by James Hunt
Mallory exhaled and reached into a desk drawer and removed a thin folder that he placed on the cherry oak of his desk and slid across to Mack. “We were able to track down a piece of property he had off the books. Old warehouse. The only reason we found it was because he blew the damn thing to smithereens and someone called the fire department.”
Mack examined the pictures inside. A few snapshots of the exterior had been taken, which didn’t interest him. What did were the many photos of what appeared to be a server bank, computers, and two charred corpses, all found in the building’s basement. “Who are the bodies?”
“Roman Lahftz and Mable Lahftz,” Mallory answered. “Or, as they’re more commonly referred to, the Ghost Twins.”
Mack raised an eyebrow. “I’m assuming no recoverable data?”
“No.” Mallory leaned forward then opened his arms in a pathetically helpless gesture. “And as of right now he hasn’t revealed who he is to any of the intelligence organizations he’s contacted. And I’d like to keep it that way. It wouldn’t bode well for our government if it was discovered that the deputy director of the CIA had gone off the deep end. We’re dead in the water, Mack.”
“I know.” Mack’s team could gather more information in twenty-four hours than Mallory’s entire organization could in six months. But the reason Mack had come, the only reason in fact, was the thousands of glowing red dots that had been projected on the empty white wall a few seconds ago. Never in his thirty years in intelligence or his time with the military had he seen something like this. Mallory was right to be nervous. The world was sitting on a powder keg that could blow at any minute, and one man had his finger hovering over the button. “I need everything you have on Taylor Grimes.”
The woods in the mountainous west side of Virginia were thick and hard to access. The nearest town was fifty miles east and the nearest accessible road was fifteen, and it looked more like a hiking trail than something a vehicle could traverse. But the location smack-dab in the middle of nowhere had been picked with a purpose. It was off grid. It was self-sustainable, at least for the timeframe he would be here. And most importantly, it was still in the United States.
The cabin was crude, erected by hand in the style of the old pioneers of the 1800s that had traveled west during the Gold Rush. The only modern advancements added to the building were the solar panels on the roof and the diesel generator that hummed low and soft on the south end of the building. Other than that, nothing could be heard except for the faint sound of birds chirping in the distance.
Inside, the cabin was one large room, sectioned off in different areas to separate the makeshift kitchen, which was nothing more than a wood-fire stove and a small fridge hooked up to the generator and fed through wires that ran from the floorboards.
While the cord feeding into the tiny fridge was small, the rest of the thick wiring to the second half of the room was connected into a long, rectangular desk stacked with a half dozen monitors, three keyboards, and three computer towers. And centered underneath the monitors was a device the size of a shoebox, with wires connecting to each computer.
It sat there unassuming, looking like nothing more than a modem that lacked antennas and blinking lights. But the thin plastic casing of the device hid a system that was more powerful than anything the world had ever seen. From this device, the world’s nuclear arsenal could be detonated by little more than a few strokes of the keyboard. This was Black Box.
And sitting in the chair, looking just as unassuming as the device on his desk, with a freshly buzzed haircut and clean-shaven face that accentuated the square jaw and Romanesque facial features, was Taylor Grimes. His fingers glided across the keyboard with the same mechanical efficiency that he’d mastered in his time with the CIA.
Betraying the agency that he poured nearly twenty years of his life into was hard at first, but Grimes had always possessed a talent for being able to compartmentalize. It was just like flipping on a light switch.
Most individuals had the ability to compartmentalize normal day-to-day things: a small lie, cheating on a test, running a red light because they were late to work. Others could even handle compartmentalizing bigger stuff like an affair, tax evasion, or dealing drugs. But compartmentalizing the deaths of millions—that was something else entirely. However, collateral damage was always a by-product in his line of work. And this time it couldn’t be helped.
Grimes rose from his chair and grabbed one of the room-temperature bottles of water stacked along the east side of the cabin. Thick rings of sweat circled his neck and underarms, darkening the blue cotton of his shirt. He drained half the bottle and wiped the sweat dripping from his face. It had been intolerably hot since he’d arrived, and he knew it was only going to get worse. But he took the pain and uncomfortable thoughts and stuffed them in a box. Just one more compartment to be locked away.
The computer monitors showcased a map of the world spread across the six screens. It was covered with red dots, just like the ones on the projection that Mack had used in Mallory’s office. He knew the two head honchos had to have met by now, and that was exactly what he wanted.
Grimes finished the rest of the bottled water, crushed it, and tossed it in the corner, where the growing pile had already reached a few inches off the floor. He returned to the chair and checked the time. It’d been nearly six hours since his last contact, and it was time to once again stir the international pot. He placed a headset on and converted the bottom center monitor to a messaging program he’d designed when he was still with the agency. He reached for a folder with the CIA department symbol emblazoned on the front, which was stamped with red “Classified” lettering. He found the needed code and entered it. The screen pulsated with audio sound waves, which flickered in time with the ringing in the headset.
“Hello?” The voice answered with a Middle Eastern accent.
“You’re probably wondering why all of your nuclear weapons are still showing as activated even though you’ve initiated the kill-switch program you installed a decade ago.” Grimes watched the audio line on his screen remain flat, with only the occasional light breath that fluttered the line to life.
“Who is this?”
“I’m the one in control of your nuclear arsenal. Right now I’m choosing not to blow you off the face of the earth. But I could grow tired of that at any moment.” A light tickle in the back of Grimes’s mind triggered a smile. He was in the driver seat now. For the first time in perhaps his entire life, he was in control of his own destiny. He was in control of everything.
“This is a secure line. If you don’t hang up now I’ll have you locked away before the day’s end.”
“Poor choice.” Grimes used the center top screen and zeroed in on the small patch of land that was the Jewish state. A few lines of code and the small red dot located five miles outside Jerusalem switched from red to green. “Thirty seconds, Director Frisch. That’s the time left until that nuke kills everything within ten square miles.” He paused, letting the seconds tick away. “If you think I’m bluffing. You can check with your team at the facility to confirm, though I’m not sure if you want to waste that much—”
“What do you want?”
Speak softly and carry a big stick, Grimes thought to himself. “I will email you a link to an online account. I want every classified document from the last twenty years of Israeli intelligence placed inside.”
“Are you insane?” The Mossad director’s tone turned vicious, the helplessness of the situation eroding whatever pride or power he had. The clock ticked below ten seconds now, and Grimes listened to the muffled shouting on the other end. “It’ll take time.”
“How long?”
“A few hours, at least.” The clock ticked below three seconds. “Please!”
With one second remaining, Grimes ended the program, and the green dot flashed back to red. “I expect you to deliver on your promise, Director Frisch. I’ll be in touch.” Grimes hung up, and the screen returned to displaying t
he section of the map spread across the rest of the monitors.
During the next few hours, the Israelis would be scrambling with their intelligence liaisons, most notably the CIA, trying to figure out who he was and how he had taken control of their precious nuclear program. When the CIA couldn’t provide any answers, the Israelis would give him what he wanted, divulging all of their secrets.
In the world of espionage, knowledge was the most valuable asset one could own. That was what made the GSF so powerful. But they wouldn’t retain their global title of best in show for much longer. He’d come too far to be stopped now, even by the GSF’s best, and he had more than one trick up his sleeve for their number one agent.
A crumpled piece of paper sat balled up next to Black Box, and Grimes reached for it. Slowly, he unfurled the edges, the past two years running through his mind. All of the secrets, all of the lies, all of the risks he had taken to save his country from itself because of a picture he’d found of some woman involved in the world’s largest agency of covert operations. The GSF operated under no supervision and adhered to no country’s laws or policies. It was a nation unto itself, and it had the ability to do whatever it wanted.
But Grimes could compartmentalize.
He smoothed out the picture on the desk. Hundreds of tiny fault lines ran over the paper, crinkling the image that was already permanently burned into his memory. Even before the image had been crushed by his fist, the photograph had blurred. He could barely make out her features, but he knew she always wore the same black uniform comprised of high-tech Kevlar fabric and sported those .45 Colt 1911s she loved so much. Agent Sarah Hill and the GSF were a threat to his nation’s security, and he’d spent two years trying to convince his boss to fall into his line of thinking, but the man just wouldn’t listen.
So Grimes compartmentalized.
He retreated to his earliest days of training with the CIA. It was his job to protect his nation’s interests from threats both domestic and abroad. Now armed with the most technically advanced military software in the world he was finally in a position to keep that oath.
Grimes drifted his eyes to the bottom left screen of his monitors and brought up a separate display. Dozens of bars covered the screen, each of them still green, but some of them already lowering to ninety percent. All he needed to do was make sure all of them dropped below twenty percent. But if he wanted to succeed, then he was going to have to press harder; cause more unrest, more distress in the global community. He opened the messaging system again to call Director Frisch. He had a new mission for the MOSSAD.
3
The floor was busier than it had been all year. Every GSF field agent had been deployed to help stabilize volatile regions that had turned into unofficial war zones. And with every field agent on a mission, every support agent was busy scrambling data to make sure their missions were successful.
“Johnny, make sure you have Annie do a clean sweep of the apartment building before she leaves,” Bryce said. “And give her whatever thermal imaging she needs to do it quickly. The local militia will be rolling in there soon, and they won’t care about civilian casualties.”
“Got it. Should be less than ninety seconds until she’s out,” Johnny answered.
Bryce Milks had been all over the world this morning without leaving the comfort of his chair, and it wasn’t even noon yet. The six monitors hovering above his desk flashed images of conflicts in the Middle East, Central Asia, and the growing tensions on the India–Pakistan border. He couldn’t even remember the last time he blinked, and his eyes had grown dry and red from the nonstop surveillance. With Sarah still on her return trip from Tokyo, he had time to help out on the other missions—and pray she’d forgotten about their little bet. “Brooke, Tony has a pack of local police heading to his location in less than five. He needs to bail.”
“Shit, I got it. I got it.”
The controlled chaos of HQ was the environment Bryce thrived in. His fingers worked the keyboard like a master pianist behind the keys of a concert grand piano. The global catastrophe they were now dealing with had started when Taylor Grimes had decided to activate every nuclear weapon across the globe, putting every nuclear state on high alert. The fact that Grimes was able to do that drove Bryce insane. Because he had no idea how it was possible.
Using the GSF satellite, Bryce had the world at his fingertips. There wasn’t a computer he couldn’t hack or a terrorist he couldn’t locate hiding in his cave in the Afghan mountain ranges. But despite the technological marvel he’d created, every search and scan to locate Grimes turned into nothing but a dead end.
A call popped up in the top center screen, and Bryce quickly answered. “Hey, Boss.”
“How are we looking across the board?” Mack asked.
Bryce examined the scenes unfolding, and a light pain radiated from his left arm as his heart pounded like a jackhammer. “We’re barely able to plug the holes in the boat, and new ones keep popping up. We’re spreading ourselves incredibly thin.”
“We may have some help on that front soon.” But despite the good news, Mack’s tone didn’t suggest that he was happy about it.
“Did Mallory give you anything?” Bryce had already sifted through every piece of digital data the CIA had on Grimes after hacking their servers. But even in the high-tech world that he thrived in, he recognized the need to keep certain documents offline, and he was sure the CIA knew that as well.
“They’re collecting what they have now. They discovered some old notes that Grimes must have left behind in his haste to exit the building. I’ve already given Grace a few things for analysis.” Mack paused. “Hill back yet?”
“She’ll be landing soon, sir.”
“The moment she does, I want both of you in my office for a conference call.”
The call ended, and Bryce leaned back in his chair to catch his breath. His eyes reflected the screens, where a set of parents with three small children sprinted away from an armored truck with a mounted machine gun in east Russia after it had been divulged that the president had embezzled billions from Russia’s citizens, and the military had been called in to handle any demonstrations in the capital. He saw a young woman in northern China trampled in a riot started by a news story that the Chinese government had performed illegal experiments on small sectors of the public without their knowledge. And on the far top right screen was a young boy, no older than four, awkwardly carrying an AK-47 as children only twice his age were drafted to overthrow the government regime in Iraq. Each news story littered with classified information. And each had been leaked by Grimes.
A folder was smacked onto the small patch of desk space between his keyboard and body. Bryce swiveled his chair to the left. Grace stood with her right hip cocked out to the side, pointing to the folder she’d just tossed in front of him. “A breakdown of the data I received from Mack.”
Bryce folded his hands in his lap. “Good morning to you as well.”
Grace flipped open the first page, revealing photographs of a man and a woman, both with beach-blond hair and near-albino skin and nearly identical facial features. “Roman Lahftz and Mabel Lahftz were skilled hackers within the black hat community. They were a part of WikiLeaks and helped Edward Snowden with his escape from the U.S. They were found dead in an abandoned building, burned alive. Who owned the building, you ask?” She flipped another page. “Taylor Grimes.”
“So Grimes recruited them or kidnapped them?”
“Based on their profile it could be both. They would have been attracted to the type of technology that Grimes was touting them with, and with Grimes’s skill set as a former CIA field agent it would have provided him the capacity to take two five-foot-nothing, one-hundred-pound twins out of their apartment without anyone seeing.”
“How’s it feel to be right?” Bryce asked.
Grace smiled. “Pretty good.”
She had certainly come into her own over the past year, and he couldn’t have been more proud of all she accompl
ished. Moving from Mack’s secretary to psyche profiler wasn’t an easy task. Though, he had to admit that because of her new skill set he didn’t get away with much. Especially when he tried to lie. “Did you finish the assessment on Grimes?”
“Yeah.” Grace slapped another folder onto the desk. “He’s a piece of work.”
Bryce opened it up and examined the notes. “He was Special Forces for the Army?”
“Green Beret,” Grace answered. “And he was damn good, too. Eight commendations and the Silver Star. This guy knows how to handle himself.”
Bryce flipped over to the second then the third page. “Joined the CIA after an honorable discharge from the Army. Started as a field agent and worked his way up to deputy director.” He quickly slammed the folder shut and tossed it back onto the desk. “During his time at the CIA, he didn’t have one complaint filed against him, not one investigation of any wrongdoing. This guy was squeaky clean. Why would he do this now?”
Grace leaned her hip on the edge of Bryce’s desk and crossed her arms over her chest. “He never married, no real family connections. His life has been dedicated to the service of the country.” She pressed her forefinger on top of the folder. “This guy bleeds red, white, and blue. And from the communications I looked at between him and Mallory, he was not a fan of the GSF.”
“No surprise there,” Bryce said. After the Global Power Crisis two years ago, the GSF’s complete anonymity was blown. Grimes and a handful of others had discovered the GSF existed, and the poster boy for American Imperialism didn’t want to submit to a superior agency. Though, he didn’t hate the GSF enough to disobey his orders to keep his mouth shut. But it appeared that he’d finally taken about as much as he could handle.
“The only reason he would do this is because he thinks he’s helping the country somehow,” Grace said. “Trust me, in his mind, he still thinks he’s doing his job.”
“He sounds just as stubborn as Sarah,” Bryce mumbled.