“Great sacrifices can lead to greater victories,” Thomas recited.
“Sun Tzu?” Sand asked.
“No,” Thomas replied, gesturing to the old man. “Albert Brecht.”
Jensen massaged the back of his neck. “Any thoughts about who the other bad guys are?”
“Only guesses,” Brecht replied.
“It would have to be a nation-state to find and stake out Beeman, a man likely subject to heavy security protocols,” Sand said. “I’d guess North Korea, maybe Iran. I doubt it would be ISIS or Al-Qaeda or Hamas or any splinter cell. A terror outfit wouldn’t have the skills, intel or resources to run this kind of operation.”
Brecht turned to him. “North Korea has nukes. And things are cooling off on that front.”
“I realize that,” Sand said. “But hear me out. Biological weapons mean a whole different kind of warfare. More insidious than nuclear warheads, deadly microbes creep into people and kill or cripple them. A single test tube can potentially cause more casualties than a billion-dollar warhead. Kim launches a nuke, he’s caught red-handed—pun intended—the minute the missile leaves the silo. And in return we incinerate his ass in less than an hour, with China’s blessing, as well as that of Russia and the rest of the world. No recriminations against us, no matter who his rocket hits. He’s just gone.” Sand snapped his fingers. “Right now, his situation is worse than precarious. He’s tamped down an entire nation that is literally starving to death. He can’t stop the flow of information into his country any longer. His people are waking up, more and more every day, to the fact that he is the reason they’re starving and living in terror when the rest of the world is eating, watching good movies and making money. It’s only a matter of time before he’s overthrown. Something major has to happen for him to remain in power—to remain among the living. He knows that. He needs what South Korea has. He takes back that nation, which he and his people consider rightfully his, and his people will worship him forever. Remember, the Korean War is still technically underway. All we have is an armistice and a demilitarized zone. But that fact means more than people realize, especially in North Korea.
“So, he has to take a really tough hill, but conventional military means are doomed to fail. He has absolutely no choice. None. His back is against the wall; he has to take back South Korea—and soon—which is why he’s pretending to play nice with us now, for the first time in more than forty years. He worked as hard as he did to build an atom bomb and strategic launch vehicles to make it harder to contemplate open warfare with him, which would only be a necessary option if he invades South Korea. Why else build a bomb? But he won’t use the bomb on that country. He can’t, for several reasons, starting with the fact that he wants that landmass as his own, in a habitable state and without vaporizing his own country with him in it.
“You’ve heard of a Cheshire Cat smile? Well that’s what I see on that little puddin’ pop face of his when they show pictures of him with world leaders on CNN. He’s the cat that ate the canary, or so he thinks.
“Iranians? They are still at least trying to make a go of it on the world stage. The Israelis screwed up their nuclear program five times in a row. The cost of developing atomic war-fighting capability has gotten to be more than they want to pay. So they rattle their daggers or whatever and give us hateful glares and rhetoric and burn our flag, but what they really want is money and power, which they can’t get by invading anyone.”
No one spoke, so Sand pressed on. “What purpose is there for a biological weapon of mass destruction, other than invasion? The other nations of the world threaten us but are not immediately dangerous, at least in strategic terms. No ad-hoc terror group or caliphate has the means to plan and execute a major espionage operation on our soil. Terrorist attacks are about as far as they go. So in fact we can easily narrow down the list of possibles to one. The little Doctor Evil. The Dearest Eternal Emissary of Everything Great and Wonderful, or whatever nickname he coins for himself. With him, this all makes sense. But if you scrutinize the details, none of the other usual suspects pan out. I like Kim for this.”
Everyone stared at Sand without speaking.
“Wow,” said Brecht, exhaling and shaking his head.
“Wow,” Jensen echoed.
“You should work for us,” said Thomas.
“I can see why Jackie is attracted to you,” said Janet.
“Hell, sorry for running on like that,” said Sand.
“What if he’s right?” Thomas asked. “Does that help us?”
“Not immediately,” Brecht said, shaking his head again. He turned to Kenehan. “I sense you’re sitting on some more news, Roady.”
Kenehan took a deep breath and let it out.
“Well, as you know, there is almost no doubt Beeman confined the girls in his cabin. We brought back hair samples and other trace evidence we’ll analyze for DNA soon. We found blood and more hair samples on the kitchen floor and a wall. The blood spatter pattern indicates a gunshot injury, so we scoped and found a bullet hole in the wall.
“I dug out the slug. The bullet was hardball, full metal jacket, little deformation, so I’m guessing it was a through-and-through flesh wound. The height and angle of the bullet’s path, coupled with the relatively low amount of blood, are inconsistent with a round fired into a woman even Christie’s height, unless it were a head shot, which this was not. I’m guessing the OPFOR shot Beeman or Pessoa. The latter makes more sense because Pessoa is not high-value and is likely just a nuisance to the bad guys. The cabin being empty suggests Beeman and Pessoa left along with the girls—or someone took them. We found an overnight bag with clothes and shaving gear I’m guessing is Pessoa’s.”
Brecht looked at Kenehan with the wisdom of the ages flickering behind his watery eyes. “That’s not all, is it, son?”
Kenehan shook his head gently. “No, sir.”
Brecht nodded. “Mark and Janet, would you like to wait—”
Janet cut him off, her voice like a band saw. “Spill it, Roady. We have to know.”
“Okay,” Kenehan sighed. “We found evidence of a violent sexual assault in the second-floor bedroom. There was a torn dress and panties on the floor and a fair amount of blood on the sheets. We also found a large whip on the floor with more blood on it, additional hairs in the leather braids and more hairs in the bed.”
For nearly a minute no one spoke.
Sand finally broke the silence. “Tell us about the hair.”
Kenehan shook his head. “Well, on visual examination, without the benefit of a microscope—I’m so sorry, Robert. Long and brown, with some short and black. No blonde to match what we’d found in the basement cage.”
Jensen resumed breathing. So, Pessoa had violently assaulted young Jackie in the bedroom, tearing away her dress, whipping—and likely raping—the poor girl, possibly injuring her severely, or worse. He was nauseated and relieved and felt angry, guilty and overwhelmed all at once. Where had Christie been while this was happening? He looked at Sand and noted that the man’s soft brown eyes had gone harder than he’d ever seen them, holding death in them.
The eyes are the mirror of the soul, and his is the soul of a killer.
Sand and Kenehan passed a silent message between them with equally lethal gazes. Kenehan nodded imperceptibly.
“There’s more,” Kenehan added. “Outside, behind the cabin, we found a plastic chair with duct-tape on the armrests and front legs. A sharp knife had cut the tape, based on the clean edges of the cuts. Next to that, we found a watering can half-filled with gasoline. We collected more long brown hair samples there.”
Jensen’s mind raced. “Do you think—”
“It was mental torment,” Sand said. “They taped Jackie to the chair and threatened her with fire at the window well just outside the cage in the basement, where her screams of terror would mess with Christie’s head.”
“To hear Jackie screaming?’ Janet asked in horror.
“That would be my gues
s,” Sand said.
“How do you know this?”
“I’ve seen this before,” Sand answered. “It’s a fast way to break someone. Creates panic that is contagious among prisoners. The technique is most effective when interrogating a captured group of men under time pressure—the general idea is to incinerate the first man who fails to answer a question. In front of his buddies. Then pour gas on others, and everybody talks.”
Kenehan shrugged. “Could be. But there was no sign of fire or struggle outside. The surveillance position we found was fairly close to that spot, so the enemy operatives may have seen the whole thing play out. It might be what spurred them to break in, cut the lock, take the girls away from Pessoa and shoot him.”
“An awful lot of speculation,” Jensen observed. “But the scenario could fit the facts. If it’s true, the girls are now in the hands of an enemy infiltration team or whatever you call it. I don’t know if that leaves them better off or worse.”
“Hey, that spy ring is under observation by American officials,” Janet offered hopefully. “So if they have our girls, their goal is to blackmail Beeman to hand over secrets, so they would have to keep the girls safe, and the government agents watching them will also keep them safe.”
Kenehan stared at the floor.
“What is it, Roady?” asked Janet.
“The cabin was deserted. It looked like they all bugged out in a hurry. I don’t think they’re going back there. But our fed was still covering the road to the place. When we came upon him, he was focused toward the cabin, so I think he was waiting for someone to come down the hill—leaving the place—rather than going up and returning. A returning car would have come from the same direction we did, and we scared the hell out of the guy. I don’t think their surveillance was tight enough. They likely don’t know about—”
“I concur,” Brecht said. “Fitch didn’t know you were there until you made yourself known to his man. I doubt he knew the cabin was empty when I talked to him. It is possible he still doesn’t.”
“So they’re in the wind,” said Sand.
Kenehan glared at the Old Man. “So now what, sir?”
Takaki, who had been silent all through this, spoke up. “Maybe not.”
“Yes?” Thomas prodded.
“I’ve been running into brick walls most of the time, but I’ve been whacking at firewalls and less secure—”
“Cut to it, Jennifer.”
Like all millennial nerds, Takaki swallowed before speaking, adjusted her glasses and then blurted, “It’s called ‘Black Sunrise.’”
“What?” Thomas asked.
“He won’t leave home without it.” She explained what her hacking had uncovered.
Chapter 40
As casually as possible, Beeman strolled up the walk to his Denver home with a brown paper bag tucked under his arm. He’d noticed a van parked a few houses down, and now he spotted a car containing two men on the opposite side of the street. Catching a glance of the occupants, he saw that one was female and the other looked Latino.
It troubled him that they were not Asian.
But he’d foreseen this, and hopefully his preparations would prove adequate. He would be ready to depart in less than twenty-four hours with everything he needed to start his new life. If he could land in a well-feathered bed, taking his research and samples with him to thrive in Kim’s country, fine. If not, he had many other contingencies available to him.
Kim’s decision to take custody of the women and Antonio may have been a fortunate development, but was Kim aware of this surveillance?
He pushed open the door to his house, half-expecting to find someone waiting inside. Once inside, he checked each room and confirmed he was alone. No observable signs indicated that anyone had been in his home. The telltales he’d left behind appeared undisturbed—bits of thread, small strips of tape and carefully placed objects on surfaces and within drawers.
Peering through a crack in the curtains, he watched the van and the car. No one emerged from them. He stood motionless for a very long time, watching, thinking and refining his plans as the sky faded from cerulean to magenta to violet to darkness.
No one came to his door.
They must not know everything yet, he decided, otherwise they would have come to arrest him. Given his signature on a number of security clearance agreements, they would not even need a warrant. So they were just watching, gathering information. He should be safe for at least this one night, which would be all he would need. This would probably be the last night he would ever spend in this home where he’d lived for so many years.
I’m growing old, he thought. Time to create a new reality.
When he left in the morning, they would follow him. He’d call Kim for help in slipping away, but not until tomorrow. He locked the door and placed his sack on the counter, extracting cartons of Vietnamese food, dishing the cold contents onto a plate. He poured a glass of good merlot and sat down to nibble, continuing to play out foreseeable actions and outcomes.
Predicting the behavior of living organisms came naturally to him, and he’d devoted a lifetime to that pursuit.
Several international treaties banned the development of new biological weapons, which is why a private company had developed Black Sunrise rather than a government agency. Now that they’d completed the research, they’d transferred all known samples of the virus for further study—as permitted under the treaties for “existing” biological agents—to the new USAMRIID molecular biology lab in Fort Detrick, Maryland.
For this reason, Beeman’s watchdogs would think he had no way of obtaining the virus or detailed records of his research, which would give them a false sense of security.
That would be their downfall.
Weeks ago, he’d made it out of the DataHelix lab with three sealed vials and a data chip. He’d used a time-honored way of concealing them on his person, unpleasant though it had been. One of the vials and the chip were now tied inside a condom taped behind a toilet in the filthy men’s room of nearby antique store, which had no security cameras. DataHelix had very strict stock controls, but Beeman controlled the records.
A second vial was stored in a safe beneath the floor of his uncle’s gas station in Farmington, New Mexico. Even his uncle didn’t know about the safe.
The third vial was set for timed release in a location where it would claim more lives than all the nuclear detonations in history, unless he chose to deactivate the device. No one knew about that ticking bomb; depending on how things went with Kim, he might share that information.
Or perhaps not.
Kim and his leaders might prefer to release the pathogen on schedule. The thought made Beeman smile; he could become a national hero in his new nation-state.
Beeman took great pride in his foresight.
His meal finished, he sat silently in his kitchen for two more hours, stilling his mind, bringing his great brain to a dormant, nearly trancelike state. He closed his eyes and banished all computational thought. He could hear the old clock ticking in the living room as he floated in endless blackness until he was completely at peace.
Around midnight, he stripped out of his clothes, took a shower and slipped into his bed. Sleep came quickly.
Beeman’s house was in the middle of a long block of old homes. Slithering through bushes and crawling behind trash cans for a couple of hours, Kenehan learned that it was under surveillance by four separate vehicles: two on the street and two more in the alley behind the house. Each vehicle contained at least two men, possible more. Unlike Kenehan, the men in the vehicles did not appear to be using night vision scopes.
Dressed in loose-fitting dark grey jeans and a light gray knit pullover, Kenehan was nearly invisible in the darkness. Many people believe that black clothing provides the best concealment in the dark; trained soldiers are shown early in their careers that this is not true; black simply creates a silhouette the eye can spot, whereas neutral colors in low light blend in much more effective
ly. To evade detection from the alley, he started at one end of the block and scaled a series of neighboring backyard fences, one after another, until he reached Beeman’s backyard. The process took another twenty minutes. He used a CO2-powered dart to silence a dog in one yard before it could bark and then scaled a fence to traverse that backyard, stopping only long enough to withdraw the dart from the animal’s neck. The hound would be out for thirty minutes or so.
Once in Beeman’s backyard, he crept about outside the house for a few minutes, inspecting window frames, finding an alarm system. It was a standard ADT system. Using his throat mike, he signaled Grayhound to use their hack of Beeman’s landline to swap-and-blanket the alarm link, isolating it from central telephone switching systems without triggering the automatic cut-line backup alarm. When this was done, Kenehan found Beeman’s unprotected fuse box and turned off power to the house. Then he cut the landline where it led into the side of the home, near the garage.
Crouching in a window well along the rear of the house, Kenehan withdrew a glass cutter from his fanny pack.
Fucking window wells. A recurring theme.
While he cut an eight-inch circle in the glass and reached in to unlatch and slide the window open, he thought of a girl trapped in a basement, listening to screams coming through a window well such as this.
Beeman had wanted horror to come through a window well.
Have it your way, motherfucker. What comes around goes around.
He shimmied through and dropped to the basement floor.
Once inside, he opened his fanny pack again and withdrew a small instrument that scanned for listening devices. Finding one in the basement, he carefully examined and deactivated it. He was familiar with the type—the unit used the old GSM 06.10 digital encryption protocol—good for transmitting voice signals but poor with background noise. Thank God for small favors. There would be more of these.
He pocketed the device and moved softly up the stairs.
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