Fires of Midnight

by Jon Land

  Josh’s enthusiasm dampened somewhat as reality interfered with the information rolling across the screen. If Group Six had retained Chaney, it was Group Six that must have been after him and, by connection, must have been responsible for taking Harry away. Why? What exactly did Group Six do?

  Josh turned his attention back to the machine and began to read again.

  Group Six’s command and communications center was located on the third floor. Larsen had just isolated the source of the intrusion into the computer network when Fuchs stormed in, followed closely by Haslanger.

  “We’ve got it, sir: Orlando, Florida. Hyatt Hotel.” Larsen’s eyes came off the screen. “Permission to shut down system now, sir, please. He’s in deep, into classified reports.”

  “No,” said Haslanger. “Not until we’ve got him.”

  “Time, sir. A few more minutes and he’ll be inside any part of our system he wants to. He could wipe out our data banks!”

  Fuchs was already holding a phone to his ear. “Patch me through to Sinclair in the field in Orlando. He’s on cellular.”

  Josh was staring at the screen. Over the past several minutes, he’d slowed his scan significantly, amazed by the depth of what Group Six had accomplished but frightened by the scope of it.

  Weapons. They made weapons. The best equipment, the best technology, the best hardware and software in existence, and they used it to make weapons.

  What did they want with him? What was Group Six’s connection to the Handlers? Lacking answers, Josh felt his mind pull back in another direction.

  The best equipment …

  Their inventory and laboratory development was unprecedented, made what he’d had to work with at Harvard look like a grammar school chemistry set.

  Josh began scanning again. Strange how he could access all of Group Six’s most intimate secrets, but nowhere in any of the data banks could he locate its address.

  Maybe, he thought, I don’t have to.

  “We’re moving into position now, sir,” Sinclair reported.

  “We’ve got him, Doctor,” Fuchs said to Haslanger.

  “Something’s wrong,” the old man responded. “The boy would know we could trace him.”

  The colonel looked back at Larsen. “Is he still scanning?”

  Larsen checked his screen, hit a few keys. “Yes, sir.”

  “Can you bring up what he’s seeing?” Haslanger asked.

  “I think so. Let me just run a loop and bypass here … . Yes, he’s spent the last several minutes going over our experiments involving molecular technology.”

  Haslanger and Fuchs looked at each other.

  “What’s he looking for, Doctor?”

  Haslanger couldn’t take his eyes off the screen. “I don’t know.”

  Sinclair’s team still consisted of fifteen men, not enough to blanket the spacious grounds of the Hyatt Grand Cypress, but easily enough to take the boy, who, according to reports, was in room 1063. The room overlooked the spacious pool complex consisting of three separate but interconnected pools sprawled across a rocky mountain motif of waterfalls, tunnels and water slides. A single man with binoculars posted on the man-made beach confirmed Joshua Wolfe’s presence in the room before Sinclair moved. He spaced the remainder of his team strategically across the tenth floor. He left three lined up shoulder to shoulder a yard back from the door to room 1063, while a fourth affixed a sophisticated listening device attached to a set of earphones to the door. He listened briefly and then turned back to Sinclair.

  “He’s not working the computer,” the man with the earphones reported. He yanked the device free as a large man replaced him before the door. “But his position seems to be unchanged.”

  Sinclair stepped back and used his walkie-talkie to contact the man down on the beach. “Can you still see him?”

  “Negative.”

  Sinclair felt his nerves tug at him and decided to waste no more time. “Do it,” he ordered the large man who had taken up position directly in front of the door.

  One swift kick from his steel-toed boot crashed the door inward. It banged up against the wall and might have bounced closed again if the three men with tranquilizer guns drawn hadn’t rushed in just ahead of Sinclair. They froze in matched firing positions, their crouches allowing Sinclair to gaze past them at a solitary figure seated on the bed, a laptop computer resting unplugged on one side of him and a black backpack on the other. The figure stood up and grabbed his backpack casually, working a wad of gum through his mouth.

  “What kept you?” asked Joshua Wolfe.

  3

  CLAIR

  WASHINGTON, WEDNESDAY, 10:00 P.M.

  TWENTY-ONE

  “It ain’t good, boss,” Sal Belamo announced grimly as he stepped through the door of the room in Washington’s Watergate Hotel. He was holding rolls of blueprint plans under one arm and an attaché case in the other.”Got everything you asked for and more,” he said to McCracken.”Satellite overviews, original schemas, final retouched blueprints, confidential budget summaries, development file, personnel. Yup, I got it all and what I got I don’t like.”

  McCracken stood there looking as Belamo dropped the blueprints onto the double bed and laid the briefcase down next to them. Besides the slightly scarred ears and bumpy nose that angled sharply to the right, Sal Belamo was generally nondescript. The nose had come courtesy of Carlos Monzon, who had broken it both times Sal had made the mistake of getting in the ring with him. Belamo had learned life on the streets, boxing and killing at about the same time. Like Blaine, he never seemed to change. Certainly the bald spot on the crown of his combed-back short hair was a little more prominent, and the lines under his liquidy eyes might have deepened into furrows. But the important things, like the cocky way he held those eyes and his perpetual sneer, were worn, Blaine guessed, even in his sleep.

  “How much you know about Group Six, boss?”

  “Beyond their name and function, not much. I also know that quite a stink’s been raised since their existence became public knowledge.”

  “Their existence is about the only thing that’s gone public. Group Six’s function varies depending on who you ask in Washington. Everyone on the in knows they’re out there but the specific knowledge depends on the person’s role. Different stories to suit different needs, you get my drift.”

  “Sounds like standard government politicking.”

  “Politicking, yes. Standard, no. We’re talking a major bullshitting job here. Next best thing to keeping Group Six’s existence secret altogether is to keep it confused. Ask ten different people what they’re about and you get at least five different answers and five repeats of the runarounds the respondents have been given.”

  McCracken nodded. “Not the first time.”

  “No, the same runaround was given about Los Alamos and the Manhattan Project way back when. Group Six enjoys the biggest scientific commitment the government has ever made since then and, depending how you balance the books, that includes NASA. Hell, Group Six could get funding for a Mars trip if there was a chance the voyagers might come back with new weapons for the twenty-first century.”

  “Nice to see our future’s in good hands.”

  “Yeah, well, Group Six has got so many layers that most of ’em probably don’t even know about the existence of the others.”

  “The Manhattan Project again.”

  “And again the layers fit together without the kind of seams that usually rip.” Belamo pointed at the briefcase. “Their personnel roster is somewhere in there, but don’t bother yourself with it. The big boys aren’t listed, including your Nazi Haslanger. Group Six’s director is an army colonel named Lester Fuchs who’s been on the outskirts of the big time his whole career. Any medals he’s got on his chest come from surviving administrative battles. Son of a bitch never saw war, and here he is trying to redefine how it’s fought. Thing is he’s in deep shit himself. Seems like the real powers behind Group Six in Washington are starting to lose patie
nce with the lack of return on their investment. All they got is a string of zeroes to show for all the zeroes on the checks they’ve made out. Most recent major fuck-up was yesterday.”

  “Yesterday?”

  “Dozen soldiers got themselves microwaved by some ray that didn’t work according to Hoyle.”

  McCracken raised his eyebrows, then gazed down at the stack of blueprints. “Where is this place?”

  “The grounds of Brookhaven National Labs in Upton, Long Island.”

  “And to think I almost bought a summer place around there once.”

  “Not on the grounds of Brookhaven you didn’t, boss. Take a look at these.”

  Belamo unrolled the first of his blueprints and fished through the briefcase for the proper eight-by-ten photographs, courtesy of pilfered satellite reconnaissance, to plop down over it. “To start with, Brookhaven’s got its own private community on the order of fifteen square miles, all of it fenced in and guarded on what used to be the property of Camp Upton ‘round World War II. See the heavy tree cover that hides the facility from passersby on the William Floyd Parkway? Whole place is built into a scrubby pine barren atop a watershed area. EPA probably wouldn’t let you build it today, but this is Brookhaven we’re talking about. Got their own post office, minimart, and direct freight line running off the Long Island Railroad lines. No passenger traffic, ’fore you get your hopes up.”

  McCracken’s eyes finished scanning the photographs Sal had laid out. “Lots of buildings. Which one’s Group Six?”

  “None of these. Some of ’em are old, most new. Each has its own designation and purpose. Got a weather station in one, particle accelerator in another, and a nuclear breeder reactor in this big tower here, just for starters. Rest are divided between genetics, advanced molecular shit and assorted other biotech specialties I can’t even pronounce.” Sal lowered his finger to a spot in the center of the overview blueprint. “And here we have your ordinary, run-of-the-mill, toxic waste dump. Locals just gotta love that. Complaints of ground water contamination have gone up tenfold in the past five years.”

  “Don’t tell me—since Group Six opened.”

  Sal smiled and nodded. His finger plunged downward again, popping against a crease near the right-hand corner of the map. “Got itself headquartered right here in Brookhaven’s northeast corner. Can’t even see its private security fence from the rest of the installation, ’cept maybe for this farmland over here they’re growing God knows what on. Thick pine growth handles the natural camouflage. Rear of the base has plenty of terrain for full-scale weapons testing.”

  McCracken’s eyes fell on the blueprints. “So how do I get in?”

  “You don’t,” Sal said flatly. “What Group Six has got protecting it inside their fence gives a whole new meaning to the term ‘three-zone security.’”

  Belamo unrolled three of the blueprints and scattered another series of enlarged satellite photos from inside his briefcase randomly atop them upon the bed.

  “Group Six may be contained on Brookhaven property,” he continued,

  “but every connection between the two of them ends there. What we got is a facility within a facility. In fact, the only reason Group Six’s base is on those grounds at all is because Brookhaven had this shell of a new addition built before the powers that be determined they had run out of money and need. Group Six came in with plenty of both. Finished the facility in record time and was laying in the security even as the first filing cabinets started to arrive. Security like nothing we’ve seen before.”

  “And me thinking we’d seen it all …”

  “Big day for firsts, boss. See, the way it is most times, high-security installations aren’t prepared to fend off one intruder. They’re set up to defend against a full-scale armed assault or terrorist action. But Group Six is different. Group Six’s primary concern is sabotage or espionage, which one or two men can work more efficiently than a group, and all their security is set up with that in mind. Wait till you get a look at these, see what I’m talking about.”

  Sal leaned over to visually highlight the objects of his discussion. His knees cracked and he had to hunch his back to bend.

  “Like I said, what you got is your basic three-zone-security model, except there’s nothing basic about it. The electrified fence around the complex doesn’t even count, so the first zone runs along this grid.” Belamo traced his hands across a blue strip that circled the entire building on the overview plans. “Motion detectors laid with underground, interconnected wire and rigged to changes in ground mass above. You take a step, you disturb the dirt and barn!—they know you’re there.” Sal’s finger moved to a red strip that encircled the complex inside the blue strip. “Here we have your basic ultraviolet spools of light that register intrusion when broken. Thing is they don’t just run in straight symmetrical lines or squares; they crisscross on an ever-changing computer-altered basis. Prevents anyone on the inside from selling the schema to ambitious sorts like us. In other words, we’re fucked.”

  “And you’ve only mentioned two of the three zones.”

  “You don’t want to hear about the last one, boss, believe me.” McCracken looked down at the unrolled plans and realized there was no third color grid to complement the blue and red. “So where is it?”

  “Everywhere.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I brought you a picture so you could see for yourself.” Sal riffled through his briefcase and extracted a single eight-by-ten photograph that was clipped to the top of a formal memo. “Here, have a look.”

  Blaine took the packet and examined the photo. The picture showed what looked like a huge steel mushroom, a foot-long shaft attached to an umbrellalike top.

  “Looks like an underground sprinkler.”

  “And it works on pretty much the same principle, boss. Fact, I think it says somewhere that’s where the idea came up for it, ’cept it fires death instead of water. They got maybe five hundred of them rigged belowground and wired to the motion detectors and infrareds.”

  “Wired to do what?”

  Sal removed still more enhanced satellite reconnaissance photos from his case. “First I want you to take a look at these shots. Tell me what you don’t see.”

  “What I don’t see?”

  “Yeah. Won’t take you long.”

  McCracken scanned the shots that caught various angles of a large dark slab of a building sitting in a clearing. Belamo was right: it didn’t take him long to see what was missing.

  “No perimeter guards,” Blaine pronounced. “Nobody in evidence patrolling.”

  “A thing of the past, boss, at Group Six. Rendered superfluous, you might say.”

  “Because of those mushrooms?”

  “Laser-firing mushrooms. Motion detector and/or the ultraviolet rigging picks up an intruder and tracks him at the same time it sends a message instantly to mushroom control. Mushroom things rise out of the ground and home in on the intruder’s signal, firing automatically once he enters one of their grids. Nothing left to chance that way.”

  Blaine turned his attention to the overview schema, then lifted it aside to check a more complete blueprint of Group Six’s headquarters. “What about an airdrop onto the roof here, Sal? Say off a glider or a quietrunning chopper?”

  Belamo shook his head. “Forget it, boss. It doesn’t show up clearly in the plans, but the roof surface is electrified.”

  McCracken nodded slowly, still checking the plans. “Where does Group Six’s power supply come from?”

  “Doesn’t matter. They got backup generators capable of running the entire security system at eighty-percent efficiency. Not to mention that in the event of a power failure, all exit doors are automatically sealed with cobalt bars. More to keep people in than out in this case, figuring a power failure would create the ideal diversion for an infiltrator to escape.”

  Blaine was looking at the plans like the page of a book he’d been over a dozen times. “Diversion might be just what we nee
d.”

  “Better be an awful big one, you ask me.”

  “When exactly does this security system stand down?”

  “According to some boys at the Pentagon who’ve seen it firsthand, never—not even when someone authorized’s coming or going.”

  “Down this road … here.” McCracken traced a route that wound its way through the Brookhaven complex starting at the main security gate.

  “Yup.”

  “Deliveries?”

  Sal Belamo shook his head. “No truck even gets close. Everything is offloaded on Brookhaven grounds and picked up by Group Six personnel.”

  “Security is made to be broken, Sal. There’s always a flaw. The trick is finding it.” McCracken checked the plans again. “According to these, Group Six’s building has three complete underground levels, along with these high-confidence storage holds here, here and here.” He traced his hand farther outward well beyond the scope of the building. “And there are these underground passageways that run from Brookhaven outward. Unfinished, it looks like, when Brookhaven abandoned the building Group Six ended up occupying. I think you can get maybe halfway into the security zone before you run into a wall.”

  “Not far enough, you ask me.”

  “Wait a minute,” McCracken said suddenly, his eyes drawn back to something on a blueprint enlarged to contain the area encompassing the toxic waste dumping facility to the start of Group Six’s security zones. He tapped his finger against a spot on the original plans marked in red. “Take a look at this.”

  “Holy shit,” Sal muttered, gazing over Blaine’s shoulder. “I never …”

  “Think it’s big enough for a man?”

  “What’s the difference? You can see from the plans it don’t go far enough.”

  “Just tell me if it’s big enough.”

  “You got something figured, boss?”

  McCracken was comparing the blueprint sketches to some of the photos Sal had scattered atop them. His eyes kept coming back to one area.