Drop Zone

by Amanda Carlson

  McAllister popped off the wall screen and up on her cuff in the next two seconds.

  Lee maneuvered so McAllister could get a good view of him, taking the drone controls like a champ.

  It was no use having Mina try to sell this plan to her director. She didn’t have the information stored in Lee’s brain to lay this out in a clear, objective way.

  “Um.” Lee cleared his throat. “There’s a way for us to get everything we need to build an airtight case against Waterbury. We believe all the vid data taken during the torture of Norman Webb is located on Travis Blade’s satellite Currency Reigns. Waterbury has his cams funneled to it, and I’m nearly one hundred percent certain that this satellite stores data. They keep the data up in space because it’s far safer than being here. They can detect and shut down a hack in split seconds. They’re ready for it. They have complex booby-traps to fry your equipment if you try to see what’s on there. But they’re not expecting a different kind of attack.”

  “And what kind of attack might that be, Agent Adams?” McAllister asked. His tone indicated he knew exactly what Lee was going to say next.

  Lee didn’t falter. “We bring it down. The whole satellite. We knock it out of the sky, and once it burns through our atmosphere, the stable heart that contains all the data is all that’s left. It’s built to withstand the heat of reentry. If we get to the heart before the Syndicate, we will have everything we need to make an arrest, and with vid of Norm’s torture, I believe Waterbury has a good chance of getting Babble. That would lead to more of the Syndicate being incarcerated for crimes they’ve committed.”

  “What’s stopping them from erasing the data remotely once they get the alert that it’s descending out of the sky?” McAllister asked.

  Mina’s eyebrows rose.

  She figured McAllister would start off deeming the idea out of their scope. But he hadn’t. He didn’t even sound shocked. It was more than surprising, but not unwelcome.

  “It’s technically impossible for them to do something like that,” Lee said. “Once it starts to fall, emergency shutdown is enacted. Everything is powered off, no signal, no current. It’s preventive so the data won’t be lost during the satellite’s descent and subsequent crash to Earth. The locking mechanism comes standard and can’t be overridden. The Syndicate will do everything they can to retrieve the stable heart. They will move quickly. But we have the advantage. We’ll know the trajectory minutes before they’ll be alerted by an internal mechanism. Those minutes will be crucial.”

  “I like it. I like it a lot,” Harmony murmured, bobbing her head. “Good thinking, Karmaseeker. That’s using your old noggin to good effect. It’s a big ask, but one that comes with crazy rewards.” Her fingers flew across her board. “According to history, this kind of thing has happened twelve times in the last twenty years.”

  “Lee said it’s happened twice,” Mina said.

  “Twice within the government,” Harmony amended, leaning forward, her eyes scanning quickly. She must absorb data at hyperspeed. “Or so they say. It’s pretty murky, as the government neither confirms nor denies. But there are ten more times that satellites have been purposely knocked out of the sky. Which means it’s way more than that, and to make it even more cryptic, many of them haven’t been reported or documented in the media for whatever reason. Some have lawsuits attached, some don’t.” She scanned what was in front of her. “Looks like there was a pretty major one about four years ago. It was a data snatch-and-grab. Some asteroid smuggler wanted the inside scoop on what his competitor was doing. He was prosecuted and sent to a box for ten years. In most of the other cases listed on the site, lawsuits that were drawn were ultimately dropped. Insurance was paid out. Some of these people made a small fortune.” She leaned back in her seat, flexing her fingers. “If we want to take Waterbury quietly and not set off any alarms, Agent Adams is one thousand percent correct. This is the way to do it. There’s no other way to get that data. Cam vid that shows the fixer torturing a federal marshal will bring the house down. I’d say we have more than a few minutes’ lead time to get ahead of the mob if we map the trajectory super carefully in advance. I know some hackers with pretty sweet programs built especially to do that. I bet we could get it up to ten to twelve minutes. If that happens, we get the stable heart. No question about it. We swoop in and pick it up. Then pry that sucker open. Plug in the data cards before the sneaky Syndicate knows what hit ’em. Agent Adams and myself must be on the scene. We risk losing it otherwise. After it lands, I’d say they wipe it clean inside of fifteen minutes.” She rubbed her hands together, smiling like a fiend. “We’re going to need somebody with crazy-big tools. And once we’re in”—she snapped fingers on both hands, looking extremely satisfied—“bam. We have the data we need and anything else Travis Blade is trying to hide.”

  Kaylee’s mouth gaped open a little. She clacked it shut. Mina felt the same way. “So you’re telling us the solution to this case is to knock a really huge, really expensive satellite out of the sky? Can we even do such a thing?” She turned to Mina.

  Mina didn’t have an answer, but McAllister did. “Doing something like this is possible. The approval route will be…complex, requiring both committee approval and judicial warrants. But it’s not impossible.”

  “I’ll say it’s complex,” Kaylee muttered. “It’s not like we can just hire a craft to ram it out of its lane. But getting into that nice, juicy stable heart sounds like what we need to bring this greater sucker in.”

  “Agreed,” Mina said. “My partner’s right. There’s going to be more for us to find on that data core. Particularly when we heard the Syndicate boss tell the guy who discovered Norm was missing that they couldn’t risk government involvement right now.”

  The odds were favorable that at least something more would be stored up there. But even if there wasn’t, retrieving the physical evidence against Waterbury so a warrant would be issued to give him Babble was what they’d been hoping for anyway. That alone would be huge. Anything else would be a bonus credit.

  “When are they not doing something illegal they don’t want us to know about?” Kaylee scoffed. “There’s a pretty good chance Waterbury’s cam data is up there, but there’s a possibility we won’t find anything else. The warrant to bring the satellite down has to be based on convicting Waterbury alone, not any conjecture, frackin’ or not.”

  Mina nodded, allowing herself to get a little more excited about the plan. A plan she’d thought a scant hour ago would be almost impossible. “If we can get a judge on board ahead of time, prepped with Webb’s verified testimony, and he agrees that if the vid feed is there and conclusive, Waterbury comes in and immediately gets Babble, it would be an arena ball goal for the win.”

  This might be the most complex case Mina had worked on to date. All the moving parts had to come together in precisely the correct way, or it could blow up in their faces, and they would lose their only chance at Waterbury and, in the process, tip off the Syndicate. The Syndicate would be angry at their interference. It wouldn’t be a question of if they would retaliate, it would be when.

  McAllister said, “If committee approval is granted, a judge will be asked to approve a warrant. That will require Norman Webb to provide an oral statement in front of that magistrate about ongoing, imminent threats to his life, as well as testimony about his torture at the hands of Waterbury. If we can do that, we have a good chance of following through with this plan. It will take me a few hours to bring this to the committee and see what their decision is. During that time, I want you four to come up with a precise work-through from beginning to end to carry this out. As soon as we have a warrant, we move. With this directly affecting Colonel Kramer, and the likelihood that the Syndicate will discover his involvement, we need a quick resolution. We owe it to him. I’ll report back when I know more.”

  He popped off Mina’s wrist.

  She stared at the vacant s
pace in quiet astonishment for a few seconds. That had gone much smoother than she’d anticipated.

  This crazy plan just might work.

  “Did that just happen? Tell me that just happened.” Kaylee appeared as shocked as Mina. “I’m having trouble believing that our esteemed director just gave us approval to move forward with a plan to knock a satellite out of the friggin’ sky.”

  “The Syndicate boss prefers the term ‘frackin’ sky.’ And he did. I’m pretty sure.” She still couldn’t completely believe it.

  But she did know this—they had a lot of frackin’ work to do.

  Chapter 9

  “No,” Harmony argued. “If we use the Bonsai Gattaca probe to knock Blade’s satellite out of orbit, the trajectory will be forty-two-point-seven. It’s simulated right here. See the arc?” She tapped her screen. “That probe is massive. It’s completely reinforced on the outside. I bet it won’t even sustain any lasting damage. That is, if we get permission. It’s owned by a privateer.”

  Lee shook his head, tugging his eyes from his compucase to hers. “You’re not taking into account the added mass of the interior lens. When you do, it changes it to a forty-two-point-nine. Watch my sim. See there? After this, we run it through the Orbital Crunch Stream to make extra sure. That accounts for interior weight automatically.”

  “Oh, yeeeah,” Harmony said. “I see now. Thank goodness you’re here, Seeker. You and the deetz go hand in hand.”

  Kaylee shook her head, grinning as she turned to Mina. “Their heads have been bobbed together under one big wizard helmet for over an hour. I don’t understand anything they’re talking about. But I like it. It makes me feel better about what we’re trying to do here.”

  “Yes. If it weren’t for them, we wouldn’t be here right now,” Mina replied. “We would’ve been forced to hand off this mission to another hacker-agent team.”

  “Have you acquired shuttle transpo to get us to the stable heart once it lands yet?” Kaylee asked from her position on Mr. Raphael’s lounger, compucase in her lap. Mina sat across from her on a chair. “I’m trying to figure out how we’re going to crack this thing open. Not an easy task. Plus, we have to be cognizant that whoever we bring in could either rat us out to the Syndicate or be put in their crosshairs. The more we do ourselves, the better.”

  “Yes.” Mina didn’t relish getting anyone else involved. If they could, they would stick to government resources. Privateers would be in a precarious situation trying to fend off retribution from the mob. “As far as the transport goes, the government has high-level stealth shuttles, but they’d be readily identified by anyone bothering to take a look. And we know extremely interested parties will be looking, so I’m seeking out other companies.” Using a rocket shuttle made the most sense. Their speeds broke the sound barrier and could get them where they needed to go the quickest.

  Kaylee sat back. “You know, we’re going to need the media to cover this instantaneously. Someone is going to see this thing blaze through the atmosphere and crash into Earth. Probably a lot of someones. The story we want needs to break. So how do we do that if this is a cloaked government mission?” She bit her nail. “In order to sell the story to the media and get them to run with it, we need somebody reliable, or a celebrity, or someone trustworthy to feed them a tidbit. Then the media does their own digging and finds that it’s Travis Blade’s satellite. Then, in tandem with that announcement, this reliable someone feeds them that an investigation is happening. Before anyone blinks, somehow a few major players are already in custody.” She shook her head. “Or, you know, something like that.” She slumped in her seat. “Unfortunately, it’s not that simple. The Mafia is going to suspect government involvement from the get-go. I don’t even know why we’re trying to hide it. Maybe we should just project a giant image of us all standing in a circle dressed in syn-leather, hands on hips, waiting for that thing to touch down. That would be a more accurate, and likely a juicier, story.”

  “The Syndicate will suspect us,” Mina agreed. “But if there’s a chance we can keep them confused, we take it. You’re right—media presence is key. The mob will react quickly to get their stable heart back, but if there’s a media storm, they’ll have to be more cautious about how they go about doing that. The Syndicate hates bad press. They take it as a personal affront. I don’t know what kind of celebrity you’re talking about.” Mina sighed. “And please don’t say Vince. He’s already in their sights.”

  “I’m not talking about Vince,” Kaylee pondered. “But, I mean, it could be. We should technically leave all hyperlanes open. He might volunteer to arrange it. He has contacts, and he could do it from afar. By the way, have you been able to get a hold of him and let him know about the possible DNA grab?”

  Mina glanced at her cuff. “No. I left him a message about thirty minutes ago. Nothing back so far.”

  “You’re pulling your worried face.” Kaylee frowned. “He’s a big boy. He holds a powerful position in a very prestigious military. He’s in charge of a lot of people. He has allies. He knows how to get out of a mess. He’s going to be fine.”

  “I know. But this fief allegation has me worried. It’s one of the biggest accusations—the leader of a major military force—I’ve ever heard about. The entire Protectorate could come crashing down, and in that chaos, Vince could easily become a casualty. If anyone finds out he’s asking the questions and thinking about pulling the trigger on exposing them, he’ll have a target on his back. You know as well as I do that people kill for less than that every single day.”

  Kaylee looked thoughtful for a moment. “I’m going to reiterate that I think he’s going to be fine and can take care of himself. Until we know otherwise, we stay out of the panic zone.”

  “For what it’s worth, I agree with Queenie over there,” Harmony injected. “Big, sexy Kramer is going to be fine. He’s crafty. I never got a chance to ask him if it was him dressed up in that old-man alt when he pulled one over on me.” Vince had used Harmony to get to her father, Strum Littlefield, a renowned hacker who’d recently been sprung from a box. “But if it was him, like I think it was, there wasn’t a hint of nervousness when he played me. I’m pretty sure he’s a master. He’s probably feeding his superiors all sorts of woe-is-me lines, like ‘I can’t wait to get back here,’ and ‘I hate America,’ and everything he can to lead them off the scent. That’s how he operates. Smooth as a creamy, silky piece of real chocolate dipped in syrupy caramel sauce.”

  Mina had no problem ignoring the sweets reference, but she had to come back to the first part. “I’m sorry, but Queenie?” Mina bounced her head between Kaylee and Harmony in her confusion.

  Kaylee shrugged. “I told you the other day the two of us are experimenting with nicknames. Remember kidlet? Well, today she’s supposed to be addressing me as the Queen of all Mentors. But apparently that nickname is too long for some to memorize.” She gave a knowing head bob in Harmony’s direction.

  “I shortened to Q-MENT, and she didn’t like it,” Harmony chuffed, her eyes still on her screen. “Picky, picky.”

  “That was supposed to be a play on last night’s G-MENT,” Kaylee commented, addressing Mina like she and Harmony weren’t participating in the same conversation. “Which I vetoed, of course. It wasn’t that I didn’t like it, it was more that it lacked pizzazz. Hear me? It has no pizzazz.”

  “You know, come to think about it, Queenie’s not really working for me either,” Harmony snarked. “It grants you too much status. Stuff like that goes right to your head and inflates it forty-seven-point-five pounds per centimeter. Doing that on a regular basis will impede your ability to function—like, at all.”

  “Nah,” Kaylee argued. “The brain capacity only goes up a few millimeters, not pounds, and I can deal with that. I can still get through a door. Queenie is acceptable for the time being. Maybe next time add in a nice ‘of the universe’ or ‘nonpareil.’” Kaylee waggled
her perfectly sculpted eyebrows. “For you laypeople, that means without equal, which is totally and completely the truth.”

  Mina rolled her eyes, chuckling.

  Her cuff beeped, and she stood. “I’m going to take this. It’s Quinn.” She walked toward Mr. Raphael’s sleep room as she ordered, “Engage, voice only. Hi, Quinn.”

  “Hey, sis,” Quinn replied. “Is this a good time?”

  “Good enough,” Mina replied. “I have a few minutes.”

  “It’s about dinner tonight. Are you going?”

  “Um, what dinner?”

  “Mom and Dad are home from their trip. Mom wants to have a family dinner tonight. She said she told you.”

  “She must’ve left a message,” Mina said. “She only hits me at work if it’s an emergency. That’s our agreement. A message is probably waiting for me at my residence. I’ll check after this.”

  “Like I told you the other day, I want to bring Daphne,” he continued. “But only if you come. I don’t want it to be awkward and weird for her. I mean, our parents are nice and relatively easy, but they’re still, you know, parents.”

  “I’m sorry to disappoint,” Mina said. “But there is a very slim chance I’ll be free for dinner tonight.”