Locked Down

by Ed Kovacs

  Hernandez stood ready to fire, but the car was empty. They hurried in and he pressed the button for LG1. “If this car stops at any floor other than LG1, we could have a problem.”

  She nodded as the elevator doors closed.

  “I'm trying to give you a hint to pull your damn gun, Grant,” he said, irritated. “Like you should have pulled it when I opened the steel doors, and like you should have pulled it while we waited for the elevator to arrive. You want to be my partner, then back me the hell up.” Nicole saw that Hernandez wasn't trying to hide it, he was royally steamed.

  She blushed again as she reached into the nylon shoulder bag and retrieved the heavy handgun she'd shot the guard with. They stood on opposite sides of the elevator doors, guns out and ready as the car silently, slowly descended.

  “What else haven't you told me?” he asked accusingly.

  Her eyes met his and she quickly explained to him about her old NSA boss Ernest Normann and how he didn't answer her call using the secure phone.

  “I asked you not to contact anyone.”

  “Your cell phone video message said you were dead, so any agreements we had were null and void,” she retorted. He'd put her on the defensive but she had no intention of staying that way. “I called Normann just before I saw you at the Shangri-La. He told me to call back on a secure line.”

  “His phone was probably monitored. Most likely he's been waxed.”

  “No, don't say that. Don't even joke about that.” Her words rushed out like they'd been swept away on a tide of fear. She couldn't face the notion that her call might have led to his death. Too much anguish pressed on her chest as it was, and the idea that call could have...

  “We'll talk about it later. What else?”

  Crap, how did he know there was more?

  “I hacked a local government computer and stole the blueprints for Pacific Place.”

  “Good. What else?”

  She hesitated. This was the big revelation. Was it wise to tell him now, while they were both holding firearms? Screw it. “An admission. I was a spy for Normann, for the NSA, during the drone op. We stole everything. It got sent to NSA, and I personally saved hundreds of files on the Darknet to cover my ass. Not just the one file I've told you about.”

  She felt a sense of relief at have blurted out the secrets she'd been holding back from him, but her relief was tempered by the sight of Hernandez's face flushing with anger. She imagined white-hot rage rising in his throat. He’s thinking that I'm nothing more than a spy, a mole, and that I've betrayed him. All afternoon she'd been playing the innocent, but Nicole knew she was guilty as hell. She’d lied to him several times. First about not having listened to the audio file of Vice Premier Wang Hongwei in the van, and now this. She had no idea how Hernandez would react to these revelations.

  “So my laptop in Phoenix was pinging dozens of requests every day to the Darknet to keep all of those files fresh in cyberspace—that's what got the attention of the Chinese.”

  She watched as fury seemed to well-up inside him, but he didn't say a word.

  “You probably want me to take a long walk on a short pier. You might even be wondering if you can trust me. That's up to you, but I swear I've got no more surprises. No more secrets. You know everything I know. So I hope you can be professional and put aside your anger, because we need to create a plan to remotely access my laptop.”

  He frosted her with an icy stare, and then leveled his weapons as the elevator car arrived at LG1. Nicole also aimed her gun as the doors opened... but no one was there. They hurried out of the lift and he led her to a steel door. “Since you crashed so much CCTV video, use the blueprints you stole to lead us someplace safe,” he said, pulling open the door that led into a concrete passageway.

  “But isn't Jaffir waiting for us?”

  “Forget about Jaffir. You and I need to have a private conversation,” he said coldly.

  Her heart sank. The tenuous trust she'd had with Hernandez lay in tatters like trash strewn in a dirty gutter

  CHAPTER 17

  19:23

  MSS Director Tang's command post in the Marriott buzzed with electrified activity. Tang hid his impatience as he held a cell phone to his side while getting a briefing from his aide, Choi. Events were quickening, but not in a smooth fashion, and that frustrated him to no end. His hackers had identified an adversary hacker operating from an office at One Pacific Place. Whoever it was had crashed most of the CCTV systems in the entire complex. So Tang had dispatched his men and got lucky; a security guard identified Hernandez from one of the 8 X10s. The American had been seen loitering in the building. So Tang had felt confident in assuming that Hernandez and Grant were operating out of a company called Trans-National on the 23rd floor.

  The problem lay in Tang's lack of manpower. Having to co-ordinate with the Second Department through Ma's aide Li Shan slowed everything down. It was also a recipe for confusion and screw-ups.

  “Two more things,” said Choi, continuing his briefing. “Nicole Grant had a long conversation with a female at the Marriott wine bar. We have this woman under close surveillance. She's British and might be the WikiLeaks replacement.”

  “Find out if she is. And the second thing?” asked Tang as he tugged at an earlobe.

  “Six of General Ma's men just gained access to Trans-National Corporation at One Pacific Place through a service elevator entrance. They are right now inside the offices.”

  “So our MSS agents are still outside the front door. Ma's people have the stairwells covered and have just now entered through service elevators?”

  “Yes, that's right, sir.”

  “Send six more of Ma's men in using the service elevators.”

  Tang turned away from Choi and brought the cell phone up to his ear. “Sorry to keep you waiting, General Ma, but at this moment we can't yet confirm that Grant or Hernandez are present in that office. But your men are now inside and will begin searching at any moment.”

  “Tell my men to shoot them on sight,” came General Ma’s voice from the cell phone.

  ###

  Nicole Grant felt Ron Hernandez drill her with a hard stare. She'd used the blueprints uploaded into her tablet computer to lead them deep into the inner workings of Pacific Place. They now stood in a large cement-walled room full of gargantuan HVAC—heating, ventilating, and air-conditioning—equipment, standing in broken rows like some kind of medieval maze of steel. Wide, six-foot high, battleship gray metal cabinets housed scrubbers that used massive filters to clean the air. Oversized air handlers conditioned and circulated the air, while giant dehumidifiers drained large amounts of water from Hong Kong's muggy atmosphere. Segments of the floor were made up of steel plates. Individual plates could be lifted for access to crawlspaces below the room. Duct work, steel conduit, and all kinds of cabling running on horizontal and vertical cable trays laced the room into a large industrial knot of efficient, humming machinery.

  Grant thought Hernandez looked completely out of place standing there in his three-piece suit. He'd picked the lock to get them inside, but she could tell he didn't like being in this room. She was keenly aware he hadn't spoken to her since right after they'd left the elevator. She stood next to him fumbling with her tablet and suspected he now trusted her as far as he could throw a brick.

  Nicole had gotten rid of the Central Services uniform shirt. She had the nylon shoulder bag she'd used as part of her cleaning lady disguise draped over a black pullover top, and still wore the clunky polyester uniform pants, black wig and sunglasses. The relentless sound of blowers and fans and pumps and other equipment provided a kind of Machine Age techno soundtrack to the unfolding drama between the two fugitives, like a baseline of tension.

  “I don't like it here,” he said, scowling as he looked around.

  “Why? We have a strong, locked door. We can take some time and work up a plan to—”

  “There's only one way in and one way out. If the bad guys start doing room-to-room searches and
walk through that door, we're screwed.”

  “I was under the impression we were pretty much screwed, period.”

  “I don't know about you, but I'm no quitter,” he snapped. “That's why you're going to answer some questions. Beginning with, are you still with NSA or some other agency?”

  “No, I'm not.” It was unnerving trying to hold his accusatory gaze. She looked to her tablet, to the blueprints of the building.

  “Why did you lie to me?”

  She hesitated, and then reluctantly looked up. “I'm still wrestling with the reasons.”

  He wasn't amused. “Answer my question.”

  “I was afraid, okay?” she blurted out. “I'm ashamed to admit it, but I was scared out of my wits. Considering my job and background, I should have better control over my emotions, my behavior, my fear. But you forced your way into my room, manhandled me, shot a bullet next to my arm, threatened to kill me, and then showed me video of an assassination squad assigned to end my life. So maybe I had good reasons to be frightened.” She looked away, avoiding his gaze. “I guess I'm not as tough as I thought I was, as tough as I'd like to be, and that bothers the hell out of me. Anyway, fear can be irrational, but fear was only part of why I lied.”

  He watched her for several seconds. “What's the other part?”

  She let out a long exhale. “I guess I'm facing up to the fact that I'm devious. I've become... dishonest. And it's not a particularly nice trait, is it?”

  He crossed his arms. “That depends on intention.”

  “As a penetration tester, I have to think like hackers, thieves, criminals, think of how they might break into a system. I even go to physical locations and do risk assessment. How could I gain access to a building, break into the server room? How could I infect an unsuspecting employee's computer with spyware? So my intention is pure—I'm working to protect a client. But I wonder if by spending so much time thinking like a criminal—”

  “You wonder if it's changed you for the worse,” he said.

  Considering his background, maybe he could relate, maybe he could understand what she was getting at. She looked at him through her dark glasses. “The reason I lied about not having listened to the audio file of Wang Hongwei in the back of the panel van was self-preservation. At the time, I thought you might kill me if I confessed to knowing what had been recorded. But since you already knew I'd sent a file to the Darknet, I admitted it.”

  “So you committed a sin of omission by not telling me about all of the other files. Or mentioning the fact you were a mole for the NSA.”

  “Yes. I was gaming you. Even after I'd come to trust you, I still held back the truth.”

  He nodded, seeming to digest her words. “Not too long ago, you told me that if I didn't shoot straight with you, you'd take your chances alone. But you're the one who hasn't been shooting straight with me.”

  Her mouth opened slightly. She started to say something, and then stopped. Then she simply said, “I'm sorry.”

  He finally broke his gaze and looked around at the machinery. “I'm going to find Jaffir. Your new passport and credit cards should be ready. I'll text you, tell you where I've hidden them.” He turned and walked toward the door.

  “Wait!” She wet her lips, took a breath and right there and then, in a flash of absolute certainty and clarity, made peace with her death. Her mother Jan would eventually recover from the news, if it came to that. Jan was so strong and brave. If Hernandez walked out that door, so be it. She'd do her best on her own, and that was all she could do. She pulled off the oversized sunglasses and stuck them into the shoulder bag. She realized almost immediately that it was an unconscious gesture that she was ready to come clean. “I want to tell you what I did for the NSA.”

  He checked the time on his Suunto watch. “Make it fast.”

  She took a breath, and then sat on the floor with her back against the cool cement wall. She placed her tablet computer on the steel floor next to her. It looked odd since he was wearing a three-piece suit, but Hernandez sat on the floor in front of her.

  “The very first day of the op, acting under orders from Ernest Normann, I used a flash drive to infect the computers in Pomona with invasive, invisible, fast-loading software developed by the geniuses at Fort Meade. That software caused all of the data generated by the Omega Team to be sent to NSA. The data was piggybacking on the carrier signal going to Langley.”

  Hernandez nodded. “Clever.” He crossed his arms, as if waiting in judgment to hear the rest.

  “Normann had told me he wanted to know what the hell that super-secret Omega Team was up to. I felt uncomfortable spying on fellow Americans. But those were my orders, so I carried them out, even though I've never been trained as a field agent.”

  He nodded.

  “But I'm a careful person and I like redundancy.”

  “So you also started sending the same data to the Darknet?”

  “No. I altered the NSA's software so that everything that was sent to NSA was also sent to me. To a secure server I controlled. That last night of the operation you terminated the carrier signal before the audio file I'd recorded could be sent to my server. So that audio file of Wang Hongwei was the sole file I sent directly from Pomona to the Darknet—it was the only way to preserve it.”

  “Not like an engineer to do something so risky.”

  She nodded. “It was an impulsive decision that I've regretted ever since.”

  “What did that audio file contain?”

  “Zhao Yiren was inside that panel van, waiting for the soldiers to bring in Wang Hongwei and Wang's special laptop.”

  Hernandez raised his eyebrows slightly. “I knew the mission was to help Zhao, but I didn't know he was inside the van.”

  Her eyes unfocused a bit as she recalled the details. “Zhao was gloating. He told Wang that instead of becoming the next president of China, Wang would become an inmate in a Chinese prison for the next thirty years. He threatened to have Wang's entire family killed if he didn't reveal information about secret bank accounts in the Caribbean. Wang was giving up bank names and account numbers all the way up until I stopped recording.”

  “So Zhao Yiren stole all of Wang Hongwei's dirty money. If the political elders in Beijing heard that tape they'd put him in front of a firing squad.” Hernandez pursed his lips. “You're telling me you have that audio file, plus you kept copies of data generated on the drone operation?”

  “Yes. A few months after it all went down, I sent the files on my secret server to the Darknet, and have kept them alive ever since. Like I said, I'm devious. Logically, the risk was not to keep copies of everything. I was being careful because something wasn't right with that Omega Team operation. Subsequent events would seem to confirm that.” She looked at him straight on.

  “Grant, you're full of it.”

  Nicole felt her face flush. Here she was letting her guard down, being honest with him and he was calling her a liar.

  “You're not devious, you were cautious,” he said, with a slight smile.

  She blanched, and her anger evaporated into the ozone-rich air of the HVAC room. “You think so?” She watched as his countenance softened into something approaching neutrality. She absentmindedly wiped her clammy hands on her pants. “Can you answer a question for me? I understand I'm alive, thanks to you. But how is it that you're alive?”

  He paused, as if considering how to answer. “I was warned by a highly placed contact. Someone who knew about the operation from the beginning.”

  “I didn't think many people knew about it.”

  “Giving the drone to the Chinese two years ago had to have been a deep black covert action program approved by the president. So maybe a dozen people knew. Not a huge number, but more than a few. This cover-up they're now doing with the killings is the kind of off-the-books operation that would be highly compartmentalized with only a handful of people in the loop. But what's the old saying by Benjamin Franklin? 'Three can keep a secret if two of them are dead.'�
��

  “The person who warned you. Are they—?”

  “Dead?”

  He looked away, but his eyes betrayed intense worry. Nicole could tell that the person who'd helped him was someone special. He'd already lost his brother and now maybe someone else important to him. It hit home to her because she was worried sick that the Chinese or even the Agency might grab Jan in Las Vegas to use as bait against her.

  “Maybe he's dead. I'm not sure. Something is wrong, but I don't know what,” said Hernandez, as if trying to swallow the emotion underlying the words.

  There was nothing she could say, so she reached into the shoulder bag and handed him a business card. “Rena, the WikiLeaks girl, asked me to give this to you. I think you should talk to her.”

  He took the card and then looked at Nicole. “For the sake of argument, let's say we can go public. The first possibility is that we'll be ignored and nothing will happen except a stronger effort to find and kill us. The second possibility is the government will respond, meaning you and I would be demonized in the press. It's called the politics of personal destruction, and they're good at it. What we'd see is a huge cover-up, with a fall guy or two thrown in for the establishment mainstream media to devour.”

  “So why contact WikiLeaks in London? Wasn't it to try and save your life?”

  He smiled a sad smile. “My goal since my brother's murder was to kill Zhao and anyone else responsible. But I've been living on borrowed time. WikiLeaks was a backup plan. If I died before I could get revenge, I thought maybe WikiLeaks going public would result in the Chinese government itself killing Zhao and some of the others.”

  He checked his watch, rubbed tired eyes, and wearily stood up.“Considering the video we got from those two contract agents,” he said, “you hold some good evidence. But it's not enough. Your drone op files are the clincher that might make a difference for you. So I hope you can get the files back.”