An Untitled Novel

As Basil sat still a flood of recent events rushed through his mind.

“You are sure you are ready to do this?” ACE asked Basil, who was spreading out a tarp. “Yeah, I’m feeling alright. Let’s get this jet ready.” Several maintenance drones climbed onto the tarp and Basil began to drag them towards the hangar. Unlike his first outing, he found the landscape to be awe inspiring. The sky was lit up with the most amazing shades of red imaginable, and a few stars were still visible in the dusky sky. The snow and ice reflected the light, shimmering in such a way as to give the world a magical feel. Even the mountains, though partially illuminated and slightly foreboding, were breathtaking. They carried something of a majestic presence and their size and permanence brought on an oddly calming feeling of insignificance. Basil finally arrived at the hangar he woke up in. He left quickly, hands shaking, as the maintenance drones got to work on the jet.

Basil now sat in the same jet, which began to turn on as ACE ran through pre-flight checks. It had been nearly a week since ACE began working on the jet and the false documents that would conceal Basil’s unknown identity - at least hopefully. They were beginning to run very low on supplies, however, so despite the risks such a trip was a necessity. Basil had largely healed up, though had a very mild consistent pain down his spine. A small drone flew out ahead as the door to the hanger opened, though only a couple of minutes had passed and the drone had already returned. “It appears that our hypothesis is correct, we can poke a hole in our mysterious ghost mountain if I give a location to the mysterious machine that’s directly to the generator.”

ACE indicated that they would soon be ready to take off. “Good” thought Basil. They were both eager to see what exactly lay beyond the facility aside from what information the drone and cameras could collect, and Basil was eager to be out of the hangar that haunted his dreams. “We are all ready, I am prepping you for your flight now” ACE stated as the door to the hanger opened again and the jet engines kicked on. Basil saw the jet move as he looked through the cockpit windows, and soon enough the nose of the plane had exited the hanger of dread. Moments later he was already in the air and looking back at the mysterious mountain that ACE was busy collecting readings on.

Basil began to doze off, but his attention was brought back as ACE spoke over the intercom. “We will be nearing the airstrip shortly, put your seatbelt and earphones back on.” Basil realized that he was looking out over land as opposed to the endless ocean that he had been staring at previously. “Okay, let the customs do the fake sweep, then walk out of the airport to the rental place just down the hill.” ACE replied with a short “Yes, be careful, but it should go fine” and Basil added another comment jokingly. “That officer is going to be real pissed when he finds out that wire transfer was fake.” Basil could tell that, despite ACE’s monotone voice, he didn’t find the situation quite as humorous. “We will be long gone by the time he figures that out, but this is going to burn the best location we can get supplies from.”

Basil heard a click in his headphones and prepared to speak with air traffic control as if he were the pilot of the jet. Air traffic control relayed a bunch of jargon in Spanish that Basil didn’t understand, but ACE told him to remain quiet for the time being. Eventually air traffic control spoke again, and even with Basil’s limited Spanish skills he was able to understand what was said. “(November-three-five-four, enter left tailwind for runway three).” At ACE’s prompt Basil repeated the statement, also in Spanish. “(November-three-five-four, entering left tailwind on runway three)” and the plane slightly adjusted its course under ACE’s control. Basil began to be worried at the continued silence, but right as ACE began to reassure Basil that all was fine the control tower spoke again. “(Three-five-four you are cleared for landing),” and at ACE’s direction Basil replied to the control tower “(Three-five-four cleared for landing).” The plane made a smooth landing, and the bribed customs officers made their way towards it.

The officers went through the motions of a sweep, but even an uninitiated Basil could tell that it was only the motions. Eventually they asked for a passport, but as Basil showed his fake passport to them they returned it quickly, and he could have sworn they didn’t even read which country it was supposedly from. Soon enough he was walking out of the plane and through the wide open airport. It was exactly like ACE described it, absolutely immaculate, built for the ultra wealthy and the occasional drug smuggling operation. Eventually he made it out of the airport and down the road slightly to the rental office, which checked his passport more thoroughly than the corrupt customs officer did, before handing him a set of keys. Basil climbed into the large work van, which appeared to be in good condition but slightly rusted by the warm salty breeze, and drove off to find supplies.

Basil began to make several trips, each time loading up the van before returning to the plane. Basil watched the expression of the increasingly confused corrupt customs official. He tried to guess what the official’s thought process resembled. First trip, sure, everybody needs to eat. On the second or third trip he was probably really confused, “Who the fuck pays to smuggle construction materials and saline solution?” he could imagine the official thinking. That, or the official just thought Basil was a really good smuggler. Whatever the case, as the day was starting to turn into evening he only had one more leg of his journey: load the van with as much scrap metal as he could before hitting the skies again. ACE directed Basil to the location of a small scrapyard, and Basil began to make his way in that direction.

“(Hello, I find metal here?)” Basil asked in poorly spoken Spanish. The guy at the gate chuckled slightly, “Don’t worry, I speak English, got a brother out in Orange County. I’m Carlos” Basil smiled, “Good, because that was probably my best Spanish of tonight. I’m Pat.” Carlos started leading Basil into the fenced off portion of the scrap yard and spoke again. “So Pat, where are you from?” Basil replied with the story he had decided on. “Well I’m originally from New Jersey, but took a job with a chemical company down here not that long ago.” Carlos seemed slightly amused. “Hey, my brother’s an accountant for a chemical plant up north. But I’m not surprised you’re an expat, not a lot of tourists buy scrap metal and circuit boards in these parts.” Basil eventually finished collecting all the supplies he could fit in his van, and after paying Carlos the equivalent of a few hundred dollars the two wished each other well and Basil climbed back into the van.

ACE began to relay instructions to return, but Basil had only been driving for under a minute when he stopped at an intersection. While waiting for a chance to pass through a woman in tie dye ran up screaming something about somebody being hurt and banged on the passenger side of Basil’s van. After a moment to process what was happening Basil got out of the van, and not fully sure how to handle the situation followed the woman as she frantically gestured for Basil to go down a short alleyway. The alleyway itself looked run down, with some graffiti mixed with crumbling concrete and trash surrounding the nearby restaurant’s dumpster. Those, however, were not the focal point that Basil’s attention gravitated towards. Three people, probably teenagers, stood around a handful of what appeared to be backpackers. One of the three had a bloody nose, but held a bloody knife as he went through the backpack of one of the backpackers. A backpacker with an infinity tattoo sat on the ground nearby, holding his stomach which was likely the cause of the blood on the knife.

“Hey” yelled Basil as authoritatively as he could, not sure how to respond to the situation. The three kids spoke at the same time, and Basil couldn’t make out anything other than the obvious fact they were none too pleased with the presumed American. The one with the knife started to approach Basil, and Basil quickly started fumbling for his handgun. Everyone looked towards Basil as he pulled it out, and the kid holding the knife started rushing towards Basil. Basil aimed it at his attacker and intended to aim for his chest, but fired early and hit him somewhere on his abdomen. The one kid fell to the ground clutching his stomach, the other two fled, and Basil bolted back towards his van while the woman yelled something about not leaving them there. As Basil made his way back to his van he saw a car with two men closely observing his actions. The two seemed to have firearms that were printing beneath their clothes, and given they didn’t do anything about the man that just shot somebody in the street he reasoned they weren’t cops or affiliated with any sort of organized crime the kids might have been affiliated with.

One thing was sure, however, he was being watched. He jumped into the van and sped off, barely avoiding a collision as he sped through the intersection. “What part of under the radar do you not understand?” ACE chastised him as he returned to driving. “I don’t know, she was yelling and I didn’t think it through.” ACE seemed slightly more understanding, but still unhappy. “Well, it is done and I see you are back and made it in one piece. Did you notice your tail?” Basil looked in the mirror where he could see the car he saw earlier was still following him. “Yeah, I saw them when I was running.” ACE had even more disturbing information to provide as Basil started to speed up and began losing the car. “I ran some facial recognition, those two are listed as diplomatic staff at the American embassy.” Basil replied “Shit, what do you think-?” but ACE cut Basil off to chastise him. “Slow down, they will have no trouble catching up if you are pulled over, and getting pulled over after shooting someone is not something that would benefit us right now.”

“Do you think he’ll survive?” Basil asked, concern in his voice as he began to slow down. “Police scanner says two individuals with wounds to their abdomens have been taken by ambulance, both of them should survive. What happened back there?” Basil tried to control his hands which had started shaking as he gripped the steering wheel ever tighter.

“That woman that was yelling at me, I think she was some sort of backpacker or tourist freaking out about somebody in her friend group getting stabbed in a robbery that went bad. When I got there one of the robbers came at me with a knife.”

ACE seemed to silently process that information, but before any more was said Basil had arrived at the airport. Pulling up next to the jet he began to rapidly load up the jet with scrap metal, before abandoning the rented van nearby and returning to take off.