Operator Down

by Brad Taylor

  Sometimes it pays to be in charge.

  She said, “Where’s Jennifer?”

  I mimicked her voice, “Oh, hi, Pike. Sorry I’m early. I’m sure you didn’t have anything going on.”

  She started to move to the bedroom, saying, “I want to talk to her. I won’t interrupt whatever you’re doing.”

  “You already have.”

  She turned back to me, and I said, “She’s in the shower. Thanks for showing up.”

  She scrunched her eyebrows, her little Vulcan brain running through the parameters of my statement. Finally, I saw them clear, along with a tinge of embarrassment. Honestly, doing that to her was like telling jokes to an alien. But, I still don’t understand why a chicken is even near a road. Please explain . . .

  She flicked her eyes to the bedroom, then back at me. She said, “You were going to . . .”

  I laughed and said, “No, Carrie. Jennifer is in the shower, but that’s it. I was on the line with the Taskforce. I disconnected before answering the door.”

  “You talked to Creed? Can he use my photo?”

  “I was actually on the VPN with him when you so rudely interrupted. He got the photo, but more importantly, the audio we got from Apple Watch at the Long Street Hotel wasn’t nearly as good as we had before.”

  Apparently, Apple Watch had gone all operator starting to operate, because he’d switched the Apple watch for a Casio G-Shock, which meant Creed could get audio only from his phone, crammed in a pocket. Which meant everything we heard sounded like a bad celebrity recording from the back of a Lincoln. Creed was working the audio to see what he could get.

  Shoshana said, “That beacon you put on the other guy is still working. We have his hotel.”

  The black man who had passed Apple Watch a key had wandered about for a bit, then gone back to the Long Street Hotel. We had a location of his room and real-time GPS tracking of him, but he was not a priority. At least not to me.

  I said, “And?”

  She flashed her teeth in a grin that wasn’t a grin. It was more like watching a wolf smile. “And let me have a crack at him. I won’t need Creed to do any audio work.”

  I changed the subject. “Creed says he can do anything the Mossad can. He’s building us code for the key. All we have to do is find a 3-D printer.”

  “Does he know what he’s doing? Or is he starting from scratch?”

  “No, he actually knew about your process. Apparently, it’s been kicking around in the US as well. Don’t worry.”

  Shoshana had come back with high-resolution cell-phone pictures of a keyway for a lock on the warehouse Apple had visited, and she had asked if the Taskforce could build a key from it. Of course I’d said no, because who the hell can build a key from just looking at the keyhole?

  Turns out, the Mossad, that’s who. The lockset used a restricted key, meaning the key blank itself—besides the traditional teeth—had cutouts in the spine that fit the metal in the cylinder, like sliding a piece into a jigsaw puzzle. The purpose was to prevent the key from being duplicated. The only people who would have access to those unique blanks were locksmiths who had an arrangement with the lock manufacturer. It was a method to prevent someone from stealing the key and making a copy at the local hardware store. Unfortunately for the lockmaker, all of those various cuts in the spine of the key showed up in the picture, not unlike a picture of a child’s 3-D puzzle, where he or she has to match up squares, triangles, and circles—only now the picture was much more complicated. It was a good security tool, but once you had a key blank that would actually fit into the cylinder, it was easy business to develop a bump key to defeat the lock.

  I said, “Can you work a bump key? Since this is your big idea?”

  “Why? You can’t?”

  Jennifer came out in a hotel bathrobe and slippers, her hair in a towel. She saw Shoshana and looked at the clock on the wall. I said, “Jennifer, you’re okay. Carrie’s early.”

  Jennifer took the towel off her head, working it in her hair. She said, “What’s up? Something new?”

  Shoshana said, “No, I just wanted to know if Nephilim, here, could get the Taskforce to do what we can.”

  I said, “Shoshana says we can’t build the bump key. I was just asking her if she could use it.”

  Jennifer said, “Can’t be that hard. A bump key is a bump key.”

  A so-called bump key was nothing more than a key blank with teeth set to engage the pins in a lock. In an ordinary lock, the varying degrees of the cuts were what told the lock to open. In a restricted lock, there was the additional level of the convoluted key blank. In both cases, the pin-tumbler lock worked the same way and had a similar vulnerability—pure force. The bump key worked with shock, in that you inserted it into the cylinder and then gave it a light bump, with the force of the blow driving all the pins to the shear position. If you maintained tension on the key, in effect, it caused the cylinder to unlock. You didn’t need to know the exact position of the cuts, because force drove them where they were supposed to be.

  Shoshana said, “The problem is the keyhole. It was complicated, which is why I suggested the technique we use.”

  I said, “Let me get Creed back on the line.”

  I thought about having Shoshana leave the room, but hell, Kurt knew she was here. It was stupid to keep playing high school games. The VPN connected, and Creed came on, saying, “Pike, seriously, I’ve been sitting here for ten minutes. I have better things to do.”

  “Sorry about that. I got held up with a crazy woman.”

  He said, “Shoshana? Was that who it was?”

  He said it like a teenager in high school asking about the prom queen. Creed was a good guy, but his crush on Jennifer was truly annoying, and now his curiosity was piqued by the exotic Israeli, whom he’d yet to see. I was sure he thought she was a woman with the rack of a Penthouse Pet and the suave banter of a female James Bond. I didn’t have the heart to put her on the screen.

  I said, “Yeah, but she’s gone now. She’s got concerns about the data you’re going to send. She thinks the Mossad has this perfected and you’re just guessing.”

  On the screen, Creed laughed. “Yeah, they’re waaaay ahead of us. Shit, this was all developed by civilians here in the US. The damn program we modified came out of MIT. There isn’t any supersecret crap here.”

  I saw Shoshana glower and raised a finger off the screen.

  Creed brought up a PowerPoint slide showing a lock cylinder and said, “The attack in question is an Ikon SK6. It’s pretty sophisticated as far as the chamber goes. You see it looks like a Z. That’s no issue with the 3-D printer. The problem is that the third pin is made to false set if not enough force is used. What that means is that it won’t be a quick bump. You might have to work it a bit, not unlike picking the thing with tools. I’ve sent the data to your Grolier email. All you have to do is use a flash drive to load it into a 3-D printer.”

  “So this thing isn’t going to be the easy fix? I don’t want to do the work if it’s asking for a fiasco.”

  “No, it’ll work. It’s just that it might take more than one bump. Don’t worry, the Mossad doesn’t have anything better. I’m getting sick of hearing about them, like they’re a gift to the intelligence world. I earn my keep just fine.”

  Shoshana had heard enough and leaned into the screen, giving Creed a full view of the Israeli. She snarled, “Nobody asked for your opinion. Just send the fucking data. We’ll do the rest.”

  I saw Creed recoil, and I pushed her bodily out of the way of the camera. Creed said, “Who the hell was that?”

  I said, “Your fantasy. She loves you.”

  He said, “That was Shoshana?”

  38

  Shoshana retreated and began pacing the room. I snapped my fingers at Jennifer, telling her to get Shoshana under control. Her body passed by the camera, and Creed said,
“Was that Jennifer? In a bathrobe?”

  I put my hand to my eyes and squeezed. I said, “Creed, what did you find from the audio?”

  He said, “You got a headache or something? Was that Jennifer? I want to say hello.”

  I cut him off. “Creed. The audio.”

  Truculent, he said, “The only thing we got was that there is a meeting tonight at nine, at someplace called either the castle of hope or the castle of probate. We think it’s a nickname for something having to do with law enforcement.”

  “That’s all you got, out of the entire conversation?”

  “Pike, his phone was in his pocket. I’m not even sure the readout we have is right. The only thing we could positively identify was the word ‘castle’ and the time.”

  “Who’s he meeting?”

  “We have no idea.”

  “Jesus, man. What good are you?”

  “I’m good enough to get you a key blank for the warehouse.”

  “This meeting is happening tonight?”

  “As far as we can tell. Look, we did a search, and there’s a police station that’s got a history of doing shady things. It’s nicknamed the ‘hope’s last probate’ or something to that effect in Afrikaans. We think that’s where he’s headed tonight.”

  “Where is it?”

  “In a district that’s full of crime. One of the old townships near the airport. It fits.”

  “That is fucking bullshit. That’s the best the Taskforce could come up with?”

  “Pike, we only had the two words.”

  “You know these guys are planning for something, right? They’re tied in to our target, who’s one of the biggest small-arms dealers in the United States. No way they’d meet at a police station in the ghetto. Those words you caught mean something, and we need to find out what.”

  Creed looked hurt and said, “Pike, I’m the computer guy. I can get you the key blank. I can get you the penetration of a phone, but I can’t tell you what it means.”

  I leaned back, knowing I was beating up the wrong man. I said, “Yeah, I get it, Creed. Sorry. That was uncalled for.”

  He brightened, and Jennifer, from the back of the room, said, “I found it.”

  I said, “What?”

  “It’s the Castle of Good Hope. A fixture in town. It’s the epicenter of Cape Town history. Where the whole place started.”

  I looked at Creed on the computer and saw he was no help. To her, I said, “What’s there?”

  “Uhhhh . . . it’s a tourist attraction. It was the original fortification for Cape Town. It closes at four.”

  I turned away from the computer and said, “So these guys are going to do a meeting at a closed tourist attraction at night? What the fuck? That’s no better than the police station.”

  Shoshana glowered at my tone, then moved behind Jennifer, putting a hand on her shoulder. Jennifer kept typing, but all I could see was the hand. It was an intimate gesture.

  There was a time in our past when we were sure Shoshana was a lesbian, not least because she clearly enjoyed annoying me by flirting with Jennifer, but that theory was supposedly destroyed by Aaron.

  And I realized she wasn’t bound by such a definition. She was Shoshana, and she didn’t understand the distinction. She gave her love stingily, but when she did, it was total, and woe betide those who attempted to harm the ones she’d granted access to her vault.

  Thank God she was sweet on me.

  Jennifer finished typing and turned to me triumphantly. She said, “It’s the castle.”

  “How do you know?”

  “There’s a South African National Defence Force base at the back of it. They’re going there because they’re meeting South African military. Whatever these guys are doing, it’s tied into the South Africans.”

  In the span of six seconds, I went through everything I knew about our operation, and what she said made absolute sense. Tyler was doing something with South Africa. And we didn’t have a second to waste. The meeting was happening in less than two hours.

  Before I could even issue an order, someone else knocked on the door. Shoshana went to it and let in Brett. He saw everyone there and said, “Am I late? I thought this meeting was at seven.”

  I said, “You’re not late. Well, not from my time schedule. We’re all late now. Jennifer, bring up a map of that castle.” I looked into the computer and said to Creed, “You sent the key data?”

  Creed said, “Yeah. You got it.”

  I turned to Shoshana and said, “Find a 3-D printing place around here. Get us that key. Probably can’t do anything tonight, but at least find out where we can go tomorrow.”

  To Jennifer I said, “Get us a complete layout of that castle. Find me penetration points, surveillance locations, everything.”

  Brett said, “What the fuck did I miss?”

  I said, “Go prep some kit. I don’t want to rely on computer-hacking shit. Give me something that can hear from a distance. Old-school stuff.”

  He said, “What’s going on?”

  “We’ve got a surveillance mission at nine tonight. We have about thirty minutes before we need to roll. Get back here in fifteen, and I’ll have an OPORD done.”

  He left without another word. Which is why he was on my team.

  Shoshana, on the other hand, said, “I’m not doing bullshit support work. I’m going with you.”

  I turned to her and said, “No, you’re not. Get the key made. It’s a team effort.”

  I saw the anger flare, and she said, “Those fucks know where Aaron is! I’m not going to break into some warehouse.” She advanced on me, and I grabbed her arms before she could do something she’d regret.

  She looked into my eyes and said, “I’m not.”

  She quit fighting, and I looked into her eyes, just to make sure she wasn’t tricking me. She wasn’t. I let her go, and she said, “You told me we’d find Aaron. You promised. I can’t keep doing this. All we do is Taskforce crap. Aaron is in trouble.”

  She said the last word with so much pain it caused me to flinch. She was right, and I knew it. But I also knew I didn’t have the authority to do anything else. I had what I had, and I’d use that to help her, but I couldn’t just go ripping into everyone like she wanted, because it would destroy my mission. Possibly destroy the ability to prevent more deaths than just Aaron’s.

  I said, “Shoshana. Give me the night. Just give me this night. We have no idea where Aaron is, and I might find that out. Please. I’m asking.”

  She said, “We have the black man from the meeting today. I can go to him. I can find out what he knows.”

  I said, “No. No, you can’t. We don’t know his connections, and I’m not sanctioned for that. And you don’t even know where he’s located.”

  She said, “I do. I have your Taskforce phone, and I see the beacon. Pike, he’s no threat. He’s a nobody. And I’m not Taskforce. I’m freelance. Nobody can blame you if I interdict.”

  I’d voiced the question for a reason. She was thinking exactly like me, but I couldn’t ask out loud if she could find the guy, like I wanted her to execute something, but I had to make sure. Just in case.

  In the room, I said, “You want me to take that phone back? Do I need to worry about you?”

  She pursed her lips, then shook her head, resigned to my decision. I said, “Okay. Just get the key so we can see what’s in that warehouse. Let us work tonight.”

  Shoshana said, “You didn’t lie to me, did you? About Aaron? You would never lie to me, would you?”

  I said, “No, Shoshana. And you know it.”

  She glanced at Jennifer again, as if she wanted to ask her the question but wasn’t sure of the answer.

  She said, “Outside of Aaron, you two are the only thing in this world I trust. The only ones who have ever understood me. You are me. Please
tell me that that’s enough.”

  I didn’t know what to say. She’d never been vulnerable before. She was so full of violence that hearing the words was as strange as seeing a lion exposing its belly for a man with a knife. But I couldn’t promise what I couldn’t deliver.

  I said, “You have our support. Let us exploit tonight. We can talk about the future tomorrow.”

  She wanted to believe we were infallible, but she understood all I could promise was to help. I couldn’t guarantee success. She nodded and went to the door. She opened it and said, “I feel like I’m doing nothing. I’m letting Aaron die.”

  I said, “Get the key. That warehouse may hold the information we need.”

  She nodded glumly, and I said, “And keep an eye on that beacon.”

  She said, “Why?”

  “Because I said to. But just keep an eye until I say otherwise.”

  She let the wolf smile slip out, her true essence coming back. She said, “Thank you, Nephilim.”

  And she left the room.

  Jennifer said, “What was that about?”

  I said, “Nothing. We have a mission to plan.”

  39

  Throwing shallow pools of light with a harsh downward slant, the vapor lamps gave too many shadows for Jennifer or me to recognize anybody who arrived at the front of the castle. Though the lighting wasn’t conducive for identification of Apple—now Casio—Watch, we knew the time he was supposed to show, so we had something to go on. Not that we could see the entrance anyway, since we were hidden off to the side in the dark, waiting on Brett to give us the signal to climb.

  Outside of the thirty-foot circle of light at each lamp, the rest of the terrain was pure black. While I ordinarily liked being the one to make the trigger decision on an operation, pulling myself out of control was a conscious choice. Here, I couldn’t positively trigger and execute. I needed some help, which was why I delegated to Brett. We had a lot of technology—like night vision goggles—that could supposedly solve every problem, but at the end of the day, sometimes old-school, man-on-the-street was the way to go.