by Kari Nichols
“You’d think so, given what we do here, but if they’re swamped with new hires they often don’t get around to it. Plus, given her credentials, they probably didn’t care enough, they just wanted her in here.”
“Her credentials?”
“She’s a freakin’ genius, if you ask me,” Tommy murmured.
Tate heard the wistful tone to Tommy’s voice and wondered if he’d had a mini crush on the girl. Looking to Evan, he smiled and nodded. So, Evan hadn’t struck out because he hadn’t even tried with Fiona.
“What makes her a genius, Tommy?” As far as Tate was concerned, Tommy was a genius. It would be interesting to hear what one genius saw in another.
“She was wasted in Signals. The program they had in there was so archaic it was embarrassing. Fiona rewrote it in her spare time, adding extensive tracing technology including multi-relay tracking capabilities, five-second ping recognition and a dual-cloak system that piggy-backed a locator’s ping onto known devices.”
Tate thought for sure her eyes had started to bleed before he even got to ‘multi-relay tracking’. It must have shown on her face, because a light flush crept up his neck and he swung back around to his terminal.
“Anyway, she advanced the system by three centuries and all they offered her was their thanks and then made her install it and use it. They should have moved her out of that department and had her revamping all of our systems.”
“Why would someone who could do all that want to sit in that room day after day and check signals?” Tate asked.
“I don’t know,” Tommy admitted. “I didn’t talk to her much.”
No, Tate thought, because that would have required leaving the lair. She loved Tommy as much as she loved her brother, so she wished he’d get out of this cave a little more often. He needed to go on a date. Too bad Fiona was on the lam. She’d sounded perfect.
“Tommy, what would make you want to sit in that room all day and check signals?” Tate perched on the edge of his desk and swung her leg back and forth. For as long as she’d known him, Tommy had always been behind a desk. Still, he felt that some jobs were beneath him. And he was right. There were a lot of code punchers out there who didn’t have even a quarter of Tommy’s skill. They wouldn’t think twice about lounging in the Signals department, collecting a fat pay cheque for little work.
“Was she hiding?” Evan asked.
Tate figured he’d hit it right on the nose.
“You’d already made that connection,” Evan said.
She shrugged, conceding the point. “If we find out what Fiona was hiding from, perhaps we can figure out where she went.”
Tommy gestured toward his computer. “I’ll keep looking into her background and see if I come up with anything you can follow up on. At the same time I’ll do a run on all of Warp’s known associates and see if we get a hit on this new guy.”
***
“We have a problem.”
Blackburn cringed at the words. Before he let Morrison continue he pulled a bottle of Tums from his desk drawer and chewed up a handful of the chalky tablets. Swallowing the paste with a mouthful of coffee, he took two deep breaths and waited for the news.
“Tate was at Fiona’s apartment, searching it. She knows the woman is alive.”
Fuck! That’s all he needed! “How did she find out about Fiona?”
“How the hell would I know?” Morrison asked.
Blackburn cursed silently. Morrison had tipped Fiona off by tampering with the electrical system in her car. Planting an incendiary device that was rigged to the ignition system often gained the desired results, but doing it to a car from a prairie town was a bad idea. Most cars had remote starters, allowing the owners to remain inside their warm houses while their cars heated up outside in the freezing cold. Her habit of using the remote starter every morning had detonated Morrison’s bomb while Fiona was still inside the coffee shop.
If he hadn’t screwed up the hit, they’d have nailed Fiona to the wall and no one would have ever missed her. Of course, if Morrison had succeeded in killing Fiona then Blackburn wouldn’t have anything to offer for Godin’s fuck up. Now Fiona was on the run and every-fucking-body was after her. If Tate found her first, the whole mission could go sideways.
It was damn difficult to eliminate a Sector Agent. He couldn’t go through the proper channels and splinter Tate. There would be too many questions asked and he didn’t have enough decent answers. However, if she were killed while conducting an Op, that was a different matter. Perhaps he could manufacture an opportunity for a skilled hitter to get rid of her.
“Let me worry about Tate,” he told Morrison. “You just find Fiona and bring her in.” He slammed the phone down before Morrison could comment.
Boston, Massachusetts
Emily hoped that coming to Boston wasn’t a bad idea. Tank lived there but he wasn’t home. Though she’d sent him the information about Warp and the rest of TA-4, he hadn’t been in contact. She wouldn’t be so stupid as to use his apartment, even though she didn’t think anyone knew who she was, yet. They would find her soon enough. The fewer expected moves she could make, the better for her continued existence.
Using a credit card she’d created under a name she hadn’t used yet, she’d checked into a decent hotel with a good internet connection. She refused to stay in a flea bag hotel. Those types had spotty internet anyway. And bedbugs.
Booting her laptop, Emily synched her system into a program that filtered her signal through hundreds of different relays, bouncing the signal across the world and back, dozens of times. Once she was ready, she patched into The Sector’s main server and got to work.
Synching her laptop to her old system had taken her mere moments. The backdoor access she’d created in her first month on the job had never been found. Whoever they’d hired to replace her wouldn’t have had enough time to get familiar with the system, never mind figure out what didn’t belong. Accessing the repository to gather any data that had collected while she’d been on the run, she started the download. If no signals had bounced, no data would be downloaded.
Emily saw straight away that information had been collected. She had instructed her system to track the signal as far as possible, until it either ended, or her system found the source. The size of the data file told her that the signal had lasted for a good length of time. She hoped that meant she’d have a new location for Tank to check.
Once her computer had finished downloading the file, she disconnected from The Sector’s system and disconnected her internet connection. She had barriers established that should block all but the best people from finding her once she’d disconnected, but one of the very best people was working at The Sector. She didn’t need him breathing down her neck.
The Sector, HQ
“Damn it!” Tommy swore under his breath. She hadn’t been on for more than a minute, but he’d been so close. Her relays had bounced him all over the freaking world, but he’d been breaking through them. And then he’d lost the connection completely and knew that she’d unplugged.
Tommy had spotted Fiona's bot as soon as it had entered the system. If he'd not already been scanning for any anomalies he'd have missed it. It was a sharp system and he'd have to tear it apart when he had a little more time, to see how she'd built it. In the meantime he let it run free and followed it. When she synched to her old department, he wasn't surprised.
As he’d watched, her bot had accessed a system he hadn’t been aware of. She’d been hooked into it for a very short period of time and then she was gone. When he tried to access it, he was denied, but that didn’t deter him. He’d run his own system to crack hers and see what information she was storing.
Swinging around to one of his other computers, he checked on a search he had running for Warp’s known associates. Aside from family members, Tommy had added any man who’d enrolled in or had already been enrolled in the Navy during Warp’s ten years of service. He’d included all Sector personnel from the past four years and, if necess
ary, would add old school friends to the mix.
The search had a dozen possibles listed already, so Tommy called up the file on the first name. He’d kept the details vague; approximate height and weight, large age range and basic coloring to account for any discrepancies between the picture Tate had found and the person’s actual physical appearance.
After searching through a half dozen files, Tommy hit on the correct one. The picture, from Nick Walker’s enrollment in the Navy thirteen years earlier, was a dead ringer for the mystery man in the photo from Fiona’s belongings. Reading through Nick’s personal details he noticed under Siblings that Nick had written sister. Emily Walker was the name given and Tommy started a standard DMV and Passport search for the name.
He had a hit in less than an hour. Emily Walker, 28 years old with brown hair and green eyes, looked exactly like the woman they all knew as Fiona. Another few hours netted him all family data as well as property under their names. If Fiona, make that Emily, was on the run she might try hiding with family. He sent the list to Tate’s cell phone and decided to let her figure out which location would be the most ideal hideout.
***
The door to their new cell opened and Warp watched as Samuelson was shoved back into the room. A former member of the JTF2, Samuelson had joined The Sector three years earlier. Warp had hand-picked him from a pool of over two hundred eligible recruits. It didn’t matter how often he’d gotten knocked down, Samuelson had jumped right back up again. Warp had watched as Samuelson took a fist to the face and laughed it off before following with a left hook that came out of nowhere. His fists like bricks, Samuelson had flattened the unfortunate recruit.
Their new cell had been cobbled together from one of the submarine’s bunks. All bedding had been removed and their chains had been bolted down. Each man stood tight to his neighbor with their arms extended above their heads. There was little play in the chains here. Meal times were held in the mess, where the soldiers were transported chain-gang fashion.
Samuelson, clearly exhausted, bounced off the wall and hit the floor. One guard stood at the door with his AK pointed at the soldier on the floor while the other guard hauled him to his feet and slammed his hands into the cuffs extending from the ceiling. Hooking his legs in, the guard stepped out of the way and exited the room. The guard with the AK jabbed the butt of his rifle into Samuelson’s gut and walked out the door. When it had slammed shut everyone in the room started talking at once.
“What did they want with you?”
“Where did they take you?”
“Where are we?”
Samuelson looked up and smiled. His black hair dripped water down the sides of his face. His uniform was dry. They’d given him a dry suit before they’d thrown him into the water. “We’re nearing Russia. They tossed me over the side of the sub and left me to swim for a while. I don’t know what they wanted to accomplish, but I know they weren’t happy with the results.”
Warp tried to piece together the plan that Godin had for them. They were down four men from their team so far. When Samuelson had been dragged out they’d not expected to ever see him again. Hillman had been the last to leave and he’d never returned. The guard who brought their dinner later that same day said that Hillman had not survived his outing. The guard wouldn’t say anything beyond that, no matter how many questions they tossed at him. What purpose would be served getting a soldier to swim around a submarine for hours on end?
“Were you swimming the entire time?” Warp asked him.
“Yeah,” Samuelson nodded. “At first I was just swimming alone, but then I could tell they were looking for me. They drove around aimlessly for a while, but then they seemed to pinpoint my location and zeroed in on me. I couldn’t lose them after that.”
Understanding went through the room. They had waited so long for a rescue that they’d figured their locators were busted. Something must have gone screwy with the upgrade. If the locators were still working then a rescue was still possible.
Warp glanced to his left. “Piggy, what do you know about these new locators?”
Piggy, who was as lean as a whippet, tilted his head and rotated it from side to side in an attempt to scratch at the scar on the back of his neck. His locator had been implanted two days before he’d been sent on this mission. He had just completed his training and been given to a squad. One of their snipers had retired and Piggy had been assigned to fill the vacancy. A former US Army Ranger, Piggy had been trained by some of the best men in the field.
Piggy was actually Michael James Fillamore, but he got his name from the upturned nose and rosy pink cheeks that everyone said made him look like one of the Three Little Pigs. Everyone got a nickname in the service, it didn’t matter what service you were in. Piggy didn’t mind his, much. He’d known others who’d done a lot worse.
He was also known as a bit of a worrier. Not when he had his rifle in his hand, then he was as cool as a cucumber. But when he’d been told about the locators, he’d gone straight to Bailey Rhodes and talked her ear off about them before he’d allow them to implant him. He’d wanted to know what it did. He didn’t tell the guys because it would make him sound like a fool, but he had asked Bailey if it would give him a tumor.
She’d been very patient with Piggy and had explained everything that it did and had ensured him that the locator would not cause a tumor. He paraphrased her explanation to him. “It’s a computer that reads your biorhythms. When it’s activated it sends your GPS coordinates up to the nearest satellite and bounces that signal to HQ. It can tell if you’re in trouble. If you’re about to drown or about to have a heart attack or if you’ve died. It will signal them for all of that.”
“We know that the others have all died. Why didn’t it signal HQ then?” Samuelson asked.
“I think they’re blocking it,” Piggy admitted. “Bailey said that it registers at a specific frequency and I bet if a jammer is set to that frequency then the signal can’t get out. If the jammer is on when a soldier dies, I figure HQ won’t get the signal.”
“How would Godin have gotten the frequency?” Warp asked.
“Don’t know,” Piggy said. “But if he knew about them, then maybe it wouldn’t be so hard to figure out what frequency it ran on?”
“Or he had someone on the inside,” Bulls-eye suggested. He was the team skeptic. He’d been with The Sector longer than anyone on his team, but he didn’t have the skills to be a leader. He was good at being a grunt and he was happy with it. He didn’t need extra bars on his chest to prove anything.
“Yeah, that’s a definite possibility,” Warp admitted. Someone on the inside, feeding Godin data, would be hard to combat. Of course, each of them being strung up like a cow’s carcass wasn’t making that any easier, either. He’d already vetoed the idea of overcoming the guards when they tried to take a soldier from the room. The room was tiny, maybe ten feet square, allowing one guard to enter and one guard to stand at the door with the gun. The guard with the gun would shoot first.
Still, it galled him to just hang there and let his men be taken. He weighed the pros and cons of an attack on the guards and determined that it was the best option they had at the moment. Who knew where they’d end up and what situation they’d be in when they arrived in Russia, or wherever their final destination was.
“Ok guys, listen up,” Warp said. “I’ve got a plan.”
Chapter 7
Tank called Emily the next day from Vietnam. After leaving Godin’s island, he’d made his way to Ho Chi Minh City, to be near an airport. He had spent a little time chatting with the guards who had remained behind when Godin flew the coop, but none knew his current destination. Emily didn’t want to think about that conversation. Her brother could be very persuasive.
“He’s traveling in a submarine, but he could have gone anywhere from here,” Tank said.
“He went north,” Emily confirmed. She’d plotted the two sets of coordinates on a map. The first set was just off the coast of one of
the islands of Con Dao, where she’d sent Tank. The second set was another chain of islands to the north of Japan.
“He has to be careful going near Russia,” Tank murmured. “There are a lot of powerful men who got screwed over by him.”
“Yeah, but he knows just as many who are willing to forgive and forget, in the hopes that he’ll throw more of his money around.” Emily transmitted the coordinates to his cell phone and gave him the approximate destination. Then she told him about the car bomb. She held the phone away from her ear as he yelled into it.
“What car bomb? Where the hell are you and why aren’t you on a plane to me right now?” he demanded, all in one breath.
She waited for him to calm down and then she explained what had happened. “Someone figured out that I knew about the secondary GPS signal. They came after me and they missed. I won’t let them get that close again.” She talked a good game, but she wasn’t feeling half as confident as she’d sounded.
Tank wasn’t buying it either. “Why were you already leaving?”
“We’ve had a few unexpected employee terminations recently,” Emily admitted.
“Define terminated,” Tank demanded.
“Greg Parker was killed in a car crash. I saw the Sector report on it. There appeared to be some interesting burn damage to the brake line. The car didn’t explode on impact, but the brake line had a split in it that looked like a burn.”
“Who was Greg Parker?”
“He was Head of Deployment. It was his call to send TA-4 after Simon Elliot.”
“And now he’s dead. Sounds like someone used an acid bomb on his brake line.”
“Yeah, that’s what I thought, too. Bailey has gotten those reduced to near nano scale and she admitted that two of her prototypes were missing.”
“A lot of her stuff seems to be going missing,” Tank said.
“Yeah and boy is she pissed about that,” Emily revealed. She’d been in the hallway when Bailey had learned about the prototypes going missing and she’d been livid. Bailey had insisted there was a mole or someone who was working against The Sector’s directives, but her words were starting to fall on deaf ears. She could only survive so many thefts before the upper echelon started to point their finger in her direction. Bailey knew that soon Tommy would be ordered to do a full run on her financials, to see if she was selling her own ideas on the black market. “She’s rewriting all of her security and locking the most secret projects into her vault so that no one but she can access it.”