Threat Level Alpha

by Leo J. Maloney

  Soon Morgan and Jenny were side-by-side reviewing footage on computers in a cubicle.

  Then had just begun when Alicia Schmitt walked in and said, “What can I do to help?”

  Morgan heard Lily Randall’s distinctly British lilt. “What can I do? Also, Scott told you to call him, he’s ready to put his people on whatever you need.”

  In this case, Scott’s ‘people’ was a group significantly bigger than the combined staff of Zeta. The Internet billionaire had resources in terms of technology and computers that rivaled anything Zeta and most medium-sized countries had.

  In the constant buzz of noise and movement around him, Morgan realized something. Except for Conley—who was halfway around the world in Manila—just about everyone at Zeta was working the problem.

  That had never happened before. Zeta was manned in shifts, with agents coming and going depending on their missions. For long periods, agents didn’t see the inside of the office.

  Certainly, there was the potential threat to the world. Everyone took that seriously, but this was something else. They were here for the two missing agents—who in the civilian world wouldn’t even be missing long enough to rate a police report.

  That was who these people were. That was what they did when two of their own might be in trouble.

  Morgan’s gut was screaming for him to get out and get moving. He needed a target; he needed a mission. He needed to do something to help his daughter, and Karen. He needed to take action.

  But because they had no leads he did what he could—what everyone else in the room was doing. He scanned the screen in front of him looking for any scrap of information that might help.

  Chapter 19

  “Hello, Amado,” Conley said, as he left the café.

  “Good morning Mr. Peter,” Amado said with his familiar grin.

  When Amado had first begun as his and Dani’s tour guide, Conley had insisted that the man call just call him Peter.

  “Of course, Mr. Peter,” Amado had said, though Conley thought Amado might have been having fun with him.

  Conley sat down in his usual place in the lobby and pulled out his newspaper. Less than fifteen minutes later the Chinese minister and his delegation—which, of course, included Dani—exited the café.

  No one in the group spoke to Amado, and the security guard simply gave them his usual smile. Conley noted that Amado didn’t speak to or even acknowledge Dani, despite that fact that he had spent two days showing her and Conley around Manila.

  Without being spoken to, Amado had known that if Dani were too familiar with the hotel staff, it would be noticed by her people.

  The man would make a good operative, Conley decided. Besides the military training that Conley had already assumed he had, Amado had an intuitive grasp of a complicated situation in which he had very little information.

  Conley chuckled at the thought of recruiting Amado into Zeta. Pity he was nearly seventy. Even so, the man’s good nature was infectious. They could use a little of that around Zeta.

  Conley and Dani had agreed to keep to their normal routine for the week. She would continue her exhausting schedule with the minister while Conley made the arrangements for her defection.

  They had four full days to develop a plan. Getting her to the American embassy would be easy, but Conley suspected that Bloch would want to go a different route.

  As a high-value defector, Dani would be a great source of intel. And Diana Bloch would want to debrief her first so that Zeta collected some of that intel before Dani was transferred to the CIA.

  Because that’s how it worked. Assets were traded between organizations for favors, for advantage. And along the way assets were used and maximized—and when necessary, they were burned.

  And that was the problem. Conley knew that once he made the call to Bloch, Dani would become an asset, not his…

  What? Lover? Partner?

  He settled on friend because he didn’t have a term for what she was to him.

  Morgan liked to joke that Conley had a woman in every city in the world. Of course, that was ridiculous.

  In many cities he had two.

  And yet something was different about Dani. Conley wasn’t Dan Morgan, family man. Morgan had found a way to square the circle that eluded most operatives and agents in this business—a business that emptied people out, made them hard.

  Morgan’s family life had kept filling him back up so that never happened. And in the end, Morgan had done something Conley had rarely seen before. He had left the intelligence world behind for Jenny and Alex. Then, after years away, he had returned, but for Zeta, not the CIA.

  No, Conley wasn’t Morgan. He found his own ways to make peace with the life. Conley was not a family man and never would be. But if he ever were to go down that path, he couldn’t help thinking that it would be with a woman like Dani.

  And yet he was certain there was something—possibly quite a bit—she wasn’t telling him. He and Morgan had a rule for coincidences on a mission: they didn’t exist. He wasn’t foolish enough to think that it was an accident that she had approached him thinking he was a civilian.

  What did that make her—Intelligence? Maybe not an agent herself, but she likely had access to information. If she knew he was an agent that didn’t mean that she wasn’t sincere in her desire to defect. In fact, it showed that she was smart in how she was approaching it.

  Of course, he was sensitive to the possibility of a trap, or a double-cross. He liked Dani, but he had been an agent for too long to fall into a honey trap. However, she hadn’t asked him for information, or asked him to do anything other than help her defect.

  Thus, his exposure was limited.

  Once he got her out of the country there would be plenty of time to sort through possible agendas. But the simple fact was that though she had not been completely honest with him, he still believed that her desire to defect was sincere. In any case, they would soon find out.

  Of course, her behavior raised questions about her sincerity in other areas. And while Conley didn’t quite have Morgan’s instinct for people, he knew something about women. And he believed Dani was sincere in her feelings for him, at least mostly. And the fact was that they had only known each other for a few days.

  Rather than being hurt, Conley realized that he was intrigued. He had liked her very much and had found her very interesting. However, he suspected the real Dani was even more interesting.

  Conley wouldn’t let himself wait anymore. It was time to call Bloch and lay it all out. In a pinch, they could move a flipped asset overnight and even in hours. But the more time they had to make arrangements, the less danger there would be to Dani.

  And Zeta wasn’t the CIA. Conley didn’t have the same problems with the agency that Morgan did, though he understood them. The CIA could be a cold place. There, everyone was an asset and everyone was expendable except the one protected class—the brass.

  Bloch would see to it that Dani was protected, and Conley would make sure of it. Dani would trade what she knew for a new life in America. And what she knew would make America stronger and the world more dangerous for the kinds of people who had taken Dani’s parents from her.

  Yes, it was a trade, but it was a good one.

  Conley kept Dani and the Chinese delegation in his peripheral vision as he checked his phone. Boston was exactly twelve hours behind Manila. So for Bloch it was nine O’clock at night—last night.

  Well, there was a better than even chance that Bloch was still at Zeta. And even if she wasn’t, they didn’t exactly keep banker’s hours in their business.

  Conley tapped the phone. It barely rang and then Bloch was on the line.

  “What is it Conley?”

  “I have a situation here,” Conley explained.

  The conversation was brief, but still they were interrupted several times. Somethin
g was going on at Zeta, though Bloch maintained that it was nothing he had to worry about.

  She listened carefully and told him he’d done good work considering he was on vacation. Dani would be a great asset, a literal treasure trove of intelligence. Bloch promised to make the necessary arrangements and told him to sit tight and to call her if there were any developments.

  Conley watched as the minister, Dani, and the rest of the Chinese group finished their morning pleasantries in the lobby and then disappeared into the labyrinth of meeting rooms and conference halls that made up the lower levels of the hotel.

  Conley did the only thing he could do. He waited. He would keep his routine, visiting the beach and some of the local sites while eating lunch and dinner at the hotel. On the outside, everything he did needed to appear normal.

  Dani would do the same.

  However, despite the external motion, he would be doing something remarkably difficult—he would be waiting. Waiting until he heard back from Bloch. Waiting until he had a time and place for Dani’s extraction. Waiting until she was safe and out of the reach of the Chinese government.

  Conley decided it was going to be a long week.

  * * * *

  “Don’t shoot,” Alex said as she stood up. It was a reflex and not a good one. Now all of the Chechens’ eyes were pointed at her—as well as two of their guns.

  Whatever she came up with next had better be good.

  “He’s my lab partner,” she said, realizing that the only thing that would save Jason was if he was judged valuable to the terrorists’ project. “We need him,” she added.

  “Alex, what is going on?” Jason said.

  The terrorists started shouting at him in Chechen. The look of shock and incomprehension on his face was painful.

  “Alex,” he said as he lurched forward.

  More shouting, a gun cocking.

  “Jason, don’t move,” she said.

  His life could end in seconds. In fact, it would unless she did something.

  “We all want the same thing, but we need him to do it,” she said.

  Jason was frozen in his spot, his expression shifting from shock to fear. The terrorists were also still, waiting for a command. Finally, their leader barked something at the driver, who pulled the door shut. Then he approached Jason and held out his hand. “Give me your phone.”

  Jason pulled his phone out of his pocket and handed it to the Chechen, who dropped it on the floor and smashed it, repeatedly, under his heel.

  Then the leader grabbed Jason and shoved him roughly down the aisle. The boy nearly fell and Alex had to restrain herself from getting up to grab him. Once again, he remained standing. Then he scanned for Alex and their eyes met.

  The bus had two rows of two seats each and Alex was sitting next to Karen. However, the seat across the narrow aisle from Alex was free. She put out a hand to brush his as he took that seat.

  Once he was sitting, he looked over at her and she touched her lips with a finger.

  Everyone lurched, and then the bus was moving again, slowly through the traffic.

  Jason was remarkably calm, despite the fact that he’d just been kidnapped by armed men and loaded onto a bus.

  The bus had quieted. The light sobbing and whimpering had stopped, replaced with stunned silence. That was better for now. The Chechens were clearly determined to keep order. She suspected they would take extreme action to do it and didn’t want to test them.

  Alex kept eye contact with Jason. She told herself it was to keep him calm, but it helped center her as well.

  He must have shown up for their date, and then gone to the site of her meeting to see if she was still there. Then what? Had he seen them getting onto the bus?

  There was a slim chance that he had seen something and been nervous enough to call the police, but every passing moment that she didn’t hear sirens told Alex that was less likely.

  The bus kept lurching forward for a minute or two at low speed, then stopping. The pattern repeated over and over for the next half hour until the stops became shorter and shorter.

  They didn’t stop for a full five minutes and then began picking up speed. That meant that, for now at least, they were out of traffic.

  Alex didn’t know if that was the good news or the bad news.

  * * * *

  It had been a long day and that showed on the face of everyone in the conference room.

  “How can so many people just disappear?” Jenny asked. Morgan was surprised at how normal it felt to have Jenny at that table, discussing an ongoing operation.

  Shepard answered. “Honestly, we’re no closer to knowing that than when we started.” His face bore the same combination of exhaustion and worry that Jenny wore, and that Morgan knew showed on his own.

  Bloch took the lead next. “The security footage we have shows nothing suspicious and our informal search of the campus hasn’t turned up anything. We’ll keep at it but it appears very unlikely that the group is anywhere on campus. We’ve also confirmed that the Professor’s and all of the students’ cars are still on campus. They didn’t drive off separately, and we’re reasonably certain that they weren’t moved out in delivery trucks—since all major deliveries occurred in areas that still had working security cameras. That means we’re left with two possibilities: One, they simply walked off campus, most likely separately. Second, they were moved via an underground tunnel or using some other method that we haven’t figured out yet.”

  “It’s been more than eight hours since they went off the grid. And there has been no word. No demands. Nothing. What does that tell us?” Jenny asked.

  As a rule of thumb, in a kidnapping or hostage situation, the chance of recovery of the victims went down in a steep curve over time. And the odds of a good outcome decreased exponentially if the hostages were moved to a secondary location.

  “We’re throwing away the book on this one. None of our working theories include kidnapping for ransom or simple terrorism. Frankly, if it were either of those scenarios the situation would be very serious. We’re assuming that Mr. Dobrynin is correct and that the group has been recruited or taken to participate in a specific project. If they were taken for their skills and are vital to that project then they will be safe for the duration of the operation. That gives our greatest assets—Alex and Karen—time to formulate and execute a plan to take action or get word to us.”

  “We do know one more thing,” Shepard said. “Security footage and facial recognition has helped us rule out air or train travel, at least from local airports or stations. That means one way or another they are traveling by road and it’s just a matter of time before we get a hit on a traffic stop or camera.”

  “They will be concerned about time, and will want to keep their travel simple. They also know law enforcement will be looking for them, at least eventually. I would guess they will get the students to a remote location within a single day’s drive. Even stopping for gas puts them at risk of getting caught on a security camera. They will be confident because they will not suspect that anyone knows about the virus, so they will assume that the police will simply be looking for a group of radicals who went missing.”

  “Even if they don’t stop for gas and haven’t brought any extra tanks, that still gives them a range of at least two hundred miles and a search area that is thousands of square miles,” Morgan said.

  Shepard responded, “We have access to satellites that can read a license plate but we need to know where to look.”

  “Any leads on finding their lab?” Bloch said.

  The Russian scowled. “This was a well-planned operation. If they had ordered their equipment all at once, it would be easy to find. However, they likely ordered it over time and shipped it to multiple locations.”

  Shepard stepped in, “But that just means it will take longer to find. Thanks to Mr. Dobrynin, we have
a list of relevant equipment. We’re tracking all sales of that equipment in the last two years. We can investigate each sale individually and track it. It’s a big job but eventually, we’ll find something we can use. The problem is that pretty much everything they need is readily available online. And most of the equipment isn’t tracked by the government. We’re using online retailers’ own databases to analyze sales but there are a lot of them. It gets exponentially harder if sales were made over eBay or Craigslist”

  This was bad, Morgan knew. They would be looking at thousands of orders. Tracing the transactions and shipping information would take thousands of man-hours, if not tens of thousands.

  “It would be easier to track any DNA they bought online,” Shepard said.

  “You can buy DNA online?” Jenny asked.

  “Nothing dangerous but it would give them a head start on some of the bigger pieces of the sequence. They can always sequence the virus from scratch but it takes longer,” Shepard said.

  “Let’s hope they are in a hurry and got sloppy,” Bloch said.

  Morgan didn’t like it. Counting on luck wasn’t a plan.

  He saw that Dobrynin felt the same way and was muttering under his breath. He heard something that sounded like…koshmar. Morgan was far from fluent in Russian but he had learned a bit from Natasha years ago. That one was new to him.

  “No, not the lab equipment!” the Russian interjected. Everyone stopped and turned to him. “We can keep looking but by the time we trace their purchases their project will be complete. The pieces are just too common. But if the group is going to build the virus they will need safety protocols.”

  “Special equipment?” Bloch asked.

  “Not exactly, but building what you would call a biosafety level 3 or 4 facility is complicated and expensive. Controls on the air conditioning system, high and low pressure areas. It’s often easier to build a new building than to retrofit an old one for this kind of work. Ultimately, I doubt there are more than a dozen contractors who can build such a lab.”