by Vicki Hinze
Barber looked her in the eye. “Your ex-husband designed the security system at A-267.”
“Surely that’s no surprise to anyone, especially to Commander Conlee. Austin’s designed secure systems for nearly every segment of the federal government.”
“Yes, ma’am. But someone inside A-267 corrupted this system. Commander Conlee will give you the details when we get to the site.”
Her stomach clenched, and it wasn’t protesting the food. “They think Austin is responsible?”
“Actually, they don’t. He hasn’t accessed the site in over six months. But Captain Mendoza being missing, and the system being corrupted by someone savvy on the inside, has some validity as evidence of an arrangement between them. It seems suspicious, so Intel is checking it out.”
Could Austin do this? Sybil chewed a bite of burger and looked at Jonathan. They both knew the truth. Austin had the skills. He could. But would he?
Barber shifted on the seat. “One other thing, ma’am.”
Jonathan cleared his throat. Touched his fingertip to his chin.
Picking up on the signal, Sybil dabbed at her own with her napkin. “Yes?”
Barber focused on her neck, unable to meet her gaze. “There’s a strong rumor going around that you’re committing treason.”
Sybil choked on a long draw of tea.
“What?” Jonathan nearly came up off the seat. “Look, Barber, so far in this situation, the vice president has nearly lost her life three times. She’s exhausted and still up to her ass in alligators. This is no time for you to be joking around.”
“I’m not joking, Agent Westford.”
Treason. Her? Sybil couldn’t swallow. She had a mouthful of tea, but there was no way she could get it down. Absorbing the shock, she slotted her disbelief, her outrage. How dare the bastards even consider her capable of committing treason?
“It’s related to what Intel believes is an unconnected matter, ma’am,” Barber said. “Some reporter leaked word that you’re passing envelopes to an old man at the Vietnam Wall.”
“Oh, for Christ sake. We know all—”
Sybil silenced Westford with a look.
Barber waited for one of them to clarify and disclose the nature of the association, but Sybil couldn’t talk. And even if she could, she wouldn’t defend herself against something so stupid. A reporter. No doubt, Sam Sayelle. So much for him having a change of heart about her because he had done the broadcasts. Indignant as hell, she lifted her chin. “Word is wrong.”
“The president and Commander Conlee agree,” Barber said. “At least for now. But there are others, so if you’d care to elaborate …”
Sybil looked over at Jonathan, automatically checking his shoes. He was still wearing his sneakers, of course; there hadn’t been time to change them. Unable to gauge the seriousness of this—hell, wasn’t treason always serious—she looked to his face. His jaw was locked down as tight as A-267, but no doubt glinted in his eyes, only fury, and she was grateful to see it.
Until that moment, if asked who in the world would believe her unconditionally, she would have named only Gabby. Now Sybil could add Jonathan to the short list. She felt good about that. Scared stiff, but good.
“Ma’am?” Barber prodded. “Would you care to elaborate?”
She stared him right in the eye. “No, I wouldn’t.”
The limo stopped in front of the three hangars. An ambulance sat parked near the one on the left and a dozen armed men stood on point, surrounding the building. Commander Conlee moved toward them, his stride long and eager, a stubby cigar clenched between his teeth. Jonathan got out of the car. Barber and Sybil followed.
“Commander,” she said to Conlee.
“Ma’am. Westford. Good to have you back.”
“Thank you. I appreciate the broadcasts, but Sam Sayelle, Commander?”
A sly-fox quirk twisted his lips. “Of all the media, who would you consider the least apt to help you?”
“Valid point. But can we trust him?”
“He got a solid, personal referral from a man who held my life, and the lives of my men, in his hands for years.”
That worked for her. She nodded. “What was the holdup in the clearing?”
“That’ll have to wait, ma’am.” He nodded toward a safe-zone area where five men stood waiting for them. “Bomb squad is this way.”
Bomb squad. Sybil’s stomach flipped. “What are the odds of the briefcase blowing up when we unlock it?”
Conlee answered without shifting his gaze. “Fifty-fifty.”
Her breath caught, and she swallowed a gasp, wheeled her gaze to Jonathan.
“Seventy-five, twenty-five,” he said, then turned to Conlee. “It’s not a simple system.”
“Two known sensors. One is building proximity.”
“What’s the other?” Jonathan asked.
Conlee’s frustration surfaced. The creases in his face deepened to grooves. “We don’t know.”
Sybil followed the commander over the asphalt.
She was filthy, caked with dry mud and vegetation from the swamp. Her clothes had been reduced to rags. She wore no makeup, and her hair was wind-tossed and wild. All of that conspired, yet none of it succeeded, at making her feel the least bit uncomfortable. But she hated—hated and resented—what walking toward the left hangar’s drab green entrance in Westford’s socks was doing to her insides. That bothered her nearly as much as the seventy-five, twenty-five odds of the briefcase blowing up.
Wearing a man’s socks was such a personal, intimate— and sincerely insignificant—thing. Why did it bother her so much? Why did bare feet bother her so much?
Five men stood waiting just outside the entrance door. Suited out in black bomb gear, they reminded her of the three men in the swamp. Their expressions were equally serious.
“This way, ma’am,” Conlee said. “We have a dilemma and you need to make a choice. It’ll take another forty minutes to get bomb gear that’ll fit you here. We can wait. But by then Senator Marlowe will be dead.”
Terrific. Sybil gave Conlee a negative nod. “That’s unacceptable.”
“Ma’am, I strongly recommend you wait,” Jonathan said.
“I’m not going to let him die out of fear of what could happen, Jonathan.”
“Take my gear, ma’am,” the squad leader said. “It’s not a great fit, but it will give you some protection. It’s better than nothing.”
Touched, Sybil smiled. “I can’t do that, either, but thank you for offering.” Terrified, and doing her best to hide it, she looked back to Conlee. “Let’s do it.”
Conlee hesitated, shot Jonathan a worried look, but finding nothing in his expression to convince him they could change her mind, nodded. “This way, then.”
In the distance, Sybil saw a Plexiglas-shielded desk and, another twenty yards beyond it, a circular concrete pad. “Wouldn’t it be safer over there, in the testing zone?”
“Proximity to the building,” Jonathan reminded her of the Ballast sensor.
She stepped up to a makeshift table within twenty feet of the hangar. Jonathan moved to her side. The commander stopped across the table from her. Both looked as peaceful as if they were meeting at a casual social function. “You two need to get behind the shield.”
“I trust my men,” Conlee said, clenching his jaw.
“So do I, but I don’t trust Ballast,” she said. “I know they’re responsible, and if the need should arise, I’m expecting you two to prove it and help President Lance get us out of this.”
The squad leader set the case on the table and slid the commander a telling look.
“It’ll be fine, ma’am.”
She shifted her gaze to Jonathan.
“I’m not leaving you again.” He spoke softly, but steel etched his tone and he was looking at Conlee, not at her.
How could they be so calm? She should issue them a direct order, but it would do about as much good as their objections to her not waiting for the gear, so she saved her breat
h.
“Has our current situation been explained to you, ma’am?”
A member of the bomb squad took the key.
“Not completely, Commander,” she said, doing her damnedest to focus on what the man was saying. Her heart was racing, thundering in her head, drowning out his voice.
“Command doesn’t have control of the facility, and the source perpetrator is unknown.”
“It’s Ballast, not PUSH. Didn’t you get our message?”
“We got it, but we haven’t been able to substantiate or verify it. Our resources are stretched pretty thin.”
Jonathan reiterated their certainty that the Band-Aid incident in Geneva had been a deliberate attack.
“That, too, is going to have to wait. Our number-one priority is to regain control of this facility. Secure Environet and our engineers are working on it. The entire security system has been overridden—they’re working on that, too.”
“So Austin is here?”
“No, ma’am. His engineers are working out of their own offices. Only Dr. Stone has A-267 clearance, and he needs team support to get what we need before midnight.”
The cuff jiggled at her raw wrist, and Sybil’s heart nearly banged through her ribs. “How many are locked in there?” She knew she’d been told at some point, but for the life of her, she couldn’t recall just then.
“Eleven in the outer rim, including the senator. Barber explained the senator’s medical challenge, right?”
“Yes, he did.” So had Conlee. He, too, was rattled. That was comforting.
The squad member ran some tests on the case, including some kind of scan. Sybil forced herself to look away, to not think about what he was doing. “How long has he been critical?”
“Too long. Dr. Richardson is amazed he’s still alive.” The commander’s gaze drifted to the case. He flinched, then stiffened. “The doc’s done what he can by phone, but the senator doesn’t need advice, he needs insulin, and that we haven’t been able to get to him.”
“Everything’s testing clear,” the squad leader said. “I’m going to insert the key now”
“Wait.” Jonathan, who had been intently studying the cuff, looked at the squad leader. “You can’t remove the cuff until the case is opened.”
“I see no evidence or reason—”
“Take my word for it.”
The squad leader looked to the commander. “Sir, we can remove the cuff and get Vice President Stone out of harm’s way.”
Sybil looked at Jonathan’s face and knew the only way anyone would open the cuff without first opening the case would be over his dead body. “Open the case, please.”
“But ma’am.”
“Open the case, Lieutenant.”
“Yes, ma’am.” The leader’s glare warned Jonathan he had better not be wrong.
Another jiggle at her wrist, then a loud click, and the locks on the case snapped open.
Tensed, Sybil waited for the explosion. Ten seconds lapsed. Ten more.
Jonathan’s eyes glinted. “Now key the cuff.”
The metal shifted against her wrist bone, and she drew in a sharp breath. “Westford?”
“They’re done, ma’am.”
The metal shackle fell away, and she swallowed a sigh of relief. At least in this, they had won. “What was the second sensor?”
The bomb squad member shrugged. “Nothing showed up in the case, ma’am.”
“Ballast never does anything without a purpose. See if we can find it.”
“It’s in the cuff,” Jonathan said. “It activates only if you remove the cuff before you disarm the case.”
“How did you know that, Agent Westford?”
“The building proximity warning,” he said cryptically, leaving it to the squad leader to decipher it beyond that.
Sybil looked at the squad members, circling the table, and met each gaze, one by one. “Thank you.”
The squad leader smiled. “You’re welcome, ma’am.” He took several steps back, joined the circle, then all five of them turned their backs.
Sybil considered that odd for a second and then realized that knowledge of what was inside the case could exceed their security clearances and they had positioned themselves to block the view of the others present. She allowed herself to relax and breathe again, then grasped the popped clasps on the briefcase and opened it wide. Inside, nestled on a solid bed of foam, was a small silver key.
“Make sure nothing is connected to it,” Jonathan said. “No triggers.”
Sybil pulled a visual and saw nothing, then lifted the edge and let her fingertip slide under the key. “It’s clear.”
He nodded, and she lifted the key out of the foam, eager to shut down the launch. “Where is the checkpoint?” she asked Conlee.
“This way.”
The three of them moved into the hangar, down a white-tiled hall unmarred by doors or windows, to an elevator. Outside it, two machines hugged the wall.
“You know they’ve reconfigured the system, ma’am,” Commander Conlee said. “It now requires more than just the key. The device has a new, and unfortunately unfamiliar, DNA-recognition security code.”
“What exactly is that?” An uneasy feeling pitted her stomach.
“I’ve just been briefed on it myself, but I’ll share as best I can. It’s a new device, both in technology and in design. Biometric secure systems, as you know, use unique, individual traits—such as the iris of the eye, fingerprints, bone structure—to positively identify specific, authorized people. This DNA device works in a manner similar to biometric devices and photocopying machines. An authorized user pricks their left thumb and then presses it to this plate.” He pointed to what looked like a small, absorbent pad.
“The chin pad?”
“It used to be a chin pad. Now you bleed on it. The pressed-thumb blood smear then contains the user’s thumbprint. The system converts the print and the user’s DNA to digital data and then compares both to stored, authorized user’s digital data. It’s a more complex system and, according to our experts, impossible to beat.”
“What happens if you use the key without the DNA blood match?”
“Ordinarily, we think an alarm notifies security. On this system, it activates a trigger that results in an immediate Peacekeeper launch.”
That deeply disturbed Sybil. What if she had been killed in the explosion? In the quicksand? By ET, the Ballast man with the white spot in his hair who had given her the penny and let her live because of the cookies and milk for Peris and Abdan, or by the snipers from the helicopter? “How do we know it’s configured for my blood?”
“We don’t—not for fact. The terrorists, who are still identifying themselves as PUSH, claim it is, but we haven’t been able to verify that yet. At this point, any attempt we make to verify could escalate a launch. They also reported that the blood must be fresh. No keeping stock in a fridge and pulling it out when it’s convenient.”
“For the last time, it’s Ballast, Commander. They’re just ducking responsibility.”
“Why?”
“I’m not sure.” Sybil’s feet throbbed from walking on concrete and tile. She shifted her weight, hoping the pain would ease up.
“Until we know that, we can’t risk not covering both.”
“Fine.” She shifted her weight again. “So we have to take Ballast’s word on it that it’s my blood?” Sybil hated this. “Why would Faust make it so difficult and then so easy for us to resolve a crisis he created?”
“Second thoughts?” the commander suggested.
“Maybe.” She looked to Jonathan.
He shrugged. “Maybe he doesn’t want the missile to detonate and strike China.”
“Ballast has no interests in China,” Sybil reminded him.
“PUSH does,” Conlee interjected.
“Could be why Ballast chose it to blame.” Sybil cocked her head. “Maybe Faust only wanted to stop the peace talks and continue his arms sales to Peris and Abdan. Maybe he never wa
nted to launch the missile.”
“Possible.” Conlee nodded. “But wouldn’t President Lance pick up negotiations where you left off?”
“Yes.”
“I have to disagree.”
Sybil and Conlee shifted their gazes to Jonathan, and she asked, “Why?”
“Because without you, Peris and Abdan’s premiers wouldn’t be in Geneva. They didn’t agree to the peace talks because they feared refusing the United States. They agreed to meet because of you. The president couldn’t get the warmongers talking, so how could he keep them talking?”
“Jonathan, I asked you not to call them that.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said, without swinging his gaze from the commander.
“Lance could,” Conlee said, “if Peris and Abdan thought she was dead.”
“You’re in the ball park but not on base,” Jonathan countered. “Faust needed a fail-safe to keep us preoccupied long enough for the seeds of doubt between Peris and Abdan to take root and grow. Even the UN doubted anyone other than Vice President Stone could pull off any kind of success.”
Conlee crossed his arms over his chest and mulled that over. “I have to admit, your deduction seems logical. But is it accurate?”
It felt accurate. Yet this whole situation felt like… more. What more, Sybil didn’t know, and that irritated her immensely. “I’m not sure. Is China still the target?”
“No, ma’am. Pakistan. But it’s still cycling. So far, this is the fourth country targeted.”
Faust had made arms deals with Pakistan. Major money. She’d had a hell of a time getting them to the negotiating table a year ago, and Faust still had ties there. Bombing them didn’t seem to be in line with Faust’s goals. “Have the cycles been verified?” Something in this target business just didn’t fit.
“That’s in progress, ma’am.”
She didn’t like having to rely on Faust’s information, but he couldn’t want a world war any more than anyone else. “Let’s go then.”
Clearly as concerned about them acting on Intel provided by Ballast or PUSH as she was, Commander Conlee passed her a blue lancelet and then nodded to one of his men. “Get the medical team on point.”
Sybil didn’t look at Jonathan, but she felt the heat of his gaze. It felt comforting. She didn’t like liking that, but she no longer hated it. Twisting off the rounded top of the lancelet, she exposed its sharp point. “Does it matter which thumb?”