********
Seven days ago. Day four of the Strickland experiment.
Flesh split open in wide and wet shreds underneath the punishing assault of metallic claws?long claws?animal claws. Crimson sprayed as dirty teeth drove deep into skin, muscle, and bone.
Red.
So much red.
The screams were inaudible against the onslaught of inhuman color and texture. It couldn't be real. This couldn't be happening -
Strickland shot upright, his eyes squinted, his mouth pursed in a half scream, but the room remained silent. Stumbling from the couch, the young man braced himself with a muscular arm, squinting back tears that burned at the corners of his closed eyes.
"Just another damned dream," he said in a half-whisper. Standing and stretching in his living room, Strickland saw the shards of light peeking through his curtains and realized it was early morning. Instinctively, his body seemed designed to wake him up at the crack of dawn, which was okay with him, especially when it interrupted the blood-soaked nightmare he had just been suffering. Venturing upstairs, he dressed for his morning jog and was soon easing under the rising garage door, breathing in the refreshingly cool fall Vermont air. Taking a few minutes to stretch, Strickland glanced up and down the dirt road outside his house, almost inadvertently checking his perimeter, when he noticed something unusual. Both his eyes and his nose locked on something. Something all the way across the street nestled in the dirt at the edge of the trees, at least a hundred yards away. It was something he shouldn't have been able to notice, not from this distance, yet somehow he could see and smell it. A tiny brown stain. He couldn't explain how this was possible; he just knew that it was. Filing the thought away as his eyes continued to scan the tree line he pulled up and broke into a slow-paced jog.
Agent Halifax looked back towards Burndock and Mathis, lowering his goggles. "All right, who's chasing him this time?"
"Screw that," replied Mathis. "Didn't you see how fast he ran yesterday? Dude is scary quick."
Burndock didn't reply, instead pulling the goggles from Halifax's hand and scanning the roadway as Strickland rounded a corner and vanished from sight.
He wasn't gone long.
About an hour later, Strickland came back around, running at a relatively normal pace, and actually looking a bit more out of breath than he had the morning before. As he neared the crest by his home, Strickland recalled what he had seen and smelled as he left the driveway, and he reached into his pocket, plucking out the garage door opener. As he pretended to thumb the "open" button, the device squirted from his tight grasp, rolled aimlessly through the cool air, and landed on the gravel road with a soft thump. Strickland swore to himself and halted his pace, bending down to scoop it up.
This entire process was merely for show, as Strickland fished for an excuse to get down closer to the dirt road on which he had been running.
Just as he had thought, ground into the soft dirt at the side of the road was a tire mark. It was a deep, thick gouge; the type of mark left when a car had been sitting still, and then pulled out, spitting gravel behind it as it went. Someone had been parked outside his house. He wasn't sure if this was malicious or not, but then he smelled it again. It had been clear enough all the way across the road, and now was even more obvious to his keen senses. A small brown stain covered the grass and leaves right by the dirt road. Coffee. Someone had spilled coffee.
His eyes tensed as he found the garage door opener and lifted it from the ground. Standing up quickly, so as not to look like he was searching the ground for evidence, Strickland made a clear show of pointing the recently discovered opener at the garage and heading towards the sliding door.
Burndock spun around, nearly losing his grip on the binoculars as he did it. "Pack it up, boys, we're pullin' out! Now!"
Halifax looked up, startled. "What's up?"
"Subject is on to us, that's what!"
"We've been made? How?"
"He pretended to drop his garage door opener, and then took a look at the road outside his house right where the watch car was sitting last night. He's smarter than he looks." Burndock ran the zipper up the side of his black backpack, and snapped the clasps closed, gathering all of his extra gear into one easy to carry bag.
"Dammit!" cursed Halifax. "Grace is going to have our asses."
"Hell no, he won't. This is on those security shmucks, not us. I told him he shouldn't contract this one out."
Halifax and Mathis swiftly swung their packs over their shoulders and double-checked the ground around them, making sure all was clear. The rushed cleanup had taken approximately thirty-five seconds, and still Burndock felt like it was too long. Strickland wasn't an amateur, and he wasn't someone to be trifled with; they had to play this by the book.
"Oh, shit."
Burndock's head spun on a swivel the minute Mathis uttered those words and he saw why. Strickland had emerged from his back door, still in his running shorts, and was looking throughout his backyard like a man on a mission. His eyes were narrowed and intense, but what Burndock especially focused on was the way his nostrils were? flaring? Like he smelled something? Burndock shook his head to himself as he turned towards the other two.
"Move. Now."
The rustling in the trees was about three-hundred yards away and nearly silent, so Strickland shouldn't have been able to hear it, yet he did. His head snapped up towards the thick trees to his right as his ears flexed just a little bit.
The anticipation churned and boiled in Strickland's guts, but his sense of self-preservation was equal, keeping him static. He had no desire to be drawn into some ambush against an enemy he could not see, or even worse, end up in conflict with some poor shlub just doing his job. Strickland had learned enough over the past few days to start piecing some things together. He took a step back, amazed at the sudden clarity of thought he experienced.
As Burndock had expected, Grace was not pleased. He got the call as he stepped out of his sedan, which sat outside the three story office building in downtown Hammond. His head dropped in frustration as the field agent revealed the events of the morning, but he managed to muzzle his outrage into mere subtle head motions. He calmly told Burndock to take a break for the morning and consider reconvening in the late afternoon. About five minutes later, he was back in his office, and the rage had not subsided. He had considered calling Lewis and Breer directly at first, personally chewing them new assholes for their rookie mistake out in front of the Strickland home, but that thought quickly passed through his mind. Like it or not, he needed these guys too, and needed them to be committed to him and to the project; he didn't want to waste those resources quite yet. He plucked up his phone receiver and quickly dialed a series of numbers.
"Brooklyn Security," a thin, New York-infused female voice answered on the third ring.
"Dottie? This is Rick. Is Reggie in?"
"Hey, Rick, howaya?" Dottie replied. "Lemme get Reg for ya, honey."
"Thanks, Dottie." Agent Grace desperately hated the whole useless small talk routine, but thankfully Dottie's question had been rhetorical. She knew her job, to patch important callers through as quickly as possible. At this point in Brooklyn Security and Protection's brief life, they didn't come much more important than Richard Grace.
"Rick. What's up?" A thicker, but still New York classic voice responded not sixty seconds later.
"Hey, Reggie."
"Developments up north?" Reggie Moreno stuck his old-fashioned corded phone between his ear and his perched shoulder as he leaned back a bit in his office chair. His dark wood wall was covered in various pictures, commendations, and newspaper articles from his celebrated career as a New York cop, which had come to a stop when he ended up on the wrong side of an armed robbery and took four bullets. Now he ran a firm with guys who were some of the most highly trained and capable private dicks in New York. Grace had been so profoundly disappointed that the two men assigned to Strickland's Night Watch had been so careless.
r /> Grace nodded into the phone. "Yeah, you could say that. I need some more guys."
Reggie's brow furrowed. "How many you need?"
"Can you spare ten? I've got a 24-hour watch going on this guy, and I need to spell some of my guys more. Get a deeper rotation going."
"Damn, Rick. Ten would pretty near break me. If anything local came up, I might not be able to fill a contract."
"It'll be worth your while, Reg. You know what my bankroll is."
"Yeah, yeah, I know, Rick. But it's more than bankroll. I can't afford to be tellin' customers down here that I can't fill their needs. That's bad for the reputation, ya know?"
"How about this? How about I pay you for ten, but you send? eight?"
This brought a sly smile to Reggie's lips. Nothing made him happier than free money. "Ya convinced me, Ricky. When you need them?"
Agent Grace donned a sinister, knowing smile on the other end of the line that would have immediately caused Moreno to cancel the contract if he had seen it in person. "Tomorrow work? In time for the night shift?"
"Sure. Any special requests?"
"As a matter of fact? the guy they're tailing is a spook. Ex-Special Forces, black ops type of scary shit, you got me?"
Reggie was taken aback slightly in his chair, and he sat himself forward just a bit. "Okay? you expectin' trouble?"
"No, no? not at all. But just in case. Maybe get me some guys with real combat experience? You got anyone like that?"
"Well, yeah, of course. You're lucky, man, this time o' year isn't huge for protection gigs. I'll get you my best guys, but hopefully it's not a real long shift."
"Thanks, Reggie. We're hoping to have this wrapped up in the next three weeks."
"Good. Okay. I'll get my guys ready."
Both men killed their respective calls and down in New York, Reggie put his hand to his mouth. "Yo, Dottie!"
Dottie came shambling in, easing the door open with a thin left arm and looking accusatory.
"We need Irizarry and his boys. Could be a four-week assignment up north. Get 'em for me, will ya?" Reggie typed away at the computer in front of him, checking Outlook for his scheduling calendar and the contract schedule for the next month. Dottie rolled her eyes slightly and backed out of his office.