by Finian Blake
“No, the big ass German Shepherd tore the zipper out of my pants, and came within an inch or so of de-nutting me. The girls literally kicked the shit out of me after the German shepherd was through with my zipper.”
“I wish I could’ve been there that would’ve made for some great pictures,” Steve said with honest enthusiasm. Suddenly Lloyd was repulsed by the idea of anybody taking pictures of his misfortune. “Did you have any pictures on your camera,” Steve pressed on.
“Yeah, I was taking some pictures to survey the area and I got a few pictures of the girls,” Lloyd said suddenly remembering what happened to his camera. “I laid the camera down on the ground when I ran out to grab the reins of their horses. It might still be there.”
“It sounds like you’re going to need a good criminal lawyer and our lawyer deals mainly with civil cases.” Steve reminded Lloyd.
“I was in and out of consciousness while they loaded me into the ambulance, but I seem to remember them mentioning the name of a lawyer. I believe it was Felix Owens. Could you do some research and let me know who this guy is.”
“All right I will check the name out,” Steve said cautiously. “Whether you get charged with assault on a minor or attempted rape that action is way out of my range and I will not be doing the sidekick role for you on this run.”
“That is kind of chicken shit,” Lloyd said angrily.
“Those girls didn’t kick the shit out of you dragging you through the fence as a prank did they,” Steve asked testily. “Look, I will bail you out and check out that name for you, but after that we’re finished.” Lloyd was going to say more, but decided against it because Steve was looking really pissed and he didn’t want to blow his bail money.
Senator Ransom was packing a bag that Tamar had let her use to take all the clothes home. The bag was completely full and very heavy.
“I’m going to have to figure a value on these so that I can report them as gifts.”
“But I never gave you those clothes,” Tamar said mildly.
“What do you mean,” Winnie asked sounding confused. “You made those clothes especially for me.”
“Yes, I made them especially for you as my model,” Tamar said with a sly smile on her face. “Since you agreed to be my model, you are taking those clothes home to evaluate them before we do our photo session, so technically they belong to the company.”
“That is a technicality.”
“Yes, that is a technicality, but it is valid. We will be doing photo shoots of you in all of those outfits and they will either be in our advertising, or our catalog.” Tamar smoothed out the jacket of the business suit Winnie was wearing. “Since the clothes are custom made they will not fit another model, so after we have done the photo shoot they are worthless to us and you can count the value as zero.”
“One thing is still unanswered about last night if Boris is married to both Rhonda and Cherry where was Boris last night,” Winnie asked pointedly believing that she may have been setup.
“Boris is never home at night. He is always up in the computer center from about eleven o’clock on, monitoring the Russians. He and all of his Russian experts are scouring the channels to see where that Spetsnaz team came from.” Tamar escorted Winnie out the front door to a waiting limousine. “I will have Xavier take you home.”
“I always take the train my apartment is only a few blocks from the Metro stop in Georgetown,” Winnie protested.
“Don’t worry we will charge you for the ride,” Tamar handed Xavier a dollar, since you are our principal spokesperson you are entitled to all the trappings that go with it.” Tamar reached in her pocket pulling out an odd looking phone. “Speaking of all the trappings, all of our key players use satellite phones. The phone number and the pin number are taped on the side of the phone put them somewhere safe and keep it with you at all times. If you are ever in trouble just punch the one key once, and if somebody assaults you press the one button as many times as you can.”
“What’s the difference,” Winnie asked.
“Push the button three times and we will make sure you get some help, but if you push a button more than three times will send out the cavalry,” Tamar said doing her best to sound dead serious. Tamar leaned in the driver’s window to talk to Xavier before he drove off.
“Xavier, Winnifred is one of us now would you please treat her accordingly.” Tamar always asked instead of telling.
Boris scoured the computers for any signs of a Spetsnaz team checking all the military and diplomatic channels. He checked out all of the FSB channels also without getting so much as a sniff of any actions being taken. They had found no information on any of the four bodies of the team members. Boris had all of their fingerprints but knew that any direct inquiry could cause unwanted attention. Most of the work that they had done until now has been for private corporations. Boris set the team to work checking to see if there is any connection on the corporate front since many of the big multinational corporations play just as rough as the governments did. Tom had gone out to the address listed on the registration of the car, finding that it was a vacant lot.
Tom finally decided to try a local check on the fingerprints with the police department. As it turned out one of the members of the group had been arrested for drunk and disorderly in Baltimore. The address turned out to be a hotel with rooms that could be rented out by the month, week, day, or hour. With a financial incentive the desk clerk suddenly remembered that the man had three friends that were also renting rooms by the week. Tom had his team clean out the rooms giving the desk clerk a thousand dollars to develop a case of amnesia. The team took fingerprints from inside each room to ensure that these rooms had in fact been rented out to the Spetsnaz team. He downloaded the prints to Boris. They already had the fingerprints that they were trying to match so the confirmation came in a matter of minutes. Tom checked the phone records finding that one room had been called every hour on the hour from one number in particular. Tom instructed the desk clerk to ring any in-bound phone calls directly to the rooms requested.
Nadia and Mary Lee stayed behind dressed as maids to do a detailed search of each room moving mattresses, taking the drawers out of the dressers, and looking for any possible hiding place for things that might giveaway their true identity. Bringing this team in represented a huge expense and there was no doubt in Nadia’s mind that they would send another team when this one failed to report in. She needed to know where they came from and what they came here to do. There were twenty people of Russian origin in the new operation and Nadia had to protect all of them.
Once Boris had the number for the hotel it only took him five minutes to infiltrate the switchboard effectively hijacking any phone calls for rooms 205, 207, 209 and 211. Next Boris activated the caller ID. There was a 70%cent chance that the number would just pop up on his computer instead of having to trace a number. Everybody felt acute pressure to find out if there would be a next attack and who would be coming. The one thing that everybody understood was that there was a strong likelihood of another attack. Mary Lee was the first to score some additional information when she lifted up the mattress in room two eleven finding a small cut at the bottom of the mattress. When she stuck her hand inside Mary Lee found four passports and about $20,000 in cash. The one thing that stood out in Nadia’s mind was that there were no traps in the obvious hides indicating that this team felt rather secure. Nadia lifted up the mattress in room 207 finding another stash consisting of twenty blocks of C4 explosives and several pencil fuses along with five or six sophisticated timers all of which appeared to be of American origin. There were also two Dragunov SVU-A rifles under the mattress. One of the large suitcases appeared to be locked, but Nadia found a set of keys lying next to one of the rifles. Nadia tried the keys in the suitcase opening it a fraction of an inch at a time not finding any booby-traps. The suitcase contained what Nadia figured to be at least a hundred clips of 7.62 caliber ammunition for the Dragunov SVU-A rifles that they had found in
the car. Nadia calculated that there was enough C4 to level the motel if properly placed.
“Well, I believe that they had something planned for after their scouting mission. I believe we were the target. The Dragunov rifles are definitely Russian manufacture but it looks as if the explosives were supposed to look like an internal assault,” the concern in Nadia’s voice was evident because the most apparent target was the computer center. “The SUV-A rifles are restricted issue, and are only made at one factory. I believe that Boris can track these.” Mary Lee watched Nadia cradle a weapon tenderly as if it were a baby placing it reverently in the maid’s cart for removal. Something caught Mary Lee’s eye in the corner of the closet. She bent down for a closer look finding a laptop computer that was Wi-Fi-33 equipped hidden under a cut in the carpet.
“We need to be careful with this because he can be tracked even if we pull the battery out. We will need a special case which I do not have.” Mary Lee frowned, “the fact that we have moved it may have triggered off a tracking device.” She pulled a screwdriver out of her tool kit removing the hard drive and the RAM boards. “We need to take a ride down to the harbor before we go back to the computer center.” They loaded everything into the van after which they drove down to the harbor where Mary Lee flung the computer as far out into the Patapsco River as she could throw. “If there were any tracking devices they should be located in the Wi-Fi module.” It was almost midnight before Mary Lee and Nadia returned to the computer center. Mary Lee made a quick report to Boris handing off the hard drive with the RAM chips and disappeared while Nadia removed the rest of the goodies from the van moving the C4 and detonators to an underground blast shed. The weapons, ammunition, and other miscellaneous items were moved to the forensic laboratory in the basement. By the time that Nadia moved everything to where it belonged Nick and Boris were examining the hard drive and RAM chips. Two years ago when Boris set up the computer program he hired Nick away from the FBI. His specialty was computer forensics. Nick thought that things were going to be slow but the opposite was true. There was a huge demand for computer forensics in both the government and private sectors. Private companies bid huge sums of money to retrieve information from unfortunate computers which enabled Nick to hire six technicians for his laboratory however he made it a point to personally handle Boris’s priorities. Boris was personally assisting Nick, since he designed so many destructive viruses. Nick had discovered three capacitors wired into the hard drive that were designed to cook the memory and RAM chips if anybody tried to turn the computer on without using the password, only Mary Lee had removed the memory without turning the computer on. By the time that she had finished moving her collection of evidence from the four hotel rooms Nick was just mounting the hard drive and RAM set into a test computer.
“I thought that you didn’t want that gear installed in the computer,” Nadia said being a little bit confused.
“We didn’t want that stuff in that particular computer. Mary Lee made the right call.” Nick said with a tone of pride in his voice. “She correctly recognized that there was a self-destruct mechanism wired into the computer. There was an independent tracking device that was not linked to the brains. If we had fired this up without our little preparation is computer would have fried itself, and set off the tracking beacon. We now have the opportunity to pull the information from the hard drive without a major disaster. We have linked this computer with another one that is independent of everything we have.” Nadia was about to ask why they had a twin computer set up when Boris shouted.
“There Nadia, is the reason for such elaborate precautions.” The test computer started to invade the secondary one pulling all the files out and sending them to a specific Wi-Fi address. Boris leaned back and smiled, “we have a fake Wi-Fi-33 system set up to fool the unit. We can now see what information they are trying to obtain.” When the test computer finished sending the information it set a command to self-destruct which was not going to happen, since Nick had physically disabled all of those functions. It was Nadia’s turn to provide some information.
“There was enough C4 to destroy a good portion of this building if properly placed,” Nadia said obviously being concerned. “There is little doubt in my mind that they were out to disable the computer center. I don’t believe that they came equipped with the right information which was a reason for the search party. The rifles and tactical weapons are definitely Russian, but the C4 and detonators were definitely of American origin. It appears as if they were trying to make any strike look like it was not of Russian origin.”
“I’m not so sure it was of that origin,” Nick said. “The primary language on the hard drive is set for U.S English and the programming follows decidedly U.S language.”
“Well, the rifles and ammunition are decidedly Russian, and the tattoos that decorated those four men were more specifically Spetsnaz.” Nadia was looking for some hard-core answers so she was decidedly unhappy.
“This has been a long day for you Nadia,” Boris said softly. “Get some sleep, Nikki and I will unravel this knotty problem.”
Nadia was exhausted so all she wanted to do was go to bed with Ted who was already asleep in Tom’s guesthouse. As she was walking up to the door of Tom’s guest house, Nadia looked over at the barn seeing a light on. She found the door of the barn open and walking down the central aisle she looked through the big window seeing Ted asleep on the couch in the office. Nadia, tapped on the door lightly calling Ted’s name as she softly slipped into the room. Ted rolled over on the couch putting his fingers to his lips signaling Nadia to be quiet.
“Cher and Sue are having a sleepover in the loft,” Ted whispered as softly as he could. “I guess their little experience with the intruder affected them more than they let on. Cher asked me to sleep down here in case there are any problems.” Nadia nodded her acceptance pulling a blanket out of the closet grabbing a comfortable spot on the floor. Within seconds Ted had joined her on the floor.
“I’m proud of her,” Nadia said quietly. “She and Sue remembered their lessons. That idiot Lloyd definitely could not have come back at her in his condition.”
“After you left somebody found his camera on the ground and there were several pictures of both of the girls on the camera,” Ted said expressing concern. “I turned the camera over to the police telling them that I thought he was some kind of a pervert. Between the camera and the duct tape it was not hard to have them consider the point. Tom is going to call the chief of police and insist on a psychiatric evaluation.” Ted rolled over pulling Nadia close to him. She was asleep in minutes.
Nadia was awakened by a welcome smell of hot food and coffee as Tom’s wife Helen walked in the room with a breakfast tray.
“Tom really wanted to spend the night in the office so that he could watch the girls, but a sleepover with Ted did nothing for him. He was on the phone early today with the chief of police insisting that they give Lloyd a full release.” Helen set the tray down turning to Nadia. “Boris was calling all over the place wanting you to give him a call.”
“Thank you I will go see him in person,” she answered.
“I believe you will find him camped out in his laboratory,” Helen said.
Nadia decided to walk up to the computer center. She threw her purse over her shoulder taking one of the jogging trails that lead up through the trees. She was about 50 yards away from the center when she noticed a figure on the side of the trail that seemed to be focusing on something in his hand. Nadia thought that there was an assault rifle leaning up against a tree next to this man. He was so intent on the device in his hand that he did not notice her approach until she was almost on top of him. Nadia was a mere five feet away when she spotted some tattoos on his neck. Nadia grabbed the strap on her purse and the cell phone rang. She smiled at the individual, “I have to take this.” Instead of the cell phone Nadia pulled out a .45 caliber Derringer and when she extended it at arm’s length it was only two feet away from the man’s head. The man mad
e a grab for her arm, but Nadia had already pulled the trigger firing an armor piercing round into the man’s forehead. She pulled the cell phone out of her purse calling René in this security center.
“René, I have an intruder on the footpath 50 yards south of the computer center call Tom and Ted, have them meet me here. Nadia picked up a device from the man’s hand finding that it was a receiver thinking that he was probably looking for the things they had removed from the hotel room last night. She turned the on-off switch back and forth failing to locate a signal. Next she examined the man’s weapon which was leaning up against a tree finding that it was an AN-ninety-four which was a special issue in the Russian army. When Ted and Tom arrived Nadia had the man’s shirt open examining the tattoos.
“This man and the other four men all served in the same theaters of war,” Nadia said. “I believe he was using this receiver to find them. We need to locate the transponder so that we don’t have any more surprises. We should sweep the area to make sure that he was working alone. If he was alone he was a control and if he was not alone we are probably looking for three men or another team.” Nadia switched off the transponder leaving Ted and Tom to deal with the cleanup.
When Nadia arrived in Boris’s laboratory she held up her hand to signal Boris for silence before he could speak a word. Nadia switched on the transponder which indicated a very strong signal, but it was not coming from Boris’s lab. Nadia followed the signal into the forensics lab and up to the suitcase that was loaded with ammunition. Upon close inspection she found the other signal. When she destroyed the chip the transponder continued to transmit and Nadia found a second chip in another area of the suitcase.
“We were so damn worried about the laptop sending out a locator signal that we forgot to check the other things.” Nadia switched off the transponder. Nick switched on the detector finding that another transponder was also sending a signal.