Two of the troopers began running in Shotgun’s direction. They looked a bit like Storm Troopers from Star Wars, a movie Shotgun has never particularly liked. He gunned the bike down the street, only to find a ninety-degree turn where he thought a straightaway would be. He tried braking but it was too late; when he hit the curb this time he separated from the bike, flying in a tumble all the way to the garage door of the nearest house.
Several blocks away, Trace heard a helicopter flying in the direction of Granny’s house. Unsure whether it was part of the task force or not, she tried to reach Danny on the radio for clarification. But Danny was talking to the task force head, and wouldn’t interrupt the call. With the helo closing in, Trace used a flashing laser device to ward off the pilots. The laser wasn’t quite strong enough to blind the pilot, but the dazzler made it difficult for him to see, and he immediately diverted back to the airport.
The task force chief’s initial response to Danny was something along the lines of Who the hell do you think you’re talking to? He calmed down somewhat as Danny recited the names of half a dozen mutual acquaintances, including Narc’s. Fortunately for us, the agent was a legend in anti-drug circles, and mentioning his name got the chief’s attention.
“We need you to call off the raid on Granny,” said Danny. “I’ll explain the reasons in person tomorrow, but I need you to call it off right now.”
“How the hell do you know what we’re doing?”
“We’re watching the property right now,” said Danny. “She has a major drug shipment coming in from Europe in a few days, and we need to track it.”
“You’re with the feds?”
“Not exactly.”
That was actually a better answer than yes, given the relationship between the task force and the DEA, but it wasn’t so much better that it got instant cooperation. In fact, it took Danny another two or three minutes to persuade the chief to call his men back.
Which should have ended the operation right there, at least temporarily. But Murphy had other plans.
Oblivious to what was going on a few blocks away, Granny decided that she wanted to slip out for a midnight snack. Over the protests of one of her bodyguards—one of the undercover agents who had been slipped in by the task force—she got into her SUV. As she sometimes did, Granny insisted on driving; all the bodyguards could do was go along.
“McDonald’s, next stop,” she told them.
She’d barely gone two blocks when she heard the siren of an ambulance, which had been called by the homeowner whose lawn Shotgun had plowed into. Granny continued on toward the highway. The siren probably made her slightly nervous, and the sight of armed men milling in the road a few blocks from the highway couldn’t have made her any more comfortable.
The bodyguard-double agent had knocked out the right brake light on the vehicle earlier that evening, to make it easier to spot and identify. Unfortunately, its absence attracted the attention of a traffic patrol just after she got on the highway. The officer hit his lights. Granny sped up. She lost him long enough to reach the next exit. But the officer had radioed ahead, and a patrol cruiser was parked across the intersection below the highway, blocking her off. Within seconds, her car was blocked front and back.
The bodyguard in the passenger seat pulled out his pistol. The man in the backseat, the planted agent from the task force, decided things had gone too far. He, too, took out his gun—and did a double-tap against the back of the other man’s head.
“You’re under arrest, Granny,” he told her, pointing the gun at her.
“I guess this means I’m not getting my Big Mac,” said Granny as she was led from the vehicle in handcuffs.
(II)
Shotgun rendezvoused with Mongoose not too long after his tumble, and we were also able to recover the Harley, once we straightened things out with the task force. Holding Granny on flight to avoid prosecution of a traffic violation would have been difficult, even in Florida, so the task force went ahead and filed drug charges against her.
A few hours later, someone called Veep from a phone booth in Italy, leaving an automated text-to-voice message on his answering machine. The message was short, and we had no idea what it meant, or even if it was actually meant for Veep: “Scorched Earth.”
We heard the message thanks to the bugs Junior had placed. Shunt eventually tracked the call to the phone booth, but that was as far as the trail went. Veep came home a few hours later and didn’t seem to react, deleting the call along with a half-dozen others. When he went to work the next morning, he acted as if nothing had happened.
Something had, but we were damned if we could figure out what.
* * *
Junior had earned himself a time-out from Danny. Even though the information we’d gotten from the bugs had helped us immensely, we couldn’t afford to have someone freelancing in the middle of an op. Danny now conceded that his original decision not to bug the complex was wrong. But that didn’t excuse Junior for going ahead and doing it on his own. A properly planned and executed op would have succeeded just as well, without taking the chance of tipping off Veep.
From being the golden-haired boy—not literally, since his hair is black—Junior had become a problem child. The fact that he was my son made things worse: not only couldn’t I cut him slack I wouldn’t cut anyone else, but I couldn’t even appear to give him special treatment. Frankly, I felt a little betrayed—he of all people should know that the highest standards were expected of him. In the past, he’d always gone the extra mile, militantly insisting that no one cut him any extra slack or give him any break because his dad was in charge. But what the hell was I supposed to make of what he was doing now?
I knew one thing—I’d have given him a good, swift kick in the seat of his intelligence if he was nearby.
* * *
But I was far away, in the middle of the Atlantic, basking on the sun deck of the Bon Voyage. The cruise ship had an air of restrained elegance, though you didn’t have to chip too hard at the surface to get at something a little chintzier. The central ballroom had mahogany-paneled walls and a large crystal chandelier at its center; four smaller chandeliers flanked its sides. The rug was so thick and soft you could walk barefoot through it and swear you were walking through a field of the softest grass in the world. The dining rooms were equally plush, though there were noticeable differences between the “king class” and the “knights class”: the tables in the upper division’s De Gaulle Room sat fewer people though with more room at each than either the Louis XIV or Joan of Arc Rooms; the velvet on the seatbacks was a little plusher, and the nightly specials always included some variation of caviar.
Walking through the passages to the cabins, you could be forgiven for thinking you’d been thrust back into some golden age of opulence. Of course, that golden age included a recreation room with a state-of-the-art pool table—no matter how the ship bucked, the balls stayed put, thanks to a gyroscope mechanism. It also included just about every boutique clothing store known to man, or I should say woman. Fountains, three different inside bars and a fourth on deck (not counting the cocktail wagon), and small jazz combos cemented the impression that you were among the privileged in a floating paradise.
By the second day, however, you started to notice things like wallpaper that didn’t quite match at the seams, silver glitter paint that no longer glittered, edges of curtains that were as frayed as an old sailor’s bellbottoms. The sticks used for shuffleboard had chipped handles, and no matter which bar you tried, they tended to go overboard on the ice, no pun intended.
Bug planted, I devoted most of my time to sight-seeing, of which there was quite a lot to be accomplished in the pool area. While a good portion of the passengers were elderly, there was a small but strategic contingent in the mid-twenty to mid-thirty range, and a pleasing proportion were of the female persuasion. String bikinis were making a serious comeback, and you had to get out early to get the best spot.
One afternoon not long after the
raid on Granny’s, I returned from lunch and settled into an excellent perch close to both the bar and the pool. I’d just begun sipping from my drink when a steward approached.
“Commander Julio?” he asked.
“Yes?”
“The captain asks if you would honor him with a visit to the bridge.”
I hesitated. I had just spotted a very real threat to the ship’s safety, namely a twenty-something blonde in a Wicked Weasel bathing suit that seemed more imagined than real. But seeing that the five lifeguards on duty were clearly alert to the threat, I decided to go along to the bridge.
The time on the ship had allowed my knees to recover from the knockings they’d received, and I had to suppress the urge to spring up the ladder42 to the bridge as I walked, reminding myself that I was playing the role of an eightyish pensioner. The steward went ahead and opened the door as I caned my way upward, ushering me onto the space.
If there were bits and pieces of the ship’s décor that were somewhat dated, the bridge was decidedly not. It was refreshing to see that the cruise line had put serious money into the command area—I suspect the board of directors includes more than a few former sea captains. The bridge had a rail at the back of the console area, most likely so that it could accommodate visitors during VIP tours. But then again, the entire space was larger than a number of minesweepers I’ve seen. The center navigational console looked like something out of Star Wars, with an array of configurable flat screens that read out every possible vital sign. A large panel plotted our position; there were accompanying radar and sonar displays demonstrating that the nearby ocean was our own. There was no paper to be seen anywhere; each crewman, from captain to second lookout, had a tablet-type computer, which tied directly into the ship’s command data systems.
The area forward from the console was divided into two separate sections that stepped down from the console deck; even Shotgun could have stood in front of the captain’s chair and not blocked his view. Doors at starboard and port opened onto the flying bridge, which extended around the superstructure like the porch on an old Victorian building.
The captain rose from his well-padded leather chair as I came in. He cut a good figure—full head of gray hair, the slightest suggestion of whiskers, a strong gait. He was only of average height, and I doubt he would tip the scale over 150, but he seemed larger in his uniform. He’d shortened his name from Adolf to Alf, and like many of the crew, was Swedish by birth. He shook my hand as if I were an old friend.
“Well, old-timer, what do you think of our bridge?” His words had a slight lilt to them, betraying his first language.
“Very nice,” I told him.
“Like the navy ships you commanded?”
“I never had the honor of command.” I didn’t think he was testing my cover story—he seemed too affable—but just in case, I reminded him what I had said during dinner the night before. My highest shipboard role was as exec, an able and strenuous number two, but not the main fiddle.
“You were on a destroyer, though?” said the captain, remembering.
“Early in my career, aye. A bit different than this.”
He smiled proudly, and began showing me the different stations. Though there was a helmsman, the ship was currently running on autopilot; I wondered how the man kept himself awake.
“Soon, they won’t need a crew,” the captain said wistfully. “Just program the computer and voilà. You will arrive.”
“I don’t think I’d like to be on a ship like that.”
“I would not have expected many things when I started.”
The captain introduced me to the rest of the bridge crew. Like him, most were Swedish—it seemed almost a requirement for advancement in the upper ranks of the company, even though the firm was not itself headquartered in Scandinavia. The next-largest contingent of officers was Filipino, which was appropriate since the largest portion of the crewmen had come from the islands. A polyglot of different nationalities made up the rest.
The captain had first served as a crewman aboard a liner in 1969; he liked the experience and went to a training school, joining another line as a junior officer. He’d been with this company for more than a decade, but wasn’t yet senior enough to command their best ships—something that rankled him just below the surface. Still, he relished his vessel; his sunburned face beamed with pride as he took me to the forward windows and had me look across the deck.
“Quite a ship,” I told him.
“Would you like a turn at the wheel?”
“Love it.”
The “wheel” consisted of a large pistol-grip controller, more like something you’d find in a spaceship than a ship. I wouldn’t have been surprised if it was just for show, but the bow did move a degree or two to port as I steered.
“Now watch the effect of the autopilot,” said the captain. He tapped a few buttons and gave the control back to the computer. The Bon Voyage moved ever so gently back to starboard.
“Impressive.”
“You look tired,” said the captain.
“Just my knees acting up.”
“Have a seat, have a seat.”
He gestured toward the chair next to his. I thanked him and sat down. He picked up a walkie-talkie and began speaking to a member of his crew.
I rested the cane against the console panel and slid back in the chair.
It was comfortable—so comfortable, I could have fallen asleep. And maybe I would have, except for the loud explosion that went off right behind me.
The shock wave rattled the bridge. I grabbed at the armrest to keep from falling. When I looked up, two men had materialized in front of me, both holding sawed-off shotguns.
“The ship is under our command!” one of them yelled. “Do as we say! Do not be foolish!”
His voice was familiar, but until he took a step closer, I didn’t realize who it was: Scarface.
The captain pulled himself off the deck where he’d fallen from the shock of the explosion. Grabbing the edge of the console, he steadied himself.
“This is my ship,” he growled. “I am in command here.”
Scarface answered by pulling the trigger, scattering a good part of the captain’s skull across the bridge.
“We are in full command,” he said in a strangely calm, even understated voice. “Anyone who resists will be killed, as he was.”
(III)
After being dressed down by Danny, Junior headed over to our e-headquarters in Queens, New York, sharing his misery with Shunt. They’d been friends before either worked for Red Cell International, and being the same age—assuming Shunt has an actual age—had a lot of things in common besides their techno-prowess.
As Shunt tells the story, Junior wanted to get back in Danny’s good graces, and was desperate for some sort of plan that would take him there. Shunt, meanwhile, had his hands full trying to figure out what Veep’s “Scorched Earth” message referred to. Junior started to help.
They wasted a lot of time tracking the phone booth and then cracking the European phone company to look for parallels or other calls. Eventually, Junior started doing random searches and discovered a Twitter account named TWT345 that contained exactly two messages: one, back two months before, was simply the word “Sending.”
The second was “Scorched Earth.”
There must have been hundreds of messages with those words in them, but the tweet was unique for two reasons: one, that was the only thing in the message, and two, it happened within a few minutes of Veep’s phone call.
More interesting, at least to Junior, Twitter account TWT345 had no real followers. The six accounts “following” TWT345 were all spambots, which sent out advertisements but didn’t actually read anything sent to them. TWT345 was the proverbial tree falling in the forest that no one was around to hear.
(For those of you who have better things to do with your lives than play with Twitter, the service works like this: once a user signs up for an account, he or she can send messages�
��called “tweets”—to anyone who has subscribed to receive their messages. That is called “following.” Followers can “retweet” or repeat messages, which basically means forwarding the message to the people who follow them. More on Twitter: each message can be no longer than 140 characters. If you think of it as a semi-closed system for sending text messages to a list of people, you have the basic idea.)
The account could have been used to communicate basic information without being noticed by the authorities, but from what Junior could tell, no one else had noticed it either. Then he realized that tweets could be retrieved through searches instead of subscriptions. Someone doing a regular search would see the tweet without having to subscribe to the specific account. No subscription, no record, no way to track.
Or, no easy way to track. The Twitter servers had records of the searches; all Junior had to do was break into the system and retrieve them. That took him several hours, but once there, a few minutes of downloading and examining search strings revealed that TWT345 had been searched every half hour over the past two weeks by two different computer users.
While the identity of the users themselves was hidden, the service providers were not. One user was in Europe, the other in Washington, D.C. Knowing that backtracking to the actual person could be difficult, especially in Europe, Shunt prioritized the Washington, D.C., user and began digging into the service. He discovered that the same computer had been searching Google for days, looking for plans to the Capitol and the Supreme Court Building, both of which had been mentioned in the intercepts that Junior had looked at weeks before.
Just a coincidence, surely—but Junior found that the computer had accessed a Web e-mail address, and was able to tease out the account. And the e-mail account had received the following message from a heretofore unused Gmail account about a half hour after Veep got his phone call: Initiate Scorched Earth.
[Rogue Warrior 18] Curse of the Infidel Page 31