Page 1 of Heart of Danger
CHAPTERONE
January 5
A New York Times exclusive.
The New York Times has learned that the explosion on January 4 which destroyed a research laboratory in Cambridge, MA, operated by Arka Pharmaceutical Laboratories, was not due to a gas pipeline, as originally reported.
The New York Times has received exclusive information from a senior government official that the laboratory came under attack from a group of elite commandos under separate leadership in the US military, what are known as ‘black ops’ soldiers.
The US military is forbidden to operate on United States soil under the ‘Posse Comitatus’ Act.
The alleged leader of the top-secret unit is the former commander of famed SEAL Team Six, Commander Lucius Ward. Currently, Commander Ward’s military records are sealed, though there are rumors he commands a secret team called ‘Ghost Ops’. The New York Times has been unable to access his records under the Freedom of Information Act to confirm this.
Forty one people died in the conflagration at the laboratory, among them Macarthur Foundation Fellowship winner Dr. Roger Bryson, a long time candidate for the Nobel Prize for his work on the biochemistry of vaccines.
“We have reason to believe that the destruction of our Cambridge laboratory, which was close to a cancer vaccine, was the work of competitors hoping to stop our progress,” declared Arka CEO Dr. William Storensen. “All efforts must be made to bring these criminals to justice.”
This reporter has also learned that Commander Ward had several million dollars invested in a rival pharmaceutical company. Commander Ward’s remains were identified by dental records.
The three surviving members of the attack commando team, whose names were redacted from the documents obtained by the New York Times, disappeared en route to a court martial in Washington, DC. There is an outstanding warrant for their arrest.
Byline Jeffrey Benson
TWO YEARS LATER
MOUNT BLUE, NORTHERN CALIFORNIA
Her car died.
One moment her charming, lavender colored little eCar, which infinitely preferred balmy climes, was bravely climbing the rutted road and the next it just stopped dead.
In the middle of a snowstorm. At night. On a deserted mountain road.
There was nothing Catherine Young could do.
Oh God,she thought.Not now.
She pressed the ignition over and over again but the car was utterly inert. It was the latest generation eCar, and the salesman had assured her that if something happened to the main engine, there was an ancillary one with separate power guaranteed to take her at least another ten miles.
He might as well have promised her it would fly her to the moon.
There was no power in the car, none. Every instrument dark. Not even the inside lights turned on when she opened the driver’s side door. She got a terrifying blast of snow and sleet like a fist to the face and shut the door immediately.
Her cellphone was dead, too. Utterly dead, screen blank. An iPhone 30, normally she could talk to the moon with it, but now it was an inert, though still elegant, piece of metallic glass. Her tablet was dead, too, she found when she scrabbled in the back seat for it. For the first time in its life, it refused to switch on. It, too, was an inert piece of metallic glass.
GPS, dead. Wristwatch, dead.
Everything dead.
It was impossible to see anything outside the car, to gauge how close she was to the top. The snow was too thick for that. She’d barely been able to see ten yards ahead with the special halogen headlights on high. Now, with a dead car, no lights, she could have been on another planet.
A cold and hostile one.
She hadn’t counted on being on the road after dark, and if she hadn’t had a compulsion to find Tom ‘Mac’ McEnroe so strong it was like the compulsion to breathe, she would have turned around hours and hours ago. But there had been no turning back, though there had been three dead ends and she’d had to painfully back out over frozen ruts and dead branches, trying to find a viable road.
Finally, she knew it was the right road when she nearly plowed into a boulder, a huge granite shadow darker than the night, right in the middle of the road.
She’d been told all of this, of course.
