I nodded, going into the kitchen and rattling around, getting things together. Zeke obviously wanted to talk to the others without me around, reassure them a bit, I guessed. Right now they needed some space.
So I puttered around, unloading and repacking my van, poking around the barn, checking out Vinny’s gear. I didn’t touch anything – it was mostly out of my league, though I recognized a frequency-hopping tactical radio base station of the latest type, and what looked like an encryption module, designation KY- or KV - something.
And a flashing red light.
I looked at the light, which was attached to another box of unknown purpose, and the computers. There was a little noise, bip, bip, bip, each time it flashed. I think it had to do with the satellite uplink, though, so I figured Vinny might want to know.
I went toward the cabin to tell him.
I think he already knew, since he bolted past me as I was coming to the cabin door. He had a smart phone in his hand and he made a beeline for the barn, slipping once on the thin snow cover. He was cursing under his breath.
All the rest of them came after, not moving quite so fast, except Spooky, who somehow managed to get around everyone and follow Vinny into the barn first. By the time we all trooped into the structure, Vinny was furiously banging away at keys and continuing to curse like a sailor on speed.
“What is it, dammit?” asked Zeke.
“Alarm and repeater transmitter for my smart phone, local mode. It means one of several things happened…” He started hammering furiously on the keys, switching views, windows, displays.
“Transponder…it’s my ATC back door – air traffic control. Something flying at low level…” He brought up a map of the local area with an overlay of moving dots with tails and numbers beside them. He pointed at one flashing. “Rotor-wing…someone turn off the overhead light in here. Uncle, unplug the transmitter please? It isn’t sending but might as well be sure.”
Larry flipped the wall switch and we were plunged into cold darkness, lit only by the glow of the computers.
Vinny held up a pointing finger, straight up. “Hear that?” Everyone fell silent. There was a faint eggbeater buzzing somewhere, which grew louder.
“Helo. Sikorski. Probably a Black Hawk,” said Skull.
I agreed.
The sound swelled, then burst overhead. Spooky moved off to a side door, weapon ready, but the helicopter continued on, flying fast, fading.
“They’re looking for us,” said Skull. “For him,” he said, looking at me.
“Maybe,” said Vinny. “Probably. Military transponder. Huh.” He grunted in irritation. He pulled up another display, flashing.
Zeke leaned over Vinny’s shoulder. “What’s that?”
“It’s a threshold alarm on all the things related to this INS Inc. situation. It means my bots have detected a certain level of cyber activity looking at what I have been doing. Nothing from NSA yet, thank God, but there is one hot node that I know is Langley’s.”
“Somebody finally reported the feces impacting the rotating oscillating device, and the Agency is waking up. The helo probably has ELINT gear on board. Our timeline just got shorter.” Electronic Intelligence equipment would try to find our transmitters, cell phones, anything that radiated.
“How much shorter?” I asked.
“At a guess? I’d say we should have twelve hours, less if I transmit on anything but the Harris net.” He meant our frequency-hopping secure tactical radios, almost impossible to detect or intercept.
“Well, shut it all down!” cried Larry, looking around as if for an off switch for the gear. He started to move toward the main power cable running to the lone outlet in the barn.
“Leave that alone!” Vinny yelled. “We already shut off the transmitter. Don’t panic.”
Larry stopped, looked sheepish.
Vinh went on, “I’d say fifty-fifty they find us at all. They probably have us to within two to four hundred square miles right now, but unless we transmit, they have to do it the hard way – with people. That means identifying your acquaintances, friends and family, you know, six degrees of separation stuff. Nodal analysis. Then they have to dig through everyone’s records, and even digitized stuff isn’t necessarily textual data.”
Blank looks.
“Like if it’s a document that’s been scanned in, but wasn’t generated on a computer – it’s just a picture. Needs a lot of processing power and human-in-the-loop to dig stuff out. If it’s a handwritten document they might miss it entirely except by a human. How much manpower do you think they have devoted to this?”
“You tell me,” Zeke said.
“Well…if it’s just one bigwig in the Agency, he could probably form a small team of three or four analysts and set them to work without drawing any attention. So…it’s a crap shoot. At least twelve hours, more likely several days, and like I said, they may never make the connection to Zeke’s wife’s maiden name.”
“What about HUMINT?” asked Spooky. He meant human intelligence. Boots and eyeballs. “If they come here and ask the sheriffs, ask people.”
“No way,” said Vinny. “That would take forever. There are at least five thousand residences within ten miles of here. Besides, people around here aren’t going to tell tales to a stranger, or the feds.”
“Okay,” started Zeke, “we tear it all down. We can’t risk being caught. Take it all apart, pack it up. And everyone pull your batteries from your cell phones if you haven’t already. Dan, your van is going into the lake. Sorry, but it’s the only vehicle they have positive ID on. Spooky, you have to park the Porsche somewhere, it’s too noticeable. Maybe a storage unit? We’ll use the other four SUVs. Pack everything in there. And rip out your lo-jacks, your GPS units, everything that can be traced. Come on people, chop chop.” Zeke clapped his hands.
There was a flurry of activity, as everyone tore down and packed all the gear. Boxes went from vehicle to vehicle, all sorts of cases and high-tech-looking containers. I wondered what all we had besides weapons and Vinny’s commo gear.
I cleaned out the van really well, took the plates off and tried to sanitize it. Spooky helped. We couldn’t get rid of every identifying mark and number, but the more we could slow them down, the better. I put all my stuff in the Land Rover, my long gun case, my ruck and my aid bag. One or two men in each vehicle meant we had plenty of cargo room.
Zeke took my van, Spooky fired up his Porsche, and Skull drove the Jeep as the recovery vehicle. An hour later they came back in it, having sent the van into the lake in a hidden cove. If we were lucky it would be months before anyone found the site.
In the meantime I had cooked some food, trying to use up everything that we couldn’t bring along. I laid a huge spread, knowing I’d eat a lot of it, and the others wouldn’t be too far behind. Stuffing our faces, between bites the talk naturally turned to the coming operation.
“How soon do we go?” I threw out. “And how?”
“Qui Audet Adipiscitur,” quoted Skull.
I furrowed my brow at him. “Latin?”
“Who Dares, Wins. The motto of the SAS.” He meant the Special Air Service, British special forces.
“You mean you think we should go in fast and hot.”
“Yes.”
I nodded, thoughtful.
Zeke looked at me, then at Skull. “I agree, to a point. And I think I want the treatment.”
“What?” That caught me off guard.
“Hey, I’m the oldest one here, I’m getting fat, my feet are flat, my cholesterol is high, I got a hernia, and it ain’t gonna get any better. And we have to do this right and do it fast, for Ricky’s sake if nothing else. I’m willing to take the risk.”
I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised. The payoff looked too big, too rich, to ignore. “Anyone else?” I asked around, challenging.
Skull shook his head. So did the rest, though more slowly.
“Not yet,” said Nightingale. “What if it makes my…makes me not be able
to…you know.” He looked down at his crotch.
Everyone burst out laughing, but it was a legitimate question. We just didn’t know anything about the side effects.
I said, “Well, I haven’t noticed any ill effects.”
“I don’t see any women around here to test yourself on.”
The next few suggestions were too vulgar to repeat; warriors can be rough-spoken. After the laughter died out and everyone had pretty much finished their dinners, Zeke drained his beer and said, “Well?”
Everyone stared at me expectantly. “Well what?”
Zeke held out his hand, palm up. “Bite me.”
“Oh, dude…this is creepy,” I answered. “Maybe we should just cut our thumbs and mix our blood.”
Zeke shook his head. “We don’t know that would work. We do know this does. Bite me.”
“Bleah, bleah,” I did my best Dracula. “Okay.” I grabbed his hand and bit him, slobbering on the wound a bit for good measure. “Yech. I’d make a bad vampire.” He tasted like cheap after shave, which meant really, really horrible. You ever taste cheap after shave? Try it sometime, near a bucket.
To his credit he hadn’t flinched, just rubbed the bloody spots a little bit and looked at it.
“It took a little while. Overnight, for me. Don’t expect anything before that, except to get unusually hungry and sleepy,” I put in.
He shrugged. “Que sera, sera.”
We cleaned up, locked up and moved out.
I called my neighbor Trey with a clean phone on the way. “Hey Trey, DJ here.”
“Hey, man. Glad you called. There is a truck parked in your driveway. It says Dominion Power on it, but I saw four guys get out and they went in your side door. Which seems weird since I know you’re not home, and it’s after hours. You want me to call the police?”
I really didn’t want him to. I actually wanted them to clean up the body, if that was what they were doing. I hoped they weren’t setting up a frame for Jenkins’ murder. I pushed that thought away.
“No…Trey, it’s some classified stuff, national security. I think these guys are bad guys but I don’t want to tip them off. I’ll just report it myself, okay? Don’t get involved, they might be dangerous.” I didn’t think he would. He was a nice guy, but not the adventurous type.
“Okay, man, your call. You got a number I can call you on?”
“No, sorry, I’m moving around. I’ll call you now and then, okay?”
“All right now. You take care.” He hung up.
I pulled out the batteries and tossed the phone out the window when we crossed the next river. It traced a sweet arc downward to splash fifty feet below. Then I went to sleep.
I woke up when our convoy was pulling into Outdoor Mountain near Richmond, a mecca for the hunting, fishing, and nature sporting crowd. A hundred thousand square feet of gear, from the smallest lure up to bass boats and ATVs, and guns and ammo. Lots of guns and ammo. We did some shopping.
We didn’t actually buy any guns. That takes a background check, ID, and an hour or two of waiting even if your record is clean. We couldn’t be sure any one of us wasn’t on some watch list somewhere.
Ammunition, however, can be purchased like candy in Virginia. Echoes of carpetbaggers and Reconstruction and the Federal city right on its northern border kept Virginia’s gun laws libertarian. Thomas Jefferson, native Virginian, had said, “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.” A few million Virginians stood quietly ready to prove him right if the Feds ever tried to take their liberty and the guns they protected it with.
I picked up a few things I wanted to try out, a few things I thought would be useful. We all did. Then we drove on, well stocked.
-11-
The sun was coming up the next morning over Onancock as we deployed around the apartment complex where the Integrated National Strategies people lived. It turned out that they all had units at a place called Seaside Acres, built in the last ten years, cookie-cutter. Made it easier to recon. Made it easier for their security people to keep an eye on their own guys too.
Zeke, Spooky and I sat in the Land Rover, parked down the street from the apartment complex’s single gate. Zeke was munching on his fourth ham-and-egg croissant. We both figured the XH had taken hold. He was cheerful.
We’d already watched one little nerdy-looking guy get into a black Suburban driven by a big Hispanic minder. They were parked just inside the gate, by the leasing office. We could see them easily from our angle.
“That’s Arthur Davidson, virologist. The heavy is Miguel Carrasco, former Texas Ranger.”
It was hard to say for sure, but Carrasco didn’t seem to be all that alert. Just another day on the job for him.
He got out of the vehicle again as another guy walked up. Caucasian, thin, grey and balding, thick glasses. His pants were too short and he had on a stained white shirt, and dirty leather shoes like fry cooks wear on greasy floors. “Roger Auprey. Epidemiologist. Nominated for a Nobel prize once, but apparently he has to be reminded to shower and change his clothes. Mad scientist.” One more of the watchers followed behind him.
“The guy behind him must be Rogett.” Karl Rogett, Master Gunnery Sergeant, USMC retired, I remembered from his file. Looked tough as nails, like you might expect. These two hard cases seemed more focused on controlling their charges than protecting them. I guess they expected me to run and hide, not gather up my own personal A-team – well, Zeke’s - and come after them.
I really wanted this thing to go smooth, no casualties. I wasn’t sure the other guys were on the same page, despite my insistence.
Skull, Larry and Vinny were in the Cherokee, over Larry’s strenuous objections. A flashy Escalade just wasn’t any good for surveillance, so we’d parked it back at the chain motel we were staying at. They were down at the biggest marina nearby, renting a nice big pleasure boat that would accommodate us. If we were lucky, INS’s corporate vessel would be at the same marina. If not, it would be easy to keep an eye out for them from the water between here and Watt’s Island. The harder thing would be not to be noticed ourselves.
The Suburban pulled out of the gate and we shadowed them from well back. They drove like locals, not too fast and not too slow, and pretty soon we watched them pull into the marina where our guys were. Sometimes things do go smooth. For a while.
Zeke called the other vehicle on his walkie. “They’re here, look alive.”
We turned left where the Suburban had turned right, to go down to where our boat waited. We parked, schlepped our cases with various supplies and ordnance onto the boat, and loaded up.
Vinny stayed on shore. He was going to do some surveillance of everyone’s vehicles and residences. He had hinted he might try for something more than that; maybe sneakiness ran in the Nguyen family. Maybe Vinny was a younger version of Spooky in the techno-urban jungle.
Skull piloted the boat like a pro, taking us out about a mile then slowing down. We loafed along like some lubbers out for a pleasure cruise. It was chilly but sunny and we bundled up and broke out the coffee thermoses and doughnuts and binoculars.
Pretty soon a nice thirty-six-footer came out of the marina and angled off to the north pretty fast, toward Watt’s Island, which I could barely see about seven miles off. They crossed to windward of us doing twenty knots, going northwest, and by this time Alan had us on a parallel course at ten or so. We didn’t want to look too eager.
We watched them all the way in to Watt’s Island, a tiny patch of scrubby pines and rocks with the all-steel buildings showing quite clearly. The highest tree on the island didn’t look more than twenty feet tall. The complex was on the southeast corner, and everything looked just like it had on the satellite imagery. We could see the white Jeep parked at the pier, with someone standing next to it, smoking.
We tooled along, not too near, not too far, and observed. Their cruiser pulled up to the dock next to the boathouse. Three people got out onto the pier, t
hen into the Jeep, which drove the hundred yards or so to the tiny empty parking lot. The boat pulled away and headed back for Onancock.
By this time we were looking at the south side, and then the back of the complex as we rounded the island. There were no windows in the big building, but there were two in the small one facing south. We could see the helo pad, which was empty except for a short pole and a wind sock standing stiffly in the north-by-northwest breeze.
“All right, that’s enough. We don’t want to get made. Head for Tangier Island,” Zeke ordered.
Alan turned the wheel and ran the throttles up to comfortable cruising speed. Less than half an hour later we came into Mailboat Harbor and docked at the marina at the north end of the island. Skull, slightly less conspicuous than usual in a New York Yankees cap, paid the docking fee and got the boat topped off with fuel. He could still frighten children with a look.
We wandered around the tiny island, splitting up to act like we were interested in the little shops, museums and restaurants along Main Ridge Road. The whole piece of land we stood on was barely a square mile, the southwest-most of three sub-islands that were all that remained of historic Tangier Island. It used to be much bigger, just like Watts Island, but rising ocean levels and erosion were slowly washing it away. In a couple of hundred years it would probably be completely gone.
We met up for an early lunch at a seafood place overlooking the water, within sight of a dozen fishing boats trying to eke out a living in the Chesapeake and the coastal Atlantic nearby. It was hard to hide, because the tourist season hadn’t started yet, and it was mostly locals. At the same time, that made it easier for us to spot anyone out of the ordinary, and none of us reported seeing anyone that looked like they were watching us. That was good news.
We headed back as soon as we were done. Just a bunch of guys on an outing, yeah. The island looked the same on the way back, though we went around to the north of it this time. It was about noon, and not a creature was stirring except for the sea birds.
The Eden Plague Page 7