Chapter 66: A Wrench in the Works

Dr. Alan Lipscomb sat quietly in his main office. The rest of the company had the lights off. It was still a few minutes before 7 am, and most of the regular office workers didn’t come to work until 9 am.

The foyer lights turning on briefly startled Dr. Lipscomb as he read a report on his ever-present iPad. He had been reading several accounts of different supposed sightings of their prey from all over the country. Yet each of them was easily debunked and eliminated.

The recently-hired office secretary was more than a little early for her shift. With Dr. Lipscomb watching from his glass-walled office, the mature, voluptuous woman put her purse underneath her desk and turned on her computer station. Once the station was up, she grabbed her favorite coffee mug and headed to the employee break room in the back of the office, turning on the lights as she walked.

Hers was a simple, white coffee cup with the letters “UNT” printed prominently in black. The handle was completely black, up to the point it touched the cup itself, giving the illusion of being the letter “C.” It was an amusingly popular cup with the rest of the office workers, and the word was the exact opposite of the owner’s attitude to everyone else in the office.

Dr. Lipscomb created this company, Socii Ferrum (Latin for Iron Allies), to hide the search for the former prisoner held by the government after he appeared out of nowhere in the middle of a top-secret laboratory outside Ft. Sam Houston in San Antonio, Texas. The lab is one of a series of top-secret installations located all over the country and working on various advanced technologies. Socii Ferrum occupied the 17^th, 18^th, and 19^th floors of a 32-floor office building in downtown San Antonio. The bottom three floors of the building featured an underground garage, the main lobby, and a separate floor for building maintenance and executive parking accessed from a street at the rear of the building. Socii Ferrum covered one-half of that floor for their exclusive use.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, initially created a new company to hide the activities of the men hunting down the escaped prisoner, ostensibly to find the secret to his recuperative powers. The government was originally more interested in how he had just appeared in the top-secret installation. Still, once the government knew of the ability, they were much more interested in how he could heal himself of any injury -- from burned flesh to severe lacerations, bullet wounds, and limb amputation. The question of how the large man gained entrance into the laboratory seemed to not be as important any longer.

Dr. Lipscomb was usually a researcher with DARPA, but when the prisoner’s abilities were discovered, answering the question of how and eventually reproducing said abilities became the top priority. Dr. Lipscomb took over from a squad of top-level wet works operators from the military who, up until the escape, had been in charge of interrogation and holding the prisoner.

Hiding the man’s abilities was initially a top priority as someone in the military command wanted the information kept for themselves, but when DARPA discovered the prisoner, they were able to secure the permission of higher-ranking officials to take over the project. While awaiting transfer, the prisoner escaped, and the unit guarding him could not reacquire the subject. There were several within the team, though, who showed an increased aptitude for hunting down the prisoner. Dr. Lipscomb recruited those men to work for him to find the prisoner themselves, eliminating bureaucratic red tape.

Dr. Lipscomb named his new endeavor Socii Ferrum with the idea being to keep well-trained operators ready at a moment’s notice for whatever and officially working for a new company. Still, the owners of that company were the U.S. Government but specifically DARPA. It would not be the first time this kind of company was explicitly created, and it would not be the last.

“Sarah,” Dr. Lipscomb announced in his ordinarily soft voice.

“Holy shit,” the secretary exclaimed as she dropped the doughnut she had retrieved earlier from the box on the counter. “I didn’t know anyone else was here.” She continued holding a hand to her chest as she fought to regain herself.

“I’m sorry, Sarah, I didn’t mean to frighten you.”

“Oh, that’s okay, Dr. Lipscomb, but what are you doing here this early in the morning?” the frightened secretary asked as she quickly worked to clean the smear of chocolate frosting on the cabinet top.

“I could be asking you the same thing, Ms. Kazori.”

“Oh, well, I wanted to get ahead of the new HR guidelines Mr. Hall suggested in yesterday’s staff meeting. We’ve been growing so quickly, and I wanted to ensure we got those squared away,” she explained after getting a couple of napkins and placing her doughnut on them as a makeshift plate. “Would you like a doughnut or some coffee? I just finished brewing a new pot,” she queried in a sing-song voice and grabbed for her boss’s favorite mug.

“Oh yes, please, and once again, I’m sorry for startling you.”

“No harm, no foul, but if I’d been carrying a new cup of coffee and spilled that everywhere, well, hell, you’d have heard quite a few new colorful adjectives coming out of my mouth, I tell you what,” Sarah giggled as she poured the cup of coffee. She handed the cup to her boss. “Is there anything you need from me, sir, before I get going on Mr. Hall’s HR guidelines?”

Dr. Lipscomb looked at the woman and seemed to look into her soul. It was a weird face the rest of the office had come to call the boss’s thousand-mile stare as it seemed to go straight through you. “No, Ms. Kazori, that’ll be all. I’ll let you get to your work. Make sure you put in a couple of extra hours on your timesheet so you aren’t volunteering your time to us.”

“Oh, for sure, doctor. For sure. Mr. Hall had already permitted me to do so, but it is nice to get it reaffirmed by the boss, that’s for sure.” Sarah Kazori had a small giggle like a quiet mouse trying to keep that way. It was a tremendously disarming tool to prevent anyone from suspecting the mature, gray-haired woman was a lethal killer. The rest of the office considered Sarah’s laugh so cute that many made it their daily chore to get her to recreate that laugh as often as possible. It was just so sweet.

Dr. Lipscomb took a step back from the door to allow the secretary to return to her desk. She took a bite of her doughnut and carried her “C UNT” mug along for the ride. They exchanged smiles as they returned to their respective desks.

Sarah did her absolute best to keep her boss from thinking anything other than what she projected to be the entire truth for her working in that office. She was beginning to see suspicion in her boss’s demeanor. She needed to do nothing out of the ordinary for the next few days, or she might be unmasked as a spy.

Suppose the state workers’ association found out about his tiny cameras in the restrooms, the break room, and in between the hallways. If that happened, Dr. Lipscomb would have a big headache in the form of the state government searching everywhere for more hidden cameras.

Dr. Lipscomb watched the extra security cameras he had installed without anyone knowing. He doubted anyone would ever see them since they were state-of-the-art cameras created by DARPA. They were the highest resolution cameras, about the size of a dime, and easily molded to appear to be caulking connecting sheetrock, perfect for use in office settings, and no one would be the wiser.

Dr. Lipscomb kept a close eye on everything Ms. Kazori was doing in the office. He watched as she finished her doughnut and poured herself a second cup of coffee. She greeted each employee as they all reported in for work. She looked exactly like a more than capable secretary. Dr. Lipscomb was worried that she was almost too perfect, but he only had a feeling. Was he being too paranoid, or was there something there?

A buzzer sounded from underneath his phone. There was a small box where the phone sat atop. The box held a small slide-out screen connected to a hidden camera in the bottom level of the garage in the basement of the building. From the lowest level of the basement garage, there were many hidden features created, especially for their offices. Building these office features and some of the additional infrastructure was the main reason Socii Ferrum was without a home base for so long, even once the former CID-SI squad transfers were complete.

The call from the garage was one of the men calling for access to the secret elevator to the floor of secure rooms one flight above their office. The entire floor was half a foot smaller than other floors because of the extra sound dampening installed throughout the floor.

When Dr. Lipscomb sent in his request to create a specialized unit to chase down the escapee, it was not the first time something like that needed to be done. DARPA was setting up a close brother to a CIA black site – a place where the rule of law was easily bent and even downright destroyed, but on U.S. soil, where DARPA could work and but the CIA couldn’t. The only way to activate the elevator was to call Dr. Lipscomb in his office, and he would turn it on and secure the door behind them once the elevator was moving.

As funding arrived, Dr. Lipscomb leaned on his past dealings with CIA black sites, and he picked and chose what he thought would work best. Luckily, the office situation in San Antonio was in a downtrend. When they were looking for more than one floor, the building was willing to sell them three floors for the price of two. There were three floors for Socii Ferrum to use, but the third floor had not been set up for anything yet, so that is what Dr. Lipscomb did.

The buzzer sounded for a second time. Dr. Lipscomb looked up at his door to ensure it was closed as it usually was. He pulled out the screen again and touched the sound icon.

“Hey, Doc, we got him, and we need to come up, quiet-like,” Cpl. Eddie Buck, the man who had shown himself to be willing to think outside of the box to solve problems, announced quietly into the screen. Then five men in suits dragged a sixth who appeared hindered, a man on each side holding him up by his shoulders and a bag over his head. He was not moving, but the other three were guarding him closely.

After a few seconds of waiting, the door opened from a wall that did not look like an elevator, and the two men carrying the bagged man entered first, followed by two more, and Cpl. Buck came in last. The elevator door closed, and then the room light came on. No one in the room would be able to see an elevator door; the entrance was well camouflaged.

The elevator was also very fast since it served no other floors except the garage and the secured floor. The men knew exactly where to go with the prisoner. They placed him on a seat and handcuffed him to a rail attached to the inside of a cell. The prisoner was still out and quiet.

The five men exited the prison cell and went down a small set of stairs that entered the rear of a conference room. The locks were only accessible to one of those five men plus Dr. Lipscomb. The others in the office knew of that conference room, but they did not have access. Most of the office’s security features were above state of the art and did not have any keys. They used fingerprint and facial recognition software for opening and securing all the doors of the company. The conference room was where the majority of the firm’s covert work was handled.

“Okay, give me a situation report. From the looks of it, you were successful,” Dr. Lipscomb declared, offering a box of doughnuts he bought on his way into the office.

“No serious problems, Doc, but we did have to rough him up a little bit to get him to come quietly,” Cpl. Tommy Johnson explained.

“I hope it wasn’t too serious,” Dr. Lipscomb added worryingly.

“No, not too serious, but when I hit him, he s-s-st-started bleeding a little from his nose,” Cpl. Eddie Smith explained, his stuttering showing itself. It only minimally appeared nowadays. “I guess he wasn’t used to seeing his blood, and he passed out at its sight.” The others openly laughed at the description of the scene. Even Dr. Lipscomb had a slight smile on his face. “We stuck him with the serum, anyway, to make sure he was out for the whole ride, and he ain’t budged since.”

“Great job, guys. Great job,” Dr. Lipscomb earnestly praised the group. “Now, a quick question for you guys.” The doctor looked over the group to ensure he had their full attention. “I remember from the tapes none of you were involved with the interrogation of the prisoner underneath the old library. Am I right in believing that was by choice, and none of you want to get involved with that sort of thing?” he asked the core group of Socii Ferrum.

“Yeah, Doc, only it wasn’t by choice since the bosses took care of all that themselves. When we found out later about some of the extracurricular stuff being done to him, I know I, personally, didn’t like it,” Cpl. Smith acknowledged. “but when we saw what he could do, I know I felt a little bit less worried about it. I know if we were going to start doing some of that stuff again, I might be thinking about it a little bit more.”

“But you don’t have a problem with the actual interrogation stuff?” Dr. Lipscomb focused.

“No, I don’t. I mean, I don’t think this is our guy, so I don’t think we should be lobbin’ off toes and what-not just to watch ‘em grow back,” Cpl. Smith answered without a stutter.

“No, nothing like that, but we do need to interrogate him, and we will be using the advanced techniques piloted by the CIA and improved upon with some tech from the home office,” Dr. Lipscomb revealed. The men all nodded their heads approvingly.

“Hell, Doc, this ain’t our first rodeo. We’ve seen and done some shit to some bad guys before, and if it helps us find our missing prisoner, well, we’ll hook him up to your machines, turn up the juice, and squeeze until the pulp comes out!” The stuttering was now an afterthought, and this was the real Cpl. Smith talking to his friends. This brought a smile to Dr. Lipscomb because he liked to think his men considered him a friend.

“Well, then, let’s not waste a moment and see what we can get from our friend up there,” Dr. Lipscomb announced as the men gathered up their things and made their way back up the secret access to the secure floor.

Dr. Lipscomb was not an experienced interrogator. However, he had read up on current techniques and interviewed a few interrogators in his time, mainly to get an overall feeling of what it would be like. He was assured that he could successfully question their current prisoner and get the information they wanted from him. Besides, Dr. Lipscomb had an ace in the hole – well, three – time, intestinal fortitude, and the most significant technology money could buy.

Dr. Mike Jensen was not a strong man, and he was very much a bookworm. He had a generally happy childhood. His parents had a great marriage, and both lived long enough to see their boy succeed in his chosen profession. Dr. Mike Jensen also did not have many bumps in the road of life he needed to navigate.

Soon after Dr. Lipscomb shaved the scientist’s head, Dr. Jensen began to tell stories of all the bad he got away with throughout his life. Like Chunk from “The Goonies,” he admitted to a long list of things to Fratelli, the bad guy. He didn’t do a “Truffle Shuffle,” however.

Dr. Jensen was soon talking a mile-a-minute, but he used a system to fight against interrogations his Uncle Justin had taught him while growing up. He told rousing whoppers of stories of shenanigans of yesteryear, deep with details. Not every story was something he did, but he did know each story well. It was an attempt to make your captors believe you’ve admitted every wrong committed throughout your life.

Several hours later, the interrogations seemed almost like an unnecessary afterthought, but then Dr. Lipscomb decided to go ahead and do his due diligence and use the interrogation machine developed by DARPA. It was not torture, but since they had already shaved the poor bastard’s head, why not go all the way? The device loaned to him from DARPA tracked the blood flow and synapse response to outer stimuli and then simply mapped a person’s subconscious. It was essentially an instant lie detector.

A few days after they had gone entirely through every fool-hearty and passive-aggressive thought Dr. Jensen had ever entertained, Dr. Lipscomb asked his questions again. He secretly hoped there was something more that the young scientist and, according to some of the previously answered questions, possible sadistic serial killer, had forgotten to say.

No one said a word until each of the ex CID-SI members left the secure floor and were seated one flight below at their conference table. They all took a moment to look at each other and ask the unasked question. “Did that just fucking happen?”

“The time machine shit story they told from the very beginning is true.”

“Yeah, but that ain’t what got me. What about you, Dr. Lipscomb?”

“Well, what kind of freaked me out a little bit was that those ladies sure do make great tacos. Gonna be sort of sad to have to get them out of the picture,” the boss explained. A couple of the guys had shocked looks on their faces. “Well, yeah, I mean, the Colonel knew about them months ago but decided against removing them from anywhere near our secret laboratory. The Colonel and the Sergeant were getting ready to try and paint them with a wide brush and get them scooped up into all of this and maybe even pin the breaking into the lab and the escape of the prisoner all on that family and head of security for the facility.”

A couple of the guys nodded along with Dr. Lipscomb’s explanation of the machinations behind the scenes. “That m-m-m-ight of worked,” Cpl. Smith mentioned with admiration.

Dr. Lipscomb agreed, “Yeah, but the good Colonel let it drop when his new orders came in, and his hands were cleaned of everything. I mean, that sort of thing was not his forte. It’s like sending a bunch of guys from the motor pool to go rebuild a small schoolhouse of some backwater village in west Africa. They could get it done, but it ain’t gonna be the best-built school around.”

Some of the guys broke out into a bit of laughter.

“So, when do we go after the spy in our midst?” everyone subconsciously focused on one of the security screens rotating from various personnel in the office.

“Let’s wait for the end of the week. Damn shame, though,” Dr. Lipscomb lamented.

“What?”

“She really is great at organizing the entire office. It’s one of the most well-oiled operations I’ve ever had the pleasure to see for myself.”

Now everyone broke out into a little more laughter.

“We’ll wait for the end of the week and take her upstairs. Nope, better make it Thursday to make it safe and give us time to interrogate her,” Dr. Lipscomb delivered her sentence, and the others nodded in approval and understanding.

“Look, Uncle Justin, we’ll find him. It’ll just take a little time,” George tried appeasing Uncle Justin and keeping him from losing his shit again. The rate at which he was losing computer monitors was staggering if you thought about the price per unit as he smashed them on the ground.

It had been two weeks since they discovered Dr. Mike Jensen was missing and found his apartment ransacked like someone was looking for something hidden there. Uncle Justin was about to grab another monitor off the wall, but his right-hand man, Jose, placed a hand on his shoulder and shook his head. Justin immediately began forcing himself to calm down a bit. He was still fuming but seemed to start getting himself somewhat under control.

“I know that, George, but Mikey is my last living blood. I told my sister I’d look after him when he was still in grade school, and she got taken out by cancer, but dammit, I think of that boy like my own. All this,” Justin raised his arms, indicating the computer center in his house used for running his various websites. “and I can’t find a single string to pull and find my ... my...” He seemed defeated and slumped back down into his plush chair at the head of the crowded conference table.

George, Tim, Uncle Justin, and Jose were the only ones sitting around the table discussing the current situation. Everyone else at the table was busily using their contacts and expertise to find more clues about the disappearance of the man Uncle Justin affectionately tagged as Mikey. Justin was the only one to call him by that name.

At the other end of the table, diligently pounding on his keyboard, Uncle Justin’s expert hacker and website designer, Brett Mason, had a slight smile that was beginning to grow with every few aggressive keystrokes. He suddenly grabbed everyone’s attention, “Yes, got it!”

Jose held his friend’s shoulder down for a second, immediately conveying to take it slowly and surely rather than jumping off the hinges and attacking. “What do you have, Brett?” Jose asked with his calm, controlled tone. The effects on the room seemed to get everyone to pay attention.

“I finally got the traffic footage from the city for the night Dr. Mike went missing,” Brett announced as he continued working through the found footage. “Give me a second, and we can scan the footage together,” he expressed.

“Good work, Brett,” Uncle Justin praised. “Please put it up on the big screen.”

A moment later, the footage on his monitor seemed to be running in reverse at about three times normal speed. “I’ll set it to the afternoon he went missing and see who entered the apartment complex private road,” Brett said. A few seconds later, “Okay, here it is.”

Everyone in the room stopped what they were doing and paid attention to the large, blank screen on the wall. A few moments passed, and the time code across the top of the film showed about 2:30 pm. Three large, black Suburbans exited off the highway, and two veered off onto the small, private road used to enter the apartment complex. They could not immediately tell where the other Suburban had disappeared.

The two Suburbans pulled up directly into the parking spots below Mikey’s apartment, and eight men dressed in black with black balaclavas quickly made their way up the staircase and gathered in front of Mikey’s apartment. One figure pressed his finger to his ear and began counting down from three with his hand seconds later. When he hit one, he pointed to the door, and the largest of the men kicked the door in. Then they all quickly pushed their way into the small apartment. The last entrant immediately set the door back in place to show anyone who heard the door being kicked down that nothing was awry if they happened to look out their door.

“There you are, you little fucking bastard,” Brett exclaimed while everyone else watched a second review of what they had all just seen of the break-in. “I got the other Suburban entering the parking garage of the rehab hospital gym next door. Here, I’ll put them both up side-by-side and sync them together.” While Brett worked his magic, the rest of the conference table began making their opinions known on what they had just seen.

“No doubt about it. That was a very professional team. That team knew what to do and how to do it,” Jose explained. The people in the room who had tactical experience of some kind nodded in agreement. The others looked to them for confirmation of the statement.

“Okay, here you go,” Brett reported, and the room got quiet in concentration again. The footage now synced together and showed the scene in front of Mikey’s apartment side-by-side with one of five men from the lone Suburban parked in the parking garage. They jumped onto the small balcony at the rear of the same apartment. These men seemed to get Mikey’s attention first as they broke the sliding glass door just a moment before the front door came down. No one noticed, or more likely, bothered to check up on the breaking glass door.

“Hang on a second. I think I can get you something, but it might take a few minutes,” Brett explained and started on his work before explaining what he meant.

“What do you have, Brett?” Jose asked for the room.

“Well, I think I can isolate the glass door right before those guys break it down. It seemed one of those guys was not wearing a balaclava. It looks like he only wore a black cap without face covering,” Brett stated as he continued manipulating the images on the screen. It was getting difficult for the people around the table to tell what Brett was doing as he quickly and proficiently worked the computer.

“The young man Brett is excellent at what he does. We are impressed, and yes, his assumption is correct. You can see a face, and he will have the answer momentarily.” The words quickly erased from Tim’s vision after the closing tag, “End of message.”

“Here you go. I’ll have it cleaned up in just a sec.” Brett enhanced and focused on the face. While the computer crunched through the algorithm to improve and clean up the image, Brett explained what he had just done. “It looks like that guy was the driver, and he did not cover up his face. Probably to keep anyone from noticing the other guys in black covering their faces.” The driver’s face appeared in front of everyone at the table.

“Does anyone know who that is?” Uncle Justin challenged the room.

“Fucking Eddie Smith.” Everyone looked at George and Tim, who answered simultaneously. The two now saw everyone looking at them.

George took over the conversation. “I’m pretty sure that is Eddie Smith, formerly of the CID-SI and now on loan to the newly-created corporation, Socii Ferrum.”

“I can’t believe they would try to kidnap my nephew trying to track you guys down. That’s crazy! You’re not hiding. All they needed to do was call him in from work and ask him the questions from there. Why go through the trouble of grabbing him from his apartment? It just doesn’t make sense!” Uncle Justin exclaimed.

“Jose, when was the last time we got an update from Sarah?”

The large, heavily-tanned man looked down at his iPad and answered, “It was a good week before your nephew’s disappearance.” Uncle Justin sat further back in his chair.

“Well, then let’s get in touch with her, and maybe she can shed some light on the situation,” Justin suggested.

Jose was working on his cell phone before Uncle Justin finished his thought. “She is not answering. I left a message for her to call,” was Jose’s reply after a few moments.

“Fred, what have you been able to find out about this Dr. Lipscomb?” Uncle Justin asked his tracking expert.

“This is pretty far out of his normalcy, Justin. Yes, he was considered an up-and-comer in DARPA, but his specialty was setting up new offices for established services. He is the guy brought in to help create the government levels of bureaucracy found everywhere. Not only does he understand how to navigate his way through those turbulent waters, he finds ways of making the waters work for him. Lipscomb was a popular dude at DARPA,” Fred Upton excitedly explained to the table.

“But that’s not the half of it,” Fred’s wife Gloria added. “He also had another expertise: recruiting. Lipscomb had a knack for creating the office then recruiting the operators necessary for that office – either wet works experts or simple security experts. Lipscomb was an ace at finding and quickly getting the personnel necessary to fill in his newly-created system.”

“He built his career by creating the fun CIA black sites right after 9/11. He would create the site and, within just a few days, had the operators working and brought the site up to a well-oiled machine in a quarter of the time anyone else could do it,” Gloria continued.

“What’s really fuckin’ scary about this asshole was he had no inside road on how to recruit his guys. It was like he could meet the guys and, within an hour, understand exactly what it would take to convince this cold-blooded killer to leave his current government position and join his newly-created one in just a couple of hours. He’d figure out if it was either money or free-flowin’ pussy, or just the opportunity to kill with impunity. Lipscomb discovered what an operator wanted and gave it to him before he even knew he wanted it,” Fred Upton reported with amazement. “Get him in a room with your guys, and a few beers later, they followed him to whatever shit hole operation he had just created, and they were happier than pigs in shit.”

“Fred, it sounds a little bit like you admire this guy,” Uncle Justin pointed out with a slight chuckle.

Fred Upton looked to his wife, who gave a subtle nod and answered. “Yeah, Justin. I kinda do. Don’t get me wrong, he’s an asshole, but you put this guy in the corporate world,” Fred said while pointing to the mugshot of Dr. Lipscomb on his iPad. “and he’d be one of the world’s most successful headhunters. I wouldn’t be surprised if major corporations worldwide knew who he was and probably had their security forces on the watch if he walks through the door because, chances are, he’s coming for your best people, and he’ll get them.”