Thriller Box Set One: The Subway-The Debt-Catastrophic

by Dustin Stevens

  Just as fast, the angst returned.

  “Wynn,” Jacoby said, his eyes narrowing slightly. “Tell me where we’re at with that bastard.”

  “And his girlfriend,” Celek added.

  “And Skye,” Jacoby finished.

  Nodding in agreement, Celek said, “Their last known location was in Springfield, making it pretty clear they are circling back here.”

  “Great,” Jacoby muttered, his mind already moving ahead to the planned event that night, a gala to make the previous evening’s soiree in Indianapolis look like a house party. “You think they’re planning something for tonight?”

  “Most likely,” Celek said before pausing and raising his eyebrows, “if they can.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning they were probably going to before we intercepted that laptop. Now, I’m not sure that they have much to work with.”

  Eyes bulging slightly, Jacoby stared at the man a moment, not quite believing the occasional flashes of ineptitude he was prone to.

  “Except for the fact that, you know, she is my daughter.”

  “Right,” Celek said, “but what’s she going to do? Show up in a crowded room and start screaming Daddy?”

  The question was obviously rhetorical, laced with a bit of hyperbole, but the point was made. Jacoby could see that her doing so would accomplish nothing, easily dismissed as a crazy liberal trying to get some attention at a major fundraising event.

  For a moment, Jacoby almost wished they would try something so foolish, making it easy for them.

  “So then, why are they coming back here?”

  Glancing out the window beside them, Celek sighed slightly. “Dawson and I spoke at length about it last night. We’re thinking they might try to recover enough of what we have here to go to the press.”

  “During the gala?” Jacoby asked.

  “Before, during, it doesn’t matter,” Celek said. “If the news cycle got hold of any of this, it would go nuclear faster than the WikiLeaks stuff did.”

  There was no outward reaction from Jacoby, his face remaining stony as he sat and thought about what he’d just been told.

  “Recover? How?”

  At that, Celek pulled his attention away from the windows. He leaned forward and laced his fingers before him, his gaze leveled on Jacoby.

  “The only way she was able to access what she did was because of that laptop. Built to specification, that thing was basically a rocket ship in a briefcase. The only way she could ever hope to get even a shred of that stuff again is by having something equally powerful.

  “Assuming she doesn’t have another just lying around somewhere, there aren’t but a couple of places in the area where she’ll be able to access one.”

  Chapter Forty

  Six hours was the most my body ever allowed me to sleep at a time, regardless of how long it had been since I’d gotten any rest. Pre-programmed from fifteen years of having to rotate out on guard patrols, I could be in a complete blackout state or the middle of a dream involving myself and Kate Beckinsale.

  Didn’t matter.

  My eyes would pop open, my body powering up instantly, ready to do whatever it was tasked with.

  It took less than a second for my mind to catch up upon awaking, taking in my surroundings, inventorying and addressing everything in short order.

  I didn’t know exactly what time it was, though based on the previous late night and the state of near-darkness in the room, I would peg it at somewhere close to 6:00 a.m. Still fully dressed, I was lying atop the same bed I’d had dinner on, my shoes kicked to the foot of it being the only sign that I had readied for sleep in the slightest.

  Seated upright on the opposite bed was Rae, the whites of her eyes flashing at me, her own body clock never letting her get more than four hours before activating her for the day.

  No doubt she was sitting over there aching to go for a run, to burn some of the residual energy accumulated inside her, though we both knew doing so right now would not be wise. The odds of Dawson having any idea where we were or showing up were long at best, but it was still a risk neither of us had any desire to take.

  One doesn’t live to our age having seen what we’ve seen without having pretty healthy doses of common sense and self-preservation.

  Still seated on the chair positioned at the end of the beds was Skye, her legs pulled up beneath her. Both arms were folded atop the chair back, her head resting flat against them, a blanket draped over her shoulders, something she must have done before drifting off.

  I knew I hadn’t put it there, was even more certain that Rae hadn’t.

  “Sleep?” I asked, my voice low.

  There was no movement of any kind as Rae lay perfectly still, her focus raised to the ceiling, a pattern of shadows stretched across the dimpled stucco surface.

  “Enough. You?”

  “Same,” I said.

  The previous night’s conversation had been basically a one-on-one affair, Skye and I dissecting what we knew, Rae seated and listening with her eyes closed, never missing one word. Once we had laid out everything we knew, we opted to sleep on it before pushing forward, content not to make any rash decisions based on the events of the day.

  That, and the extreme lack of rest we were all operating under.

  There was no further conversation between us for another half hour, each in our world, processing what the previous thirty-six hours had given us, trying to forecast what the next twenty-four might hold.

  From where I lay, none of it looked particularly appealing. In no way did I want to go to war with Meyers Jacoby or his team of rent-a-soldiers. At the same time, they would never leave us alone unless forced to, Rae pegging it exactly when she said we would probably have to kill Dawson and give Jacoby a compelling reason to disappear.

  Anything else just wouldn’t get it done.

  The problem with such an approach was that it would require things of me, things that I gave up long before, things I had no interest in revisiting.

  The reason I had mustered out wasn’t the injuries. The big one had happened thanks to Jacoby, but that was just the start of things. Cuts and gouges, sprains and bruises, those things were just part of the job, as omnipresent as camouflage clothing and grease paint.

  It wasn’t the schedule, the constant hiking, the sleeping in the mud, or even the inability to tell anybody back home - back when I still had people back home to talk to – where I was.

  It was the death, the sensory overload of it. Not just the sight of women and children left out in the open, but the smell of dried blood and desiccating flesh, the sounds of grieving families.

  The looks of fear and contempt they gave us as we passed.

  It didn’t matter that we were there to help. All they saw was us and our giant guns, the whole thing one large killing package, a symbol they came to loathe.

  The last time I held a weapon was the day I got out. I turned over the M-16 and the sidearm I’d been issued, handing both in and immediately feeling a weight lifted from my shoulders.

  From that day forward I have owned weapons, kept them close by in the event that an extreme danger arose, but never have I so much as I wrapped my hand around the grip of a loaded gun, let alone pointed it at anything with a pulse.

  Whenever I may need one on the ranch, I either make do with the knife or allow Rae to handle things.

  Even Clarice - the beautiful Sig Sauer with the engraved grip Rae bought for me last Christmas - always stayed in a specially designed holster. The only time I’ve ever held it there wasn’t a single bullet inside, the weapon nothing more than an expensive, finely crafted paperweight.

  Of the myriad things Rae was probably pondering beside me in the dark, that had to be sitting high on the list. She knew how proficient I once was, had witnessed my abilities time and again, but she couldn’t help but be wondering at my willingness to reengage.

  And I couldn’t allow those thoughts to be in her head, potentially causing even a s
econd’s hesitation that might get all of us injured.

  She had to know it was a personal choice, not a maxim that would in any way impede us. I had her back, whatever it took, and I always would.

  Opening my mouth to speak, I started to say that very thing, to let her know she needn’t worry, when the sound of Skye stirring interrupted me. With a low and pained groan, she raised her head from her folded arms, raising them both above her head before lowering her left hand and using it to rub vigorously at the side of her neck.

  “Man,” she said, the word coming out in a pained groan, “I’ve got to stop sleeping in random positions.”

  There was no sound from Rae or I, both of us staring, each starting to feel the itch to be moving again.

  Oblivious to our presence, Skye went through a coordinated series of stretches, never once leaving the chair, before finally dropping her hands in her lap and staring at us.

  “Good morning.”

  “Morning,” I replied.

  “Man, you guys both,” Skye said, waving a hand between us. “Thirty seconds after we were done talking, you were out.”

  The ability to fall asleep anywhere at any time was Trade Craft 101 in our previous line of work. Never knowing when the next opportunity at rest would arise, you became quite adept at dropping off instantly.

  I didn’t bother explaining as much.

  “You get much rest?” I asked.

  Staring at me a moment, realizing I hadn’t responded to her comment, Skye said, “Some. Was up for a while sketching out ideas, thinking on what we’d talked about.”

  Despite lying flat on my back, I could feel my pulse begin to pick up, synapses in my brain starting to fire anew. “And?”

  Again raising her hands high, Skye spread them in a Y, a yawn contorting her face to the side. She held the pose a moment, finishing it all at the same time with a mighty huff of air, before coming back to her original starting position.

  “We’re going to need a supercomputer, something with some serious processing capability and enough concentrated power to let me get what we need in a hurry.”

  At that I raised the top half of my body, propping my elbows up under me to get a better look at her.

  “And where do we find those?”

  “There aren’t many places,” Skye said, giving her head a small shake. “Basically, either a handful of government labs or one of the universities in the area.”

  Neither sounded particularly appealing.

  “That’s it? There isn’t some sort of hacker underground you can call on for help?”

  Again she gave me the same look that suggested I should be wearing a toga of mammoth fur and dragging a club.

  “The entire hacker world is underground, and we’re not exactly friends. More like competitors. No way would any of them go in on this, especially once they found out how much trouble they could be in.”

  To that I couldn’t rightly argue. Even without knowing exactly what was entailed, I did know enough to know nobody would want to match up with the potential Vice President.

  Even less with Dawson and his crew.

  “And I’m guessing government buildings are probably out,” I said.

  “For sure,” Skye said. “That’s how I got arrested the first time, and that was years ago in Washington. The places here with this kind of capability would look like Fort Knox by comparison.”

  I suspected that security would be even heavier now, with Jacoby in town, the sitting Chair of the Armed Forces Committee capable of calling and putting them on high alert.

  “So that leaves universities.”

  “Yeah,” Skye said, “and while there are a ton in the area, we’re basically talking about two with enough size and close proximity to the Hyatt.

  “University of Chicago or Northwestern.”

  One at a time I considered the options, trying to picture where they were located. Never had I been to either one, but I had seen enough campuses to have a general idea how they were laid out and what to expect.

  “Wasn’t Chicago where they invented the a-bomb?”

  “It was,” Skye said, “and where we’ll find the stronger computer, by far.”

  “Then we go to Northwestern,” Rae said, her first comment, snapping Skye’s attention over toward her.

  From where I was, I didn’t bother looking over, knowing her train of thought and that she was right.

  They would be looking for us at Chicago. We were headed to Northwestern.

  Chapter Forty-One

  “Nice hat, Boss.”

  The crack came in through Otis Dawson’s earpiece, the voice belonging to Tim Roush, the only one on his crew that would dare make such a comment.

  “Shut up.”

  “Naw, seriously,” Roush continued. “We heading over to the water after this? Maybe try to hook some marlin or something?”

  In the background Dawson could hear chuckling, the other men working to suppress laughter but doing a terrible job at it.

  Unable to feign anger any longer, Dawson felt both corners of his mouth curl up as well, knowing that what Roush was saying wasn’t far off, that he did look pretty ridiculous.

  For years he had operated under the same image, working with a shaved head, a goatee, and some form of shirt that showed off his ink, regardless of the weather. For 99% of the situations they found themselves in the look worked perfectly, conveying a tone that let people know what they were up against.

  Whether tromping through a jungle or caravanning across open ground, he was ready.

  The one place it became a bit of a liability was when trying to assimilate into an urban setting, none more difficult than the one he now found himself in.

  An hour after arriving into Chicago the night before, Celek had called him. No more than a few minutes into bed, Dawson had not appreciated the late hour conversation, had not minded letting it be known.

  Within a few sentences his anger at the situation fell away though, his reasoning winning out, determining that Celek was right to do so. If the laptop was really as powerful as claimed, really did contain the sort of material that was being discussed, it made sense that Wynn and his crew’s next move would be to get somewhere they could recreate it.

  Tracking down everything it housed in short order would be next to impossible, but they didn’t need that much, just enough to turn the spotlight on Jacoby.

  After that, the entire situation would explode, taking Dawson’s job and the enormous payday it promised with it.

  “Alright, look alive, guys,” Dawson said, working to quiet down the chatter over the line. “You never know, they might be just as masterful at disguises as I am.”

  Again he could hear guffawing, Dawson himself allowing one more smile as he idly turned the pages of a dog eared Clive Cussler novel in his hand. Having read not a single word of it, he kept his eyes hidden behind dark sunglasses, his gaze sweeping the grounds north of the computer science center on the University of Chicago campus.

  The night before he and Celek had made a list of possible places that Skye Grant might be able to access something strong enough to hack into the satellite grid. While a basic desktop might be enough to get to a cell phone rig parked directly overhead, it would never have the capability of getting into the high end stuff stationed half a world away.

  To do that meant getting her hands on some serious hardware, the kind of thing only a few places in the area would have.

  Of those, the ones controlled by the government were an easy enough fix. Jacoby, in his capacity as Armed Forces Committee Chair, fashioned together some excuse about wanting surveillance on a training exercise taking place in the Pacific. Strict instructions were then given to alert him personally if any diversion from there occurred, the reasoning being that they could take the satellite off-line and divert Dawson and his men immediately if need be.

  Additional security was also dispatched to each site, again under the auspice of Armed Forces Committee business.

  Onc
e those were wiped clean, only a few options existed in the public sector. If there was anything private, they would just have to roll the dice and hope that Grant made a mistake, it virtually impossible to know who they were.

  Calling on the last of the favors Jacoby had somehow acquired during his time in the military, a few men were sent to stake out the only people from the Cyber Terrorist Watch List that lived in the area, though Dawson didn’t hold out much hope for that.

  In his limited experience with hackers, they were loners. If they didn’t work alone, they banded together in small teams, just as Grant had done with the two that they found in the van the previous morning.

  Now that they were gone, she was likely on her own, and in need of supplies.

  With all that in mind, it was mutually agreed upon that the University of Chicago made the most sense. Renowned for its science and engineering departments, it boasted the most powerful computer systems, routinely churned out some of the best programmers in the country.

  If there was anywhere that Grant and Wynn would show up, on short notice and desperate, this had to be it.

  Under normal circumstances, he would reason that there was no way they would do so, seeing it as the obvious destination. To combat that he had sent Henry and Simmons to Northwestern, just to keep an eye on things, but was willing to bet everything he had that sooner or later they would come slinking by, aiming their attention on the building in front of him.

  There just wasn’t the time, their need too great, to consider anything else.

  If he was in their position it was how he would have played things, betting on his own abilities should things get hairy.

  “Anything?” he asked, once more turning a page in front of him. At twenty years older than the average student, the odds were already long of him fitting in. The least he could do was play the charade out to the fullest.

  “Negative,” Roush said, his previous jovial manner falling away.