Deathbites at-12

by Dick Stivers

  “What are Gadgets and Pol up to?” he asked.

  “They’re double checking my security arrangements. I don’t think they quite trust me, yet.”

  “They never fully trust anyone. It goes with the territory. They even check out each other whenever there’s time. That’s the way they stay alive.”

  Ti nodded. “Of course. Bushido, the way of the warrior, dictates vigilance all of the time, but I always thought that was theory. I’ve never seen it in practice before.”

  “It’s rare, because the price is high,” Hal reflected. “You see it only where lives are always on the line. I imagine Miyamoto Musashi understood it very well.”

  Ti grinned at Hal’s reference to the “Sword Saint” of Japan.

  Brognola took another sip of coffee and then got down to business. “How ready are we for another terrorist attack?”

  “An attack will be difficult for us to handle. We hold ‘fire drills’ to evacuate people quickly from the building, but I think everyone’s figured out that they’re attack drills. When someone asks what to do if the terrorists show up, I tell them everything is being taken care of. But truthfully, if we don’t have at least a few minutes’ warning, we’re bound to have casualties. We’re gambling with these people’s lives.”

  “We’ve substituted Justice Department employees wherever we can,” Brognola said, “but we’ve had to hire some outsiders with creative potential to keep this company going. Here at Elwood we have a chance of stopping the terrorists. We have no chance of stopping them if they strike a new target.”

  “But… ” Ti began.

  She was interrupted by the beeping of a pager that she wore on the belt of her jeans.

  “The computer has monitored some activity on the central WAR computer,” she said. “Shall we check it out now?”

  “Might as well.”

  When Lao Ti did not have a portable computer, she breadboarded her own. Miscellaneous boards of chips and a riot of wires filled an entire workbench. The only items Brognola recognized were a monitor, a keyboard and a bank of floppy-disk drives.

  “Wouldn’t this be better pulled together in a cabinet?” he asked.

  Ti shook her head. “Not at the rate I’ve got the clock set. Too much heat. If I really get going, I turn some fans on the bench to move the air faster.”

  She sat down at the keyboard. Her fingers would blur for a few seconds and then pause while the screen filled with a mishmash of symbols. She would take these in at a glance and then her fingers would start their frantic dance once again.

  The messages on the screen were as impossible to follow as the arcane symbols that Ti was entering. Often there was nothing but long strips of ones and zeros.

  “Do either of you speak English?” Brognola cracked.

  Ti finished her high-speed rattling of the keyboard and then turned to Brognola with a smile.

  “As a matter of fact, we both do, but not to each other. Machine language is more efficient.”

  “I don’t recognize any of the standard programming languages on that screen.”

  Ti shook her head. “Not programming language. Too slow. Machine language, the language the computer regulates itself with. Machine language is both stronger and faster.”

  “I’ll buy that it’s faster. What’s happening?”

  “Just let me finish and the three of us will start speaking English.”

  She scanned the screen and her fingers danced again. In another minute she had exchanged two more screens full of information with the computer. She then paused and thought for a moment, before starting back on the keyboard.

  “I’ve separated out the everyday transactions from the ones we’re interested in,” she said. “Can Aaron join us? I think we’ll need his help.”

  Brognola went to the lab next door. There, Aaron “The Bear” Kurtzman was at a more conventional computer terminal, directing the daily running of Elwood Electronic Industries. Brognola had insisted that Kurtzman join him in Atlanta. He knew the Bear was going stir-crazy in his new job at Stony Man Farm.

  “You know, Hal, running a company can be fun,” the big man said. “I think I’ll take over some company when I retire.”

  “That’ll take a fair-sized investment.”

  Kurtzman looked at Brognola and shook his head.

  “Oh, no. I’ll just use a computer like this and take over a company. They’ll never quite figure out how it all happened.”

  “Before you get your hand too deep in the till, Ti says we need your help next door.”

  When they returned to Ti’s lab, she had a bunch of pseudo words on the screen. She continued to study them while Kurtzman maneuvered his chair to where he could also see the screen.

  “You recognize anything?” she asked, without looking up.

  “Where’d you get that stuff?” Kurtzman demanded. His usually soft voice was gruff.

  “Entry codes used recently by someone on the WAR computer. This computer is monitoring theirs.”

  “Those codes reach all sorts of information, both restricted and classified.”

  Ti pushed her chair back from the workbench.

  “You better take over. I may trip one of the safety devices. We need to go in there and find what WAR got from those computers. Whoever did it was shrewd enough not to store anything. I have a record of the stuff sent, but it would take ages to go through everything in the order they did it.”

  Kurtzman’s hands moved over the keys. His eyes stayed on the screen. He never looked down to see what his hands were doing.

  “Damn,” he spat after minutes of work.

  “Damn,” Ti repeated.

  They both sat looking glumly at the screen.

  “The damn terrorists must have found the government access codes at one of the places they wiped out,” the Bear told Brognola. “They’ve dug into the federal computers and gone straight for any grant money awarded that’s blanketed by security. They now know where every research establishment that is important to the government is, and what they’re working on.”

  “Crap,” Brognola fired. “I want a map with the location of every office and branch that WAR has and all the research that’s going on within a thirty-mile radius of each branch.”

  “You realize that their offices are near Silicon Valley, Bionic Valley, Route 128 and all the big research centres?” Kurtzman asked. “You’re talking about over half the computer research that’s happening in the U.S.”

  “If it’s that big a job, you’d better get moving,” Brognola growled.

  “Aaron,” Ti said, “if you start pulling out names and addresses on your computer, I’ll raid civil defense for computerized city maps. Then you batch your information over here, and I’ll have my computer mark the locations on the maps. Give me an importance rating of one to five. We’ll assign them colors. When we’re through, we can batch the information onto the company computer and have the plotter print it six-color on eleven-by-seventeen paper.”

  “You got it,” the Bear told her.

  *

  July 13, 930 hours, Atlanta, Georgia

  “Where are Louis, Rodrigos and Lobo?” Jishin demanded.

  Lyons and Devine had not been summoned to report until the following morning. They stood facing her in the deserted recreation lounge.

  “Who?” Lyons asked.

  Jishin stared at Deborah, who raised her eyebrows. “Aren’t they here?”

  “No. They’re not here. Yesterday they were sent to keep you two out of trouble. They haven’t returned.”

  “Were they driving a beat-up pickup truck?” Lyons asked.

  “Louis owns such a vehicle.”

  “We saw a beat-up truck following us when we were changing buses downtown. We didn’t know who it was, so we ditched it,” Lyons told the Japanese terrorist.

  “Did you check the police and hospitals?” Deborah asked.

  Jishin filled her lungs to say something and then let the breath back out again, slowly. “So what do
our intelligence experts have to report?”

  “Dr. Lao is just finishing a week off. She’s due back at El wood next week,” Lyons reported, using the story that he and Deborah had carefully concocted.

  “How did you manage to find this out?” Jishin’s voice quavered with suspicion.

  Lyons flashed the wallet he had stolen.

  “We went in there as building inspector and assistant. Looked the place over. Asked questions about an empty lab and got lucky with the answers.”

  “You seem to have an extraordinary amount of skill and background in these matters,” Jishin commented.

  “Never been caught yet,” Lyons answered. He gave Jishin a broad wink. Her face remained expressionless, but there was no question that she could barely tolerate bigmouthed Carl Leggit.

  “I think you two might have done a good job. If so, there’ll be a bonus and you’ll be made team leaders for the raid. I’m not passing final judgment until I hear from the three who were supposed to protect you.

  “In the meantime, you’ll stay in this building until the time of the raid. I’ll be in Boston, but I’m leaving instructions with Jim Saint to shoot anyone who leaves this building without direct orders. He’s commander in my absence. Is all that quite clear?”

  When Jishin left the room, Lyons turned to Deborah and leered.

  “If we’re going to be confined to quarters, we may as well enjoy it,” he said. His voice was loud.

  He grabbed Deborah by the hand and almost dragged her to the men’s bunk room. There was only one occupant. The rest were in classes.

  Lyons pushed her toward his bunk and went to the other occupant of the room.

  “Ten bucks if you get out and watch the door for fifteen minutes,” he whispered in the man’s ear.

  The guy glanced at Deborah. “Only fifteen minutes, huh? Who are you fooling?”

  “C’mon, you know we’ll be missed if we stay longer.”

  The guy pocketed the money and left, a silly leer plastered on his face.

  Lyons went over to another bunk and turned on a radio. Then he beckoned Deborah. She came into his arms.

  He whispered in her ear. “I don’t know if the place is bugged or not. I’ve got to get to a telephone with that Boston bit. You stay here and cover for me.”

  “Okay,” she whispered.

  Lyons went to one of the two windows in the room. It was fitted with heavy mesh, bolted to the window frame.

  He propped the window open, stood back and aimed a series of front kicks at the lower corners of the mesh. Three minutes later, the bolts had been dragged right through the wood frame. Lyons forced his way out between the window ledge and the bottom of the screen.

  Deborah went over to the window and examined the screen. The kicks had been well placed and had done little damage to the mesh itself. She pulled the screen back into place. Then she put some pennies on the sill and closed the window. Lyons would be able to put his fingers underneath to raise the window again. Deborah had an uneasy feeling, a feeling of doom. She wanted Lyons’s tracks covered as well as possible.

  She was looking around for something to read when she heard angry voices in the hall. She quickly climbed into a bunk and covered up with her back to the door.

  A moment later the door opened.

  “For Christ’s sake, get out!” Deborah cried without looking around.

  Heavy boots crossed the floor and the covers were yanked off the bunk.

  “Making love to yourself?” asked James Saint, his voice heavily laced with both an Irish brogue and venomous sarcasm.

  “Just trying to get fifteen minutes to myself,” Deborah answered. Her voice sounded weary.

  “Where’s Leggit?”

  “How the hell should I know.”

  Deborah swung around and sat up. Saint stood towering over her. His blue eyes surveyed her coldly as he stood with his hands on his hips.

  “Jones said he was in here with you.”

  Deborah stood up so suddenly she almost knocked Saint off his feet. He had to take a rapid step back to keep his balance.

  “Where does this harassment stop?” she yelled. “First, you match me up with the boor in exercise class. Then you send me out for a day on the town with him. Some day! Now you expect me to sleep with the son-of-a-bitch. Go to hell!”

  Saint was taken aback by the sudden onslaught. He looked at Deborah as if she had just sprouted horns and a tail. He went once around the room and looked in the washroom, but he found no one. He stopped in front of each of the two windows, but seemed satisfied that they were intact. His circuit of the room brought him back in front of Devine.

  “Where’s Leggit?” The voice was determined.

  Deborah shrugged. “I haven’t seen him since he got Jones out of here and let me have his bunk. He and Jones left together.”

  “What’s wrong with your own bunk?”

  “The place is full of yappy females.”

  He slapped her hard enough to rock her on her feet. She bent her knees and went with the blow. Only her karate training enabled her to keep her feet.

  “You’re lying.”

  She launched a body blow that hit the hard-muscled stomach with enough force that Saint had to take a step backward. He backed up one more step and produced an American Arms TP-70 from his trouser side pocket. The little .25 caliber automatic stared like death into Deborah’s face.

  “You do notstrike a superior officer,” Saint grated. “You’ll be disciplined for this, but first I’m going to find Leggit.”

  The automatic gestured toward the door. “Out.”

  “I demand to see Aya Jishin.”

  “Tough shit, Devine. Jishin just left. I’m in charge. Now move.”

  “Whereto?”

  “The brig. You stay there until we get this thing sorted out.”

  Deborah turned to hide a shudder. The brig was a cage in the basement. It was used for punishment. A person could neither stand, sit, nor lie straight in the brig. Things were falling apart in a hell of a hurry. She pulled her shoulders straight and marched out of the room.

  *

  July 13, 951 hours, Smyrna, Georgia

  “Exactly what did Carl say?” Politician asked.

  Pol, Gadgets, the Bear and Ti were sitting in front of Brognola’s desk at Elwood Electronic Industries. Behind the desk Brognola sat very straight, his forehead creased with worry lines.

  “Not much,” he answered. “He’d slipped out of the building and was worried about being missed. All he knew was that Jishin let it slip she was leaving for Boston right away. He has a hunch that a raid is imminent in that area.”

  “We might be able to get military transport and arrive the same time she does, but there’s no way to beat her there,” Gadgets pointed out.

  “No idea how long we have?” Pol probed.

  Brognola shook his head.

  “Is there anyone left at Stony Man?” Gadgets asked. “If so, they can get to Boston a lot faster than we can.”

  Brognola nodded. “Phoenix Force’s Manning and McCarter are watching the shop. They can be in Boston in a matter of minutes.”

  “Okay, Manning and McCarter can get to Boston on time, but what’s the target?” Gadgets wondered aloud.

  Kurtzman spoke for the first time. “I think we can answer that one. Ti and I have been assembling maps of probable targets within striking distance of WAR’s main branches. The Boston area has one target that’s several times as important as any other in the area — MIT.”

  “What’s so special about the Massachusetts Institute of Technology?” Brognola asked.

  “They’ve assembled some of the most promising younger researchers. A lot of federal funds have gone there recently to back several hush-hush computer projects. And a university is always an easy target. I’d say it’s MIT with a ninety-six-percent probability.”

  “That’s close enough,” Brognola decided. He reached for the telephone to call Stony Man. “I just hope we manage things on time.
One of you get me Quantico Marine Base on the other line.”

  12

  July 13, 1032 hours, Stony Man Farm, Virginia

  The captain was in a cranky mood. He had been off duty and just about to sit down to enjoy a couple of drinks in the officers’ mess, when the officer of the day had caught him.

  “Jackson. Top-priority flight, on the double.”

  “Hey, Colonel. I’m not on the duty roster.”

  “You are now. Jump.”

  Captain Jackson got the message. He got to the chopper hangar on the double — it was on the double all the way, because Colonel Fulton jogged right beside him.

  They came to a stop beside a Sikorsky CH-53E. It was already warming up. The captain reached for the clipboard being held by a mechanic, but Fulton snatched it and scribbled a quick signature without checking it. Jackson was beginning to suspect that the flight was more than routine.

  “Where’s my crew?” he asked.

  “You’re the crew,” Fulton told him as they boarded. “I’m commanding.”

  “But you’re duty officer.”

  “And duty calls.”

  They warmed up the sixteen-ton helicopter and staggered it into the sky the moment the engines would take it.

  “Where’s the load, skipper?” Jackson asked. He was beginning to feel the excitement.

  “Just outside the Shenandoah Park. There’s two passengers for Boston.”

  “We’re taking this gas-guzzling, suicidal monster to ferry two men?”

  The colonel was enjoying the captain’s discomfort. “It’s the fastest thing we’ve got on the base, and I was told it had to be the quickest merry-go-round we have.”

  “Who gave that brilliant order?”

  “Not allowed to say, but it came from a lot higher than base commander.”

  The lights around the helipad were strongly directional. Jackson did not spot them until they were directly over them. The colonel brought the chopper back on a much lower level and then down on the pad. The lights went out immediately. Jackson cranked the door and jumped out.