It had been a frustrating day. Clark Kent hadn’t had nearly as much information as he’d liked to think, and all she’d managed to get from the biotech lab was that they’d had an order for twenty DNA comparisons to be rushed for Homeland security.
Even getting that much information had been a Herculean effort, and a representative of the laboratory had explained that they didn’t really have any names attached to the tests, only a series of numbers. The people running the lab tests couldn’t reveal any information because all they knew were the test results, which were confidential.
According to Agent White, there had been one hundred ninety five people on the plane. Lois wasn’t sure if that was just passengers, or whether that included crew as well. It seemed strange that they would only ask for DNA comparisons on twenty of them. Were those twenty people of special interest, or were other labs being used to spread out the amount of testing being done and speed the process?
Pulling up in the driveway, Lois shut off the ignition. The man calling himself Clark Kent had given her a list of five names. He hadn’t bothered to explain how he’d come by the list, and Lois hadn’t bothered to ask. If he’d come by them illegally, she’d find out soon enough.
Two of the names on the list were out of town. Lois had found their home telephone numbers using the internet and had called only to learn that they’d been flown to Washington D.C. and would be away for several days.
A third name had led to another gravesite; this one was already being exhumed. Apparently the family hadn’t chosen to fight the issue.
Lois tried not to think about what they were doing to the body in Lucy’s casket even now. Maybe they’d be able to find out who it was, give it a real burial. It might mean actual closure for a family which had gone five years without any.
The garage was old and run down, but it seemed to be doing a fair amount of business. Lois waited in her car until an older man in a worn and stained uniform walked up to her window.
“You need an oil change?” The man was wiping his hand on an oily rag.
“I was hoping to speak with Javier Mendosa.”
The man’s expression turned unfriendly. “Javier’s a good kid. I don’t care what he did when he was younger, he’s turned his life around. He doesn’t need people harassing him.”
“I’m doing a report on abuses of power in the government,” Lois said smoothly. “I understand that someone has been giving Javier a hard time?”
“Yeah. They didn’t just trash his house, they trashed his mother’s house too.” The man frowned. “You’re that chick from TV aren’t you? The one from Iraq?”
“Yes I am.” Lois said. She didn’t bother to give her name; getting snickered at one more time would be just what she needed to make the day complete.
“He’s up for a break. Why don’t you head back to the back and tell him I’m giving him an extra thirty to talk to you.”
“That’s very kind of you,” Lois said. “What’s your name again?”
“Joe…Joseph Smith. If you could mention the name of the business on TV, that’d be great!” He smiled.
“I can’t promise anything,” Lois said. “Sometimes my editor picks what gets on the air. But I’ll think about it.”
A moment later she was parking her new rental and stepping across the weed strewn area that served as a combination between a parking lot and a junkyard.
Leaning against a stack of old tires propped against the wall was a Latino man. Although he was probably Lois’s age, he looked younger. He was wearing a white muscle shirt and a pair of oil stained jeans. His head was shaved and he had a fresh bruise under one eye.
He was lean and well muscled, and on his chest Lois could see a tattoo of a rose from which emerged barbed wire with three barbs.
From previous news articles, Lois knew those tattoos indicated gang membership and at least one prison stint of three years, assuming there weren’t more barbs she couldn’t see.
Lois was suddenly glad that she’d thought to buy a fresh canister of pepper spray before coming here. The last batch had been defective. It hadn’t slowed Clark down at all. She casually kept one hand inside her purse, and she stopped well out of his reach.
He was turned slightly away from her and he was speaking rapid Spanish into a cell phone. When he finally noticed her he spoke into the telephone again and then flipped the phone closed.
“Javier Mendosa?”
He looked at her for a moment then looked away. “Who’s asking?”
“I understand that you had some trouble today,” Lois said.
Sighing, he looked up at her. “Unless you’re my new parole officer, I don’t see what business it is of yours.”
“I’m doing a story on abuses of power by the Federal government.”
In a way it was true. If Lois discovered incontrovertible proof of abuse, she would do an expose even if it damaged her relationship with the Federal Government. After all of this she doubted that she’d be able to pass a security check in the future.
There was no sign of recognition in his eyes, and Lois felt relieved.
“I don’t think I have anything to say about that,” he said.
Lois said “Where did you get the shiner?”
Now he looked at the ground. “I fell,” he said.
“It wouldn’t have happened when they were hauling you in for something you didn’t do?” Lois asked.
Javier snorted. “Everybody always says they didn’t do it. Nobody ever believes them.”
“But you really didn’t do anything, did you?” Lois stared at the young man.
He shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. Cop sees the tats, that’s all he has to see.”
“So why did you get them?”
“You ever been to prison?”
Lois shook her head.
“You do what you gotta do to get by. If you don’t have friends, you’re in trouble.”
“Joe says you’ve been doing pretty well for yourself.”
“Three years without as much as a traffic ticket. I’ve been going back to school, keeping a job…now I’ve got my parole officer on my back wondering why the Feds are investigating me. He’s thinking about sending me back.”
“Did they say what they were charging you for?”
He shook his head. “They grabbed me, fingerprinted me, stuck a q-tip in my mouth and stuck my eye in this thing…”
“A retinal scanner?”
“Yeah. One of the cops said something about it being better than fingerprints.”
Fingerprints could be changed, but other than the effects of certain diseases, retinal patterns stayed with a person for life.
“So they didn’t believe you when you told them who you were?”
“My fingerprints are in the system.”
“What did your lawyer say about all this?”
“I didn’t get no lawyer. They kept asking me if I had a twin. Do I look like I have a twin? I don’t have any kids either. They kept asking that.”
Lois shrugged uncomfortably.
“You’re out now.”
“They tossed my mother’s place,” he said. “Took all the pictures of me from the sixth grade, too my little brother’s computer.”
“So you don’t have any idea what they wanted?”
“They kept asking if I knew anything about this plane thing from the other day. I haven’t ever been on a plane in my life!”
“Anything weird that they did?” Lois asked.
“It was all weird. They held me, and then they let me go without even asking me much.”
They hadn’t wanted anything he’d had to say. They’d wanted his DNA, his fingerprints, his retinal scan…and they’d kept asking about twins.
“I was off work four hours.” He glanced back at the building behind him. “If I didn’t have a great boss I’d be out of a job right now, being pulled out of work like that. People see a guy with a record being dragged off by the cops, they don’t usually ask many questions.”
Lois nodded. “I don’t suppose they beat you or anything.”
He looked away. “The Feds weren’t too bad. It was the local cops who…never mind.”
“You wouldn’t happen to remember which police officers were involved would you?”
**********
Officer Abe Washington shook his head. “Is that little punk making some kind of accusation? That thing with his eye was an accident with the door. We already filed all the paperwork all nice and legal.”
Lois shook her head. “He’s just a little confused about what he was being charged with.”
The officer shrugged. “I don’t really know. The Feds say bring somebody in, that’s what you do.”
“You didn’t think it was strange, them letting him go after a few hours without charging him?”
“Maybe he knew something…he used to be in a gang, maybe he’s been associating with people he shouldn’t. Wasn’t my call.”
“The agents didn’t say anything?”
“I heard one of them say he was ‘just like the others,’ whatever that means.” The officer frowned. “What did you say this story was about again?”
“I didn’t,” Lois said. “Did they have you bring anybody else in for questioning?”
“Two others. They took one look at one, checked his prints and sent him off right away. The other they took downtown.”
“You’ve been a big help.”
*********
A snippet of conversation came back to Lois, something she’d overheard the men in the hallway at Walter Reed saying.
The fingerprints are the same, just like the others.
The government was fingerprinting certain select people. They were taking DNA and doing retinal scans, which would be useful if someone had tried to change their fingerprints. Retinal scans used something like three times as many points of comparisons as fingerprints…more than two hundred if Lois remembered correctly.
They were digging up Lucy’s grave, and they’d been talking about at least on patient having false papers indicating that he was in the military…papers that said he was a military officer. But apparently there was another person with the same fingerprints who also claimed to be the same man.
Had they been trying to slip imposters into the military? That would explain why Homeland Security was so concerned. If someone was able to use plastic surgery well enough to fool everyone, to the point of changing fingerprints, they’d be able to slip into positions of power.
The only reason Lois could think to reveal this by loading a planeload of these people and giving them ridiculous stories no one would believe was to throw the United States military into disarray.
The threat, and the implication was that someone already had been replacing soldiers, officers and even politicians. It must be expensive to do all of that, and so it was cheaper just to create confusion and distrust in the ranks.
The scope of it all was staggering. Even discounting the plane, which must have been stolen from somewhere, this would have cost tens or hundreds of millions of dollars. The resources required for this were out of the range of any known terrorist group.
That suggested that it was another country that was sponsoring the whole thing. Only another nation would have the sheer resources to pull something like this off, and if they wanted to put the military in disarray, that could mean only one thing.
An attack was coming.
Homeland security would be out of its mind with worry, and Lois couldn’t imagine what it was likely to do next.
She was going to need to be very careful.
**********
Lieutenant Evans was a distinguished looking African American man who was wearing his full dress uniform.
He hadn’t made fun of her name, which was a point in his favor.
“I’m not sure how I can help you, Ms. Lane,” he said. “I’ve come to Walter Reed for some medical testing. They tell me there’s a problem with my heart that didn’t get diagnosed until recently.”
“Your son said your bosses called you and you had to leave right away.”
“You had no right to talk to my son!” The man grimaced and lowered his voice. He fumbled in a pocket for a small bottle of pills. “They tell me I have to take these now.”
He slipped a pill under his tongue.
“I was just trying to find out where you were staying,” Lois said. “I wanted to speak to you about why the military fingerprinted you and did retinal scans on you…took DNA.”
He glanced up at her sharply but didn’t say anything.
“They didn’t ask if you’d had a twin?”
His expression tightened.
“Maybe took you to see someone who looked just like you lying on a hospital bed…”
“I think you’d better leave,” he said. “I don’t have anything to say to the press.”
His expression had told her what she needed to know.
Being very careful was for the birds.
********
Wearily, Lois unlocked her door. She was halfway inside when she heard the sound of the television playing.
She was going to have to get her locks changed, sooner rather than later. At this rate, she should be charging her intruders rent.
She relaxed when she saw who it was. Clark Kent was laying on the floor near the television staring at the screen.
Around him were CD cases for her Superman collection. Although she’d never cared for the shows, her parents had insisted on gifting her with them, and after they were gone she’d continued the pattern.
Half the cases were opened, but what was on the television at the moment wasn’t on any CD.
Lois had gotten her big break in 2001, getting to report on the one story of the year that was going to be remembered in a hundred years. She’d been barely nineteen and fresh behind the ears, and she’d kept a copy of her report, along with other things surrounding it.
She was just narcissistic enough to have a friend tape ALL her reports. She watched them to critique herself and work on her stage presence.
It took her a moment to realize what was on the screen that had him so transfixed.
It was an image that had been burned into the mind of every American, one that had been played over and over and over again until it had been seared into the psyche.
Images of planes and fire and death.
