Drop Zone

by Amanda Carlson

  The same theory would apply to Waterbury, so maybe what Lee was suggesting wasn’t so extreme after all. Who knew how many people Waterbury would go after once he was free and clear? He would certainly cover his tracks. Being funded and protected by the Syndicate would only make that part easier.

  Bringing the satellite down might be their only real chance to get charges to stick.

  “Yes. They really knocked it out of the sky,” Lee said. “According to the data, Malcolm Hammer was a genius. On the Mind Galaxy scale, he was off the charts. Graduated from advanced programming at age twelve. Built a gaming empire by twenty. He was not only a virtual gaming champ—one of the best of all time—he wrote and created all his own virtual experiences. Many of which were operated out of a massive satellite. It was one of the first of its kind, if I remember correctly. I was pretty young at the time, but I remember being awed. His MO was to invite specific people to demo a brand-new game, but in order to do so, they had to complete what he called a ‘background check.’ It was the way in which he siphoned their personal data. Then, once they logged into the game through his private network, he would begin to download their home sim accounts and everything personal they had connected to it. That’s how he found the perfect victim.” The thought of this man with his evil green eyes preying on unsuspecting innocents made Mina furious. “Then he would set up holo interactions with the women until they felt comfortable with him. He would then convince them to meet him at a location of his choice. All of these interactions were masked. There were no records found of the holo meets or anything from the victim side, because he would wipe all the evidence clean. He controlled their sims, their cuffs, their boards. Everything. They never had a chance.”

  Mina whistled low. “I remember it now that we’re talking about it. He mutilated them. Then he got sloppy. That’s how they found him. He left some DNA behind.”

  Lee nodded. “He did, but everything about him here on Earth was squeaky clean. That’s when they decided to take the satellite down. It’s all here in the report. There’s a lot redacted, but I got the gist. Maybe McAllister has clearance to read it all. I mean, what they did to catch him is what we want to do. It could help our case.”

  “It definitely could.” Mina’s cuff beeped. “This is Agent Kane.”

  “Hiya,” Kaylee said. “We’re about to enter the Meridian. Have Lee zap the lobby and hallway cams.” She didn’t have to tell Lee, he was already on it.

  “All clear. Come on up.”

  “Okay. See you in two.”

  Mina stared out one of Mr. Raphael’s solar-catch windows, hands on her hips. “If we get permission to do this, it’s going to be a massive in-coordination-with endeavor. We’re going to need a lot of help.” She turned. “It will likely be multidepartmental, possibly involving the military. It’s hard to keep something like that quiet—”

  Lee sucked in a breath, his eyes locked on his compucase.

  She rushed to his side. “What?”

  He gestured at his screen. “When I looped the cams, I checked all the key areas. These three guys just emerged from a waste room on level ten near the public hub. They’re holding some heavy-duty titanium cases, and they don’t quite fit. Warn Agent Poston and Harmony. We don’t want them crossing paths.”

  Mina tapped her cuff.

  “What’s up?” Kaylee asked. “We’re almost to you.”

  “Change of plans. We’ve got possible company. Send Harmony through and reroute yourself back to the lobby. Jump floors, stay off of ten and fifty and out of the tubes for another five. Find a place out of sight once you’re downstairs. Be ready to enact an extremely quiet tail. Three perpetrators, classic mob, holding large titanium cases.”

  “Got it.” Kaylee didn’t question her. “I’ll be ready and waiting.”

  Mina walked over and pulled open Mr. Raphael’s door, anticipating Harmony’s imminent tube arrival. A ding sounded. It took Harmony under three seconds to slide into the residence. She already had her compucase open and was typing as she sat down.

  “Let’s see who’s coming to visit, shall we?” she murmured. In less than four seconds, she homed in on them. “Oh, yeah, they do look crooked and spooky. Who wears sunshades inside? Those kinds of disguises went out more than fifty years ago. And look at their icky iced-back hair. Only goons wear their hair like that. The individual hair rows look like fat noodles stuck on top of their head with sticky elastomer. How can they not know they’re announcing themselves as bad guys?” She tsked. “So dumb. But yay for us. Those cases they’re holding are huge. Could be examination equipment, heavy-duty cleanup, or both. They’re boarding a tube. Next stop, level fifty. Or, you know, we’re wrong, and they’re visiting their elderly grandmother and bringing her cases full of yummy soup.” Waterbury’s residence was on level fifty. Harmony glanced over at Lee’s compucase. “They’re in tube number thirteen.”

  Lee flicked his feed over, looking mildly abashed. Harmony, being Harmony, was steps ahead. “They seem really confident,” he said. “Like they’re on a mission.”

  “There’s no fear in their body language.” Mina watched the three men in the tube. They didn’t speak and kept their heads down. “They’re being cautious, but not overly so. They certainly don’t think anyone is taking notice. My guess is that Waterbury figured Norm was dead. After all, he did stick him in the side yesterday.” Among other things. Norm had been on the brink of death. “Waterbury must have called in cleanup, knowing he can’t get to his residence until later this evening. He must be in a rage. Things didn’t go according to plan. Poor, poor Wilbert.”

  There was no way to stop these guys from discovering Norm was not inside the residence. And with the amount of equipment they were carrying, they would perform an analysis once they found him missing, including a DNA search. That was the most logical approach anyway.

  “I can shut the tube down,” Harmony suggested. “Give it a nice little jerk. Make it seem like it’s about to plunge. That should put some fear in them. It’ll slow them down for a minute or two.”

  “No. We need more than a few minutes,” Mina said. “We have no choice but to let them proceed with their mission. We also don’t want to give away that the government is paying attention or that there’s any outside interference. We stay beneath the radar, though I’m happy we get to watch. Are you recording?”

  Both Lee and Harmony confirmed at the same time with matching snorts. Of course they were.

  “Here they come,” Harmony said. “Level fifty, just like we thought. Grandma doesn’t get her soup today.”

  The burly men made their way down to Waterbury’s door slowly and confidently.

  “They’re not checking for any tampering,” Mina murmured, eyes locked on the screen. “They don’t think anybody’s been in there.” That was a good thing.

  Harmony flicked a few keys on her compucase. She typed faster than anyone Mina had ever seen. “I’m inside the residence. I removed the still images last night and replaced them with my homemade video, so we have live feed. But only from the cams controlled by the sim, not the ones in the utility room that are hooked to the satellite. I’m working on audio now. It’ll just take a second. I want to make sure it doesn’t trigger anything or mess up the vid I planted showing Webb trying to break out.”

  Harmony had strung together a bunch of still images of Norm in his battered state and animated them with Waterbury’s residence as a backdrop. Mina hadn’t watched it yet, but she knew it was crude. It’d been the best they could do in the moment. It was meant to confuse Waterbury into thinking Norm didn’t have any help, not stand up under Syndicate hacker scrutiny.

  Once inside the residence, the men moved down Waterbury’s short hallway single file and turned out of sight. Harmony switched to another cam, one that highlighted the front of the utility room, which had been left open and unlocked.

  Mina leaned in closer. />
  One man glanced into the room, then waved another guy over. It took a second, but all three men began to physically panic, each shaking his head and looking at one another. Then all three split up to search the rest of the residence. It didn’t take long, as there were only four other rooms.

  Mina’s stomach sank as she watched one of the men put his wrist near his lips.

  His voice came over Harmony’s compucase a second later. “The target is missing. I repeat, the target is missing.”

  A very faint response issued out of the man’s cuff. “What do you mean the frackin’ target is missing? It’s not missing, it’s dead. That’s why you’re there!”

  “There’s no one here, boss,” the man confirmed.

  “That can’t be. Willie said he was in there. Locked him up himself. He hasn’t been back.”

  “He ain’t here.”

  “Well, then, watch some frackin’ forsaken vid feed and figure out what the hell happened in there!” It came out as a bark, loud enough that Mina could catch every word. “Then swab it down. The works. Nothing untouched. That guy was a marshal, for frackin’ sake. We can’t have this leak and have the government snooping around. Too much is at stake right now.”

  Interesting.

  What was at stake more so now than any other day? Likely nothing special, crime as usual for the Syndicate. But maybe not. This sounded particular. There was more than an echo of unease coming from that coughing bark over the man’s cuff.

  Once Mina sent a recording to Tech, they would figure out which Syndicate boss the voice belonged to. Mina imagined it was Travis Blade, but only because that would be convenient.

  A man called from another room. “Willie didn’t give us access to his sim. No way to play it back. Everything’s ’crypted.”

  “Fine!” the voice shouted from the cuff. “Full sweep. Right now. I want everything. Find out how he escaped. I’ll send someone over to talk to Willie. I have to get him out of that monitored frackin’ jail cell.” Almost too softly for them to catch, he ended with, “That guy is going to get us all fracked up the behind with his personal vendetta.”

  The man was fond of the word fracking, apparently.

  And fond of shouting out admissible evidence.

  Mina would take it.

  Chapter 8

  “The sweep was thorough,” Mina reported to her director, who was positioned on Mr. Raphael’s screen, where the satellite feed had just been. “They swabbed every surface multiple times.” It’d taken the three men inside of an hour to get everything done. “Nobody talked, other than a few grunts. They didn’t call their boss back. I sent the vid to Tech for a voice match.”

  “I have Waterbury on lockdown, no visitors,” McAllister said. “Sanctioned and ordered by the official counseling office. He’s not going anywhere, but can receive messages and will likely give authority to whoever is requesting to use his sim, and that person will subsequently watch the vid Ms. Biggins created. The vid is very rough. They will be suspicious and have it analyzed. They will hopefully think Norm had a friend help him, however, not the federal government.”

  Mina cleared her throat. “There’s a very high likelihood they captured Colonel Kramer’s DNA in their sweep. They went over everything meticulously.” She’d watched the entire thing with a sinking heart. “His DNA profile won’t pop for an average search, but their hackers are the best of the best.” As confirmed by Lee and Harmony, who were their best of the best. “The Syndicate won’t make their findings public, but chances are they will eventually target him, even if it’s just to monitor his whereabouts. He’s an eyewitness to a heinous crime, perpetuated by one of their own. As you heard from the audio I sent of the thugs inside the unit, they want to keep this very low profile. Whichever boss was giving them direction must have something large-scale in the works. He called that out specifically.”

  Behind Mina, Mr. Raphael’s door clicked open, and Kaylee walked in.

  Mina nodded at her pal to go ahead and give her report.

  “They were pros,” Kaylee said, facing the screen. “After exiting the building, all three broke apart almost instantaneously, each moving quickly and efficiently in a different direction. I tailed one to the end of the block. He entered a high-rise and took the tube up to the roof. An unmarked craft was waiting. I’m assuming each man did the same. Even if we had drones circling the air space, we wouldn’t have been able to maintain a tail. These guys were looking, too. I had to do some pretty ace pretending as a casual shopper. The one guy kept looking over his shoulder.” She sat down on Mr. Raphael’s compact lounger, glancing around. “Fill me in on what went down here so I’m up on things.”

  “Those three came in, found Webb missing,” Mina told her, “and did a full sweep of the residence. They didn’t have access to Waterbury’s sim, but they’ll get it soon enough. They’ll view it remotely with his permission. No need to come back. However, they’ll likely send in a cleaning crew. These guys left without mopping up.”

  Kaylee nodded. “Kramer was careful when he went in to get Webb yesterday. He sprayed his hands and wore a hat, but we know DNA sprinkles.”

  Harmony added, “Yeah, and he had to act fast to get Webb out, so shedding will be expected. According to my data analysis, there’s a ninety-nine-point-seven-five chance of them catching his DNA. Not only are the Syndicate hackers good, they have diamond-point tech. They have access to stuff that’s not even on the market yet. They pay big currency for whatever’s latest. If they only captured a quarter strand of Kramer’s helix, they’d suss it out. And no public blocks are going to stop them. They’ll know it’s him inside of six hours, is my guess.”

  Lee, who had been nodding along, agreed. “I’d say four to six hours is accurate.”

  Mina hadn’t shared Vince’s call with anyone, as she was reporting to her director for only the first time since she’d arrived at Mr. Raphael’s. She’d told Vince that she would be confiding in her director and her partner, but she had to believe that he would be okay with Kaylee and Harmony knowing as well.

  She trusted everyone in this room with her life.

  “I spoke with a certain colonel less than an hour ago,” Mina reported. “Everything I’m about to relay is first-class confidential. No speaking of it outside this room. I was given permission by the colonel-in-arms himself to reveal this, but his safety is on the line.” Everyone here knew what that meant and would honor it. Even though Harmony hadn’t been sworn in as an agent yet, Mina was absolutely certain she would not divulge anything. She was a hacker first. They kept things cloaked as a way of life. “He was relocated to his home base in the early hours of this morning. Not by choice. They’ve been grilling him about his involvement with the US government, searching for details about the cases he’s worked while he’s been here, singling me out in particular. He’s given them very little, as he’s honoring his nondisclosures.” She paused, deciding to veer even wider on the next part, not wanting to say everything out loud just yet. McAllister was on a secure channel from headquarters, but they were in a civilian’s residence. One they didn’t know much about. “He has a hunch that everything may not be as it seems inside his bubble.” She met Kaylee’s inquiring gaze. “I would compare it to the Fiefer case.”

  There was no case by that name, but fief was the word they used as code for double agent.

  Kaylee gasped.

  McAllister made a sound resembling a cough. “Are you certain?”

  “As certain as I can be with the information I was given directly by the man himself.” Lee appeared confused, and Mina shot him a look. He nodded, understanding that she would explain it later. “He was inside an isolation chamber for privacy. He won’t be able to speak as freely the next time.”

  Mina wasn’t worried about understanding his clues. After all, they’d been speaking a similar language their entire lives.

  “This is
…unprecedented information,” McAllister settled on. They all seemed as shocked as Mina had felt when she’d first heard it.

  “Are we talking about the king in the Fiefer case?” Kaylee asked, her voice expressing her incredulousness.

  She was asking if Ambrose Bernard was the one who Vince thought was the double agent.

  “Yes, we are,” Mina confirmed. “But please remember, as I’m relaying what was told to me, it’s all hearsay based on feelings and speculation. Absolutely nothing is verified at this moment.”

  “Just alleging such a thing could place him in considerable danger,” McAllister said.

  Mina tried not to think about what that would look like. Vince was competent. He would handle himself.

  “I told him that. I also indicated that you would be open to crafting a memo highlighting the cases he’s helped us with and verify who I am. Something brief and nonspecific. I figured we owed him that much since he’s helped us in an agent capacity while he’s been here. If that’s not appropriate, that’s fine. He gave one of the watchdogs my name when we were trying to get into the vid star’s residence yesterday. I’m not sure how much detail you gave them when you debriefed them on the ship-jumping case, but they may require a little more.” McAllister had met with both Ambrose Bernard and Vince after they’d taken the ship full of Veritus members into custody. “They seem to be targeting my involvement specifically, and the lack of information they’re finding on me is making them suspicious of his allegiance.”

  McAllister was quiet for a few moments. “I did not name any of my agents during the debriefing. I gave them very little, in fact. If they try to figure out who you are, which it seems they are, it would be a very dry trail. I can see how that would flummox them and possibly cause them to question one of their own’s intentions.”

  Mina figured her director had been brief with the debrief. “My next priority will be to contact him so I can fill him in about what’s going on here. He needs to be informed that a large crime organization has his DNA so he can take the appropriate precautions.” Mina figured this was the best time as any to move on with this case. “In light of the escalating situation with Waterbury and the Syndicate knowing there’s been interference, I feel it’s time to make some decisions. We’ve been working on a possible solution to our problem, but I’m going to let my partner explain it.” She gestured toward Lee. His eyes went wide. “But before we do, let’s change the channel of communication. Just to be safer. I’ll summon you back up on my cuff,” she told her director.