Above From Below: Part 3

Above From Below Part I, Part 2

Rick needed a drink, and Mac’s place was as secure as anywhere he and the mysterious Major Kohl could have some privacy and get out of the rain. There was a commitment in her eyes. She had a purpose for being there. Rick needed to know what was so important that she’d hunt him down to tell it to him instead of appearing at the office. They clearly had to have been watching for him to leave the building.

The bar was barely open, and the flooding was starting to enter through the walls. It wasn’t an ideal place to host a meeting, but aside from one of the old-timers and McKenzie, nobody was around. Rick pointed at the corner booth, telling the major to meet him over there. He went to the bar and grabbed two drinks, cracking a slight smile as he saw McKenzie behind the bar, wearing hip waders.

“You expecting it to get worse?” he asked her.

McKenzie didn’t smile. She pointed to the weather report on the tube. As she poured the two drinks, both scotches, Rick watched the captioning as the weatherman reported there was the likelihood of another full day of rain. It was unimaginable how much rain they were getting. Especially after the years of drought, leaving sections of the river dried up enough that people could walk out to the islands.

“Do you have sandbaggers coming to reinforce things?”

McKenzie looked at him, dipping her head. She could barely afford to keep the lights on, much less pay sandbaggers to work. She shook her head side to side.

“Don’t worry,” he told her. “Some of the boys will be here to help. We’ll keep this place from going underwater.”

Rick picked up the drinks and meandered over to the booth where the Army Major was waiting. He set the drinks down, put his smoke in an ashtray, and told her he was all ears. Before she began, she took a sip from the harsh liquor, then another. What she was about to do constituted disobeying a direct order, and sharing classified secrets with a civilian authority was likely an act of treason. She needed the booze to calm her nerves.

“Your brother’s accident, the one you keep making inquiries about, what made you so sure it wasn’t an accident?” she asked Rick.

Rick knew his brother well. He knew Nico was a smart kid, with a bright future, but a bit of a nerd. The accident report indicated Nico had been traveling at a high rate of speed. Locals reported he had to have been going near 100 miles an hour to have hit hard enough for the car to burst into flames. There was no way that Nico would have been driving his car like that. Next to his mother and his girlfriend, Nico loved that car more than anything in the world.

“Why is an Army major dug in on a traffic crash investigation?” asked Rick.

Andrea opened the file, but it wasn’t the accident investigation file that he thought it was. There was a report inside the file, a classified debriefing file.

“What is this?”

“Did you know what your brother was working on?”

Rick replied, “He was in college, working on his graduate degree.”

“Did you know that he’d had a change of heart, that he wanted to do something else?” she asked.

“He hadn’t said anything?” sighed Rick. “So, what was he into?”

She explained, “At the time of his demise, Nico was working for the Southwest Texas Observatory. He was interning there with about a handful of other interns. On the night of his 'accident, ' the observatory went on alert. He made one phone call.

“So, I’m sure they have an egghead they report to.”

“That’s just it,” she told Rick. “Look at the call logs. Nico called this person,” she pointed at the log.

“Then, the professor contacted this number,” she explained. “That number goes to the PDN director.”

“Why is this important?”

“Rick,” she sighed, “The professor was killed in his residence the same night Nico was killed in that so called accident.”

Rick's head swirled as it all started to come together. He'd always found the paperwork suspicious, making his brother's accident questionable. Now, there was a line forming. For both he and his professor to end up dead on the same night; well, that's too coincidental. But why now? Why, after this long, was this being brought up?

"Did he call you, talk to you at all, give you any hints he was into something dangerous?"

"Why does any of this matter to you?" Rick asked, his hand now resting at his side, fingers clenching around the grip of his pistol.

"Because," she dropped her head, a small tear starting to streak down the side of her cheek. "It's taken me this long to find you, and the trails getting colder."

"That's not good enough," Rick told her, sternly looking her in the face as he pulled his gun up above the table. "Whatever you're doing, you better get straight with me, real fast!"

Andrea sighed. The professor over the astronomy program; he was her father.