Firewall (The Firewall Spies Book 1)

by Andrew Watts

  Ava raised an eyebrow.

  “Forbes listed Pax AI as one of the top three companies most likely to be the first to achieve artificial general intelligence.” She shook her head in amazement. “I mean, just think of the possibilities. Hunger, inequality, climate change. All of those problems could be solved.”

  Ava looked inquisitive. “So, you are one of the optimists?”

  The girl’s expression went serious. “Well, of course I understand the need for caution.”

  “Do you?”

  “Sure, I mean . . . it will be important to make sure the values programming is early and accurate.”

  “Tell me. How would you feel if your life’s work brings forth the end of all humankind?”

  The girl’s face drained of color. “Um . . .”

  Ava waved away the question, smiling. “Relax. You are applying for an engineering position. Engineers don’t need to worry about that stuff, right?”

  The girl gave a relieved laugh. “Right . . .”

  Ava rose, her tone growing sharp. “Thanks for coming in.”

  “Oh. We’re finished?”

  “I’m afraid so.” She gestured toward the front desk. “You can turn in your guest ID to the receptionist. It was very nice meeting you.”

  The girl’s smile looked manic. “Thank you so much. I hope to hear from you soon!”

  Ava watched as the receptionist took the girl’s ID and logged her out. Then she headed toward the stairs.

  “Afternoon, Miss Klein,” the security guard greeted her.

  “Good afternoon.”

  She pulled on the extendable identification card clipped to one of the belt loops on her jeans. George, the security guard, scanned it, saw the green confirmation symbol with the accompanying ding sound, and nodded for her to proceed up the stairs.

  “Still me.” She smiled.

  “Still you.”

  “This easier than the San Francisco PD?”

  “Oh, just slightly, ma’am.” George smiled.

  Ava checked her watch again as she made her way up the hardwood staircase. She saw Colt through the clear glass walls of his second-floor office. All the other offices were empty. Everyone was at the company off-site demonstration event, including Jeff.

  Ava saw Colt’s face in his hands. She hesitated, then walked over and cracked open his door. “Hey . . . you wanted to see me?”

  Colt looked up at her, his face red. “Hi.” The words came out slow and soft and she knew something was very wrong.

  “Are you okay? You look worried,” she said.

  Nader called out from behind her. “Ava! It’s time! Let’s go.”

  She looked at Nader on the stairs and then turned back to Colt, taking the opportunity to move on. “Gotta run. Showtime.” Their eyes locked together for a moment and she fought off the emotions welling up inside. Keep moving, she told herself.

  Ava turned and walked away before Colt could speak, joining Nader walking up to the fourth floor. She forced herself not to look back toward Colt, whose eyes she felt on her.

  Nader made small talk as they walked upstairs. “You finish that new-hire interview?”

  “Yup. I had three today, back-to-back.”

  “Any good ones?”

  “They all said they want to change the world.”

  “How original.” Nader laughed.

  They reached the fourth floor, with Nader almost out of breath. Ava kept in good shape, and barely registered the climb.

  “Afternoon, sir, ma’am. I have you both on the schedule for a ten o’clock lead team meeting. Says here . . . language-prediction demonstration.”

  “That’s right.” Ava once again pulled the ID card from her waist and allowed the security guard to scan it. He then tapped a code and the opaque glass door in front of Ava made an unlocking sound.

  “Cellphone?”

  Ava frowned. “Sorry.” She reached in her jeans pocket for her phone and paused before she handed it to the security guard. “Hmm . . . let me just check something.”

  Nader had already handed his phone to the security guard. “Come on, Ava, you can check your Instagram later,” he chided.

  Ava didn’t respond. She was reading a text.

  The message was alphanumeric. It would appear meaningless to anyone else, but she immediately felt a chill.

  “Hmm. I actually need to . . .” She stepped backward, down one stair, looking at her phone while gripping the handrail. They would only send her this message if it was a true emergency.

  “I’m sorry, Gerry, but I need to go make a phone call really quick. Tell them to start without me.”

  Nader looked surprised. “You’re kidding, right? You are lucky Jeff’s not here.”

  Ava offered an apologetic shrug and then began hustling back down the stairs. She tried to keep a normal pace as she flipped to the Starbucks app on her phone. There were five pre-paid cards stored on the app. One she used frequently. The others had always remained untouched.

  Until now. One of the cards had a very recent purchase. The use of that particular card identified which extraction plan she was to use.

  Ava was in immediate danger.

  Nader walked down the hallway toward the high-security meeting room. Pax AI’s fourth floor was a spartan environment. Part of that was the company’s executive culture. The other part was security. Nothing on this floor was ever removed from the premises. No office decorations or family pictures hung from the walls. Computers were regularly scanned by in-house cyber security specialists. Even the cleaning people were put through rigorous background checks.

  The Pax AI lead team, sans Jeff Kim and Ava, were all waiting in the glass-walled conference space. He reached the door and placed his right eye to a retinal scanner. The locking display went green, the door latch clicked, and Nader walked inside.

  “Where’s Ava?”

  “She had to make a call. She said to begin without her.”

  Colt bolted down the stairs, twisting his headphone into his right ear as he went. “Ava! Wait up!”

  She was walking fast. Colt yelled loud enough that she must have heard him, but she didn’t so much as slow, practically running out the main exit.

  Colt plowed past a few delivery men carrying bags and boxes on their way into the building, hearing the receptionist’s shrill voice greet them.

  Outside the building, Colt squinted in the sunlight, looking in both directions for Ava. Reaching for his phone, he called the tech counterintelligence unit. Weng answered, “She’s one block north, and on foot still. She’s jogging. Rinaldi wants to know what the hell happened?”

  “I don’t know yet. I’m having a very bad day,” Colt answered, jogging north on the street.

  A gray van pulled up along the curb next to him. The driver’s window rolled down, revealing Rinaldi behind the wheel. The sliding door opened, and Colt saw Wilcox and Weng inside.

  “Hurry up and get in,” Wilcox called.

  “She just got in a car,” said Weng, who was monitoring several screens in the back of the van. The oversized van was a mobile surveillance unit. Colt had seen them before, but had never been inside one. Computers and screens along one wall. A metal shelf with half a dozen types of communications equipment behind the passenger seat. Several swivel seats and little room to maneuver.

  “Give me a description,” said Rinaldi.

  “Black sedan. Tinted windows. Toyota, I think. About three blocks ahead of us. You want me to put anything out to local law enforcement?”

  “Negative. Just us for now,” Wilcox said. “What the hell happened?”

  Colt shook his head. “I don’t know. She went up to the fourth floor like she was supposed to, and then one minute later she was running down the stairs. She waved at me to follow her like . . . I don’t know, like she was scared about something.” He took out his phone. “I’m going to try calling her.” It went straight to voicemail. “Her phone is off.”

  “No one’s phone is off. She’s not ans
wering you,” said Rinaldi from the driver’s seat.

  Weng said, “If she’s Israeli Intelligence, she’s not going to . . .”

  Colt said, “We don’t know that she’s Israeli Intelligence.”

  Heads turned at that. Skeptical looks in their eyes.

  Weng said, “Colt . . . come on, dude.”

  She was still looking at one of the screens. “Here, Colt, take a look. This is CCTV from two minutes ago. Here’s Ava coming out of the Pax AI building. What do you see?”

  Colt watched as Ava walked out the door, scanning the street in swift, precise motions. Like a professional.

  “What’s she doing?” Sims asked.

  “Looking at her phone.”

  The screen showed Ava studying her phone and then tossing it into a public waste basket. She did the same with her purse.

  Colt had a sinking feeling in his chest.

  “Still think she’s not Mossad? She’s going on the run,” Wilcox said.

  “Why?” Colt asked.

  Wilcox, monitoring the real-time video feed on another screen, called out, “Sedan’s making a right turn. Rinaldi, you have visual?”

  “Negative.”

  “Two blocks ahead, they made a right turn.”

  “Copy.”

  Colt watched the replay of Ava walking out the Pax AI entrance. Something caught his eye. “Hey, rewind the surveillance feed one minute.”

  Weng did as he said.

  “Who’s that?”

  On the screen, a delivery truck had pulled up to the curb right outside the Pax AI building, and three men got out, heading in, one carrying large boxes and another a duffle bag. Colt had walked right past them as he was following Ava out of the building. He mentally replayed the image in his head. Three delivery men at once. Why the duffle bag? He cursed himself for not noticing it. He had been distracted.

  “Ed, take a look at this,” called Weng.

  Wilcox looked, frowning. “Do we have video feed from inside Pax AI?”

  “Negative. Couldn’t get it.”

  “What about audio?”

  Weng was multitasking from the front. “We have a long-range audio from across the street. It’s pointed at the fourth floor. It’s not great, but it’s something.”

  “Put it on the speakers.”

  Weng flipped a switch, and they all heard muffled screams.

  Two minutes earlier

  * * *

  The receptionist waved to Ava as she walked out the building’s main exit. “Have a nice weekend!” Ava didn’t look up.

  “Hmph. Well that wasn’t very polite,” the receptionist muttered to herself, and then went back to scrolling through her social media feed. She looked up when the front door slid open.

  Two young men wearing backpacks, T-shirts, and khaki pants walked in. Both wore dark blue gaiter-style cloth face masks. She frowned. Those types of masks were shown to be ineffective. And besides, there hadn’t been a health recommendation to wear them in the Bay Area in quite some time.

  Just then one of the other Pax AI personnel rushed down the stairs and out the door. It looked like that nice man from New York.

  “Not sure why everyone’s in such a hurry.” The receptionist smiled at her new arrivals. “Good afternoon, gentlemen, how may I help you?”

  The first man said, “I’m here for an interview with Dr. Pace.”

  The receptionist frowned. “Oh, I’m sorry, I thought the interviews were finished for the day.” She looked down at her computer monitor and squinted at the schedule. When she looked up, a delivery man had entered the building. He was wheeling in a large cardboard package. He also wore a face mask, she noticed. She craned her neck to look around the young man in front of her and said, “You need anyone to sign for that?”

  The delivery man didn’t reply.

  The second backpack-wearing man was walking toward the stairway. The receptionist said, “Honey, you need help with something? You looking for a bathroom?”

  George, the security guard, had just started to look up from his computer screen as the man raised a silenced pistol. The man standing in front of the receptionist had raised his own. Both men fired into the forehead of their target, the bodies falling to the hard floor.

  The delivery guy had opened his package and removed two silenced sub machine-guns, handing one to the man at the reception desk and keeping the other for himself. The team worked quickly, ensuring that all entrances were closed and locked. The man wearing the delivery uniform used the guard’s badge to unlock the security room. Then he disabled all the internal cameras and communications, except for the secure satellite link connecting the Mountain Research Facility and the fourth-floor conference room.

  The team began making their way up the stairs.

  Nader said, “Are we up?”

  “Yup. We have a good connection with The Facility. Data only, no voice. How much longer until Jeff’s ready?”

  Pace said, “They said they’d be set up for the top of the hour. So any minute now.” He checked the time on his watch. “Ava should really be here for this. Nader, you said she was with you coming up the stairs, right?”

  “She said she needed to make a call. You want me to go look for her?”

  Pace shook his head. “No, I’ll call down to Mary and see if she’s at the front entrance.” He tapped the speaker button on the table’s center control panel to ring the front desk receptionist, but there was no tone. “Line’s dead. I hate not being able to instant message from up here.”

  “Security. Talk to Miller.”

  One of them did their best Miller impersonation. “Security is important to our mission.”

  Pace said, “Nader, would you mind?”

  “Sure.”

  Nader walked out of the secure conference room and through the barren hallway, hearing the conference room’s high-security door close with a hiss behind him.

  He thought about stopping at one of the desks and trying the receptionist again, but he could use the climb down the stairs. More steps, even if he did have to leave his Apple watch outside with his phone.

  Nader nodded to the guard sitting inside the fourth-floor security entry chamber. The guard nodded and buzzed him out, the glass doors sliding open. On the far side of the chamber, bright sunlight was shining through the opaque glass walls.

  But there was something odd there. A dripping dark patch of liquid spattered on the glass. Nader heard the guard behind him say, “What the hell?” It almost looked like . . .

  The doors slid open in front of him before he pressed the button, and three men wearing masks appeared in the entrance, the dead security guard at their feet.

  Nader saw the muzzle flash and flinched at the noise. A clatter of shells hit the ground and fell down the stairs as the men advanced. The other security guard hit the floor behind him.

  Pace and the two other members of the leadership team heard the knock at the door to the secure conference room and didn’t know what to make of it.

  No one knocked on this door.

  The door used a biometric scanner for entry. You either had access or you didn’t.

  “Did Nader lose a finger?”

  The other two lead team members snickered.

  Pace walked over to the door and was about to open it when he hesitated. Near the intersection of the tall glass panels that made up the wall and the door was the tiniest sliver of clear glass through which he could see the other side.

  And what he saw confused him.

  Two sets of sneakers. Nader was known for being a well-dressed man. Neither of those looked like Nader’s fine leather shoes.

  “Something’s wrong,” Pace said.

  The CFO looked confused. “What are you talking about?”

  Pace turned to her. “Erika, there are two men standing on the other side of this door.”

  The COO said, “How’d they get in? This floor is secure.”

  Erika sounded scared now. “Why do they want to get in here?”


  “I’m going to de-polarize the glass so we can see.”

  The COO held out his hands. “Wait. Hold on. Wait, let’s think . . .”

  Pace didn’t wait. He tapped a few commands on the control panel next to the door and the glass walls and door went from opaque to clear.

  Erika let out a scream behind him.

  Standing on the other side of the door were three very fit-looking men, each carrying weapons. Nader sat on the floor next to the third man, a gun to his temple.

  The lead intruder tapped on the glass with his gun, then gestured down toward the control panel.

  “They’re trying to get in. Pace, don’t . . .”

  Pace said, “I know.”

  “Can they shoot through the glass?”

  “Somebody check the phones again.”

  “They don’t call outside here.”

  “Do we have a connection with Kim’s team?”

  “No. Just data to The Facility. What the hell?”

  “Can they shoot through the glass?”

  “I don’t think so. It’s supposed to be bulletproof, that’s what Miller always said.”

  The gunman walked back toward Nader, pointing down at him, then to the door. His eyes were expressionless.

  “He’s going to shoot Nader. Oh my God, oh my God.” Erika’s voice was hysterical.

  The lead gunman grabbed Nader by the back of the neck and pulled him up, then prodded him over to the door. Two of them held Nader’s finger down on the fingerprint reader. Nader thrashed around, but it was no use.

  The security panel inside the room glowed green and Nader’s identification displayed on the screen.

  Now the gunmen were holding his face down to the retinal scanner. Nader was again struggling and closing his eyes. This proved a much more challenging assignment for the armed men. After a moment of resistance, the lead gunman threw Nader back to the floor, raised his weapon, and fired into Nader’s chest. Bursts of red spray popped up from his torso.

  Pace let out a yell and covered his mouth, his watery eyes wide. Erika screamed and began dry-heaving.

  The lead gunman barked more orders, but they could barely hear him through the soundproof walls. It was like watching a horrific silent film.