Dream War Page 4

  “Hector, as you know,” Moats said, “there are short-term effects on the subjects after a dream link.”

  It was evident. Subjects, after sessions where significant information had been extracted, displayed symptoms ranging from disorientation to depression. In experiments where OIA had implanted a suggestion in a subject, either to perform a task, or to forget a task, a marked increase in hostility, confusion, and often times displayed a dangerous lack of good judgment.

  Moats leaned forward and continued, “What we didn’t know until today was how damaging these effects could be made to be on the subject. Members of my team and I have completed the first organized campaign to neutralize and eliminate an enemy force using coordinated efforts to…” He paused and looked out the window. “—to drive them to commit suicide.”

  Lopez winced and looked to Hyde for an explanation. “Hector, dreams are like clues to riddles. But they are also direct passages into the subject’s mind. We have been leading the dreamer to both conscious and subconscious files that contain whatever data we need—codes, information, passwords. The possibilities utilizing these methods are endless. Yet, our experience indicates an additional application for dream linking.”

  Hyde opened his desk drawer, grabbed a syringe, and filled it with a green dye. He injected it into a glass of water where it swirled about in dancing streams of vibrant color as it faded into the water. It maintained threads of dark green, but a moment later, the entire contents of the vessel clouded to a swirling haze of lime.

  “Now, imagine this is the mind of the subject.” Hyde lifted the glass. “Extractions are locating the important points of information during a dream and porting them back to OIA. They would be akin to pulling the green dye back out of the water and emptying it into another glass. It takes practice and discipline for the agent to return from the dream link with the information intact.” He flashed an apologetic smile at Lopez, and then loaded the syringe with a black dye.

  “In the psyche of the dreamer, implants have an immensely magnified effect. Confusion is caused by a single implant. Continued ‘doses,’ applied in a consistent pattern, will escalate the behaviors we wish to incorporate in the subject’s personality.”

  He plunged the syringe into the glass and repeated his experiment with the black dye. It surprised no one that the water became a squalid mixture of gray, green, and charcoal. A third injection dramatized his point; the muddy solution had gone black.

  “So what you’re saying is that agents can implant suggestions, false information, and suspicion into the mind of a subject, driving him insane?”

  Moats squirmed in his seat, looked at Hyde, and smiled. “Hector, what I’m about to tell you is highly classified information even within OIA.”

  “Okay.”

  “We located and then tormented that Libyan hit squad sent by Muammar Qaddafi. After days of implanting coordinated—” Moats gestured with the index and middle fingers of both hands to indicate quote signs, “injections into their dreaming minds, one of them murdered the other two, and then sliced his own throat open, ear to ear, with a razor.”

  - Chapter Four -

  December 17, 1981 – Oceanside, CA

  Lopez was headed toward the dream-link lab with a cup of steaming decaf coffee when Moats approached. He handed Lopez a fax.

  “This just came in.”

  To: Bernard Hyde

  From: X98504 Z2334

  This morning in Verona, an Italian terrorist group known as the Brigate Rosse or “Red Brigades” kidnapped U.S. General and NATO commander, James Dozier. They are demanding eight million dollars for his release. Be advised, this terrorist organization kidnapped former Italian Prime Minister Aldo Moro. After 55 days in captivity, they murdered him.

  The United States government wants, at all costs, to ensure the safe return of General Dozier. Use of any and all means necessary has been authorized to secure a successful rescue.

  Lopez reread the last two lines mumbling. “‘At all costs. Any and all—’”

  “Means necessary.’” Moats grabbed the fax from Lopez’s hands. “Hector, this is a grave situation. I was stationed in Naples in ’78 when the Moro kidnapping went down. Those cocksuckers are serious. They took great pleasure tormenting the authorities. We may need to combine forces on this one.”

  “All due respect, sir, I’d think the last thing we need right now are suicidal terrorists.”

  Moats sighed. He ran his hand over his closely trimmed crew cut. “I meant combine forces to find these fuckers. I’m going to have Martin sit in on your meetings and report the goings on to me…in case we need to quickly come up to speed.”

  Since their last meeting with Hyde, the teams had been reorganized. Silverman, Bohnam, and Martin had been working with Moats in the application of implantation techniques. Henderson, Prie, and Imbo worked for Lopez on the extraction team.

  “If you say so, boss.”

  Moats grabbed Lopez by the arm. “I say so. We need this done quick, Hector.”

  *****

  Lopez and his group of agents began the manhunt, but unlike most of their previous missions, the pace was slow and arduous. Their investigation continued through Christmas, the New Year holiday, and into the first couple weeks of 1982. Many of the known Red Brigade members they linked to were low-level associates with no knowledge of the abduction. The dream-linked agents were relegated to extracting information from subjects to provide leads in finding higher-level members.

  “This is like conducting a door-to-door search of every shit-filled outhouse in Italy,” Henderson complained during one group meeting.

  Despite his quirks, Henderson had proven to be an extremely creative and clever team player. He’d been the first to perfect the widely used method of manipulating the subject to go to their information warehouse—a section of their mind that housed all of their conscious and subconscious information. Once “inside,” an agent could access stored data, “boxed” so to speak, in the subconscious mind and rifle through it to find whatever he needed.

  “Outhouses, eh?” Lopez clarified.

  “Yeah,” Henderson said.

  “Henderson, I always pegged you for a cathouse kind of guy.”

  “Funny.”

  Lopez waited for his team, and Moats’s agent Martin to settle into a conference room for their group meeting.

  “Okay guys,” Lopez began. “We’ve got the opportunity to break this one wide open. An agent in Padua spotted Emilia Libera.”

  “Where’s Padua?” Martin asked scribbling notes on a pad.

  “Small city just outside of Venice,” Imbo muttered.

  “Emilia is the known lover of Red Brigades’ leader Antonio Savasta.” Lopez flashed her picture to the group.

  A waif of a woman with dark hair, Lopez thought that her sunken eyes and elongated, emaciated visage left her face as unattractive as her politics.

  *****

  Via NOCTURN, Lopez linked to Emilia Libera as she dreamed.

  Once he popped through into her subconscious mind, Lopez surveyed his surroundings. In the middle of a dingy barn cluttered with farming tools and empty crates, the woman stood in the middle of the space at a white stove. A cigarette dangled from her mouth as she stirred a large pot of pasta.

  Lopez circled behind her; the hay-covered floor he crept across emitted no noise in the dream. He rushed up, grabbing her head from behind.

  Lips near her ear, he snarled, “Take me to where your memories are stored. I want you to remember it all. I want you to share them with me.”

  He worked on her mind— pushing, pulling, poking and prodding. Their surroundings began to disappear, replaced with a cavernous warehouse of various-colored boxes stacked to the rafters.

  “I want contacts, addresses,” he said, focusing his efforts to control her subconscious.

  The room shifted around them, blurred images of cardboard containers whizzed by. They stopped at a section of white boxes, the kind photocopy paper came in, with
red trim at the corners and around the lid.

  “The Red Brigades information,” he suggested.

  She hesitated.

  “The Red Brigades information,” Lopez said more firmly.

  She pointed to a container in front and on a fifteen-foot high shelf. Lopez lifted a palm, pointed to it, and then to the area in front of them. The box obediently floated down. He sifted through file folders; one read, “Aldo Moro,” another, “Sogno di Guerra.” He rifled through the one that read, “Brigate Rosso – contatti.” It contained pages of contacts with corresponding street names and numbers.

  “Emilia, where is General Dozier being held?”

  Her eyes were vacant. “A storm is coming.”

  She pointed to the ceiling. Lopez did a double take at a swirling oval of gas, clouds, and darkness. Whatever it was ate into her dream.

  “Emilia, I want the address!”

  Her eyes remained as though focused on a far away event. “It’s at the bottom.”

  Lopez pulled out more files and papers, finally finding a red folder. “Generale Dozier” was scribbled across the front in black magic marker. He opened the file and flipped through pages containing the operation’s details, photographs and names of people crucial to their mission. Finally, he found an address in Padua.

  “Is this where James Dozier is being held, Emilia?”

  She nodded and started trembling. “But a storm is coming. It’s coming for me again.”

  Overhead an oblong portal had opened, revealing a starless black sky. Flashes of lightning streaked across and continued through the hole into the warehouse. One struck a box of papers. The smoldering papers and cardboard ignited a fire.

  A hoarse voice thundered from the portal. “Who are you? Why are you here?”

  Lopez stared for a moment saying nothing. He had what he wanted, but he’d never seen anything like this in a dream-link before.

  “There is a reward,” the voice called out. “A reward for helping to release me—come and see!”

  Ten plus ten is twenty. Twenty plus twenty is forty, Red dog. Ten plus ten is twenty. Twenty plus twenty is forty. Red dog. Red dog.

  Just before being transported back through NOCTURN, Emilia was sucked up and out of the dream through the portal. She was screaming.

  Her screams would haunt him the rest of his life.

  *****

  After OIA gave the Italian authorities the address where Dozier was being held, it still took them a day and a half before launching the rescue. They claimed to be verifying the information and they refused to coordinate the storming of the building with OIA, missing the opportunity to catch some of the terrorists asleep.

  “Italian machismo,” Hyde muttered to Lopez with disdain.

  Although one of the kidnappers pointed a gun at General Dozier as the raid unfolded, the rescue team was able to overpower him and secure the general unharmed. Five terrorists were arrested. Even though OIA got no public recognition, people throughout the CIA knew that they had been responsible for Dozier’s rescue.

  An ebullient Dr. Hyde granted the men of the Extraction Team three days off. Lopez’s team and Moats’s crew all went out for beers together like they’d done in the early days. But there wouldn’t have been any celebration had they known that the Dozier rescue would be the last successful OIA operation.

  *****

  Lopez sped toward the buzzing light during his next dream mission. Feeling lethargic, he realized that he’d forgotten all the mission details. A temporary loss of memory occurred from time to time during the transportation phase. It was nothing to panic over, but it never ceased to cause him a jittery angst. Hyde had theorized that brainwaves crossed while linking, which caused an effect best described as the opposite of déjà vu. He had suggested that, when this occurred, remembering relatively distant events and tracing backwards would often restore normal memory functions.

  Now, Lopez had a vague recollection of Tabatha, rather than Hyde, preparing his dream link departure. While not unheard of, it was out of the ordinary.

  He felt wet all at once and only for a second. He was in an unknown subject’s dream. Lopez stood in the middle of a cornfield. Even craning his neck and standing on his tiptoes, he couldn’t see an end to the rows of ten-foot-tall corn stalks. The sentinel-like stalks, topped with sprays of yellow-brown husks, blocked the view in every direction. The distant wails of a child could be heard through the imposing shoots of forest green.

  As the toddler’s cries got closer, Lopez still could not remember his objective.

  Has a child gone missing or been abducted?

  He panicked. There existed no precedent for this scenario, but as Hyde’s protocol dictated, Lopez would return to OIA headquarters and reorient himself with his objectives.

  He darted away from the sounds of the approaching child and through the stalks of swooshing corn, the large stems swaying and snapping back like giant pendulums behind him. He began the signal to return.

  Ten plus ten is twenty. Twenty plus twenty is forty. Red dog. Ten plus ten is twenty. Twenty plus twenty is forty. Red dog. Red dog.

  Nothing.

  Despite the brevity of the mission, someone should’ve been on-guard at the OIA controls. Hyde maintained, as rule number one, the immediate withdrawal of an agent at the earliest sign of trouble.

  Ten plus ten is twenty. Twenty plus twenty is forty. Red dog. Ten plus ten is twenty. Twenty plus twenty is forty. Red dog. Red dog.

  Again, nothing.

  By the third time through his signal, Lopez knew something was horribly wrong. The child’s cry became a hideous cackle.

  Dark storm clouds rushed from the horizon and gathered overhead. They opened, unleashing an icy deluge. He started to run but the rain had soaked the earth and fertilizer beneath his feet creating a slushily slick terrain. He slipped, righting himself with a cornstalk’s aid.

  His second misstep landed him on all fours.

  His nostrils flared. The stench of cow shit gushed into his nose and mouth as he panted. The child’s terrifying laughter grew louder and seemed to encircle him.

  Christ, why am I here?

  He failed three times to rise, so he began crawling.

  Where the fuck do I go?

  His right hand plopped into the wet, sticky mud. His right knee slid forward. His left hand struck a sharp, mud-buried stone that drove pain up his arm. Again he began his return sequence.

  Ten plus ten is twenty. Twenty plus twenty is forty. Red dog. Red dog.

  The earth felt tacky on his arms and legs. He rose to his knees. There was no sign of him being brought back to OIA.

  He began shouting, “Ten plus ten is twenty. Twenty plus twenty is forty. Red dog. Red dog.” The words seemed to die as they fell from his lips. He couldn’t even hear them over the sound of the storm.

  A low rumble erupted from below Lopez. He started to sink as the mud began to give way under his knees. The earth had begun to swallow him. Slowly at first, but with intensifying certainty, he was being pulled down into the mud, and the shit, and the swirling flood waters.

  He looked up.

  Storm clouds swirled around the entire sky transforming it into a giant hideous face. It glared at him with black eyes and an expression of smug hate. A pointed nose jutted at him as if preparing to bestow a death sentence. There was something terrifyingly familiar about the features. Before he could remember where he’d seen the face, it fell. The entire sky surged, stopping only inches from Lopez’s face. He could feel cold, muddy excrement moving up his neck. The hot breath of the visage above bellowed three words.

  “Come and see!”

  Screaming, Lopez awoke.

  He looked around, half-expecting to see the walls dripping with mud. It was his bedroom. He was in his own bed.

  His girlfriend Bonnie knelt over him, breathing heavily, rocking to and fro her long dark hair swaying with her. Her brown eyes were wide with terror.

  “My God, Hector. Oh my God, honey—”


  A dream? It was just a fucking dream?

  “I’ve been trying to wake you up for ten minutes!” She sat back and began to cry. He knew the right thing would be to comfort her, to tell her that everything was all right. The problem was that he had no idea if everything was all right.

  He focused on his breathing and collected himself enough to bring her slight, olive-toned frame onto his. His left arm wrapped around and drew her to his chest. She asked for no details and he offered her no explanation. Her sobs tapered off, replaced by the deep breathing of sleep.

  Lopez tried to analyze the dream rationally, as he would do at work. The child was perhaps a symbol for his desire to have children. His own father existed only in black and white memories, and stories of the life he’d led pre-cancer. Of course Hector Lopez, youngest of six, wanted a family of his own, but mired in a dangerous job, he worried he wouldn’t be around to raise them. Service to his country was important. The hideous face from the sky threatened not only the security of his career, but his country, as well as his plans for family. As he mulled these issues, two hours would elapse before he would drift again to sleep.

  - Chapter Five –

  February 1, 1982 – Oceanside, CA

  Agent Joe Imbo, a peculiar look on his face, was waiting for Lopez when he arrived at OIA headquarters after the three-day, Dozier-rescue, celebration weekend.

  “What’s up, Joey?”

  “Well, boss, I need to talk.”

  “But the real question is—do I need to listen?”

  The somber visage told Lopez that whatever was on Joe’s mind was serious. The pair walked toward Lopez’s office. Along the way they nodded at, but didn’t speak to, agents Silverman and Bohnam, two of Moats’s agents as they passed.

  Once seated in Lopez’s sparse office, Imbo began asking about Lopez and his weekend.

  “Joey, let’s skip the small talk. What’s on your mind?”