The Fourteenth Protocol_A Thriller

by Nathan Goodman

  Since Kyle was from Savannah and sported a southern drawl, the HRT guys honed in on him like a bug to a windshield; to them he seemed to be tough as nails, and they liked him from their first meeting. To lighten the tension of such an intense operation, HRT loved to invent amusing radio codenames for each other. Kyle would be identified as Savannah across any radio chatter. And it seemed only fitting to use call sign Paula Deen, in reference to the famous Savannah chef, to identify Agent in Charge Murphy. Although he too was tough as nails, he had a well-known passion for cooking—something his men kidded him about. He was on the twelfth floor of the Atlanta Financial Center and would be personally overseeing all ground operations.

  Then came a crackle in the encrypted radio signal as Kyle’s earpiece barked to life. “Savannah, cheese grits are ready for the oven,” chirped the radio. “Savannah, cheese grits are ready for the oven.” It was Kyle’s signal to give the green light to Cade and Agent Baker to make their entrance.

  Jana and Cade busied themselves looking at the rail line map. Kyle removed his baseball cap and ran his fingers through his hair—the signal to enter the building. Without glancing in their direction, he tapped his watch, a reminder that the twenty-five-minute countdown had started. Should they fail to exit the building in twenty-five minutes, the Hostage Rescue Team would breach the structure with what they called extreme prejudice. They turned and walked through the double sliding doors. To Kyle, the two looked perfectly natural and relaxed, but his insides were eating him alive.

  High atop the Atlanta Financial Center, an HRT sniper and his spotter focused. One watched through polished Steiner optics, the other through the Leupold scope of the sniper rifle chambered in .270 Weatherby Magnum.

  Cade and Jana disappeared from sight and moved farther down the long, underground hallway, which led from the station platform to the Thoughtstorm building. Since both buildings literally straddled the train line, these entrances became a mainstay for employees to commute to work using the MARTA rail. The HRT team thought it advisable for Cade and Jana to use this entrance so as to avoid the main entrance off of Peachtree Street. Entering down here, they’d be able to access the elevator up to seventeen without having to walk past building security.

  The white hallway stood in stark contrast from the dingy train platform. Its fluorescent lights glowed brilliantly through the translucent laminate material clinging to the ceiling and walls. Cade had never used the tunnel at night, and he squinted against the light. He felt so exposed, like he was walking into the mouth of an alligator. Tiny hairs on the back of his neck stood tall.

  Kyle keyed the tiny transmitter in his left hand and whispered into the mic. “Paula Deen, this is Savannah. The cheese grits are in the oven. Paula D, the cheese grits are in the oven.”

  Cade swiped his keycard across the security bar, and they entered the elevator. It was the same elevator he had stepped into so many times before, but this time it felt like stepping into a honed glass coffin. His stomach had that feeling of having just dropped down the screaming hill of a roller coaster; only this time, the feeling wouldn’t go away.

  There was no turning back. He turned to look at Jana then began to reach for the button labeled 17 when her hand interrupted his. She darted her eyes upwards towards the small security camera peering at them from the corner. Knowing they may be watched, she wanted to make this look real. The appearance of being young and in love would work in their favor if they were caught, and it wouldn’t hurt if they seemed a bit drunk either. She feigned losing her balance to carry off the appearance of being a bit tipsy. But if she told herself the truth, the lines between working this undercover role versus falling for Cade were blurring. She leveled sultry eyes, put her hand on his chin, and kissed him. After a moment, she pressed the button herself, but since it was a secure floor, the elevator door didn’t move. Cade swiped his keycard, tapped his security code into the digital keypad, and the elevator was cleared. They were headed into uncertainty.

  37

  Jana kissed him again as they embraced for the camera. For Cade, the problem was deeper. He was falling hard; he couldn’t help it. And riding up this elevator-to-terror at the same time he was kissing the most beautiful girl in the world represented a paradox he couldn’t quite comprehend. He was dizzy. The elevator ride seemed to go on and on in an endless rise. Cade was falling in love with this girl whether she was acting for the cameras or not. When this whole damnable terrorism case was over, he was going to crash, and crash hard.

  The elevator rose and a faint chime announced each floor.

  Ground, One, Two, Three, Four . . .

  Kyle assured him the guards would be changing shifts right at this moment. If the timing was perfect, they would get to seventeen without being seen. Cade’s chest heaved, a sure sign of nerves that had been fraying for days.

  Outside, HRT operators pressed headsets tightly against their ears. There were no fewer than twelve pairs of eyes. Each agent pair had a laser mic mounted on a heavy tripod pointed at the Thoughtstorm building. They listened with intent for any sounds inside the building that could signal trouble.

  Agent in Charge Murphy, the senior-most agent on the Hostage Rescue Team, whose earlier recording of Bastian Mokolo and William Macy had played so prominently in the case, broke into the silent radio.

  “All eyes, all eyes, this is Paula Deen. You are code yellow. I repeat, you are code yellow. Do not fire unless fired upon. Do not fire unless fired upon, over.”

  Each operator in the HRT team knew what that meant. Unless the yellow code status elevated, permission was required in order to discharge their weapons. One thing working in their favor was that the mirrored glass of the building was now completely translucent. The darkness outside the building and the brightness inside caused a reversal of the mirrored shine. They may not have direct communication with Agent Baker and Cade Williams, but on the first sixteen floors, they were able to see inside several interior spaces.

  An HRT pair stationed across from the southwest corner of the building had their laser microphone pointed at the uppermost floor. The building’s blueprints had revealed that to be the location of the elevator winch, and thus, the most likely place to detect elevator movement. The agent’s eyes were closed as he focused on the diminutive sounds emanating from his headset. He heard the distinctive sound of an elevator winch kick into motion and keyed his headset.

  “Paula D, this is nine. Paula D, this is nine. The grits are rising in the oven. We confirm vertical movement. I say again, the grits are rising, over.”

  Inside the elevator, the security camera mounted in a corner near the ceiling leered at them. Jana was unsure if the elevators were also bugged for sound, and she too felt very exposed.

  Five, Six, Seven . . . chimed the elevator.

  She whispered in Cade’s ear.

  “Relax, Cade. Whatever happens, it’ll be fine.” She smiled at him. “Remember, we’ve got heavy backup outside. There are more guns trained on this place than protecting the White House.”

  Eight, Nine, Ten . . . the elevator rose.

  Cade drew in a deep breath, closed his eyes, and held it.

  Eleven, Twelve, Thirteen . . .

  His ears began to pop against the elevation. He exhaled hard, blowing out as many jitters as he could.

  Fourteen, Fifteen, Sixteen . . .

  Jana squeezed his hand.

  Seventeen. Cade stopped breathing.

  Kyle crushed his hand against his radio earpiece. HRT operator nine said in a whisper, “Paula D, this is nine. The grits are scattered, smothered, and covered. Repeat, the grits are scattered, smothered, and covered.” Kyle shook his head. Jesus, these HRT guys must all be from the south. Only a southerner would be familiar enough with the Waffle House diner to understand grits humor. He smiled and began to appreciate the need to relieve a little tension.

  The elevator doors slid open into a vacuum of bleak silence. At the far end of the sterile hallway, the guard desk stood vacant as an
empty chair swiveled, letting out a slight squeaking sound. The shift change was happening; the guard had just stepped out.

  Cade whispered, “I’m not sure having more guns pointed at this place than protecting the White House makes me feel any better right now.” To Cade, the tension was as thick as trying to breathe through a mouth full of peanut butter. They walked across the white tiled floor as the heels of their shoes echoed onto their own straining eardrums. Cade swiped his keycard against the thick metal security door leading onto the server floor. A digital beep was chased by the sound of the door’s steel throw-bolt sliding clear. Cade pushed his way through the door and was suddenly terrified that he would see William Macy standing with folded arms on the other side.

  Silence. Cade’s eyes darted from left to right praying no one would be there. The server floor was empty except for the hum of spinning hard drives and glowing light. Cade had never seen it so quiet. He felt very vulnerable as the pair walked in, Jana pulling him along.

  “Jesus, it’s freezing in here,” she whispered.

  “Yeah, they keep it at fifty-nine degrees to keep the servers happy. Most days I don’t bother putting my lunch in the fridge.”

  They walked over to Cade’s desk. “Well, this is me. But over there is where we need to go. That’s Johnston’s office. Pray to God he left his laptop in there. Otherwise, we’re hosed.”

  “Remind me to get you a picture frame or something for your desk. Man, you guys have no sense of decoration,” said Jana, still clinging his arm.

  Across the radio outside, “All eyes, all eyes. This is Paula D. Any audible signs from the oven? Repeat, any audible signs from the oven? Over.”

  There was no reply. The skin coating the exterior of the seventeenth floor not only blocked laser mics but also reduced visibility to near zero. It was like looking into the translucent smoke of a forest fire and trying to see what was behind it. As far as knowing what was going on inside, HRT was dead in the water.

  In the command center, Agent Murphy leaned over. “Christ, this blindness is like waiting for Apollo 11 to clear the far side of the goddamned moon.”

  Cade and Jana approached Rupert Johnston’s office. Cade sighed in relief, halfway expecting the man to be sitting right there with a “what in the Sam Hill are you doin’” look on his face. The office was empty. On the dark mahogany desk, underneath a stack of loose papers, the black laptop sat sleeping, its lid closed. Cade darted behind the desk, opened the laptop, and held down the power button.

  “That smell,” said Jana. “It’s . . . it’s . . . bourbon or something. Damn, where’s that coming from?” Glancing in the oblong trash can under the desk, Jana had her answer. She reached in and pulled out the empty bottle of Jim Beam. The lid was on, but a drop of the Kentucky whiskey made an escape attempt down the side of the bottle.

  “That’s weird,” said Cade. “I’ve never seen Johnston drink. Then again, I’ve never seen him out of the office either.”

  “Cade, the smell is strong in here. I don’t see any spills anywhere. It’s like the smell is fresh.”

  “Well, let’s just get this over with,” said Cade.

  Just as little LED lights blinked to life on the laptop, the login screen appeared. Jana pulled out a lipstick, pulled off the top, and removed the gel copy of Johnston’s fingerprint. She slipped it on her index finger and swiped it over the laptop’s scanner. A message appeared on the monitor indicating the print had been authenticated. But then another login screen appeared—this one required a password.

  “Shit,” said Cade. “Fingerprint and password authentication.”

  “What do we do now?”

  “I can get through it, but it’ll take a minute.”

  Cade inserted a thumb drive. Jana focused on the monitor, but became distracted by the array of loose papers fanned across the desk.

  “Man, look at all this stuff,” she said. “It’s all handwritten. Who handwrites anything anymore?”

  “Jana, even south Georgia boys know how to write. Check out his diplomas on the wall.”

  Running her hands through the papers, she said, “And look how old some of this is. These on the bottom of the stack look like they’re fifty years old. They’re all yellowed.” Jana fingered her way through the stack, up to the top. “And these on the top are much more recent. They’re all dated. It starts back in . . . 1965.”

  Without glancing over, Cade said, “Ah, kind of busy over here trying to steal the secret files, remember?”

  “There’s different handwriting on some of the older ones,” she said. “Wow, looks like these were love letters from his service in Vietnam. He must have had a girl back home. I feel like I’m invading something private here.”

  “What? Private? Oh, yeah, I think he started out as a private during the war.”

  “Oh, you aren’t listening to me.” Jana read on. Private or not, she was captivated. It was like peering into a little piece of history you weren’t supposed to see. Some of the passages revealed two young kids in love, separated by a god-awful war. A smile spread across her mouth, but as she flipped farther in the stack, her smile disappeared.

  “Cade?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Look at these. Some of them have perfect watermarks on them. Someone’s tears fell on these letters. This one is still damp.”

  Cade looked up, but only for a moment. “Well, they couldn’t be Johnston’s tears, I can tell you that. I don’t think he has tears. And if he did, he’d probably kick his own ass just for crying.”

  The screen on the laptop went blue, and a message read “Boot from external drive?” Cade clicked yes.

  “What’s it doing?” said Jana.

  “We don’t have Johnston’s password, so I loaded an NT boot registry app onto the thumb drive. The laptop is booting from there.”

  Jana shook her head at the technobabble. The farther she thumbed forward through the papers, the more recent the dates on the papers became. Jana skimmed faster and faster through the stack and started to realize this was more than a collection of love letters.

  “Cade, it’s like the rest of this is a journal or something. This part starts about a year ago . . . it’s like he’s recording all his work.”

  “His work? What work?”

  “His work here. Here at Thoughtstorm,” she said. “Holy shit, he’s documenting his work here. My God, look at this! Dates and times of e‑mail campaigns, names of recipient lists . . . this part talks about some kind of . . . encryption . . . wait, look at this! CIA! Oh my God. He’s recording conversations he had with the CIA. Jesus Christ, Cade, this is evidence. This is like, this is like . . . finding the damned Rosetta stone. This is the key to everything we need to tie this all together.”

  For once, Cade looked up at the papers. His mind was trying to concentrate on two things at once, and it wasn’t working.

  Jana dug her fingernails into his arm, “Where’s the copy machine? I’ve got to copy this right now.”

  “Ouch. My, we are old-school, aren’t we? There is no copy machine. Server dudes don’t copy anything. Here, take out your phone. Use the camera and take pictures of all this stuff. I’ve got to crack into this damn laptop. Those papers might be the Rosetta stone, but it won’t help us much without the actual data.”

  “Kyle has our phones.” Jana’s eyes ran across the page at the very top of the stack, the most recent writings. She turned her back to the desk and leaned against it.

  “This, this . . . was written today,” she said. “He’s talking about . . . about . . . it’s like he’s conflicted. He’s talking about blowing the lid on the whole thing, the whole cover-up. But wait . . . look at that. He sounds desperate to blow the whole thing wide open, but he knows he can’t. It doesn’t say why.”

  She lowered the stack and said, “He knows he can’t? What does he know that we don’t know? What’s the laptop doing now? You said something about we didn’t have his password. That thumb drive thing, it’s going to crack his passwo
rd?”

  “No, not exactly. It’s going to bypass his password and allow me to set a new one. In the morning, when Johnston logs in, he’ll be asked to reset his password. We have to reset our passwords monthly anyway. There’s a chance he won’t suspect a thing.”

  Just then, a towering, hoarse voice exploded from the doorway. “Won’t suspect a thing!”

  Jana and Cade froze in terror, wide-eyed at the oversized man blocking their only exit. It was Rupert Johnston.

  “What in the Sam Hill are you doin’ at my computer, Williams?! And who in the hell is this?!”

  Thoughts raced through Jana’s head. Should I draw my weapon? Should we just take the laptop and run for it? Then, a horrifying thought popped into her head from all those months of training at Quantico. Her instructors practically beat it into her head. “If you ever use your weapon, one shot, one kill.” The voices echoed like the beating of a drum.

  “Uh, ah, um . . . yeah, ah, Mr. Johnston . . .,” babbled Cade, “no, ah, well, see we were just in here and . . .”

  Johnston was furious, yet his eyes were swollen and brimming with tears.

  He yelled, “I said, what in the Sam Hill are you doin’ on my computer!”

  Then his eyes locked on the papers Jana was holding. “Them’s, them’s personal!” He lunged forward; his left hand grabbed her neck and wedged her against the wall. The papers splayed out onto the floor.

  “Mr. Johnston! No!” yelled Cade, jumping up, his hands on Johnston’s crushing, steely forearm.

  But as quickly as the rage started, it stopped. Johnston released his grip on Jana’s neck and looked at his left hand as though it were a beast beyond his control. Jana coughed violently.

  He reeked of bourbon. “I, I . . . I don’t even know who I is anymore,” said Johnston still gazing at his hand. He stumbled backwards and fell into a heap on the ground, his salt and pepper hair jarring in the process.

  Jana’s initial shock faded as she regained her composure and cleared her throat. Without anyone noticing, she slipped her firearm back into its holster. She had nearly pulled the trigger at point-blank range. She shook herself off and stood tall. It was like looking at a cross between a petite young woman and someone who’d just faced down insensate evil. The terrified young girl crumpled into ashes and the agent emerged. Jana had crossed over.