Free Off The Grid by Dan Kolbet Page B

at a low cost to consumers. Warren Evans’ first foray into wireless devices was a wireless electric vehicle charging station for garages. But that was small potatoes.
    Evans had never been happy with using conventional means and struck out to uncover a wireless solution that no one had tried before. Evans would take samples of minerals and various elements he personally discovered or that were sold to him and used them to test his wireless devices. After years of testing, Evans created a process that he claimed distilled common minerals, once thought of as having no practical value, into something that would conduct electricity. He mined this secret material in an area of Colorado called Pueblo Bluff.
    He called his material ARC and only StuTech had it.

 
     
    Chapter 12
    Seattle, Washington
     
     
    Steve Lunsford sat in his office reading the incoming reports. He was not happy. He was down to seven covert employees in the field – agents he called them. Each report was written in the manner he requested and delivered exactly as he had instructed, but it didn’t matter. His patience with the agents and funding to keep them up and running was wearing thin. He needed to show results or the project would get scrapped. His good buddy Warren Evans had made that abundantly clear to him.
    Millennium Optics had turned out four agents, but keeping up the veil of a legitimate business was difficult and expensive. Also he didn’t like to double up the agents in more than one location because it might raise suspicion at the hiring company. That meant most of his agents were working solo. Solo agents get lazy or make mistakes.
    He’d worked long enough in the international espionage world to know what the solitary life meant. He’d been trained by the best the United States government had to offer to assume an identity and carry out a task with no mistakes, no trace of his involvement. He’d gone three years alone in Europe during a deep undercover operation before his mission was complete. But he wasn’t the one in the field anymore. He did his best to train his agents to perform, spending weeks or months with each new recruit. But they were essentially playing themselves, not assuming a new identity that he could shape into a performer. They were completely vulnerable with few skills other than what they brought to the table. He looked at Luke Kincaid’s reports. He was a great example of ambition, but few skills.
    His people were spread too thin and he was tasked with covering too much ground. For years he had asked for more resources and more men, but was denied each time. It was a risky venture to protect an empire with a hodgepodge of everyday employees, but that was his role.
    StuTech was massive and had the resources to fund Lunsford’s programs indefinitely, but with the amount of government oversight it had to undergo every day, hiding his endeavors was more than a shell game. He had to work completely off the book and there was only so much money that could be funneled his way before raising suspicion. The agent program wasn’t even the most important one under his purview, but it was taking an enormous amount of time to cultivate.
    The report that sat in front of him detailed the laboratory set up at a medical equipment manufacturer in Tennessee that was testing a curious chemical mixture in one of its machines. The machine contained a laser that would strip away dead skin cells with a pulsing pattern. The latest model was an improvement on an old design, but featured a compound that wasn’t readily identified in the patent application. Lunsford needed to know what it was.
    It was the agent’s last report before he was fired from the equipment manufacturer.
    He had first met the agent at a diner in Illinois. Lunsford was eating a late dinner when a small man in the booth next to him, lifted the wallets of two men passing by in the span of 30 seconds. Lunsford watched as he stuffed the wallets into his Loyola