Chapter 2: 5225 HQ

Meoldy A. clicked off the monitor on her 'source' – a dying man kept alive on glucose and vitamins pumped in to his right arm, and slowly killed by a toxic cocktail of psychotropic drugs of Melody's formulation that induced him to have visions of the future. His sole task in recent months has been to find and isolate his replacement as Melody's 'source.' Lately, he's been rattling on about the Indians, and coming to Washington. Probably it's baseball again. Peter was a big baseball fan, and she was always getting hot tips on games. But maybe ... just maybe...

She pushed a button and Alpha One came in.

"Yeah?" he said. It aggravated her that he didn't maintain proper respect and discipline, but he was her best agent. He was almost clairvoyant in his ability to guess where a target was going to be, once he was in a tactical situation. Almost. He was also the only person who'd actually seen the Gold Target, the man who was to be her next 'source'.

The man in her basement medical suite – or torture suite, if you must be crude about it – had said he was a wet-back, a Mexican American, who was a former SEAL NCO, and had 'no body' – or maybe it was 'nobody.' Alpha One's description said he was Anglo and he definitely had a woman. A good looking woman too, from what he'd seen of her tied in the chair in Rhode Island. On the small side, for Alpha One's taste, but she was a nice package. It would have to have been in the middle of Hurricane Sandy.

Neither could know that the person they were tracking was indeed Mexican American, only the clairvoyant person was a disembodied entity that lived in Zeus' brain.

"The Gold Target," Melody said, "could be coming to D.C. Although what that distraction is about the Indians I don't know."

"Well," said Alpha One, "there's only four kinds of Indians that I know of. Those from India." He held up an index finger. "Those from an American Indian tribe." The middle finger joined his index finger. "Those from the West Indies, though nobody calls them Indians." The ring finger went up. "And those from Cleveland."

"Cleveland?" she asked.

"Not a baseball fan, eh? The Cleveland Indians are in the American League," explained One.

"Oh, baseball. It's probably that. He is a big Cubs fan and every other peek into the future is about baseball." Melody was suddenly disinterested. "Well, keep an eye out for him, but don't mount any special operations." She paused a moment then shifted topics. "That liberal bitch on TV ... can't we do something to shut her up? She's always going on about how the FBI isn't investigating itself enough, or how the abortion clinics are shutting down all over the South ... Plus she's gay. That's the last straw ... What do we have to do to get her off the air – permanently?"

"She could have an accident, I suppose," offered her number one accident-maker.

"Too much publicity. How about if she just disappears? Make it look like she ran off with her girl-friend. Yeah ... that's it."

"Too complicated. Trying to plant a motive? Dicey. You want her gone, best thing is to just disappear her and dump her body in the ocean."

"All right. Do that then."

It was like she was ordering a ham and cheese sandwich for lunch, instead of ordering the death of a host of a popular TV show.