“The software … what it does is cast a shadow,” Aaron explained. “While its main programs run and function, hidden programs, embedded deep within the system and designed to spread, operate based on their own directives. It’s insanely complicated, and even I don’t totally understand how it works—but I understand what it does.
“The shadow program infiltrates and transmits. Meaning it’s going to spread across everything. Everything protected within the Pentagon, this program will record, and then it’ll send that information out.”
“That … that would devastate the entire country,” Sarah said, dumbfounded. She understood what Aaron was telling her; she just couldn’t believe it.
“Sarah, we’re talking classified military information, the names of deep cover agents and their locations, intel given to the U.S. from its allies. Everything. If that information was exposed and delivered into the wrong hands—and whoever is behind this program, they can’t be the right hands—our country’s entire defense matrix would be trashed. Countless lives would be in danger. The entire world would be in danger.”
“But we can stop it, right?” Sarah asked, her resolve kicking into overdrive. Sarah hated the person who had framed Mark. Even through her own fury, she thought she understood that person, that he or she had used Mark because of their own greed or thirst for power. But this? This was the work of someone who wanted to watch the world burn. This was someone evil, and he or she had to be stopped. “We have to do something about this before it happens.”
“Huh?” Aaron said, as if snapping out of hypnosis. “Sorry, I just … this is so much bigger than I ever imagined. But, yeah—the program isn’t live. Not yet. We can stop it.”
Sarah nodded and swallowed hard. She was about to instruct Aaron to pack up the computer so they could get the hell out of there, but her words turned into a breathless gasp.
Voices. Both Sarah and Aaron froze, listening to the murmurs clarify into whispers, whispers into muffled words. The voices were coming their way.
“Hide,” Aaron whispered to Sarah, leading her down an adjacent row.
“Hide where? They know we’re both here,” Sarah protested. “They—”
“Just go,” Aaron urged. “Try to escape, call for help. Just go.”
Sarah looked at Aaron, reading his refusal to compromise. And she knew he wasn’t being selfless; he wasn’t saving her, he was charging her with saving them both. She ran down the row on the balls of her feet, careful to not make a sound. When she reached where the row ended in a T, she turned to head toward the exit. But then she heard a familiar voice. She exhaled her relief like a breath she’d been holding in for days. She’d panicked over nothing; it was just Dale.
In the sliver of time it took for Sarah to redirect her course back the way she came, she had thoroughly convinced herself that everything was going to be okay. They’d prevent this terrible plot from being executed, saving the country from an incalculable amount of mayhem and destruction. With Dale on her side and the Verge software nullified, combined with whatever else Jenna had discovered, surely they’d be able to exonerate Mark.
But when she turned and faced the long, deep row that led back to Aaron, all those feelings evaporated.
Sarah slowly crept forward, squinting to get a better look at what was ahead. Because it wasn’t Dale at the end of the row, lumbering over a cowering Aaron, that much she was sure of. She hugged the side of the row, moving out of the light and into the shadows. She stalked closer and closer, one small step at a time, until the man came into view:
Banks. That was the man’s name, the one who’d almost choked the life out of Mark when he was abducted from their home. She’d never forget Banks’s name or his face, his look of maniacal joy as he watched Mark suffer.
“She’s not here! Sarah’s gone, she left!” Aaron yelled.
“Where did she go?” a voice asked. It was Dale, Sarah recognized. He was standing where she couldn’t see, hidden from view. Sarah didn’t know why Dale had come here and not texted her—or called—when she reached out to him, and she certainly didn’t know why he was paired with Banks. But whatever the reason was, she knew it wasn’t good.
Sarah realized she should run, she knew she should try to escape while she had the chance. But she couldn’t. She had to know. Why was Dale here? In all the ways she’d known him—as Mark’s mentor, his father figure, as someone she considered a friend—was it all just a lie? Her idea of who this person was had been completely wrong. This wasn’t Dale, this was a complete stranger. A stranger was threatening her friend, trying to intimidate his way to what he wanted. Which, apparently, was Sarah.
“Don’t make me ask again,” Dale said, his voice laced with menace.
Sarah darted back to the end of the row, but instead of turning toward the exit, she headed in the opposite direction. She weaved down rows, cutting a path that would take her to the row on the opposite side of where she’d left Aaron. As she moved, unseen, behind the towers, she heard Aaron scream again.
“She’s. Not. HERE!” he yelled, though his final syllable was cut short by the sound of a muffled impact, then something heavy crashing to the floor; Sarah knew Banks must have punched Aaron, and the blow had caused him to drop to the ground.
“The guard said two people came in, and no one’s left,” Dale said. “Care to try again?”
Sarah reached the tower adjacent to Aaron; she found enough of a gap before the next tower to peek in on the scene. She pressed her eye to the narrow slit just in time to see Banks press the bottom of his shoe against Aaron’s face and push it into the floor, hard.
“Fuck. You,” Aaron replied, and Sarah turned away from the slit and winced. She knew more pain was about to be inflicted on her friend.
Just as Aaron started to scream, Sarah’s phone began to vibrate in her back pocket. She rushed to silence it, terrified Dale or Banks would hear it over Aaron’s pain-wrought howls. When she yanked the phone from her pocket, quickly disconnecting the call, Sarah took a quick look at the screen. She knew, because of the extra digits, that it was of foreign origin.
Sarah panicked, convinced it was Mark. She felt, deep in her bones, that it was him. But she couldn’t answer the call. She had to physically restrain herself from answering the call.
Putting the phone aside, Sarah turned her attention back to Aaron.
“What did you find?”
“I don’t—” Aaron grunted as Banks applied more pressure to his neck. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m a Pentagon programmer. I’m just performing maintenance.”
Dale pursed his lips and shook his head ruefully. At his signal, Banks delivered a short, compact punch to Aaron’s face.
“Tell us what you know!” Banks yelled, holding his fist above Aaron’s face, letting him know it could be dropped on him again at any moment.
“Don’t bother,” Dale said, then motioned for Banks to pull Aaron up on his feet. “We don’t have to play this game. I know what you know—but it doesn’t matter. In about an hour, as I’m being honored with a lifetime achievement award from the DoD, the Verge software will go live. You know what happens then.”
“Are you fucking crazy?!” Aaron yelled.
Dale smiled. A terrible, twisted smile. “I’ve never felt saner in my life.”
Aaron shook his head, horrified, but he couldn’t bring himself to say a word.
“Want me to get rid of him?” Banks asked without the slightest inflection in his voice. Killing Aaron was as pedestrian as doing his laundry, and it made a shiver run up Sarah’s spine.
“There’s not enough time to deal with a corpse and cleanup, and I need you here for the ceremony,” Dale said. “There are holding cells, down in the basement. We’ll store him there.
“But for now,” Dale said as he viciously grabbed Aaron by his hair, “we have to smoke out Sarah.”
“I told you she’s not—” Aaron’s words were cut short when Banks threw a punch into his side, doubling hi
m over.
Sarah backed away from the tower, slowly, just as Banks pulled a straight razor out from his pocket. She couldn’t witness what was about to happen next.
“Sarah,” Dale called in a chilling, playful tone. “Don’t make us do this to your friend. Just come out, and he won’t get hurt. Now, Sarah.”
Turmoil weighed her down. She tried to rationalize all the lives that were now in the palm of her hand against whatever agony awaited Aaron. The future of the country was relying on her ability to somehow make it out of this situation and share what she and Aaron knew before that knowledge, and their lives, were snuffed out for good.
She turned her thoughts away from Aaron and tried to conjure an idea—of where to run, where to hide. But even if Sarah could have somehow manifested an escape plan out of thin air, it wouldn’t have mattered. Not after her phone’s text message alert vibrated in her pocket, its muffled sound amplified by the room’s silence.
Everything came to a halt. But then Sarah heard footsteps, heavy, hurrying down the row beside her. She was being pursued.
Being caught was an inevitability, but she had to take what she knew and pass it on, to someone, anyone. As she ran down the row, she took out her phone, and her heart stopped. She couldn’t believe what she was seeing, but she had no time for disbelief. The message that had doomed her—it would also save her.
The message was from Mark.
“In D.C. Trying to find you. Where are you?”
Sarah attempted to breathe, but found it difficult. She zigzagged between the rows, her feet slapping against the hard metal floor. She had to tell Mark what he needed to know, but there was so little time—time for Mark to save himself, to save her and Aaron, to save the country. She pressed her back against a tower, quickly crafted a reply.
You have to listen to me. It’s Dale. He’s behind everything. He framed you and the Verge software is bad. Has to be stopped. I’m in the Pentagon and he’s going to catch me and take me to cells in the basement level. Mark you have to stop the software from going live. Whatever you do. I love you.
Just as Sarah pressed the SEND button, she felt her hair pulled back, hard, and her body following.
“There you are,” Banks said.
They couldn’t know Mark was back. It was the only thought that occupied Sarah’s mind as Banks dragged her down the row of towers. Though instinct urged her to fight back, to do whatever she could in the desperate hope to break free, she knew nothing was more important than protecting Mark’s return.
Sarah tripped over her own feet and dropped to the ground. As she fell, her hair still wrapped in Banks’s fist, she slammed her phone against the floor. She heard the phone crunch as it met the ground, felt it shatter in her grasp. Banks didn’t seem to notice or care. He pulled her back up, and as he turned, Sarah pushed the phone across the floor, sending it sliding beneath a tower. At the very least, she thought, she had kept Mark safe.
Dale shook his head at Sarah, as if everything that was happening was such a shame. She wanted to claw his eyes out.
“I’ll be honest, Sarah,” Dale said. “When we spoke in my office, I never dreamed you’d figure any of this out. But here we are.”
“You’re a pig,” Sarah spat.
Dale shook his head, then looked at her with an expression of pitiful condescension. “You’ll never know it, you’ll never understand, but everything I’ve done, all of it, has been for the greater good.”
“Mark trusted you, he believed in you.”
“Knowing what’s about to happen, from a certain point of view you could say I did Mark a favor.”
Sarah lunged forward, but Banks got to her before she made it a half step in Dale’s direction. He wrapped his arm around her shoulders and, as she fell back, she felt something hard jam into her back. She knew, instantly, that it was a gun.
“Take them both to the basement,” Dale ordered Banks. “I’m going to celebrate my retirement by seeing the Verge program go live with my own two eyes.
“We’ll take care of them later on, together. I want to personally make sure these loose ends are dealt with.”
28
Mark hurried through the Pentagon’s lobby, relieved to see his old friend, Private First Class Danny Rand, still working the overnight security shift. Danny wouldn’t shoot him on sight.
Mark hoped.
Danny, however, didn’t share Mark’s enthusiasm over their reunion. Mark was halfway to the security barrier when Danny spotted him; he did a double take, nearly hard enough to give himself whiplash.
“Mark?!” Danny exclaimed. “Wha-what? How?”
“Hey man,” Mark said, a smile on his face as he chewed the distance between them. “I know this seems strange, but it’s totally fine. I can explain.”
Danny stepped out from his station, his right hand hovering over the gun holstered at his waist. Not gripping it, not yet, but close enough.
“I need you to back off, Mark. Right now.”
Mark almost felt bad. He knew the only reason Danny hesitated was because of his personal connection to Mark. It’s much easier to shoot—or even arrest—someone you don’t know. And Mark used that hesitation. Before Danny could decide what to do, Mark was nearly on top of him—close enough to discharge 35,000 volts of electricity into his side, shot out of the Taser Mark had concealed in the sleeve of his coat.
Danny’s body corkscrewed in a fit of convulsions; Mark wrapped his arms around the unfortunate PFC and helped ease him to the ground. There was no telling if anyone would walk in the front door and spot a national traitor standing over the body of an unconscious serviceman, so Mark had to act fast. He pulled off Danny’s jacket and used his identification badge to open the security barrier. Dragging the young man’s body inside the small security station was no easy task, but Mark managed. He relieved Danny of his handcuffs and locked him by the wrists to one of the desk’s immobile legs. The guard started to murmur, his eyes fluttering as he broke out of his forced slumber.
“I’m sorry, Danny,” Mark said as he stuffed a cloth in his mouth and wrapped duct tape around his face and the back of his head to keep it in place. Mark used the money he had remaining after purchasing his flight to get prepared. Taser, tape, a sturdy backpack for Gregori’s laptop, new clothes—he was as ready as he could hope to be. And now he had a gun, lifted out of Danny’s holster.
All he needed, now, was to blend in.
With no amount of shame—Mark was well beyond that point—he stripped Danny of his well-pressed pants. “I guess it won’t do either of us any good to apologize again. But believe it or not, I’m the good guy here.”
Mark stepped out of the security station, dressed in the fatigues, equipped with full security clearance and a loaded Beretta. His time in Russia, Mark mused, had taught him a lot.
What it hadn’t taught him, though, was where these underground cells were. For that, he’d have to use the skills he’d relied on in his previous life. Meaning, he’d have to bullshit. And he’d have to do it fast, before someone found Danny handcuffed in his skivvies.
Mark roamed the Pentagon, asking whoever he encountered about basement access. The best response he got was a laugh, like he was playing a prank. Everyone else arched an eyebrow at him and admitted they had no idea before moving right along. Mark’s concern over finding this clandestine location grew with every puzzled expression, and he worried he’d soon be left with no other option but to run around the Pentagon, checking every door. Which might attract suspicion. He was on the cusp of giving up hope when he queried a grumpy sergeant who Mark could read as clear as day: He knew the basement existed, and he knew how to get there.
“Why do you ask, Private?” the sergeant tersely inquired.
“I’ve been asked to retrieve some materials from storage, Sergeant,” Mark responded.
“I’m not sure I know of any basement level,” the sergeant said, failing dismally at being coy. “Who sent you to find it?”
“General Hodges, Se
rgeant,” Mark said. “I thought I knew what he meant when he asked me to retrieve his materials, but I was mistaken.”
The sergeant grumbled. “What kind of materials, Private?”
“I’m afraid I’m unauthorized to say, Sergeant.”
The sergeant eyed Mark suspiciously, but Mark knew his cover story was impossible to refute. No one wanted to obstruct Hodges, especially on something that seemed so trivial. “Take the east stairwell. There’s a door at the very bottom of the stairs. Take that door to the basement.”
“Thank you, Sergeant,” Mark said with a grateful smile, then went on his way, fighting the impulse to sprint. He thought of nothing but Sarah as he hurried to the stairway, suppressing the impulse to fear the worst. At the moment, he didn’t care about Dale or whatever the hell he was up to with the Verge software. There was only his wife and getting to her in time.
If he didn’t save Sarah and their unborn child, all of this, everything he’d fought for, risked his life for, would have been for nothing.
* * *
Mark hugged the twisting rock wall that led down into the Pentagon’s depths. His gun held tight in his hands, he proceeded with caution; for all he knew, Dale could have a militia waiting down there, ready to overthrow the government. A month ago, Mark would have laughed his ass off at the idea of Dale leading a revolution, or whatever it was that he was up to. Now? Nothing could shock Mark. Nothing was so outrageous that he’d discount it as a possibility. Whatever awaited Mark at the bottom of the stairwell, he was ready for it.
But, for the first time since he broke out of the Russian hospital—which felt like years ago—Mark wasn’t confronted by one worst-case scenario after another. Instead, Mark found himself staring at what had kept him alive the entire time.
Sarah.
Mark bolted off the stairs, hurrying to the freestanding cell Sarah was confined in at the other side of the room.
“Mark?” Sarah said, incredulous. Then she said his name again, this time on the cusp of erupting into tears.
“Sarah,” Mark softly said, repeating her name three, four times as he pushed his hands into the cell, caressing her face. Even as he overcame odd after impossible odd, Mark never thought he’d see his wife again. He never thought he’d touch her, hold her, feel the heat of her breath on his skin. Even in his most optimistic moments, he couldn’t help but be convinced that his journey would end with him buried in a shallow grave. But here she was, and here he was. And nothing—nothing—would ever tear them apart again.
The Throwaway Page 27