Operation Stingray                        Part 4 // PG. 3 of 3

     

     “What do you think? Field operations. Crowd control. Targeted assassination. Using the Ray to eliminate enemies and prevent the masses from congealing into any kind of a threat. It's a remarkably simple feat. That riot you witnessed, for example. They didn't need to take over everyone's brain to do that. That was probably a single Ray turning up the aggression of a handful of the protesters and setting the whole thing off. That's all they need, the ability to control a few key players at a few key moments, enough to tip things in their favor 51% of the time. With the proper planning you can control a whole city with a skeleton crew of maybe half a dozen Rays. Put a crew like that in every major city, maybe infiltrate a few foreign governments, and, well...I'm sure Dreiser thinks he can control the whole world like that. The scary thing is he might be right.”

     “Who's in charge of it all?” I asked.

     LaFarge shrugged. “Ostensibly it's under the Defense Department, but I don't know how much sway they really have. A couple of them got spooked and tried to pull the plug a few months ago, then promptly died by apparent suicide. Maybe the president is calling the shots, maybe he's under the Ray like everyone else. The closest thing to a leader the project had was Dreiser, and he was more of a mad scientist than anything else. But you're already well acquainted with him, I believe.”

     “The man in the bowler hat?”

     “Bingo. He's a real ruthless SOB. The thought of a man who loves power that much being given a blank check for it frightens me more than anything about this whole situation.”

     I stared out the window. I had been too scared to ask the real question. I took a deep breath. “So if it's a three phase operation, what's Phase Three?”

     LaFarge shook his head. “Whatever it is, it's big. The largest wing of the facility was behind a door marked 'Phase Three Development.' Dreiser was the only one I ever saw go in or out of there. There were whispers and rumors, but no one had any idea what he was doing. All I know is that if Phase Two is already being implemented, Phase Three must be nearing completion.”

     We pulled off the road onto a long gravel driveway leading to a tiny cabin deep in the woods. LaFarge shifted the car into park. “Listen,” he said. “I know this is a lot to take in. I know it seems like you've set yourself against overwhelming forces. But they aren't invincible. There are weaknesses. They've made the Ray a handheld, but the tradeoff is that its signal is weak. They have to be near you for it to work and that limits its effectiveness. And there's the pill. I had to dig up a lot of old biochem knowledge to create it, but it seems to work. If we can figure out a way to mass produce it and get it to the public, we can turn the tables.

     “And most importantly,” he said, “we have the truth on our side. That was the one thing that kept Brian going, the fact that he was shining a light into the darkness. When he told me he was going to try to bring you to the rendezvous, I knew that he must have seen something in you, something that told him you would devote yourself to doing the right thing. He trusted you, so I trust you.”

     He opened the door. “So come on,” he said, “we have a lot of work to do.”