He just looked at her, letting his silence serve as the answer she didn’t want to hear.
“Jesus, Henry. How can you do this? How can you risk everything—your life, our kids’ futures, my future—for a stranger?”
“He’s not a stranger,” Henry said. This time, he let her hands go. “He’s the very opposite of a stranger.”
“He’s a stranger to me!”
“Sarah, what do you want me to say?”
“I want you to say no!”
“I can’t.”
“You mean, you won’t.”
“Fine, then. If that makes you feel better, then I won’t. But because I can’t. This guy would move heaven and earth to do the same for me.” He felt his throat thickening, a total surprise. “And that’s after he already damn near died to save my life. You want to talk about your future and the kids’ futures? We have a present day because of him. In my world, you don’t turn your back on that. Can’t, don’t, won’t, whatever the hell you want to call it—it’s who I am. It’s who I hope you want me to be, and who I hope the kids grow up to be.”
Sarah stared, tears in her eyes, but she wasn’t crying. She looked less angry.
Henry moved in and took her hands again. “You knew what you were getting, even way back then. There’s a code, and the code is good. Sometimes we risk everything because the goal is that important. I love you. I love you all. But if I expect Kenny and Lindsay to respect me, I need to respect myself first.” He pulled her into a hug.
Sarah pressed her face into his chest, wiping her tears on his shirt. Her hand wandered to his crotch. “Speaking of Kenny and Lindsay, did you know they won’t be home for, like, hours?” She pushed him toward the bed and Henry fell backward onto the mattress. He closed his eyes and cupped her face as she fondled him through his trousers.
Then she stopped.
He opened his eyes to see her staring down at him, a curious expression on her face. “What?” he asked.
“Are you even any good at the Conan stuff anymore?”
CHAPTER 14
VENICE ALEXANDER CARRIED THE BURDEN OF MANY SECRETS. THE business of Security Solutions thrived on them, and in most cases, revelation of the secrets she kept would cost people their lives. Early on, she found the burden to be crushing. However, as time moved on and she saw the long-term benefits of what Digger and his team were able to pull off in the field, she realized that the benefits outweighed the liabilities. It was all a matter of trust.
But there were other secrets, too—secrets that she’d never shared with anyone—and those were the ones that allowed her to do her job so well.
In the dark world of covert shooters, Mother Hen was a handle recognized by everyone. Admired as a force of nature, she was an unstoppable, unstumpable solver of critical riddles and problems. But no one outside of Security Solutions—and the executive suite of the FBI—had any idea of her true identity. And it wasn’t for lack of trying. You don’t tap into the resources that Venice tapped into without inviting retaliatory hacks. Thankfully, Digger never said no when she asked for resources, and those resources, combined with her skills, kept attackers at bay.
In the dark world of computer hackers, she was a nobody. Mother Hen might as well have been Mother Goose. But FreakFace666 was beyond famous. He was a key player—the leader, if there was such a thing—of Gloomity, a hacker army that most recently revealed to the world the sealed juvenile court records of a child molester campaigning to be mayor of San Francisco. That hack was actually a commission from the candidate’s opponent, who’d paid a hefty sum in bitcoin. FreakFace666 didn’t want the money—in fact, Gloomity donated it all to a child-protection charity—but the whole point of creating chaos was to make people pay in as many ways and on as many planes as possible.
FreakFace666 had no idea who the other players in Gloomity were, and that was exactly how he liked it. For all he knew, one of those other electron teasers was an FBI agent or a Scotland Yard inspector. He didn’t care. These major hacks could go on with impunity, with a nearly zero chance of backlash or repercussion, so long as anonymity was the rule of everything.
FreakFace666 knew who Mother Hen was, though. Because they were the same person.
FreakFace666’s pronoun was he because that’s what the hacker world expected. And that was Venice’s one secret that no one else in the world knew about. It helped that Jonathan was a confessed and proud Luddite who would have difficulty even conceiving of the right questions to connect the dots to her alt-identity. He also didn’t care. She got him the information he wanted, more or less when he needed it, and that appeared to be the beginning and the end of it for him. He had to know that she was making special things happen, but he never asked the questions, and she never presumed to give him what he clearly didn’t want to know.
It was the nature of FreakFace666 that he had to break laws in order to have the street cred with others in the hackersphere. It was the part of his identity that Venice disliked, but it was necessary if she was going to get the help she needed from the people from whom she needed it.
There was nothing especially exotic about the current task at hand—finding out why there was a complex of explosives-storage facilities on Crystal Sands Island and who put them there—but it was vexing, nonetheless. Truth be told, she wasn’t sure where to start. The commercial Internet search sites were useless, but was that because the information was buried, or because she didn’t enter the right search parameters? This was the kind of intellectual spelunking that could inspire her to kill hours without a bathroom break, but she didn’t have that kind of time.
Digger and Gail didn’t have that kind of time.
FreakFace666 rarely worked from Security Solutions’ office at all, but he never worked out of the War Room. Venice knew of no vulnerabilities with the equipment there, but the consequences of a breach from within were too devastating even to consider. She rose from her command chair in the War Room and buttonhooked a right to turn into her office. She closed the door and spun the blinds shut. Whereas Jonathan had furnished his office on the model of a rich man’s city club, Venice preferred efficiency of function. Digger called her decorating aesthetic “chrome and glass,” but the reality of it was closer to Scandinavian minimalist. She liked light-colored woods and polished metallic finishes.
FreakFace666 kept his laptop computer in a wall safe that was controlled by both a fingerprint scanner and an eight-digit combination. The fact of the safe was no secret, but the contents thereof were. And Digger had never asked about it.
Venice took her time establishing her online presence, routing her way through multiple servers before finally projecting herself to be on a server in Sri Lanka. It was part of FreakFace666’s persona that he always appeared from a different part of the world. For this visit, though, the research to be done was so on-the-nose that FreakFace666 masked his identity with the moniker BadThings, an identity that had never been used, and likely never would be used again. If FreakFace666 had appeared as himself, he’d have been swamped with greetings from admirers and hangers-on. BadThings, on the other hand, could wander the dark corridors unmolested.
Venice was hunting for one particular individual. His real name was Derek Halstrom, and he worked for the National Security Agency. He thought his avatar of TickTock2 was unbreakable, and it would have been if he hadn’t let his guard down for just a few seconds, about three years ago, and allowed Venice to slip in behind his invisibility cloak. Once in and undetected, she could own him for as long as she wanted. As was so often the case, the hackers who thought they were the best let their egos blind them to the fact that there were millions just like them, trying to take them down.
Derek Halstrom got mediocre performance appraisals at NSA, and was twice disciplined in the past year for taking improper precautions with classified materials. Something about not putting them back in the safe within the allotted time period. He clearly was not happy in his work.
But TickTock2 loved the fact that he knew stuff.
He loved that when the Interwebs were all abuzz with rumors and innuendos he could be the definitive source to set the record straight. Venice knew this not by conjecture or through social engineering, but because TickTock2 kept a journal on the same computer from which he ran his hacking empire. The only way Venice could make sense out of such a stupid decision—okay, the journal itself was an unthinkable idea—was that maybe if the balloon went up on a bad hack, he’d be able to trash all the evidence with one destruct button.
TickTock2 also enjoyed something of a bromance with FreakFace666. If you’re going to preen, after all, you want to preen for the best.
Venice had to ping for only about twenty minutes before she found him. Then it was a matter of getting his attention. At this hour of the morning, she assumed that he hadn’t yet left for work.
Good morning, TickTock2, she wrote. Gotta minit? This was the Internet. Dumbing down the language was an important part of her cover.
Wattup?
Ur the guy who knows secret shit, right?
Idk u I don’t know you.
Venice took a deep breath. There was no time for subtlety. But I know you, Derek.
In her mind, she pictured the panic, the feeling of the world coming apart. TickTock2’s instinct would be to shut down the computer, but if he did that, she’d just text him on his phone. Working as he did for the NSA, he had to know that once a hacker had your personals, the hook was sunk too deeply ever to be retrieved.
She wrote, RU there?
What do you want?
Just information. Nothing that will send you to jail. Except, of course, everything TickTock2 has ever done could send Derek Halstrom to jail. Just in case, there was any remaining doubt in his mind, she had to drop the last name.
Venice typed in a detailed longitude-and-latitude string. I need to know what used to go on here.
Where is it?
Off the west coast of Mexico. Get back to me in two hours.
That’s not enough time. It was not lost on Venice that the more stressed Derek became, the better his English.
It’s all I have, so it’s all you have. Then, just for good measure, she typed in his boss’s phone number. That’s even his private line.
He went silent. She saw him trying to cope with it all as he felt the walls coming in at him.
Ur wasting time, Venice typed. And she felt she owed him a slice of bitter truth: This is not a bluff, Derek. A lot is at stake. You don’t want to cross me.
How do I get back in touch with you?
I’ll be here. One hr 59 mins.
TickTock2’s avatar disappeared from her screen. She hoped it was because he was in a hurry, and not because he was going to do anything stupid. She’d never deliberately hurt anyone before, but if he crossed her on this, she would nail his hide to the prison wall.
Thirty-seven minutes later, her laptop dinged, and Derek had returned. I have what you want, but then it’s over, right?
Venice thought it best to be honest. It’s over till I need you again. There’s no statute of limitations on treason. I’m not all that demanding, but I’m impatient as hell.
TickTock2 fell silent for the better part of a minute, making her wonder if maybe she’d pushed him too far or too hard.
Then he spoke up again and totally ruined her day. Jonathan and Gail were in worse trouble than she thought.
* * *
As soon as the sun cleared the horizon, the heat and humidity both blossomed, and it became clear why Baker Sinise had positioned the resort on the part of the island he’d chosen. On this side—the unglamorous side—the air didn’t move, allowing the flies and mosquitos to feast on invaders. Now that they could see where they were going—and others could see them going there—Jonathan decided to leave the roads and trails to hike through the belly of the jungle. Now that he was aware of what he was increasingly certain were explosives-storage magazines, he wanted to get a look at them. He wasn’t sure what he was looking for, but more information was better than less. Maybe the size and configuration would tell him something.
Storing energetic materials—explosives—was itself a science. On military facilities, and those of their contractors, storage magazines, as they were called, were designed and arranged with the specific purpose of preventing a catastrophic explosion in one bunker from propagating to other bunkers. This was particularly critical for the storage of Class 1.1 mass-detonating materials. Say there were three adjacent storage magazines, each storing thirty thousand pounds of explosives. With improper bunker design or management, a thirty-thousand-pound incident could become a ninety-thousand-pound Armageddon. That was always bad.
Size mattered. From the physical volume of the structures—which Jaime had already professed to be huge—to the thickness of the walls, there was much information to be gleaned from a physical inspection.
During his scheduled six-thirty phone call back to the office, he’d relayed to Venice what they knew so far. She, in turn, seemed to be confident that she’d be able to cobble together the rest of what they needed—or at least some of it. He was scheduled for another phone call in twenty-five minutes.
As jungles went, this one was less dense than most. Jonathan wondered if that was Mother Nature’s work, or the result of culling and trimming at the hands of the resort management team. The stench of rot and wetness that had come to define such places in his mind was less pervasive, and it was a relief to be able to see ten yards ahead rather than the two or three feet afforded by less friendly rain forests. The net effect was to make him feel less like he’d entered the wrong end of the food chain.
“I always liked the view from up here,” Tyler said as they reached what Jonathan figured to be the highest point on the island. “It feels like you can see forever.”
And forever, it seemed, consisted of nothing but water.
“How much farther to the magazines?” Gail asked. She was soaked through with sweat, and she’d used a length of paracord she’d found in her vest to tie her auburn hair back into a ponytail. It probably wasn’t a look for everyone, but Jonathan thought she looked sexy.
“Not far,” Jaime said. “Another ten, maybe twelve minutes.” He looked back to Jonathan. “It is much closer when you use the trails.”
“Couldn’t be,” Jonathan said through a smile. “What we’re walking is a straight line. The roads meander.”
“But they’re much faster.”
“Faster and closer are different things, Jaime. And getting shot and having to be carried—a likely result if we’d used the trails—makes the trip longer still.”
Gail’s posture straightened, as if on alert, and Jonathan held up his hand for silence. Something out there had attracted her attention. Jonathan didn’t see anything.
“What’ve you got?” he asked.
Gail shaded her eyes with both hands, then extended one arm to point to the east. “A boat,” she said. “Hard to see against the sun, but I know it’s a boat.”
Jonathan mimicked her posture, shading his eyes, and so did the other two.
“I see it,” Tyler said, and he leveled his pointer to the same spot on the horizon. “Is that the Express?”
This was getting frustrating. “What the hell—” And then he saw it. Bravo to Gail for being the first to pick it out. In the distance, all but lost in the reflective glare of the rising sun, he could just discern the outline of a speck. If others were certain, he’d stipulate that it was a boat. “What is the Express?”
“It can’t be,” Jaime said. “It’s not due for another two days.”
“I’m guessing it’s the ship that brought us out,” Gail said.
Tyler said, “Exactly. Maybe they’re the rescue team.”
Jonathan rejected that out of hand. “Absolutely not. It’s daytime and it’s too slow. Could they be bringing more guests?”
“You know what you have to do to come here,” Jaime said. “It’s a minimum four-night stay because the boat only comes out here every four days.”<
br />
“Suppose somebody gets sick?” Gail asked.
“And why didn’t we talk about that before we settled on this island as a vacation spot?” Jonathan quipped.
“We have an infirmary here,” Jaime said. “With a staff doctor. If it was something serious, we’d call for a helicopter.”
“Anybody have a theory?” Jonathan asked.
“Could always be more soldiers,” Tyler said.
“Somebody else come up with a theory,” Jonathan said. “I don’t like Tyler’s.”
“Supplies, maybe?” Gail offered.
“I don’t know what supplies they could need that they don’t already have,” Jaime said.
Tyler doubled down. “I think it’s more soldiers.”
“I think you’re right,” Jonathan said. “But why use the company shuttle? Or, alternatively, why did they use the other ship if the shuttle was available?”
“I think we’re getting ahead of ourselves,” Gail said. “First of all, it’s too far out to tell for sure if it’s the Express. It’s also too far out to tell for sure that it’s even coming here.”
“You’re right,” Jonathan said, and he helped himself to a deadfall, which he straddled like a horse. “Take a seat, everybody. Let’s see what happens.”
“What about the caves?” Jaime asked.
“Caves are stationary,” Jonathan said. He pointed out to the horizon. “That, however, is moving. Let’s see what it does. Besides, I’ve got to make a phone call, anyway. Tyler and Jaime, spread out to our flanks and make sure no one sneaks up on us.”
“How far out?”
“Not far,” Jonathan said. “Fifteen, twenty yards. Don’t shoot anybody who doesn’t shoot at you first.”
“That sounds like a way to get killed,” Jaime said. “Doesn’t the second shooter in a gunfight usually have the worst day?”
Jonathan conceded the point with a smile. “Okay, then. You can shoot them when they start to point a gun at you. I just don’t want you shooting a wayward resort guest if some of them were able to get away.”
Tyler objected, “But if—”
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