The Unknown

by Brett Battles

  Nate glanced across the table, and Daeng nodded toward the front of the plane. Nate twisted in his seat to take a look. Quinn was leaning into the cockpit, talking to the pilots. When he stood and started walking back, the plane banked to the right.

  Seeing Nate and Daeng looking at him, Quinn continued past Orlando to the table.

  “What’s going on?” Nate asked.

  “The kidnappers are landing.”

  “Already? Where?”

  “In Hungary. Debrecen.”

  “Any idea why?”

  “Working on that,” Quinn said. “We’ll be on the ground in about forty-five. Not sure what the plan will be yet, but I want everyone ready to move.”

  “Got it.”

  Quinn switched his gaze to the hard drive. “Did you get it working?”

  Jar was focused on her screen and didn’t seem to hear him, so Nate answered, “It’s powered up but it’s encrypted. Jar’s trying to break through now.”

  “I am setting up the computer so it can break through,” Jar said. “I am not doing it myself.”

  Nate glanced at Quinn. “What she said.”

  Quinn smirked. “Let me know if you’re able to pull anything off it.”

  Nate knew Jar was about to explain that it would take longer than three-quarters of an hour to see any results, so he spoke first. “No problem. Will do.”

  After Quinn left, Jar said, “He did not need to know there would be no information before we land, correct?”

  “Correct,” Nate said.

  “Hmm. Okay. But I do not need you speaking for me.”

  “Fair point. My apologies.”

  A flash of a smile from Jar, then all serious again as she returned to her task.

  “Dude, you’re like the Jar whisperer,” Daeng said.

  Jar looked up again. “Jar whisperer? Like the movie The Horse Whisperer? This is what you mean?”

  Daeng looked uncomfortable. “Yeah, but it was a joke. I didn’t mean that you were a—”

  “I know what you meant. You meant someone who can communicate with someone or something others cannot easily do.”

  Her words did nothing to improve Daeng’s look of unease. “Well, yes, but—”

  “You are right. Nate does understand me better than you. Better than…anyone.” She turned to Nate. “You are the Jar whisperer.”

  “Thanks?”

  “You are welcome.” She returned her attention to her computer.

  Behind Daeng, Kincaid shook his head and said, “You guys are a bunch of wackos.”

  “I can live with that,” Nate said.

  After Jar got the decryption going, she pulled out the sealed book and began pushing and prodding it again. She’d been at it for around five minutes when the tome let out a thonk and the top cover popped up.

  “Well, I’ll be dammed,” Nate said.

  She set it on the table next to the hard drive and lifted the lid. At one point, it had been a real book, but the pages had been glued together and the centers cut out. The cavity created was filled with black packing foam.

  Mostly filled, that was.

  Sitting dead center in the foam, in a tight-fitting groove, was a silver rectangle about the length and width of a thin, convenience-store lighter. The metal was scored about a third of the way from one end.

  “What is that?” Daeng asked.

  “Flash drive?” Nate suggested.

  Jar grunted noncommittally and leaned down for a closer look. After several seconds, she pulled on rubber gloves and prodded the foam in places. She then reached for the object.

  “Wait,” Nate said.

  “What?” she said, looking at him, her fingers hovering above the foam.

  He glanced over his shoulder and said in a loud voice, “Hey, you guys, you might want to see this.”

  Quinn and Orlando rose from their seats and came back. Kincaid stood up and looked over Daeng’s seat.

  “You opened it,” Orlando said upon seeing the book.

  “Of course I did,” Jar said.

  “What is that?” Quinn asked, his gaze on the silver rectangle.

  “That’s the question of the moment,” Nate said. “Okay, Jar.”

  Jar slipped her fingers between the foam and the rectangle and pulled out the object.

  Nate could now see it was about a millimeter thick, and that the score line went around the sides, too. He guessed it marked a removable end cap.

  Jar turned the object and stared at the side that had been facing down in the foam.

  “Find something interesting?” Nate asked.

  She set the rectangle on the table so everyone could see the backside. All the other sides were entirely covered in metal. Not so here. While the short portion below the scored line was also metal, the surface on the other side of the line was entirely black glass.

  “You have another set of gloves?” Orlando asked.

  Jar handed her a disposable set from her bag. Orlando pulled them on and gingerly took the stick from Jar.

  As Orlando studied it, Jar said, “It appears to be a biometrics reader.”

  “I agree,” Orlando said.

  With her free hand, Orlando grabbed the smaller section below the score and glanced at Jar. “Do you mind?”

  “Not at all.”

  A tug and the cap came free, revealing a connector.

  “It is a flash drive,” Daeng said.

  “Perhaps,” Orlando said, though she sounded doubtful.

  She handed it back to Jar. “I wouldn’t try it on your machine.”

  Jar twisted the object in her hand. “I can isolate it. Any damage it could cause would be minimal.”

  The pilot’s voice came over the intercom. “We’ve been in touch with Debrecen and they’ve been able to work us in, but we won’t be on the ground for another fifty-six minutes.”

  “Fifty-six?” Quinn said.

  “Must be a lot of traffic going in,” Orlando said.

  Jar, apparently unfazed by the news, had set the device next to her laptop and was typing on her keyboard. After she finished, she picked up the stick and plugged it into her machine, glass side up.

  A slowly pulsing red light began to glow along the edges of the glass. Jar studied her computer. At first, it appeared everything was going as she expected. But then her brow furrowed.

  “It should not be able to do that,” she whispered.

  “What?” Nate asked.

  “It’s connected itself to the internet.”

  “How? You haven’t unlocked it yet.”

  “It must have an automatic program that turns on when it powers up,” she said, her eyes never leaving her screen.

  Inside a window on her screen, data that Nate couldn’t understand scrolled faster and faster. This was matched by the sound of the fan inside her laptop increasing.

  “Maybe you should—”

  Jar yanked the device from her machine, but the data in the window and the fan’s whine both continued.

  “Did it upload a virus?” Orlando asked.

  “This is coming from the web,” Jar said. “From wherever that thing was connected to, but—”

  She said something in Thai that Nate was pretty sure was a swear word as she shut her laptop, flipped it over, and popped the battery out.

  Finally, the fan slowed.

  “What the hell happened?” Kincaid asked.

  “I…I do not know,” Jar said. She picked up the metal rectangle and stared at it. “I do not think this is a flash drive.”

  “No,” Orlando said. “It’s a key. Part of one, anyway. You probably need the right fingerprint on the bio scanner. That’s why it didn’t cooperate.”

  “Brunner’s fingerprint,” Quinn said.

  “That would make the most sense.”

  “If it’s a key, then it could give us access to what Brunner’s been working on, right?” Quinn said. “Might be our only way to find out.”

  “If we had his fingerprints,” Nate said.

>   “They must be on file somewhere,” Orlando said. “I can see what I can dig up.”

  “You think you could get that thing to work?” Quinn asked Jar.

  “With the fingerprint, I should be able to.”

  “Then let’s make it happen.”

  Chapter Twenty

  Debrecen air traffic control granted Tiana’s jet immediate emergency clearance, and twenty-two minutes after she had given her order to land, the Falcon was on the ground.

  The pilots were instructed to park in an area southwest of the passenger terminal, where two fire engines and three airport police vehicles waited.

  The excuse the pilots had used to obtain clearance was that a warning light had indicated a problem with the pressurization system. Now that the jet was on the ground, the two men had “discovered” the real problem was with the light itself.

  When the pilots exited the plane to explain this to the authorities, Tiana followed them out, but instead of walking with them to the waiting vehicles, she ducked underneath the fuselage, hoping the thought that had been bothering her would be a nonissue.

  It was about the man who had run under the plane. She’d assumed at the time he was hoping to somehow disable the craft and had failed. But what if his intentions had been something else entirely?

  She scanned the bottom of the plane, looking for anything that seemed even remotely out of place.

  “Hey!” a voice yelled.

  One of the officials the pilots were talking to was looking in her direction. He shouted something in Hungarian, a language she didn’t understand. She ignored him and returned to her task.

  She saw nothing unusual stuck to the fuselage or under the wings, so she walked over to the nearest landing gear and looked it up and down. She was no airplane mechanic, but everything seemed to be— Her eyes narrowed and she leaned closer.

  “Hey!” the official yelled again, his voice much nearer this time.

  She barely even registered him, her attention fully on a small black square attached near the top of a diagonal support post. It didn’t match anything else on the gear.

  She grabbed an edge of it and gave it a tug. While most of the square remained in place, a corner peeled back a bit, allowing her to see it was secured in place by some kind of adhesive backing. Sure now that it was not standard equipment, she yanked harder.

  Another “hey!” was followed by a barrage of Hungarian.

  Still pulling, she glanced toward the voice.

  The official was walking rapidly toward her, having already passed the end of the wing. Trailing him were the two pilots and the other official.

  Just as the man reached the fuselage and ducked down to get a better look at Tiana, the square came free from the post.

  The man barked again, clearly not happy.

  “Sorry, I don’t speak Hungarian,” she said in English to obscure her background.

  This stopped him midsentence. He looked back, and said something to his colleague.

  Tiana walked over to the other rear landing gear. When she saw no black square attached to it, she relaxed.

  “You must come,” the second official said in heavily accented English. “Please, you cannot be out here.”

  “I’m just doing an inspection. I’m almost done.”

  He translated what she’d said to his colleague. There was more talking, but Tiana didn’t pay attention. Instead, she circled around the landing gear to make sure she hadn’t missed anything.

  “You must come now,” the official said. Though he wasn’t yelling like his colleague had, his tone was sterner. “You are in violation.”

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t—” She paused.

  There, on the arm connecting a diagonal post to the wheel, was another square. It had been hidden behind the tire, keeping her from seeing it from any other angle.

  “If you do not return inside your airplane, we will be forced to arrest you.”

  She grabbed the square and tried to yank it off, but it was better affixed than the other one.

  “This is your last warning.”

  Grimacing, she let go of the square and said, “I’m coming, I’m coming.”

  As she scooted out from under the plane, she nonchalantly slipped the first square into her back pocket.

  The first official, his face red, spoke to her again in Hungarian, his tone full of anger.

  “I wasn’t doing anything wrong,” she said to the man who spoke English. “I’m a certified pilot, so while my friends were talking to you, I was helping them by checking the plane.”

  “You will get back on board now and will not come out again,” the man said.

  “Of course. Whatever you want.”

  She climbed back into the jet.

  While she waited for the pilots to join her, she pulled the square out of her pocket. It was not much larger than a postage stamp and wafer thin, with no marking to indicate what it was for.

  A few minutes later, the copilot reboarded.

  “So?” Tiana asked.

  “They’re sending out an inspector. Once he clears us, we can leave.”

  “How long until he gets here?”

  “I don’t know.”

  She heard the pilot start up the stairs so she moved to the doorway, intercepting him before he reached the top. Glancing beyond him, she saw the officials returning to their vehicles. She held up the square and said to the pilot, “Do you recognize this?”

  He shook his head. “What is it?”

  She told him where she’d found it.

  “That shouldn’t be there.”

  “There’s another one,” she said, then described its location. “They stopped me before I could pull it off. I can’t go back out there, but you can. Get it.”

  He nodded and retreated down the stairs to the tarmac.

  While he was underneath the plane, the fire trucks and two of the security vehicles drove off. The third stayed where it was, but the man inside made no move to stop the pilot.

  A few minutes later, the pilot reentered the aircraft and handed the square to Tiana.

  “You’re sure you don’t know what this is,” she said.

  “Positive. It was not there when I did the inspection before we left to meet you.”

  That cinched it, then. The only way the squares could have hitched a ride was due to the man who’d run under the plane.

  She bent one of the squares in half, and worked it back and forth until it split in two.

  “Shit,” she whispered.

  Embedded between the outside layers was a tiny circuit board. The hair on the back of her neck stood on end. The squares could be only one thing.

  Tracking bugs.

  Whoever those people in Slovakia were, they knew exactly where Tiana’s jet was. She had to assume they had access to their own jet, and were likely heading this way right now.

  She grabbed the second square, intending to break it, too, but then stopped. She had a better idea.

  She headed to the cockpit, where the pilots had gone.

  “We need to get out of here,” she said.

  “We can’t go until after the inspector clears us,” the pilot said.

  “Do you really want a replay of what happened in Slovakia?” She held up the unbroken square. “This is a tracker. They know we are here.”

  “The…the tower won’t give us runway clearance,” the copilot said.

  “So what? When they see what we’re doing, they’ll make sure everyone gets out of our way.”

  “Even if we get into the air, they’ll send fighter jets to intercept us.”

  She rolled her eyes and pointed at the map on the dash screen. “We are only a few minutes from the Romanian border, correct? Go that way. The Hungarian Air Force isn’t going to follow us there, and by the time the Romanians send someone up, if they do, we’ll already be in Ukrainian airspace.”

  The pilot looked at the map before turning to the copilot. “Preflight check.”

  “I want us roll
ing as soon as I get back on the plane,” she said.

  “Where are you going?”

  “To have a quick conversation with our friends outside.” She walked back to the main cabin.

  Grigory was sitting in the front row of seats, next to the door.

  “Give me your phone,” she said to him.

  “What? Why?”

  “Because I said so.” Grigory was a skilled commando, but he would occasionally forget she was in charge.

  Frowning, he handed her his phone.

  Holding his mobile by her side, she exited the aircraft and headed straight toward the remaining security vehicle. The official was on his own mobile and didn’t notice her until she tapped on his window. He jerked in surprise, then quickly ended his call and rolled the glass down.

  “You need to return to your plane,” the man said. Thankfully, it was the guy who spoke English.

  “We want to know how long it will be before the inspector gets here.”

  “He will arrive as soon as he is able.”

  “You can’t even give me an estimate? Twenty minutes? An hour?”

  “I do not know. Now, please—”

  Tiana let Grigory’s phone slip from her grasp. It hit the ground with a thunk.

  “Dammit.” As she leaned down to pick it up, she slipped the intact tracking bug under the car, the backing still viable enough to adhere to the frame.

  When she stood back up, she brushed off the phone and smiled. “No cracks. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve ruined a screen.”

  “Ma’am, return to your aircraft.”

  “Okay, okay. I’m going.” She turned and walked back to the jet. As soon as she was onboard, she yelled toward the cockpit, “Let’s go.”

  Six minutes later, to the dismay of Debrecen traffic control and airport security, the jet hijacked the runway and rose into the sky.

  If the Hungarian Air Force sent anyone to force them down, Tiana and the others never saw them. The Romanians were no-shows, too.

  Quinn and the team landed ten minutes later than the tower had estimated. The reason for the delay was some kind of incident at the airport, but the air traffic controllers didn’t give any more details than that.

  As they taxied from the runway to the area where they’d been assigned to park, each member of the team, save Orlando, sat at a different window and scanned the airport for the Falcon. Orlando was monitoring the tracking bug on her computer.