by James Hunt
“What’s going on?” Becca asked, keeping her voice low.
“There are some things in play right now that are bad,” Sarah answered. “End-of-days bad.”
“Does it have to do with all of the stuff I’ve been seeing on the news?” Becca asked. “They keep talking about what’s happening in Asia, the Middle East, and Eastern Europe.” She pinched her eyebrows together. “What the hell is going on?”
Sarah gently grabbed Becca’s wrists, snatching them out of their erratic flight path with ease. “There is a nuclear threat. We have it contained as best we can for now, and I don’t think the guy who is behind it will actually press the button.” At least she hoped.
Becca’s eyes grew wide. “Is that the guy you were talking about last week?” She searched the ground as if his name was written on the carpet. “Clark something? Or was it Branston Clark?”
“No,” Sarah answered. “It’s not him. But I would keep the kids home from school. Do you have any vacation days left?”
“Yeah, I’ve got some time.”
“Use them.” Sarah reached into her pocket and removed an old flip phone and forced it into Becca’s palm, closing her fingers around it. “I don’t know when or if things will start turning bad here, but if they do, just press the call button. It’ll put you through to Bryce, and he’ll send a team over to get you out.”
“Is there a bunker or something we can go to?” Becca asked.
“No, but listen, there is something else,” Sarah answered. “The guy who is behind all of this, he has a grudge against the GSF, particularly me. And if I can’t stop him and he gets away—”
“He might come after us.” Becca immediately turned and looked at the twins in the living room. She twisted her hands together tightly, and Sarah noticed that Becca’s breathing had accelerated, but it only lasted for a little while. She stopped fiddling with her hands then returned her gaze to Sarah. “You think he’ll do it?”
In all honesty she wasn’t sure. While Grimes seemed content on attacking her place of work, she didn’t have any evidence to suggest that he wouldn’t cross the line into her personal world. It wasn’t like he couldn’t find out who and where her family was. But for now Grimes was preoccupied with his weapons and his intelligence, and Sarah intended to keep it that way. “I won’t let him.” She gripped Becca by the shoulders. “You and the kids will never have to go through something like that again.”
Becca nodded absentmindedly. “And what happens if this guy decides to end the world? What then?”
“It won’t get that far,” Sarah answered.
Becca nodded, tucking the phone into her pants pocket. “What are you going to do?”
Sarah took a step back. “Try and make it to where you don’t have to use that phone.”
***
With every mission and every piece of data that passed through the GSF system’s, Bryce watched the satellite’s efficiency levels plummet. The once long green bars had shortened to yellowed midgets of their former selves. For Bryce, it was the equivalency of a parent watching their child grow sick. He reached out a hand and touched the screen that monitored the satellite’s data points. “It’s going to be okay, sweetheart.”
The profession of espionage gave him a peek into a world that most people only believed was fantasy. His own creation, the GSF satellite, was like something out of a science fiction novel, but that didn’t make it any less real. Bryce had operated under the impression that the GSF was the best in the field for so long that it never crossed his mind that someone could be better. Now he found himself in Taylor Grimes’s shoes circa two years ago.
What time wasn’t spent examining the Ghost Twins was focused on whatever device they’d created for Grimes. The code lifted from the secure CIA files about Global Power had hundreds of thousands of pieces of data and could be used in trillions of different combinations to achieve the manipulation of different weaponry systems. Once you delved into the world of energy manipulation, it was like you had a universal remote for anything.
“How’s it going?” The question accompanied a hand on his shoulder, and Bryce looked up to see Grace looking at the screens.
“Not good.” Bryce sighed and leaned back in his chair, running his hands through the messy fuss of his hair. “Every single combination I’ve tried has given me nothing I can work with. I just need a starting point, but this is like searching for a needle that was dropped into the Marianas Trench.”
“You can’t track any of the signals he’s sending to the nukes in the field and trace his signal that way?” Grace asked.
“If it was a cable connection, or even a satellite uplink, yes,” Bryce answered. “But this is manipulation on a molecular level.” He picked up the Rubik’s cube sitting on his desk. “Think of a standard satellite uplink between two systems like me and this Rubik’s cube. My hands are the instruments that can change the pattern of the cube into whatever I want, my brain the computer sending the commands.” He twisted it a few times to demonstrate his point then set it on the ground. “Now, what Grimes is able to do is move that Rubik’s cube without actually having to touch it. And he doesn’t even have to rotate the device. He could literally just remove the stickers on each individual cube and place them anywhere. And he could do it from anywhere in the world without anyone seeing him do it.”
Grace raised her eyebrows. “That’s… not good.”
Bryce twirled the Rubik’s cube on his desk. “No, it is not.”
Grace paced around the back of his chair, and when she appeared on the other side, she pressed her palms into the edge of his desk. “What about the schematics for the computer chips Grimes had stolen to build the actual hardware?”
“I know what you’re thinking and I’ve already tried looking for some sort of tracer program or security feature the manufacturers may have built inside, but there is nothing,” Bryce answered. “They were designed for complete anonymity. No way to trace Black Box that way either.”
Grace crossed her arms, the familiar scrunch lines on her forehead appearing the way they did whenever she had an idea. “Maybe that’s the problem.”
“What do you mean?” Bryce asked.
“I mean, it doesn’t look like you can beat this with the digital abilities at your disposal, so why not go analog?” Grace picked up the twins’ file, and turned to one of the pages. “Here, when Interpol raided one of their former apartments in Finland they found notebooks with bits of code written in them. They were from older jobs, but it showed that they were sentimental. Their work was more than just a job. It was their life.”
Bryce reached for the Rubik’s cube and gave it a few turns, mulling it over. He slid the cube back onto his desk and started scanning the CIA files for any known residences. “Looks like the cyber task force narrowed their locations down to a few dozen addresses stateside. They kept switching up their IP servers, running one of their algorithms that shielded their actual geo-location.” Bryce isolated the areas, enhancing the images on his screen, but the satellite dragged, the operational efficiency dropping to sixty percent across the board. “C’mon, baby, don’t fail me now!”
One by one the addresses were eliminated, either through local police reports, or coordinated intel from international agencies. Finally, Bryce narrowed it down to three. “Sacramento, Miami, and Boston. Let’s look up any cards they may have used in the area linked to some of their offshore accounts.”
A list of transactions appeared, and Grace pointed to the last one on the list. “There! Gas purchased at a 7-11 just outside of Sacramento a few days before they were listed as missing.”
Bryce clapped his hands and jumped from his chair, kissing Grace on the lips. “You are a brilliant woman; did you know that?”
Grace smiled and gave a little shrug. “I know.”
Bryce dropped back into his chair and reached for his headset, syncing up with Sarah’s communication link.
A mouth crammed full of food answered, slightly irritated
. “If this isn’t as good as the mac and cheese I’m currently eating, then I’m hanging up,” Sarah said.
“I think I might have found us a loophole,” Bryce said. “But I need you to go to Sacramento.”
Chapter 6
The coffee steamed from the Styrofoam cup, and when Mack pressed the rim of the cup to his lips he felt better instantly. He turned back to look at the closed conference room door where Mallory and the rest of his cronies were still arguing with one another on how to handle the situation with Grimes, a topic they had made little headway on.
A small television sat in the corner of the break room and flashed a news report of some of the fighting breaking out across the globe. The ticker at the bottom of the screen flashed more notifications from the global community. A riot in Bangladesh, worker strikes in southern China, an attempted coup in Turkey, all of them with roots that led back to Grimes.
Mack started his return to the office when a familiar face flashed on the screen, causing him to stop. He walked to the screen and turned up the volume.
“Joining us now is Senator Runehart out of Wisconsin.” The news anchor folded his hands together and leaned toward the camera. “Thanks for being with us today, Senator.”
“It’s a pleasure, Jim.” Runehart flashed a smile with bleach-white teeth. He was the picture-perfect politician, almost as if he was assembled in a lab.
“You’ve campaigned hard against the intelligence community, telling your opponents that, and I quote, ‘more transparency is needed to ensure our policies both domestic and abroad adhere to American values and principals.’ Do you still believe that today with all of the violence happening around the world?”
“Yes, Jim, I wholeheartedly do.” Runehart feigned concern, but Mack saw right through the bullshit. He had to deal with plenty of politics during his time in the military. “The American people have a right to know what their tax dollars are doing, and the fact that we have agencies with practically no oversight is a system that breeds corruption.”
“But what about the threat of national security?” The anchor sliced his hand through the air as if he could chop the senator’s words up on screen. “Your opponents have argued that there is a reason these types of agencies need to have minimal oversight, that it allows them to get the job done.”
“And we’ll never know how well they’re doing that job if we don’t see what they’re doing.”
Mack pressed the power button and flicked the television off. He’d seen politicians grandstand against the intelligence community before, but it was always just for show; a quick way to boost your poll numbers for the conspiracy theorists who believed that the government was out to get them. But from what Mack had seen behind the conference room door he was about to re-enter, none of the agencies had neither the malice, nor the ability, to pull off such an endeavor. Grimes was nothing more than a lone wolf; an anomaly.
Mack paused at the conference room door, closing his eyes and taking in a breath. When he opened the door he returned to his front-row seat of the cluster-fuck that was the attempted cooperation between the FBI, the NSA, Homeland, and the CIA.
“We have to bring the Chinese up to speed. Whatever this Black Box is that Grimes has created could have more applications than he’s letting on! We bring them in the loop now and we can start separating ourselves from it. Grimes could reveal who he is at any time! This isn’t something we want the MSS to find out we were a part of.” The FBI director was a mouse of a man, barely clearing five feet, but what he lacked in physical presence he made up for in shouting. His cheeks had remained flushed since the meeting began.
“Are you insane? The Chinese government has already completed four hacks into our system over the past three years, and now you want to officially open the door for them?” The NSA director’s skepticism was only exceeded by his ability to poke holes in any solution given without ever offering up any himself.
“China isn’t the problem,” the Homeland director said. “India and Pakistan are one misfired shot away from starting their own nuclear conflict. Both sides have ramped up their border presence, and both have raised their military ready status to red. The last time it was that high was the war of 1999. Where are the engineers with trying to figure out exactly what this device can do?”
Mallory leaned forward, rubbing his hands vigorously. “We believe that the computer chips Grimes acquired through his contacts at the NSA—”
“Oh, don’t try and put this on me, Mallory.” The NSA director wagged his finger, his cheeks flushing pinkish-red. “Remember that it was your man who decided to go rogue. This is as much on your agency as it is on mine.”
And so the bickering went round and round the table. The meeting was more of a blame game than a way of coming up with solutions. And Mack had just about enough of it. “Black Box isn’t the problem.” When Mack spoke up, every head in the room turned to him. “There is a reason he is stirring the international community into a frenzy while not implicating any of the United States intelligence agencies. And that’s something that the rest of the global community will figure out as well.”
Mack pushed himself out of the chair and pocketed his phone. He walked to the whiteboard, where a handful of nonhelpful solutions had been hastily scribbled, and erased them. He ignored the chuckles and groans as he picked up the marker. “The unrest, the nukes, those are just the symptoms of the larger issue.” The marker squeaked against the whiteboard with each line he painted on its surface. “What we need to examine is the real problem.” He finished writing “Taylor Grimes” on the board, then underlined it and ended it with a question mark. Mack placed the cap back on the marker and tossed it onto the table, where it rolled into the forearm of the NASA director. “This man had sacrificed so much of his life for the betterment of his country. Why would he go rogue now?”
“Because he’s a lunatic,” the FBI director said.
“He was a soldier, a field agent, and most recently the deputy director of the CIA,” Mack answered. “So far he has used the intelligence he’s gathered against every country that gave it to him. If he’s so hell bent on changing the world order, why hasn’t he used the intelligence we know he has about the United States, a government he’s been employed by for almost twenty years, as blackmail?”
Nothing but vacant stares answered. Frustration built in the form of a tight pressure in the center of Mack’s forehead. It wasn’t until spending the day with these people that he truly appreciated his own team.
Mack looked back to the name he’d written on the board, his brain running through the files that both Grace and Bryce had sent him, which he’d been scrolling through on his phone for the past hour. Grimes was the poster boy for CIA intelligence. He’d managed to get through all of their security checks without triggering any security alarms. He was smart, driven, and organized at a level of efficiency that would have been on a par with GSF standards.
A thought broke loose in Mack’s mind, but it passed too quickly. The residual brain matter it left behind provided him with a blueprint, though, of where to find it. If Grimes hadn’t reached out with demands to the CIA or the rest of America’s intelligence agencies that meant… “He already has what he needs from you.”
“What?” Mallory asked.
Mack spun around, hunching over the table and locking eyes with Mallory. “You need to lock down all your communication channels. Get everything offline. Across every agency.”
The room erupted in a mixture of confusion and panic. Each of the directors screamed at Mallory like children who had just learned Christmas had been cancelled.
“Who the hell is this guy?”
“You want to shut down the United States intelligence program?”
“Please tell me we’re not paying this guy for advice!”
But while Mallory and the rest of his disgruntled peers bickered, Mack already had Bryce on the line as he stepped out of the room, shutting the door behind him and finding the first peace and quiet t
hat he’d experienced all morning. “Bryce, I need you to monitor every communication channel across the United States intelligence agencies.”
A pause. “All of them?”
“Yeah.”
“Boss, I already have the satellite running overtime with all of the missions we have going around the world… I can’t monitor all of them with the processing power I have left and track the communication of every piece of United States intelligence coming in and out of their agencies. We’re just stretched too thin.”
“The whole world is stretched thin, Bryce.” Mack rubbed his temple, looking back toward the closed conference room door and the four suits still bickering inside. “I don’t think Grimes’s end goal is nuclear war. He has to know that the moment a bomb goes off, this game is over. And I don’t think he wants the game to stop.”
“That does fit his psych profile,” Bryce said. “I’ll see what I can work up in terms of a temporary fix to boost efficiency.”
“Make it fast.” The call ended, and Mack lingered in the hallway, a few staffers passing him, their noses buried in the folders for whatever assignments they’d been tasked with completing.
Everyone had a job to do, each of them playing a role in making sure that the world didn’t fall apart. Mack had always believed the basic function of his role was to keep innocents safe; no matter what the challenge.
But what they faced now was total destruction. And if the bickering directors in the conference room behind him couldn’t find a way to work together there wouldn’t be any innocence left to protect.
***
The windows of the house were boarded up, and there was a stack of newspapers piled up near the front door that was one Sunday ad section away from touching the doorknob. “I don’t think they’re home, Bryce.” Sarah stood in the front yard of the house, her all-black Kevlar attire temporarily replaced with something more akin to the lower-middle-class suburban neighborhood she found herself walking through.
