by Cindy Gerard
“Or maybe there’s been a leak,” she said, feeling sick to her stomach. She’d played this spy game before, when she was at the NSA. “Maybe they’re afraid the bad guys are on to their top secret project. Or maybe the bad guys are on to it, and NSA picked up some cyber-chatter about an attack plan and labeled it an imminent threat.”
He was quiet for a long moment, long enough that she became aware of the constant flow of stale air moving through the small room. “You may be on to something there,” he finally said. “Apparently, this security check was scheduled for next week. But Nate’s letter said DOD stepped it up a week because they’d picked up some chatter that concerned them.”
When she managed to speak, she sounded much calmer than she felt. “He couldn’t have told us this before?”
“That’s how we operate. Apparently, there was no need to know until this morning.”
This bit of team protocol failed to settle her down, and Cooper seemed to notice.
“Look, there’s a huge difference between concern, a credible threat, and an imminent threat. There’s no ‘imminent’ in this letter. ITAP is the top dog when it comes to security threat analysis, but Nate would warn us if he thought we were biting off more than we could chew. He’d never put any of our team in that position. And the Pentagon wouldn’t put a sensitive project in that position.”
“I realize ITAP’s status, but I’m a rookie. Why not call in B.J. or Steph to analyze cyber-threats? Why not the entire ITAP and Black team?”
He leaned back and crossed his arms over his chest. “You don’t think you can handle it?”
“Of course, I can handle it.” Once again, he’d gotten her to rise to his bait, damn it.
“Well, then, there’s your answer. Nate clearly thinks so, too. And so do I.”
28
“As the first order of business”—Coop clipped his access key card to his jacket—“let’s take the grand tour.”
The extensive briefing package from Helen contained a lot of useless information. How many bathrooms, how many meals served a day, blah, blah, blah. But one piece was actually useful: a fairly detailed and comprehensive map of each floor that ID’d everything from elevators and emergency stairwells to each floor’s function.
While Coop knew Rhonda was still uneasy, he also knew she’d cowgirl up and do her job. There was no bigger turn-on than a woman who felt vulnerable but refused to give in to it.
And there was no bigger fool than a man who let a distraction—no matter how demanding—interfere with his job.
So he was all business as they walked back down the hallway.
“According to this site map, besides monitoring new arrivals, the security station on this level monitors all five levels for unauthorized persons and facility breaches. Isn’t that right, Helen?” Coop asked as they reached her desk.
Still as prickly as a cactus, Helen gave him a crisp nod in reply.
“Are there surveillance cameras capable of monitoring every area of the building?” Rhonda asked.
“Not all areas. Some projects are too top secret. They don’t want cameras on them.”
Coop laid the map on Helen’s desk. “Point out for me exactly where those particular areas are.”
“Here,” she said reluctantly. “Level four.”
“You’re too good to me, Helen. Thanks again.”
After going through the access protocol to gain admittance to another hallway, they found the bank of elevators they needed. Before going to level four, though, they made a stop on level two, the first subterranean level of the building.
“According to the map,” Rhonda said, “this level contains more administrative offices.”
“We all know how the government runs on paperwork.”
“And the computers on this level support the equipment for running the physical plant—electrical, cooling and heating, plumbing, communication. Looks like it also connects with surveillance aboveground.”
The second level was a clone of level one, as Coop suspected all of the subterranean floors would be. The construction was poured concrete, more government-gray walls, and highly polished floors. The minuscule attempts at circumventing the unrelenting drabness amounted to a few neutral paintings and the occasional motivational poster.
The ceilings were covered with pipes and wire runs. Cameras blinked at every corner and doorway. He noted the emergency lighting system, the periodic fire extinguishers and water sprinklers.
At the back of level two was a stairway that he suspected connected every floor, no doubt used for emergency evacuation. He made a note to check to make certain that once someone vacated the building via the emergency door, it shut behind them and couldn’t be opened from the outside. So the only way to get back into the building was through the front entry door.
Next to the emergency exit was a freight elevator large enough to move a variety of equipment.
“This is what I want to see,” Rhonda said as they stepped out of the elevator on the third level. Level three was a server farm containing computers housed in multiple layers of racks. “Amazing,” she said, sounding awed.
Besides the racks of computers, Coop recognized servers and supercomputers. “Overkill?” he suggested, tongue in cheek, as they walked through the floor.
“Oh, no. You’ve got to have a lot of computational power to design and do virtual testing of complex prototypes. And these bad boys are also tied into everything from the surveillance cameras, to the commissary inventory, to the power grid. They’ve got fail-safes in place, as each floor has its own network. But it’s all wired through this farm, with override capabilities built in.”
“Do you ever think they’re going to take over the world?”
He’d hoped she’d grin, and she did.
“Level four,” Coop announced once they were back on the elevator. “The labs where the brains design their supersecret toys and a major-league testing area with simulators to test them. Hence the camera-shy supersecret rooms.”
“Do you suppose some of these sections are off limits even to us?” Rhonda asked as they did a quick walk-through.
Coop paused at a door marked “No Admittance.” “Not according to these badges.”
She tried her pass key and was denied access. “Try yours.”
He was watching the red light that had blinked on above the door after Rhonda inserted her key. “It’s not going to work. But I’m pretty sure it launched—”
Two security guards materialized from around a corner and raced toward them, M16s shouldered.
“—a code red,” Coop finished, obeying their shouted orders by lifting his hands in the air and pressing his face against the wall.
• • •
It took a few minutes to sort things out with the guards, who finally left them with a caution.
“Do not to attempt to access any area marked ‘No Admittance,’ because it means exactly what it says.”
“We were granted total access,” Coop pointed out.
“If the president himself showed up with his Secret Service agents, he wouldn’t be allowed inside, either.”
Rhonda’s lips had paled nearly as light as her skin as she watched the security unit leave. Her hand shook as she raked it unsteadily through her hair.
“First pat-down at gunpoint?” Coop asked cheerfully.
She glared at him. “Are you serious?”
“Actually, it was supposed to be funny.”
“What is it with you?” she asked grumpily. “Why aren’t you rattled? How can you always make jokes in bad situations?”
“Because that’s how I get through the rough parts,” he said, serious now. “You’ll figure out your own way of coping.”
“The hell I will. I don’t do guns and bullets. I do algorithms and encrypted code and pentesting.”
He d
idn’t point out that for someone who preferred a mother board to a water board, she’d been in some pretty dicey situations lately. The fact was, for her sake, he didn’t like the danger factor, either. Which was why he wanted to get this gig done and get out of here yesterday.
“What do you think’s in there?” she asked, making a credible effort to pull herself together.
“Well, it wouldn’t be practical to house an underground wind tunnel, especially when there’s most likely one on the AFB, so we can rule that out. Same thing for building the really big stuff; you need to get materials in and out, power the machine tools, et cetera. You don’t want to build an airplane down here, then have to knock out the walls to get it out.”
“So?”
“So I’m betting it’s a bunker, housing a major-league testing area.”
“For whatever supersecret project we were sent here to protect but that we can’t know about,” she surmised.
“Yup. For something like that.” He stared at the sealed door. “We need to get in there.”
She cut him a horrified look. “No, we don’t. In the first place, I don’t want to know what’s behind those doors. Someone might have to kill me if I found out. Second, if we were meant to be in there, we’d have been given access.”
“You think anyone trying to steal it is going to give two figs about access?”
She had nothing to say about that.
“Come on,” he said. “Let’s go to level five and check out our temporary housing.”
“I don’t want to stay here. I want a hotel. Preferably in the next state.” There was the pouty look that he’d come to know and enjoy.
“I’m hungry, and I think better on a full stomach,” he coaxed. “Come on. We’ve got to work out a plan of action, then do our job and get the heck back to Langley.”
• • •
Besides the cafeteria lined with long rows of tables, a complete kitchen, and vending machines, level five appeared to be where back files, old equipment, and miscellaneous furniture went to collect dust. It also provided housing for the building’s environmental systems—heating, cooling, and water purification.
The living quarters were furnished with typical government-issue surplus. From the single bunks to the communal showers, a Hilton it wasn’t.
But the food was surprisingly good.
“You’d better eat that.” He nodded toward her lunch tray. She’d selected soup and a sandwich and coffee, but the only thing she’d touched was the coffee. “It might be a while before we eat again. You need your strength.” He was starting to get a bad feeling about this assignment. Starting? Hell, he’d had a bad feeling ever since he’d talked to Nate this morning.
“How many people do you suppose staff this building?” she asked, instead of eating.
“Tell you what, you eat your lunch, then I’ll let you plop yourself down at that computer, and you can hack into the system and find that information for us.”
“What makes you think I can hack into the system?”
He leaned across the table to whisper, “The same thing that makes me think you had your first screaming orgasm last night.”
He loved shocking her. He might have overdone it this time, though. Fire shot from her eyes, and her face flamed. He was pretty sure that if there hadn’t been staff in the cafeteria, she’d have laid into him.
“Sorry,” he said, not sorry at all. “It just came out.”
Her hand shook with rage when she brushed her hair back from her face. “We could be bugged.”
He reached inside his jacket pocket and pulled out a pen that wasn’t a pen. “This little gizmo would have told me if there was a bug within ten yards of us.”
“That doesn’t excuse you.”
“True,” he agreed. “But it did accomplish what I wanted.”
“To piss me off?”
He grinned. “To get you to stop obsessing about our assignment for a few minutes. Worked, didn’t it?”
She blinked slowly.
“Now, eat. Then we’ll go tackle access to that room.”
29
Early Friday afternoon, Mike sat on the other side of Nate Black’s desk, frustrated and weary.
Mike needed Coop back, but Nate had just broken the news that he’d had to divert him and Burns to Nevada. The team could use Coop’s analytical mind here to deal with the investigation. Burns’s, too.
“So how long are they going to be gone?”
“I don’t know. I hope no more than a couple extra days. Orders came down straight from the Pentagon. NSA picked up some cyber-chatter with coded references to a high-value facility in the States.”
“Which could be anywhere. Why Nevada?” He’d always figured that top secret testing was still going on at the Roswell facility, but power grids, nuclear plants, and any number of other targets could fall into the high-value category.
“Not sure,” Nate admitted, “but they asked for your team specifically. Cooper and Burns were in the area, so they got elected.”
“They’re not going to run into something hot, are they? Coop can handle himself, but this is Burns’s first field assignment.”
“No, the threat level is ‘suspected,’ not ‘imminent.’ Homeland Security’s jumpy, waiting to find out when the next shoe’s going to fall, and they want to make sure they’re ahead of the game on this one. They decided they needed an immediate security threat analysis, and they wanted an out-of-house team.
“I’ve got more news,” Nate added after a moment, “and it’s not good, either. Barry Hill’s been cleared. He had nothing to do with Monday’s shooting.”
“Bad news seems to be turning up all over.” Discouraged and restless, Mike rose from the chair, tucked his fingers into his back pockets, and walked to the window. Five days ago, his wife had been near death’s door, and they still didn’t have the bastard who shot her. “We’re absolutely certain Hill’s not involved?”
They’d found Barry Hill on Wednesday night and had been interrogating him at Langley ever since. This morning, they’d had to let him go.
Behind him, Nate’s chair creaked. “Even if his alibi wasn’t skintight, he’s too stupid to lie his way out of this. Too stupid to hide his amusement when he found out the team was on the ropes. The guys worked him from every angle—his known associates, their whereabouts as well as his. There’s just no way to tie him to the shooting.”
Mike shook his head. Hill had been the most logical suspect, and now that lead had gone bust. “What’s happening on the La Línea front?”
“Interpol’s all over it. Those guys are slick. But I really don’t like La Línea for this, anyway. They’ve got a shitload of trouble right now. Between the arrest of four of their top lieutenants last week and the heat they’re getting from DEA, I think their plates are full.”
“So we’re dead in the water.”
“Never say never. The teams have been working their asses off, much of it on their own time, trying to get a lead. By the time they let Hill go, they had a whole list of other names they’re working on,” Nate said.
“We’ve got to be missing something. Something that’s right in our faces,” Mike insisted. “We’re just not seeing it.”
“We’re going to get him. It’s just going to take longer than we’d like.”
Nate’s office door flew open right then, and Carlyle flew in with it. “Mike, you need to get over to the ITAP briefing room right now.”
On full alert, Mike glanced at Nate, then back to Carlyle. “What’s up?”
“Package arrived in the morning mail.”
“From?”
“No return address. Postmarked Toronto.”
“What’s in it?”
Carlyle shook his head. “No clue. But it’s damn clear that it’s meant for you.”
Nate was right behind them
as they headed out the door. “Clear how?”
“You need to see it.”
• • •
All incoming mail was screened for explosives and chemical compounds before it ever made it through the front door; this included X-rays, advanced scanning techniques, and being sniffed by a bomb-detecting dog.
This particular package had been given special attention, because not a lot of people knew of ITAP’s existence. So the fact that the package was addressed to ITAP, at their HQ, no less, had raised scrutiny to the five-alarm-fire level.
Both Nate’s and Mike’s teams were surrounding the conference table when Mike, Nate, and Carlyle rushed into the briefing room.
Remnants of their lunch had been scooped aside; the package took center stage in the middle of the table.
“The X-ray showed two indistinct metal shapes, and the chemical analysis revealed very slight amounts of burned nitrates, like those used in gunpowder and some explosives,” Carlyle said. “The levels are too minuscule to be an explosive device.”
Mike stared at the package. Wrapped in plain brown paper, it wasn’t much bigger than a pack of cigarettes. Carlyle, already wearing latex gloves, picked it up, then turned it over. A jack of hearts with a bullet hole through the middle was taped on the back.
This was meant for him, all right.
Mike slipped on the latex gloves that had been laid out for him—lifting prints was doubtful but still a slim possibility—and fished in his pocket for his knife. Very carefully, he slid the blade beneath the tape, taking care not to do any more damage than necessary.
Long minutes later, the brown paper lay unfolded on the table, and Mike held a plain white jeweler’s box in his hand.
He glanced at Nate, who nodded, and then Mike lifted the lid.
Inside, on a bed of white cotton, were two bullets.
One was a .223 Remington—at first glance, identical to the cartridge the team had found with the playing cards left behind by the shooter. The other appeared to be a 9mm.