by Brad Taylor
Knuckles handed me a cordless tool with a circular blade made of diamond-impregnated graphite, and I went to work, grinding through the facade they’d built, the noise much louder than I wanted. I stopped, saying, “Brett, check outside the door.”
He did so and said, “It’s clear.”
I went as fast as I could, the masonry inevitably giving way to my saw, the residue falling onto the sheet below. I went past the second corner and said, “Knuckles.”
He jumped up, knowing what I wanted, placing his hands in the center as I continued around the edges. Within five minutes, I was done, and Knuckles slowly lowered the centerpiece, handing it to Brett.
We both jumped down and I said, “Okay, here we go. Knuckles, get our kit ready. Jennifer, it’s on you now.”
Jennifer looked uncharacteristically hesitant and I said, “Hey, you good? Surely you’re not worried about the climb?”
Jennifer was what I would classify as a freak when it came to climbing things. She’d once been a performer for Cirque du Soleil, and could slither up plate glass if you let her spit on her hands. This climb was routine, especially since she had assistance in the form of vacuum suction devices. She did have to go four stories to the top, but even if something failed, she could chimney in the shaft and fix the problem. It wasn’t like she was free-climbing the North Face of Everest.
She smiled and said, “You know better than that. I just don’t like the lack of communications. Once Brett and I get up, we’ll have no idea of your status. No way to know if the hack worked.”
The problem with working inside a bunker was that no radio signals could penetrate the rock. Once she left, we’d lose the ability to talk, because we still had to follow the laws of physics. One of these days the Taskforce would figure out how Hollywood could do such a thing in the movies, but it hadn’t happened yet.
I said, “Just stick with the plan. Get up there, drop the rope, hit the HVAC, and then get back. Your job will be done. If we penetrate, we penetrate. If we can’t, we can’t.”
“What if you penetrate and then things go bad? I won’t know, and can’t react.”
I grinned and said, “We’ll deal with it. Unlike Wonder Woman, the fate of the free world actually doesn’t rest on your shoulders. Get going.”
I saw her relax at my words, turning to Brett for her wall climbers—two powered suction disks with a short rope ending in a loop for her feet. He said, “Ready, Wonder Woman?”
She rolled a coil of rope on her shoulders and jumped onto the crate. She glanced at Knuckles, then snuck a kiss on my lips. I returned it, because I’d learned it was just stupid trying to get her to hide her emotions. She worked better letting them out. I pulled back and Knuckles said, “You two sicken me.”
I laughed and said, “Let’s go.”
Jennifer climbed on my shoulders and said, “Catch me if I fall?”
I winked. “As you wish.”
Knuckles rolled his eyes and said, “Okay, my manhood is fleeing. Get going.”
She slid her hands into the climbing devices and I hoisted her up, lifting her into the shaft. She stood on my shoulders with my hands on her butt and engaged the suction, twisting a rod in first one disk, then the other. She tested the hold, then put her feet in the loops dangling down, and began climbing, one hand after the other. It was a slow walk with her having to release the vacuum in one climber, slide it higher, reengage the suction, then repeat with the other one. When she was up high enough, I said, “Brett.”
He jumped up and said, “I don’t need you holding my butt.”
I said, “Too bad.”
He grinned, then followed Jennifer, crawling up my body while I pushed him higher. He seated his climbing disks against the shaft, and then he, too, snaked his way up.
When they were lost from sight, I dropped back down, setting the timer on my watch. Knuckles said, “I’m with Jennifer. I don’t like this no commo thing.”
Knuckles was always a stickler for prior planning, wanting everything nailed down tight before we executed, which was unique in the SEAL community, to say the least. I tended to deal with the curveballs as they came, because no plan survived first contact, but he had a point. Without communication, we were set on our path. You can’t flex when you can’t talk. We could only do what we’d agreed on beforehand, relying on Jennifer and Brett to do exactly what we’d planned regardless of something going wrong.
I said, “I don’t like it either, but at least we aren’t facing anything more than pepper spray here. Worse comes to worst, we’ll just fight our way out.”
We knew from research that the guards were forbidden from carrying weapons for fear of a shoot-out damaging the very servers they were there to protect. In essence, the company would rather them die than harm the valuable data.
Knuckles pulled out a climbing-seat harness from the crate and handed it to me, then withdrew his own. We cinched ourselves into the webbing, working silently. Fifteen minutes later a rope snaked out of the hole, followed by another. They’d made it to the top.
I tested the hold, then attached a prusik climbing device—a mechanical aid used by arborists to scale trees—and slid the free running end through my harness. I reached up and yanked on the rope, sliding it through the device and rising into the air. In short order, I was headed into the shaft. I went fifteen feet up, and saw an opening to my right. Our highway to the other side of the bunker.
I crawled inside it, released the rope through my carabiner, unhooked the prusik device, and said, “I’m in.”
Knuckles said, “Drop it.”
I held the prusik device over the hole and let it go. In five minutes I saw Knuckles appear. I snagged the rope, pulling him inside the horizontal shaft. He detangled himself, let the rope fall back into the shaft, and said, “That took longer than we planned.”
I looked at my watch and saw he was right. The clock wouldn’t start until Creed cut the HVAC, but we needed to be on top of the shaft when that happened. We would need every bit of that time.
I said, “We can make it up on the crawl.”
I turned on my headlamp and we started moving on our hands and knees, going west into the heart of the bunker. We skipped over several holes, black chasms leading down to the dormitories that were now safes, the company having sealed them all like they had in our room.
Eventually, we reached a shaft that wasn’t sealed, the light from below illuminating our tunnel, a bundle of Cat 7 cables running out. The first server room.
I paused, looked at my map, and whispered, “Four shafts to go.”
Knuckles nodded, put a night vision monocular to his eye and looked down the hole. He said, “Still see the infrared. The alarms are still on.”
The company had sealed up all of the shafts leading to the secure safe rooms, but had utilized those same shafts to run their cabling for the data side of the house. Because the shafts were still gapingly open, leading into the server rooms, the company had placed protection at their exits in the form of infrared lasers. If we broke the plane of the lights, an alarm would go off, alerting security.
I said, “I guess Creed’s going to earn his money.”
I crawled across the shaft and kept going. Knuckles followed, saying, “Or we are.”
Five minutes later, I was looking down the shaft of our server room with my own night vision, seeing a crisscrossing of infrared lasers. Creed had not shut down the server-room HVAC systems, because the alarms were still on.
Knuckles said, “What now?”
I started to answer, and then felt the air pressure drop in the bunker. It was a small thing, but I sensed it in my ears. I saw that Knuckles felt it, too. I opened my jaw, popping my ears, and said, “O ye of little faith.”
Knuckles looked into the shaft with his night vision and said, “You are one lucky son of a bitch.”
Seven minutes lat
er we heard the door break. Two men entered and started pushing in mobile air conditioners. They set four in place and then left, presumably going to the next room that Creed had affected.
I said, “We win. Let’s go.”
20
Knuckles seated another climbing disk on the floor of the shaft we were in, twisting the knob and gaining suction. He ran a length of knotted rope through the handle, cinched it tight, then let the free end drop down through the ceiling. He said, “You first, Batman.”
I grinned and lowered myself down. I got to the end of the rope and was still about fifteen feet above the ground. I let go, dropping lightly to the floor. Five seconds later my 2IC landed next to me.
We both paused for a moment, listening. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary. Knuckles said, “We’re good. Let’s get it done.”
I nodded and surveyed the room. There were four rows of servers, with seven servers per stack. I looked at the map in my hand and began counting. One, two, three. I moved to that server row, thinking, Right stack. I stood in front of the machines and then went from bottom to top, counting again. One, two, three, four.
I pointed and said, “This is it.”
Knuckles positioned himself behind it and said, “Ready, ready.”
He put one hand on the Ethernet cable snaking out from the server, pinching the release pin. I swung my small rucksack to the ground and pulled out a tablet with a foot of Ethernet cable dangling out. I booted it up, looked at him, and nodded. He unplugged the server, jamming the cable into my device. I inserted my own Ethernet into the server. And we held our breath.
No matter what happened, there would be a disruption of service. It might only be a split second, but it was there for someone to find.
I looked at the screen, and it started providing words, like a ghost in the machine. But the words weren’t what I wanted to read.
Creed sent: This is not the box.
I wanted to scream. I typed, What the hell are you saying? This IS the box.
I waited and saw, It is NOT. Pike, go one higher.
I looked at Knuckles and said, “Creed says it’s the wrong box. Get ready to pull.”
He grasped the Ethernet cable, looking at me for the count. I put my hand on the cable for the next server and gave him a rundown. He snapped our cable out, I did the same, and we plugged in again.
And waited.
The screen scrolled with typing, and I wanted to punch the wall. What came out was Wrong box. Nothing here.
I typed, Wrong box? Or wrong hacker? I’m about to rip your head off. Find something!
He wrote, Pike, it’s the wrong box. Go one lower.
Knuckles looked at me in amazement, and I knew what he was feeling. We both wanted to crush the damn computer nerds back at headquarters.
I said, “One more time. Lower server.” Knuckles put his hand on the cable, and I did the same on the lower box. I said, “One, two, three, go!”
And we waited. Seven seconds in, the screen said, This is it. You got it. Give me five minutes.
I relaxed, saying, “Finally.”
Leaning against the wall, Knuckles looked relieved. For about two seconds. He felt a change in air pressure and perked up, saying, “Your ears just pop?”
I looked at him and he said, “HVAC is going.”
I heard the whine of the system, and Knuckles said, “We gotta go, right now. Before they turn the alarms on again.”
We heard a click, and Knuckles ran to the center of the room, looking up with his night vision. He said, “Alarm’s set. Only way out now is the front door.”
Shit.
We heard the door open and ducked down behind the server tray. Knuckles whispered, “Take him?”
I said, “No. Not until he finds us.”
“What happens when he finds the rope?”
I looked up and saw our lifeline snaking out of the shaft into the room, gently blowing in the breeze. I prayed it wouldn’t make contact with one of the laser beams. I whispered, “Let it go.”
He grinned and hissed, “Okay, but I’m not going down because your damn date couldn’t shut off air-conditioning.”
The man began removing the temporary coolant devices, walking all over the server room. We remained in a crouch, hiding behind the racks and circling away from him.
Eventually, he was done, none the wiser about the rope dangling from the shaft. When he was gone, Knuckles said, “So what now? We can’t get out without tripping the alarm.”
I said, “I know. But Jennifer knows that as well. Give her a chance.”
“Jennifer? We can’t even talk to her.”
I said, “Yeah, but she knows we didn’t get our thirty minutes.”
No sooner had he said it than my ears popped again. I looked at him and said, “That’s my girl.”
He grinned and said, “Never had a doubt.”
The man came in the room again, pushing the portable air conditioners and bitching, then left. I heard the door close and wasted no time. I typed, You good? We need to bolt.
The screen said, Yes. I’m good.
I unplugged our tablet, shoved it in my rucksack, then looked up, seeing the lasers off, but knowing they wouldn’t be for long. I jumped up, snagging the rope and free-climbing into the shaft. I pulled myself into the horizontal section, rolled over to the hole, and saw Knuckles coming up. He struggled to enter the shaft, and I said, “Come on. Get your legs up!”
I hoisted him higher, pulling him into the horizontal section, and the laser alarms initiated right below his feet, stabbing the darkness in a futile endeavor to catch us. He rolled over, took a breath, and said, “Whatever Jennifer did, I owe her a beer.”
I chuckled and said, “Rum and Coke. She doesn’t drink beer. Come on. We still have to get out.”
We low-crawled back to our safe room, moving as fast as we could. We reached it and I saw the rope was gone. I lowered myself into the hole and slid down, using my hands and knees to slow the descent. I reached the ceiling of the room and dropped through, hitting the ground hard. Behind me, Knuckles did the same.
I saw Brett and said, “What the hell happened?”
He said, “We cut the HVAC, but it didn’t take thirty minutes for them to fix it. It took like five. We were already in the shaft, coming back, when it initiated. We had to make a call. Sorry about the rope, but we couldn’t waste time with a slow climb. Jennifer decided to go back up. She cut it again while I rigged our rope for a fast rappel.”
“What if we’d been caught?”
“Hey, Jennifer said you’d figure it out, and I believed her, because she’s damn near impossible to tell no. And she was right, so stop bitching. It was the best we could do, given the circumstances.”
I smiled and said, “Well, your best was good enough. Where is she?”
He laughed and pointed, saying, “In her crate. Like we dictated in the plan.”
While Knuckles and Brett cleaned up our mess, hiding the residue and our gear, I slid her crate open, seeing her curled up in a ball, eyes wide. I said, “You going to wish your way out of here? If I hadn’t shown back up?”
Chagrined, she sat up, saying, “We had an issue. The HVAC kicked on much earlier than Creed said. I had to make a decision. We had to—”
I cut her off, saying, “I know. You saved the day, Wonder Woman.”
She smiled and said, “So it worked?”
“As far as I know. Creed said he got what he needed.”
Knuckles said, “We’re done here.”
I said, “Get back in the crate.”
She said, “What about the hole?”
I said, “Taskforce problem. We’re out of here.”
Because of the exclusivity of the bunker, the only people allowed inside the room were the renters—us—so I didn’t worry about the management finding
our handiwork with the ceiling. The Taskforce would send a separate team to rebuild it in a day or two, pretending to be removing the items from the safe.
Jennifer nodded and crouched back into her crate. I slid the top over her, saw Brett was hidden as well, and pushed the button next to the door, alerting the management team that we were done.
21
Yasir al-Shami stepped onto the small ferry, showing his hotel key card, wondering if the man would allow it as payment. He’d been told it would give him free passage, but he still wasn’t sure.
The boat driver nodded, and he scurried to the back, taking a seat on the bench at the rear. The rest of the cabin filled up, and they left the dock on the east bank of Lake Geneva, the boat driver absolutely bored at his job. Back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, it was a monotonous, rote existence, leaving him jaded to the view that left the others on the small craft enthralled, including Yasir.
As a fixer for the Syrian regime, Yasir had traveled to many places outside of his war-torn country. In fact, after a tour as a commander of one of the secret prisons in Damascus, he preferred it, but most of those trips involved yet another Arab country. Iran, Qatar, one short trip to Egypt. He’d spent some time in Turkey, and while that country had more to offer than his own, it didn’t measure to the splendor of Switzerland.
In all of those countries, while he’d been able to escape the prison and its stench of urine and the sound of men’s souls being torn apart, the view was essentially the same. He’d enjoyed Monaco, but Switzerland was on another level completely.
Lake Geneva stretched out before them, the water flat as a pane of glass, the reflection hiding what was below, as if it held a secret. That was okay. He had secrets of his own to keep.
He could see the Swiss Alps in the distance—the tops still white from the passing winter—marveling at the sight. Someday . . . someday soon . . . he’d leave the cauldron of Syria for good. Leave the devastation of the only home he’d ever known—and gladly. Move somewhere like this or Monaco. He couldn’t afford Monaco just yet, but he could afford Geneva. After this mission anyway.
