“Any news on the other disavowed Special Forces teams?” Drake asked.
“Not yet. Clearly, they don’t know who to trust.”
“If we could find a way . . .” Drake let the rest of the sentence hang, thinking hard.
“Whitehall could do it,” Dahl said. “Think it through. They’re connected everywhere, even helping us all over the world at the same time as storing the weapons and preserving our cover. Give them the job.”
“To say what exactly?” Alicia played devil’s advocate. “’How about a play date?’”
Drake tended to agree. “She’s right, in her idiosyncratic way,” he said. “First, we need to come up with a strategy. But first, let’s give Whitehall the heads up.”
“We learned a little more about the terrorist training camps that Tempest is creating,” Hayden said. “They’re run by mercs, hand-picked, and are basically a double-bluff. Recruits are fed the usual beginner shit, half-brainwashed, and introduced to several ‘father’ figures, who will be their handlers. They’re then put to use, around the world, doing Tempest’s dirty work. Stealing. Killing. Covering missions up beneath the general veneer of terrorism. With every passing day, they become stronger.”
*
When Dahl saw Kenzie again he smiled tentatively, unsure how to greet the woman he’d hurt. She’d wanted more than he could give; but she knew that. She’d known Dahl was married with children. And still she kept coming.
I did the right thing.
So why did it feel so wrong?
Their relationship had soured badly and even now, he wasn’t sure why Kenzie remained with the group. Privately, he thought it was for just one reason—a reason she’d never, ever reveal.
Kenzie wanted to belong to something good, doing something good, with the right people.
Dahl felt the same, and wanted her to stay. But he couldn’t see how she could get past the problems she’d wrought between them. Whilst it was true they’d had barely a moment to speak since their own clash—where Dahl told her he would keep fighting to stay with his wife—nothing had really changed. She still resented him.
Now, as the group made their decisions, he became aware that she was sat behind him. It was a perfect sunny day with no pressure. Who could stay angry on a day like this?
“How are you?” He turned slightly.
Kenzie stiffened but said nothing.
“That bad, huh?”
“What’s the point of answering?” she bit back quietly. “As if you really care.”
“I care,” he said truthfully. “Just not like you want me to.”
“Oh, don’t flatter yourself. That ship already sailed. You’re just another grunt to me now.”
“Is that what we all are?” Dahl asked.
“Pretty much.”
“Then why do you stay?” He hadn’t meant to force it, to push the sensitive part too much, but Kenzie seemed to have a knack for pushing all the wrong buttons.
“Y’know, I’m wondering the same thing.”
Kenzie walked away and leaned up against the quietly ticking chopper. Dahl saw a single chance then, an opportunity to walk up to her and try to make it better. It would take truth, honesty. It would take a huge effort.
But all too suddenly, it was time to go.
*
When Drake rose, Yorgi was suddenly by his side. The young Russian’s fists were clenched into tight balls and his lips were white with worry. It appeared that Yorgi had something to say and Drake had a very good idea what it would be.
“When you told us what happened to your family, why you killed your parents, I wondered if that would change you.”
Yorgi looked grateful for the easy opening. “It is not a change,” he said, the stress thickening his Russian accent. “But it has strengthened my resolve. You know what I must do, don’t you?”
Drake nodded quickly. “I saw it in your eyes, mate, even as you told the story. It’s not over, is it?”
“No. It is not.”
They walked together toward the waiting chopper, taking their time. Alicia stayed to Yorgi’s left, listening intently.
“I have to return to the graves of my kin,” Yorgi said with quiet passion. “I cannot just leave them out there, unmarked, lost in that icy wilderness forever.”
“You don’t have to go alone, mate,” Drake said. “We’ll go with you.”
“No,” Yorgi said. “This is for me. I did not come to this decision lightly, either. I told my story—it seems months ago now—and I have struggled ever since. Now I know I must go back.”
“With us.” Alicia pressed her words upon him. “Together. We’re a family, Yogi. You know that.”
The Russian smiled at the perennial nickname. “At least you have stopped calling me a girl.”
“Well, only for today.”
“Then, that is better. I will return to Russia tonight. I have to go.”
Drake fought all the protestations, all the offers of companionship. Sometimes, a person had to do something by themselves. It was the only way to overcome the old demons.
“Just keep in touch,” he said softly.
“And never forget we’re here for you,” Alicia added.
Yorgi turned away from them, tears in his eyes. “I never will,” he said. “For as long as I live.”
CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN
Karin Blake almost instantly regretted her decision to infiltrate FrameHub.
They were a small bunch of supergeeks that had managed to take control of three countries’ weapons systems, making two of those countries fire upon each other. They were lethal, super-intelligent and wholly uncool. Self-proclaimed gods, they were connected through a computer to everything that held a microprocessor, and some things that didn’t. They used ridiculous code words for names and held the belief that knowledge was power—so they intended to gain infinite knowledge. Currently, they comprised of eight members and wanted Karin for their ninth.
Based on her old reputation.
Karin was a soldier now, a newly trained deserter to be precise, and she’d brought her two almost identical colleagues along—Dino and Wu.
All well-trained and eager to fight, they went to Egypt with one agenda and came away with another. This confused Dino and Wu, but it was Karin’s party. Always would be. They respected and looked up to her.
Their lives, under her leadership, looked good, hungry and full of potential.
They had no idea what was coming.
For now, Karin had said goodbye to Drake and the team after the Great Pyramid battle, tucked her main agenda away for a later date, and turned to rooting out the terrible, destructive organization that was FrameHub before it caused death and agony to any more innocent lives.
She returned their invitation email, hinting that she might be interested in talking. She returned another, then jumped through some hoops proving she could crack an easy code—for her—over the Internet.
This allowed her into a secret web-room.
There was more progress, by the day and then by the hour. They really wanted her. Dino and Wu got bored very quickly, unused to sitting around with no clear plan in sight.
“I have to get inside first,” Karin told them constantly. “That’s how this works.”
“They’re geeks, Blake,” Dino reminded her. “Let’s just take ’em out.”
“Now that’d look very embarrassing, Dino,” she said. “When they take you out. You don’t get it. They’re into everything. The best thing you can do is to not figure on their radar.”
Dino laughed. “What are they gonna do? Fry me with a cash machine?”
“How about hijacking a self-drive car to run you down? Using stop lights to make a van swerve into your path? Something easier—like using one of the army of mercs they employ?”
Dino jumped on that. “So you’re walking into a joint guarded by a merc army? No way.”
“No, no.” Karin fought to remain calm. “It’s not like that. FrameHub work out of a blood
y basement. They trust nobody, not even their own mothers. They have only themselves. They’re millionaires with no interest in cash. Entrepreneurs without vision. Travelers without the merest ounce of wanderlust. They live, breathe and eat computer data and find it hard to venture up—up into the real world. Only I can get close to them because I . . . I used to live in that world.”
Dino didn’t look impressed. “You? A fucking geek?”
“Yep.”
“What happened?”
“Life happened, you asshole. Shit happened. And don’t judge. Everyone needs to find a way to deal with their issues. Some are different to others, that’s all. But FrameHub, they took it way too far.”
“All right. You go first. We mop up. That’s all you had to say.” Wu was always to the point.
Karin tuned them out and thought back to the days when she lived with and loved her mainframe, when the lights flashed only to the transfer of data, and the whirring hum of a working computer in mid-hack was the sweetest sound in the world.
Be the old Karin, not the new Karin.
Time to go retro.
*
And now, seated in a big basement that stank of stale sweat, hot electricity and candy, she reflected on everything that had happened during the last few days.
First, they met in a busy coffee shop in the middle of town. She sat, sipping a vanilla latte, for thirty minutes after the agreed time, assuming they were verifying her identity before approaching her.
Then, one man—a young, spiky-haired individual with bad skin and a nervous disposition—approached her.
“I am FrameHub,” he said.
“You are FrameHub?” she asked. “I thought there were eight of you.”
“We are FrameHub. I am FrameHub.” He shrugged. “It’s what we say. You are Karin Blake.”
“Well, you got that part right at least.”
He blinked and stepped back. Quickly she reminded herself: Be the old Karin.
“You guys are badass!” she said too loudly. “Supercool, even.”
“Do you really think so?” He was peering at her now as if he’d never seen a girl.
“What happens next?” she said to deflect the creepiness. “I can’t wait to meet all you guys.”
“Are you British, or American?”
“Once from the UK, but I’ve worked in America for years.”
“Right. You’re accent’s weird.”
Like your fucking face, freak! “Oh, right.” She managed something close to a giggle. “Cool.”
“How old are you?”
“Don’t’ ya know that already?”
“Yeah, yeah, but you look older.”
Something to do with life and love and loss, she thought. “Tough paper round,” she said.
The geek laughed so suddenly and at such a shrill pitch that she jumped and the barista looked over. Karin found it prudent to stick her face in her latte cup and take several swigs.
“We should go,” the geek said, looking around. “By the way—I’m Piranha.”
Karin kept a straight face. “Nice.”
I should win a bloody Oscar for that performance.
But it turned out to be the first of many performances she would have to enact. Old Karin was long gone, but New Karin was forced to locate that echoing, lost voice and use it to move forward. Karin hated it. The good news was—it wouldn’t be for long.
Piranha led her to a waiting car. Karin almost pronounced her shock that “FrameHub” could drive, but then found a paper bag being shoved over her head and was forced to clam up, for fear of blowing her cover in a fit of anger.
Forced down in the passenger seat, with Piranha at the wheel, she was driven for approximately forty minutes. This wasn’t a large town, so Karin assumed it was to the outskirts, an industrial area perhaps. The sun was largely to her left, so most of the route was north. Once, a whistle hooted and another time a few minutes before they stopped she felt the change in the road as they went over a bridge.
I could find this again. Probably . . .
No matter. The tracker in her shoe would enable Dino and Wu to follow with ease. The problem she faced was disposing of it before they entered HQ. A darkness came over the car and then Piranha brought it to a halt.
“Wait there,” he said. “I’ll come around and get you.”
Scrabbling hard, bending back several nails, she managed to rip the tracker out of her shoe and cup it in her left hand. When Piranha pulled her out of the car she was able to drop it behind her, underneath the chassis. A moment later, Piranha pulled back the paper bag.
“You’re incredibly fortunate,” he said. “Only eight others have ever see the lair of FrameHub.”
Again, her face twitched, but she somehow managed to stare around in awe. The trick was to remember that these hopeless, antisocial nerds were incredibly dangerous and didn’t care who they maimed or killed.
That was the trick.
Piranha led her out of an underground car park, through a door marked Staff Only, and then down an echoing, concrete stairwell, cold because it led underground. She shivered. Piranha looked up at her.
“Don’t worry. The basement’s hot as fuck because of all the equipment. It’s shielded down here too. Tons and tons of concrete and metal between us and the shitbricks up there.”
Karin struggled with that. “Shitbricks?”
“People.”
“Ahh, I see now.”
The staircase wound for a while. Rubbish and other debris had drifted down here from upstairs and sat in decaying piles. It became dark enough that Piranha had to produce a flashlight. Gang graffiti covered the walls, but was clearly old and flaking away. Many layers of dust covered the floor, marred only by their own footprints.
Piranha forced open another door, the metal creaking against protesting hinges. A square-shaped room lay on the other side, empty, and they crossed to one more door. This one looked to be in the same disrepair as the rest of the place, but Karin spied two well-hidden cameras. From a hidden panel in the wall, Piranha produced a small keypad.
“Our lair,” he said grandly.
Killers, Karin thought.
And on the other side, it was exactly as she’d imagined. As she remembered, to be fair, having once been a part of the hacker underground. A big, oblong-shaped room with several alcoves at the far end. A series of desks set out in one long row with banks of computer screens on top. Wires everywhere, snaking beneath the desks and across the floor, ending up in a series of electrical outlets, such a chaos of cables they would never be able to sort it out. Two rows of strip lights hung from the roof, illuminating the place and, set against the wall opposite the computer terminals were more tables full of laptops, three enormous refrigerators, microwaves and a drinks’ mixing station.
Everything a crazy, power-hungry geek could ask for.
The first thing she thought to ask was, “Where do you sleep?”
“Back there.” Piranha pointed toward the alcoves. “FrameHub never stops. It’s twenty-four-seven, so we take shifts, but share the cots back there.”
Un-fucking-likely.
Seven faces studied her, eyes wide. She thought about pointing out that FrameHub were not then in fact currently functioning twenty-four-seven, but flashed an open, nerdy smile instead.
“Hi, everyone!” She waved.
Most of them turned away quickly but one, with a little more presence, came over and introduced himself.
“Hey, I’m Barracuda.”
“Karin.” She nodded. “Karin Blake.”
“We should find you a proper name,” Barracuda said. “A real one. Think on it.”
“I will.”
“Anyway, we have to vet you first. Make sure you’re acceptable to FrameHub.”
Karin sensed trouble as all work came to a standstill once more and every face turned toward her. “And what does that entail?”
“Remove your clothes.”
She choked. “I’ll remove my clothes righ
t after I remove your face, asshole.”
“We have to make sure you’re not wired,” Barracuda protested.
“So . . . wand me.”
Now Barracuda looked decidedly embarrassed. “We don’t have one, sorry.”
“You’re kidding?” Karin looked around the place. “The mighty FrameHub, feared by nations, don’t even have a wand? Look here, mate, if I were military or a cop do you think they wouldn’t have descended on you by now? It’s not like I would need a confession.” She gestured at the row of computers.
“Yeah, yeah.” Barracuda admitted defeat with a modicum of grace. “It was worth a try.”
Karin fought yet again to keep a straight face, but this time it was fury threatening to take hold, not mirth.
“Why don’t you show me what you do down here?”
I won’t be able to keep my hands from their pimply throats for long.
But she had to be sure they weren’t in the middle of something dreadful.
“First,” Barracuda led her to a brand-new computer, “you gotta prove yourself, and this is no joke. Turn this on and crack Morgan Sachs. You’ve got ten minutes.”
Karin sat down. “Ten minutes? Not Langley? Not the NSA?”
“We figure you would already have backdoors or worms planted there. I’d give you three minutes tops with government shit. Morgan Sachs is strong, but child’s play if you have the right skills. We have the right skills. Do you?”
Karin spent the next four minutes cracking the Wall Street bank, then sat back. “Are we cool now?”
“Wait.” An overweight geek reached across her, assaulting her senses with armpit stink. “We can augment our reserves with a bit of that.” He glided over hundreds of accounts, skimming small amounts right off the top.
“Subtle,” Karin said.
“Most people don’t check their statements,” Barracuda said. “And many of those that do only look for the larger amounts. Sachs might flag it, but they won’t find us.”
Karin spent some time wandering the desks, pretending to be impressed at most of the illegal misdeeds being perpetrated there. Some were reprehensible; FrameHub preying on everyday people just for fun, destroying lives at a whim. It reminded her of Tyler Webb and the atrocities he had committed, so it wasn’t a surprise when they asked her about him.
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