The Gauntlet

by Mike Kraus

  “Can we get the overhead lights back on?” Linda pointed her flashlight at the ceiling. “Is the breaker tripped or did something more serious get damaged?”

  Jackson stepped back out into the hall. “Stay here while I go check.” He ran off, leaving Linda and Frank alone in the quiet, dark room. Frank wandered slowly around the room, running his hands across the computers and furniture as he spoke.

  “You think we’ll be able to get anything off these machines?”

  “I don’t know.” Linda sighed. “But it’s the best place to start. Hopefully whatever happened in here didn’t destroy all their data.”

  After a few minutes of waiting the lights in the ceiling suddenly flickered on and the room was filled with the sound of dozens of computer components powering on. The sound of rushing air quickly dominated and the pair had to raise their voices to be heard over the din.

  “You want to wait for Jackson to come back or get started now?”

  “Might as well do it now.” Linda looked around the room as she slipped her flashlight back into her pocket. Over in one corner sat a small desk with a pair of chairs in front and a monitor, keyboard and mouse on top. “Let’s take a look.”

  Linda switched on the power button for the computer, expecting that it would go through a short bootup process and then present her with a login screen that one of the staff members at the dockyard would be able to get through. Unfortunately, though, after going through the bootup process the monitor switched to all black with white text scrolling by along the left side. A series of error messages displayed in rapid succession. Linda skimmed the messages and shook her head. “Hoo boy. This doesn’t look good.”

  Frank leaned in and caught sight of words like “no connection,” “system error” and “data fragmentation” on the screen. “No it doesn’t.”

  “I’m no expert—and jump in if you are—but it looks like their database is corrupted. Probably as a result of… well, that.” Linda gestured to the burned server cabinet in the corner.

  “You can’t get any data out?”

  “I dunno.” She swiveled around in her chair at the sound of footsteps out in the hall. “Maybe Jackson can find someone here who knows this system.”

  “Rollins?” Jackson poked his head in through the door and glanced up at the ceiling. “Excellent. This is Jim Ward. He was the onsite IT guy; I figured you might be able to use his expertise.”

  Linda stood up from her chair and crossed the room with her hand extended. “Jim? I’m Linda, this is Frank. Good to meet you.”

  Jim nodded and shook her and Frank’s hands. “You too. Not the best circumstances, though.”

  “That’s why we’re here, Jim.” Linda steered him toward the computer and motioned at the seat. “We need to access records relating to some shipments that went through here a while back. They were crates that triggered some radiation alerts. We need to know any and everything about them but it looks like—”

  “Yeah, the servers are down.” Jim finished her sentence as he tapped out commands on the keyboard and read the return information on the monitor. “Looks like one of the surviving racks is offline and a few machines on the other two either have corrupted drives or they just aren’t spinning up.” Jim looked over at the blinking lights on the stacks of machines and sighed. “It’s been a mess here, as you can see.”

  “What happened in here?” Frank asked. “With the fire, I mean.”

  Jim shrugged as he continued tapping out commands. “We’ve had all sorts of power issues ever since they brought it online. Something blew and started a fire which someone noticed and put out.”

  “Huh.” Linda glanced at Frank. “So why are you here, anyway? I didn’t know they needed an IT admin to stay during emergency operations.”

  Jim swiveled in his chair and gave Linda a look of exhaustion. “Look, lady, I’m just trying to survive this nonsense as much as the next person. A call went out, I answered and I’ve been doing cataloging and manual labor ever since. Though it’s mostly been the latter instead of the former.” He tapped a few more keys and sighed as he pointed to a line displayed on the monitor. “And there you go. The data from the timeframe that your Lieutenant said you’d want is gone.”

  “Gone?” Linda leaned in and looked at the monitor. “What do you mean by ‘gone’?”

  Jim stood up and walked over to one of the server cabinets. He looked at the labels taped to the side of each machine until he found the one he was looking for, then leaned in close and pressed his ear up against the case. “Gone as in dead.” With a quick motion he popped the front off of the unit and slid out the tray inside, revealing the components of the machine including the half-dozen disk drives. He pointed to the drives with a grimace. “Looks like the motherboard blew. Probably too much juice during a surge. The drives are most likely dead.”

  “Most likely?” Linda moved in with Frank close behind. “Can’t you put them in another machine and see?”

  “I’d love to, lady, but this is one of four servers that still supports drive interfaces this ancient.”

  “What about the other three?”

  Jim turned and gestured at the burned server cabinet. Linda rolled her neck and her eyes, groaning loudly. “Great. So we’re at a dead end.”

  “What about paper records?” Frank piped up next to Linda. “Don’t you all have those anywhere?”

  Jim scrunched his eyebrows and pursed his lips as he thought over the question. “You know, we did have a paper retention policy. Every few weeks there would be a data dump that they’d store for six months or so down in the basement. I guess it’s possible that what you’re looking for might be down there.”

  Linda forced herself not to growl as she replied with a simple statement that came out sounding like an order. “Show us to the basement.”

  ***

  Outside the main dockyard building, Lieutenant Jackson glanced around as he stood by himself off to one side. After double-checking to ensure he was alone, he reached into his pocket and pulled out a tattered packet of cigarettes. He flipped open the box and mumbled something incoherent over the fact that he had only three left. He plucked one from the box, put it in his mouth, retrieved a lighter from his pocket and was just about to flick it on when a sharp call startled him so much that he nearly dropped the lighter and cigarette on the ground.

  “Jackson!” Linda shouted at him as she and Frank ran up. She glanced at his fumbling hands as he tried to shove his lighter and cigarettes back into his pockets before giving him a wink and a devilish grin. “Don’t worry, I won’t tell.”

  Lieutenant Jackson cleared his throat and straightened his back. “Bad habit that comes back to bite me sometimes. What’ve you got?”

  Frank stepped up and handed a thick manila folder to Jackson. “Actual physical descriptions of the crates. Weight, color, dimensions; we got the works.”

  Jackson felt an enormous weight fall off of his shoulders and he closed his eyes and breathed a sigh of relief. “Thank goodness. Finally some good news for once. Have you called this in to Sarah yet?”

  “That’s next on the list.” Linda looked around for their Humvee. “Come on, let’s go.”

  The trio ran for the Humvee and once they arrived Linda retrieved the case containing the satellite phone and opened it on the hood of the vehicle. After powering it on and dialing Sarah’s number, she tapped her foot impatiently as the device connected to the military’s communication network and began the long, complex process of reaching out to Sarah’s phone.

  “Did you finally find something?” Sarah sounded as if she had been woken again and Linda couldn’t resist mentioning it.

  “Are you sleeping round the clock now?”

  “Until you two idiots get some solid intel I’m about as useful as a screen door on a submarine, so yes, dammit! I am catching up on some much-needed sleep!”

  Linda choked back a laugh before replying, a wide grin still plastered across her face. “Good to hear it, because
you’re about to get a lot less.”

  There was a shuffling noise in the background on the call and Linda could tell that Sarah had just sat up from wherever she was lying and was fully focused on the call. “You got information on the crates?”

  “You could say that. We’ve got dimensions, weights, colors and everything else you need to put out an alert for them.”

  “About time. Hold on, I’m grabbing a pen and paper.” Linda could hear the phone at the other end of the call being placed down, then a set of footsteps echoed in the background. Instead of footsteps back toward the phone, though, what Linda heard next was the sound of Sarah saying something unintelligible far in the background followed by the unmistakable sound of a rifle’s safety being flipped.

  “Sarah?” Linda spoke into the phone as she pressed it against her ear and bumped up the volume on the device. “Hey, you still there? What’s going on?”

  There was silence for a few seconds before the faint sound of wood and glass breaking came through. Shouting and gunfire followed, as did the shouting of at least three different people before there was a scuffle near the phone and the line went dead.

  “Sarah? Sarah!” Linda shouted into the phone, feeling her heart skipping a beat as a wave of nausea hit her stomach, threatening to bowl her over. Gunfire didn’t normally phase her but the thought of it going on around—and potentially targeting—Sarah brought her old team back to her mind and what had transpired when she lost them. She grabbed onto the front of the Humvee to keep herself upright as she called out Sarah’s name repeatedly. Frank took the phone from her while Jackson took Linda by the arm, helping her sit down on the ground.

  “Sarah?” Frank spoke into the phone and listened for anything on the other end. Once he realized that the line had gone dead he redialed the number only to hear a rapid beeping coming back through the phone. He tried several more times but was greeted by the same result before he crouched down next to Linda. “What happened? What’d you hear?”

  Linda’s face was a cold mask of fear and she shook her head slowly. “There was shouting and gunshots. Someone must have broken in.”

  Frank sat down next to Linda and took her hand. “Hey, look at me.” She glanced up at him.

  “Don’t tell me it’s going to be okay.”

  “I don’t know if it’ll be okay, but I’m sure she’ll be fine. She’s tough. You know that better than I do.”

  Linda closed her eyes and took a deep breath as Jackson crouched down next to her. “What is it you heard, exactly?”

  “Gunshots and shouting and what sounded like a door being broken in. Didn’t she say something in our last conversation about there being incidents up there?”

  Jackson swiveled away and spoke quietly into his radio as Frank nodded. “I think so, yeah. But I’m pretty sure that if looters broke in to her house they’ll be in more trouble than she will.”

  “Why’d the line go dead, then?”

  “Somebody stepped on the phone?” Frank shrugged. “I don’t know. She’ll be okay though; I know tha—”

  “You can’t know that. Nobody can know that. She might be or she might not.”

  “Back in a minute; stay put, you two.” Jackson stood up and walked away, still talking quietly into his radio. Linda and Frank watched him having an animated conversation several feet away, picking up only a few of his words here and there. When he came back there was a determined expression on his face. “I called in a favor. Don’t know if it’ll actually go through but we’ll see.”

  “What favor?” Frank asked.

  “To see if someone can check on her, see if she’s okay. No promises but they’ll do their best.”

  Linda nodded once. “Thank you, Jackson. I appreciate it.”

  “Hey, this isn’t just about you. Sarah’s the one with the million connections. We need her in this. Badly.”

  The trio was silent for several seconds until Frank cleared his throat and broached the topic the other two didn’t want to bring up. “Until we hear back from Sarah, shouldn’t we be operating under the assumption that she’s out of the picture right now?”

  Jackson nodded, but Linda was the first to respond. “Yes. We should.” The wave of nausea and the feeling of being back in Iran had subsided and she pushed herself to her feet, shrugging Jackson’s hand off her arm and squaring her shoulders in the process. “Jackson,” she said, turning to him, “What are the chances you can get someone up the chain to pay attention if you call this in?”

  “Halfway decent, I’d say. But that’ll just alert the person on the inside. I thought the whole point of going through Sarah was to avoid that?”

  “Of course it was. But with Sarah out of the loop for the time being we have to push forward. Omar already knows we’re looking for him so I can’t imagine him finding out we know what the crates look like will speed up his timetable all that much.”

  “I suppose not.” Jackson hefted his radio in his hand, then paused and looked at Linda closely. “You sure about this?”

  Linda glanced over at Frank. “What do you think?”

  Frank spoke slowly, carefully selecting each word. “I think that if Sarah’s potentially out of the loop… then we need to move forward. Stalling and waiting for her isn’t going to get us to the next step of solving this problem.”

  Linda nodded and looked back at Jackson. “Do it. Make as much noise as you possibly can. Get anyone and everyone’s attention and make sure to emphasize how serious this is. Maybe, maybe if we scream loud enough then the traitor will be forced to back off and play ball just to stay in cover.”

  “And if not?”

  “Then we burn that bridge when we come to it.”

  Jackson took a deep breath and nodded. He took the papers Frank was carrying that described the crates and stepped away to start making his calls. Frank and Linda watched him walk away for a moment before Frank stepped closer to Linda and spoke in a quiet voice.

  “You okay?”

  “Hm?” She looked at him, knowing full well what he meant.

  “The thing a few minutes ago, with you going all pale at the phone call.”

  “Oh. No, I’m fine. Just… yeah. Losing Sarah’s not something I really want to think about. We need her.”

  “Absolutely. What should we do in the meantime, though? I’m guessing Jackson’s call is going to take a while to go through.”

  “Good question.” Linda rubbed her hands together, trying to think of an answer but coming up blank.

  “What about… well, no.”

  “Go on, cough it up.”

  “Well.” Frank shifted on his feet, trying to decide if his idea was worth saying or not. “Would there be any records of where those crates went? So we could maybe try to start going after some of them ourselves?”

  Linda had been idly playing with the strap of her rifle as they talked but her hands froze upon hearing Frank’s question. “You know, that’s a really good question. I don’t know the answer but I bet I know someone who does.” She looked at Frank, her eyes suddenly possessed with hopeful exuberance. “Come on. Let’s go talk to Jim again.”

  ***

  Two hours of searching resulted in a shout of glee from Linda as she held up a piece of paper with one hand. “Got it!” The physical copies of the shipping manifests were stored in a separate location from the other paperwork and the disheveled file system left much to be desired. The switch to digital copies of everything meant that processing, data lookups and most day-to-day operations were more efficient. Paper backups had nearly been done away with except for obscure regulations that required them to be kept, though no organization system was specified in the regulations so the paperwork was dumped into rooms of the main building in random piles with no easy way to tell what was what. The discovery of the shipping manifest was a minor miracle in and of itself, and one that Linda and Frank were elated about.

  “Where’d they send them?” Frank stood up from where he had been searching and hurried over to rea
d the paper over Linda’s shoulder. Jackson, half-buried into piles of discarded papers, shuffled through the mess and stood on Linda’s other side.

  Linda ran her finger across the lines of the paper, nodding and mumbling to herself as she read the obscure acronyms and documentation bit by bit, not wanting to miss anything in the process. “They were processed through successfully minus the radiation detector ‘malfunction.’ At that point they were put aside for pickup by a private shipping company by the name of Wayne Shipping.” Linda blinked a few times and shook her head in exasperation. “Seriously? Did anybody pay enough attention to this nonsense to see that apparently Batman himself owned the shipping company?” She sighed again and continued. “They were picked up twenty minutes after processing—seems fast—then it has their destination address as…Perris? Where’s that?”

  “East of here; inland,” Jackson said. “Probably fifty, sixty miles as the crow flies.”

  “Is it a big city?”

  “Moderately. About eighty thousand people spread out over the desert.”

  “Is it close to any military installations?”

  Jackson shook his head. “Nope. None that I’m aware of, at least.”

  Linda looked at Frank and nodded. “I think this is our place.”

  “Sounds like it,” Frank replied. “Out of the way, enough traffic to blend in and close enough that they could get the crates secured without setting off radiation detectors elsewhere.”

  Jackson took the sheet of paper from Linda’s hand and passed it off to a soldier standing outside the room. After speaking with the soldier for a few minutes he returned to Frank and Linda, rubbing his hands together. “We’ll be ready to roll out soon. Twenty minutes tops, unless you think we need anything else from here.”

  Linda shook her head. “If that info’s good then that’s all we need. Frank and I’ll talk with a few more of the staff to see if they know anything else, but we should move as soon as you’re ready.”

  “Copy.” Jackson nodded and headed out the door and up a flight of stairs to get his men ready to move out.