The Shadow Protocol

by Andy McDermott

  “Admiral!” A familiar voice caught his attention. He looked around, seeing Baxter hurrying into the kitchen. “Are you okay?”

  “Yes, yes,” Harper replied with irritation. He addressed the Secret Service agents. “All right! The situation’s under control. Go back to your duties.”

  “Are you sure, sir?” the first agent asked. “If there’s been a security breach, we should—”

  “You’ve got your orders, Agent,” he snapped. “Is my car here yet?” After summoning Baxter, he had called back his chauffeur.

  “Yes, sir. It just got here.”

  “Good. Take its driver to wherever he needs to be. Mr. Baxter will handle everything from now on.”

  The agents were clearly unhappy about surrendering authority, but had little choice except to follow his orders. They filed out.

  Baxter regarded the PERSONA equipment with grim dismay. “Did Gray use the machine on you?”

  “I don’t know—I don’t remember,” Harper replied. “Which means I have to assume that he did, and then wiped my memory.”

  “Son of a bitch,” the former marine muttered. He went to the table, staring at the gear upon it … then with a snarl threw the PERSONA device to the hard floor. The screen broke loose and skittered across the tiles. He was about to do the same to the recorder unit—then his eyes widened as he saw what was inside. “Sir—Gray’s disk! It’s still in the recorder.” He pulled out the memory module and held it up.

  “Why would he leave it behind?” Harper wondered, before the answer came to him. Of course—as soon as Gray had been imprinted with his memories, he knew that the secondary alarm hadn’t been deactivated and had to make a hurried departure before the Secret Service arrived. So he had been forced to abandon something vital … “Destroy it.” Baxter gave him a look of puzzlement. “Smash it! Now!”

  Baxter dropped the disk to the floor and stamped on it, grinding it under his heel. The plastic shell cracked and split, exposing densely packed microcircuitry. Another blow and it broke in half, silicon splinters scattering.

  Harper regarded the destruction, satisfied. “There are only two pieces of evidence against me, and that was one of them. As for the other one … come on. We need to get to Suitland.”

  He marched for the door, Baxter hurrying to catch up. “Why?”

  “Because,” said Harper, grim-faced, “there’s a federal secure data storage facility there. It’s the only place Gray can get proof about what happened in Pakistan.”

  Shock crossed Baxter’s craggy face. “You told me all the files had been destroyed!”

  “They have. But there’s something that’s impossible to delete—the activity logs.” Seeing Baxter’s blank look, he explained: “Every time a file is created, accessed, edited, or deleted on the USIC network, the system notes it in a log—along with the identity of the person who did it, and the terminal they used. It’s a security measure: If the same login is used in two different locations at the same time, say, the computer raises an alarm.”

  “So how does that prove anything?”

  “Because,” growled Harper, “it shows that I personally accessed and altered the file that was given to Gray to pass on to al-Qaeda—Easton’s itinerary.”

  They exited the house. Baxter’s black Suburban was parked nearby, blue lights flashing. Behind it was the empty Cadillac. “But the actual file was deleted, wasn’t it?” said Baxter.

  “It doesn’t matter. The logs establish a chain of contact between me and Gray immediately prior to his mission in Islamabad. If Gray gets hold of them and passes them on to the wrong person, we’re finished. Even without the files, the logs provide enough evidence to start an investigation. And there are plenty of hard-nosed little bastards who’ve been waiting for the chance to attack me.”

  “People like Sternberg?”

  “He’s top of the list, yes.” Harper spotted someone in the SUV. “Who’s your driver?”

  “Reed.”

  “Is he trustworthy?”

  “You can trust all my men, sir.”

  “Good. You drive my car, and tell him to clear the way for us. Oh, and I need a phone.” Baxter went to the Suburban and issued instructions, returning with Reed’s cell phone and giving it to Harper. The two men got into the Cadillac, the DNI taking the backseat. The vehicles set off. “Are your teams still in the field?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Get them there too. I want Gray and Childs dead before the cops or anyone else get involved.”

  “On it.” Baxter took out his phone, and was about to dial a number when it rang. He answered it. “Baxter. Yes? Okay, hold on. The admiral’s here with me.” He put it on speaker. “Sir, you should hear this.”

  “We got a hit on Dr. Childs’s credit card,” said the man at the other end of the line. “It was used at a hardware superstore in Brentwood.”

  “How long ago?” Harper demanded. Brentwood was in eastern DC, some five miles northwest of Suitland. If Gray was going there, he had a considerable head start.

  “About fifteen minutes.”

  “Why wasn’t I told immediately?” asked Baxter.

  “You ordered us to get a list of anything Dr. Childs or Agent Gray bought. The manager was uncooperative and wouldn’t give it to us without a warrant. We had to wait for an FISC judge to issue one.”

  “Well?” said Harper impatiently. “What did they buy?”

  “I’ve got the list here, sir. It’s, uh … odd.”

  “Just read it out!”

  “Yes, sir. The card was used to buy a compressed air cylinder, a pressure relief valve, an inner tube, a six-foot length of PVC pipe, a hundred feet of rope, a light fitting, five pounds of lead shot, some air hose, a bicycle pump, a roll of duct tape, and, ah … two footballs.”

  Harper and Baxter exchanged bewildered looks in the mirror. “Footballs?” the latter asked.

  “Yes, sir. American footballs, not soccer.”

  “Okay,” said Harper in acknowledgment. “If there’s any further activity on their cards, inform us immediately.”

  “Footballs?” echoed Baxter as he closed the line. “What the hell do they want with two footballs?”

  SUITLAND, MARYLAND, UNITED STATES

  Adam surveyed the large, windowless building from the rooftop of its darkened neighbor. The blocky structure’s sole relief from anonymity was an unassuming plaque reading WALTER J. GORMAN FEDERAL DATA REPOSITORY; beyond that, the only signage consisted of warnings against trespass. The presence of a US government facility here would draw no comment—the town of Suitland, a short distance outside the southeastern boundary of the District of Columbia, was home to several minor agencies including the Census Bureau, and not far from the sprawling Andrews Air Force Base.

  Even by bureaucratic standards, he knew, the Gorman Building was dull. It was in essence a glorified digital box-room, one of several around the country built to store tape and disk backups of the gigabytes of information churned out by the American governmental machine every day. Most of the data it contained was humdrum, barely of interest even to the people who created it.

  But one file had now become extremely important.

  “So how are we supposed to get in there?” said Bianca. A high fence topped with razor wire surrounded the entire site. She put down a bag containing some of the items the pair had bought. “And what does Levon’s puzzle have to do with anything?”

  “You’ll see,” Adam replied, making mental calculations. The gap between the two rooftops was about sixty feet over the Gorman Building’s parking lot, but he needed something secure on the far side …

  There was a cluster of boxy air-conditioning units set back from the roof’s edge. He squinted, trying to make out more detail in the low spill of light from the street-lamps. Lines of shadow became visible: a slatted grille covering an air inlet.

  “Pass me the duct tape,” he said, picking up the yellow plastic pipe and propping it on his rooftop’s A/C ductwork. As Bianca opened the b
ag, he lined the pipe up with the distant grille. Harper had many years earlier served as a gunnery officer aboard a destroyer; Adam now used that experience to bolster his own military training. It was a straightforward matter of judging distance and angles of arc to hit the target—the complicating factor was the nature of his “gun.”

  Bianca watched as he set to work, securing the pipe in position with the strong adhesive binding before starting to connect together the cylinder of compressed air, the deflated inner tube, and the valve with lengths of hose and more tape. “Oh, I get it!” she exclaimed as the purpose of the random assemblage suddenly became clear. “You’re making a sort of air cannon.”

  “That’s right. It fills the inner tube with compressed air from the tank. Then when it reaches a certain pressure, the relief valve”—he tapped the brass device—“blows and lets it all out in one go.”

  “Firing the footballs?”

  “Yeah. I’ll put the lead shot in them to give them some weight, then use the pump to inflate them just enough to fill the pipe without sticking in it. Then I attach the rope and the grappling hook.”

  “The hideous grappling hook,” said Bianca, eyeing the ornate three-armed chandelier. “Will it be strong enough?”

  “It’ll do what I need it to do,” he assured her. “When the pressure valve opens, it’ll shoot the ball across to the other roof, and pull the rope with it.”

  “Then you climb across to the roof?”

  “I climb across, yeah.” His oddly smug smile told her that there was more to his plan than he was going to tell her for now. “Go back to the car. We’ll need to move fast.”

  “Do you know what you’re looking for inside?”

  “More or less. There’s a WORM disk—”

  “A what?”

  “WORM—Write Once, Read Many. Like a bigger and more durable recordable CD. It’s got the logs that prove Harper switched the fake itinerary for the real one.”

  Bianca looked across at the Gorman Building. “When you say ‘more or less’ … does that mean you don’t know exactly where it is? How many disks do they have in there?”

  “A couple of million.” Her face fell. “Don’t worry—Harper knows how to get it.”

  “I hope they haven’t changed the filing system,” she said. “Okay, I’ll be in the car. How long will you be?”

  “I don’t know. Keep watch—you’ll know what to do when you see me.” He turned back to his improvised cannon as Bianca reluctantly headed for the ladder.

  Harper’s eyes suddenly flicked wide open. “An air cannon.”

  “Sir?” said Baxter.

  “That’s what he’s making, it has to be! The pipe’s the barrel—and the football’s like the cork in a popgun.” There was a laptop in the Cadillac’s rear; Harper opened it.

  “Why would he need to build an air cannon?”

  “To fire the rope he bought over the perimeter fence, would be my guess.” He hurriedly tapped at the keyboard, logging on to the secure USIC network via the car’s wireless link and bringing up a global map of high-resolution satellite imagery. He typed in the address of the Gorman Building, then waited for the results to download. “Yeah,” he said when the picture appeared. “If he got onto the roof of the next building, he could easily shoot a line over from there. How far out are your teams?”

  “Spence’s team is right behind us. Fallon’s is a few minutes away.”

  “Tell Spence’s unit to send someone up to check the neighboring roof. Childs might be waiting for him there. Everyone else searches the repository.” Baxter nodded and took out his phone, while the admiral called his office on Reed’s. Security checks completed, he barked: “I need to talk to whoever’s in charge at the federal data repository in Suitland. It’s a matter of extreme urgency.” He waited impatiently for the connection to be made.

  Finally, he heard a timorous voice. “Hello?”

  “This is Admiral Gordon Harper, director of national intelligence,” Harper announced imperiously. “Who am I talking to?”

  “I’m, ah, I’m Jerome Butterworth, sir. Night-shift duty officer at the Walter J. Gorman facility. What can I do for you, sir?”

  “What you can do, Butterworth, is put your facility on full security alert, right now. Someone is trying to steal classified data from your repository—he may be there already. He’ll probably be trying to gain entry via the roof.” When there was no immediate response, he barked: “Now, Butterworth!”

  “Uh, yes, sir!” The official’s voice was muffled as he covered the phone with one hand to shout orders. An alarm bell rang in the background. “We’ve gone to full alert, sir. I’ve put the facility on lockdown.”

  “Good. I’m on my way to you with a tac team. The intruder is to be considered armed and extremely dangerous. If your people find him, I want them to contain him until I arrive. Do not attempt to engage him—just make sure that he doesn’t get away.”

  “Understood, sir,” said Butterworth nervously.

  Harper disconnected and pocketed the phone. Baxter finished issuing instructions to the other members of his team. “We’re all set, sir.”

  “Good.” Harper sat back, watching other cars pull out of the way as the Cadillac sped toward Suitland behind the Suburban, the SUV’s lights flashing and siren blaring.

  Bianca waited anxiously, checking her watch for the third time in under a minute. Something had just happened at the Gorman Building, more exterior lights snapping on and an alarm ringing. Had Adam been caught? She didn’t know. From the Mustang’s position a little way down the street from the offices, she hadn’t even been able to see him make the crossing.

  How long should she wait for him? He’d seemed confident that he could get what he needed, but confidence alone was no guarantor of success. At what point should she cut and run? Ten minutes? Five?

  Maybe sooner than that. The wail of an approaching siren reached her. She hunched lower and peered down the road. A large SUV came into view, horn blaring as it bullied its way through traffic. An expensive-looking car was right behind it. They reached the government facility’s main entrance and squealed to a halt at the gates. The driver waved furiously for the guard inside the little gatehouse to open the barrier. It swung upward, and the vehicles surged through to stop at the doors of the building.

  A man in a shirt and tie hurried out to meet the occupants as they emerged. Even at a distance through the chain-link fence, she recognized two of them: Harper and Baxter. The latter was carrying a submachine gun, as was the SUV’s driver.

  “Oh God, Adam,” she whispered as they hurried inside. Another siren sounded in the distance, drawing nearer. “Get out of there …”

  * * *

  “The man trying to break in here is after one specific disk,” Harper told Butterworth as they marched into the building. “I want it located and taken to safety before he can get it.”

  The duty officer, a pudgy, balding man in his late forties, was sweating at the unexpected turn of events. “Couldn’t we just, uh, put all our security around the section where the disk’s stored?”

  Harper glared at him. “This isn’t some crack-addict burglar we’re talking about, Butterworth! You’ve got no idea what this man is capable of. I’m not willing to take any chances with people’s lives. Get me that disk, right now.”

  “Yes, yes. Right away, sir.” They reached Butterworth’s office. “Do you know its ID number?”

  “No, but if I give you the criteria, how long will it take you to locate it?”

  “Everything’s fully archived on the system, sir.” He gestured at a computer. “If you put in the details, it should find it immediately.” Harper sat at the terminal. Baxter was still on his phone.

  “Spence’s team is here,” he reported.

  Bianca watched as a second Suburban powered toward the gates …

  And drove past them.

  The blood froze in her heart. They were coming for her! She grabbed the override, about to start the engine— />
  The Suburban braked hard, stopping outside the offices. Two men dressed in black combat gear and carrying submachine guns jumped out and ran toward the building. The SUV reversed, slewing around and powering back to the repository.

  Her relief that the men weren’t coming for her was immediately overcome by alarm. The pair rounded the rear of the offices and started to climb the ladder to the roof.

  Adam’s escape route was cut off.

  * * *

  “The first team is on site,” Baxter told Harper as he listened to his phone. “Two men are going up to the roof—Spence just entered the facility’s grounds.”

  Harper finished entering the information into the computer. “Here,” he said, jabbing a finger at the results. “Is that enough to find the disk?”

  Butterworth looked over his shoulder. “Yes, sir.”

  “Good. Then do it!” As Butterworth gave orders to a subordinate, Harper went to Baxter. “Have they found

  Gray? Or Childs?”

  “No sign yet, but—”

  He broke off as a new alarm, a shrill, rapid bleeping, sounded. “My God!” gasped Butterworth, rushing back to the computer. “That’s—that’s the internal alarm. Someone’s broken into the building!”

  Baxter brought up his gun. “Where?”

  “It looks like, ah …” He brought up a schematic of the building, a small area flashing red. “You were right, Admiral—he’s on the roof! One of the vent covers for the HVAC system has been opened. He must be trying to get in through the ducts.”

  “Do you know where he’ll come out?” said Harper.

  Butterworth clicked through to another layer of the schematic, exposing the rectilinear mazework of the inner structure. “Yes! The only place he can get out is in section K-6.”

  Baxter looked around as Spence and another man ran into the room, accompanied by one of the Gorman Building’s security personnel. “With me,” he ordered.

  “Take them to K-6,” Butterworth told the guard. “Quick!” The group of armed men hurried out.

  Harper’s phone rang. “Yes?”