Dead Shift (The Rho Agenda Inception Book 3)

by Richard Phillips

  A new set of instructions appeared in the messaging window on his central screen. In addition to his overall management duties for the upcoming attack, Jamal would form the first line of defense against intruders that tried to seize control of any of the targets on the big board. In that case, Jamal was to spoof the attacker, allowing him to believe that he had gained control of the targeted system, while Jamal redirected the attacker to a system controlled by one of his cyber-warriors. The attacker would be allowed to retrieve data, but it would be data that the assigned cyber-warrior wanted to deliver. It was all part of baiting the elaborate trap that Levi Elias was trying to lure the target into.

  Throughout the War Room, the external lighting dimmed from white to a soft magenta as the ready alarm sounded. Then, feeling the gooseflesh raise the hairs on his arms and legs, Jamal saw his preprocessing queue fill with targets. With a rush that felt as if he were operating at the speed of thought, Jamal pushed all distractions into the background and entered the game. It was go time.

  CHAPTER 25

  Steve Grange watched the data cascade across the OLED displays arrayed in front of him and smiled. Jamal’s mind had accepted the uplinked scenario and was fully immersed in the virtual reality that Delores Mendosa’s team was feeding him. Another display showed that the team of Chinese hackers in the adjacent room were fully involved. Eleven of them were receiving tasks from Jamal as he assigned them to what he believed to be other members of the NSA’s Dirty Dozen.

  The rest of the Chinese hackers were busy identifying targets to push into Jamal’s preprocessing queue and watching for external attempts to seize control of the freshly hijacked cameras and computing systems. The speed with which Jamal penetrated supposedly secure systems amazed Grange, and he saw that same amazement work its way onto the faces of the finest hackers at the Chinese government’s disposal.

  Dr. Morris turned to look up at Grange, and he heard her excited voice in his earpiece. “He’s an amazing specimen!”

  “What about the neural data?” Grange asked.

  “We’re capturing everything. This should fill in the missing details from the initial mind scraping so that we can complete the digitization.”

  Dr. Landon’s gruff voice interrupted. “How long do you plan to keep this test going? We don’t have any idea how much of this intense stimulation Jamal’s neural pathways can take.”

  Grange turned his attention to Dr. Landon. “Didn’t you get the memo? This isn’t a test. The Chinese are assigning live targets to Jamal in support of an ongoing operation.”

  A horrified look settled on Dr. Landon’s stern features. “Qiang Chu?”

  Grange felt a strange sense of satisfaction in seeing the doctor’s recognition of the import of what they were doing here. “So you see, Dr. Landon, Jamal will continue actively hacking all the targets the Chinese give him until we get a message from Qiang saying we’re done for the night. There will be no abort.”

  Here tonight, suspended in the sensory deprivation tank, Jamal Glover was going to validate all of Steve Grange’s research. And as Jamal accomplished his tasks, the government agents who thought they were closing in on Jamal’s kidnappers were about to have a very bad night.

  CHAPTER 26

  Janet Price answered the encrypted call on her cell phone as she drove toward the NSA safe house near Marsh Creek. It was Spider Sanchez.

  “We’ve got a location. Get back here now.” Spider’s all-business tone told her the rest.

  “On my way in with Harry right now. We’re twenty minutes out.”

  Spider terminated the connection and Janet knew that he was already dialing the next team member.

  “What’s up?” Harry asked from the passenger seat.

  “Spider’s assembling the team. It looks like he’s found Jamal.”

  “Levi must have the NSA geek squad working overtime. I guess sometimes it pays to be a computer nerd.”

  Janet’s thoughts turned back to Jamal Glover and his dead girlfriend. “And sometimes it doesn’t.”

  Beside her, Harry nodded. “You’ve got that right.”

  When Clayton Road gave way to Marsh Creek Road, Janet let the big pickup carry them out of town to the southwest. She turned south onto Morgan Territory Road and passed just west of the Marsh Creek Detention Facility before taking a winding dirt road up a wooded canyon to the west. When she pulled the truck to a stop in front of the isolated house, she saw from the other vehicles parked along the driveway that she and Harry were the last to arrive.

  Janet stepped out into early evening air that was at least thirty degrees warmer than it had been in San Francisco, despite being only a little over an hour’s drive east. But after the chill of the marine layer, the heat actually felt good on her face. She led the way through the front door to see the rest of the team seated in the living room.

  Raymond Bronson grinned when he saw her. “Ahh, a sight for sore eyes. Being around these ugly jokers, it’s nice to have something beautiful to look at.”

  Janet laughed. “You didn’t have a mirror?”

  “Ouch,” Bronson said, feigning indignation as the others in the room chuckled.

  “Have a seat,” said Spider, moving to stand before the group.

  Janet grabbed a chair from beside the dining room table and seated herself next to the lanky Bobby Daniels. Harry pulled a chair up beside her.

  “What about Gregory?” Paul Monroe asked from across the room. “Any word on him?”

  Janet felt her breath catch in her throat at mention of Jack. Despite what she’d said about not wanting him on the team, she missed him.

  Spider shook his head. “According to Levi, Jack was doing some digging in Kansas City yesterday and a hit squad tried to take him down last night. Five Chinese hitters, all dead. The NSA is still working on tracking down their identities. As for Jack, he’s off the grid, but you can bet he’s headed this way.”

  The news failed to put Janet’s mind at rest.

  “So what happened?” Bronson asked. “Did the Chinese get sloppy?”

  “Not really. They came hard at the house where he was staying, flash-bang grenades and automatic weapons, leaving two guards outside to cover the perimeter. The entry team wasn’t expecting claymores on the inside, and the outside team wasn’t ready for Jack.”

  “Holy crap!” Paul Monroe echoed Janet’s surprise. “He detonated claymore mines in Kansas City?”

  “Apparently the area was empty and rundown,” Spider said. “Forget about what Jack Gregory is doing. Right now I need your focus on what I’m about to show you.”

  The sixty-five-inch screen on the wall came to life, displaying live camera footage of a building Janet had seen as she’d driven through San Francisco’s Chinatown district.

  “This afternoon, Levi Elias gave me access to intercepted video from cameras in and around this building in Chinatown. What you’re now looking at is a live external view.”

  Spider pressed a button on the remote control and a new image filled the display, one that made Janet’s skin crawl. It was a close-up view of Jamal Glover’s naked body suspended in liquid within a closed tank, illuminated by what appeared to be a black light that gave the man’s form a pale blue glow. His skull was covered with a tight rubber cap that sprouted a thick bundle of wires that disappeared into a conduit. As she watched, Jamal’s forehead creased, as if in deep concentration.

  “This live footage is from a camera located inside that same building. According to Levi, Jamal Glover is being kept inside a sensory deprivation tank. He believes the wires coming from Jamal’s head are attached to electrodes that have been surgically implanted into his brain, but Levi and the rest of the NSA brain trust haven’t figured out exactly what the Chinese are trying to do to him. Their best guess is that they’re attempting to extract classified information from Jamal’s brain.”

  For several se
conds Spider left the video up, letting the assembled special operators study the changing emotions that played across Jamal’s expressive features. Janet could see Jamal’s eyes moving beneath his eyelids as if he were vividly dreaming. But she’d seen rapid eye movement associated with sleeping before and this was somehow different. What these people were doing to Jamal made her want to lock and load.

  The video on the display was replaced by building blueprints.Spider continued. “I want each of you to study these blueprints and the digital maps of the surrounding area before we start to plan our attack. At 0230 hours, we’re going to hit this building, rescue Jamal, and teach these bastards why it’s not a good idea to screw with the NSA.”

  To a man, the killers assembled inside the safe house voiced their agreement. But Janet remained silent. Come 0230 she’d let her weapons do the talking.

  CHAPTER 27

  Cutting through the wake of a much larger craft, Jack felt the Sea Ray powerboat lurch beneath his feet in the dark night. Throttling back, he studied the distant Pier 47 through the AN/PVS-15 night-vision binoculars. It was five minutes before the agreed-upon time for his meeting with David Chambers, and he could see the man standing at the designated spot, the glow of his lighted cigarette bright on the dimly lit pier.

  Jack had transferred the requested twenty thousand dollars into a numbered offshore bank account shortly after their noon meeting. The fact that Chambers was here meant that the transaction had already cleared. If that was all there was to it, Jack would have strolled down that pier to meet the ex-MI6 agent. But in his business, things were rarely that simple, and Jack had no intention of showing up to collect on his half of the bargain.

  Scanning along the pier, Jack spotted a half dozen men. Two of these were carrying trash bags out the back door of Scoma’s and tossing them into Dumpsters. Since the restaurant had been closed for almost a half hour, that made sense. Closer to where Chambers waited, another man leaned back against an outbuilding, tipping a sack-wrapped bottle to his lips. The other three men worked on a fishing boat, two stacking boxes while another swabbed the deck with a mop.

  All these activities were what you might expect to see around the wharf. But to Jack, these last four felt wrong. While it was possible that the fishermen were working late to prepare the boat for tomorrow’s outing, these guys hadn’t turned on any boat lights. And the wino’s posture carried a tension Jack could feel from where he stood atop the Sea Ray. Despite the fact that, at this distance, he couldn’t determine the race of those men, the context of the situation told him all he needed to know.

  It was exactly what Jack had expected to find . . . what he had wanted, but it still left a knot of sadness in his gut.

  Ah David, Jack thought. Why’d you have to be so damn predictable?

  Turning the boat out toward Alcatraz, Jack slowly throttled up. As he passed around the end of Fisherman’s Wharf, he banked hard to the east and jammed the throttle forward. The powerboat covered the kilometer to Pier 39 in just over a minute. Rounding the north end of the pier, Jack slowed and turned south, down its east side. When the Sea Ray rounded the end of the breakwater, Jack guided it into the marina and toward the nearest empty slip. Tossing a looped line over the outside piling, he glided the boat in.

  In less than a minute he had secured the lines to the deck cleats; then Jack was moving west through the marina toward Pier 39. Reaching the Pier 39 concourse, he adjusted his stride so that it was just fast enough to imply that he was hurrying to meet someone without attracting undo attention.

  By the time Jack reached the Triangle Lot, slipped on his helmet, and started his motorcycle, it was ten minutes past eleven. He knew that Chambers would probably give him ten minutes slack, but by now the older man and his Chinese handlers would be on the move. Unfortunately for them, there was only one exit from Pier 47 and that was back down Al Scoma Way toward Jefferson Street. Unless they had all gotten spooked and run back to their cars, an action that the Chinese would find beneath their dignity and the sixty-eight-year-old Chambers hadn’t looked in shape for, they couldn’t beat Jack back to that intersection.

  Just before he reached Al Scoma Way, Jack turned left onto Jones Street, and then swung about at a spot where he had a diagonal view of the Jefferson and Al Scoma intersection. Letting the engine idle, he waited, going with his gut feel of what was about to happen.

  When the two vehicles emerged from Al Scoma Way, the black Mercedes sedan turned right and headed west on Jefferson while the silver Jaguar turned east. Jack let the Jaguar pass in front of him before turning to follow the Mercedes. It didn’t take much intuition to know which car the Chinese assassins were in. David Chambers wouldn’t be caught dead driving a French or German vehicle.

  As the Mercedes turned left onto Leavenworth Street and then took a slight left onto Columbus, Jack hung back, keeping several cars between himself and the Chinese. Jack had known that David Chambers had close connections in China and had hoped the photographs he had shown Chambers would generate some reaction from those contacts. Tonight’s attempted ambush confirmed that he was on the right trail, and right now he had a pretty good idea where these four guys were headed.

  A slight right turn onto Powell Street was followed several blocks later by a left onto Clay, but here Jack pulled over and waited, watching the Mercedes until it took another left onto Stockton. No doubt about it; the rats were headed back to their nest. The problem was, they weren’t likely to be alone.

  Jack knew that if he wanted to narrow down the search, this was no time to be shy. But when he turned north onto Stockton, the Mercedes was gone. Jack didn’t bother to look for it. This was the right general neighborhood and if he didn’t want his enemies to figure out that he was hunting for them, he’d better not linger. Five minutes later Jack was out of Chinatown.

  It was fifteen minutes to midnight.

  CHAPTER 28

  Levi Elias stepped up beside Admiral Riles and looked down through the curved glass wall at the Scorpion workstations currently occupied by the Dirty Dozen. With Jamal absent, all positions had shifted up so that Caroline Brown was now the designated leader of this crew. From the mass of NSA hackers that longed to be a part of this elite group, Dr. David Kurtz had elevated Fred Simmons to fill the newly opened twelfth spot.

  “Jack Gregory just checked in,” Levi said.

  “What’s his situation?” Admiral Riles asked as he continued to gaze out over the War Room.

  “Apparently he’s rattling Chinese nerves. They made another move on him in San Francisco, but this time he avoided direct conflict.”

  “Good! The last thing we need is a shoot-out there just as the team is about to take back Jamal.”

  Levi echoed the sentiment.

  “Don’t worry. I made it very clear that we have an operation going in Chinatown tonight and that he is to stay clear.”

  “What was his response?”

  Levi swallowed. “He said roger and broke the connection.”

  “Goddamn it!”

  The admiral’s response wasn’t lost on Levi. They both knew that, in military parlance, roger means “I understand,” as opposed to wilco, which means “will comply.” For Jack to use roger was the same as him saying, “I hear you.”

  Levi looked up at the tiled displays that covered the gently curved wall on the far side of the War Room. In addition to the task-processing queues, it also displayed all the video feeds for the target area, including one that showed Jamal’s body inside the sensory deprivation tank. Keeping him in that tank for this long could kill him. Under that blue glow, Jamal’s face showed a combination of strain and grim determination that Levi found extremely disturbing.

  Caroline had been able to access two other cameras inside the building where Jamal was being kept. City records showed that the first floor was a long, narrow, dry-cleaning facility, with three floors of apartments above it, providing homes to
the extended family that operated the business.

  But this dry cleaner’s shop had been closed for several weeks while it was under renovation. The low-resolution security cameras showed that in the back of the building, all of the conveyors, presses, and chemical equipment had been removed to make room for the sensory deprivation tank and the high-tech equipment associated with its operation. A changing shift of armed guards came and went, along with others who appeared to be doctors and technicians.

  Unfortunately the video cameras were so poorly located and of such low quality that it was impossible to enhance the images to the point where facial recognition was feasible. But the fact that something wasn’t feasible didn’t mean it was impossible for the NSA, and Levi already had a team of experts working the problem these low-res images presented.

  In San Francisco, it was 0130 hours and Spider Sanchez’s team was on their way into the city, their GPS locators showing their positions on the big map. One panel van with six individual transponders inside. As Levi watched the van move along the map, his thoughts turned to Janet Price. The fact that she had lost faith in Jack was an operational tragedy because, together, those two were the most formidable team Levi had ever observed. Janet gave Jack the balance that kept him from flaming out, and Levi knew that if The Ripper flamed out, it would endanger everyone and everything in his general vicinity.

  Admiral Riles’s voice brought Levi back to the moment. “It looks as quiet as we can hope for. Tell Sanchez his team has the green light.”

  Levi nodded and picked up the satellite phone, feeling the familiar rush that the commencement of combat operations always gave him. Luckily this looked like it was going to turn out to be a relatively straightforward smash, grab, and go operation.