by Brandt Legg
The bikini woman shook her head. “I don’t think so. Two dead cops, and more injured.”
“Thanks, Jen,” Grimes said, sincerely appreciative of the information. Jen, who worked with a hacker, had become a reliable messenger. Belfort and the cartel knew nothing about her—at least he hoped they didn’t, but he knew that could change any moment. He scanned the beach again, confident that if he was being watched, he’d be dead. And although he felt dead, looking across at Shelby, he knew he wasn’t.
She’d probably be a tad more upset if I were.
The hacker had long ago cracked a line into Belfort’s network after a buddy of his was killed by the cartel. When Grimes started looking for information on his employers, he eventually connected with the hacker—a friend of a friend, a contact, a guy who knew a guy. But in the world where Grimes navigated, populated with rogues, smugglers, and assassins, that was hard stuff . . . extremely dangerous stuff.
Washington DC – April 3rd – 7:07 am
The force of the explosion threw Wen nearly ten feet, slamming her into the side of a parked BMW, tipping its security alarm, sounding an annoying pattern of sirens.
What happened?
For a moment, she fought to regain reality. Mentally checking her body, Wen thought she’d cracked a rib, but as she struggled to breathe, decided it was only the wind knocked out of her.
A man’s hands reached for her.
An instant from shooting him, she realized he wasn’t a killer. Instead it was a rather normal looking businessman. He helped her to her feet. “Are you okay?” he asked, but the ringing in her ears made it sound more like one word.
“Yes,” she said, nodding, having read his lips. Then he saw the gun still in her hand. The jacket she’d been using to conceal it lay nearby.
He backed away, his concerned eyes suddenly filled with fear.
“It’s okay,” Wen said. “I’m a federal agent.” She picked up her jacket, once again hiding her pistol, and quickly scanned the area as the man went to check on other victims. The impact of the blast had been relatively small.
The explosives weren’t designed for a terrorist attack, rather to keep the sniper in line, she thought. And to make sure he wasn’t caught alive.
Wen saw part of the man’s bloody hand laying ten feet from where he had been crawling. Strangely, parts of both his legs had landed right next to each other. A foot, still in his brown leather shoe, remained attached to a fleshy femur. The other one was more complete, but also more mangled. There wasn’t anything else left of him.
If she’d been closer, Wen might have grabbed the hand for finger printing. However, now the crowd was too large. She needed to disappear.
A block later, she spotted Chase jogging towards her.
“I heard the explosion,” he said. “I was afraid . . . ”
“It was the sniper,” she said as they both headed the opposite direction from the blast. “His employers fitted him with an explosive vest. They must’ve been nearby. It was detonated remotely as soon as I caught him.”
“How would they know?”
“He must’ve had a body cam,” Wen said as they walked as fast as they dared without attracting attention. “A camera would verify the shooting and show if he was in danger of being apprehended.”
“It’s scary sophisticated.”
She nodded. “Very. What about you? What happened to the other one?”
“An EPA agent killed him. Saved my life. But he was most likely Russian.”
“The sniper only spoke a few words before . . . But I’m almost sure he was also Russian.”
“So the Kremlin’s making a serious move?”
“It would appear that way.”
“Did you know the EPA had agents who carry guns?”
“I did. Seventy-three federal agencies have armed agents, including the Department of Education, the FDA, the Social Security Administration, and many more that seem excessive. The average American might be surprised to hear that even agents for the Railroad Retirement Board carry guns.”
“And the MSS has files on all of them?” Chase asked, knowing the answer.
“The MSS knows what schools the agents’ children attend, how much is in their bank and retirement accounts, what cars they drive, everything.”
“The world is scarier than most know,” Chase said. “Crazy!”
Once they were a good distance from the action, they started walking faster. Wen checked her phone. “There’s a car rental place three blocks from here.”
“You don’t like the shadow people’s car anymore?”
“Too risky. A few shootings is one thing, but when a bomb goes off this close to the White House, they’re going to start locking down, checking everyone.”
“We’re only twenty-one hours and thirty-three minutes until a city gets wiped off the map,” Chase said after checking his watch. “What if it’s Washington?”
“It would be the hardest city to target, especially when it’s on high alert. The Astronaut’s running all the parameters. We’ll know soon.”
“Not soon enough.”
Thirty-Nine
Washington, DC
With the rental car lot in sight, they stopped for a moment as Chase’s phone vibrated.
Still catching his breath, Chase checked the name on the incoming call. “Unbelievable,” he said, not really surprised.
“Tess Federgreen?” Wen asked, scanning the area, still anticipating another attack.
“Funny hearing from you,” Chase answered suspiciously.
“Well there’s nothing funny about this,” Tess said.
“Make it quick,” Chase snapped.
“We’ve been through a lot, the three of us,” she said, referring to herself, Chase, and Wen, “but I’m not sure you’ve ever been in this deep before.”
“Tell us what you know,” Chase said, figuring she had already heard about the head of DARPA, recalling that Skyenor and Tess were old friends and their professional relationship went back even further.
“You know that’s not how this works.” Tess stormed around Secure, an enclosed glass room at the end of mission control where technology made it impossible for conversations to be overheard, her scuffed cowboy boots making her sound even angrier as she moved across the hard tiled floor.
“That’s how it’s going to have to work, because we’re not exactly lounging around the pool,” Chase said. “We’re in the middle of some real trouble.”
“Aren’t you always?”
“Three seconds, Tess.”
If the phone in her hand had been a living thing, she would’ve squeezed it to death. As it was, she would’ve liked nothing more than to have found a way to crawl inside of it to assault Chase. “Okay, I’ll go first. You were about to meet with JW Skyenor, the director of DARPA, and now . . . he’s dead.” The reality still shook her. “You were within shooting distance of one of the most important people in America. Meanwhile, I’ve got a covert space weapons program on my plate, and it turns out that The Astronaut who was centered on the technology was close with your Astronaut . . . and he’s dead, too. You’re a common denominator.”
“I could say the same about you.”
“Ask Wen if she knows Jie Shi.”
“Wen is kind of busy at the moment.”
“No need. I happen to know that Jie Shi is an MSS operative in the United States, and she’s an old friend of Wen’s. Or at least she was another one of Rong Lo’s favorites . . . I know you remember Rong Lo.”
“I remember killing him,” Chase said, looking at Wen, trying to hear her silent response.
“I assure you, Jie Shi is no friend of mine,” Wen said. “And if she’s involved, your plate is filled with poison.”
“She’s not involved with the space weapons program, but before this fiasco dropped into my lap, Jie Shi was occupying quite a bit of my time.”
“Who has she compromised?” Wen asked. “A Congressman, or a governor?”
The q
uestion surprised Tess. “Both. How did you know?”
“That’s what she was trained for.”
“There are an awful lot of coincidences hitting my desk with your fingerprints on them,” Tess said.
Chase, already tired of the conversation, interrupted, “We had nothing to do with Skyenor’s death.”
“What were you meeting him about?”
“That Astronaut who was working for him sent Nash a message. A warning, really. There’s some group ready to unleash a terrorist strike like nothing the world has ever seen before.”
“Details,” Tess demanded.
“A million dead.”
“A million people?”
“That’s the claim.”
“That could only be nuclear.”
“Well you’re the expert on that,” Chase said. “But we don’t have a lot else to go on. No target. No group. Just a name. ‘Blackout.’”
“How do we even know it’s real?” But as Tess asked the question, she knew the answer already. They had killed that Astronaut in order to silence him, and now Skyenor.
“I don’t know,” Chase said. “Do you want to risk it?”
Tess, digesting the new pieces of information Chase had provided, ran through a series of scenarios in her mind. Why had Skyenor employed the dead Astronaut? She thought of the commonalities—Skyenor, The Astronaut, The Russian space weapons, Chase and Wen. What was Skyenor working on?
“I need to talk to Nash,” Tess said.
“I’ll bet you do,” Chase replied dryly.
“I’m serious. If there are a million people in harm’s way, I need to talk to him, and it needs to be today. If the people planning this kind of attack believe we’ve discovered their plot, there’s no telling how soon they’ll act.”
“Oh, I forgot. 4:44 AM, April fourth.”
“That’s tomorrow,” Tess said, sounding more agitated than she would’ve liked.
“It’s actually in twenty hours and fifty-six minutes. Don’t plan on sleeping.”
“We’ve got less time than that to find out where the target is, who’s behind it, and what they’re using!” Tess looked at the monitors showing the status of various CISS operations and live feeds displaying US and enemy agents in the field. Everyone in the US intelligence community is about to be working on the same thing—Blackout.
Forty
Washington DC – April 3rd – 8:02 am
On their way to the Lincoln Memorial, Chase and Wen made a quick stop to see Tu. Housed in a fortress-like building, the blandly named World Affairs Institute had become a behind-the-scenes force in US government policy, particularly in the intelligence arena, although the think tank also regularly lobbied Congress on matters of international trade and security as it related to the Institute’s mission of global peace, freedom, and democracy. The secretive group had avoided the spotlight, yet still attracted controversy by refusing to disclose its contributors or annual budget, thought to be in excess of $100 million.
Through The Astronaut’s connections, Tu had become a resident and fellow at WAI. Sepio, the elite security force employed by Chase to protect Tu and Wen’s grandmother, had also been given an in-house barracks.
Tu beamed when he saw them come into his “office,” a room about the size of a convenience store. “Chase Bank! Wen!”
“Sorry,” Chase said, giving Tu a hug, “but we’re going to have to cancel dinner tonight.”
“Why?” he asked, alarmed, knowing something horrible must have come up. “ Did you find Grimes?”
They filled him in on what they knew, avoiding the part about an Astronaut getting killed, and leaving out Chase almost getting strangled to death and Wen getting blown up. Even with their deal to always tell him what they were working on, he didn’t need the gruesome details. However, they did tell him about Skyenor, since it was already on the news, and in the case of Blackout, they told him all they knew. Since the clock was ticking away, they decided to tap into one of the best minds they knew.
“A whole city of people,” Tu said. “This is terrible. I will get to work on it right away.” He gave them a fierce look. “Who would do such an evil thing?”
“That’s one of the three questions,” Chase said. “Where is the attack going to happen? What kind of weapon? And who’s behind it?”
“This is so big it can only be a few countries. I think China, Russia, maybe North Korea, possibly Iran. I believe it’s probably China.”
“It doesn’t look like China’s the bad guy this time,” Wen said.
“Chinese Communist Party is always the bad guy,” Tu said angrily.
“That may be true,” Chase said. “However, I think they would be crazy to inflict such damage on their best customer, especially one with the most powerful military on earth.”
“He’s right,” Wen said. “Too risky for China. They’re already winning. Russia, on the other hand, is desperate.”
“And we’ve got Russians all over this.”
“It could be Russia,” Tu said, appearing in deep thought. “Who else is working on this?”
“We just informed Tess, so I suspect the entire US government and all seventeen intelligence agencies are now fully engaged.”
“What did Tess think?”
“We didn’t talk at length,” Chase said, “but she’s already working on leads.”
“How did we find out?” Tu asked.
Chase and Wen exchanged a quick glance. Tu noticed. “Something bad,” Tu said. “You found out in a bad way, and you don’t want to tell me. You have to tell me.”
“A man was killed last night, but he managed to get a message out to Nash,” Chase told him.
“He knew The Astronaut?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“He was working for DARPA.”
Tu nodded, as if this satisfied him for the moment. “Perhaps they are not going to destroy a city. That is very hard to do. This could be a big scheme to distract the US military and intelligence agencies while they do another kind of attack.”
“That is possible,” Wen said, “but we can’t take a chance it’s not real.”
“They know that.”
Chase smiled. “Don’t overthink it.”
“Overthink? Is such a thing possible?”
“Playing out all the different scenarios in your mind can make you crazy,” Chase said. “It’s usually the simplest of the possibilities that turns out to be correct.”
“Oh, you mean Ockham’s razor, the law of parsimony. I know about the problem-solving principle that states ‘entities should not be multiplied without necessity.’ Which is what I believe you mean.”
Chase nodded, always impressed by Tu’s sharp mind.
“The axiom is attributed to William of Ockham, a Franciscan friar. He was a fourteenth century philosopher and scholastic. I understand his premise that when facing differing hypotheses about a singular prediction, it is wisest to go with the solution that makes the fewest assumptions. However, in this case, we are coping with espionage, acts of war, strategy, and consequences too catastrophic to ponder. I assure you, this is more complex than you or William of Ockham could imagine.”
“It’s tomorrow,” Chase said. “Knowing the time of the strike should help us figure it out.”
Tu looked at him. His eyes suddenly appeared far wiser than his years. “Yoda says, ‘Difficult to see; always in motion is the future.’”
Forty-One
Washington DC – April 3rd – 8:49 am
Chase turned the car onto Constitution Avenue. “We better call Nash. He might be able to get into Skyenor’s phone.”
“If only we had Skyenor’s phone,” Wen said, then paused and looked at Chase. “Wait, we have his phone?”
“We might.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I just did. We’ve been kind of busy since I took it from his body while being shot at.” Chase slipped it out of his pocket and handed it to her.
&
nbsp; “It’s not a standard phone,” she said excitedly.
“Wouldn’t think so.” Chase found a parking space.
“What secrets this must contain . . . It may tell us the city, the weapon, the people behind it . . .”
“The everything.”
“Well, look at that,” Wen said, looking at her phone. “It’s The Astronaut.”
“Do you think he was listening in on us somehow?” Chase asked.
“You never know with The Astronaut,” she said, winking. “Hi Nash, how are you?”
“I’m alive,” he said in an emotionless tone. “I called to tell you that Hayward’s watch is there.”
“Where?”
“On the National Mall.”
“That’s where we are,” Chase said, glancing up at the sky, and then at Wen, as if to say, The Astronaut already knows exactly where we are.
“Where on the Mall?” Wen asked.
“I’m not sure exactly, but I’ve enhanced the footage from the National Park Service surveillance. In the first images, he was wearing the watch, and then at the end . . . ” The Astronaut’s voice cracked. “At the end, it wasn’t on his wrist.”
“Maybe the killers took it,” Chase suggested.
“No,” The Astronaut snapped. “Hayward would never have let them take the watch. I’m certain that he hid it somewhere between the gardens, the wall, and the Lincoln Memorial.”
“That’s a lot of real estate,” Chase said. “It won’t be easy to find. If Hayward did manage to hide the watch, he must have done a good job, assuming no one else discovered it yet.”
The Astronaut sat in a dark room surrounded by a circular array of screens. He had hacked into the traffic and security cameras around the National Mall and followed the last steps of his friend’s life. He cycled through images, knowing how afraid Hayward would have been in those final minutes. New images continued to come in, and one of them provided the key evidence he needed. “There,” Nash said again. “I see Hayward entering the Lincoln Memorial.” Nash paused, frozen by the horrified expression on Hayward’s face as he saw the guard. “He doesn’t have the watch on. The watch is not at the Memorial, and the killers didn’t get it.” A slight trace of relief returned to Nash’s voice. “He got rid of it before he arrived at Lincoln.”
