Chapter 11

Jack and Dr. Reinhart loaded up two cargo tube vehicles full of equipment and followed in a third vehicle out to an office near the San Jose airport. From there, they loaded the equipment into a large SUV and drove a short distance to where a private Gulfstream jet belonging to Juan's company was fueled up and waiting for them.

Under Dr. Reinhart’s direction, assistants loaded the equipment onto the plane and then began to unpack some of it and set it up. As the pilot and co-pilot went through their final checks, Dr. Reinhart finished showing the assistants what he wanted them to do and then he went and sat down next to Jack.

Dr. Reinhart was a short, intense looking man that wore dark rimmed glasses, white shirt and tie and looked like he came from another age, when NASA was still launching Saturn V's at the moon. His eyes betrayed an exceptionally bright mind, but some people found it difficult to understand him because of his thick accent.

"I've heard a lot about you, Mr. Talon," Dr. Reinhart began with a twinkle in his eye. "I've worked with Juan Carlos for a number of years now. He has told me many unbelievable stories about you."

"Half of them are untrue, I would bet."

Dr. Reinhart laughed in a stiff way. "Oh, Mr. Talon, there is no need to be modest with me. Juan Carlos is a man of his word."

"Please Dr. Reinhart, I'd prefer if you call me Jack, but I don't know if I would trust Juan that much in this area. His story telling abilities are known in far away places all around this globe. You can trust me, he is very clever in describing things in ways that while they may be truthful, they sure aren’t the way I remembered them."

Dr. Reinhart smiled a knowing smile. He was beginning to like this Mr. Talon. "And you may call me simply Reinhart. I avoid using my first name, Adolph. I suspect you can understand why."

"Of course Reinhart."

The assistants completed their setup of the equipment and in no time the jet was in the air and set on a flight path for New Mexico. Once at cruising altitude, the pilot came back and told Dr. Reinhart that it would be best to begin his procedure immediately as there was little turbulence right now but it could likely increase once they were over the desert.

Dr. Reinhart escorted Jack to the back of the plane where the equipment had been set up and had Jack lay down in a chair that looked somewhat like a Dentist’s chair.

“Now Jack,” Reinhart said as he pulled up a chair and sat beside him, “Juan Carlos told me you would want the surveillance implants completely removed, not just overridden with a false data set. Is that right?”

“Yes, that’s right. The overrides don’t fool our people anymore, so it’s pointless to try. Just remove the implants entirely.”

“You realize Jack, that you are committing a felony by doing this, and in just a few hours, they will know you’ve done this too. You will always be on the run after this. Are you sure you want to proceed with this?”

“Yes, I’ve thought this through, and I’m sure.” Jack said in serious and resigned manner, and then he switched to a more upbeat tone. “Look, you’d better get started. I’d hate for some turbulence to kick in and you slip up while operating on my brain.”

Dr. Reinhart laughed. “Oh, Mr. Talon, you needn’t worry. Our equipment and techniques are very advanced and there is little risk. This is as routine and straightforward, as… well as if I were cutting your hair.”

“Just be careful – will you?”

“Relax Jack. It will only take only a few minutes and you will feel almost nothing.”

“It’s not my feelings I’m concerned with. It’s my thinking. I just don’t like it being messed with.”

“Well that’s exactly what we’re going to put an end to right now. We’re going to stop them from eavesdropping in on your thinking.”

At that, Dr. Reinhart picked up a bright stainless steal instrument while an assistant positioned a complicated device on top of Jack’s head, and then he began his procedure.

----- o -----

As the jet descended towards a private runway outside of Albuquerque, Jack looked out the window at the mountains and desert, but his mind wasn’t on that. Rather, he was taking a personal inventory of sorts, going through all the things he could remember and seeing if there was anything out of place. But even if anything were out of place, how would he know it?

The jet landed and they were moving the equipment over into a Hummer when the call came through from agent Parsens.

“Bill,” Jack said talking in his mind through his phone implant. “Are you in a safe place?”

“Yes, I think so. At least it’s the safest place I know. It’s my aunt’s cabin up in the mountains.”

“Sounds good. Just feed my phone the GPS coordinates and we’ll be on our way.”

“I’ve already done it. We’ll be waiting.”

Jack hung up the connection, turned to get in the Hummer and then stopped when he saw a muscular special-forces type guy approaching.

“Jack Talon?” the man asked in a military clipped manner. “I’m Reggie Jones. Juan briefed me on the mission, and we should be ready to go in just a couple hours. We’ve already established a concealed base camp near Mt. Washington overlooking the Starfire Range. As soon as we get this equipment out there and set up a direct laser link to your position for secure communications, we’ll be ready to initiate operations.”

“Good. How will you insert the nano-swarm?”

“Sir, we have a stealth micro-glider that is completely silent and that will self-decompose in under a minute after it lands, leaving only its package.”

“Excellent. But how do you fly it down there? Is electronic communication used?”

“No sir. It’s pre-programmed with the flight path and it is smart enough to fly itself into position. The package itself will use a laser-com to link with base, which is why base has to be in line-of-sight.”

“What about enemy nano-bots? What if they have nano-sentries flying around that detect the package or our laser-com?”

“We don’t anticipate that sir. It’s usually pretty windy out there, so I doubt they depend on that type of defense, but if you’re concerned, we could limit using the laser-com to only when the wind is strong enough to ground any nano-devices out there.”

“Do that. We don’t know yet exactly what we’re dealing with.”

“Yes sir!”

----- o -----

Jon still couldn’t understand what was going on. The FBI agent kept telling him that two days of his memory had been erased, and that somebody was on his way who might be able to restore it. But what could be so important about two days? Why did he have to be taken up to a cabin in the mountains? What could possibly have happened during those two days to make such a big deal over?

Jon didn’t like that somebody had messed with his mind. Even worse was the thought that people were coming who were going to mess with his mind some more. What if they didn’t know what they are doing? What if his mind got completely scrambled with memories that didn’t make sense to him? It all made him very uneasy and he kept pulling the thin curtains aside and looking out the cabin window.

He saw the black Hummer while it was still far down the road.

“They’re here!” Jon told agent Parsens at the same time feeling more nervous than ever.

Bill saw the worried expression on Jon’s face and placed his arm on his shoulder. “They’re here to help you Jon. They’re experts and they’re going to help us figure out what’s going on and what happened to you. You’d like to know wouldn’t you?”

“Yes, but I don’t like to think about what they’re going to do.”

“It’ll be okay Jon. You’ll see.”

----- o -----

The micro-glider was catapulted into the air from a handheld launcher and soon it had caught an updraft of hot air rising up from the desert floor. It looked like it wanted to soar, but then it wasn’t alive and instead it started to execute its pre-programmed mission. Nano-particles on its surfaces were activated that instantly made the glider seem to disappear from the sky. It did this by having topside particles transmit what they saw looking up into the sky to the particles on the underside of the glider. Those particles then mimicked the sky above the glider making the glider look virtually invisible.

Once launched, the micro-glider was on its own until it reached its destination point near one of the Starfire Optical Range’s buildings. If all went as planned, then once the glider landed, it would command the surface particles to begin the decomposition process by having them “eat” the glider’s skin away. In just one minute, all that remained would be a few indistinguishable nano-particles on the ground, and the package that the glider had carried along with it.

The package would then dig itself down into the ground by first firing anchors deep into the ground and then pulling on those anchors as the bottomside of the package activate a drilling mechanism. Once in the ground, the package would open up its top and deploy the laser-com, a small pen-sized device that could communicate with the base camp via a laser. The laser-com aligned itself by having the base camp paint it with a telescopic laser beam first, and then it would adjust itself until the incoming beam was parallel to the axis of its own laser.

Once aligned, the package initiated communications with base camp and then waited for the command to initiate deployment the nano-cam swarm.

----- o -----

Jon helped the men unload the equipment from the Hummer and then watched as they set it up. Dr. Reinhart kept asking him if he remembered anything from the two-days that were lost, but he kept saying he couldn’t. Weren’t they the ones that were supposed to help him recover his memories, he thought? Then why did they keep asking him to remember those things?

Finally, they not only had the equipment set up to begin working on recovering Jon’s memories, but another man that Reggie had sent along with them had established the laser link to Reggie’s base camp. The base camp communicated that they had the package in place and they were ready to begin deployment of the nano-cam swarm whenever they liked.

“You go ahead with the nano-cam Jack,” Dr. Reinhart said as he motioned for Jon to lie down on the Dentist like chair. “This will take a while and there’s no need to wait for me.”

“Sounds good. You find out what’s hiding in Jon’s brain, and I’ll find out what’s hiding in Starfire.”

Jack took a seat in front of a display panel that would show what the nano-cam was seeing, and Reinhart took the seat beside Jon. Bill Parsens simply stood back and watched both of them.

“Let’s roll!” Jack said signaling for the nano-cam swarm to be deployed.

“Good,” said Reinhart with a smile slowing spreading across his face. “I always loved looking into the unknown. Who knows what we’ll discover today?”