by Brad Taylor
She sidled up the rough steps, avoiding the light from an art gallery built into the stone like a cave. One she used to enjoy visiting because of the paintings of the shoreline, fantasizing about hanging one over a fireplace in America. The shop owner had always been nice to her, but she couldn’t trust that now.
A few steps farther was another shop on the opposite side of the alley. A cheap tourist store, with the dragon lady who had chased her and her brother out days earlier. She passed the first one on the stone wall to the right, and then began to slink past the other on the left, avoiding the feeble light. She saw the owner outside, talking to a tourist, and paused.
And then she heard the pounding footsteps behind her. She turned, and saw Gold Chain coming up the stairs at a trot. He recognized her, and began sprinting. The store owner heard the commotion, and turned to look, locking eyes with Amena. She saw the woman scowl, and her world shrank.
She took off running past the store, hearing the owner shout at her about the police. She took the first staircase to the right, knowing it led to a little patio with the first fountain the village had ever seen. Built in 1930, it had once been a focal point for the entire town, as before then, from the village’s creation in medieval times, every bit of water had to be brought up the mountain from the valley below on the backs of the people living there.
The history only mattered to her because she knew the small square had no shops for the owner to coordinate a response, only the residences of the historical families who had lived in Eze for generations.
She scrambled up the steps and entered an open area of about thirty feet, with doors and alleys leading off it. She darted behind the fountain, hiding in the dark. She heard Gold Chain run past her, continuing on, and breathed a sigh of relief. Then she heard another set of pounding feet.
She peeked around the fountain, and saw the man who’d killed her brother.
Unlike his partner, he was scanning left and right, exploring. He was within seconds of finding her. She panicked, breaking from her cover and running up the stairs, following the man with the gold chain. She heard the footsteps behind her and knew she was now trapped. Her only hope was that Gold Chain had run past the next intersection, the one that led to the church.
Her lungs on fire, begging her to stop, she continued, the mantra in her head,
If it is to be, it is up to me.
She reached a turnoff to a steep rock path that led down into a winding garden near the church. Gold Chain had kept going. She’d lucked out.
She bounded down the rough stone, hearing the killer behind her follow. She reached the dirt path, a drop to her right falling a hundred feet down into the valley and a cliff to her left rising up to the top of the mountain, but she knew the garden was split with multiple paths. All she had to do was keep him from knowing which one she’d taken.
The path widened, and she entered the church’s courtyard, her confidence faltering at the sight in front of her. The place was full of ropes and tape for some sort of excavation, all of it hindering her ability to maneuver. The only path open was to the right, and she took it, wanting to keep ahead of the man behind her.
She circled around the church, still running. She reached a split in the trail—a rough stone stairwell leading to the ancient remains of the citadel at the top of the mountain, and another one leading lower, circling around the mountain to a garden area with a view of the coast. She slowed, not wanting to give away her choice.
She heard the man behind her, his feet slapping the pavestones surrounding the church, and went up, now no longer running, but moving as silently as she could, hoping he would think she was trying to escape back down the mountain.
She reached the crest of the citadel, a stone structure that was now nothing more than a few pillars and a viewing deck, and paused, listening. The footsteps grew fainter. The trick had worked. She smiled, and then heard a scuffling in front of her.
She peeked over the edge and saw Gold Chain circling the perimeter of the flagstones, looking for her. He went to the edge that overlooked the lower path she’d avoided, staring at something. She heard a shout, and knew the killer of her brother was down there, looking up from seventy feet below. He would tell the man she hadn’t come that way. He would get the man to search the other trail.
They would find her.
Gold Chain leaned over the railing, holding a hand to his ear, and she shot out from the stairwell, running right at him. He was so focused on the killer below that he didn’t hear her coming until she was within ten feet. He whirled around, and she hit him just above the waist, using the low railing as leverage.
His mouth opened in shock, and he grabbed her arm. She kept pushing, and he went over, screaming, ripping the sleeve of her shirt. She watched him fall in what seemed like slow motion, his mouth open, his legs flipping over and his arms flailing to stop the inevitable. He screamed all the way down, the sound cut short when he slammed into a concrete bench with his back, his head hitting a rock and exploding open like a watermelon.
She stared with an open mouth, not able to turn away from what she’d done. She’d taken a life. Killed just like they had.
The man who’d snapped her brother’s neck ran to the body, and then looked up. She saw the lifeless eyes again, and realized he didn’t even care what she’d done. All he wanted was her.
She saw him turn around and sprint back the way he’d come, and she knew she’d won. She had to beat him to the lower level, but he didn’t know Eze like she did. Didn’t realize that the paths wound around like spaghetti, and for every one entrance, there were two or three exits.
She ignored the way she’d come and ran to the citadel’s primary entrance, skipping down the stone steps three at a time, knowing that he would have to circle the entire church facility, and she’d be able to slip by him.
She reached the lower level, the church entrance she’d taken before to her left, and heard a shout, sending a bolt of fear through her. Then she heard footsteps in front of her.
She had no idea who they were, but she certainly couldn’t stop. She entered back into the maze of alleys, and ran headlong into two gendarmes coming up the stairs, followed by the evil dragon lady from the tourist store.
She tried to squirm past them, but they caught her, swinging her around. She struggled like a feral animal, and they became violent, shouting and shoving her to the ground facedown. She looked up, on her belly, and saw the killer. He was standing still, boring into her with his eyes. He stared, waiting to see if she escaped. Wanting her to.
She saw the death in his eyes and quit fighting, letting them take her.
16
Knuckles said, “Are you kidding me? You didn’t want me in the room at the casino because of Carly? That’s just stupid, man. I told you the breakup was amicable. Shit, I was the first one she called when she VW’d. Me. I was the one she wanted to tell.”
Incredulous, I ignored his statement about Carly, focusing on what he’d said previously. I said, “Are you kidding me? You’re boinking the secretary of state? And you didn’t say anything to me? What the hell. We never keep secrets from each other.”
He said, “Oh, this from the guy who thought because I used to boink Carly I can’t do the mission. I wonder why I didn’t tell you.”
Jennifer said, “Can this wait until the op is over? You guys are both killing me.”
We were sitting inside a Gulfstream G650—what we called the Rock Star bird—on a private runway in the canton of Bern, deep in the Swiss Alps. We were about to attempt to crack an old cold war nuclear bunker with more than forty different levels of security in order to glean intelligence that was critical for the defense of the United States—but that could wait. Knuckles’s revelation was just too much.
Earlier, after passing my SITREP on the current operation to our command, Kurt Hale had ended by asking to talk to Knuckles in private. I, of
course, had agreed, but had spent the entire time since the call badgering him about what had been discussed. Turned out, Kurt had asked Knuckles some probing questions about his relationship with the SECSTATE, and, after waffling a bit, Knuckles had finally come clean. At least to Kurt. It had taken me thirty minutes of nagging to get him to say the same thing to me.
I held up a hand to Jennifer, cutting her off, and said, “Wait a minute, Knuckles. I just did what I thought was best for the mission. You can’t hold that against me, and it doesn’t compare to what you just said. I can’t believe you’re dating the damn secretary of state of the United States of America. Where the hell did that come from?”
Knuckles ignored my question, saying, “You didn’t talk to me about Carly. You just made a decision, and you did it based on your relationship with Jennifer.”
She snapped her head up, a questioning look on her face, but he was probably right. I might’ve let my support of Jennifer cloud my judgment. Jennifer was the first—and still only—female who had passed Assessment and Selection, and I was extremely protective of her, which might have caused me to project what I would have felt onto Knuckles.
I said nothing for a moment, then nodded, saying, “Okay. I’ll give you that. Maybe I screwed up.”
He said, “Maybe, my ass. I told you this fraternization shit would never work. You can’t keep on an even keel because you’re boinking your business partner, and you’re so damn protective of her, you put that on me.”
Jennifer wound up to say something, but he put a hand on her arm and said, “I’m just kidding. You know I love you.” He turned to me and said, “But there’s a little truth there.”
I said, “Okay, okay. I get you and Carly are good, and I’m glad to hear it. She doesn’t need the baggage, but what the hell is up with the SECSTATE?”
He just shrugged and said, “Kurt took me to an Oversight Council meeting when you were running around Africa. I sold the mission based on my good looks and charm, and the next thing I knew, she looked me up. She’s a little hammer, and she’s wicked smart. It’s nothing serious, really, and it’s supposed to be a damn secret. I have no idea how Kurt found out.”
From the back of the van, Veep said, “I’m loving hearing how you Gen-X guys get women, but I’m online with Creed. He’s ready to go.”
In the seat next to him, Brett said, “Thank God. I’m sick of hearing this white-bread dating crap. Can we just go shoot someone?”
I laughed and said, “No. Not this time. We won’t need to.”
Jennifer started packing her kit, saying, “Don’t blame me. I said to shut up ages ago.”
Brett left his chair to help her, as they were going to be a team, saying, “I’m with you. I’m not sure I want to go inside with these snowflakes. You, I trust.”
I caught Knuckles’s eye and winked, then turned around in the seat, saying, “What’s Creed got? How far could he get in?”
“He’s confirmed the server map, but that’s about it.” Veep turned the laptop around and pointed at the screen, saying, “That’s the box you want.”
Knuckles leaned in, memorizing the icons that represented the server room. He said, “So it is level four.”
“Yeah, Creed says you should have expected that. The North Koreans would want the tightest security possible.”
Switzerland had maintained its neutrality since forever, but in World War II they hadn’t relied on the promises of all of the belligerents around them to keep them that way. Having watched Germany steamroll all of Europe, they’d prepared to make such an invasion of their country much harder. They’d built more than twenty thousand military bunkers all over the country, burrowing into the mountains of the Swiss Alps and hiding them in plain sight, with entrances that looked like everything from a barn to a ski chalet. Once the cold war started, the Swiss went even further, passing a law in 1963 requiring a fallout shelter for every single citizen. The land was blistered with secret and not-so-secret bunkers dotting every canton.
After the fall of the Soviet Union, the fear had subsided somewhat, and the Swiss government began selling off the bunkers to corporations for repurposing. Some had been made into hotels, others into something as esoteric as a cheese-ripening facility, but the one idea that had really taken hold was that of a cloud data storage center. While companies such as Amazon could claim ironclad cybersecurity, they were still vulnerable to physical attack, and ingenious entrepreneurs in Switzerland had seized on the added benefit of an impenetrable facility. They’d turned the bunkers into data centers that were immune to physical attack.
The bunker we were targeting was one of the largest, with its own ecosystem in place for complete self-reliance. It had its own hydroelectric power grid, and was hardened against everything up to a nuclear attack, to include an electromagnetic pulse strike. Nothing could affect the data within its confines, a feature that was worth the price to many. Want to ensure that the secret recipe of Kentucky Fried Chicken’s eleven herbs and spices survived after the apocalypse? Switzerland was your ticket.
Besides data, entrepreneurs had used the bunkers to exploit one other niche: circumventing the new Swiss banking laws. Before 2013, the Swiss had been famous for its numbered bank accounts and absolute discretion, but the world community eventually grew tired of unscrupulous tax evaders and outright criminals using the accounts for illicit purposes. In 2013, the drumbeat against these infamous numbered accounts caused the Swiss to take an ax to their reputation for secrecy. No longer was your numbered account impervious to outside investigation.
Ever ingenious, Swiss entrepreneurs had started converting the bunkers to secure storage for anything one wanted to hide, effectively taking a bank account with a digital monetary amount and trading it for a bunker with a physical storage of monetary items. Gold, silver, artwork, stocks, bonds, you name it, was now housed in bunkers all over the country, and they offered absolute security, along with the famed Swiss discretion, as the bunker storage was outside the scope of Swiss banking laws.
Which was something we intended to use to penetrate the server farm.
17
I turned to Veep and said, “Is Creed sure the HVAC hack is going to cause the disruption we need?”
He said, “Oh, yeah. All of those servers run up a tremendous heat base. They need to be almost icebox cold at all times to protect the data. If we shut off the HVAC to that server room, they’re going to react, putting in temporary coolant devices until they can get it back online. They’ll have to turn off the alarms to do so.”
Our target bunker was a hybrid arrangement, and it was huge. Built four stories into the ground, it had been split in half, with one side used for the data storage, and the other used as individual room-size safe-deposit boxes. Using the Grolier Recovery Services cover, we’d rented a room on the safe-deposit side, ostensibly to store archaeological items we’d found in a war-torn country. We’d told the man that we were protecting them until we could determine provenance, which struck a chord with him, because Switzerland’s banks had a seedy historical underbelly of trafficking in Jewish wealth during the Holocaust. He hadn’t questioned our bona fides too intently, satisfied with the Grolier cover, and we now had a room ready to deposit our “items.”
The bunker was impregnable from the outside, both virtually and physically, but the majority of the defenses were focused outward. Get inside the bunker, and we could peel it open. Not without some work, of course, but like Odysseus and the Trojan Horse, all we needed to do was get past the gates of Troy.
Jennifer began putting climbing gear into a crate—two sets of wall climbers, two descenders, and a hundred and fifty feet of black kernmantle rope. I said, “You still going to fit?”
She judged the box and nodded. “Plenty of room.”
While she finished her load-out, Brett had swung open a section of the aircraft wall and was digging through what looked like a deep medicine c
abinet, holding up pieces of tech gear for Veep to approve or disapprove.
The Rock Star bird was leased to my company through about forty-two thousand cutouts, and on the surface was just like every other Gulfstream, but like everything in the Taskforce, it was decidedly unique. Hidden inside of it were a myriad of different intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance capabilities, along with a complete small-arms arsenal packed in its walls.
Brett held up a pen-testing Wi-Fi probe that looked like a cell phone on steroids, with two wires that terminated in alligator clips and a thick two-inch antenna. Veep said, “That’s it. You’ll have to cut to the bare metal on the terminal wires, but that’ll give you access to the SCADA system running the HVAC. Give it to me, I need to have Creed load it.”
Brett handed the device to Veep, and I said, “You got our stuff?”
He pulled out a tablet, held it up, and said, “Got the tools. This is all you need inside, right?”
“Yep.”
He put it in his crate, looked at Jennifer, and said, “Why are we the only ones dressed like this? All we’re missing is a car full of clowns.”
Both of them were wearing black Under Armour compression pants, long-sleeve shirts, and tightly laced rock climbing shoes, making them look like circus performers.
She smiled and said, “Better to be the high-wire act. We can leave the clown car to these two.”
Veep handed the pen-testing device back, saying, “Creed’s loaded it with the HVAC manufacturer’s software. Should be plug and play. You override the system, inject the malware, and it should just shut off. It’ll probably take them forty-five minutes of software searching to find the error before they can get it back online.”
It would have been nice if we’d been able to go through the Swiss government to get the information we needed, but since the bunker was now in private hands, that would require a slew of warrants and other legal maneuverings, which made it out of the question. The best the Taskforce could do was procure a blueprint of what the company had turned the bunker into, complete with the various manufacturers of every industrial piece of equipment in the place—something we were about to exploit.
