Free The Mongol Objective by David Sakmyster

color of socks he wears, we’ll know.”
    “That’ll help,” Orlando said, “if we ever get our laundry mixed up with this nut, but my guess is that if he doesn’t want to be found, then the only chance of finding him is our way.”
    “And,” said Phoebe, “we tried to find him for years after he left our group. And sorry, but we had better tools than you, and we couldn’t even get a glimpse. It’s like he was a ghost.”
    “Or he had some help,” said Caleb.
    “What do you mean?” Renée asked.
    “Never mind. It’s just a thought. There may be things, or people, who are able to block what we can do, where we can see. I’ve heard anecdotal evidence about it, but I thought that it was more like an excuse for failure. But maybe there’s something to it.”
    “Anyway,” Phoebe cut in, “come on, Agent Wagner. Try it. You might have a knack for it. We’ve had successes with the most skeptical of volunteers.”
    Renée sipped her coffee. “I don’t think I’ll have any—”
    “That’s okay,” Caleb said, his voice wracked with suffering and pain just below the surface. “It’s fine if nothing happens. We normally work as a team, but our team, well, I’m sure you know all about what happened in Antarctica.”
    “I know what was on the report, but as far as exactly what the hell happened down there I have no idea. Forgive me for asking this bluntly, but what are you people caught up in?”
    “Just research,” Orlando said, hands raised defensively.
    Caleb started to answer, but Renée was quicker. “And does ‘just research’ involve globe-trotting adventures into booby-trapped tombs, underwater shipwrecks and other Indiana-Jones-type shenanigans?”
    Phoebe and Orlando grinned in spite of themselves and said at almost the same time: “Sometimes.”
    #
    Twenty minutes later they were drawing. Caleb had given them instructions, what he felt were vague enough so as not to lead anybody, but also give enough direction to focus them on where he thought Xavier might be.
    I hope I’m wrong, he thought, after having them visualize Alexander, where he was now, and where he was headed. To focus on the destination, a place with a tomb.
    That was all. To say any more might influence the process too much. What he had given them was enough.
    He trusted Orlando and Phoebe, the best of the Morpheus Initiative members, to come up with the right answer, to remote view their destination and confirm his thinking. But for himself, he would attempt a different visionary destination. If he could, if it was at all possible. He was going to focus on Xavier himself. On Montross, the man, the psychic. The FBI might have their methods, but Caleb needed something more direct.
    He needed a first-hand experience, a psychic get-to-know-you of his adversary. His wife’s murderer, his child’s abductor.
    He wanted to see the man he was going to kill.
    #
    Phoebe finished her sketch first, then stared at it before turning her attention to her brother. Caleb was in a meditative pose, hands on his knees, eyes closed, brow furrowed in frustration. Orlando was drawing on his iPad, shading in what looked like a pillared structure on a hill.
    “I still get weirded out,” she said, turning her sketch pad his way, “when we have the same damn visions.”
    “Copycat,” Orlando said with a smirk.
    Renée looked over from the other side of the table. “So, is this what it’s like?”
    “More or less,” said Orlando. “Though usually we have a few more people here, and we can cross-reference details and see what elements get the most hits.”
    Renée turned her pad around. “See, I don’t have any talent. I drew some kind of horse and buggy thing.” On her pad was a crude sketch of two horses pulling a cart with two people inside. “Guess my mind was just wandering, but that’s all I saw.”
    “Interesting,” Phoebe noted. “You drew crowns on their heads.”
    “I knew it.”
    Phoebe looked up. Her brother’s eyes were