The Shadow Protocol

by Andy McDermott

  “Sir, this is Morrow—Mr. Baxter told me to call you,” came the reply. “I’m on the roof of the next building.”

  “Have you found Childs?” demanded Harper. “Tell me what you can see!”

  * * *

  The two men moved across the rooftop, the tactical lights mounted on their weapons illuminating the dark crannies among its ventilation ductwork with pitiless intensity. There was no sign of their target—but they knew he had been there. “There’s a long piece of pipe pointing at the next building,” said Morrow into his headset, shining his beam upon the bizarre apparatus. “It’s hooked up to a gas cylinder of some kind—it’s still hissing.” He cautiously prodded the half-inflated inner tube with the muzzle of his gun. Nothing happened.

  “There’s a rope here,” said his companion, moving past him and aiming his light out across the gap between the buildings. A line of blue nylon ran between them.

  “Sir, he’s gotten across to the federal facility.” Both men swept the other roof with their flashlights, but spotted no signs of life. “He must be inside—we can’t see him.”

  “What about Childs?” asked Harper. “Is she up there?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Damn it!” Harper growled. “All right, keep watch in case he tries to get out that way.” Capturing the Englishwoman would have given him considerable leverage over Gray—although, it occurred to him, if the agent really was thinking like him, would he sacrifice her to achieve his objective?

  His musing was interrupted as Butterworth’s subordinate ran back into the office. “I’ve got the disk, sir,” he gasped.

  “Give it to me.” Harper all but snatched it from the man’s hand. It was nothing special to look at, a mirror-like optical disk in a protective transparent plastic caddy. A label bore a barcode and a string of numbers. “Are you absolutely sure this is the right one?”

  Butterworth checked the digits against the search results. “Yes, sir. This is it.”

  Harper attempted to conceal his relief. “Good. I’m taking this to a secure location. And remember,” he added, raising a threatening finger, “all of this is a matter of national security and is strictly classified. Nobody in this facility is to discuss it without first receiving written authorization from my office. Is that understood?”

  “Yes, Admiral,” said Butterworth, nodding repeatedly.

  “Good. Liaise with Mr. Baxter—he’ll give you further instructions once the situation has been dealt with.” He turned and without another word strode from the office, heading back to the main entrance.

  The disk felt bizarrely heavy in his hand. He had to fight the temptation to smash it there and then. That would lead to unwelcome questions, suspicion.

  But he already had a plan. He would return to his home, where a fire—some booby trap set by the intruders, or so it would seem—would destroy it. Again, there would be questions, but they would be much easier to handle. In this scenario, he was the victim, attacked by a paranoid and unbalanced rogue agent in his own home. The Persona Project would take the blame for the mental breakdown of its operative. A shame to lose a program that had proved its worth as an intelligence-gathering asset, but it was a price he was more than willing to pay.

  Harper emerged into the night air and got into the Cadillac. He put the disk on the passenger seat, then started the engine.

  A small, gloating smile curled his lips as he set off. He had the logs—and all Gray would find waiting for him when he emerged from the ducts were bullets.

  “It’s just down here,” said the guard, leading the way as Baxter and his men hurried through the storage facility. The building was divided into blocks allocated to different agencies of the US government, grids of tall shelving racks holding countless disks and tapes. “On the right.”

  Baxter took the lead, raising his MP5. Spence and the others followed suit. “Okay, we’ll handle this,” he told the guard. “You stay back.” The man obeyed, with evident relief. Baxter rounded the corner, seeing a door ahead marked with a small sign: K-6.

  “Cover me,” he said. He pressed his back against the wall beside the door and took hold of the handle as his men aimed their weapons. “In three, two …”

  He silently mouthed one, then threw open the door. There was nobody beyond.

  Baxter frowned, surveying the room with suspicion. Ranks of gunmetal-gray filing cabinets lined the walls, not enough space for anyone to hide behind them. Giving his men another silent signal, he darted through the entrance and whipped around, finger on the trigger in case his target was lurking behind the door.

  No one there.

  That only left …

  “The vent,” he whispered as his team entered, looking up at the ceiling. There was a large grille in its center. One corner, he realized, was not quite flush, hanging down from the frame. Something was putting weight on it from above.

  Gray. It had to be. If he had left the room, he would have been seen on the CCTV cameras.

  He gestured to Spence: Open it.

  Spence clambered up onto the cabinets. He reached across and hooked his fingertips over the grille’s edge. All the guns were fixed on the vent.

  Baxter nodded. Spence pulled—

  The grille swung down. Something dropped from the opening and hit the floor with a muffled thud. Shock raced through Baxter: a grenade!

  But it didn’t explode.

  It wasn’t a grenade. It was …

  “A football?” said Spence, bewildered.

  Baxter signaled for his men to check the vent. They shone their tactical lights into the darkness above, seeing nothing but the bare metal sides of the duct. He crouched and picked up the football. It was only partially inflated, sagging limply in his hands, but was far heavier than he’d expected. He shook it, hearing something rattling dully about inside.

  Lead shot, he remembered. Gray and Childs had bought lead shot. Now he knew what they had used it for: to add weight to the football. But why?

  “Morrow!” he said into his headset. “Gray’s not here—are you sure he’s not on the roof?”

  The two men atop the offices swept their powerful flashlight beams over the Gorman Building’s wide, flat rooftop. All they saw was machinery and ductwork. “No sight of him, sir,” said Morrow.

  The frustration in his commander’s voice was clear. “He’s not inside the building either. Tell me exactly what you see up there.”

  Morrow gave the now swollen inner tube a brief glance before turning his attention to the rest of the apparatus. “Okay, there’s a rope tied to the air-conditioning system on this side, and it goes all the way over to the building you’re in. The other end …” He fixed his light on one particular spot, catching something in the beam. “There’s what looks like a football attached to the end of the rope, and a hook …”

  His companion added his own light to the search. “That vent’s broken,” he said, illuminating an opening in the ductwork on the far side of the gap. A slatted grille was bent back as if it had taken a powerful kick.

  “He must have gone in through the vent, but—”

  Whump!

  A sudden detonation made them both jump. “Jesus!” yelped Morrow, spinning and bringing his gun up before realizing what had happened.

  “Morrow!” shouted Baxter. “What happened? Report!”

  “Sir, the air cannon—it just fired again.”

  “What? How?”

  “The gas cylinder was still filling a big inner tube. There’s a valve taped to it—it must have released when it got to a certain pressure. Like a time-delay system. But there wasn’t anything in the pipe, so the air just blew out through it.”

  Baxter was silent, trying to make sense of what had happened. Gray had used the first football to fire a rope across the gap. But why would he need to shoot a second one?

  He looked at the flaccid leather ovoid in his hand. It was brand new, but the leather at one end was scuffed and torn, scratches on it looking as if they had been made by knive
s.

  No, not knives—but still something metal and sharp-edged …

  The vent cover on the roof. Its grille would be made of thin sheet steel, intended only to keep out the weather and birds, not to withstand a projectile weighing close to three pounds fired at it with great force.

  Gray had rigged the cannon to hit the vent—and set off the alarm. Why, though? And where was he? If he hadn’t come down the duct, then …

  The answer hit him like a truck. “Shit!” he cried. “This whole thing—it’s a decoy! It’s all some goddamn Mission: Impossible crap! Gray never came in here at all!”

  Spence jumped down from the cabinets. “Then where is he?”

  Baxter already had a horrible suspicion. He took out his phone.

  “What’s your number?” he asked Reed. “Quick, your cell number! I need to reach the admiral, now!”

  Harper turned at a junction, heading back toward Washington. Given favorable traffic, if he took the Suitland Parkway into DC he would reach his home in around twenty-five minutes. Then he could destroy the WORM disk, and the only piece of evidence linking him to the death of Sandra Easton would be gone.

  Lights flashed in his mirrors, some impatient idiot in a muscle car wanting to get past. Despite being in a hurry, he allowed the black car to overtake. The last thing he needed was for a highway cop to pull him over for speeding.

  The Mustang powered past with a V8 snarl—then cut back in right ahead of him, slowing to the legal limit. “I gave you the road, asshole,” Harper muttered. He was about to give the other driver a piece of his mind with the horn when Reed’s phone rang. He fumbled in his pocket, taking it out—

  “Don’t answer it,” said a voice right behind him. “It’s dangerous to use the phone while you’re driving.”

  A shape rose up in the rearview mirror. “Gray!”

  “Yeah.” Adam pushed the gun he had taken from the admiral’s house against its owner’s head. “Put it down and pull over.”

  Harper reluctantly tossed the phone onto the passenger seat beside the disk. He brought the Cadillac to the curb. The Mustang ahead also stopped, then backed up, its reversing lights turning Adam’s reflection a demonic red. “So are you going to kill me?”

  “No. I just want the disk.”

  “What for? Blackmail?”

  “Justice.”

  Harper made a sarcastic sound. “There’s no such thing in this world.”

  “I know you think that—but I also know that not everybody else does. So maybe there’s hope for us all yet. Get out. Slowly.”

  The phone’s trill stopped. Harper glowered over his shoulder at Adam, then opened the door.

  “Thank God,” said Bianca as she saw Adam emerge from the CTS. He waved, and she got out and ran to him. “It’s a good job I saw you get into this thing, otherwise I’d still be sitting there waiting for you.”

  “I made sure you’d see me,” he replied. He had never even reached the Gorman Building’s roof, dropping from the rope once he was over the fence and sneaking through the parking lot. “I just had to make sure the guards didn’t.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me you were going to hide in his car?” She nervously regarded Harper, who stared back in menacing silence.

  “Because I didn’t know how I was going to play things until they actually happened. Here, hold the gun. Keep him covered.”

  She took the pistol. “But you knew he’d get the disk.”

  Adam leaned into the car to collect the item in question, and the phone. “It was the only thing connecting him to what happened in Islamabad—and I knew he’d want to destroy it, but in some deniable way that wouldn’t incriminate him. A house fire, maybe?” he asked Harper, who couldn’t conceal his shock at being second-guessed. “Yeah, I thought it would be something like that.”

  “If you really thought like me, you’d have killed me by now,” the DNI rumbled.

  Adam fixed him with an icy look. “I’ve considered it. Believe me. The only reason you’re still alive is that just because I can think like you doesn’t mean that I have to.” He pocketed the phone and disk, then turned back to Bianca. “I knew I wouldn’t be able to go in there and get it myself. I know all his passwords and security codes, but there’s no way I’d be able to pass myself off as him.”

  “So you got him to get it for you.” She realized what he had meant earlier. “That’s the solution to Levon’s puzzle, isn’t it? There’s no way you can get the diamond out of the vault yourself—so you mug the owner after he’s collected it!”

  “That’s right. Is the override still in the car?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. Okay, I’ve got to go.” He marched past her toward the Mustang.

  “What? Adam, wait!” she cried, not daring to take her eyes off Harper. “Where are you going?”

  “I’ve got to get the disk to someone who can use it to bring this son of a bitch down.”

  “Why can’t I come with you?”

  “Because that phone call was probably Baxter trying to warn him that I threw them a decoy at the repository. I need you to make sure that Harper doesn’t tell anyone where I’m going.”

  “But you didn’t tell him.”

  “He knows.” Adam opened the Mustang’s door. “Keep him here for fifteen minutes, then take the car and go.”

  “Why fifteen minutes? What happens then?”

  “If I haven’t delivered the disk by then, I never will. They’ll have stopped me.” He started to get into the car—then hesitated. “Bianca?”

  “What?”

  He jogged back to her and, to her surprise, kissed her cheek. “Thank you.”

  “For what?”

  “For everything. If it hadn’t been for you, I wouldn’t have known the truth about what happened in Pakistan—or who I really am.”

  “And if it hadn’t been for me, we wouldn’t be on the run from a bunch of people trying to kill us,” she pointed out.

  “The glass is always half empty for you Brits, isn’t it?” He became more serious. “I hope I see you again.” With that, he ran back to the car and jumped in, setting off with a skirl of tires. The throaty roar of its engine quickly faded as it headed for the parkway.

  “You won’t,” said Harper. “He won’t make it to where he’s going. And you … you’ll be spending the rest of your life in prison. I guarantee that, Dr. Childs.”

  “Shut up,” she said, jabbing the gun at him. “Get over by the car and sit down.”

  He didn’t move. “And if I don’t?”

  “Then I’ll shoot you.”

  “No. You won’t.” He stepped closer to her; only by a foot, but enough to make a point. “I don’t need the PERSONA machine to know how people think. It’s how I got to where I am. I know people—and I know you. You’re a carer, Dr. Childs.” The word sounded almost like an insult. “Your career, helping Gray—you do what you do because you care about other people, on an individual level.”

  “Whereas you don’t care about anyone except yourself.”

  He shook his head firmly. “I care about people—as in, we the people of the United States. My duty is to protect them and their country. And I’ll do whatever’s necessary to achieve that.”

  “Including murder? You let your own secretary of state be assassinated. In fact, you gave information to terrorists to make sure it happened! You’re not some great patriot—you’re a criminal and a traitor.” Her face creased with disgust. “I’m normally opposed to the death penalty, but in your case I’ll make an exception. I hope they hang you.”

  His eyes flicked briefly away from Bianca toward something in the distance, then locked back onto her with a newly calculating intensity. She didn’t miss the change in his attitude, but was unsure how to respond. Was there really something coming along the road behind her—or was it just an attempt at distraction?

  She edged away from him, taking a quick look. A vehicle was approaching. She hurriedly tried to shield the gun from the driver’s si
ght with her body.

  “You really don’t have a clue what you’re doing, do you?” said Harper, voice oozing condescension. “You don’t even know how to hold a gun properly.”

  “I know which end the bullets come out of,” she countered.

  Another flick of his gaze, then he looked back at the gun. “But you don’t know how to take off the safety catch.”

  She almost turned the automatic away from him to check it—but stopped herself. “Nice try. But Adam wouldn’t have given me a gun that I couldn’t use.”

  “Well done, Dr. Childs,” he said, with a faint shrug. “You’re not quite as gullible as I thought. It doesn’t matter, though, because that gave Baxter time to get you in his sights.”

  “And I thought I wasn’t gullible,” Bianca scoffed. But then she saw an expectancy in his expression as he glanced behind her once more—and realized that the oncoming car still hadn’t passed.

  Keeping the gun aimed at him, she looked back …

  And saw a black Suburban cruising slowly toward them. Baxter leaned from the passenger window, the needle-thin red line of his MP5’s laser sight fixed upon her.

  “Drop the gun!” he shouted. “Do it or I shoot!”

  Fear froze her, her hand refusing to obey Baxter’s order even to save her life. She stared helplessly back along the laser beam as it moved up to her head—

  Thudding footsteps—and she was slammed painfully to the ground as Harper charged at her like a bull. He tore the gun from her grasp, twisting her arm up behind her back with such force that her shoulder joint crackled. She screamed. “Limey bitch,” he growled. “Baxter! Get over here!”

  The Suburban pulled up, Baxter jumping out. Two more SUVs came speeding in from the other direction. “Are you okay, sir?” Baxter called.

  “I’m fine. How did you find me?”

  He nodded toward the Cadillac. “All government vehicles have trackers. When you didn’t answer the phone, I realized that Gray must have gotten you, so we hauled ass to catch up.” He surveyed the area. “Where is Gray?”

  “On his way to DC—with the disk,” said Harper, standing. Bianca tried to move, but he shoved her back down with his foot. “He’s in a black Mustang—Maryland plates, registration BAR 643. He went west, toward the parkway.”