by Dave Edlund
With a grunt, Heinrich hit the dirt, Peter on top of him, fists pummeling Heinrich’s face. He tried to raise his pistol, and Peter clasped the man’s gun hand while simultaneously ramming an open palm into Heinrich’s nose. Cartilage and bone broke at the same time his head whiplashed into the hard ground.
His strength ebbed, and Peter struck again, driving bone into the man’s brain. His struggles stopped, replaced by ineffective and random muscles spasms as life ebbed from his body.
Peter grabbed the SIG Sauer pistol and quickly searched the corpse for spare magazines, radio, and phone. He scored on all three. He also removed a key card that had been hanging around Heinrich’s neck before pushing the body into the hole. Then he returned to Logan’s body. “I tried to tell you this would end badly,” Peter whispered. He pulled the tomahawk from Logan’s neck and ran the handle underneath his belt at his side. He rolled the body into the pit, just in case someone came looking. Such a waste. Peter wondered what the kid might have accomplished if his life had taken a different path.
Staying in the forested perimeter to avoid observation, Peter plotted a course back to the ranch house. He moved in a crouch with care to avoid making sounds. Fortunately, the fog, which had only lifted with sunrise, had dampened the detritus on the forest floor aiding with his stealthy approach.
Although he suspected Danya had thrown the tomahawk, he didn’t know with certainty. If it was Danya, how did she track him to this location? And what had prompted her to deviate from the agreed-upon plan? She should still be in Bend, awaiting contact from him.
With so much uncertainty, Peter decided to be conservative and work solo.
As if he were stalking a bull elk, Peter approached the house from the forest with slow and deliberate motion. He angled toward a back door that exited onto a wooden deck. From fifty feet away, he clung to a mature fir tree, just edging his head around the side, watching for activity. After several minutes of observation, no guards were visible, and Peter concluded that they were all occupied with getting the drone in the air. Still, he calculated that when Logan and Heinrich didn’t report in, it would draw attention. And probably sooner than later.
In a crouch, he dashed across the deck for the door. With his back to the wall, he tested the door latch. It was unlocked. He eased the door open and entered a large, open space. It was furnished like a living room with two sofas facing toward a TV mounted on the wall.
To the right was a short hallway that was familiar—it led to Ming’s study. Leading with the pistol he’d taken from Heinrich, Peter quietly crossed the room and worked his way to the study. It was empty. He ducked in and closed the door, taking care not to make any noise.
Through the bay window he saw Ming and Corbett conversing by the barn. They were far enough away that he didn’t think they’d notice him as he did his work. Motion was his enemy—if he was moving about in the room, the chances of being noticed were many times greater than if he was sitting mostly stationary.
Ming’s laptop was still on the desk with the monitor open, just as he’d hoped. He covered the distance in three strides and squatted with the desk shielding his body from the large window. Slowly, he slid the laptop around until it was facing him. Only then did he exhale the breath he’d been subconsciously holding.
He lowered the computer down to his lap. It was still powered up and on the page Ming had shown him. Peter reached into the front of his pants and removed the cell phone he’d stashed there, correctly betting the guards would not get too personal when they patted him down at the manufacturing facility. He dialed a number from memory.
After three rings, the other party answered. “Gary Porter speaking.”
“Gary, it’s Peter,” his voice barely above a whisper.
“Hi buddy. I didn’t recognize your number. Get a new wireless account?”
“Listen, I don’t have time to talk and I need your help.”
“Of course you do. Why else would you call?”
Ignoring the sarcasm, Peter said, “It’s a long story, and it’s related to that contract on my head that we discussed.”
“Oh yeah. Like I explained, unless you have the computer IP address, not much I can do.”
“How about the laptop? I have it powered up and the owner still logged in. Can you access it remotely?”
“Really? That question doesn’t merit an answer. Okay. Type this URL into the browser.” Gary rattled off the address and Peter repeated the characters back as he typed, cognizant of the fact that every second he spent there put him at ever greater risk. Moments later he received a prompt to accept external control. Without hesitation, he clicked the mouse on the box and watched as the laptop seemingly took on a life of its own.
They were still connected by phone, but Gary had gone silent while he was accessing Ming’s laptop. Abruptly, Gary’s voice blurted from the phone. “Whoa. This site has issued a contract on me! Oh, and Todd and—”
“I know,” Peter cut him off. “I need you to cancel the contracts. All of them. You can do it, right?”
“Just another day in the office.” While Peter watched the monitor, the text changed and one by one the postings offering to pay for the murders were deleted.
“Is that it?” Peter asked after the last contract was deleted.
“Hold on. Just one more thing to do.”
After another minute Gary said, “Done. I’m assuming it’s not practical to deliver the laptop to me, so I constructed a virtual copy of it on my machine. I’ll monitor this web page for a few days and make sure there’s no activity related to the contracts. If there is, I can spoof the laptop and shut it down.”
“Good thinking. Thanks, I have to go.”
“Have you called the police?” Gary asked, but his question remained unanswered. The line was disconnected.
Wasting no time, Peter swung the tomahawk down and smashed the spike into the laptop where he thought critical components were located. He repeated the movement over and over, aiming to destroy the hard drive and memory chips in the computer. After inflicting a dozen thumb-sized holes in the case, the screen remained dark, and he stopped.
He really wanted to phone law enforcement, but who could he trust? It was a short list, only one name—Detective Ruth Colson—and even that carried some risk. He needed something substantial, concrete information, not just speculation.
Pushing the mutilated laptop aside, Peter rolled to a crouch and discretely exited Ming’s office. He surmised that the center of action was within the barn since that’s where personnel seemed to be congregated. That became his destination. Ming’s plan to infect water supplies with his virus required people and equipment. So, he reasoned, it could be easily disrupted by either disabling the equipment or the personnel.
Peter had initially believed that the grand plan was to inoculate bottled water with the virus and then ship that water to various locations around the world, as in third-world countries with impoverished populations. But after listening to Simon Ming, he knew that was simply a diversion. Could Ming’s plans extend beyond the immediate vicinity of western Oregon? And if so, how did he plan to execute his scheme? The drone Peter saw had only limited payload and range.
He kept coming back to the idea of seeding viral agent into city water supplies. But that only worked for nearby water reservoirs and treatment plants. To be effective on a grand scale—and Peter reasoned that Ming would only plan on a grand scale—the virus had to be widely distributed, and in a short period of time. How can Ming do that from this isolated location?
There would be time later to ponder that question. Right now, he had to intervene. And that meant he had to infiltrate the barn, learn what the hell was going on there, and cripple the operations.
Chapter 41
South of Eugene, Oregon
March 29
As soon as Danya let loose the tomahawk, she was in motion. Leaving the shotgun, she dashed for cover just as a single shot rang out. That was enough encouragement for her to k
eep moving. Still crouched, she plowed a path through the foliage, seeking distance and cover. After running for ten heart-pounding seconds, she slid to a stop and squirmed behind a large, two-foot-tall tree stump. The bark had long since fallen away, leaving gray timber exposed. The wood appeared solid, not that she was in a position to be choosy—it certainly was a better shield against bullets than the leafy understory.
With her side pressed against the stump, she waited, catching her breath, expecting bullets to gouge into the old timber. But the shots never came. Cautiously, Danya eased her head to the side until she could just glimpse the area near the pit where Peter had stood, awaiting execution.
No one was there. No bodies, either.
Although she doubted Peter had seen her—how could he, since his back was turned in her direction when she threw the tomahawk—she judged they had a better chance of spoiling what Ming was up to if they worked separately. The disadvantage was that she and Peter would not be able to coordinate their efforts. But on the plus side, the two working independently would likely confuse the guards and force them to split their defenses. At least, she hoped it would work that way.
Failing to see any guards, she backtracked and retrieved the FN shotgun. In close-quarters combat—which is what she expected—it would offer superior firepower over handguns. Plus, the intimidation factor was not to be underestimated. A large man may be easily tempted to challenge a woman holding a pistol, but he would think differently when staring into the business end of a 12-gauge scattergun.
Danya gathered her thoughts and considered her first target—would it be the ranch house or the barn?
Her decision came quickly, drawn from years of training and field experience in many of the most dangerous areas of the world. Gaza. Syria. The West Bank. Iran. Lebanon. Her resume read like a travel guide to the hotspots of the Middle East. As an agent of Mossad, she’d been challenged with many dangerous and important assignments. Until…
Her thoughts instantly rolled back in time to a mission not far from her current location, in the Cascade Mountains of Oregon. Her government had sent her and four other Mossad agents to track down and kill an American. A man named Peter Savage. The reason why seemed inconsequential, something about a political embarrassment to the Israeli Prime Minister.
On all of her previous missions, she had been tasked with matters of national security—politically correct language for assassinating terrorists and their financiers. The public liked the term “national security” as it made them feel safe while masking the true nature of her violent profession.
But this mission was different. It was on American soil, thousands of miles from the anarchy of the Middle East, and Peter Savage was no terrorist. In no way did he threaten the national security of her country.
Danya would never forget looking down the barrel of her gun at this man whose only fault was being in the wrong place at the wrong time. At that moment, she was reborn and began living off the grid, in near-complete anonymity. No longer a tool of political demigods and paranoid bureaucrats.
Returning her focus to the problem at hand, the answer was easy. The barn was topped with satellite dishes and had enough air conditioning for four houses. Plus, the activity she’d seen was centered around this structure, not the ranch house. Her priority target was the barn.
s
With his back pressed flat against the rear wall of the barn, Peter debated his options. He wanted to believe it was Danya who’d saved him from certain death minutes ago, but he couldn’t be sure. Who else could it be? he asked himself rhetorically. He had to assume she had a good reason for not joining up with him, that she preferred to press the initiative against Ming independently. By default, that meant he, too, had to work solo.
Based on his brief observations when he arrived at the ranch, he was betting the drone operational control was conducted from the barn. The fact that he encountered no one within the ranch house simply reinforced his conclusion.
He paused in contemplation, trying to visualize what defenses he would encounter within the structure. Trouble was, he had no way of knowing or even making an educated guess. He did not know the layout of the barn. Nor did he know the number of guards, where they were located, or what weapons they possessed.
His face twisted into a frown. He grasped the tomahawk in his left hand, 9mm pistol in his right. Although the bladed weapon would have felt reassuring in his grip if he was going up against a hoard of zombies, Peter didn’t see himself using it in combat. At least not as long as he had a gun and bullets. He was about to slide the handle beneath his belt when an idea suddenly came to him.
Only a few feet away, a thick conduit snaked from the ground, traveled three feet up the outside wall, and then disappeared inside. Electrical power, he thought.
Peter holstered the pistol and transferred the tomahawk to his dominant hand. He hefted the weapon, visualizing the devastating blow it would deliver. This could work, if I don’t kill myself in the process. Taking a step forward, he clenched the handle, rotated his arm back, and then swung forward with all his strength. The razor-sharp blade did not disappoint, performing as it was designed to.
A blindingly bright bolt of blue-white light erupted from the slashed electrical feed as 480 volts of power shorted at the severed end of the cable. Too late, Peter raised his left arm as a shield from the brilliance. He closed his eyes to regain his vision while his body relaxed. Okay. That ought to introduce some confusion. And if I’m lucky, it will screw with their remote piloting of that drone.
After waiting ten seconds to regain most of his visual acuity, Peter advanced around the side of the barn looking for the nearest entrance.
He stopped beside the door and tested the latch. It was locked. Next to the door latch was a magnetic strip device. Wasting no time, Peter swiped the card he’d taken from Heinrich. With a barely audible click, the lock opened.
He took three deep breaths, readied the 9mm pistol, and eased the door open. Taking a glimpse inside, the room was filled with frenetic activity. People were running to and fro. Peter quickly recognized it as a state-of-the-art control room. A voice rose above the rest: “Get that power back on!”
In the chaotic confusion, no one noticed the stranger slipping through the open door.
He plunged inside, hugging the wall and closing the door again. The room before him had been plunged into total darkness when he severed the main power cable. A moment later the battery-powered emergency lighting came on, providing limited illumination. The beams were adjusted to cast ample light into the control room to allow the technicians to carry out their tasks as well as to navigate around the consoles and other furnishings. But this came at the expense of lighting the perimeter, which was smothered under a Stygian black veil.
Mounted on the wall above Peter’s head was one of the emergency lights, the beams adjusted toward the workstations in the central portion of the room. Anyone looking his direction would be blinded by the bright lamps. As long as his motion was slow and limited in range, he calculated he would not draw any attention. He held the pistol with both hands, close to his chest, ready for action.
Whereas the outside of the barn looked like a stereotypical farm building, a throwback to simpler times, replete with red-painted rustic wood boards and white trim, the interior was the polar opposite. His eyes moved left and right, trying to take it all in. A dozen workstations were clustered in three groups of four, each manned by a frantic technician. Beyond the control room was a glass wall that separated a machine shop, equipped with computer-controlled milling machines and lathes, an electronics shop, and an assembly room. A mold was laid open revealing a fiberglass body of a drone similar to what Peter had seen earlier, staged for flight on the expansive lawn.
A constant electronic hum was punctuated by excited orders and terse replies.
“We only have about five minutes of battery backup,” someone shouted. “Then we lose flight control.”
“Why aren’t the generator
s online?” another technician asked.
“The diesel engine on generator number one is running,” came the reply. “The engine just reached operating temperature and the generator is engaged. Transfer switch is… Wait a minute… Transfer switch is not activating.”
“Say again?”
“The transfer switch has not engaged. The generator is online, but the power is not connected to our main.”
“Must be a faulty indicator.”
“Negative. Instrumentation checks out. I repeat, we have no generator power to the control room.”
A steel staircase led to a second-floor catwalk that extended in front of a wall of glass. Subdued lighting within revealed what appeared to be an office space—probably security, Peter thought. As he looked upward, a man wearing the now-familiar sky-blue coveralls and a pistol holstered in a black tactical rig strapped to his thigh stood on the cat walk. It wasn’t until he walked into the beam of a flood lamp that Peter recognized him—Corbett! He pointed toward the floor and shouted an order. “Beckman! Check the generators. Activate the transfer switch manually if you have too. If we don’t get power restored in four minutes, I’ll have no choice but to abort the flight!”
A technician rose from his console and urgently strode for the door. He lowered his head, squinting his eyes against the bright battery-powered flood lights. He cleared the beam only a few yards in front of Peter, who was standing motionless, a shadow on the periphery of chaos.
The man extended his arms to open the door, and abruptly pulled up short. “Can’t let you do that,” Peter said.
“Who the hell are you?” the technician asked.
“What’s going on down there?” Corbett asked from the catwalk, straining to see into the deep shadows. “What’s the problem?”
In a low voice, Peter said, “Step back, away from the door.” He pointed the handgun at the technician. “I don’t want to hurt you. But I will if necessary.”
“Beckman!” Corbett yelled. “I gave you an order. Get that transfer switch engaged. Now!”