by David Perry
Gus looked at the screen and back at Sheppard, weighing his options.
“I’ll watch the monitors while you’re gone,” Sheppard persisted.
“Okay. I’ll be right back.”
As soon as Gus was gone, Sheppard sat down and went to work. He’d sent the rent-a-cop to the farthest corner of the campus, buying himself as much time as possible. Sheppard had practiced what he was about to do for the last three weeks. He punched the keyboard until the eight-image array returned. Then he moved to the network video recorder and squeezed behind it, pushing the small stand on which it stood away from the wall. He lifted the small cloth covering the cables and studied the sight. The small rectangular box, no bigger than the size of a large VCR, held forty-eight ports into which ran an army of coaxial cables. Dawson was currently using forty of the forty-eight available ports.
Thank God they haven’t upgraded to IP cameras! Analog cameras made this task much easier, he thought.
Each analog camera around the plant, forty in all, was hardwired via a coaxial cable with its feed running from ports in the wall into the back of this network recorder.
Sheppard found the five ports he needed and unscrewed each coax cable from them. He removed five small devices called repeaters from under his shirt. Each was identical—a small black box with a four-inch coaxial cable protruding from one end and a coax receiving port on the other. Sheppard screwed the first unsecured cable into a repeater then connected the repeater’s cable to the network recorder, thus placing the device between the cable from the wall and the network recorder.
He walked back to the screen and checked the image corresponding to that port. The repeater recorded a short ten second video from the image on that camera and continuously looped it back to the monitor.
He left the security room and ran the fifty feet to the hallway the camera monitored and switched off the lights in the hallway. The corridor went dark. Sheppard then returned to the security office, out of breath. He rechecked the image for that camera and saw that the image showed the lights still on in the hallway. He smiled. It’s working. The cameras would not record movements by anyone in these hallways or on the loading dock!
Sheppard repeated the process with the four remaining ports and cameras, inserting a repeater between the network recorder and the coaxial cable. He checked his watch. He had planned on fifteen minutes, start-to-finish. Everything was done with three minutes to spare and there was still no sign of Gus. Sheppard covered the back of the NVR with the small black cloth, covering the repeaters, and pushed it back into place. He pulled up the camera feed of the front lawn and saw Gus the Guard standing on the grass.
His covert activities could now be conducted in total secrecy. Sheppard would return tomorrow after his covert activities had been conducted and remove the repeaters. If everything went according to plan, by the time anyone discovered what was going on, Sheppard would talk Gus back out of the office and remove the repeaters.
Sheppard hated the sneaking around. If he didn’t, he was sure Quinton Boyd would end his career. All of this would be over soon.
The Greek Monitor sat at her computer in the cramped one-bedroom extended-stay hotel just outside Clintwood, six miles east of the Red Onion. The small suite had an open-ended lease. She had a feeling the message she was going to send would mark the end of the CIA’s need for her surveillance.
She typed her message into the email that would eventually find its way through various relays to her handler, the deputy director of operations of the CIA. The woman had been typing and crafting the message for the last hour, perfecting it, then using the polygraphic communications cipher to encrypt it.
The two paragraphs outlined how Cyclops had been taken from his cell, unconscious or dead, only hours after Steven Cooper had been confirmed as a casualty. All of this happened during one shift. Dalton Griffin was the variable. The new corrections officer had been on duty for less than eight hours when these crises occurred.
Her final coded words to the deputy director were: Cyclops is no longer on site. I followed the vehicle and know where they have taken him.
She typed in the coordinates. Satisfied, she pressed enter and the email disappeared.
An hour later, Sharif-al-Faisal awoke with a sharp intake of air into his lungs. The room spun. The ceiling seemed to rotate above him. He felt as if he was about to spin off the cold, steel slab.
He closed his eyes again, quelling the nausea and the spinning. Slowly, his senses returned. His ears picked up a soft, rhythmic beeping. A female voice penetrated the fog of his mind.
He’s coming around. Increase the rate of the reversal agent. Bring it up to fifteen micrograms per hour.
The blurry face of a very attractive woman filled his field of vision. The soft lips rippled as her mouth formed words that did not quite register. Faisal blinked rapidly. The facial image strobed. Her blonde hair was pulled into a tight ponytail and a stethoscope hung laterally around the collar of her white lab coat.
“Where am I?”
“Just relax,” the woman said. “It will take several hours for the reversal agent to take full effect and for you to regain all your faculties.”
“Where am I?” Faisal repeated.
The doctor disappeared. A diminutive man wearing another starched lab coat replaced the woman. A pair of silver eyes peered at him from under a bald head and over a tightly cropped goatee.
“You are coming around nicely,” the man said.
Faisal asked the question a third time. Still no one would answer him.
“Leave us,” a third voice commanded.
The receding footfalls were followed by the clicking of a metal door latch. Sounds exploded around him as if through a loud speaker.
The drug!
The man attached to a third voice came into view from the opposite side of the bed. Faisal turned his eyes and gazed up at him. The man’s head was turned, looking to the foot of the bed, as if waiting for the doctor’s to leave. After a few seconds, he rotated his head and looked at Faisal, not speaking for a full fifteen seconds.
Dressed in a black turtleneck sweater under a tweed sports coat, he studied the patient with his hard black eyes.
“Welcome back.”
Al-Faisal tried to sit up. A firm hand pressed him back down.
“Not yet,” the man instructed. “Let the reversal agent do its thing.”
“What happened?” Al-Faisal asked. The words sounded foreign to him, as if spoken by a drunken man.
“Everything went as planned. You took HH-34. It worked as it was supposed to.”
Al-Faisal frowned in confusion.
“You died and we brought you back.”
“Where am I?” al-Faisal asked. The words felt like they were coming from outside his body.
“In a safe hospital in rural West Virginia, an hour from the prison. Now relax. In a few hours, we will move you out of here … to be reunited with your mother.”
Four hundred miles northeast of the safe hospital, Peter Rodgers sat behind the wheel of the Freightliner with the engine running. His hands rested on the steering column, gripping the vinyl. He had not moved a muscle since the man standing ten feet from the cab had ordered him to place his hands on it. It was late Sunday afternoon. The parking lot itself was deserted, save for the idling truck.
“Are you Jason?”
“Yes,” Peter lied.
“Where’s your brother?”
“I left him at a coffee shop on the way.”
“I was told there would be two of you.” The man’s face was covered with a black bandana much like outlaw cowboys once wore. Peter couldn’t discern the make of his weapon. But it was a large caliber that would cause a lot of damage.
“Sorry about your bad luck,” Peter intoned calmly. “It’s just me.”
“Turn off the engine and get out. Now!”
Peter cut the engine, pushed open the heavy door, and stepped down. He stood beside the open cab with his hands raised,
palms facing the gunman.
“So what is the going rate for secret deliveries to Dawson Pharmaceuticals in New Jersey?”
“Shut up!” The man removed a cell phone from his jacket pocket and pressed a preprogrammed number.
“Are you an American?”
“I said shut up!”
The man’s gun hand wavered. His eyes darted about as if he’d forgotten what to do next.
This guy’s a nervous wreck.
Peter pressed his luck and the man’s patience. “You know treason carries the death penalty.”
“If you say another word, I’ll shoot you right here. My orders were to secure you and your brother …”
“Well, I’m glad I made him get out of the truck.”
Someone answered. The gunman spoke to the person on the other end. “Where the hell are you? He’s here. Get the fuck over here!”
Thirty seconds later, a dark sedan pulled to a stop in front of the truck. Four men exited. Two flanked Peter. Before the hood was placed over his face, Peter saw the second pair of men climb into the truck.
He was tossed roughly in the back of the sedan beside a third man, whose presence he could feel. The former marine’s hands were bound in front of him. Peter heard the truck engine rev and move off. Seconds later, his head jerked backward as the car accelerated away.
Chapter 46
Angelo Sheppard alighted from the Freightliner, leaving the engine running so the refrigeration unit continued to cool the hold. The car with his new compatriots and the driver of the truck had sped off to God-only-knew-where. Sheppard didn’t know what was going to happen to the man. It didn’t look good. Boyd had never told him guns would be involved. Suddenly, Sheppard felt like a criminal.
Keep your mouth shut and do the job, mate!
Sheppard walked through the door alongside the loading dock. A few seconds later, the large roll-down garage door lifted. The production manager rolled a six-foot, motorized, flatbed dolly onto the dock. He removed the only set of keys to the rear door of the hold, unlocked the double padlocks, and lifted the door open.
A blast of freezing air and a cloud of fog hit him in the face. Sheppard rolled the motorized dolly into the truck, its electric engine emitting a low whine. There was no time to waste. The ten drums had to remain below the optimal temperature of twenty-eight degrees.
Wearing thick work gloves, he lifted the tall, slim drums coated with frost onto the dolly. He estimated that each weighted fifty pounds. He would be lugging five hundred pounds through the hallways of the plant.
This Sunday had been chosen as the perfect time to make the transfer. The plant had been shut down for the weekend for a thorough cleaning and decontamination before the production run next week. Sheppard had ensured that the sanitizers finished yesterday, Saturday, leaving the plant empty. Save for the security guards on site, Sheppard was the only person inside the plant.
Two minutes after starting, he had finished hefting the drums onto the electric dolly. He had practiced the journey from the loading dock to the secret room many times, trimming his time to a consistent five minutes.
With the truck still running, Sheppard pressed the lever on the steering mechanism, much like the brake handle of a motorcycle. The dolly rolled slowly off the truck, bumping onto the concrete loading dock, and through the open garage door.
He checked his watch and started the timer. He motored the machine to his right, disappearing into the shadow of the plant.
The deputy director of operations of the CIA sat at his desk in his home office. The soft glow of the computer screen illuminated his face with a blue hue. The machine beeped as an email arrived in his private, secure inbox.
It was from the Greek Monitor.
He clicked on it and stared at a jumble of letters organized in varying length from one letter to ten. The DD opened a decoding program and accessed it. He copied and pasted the encrypted message into the software and hit enter.
The disorganized alphabet transformed into two paragraphs of readable text.
“Shit,” he said aloud, twenty seconds later.
He printed the page and folded it in two. Jumping from his cushy leather executive chair, he rammed the email into his pocket. A minute later, he was on his way out the door. As he backed out the driveway of his Fairfax home, his cell phone was pressed to his ear. The director of operations line was already ringing.
The hood, filthy and soaked with some kind of noxious chemical, exuded a medicinal odor. Something from the pharmaceutical plant, Peter concluded. Hope I’m not being poisoned.
Fifteen minutes later, the sedan skidded to a halt on a gravelly surface. The front doors swung open, followed quickly by the rear doors. Peter was yanked out. With his hands still bound, he fell from the vehicle, landing hard on his shoulder.
A strong hand pulled him up by the shirt and ripped the hood from his head. Peter blinked at the sudden barrage of light. After several moments, his eyes adjusted and he scanned his surroundings, assessing. They were in a clearing, deep in a wooded area. A cloud of dust swirled about the recently stopped vehicle.
It was still light, but the sun was going down. He guessed it was past six in the evening. It was still early spring, but it would be dark soon.
Two of the men, also wearing masks, flanked him as the third masked man, the nervous one who had held him at gunpoint in the parking lot, rammed his gun into his beltline, then removed a cell phone and initiated a call. In short, clipped tones, he gave a short burst of vital information to the person on the other end. Peter could hear the response clearly. A heavily accented male voice responded on the other end. Peter could not make out their meaning. Could be French!
The voice asked a series of rapid-fire questions, perhaps inquiring about the delivery and its whereabouts. Then Peter could understand the words coming from the voice of the man on the other end.
“Yes,” the masked man repeated several times. “The delivery has been secured. Angelo has taken possession of the truck.”
“Have you taken the drivers into custody?” the voice asked.
“No … I mean yes. I mean … there is only one driver.”
“What? Who is it?”
“It is the man named Jason.”
“Where is the brother?”
“He said he left him at a coffee shop. What should we do? Do you want us …” The masked man locked eyes with Peter before continuing. He then turned his back to him. “Do you want us to kill him?” the man whispered. Peter did not hear the words but he could guess. It was as if they had been shouted in his ear.
A long silence ensued as the man waited for a response.
Peter held no cards. Bound by the hands and guarded by two large men with large guns, he would not get three steps if he tried to run. Despite these long odds, he was not about to stand idly by as they put a bullet into his brain.
The voice came back on the line, muttering words Peter could not understand. The masked man turned and held the phone up and snapped a photo of Peter’s face. Fifteen seconds later, he dispatched it.
A minute later, the phone rang. The male voice on the other end had been replaced by that of a female. The high-pitched and irate timbre spewed epithets Peter did not catch.
The masked man, through the cloth over his face, attempted to respond but was unable to. Thirty seconds elapsed before the pitch and speed of the woman’s words decreased.
The masked man stepped to within a foot of Peter. He lashed out, twisting at the waist, with a right cross to Peter’s cheek. The former marine dropped to his knees.
The masked man stood over him. “You are not Jason Rodgers. You are his brother. Where is he?”
Peter spit a mouthful of blood into the dirt. The two men on either side of him lifted him to his feet. Peter squinted and spat a bloody gob into the leader’s face.
“I want to speak with whoever is on the other end of that phone. Is it Delilah Hussein?”
The leader’s eyes went wide. Then his chee
ks lifted slightly, telling Peter the man was smiling.
He held the phone to up to Peter’s cheek. Peter spoke into it as blood flowed over his bottom lip. “I do not know where Jason is. But wherever he is, I’m sure he’s on his way to find you.”
Sheppard checked the isolated hallway, making sure that no one was around. The video cameras had been taken care of. He and his cart of frozen drums were invisible.
What had happened to the driver of the truck?
Boyd had told him he would never see the three men who had taken the driver. He did not mention that other men were involved until this morning. Sheppard felt like a man trapped in a watertight compartment with the water level rising.
He pushed the cart into the Vault and closed the door, locking it behind him. Removing his cell phone from his pocket, he videoed each drum, making sure to get a close up of each container’s serial number. He flipped the switch on the large metal cylinder. The entire assembly lifted, exposing the fogged, subterranean, grave-sized hole lined with stainless steel.
Carefully, Sheppard moved each of the drums into position in the hold so that each was beneath one of the ten tubes dangling from the larger vat.
Will connect those later, he told himself.
The production manager considered the roads he’d taken and choices he’d made in the last few years that caused him to end up where he was at this very moment. And he wished he’d never agreed to meet Boyd that day.
One March afternoon twenty-five months ago, Quinton Boyd, the vice president of the Injectable Division, had appeared in the cafeteria. The Brit asked Sheppard to meet him after work for a drink, saying it would be worth Sheppard’s time. Later that day, Sheppard met the pharmaceutical executive at Bill’s Olde Tavern in Hamilton, just outside of Trenton, about twenty minutes from the plant.