A guard was lying supine a couple dozen feet away. Vail ran to his side. His nose was viciously broken and his right elbow was fractured, bent into an unnatural angle. He had no pulse.
Kerwin’s proficient in Krav Maga.
The man’s watch was on the right, so he was probably left-handed.
Must’ve grabbed the wrist of his gun hand and yanked downward, then fractured his arm with a sharp left thrust through the joint. She swung her right palm up and into his nose, driving it into his brain.
Vail glanced around but did not see his handgun.
Her phone vibrated with a message:
bomb blew hole in back door
looks like high order explosive prob c4
kerwin gone
setting up a radius
Son of a bitch.
Vail replied:
hallway guard dead
she has his gun
Vail holstered both her phone and Glock as she entered the interrogation room. The chair Kerwin had been sitting in was askew, the handcuffs unlocked and lying on the floor.
Out in the hallway, armed men in black tactical uniforms ran by.
As Vail knelt to examine the cuffs she heard footsteps behind her. She reached for her Glock and pivoted in one motion—but saw Rusakov standing there, forearms tense, the HK in her right hand.
“She had to have that bomb on her,” Rusakov said.
“That and a handcuff key. My guess is, when she got loose, whoever was watching her hit the alarm. When the guard pulled the door open, she blitz-attacked him. I don’t think he knew what hit him.”
“Krav Maga.”
“Yeah.”
“But what about the handcuff key?” Rusakov asked. “Let’s get the surveillance tape, see if we can figure out what went down.”
“Possible to miss a small key like that on a pat-down, but they wanded her. The magnetometer would’ve picked it up.”
“Not if it was ceramic.”
It was Zheng. He pushed past Rusakov and entered the room.
“A ceramic handcuff key?” Vail asked.
“Small, narrow, very strong. Probably concealed in the cuff of her blouse sleeve.”
“But a block of C-4?” Vail asked.
Rusakov glanced around the room. “C-4 can be molded. So don’t think ‘block.’ Think small and cylindrical, like a thin cigar or—”
“A tampon.” Vail winced. “That’s just … gross.”
Rusakov shrugged. “I did it once. Good place for concealment. Very convenient if not very comfortable. Not saying that’s what she did, but it’s possible.”
“And the detonator? Blasting cap has wires, a little bit of metal. How’d the wand not pick that up?”
“Maybe it did,” Zheng said. “They’re small, like the size and shape of a pen—but only half its size. She could’ve hidden it in her jeans with Velcro, right by the zipper. Wand goes off at the zipper, guy thinks it’s a normal false positive.”
“Still, whoever frisked and wanded her has some explaining to do.”
Rusakov looked into the corridor. “Worse than that. This happened in front of the brass. None of us are gonna come out of this without some bruises.”
Vail stood up. “I wish the same could be said about Jessie Kerwin.”
36
Deep Space
En Route to the Moon
So what do you think is going on?” DeSantos asked. “This can’t be jamming. I mean, if someone jams your comms, you know about it—and you know who’s doing it.”
“Yeah,” Stroud said.
“From what I know, there are different kinds of jamming—obvious or subtle. China goes the obvious route—they play a loop of Chinese music—you know you’re being jammed and you know China’s behind it. But Russia is more stealthy in everything they do, so their style is subtle. And that fits with what we’ve been experiencing with Patriot. We don’t hear anything—no noise, distorted speech, pulses. Just quiet.”
“This is not jamming,” Uzi said. “You have to break the line of sight communication. To jam an uplink type signal, they’d have to overpower the sending unit by creating significant noise on the frequency that was being transmitted.”
“True,” Carson said, “but there’s more to it because NASA and the DOD use the Deep Space Network for spacecraft.”
“Which is?” DeSantos asked.
“The DSN has three main sites, spaced equally across the Earth—about 120 degrees apart—the Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex at Fort Irwin in southern California, the one in Madrid, and the third in Canberra, Australia. Humongous antenna dishes—that’s how mission control sends commands to the Patriot if/when needed. It also receives telemetry data from the Patriot.”
“And once we got 18,000 miles away from Earth, we’re always in view of at least one of the antenna stations,” Stroud said. “Even if they wanted to risk that kind of aggressive act, after about eight hours we’d switch to the other array and reestablish comms. And there’s no way they could jam the Goldstone location because—”
“It’s at Fort Irwin,” DeSantos said. “So what are you saying?”
Uzi sighed. “It’s malware. There’s code written to cut out our comms.”
“Have you made any progress?” Stroud asked.
“Look at it this way,” Uzi said. “The average iPhone app has about 30,000 lines of code. The space shuttle had about 400,000. A Boeing 787, over 5 million. The F-35 fighter jet, our most advanced, has well over 10 million. Facebook has around 70 million lines of code. Orion? Hundreds of millions. Once you get past 100,000, it doesn’t really matter, does it? I have to take shortcuts to check it.”
No one spoke. DeSantos, for one, was trying to absorb the enormity of the task—and the chances of Uzi successfully rooting out the malware. “So you’re saying we’re fucked.”
“I’m doing my best.”
“I’ve always found that your best gets the job done, Boychick.”
“All I’m saying … keep your expectations in check. You’ll never hear me admit this back on Earth … but I’m not Superman.”
“Well then,” DeSantos said, “it’s a good thing we’re no longer on Earth. Because we really need the Man of Steel to come through.”
37
Fairfax, Virginia
I’ve got a problem,” Vail said. She gripped the phone tightly, unsure of what kind of response she was going to get.
Deputy Marshal Lewis Hurdle laughed. “Something tells me you want to make this my problem too.”
“That’s half accurate.”
“We didn’t exactly leave things on a good note, Karen.”
She could not dispute that. But they had worked successfully together to secure a highly dangerous fugitive—and cracked a serial killer case in the process. It was a win all the way around. But clearly Hurdle did not see it that way.
“Look,” Vail said, “we did our jobs on a very difficult case and the good guys won.”
“And the FBI took credit. Like you people always do.”
Let it go, Karen. You need his help. Setting the record straight isn’t important.
“Then on behalf of the entire Federal Bureau of Investigation, I apologize.”
“And you still need my help,” Hurdle said.
“Nothing’s changed in the last thirty seconds.”
Vail heard an audible groan over the line.
“Fine,” Hurdle said with a sigh. “What do you need?”
“I need you to meet me. Name the place.”
“Can’t we just discuss it over the phone? I’m in the middle of two cases.”
“No. This is sensitive.”
“Starbucks in Fairfax on Main. Half an hour.”
Truth was, Vail was in no mood to have a sit-down with anyone, let al
one a law enforcement officer who would prefer to do just about anything other than help her. But she knew he was good at what he did—and right now, she needed his talents.
She arrived five minutes after their appointed time.
“You have a lot of nerve being late to an appointment you just about begged to have.”
Vail sat down. “I didn’t beg.” There was a jacketed tall coffee at her seat. “This for me?”
“It is.”
“That’s very sweet of you. Thanks.”
He gestured at the cup. “I hope the strychnine isn’t too acidic. It’d kill the wonderful taste of the premium coffee beans.”
Funny. “Nice to see you’re in good spirits.”
“Yeah, well …” He cleared his throat. “Despite how things ended, I did enjoy working with you.”
“Same here. Which is why I called you. I respect your abilities.”
“Is this business or personal?”
Vail lifted her coffee. “Business. But not Bureau business.”
Hurdle tilted his head. “Okay, you got me. What the hell are you talking about?”
“I can’t say.”
Hurdle squinted. “What?”
“Look,” Vail said, leaning forward and lowering her voice, “I need to locate this woman.” She slid a small photo forward. “Name’s Jessie Kerwin. She went fugitive a little over an hour ago.”
“What else do you have?”
Vail took a drink of her coffee. “Not a whole lot. Half-page bio. Bottom line …” Vail spoke more softly. “She’s a person of international interest. Lethal in hand-to-hand combat. We had just … arrested her and she escaped custody. She’s very smart, paranoid, well-prepared, skilled in Krav Maga, armed—and very dangerous.”
“And why can’t the FBI find her?”
“Because you guys are the best at finding fugitives.”
“This you talking or the Bureau?”
Vail frowned. “The Bureau. But I know it to be true.”
“So if it’s a Bureau case, why all the hush-hush? This counterterrorism related?”
Why didn’t I think of that? “You could say that.”
Hurdle accepted that and picked up the photo. “This may take awhile. I’m not even sure how many LEOs I can put on this,” he said, using the abbreviation for law enforcement officers. “I wasn’t kidding when I said I was in the middle of two cases.”
“Glad you brought that up. You can’t involve anyone else on your task force. Just you.”
“Just me. You’re not serious. What the hell are you drinking?”
“Coffee laced with strychnine.”
“Karen, you saw firsthand how the fugitive task force works, how we track down these knuckleheads. One person can’t do it on his own. Not if there’s urgency.”
“There is. Urgency. Lives depend on it.”
Hurdle sat back and took a sip from his cup. “And who would I be working for?”
“I don’t know how to answer that. Take some sick time.”
“Sick time? What the hell are you talking about?”
“This is unofficial. Off the books. I’ll find a way of getting you paid your normal salary for the time you work the case. But you can’t tell anyone what you’re doing. Not even your boss.”
“Karen.” He examined her face, shook his head, then stood up. “I don’t think this is a good idea. Good luck wit—”
“Sit down.”
“No. We’re done here.”
“Hurdle. Sit down. I’ll—” She glanced around. “You’ll be working for a federal agency. I just can’t tell you which one.”
He pushed his chair in. “Good seeing you, Karen.”
As Hurdle left, Vail dug out her OPSIG phone and made a call. Ten minutes later someone was calling someone else—and twenty minutes after that Hurdle walked back in.
He leaned his palms on the table, putting his face a foot from Vail’s, the look on his face a mixture of anger and astonishment and fear. “Who the hell are you involved with?”
“I can’t say.”
Hurdle looked at her long and hard.
If he had a problem with me before, I certainly didn’t score any points with this maneuver.
“If there was another way, I’d do it. But you’re the best I know. And this is important.”
Truth was, there were others in OPSIG working on locating Jessie Kerwin. But catching fugitives was the bread and butter of the US Marshals Service. It was in their DNA. And Hurdle had proved his worth. It was risky involving someone outside the group, but Vail made the case that it was necessary. She hoped it did not backfire on her—and OPSIG.
“I can’t believe I’m doing this.” Hurdle kicked the chair away from the table and sat down heavily. “Tell me everything you know about Kerwin.”
VAIL HAD DIFFICULTY concentrating. Her feet felt heavy and her brain had shut down halfway to her house. It was dark out and drizzling.
She had not had a good night’s sleep in … well, too long … and she just wanted to crawl into Robby’s arms and saw wood for a few days.
When Vail walked in, Hershey bounded over and jumped up to greet her. But Robby was engrossed in his phone. She waited a moment for him to react, to say something—anything—to her. Instead he continued to fiddle with the handset.
“Your wife walks in the door and you don’t even look up? Even our dog came over and gave me a kiss. Is what’s on your phone more interesting than me?”
“No, no, no,” Robby said, walking toward her and mouthing something at her: Look at this.
Vail read his lips and realized what he was getting at—and whatever it was, he was purposely facing away from the security camera they had recently put in the family room.
“Is that two lesbians?” She tapped his arm, letting him know that she understood something was not right.
“Not that I find anything more interesting than you.”
She playfully elbowed him. “Liar.”
Robby pointed at the screen, which was open to the app that controlled their cameras. “You into that? I think it’s kind of arousing.”
“Why don’t you show me.” She took his hand and led him into the bedroom. After stepping into their walk-in closet—Hershey squeezed in because he did not want to be left out—Robby gestured at what he had noticed: in the camera settings, the status LED was set to the default—on.
Vail knew that they had manually disabled the bright green lights so intruders would not notice that they had wireless surveillance cams.
He leaned over and touched his lips to her right ear. “I opened the app to reconfigure it—and to see how the status light could’ve gotten turned on. But things were tweaked, the settings were all wrong. Things I’d never do.”
She put her index finger to her mouth, then texted Knox.
could be listening devices in my house so Im
texting--ok to proceed?
She silenced her phone so the reply would not arouse suspicions. Knox wrote back immediately:
yes your OPSIG phone is safe because it was
preconfigured without access rights to make changes
so your phone isnt vulnerable
its locked down against cloning and hacking
preventing remote installations
Vail showed Robby the reply and wrote back to Knox:
whats the plan
“Oh, honey, that feels so good.”
Robby looked at her and chuckled.
Knox’s reply rumbled in her hand:
im sending over a team
“Ohhh, Robby … don’t stop.”
“You kidding? I can go all night.”
Vail shot him a look that said, “Don’t oversell it, honey.”
should i shut down the modem or
cu
t off the internet
Knox replied a moment later:
no we may be able to tap in without
them seeing and trace the signal
someone looking in on you has to
send a signal out to the ones who
are watching
we may be able to use that
sit tight play it cool
Vail showed Robby the screen and then took his hand and led him out of the closet. She playfully shoved his chest, pushing him onto the bed. “We’ve got about fifteen minutes,” she whispered in his ear.
He undid her blouse. “More than enough time.”
38
Deep Space
Moon’s Gravitational Pull
Patriot was speeding through space at an accelerating rate, having entered the Moon’s sphere of influence. As they got closer, the Moon’s gravitational effects increased and pulled Patriot along as if a rope were attached to its nose and it was sliding along an expanse of ice.
“We’re running low on time,” Stroud said. “What’s your status?”
Uzi focused on his screen as he worked the keyboard. “It’s common for astronauts to patch code. Ground control tells them what to do and they make the changes. Or they use a JIT compiler and organize the binary into a specific memory location—embedded programming. But we don—”
“Boychick,” DeSantos said. “Don’t know about Cowboy and Digger, but I don’t have any idea what you’re saying.”
“We don’t have ground control engineers to help us out here, so it’s just me. I’ve found the malware and I’m getting rid of it. But I also just found a transmit circuit with two chips that controlled broadcast. In the same circuit. So I’m thinking, maybe it’s redundancy because radio is a critical system? But no other circuits were duplicated. I pulled up an online schematic for the circuit board and the two don’t match. The real board doesn’t have that second chip.”
“How can that be?”
“Don’t know,” Uzi said. “But I’m gonna open it up and take a look.”
Dark Side of the Moon Page 21