His face turned dark. “I am turning out to be the thing I most hate, Patrick. I am turning into a machine! I have lasers for vocal cords, microchips for a larynx, and now Jon wants to give me hydraulic actuators for muscles and fibersteel for bones. I am turning into the thing I hate most in the world.”
He scanned Patrick’s face with a strange mixture of sadness and pity, and went on: “But the worst part, bro, is that I feel like I’m in danger of turning into you. I feel like my soul is being replaced by a machine. And the only thing I get from you is, ‘Don’t worry. Accept it. Everything will be all right.’
“I’m scared, dammit! I’m scared because I’m turning into a damned contraption, a collection of composites and microchips, and when I reach out to you for support and guidance and love, all I sense is another machine, an even more terrible machine, sucking me down even more.” He stopped, waiting for his brother to speak, but there was only silence. “Talk to me, goddamn you! Talk to me or get the hell out.”
“Paul, I can’t talk about it,” Patrick said. “It’s all…”
“Don’t tell me ‘It’s classified’ or ‘It’s top-secret’ or any of that nonsense,” Paul shot back. “Something is driving us apart. We want to be together, connected, supportive, but we can’t. We’re both hurting. I know what hurt me, Patrick. What in hell has hurt you?” He closed his eyes, fiercely trying to establish the psychic connection that had once bound the brothers tightly together through vast differences in time and distance. Then he shook his head in resignation. “All I get from you is a ghost, Patrick, a gray ghost. Talk to me, Patrick! What happened? What’s going on?”
There was still no reply. Paul threw his head back on the pillow. “God, first my real family splits up; and then my new family, the police department, kicks me out. Now you’re pushing me away. Happy fucking New Year!”
It would have felt so good, Patrick thought, so right, to tell Paul everything. Not only about bugging the SID offices, or trying to find Mullins in the Bobby John Club, or about his failure with the Ultimate Soldier project. Everything, going way back: starting with Brad Elliott and Dreamland, the secret bombing missions, the top-secret projects, all the times the world almost went to war and his role in preventing it.
But most of all, he wanted to tell Paul about the people, all those souls he’d encountered, good and bad, over the past eleven years. So many times, so many battles, so many lives that touched his and then were gone forever, while he lived on. He wanted to tell him everything…
“I’m sorry, Paul,” he heard himself say. “I can’t tell you. I wish I could but I can’t.” Paul turned away. “Believe me, bro, everything is okay. The most important thing is for you to get better. Get some rest, and later I’ll…”
“Save it, bro. I’ll be fine. Go and do whatever the hell it is you do.”
Patrick stepped toward Paul, reaching out to him… but the connection was severed. The person in the hospital bed before him might as well have been a stranger.
He turned and left the room, pushing his way through the reporters swarming around him clamoring for a statement. He’d had enough of this damn town. Time to take his family and go home.
Wilton, California
the same time
The next meeting between Gregory Townsend and Sandman Harrison and his Brotherhood bikers was brief and to the point: “The chief says yes,” the Sandman said. “Thirty meth cookers, ten grand each, charged against our first payments. You provide the training and keep ‘em running and we pay one grand per pound. How will it happen?”
“Good,” said Townsend. “Next week, barring any unforeseen complications, we will deliver a hydrogenation unit to a location that you will advise me of while en route, in order to preserve total security. Each time, your men will pick up the unit, at which time a deposit of one hundred thousand dollars on each will be collected by myself or Major Reingruber.
“Your men will take the hydrogenation units to your clubhouses or safe houses or whatever you call them,” Townsend went on. “One of my men will accompany each unit. Once at the clubhouse, my man will instruct your chapter members present on the operation of the unit. After the instruction period, you will deliver two hundred thousand dollars as our final advance deposit, to be applied against our share of the first batches prepared by each chapter. Agreed?”
“What about the chemicals?” Harrison asked.
Bennie the Chef answered this. “The units will have enough chemicals on board for the first test batch, a little over twenty-five pounds. The colonel is supplying the chemicals just for the test batch. You want more, come to us.”
“Like hell we will,” Harrison said. “We got our own connections.”
“We only guarantee the purity of the product and the safety and efficiency of the hydrogenators if you use our chemicals,” Townsend said. “If you use inferior ingredients, we cannot be responsible for the outcome.”
“The cookers better work, asshole, or we’ll use them as coffins for you and your men-after we get through chopping your sorry asses into little pieces,” Harrison snapped. His angry glare rested on Reynolds, then Townsend, then Reingruber. “Don’t fuck with us, Townsend. You say your cookers need certain chemicals in certain amounts and concentrations, fine. Tell us what they are, and we’ll get them. If we need to buy from you, we will, but you sell at cost-you’re already making a shitload of cash on this deal and you’re not taking any of the risks.”
Townsend spread his hands and nodded. “Very well. Chemicals at cost. Bennie will supply you with all the specifications you need for the chemicals. If you fail to follow the specifications, of course, the risks are entirely your own.”
“You just hold up your end of the bargain, limey, and we’ll take care of the rest,” Harrison said. Townsend held out a hand to seal the deal with a handshake, but Harrison ignored him. “Have the cookers ready to go next Friday night, and we’ll call and tell you where to go.”
As Harrison and the bikers headed for the door, one of them glanced into the kitchen-turned-communications-center, where several TV sets were tuned to the morning news on the major Sacramento-area stations. He stopped in his tracks and pointed to one of the screens. “That’s him!” he shouted. “It’s him!”
“Who in bloody hell are you talking about?” Townsend asked.
“The guy in the bar, dammit!” the gangster said. “The guy who said he was looking for Mullins.”
“Did he say why?” Townsend asked.
“He said he wanted to ask Mullins about the Major,” the biker said. “He said the cops were watchin’ us. He said he was the brother of one of the cops that got shot and he wanted to kick Mullins’s ass.”
His face stern, Townsend turned to Harrison. “It would seem that you have a leak in your organization, Mr Harrison,” he said. “Either you have an informant in it, or the police targeted one of your members for special surveillance.”
“Mullins,” Harrison said. “It had to be fuckin’ Mullins.”
“For your sake, you had better hope it was Mullins. I tolerate no security breaches in my organization.”
“Screw you, Townsend,” Harrison said. “My boys know if they rat on the Brotherhood, they’re dead.”
“Good. Be sure it stays that way.”
Gregory Townsend shook his head as he watched the Satan’s Brotherhood gangsters drive off. “Bloody bastards,” he said under his breath. “They don’t deserve this deal. They don’t deserve my time one bit.”
“If you want a piece of the meth trade, Colonel,” Bennie Reynolds said, “you gotta deal with Harrison and Lancett. But once you got them in place, they’ll fight night and day to keep the business going.”