Binder - 02

by David Vinjamuri

  “Why would you take that kind of risk?”

  “I’m paying back a debt,” I said, and my mind went back to the scene in the Activity’s tractor-trailer after Nichols left.

  I’d asked her to tell the Activity people outside to give me a couple more minutes. I called Alpha.

  “Sir, if you want me to walk into the National Front’s compound two hours after the third time they’ve tried to kill me, you need to level with me. This is the second time I’m asking you, and this isn’t a request any more. Please don’t expect me to believe this is just about some friend’s daughter.”

  “No, it’s not. Not entirely.” Alpha paused, weighing his words as I held the secure phone to my ear. “This is compartmentalized information, so please treat it as such. Is your space secure?”

  “Everyone’s out of the rig at the moment, sir.”

  “I have no faith in coincidences. When Heather’s parents contacted me, I’ had just finished reviewing a report on the National Front. The group crossed our radar screen because of some recent incidents in Africa.”

  “Africa, sir?”

  “Yes, beginning in the South Sudan. Bombings targeted at oil fields. We first thought the local Al Qaeda affiliate was responsible.”

  “Yes?”

  “The attack was ineffective. Not the devices themselves, mind you. They destroyed valuable exploration equipment. But the goal of the bombing was apparently to scupper an agreement between the government of South Sudan and a Dutch energy company called Vitol for an oil refinery. The deal went forward.”

  “So how did you tie this to the National Front?” I asked.

  “The Dutch company had video surveillance on their assets. They had some high-end monitoring equipment installed in unusual places. We were already cooperating with them on another operation, and the company asked us to help them identify the terrorists. Four men were involved. We captured two faces and connected them back to their passport photos and eventually back to the National Front.”

  “They didn’t cover themselves well?”

  “Not effectively. A month later, South Africa experienced a series of terrorist strikes on their infrastructure. All of the incidents targeted power-generating facilities. The last attempt was directed at a nuclear reactor. It was coordinated with a hacking attack that disabled some of the data systems at the plant. Johannesburg experienced a multi-day blackout as a result. No permanent damage was done to the facility, but the security breach at a nuclear plant alarmed the South Africans, who asked for technical assistance. Using facial recognition, we connected one of the men from the Sudan operation to the incident. He had contractor credentials to the site for the day of the attack. This time the cover documents were more professional. We only identified him because he was already in our database from the South Sudan operation.”

  “How long ago was this?”

  “Just over a month ago, at the beginning of September.”

  “Any clue what they were up to?” I asked. “Could these guys have been freelancing with some other group unconnected to the National Front?”

  “That was our initial assessment. Both men were Special Forces veterans and both had served in Iraq. One of them had worked for Blackwater. Our working assumption was that they were contractors working for another party.”

  “But something changed that assessment?”

  “Not conclusively until last night. When I heard from Miss Hernandez’s parents and learned that the FBI had an interest in the protestors, I was already inclined to send someone with a skill set to investigate. Her disappearance, along with an active and highly classified FBI investigation and the headquarters of the National Front in one small corner of West Virginia, seemed like too many coincidences. When we reviewed the design of the device found in your room last night, our explosives people confirmed that the signature is similar to an unexploded device we recovered in South Africa.”

  “Was either of the guys the FBI arrested this morning involved in the African incidents?”

  “We haven’t positively identified either man yet, though the tattoos you photographed are consistent with National Front membership.”

  “So there are still ex-SF guys out there trying to kill me?” I’d been hoping that the sniper and spotter the FBI was holding had rigged the bomb as well.

  “Most likely.”

  “And I’m walking into their compound because?”

  “You know the reason, Orion.”

  “Because neither of us believes that the National Front would try to kill me just to hide a missing girlfriend. Because when men come after you with plastic explosives, they’re trying to protect something. Because there’s obviously something else going on with the National Front.”

  “Agreed.”

  “Agent Nichols just told me that one of the Reclaim people killed Wednesday night—the one who was beaten to death—was an undercover FBI agent. I don’t think she was supposed to share that,” I hastened to add, realizing that I’d just done the one thing she’d asked me not to. But I knew Alpha well enough to know he wouldn’t burn her. “And we know Harmon was at Reclaim too. So somehow the protestors and the mine are connected to the National Front. The FBI could tell us more.”

  “Senior officials at the FBI are very unhappy with our involvement. They’ve brought pressure to bear to force me to withdraw you. This has gone all the way up.” Which for Alpha meant either the National Security Council or the White House.

  “I thought they were impressed that the National Front tried to bomb me and wanted to play ball with us.”

  “At the field level. But the FBI Director is guarding his territory very zealously.”

  “Seriously?”

  “If you fail to find anything today, we’ll certainly be pushed out.”

  “If the National Front had a hand in the murders on Wednesday, it means that they unmasked an FBI undercover agent with a face nobody knew and a solid back story. We can’t assume I’ll waltz into the National Front’s headquarters and nobody will recognize me, even with a $10,000 makeup job.”

  “No we can’t.”

  At that moment, I realized that escaping detection wasn’t the plan—that it had never been the plan.

  “Okay, let’s talk about what you really want if I can get in.”

  21

  “I’m still not talking to you,” Ventura said, snapping me back to the interrogation room.

  “You’re hurting my feelings,” I said, frowning. “So I’m going to walk out of here. I’ll leave you completely untouched, next to your dead colleagues. When they find you, your superiors will take one look and assume you’ve talked to me. If you’re lucky, Price will kill you quickly. Tell me if I’m wrong.” I got up and chambered a round in the Sig, tucking it into my waistband. I started toward the door.

  Ventura grappled with that, then panicked. “Wait. Wait!”

  I stopped walking without turning back.

  “I’ll need immunity and protection if I talk.”

  “I’m not the FBI, but they’ll give it to you if you cooperate. You’re a little fish.”

  “We’ll never get out of here.”

  “First things first. I didn’t work this hard to get inside just to leave so soon. We have some errands to run. Let’s start with some basics. How many guards on the grounds?”

  “I don’t know. Fifty maybe? But they’re all armed.”

  “Who told you to kill me?”

  “Price.”

  “He said ‘Kill him when you’re done with him’?”

  “No, he doesn’t work that way. He said ‘Escort Herne out personally after you bring him to me.’ We all know what that means.”

  “It sounds like it means you were supposed to walk me to the front gate.”

  “Don’t be naïve. That’s what he says when he wants someone brought here.”

  “Maybe. But it also means that he’s keeping his hands clean. So people like you take the fall if anything goes wrong. Where is Price n
ow?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You didn’t go up to see him just then?”

  “I was standing outside the door.”

  “You’re really a piece of work. Why were you questioning me? What were you supposed to find out?”

  “Price wants to know what you know about us.”

  “Why? What specifically does he think I know?”

  “I don’t know.”

  I leaned back in my chair and stared at Ventura.

  “No seriously. I don’t know. But I think there’s something big going on—other than the festival, I mean. A lot of Price’s guys have been leaving today.”

  “Price’s guys? Aren’t you one of them?”

  “No, I’m not. I mean, that’s not what I mean. I’m talking about his buddies from the PA—the army guys. They’re...like you. But most of them are older.”

  I stood up and took my jacket from the workbench where they’d left it. I laid it flat on the table. I picked up my Spyderco folding knife and cut a foot-long hole in the rayon lining. I slid a hand inside, fished around for a second and withdrew an envelope. I pulled four pictures from the envelope and handed them to Ventura.

  “These men—are they part of it?”

  Ventura looked at the pictures and then at me. “Two of them look familiar but I don’t know them. The other two I recognize. They’re Holser and Klaussen. They were both Eric’s Army buddies. They’re in the inner circle.”

  “Then why weren’t they the ones questioning me? You’re a little green for this kind of work.” I said it as a fact.

  “I told you they all left today. I run the PR office. I don’t usually deal with...this kind of stuff.”

  “But I bet you jumped on the chance to impress Price with your initiative, right?” I didn’t wait for him to answer. I looked away, disgusted. “Did these guys rig the explosives in my hotel room?”

  “I don’t know anything about that.” I watched Ventura’s face as he said this. It was the truth.

  I slid another photo from the envelope and handed it to Ventura. “Do you recognize this girl?”

  “That’s Anton’s girlfriend. Heather.”

  “Where did Anton meet her?”

  “On his mission. He wouldn’t talk about it, but she said they met at a mine—Hobbit?”

  “Hobart,” I corrected.

  “When did she come here?”

  “Just a couple of weeks ago.”

  “Have you seen her here?”

  “Yeah, she’s around.”

  “When’s the last time you saw her?”

  “I dunno. Yesterday, maybe the day before?”

  “Does she have a room here?”

  “She and Anton share his room in the dorm.”

  “Where’s Anton?”

  “He’s not here today.”

  “Where is he?”

  “I don’t know. Someone goes out on a job, you don’t ask questions.”

  “When did he leave?”

  “A couple of days ago. In a rush.”

  “With the other guys?”

  “No, I told you they all left today.”

  “Did Anton know Price from the Army?”

  “No, but he’s in the inner circle, too.”

  “Do you have a car?”

  “A truck—an F150.”

  “Where’s it parked?”

  “Around back in the lot behind the museum. That’s where everyone parks.”

  “Okay, Jay, you’ve done well. We’re almost done. Now tell me where the security monitoring room is.”

  “Top floor.” I caught the pattern in his face when he said it.

  “You’re lying. Do that again and you’re on your own.” He considered that.

  “It’s on this level, around the other side.”

  “How many men will be there right now?”

  “I have no idea. It’s not that big. Maybe two?”

  “Where is the server room?”

  “Server room?”

  “A complex this size has an internal network and its own server. It’s always in the basement because it’s cheaper to cool and the racks are heavy. This building has a data satellite uplink on the roof and it runs its own servers. So stop screwing with me and tell me where the server room is.”

  “There’s another secure room on this level. That might be it, but I really don’t know. I’m not a frigging IT guy, okay?”

  “You’re going to help me get out of here. We’re going to drive your car out the front gate.”

  He nodded. “Yeah, okay.”

  I shook my head. “It won’t be that easy. The moment you see a guard you’re going to change your mind and switch teams again. I have to make sure that doesn’t happen.”

  I grabbed my jacket. I detached a seam from the lining and slid it open. Then I pulled a two-foot orange strip from the enclosure. It looked like very smooth Play-Doh formed to the diameter of a finger. I cut an inch off of the strip and compressed it onto the seat of the chair I’d been sitting on. I slid the chair to the other end of the room, then took off my watch and withdrew a slim stick of metal from the back. I pushed it into the strip. I stepped back across the forty-foot room and turned over a small metal table, then knelt behind it and shielded my eyes. I pressed another button on my wristwatch. There was a small explosion—thunderous within the room but not loud enough to attract attention on other levels. I hoped. The chair fell inwards, split in two. I turned back to Ventura, holding up the rest of the strip where he could see it.

  “This is Semtex. They also call it plastic explosive or detcord. You can think of it as a chastity belt. It will help you stay true to your vows. Now drop your trousers,” I said as I cut off a longer strip.

  22

  I followed Ventura out of the interrogation room, glad to be away from the water basin and the dead bodies. I was wearing Old Spice’s black turtleneck. His blood added a sharp overtone to the cheap adolescent cologne. Getting it off the guard’s corpse was the low point in a day where I’d already been tortured, and it had been impossible to accomplish without getting it soaked in blood and laced with bits of brain matter. But it was still better than Flattop’s, which was much too large and had three holes in the chest. I wore a baseball cap with the National Front logo pulled down on my face as low as I dared. Flattop’s Sig Sauer was in a holster at my hip with fourteen unfired 9mm Parabellum rounds in the magazine and one in the chamber.

  “The room I was thinking of is around the other side.” Ventura pointed behind me. “Past the elevators and to the left.”

  I shook my head. “We need to find the security room first.”

  Ventura pointed me in the opposite direction. We walked down the hall.

  “This seems like a bad idea,” he said.

  “It’s necessary,” I said. “Will they recognize you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is it the same group that wears these?” He glanced back and I tugged at my turtleneck.

  “Yup.”

  “Have you been in this room before?”

  “Uh, yes. Not recently, though.”

  “Describe it to me,” I said as we turned the corner.

  “I dunno—it’s not too big. There are lots of monitors.”

  “Are there offices or locker rooms connected?”

  “No, they’re not down here.”

  “Where?”

  “At the back of the first floor—that’s where the main security office is. The room down here is just a monitoring room.”

  “Where is the head of security?”

  “His office is on the first level.”

  “Good,” I said. We turned a corner and I caught sight of a very visible security camera mounted above a reinforced steel door with a biometric scanner.

  “Tell them you need to review some footage. Make it sound plausible or we’re both dead.”

  Ventura pushed a doorbell button below the scanner. I kept my head down.

  “Yeah?” The voice sounded bored.<
br />
  “I’m questioning someone in the Room. I need to look at some tape of him on the grounds a couple of hours ago.”

  The door buzzed and Ventura pushed through. I stepped in behind him, pushing him aside as I drew the Sig. Two men were sitting ten feet from us at a control panel in front of a wall full of flat-screen monitors. I saw one of them reaching for an alarm button and pointed the 9mm at his head.

  “It’s not worth your life,” I suggested. On reflection, he agreed. I had Ventura put them in flexicuffs, then I used a roll of duct tape I’d liberated from the Room to bind them to the chairs and blindfold them. Silently, I went to work on the monitors.

  “You’re going to fuck—” Ventura started before I cuffed him on the back of the head and he shut up. In five minutes I ensured that it would take a half-day of repairs before any of the monitors functioned properly. It took five more minutes to program the phone so it forwarded to the main security office. I wasn’t optimistic. We probably had a better chance of getting out of the compound unmolested before we entered the security office. But I needed to disable the monitors to increase the chances that my next stop would go undetected.

  * * *

  It took me a couple of minutes to defeat the electronic lock on the server room door. We didn’t see anyone wandering the corridors in the basement level and I hoped that my luck would hold for a few more moments. I pulled out a special USB drive that I’d removed from the lining of my jacket opposite the Semtex as we stepped inside. It was a modern server room, several times the size of the video monitoring office. Racks of blade servers revealed a much larger operation than I’d have guessed, all housed in a dust free, climate-controlled setting.

  The room was cold, so I looked around the edges for offices where the network managers would work. Off the end of the third long row, through a glass window, I saw a desk with an ordinary PC workstation under a bookshelf of technical manuals. The office was empty, though I couldn’t tell if that was normal or if the festival had changed things. I quietly opened the door, sat down at the desk, and inserted the thumb drive into a USB socket on the front of the PC. I opened the file from the Windows control panel and started an executable program. After a moment, the light on the drive started flashing and a program screen appeared. After thirty seconds, the program screen disappeared and I pulled the drive from the computer.