Winston Chase and the Omega Mesh Read online

  Winston Chase

  and the Omega Mesh

  (The Winston Chase Series, Book 3)

  by

  Bodhi St. John

  Copyright 2018 by Bodhi St. John

  bodhistjohn.com

  Cover art by Roy A. Migabon Artworks

  Formatting by Polgarus Studio

  All rights reserved

  For Baron,

  my closest friend, second-harshest critic, and tireless supporter.

  Winston Chase would not exist without your brilliant help over all these years.

  Again and always, thank you.

  Table of Contents

  1 Attitude at Altitude

  2 Wrecking Rota

  3 Hearts and a Hand Grenade

  4 Desperate Descent

  5 Plea From the Past

  6 Mayhem and Midichlorians

  7 Disliking Hitchhiking

  8 Chancing the Checkpoint

  9 The Scorpion Ascent

  10 Guard and Gambit

  11 Deep Breath for Bledsoe

  12 Subterranean Syndrome

  13 Worry in the Warehouse

  14 Impulsively Meeting Amanda

  15 Fatal Fray

  16 Cave and Captive

  17 Push for a Plan

  18 An Offer for Authority

  19 The Rest Risk

  20 Countdown Crisis

  21 An Alien-Made Alliance

  22 Area X Assembly

  23 Bedside Surprise

  24 Fufu to the Rescue

  25 Command One and Control

  26 Rote by Mote

  27 Three Seconds to Survival

  28 Catwalk Convergence

  29 Fifth Piece Plunge

  30 The Epi Pen Ploy

  31 Action and Distraction

  32 Dive Into Death

  33 Decision of Divergence

  34 Meeting the Omega Mesh

  35 Bledsoe's Blood Offer

  36 The Dictator Decides

  37 Recording Revisited

  Epilogue: Picnic in Paradise

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  1

  Attitude at Altitude

  Winston awoke to the sensation of his stomach rising into his throat as his body lifted into the air and then dropped.

  He started, arms flailing, and opened his eyes. At first, he only made out small, blurry forms. He blinked repeatedly as the world around him rumbled and vibrated, and each time things became slightly more clear. He made out tan, high-backed seats separated by a thin aisle. Painfully bright light streamed in from two rows of circular windows. At the end of the aisle, Winston spied LED indicators, signs, lamps, LCD screens, and, crammed into a broad strip some distance before him, small gauge readouts on an instrument panel. He felt plush leather under his hands, and his seat’s three-point belt held him with firm yet yielding comfort.

  In some of the other seats, Winston made out hazy shadow-forms of people poorly illuminated by the strip lighting along the floor. Facing him, in the seat directly before him, was a shaggy-haired and shorter form but with wide, shocked eyes and a rapidly growing smile of white teeth.

  Another blink and a slight shake of the head brought Shade into sharp focus.

  “You’re awake!” he cried over the persistent rumble about them. “Dude, I thought you might be in a coma or something!”

  Another figure sitting across the aisle from Shade glanced up, fumbled at her seatbelt, and jumped toward Winston. Her slender arms wrapped around his neck while her shoulder nestled under his chin, which was good since he still felt completely disoriented. A silken cheek pressed against his face, and Alyssa said next to his ear, “I was really worried about you.”

  She slowly released him and crouched in the narrow aisle beside his seat. Her eyes looked red-rimmed and slightly swollen. “I’m so sorry.”

  Then he remembered. The world went wet and blurry again, but it did not go black. The place within himself where grief had grown and overflowed now felt hollow, like the still-standing husk of a burned-out building.

  Winston tried to distract himself by paying attention to his surroundings. The leather chairs were beige, with high backs, and featured a narrow armrest on their aisle side. The upholstery matched the long, plush couch that ran along the wall across the aisle. A small table rested in front of Winston, designed so that it could fold up and tuck back into a slot protruding from the wall. The cup-holder at his left held a Coke can covered with a fine layer of dripping condensation. At his feet, his backpack stood open, and he could make out the metallic gleam of Little e and one of the Alpha Machine rings.

  Winston tried not to let the worry show on his face when, glancing to his left, he saw that what should have been a reassuringly thick cabin wall was little more than a transparent roll-up door through which beamed blue sky and the muted sound of rushing air.

  “Where are we?” Winston croaked.

  “In Susie,” said Shade.

  Winston looked at him blankly.

  Shade pushed open one of the window blinds, and the yellow-white brilliance of sunrise over a barren, brown landscape filled the cabin.

  “You were out for Maggie, I think,” said Alyssa. “That was the Sikorsky S-92A we took off in at Council Crest.”

  “Maggie was worth $27 mmmillion,” Shade gushed. “That rear ramp was wicked. Fifty-six foot rotor span. Max speed of 190 miles per hour. We’re slumming it in this eight-seater.” Shade leaned closer to Winston and lowered his voice. “It’s only worth $3 million.”

  “Susie,” interjected Alyssa, beckoning around them, “is a King Air350iC, and it was more than enough for what we needed, especially on such short notice. Obviously, we couldn’t make the whole trip in a helicopter, so we switched outside of Portland. There wasn’t time to fuel up last night, so we had to make one stop in Cleveland.”

  Winston started against his seat straps. “We’re in Ohio?”

  Amanda came up behind him and said, “Cleveland, Washington. It’s in the middle of nowhere. I counted three streets when we flew in.”

  Winston fumbled with his buckles, then turned to embrace her. She held him tight, and he refused to breathe, afraid that if he moved his tears would come flooding out. Her hand stroked and patted between his shoulder blades, just as she had always comforted him when he was little.

  “It’s OK,” she whispered. “It’s going to be OK. You saved me, Winston.”

  He could barely swallow. “But Dad. Theo.”

  “I know,” she said. “That’s not your fault. They chose to be exactly where they were. It’s our job to make their sacrifices matter.”

  When he felt able to control himself, Winston nodded and let her go. He looked her over. Her wrists still glowed a faint blue from where the cuffs had bit into her, and Winston made out blue points on her neck where Bledsoe’s fingers had burned into her. The thought of him touching her still made the acid in Winston’s stomach boil. Dark circles under her eyes and the sag in her shoulders conveyed her exhaustion, but otherwise she seemed healthy and unharmed.

  “I had no idea that you…” he started, then faltered. “How could you keep all that to yourself?”

  She shook her head and offered a wan smile. “Because I had to. Our safety depended on it. Although I did practice every once in a while, while you were sleeping.”

  Winston kissed her cheek and gave her one more hug before turning to survey Shade.

  “You OK?”

  Shade shrugged. “Lynch knocked the wind out of me. Just a few bruises. No big.”

  “And maybe a couple of cracked ribs,” added Alyssa irritably. “He’s trying to be macho.”

  Shade gave Winston an exaggerated stage whisper behind his hand.
“Is it working?”

  “You’re irresistible,” said Winston. “How exactly did we score multi-million-dollar helicopters and planes? I was expecting a Jeep.”

  “My grandpa,” said Alyssa. “He flew in the Gulf Wars and saved a lot of lives. One of those people promised him any favor he ever needed.”

  “And the guy owns a Sikorsky named Maggie.”

  She nodded. “And that guy has a friend who owns Susie.”

  “Why are we in Washington?”

  “We had to go somewhere,” Shade explained. “You said the last piece was in Hanford. That seemed like the logical place to go.”

  “Hanford. Right.”

  Winston recalled Bledsoe’s monitor showing his father’s memory of the Hanford nuclear waste tank. The image of Winston’s slowing movements and slumping death were all too vivid. He wanted to tell them about it, but the evening had already been filled with enough terrible news and events. They probably didn’t even grasp the significance of Bledsoe having two Alpha Machine pieces yet. With those alone, he could probably take over the modern world.

  At the front of the cabin, the instrument panel was suddenly blocked by a gray-haired man making his way out of the cockpit. “Is there a problem with Hanford?” he growled.

  Alyssa smiled and took the man’s arm as he approached. “Winston, this is my grandpa, Colonel Bauman. Grandpa, Winston.”

  Winston extended his hand, and Colonel Bauman shook it with exactly the strength and intensity Winston expected. What was it about old guys wanting to crush your hand? Were they trying to prove something?

  Winston managed not to wince at the discomfort and said, “Good to meet you, sir.”

  He hoped the Colonel would tell him not to bother with “that sir business.” He didn’t.

  “I’ll be honest,” he said with a voice like sliding gravel. “I wasn’t sure what to think when Alyssa told me about you. But that fireworks show you all put on at Council Crest…that was something else.”

  “I guess so,” Winston managed. “Unfortunately.”

  “Your man stayed behind back there. Smith. Said he’d take care of the police and that other agent.”

  “Lynch,” Shade said.

  “I filed two flight plans for my so-called wealthy client, but we’ve veered away from both of them. Portland is pretty lax on handling flight infractions, but touching down in a residential area is another story. There’s gonna be some awkward explaining to do when this is done.”

  Winston hung his head and nodded. “I understand. I’m sorry, sir. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate this.”

  Amanda put an encouraging hand on Winston’s shoulder. “The colonel and I had a long talk. He understands what’s at stake. We’re all doing this because we want to, Winston. It has to be done.”

  Colonel Bauman’s mustache twitched, and his manner softened. “Also…I’ll spare you the story, but believe me when I say that this whole affair is something I’ve been wanting to get to the bottom of for a very long time.” He cocked his head and narrowed his eyes. “I do have one request, though.”

  Winston shrugged. “Of course. Anything.”

  “Can you show me how it works?”

  “How what works?”

  The colonel pointed at Winston’s backpack. “Anything. It was asking about gizmos like yours that cost me my career.”

  Winston didn’t understand, but he didn’t need to. He could always ask later.

  He bent down and grasped Little e. As he held it up before the group, the tubes unwound and waved slowly like seaweed in a lagoon. Winston heard the colonel’s sharp intake of breath through his teeth.

  Winston immediately ruled out anything involving dangerous fireballs of energy. That would be incredibly stupid in an aircraft. Instead, he knelt down on one knee and set the end of Little e against the floor. The tubes spread out, tips twitching as they searched for signals.

  Gradually, the blue, 3D wireframe of the plane’s electrical conduits formed in his vision. There were so many lines, Winston at first wondered if he could make sense of anything. It was like floating inside a woven blue shell. However, as he concentrated and focused on some conduits above others, the networks began to make sense.

  “What’s he doing?” asked Colonel Bauman.

  “Just hold on,” said Alyssa. “Trust him.”

  As Winston began to untangle the layers of communications pouring from the cockpit, he identified the navigation systems, and from there it didn’t take long to find what he needed.

  The King Air slowly but unmistakably began to tilt as they veered to the left.

  “Whoa!” shouted the colonel. “What are you doing?”

  “And then…” muttered Winston.

  The plane leveled off, then canted to the right.

  “Should I do one of those backflips, like in the movies?”

  “God, no!” cried Colonel Bauman.

  Winston felt the temptation to keep exploring the Beechcraft. The aircraft was so much more intricate than anything he’d probed before, but his heart wasn’t quite in it now. They had larger concerns. Winston pulled Little e away from the floor and returned it to his bag. The autopilot system took back over and resumed their level course.

  “Well…” said the colonel. “Thank you. I’ll be more careful what I ask for next time.”

  “We need to talk about Hanford,” said Amanda. “Our first problem is that it’s protected government airspace. We were OK in Portland as long as we steered clear of the airport, but…”

  “This is post-9/11,” the colonel filled in. “If I take us near a nuclear facility, we’re likely to have an F-15 crawling up our tailpipe. And trust me, that happens a lot more often than you think.”

  Winston mulled it over again and again, but every scenario ended at that toxic, radioactive pool. Only someone with QVs had a prayer of emerging from that environment. After all, wasn’t that what the government had been after in the first place? Unfortunately, Winston’s lifeless body proved that a nuclear waste dump exceeded even QVs’ abilities.

  Good job, Dad. You hid the piece so well that no one can get it, at least not until all that waste gets moved someday, but I would need the future-unlocker piece to jump to then. Sort of impossible.

  He could jump back, of course. He could spend ages figuring out when his dad had dropped the artifact into that pool, back up to before that, and try to intercept it. Meanwhile, the clock would be ticking in his present, and Bledsoe would be moving at full speed to build his power. For all they knew, he was already sitting in the Oval Office or holding a gun to some soldier’s head in a nuclear missile silo.

  The future is slippery.

  Winston had no doubt that the past could be slippery, too. The Alpha Machine was already proving that it had a mind of its own and didn’t want him to go to certain times or places. Perhaps he needed to figure out why that was before he could move forward.

  But was that only postponing the inevitable? Would he be handing more time to Bledsoe?

  He groaned and rubbed at his forehead.

  “I can’t go to Hanford,” he said. “Not yet.”

  “Why not?” asked Shade.

  Winston sat back in his chair. The others took up their own seats and watched him attentively. Only the colonel remained standing, a frown deepening around his mouth.

  He studied them all. There was no way around telling the truth.

  “Because that’s where I die. My dad saw it before he got rid of the Alpha Machine, and Bledsoe…pulled the memory from him. I saw it.”

  “You die?” whispered Amanda.

  “Yeah. I dive into this pool filled with rows and rows of nuclear waste tanks. The last piece is down there, but I can’t reach it. The radioactivity… Anyway. I drown.” The words tried to catch in his throat. “I die.”

  No one spoke for a while.

  “I don’t know what to do,” Winston added quietly. “And we’re out of time.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Shade.
“I wish I knew.”

  Alyssa stared fixedly at the floor, but her eyes were bright and focused. “What about Bernie?” she asked.

  Winston stared at her. “What about him?”

  “Who’s Bernie?” asked her grandfather.

  “The alien we worked on at Area X,” said Amanda. “From the Roswell crash.”

  “You said you don’t know what to do,” Alyssa continued. “None of us do. But Bernie would know more about the Alpha Machine than anybody, right? For all we know, there’s a way to disable Bledsoe’s pieces. Or maybe he can tell us a different way to get that last piece. Something. Anything.”

  Winston thought it over and couldn’t hold back a laugh of disbelief. “So, instead of getting into a modern nuclear facility, I have to break into a top-secret 1940s research station.”

  “That your dad blows up with a nuke,” Shade added, then he realized his oversight. “With your mom.”

  Amanda shook her head and sighed, but she didn’t counter Alyssa’s idea. “We would need to refuel again.”

  The colonel said, “Not a problem. I know a guy on the way, just over the Nevada line.”

  “You could go with me,” Winston suggested to his mom.

  “No,” she said. “I’m already there, remember? Younger me.”

  Shade snorted. “Like in Back to the Future. Do not fall for your hot mom, OK? It does not end well.”

  Amanda gave him a sidelong glance. “Shade, did you just call me hot?”

  Shade’s eyes grew wide, and the blush on his cheeks bloomed even before he could turn to check the contents of his backpack.

  “If we’re doing this,” said Colonel Bauman, “we have a new set of problems, starting with what’s going to happen to the rest of us. I’m going to run out of friends with planes and fuel pretty quick, and we can’t just stay in the desert forever.”

  No one made any suggestions, so the colonel answered his own dilemma.

  “Much as I don’t want to, it looks like I have a phone call to make,” he said as he headed back to the cockpit.