by J. M. Lanham
Lancaster shot a knowing look at Morgan. The guard’s story made sense from his perspective, but she knew better. Somewhere, right above her, were the outliers. In one building. Completely surrounded. And nowhere left to turn.
No one could see it, but she was smiling on the inside. She thanked the guard for his cooperation and dismissed him, then made her way over to Sarah Fletcher. The suspect sat on a couch on the far side of the lobby under a vaulted ceiling of skylights, handcuffed, head hanging low as local cops kept a close eye on her from nearby. A spotlight from a news chopper circling the building broke through the glass above and crossed over Fletcher, the bright light drawing a fierce wince. One clear look at Fletcher and Lancaster knew the girl was in way over her head.
“Sarah Fletcher, I presume?” she asked as she focused on the suspect while Morgan showed credentials and excused the locals.
“Yeah, that’s me,” Sarah said, eyes fixed on the floor.
“My name is Agent Lancaster. Central Intelligence.”
The comment drew a chuckle from Sarah. Then she looked up.
“Holy shit. You’re not an agent. You’re—you’re—”
“Once an agent, always an agent. But yes, I would expect one of Claire Connor’s colleagues in the media to recognize me.”
Concerned, “You’re here for Claire? What in the hell does the director of the CIA want with Claire Connor?”
“That’s a matter of national security I’m not at liberty to discuss. The real question is how much you really know about your supposed friend, Ms. Connor.”
“Enough to know that if the director herself is personally following up on her, then everything she told me about the CIA’s Asteria connection is true.” She stood up abruptly and drew a reactionary lunge forward from Agent Morgan, but Lancaster held up her hand and nodded, assuring him everything was okay. She took Fletcher by the shoulder and walked away from the feds.
“Tell me, Ms. Fletcher. How long have you worked in journalism?”
“About five years now, but I’ve only been in the field for a year or so. Why?”
“You know, Sarah, I was like you once. An idealist, maybe a little naïve even, but I always believed that I was fighting the good fight. That the world really could be divided into good versus evil, right versus wrong. In those days, there was no middle ground.”
“If you don’t mind me asking, what are you getting at, ma’am?”
“Some of what Claire may have told you is true. There’s simply no denying it. My predecessor was directly responsible for a series of questionable investments in a research project in Costa Rica, and I’ve spent the better part of the first six months of my appointment cleaning up another man’s mess.
“But in the time I’ve had to contemplate the motivations behind Director Bennett’s actions, I’ve come to realize that he wasn’t the malevolent predecessor I had come to loathe in the months prior to me taking office. Sure, the actions taken on Americans remains a disgusting misuse of power that I for one would never have signed off on, but that doesn’t negate the fact that when the United States government is presented with a powerful form of new technology we must explore it. We must maintain the pole position, plain and simple. Because if we don’t stay ahead of the curve, Sarah, our adversaries may very well beat us to what could be the next atomic bomb. And as an official sworn to protect the United States, it’s my job to make sure that doesn’t happen.”
Sarah chewed the inside of her cheek as she pondered the point the director was trying to get across. “So what are you saying, Margaret? That actively working to silence American citizens is in the best interest of the United States? What about the ones who’ve been tortured, hunted, murdered? What about the hits put out on Ford and Reed and Connor and the Freemans?”
“The agency turns like a ship, just like any other government entity. Those actions were put in place well before I took the reins.”
“But you were debriefed on Project THEIA. On Costa Rica. And what did Truman say about the presidency? The buck stops here? Does the principle apply to the director of the CIA?”
Lancaster looked back at Morgan, then leaned in to Sarah in confidence. Quietly, “Like I said, Sarah. Nothing is cut-and-dried, especially in the intelligence business. But you’ve got something. An ace in the hole, so to speak.”
“Meaning?”
“You’re already privy to countless files that are, to put it bluntly, quite damning to the agency. But as a member of the media, you’ve also just made an important contact at the most sophisticated intelligence agency in the world. Take a moment and think about what that could mean for your career moving forward.”
“If you think for one second I’m just going to turn around and forget about all of this, forget about my friends—”
“No one’s asking you to forget anything. Like I said, the conspiracy here was of Bennett’s making, and I’m more than happy to work with you to expose the former director for his abuse of power. But at the end of the day, the agency must remain intact, and the details regarding the Ocula experiments must stay hidden. If a foreign power caught wind of the potential here it could spell disaster for the future of our country. Of the world. And you know that, Sarah, better than most.”
“What makes you think other countries haven’t already made the connection? That they aren’t already working with their own sets of outliers to carry out their own diabolical plans?”
“We can’t guarantee anything, Sarah. Only that we’ll continue to work with what we have to minimize the damage Ocula has caused here.”
Sarah sighed long and thoughtfully, then asked, “What do you want me to do, director?”
“Help us stop a global catastrophe by bringing Claire Connor and the others in quietly.”
“You want me to betray her. Betray the others.”
Lancaster shook her head. “No, Sarah. I want you to save them. Help them understand that I’m on their side.”
“I don’t understand. You know they’re in the building, so why are you talking to me? Why haven’t you already gone up there to get them?”
“Keeping this contained isn’t that simple. We also need assurance that every single file relating to Ocula and Project THEIA is accounted for. Then they can be destroyed, and we can pretend this potentially apocalyptic scenario never existed.”
“Hell, I can already assure you of that.”
Lancaster didn’t follow.
Sarah asked, “You think the files they used to locate Skyline and connect all the dots between CIA and Asteria are on a cloud somewhere?”
“You’re telling me they’re not?”
Sarah shook her head, looked down, and smiled, astonished that even the director of the CIA—the Central Intelligence Agency, intelligence being the key word—couldn’t see it.
“Of course they’re not, director. What exactly do you think they’re doing here?”
Chapter 29:
What Goes Up
“How are we looking in there, Fenton?” Paul asked from just outside the open door to the cramped isolated server room.
“Drives are locked and loaded,” he said, his eyes fixed on the progress bars shining on-screen. “We’re at twenty-seven percent.”
Paul did some quick math in his head. Twenty-seven percent. Been here about thirty minutes. A percent a minute …“Fuck. Another hour and a half before we’re out of here?”
“Looks that way,” Fenton said. “At least we can use their network to simultaneously transfer the data to Claire’s friends at Atlanta Action News, along with the other cloud accounts we set up earlier.”
“Good to know,” Paul said. “Because from the looks of it, we’re not getting out of here unnoticed.” He didn’t want to say it in front of the kid, but he’d chocked this up to a suicide mission right from the start.
“About that,” Fenton said as he looked past Paul toward the outer data center door. “The alarm was tripped half an hour ago. Why hasn’t anyone come to check up on i
t?”
Just then, Claire busted through the data center door. “They’re here,” she said, motioning for Paul to come. She walked him to the windowed office across the hall and told him to take a look outside.
“Not too close to the window,” she said. “There’s a SWAT chopper flying around somewhere out there.” He nodded, and could barely make out the dull chop of the blades above the sirens blaring below. He crawled over to the window and looked down. “Jesus, they called in the cavalry, didn’t they?”
“In a word, yes.”
“So why are we still alone on the twentieth floor?”
“Can’t say. Working on their game plan, maybe?”
“Whatever they’re doing,” Paul said, “it’s only a matter of time before they drag us out of here.” He crawled back and stood next to Claire as she tried Sarah on her walkie-talkie. “Sarah, you there, over? Sarah, do you copy?”
Silently, Paul nudged her and pointed out to the parking lot. In the distance, they could see Sarah’s car, surrounded by crime scene tape and a handful of uniformed officers. No Sarah in sight.
“Think your friends at Atlanta Action News are going to come through?”
“That madhouse below us isn’t going to go unnoticed much longer. They’ll have a news team here any minute. Not sure how much that’s going to help us up here, though.”
Her concern was understandable. One trip of a motion detector, and their entire plan had been shot to shit, courtesy of one brilliant, but clumsy teenager. Now, they were thinking on the fly with no clear path of escape.
This was it. The outliers’ last stand.
“Fenton’s still working on the upload,” Paul said. “Says it’s gonna take another hour, maybe more.”
“Damn, that’s a long time. No way they’ll leave us up here that long.”
“You know what that means, don’t you?”
Claire nodded as she felt for the grip of the semi-auto protruding from the back of her jeans. “Yeah. I know what it means. But no matter what happens here tonight, we’ve got to make sure those files get uploaded. Exposing what’s happened here is more important than anything else right now.”
Paul agreed, however so reluctantly. He also knew Claire was right. The misdeeds committed by the Asteria-Langley partnership had to be exposed. A light had to be shone on all the dark places. It was the only chance they had of saving those still being held illegally stateside; the only chance to spread the word about the misdeeds of the people’s government to the people themselves; the only chance at bringing a dark chapter in genetic research, misuse, and abuse to a close.
No good deed goes unpunished.
He looked back toward the window and said, “A lot of jurisdictions represented down there tonight. Think they’ll send in the feds? Local SWAT? Consultants?”
“That last one is the one that concerns me the most,” Claire said. “A run-in with Langley’s hit squad is a guaranteed death sentence.”
“Think they could really pull off a triple homicide with all those folks down there?”
“Without a doubt. Right now they’re probably arguing over who has jurisdiction to bring us in. But the Consultants don’t have any interest in that. They’re a hit squad, and if they show up on the twentieth floor alone, it’s all over.” She referred to the pistol hanging from Paul’s belt. “Hell, they wouldn’t even have to bring their own weapons to plant.”
Paul was about to respond when Claire shushed him. There was a sound, a loud hum of sorts, coming from down the hall. They rushed back into the hallway and looked down the wide corridor to try and locate the source. The hum was louder now.
It was coming from the elevators.
“Fuck, they’re here,” Claire said, her words barely getting out before the elevator chime signaled the passengers had arrived. They dove back into the data server room as Paul worked quickly to pull the plugs from the nearest server and roll it toward the door. Claire reached in her back pocket and pulled out a vanity mirror she’d lifted from Sarah’s place for an occasion just like this. She blew off the makeup residue and held the mirror out just enough to catch a glimpse toward the elevator banks.
“See anything?” Paul asked behind her.
“Yeah, I see ’em,” she whispered back.
“Who’d they send?”
Ominously, she turned and said,
“Everybody.”
***
“The FBI is a federal security service, ma’am,” Agent Morgan said to a perturbed Lancaster. “We’ve been happy to cooperate and lend resources to your mission this far, but there’s no way we’re going to just let you and your men barge up there as you see fit.”
“Let me?” Lancaster said. “This is a local break-in, Morgan. I don’t need your permission to—”
“Donald Ford is a federal fugitive, and his accomplices are upstairs. No reason to think he’s not up there, too. Officially, this is an FBI matter.”
“And unofficially, these people launched a sophisticated attack on the CIA that put the lives of my people in jeopardy. It’s taken us months to pin them down, and you can’t expect us to sit by and risk losing them again.” Lancaster pulled the agent in closer and spoke in hushed tones. “Goddammit, Morgan. You know how important containing this is to national security. These people have an intimate knowledge of our most sensitive intel—”
“Which is why we’re going to do everything we can to bring them in safely.”
Morgan didn’t know it, but that was exactly what Lancaster was worried about. She also knew that if she pushed her case too much, she might be cut out of the loop completely.
With a soft smile she said, “I trust your judgment, Morgan. But I hope you know who you’re dealing with, both upstairs, and down here.”
Morgan disregarded the slight. “Feel free to standby.” He motioned for a fellow agent to hand him a radio and spoke to his men upstairs. “Secure the floor. No one makes a move on the server room without my direct order. Copy?”
They copied, and he left Lancaster to get the rest of his team ready on the ground floor. She flipped her wrist to check her watch: 23:02. Getting dangerously close to midnight. It wouldn’t be long now, and odds were the outliers would be in the custody of the FBI (alive or dead) before Sunday. With any luck, none of them would leave the building with a pulse, but Morgan seemed determined to bring the fugitives in alive.
Disappointing, that Morgan.
Lancaster took a seat in one of the ostentatious high-backed chairs in the lobby, crossed her legs, and contemplated her next move. The three Consultants she’d arrived with stood on standby in the lobby, keeping a safe and predetermined distance from Lancaster; a move intended to give the appearance that Morgan had the director’s full cooperation. But in reality, she’d never intended to take a back seat on this one. That’s because she knew full well that if you wanted something done right …
Her pocket vibrated and she retrieved her ringing phone.
It was Cline.
She answered, “I’ve got one question and you’d better give me one answer: where in the hell are you?”
“Director, it’s so good to hear your voice.”
Lancaster noticed the strange background noise on Cline’s end of the line. She hastily worked another phone, issuing a trace request to her team back at Langley while she spoke. “Where are you calling from, Cline? A bathroom? You’ve got a lot of explaining to do. What’s your location?”
“I know you’re upset, Lancaster. But I had to take the initiative on this one.”
“When did you plan on telling me about the mobile broadcasting unit?”
“Plausible deniability, remember? Sooner or later, director, you’re going to realize that I really do have the agency’s best interests at heart.” He was fumbling with something in the background, and Lancaster could make out the distinct and steady pulse of a cardiac monitor.
“You’re in the mobile unit now, aren’t you. Where’s Strassman? Is he there with you?”
>
“I can’t go into much detail now, ma’am. But I promise you, by morning all of our problems are going to be long gone.”
Lancaster cupped her hand over the receiver. “Listen to me, Cline. Whatever you’re thinking about doing now, you can’t go through with it. It’s too dangerous.”
“It’s the same tech as Skyline, director. There’s really nothing to—”
“I spoke to Ramírez, Stephen, and Colin told me everything. Think about what you’re saying here: deploying a nuclear-powered transmission from some news van that’s never been tested in the field? Pure insanity, Cline, and you know it.” She checked the other phone. The trace was closing in. Cline was in the southeast. Now Georgia. North Georgia. No, Atlanta …
He said, “I’ve got to run now, director. I’m sure you understand. But don’t worry, by the time this is all over, you’ll be recommending me for a promotion.”
He hung up, and Lancaster checked the other phone to see he’d disconnected the call right on time. Another few seconds, and she would’ve nailed him. Still, she knew he was in Atlanta, but why? Did he have a fix on the outliers, and if so, how had he beat her to the punch?
Suddenly, the large windows in the main lobby began to shake and rattle as if a car had hit the building, interrupting Lancaster’s thoughts. Startled, she stood and scanned the scene. No car to be found. She took a couple of steps back while keeping her eyes fixed on the glass as it happened again. Windows vibrating like ripples on water, accompanied by a thunderous roar that sounded like a jet was about to land in the parking lot. She looked up through the large skylights and into a starry night.
No thunder. No jets.
The vibrations grew louder as the entire building shook now, flickering lights and swinging chandeliers quickly getting the attention of everyone else in the lobby. Morgan turned and shouted to Lancaster, “EARTHQUAKE?”