by Brandt Legg
“It’s open,” she said. “Too open.”
“Yeah, but unless they’ve got snipers up in those buildings— Wait, do you think they have snipers up there?” Chase asked, suddenly concerned for an ambush.
“Stay close to this wall,” she said. “The angles won’t work for them if we stay here.” At the same time, her head swiveled around, trying to take in all the possible points. “I think it’s the roads I’m most worried about.” She gazed up the streets, looking for trouble while keeping her hand on the Glock 19 concealed under her linen blouse.
As it turned out, it was both. Shots suddenly ricocheted off the bricks at their feet and the wall at their backs.
Eleven
Langley, Virginia - April 2nd - 2:15 pm - Eastern Time
Arguably, the three most important people in the world sat in plush leather chairs, their tense faces reflected in the polished conference table.
“We meet again,” two of them said simultaneously, their standard icebreaker.
The CIA seal on one wall, a framed painting of the Washington, DC skyline on the other, gave the only hint as to where they were. The windowless space was sparse, but formal. “Bunker W,” the most exclusive of bunkers located under the grounds of the CIA Langley, Virginia campus, did not officially exist.
The two men and one woman exchanged weary glances. If they were together here, things were bad.
“Critical level?” the woman asked.
One of the men stood and looked around, as if an enemy agent might materialize at any moment, although he knew it to be an impossibility. The room, equipped with every scrambling and anti-listening tech in existence, could only be accessed by its current occupants.
“Four,” Skyenor, the director of DARPA, replied. His silver hair and matching close-cropped beard and mustache, made the slim, impeccably dressed man appear a dashing character from a noir film.
She nodded, relieved. The critical scale went from five to one, with five representing a major crisis, and one being “damn near the end of the world.”
They could speak with confidence that their frank discussions, which often considered options that violated US and/or international laws and treaties, would stay within the room. The bunker’s sophisticated construction also meant nothing would be overheard, as phones and recording devices did not work inside its thick walls. Other than an un-networked monitor capable of playing presentations from enabled flash drives, no computers or electronics were present.
“But don’t let the number fool you—it won’t stay there for long,” he added. “This is an arms race that’s going to make the Cold War look like a squirt gun battle between nine-year-olds.” Dr. J. W. Skyenor had headed the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency for eight years. DARPA, the Pentagon’s emerging technology agency, had been formed in 1958 by President Eisenhower after the Soviet Union’s surprise success with launching the first manmade object, Sputnik, into space in 1957. Since then, the agency had made “pivotal investments in breakthrough technologies for national security,” at least officially. Unofficially, DARPA was leading the US into the future of high-tech warfare by spearheading hundreds of advanced technological developments with military applications.
The woman, Tess Federgreen, the director of CISS—Corporate Intelligence Security Section—the CIA’s most powerful and secretive division, hand wrote a note on a manilla file folder. As head of the fast-growing agency within the agency—actually a joint operation of the CIA, NSA, and FBI—Tess had almost unlimited power to pursue its mandate of preventing war between corporations and nations.
Skyenor pointed to a CGI simulation on a twelve foot wide super high definition monitor. The images could have been taken from the next installment of a Lucas Film space adventure. Instead, the stark views were predictive models of what the first volley of World War III would look like. The three were smart enough to understand what many in the general population, and even certain factions within the Pentagon, didn’t fully comprehend. The next great world war would not be fought in the fields, towns, and cities of Europe, or even the wide waters of the South China Sea. Rather, it would be fought from space.
It had already begun in cyberspace. Russia, China, and the United States engaged in a constant battle for supremacy across computer networks and various slices of the Internet. However, the natural escalation that these three were constantly preparing for was in outer space. “Cyberspace to outer space,” Skyenor often said.
Tess Federgreen, the one with the least technical knowledge of the three, watched in amazement as lasers fired from satellites, destroying space stations, other satellites, manned and unmanned space vehicles. The precision was stunning, the destruction surgical.
“Somebody’s leapfrogged ahead of us,” Skyenor said. “They have this capability now.”
“Five years ahead of what we expected,” Tess clarified, wiping a lock of wavy auburn hair away from her cutting green eyes.
“Based on this.” Skyenor indicated a mock satellite launch being obliterated on the screen. “What you’re witnessing is five, maybe even seven years away. However, someone has gone beyond this. They are at a place that our simulators have not caught up to yet.”
“So this is . . . ?” Tess asked.
“Already out of date,” Skyenor finished. “I have a team working on creating images to correspond to our enemies’ new capabilities, but this couldn’t wait.”
Tess looked again at the science fiction erupting on the big screen, thinking if it wasn’t so awful, so real, so scary, she might like a giant tub of buttered popcorn to go along with the movie, hoping Harrison Ford would burst onto the scene and save them all. “Who’s moved so far ahead of us?” she asked. “The Russians? Chinese? Please don’t tell me it’s one of the Middle Eastern states, or North Korea, or some other rogue bad actor.”
“That’s just it,” Skyenor said, his eyebrows pinching together. “We don’t know.”
Twelve
George Town, Grand Cayman
Wen was right—the angles were protecting them, at least for the moment. However, the snipers had them pinned down, and Wen knew more trouble would be coming.
“Grimes set us up!” Chase yelled, crouching lower, looking for something close to shoot.
Wen, returning fire toward the windows, didn’t answer.
Dozens of shoppers and visitors screamed and ran for safety as two silver SUVs squealed around the corner, while black and white SUVs barreled up the street. In an instant, they all converged at the little concrete park, one of them running up on the curb and knocking the Aspiration statue off its pedestal, snapping the bronze girl’s hand from her mother’s.
Five armed men poured from each vehicle. Three more appeared across the street, but it was the three that came over the wall that sealed their fate. While shooting at the SUVs, two operatives leapt for the wall and knocked Wen to the ground. She came down hard with them on top of her, unable to breathe. The fight was lost.
Chase was quickly surrounded, and seconds later found himself with his arms being zip-tied behind his back. He looked around, trying to spot Grimes, but didn’t see him or Shelby.
They took his gun and patted him down. Finding his multi-tool, one of the men nodded approvingly. “Mind if I keep this?”
“Yes,” Chase snapped.
“Too bad,” he replied, stuffing it in his pocket.
Wen was cuffed while still on the ground, her face scraping against the bricks. Three of them held her down while a fourth kept a rough boot on her head.
After stripping her of all weapons, another walked up and stuck the muzzle of a pistol in her ear. “Want to live, princess?” he asked in a German accent.
She did not answer.
“I’ll take that as a yes. After all, why would you shoot back if you didn’t care about dying?”
“Let’s go,” another one said. “Cops have only been paid off for a delay. Time’s up.”
“Now we are going to let you stand,” th
e German began. “If you try anything, they will kill your boyfriend first, and we will let you live just long enough to know he is dead before sending you to join him. Got it?”
She said nothing.
“This time I need you to answer.”
Wen, calculating the odds and method of escape, paid no attention to him.
He kicked her hard in the ribs.
She groaned.
“Good, that sounds like a yes,” he said. “Was that a yes?”
Nothing.
He kicked her again, then nodded to one of his men. “Slowly.”
The men moved off of Wen, and in one swift motion, two of them yanked her to her feet.
Twenty-six men now surrounded the two high-value targets, pushing them toward one of the SUVs. Wen, who wore a small, jeweled ring that opened into a concealed razor, cut herself free as they shoved her. She spun and launched herself into the air, one foot landing on the shoulder of a man, the other hitting the second man in the neck. She sprang off them and ran across the gaggle, using the men’s heads and shoulders as stepping stones as they tried to react. By the time they turned around, she was already gone.
In that same moment, Chase dove toward the SUV, rolling underneath and breaking the zip ties against the trailer hitch as he wriggled out the other end.
Realizing he had escaped, half the crew who had been pursuing Wen peeled off and went after Chase. At the same time, the few remaining tourists on the streets fled.
Wen grabbed the painted white support column of a Duty Free Center that catered to the cruise ship crowds and pulled herself onto the building’s second story. The balcony extended half a block. At the end, she climbed a drainpipe and was now on the roof. Worried about Chase, she knew that her best chance to help him was to get distance first.
The roof opened a new avenue of escape options. The mistake the men had made was in not injuring her. They obviously have orders to bring us in alive, she thought without trying to figure out who could have given those orders. The number of agents, the ambush, the snipers and machine guns not taking them out were all clues that this was not a hit job. They could have easily killed us many times, but didn’t. They should have shot us in the legs, then at least we couldn’t run. They could have brought a medic to patch us up. Still, she wasn’t sure if they would change their plans now that she was getting away.
The answer came quickly when two men appeared on the other end of the roof. “Stop!” they both yelled, aiming submachine guns at her.
Wen ran to another corner, smiling when they chased her. They could have killed me again. It must be a firm order not to. She was now less worried about Chase. The worst that happens is they capture him again.
She took a running jump and sailed fifteen feet across a side street, catching the railing on the second floor of a four story condominium building. Wen climbed the balconies like a ladder. It would have been a great escape, if it hadn’t been for the three men waiting for her on the condo’s roof.
Thirteen
Langley, Virginia
Holt Gatewood, the third person in Bunker W, was the administrator of the most secretive government entity in existence—HITE. Hidden Information and Technology Exchange was so classified that most US presidents usually didn’t learn about it unless they got a second term, and perhaps not even then. Gatewood carried himself with the confidence of a Caesar, as if, with the flick of his finger, empires could fall. It may not have been much of an exaggeration.
Gatewood stood and paced. He never liked being in the Bunker, feeling trapped, an animal in a cage, scowling, defeated, yet strangely powerful. “Technology such as this has an origin point,” he said. “It shouldn’t be that difficult to ascertain who possesses it and whether it was developed, stolen, or . . . found.”
HITE had been established after World War II to handle captured Nazi secrets, technology, and even metaphysical data and artifacts. If a UFO of extraterrestrial origin really did crash in Roswell, New Mexico, during the summer of 1947, HITE would have wound up with the wreckage and whatever it may have contained.
“I’ll put a couple of IT-Squads on it,” Tess said. CISS had, by far, the largest number of operatives of the three agencies. IT-Squad members, the elite CISS units, were made up of special ops proficient in both combat and technology.
“Put five IT-Squads on it,” Skyenor said. “There is an apparent Russian operative, goes by the name Tolstoy, who may be involved.”
“The name rings a bell,” Tess said. “I’ll pull our files.”
“We’ve got to stop this,” Skyenor added. “This could be the ballgame.”
Skyenor, the only one with a public profile, may also have been the most purely patriotic. He often said, “It is a near-impossible task, using technology no one has yet seen, to develop military applications for preventing or winning wars before the enemy discovers a way to destroy the country I love.” He found it exhilarating, and exhausting.
“I’d like to look at the raw data used to make this simulation,” Gatewood said.
Skyenor looked at his colleague and narrowed his eyes. “You want to construct your own simulations?”
“Perhaps.”
“With what system? Something you might care to share?”
“Not particularly. Nothing you would need.”
HITE’s name, or at least the “E” part, was a bit of a misnomer because the hidden technology and/or information was never exchanged. Instead, a select committee made up of top US intelligence leaders—with security clearances much higher than the President of the United States—decided who, where, when, and if the information would be released—though never publicly.
“You’ll have the data in the morning,” Skyenor said, not interested in sparring with Gatewood. At nearly sixty, Skyenor was the oldest of the three, yet the tall, lean man exuded power. His experience, and the nature of DARPA’s work, combined to create an intelligent, mysterious persona that most found intimidating.
“Excellent,” Gatewood said, his word of choice whenever he was pleased.
They all knew that HITE offered the ultimate strategic advantage because its cache of “wonders” could ignite huge shifts in power and wealth via the introduction of never-before-seen technologies—be it nuclear weapons, computers, satellites, pharmaceuticals, any number of other items, even whole new industries.
“We may have something to counter it,” Gatewood said, his thinning black hair perfectly trimmed to make it appear as thick as possible. Graying at the temples was part of his “look,” as was the tan that never faded, which he maintained year-round by spending his weekends in the Caribbean, Bahamas, or some other warm destination. He favored perfectly tailored suits and polished Cucinellis, maybe more befitting a business tycoon than a government worker, but HITE was not a “normal” federal agency, and its director’s secret eight figure salary reflected that.
Tess smiled at Gatewood’s comment. “Don’t you always have something?” she said. While she had long liked Skyenor, she had never cared for Gatewood, whom she sometimes referred to as “the Godfather,” since she considered HITE as close to the mafia as existed in the US Intelligence community.
Her collection of cowboy boots and love of the dusty corners of New Mexico also seemed polar-opposite to Gatewood’s refined approach to everything. Tess, the youngest of the three, a no-nonsense forty-something, had risen through the ranks of the NSA with an impressive list of Washington contacts. She knew more than her share of secrets.
With auburn hair (this week) and eyes the color of wet jade, she sometimes looked prettier than she was, but most described her as “a handsome woman” and “tough, but fair.” A master with strategy and presentation, Tess could usually sum up a complex situation and bottom-line it while many of her peers were still sifting through reports, data dumps, and exhibits. However, the current crisis was an anomaly—trouble wrapped in whispers and hunches. She’d learned to anticipate based on accumulated scraps of information, somehow noticing a
pattern, like knowing a hurricane was starting by seeing a few stray clouds over warm water and a burgeoning breeze.
“Who’s taking point on this then?” Tess asked. “CHAD cannot let this get to a three.”
CHAD, in the acronym loving town of Washington, was perhaps the least spoken of all the government alphabet agencies. Just knowing it stood for CISS, HITE, and DARPA meant you had the highest security clearances, but it did not mean you had any idea what CHAD did, or even what CISS or HITE were.
“It’s you,” Skyenor said. “CISS has the best operatives.”
Gatewood shifted in his uncomfortable chair. “CISS has the most operatives,” he corrected.
Tess smiled, not taking the bait. She looked back at the screen. “Then, to summarize, you believe that someone has found a way to triangulate space weapons in an undetected manner.”
“Correct,” Skyenor replied. “Meaning they could take down virtually any and all earth orbit satellites. There are currently thousands of active satellites in earth’s orbit right now. Imagine what this destructive capability would do to everything—to the modern world as we know it.”
Fourteen
George Town, Grand Cayman
Wen looked at the three men facing her on top of the roof and could not help but laugh.
“What’s so funny?” a man, at least a foot taller than her, asked as they formed an arch around her.
“That anyone imagined three of you could capture me,” she said.
They looked at each other, smiling nervously. They knew of her reputation.
“We’ll see,” the man said bravely.
“See you on the ground,” she said.
Before any of them could react, she sent the talker sailing off the roof. After a brief skirmish, another one was dangling from the edge. Wen backed up and stomped on his hands, causing him to plunge to his death.
