Die Again To Save Tomorrow (Die Again to Save the World Book 2)

by Ramy Vance

  Pete chuckled. “Besides. If you do manage to kill me, I’ll come right back and finish the job with or without you, as Bono would say.”

  “Your pop-culture references are annoying.”

  “I’m sorry, am I not entertaining enough for you? Should I tap dance? You’re still a dancer, right?”

  “No. You should die. Die and never come back.” Rueben leapt forward in a rage and grabbed Pete’s shoulders. Pete laughed as if enjoying it and easily shoved him to the side, where he toppled over two metal trash cans.

  Pete stared down at Rueben with disappointment scrawled over his face. “After all that combat training so that you could stop Pout, I would think you’d be a lot better than this.”

  Rueben picked himself up from a pile of garbage. He shook the remains of a rotten banana peel from his shoulder. “Shut up.”

  “Oh, and you know what?” Pete crossed his arms. “You eventually start running and working out regularly to try to impress or keep Aki’s affection. Spoiler alert, she stops believing you’re a mysterious badass. Once she leaves you, you won’t set foot in a gym.”

  “Aki leaves me?”

  “Oh, come on. Did you really think you’d hold her attention for that long? She’s going through her ‘nerd phase’ only because you’re not Mike, and she’s still broken-hearted over him.”

  The words were everything Rueben feared and didn’t want to hear. With a violent yell, he grabbed Pete by the neck and slammed him against a dumpster.

  He grabbed his head and rammed it over and over against the hard metal. He completely zoned out and blinded by rage as if in a dream, he kept repeating the movement. He felt the man’s blood run down his fingers and didn’t care. He kept ramming Pete’s head against the dumpster. Was this what losing it felt like? There was a certain high to it that felt cathartic. Why was Pete letting him do this? It was masochistic. And Rueben was…

  He shifted his attention away from Pete and down to the blood on his hands.

  That’s when Pete finally kicked him hard enough that he fell on the asphalt, scraping over gravel. Sharp, paralyzing pain shot through Rueben’s back, and he couldn’t move.

  Was his back broken? It hurt to move. He grimaced in pain, and Pete drew out a syringe from under his hoodie. He crouched down next to Rueben. “Nighty-night—oomph!”

  With a single solid punch, Marshall had sent Pete face-first into the side of the dumpster. Marshall’s fist popped like a firecracker, but he didn’t even grimace.

  Pete rose, and with one finger wiped the blood off his lip. Interestingly enough, there was a piece of thrown-out greasy hash brown smeared onto his pants leg, and he wiped it off. His lips quivered as if he’d sustained a mortal injury, but then he composed himself.

  Man, this version of me is weird. Rueben tried to pick himself up, but his back still ached intensely.

  Marshall stepped between Rueben and Pete, and Pete froze, his fingers still wrapped around the syringe. Pete’s hand began to shake as he spotted someone behind Marshall, standing in the shadows of the alley. His eyes narrowed with confusion or frustration.

  At this point, the pain in Real Rueben’s back subsided enough that he was able to regain his footing. Marshall took a step toward Pete, but then Pete turned and ran like hell.

  It was only then that Reuben noticed the homeless man—the Chicken Man—who’d also been outside the Exit Bar. He caught Reuben’s eye. “You’re welcome, Rueben.”

  Then the man walked away.

  Reuben’s mouth dropped, and he chased after the homeless man. “Wait, wait. Who are you?”

  The homeless man cowered as Rueben approached him. “My name’s Jim.”

  “Jim. Okay, so you know me?”

  The homeless man didn’t answer and instead mumbled and entered a storefront liquor store.

  Aki huffed as she arrived on the scene. “What happened?”

  “He got away.” Then Rueben pointed at the liquor store. “But I know someone who I think has some answers. We’re going to talk to him and get them.”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Sunday, May 21, 9:00 p.m.

  Martha and Zach sat in her office in the largely empty precinct.

  “So, what have we learned?”

  “Other than there’s a publishing house in the same tower as One Republic?”

  Martha rolled her eyes. “Yes, other than that.”

  “We’ve uncovered that One Republic is doing a light show with drones during the One Response pre-show. What does that have to do with anything?”

  “How else would you attack the summit?”

  “Good point. Do you think Lucas is in on it?”

  “I would venture eighty-twenty he is.”

  “Okay, so we have to find proof.”

  She paced the room and tapped the dry erase marker against her palm. “Proof. How could we prove that these drones connect to… Where are they now? That’s the question.”

  Zach’s face brightened. “Hey, I bet my friend could answer that.”

  “Your friend isn’t going to know about some super-secret bomb plot.”

  “No, but he might know if there’s a storage unit somewhere.”

  Martha swigged from a bottle of water. “Well, it’s worth a try. We’ve gotten leads on worse ideas.”

  Zach pulled out his phone and stepped out of the room as he dialed up his buddy.

  Martha called Buzz.

  He answered with an annoyed, “This had better be good.”

  “Drones.”

  “What about them?”

  “That’s how they’re planning to attack the summit.”

  “We know this. That’s what Rueben already said.”

  “No. One Republic Entertainment is teaming up with GRI to do a light show for the event rally. The light show is going to release two hundred LED drones outfitted with bombs over the summit.”

  Buzz let the words sink in. “You know this?”

  “Pretty sure. We found one of the drones, but it might have been a prototype. We need to find the rest of them.”

  “You found one of them? Where?”

  “The One Republic office. The one we broke into tonight during your jacuzzi soak.”

  “Oh, right. How’d that go?”

  She smirked. “Thanks for your help and all. We couldn’t have done it without you.”

  “Oh, don’t be too modest. You underestimate yourself.”

  “Well. How would you find two hundred drones?”

  “It’s not that hard. Drones broadcast an IP address, which makes them fairly easy to hack.”

  Zach came back in, and Martha wrapped up the conversation. “Thanks. I might need you for backup. I’ll call you later.”

  “Ciao, darling.”

  She ended the call, and Zach sat.

  “Who was that?”

  “My friend Buzz. He’s a scientist, works on contract for the White House.”

  “Whoa. You know someone like that?”

  “Yeah. In fact, I do.”

  “You think he may be involved with the drone attack?”

  It hadn’t occurred to Martha until Zach said that. She didn’t know Buzz that well, and Buzz was well-connected enough that he could easily orchestrate something like a drone attack. That would explain why, off the cuff, he knew about GRI. As for a motive…God only what went on in that head of his. Plus, he’d been reluctant to help them break into the tower. Still, Rueben trusted Buzz, and Martha trusted Rueben.

  She answered Zach the best way she knew. “Buzz is good.”

  The question hung in the air, though, and Martha tried to squash it. “He knows about drones and how to hack them. What did your friend say?”

  Zach drew a deep breath and glanced over his notes. “He said there was a lot of talk about drones, but everyone was really secretive about it.”

  “Not a good sign.”

  “Nope. I asked him where he thought they might be stored. He said he didn’t know, but the company has a few storag
e spaces. He gave me a couple of places.”

  “They wouldn’t store bombs in a mini-storage lot.”

  “No, they wouldn’t. So I kept pressing him for more information, and he finally said Lucas and a couple of the other executives like to go with the GRI guys out to someplace in New Jersey.”

  “New Jersey?”

  “Yeah. That was all he said.”

  “Where? Do you know?”

  “Nope. That was all the information he had.”

  “Okay. Let’s try to find places in New Jersey that might be big enough to hold this kind of thing. Also, let’s get Buzz…”

  She searched her bag and found Lucas’s business card, then redialed Buzz and put him on speaker.

  “Did you miss me so soon?”

  “Yeah. Can you hack into a cell phone?”

  “Probably. Why?”

  “I have a cell number, and I need to find every address that cell phone has been to recently. Is that possible?”

  “Fairly. What’s the number?”

  She read Lucas’s cell number from the card. He repeated it back to her.

  Zach jumped in on the call. “Hey, what portal are you using to get in?”

  “What?”

  Martha chuckled. “That’s Zach. He’s helping with this.”

  “You know how to get into secure systems?”

  “Eh, I play around.”

  Buzz laughed. “Well, I do a lot more than play around. It’ll take a bit to run this. I’ll call you.”

  “Thanks.”

  She ended the call, and Zach grinned. “He’s a hacker, huh?”

  “Oh my God, world-class.”

  Zach nodded approvingly. “I think I like this guy.”

  Martha raised her eyebrow. “Let’s focus on possible drone locations in New Jersey.”

  An hour later, both Martha and Zach were drowning in coffee and notes.

  Zach rubbed his face. “There is no way to find this out. These drones could be anywhere in that state. It could be in a farmhouse. It could be in a warehouse. It could be…even bad information. All he actually said was that they take business trips to New Jersey a lot. They could be meeting with a client, for all we know.”

  “Trust me, if they’re taking the GRI guys down there, that’s where they’ve probably got the drones. Besides, we’re running out of time. It’s our best shot to go with it.”

  “I will admit, GRI creeps me out.”

  Martha’s phone rang, and she wanted to jump up and cheer when she saw it was Buzz. “Buzz, tell me something. Did you get in?”

  “I did.”

  “I’m going to cry right now. Tell me, what did you find?”

  “First of all, there are a lot of potentially incriminating emails. No hard evidence, but he’s in pretty deep with them.”

  “Really? How deep?”

  “They’ve kept it all vague for this very reason. But there’s enough that Lucas Cameron’s in on it.”

  “I don’t know why he’d want to bomb all the world’s politicians. I met him, and I got that he was a little bit of a young, rich, hot asshole. If you’d said he was into some shady accounting or something, I’d be quick to believe it. But I didn’t get the impression that he’s the type to assassinate world leaders.”

  “Oh, from these emails, he doesn’t. It sounds like someone’s blackmailing him.”

  “What do they have on him?”

  “It looks like someone has threatened to kill his mother.”

  Zach chimed in, “Hey Buzz, Zach here.”

  “Hey, Zach.”

  “Would you mind forwarding me those emails? I’d like to take a look at them. Also, were you able to search for an IP address on the sender?”

  “I did not. Let me run that.” Buzz was quiet for a moment, then he chuckled. “Yep. It’s bouncing off a tower near Trenton, New Jersey.”

  Zach did an online search for GRI Trenton and came up with an address. “I just found their offices. It looks like this one is under Marc Woolard.” He read off the address to Buzz. “So, you were going to send me those emails, right? I’d like to analyze them.”

  “Yeah, hold your horses, man. I’m forwarding the relevant ones right now. As far as your other question, I have good news.”

  “Please tell me you found the address.”

  “I did. He—and when I say he, I mean his phone—goes to an address outside Trenton pretty frequently. It’s about a mile from where Zach found their address. I looked it up, and it belongs to Gerhardt Military Base.”

  Zach grinned. “A military base? Yeah, that’s where you’d hide your bombs.”

  Zach and Buzz laughed in unison. Martha raised an eyebrow. “So you’re sure this is where he goes in New Jersey?”

  “Yes. He’s been there…let’s see…three times in the last week.”

  “That’s where the drones would be. Okay, thanks, Buzz.”

  “Yeah, thanks, Buzz, and send me those emails.”

  “Jesus, man. I will.”

  They ended the call, and Martha grabbed her bag.

  Zach looked confused. “Where are you going?”

  “New Jersey. You coming?”

  Zach glanced around the office. “Right now?”

  “No. After the terrorists have a chance to transport the drone bombs to the summit tomorrow. Yes, right now.”

  Zach jumped up, grabbed his stuff, and sipped one last time from his coffee cup. “Let’s go.”

  They left the office, and the cool evening breeze reminded her that hours earlier, they had narrowly escaped from Lucas’s office. Now they were closing in on him. She hoped.

  With traffic at this time of night, it was about an hour and a half drive to Trenton, and Zach had his laptop out the entire way. He was reading through the emails from Lucas’s phone.

  “The light show was supposed to symbolize peace and unity, and the light of a new era.”

  “A new era, that’s for sure.”

  “The guy from GRI was supposed to be…Marc Woolard and Geoff Van Housen. They’ve built the drones and have them programmed to dance in the air in formation.”

  “Formation? What do you mean?”

  “It sounds like the drones are programmed kind of like fireworks to make shapes in the air.”

  “I’d like to see that. Not that they’re going to do that.”

  “No, but they’re programmed to make hearts and peace symbols and some flowers… Ooh, and they’re going to make all the flags of the countries represented at the summit.“

  “That’s a nice touch.”

  “Yeah. Then they have a couple of phrases they’re going to do in different languages. ‘One World. One People. One Planet For All.’”

  “Is that the One World campaign slogan?”

  “I think. But, I don’t see anything that sends up a red flag. I’ll have to call Buzz.” He pulled out his phone and called Buzz. Within minutes, all talk of drones and bombs was out the window, and Martha was lost listening to them talk about hacking.

  Zach launched into a long story that Martha couldn’t follow, then ended with the punch line, “Well, you know there are ten types of people in the world—those who understand binary, and those who don’t.”

  Zach dissolved into laughter and heard Buzz laugh through the phone. ”That’s true, man. All right, call me when you get there.”

  “Cool.” Zach ended the call and turned to Martha. “How did you meet this guy?”

  Martha laughed. “Oh, just around. You know there are ten types of people in the world—those who get Buzz and those who don’t.”

  Zach frowned. “That makes no sense. That was only two, and why ten?”

  Martha tried to backtrack. “That was what you did with the other joke.”

  “What joke?”

  “You know, ten types of people who understand binary—”

  Zach laughed at the joke all over again, and Martha gave up. Some things she would never understand.

  Gerhardt Military Base was a sma
ll compound of concrete buildings. Razor-wire fences surrounded it and guardhouses every dozen yards or so.

  Martha parked, and Zach frowned at the buildings. “How do we get in?”

  She noticed the uniformed guard staring at their vehicle. “That doesn’t look promising.”

  “Yeah. We can’t exactly sneak in like this.”

  “There has to be a simple way around this, though.”

  Zach called Buzz and put him on speaker. “Hey, dude. Listen, it’s like totally a secure compound. How do we hack in?”

  “Gerhardt, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Hold on.” Buzz typed furiously for a few minutes. “You have access to a website?”

  Zach repositioned his open computer on his lap. “Yeah, go ahead.”

  “Okay, this is what you’re going to do. So, Holmes Security guards it, which is bullshit-easy to hack.”

  “Cool.”

  “Yeah. I’m going to send you a link. Tell me when you get it.”

  After a few moments, Zach pulled up a webpage. “Got the link.”

  “Perfect. Now I’ve infected their system with a virus that’s going to disable all logins. So that means you should have full access to their security system as a guest user. Pretty wicked if I do say so myself. The virus only lasts for up to twenty minutes. It should give you time to override their security long enough to get in.”

  With a few keystrokes, Zach grinned. “Cool. Okay, I’m in.”

  “All right. You should be able to do whatever you need to do to get in from here.”

  “Got it.”

  Zach was hard at work by the time he ended the call. He grabbed his phone and snapped a selfie. Then he instructed Martha, “Smile.”

  She smiled, and he snapped a photo.

  “Not the best lighting, but it will do. We can’t use anything that might be online. Too risky.”

  “What are you doing?”

  He pointed to a menu item on the website. “I’m uploading us as legit guests. That way we don’t have to break in. We can walk in.”

  “Smart thinking.”

  “Yeah, I met this British lady who did something similar. Her name was Rosie McClintock.”

  “It didn’t work all that well for her.”