Quantum

The trooper nodded.

‘Is that it?’ the driver asked expectantly.

‘Just one more thing.’

In a blur of motion, the trooper drew his weapon.

‘Jesus, no!’ shouted the driver.

The trooper placed two 9-mm rounds from his suppressed Glock into the skinny man’s forehead; the back of the man’s skull exploded onto the metal wall of the trailer in a Rorschach of blood, bone, and gray matter. He then adjusted his aim to the right, sweeping to his next target, and fired another double tap between the driver’s eyebrows. The younger trooper shot the third mover with equal efficiency.

Both men closed the distance between themselves and the movers. The three young men lay absolutely still as the last seconds of their lives ticked away.

‘Clear,’ Dmitri Leskov announced. ‘Pavel, go get the others.’

‘Da,’ Pavel acknowledged as he jumped down from the trailer.

Pavel was halfway to the unmarked Blazer – blue strobes still flashing – when three men, all dressed in the same tan uniforms that the movers wore, emerged from the rear of the vehicle. The men quickly moved to the back of the Blazer and unloaded a nested set of three orange plastic barrels, three battery-operated caution flashers, a bundle of large gray mats, and a ten-foot-long sausage shaped object emblazoned with the PLG corporate logo at regular intervals along its gray fabric exterior. Pavel grabbed the sausage, retrieved a large canvas gym bag from the Blazer, and then followed the others back to the trailer.

‘Hand me the bag,’ Dmitri called out from the open door. ‘Then feed the Pig to Vanya.’

Pavel tossed the gym bag up to his older brother, then lifted up the end of the sausage. The coarse fabric of the Pig chaffed against his neck and shoulders as Vanya pulled it into the trailer.

‘Quickly, Yuri,’ Vanya said as he pulled the full length of the Pig into the trailer, ‘contain the blood before it covers the whole floor.’

Yuri nodded and laid the Pig on the floor to act as a dam around the perimeter of the slowly expanding pool of blood. Vanya then ripped open the package of mats and spread a blanket of thin gray quilted rectangles atop the red-black liquid. Like the Pig, the mats immediately began absorbing the blood.

The fifth man, Josef, had the three orange barrels set with their open bottoms facing up.

‘Keys?’ Dmitri asked.

‘I have them,’ Josef replied, patting the key ring in his pocket.

Dmitri and Pavel picked up the skinny mover’s body by the arms and legs and carried it over to the first container.

‘Steady the barrel, Josef,’ Dmitri barked as he and Pavel lifted the body over the open end.

Carefully, they lifted the mover’s arms and legs, folding his body at the waist as they lowered it into the barrel. When the body reached the bottom, they folded his arms and legs until the man disappeared into the drum.

They repeated this maneuver twice more as Yuri and Vanya wiped down the trailer walls and floor with the absorbent mats. Drawn by the blood, flies began to swarm annoyingly around them.

Dmitri checked his watch. ‘Let’s wrap this up,’ he announced.

The other men nodded and went about finishing their assigned tasks. Dmitri and Pavel stripped off the police uniforms and stuffed them into one of the barrels.

‘Here,’ Dmitri said as he tossed his brother new clothes from the gym bag.

Pavel pulled the snug-fitting work shirt over his broad shoulders and looked down at the embroidered company logo over the left breast.

‘I feel like I’ve been demoted,’ Pavel said with a laugh.

Once the trailer was wiped clean of blood and gore, the soiled mats and the sausage were stuffed into the barrels, and Josef snapped the thick plastic lids closed. The men then carefully turned the barrels right side up. The movers’ bodies slumped to the bottom, but the lids easily held the weight.

Yuri and Vanya jumped down from the trailer and took the barrels, one by one, from Pavel and Josef.

After Pavel and Josef exited the trailer, Dmitri handed them the three flashing caution lights and the gym bag that contained the two suppressed Glocks. He then leapt down and closed the trailer’s side door.

Between the trailer and the Blazer, Dmitri’s men arranged the barrels around a wide, deep pothole near the pavement’s edge. Snapped in place, the orange caution lights began blinking.

‘Let’s go,’ Dmitri announced, smiling to himself that the barrels might actually do some good.

4 (#ulink_5d52ce2e-d407-5020-abad-170c45a861f1)

JUNE 23 (#ulink_5d52ce2e-d407-5020-abad-170c45a861f1)

South Bend, Indiana

Nolan Kilkenny and Ted Sandstrom stood leaning against the wall beside a large window as the movers wheeled another cart of boxes from the nearly empty lab. They heard Kelsey and Paramo engaging in a rapid exchange of words out in the corridor, their voices growing louder as the pair neared the lab’s door.

‘Problem, Kelsey?’ Nolan asked.

‘Just a friendly debate,’ she replied.

Paramo smiled. ‘Kelsey and I were mulling over some of Guth’s work on false vacuum theory.’

‘False vacuum theory?’ Nolan repeated. ‘I’m almost afraid to ask.’

‘It’s one of the more recent theories kicking around about how a universe forms,’ Kelsey offered.

Nolan held his hands up as if to push any further explanation away before it could reach him. ‘Stop right there! My head still hurts from last night’s little after-dinner discussion about M-branes and eleven-dimensional multiverses.’

‘Wimp,’ Sandstrom said with a laugh. ‘Hey, Raphaele, did the movers get those boxes out of our office?’

‘Everything went down with the last load,’ Paramo replied.

Kelsey eyed the blue plastic cooler near Nolan’s feet. ‘Anything left to drink?’

‘There’s one can of Diet Coke with your name on it.’

Kelsey fished the last can from the slush of melted ice and sat down on a lab bench. ‘How long before we’re done here?’

‘Not long. All that’s left are those two boxes. It’s a short drive to the research park,’ Nolan said, running through a mental checklist. ‘I figure a couple of hours to unload at the new lab.’ Nolan picked up the cooler and dumped the icy dregs into the lab sink, shaking the last few drops out before closing the lid. ‘I’m going to take this down to my truck so we can reload it at the gas station. I’ll be back in a minute.’

The hallway echoed with his footsteps, the building nearly empty on this early-summer Friday afternoon. Kilkenny took the stairs and exited Nieuwland Science Hall around the corner from the loading dock. A semi filled the single bay, its trailer flush with the elevated concrete dock. The four-wheeled carts were nearly empty; the five-man crew had made quick work of this job.

Kilkenny’s truck was parked at the far end of the loading area facing the dock. He fished the key fob out of his khaki shorts and pressed the button that unlocked the lift gate.

As he placed the empty cooler into the back of the SUV, he observed one of the movers pull two canvas bags from the white Blazer parked near the semi. The man then carried the bags back to where the rest of the moving crew waited. Another of the movers crouched down, unzipped one of the bags, and extracted a pistol holster.