A Dubious Curse (A Colton Banyon Mystery Book 8) Read online

  “I don’t care. I just want to get this Banyon guy.”

  “Why is he different?” Joan asked, tilting her head.

  “Well, I didn’t tell you this, okay, but I was told secretly that he could be the best candidate we have ever found. I’m also told he has friends that may be candidates, too,” Darlene whispered, like there was a conspiracy.

  “You mean all of them are candidates for the telepathy program?” Joan asked with renewed interest.

  “Yes, and candidates who may have spoken to aliens,” Darlene replied. “Hell, they might even be aliens themselves, according to the data.”

  “How do we know that?” Joan, the intellectual, asked.

  “Well, this guy Banyon found the transmitter, didn’t he? No one has even found one before,” Darlene said.

  “Could have been blind luck,” Joan argued.

  “You’re right, but what you don’t know is that the machine in the cave measured his and someone else’s telepathy score while they were in the cave and they were off the charts,” Darlene retorted.

  “I didn’t know the machine could do that.” another man at the table piped up.

  “There is a lot about these machines we don’t know,” Darlene replied with a know-it-all look. “The scientists don’t tell us everything, but I was told Banyon scored the highest ever. The other person also scored very high.”

  “We need to get this guy,” Joan agreed.

  “Maybe this has something to do with the alien sighting this morning in Rachel? It’s only about fifty miles away,” Darlene pointed out.

  “Yeah, like maybe we are going to find little blue people in the mine,” one of the men scoffed. He stopped joking when he saw the fire in Darlene’s eyes.

  “I’ve always known that one day, we would finally prove there are aliens located on Earth,” Joan told everyone. “We have collected many signals from space and even from parts of Earth. It’s just a matter of time.”

  “Yeah, and I want us to be the agents who finally capture the first one,” Darlene said ambitiously.

  “And that means that no matter what else happens we need to get Colton Banyon, “Joan announced like it was a revelation.

  Darlene now turned to the women sitting next to her. She had never met the women before, but she had been told that the woman was from the Denver facility where almost all of the candidates Darlene’s team had captured were currently living under strict guard. What the woman did there was not revealed. Darlene had been told she had the highest clearance level and that they were to treat her as part of the team, for now.

  While they had talked on the way up to Ely in the car, Darlene had more questions for the woman named Cindy Creighton. She had noticed the woman didn’t carry a gun and seemed uncomfortable with talk of a take-down and possible gun battle.

  “Cindy, can you shed any light on this?” Darlene asked.

  “I don’t know anything,” Cindy replied, throwing her hands up.

  “But you work at the Denver facility and you were sent here to work with us,” a suspicious Darlene argued. “What are your orders?”

  “I was just told to observe and to be ready to translate any Russian spoken. Even if I was told anything else, I couldn’t tell you.”

  “Why Russian? Are the Russians involved?” Darlene asked.

  “The only thing I was told was that everybody in the mine could speak Russian,” Cindy offered, shrugging her shoulders. Darlene believed that Cindy was stonewalling her but she asked no further questions.

  “You know, there may be another answer as to why we were diverted up here in this hellhole,” Joan thought aloud.

  “What’s on your mind, Joan?” Darlene knew that Joan was the clearest thinker in her group and she usually offered valuable insights.

  “Maybe someone upstairs in our organization has decided Colton Banyon is the real deal,” Joan said as she tilted her head in thought.

  “And decided to take all the credit for themselves,” Darlene filled in the thought as she pointed her finger at Joan.

  “Yeah, they could be on their way to Las Vegas right now, intending to capture him before we have a chance to,” one of the men said.

  “It wouldn’t be the first time that some bureaucrat in the government decided to take credit for work done by other people,” Darlene agreed. She looked at Cindy suspiciously. “Maybe we have been sent a spy to hold us back,” she uttered with malice in her eyes.

  “No,” Cindy said, raising her hands in surrender. “It’s not me. I don’t know anything, honestly. I just translate Russian.”

  “Well someone has tried to mislead us, we are sure of that,” one of the men said.

  “You know, once this takedown is finished, we are going after Colton Banyon,” a determined Darlene announced. “Are you guys in?”

  “What if someone tries to recall us?” Joan asked.

  “I don’t care if the President tries to recall us. We are going to find him first,” Darlene blustered. “So what about it? Are you guys in?” They all agreed, even Cindy.

  Before Darlene could say anything else, her cell phone rang. She stepped away from the table to talk to her controller, but returned within a minute.

  “The assault is back on,” she said professionally. “We need to get to the mine, pronto.”

  ack at the mine, the security alarm buzzers and flashing lights abruptly stopped working in the office area. Jason barely noticed. He was concentrating so hard on eradicating the computer hacker that he had blacked everything out. He did, however, hear his boss.

  “You did it. You’re a genius!” Kevin Ag exclaimed, clapping his small hands. “What did you do to stop him?”

  A confused Jason Petrov looked up from his computer screen. “I don’t think I actually stopped him. I think he just gave up hacking. Sometimes hackers get tired of trying to hack into a system.”

  “Nonsense,” Kevin Ag dismissed him in a jovial mood. “I hired you because you are the best,” he lied. Kevin hired Jason because he didn’t have to pay him up front and never intended to pay him later, because he would be dead.

  “That guy, whoever he is, is a very good hacker,” Jason answered. “I wonder why he stopped?”

  “Well, you are good enough to stop him,” Ag spouted. Jason agreed, thinking that Kevin might reward him.

  “Has there been any damage to repair?” Kevin asked, quickly returning to his autocratic nature.

  “None that I can detect,” responded Jason. “We have another two hours’ worth of data to input to finish. What do you want to do? Should we continue?”

  “We need all the accounts uploaded to make this work. Get the work done in an hour,” the leader demanded.

  “Then we will test the system?” Jason asked.

  “No testing. As soon as you are done, we’re going live,” Kevin Ag screamed. “I don’t want any other hackers to take a shot at us, so you’d better get it right.”

  he NSA agents arrived at the mine site within ten minutes after leaving the diner. The site was located west of the small town and between to small mountains in the dry desert. It was dark, desolate, and completely quiet as they rolled through the entrance. The only sound was made by their tires as they crunched the gravel roadway. They rolled through the mine area. The area past the entrance was completely deserted, and all they saw were mountains of dirt piled throughout the mining yard and some old, rusting machinery. There was a small motorhome, not far from the entrance to the mine. There were no lights.

  They parked with a view of the mine entrance. Then they sat in their vehicles and waited for the twelve members of the SWAT team to appear or to receive further orders. They spent the time cleaning and checking their guns. No one spoke; their nerves were on edge. The eerie silence was spooking them.

  Suddenly, the sound of two helicopters filled the air and two sleek, black apparitions dropped from the dark sky, near where they were parked. They also noticed several police cars drive up and block the entrance to the minin
g yard.

  A black-clad figure broke away from the cluster of SWAT members that piled out of the birds and walked towards the NSA vehicles. Darlene ordered her group out and they stood in a semicircle as the SWAT leader approached.

  He stuck out his hand. “Hi guys, my name is Bobby Brown. I’m the leader of the two SWAT teams,” he said, with just the slight hint of a southern accent. “I’ll be commanding the takedown and you guys will be following my orders, okay?”

  “Darlene Krenitz. I lead this group.” She shook his hand. “We are NSA agents on special assignment,” Darlene informed the stocky man. His entire body was clothed in Kevlar, and he wore a helmet with several devices attached to the top. Special glasses covered his eyes, and his mouth was partially covered by a microphone. Other than his height, he had no identifying features.

  “I’m guessing you know why you are here? So let’s go over your part,” he said politely.

  “Actually, we have not been told anything,” Darlene sincerely replied. “Fill us in, would you?”

  “Okay, there are people in that mine who are attempting to corner the silver market. They need to be stopped. That’s our job.”

  “What is our involvement? We are not typically fighters—we just do arrests,” Darlene told the SWAT leader.

  “Oh, we’ll do the takedown, don’t worry about that,” he replied confidently. “Your job is to collect the five women in the cave. They are illegals, and they have been forced to work on the project by a guy named Kevin Ag,” the SWAT leader replied.

  “Why do you need NSA agents for this takedown? Couldn’t your men also free the women?” Darlene asked suspiciously.

  “You’ll have to ask your controller about that. All I know is that the women are naked, and their skin is blue,” he replied.

  “Blue?! Did you say blue?!” Joan exclaimed with excitement. All the members of the NSA team looked at each other in disbelief.

  “Yeah, and there is one more thing. Although they are all Asian, they speak Russian. Hope you have a Russian translator with you.”

  “That would be me,” Cindy announced, raising her hand. Several things popped into Darlene’s mind. One of them was that Cindy knew more than she was saying.

  “Good, we may have to use your talent if any of these guys decides to give up,” Bobby Brown said grimily.

  “You seem very confident. How do you know so much information about the mine?” Joan inquired suspiciously.

  The SWAT leader noticed the women in the group were all good-looking and since he was a bit of a chauvinist, he attempted to impress them. “Oh, I know a lot more. I have a map of the interior and I know there are ten guards, two men running the show, and five women in the work area,” he quickly replied.

  “That’s amazing,” Darlene declared, buttering up to him.

  “Not only that, but we are all going to be plugged into the Situation Room at the White House. The President will be able to give us real-time information during the assault.” Bobby Brown passed out earpieces to the NSA team. “You’ll be able to listen in. Just press the earpiece when you want to talk.”

  “Wow, working with the President!” one of the men exclaimed.

  “How can he give us real-time information?” Joan questioned, batting her eyes at Brown.

  “I don’t know for sure,” Brown admitted. “But he seems to have some guy who can give him information whenever he needs it.

  “Does this guy have a name, Bobby?” Darlene flirtatiously asked. In her mind, there could only be one answer for having real-time information. That was mental telepathy, and she needed a name to find the telepathist.

  “The President hasn’t shared his name with me,” Brown laughed. “But I do know the guy is someplace in the local area.”

  “Do you mean Las Vegas?” Joan asked.

  “For all I know, he could be in the mine,” the SWAT leader replied. “Actually, it would make sense.”

  “Why?” Joan asked.

  “We have been on missions for the President before. His guy has always been right, and we have always been successful.”

  “We need to find him,” Darlene emphatically blurted out to her team. The force of her words didn’t go unnoticed.

  Feeling as though he had said too much, the now-cautious SWAT leader changed the subject. It occurred to him that they were not in the loop for a reason. He now spoke professionally.

  “Let me tell you how this will go down. You need to enter the cave when we call. We will direct you through the maze to the women. You need to secure them and bring them out of the cave. What you do with them after that is your problem. Do you understand?”

  “Understood,” Darlene replied. “What do you think we should do with them?”

  “Only your boss can tell you that,” he bureaucratically replied.

  The team members all nodded their heads. “We’ll be ready. What time is this going down?” Darlene asked, now thinking about the five women who would shortly be in their charge.

  “We’ll be ready to go in ten minutes,” he announced. “And now, if you will excuse me, I need to talk to the police captain, over there by the gate.” Brown turned and trotted over to the gate area.

  As soon as the SWAT leader left the group, Joan turned to Darlene and talked in a hushed voice. “Do you think it’s Colton Banyon?”

  “If it’s not, it would be a huge coincidence, don’t you think?” Darlene mused with a sinister grin.

  The SWAT leader headed back to his waiting troops after talking to the police. Joan stepped in front of him and stopped him. She had unbuttoned her silk blouse to reveal the tops of her ample breasts to get his attention.

  “What did you say the gentleman’s name was, sweetie?” She had her arm on her hip, posing for the SWAT leader.

  “What?” He had been thinking of other things, like a dangerous take-down in a mine shaft.

  “You know, the one who passes all the information to the President.” She used her native tongue, which was upper-class Kentucky blueblood. She knew any southern boy could not resist her charm.

  “I didn’t,” he replied gruffly, now knowing he had definitely said too much.

  “Are you sure you can’t tell us little ol’ girls anything else, sugar?” She laid it on thick.

  “I can tell you this,” he answered after a few seconds. “Most of my information didn’t come from any secret source.”

  “Whatever do you mean, sweetie?” Joan asked in a sultry voice.

  “From what I understand,” the SWAT leader said, deciding to add to the information he had already shared, “there were originally six girl prisoners working on the project, but one escaped two days ago. She wandered the desert, and she was even filmed this morning in the town of Rachel. She was found by the President’s guy who uncovered the plot. She is the one who has supplied all the data on the mine.”

  Thinking quickly, Joan asked, “Well, I do believe the sixth woman should also be collected, too, don’t you?”

  “Not my call,” he replied, shaking his head.

  “But you do know where she is, don’t you?” Joan flipped her hair, which was no longer encumbered by a ponytail holder, to keep his attention.

  The SWAT leader was becoming interested in the woman. “Maybe we could have a drink and talk about it after the takedown. I’m a little busy right now.”

  arlene’s phone rang. It was her controller. She put him on speakerphone. The other members of the team crowded around her to listen in on the conversation. He quickly instructed her to take him off of speakerphone. She walked away from her team to take the call, knowing the news would not be good.

  “What?” she exclaimed. “It’s been postponed again? For how long? Why?” She listened with an annoyed expression on her face. After a few minutes, she hung up.

  Noticing that Darlene appeared to be deep in thought, Joan asked, “Darlene, what is going on?”

  Before she could answer, a voice came over their earpieces—it was the SWAT leader. “The
takedown has been postponed for another hour.”

  Joan quickly pressed her earpiece and asked, “Why?”

  “All I know is there is an international complication that has to be worked out before we go in,” the voice replied.

  The international complication had been caused by Colton Banyon. It had started ten minutes earlier. He had been standing in the small pilothouse getting ready for the screen to the Situation Room to boot up when the satellite phone rang. Timmy was on the other end.

  “Timmy, we are five minutes away from starting the assault. This better be good,” Banyon warned.

  “I thought you would want to know, man,” Timmy cheerfully told him. “I am such a good hacker,” he complimented himself.

  “So, were you able to stop the program?” Banyon asked, wondering why the geek took the time to call.

  “Actually, dude, I didn’t,” Timmy replied sheepishly.

  “What? But that means they will be able to start the program and send out all the trades for silver when we attack,” Banyon lamented. “Can you at least disrupt their program?”

  “You didn’t listen, dude. I didn’t say I couldn’t stop the program. I said I didn’t stop it, cool, huh. I am, after all, the world’s greatest hacker, you know,” the insulted geek replied.

  “Why didn’t you stop it?”

  “I found something and thought you should know about it before I go any further,” Timmy told Banyon.

  Feeling a little frustrated with the egotistical geek, Banyon asked. “What did you find, Timmy?”

  “I found the money,” Timmy announced in a dramatic voice. “There is 3.1 billion dollars, to be exact, and I know where it is.”

  “Really?” Banyon had to admit it was a good find. “Can we get to it?”

  “Well, the answer is ‘yes’ and ‘no’,” Timmy evasively told Banyon. He then was silent on the phone line.

  Realizing Timmy was baiting him, waiting for Banyon to ask him to explain how he found the money. Banyon asked, “Please explain how you found the money?”

  “Well, man, since you have asked nicely, I’ll tell you,” the geek acquiesced, clearly relishing in the attention. “I was doing my thing—you know, sending them bombs and viruses with one hand and looking for a way into the system with my other hand. I can do two computers at once, you know. I am a great hacker, Colt.”