“What the hell is going on? Who was that guy with the ax?”
“I don't know, but we have to move. You can’t stay here; people want you dead. Powerful people. Our only chance is to keep moving.”
A short, nervous-looking Chinese man ran up behind Sean. He looked back and forth between Sean and Caine. “Who the hell are you?” he asked.
Caine nodded towards the man. “Never mind that, who is he?”
“Alton. He’s with me.”
Caine shook his head. “No, I came for you. He’ll slow us down. The doors are all unlocked; the guards have their hands full. He can find his own way out.”
“I said he’s with me.” Sean’s voice took on a stubborn, hard edge. Caine recognized the tone. He had argued with Jack many times. He didn’t recall winning many of those arguments, either.
Caine looked down into the holding room below. The guards were gone. He knew they would be heading upstairs to intercept them. They could be in the corridor in seconds.
“Fine," he said. "Let’s go, we have to move.” He marched towards the shattered door of Sean’s room and turned right. Sean and Alton jogged behind him.
“You know, you still haven’t told us who you are.”
“That’s kind of a long story,” Caine said as he opened the door to another stairwell.
“Funny … my dad used to say exactly the same thing. Whenever I asked him a question he didn’t want to answer.” Sean followed Alton down into the dark stairwell. He paused and looked up at Caine. “Before, you said you knew my dad … past tense.”
Caine closed the door and drew his revolver from inside his jumpsuit. He pushed past Sean and Alton, taking the point position on the stairs. “There’s no time for that now. I’ll explain everything later.” He descended into the darkness of the stairwell.
Sean gave him a sullen look, then clanged down the metal stairs after him. “Yeah, right. He used to say that all the time too,” he muttered.
Caine guided Sean and Alton through the dark, winding corridor that led to the service garage. As they scrambled behind him, Alton grabbed Sean’s shoulder.
“Hey,” he whispered. “This is bad, we could get in big trouble. Maybe we should stay? How do you know we can trust this guy?”
Sean shrugged. “He didn’t try to cut me into pieces with an ax.”
Caine glared back at them. “You’re free to stay here if you want.”
Alton shook his head. “No, never mind, thank you.”
They came to the service door. Caine paused and turned to them. “Listen up. There’s a white van parked about ten yards straight ahead. There’s a woman inside the van; she’s a friend. When I open this door, you run to that van and get inside as fast as you can. If there are any guards, I’ll lay down cover fire. You keep running. Don’t stop, don’t hesitate, just run, got it?”
The two men nodded.
Caine took a breath, and put his hand on the door. “We go on three. One … two … three!”
Caine threw the door open and sprinted into the garage.
The huge, dark garage was the same as he had left it. Dark slicks of oil still stained the concrete floor. Dim fluorescent lights beamed down from overhead. But one thing was different.
The white van was gone.
Caine ducked behind a metal dumpster as a trio of guards jogged into the garage from the front entrance.
“Get down,” he hissed. “Over here!”
Sean and Alton didn’t listen. They kept sprinting straight ahead as he had ordered them. The guards saw them and immediately raised their pistols.
“Bei dong! Don’t move!”
Sean saw the guards advancing with their guns drawn. Like a deer in headlights, he froze. Alton stopped a few feet away, turning his head left and right. “Where is it? There’s no van!”
Caine popped out from behind the dumpster. “Back here, now!” he shouted. The men pivoted and sprinted towards the dumpster. Caine fired twice, sending two shots towards the guards. One shot missed and sparked against the concrete floor. The other struck the lead guard’s leg, and he stumbled to the ground.
The other two guards opened fire. Their bullets ricocheted off the dumpster as the two men dove for cover.
“There’s no van!” Sean shouted.
“I see that,” Caine snapped back. “It took longer than I thought to get out. I guess she had to leave.”
“So now what?”
Another hail of bullets slammed into the dumpster. Caine ducked around the corner and returned fire. He aimed for the ground near the fallen guard. His shots kicked up chips of concrete near the man’s feet. The other two guards stopped firing. They grabbed the arms of their wounded partner and began to drag him out of the garage.
Caine ducked back behind the dumpster. He had bought them a few seconds, but the men would be back once their comrade was out of the line of fire.
Caine flipped open the cylinder of the revolver. He had one shot left.
“I don’t know … Maybe we go back inside, try another way out. Or—”
The roar of an engine drowned out Caine's words. Brakes squealed as the battered white van lurched into the garage. It barreled towards the guards at full speed.
“Kan de chulai, look out!” The two guards standing opened fire on the van. Caine winced as their shots struck the windshield. The pane of glass shattered into a spider web of cracks, but the van continued charging towards them. They stopped firing and dove out of the way, leaving the wounded guard on the ground.
The van’s tires squealed in protest as the lumbering vehicle swerved around the fallen guard. Then it skidded to a stop, a few feet from the dumpster. Jia opened the side door and waved to them.
“Get in, move!” she shouted.
“You heard the lady, go, go!” Caine ordered. Sean and Alton charged for the van, piling in through the open rear door. Caine ran around to the passenger door and leapt in next to Jia.
She glared at him as she shifted the van into drive. “What happened in there? You were late!”
“Sorry. Resistance was heavier than I thought.”
The van charged out of the garage. “Head for the southwest corner of the fence. There’s a rear gate, it’s not as heavily—”
“I saw it,” she spat, cutting him off. “The garage was filled with guards. They were taking all the vehicles, chasing down the detainees that escaped. I had to leave in case they tried to take this van. I drove around in circles outside. I didn’t know what else to do.”
Caine put his hand on her arm and smiled. “You did great, Jia. Thank you for coming back.”
She bit her lip and gave him a nervous glance, but said nothing.
Caine looked ahead through the shattered windshield. “Gate’s coming up. Punch it!”
Jia stepped on the gas. Caine rolled down his window and took aim at the lone guard standing in a small booth next to the gate. The bouncing vehicle made accuracy almost impossible. Caine fired. The shot missed, but it had the desired effect. The man ducked down in the guard house, taking cover.
Caine sat back down in his seat and fastened his seatbelt.
“Brace yourselves!” he shouted back to Sean and Alton.
Jia closed her eyes and screamed. The van slammed into the gate at full speed.
The metal fence snapped and sparked as it tore free of its mounting. The engine whined and groaned as a section of the wire mesh caught in the front axle.
Caine grabbed the wheel from Jia’s hands and jerked it to the right. The van’s tires screeched as the vehicle skidded onto the Beijing city streets.
They heard a thud as the last chunk of metal and wire dropped from underneath the vehicle. The van shuddered, then charged ahead at full speed.
A bullet twanged off the rear of the vehicle. Caine looked up at the rearview mirror and saw the lone guard behind them. He had run out of the tiny booth and was firing at them with his revolver.
“Turn left up here. Then make a right in the first alley.”
Jia nodded. “You remember the streets here? You have a good memory.”
Caine looked back at Sean. The young man’s eyes were wide with fear, and his face was pale. But there was also a loose confidence in his expression … a firmness in his jaw, an uncompromising determination in his stare.
Caine realized that, like his father, Sean had saved his life. He had overcome his fear and attacked the albino assassin in the hallway.
“Forgetting things has never been a problem for me,” Caine said, turning back to face her. “Just the opposite, in fact.”
Chapter Eighteen
Ted Lapinski scanned the info on the page in front of him. He flipped to the next section of the report as he paced down the hall. The dark, tinted windows of the NSA headquarters rose up on either side of him. The building was a vast canyon of black glass and chrome. Skylights overhead allowed soft pools of sunlight to pierce the shadowy corridors.
“Are these figures correct?” he asked. “Your people can guarantee a forty percent resolution improvement in these lighting conditions?”
Avi Kramer, a younger man wearing a rumpled, ill-fitting suit, kept pace with Ted.
“At least forty percent," he said. "When you combine that with our social media algorithms, you’re looking at, what? A seventy, eighty percent increase in data density.”
Ted flipped the report closed. “Don’t sell past closed, Avi. I’ve already got social media taken care of. Your algorithms are last year’s model. But this image amplification software … this is the fucking Ferrari. I want it.”
Avi jogged forward again, turning around to face Ted. A wide grin stretched across his face, and his cheeks flushed with excitement. “That’s awesome man, I mean, fucking A! Hyvemind is right there on the edge, we’re ready to explode! And you’re gonna get in for a song.”
Ted laughed. “Yeah, we’ll see. Tell that to the DARPA guy who dumped twelve million into that app, what’s it called? Crawl Space? Fifteen years later, the only people interested in the ‘next social media revolution’ are a bunch of crappy local bands.”
“Ted! Ted, hold on a second!” a woman’s voice called out behind him. Ted looked over his shoulder and spotted Rebecca Freeling heading towards him. Sunlight from the massive skylights overhead sparkled in her fiery red hair. Her eyes seemed to hone in on him, picking him out of the crowd with laser-like intensity.
Ted shoved the report into Avi’s hands. “Here, Avi. Can you give us a minute?”
Avi grasped the mass of papers in his twitching hands and gave Ted a nervous smile. “Yeah, sure. But we’re good right? The funding—”
“Prepare a demonstration for next week. I want to run this up the flagpole before I commit.”
Ted heard the hum of Rebecca’s motorized chair and she pulled up next to him. “Ted, there you are.”
Ted smiled and rested a hand on her shoulder. “Rebecca, did we have an appointment this afternoon? Hope I didn’t double-book you.”
Rebecca shook her head. Avi appeared mesmerized by the highlights of copper and auburn exploding through her hair. Ted glanced over at him and laughed.
“Rebecca, meet Avi Kramer. Avi, Rebecca Freeling. Avi’s company does facial recognition algorithms, image enhancement technology, great stuff.”
Avi shook her hand. “Pleased to meet you Ms. Freeling. You know, if you like, I could demo our new—”
Ted scowled. “Avi, why are you still here? Rebecca, I’m late for a briefing … Roll with me?”
Rebecca rolled her eyes and maneuvered alongside him.
“Charming as always, Ted,” she muttered, as they left Avi behind in the corridor.
“I can’t stand these start-up guys," Ted muttered. "All they do is bitch about privacy and oversight and other bullshit. But then they come to us for money. We’re an intelligence agency, not Kickstarter. What do they think we’re going to do with their tech?”
“That’s your cross to bear, Ted. I work in Human Intelligence. I’m a 'boots on the ground' kind of girl. Not that you’d know it from the DNI’s reaction to my drone report.”
“The drone missions are a CIA program, speaking of crosses to bear. But I have to say I agree with Blayne on this one.”
“That wouldn’t have anything to do with our reliance on NSA SIGINT for coordinating our strikes, would it? Or should I say, over-reliance?"
Ted smiled. "Well, you know what they say about opinions."
They came to a security check point in the hallway. Ted held up his ID badge and then dumped his cellphone and keys into a plastic bin. He stepped through the metal detector in the center of the hall. Rebecca rolled over to a uniformed security officer and allowed him to search her bag.
She followed Ted through the checkpoint, then stopped as they came to a silver metal door. Armed guards stood at attention on either side of the passageway. Ted typed in a series of letters and numbers into the keypad. A green light flashed over the door as it unlocked. Ted held the door open for her, and Rebecca moved forward into the vast, dark chamber that lay beyond.
Ted closed the door behind them. They were standing on a long, narrow catwalk. The walkway ran along the edge of an enormous server room, several stories below. The air was cool, dry, and artificial, and the hum of electronics seemed to vibrate all around them.
It took Rebecca a few seconds to adjust to the dim light. She looked down into the dark chasm of black towers and flashing blue lights. “God, this place always gives me the creeps," she said. "Feels like I’m on the Death Star.”
Ted slowed his pace and moved forward along the catwalk. “Really? I love this place. We draw more power in this room than the average small town in Maryland. The spinning servers down there actually generate enough friction to reduce our heating bill by forty percent in the winter.” He spread his arms and smiled. “See? Even the NSA is going green!”
“Ted, I know you have to get going, but I wanted to talk to you about the briefing yesterday. Specifically, about the prisoner exchange.”
Ted stopped moving. He glanced down at her, but did not look her in the eye. “What’s there to talk about,” he said. “It’s the President’s call, not mine.”
“You don’t sound too happy about it.”
He stuffed his hands in his pockets and surveyed the galaxy of blinking lights beneath them. He rocked back and forth on his heels. “I’m not happy. It’s a bad deal, and you’d see that if you weren’t taking it personally.”
Rebecca rolled her chair in front of Ted and spun around to face him. She tilted her head, forcing him to make eye contact. “The transfer is a Presidential order. There’s nothing personal about it.”
The blinking blue lights of the server farm blazed in the darkness. They illuminated Ted’s round, cherubic face with a soft, purple glow.
“Rebecca, despite what you may think, I like you. And I respect you. After what you’ve been through, I’d be a fool not to. So I’m going to be honest with you.”
“Well, now we’re finally getting somewhere.”
“Bernatto went off the reservation, no doubt about it. He killed Jack Tyler, hurt friends of yours. And he hurt you. So now you’re throwing all your weight behind this kid. And I get it … he’s a victim here, an idealist in the wrong place at the wrong time. But I think, on some level, you’re still fighting Bernatto. Still trying to undo the damage he did. That’s not your job. Your job is to defend the interests of the United States.”
“My job is to provide the President with accurate, objective, and actionable intelligence. Not to make policy.”
Ted shook his head. “That’s a cop-out. For all Bernatto’s faults, at least he had some skin in the game. You want to do his job, you’re gonna have to pick a side and start playing offense.”
He smiled and started walking towards the other end of the catwalk. “I have to get to my briefing. Next time you want to drop by, call my assistant, she’ll put you in my book. The cafe here makes the most amazing Waldorf salad. It’s got candied a
pples in it, tastes like those Jolly Rancher candies!”
“Ted!” Rebecca’s voice crackled through the dry air. Ted spun around, but kept walking backwards. Rebecca rolled towards him.
“Sorry girl, gotta go—”
“It’s my turn to be honest. I received intel that the NSA is running black operations in China. That you have an unauthorized asset in place there. Is that true?”
Ted stopped walking and laughed. “What? Where did you hear that? WikiLeaks?”
“I have assets of my own, Ted. Is it true?”
Ted shook his head. “Come on, you’re the ‘boots on the ground girl.’ I’ll stick to my computer geeks and web crawlers.”
“The exchange is happening, Ted. The President signed his approval.”
Ted smiled. “I know, I know. We’ve both played this game long enough to know how these things work.”
He walked away from her down the catwalk. He turned and looked back over his shoulder. “You win some, you lose some.”
Ted exited the catwalk through another security door. He quickened his pace and walked over to a small alcove just off the side of the corridor. He slipped his encrypted cell phone from his pocket and checked the screen.
There were no messages. No texts.
“Not good,” he muttered to himself. He tapped on the screen.
RED PHOENIX: REPORT OPERATION STATUS. GO OR NO GO?
He waited a few minutes, pacing back and forth in the small alcove.
There was no response.
He entered a different number into the chat app. The contact info was not stored on his phone, but he knew the digits from memory.
RED PHOENIX NOT RESPONDING. STATUS UNKNOWN. RECOMMEND ABORT OPERATION. CLEAN ASSETS.
He walked over to a vending machine and swiped his credit card across the magnetic reader. A plastic bottle tumbled out of the machine. As he twisted the cap off the soda, his phone beeped in response to his message.
He checked the screen.
NEGATIVE ON ABORT. TANGENT MUST BE SECURED. TANGENT IS PRIORITY ONE.
Ted sipped his fizzing beverage and thought for a moment. He hesitated, not sure how much information he should reveal.
Thomas Caine series Boxset Page 43