all, but we got ourselves a situation out here.”

  There was a crackling of dead air for a bit, and then a low, melodious-sounding voice answered. “What seems to be the problem, Wolf Pack One?”

  “We got ourselves an intruder, sir.” Mike looked over his shoulder, and Tyler tried to make himself appear as pathetic as possible.

  “A kid; says he’s Ryan Childs’s boy. Says Childs’s been taken by the law.”

  Again there was static-filled silence, then, “Bring him to me,” and the signal was cut.

  Nate smiled proudly as his partner returned. “See, I told you it was important. Maybe if you listened to me every once in a while—”

  “Shut up,” Mike snarled as he grabbed Tyler’s elbow and steered him toward the gate.

  Tyler had memorized the layout of the compound from notes and maps supplied by Kavanagh, but it wasn’t the same as seeing it. It was as if Father Cook had set up his own little kingdom behind these fences. Men and women sat and chatted on the lighted front porches of prefabricated homes; the cry of a baby could be heard through one of the open windows. Other than the fence and the guards, there was nothing to indicate that these people were followers of a religious zealot plotting to destroy the government.

  But who was he to talk? Many would probably argue that a teenage boy working as an operative for a highly secret, covert agency wasn’t exactly the norm either.

  Different strokes, he thought, allowing himself to be led to the larger of the buildings that he could see. This one wasn’t a prefab; it was a nice, two-story home. Father Cook was lord and master, after all.

  Tyler stumbled on the stairs, crying out as he banged his shins on the wooden steps.

  “Get up, boy,” Mike snapped, pulling him roughly to his feet.

  He was continuing to build on their perception of him as weak and scared. The thought made him want to laugh, but he kept it inside. He’d be laughing soon enough, and he was certain he’d be the only one.

  They climbed the steps to the porch and stopped to wipe their feet before entering. The house smelled of freshly cut wood, but it came as no surprise. From what he could see, the woodwork was elaborate, the art of a true carpenter. It had been Cook’s trade before his brother’s death had spurred him down a radical’s path.