Out of Time (The Adventures of Eric and Ursula Book 4)

by A. D. Winch

  The whole retrieval mission had lasted less than twenty-five minutes. Agent Hoover instructed the drone pilot to increase the aircraft's altitude until it was out of sight but to stay in the air to monitor events on the ground. In the corner of one of the screens, the three trucks raced across the desert, leaving a trail of sand behind them.

  In the back of one of these, Eric, Ursula and Johan were trying to remain silent. Ursula and Eric were breathing slowly and silently, whereas Johan had stuffed a rolled up handkerchief between his teeth and was biting hard on it. The three stowaways felt every bump and jolt, but they could not let out a word or an exclamation, or even a sigh. The truck engine was noisy, but they still felt they would be heard above it. And to be discovered was out of the question.

  Twenty-four minutes earlier, Andrea had landed on a ridge overlooking the base's runway. As she looked below, three trucks pulled up outside the hangar entrance and waited. By the time she had removed her parachute, the trucks were filling with troops. She placed the parachute under a large rock, adjusted her black OSS style uniform and looked around. Behind her, some way from the bottom of the small mountain that she had landed on, she could see the burning plane. Beyond that would be the alien debris and the others, but they were out of sight. She did not waste any time trying to locate them. They had their jobs to do, and she had hers.

  The slope to the base was steep, and jagged rocks were scattered around her. She began to walk down, but her feet kept slipping on the sand and pebbles underfoot. Mini landslides broke out with every step she took, and she thought it likely that she would attract unwanted attention if she did not descend quickly. The base was approximately four hundred metres below her on a plain, and the trucks were just leaving. Three powerful engines broke the night's silence, and large tyres kicked up dust as they drove off below her. It was the perfect opportunity, and she began to run, knowing that the trucks would drown out the noise of falling stones and hide any clouds of dust that she may cause.

  Andrea was not used to moving fast on such treacherous terrain. Her feet slipped and in order to counter-balance, her body was pulled into positions that she knew were not usual. Even so, she managed to retain her footing, and as she neared the halfway point, she discovered that these changes were now being made automatically. She was even able to look up occasionally.

  The trucks could no longer be seen, but the dust cloud hung above the ground like fog. As the slope changed into a gentle curve, she ran into it. Through the dust, she could see the vast hangar entrance. An orange glow shone out into the darkness and acted as a homing beacon. She brushed down her uniform, placed a plain white ID card on her top like Johan had told her to, and walked purposefully towards the OSS base. A few minutes later, she had reached the light.

  Two mechanics sat outside on tables, drinking sodas and chatting. They looked up at Andrea and nodded towards her. Andrea did the same as she walked past.

  "Was that Jessica from the infirmary?" one of them asked when she was out of earshot. "It looks like she's hurt her face."

  "It was a pretty mean-looking mask. Jessica was an attractive woman. She must be devastated."

  "But that tush, geez! If she asked me out on a date, I still wouldn't say no."

  "You wouldn't say no to any woman who asked you out!"

  Andrea stepped into the hangar and stopped briefly to survey the scene. Johan had told her that the security system monitors human body heat signatures, and looks for warm bodies. The IDs personnel wore masked this, therefore making warm intruders easy to spot. If this were true then nobody would challenge her. If he were wrong, then she would never make it across the hangar floor.

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  ***

  Chapter 18 - Disruption

  A news van had been parked on a quiet desert road on the outskirts of Roswell since five that morning. None of its lights were on, and the driver sat in the dark, scanning the skies. It had stopped next to a tall fence with barbed wire coils running along its top. A sign attached to the fence post read, Warning! Airside Area. Unauthorised entry prohibited. Maximum penalty exceeds $5000. Alexander ignored it. He was not planning to enter.

  Not one car had passed him, and he concluded that most of Roswell's residents were still in bed asleep. As he waited, lights gradually turned on in buildings on the edge of the town as people slowly got up and began their day.

  At five forty-nine, he heard the sound of a plane flying at low altitude. He got out of the news van and stood on the road with binoculars glued to his eyes. The CargoMaster was the only craft in the sky and the flashing light on its undercarriage was easy to spot. It flew over his head and into the desert.

  Alexander took a video camera from the passenger seat and recorded what happened next. Apart from the flashing light on the plane, there was not much else to see until blue and yellow lights appeared high in the distance. They darted across the sky as they descended and then there was a massive explosion as the plane crashed into the desert.

  Alexander stopped recording, jumped back into the news van and uploaded the video onto his laptop and then onto a video-sharing website. Once it had finished, he phoned the Benjamins on the number that Andrea had given him. The phone rang and rang.

  "Come on, pick it up," he muttered under his breath. He could feel himself becoming tenser with every ring.

  "Bonjour," greeted Mémé.

  "Madame Benjamin," Alexander replied and continued in bad French, "I need to speak to your husband. I can't speak French."

  "Please wait. I will have to wake him. He's having an afternoon doze. I told you that it would be me that answers and not him. And the phone was right next to his head. He could sleep through a volcanic eruption."

  Mémé poked her husband in the ribs and shouted at him to wake-up. She forced the phone into his hand and placed it by his ear.

  "Allo," Granddad Benjamin said, without any teeth in.

  "It is time," Alexander said hurriedly. "You need to tell Jason. He needs to release everything."

  "Alwite," Granddad Benjamin replied and ended the call.

  He got out of bed with a yawn and put his false teeth in. Mémé was already waiting by the bedroom door.

  "What's the time?" he asked.

  She picked up the alarm clock. "It's almost two in the afternoon. You have been asleep for about one hour."

  "I hope Jason is there."

  They walked outside and into the corridor. Mémé made sure their apartment was locked shut, and they shuffled to the lift. The sky was grey, and it was cold but they did not have time to go back inside and put on something warmer. The lift groaned as they descended to the first floor. Granddad Benjamin stood outside apartment three and banged on the door. Within a few seconds, they heard Jason inside.

  "Who is it?" he asked suspiciously.

  "It is Mr. and Mrs Benjamin, Ursula's grandparents," Mémé told him. "It is time."

  Locks turned, and the door opened. Jason stood in front of them in cargo pants and a brown vest. His arms were held wide, and he was grinning from ear to ear.

  "Welcome back. Come in, please. Let's do this!"

  The Benjamins followed Jason into his bedroom and sat on his bed. Last time they had visited, Mémé had hinted to Jason that he should tidy and wash his bed clothes, but he had obviously ignored her advice. He jumped into the office chair at his computer and closed down the online game he was playing. Next to his mouse lay the flash drive Ursula had sent him.

  "This is cyber dynamite," he told the old couple behind him and waved it in the air. "I've looked through the files offline. If all this is true, then it's going to be massive. Like the biggest thing since that NSA guy took all those files that showed the American government was spying on everyone."

  Before inserting the flash drive into the USB port, he made sure that he was on a secure VPN. He did not want anyone tracing this data back to him.

  "Are you ready?" he asked Mr. and Mrs Benjamin, his arms gesticulating wildly in the air.
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  "I believe so," Mémé answered, not sure what she was ready for.

  "Come and watch. This will blow your mind."

  The Benjamins joined Jason at his computer and stood behind him like parrots on each shoulder.

  "First, I'm going to upload the contents of this flash drive on to a secure cloud."

  The Benjamins made encouraging sounds but had no idea what he was talking about.

  "Now I need to upload the data to a website that I've created. It will probably be taken down in a few minutes, but it doesn't matter. It will cause a distraction while the real attack begins." A bar edged across the screen as the data uploaded to the website. "Done. Time to publish the website. Boom! We're moving now!" he sang happily. "You remember those videos of Ursula in Morocco?"

  The Benjamins nodded.

  "I've got some of my hacker guys standing by. We're going to tag a few of them and write that it was all real and that Ursula was being attacked by the OSS - a secret US agency. I imagine that the posts will be removed pretty quickly, but enough people will see them to sow the seed. You may as well sit down again. This is going to take about five minutes."

  Mr. and Mrs Benjamin did as they were asked and sat on the bed waiting. They did not speak but looked at each completely confused. Neither of them knew what was going on, but they assumed that it was good.

  "Boom! First post has been taken down. They're fighting back. Time to launch Operation Media Blitz!"

  Jason compressed the files that were most damaging to the OSS and attached them to an email that he had already written.

  "Read this," he told the Benjamins and they moved back to the desk.

  Dear News Service, You may be aware of the viral video 'Battle of Morocco' but the truth is a whole lot more sinister than you think. The video is real. The bad guys are real, and these compressed files are going to prove it. Never heard of the OSS? You will now. Happy reading, Jason

  "Do you think they will read the compressed files?" asked Granddad Benjamin, reading from the screen to make sure he used the right language.

  "Who knows? I would. Anyway I've set up a group of five hundred media groups around the world - websites, newspapers, radio stations, TV channels, the lot. And now this email is," he pressed send, "Boom! Gone baby gone! Let's see how the OSS handle that? To give us a head start, I've included a virus in the email. As soon as someone opens it the virus will send the files to all the people in that person's email address book."

  "It is a good thing to send a virus?" Mémé asked, worried that people may get sick.

  "It's good for our purposes. Within twenty-four hours or less, the anti-virus companies will upgrade their software to deal with it. It won’t cause any lasting damage, except to the OSS. Boom! It will be the internet equivalent of a mushroom cloud spreading wider and wider."

  Jason searched his desk until he found a scrap of paper that had been lost behind his screen.

  "What's next?" he said, looking at the paper. "Time to upload these files and put them around the net." He turned back to his computer. "Boom! My website is down, just as I expected, but it took them longer that I imagined. War has been declared. I just need to gather my troops, and we'll fight back."

  "You are doing a great job there, Jason," Mémé congratulated but she was not sure what he was doing. "How about I go upstairs, cook you some fresh bread to keep up your energy and bring it back down."

  Jason spun around from his chair and smiled warmly.

  "Would you do that for me? That would be epic, but you'll miss out on all the fun."

  "We're old people. We can't have as much fun as you youngsters.

  "Thanks, Madame B, much appreciated. Take the spare key hanging by the door. I can't guarantee that I'll be able to let you back in if I'm in mid-battle."

  "Okay, Jason. We'll do that," Mémé told him, "And keep up the fight."

  Jason was already looking at his screen, and he mumbled something back to them as he let out a scream of glee.

  The Benjamins saw themselves out and walked back to the lift in a daze. When they got back into their apartment, Mémé, went straight into the kitchen to make some food for Jason. She had an overwhelming need to do something that she could understand. Granddad Benjamin joined her.

  "He seems a nice young man, despite the lack of cleanliness of his apartment, but I have no idea what he is saying every time he opens his mouth," Madame Benjamin confessed.

  "Don't worry, neither do I," Granddad Benjamin replied, "but as long as we agree with him he seems happy enough."

  Mémé took out some bread dough from the fridge and began to roll it out on the work surface. Granddad Benjamin watched as it got thinner and thinner and thinner.

  "Do you normally roll dough?" he asked.

  "Do I?" Mémé replied absent-mindedly and then she burst into tears.

  Granddad Benjamin stood up and held his wife as she cried on his shoulder.

  In between sobs she spluttered, "It has begun. Ursula is thousands of kilometres away from us in a country that she has never visited. In a place where there are people who have tried to kidnap her and who were going to kill us. We had a normal life, a happy life. We may not have had much money, but we weren't poor. What have we done? How could we have let her go? Why did we agree?"

  Granddad Benjamin held her tightly and stroked her back.

  "You saw for yourself the changes that both Ursula and Eric are going through - the grey hair, the wrinkles, the long sleeps. You heard what Alexander and Andrea told us about them not having long to live. According to them, the children only had a few months left. How would you have felt if we had spent that time together watching as she slipped from our grasp? Knowing that there was a possible cure, and we were too scared to let her go to find out? We would regret it for the rest of our lives. We will see Ursula again, and in the future, we will be proud of ourselves for not standing in her way."

  "You always were an optimist, but this time I don't agree. We are never going to see Ursula again, and we are going to live the rest of our lives wondering what happened to her. Wondering if she is alive or dead. Wondering if she is locked away in some cell somewhere like Eric was. Wondering if they are cruelly experimenting on her. It will be purgatory. No, it will be worse than that. It will be hell on Earth. And with every day that passes I am going to want to die. I won't be able to live with myself."

  "Now, don't say that."

  "I'll say what I want," Mémé snapped and pulled herself away from her husband. "If you'll excuse me, I have food to prepare," and she picked up the rolling pin and smacked it down on the pastry.

  Granddad Benjamin left the kitchen and sat down on the sofa. He looked around the empty living room and saw memories of Ursula everywhere. He could see her playing on the carpet as a baby, bouncing on the sofa, cuddling up against him over dinner, sat too close to the television, and more. It was suffocating, and he had to fight to think of something else.

  In all the years that he had been married, he had only seen his wife as upset as this once before. On that day, their neighbour, Madame Colbert, had told Mémé she would not be able to keep baby Ursula. Mémé broke down when they were alone. All she had ever wanted was a child, and she had been presented with one when it seemed it would never be possible for them to have a family. Maybe Madame Colbert had been right, but thirteen years too early. He could hear his wife crying in the kitchen, but he sat paralysed and prayed that Ursula would return safely with the others.

  "We can't contain the threat," Agent Bernard squealed through Hoover's headphones.

  Agent Hoover had always known that this would happen. At some point, news of the OSS would leak out, and once it did it would spread like wildfire. The thought that it was actually, finally happening filled him with relief. Like a secret he no longer had to protect. His only concern was Agent Angel; he would not be so understanding nor would he accept it.

  "What can you do?" Agent Hoover asked.

  "We're trying to restrict the spre
ad, and we're leaking the files that we modified, but we literally don't have the manpower to deal with every issue arising."

  Agent Hoover tapped some keys on his keyboard, and a rapidly growing number appeared on his screen. Below it was a written Number of OSS mentions on the internet and within emails. The number had already passed ten thousand.

  "Can you write some code to counteract the spread," Agent Hoover quizzed.

  "We're working on that right now. We've isolated the virus that is spreading our stolen data files, but it is going to take at least one hour to write a quarantine program and nullify the spread. At the exponential rate it's multiplying, at least one million computers will have access to the files by this time," Agent Bernard concluded.

  "Do your best," Agent Hoover told Agent Bernard and his headphones went dead.

  He looked at his screen and the damage so far. This wasn't some random attack. This had been meticulously planned in order to spread Schwarzkopf's stolen files as far and wide as possible and in the quickest amount of time. Agent Hoover was convinced that their attackers would have already pre-empted any move that Agent Bernard and his team made. The avalanche had begun, and there was no stopping it. Agent Hoover felt he was looking down the barrel of a loaded gun. To make matters worse, the person who would pull the trigger was only a few minutes away from the base.

  Agent Hoover swallowed and made the call.

  "Hoover, what is it that can't wait two more minutes until I return?" Agent Angel asked tetchily.

  "Schwarzkopf has just leaked the data files he stole onto the web."

  "Now?"

  "Yes, Sir," Hoover gulped.

  "Why now?" Agent Angel asked.

  "I don't know."

  "Contain it," Agent Angel barked.

  "We can't. The files are attached to a virus that is spreading them exponentially."

  "Then distribute Bernard's doctored files. Filter the leak, create confusion, create doubt!"