by Gini Koch
“Probably so. Is there any way you can get me in touch with Chernobog the Ultimate?”
He was quiet for a few seconds. “Why?” Was glad he hadn’t asked “who” because I was both sure that he knew who Chernobog was, and was also just not up to playing verbal and mental mind games at the moment.
“We have her son in severe custody, just like we have Annette Dier. But we need answers, and probably assistance, from her, and she’s hella hard to find. She was in Cuba, but either she’s gone underground or moved, because we’ve had teams searching there for a year and they’ve only found traces.”
More quiet. “We need to meet with you before we leave.”
“Not that I mind, because it would be nice to see you two, but why?” Chose not to ask why I’d said that, nor worry about the fact that it was sincere—I’d gotten as attached to them as they had to me, apparently.
“Because of who our next target is.”
“Do I have to go to the cemetery?” I sincerely hoped not. Any lie I could come up with for why I wanted to go there wasn’t going to fool anyone.
“No. We will come to you.”
“To our Embassy complex?”
“Somewhere nearby, yes. I’ll contact you shortly. Hold onto the phone.” With that he hung up.
Dropped my Special Burner Phone back into my purse and looked at Serene and White. “Well, that was weird. And yeah, I’ll tell you about it later. But first, what’s the plan on Chernobog?”
“You mean aside from asking your uncles to set up a meeting? I don’t know, I’ve been with you.” Serene hit the elevator call button. “Your uncles want to meet with you face-to-face?”
“Yeah. I’ve done it before. Usually means I’m the safest girl in the world.”
“Jeff, Chuck, Malcolm, your mother, and pretty much everyone else wouldn’t agree.”
“Oh, I would support Missus Martini on this one,” White said as the elevator arrived. He held it open, but didn’t go into the car. “I’d like to ask if you’ve considered why, once you asked the Dingo to set up a meeting with Chernobog, he instantly wanted to meet with you.”
“In the ten seconds since the call? Not really. If we’d like to ponder that right now, though, and I can see by your expression that you would, then my guess is that their current contract relates to Chernobog in some way.”
White nodded. “That’s my guess as well. Serene?”
“It makes sense to me, Richard. But what does that mean we do from here?”
He shrugged. “It means that, for right now, we need to keep this between the three of us, and we also need to hope that our computer experts and Madame Olga have come up with something.”
“No argument, but why?”
“Am I right in thinking that the Dingo is going away?” Apparently White had learned my Dad’s trick of answering a question with another question. Decided to support someone else using one of my favorite go-to moves.
“Yeah, he said he was leaving the area, and he didn’t give any hint as to how far away he was going or where, but did say that he would be back in time for the National Convention. Where, by the way, he expects Jeff to be the target of murderous attacks. And Siler probably has contracted hits he hasn’t told us about. So, you’re both now all caught up on my call.”
White looked worried. “All of that is troubling. But I can think of only two contracts that would affect Chernobog, and if the Dingo is leaving this area to complete his assignment, that removes one of them—Russell Koslov—as the likely target.”
The reason White looked worried dawned on me. “Oh. Wow. You think the Dingo and Surly Vic have been contracted to kill Chernobog.”
“I do.”
“Wouldn’t that ultimately be good for us?” Serene asked.
“Maybe,” White replied. “However, the death of the person who hacked us means we will never have any hope of retrieving what she stole. I guarantee that while our data was erased on our systems, it still exists somewhere.”
“And if I were Chernobog, I’d be holding onto that as leverage. Yeah. You know, I think the Mastermind is running this action personally.” Explained my theory relating to the attack on Serene and Horn.
“Let’s table the rest of this for later.” White entered the car, still holding the door for us. “And hope that our team here has solved what’s sure to be a thorny dilemma for us already.”
“I love your optimism, Mister White, but I know how our luck runs,” I said as the elevator doors closed.
“Well, perhaps the young men will surprise us with good news.”
We rode the rest of the way in worried silence. In short order the doors opened on the fifth floor, where Hacker International ruled supreme.
Hacker International had moved into the Embassy during Operation Destruction and pretty much somehow never moved out. Buying The Zoo had made things a lot easier for all of us, since it meant they got their own space, blessedly far away from Jeff, who only rarely found them just this side of tolerable. And what a space it was.
As with all of our buildings, the Zoo was large, and the computer lab, which was state of the art, took up about half of the floor. Hacker International used the remaining space for their personal accommodations. It was nice work if you could get it, and, despite Jeff’s protests and attempts to remove them, they had.
However, they’d felt the hit quite personally when Chernobog had hacked us, and hacked us easily, last year. This meant that after a short period of major sulking, they’d thrown themselves into the work of finding out what the hell had happened and ensuring it never happened again.
We entered the computer lab to see all five hackers there, along with Olga. It was kind of weird to see her without Adriana, and I had a moment of worry for Team Oliver. However, they were all more than competent and if something was going wrong, we’d probably find out soon enough.
I’d known Stryker Dane since Chuckie had found him while the two of us were in high school, meaning a long time now. It was why I knew his real name—Edward Simms—as well as other, less positive things about him. Stryker, like us, was from Pueblo Caliente, Arizona. Unlike us, Stryker’s dedication to personal hygiene was limited.
He was an average-sized guy, with a reasonably impressive set of man boobs and a gut to match, topped off by a full, unkempt beard and long, curly, unkempt hair that, if he actually took care of it, would be quite lovely.
He was also a published author of the Taken Away series, wherein he made up alien encounters he claimed as being totally true that were nothing like the real alien encounters I had every day. Needless to say, Stryker’s books did well, even after real aliens were shown to be living on the planet.
Big George Lecroix was tall, black, and skinny. He was to Europe what Dr. Henry Wu, who was small, scrawny, bald, and always just a little more nervous than anyone else, was to China—their best hackers.
Ravi Gaekwad and Yuri Stanislav were, particularly by comparison to the other three, very normal looking. Ravi was India’s best hacker, possessed a normal body build, and also was the leading ladies’ man of Hacker International, having landed Jennifer Barone as his fiancée. They were still only engaged, even though both of them would have been happy to tie the knot by now, because his family was quite traditional and they hadn’t finished whatever waiting period was required prior to marriage.
Yuri was from Russia, meaning he could now only claim to be Russia’s second best hacker. But he was the only one you could find easily, so that counted for a lot in my book. Yuri was also blind, not that this stopped him from doing anything, and the only one who clearly worked out. Yuri was, all things considered, kind of hunky, especially compared to his hacker compatriots.
He was also cursing in Russian as we walked into the computer lab. At someone, if the headset he was wearing meant he was on a call of some kind.
“What’s wrong with Yuri?” I asked Stryker by way of hello. Now wasn’t the time to stand on formality. Or mention that I liked their arr
ay of Firefly T-shirts that were today’s uniform of choice. They really had created a science fiction and fantasy T-shirt rotation with pride, after I made a joke about how they always wore certain shirts on certain days. Why encourage their special obsessive madness?
Yuri ripped the headset off, tossed it across the room, narrowly missing hitting Big George in the head, and answered for himself. “How many more dead ends can we hit before we admit the truth—we can’t fight or find Chernobog?”
CHAPTER 65
“WELL, I guess that answers one of the questions we were here to ask.”
“Sorry, Kitty,” Stryker said. “But we’re getting nothing. Less than nothing. Time-wasting, frustrating nothing.”
“It’s clear Chernobog has covered her tracks, and that anyone who knows something about her is afraid,” Henry added nervously.
“We had a lead that she was in France,” Big George added. “But it petered out.”
“France is always suspect.”
“There was a lead for Paraguay, too,” Ravi said. “I think they were fakes, honestly.”
“Why so?” White asked quickly, to forestall the arguments or offers of support clearly about to come out of the other hackers’ open mouths.
Ravi shrugged. “Like Kitty said, we always suspect activity in those countries because of our past history. So, toss us some bad intel that sounds real, it sends us racing off to research a lot of nothing. Wastes our time and keeps us from finding the truth.”
“The truth is out there.”
“It is,” Stryker snapped. “But unless we can call it a day and do an X-Files marathon, we’re still not anywhere close to finding it.”
Yuri finished cursing. “First, no one believes Chernobog is real. Then she is real and everyone’s terrified of her. Make up your minds!”
“Deep breaths, Yuri, think calming thoughts. You guys have only been at this for a few hours.”
“No, we’ve been at it for a year,” Stryker said, patience clearly forced. “You don’t think we’ve spent time on this? Sure, we’ve been working to recreate the lost data and shore up our security, but the fastest way to do that is find Chernobog and figure out how she hacked us and where she hid her copies.”
“We’ve done the other work you guys wanted,” Big George said quickly. “But that’s slow going, as you know. Plus, after what happened yesterday, we were hoping to get a solid lead that could help the team.”
“Wow, Jennifer’s been working with you guys on the right way to talk to people who control your paychecks and living situation, hasn’t she?”
“Speaking of whom, have you seen her?” Ravi sounded worried.
“Not since yesterday. She’s on a mission.”
“She hasn’t checked in with me. At all. We always check in.”
“Maybe she can’t. Not that she’s hurt or something,” I said hurriedly. “But I think they’re doing something very covert. She just might not be able to check in without blowing cover or something.” From his expression, this didn’t comfort Ravi all that much.
“I’m sure she and the others are fine,” Olga said reassuringly, as she rolled her wheelchair over to Yuri’s station. She shot me a look that said she was lying, however. Great.
“What I don’t understand,” Serene said, in her Innocent Voice, “is how anyone, even Chernobog, could hide her tracks so well. Our enemies found her before. And Kitty figured out where she was a year ago.”
“She’s got access to the highest-grade stuff,” Stryker said. “We’ve got the best, but she’s got better.”
“We have the best money can buy, at least per my husband. So who could have better?”
“Major world powers,” Henry replied.
“Jennifer should have been home by now,” Ravi fretted under his breath.
My brain nudged. “Home. Wait a second . . . no one say anything for a moment.” I could tell Reader, Tim, and the flyboys weren’t here—the room went dutifully still.
There was information Serene and I had that White and the others in this room didn’t. Information sent to Colonel Franklin via Colonel Hamlin, who I was now sure was being assisted in some way by Mr. Joel Oliver. I’d focused on the part about the ricin bombs. But Hamlin had said more.
“He said, point blank, that Home Base was infiltrated. But Franklin got the note after Oliver’s team had gone out, meaning they probably confirmed this for him. And he told Franklin to watch his back, and to watch everyone’s backs. Now, why would he say that?”
“Who is this he?” White asked politely.
“Colonel Hamlin,” Serene replied for me. “I saw the note, too. Kitty, you think Mister Joel Oliver went to investigate Home Base?”
“Yeah, I do. I also think something else. You’ve met Colonel John Butler over at Home Base, right, Serene?”
“Yes. He’s a nice enough man. Pro-alien as far as we’ve seen. I’m not used to the resistance his office gave us yesterday.”
“His office? Wait, was the colonel at Home Base yesterday?”
“No, per his secretary, he was overseeing something at Luke.”
“Have you met his secretary?”
She nodded. “A couple of times. She’s an older woman, seems pleasant enough.”
Looked at Olga, who looked surprised, but in a really pissed off way. Started to laugh.
“Kitty, what is it?” Stryker asked. “You okay?”
“I am. I’m all kinds of thrilled because I just figured out something before Olga did. Mark this as a total red-letter day. Also, Siler’s right—I’m going to get along really well with Chernobog. I like the way that sneaky Russian beeyotch thinks.”
CHAPTER 66
“YOU CAN’T GO TO HER ALONE,” Olga said. “And all who I would suggest go with you are elsewhere.”
“I know. But I have Mister White here. And I think I’m going to have some serious support, too.”
“Want to catch the rest of us up?” Stryker asked, sounding more than annoyed.
“Sure, because someone should know where we’re going, just in case. Chernobog was hiding in Cuba these past years, right?” Heads nodded. “But she was hiding on the Naval base and its surrounding areas, on the American side. I’m sure she went over to the Cuban side a lot, especially since we couldn’t find her, but she was spending most of her time on that tiny patch of American soil around Guantanamo.”
“You think she’s still in Cuba somewhere?” Ravi asked.
“No. I flat out know she’s not there anymore. Frankly, I know exactly where she is. She’s somewhere the only person who could pick her out of a lineup never goes, but where she still has access to the best damn equipment in the world.”
White jerked. “Oh. Oh dear.”
“Put so much more diplomatically than I would say it. Yeah, Chernobog is at Home Base. In fact, she’s got a great job there—she’s Colonel Butler’s secretary. Bet he thinks she’s the greatest and trusts her completely, too, doesn’t he?” I asked Serene.
“Yes, he does. She came over after his former secretary took ill.” Serene looked a little ill herself. “She made that poor woman sick, didn’t she?”
“At least she didn’t kill her. I hope. But yeah.”
“But how?” Serene asked. “There are security checks, a large number of them.”
“If Madeleine Cartwright could infiltrate the freaking Pentagon, why would we think that the best hacker in the world couldn’t make herself a shiny, perfect persona that would pass muster anywhere and everywhere?”
“She always had a plethora of identities when we worked together,” Olga said. “What trouble would creating one more be? I’m sorry, this should have occurred to me, and it did not.”
“Well, it only occurred to me because of what all’s gone on and Hamlin’s note. Telling Franklin to watch his own back makes sense. But telling him to watch everyone’s backs? Really? That seems like overkill, and I’ve met Hammy, and he’s not an overkill kind of guy. But what he is is former military intelligen
ce. He knows how to leave a coded message without writing in actual code.”
“When are you going there?” Big George asked. “I mean, we all know you’re going.”
“As soon as possible.” But not before I talked to the Dingo and Surly Vic. However, I had no way of knowing when they were going to call. On the other hand, I should be ready when they did call, because I was sure we were heading to Home Base again the moment I told them what I knew was going on.
“Before you run off, why does Serene have two phones?” Henry asked.
“Oh! Right. Let’s get the pictures downloaded. We can start facial recognition or whatever and see what we come up with. Do mine first. I need to go change but I’m expecting a call.”
Stryker snatched my phone from me, plugged it into a computer, tapped some keys, and pulled up my photo file. “Just take the ones from today.”
“We don’t want to see your naked pictures of Jeff, don’t worry,” Stryker muttered.
“Careful, Eddy. I’m not against hurting you.”
The pictures were downloaded quickly and my phone was back in my hand. “Mister White, I need to change clothes. You coming or staying?”
This caused Yuri and Big George to almost choke to death on their respective Big Gulps. White chuckled. “If you promise to call me when you’re ready to go, I’ll stay here and peruse the pictures of the crowd for a bit.”
“Works for me. Serene, you coming along or staying here to run point?”
“It’ll depend on what we get before you’re ready to leave. Check with me, because I can get us into Colonel Butler’s office without an issue.”
“Sounds good.” Gave Olga a hug, and took off. I was revved, so I took the stairs at hyperspeed, and did so well I kept it up across the walkway and up to our apartment.
My father and Lucinda were there along with Jamie. And our dogs. Had to greet the canines first. Then gave Lucinda and Dad big hugs. Then I finally got to actually hold my daughter for the first time in a day, which was nice.
Cuddled her and took her with me while I changed out of the Armani Fatigues and into jeans, my Converse, a short-sleeved Iron Maiden T-shirt, in order to look intimidating, and a light Aerosmith hoodie, because I was going into action and that required my boys to be on my person.