Savage Reload (Team Savage Book 2)

by Michael Todd

  “Right,” the operative said. “There might have been a setback, but I was told there was a plan in the works to get our hands on him. My hands on him.”

  “There appears to have been a hiccup on that end.” The hacker sounded a little more worried than usual, and a trace of irritation also colored her tone. “It’s something of a tactical boo-boo, a semantics mix-up.”

  Savage sucked in a deep breath. She wasn’t usually one to bandy words like this, and the way she tried to justify and soften the blow before delivering it said she thought the blow would be something he didn’t want to hear. That aside, she usually liked to annoy him, which meant that whatever this was, it was serious.

  “What’s up, Anja?” he demanded.

  “Well, I’ve run over the cameras on our friend Banks, and it looks like he might have been…uh, kind of ever so slightly…nabbed.”

  “Nabbed?” Terry asked.

  “You know, kidnapped, absconded with, turned into a movie with Liam Neeson, the kind that ends with a multitude of bad people all beaten up,” she replied, rambling again. “The man’s gone. I can’t find him anywhere. He’s not at his offices, or at his apartment, or any of his regular haunts.”

  “Is he on the run?” Savage asked. “He might have gotten wind that he’s in our sights and tried to make a run for it.”

  “His car is still at the office, and from what I can see, it was brought up for him to use a couple of hours before you were ambushed. I’ve been dealing with that, so when I turned to get on track with our plans for Banks… Well, he was no longer there. His car was returned to the garage, from what I can tell from the camera across the street. It’s not a great view from up there and doesn’t actually show the entrance itself. It focuses primarily on the street frontage for the building it’s on, so anything beyond that is limited. Plus, there was a fair amount of traffic with cars and trucks coming and going around that time.”

  “Shit. Couldn’t you get access from another camera with a better view?”

  “All the cameras with better views are owned by the building,” she pointed. “I’ve worked with traffic light cameras to get us the information we have now. I’m the best, but I’m not God.”

  “Tell your ego that,” he said with a grin. Anja’s only response was a fake laugh.

  Not the time. Understood.

  “Wait, why can’t you simply access the building’s cameras?” Sam asked. “A place like that has to be brimming with security.”

  “And it’s all kept off the grid to prevent people like me from getting access.”

  Savage fought back the rising tide of frustration. This wasn’t how he wanted the day to go.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Savage rubbed his eyes and dropped back into the chair. The building where Terry and Sam had set their base up looked like it had been abandoned for a while. Most of the windows had already been broken either by the elements or vandals looking for something destructively entertaining to do. The top floors had been taken over by billboards that could be seen by the rich and successful of New York, which made him wonder why they hadn’t put any effort in to develop the building more. There had to be a whole horde of people who wouldn’t mind living and working in an unused building in the middle of Manhattan.

  It didn’t really matter at this point, though. They had a place to set up shop and one that overlooked the general area that Banks lived in. The downside was that it was about a quarter of the way across the island from the building where the man worked, which meant they had to rely on Anja to keep an eye on the place.

  The trio had spent a very long night with little to do except eat something and try to get some rest with the endless drone of the generator they used for lights and all the other electricity needs fulfilled. Thankfully, considering where they were and the time of year, this included heating. As Savage didn’t want to move too far away from the action while they searched for Banks—who really had mysteriously disappeared—he had spent an uncomfortable night together with his teammates and huddled on a small cot in a corner of the building that was still mostly intact.

  Having to choose between a loud generator and freezing to death was a shitty scenario but not one that had always been available for any of them during their time out in the field. The loud generator won the vote without protest from anyone. The rumble grated and scratched at his already irritated state of mind, but after a few hours, faded into the background and worked to drown out all the fucking noise in the city that never fucking slept.

  All in all, it wasn’t the best night of sleep he’d ever had but not the worst either. There had been some restful moments here and there, and he had managed a nap on the plane on the way over so it wasn’t as bad as it could have been.

  Sam helped to change the bandage on Terry’s side as Savage coaxed the ancient-looking coffee machine on the table to life and finally made them all something thick, strong, and warm to drink before they focused on making a good start on the day.

  That said, as he tasted the brew he’d made, he thought that perhaps good was a strong word for the start that they would have.

  “Don’t worry.” Sam rubbed her eyes and shook herself a little as if to dislodge the remnants of sleep. She seemed to recognize the look on his face. “It’s not your fault. We skimped on quality when we bought coffee and the coffee machine doesn’t help either.”

  Terry shrugged. “It works. The coffee wakes us up, and the after taste is enough to keep us awake until we can buy a proper breakfast on the way. There’s a nice little diner-style place around the corner we’ve frequented. We’ve also saved the receipts for Anderson and Monroe to refund us since we are technically on the clock here.”

  Savage chuckled.

  “Morning guys, gal,” Anja said and came to life in their earbuds. “I hope you slept well.”

  “Well enough,” he replied. “Did you get any sleep?”

  “I’ll sleep when I’m dead.” The hacker laughed. “Well, not really, but I’ll sleep when I crash, anyway. That’s how I do it. I’ve tried to get a trace on Banks. I see him heading into the building the day before yesterday but there’s no sign of him anywhere in the area around the building until yesterday. As I mentioned, there was considerable traffic around that time and it blocked most of the already limited view I had. All I was able to see was a quick snippet that showed security returning the vehicle to the garage again.”

  “Were there any other vehicles going in or out of the area at the same time?” Savage asked.

  “Literally hundreds over the same time period,” she said. “You’d think a place like that would be almost deserted on Thanksgiving, but nope. They still had a lunch-hour traffic jam for miles. If he left the building using one of the vehicles that entered that area, we’ll need to narrow it down. I’m good but I can’t track twenty-seven different vehicles across the city at the same time. Believe me, I’ve tried.”

  “How do we narrow it down?” Sam asked.

  “It seems obvious to me,” Savage said and took another sip of the questionable coffee. “If the security tapes for the firm’s building are held offline, isn’t the only option we have to go into the building and get the tapes for ourselves?”

  “Ironically, it probably would have been easier to do that yesterday,” Terry pointed out.

  “Is that irony?” Sam wondered with a small frown.

  “It doesn’t really matter,” Savage said. “We need to case the place if intend to break in. It will take a couple of days, by which time Banks could already be out of the country.”

  “Not to worry,” Anja said. “I’ve helped Sam and Terry with surveillance over the past few days, so I think we already have all the details we need. They had actually planned to approach Banks at work. I’ll send you all the details you need while you find breakfast.”

  “Why wouldn’t he be out of the country already if he got out of the building yesterday?” Terry asked.

  “It’s a little complicated,” the hack
er said. “The basics are that it would be possible to get him out of the country but not without using his own passport, which would ping me. If they intend to use a fake, it would take them a couple of days to set it up. Passports are a little more complicated than IDs.”

  “Right,” Savage said. “Well, you lost me at breakfast. Send us the details and we’ll discuss how we get into the building while we drink some decent fucking coffee.”

  “Language,” Terry grumbled under his breath as they prepared to leave their little base.

  “Don’t get me wrong,” Sam said. “I’d rather be out here, in the field, instead of watching from a mile out.”

  “Yeah, rub it in, why don’t you?” Terry grumbled. He sat in a car about three hundred yards out on the top of a parking garage, which gave him a good view of their location. He was their overwatch, which was a vital job, of course, and best done by someone who could make use of the high-powered rifle Savage assumed he carried. But he knew from experience that as jobs went, it was about as boring as things could get, despite the fact that they had managed to acquire another rental car, a Mercedes SUV this time.

  “But why can’t Anja run overwatch for us and we can have three people in here with us?” she asked to extend the thought as the taxi they’d called pulled up at the entrance. Savage turned to check the positioning of the camera Anja had used. It was low and skewed to the right, which made it easy to block, especially during heavy traffic hours. It seemed like a design flaw, but things weren’t always well-thought-out when it came to building in such close proximity. He turned his attention to the cameras belonging to the law firm that covered the entrance. If Banks had left via the front door, they would be the ones that picked him up.

  The operative was dressed in a suit and tie, acceptable attire for a visit to legal counsel during business hours. Sam was similarly dressed and had actually gone with makeup suggestions from Anja and worked herself into a professional-looking pantsuit, with her hair drawn up in a rigid bun above her head. She completed the outfit with a pair of non-prescription glasses.

  “Don’t say it,” she snapped warningly.

  He recalled Anderson’s brief on what happened to the last man to say the evil phrase to Sam, and as much as he enjoyed teasing, they were on the job now. Being emasculated by a high heel was not on his bucket list of things he wanted to do before he died.

  “I didn’t intend to,” he replied and fiddled awkwardly with his tie. It was suffocating to have to wear this bullshit, but it was expected by the people who worked in buildings like these. He had cleaned up rather well too, he supposed. His brown hair now boasted a neat comb-over, and the grey suit and tie combo suited him, even if he didn’t particularly like it. If he were to pick a color for his suits, it would be black for the intimidation factor, but they didn’t need him to attract attention today. He merely needed to be one of the hundred or so legal aides who came and went from this place every day.

  They moved into the pleasantly air-conditioned lobby and the duo surreptitiously examined the building’s security. They all looked like pros, but the kind that came from years on a police force, not military and definitely not special forces. They were there to provide a bureaucratic barrier between the people outside and the people inside, with a handful of weapons in reach to allow them to be a little more than simply that if they needed to be.

  The doors could be locked from the front desk, and there were pistols and shotguns in the room behind the reception, just in case.

  The guard at the front desk, a tall, lean man with a suggestion of baldness amidst greying hair, greeted them with a small, professional smile.

  “Good afternoon,” he said.

  “Hi,” Savage said and returned the gesture with one of his own. “Tom Davison, and this is my associate Mary Jane Baker. We have an appointment with Gideon Andres on the eighteenth floor.”

  “Can I see your IDs?” he asked, and both Savage and Sam presented the IDs Anja had arranged for them to collect only a few hours earlier. He gave them a quick look and handed them back, then checked to make sure there was, in fact, an appointment for them in the system. Once that was done, he looked at them and handed them a couple of visitors’ badges. “The elevators are right there to your left. Have a nice day.”

  “Right back at you,” Savage replied with a nod and they wandered toward the elevators.

  “So, Anja,” Sam said once the elevator doors closed. “A bit of a Doctor Who fan, are we?”

  “Doctor what?” he asked.

  “Who,” the hacker replied. “And yes. I thought you might like that, being British and all.”

  “Well, color me appreciative.” Sam chuckled and glanced at the visitor’s badge hanging from her lapel.

  “What are you guys talking about?” Savage asked.

  “Remind me to tie you down for a binge-watching session later,” she replied with a grin. “So, what happens when we don’t show up for the appointment we’re supposed to have with this Gideon Andres?”

  “Oh, don’t worry about that,” Anja replied. “I isolated the request to make sure only the security schedule showed it.”

  “And when the security guard calls them to say that we’re coming up?” Sam asked.

  “Oh, I fed that call into a recording I have of the secretary taking the call,” Anja replied. “Their security feeds are all offline, but everything else is kept on the main servers to maximize efficiency. It does work, I have to say.”

  “Are we in the clear here?” Sam frowned at her reflection in the mirrored interior. “I can’t shake the feeling that all this is a little too easy.”

  “It’s a law firm in the middle of Manhattan, not Fort Knox,” Savage pointed out as they reached the eighteenth floor. “That said…yeah, let’s keep our eyes open. Something may go sideways in the most colossal ways.”

  “You two are paranoid.”

  “Yeah, it’s almost like we’re breaking into a building to steal security tapes.” Sam laughed as they left the elevator and made their way through the building. Anja had explained that the system with the visitor’s badges included implanted chips that allowed the security team downstairs to keep track of where they were. While she couldn’t help them with that directly due to the system being offline, there was a simple way around it. They slipped both into an envelope marked invoices and handed it to the office assistant to deliver to Andres’ office. It was already too late in the day to handle invoices and it was Friday, so anything that was marked as such would be ignored until Monday.

  The hacker knew more about office work than either of them combined, so they simply trusted her orders and handed the envelope to the young man who pushed a trolley full of similar envelopes before they continued toward the secure server room. Most of the other servers were in the basement levels, but they were kept separate from the security servers for the very reason why they were there.

  “Well, I don’t know what you’re looking at, but I see a very nice, very big, very locked door,” Sam said. “I could probably pick it or maybe blow it up, but I think either of those options would attract too much attention.”

  “If you two could wait out there for a few minutes?” Anja said. Waiting was as necessary a part of any infiltration as any other skill, so Sam leaned quickly against the wall next to the door and pulled Savage in a little closer.

  “What are you doing?” Savage asked.

  “Don’t get any ideas,” she said softly and smoothed the wrinkles she’d caused in his jacket. “People get uncomfortable when they see something they think is intimacy. We don’t actually have to be intimate. We only need to be close enough to be perceived as intimate.”

  “So…we can pretend to be intimate on the job but if I make a joke, I get kicked in the nuts?” He focused on trying to look a little more relaxed. People would know they were faking if he was too stiff.

  “Well, not you, per se,” she replied. “I don’t like people to simply see me as nothing more than…well, you know. I
would kick you if you tried it, though. But not in the nuts. Maybe in the shins.”

  “Fair enough,” he said with a nod. “I would never, though.”

  “I know.” Her grin was full of sass. “That’s why I’d only kick you in the shin.”

  “Excuse me?” a voice said behind them. It sounded timid, young, and more than a little uncomfortable. Savage turned to see the office assistant they had run into before.

  “Sorry, I’m new here. Miss Baker?” he asked and looked at Sam, who hastily reminded herself of her assumed identity.

  “That’s me,” she said and smiling as an envelope was handed to her and the kid hurried away, a hint of a blush on his cheeks.

  “See what I mean?” Sam asked. She opened the envelope and a key fell out. “I swear to God the woman has superpowers.”

  “Not really,” Anja replied. “When office security is run almost entirely online, you’d be surprised by what you can do when you have unlimited access. Getting your hands on the keys for secured areas and have them sent to new employees, for instance.”

  “That’s basically a superpower,” Savage said as they slipped into the server room. “So, what are we doing here?”

  “You simply have to plug that USB drive into the servers and let me work,” the hacker replied.

  He shrugged and did as he was told. Some of the nearby screens lit up and a handful of programs appeared on them. The lights on the drives came to life one by one.

  “Can I ask…what you’re doing?” he asked as he studied the room. He couldn’t see any cameras, which helped him relax a little.

  “I’m uploading all the footage to the servers that do have Internet access and transferring it all to me,” Anja replied. “Which is already done. Nice work, my little puppets. I think you can manage to get out on your own?”

  “Right,” he said. “We’ll need to get the visitor badges back, though.”

  “We have a problem,” Terry said when they returned to the base. He was the first one back and had already begun to examine the security tapes. Savage doubted that Anja had the time to check all the footage they had gotten to her, superpowers or no. She probably ran most of it through an algorithm that identified Banks and worked from there.