The Fall

by R. J. Pineiro

  “Dr. Wiltz,” Raj said. “We may have something.”

  “Good news?”

  “I’m not sure. Maybe. The fact that General Hastings is the only authorized SkyLeap individual with remote access may actually play in our favor.”

  “How?”

  “As part of Hastings’s log-in protocol, the system performs a handshake with the ISP that Hastings uses when attempting to log in. Well, as a safety feature sometime back, Hastings himself thought of having the ISP record the physical location of the access anytime it didn’t originate from his phone, from his device’s IP address. At the time we all thought he was just a paranoid old fart.”

  “Turns out he was right.”

  “Yes, he was. And the thing is that the hacker wouldn’t know it because that isn’t standard procedure, just as the hacker wouldn’t know that Hastings’s phone was the only device that could access the network from outside our walls.”

  “Okay, Rajesh, so you are telling me we have an address?”

  “Yes, ma’am. But that’s what doesn’t make sense.”

  “Why?”

  “Because … it belongs to Pete Flaherty, the head of Project Phoenix.”

  Olivia froze, staring straight ahead, her mind going in different directions.

  “Doctor? Are you okay?”

  “Yes, Rajesh. I am. I need to contact the general right away,” she said, hanging up and dialing Hastings, who picked up on the second ring.

  “Doctor?”

  She closed her eyes and tried to keep her voice steady, under control, like the professional she was. “General, the hack into the network originated from Pete Flaherty’s house.”

  There was a long pause, while Olivia stopped breathing.

  “Are you certain?”

  She inhaled and said, “Yes, sir. Your phone was hijacked and it was used to get through the firewall, but although the IP address of the offending computer is sending us on a wild goose chase across the globe, the ISP recorded the physical address where that computer resided during the time of the attack.”

  There was second long pause.

  “Thanks, doctor. You’ve done well. Please go home and rest. You’ve earned it.”

  “Thank you, General.”

  Feeling a strange sense of relief, Olivia hung up the phone, reached for a bottle of water on her desk, took a swig, and sat back, trying to steady her heartbeat.

  She finished drinking the water, threw it in the wastebasket, and yawned. She was indeed exhausted and perhaps the general was right. Perhaps what she needed above all was a good night’s sleep to clear her mind.

  She waited another twenty minutes for the system to come back up—time she used to return several text messages from her suppliers, including mining operations in a half-dozen countries providing them with the critical minerals delivered to the materials lab headed by Salazar, responsible for creating the gamma-ray glass accelerators embedded in every suit.

  Olivia finally called Rajesh the moment everything returned back to normal, and thanked him, before gathering her things and taking the elevator for the basement parking lot.

  A minute later she reached the exit gate, where two security guards opened it while waving at her.

  Olivia waved back and exited the compound, rain peppering her windshield as she steered her car for I-95, taking another five minutes to reach the entrance ramp and drive the six miles it took to reach her exit.

  Ten minutes later, she pulled up in front of her house as lightning glowed on the horizon, followed by thunder that seemed to last far longer than she would have expected, and continued rumbling around her, behind her.

  That’s when she spotted individual headlights looming in her rearview mirror, along with the roaring mufflers of motorcycles.

  * * *

  Lightning gleamed in the jungle, forking through thick foliage, followed by cracking thunder, so close that it shook the ground beneath him.

  Through the rain, Jack watched the figures get close, their silhouettes backlit by the storm as another flash cast a stroboscopic glow across his immediate area of interest, the narrow meadow separating his trap from the incoming militia.

  “Get out … of here, Jack,” mumbled the other surviving SEAL, who Jack cradled in his arms while pushing another Fentanyl lollipop in his mouth, delivering a second dose of the strong painkiller through the blood vessels in his mouth far quicker than with the traditional syrettes.

  “You know I can’t do that,” he whispered to Lieutenant David Bennett, Officer in Charge of his SEAL Team 4 platoon, as they hid behind the trunk of a towering ceiba.

  “I’m done for, Jack,” he hissed, the lollipop shifting as he spoke. “But you … you got a chance … on your own.”

  Jack rubbed the rain from his eyes and tightened the tourniquet over the gauze, keeping the man from bleeding out after shrapnel blew off the bottom half of his right leg.

  Lightning cracked overhead, the glow exposing the threat, the cartel guns pausing at the other end of the meadow, by the tree line.

  “I’m not leaving without you.”

  “Dammit … Jack … the LZ … too far…”

  Jack kept working the tourniquet, but he knew it was a losing battle. His platoon leader was shivering now, going into hypovolemic shock, even with the IV that Jack had jigged into his left forearm filled with a brew of plasma, red blood cells, and platelets.

  “Go … Jack…”

  He frowned.

  His OIC was right, of course. He always was.

  It would be quite difficult for Jack to move, to get away from the enemy while holding on to him and keeping the IV in place as well as the tourniquet. But he couldn’t possibly leave him here alive, either.

  “Leave … me … Jack…”

  His free hand brushing against the holstered Sig Sauer P226 with his last five 9mm rounds, Jack peeked around the wide trunk, narrowing his gaze at the figures emerging from the bush, cautiously, spreading across the meadow. He wished he still had the MK11 sniper rifle. At this distance, he could easily take out at least half of them in twenty seconds. But he had lost it in the gunfire of their uncoordinated retreat, as the world exploded around them after the damn surveillance gear malfunctioned, telegraphing their—

  “Do it … Jack … do it for me.”

  Jack peered through the rain, watching the soldiers, close to thirty of them, all armed with a deadly mix of machine guns, high-powered rifles, grenade launchers, and even machetes. They appeared well trained, but that wouldn’t matter when the time came.

  “Jack … I would do it … for you.”

  Reaching down his leg, ignoring the bugs crawling on his skin and the rain dripping from his black bandanna, Jack curled his fingers around the handle of his SOG knife, releasing it from its Velcro-secured strap.

  The soldiers made it halfway across the meadow, approaching the dead SEALs he had left by the edge of the jungle, twenty feet away; bait to lure his prey.

  Thoroughly soaked, Jack looked at his commander once more, ready to follow his orders, but instead put the knife away and hoisted him over his shoulders.

  “Jack … what … the … fuck…”

  “I’m sorry, buddy,” he whispered. “Can’t leave your sorry ass here.”

  Surging to his feet, his back against the wide trunk, Bennett’s weight squarely on his shoulders, Jack watched the threat again, saw them poke their bayonets into the lifeless bodies of his comrades, before reaching for his remote control and starting off in the opposite direction.

  The jungle became a blur as Jack raced away from the threat as fast as he could, trying to keep his balance, vines, branches, and other vegetation brushing past them as he counted his steps, as Bennett moaned, heading downhill, where a stream led to a river a mile away, until he was sure he had put two hundred feet between him and the charges.

  Kneeling in the soaked ground behind another towering ceiba, his legs sinking in the deep blanket of leaves and fallen vegetation, and keeping Ben
nett wrapped around his shoulders, Jack pressed the detonator three times.

  The jungle trembled as Claymores and C4 charges went off in unison, forks of blinding white light reaching deep into the jungle, followed by flames, by a deafening explosion and incinerating heat that set everything ablaze.

  Jack jumped in his sleep, bumping his head on something hard.

  Opening his eyes, he felt motion, sensed the vibration from the roaring outboards behind him, realizing an instant later that he had passed out in the stern, Angela’s silhouette still standing in front of him, at the controls.

  The smell of the sea tingling his nostrils, helping him shake off the nightmare, Jack rolled from under the seat, sitting up with effort, his chest burning, his ribs throbbing, his back aching from the blasts, a headache stabbing the base of his neck.

  Reaching for the nearest handle, he staggered to his feet, struggling to keep his balance as the boat bounced in the waves. Angela had the throttles fully open, probably doing almost forty knots as he blinked to clear his sight, spotting lights in the distant shoreline on the starboard side, meaning she had them on a southerly course holding parallel to the eastern seaboard roughly six or seven miles out.

  The wind gusting against his face, the night, the stars, and the ocean mist—plus the fact that Angela had been smart enough not to turn on the boat’s navigation lights—reminded him of SEAL insertions. And for some reason, it injected him with renewed enthusiasm, with energy as he stared at his wife’s thin form, halter top flapping in the wind, legs spread a foot apart for balance, hands on the oversized aluminum steering wheel, charging the bow into four-foot waves.

  “Hey!” he shouted over the noise of the twin 250HP Mercury engines.

  “Jack!” she screamed over her shoulder, without turning around. “Glad you’re up! Come over and give me a hand!”

  Standing, he grabbed the stainless-steel bar running across the rear of the vinyl bench behind the controls and used it to steady himself in the choppy seas, before settling next to her under the stretched canvas canopy.

  “How are you feeling?” she asked, eyes glued to the bow.

  “I’ll live,” he said. “Thanks to your suit.”

  “I wish I could take credit for it,” she replied, a hand reaching for the cooler under the seat and producing a bottle of vitamin water, which he gladly took, twisting the top off and almost draining it. It tasted like heaven.

  Angela opened the glove compartment under the instrument panel and snagged the first aid kit, retrieving an 800 mg Ibuprofen tablet, which Jack gladly swallowed with his final swig of water.

  “I checked on you right after we left, once I felt we were far away. You seemed banged up but alive.”

  “Yeah,” he said, before adding, “now, about the rest of the OSS…”

  “Yeah … I figured as much,” she said, both hands on the wheel again, turning slightly to port and back to starboard to keep up with the shifting swells. “Guess you’re stuck with me for a while.”

  He looked at her, the wind swirling that long, blond hair. The chocolate freckle as inviting as ever. “Looks that way. Where are we going?”

  “Miami,” she replied. “Remember Dago?”

  He laughed and said, “The man’s hard to forget.”

  “Gave him a call as soon as we cleared off and—”

  “Angie, the phone,” he interrupted. “It’s got GPS tracking that—”

  “Relax, Mr. Navy SEAL,” she said, shooting him a half smile. “I made the call and then turned it off. Look around, do you see anyone on our ass?”

  Jack still didn’t like it. Anyone with the right credentials could access her log at the phone company and find out who she had called. But it was done and he was too tired to have an argument with her.

  “Here,” she said, reaching under the seat and handing him a pair of jeans, a T-shirt, and sneakers. “As much as you like your suit, I think it’s time to take it off.”

  “Can’t argue with that. Hey, these are my—”

  “Yeah. Grabbed them from your closet along with your guns. They should fit.”

  Amazing, he thought, staring at his very own faded blue jeans, before unzipping the battle dress from neck to groin. He stepped out of it wearing a translucent thermal undergarment laced with a thousand feet of micro tubes filled with gel, which served to keep him cool during reentry and also comfortable in any weather on the ground. He also unzipped it and dropped it down to his waist.

  Angela looked over, sized him up, and grinned as she said, “Everything looks about right.”

  Jack ignored her while dropping it to his ankles and stepping out of it, the wind chilling him before he quickly pulled up his jeans. The sneakers were also his, as was the extra-large black T-shirt sporting a subdued trident embroidered over the left breast. It fit him almost skin tight, his muscles pressing against the cotton fabric.

  “Better?” she asked.

  “All good.”

  “Great. Now you can take over. You’re the sailor. I’m not that comfortable being this far out,” she said, sitting back and also grabbing a bottle of water.

  Jack glanced at the instrumentation, his naval mind doing some quick math. He eased the throttles by a quarter, slowing them down seven knots while keeping the boat on plane, but saving them a bunch of gas, especially since Miami was still over a hundred miles away, and the outboards had already consumed nearly a third of the three-hundred-gallon fuel tank.

  Being much taller, Jack remained sitting and just placed one hand on the wheel, holding a course of one seven zero while Angela sat next to him and wrapped an arm tightly around his bicep.

  “Sorry about your house,” he said.

  “It was yours, too, Jack.”

  He tilted his head and frowned. She had a point.

  “But the hell with the house, Jack,” she added. “I’ve got you.”

  Angela rested her head on his shoulder, hugging his arm tight, a finger tracing the outline of his Triumph tattoo.

  And suddenly, at that very instant, as Angela snuggled up against him while he steered Dark & Stormy across a choppy ocean in the predawn darkness of this parallel universe he had fallen into, everything felt strangely right with the world.

  But just as suddenly, Jack’s inner voice told him the feeling was an illusion. The same instincts that had kept him alive in Afghanistan, Colombia, and back in Cocoa Beach now broadcast that they weren’t alone.

  The wind in his face, the hull splashing against waves in explosions of foam and mist, the roar of the outboards rumbling in his ears, Jack glanced up at the night sky, his eyes searching for any indication of surveillance, though he knew that would be futile. If the U.S. government had eyes on him, especially with all the noise around him, he wouldn’t notice it until either a Coast Guard helicopter or cutter loomed in the horizon, or worse, a Hellfire missile from a drone blew them to kingdom come.

  Jack felt the latter scenario to be the likely one. For better or for worse, he had fired at U.S. Army soldiers, probably even killed some. Revenge would come just as sudden and unexpected as that fusillade in his living room.

  Feeling exposed to infrared surveillance, realizing how vulnerable they were in the middle of the ocean in an open boat when the enemy was armed with so much aerial reconnaissance technology, he returned his attention to the twin flat screens on his instrument panel, the right one slaved to the boat’s GPS navigation system and the left one displaying engine parameters.

  Jack scanned the latter one, making sure that everything from oil pressure to fuel levels remained in the green for both outboards, before focusing on the GPS map, an evasive plan forming in his covert ops mind—a plan straight out of the SEAL manual targeted at giving him the edge against a much stronger and better-armed adversary.

  An adversary that Jack had angered tonight. And everything he knew told him that this bear he had just kicked would be coming back with a vengeance.

  He reached for the radio and switched it to Channel 2
1A, a frequency of 157.05Mhz, the first of several frequencies reserved for Coast Guard operations.

  “What’s wrong?” Angela asked.

  “Just getting a bad feeling.”

  She understood and jumped off the seat, standing in front of the instrument panel, shoulder-to-shoulder with Jack, and began to scan the airwaves.

  Pursing his lips, Jack narrowed his gaze at the sky once more before inspecting the GPS overlay of a map of the Florida coastline, making his decision, and turning the bow thirty degrees to starboard the moment he spotted a set of red and green lights marking the entrance to the Fort Pierce inlet connecting the ocean to the Indian River.

  * * *

  “You mind telling me what in the world she was doing in your house, Flaherty?”

  Pete sat in the same chair where Angela had been interrogated the day before, with Riggs standing behind him while Hastings inspected his fingernails, backdropped by the remnants of Claudette, which was mostly light rain and sporadic lightning.

  The trip to find Angela had proved unproductive, just as he had hoped. But something had gone terribly wrong on the way back. Hastings’s attitude toward him had changed just as they’d reached the Cape, after a short phone call from one of his gurus.

  The three of them had come straight to the VIP office on the third floor, where Hastings had just sprung a question that Pete wasn’t quite ready to answer.

  “Sir, I have no idea how she got in.”

  “See, Flaherty, that’s the thing. I can see her breaking in, but I certainly don’t get how she knew the proper alarm code, as well as your wireless password.”

  Pete frowned inwardly, realizing this was precisely the risk he had decided to take on when making his decision to help Angela.

  “I know how it looks, sir, but I have no idea how she did it. She used to be a hacker.”

  “Yes, indeed,” he said. “And apparently she still is quite the little hacker.”

  Pete remained silent.

  “But you,” Hastings added, “are quite the lying piece of shit.”

  He leaned forward. “With all due respect, sir, I will not stand for—”