by Dave Buschi
Enrique was not worried that the noise would transmit outside. But it no doubt meant they’d found James. Enrique pulled off his disposable scrubs. He was in the DECON chamber. Nothing had gone as planned.
He finished lacing his shoes. Savic, after a brief disappearing act, had informed him the men outside were using a bolt cutter to snip the chain.
“My men will be ready when you give the signal.”
“You need to make sure you get your men out of here.”
“We’ll do our part,” Savic said.
Enrique’s jaw set. He went to greet their visitors.
86
THE ruse had worked. It provided the distraction he needed. When the men started shooting James slipped away. They had him bottled and now they didn’t.
He’d known these men’s intentions, but it didn’t hurt to have it spelled out with bullets. It removed those remaining barriers in James’s head; allowed him to go where he needed to go. Put this in its proper context of black and white. He wasn’t a big fan of capital punishment. He thought it unnecessarily cruel, but he acknowledged that killing did have its place. There were evil people out there. These people certainly fit that bill.
These men and the ones who had gone after his girls were working for a pretty despicable outfit. James had seen enough when he’d worked his back door magic. He hadn’t connected every last dot, yet. But he’d painted enough of the picture to know who he was dealing with.
The Russian connection in this operation was Semion Mihajlovic. He was one of the Matryoshka dolls. James had followed his cyber trail to the end.
It was just a name at first, but a quick Internet search had told him the man’s character. Russian newspapers called him untouchable. He was a ruthless mob boss, head of an organization called the Solntsevskaya bratva.
Before James had unleashed his dogs, he’d done the five-minute skim, reading the various recent articles.
Just a sampling…
[Prostitution ring of young kidnapped teens attributed to the Solntsevskaya bratva. // Car bombing of a judge and his family—the signature killing style of the Solntsevskaya bratva. // Nuclear fission material gone missing, rumored to be the work of the Solntsevskaya bratva.]
Two hours ago, James had never even heard of such an outfit. Wikipedia had brought him up to speed in a hurry.
Man, he sure knew how to pick his enemies.
James headed towards the loading dock. It was time he got out of here. The neighborhood had gone to hell.
87
THE car was a boxy, late model, American made sedan. The three men each wore dark blue suits and white shirts. Each was fit looking.
Enrique met them at the front gate. They’d just finished cutting the two chains that Savic’s men had used to padlock the outer fence.
“Are you police? Did Paulson call you?”
The man flashed his ID. “No… FBI. Agent Hockney. These are my colleagues, Agent Martinez and Agent Chambers.”
“Thank God you’re here. I haven’t known what to do.” Enrique did his best to look frazzled, which considering the circumstances was not a problem.
“Calm down, son. What’s going on?”
“He’s inside. He doesn’t know I’m out here.”
“Who is inside?”
“My boss. He made me come here.” Enrique looked at the cut chains. He needed to be convincing. “Isn’t that considered illegal? Can you guys do that?”
“Article 16, the Patriot Act gives us the right...”
The sound of vehicles approaching interrupted them. The men turned. A white Cadillac Escalade, followed by a black Suburban was coming down the drive.
“Are you expecting visitors?”
Enrique nodded. “I called one of our engineers.”
The man seemed to hesitate. The two vehicles were about fifty yards down the drive. He gave a look towards his colleague who had his phone pressed to his ear.
His colleague nodded back. “Gotcha, Mac. But I’m not getting any service here. Thought you should know.”
Agent Hockney grimaced. “Stay alert.” He looked at Enrique. “Don’t move. I want you where you are.”
“Sure,” Enrique said. He stole a glance at his watch. The sun was going down and the pole lights around them were firing up. Enrique watched as Paulson’s car pulled up and came to a stop.
This was it. Paulson, you fucker, you better pull this off.
88
HIS Tyvek® pants had ripped. They weren’t made for the type of use James had put them through in the last few hours. The rip was on the inseam and was causing his boxers to poke through.
James wasn’t too concerned. It wasn’t like he was going to get cited by the ComTek clothing police. He had bigger problems on his hands, like getting out of here in one piece.
The Vault was in the middle of nowhere. It was a good twelve miles from the outskirts of Raleigh. He could walk a mile in any direction and still have another mile or two to go before he saw so much as a house or trailer.
The location was chosen deliberately. The Vault was all about being under the radar. It was out of the way, and didn’t have any close neighbors. Even for the few that were around, the topography was ideal to keep the place out of sight, out of mind. A thick tree range ringed the place, past its outer perimeter fence.
James might be able to slip out of The Vault, but it was going to be a tougher proposition actually making it to the woods without being seen. Bright LED pole lights lit up the grounds. There was little to no cover for at least two hundred yards any direction. The place might as well have been a prison.
There were two options that James could think of—one was to sit tight and wait till they left and the other was bolder and held more risk. James was all about sitting tight, except for one small problem.
Click.
Make that two small problems.
James heard the man before he saw him. He thought he was alone in here—he’d checked the FLIR a minute ago—but he wasn’t. The man was getting inside the van. The one that James had been admiring. The one that had been left running with its driver’s door open.
“Ta-Boom!”
“Ha ha.”
Words that James had overheard between two of the men, not less than three minutes ago.
James looked up the ramp that led towards daylight—actually it was night at this point, but with those lights out there, small difference. The ramp was a good seventy yards stretch, if he ran it, which wasn’t really an option with his ankle.
Meanwhile, those two men he’d overheard were presumably setting charges that would blow this place sky high.
James sucked in a breath. So much for choices. Stay here and die? Or try and make it out there where they’d see him for sure and plug him with holes?
Whatever happened to option C?
None of the above.
89
PAULSON handed his card to Agent Hockney. “Nick Paulson, Director of Information Security.”
Agent Hockney frowned and looked at Paulson’s security detail behind him. He glanced at the card. “You work for ComTek?”
“Yes. We just discovered the breach. An employee of ours has wreaked havoc with our systems. We’re just getting our hands around it. I’m glad Rex got hold of you.”
“Who is Rex?”
“Rex Portino? Our COO. He should have called you. Isn’t that why you’re here?”
“Let’s back up a sec’,” Agent Hockney said. “We’re here because we received some correspondence that came from one of your employees. A James Kolinsky.”
“But he’s the man responsible,” Paulson said, letting his jaw drop. “He contacted you?”
“Kolinsky is my boss,” Enrique interjected. “He’s the one that’s inside.”
“Calm down,” Agent Hockney said. “One at a time.”
“Responsible for what, exactly?” Agent Martinez piped in.
Agent Hockney gave an irritated look at his colleague.
“
Everything that’s going on now.” Paulson realized he needed to rein this in quickly. Fuck. Kolinsky contacted them? “Kolinsky works for us. We just recently detected some illegal activity on his part. He was going to be fired this Friday.”
“Going to be?” said Agent Hockney.
“You know HR. Friday is the day they do it. But what we detected was minor. We’re just discovering what he was really doing. I can only guess that he must have discovered we were going to fire him, and sped up his plans.”
Paulson launched into it. He’d been rehearsing it in his head on the entire ride over here. He kept it loose; he didn’t want it to sound rehearsed or canned. “…he’s worked for us for eleven years. He knows our systems better than anyone, including myself. He knew exactly how to bypass our internal filters, all our security measures, safeguards...”
Paulson tried to read the agents’ faces, as he spoke. But they were inscrutable. All three of them looked like they had sticks up their butt. Rigid posture, necks hardly moving at all. One of them was taking notes.
“As for why he’d do it, I have no idea. I believe he was undergoing psychological counseling. I may be wrong on that—but it was in his file,” Paulson said.
“I think he was having problems at home,” Enrique said.
Agent Hockney looked at Enrique. “Why do you say that?”
“I know I shouldn’t just throw this out, but he may have been having an affair.”
“Did you see him with another woman?” Agent Martinez said.
“No, but a couple times I overheard him tell his wife on the phone that he’d have to work late, and then the guy would just leave.”
“Leave the office?”
Enrique nodded. “Yes.”
“And he was to be fired this Friday?” Agent Hockney said.
“That’s correct.” Paulson bit his lip. The men seemed to be buying it. He looked at Enrique and gave him the signal. Enrique put his hands behind his back, which was presumably the signal that Savic’s men were looking for. That was it. They had two minutes now.
It wasn’t the original plan, but it was stitching together. They almost couldn’t ask for a better wrap. Paulson made sure he didn’t smirk as he grasped his phone. It hadn’t gone off, but these men didn’t know that. “Excuse me.”
He pretended to click his phone. “This is Nick.” He paused, as if hearing some news. “What? When? You’re kidding. I’m here now.”
Paulson nodded and looked up at Agent Hockney. “We just looked over some video footage. It isn’t good. James Kolinsky apparently has a van parked inside. It could have weapons, I don’t know.”
“A van?”
“Yes.”
Paulson said some more words and pretended to click off the phone. He shook his head. “He’s already done enough damage. Why would he come back? It doesn’t make sense.”
“Can we go this way to get inside?”
Paulson looked up. Good, the man’s face told him everything. He was buying it. “Yes. We can head towards the service entrance. It’s around back.”
Paulson’s phone vibrated, for real this time. Agent Hockney looked down.
“Phone call?”
Paulson frowned. “Yeah, sorry.” He quickly clicked to answer it.
“This is Nick.”
“We need him alive,” said the voice on the other end.
“Rex.”
“The money is gone. What the fuck is going on? I’ve just spoken with two of our partners.”
“Gone? That’s not possible.”
“Alive! Keep him alive.”
Paulson’s hand dropped.
A gunshot rang out.
The FBI men quickly turned and drew their guns.
“That came from inside.”
Paulson felt sick. He was going to throw up. The money was gone?
90
JAMES stomped his foot on the accelerator. The van let out an ear-shrieking whine and propelled itself up the ramp. He tossed his pistol on the passenger seat.
He’d left behind a man prostrate on the concrete. His shot had communicated his resolve. He was just glad he didn’t have to actually shoot him. Bad guy or not, killing someone was not something he was quite ready to do.
Up ahead, however, there were bound to be men that felt differently and would have no such constraints. He prepared himself to duck down. The van reached the end of the ramp. He eased on the accelerator, but it wasn’t enough. He was still going too fast. The van hit the bump and almost launched into the air. There was a resounding thud of objects shifting in the cargo hold. James glanced at the rearview mirror, but his attention quickly ricocheted to men up ahead. They were by the other van.
He saw several of them. By quick count… six. They were by the van’s open side door. The vehicle was near the back gate, right in the middle of the lane. It effectively cut him off from heading that way. They’d riddle James’s van with bullets before he got halfway to them.
James made a split decision. He turned the wheel and floored it. The van was sluggish, but it picked up speed. He headed around the building towards the front entry.
He expected to hear bullets popping and hitting his van, but the men didn’t get any shots off. In another second, James was in the clear. He turned the corner, his wheels screeching.
He went through the parking lot. Off to the side was Enrique’s car, parked where they’d left it. Up ahead was the front gate. His heart shot up to his throat. There were four vehicles past the guard house.
Shit.
He saw men standing. He kept going. Some of them had guns drawn. It was too late to turn around. The wooden drop-down barricade was drawn across the lane.
James blew through it and the guard house rushed past. Twenty more yards of asphalt and the chain-link gate came up fast. The men pointed their guns at him. The gate was partially open.
The men jumped out of the way. With a crash James hit the gates. They blew outwards. James saw a blur of vehicles and men. He pressed the pedal to the floor.
His eyes darted to his side mirror. The men and vehicles behind him got smaller and smaller. The lights of the facility became just a glow behind him. No cars were following, yet.
He’d done it!
His euphoria was short lived. The sloshing sound coming from the back drew his attention. He glanced back in the cargo hold. There was something back there.
He looked at the dash, trying to find a switch for a light. It took him a second—he found a knob and pulled. A light lit up the back and he looked in the hold. It was packed full with huge hundred gallon drums. There were electrical wires connected to the tops of each.
His eyes went wide. The cargo hold was one big bomb.
91
“THIS is Agent Hockney, we’re in pursuit of a suspect. Believe it to be James Kolinsky.”
Agent Chambers was driving. They’d jumped in the car, as soon as the van raced past. The boyish-faced Enrique had said it was Kolinsky driving the van. The man named Paulson had yelled something that Mac Hockney hadn’t quite heard.
Mac Hockney was a thirty-year veteran in the FBI. His two compatriots were wet behind the ears compared to him. They, however, had understood what the heck that guy Paulson had been talking about when he got into the technical mumbo jumbo.
Mac wasn’t a computer whiz. Tech lingo was as foreign as Swahili to him. He always thought life could throw you some strange curves, none more so than where his career had gone. Two years ago he was installed as team leader within the FBI’s Cyber Warfare Unit.
Since then he’d had a crash course in everything from computers to blogospheres. But it was like trying to teach an old dog new tricks. It was this stuff that Mac was good at.
Chasing down perps. Doing field work. Running down the bad guys.
“I see him!” said Agent Martinez.
The guy had ditched the van, leaving its headlights still on.
“Jam it, jam it!” yelled Agent Martinez.
Even the lingo his t
eam used was too hip for Mac.
Agent Chambers braked and came to a stop behind the van. The three of them piled out and began to run after him. The guy had made it to the tree line. He wasn’t running fast; seemed to have a bum leg.
“Freeze!” Mac yelled.
The guy didn’t stop. He was moving slow.
What was the guy thinking?
Mac had on his most comfortable shoes. He could run a marathon in these go fasters. He jumped over a fallen tree branch and reached the tree line. A noise, too deafening to even calibrate on a decibel meter, blasted the air.
Mac didn’t have time to blink. The world around him was suddenly a burning inferno of hell.
92
THE concussion wave of the blast threw James to the ground. Tops of trees suddenly lit up like matches. James must have blacked out, because when he next opened his eyes a tree was lying near him. Branches had hit his leg. He crawled out from under the coniferous mess.
James looked at the circumference of the tree. Another ten feet his way and he’d have been crushed. He was in a daze as he looked at the scene around him.
Other trees were down. Some branches were burning. The smell of something acrid was in the air.
James stumbled and walked towards where he’d left the van. Beyond the outer ring of trees was a desolate scene. Blackened landscape, downed trees, burning grass and shrubs. Past it all, he could barely make out what appeared to be a crater where the vehicle had once been.
Jesus.
The other car was gone too. The one that had stopped. Before the explosion, James had heard someone yell at him. He looked for those men, but only saw scorched earth and small pitted fires.
He needed to get out of here. There were other cars he’d passed when he’d bulled through the chain-link gate. Those men might get here any second.
Just as he was about to head back into the woods, he saw a glimpse of something in the dirt. It was a man. Face down.