by Jason Kasper
Ian didn’t answer immediately—he was too preoccupied with the connection he’d just found, a potentially groundbreaking development added to the mix of already perplexing factors surrounding this case. Zhao couldn’t be the mastermind behind this; wealthy businessmen didn’t involve themselves in the tactical specifics of terrorist operations. At most they were financiers behind the scenes, a craft that had been perfected by rich Saudis over the years as they funneled vast sums of cash to Islamic terror organizations via a series of cutouts and laundered transfers.
Zhao could have paid into the attack, but he hadn’t constructed it.
David asked, “You still there?”
“Yeah,” Ian responded, “and it’s too soon to say for sure, but Zhao as financier makes sense to me at present. And in lieu of everything else about this that has defied logic, it’s a pretty good start.”
“All right, this has gone far enough. I’ll notify Duchess.”
“Slow down,” Ian cautioned, taking the phone off speaker and bringing it to his ear before continuing. “We do that, and she knows we’ve been pulling strings even before she finds that we cleaned out the ISOFAC. This is a working theory, but it doesn’t mean I’m right—and if I’m not, or there’s something I’m not considering, then calling Duchess now will accomplish nothing but putting ourselves in prison on an educated hunch.”
“I’ll have Worthy put eyes-on the factory. If there’s any sign of the launch assembly being transported, we signal the alarm.”
“Agreed. And the next step is to confirm or deny that the facility was used to manufacture a launch assembly. If it wasn’t, no harm, no foul. We keep looking. But if it was, we need to find out two things: if it’s still at the factory, and if not, where it’s headed.”
“How do we do that?”
“Only one way,” Ian said. “I need to get inside that factory.”
49
Cancer was the last man to arrive at the team house.
He followed the sound of murmuring voices toward the back, where he found David and Reilly standing behind Ian’s workstation. Their intelligence specialist was responding to the other two men’s requests to zoom in on the overhead imagery of a large building.
No one looked up at Cancer as he entered, and he announced, “Hey, shitheads. You start planning this thing without me?”
Ian spun his chair to face him. “Yes.”
“Good, ’cause I’m tired of doing all the work around here. Reilly, why do you look so bloated?”
The huge medic shrugged helplessly. “I had a second lunch.” Then, a moment later and in response to the team’s collective blank stare, “What? I had two surveillance positions. Both were restaurants.”
Cancer asked, “Suicide, what do we got?”
David said, “We’re waiting for Worthy to get eyes-on. But I’ve got a plan based on imagery.”
“‘Based on imagery.’ Does that mean you’ve never been inside this factory?”
“No.”
“Not once?”
“I said no,” David replied testily. “I’ve been a little busy traipsing around the world with you dickheads.”
Reilly added, “We’ll have to do a surreptitious entry after nightfall.”
Cancer smiled at him. “Ain’t no ‘surreptitious entry’ about it, boys. This is a B&E, pure and simple. Starting to feel like a teenager again. Let’s see the game cam.”
Ian maximized a satellite photo on his computer screen showing an overhead view of the facility, most of which was the huge square rooftop. The remainder was an L-shaped addendum to the workshop, which Ian traced with a finger. “Offices are in this portion, and that’s where I’ll need access. The rest is primarily a workshop for metal fabrication.”
Cancer nodded, quickly scanning the graphic markups indicating windows and doorways in the form of red arrows with breakout boxes listing the dimensions from construction blueprints—Ian must have already hacked the city land records.
“What’s the size?”
Ian replied, “32,000 square feet.”
Cancer gave a low whistle, then cut his eyes to David.
“What’s the plan?”
“I was thinking Ian bypasses alarm power,” David said, pointing to the building on the screen, “and then we all enter through the northeast corner of the office portion, start our clearance there and let Ian do his hard drive cloning while the rest of us clear the building to search for the launch assembly.”
Cancer squinted hard, looking physically pained by the words.
“What’s the matter?” David asked.
“Boss, with a building this size, that’s asking for trouble. Anyone in the workshop could hear us enter, if not be tipped off by a silent alarm, and make a call or be on the run to the main road before we had any idea. Now I’ve been in my share of factories, and the workshop is usually a wide-open space that can be largely cleared by visual. So I say we make entry through two sides of the building simultaneously—Ian and Reilly through the south end, me and you through the northeast.”
“You and Reilly,” David corrected him. “I’ll stay with Ian.”
Cancer looked to David, then to Reilly, then back to David.
“What’s the matter, you don’t trust me unless our resident Boy Scout is at my side?”
“Those are your words, not mine. I didn’t say that.”
“Then what are you saying?”
David gave an exaggerated cough, then cleared his throat. “I’m not saying anything, other than I didn’t say that.”
Cancer glared at Ian, who was doing his best to suppress a laugh.
“Fuck is so funny over there?”
Ian shook his head, saying nothing.
“Fine,” Cancer said, “David and Ian break into the short side of the L-shaped building on the south end, start clearing offices and ripping hard drives, while me and our Geneva Conventions expert enter through the northeast corner, then clear the workshop. If we find the rockets, everyone pulls out and we tip off the cops. Attack stopped. If it’s empty, we consolidate for local security and Ian can take his time. Anyone gets interrupted, we bail out the backside because the first cops will come to the front of the building. What do you think, Suicide?”
David was motionless, his gaze focused on the screen as Cancer waited for a response.
Finally, he began to nod slightly.
“Yeah, that’s a better plan. We can’t risk getting rolled up on this. Let’s go with Cancer’s idea.”
“So it’s settled,” Cancer said. “But we got a problem.”
Before he could elaborate, Ian’s phone rang.
He announced, “It’s Worthy.”
Answering the call on speaker, he said, “Racegun, the guys are here and we’re looking at the overhead imagery. Where are you at?”
Worthy’s Southern-accented voice was calm as he replied, “Adjacent parking lot off the north corner. Got a clear line of sight through the trees to the service road and around the side to the loading dock.”
Ian scrolled across the satellite view on his screen. “Looks like a good spot. What do you see?”
“No movement during my drive-by or since I’ve been in position, but there’s a few company trucks parked at the back of the lot. Don’t see any privately owned vehicles, so it could be empty. If there were any major muscle movement I’d be able to see it, but it looks like the factory has shut down for the holiday.”
David said, “Stay there and call us the second that changes. You see any trucks departing with possible launch assembly components, I want you to follow them. We’ll scramble from here to back you up, and I’ll notify Duchess.”
“She’s gonna be pissed,” he replied.
“Yeah,” David agreed, “but it’s better than the alternative. Hopefully it doesn’t come to that. We’ll be standing by.”
“You got it, boss.”
After Ian ended the call, Cancer said, “Now about this problem.”
“What problem?” Ian asked.
David said, “Firearms are the one thing we have.”
“No, they ain’t. We fire one shot in there, and the police find a piece of brass that Duchess can trace to our Agency-issued weapons, how do you think that’s going to work out for us? Hell, I wouldn’t put it past her to check the ballistics on any team-caliber kills in the Charlottesville area. She’s already going to find the ISOFAC cleaned out any day now. No need to speed up that process.”
After a moment of silence, Reilly said, “I could do a round trip to my house, raid the gun collection. If I leave now, I could make it back by”—he consulted his watch—“midnight, maybe one o’clock. We could probably be in the door by two.”
“Get moving,” Cancer said. “We’ll get to work refining our plan for the B&E.”
50
Worthy sat in his car, alone in the darkness, stretching his legs so they wouldn’t fall asleep.
He’d been there for close to eight hours, peeing in bottles and trying to stay awake as his vision blurred and he yawned repeatedly. Giving his face a slap to restore some alertness, he refocused his gaze on the factory through the trees beyond his windshield.
He’d initially been apprehensive about someone knocking on his window, asking what in the hell he was doing there. Or worse yet, a patrol officer being called in by a neighboring business that had reported a suspicious vehicle with a single occupant remaining behind the wheel for hours on end.
He’d dreamed up a few cover stories tailored to whoever discovered him there—he’d certainly had time to do so, all the way up to verbally rehearsing them to himself—but after the sun set without the slightest whisper of movement around him, it became apparent that the industrial park was a ghost town.
And why wouldn’t it be? Tomorrow was the Fourth of July—actually, today was, since his watch had crossed the stroke of midnight just over two hours earlier—and any business not owned by a complete and total Communist would have closed early to allow their employees a head start on travel plans for the holiday weekend.
So Worthy had sat, and sat, and sat some more, watching the metalworking factory with no more action than the security lights ticking on automatically before sunset. This kind of assignment would have been fine for someone like Cancer, a trained sniper used to observing the world through a scope for hours on end.
But Worthy wasn’t a sniper—his specialty was running and gunning with blazing speed, reflexes honed for split-second response. The wait would have been bearable given the knowledge that he’d soon be slipping inside the building, joining his team for the intelligence collection ahead.
That wasn’t, however, going to be the case.
David had sounded almost apologetic when he’d handed Worthy his marching orders: sorry, but we’ll need you to stay on lookout duty. It wasn’t even a matter of monitoring the police scanner, which they’d be able to do as well as he could. The simple fact was, they suspected this facility of being owned by some very bad people, and those people wouldn’t necessarily call the cops if they became aware of unwelcome visitors.
Worthy doubted the building even had an active, normal security system. That would put the police on automatic response in the event of a break-in, complete with carte blanche to make entry if they found a door or window ajar.
No, Worthy suspected the reality was much worse.
They probably had a silent alarm of some kind, complete with their own personal response force designated to appear on command, intent on ensuring that anyone who penetrated their lion’s den didn’t live to tell about what they’d found inside. That would hold doubly true if the rockets were present, a possibility that Worthy discounted based on the simple fact that he hadn’t seen any sign of personnel since arriving.
Ian was aware of that too, which explained why he’d spent several hours making provisions to set up a cable relay in a nearby electrical junction box, ensuring that any security systems reliant on building outlets would detect a steady stream of electricity and not switch to their internal power supply. This would, in theory, prevent the alarm from being raised even if the entry team tripped a sensor—as far as the electronics were concerned, all circuits would appear complete and unbroken, and the team could take their time sifting for intelligence within the main offices.
It was far from a failsafe, however. There could be any number of security measures running off an internal power supply in the first place, necessitating the entry team to carry cellular and wireless jammers on their kit. But they’d have no way of knowing whether that effort was successful or not until one of two things occurred: they slipped out of the building upon mission completion, or the effort was cut short by some outside response, law enforcement or otherwise.
So Worthy’s duties as team lookout were far from over.
He just hoped that the team’s entry into the building was as uneventful as his surveillance had been. Otherwise, things were going to get very interesting, very quickly.
David’s voice came over his earpiece then.
“Angel is relay-complete,” David said. “Team One is moving to make entry.”
Reilly rose from his crouch at the string of trees lining the factory and darted across the open ground toward the building.
The single-story row of offices was phosphorescent green in his night vision, backed by the two-floor warehouse attachment behind it. Cancer shadowed his movement by a few paces, his voice in Reilly’s earpiece broadcasting their intent.
“Team Two copies, we’re on the move.”
Reilly approached the side of the building, slowing as he reached the window designated as their point of entry. He prepared to breach the building’s exterior, completely dependent on Cancer to provide cover. As much as he hated to concede that Cancer’s plan was a good one, there was good reason for splitting the entry team into two-man elements.
While only Ian had the equipment and training to pilfer digital evidence from any computers they found, Reilly and Cancer provided another intangible benefit: security.
Granted, Worthy hadn’t seen any activity or even lit windows, but that didn’t mean the building was empty.
With David providing immediate security for Ian, Cancer and Reilly could begin sweeping the building for any human presence. And while David had been adamant that any personnel found inside should be restrained uninjured—if they were affiliated with terrorists, they’d need to be interrogated, and if not, there was no need to harm helpless civilians—Reilly was concerned about his partner’s degree of restraint. Or lack thereof.
The bottom line was that Cancer liked killing people, plain and simple. If Reilly was the team’s moral compass, then Cancer was like an iron ore deposit that would swing the needle askew at the first possible opportunity. Reilly saw the team’s mission as a force for good, and he’d clashed with Cancer on this issue at every conceivable juncture. In that regard, David had been right to pair him with the team’s second-in-command.
None of that mattered tonight, of course, until they made it into the building.
With the security systems disabled—hopefully, at least—by Ian’s bypass on the junction box, Reilly had no choice but to trust the cellular and wireless jammer in his assault pack as he employed his Halligan bar on the window.
More commonly known as the hoolie tool, the iron bar had a giant forked chisel on one end and a wedge with a perpendicular pick on the other. Most law enforcement and firefighter applications, even military, employed the “break and rake” technique of smashing a window, then scraping the broken glass from the frame for follow-on personnel to enter.
But nothing so overt would suit their purposes tonight, and instead Reilly wedged the chiseled end into the frame, prying the sliding window upward with a sharp crack of the surrounding molding.
Cancer whispered, “Can you get any louder, asshole?”
Ignoring him, Reilly used a gloved hand to pu
sh the window up and out of the way, dropping to all fours for Cancer to step on his back—which he did a little more harshly than necessary—to enter through the window frame.
Grunting under the footfall, Reilly felt Cancer’s weight vanish.
Rising quickly, he adjusted the hoolie bar on its sling and placed both hands on the open frame, then leapt through the window and into the building.
Ian stepped inside the building, pulling the window shut behind him as directed before turning to scan through his night vision.
David was a black shadow in the hallway, sweeping his weapon across a green swath of the building interior as he cleared for immediate threats. Wasting no time, Ian tested the handle of the office door to his right, found it unlocked, and quickly cleared it.
The process was clumsy, and not just because Ian lacked his teammates’ tactical experience—there was also the matter of his weapon, a Colt 1911 handgun from Reilly’s personal collection. The family heirloom was passed down from his grandfather, and he’d entrusted it to the team’s intelligence operative not as a sign of respect but rather because Ian was the least likely to fire a shot. The .45 caliber pistol felt alien in his hands, and he desperately wanted to use the Agency-issued rifle slung on his back as a last resort.
It didn’t matter anyway, he thought. The office was empty, a pair of computer workstations facing the wall and window.
Ian holstered his pistol and moved toward the computers, finding the small, box-like device secured in his cargo pocket and plugging it into a USB port.
A flashing red light blinked at a corner of the device, indicating that it was in the process of copying the hard drive. At that moment, Ian wasn’t concerned whether the launch assembly was present in the facility. If so, Reilly and Cancer would uncover it in minutes, and the team would exfil and overwatch the building until police responded to their anonymous tip. And if any terrorists showed to secure their cargo before then, well, Ian’s team would get a chance to put Reilly’s weapons to good use.