by Kari Nichols
It was one room, with an army cot tucked into the back corner, a hot plate and bar fridge serving as a kitchen and one other door, leading to the toilet. To call it spartan would be generous. Jimmy sat in a rocking chair next to the brick fireplace. There was one other chair next to the fire, a small table with two hard-backed chairs near the kitchen and a worn-out rug covering most of the floor space. The isolation would have driven Tank to drink, but Jimmy only sipped from a can of Dr. Pepper. A teetotaler by choice rather than from necessity, Jimmy kept a few cold ones chilling for his guests.
After he’d retrieved his beer, Tank kicked off his boots and stuck his feet close to the fire. He gave his old friend a quick once over and noticed that Jimmy hadn’t lost his edge. He was whipcord lean and just as wiry. His long, black hair was pulled into a thick braid that trailed halfway down his back.
They sat in silence for a while, listening to the peaceful crackle of the fire and the whistle of the wind outside. The warmth was threatening to put Tank to sleep, so he sat up and gestured to the island next door.
“You hear anything interesting across the line the last week or so?”
Tank knew that Jimmy didn’t restrict his sensors to his own island. Even a retired SEAL had to keep his training up, or his mind would turn to mush. Besides, the temptation was too great. Jimmy had set up motion sensors along the perimeter of the neighboring island and he’d placed the tiniest of microphones inside each building. Four years and none of his devices had ever been detected. Twice, Jimmy had passed information he’d overheard on to the CIA, but he didn’t work for them. He was retired, and happy about it. Still, he liked to keep his head in the game.
“Well, funny you should ask me that, because it so happens there was a lot of excited chatter three days ago. They had a brief visit from some of their comrades in the Navy. A submarine, on her way back to her home port. She needed a little refueling.”
“They happen to mention which port?”
“Why are you so interested in this Russian sub?” Jimmy asked, taking a sip of his pop.
“Warp is on it and not by choice.”
Tank watched as the interest in Jimmy’s eyes sharpened. He, Jimmy and Warp had all served together a long time. Some guys you worked with when it mattered, but often didn’t socialize with them off the job. Others, you did. He, Jimmy and Warp had been inseparable for the ten years they’d served. Jimmy had quit first, followed soon after by Warp and then Tank.
Jimmy put his pop can on the floor and leaned his elbows on his thighs. “You got a plan?”
***
The Sector, HQ
Bailey stood hunched over her test bench, her magnifying goggles firmly in place. The goggles were digital and acted as a portable microscope. They could magnify an item up to ten thousand times its original size. When her telephone rang, she straightened and her back gave a sharp twinge in protest. Suppressing the groan, because it made her feel old, Bailey picked up the phone.
“Hello?”
“Bailey Rhodes?” her caller demanded.
Bailey didn’t recognize the outside number, but she recognized the tone. Military, to the core. “Speaking,” she confirmed.
“This is Brigadier General Markus Spalding of the US Army, stationed at Fort Bragg. I want a word with you about those locator beacons you sent us.”
Bailey frowned. She’d met Markus Spalding on several occasions and knew he was interested in getting his hands on some of her tech, but until The Sector had their patents in order, nothing would become available on the open market.
“General Spalding, I don’t know what you’re talking about. I haven’t sent anything to you.”
“I received a shipment of twenty-five thousand locator beacons two months ago. All but a handful have been implanted into my men. We got us a rookie doctor who fucked up one of the implants and tried to remove it. The damn thing exploded in his hands. He lost a few fingers. The soldier suffered major damage to the outside of his left thigh. Damn near blew out his femur.”
“It was implanted in his thigh?” Bailey asked.
“Yeah, we got a bunch of guys who didn’t want that thing in their necks. This is experimental science, so we had to have volunteers. Can’t do anything without making sure our legal asses are covered. You know what I mean?” he growled in her ear.
“I sure do, General,” Bailey replied, rolling her eyes. If not for the legal system of today, those soldiers would have been forced to accept the locator beacon in their necks and not make a peep about it. Still, that was not her immediate concern. How the hell had General Spalding gotten his hands on so many locators? The answer streaked across her brain before she’d finished the question. McMaster.
“General Spalding, where were those locators shipped from?”
“South Korea,” he replied.
Damn it, Bailey thought. Twenty-five thousand US Army soldiers and one thousand Sector soldiers were walking around with tiny bombs implanted inside them. A chilling thought gripped her and she just about dropped the phone.
“General, do you know if any other military organizations received a similar shipment of locators?”
The fear in her voice gave him pause. “No, but I can make a couple of phone calls. What’s going on, Bailey?”
She should talk to Ogilvie before answering that question. “I’m still trying to determine that, General,” she lied. “Can you make those calls and get back to me? I should have your answer in a half an hour.”
Bailey called up to Ogilvie’s office and was put straight through. “We have a much bigger problem, sir.” Bailey gave him a brief rundown of her conversation with General Spalding. “He’ll call me back in thirty minutes.”
“I’m on my way,” Ogilvie replied.
***
Zurich, Switzerland
At the safe-house in Zurich, Tate sat down on the sofa and stretched her long legs out in front of her. Gibson had placed Emily on the couch so they’d be close by when she woke up. If Emily was involved with the disappearance of TA-4 then they had some questions for her. If she wasn’t involved, and evidence was starting to stack up that way, then they had different questions for her.
“Can you cook?” Gibson asked Tate. They’d been sitting on the couch for over an hour without talking. It had been a comfortable silence.
Tate stared at him a minute and then shrugged. “If I have to, but it isn’t pretty and only slightly more edible.”
Gibson tried to picture her in a frilly apron with a knife in her hand. He snorted in amusement. The knife suited her more than the apron ever would. “In that case, I’ll make breakfast.”
Emily woke five hours later. She couldn’t hear a sound. She heard no water lapping and didn’t feel cold or wet, so she doubted she was still in the canal. She had no way of knowing how long she’d been asleep.
Opening her eyes, she looked around her and spotted both Gibson and Tate staring at her. Struggling to sit up, she winced as her head started to throb. She felt around the bandage, wondering how bad it was.
“You’ll have a small scar, once the stitches are removed,” Gibson announced, anticipating the question.
Emily nodded but didn’t say anything. She knew who he was. With thousands of soldiers on the task forces around the world, Emily couldn’t have kept track of them all, but there were only a handful of Sector Agents. Emily was well acquainted with both of their files.
“Are you hungry?” Tate asked. “Gibson makes a hell of an omelet. Cheese and bacon,” she added.
“No, thank you. I’m not hungry.” Emily couldn’t read their expressions. Whatever their thoughts were, they weren’t letting on.
“When did you last eat?” Gibson asked.
“In Venice, before I met with Finnegan.” When he stood up, she flinched, but he ignored it and left the room. Being alone with Tate didn’t make Emily any less uncomfortable.
Neither woman spoke for the ten minutes that Gibson was gone. Emily didn’t know where to begin and Tate
didn’t want her to waste time retelling her story when Gibson came back. Tate knew she made the woman nervous, but she’d live through it.
Gibson walked in carrying a plate with a giant omelet on it and passed it to Emily. “Venice was a long time ago. Eat.”
Emily managed to get half the omelet down before her stomach said enough. She could use more sustenance, but her nerves wouldn’t allow any more to remain down. The last thing she wanted to do was puke in front of these two.
“We have a few things we need to discuss,” Tate said, as Emily placed her half-eaten omelet on the table in front of her. “Let’s start from the very beginning. How did you get involved with TA-4’s disappearance?”
Emily took a moment to settle her nerves as best as she could and to formulate her thoughts. They’d been a jumble since the day she’d realized that Sector people were dying. Now at least, she’d be forced to go through it all and see how it laid out. “When TA-4’s locators were activated, all we got back was static. I did a few tests and realized that the static was because the signals were being jammed. I mentioned this to Walter Freemantle. He told me to keep the information between us.”
“You didn’t think that was odd?” Tate asked.
“Not at the time,” Emily admitted. “It’s how that place worked. But the longer nothing was done about it, the more worried I got. So I told Mark Blackburn, but he didn’t do anything with the information either.”
“No surprise there,” Gibson said.
Tate ignored him. “So you went out on your own.”
“I had to. I heard about Greg Parker and Dan Jarvis, but to be honest, I didn’t think they’d come for me. I wasn’t directly involved with TA-4’s disappearance.”
“What do you know that they don’t want getting out?” Tate asked.
“I got a lock on a secondary signal from Steve Hillman’s locator. They dropped the jammer for some reason and the instant the locator could get a connection to a satellite, it sent up two signals. One didn’t get through, so they have a block for it, but they must not have known about the second one.”
“It’s new, according to Bailey,” Tate admitted. “You have this lock. Where are they?”
“The GPS coordinates put the signal a mile off the coast of an island that is owned by Sergei Godin.”
“And you know this, how?” Tate asked.
Emily knew she wasn’t asking about the coordinates. “My brother went there and learned who owned the island. He was too late though. TA-4 had already been moved elsewhere.”
“Where are they?” Gibson asked. He sensed that the story wasn’t finished yet.
“Another signal got out a couple of days ago. This time it was located just north of Japan. My brother is investigating that, but I haven’t heard from him to know what he found.”
“Well, he hasn’t found TA-4, or we’d know about it.”
“Yes,” Emily agreed.
“Just curious,” Gibson said. “Why the alias?”
“Emily Walker is a known hacker. I couldn’t trust that The Sector would overlook my previous activities. I got mixed up with an organization that believed anarchy was the only way to get governments to change their ‘old boy’ ways. They mostly targeted the US, but some of their later plans included a few allies. They had a handful of low-grade hackers, but that was it.”
“How did you get involved?” Tate asked.
Emily’s cheeks flushed a bit and she stared at her lap. “I was dating a guy who was one of their lieutenants. He had me convinced that it was annoyance stuff they were doing. Take down a network, redirect website URLs; simple stuff like that. Then they started infecting the sites with viruses. I didn’t create them, because I don’t do that, but you can buy a virus online easier than you can buy a book off Amazon. They needed me to get into the systems and then they’d let the virus loose. Still, it was just annoying, the viruses they were using.”
“When did it change?” Gibson asked.
“Two years in. The viruses changed from annoying to destructive. The systems changed from FBI and CIA to military weapons installations. When I tried to leave, my boyfriend handcuffed me to my desk and threatened to kill me. I got a message out to Tank and he used his contacts to get me out.”
“Tank?” Tate asked.
“My brother. It’s his nickname from the Navy.”
“He and his SEAL buddies busted you out, didn’t they?” Gibson asked.
Emily nodded. “I went underground for a couple of years, but Tank forced me back out. He said I couldn’t hide from my mistake any longer. I just had to move past it. I’d not done any major damage, though if any of those organizations learned I was in on it they’d arrest me on the spot.”
“Was Warp involved in your rescue?” Gibson asked.
Emily nodded again. “He helped save me and now I have to return the favor in any way that I can.”
“The jammer,” Tate reminded Emily.
“I’m trying to backtrack the jamming signal, to see if I can trace where its origin is, but it’s proving quite difficult.”
“What were you doing in Italy?” Tate asked.
“I wanted to talk to Colin Finnegan. He implemented the original system. I thought if I explained what I was trying to do then maybe he could help me figure out a way to get it to work.”
“Did you get anything from him before he was killed?” Gibson asked.
“He was dead when I got there. I’ve never seen anything so horrific. His eyes were still open,” she whispered.
“You wouldn’t have gotten anything useful from him if he’d still been alive,” Tate said.
“You don’t think he would have talked to me?” Emily asked.
“It wouldn’t have mattered if he had. That man wasn’t Colin Finnegan.”
Emily and Gibson turned to stare at Tate. When she didn’t offer anything further, Gibson raised an eyebrow and made a sweeping ‘you have the floor’ gesture.
“Colin Finnegan was a bastard of the highest order. He’d blackmail his own mother if he thought she had two pennies to pinch together. He had a nasty habit of activating locators and then having people followed so he could collect dirt on them.”
“What did he have on you?” Gibson asked.
Tate smiled. He caught on quickly. “Nothing catastrophic. He had photos of me coming out of a club with a couple of guys and going into a motel room with same. He thought I’d be embarrassed if people knew I liked my sex a little kinky.”
“What did you do to him?” Gibson asked, trying to focus on the conversation and not on Tate’s kinky sex life.
“I turned him in. I didn’t give a shit if people found out about me. Those that were paying him off may have preferred it if I’d used a less public method of dealing with him.” Gibson stared at her with that raised eyebrow again and she grinned. “Ok, maybe I beat the crap out of him a little.”
Gibson nodded. That sounded more like it.
“If that wasn’t Finnegan, then who was he?” Emily asked.
“He was a decoy, not important,” Tate replied. “What we need to figure out is where the real Colin Finnegan is.”
***
Finn checked his results against the computer. False. Again with a fucking false reading! He crumpled the paper into a ball and chucked it at the wastebasket. When it hit the rim and bounced to the floor, he muttered an expletive and turned away.
Theoretically, what he was trying to do should work. He didn’t have the correct formula for his code, but he was close. He could taste it. He knew the current GPS coordinates of the locator IDs he was using, inasmuch as they could be accurate on a moving vessel. He had created a backdoor into his jamming program, to allow him access without having to deactivate it. But he couldn’t hack his way into the locator’s operating system.
He’d helped design the program, but this latest upgrade had changed a couple of fundamental flaws that he’d hoped to exploit. Those changes had surprised him. When he couldn’t get past them, they’d
scared him. He’d been forced to tell Godin of his difficulties.
He shivered just thinking about the look on that madman’s face. If they didn’t need this information and they didn’t know that he was the only one who could get it for them, Finn knew the bastard would have fed him to the fucking sharks.
Still, his time was running out. If Finn didn’t produce something substantial the next time Godin demanded a test, Godin would change tactics and then Finn would be little more than shark bait.
***
The Sector, HQ
Tommy stood in front of Ogilvie, with Evan at his side. General Ogilvie had commandeered Bailey’s desk. General Spalding hadn’t returned her call yet. He was an hour overdue. The longer they waited, the more apprehensive they became. Ogilvie reviewed the paperwork that Tate had removed from McMaster’s safe before she’d terminated him. Memos to a team of workers in McMaster’s Seoul plant suggested that progress on the upgraded chip was slow, but steady. It didn’t appear as though the Berlin plant was working on the chip.
“Sit,” Ogilvie commanded, pointing a finger at the chairs in front of the desk. He didn’t look up to see if his order was obeyed. He flipped through the last couple of pages and then stared at Tommy. “Can you get into their computers and figure out what they’ve got?”
“No, sir,” Tommy admitted. “They have strict protocols about putting data on a computer that is connected to the internet. There is no wireless in the building, as far as I’ve been able to determine. I’ve dumped the contents of any computer with a landline connection to my servers. So far there we haven’t found anything of interest to us.”
Ogilvie looked at Evan. “Where is Tate now?”