The Essential Sam Jameson / Peter Kittredge Box Set: SEVEN bestsellers from international sensation Lars Emmerich

by Lars Emmerich

  Vaneesh shook his head. “Ideally, yes. But I think there’s too much money in play for these guys not to have an alternate plan. I’d rather be more subtle about it, so they still think their system is working.”

  “So you just want to tweak it,” Trojan said. “You need to target the computers that are already infected, and maybe siphon off some of the money that’s being moved around.”

  “I’d like to siphon off most of the stolen money. Like ninety-nine percent. Maybe just keep a small amount moving around in their laundering operation.”

  “You won’t buy much time that way,” Trojan said. “I’m sure they’re keeping tabs on how much money they’re moving.”

  Vaneesh nodded. “I thought about that, too. But I don’t think it’ll be a big concern. I’m sure they’re running a script to tally the number of Bitcoins in play.”

  “So you’ll just tweak the counting script a little,” Trojan said.

  “Right. I’ll have the laundering program siphon money into accounts that we create and control, but I’ll make their tallying script count the money as if it were still in their possession.”

  Trojan smiled. “You’re a devious one. We should get together — maybe we could do something big.”

  They shared a hearty laugh at Trojan’s joke. More than any two other people on the planet, the pair of computer geniuses in the basement bunker in the Colorado mountains were responsible for ushering in the new world order.

  “So what about distribution?” Vaneesh asked.

  Trojan shrugged. “I’d love to use the NSA data pipes again.”

  Vaneesh laughed. “Who wouldn’t?”

  Trojan smiled. “Right? Sam Jameson actually asked for official permission, but I got a text saying it wasn’t going to happen.”

  “Shocking,” Vaneesh said. “That would kind of be rubbing their noses in it.”

  Trojan nodded. “I agree. But instead of rubbing their noses in it by asking for their permission, I’m going to shove it up their asses by hacking in.”

  5

  Sam and Brock walked hand-in-hand through the concourse, quietly discussing their options. Their investigation of the global-scale Bitcoin theft operation propelled them toward Rome, Italy. But the three clowns sent to “kill or capture” them at the airport had derailed those plans. They’d missed their flight to Zurich, and there was no way they’d find another flight arriving in time to make the connection to Rome.

  The pipe-swingers at the airport — led by one Henry Feng, who, it turned out, had no priors but half a dozen dropped assault charges — had rearranged their priorities a bit. It was a disconcerting development that someone was able to assemble and deploy a snatch team to Reagan International fewer than two hours after they’d made their flight reservations.

  And they’d made those reservations under false names.

  It was highly unlikely that the goons had tailed them from the DHS headquarters building, because Sam and Brock had departed by helicopter from the rooftop helipad.

  All of that implied that the muscle squad — such as it was — had inside help. If so, it wouldn’t be Sam’s first experience with a double agent working inside Homeland. In fact, she had once been dead for a short time, due in no small part to a Homeland mole.

  The thought of another compromised agent running amok within DHS made her suddenly feel exceedingly tired. Life was very difficult in the field when you couldn’t trust the home office. And with the global economy in free fall, and capturing an emerging economic hegemon on the top of her to-do list, things were plenty tough already, thank you very little.

  “I feel like we need to figure out who’s got us under the crosshairs here,” Brock said. “I mean, if we don’t chase this down, nothing stops them from sending more assholes after us.”

  Sam nodded. “I tend to agree. We’re not going to catch anyone in Rome if we get jammed up here.”

  The immediate problem was one of transportation, however. The Homeland chopper had dropped them off and left, and Sam was loathe to call them for a ride to the Pentagon City mall to investigate Wu’s Dry Cleaning and Alterations due to the possibility of a Homeland security breach.

  But even by DC standards, traffic was impossible. The demonstrators marching in the streets had turned the Beltway into one giant snarl, and the Metro system was still running at partial capacity — and horribly behind schedule — due to the dollar’s collapse.

  Walking might have been an option, except Brock’s thigh was still recovering from the gunshot wound he suffered over the weekend. It would have taken them an hour and a half to make the trek, assuming they ran into no trouble with the angry crowds marching around the city.

  “Let’s take bikes,” Brock finally said.

  “That’s a great idea,” Sam said. “You’re so much more than just a big dick and a pretty face.” She pinched his ass and winked.

  Who rides bicycles through airports? Cops do. Sam was able to commandeer one young police officer’s bicycle on the strength of her Homeland badge. The second officer they encountered was far more reticent, until Sam produced a couple of ounces of silver. “Oops, I dropped these,” she said to the bike cop, “and you found them. Damn the luck.”

  He handed over the bike.

  “Glad to see the crisis has brought out the best in you,” Sam said with a wicked smile. “Your nation thanks you.”

  It took several minutes of slow pedaling for Brock’s injured leg to loosen up, but he was finally able to complete a full rotation of the pedals without grimacing, and they set off to the Pentagon City mall.

  Wu’s Dry Cleaning and Alterations was closed when they arrived. The door was locked and the shop was dark, but Sam saw a patch of light coming from the back of the store. It looked as if there was a partition separating the main shop from an office area. The wall defining the office area didn’t reach the shop’s ceiling, and the light spilled over the top of the office wall.

  Sam felt uneasy and naked without her piece. Their weapons were in their checked baggage, probably thirty thousand feet over the Atlantic on the airplane that they were supposed to have been on. She’d briefly considered returning to DHS to pick up a service pistol, but quickly dismissed the thought. Homeland was located in the thick of the protestors, and it would have taken a week to fight their way through the horde. There were no pawn shops nearby, either, so they’d ultimately decided to take their chances.

  Sam banged on the glass door at the entrance to the dry cleaners. There was no reply after a few seconds, so she banged again, harder. She saw a tuft of black hair peer around the edge of the office in the back of the shop. “We close!” a small Asian man hollered. He made a shooing motion with his hand, then disappeared behind the makeshift wall.

  Persuasion was clearly necessary. Sam pondered using her badge, but thought of a better idea. She fished an ounce of silver from her pocket, and pounded the fleshy part of her fist against the glass door.

  The shopkeeper emerged from the office and walked toward the entrance of the shop. “We close, no service, you come back tomorrow,” he repeated, but the sight of the shiny metal in Sam’s hand brought him up short. Curiosity and avarice replaced annoyance on his face. He twisted the lock and opened the door. “What you want?”

  “I’m really in a bind, and I need to pick up my dry cleaning,” Sam said, still holding the silver bullion in view.

  The shopkeeper nodded and opened the door for them. Once inside, Sam produced the receipt she’d found in Henry Feng’s pocket at the airport and handed it to the shopkeeper.

  He peered at the receipt, and a strange expression came over his face. “One minute,” he said. He turned and retreated quickly to the office.

  Sam and Brock waited at the customer counter near the entrance. They heard the sounds of rummaging in the office area, and then a metallic sound that Sam knew all too well. “Get down,” she told Brock, just as the barrel of a semiautomatic pistol protruded from behind the office wall.

  He
looked at her in confusion. “Down!” she yelled. She shoved him toward the fake plant in the corner, then lunged toward the forest of clothing hanging from the dry cleaning shop’s conveyor system. The gun barked, a diminutive report by handgun standards, loud but nothing like 45 auto. He’s got a 9mm or a .40, Sam thought, not that the knowledge made any difference. She was unarmed, and a bullet wound of any size would unfavorably alter the course of her day.

  She heard another shot, then the sound of breaking glass. The bullet had shattered the glass case that served as the checkout counter, right in front of where she’d just shoved Brock.

  Jesus, I just threw him into that one. “You okay?” she shouted.

  “Fine,” Brock said. He started to say something else, but was interrupted by another blast from the shopkeeper’s pistol.

  The slug ripped through the clothing hanging from the conveyor system, way too close for comfort. Sam dropped to the floor and wedged herself between the clothes and the long wall leading to the back of the shop.

  The shopkeeper fired again. A freight train slammed into her chest. All of the breath left her lungs, and a searing pain assaulted her senses. Her hand snapped to her chest by reflex.

  She’d half expected to find a pool of blood and innards, but instead her fingers found the spot on her ballistic vest that had trapped the slug. They don’t tell you how much it hurts, she thought, and not for the first time.

  She took a few deep breaths, calming herself down, regaining her composure.

  Time to change the game up, she decided. She scrambled backwards toward the front of the shop, interrupting the line of sight between the shopkeeper’s office and her pink body. “Can you turn on the conveyor?” she yelled over to Brock.

  “The what?”

  “There’s a switch hanging from the ceiling above the counter. Hit the green button.”

  She saw Brock rise to a crouch and peer above the shattered counter toward the back of the shop. Another shot rang out, this one passing over Brock’s head and through the plate glass window at the front of the shop. He flattened himself against the floor again.

  Sam reached up and shook the clothes hanging above her head. Her diversion was rewarded with another gunshot in her direction, away from Brock, the bullet ricocheting in her vicinity. It missed everything important in her life. “Now!” she shouted to Brock.

  She saw his hand flash above the counter, flounder for an eternal second, then slam against the electrical box suspended from the ceiling.

  The machinery grumbled and creaked, then clattered to life. The clothing began its parade around the interior of the shop.

  Sam waited for a woman’s gown to make its way to her position. As it passed, she rose and followed it around the track, keeping the long garment between herself and the pissed-off Asian man with a gun, hoping that its length hid the motion of her feet. So far, so good, she thought, pulse hammering, now halfway along the side wall and making steady progress toward the office area.

  “Over here, asshole!” Brock shouted from the front of the shop.

  Sam cringed. Don’t be a hero, baby.

  Another gunshot rang out, and the sound of more shattering glass came from near the entrance. Gotta stop this before Brock gets himself plugged again, Sam thought to herself as she hustled toward the back of the shop, no longer bothering to keep pace with the long dress hanging from the conveyor that had hidden her movement.

  She dove forward onto the floor and slid to a stop in front of the makeshift wall defining the office area. She rolled herself into as small a space as possible, feeling horribly exposed. The shopkeeper needed only to peer around the corner, and it would be all over for her.

  Sam smelled cordite from the gun blasts. Her ears were ringing, and her heart threatened to beat its way out of her chest. She heard Brock shout at the shopkeeper again, and flinched as another shot rang out. How many was that? She cursed herself for losing count. The gun retreated back around the corner of the partition.

  Now or never, Sam decided. In one motion, she rose, twirled to face the drywall partition, leapt, and grabbed the two-by-four framing at the top of the wall. Then she scaled the wall, swung her feet atop the frame, hefted herself up to a low crouch on top of the narrow wall, and grabbed a ceiling joist above her head.

  She walked carefully atop the narrow frame, hands gripping the ceiling structure, moving toward the corner the gunman was using as a firing position.

  She peered over the edge of the doorframe. The shopkeeper was crouched low, gun pointed toward the shop entrance. Don’t screw this up. Probably won’t get a mulligan.

  Sam lunged forward and away from the wall frame, out over the shop floor. Her hands hooked the ceiling joist directly over the shopkeeper. Her legs swung out, around, and forward. She kept her eyes on the gunman’s head, flattened her right foot, and kicked with all of her might, adding the force of her leg muscles to the momentum of her body.

  The gunman caught the motion out of the top of his vision. He looked up. The timing couldn’t have been better.

  Sam heard a sickening, wet crunch, felt the bones of his face give way beneath her blow, heard the crack of his skull against the concrete as he fell to the floor.

  She let go of the rafter and jumped down to the floor. Her foot hurt like hell. She wondered if she’d broken a bone. “Party’s over,” she yelled to Brock.

  She kicked the gun away from the comatose shopkeeper’s grip, and turned his head to make sure he was still breathing. His nose was destroyed, shoved halfway into his skull and splattered wide across his face. His jaw hung at a grotesque angle, and there was blood everywhere.

  “Holy shit,” Brock said, hobbling to a stop at Sam’s side. “You messed him up.”

  Sam couldn’t find a pulse.

  The little guy suddenly looked pathetic — small, slight, old, face smashed to hell, kicked straight to the afterlife by her own boot. She began to shake a little, a byproduct of the stale adrenaline and a sudden, random wave of remorse at the way she’d just ended a man’s life.

  Her eyes teared up. Sure, the guy had tried to kill both of them just a moment ago, and she knew she shouldn’t really feel too badly about the way things turned out, but it wasn’t a rational reaction she was having. Sometimes the craziness of it all, and the finality, got to her in a place she tried hard to protect.

  Brock grabbed her in a tight embrace.

  “I’m sorry,” she said after a moment, straightening herself up. “Sometimes it just hits me.”

  Brock kissed her forehead. “I’d worry if it didn’t, baby.” He brushed the hair back from her face. “That’s how I know you’re still human,” he said with a smile.

  She returned his smile, exhaled, and then put her game face back on. “Would you mind grabbing his gun and standing guard? I’ll search the office.”

  “What about fingerprints?” Brock asked.

  “I don’t think there’ll be a functioning justice system in this town for a long time,” Sam replied. “Besides, taking the gun is a perfectly reasonable reaction when someone tries to grease you.”

  Brock nodded, picked up the pistol, and positioned himself with a view toward both the front entrance and the back exit of the shop.

  Sam looked around in the office. A distinctive smell permeated the small area. Her nostrils were assaulted by a powerful punch of garlic and fermented cabbage. Kimchi. A Korean guy running a Chinese dry cleaner’s shop? That almost never happened, in Sam’s experience. It implied that laundry wasn’t the primary business of the dry cleaning shop, and the guy calling the shots at Wu’s Dry Cleaning and Alterations probably wasn’t anyone named Wu. “Starting to smell an awful lot like a front,” she muttered as she searched through the desk.

  “Whatever led you to that insight?”

  “I’m not in the mood,” she said. There was another pistol in the center drawer of the desk. She cleared it, checked it, chambered a round, and tucked it in the back of her pants, pulling the tail of her blouse o
ut to conceal its shape.

  “Hurry,” Brock said, eyeballing the growing crowd of people gathering around the shattered glass at the front of the shop. “Gawkers.”

  “I don’t see anything weird,” she said, leafing through the accounting book.

  “We need to get out of here soon, I think,” Brock said.

  Sam felt frustration mounting. They needed to catch a break, and her search of the office wasn’t yielding anything helpful. It looked like a dingy little office in a dingy little dry cleaner’s shop, complete with a shitty old television, stinky Korean food, and a stack of barely-legible receipts on the desk.

  She absently pawed at the yellow slips of paper, picking one up for examination. She turned it over a couple of times, frowned, then picked up several more receipts. Then a half dozen more.

  Brock peered through the opening. “Babe? May we please get the hell out of here?”

  She rushed out the office doorway, brushing past Brock, and knelt at the dead shopkeeper’s body. She shoved her hands into his pockets, finding the usual — keys, an old cell phone, a money clip… and Henry Feng’s receipt, the item that had prompted the earlier festivities.

  “Bingo,” she said. There was a small red checkmark on the back of the receipt. She rushed back to the pile of receipts on the desk and leafed through them one by one, setting aside those with red check marks on them. There were easily fifty receipts, but only four had the red mark. She shoved them in her pocket along with the shopkeeper’s cell phone, grabbed Brock’s hand, and dashed out the back door of the shop.

  They emerged in an underground alleyway, the delivery entrance for all of the underground shops in that section of the Pentagon City mall. “Hide your gun,” she told Brock as they hustled around the corner into the main portion of the mall and joined the crowd of onlookers attracted by the commotion at the dry cleaner’s shop.

  As nonchalantly as they could manage, they elbowed their way to the front of the crowd and retrieved the two police bicycles still leaning up against the wall next to the shop entrance.