Chapter 11

5225

After the fiasco in Throckmorton, TX, Melody pulled her team back to Fort Worth, and redoubled her efforts with Peter. The sickly man in the hospital bed provided no information about either the 'new' target psychic or the terrorists for several days.

On one of her routine sessions with the psychotropic drugs, Melody began to hear a pattern among Peter's ramblings: words and phrases were repeated. As usual, 'the source's' information came in disjointed words and ideas. They needed interpretation. Melody broke it down to four groups

- Information about the new source: He's a former Chief in the navy. He has no body (or perhaps it was 'nobody') but he has a body. He is Hispanic. He's dead but alive. He can talk to computers. The computer talks back to him.

- Information about potential terrorists: Two Mets will try to kill thousands. Memorial Day. The Mets are not having pork for their meals at the holidays, only salads.

- Information that connects the two : He's after the Mets who are coming to Central Florida. He's going to kill them.

- And probably useless information about the Cubs: The Cubs will not win this year. They will finish 36 games out of first place.

She looked at the list of his ramblings. One thing was clear: there were terrorists coming to Central Florida, there were two of them, they were coming to kill thousands on Memorial Day. Probably they were Muslims, from the 'pork' comments, but maybe they were Jews – although the idea of Jewish terrorists seemed impossible to her. She had listened to several sessions very closely, and her source had always said 'at the holidays' not 'on' – and why talk about the holidays now? The only thing she could think of was that they were staying at Holiday Inns, but that was a guess. Less clear was why Peter called them Mets, perhaps they were disguised as baseball players, somehow. Significantly, her 'new source' was going to try and kill the terrorists. Check that: there was no 'try' ... he was going to kill them.

Perhaps she could acquire the source at the same time. But if she acquired him, did that mean that the terrorists would succeed, since they were not killed? Peter had never said whether the terrorist plot would succeed or fail, nor whether he would kill them before or after the attack. She was not willing to risk a successful terrorist incident to acquire a new source. Could he perhaps be trapped after foiling the attack? What if 5225's agents foiled it? She did not even consider the possibility that Homeland Security could do it – no, it was 5225, the 'new source' and the terrorists. They would be the only players on her field. Homeland Security was hopelessly inept.

Also unequivocal was the fact that the Cubs would finish far out of the running. Was the dual baseball reference somehow connected to the disguised Muslim terrorist 'Mets'?

Peter's ramblings about the 'new source' were in a different class. Some were simple: a Hispanic man who was a NCO in the navy. She did not know what to make of the 'body but no body' at all -- or was it 'nobody'. 'Dead but alive' could simply mean that he had buried an old identity and taken a new one. His 'ability' to have talks with computers completely baffled her, so much so that she was almost willing to put those items with the Cubs items: in the non-useful category.

One thing was sure. Memorial Day was on May 28th this year. The attack could come on that day or even on the preceding weekend. Today was the 10th, almost the 11th considering that it was almost midnight. She had to get her teams moving now, if they were to be of any use. 'Central Florida' was a big place and she could only field three teams. She needed more information about exactly what target was to be hit.

Three teams, then: teams Alpha, Bravo and Delta. She'd pull Bravo from the West Coast, where they were chasing a probable red herring – back when they thought the rambling thoughts of her 'source' pointed there. Bravo would be El's team. Delta would come from the NY area. And Alpha, of course, would be headed by Alpha 1, her most reliable team – at least prior to Throckmorton. She'd have the weapons travel by overnight shipping, and the men would be at different locations. Put one at Canaveral, one in the Disney/Universal area and a third at Busch Gardens – at least to start.

If she could trap the 'Mets' early on, perhaps the 'new source' would just tumble into her lap. She turned on her internet connection and began to formulate emails to her teams.

Edited By The Black Knight and a mystery person who doesn't want a credit.