Then she was crying, her face buried in Gil’s strong shoulder, her arms wrapped around his neck, awash in a misery she’d denied for six months. For God’s sake, she was Anna McFarland, mother, caregiver, the one who fed strength to her friends and family. What was happening to her?
Then Linda was there. And Fred. Their arms wrapped around her and Gil, hugging them so close it seemed they would all become one.
Gil was the first to speak. “Anna. Are you ready for this discussion?”
Anna pulled back, bringing her head up to stare directly into her husband’s eyes.
“Yes.”
Gil nodded, his deep voice acquiring an authoritative note.
“As excited as we all are to learn that they’re still alive, it’s time to think about how we get our kids out of whatever they’ve gotten themselves into.”
“My thoughts exactly,” said Fred.
“And if we’re feeling like we’re in over our heads, imagine what Heather, Mark, and Jennifer are going through.”
Each of the others glanced around, catching the look in one another’s eyes before returning their gaze to Gil.
Anna felt the words pulled from her lips. “So what do we do about it?”
“We call the FBI. Obviously our kids have been kidnapped, coerced into a situation beyond their understanding. We need the best of the best to deal with this.”
Linda shuddered. “But I swore we wouldn’t contact the authorities.”
Fred reached over and placed his hand on hers. “They’ve gotten involved in something beyond their control. No matter what you told them, we need to bring in the professionals.”
The room fell silent. Then Anna’s and Linda’s eyes met. Anna nodded slightly, an action mirrored by her friend.
“OK. Whatever it takes to get our babies back.”
Gil reached for the wireless handset, lifted it from the cradle, and dialed 411.
“Hello, operator. I need a number in Washington, DC. The Federal Bureau of Investigation. Yes, I can wait.”
Denise Jennings ducked into the break room, glancing over at the Bunn coffeemaker sitting on the counter beside the stainless steel sink. A thin layer of dark-brown liquid covered the bottom of the glass pot.
Damn it! Didn’t anyone else make coffee when the pot got low?
She briefly considered reprogramming Big John to find the obnoxious culprit, shook her head, pulled the filter basket, and dumped its contents into the trash can. Thirty seconds after that, fresh coffee began pouring from the Bunn into the empty pot.
Jesus. How hard was that?
Five minutes later she returned to her lab, steaming mug in hand, swiped her ID badge through the electronic reader, leaned forward for the retina scan, and, hearing the lock click back, opened the door. Ignoring the handful of staff not at lunch, she turned right into her office, closed the door behind her, and sat down at her desk. Sipping from the “I’m crabby in the morning” mug, she typed in her computer password. She’d done it so often that the sixteen-character mix of upper- and lowercase letters, numbers, and special symbols, though it changed weekly, presented no significant one-handed challenge.
As the log-in screen was replaced by her desktop display, Denise froze. Big John had opened a popup dialog:
Denise Jennings...Eyes Only
Just below the text, another login and password prompt blinked at her. Denise stared at the prompt for several seconds, dread building in her gut until she felt nauseated.
Her fingers danced across the keyboard, the password dialog fading away, replaced by the familiar Big John response window.
Datapoint Acquired.
Correlation to Jack Gregory Query = 0.943732
Event:
McFarland/Smythe Call to FBI.
Reported computer chat contact with:
Mark Smythe
Jennifer Smythe
Heather McFarland
Next chat contact scheduled today, 22 April, 22:30 Hrs.
A 94 percent correlation to her Jack Gregory query.
Shit. Shit. Shit.
As much as she’d hoped her handoff of information to Freddy Hagerman had ended her involvement, that clearly wasn’t happening. Big John had his hooks in her, and apparently he didn’t intend to let go until he’d bled her dry. Denise had been so busy she hadn’t gotten around to canceling her high-priority intelligence information request yet. So, of course, Big John made sure he returned critical information before she did, information that could send her to prison if she chose to ignore it.
Denise closed the window and leaned back in her chair, her heart thumping against her rib cage like one of those movie aliens trying to chew its way out. Well, she wasn’t going to jail. If it took playing both ends against the middle to assure that, so be it.
Denise picked up the phone on her desk, punched in the internal five-digit number, and waited.
“General Wilson.” The NSA director’s voice seemed to echo through her head.
“Sir. This is Denise Jennings. We’ve got a situation.”
Lieutenant General Robert “Balls” Wilson leaned back in his chair at the end of the conference table, hands clasped behind his head. As smart as Admiral Riles had been, Denise knew that Balls Wilson had him beat. Air Force Academy, Rhodes scholar, All-American linebacker, Caltech PhD in computer science, combat fighter pilot, former commander of NORAD, the first black NSA director was a seriously formidable individual.
He insisted that his staff address him by his fighter pilot handle, Balls, a play on the sports implication of his last name, reveling in the fact that it made some people uncomfortable. Denise was one of them. Still, she had to admit she liked the man. As far as she could tell he sweated liquid charisma.
Arrayed around the table were Levi Elias, generally regarded as the best intel analyst the NSA had, Dr. Bert Mathews, the computer scientist who had been chosen to fill Dr. Kurtz’s shoes, and Karl Oberstein, the NSA’s chief of operations.
“OK, Denise, show us what you’ve got.”
Nodding to the general, Denise picked up the remote control, pressed the green power button, and walked to the front of the room. The digital display that formed the entire wall came to life, its high-definition background image a lovely high-resolution shot of Earth from space, an image so crystal-clear it had no counterpart in the civilian world, having been taken by one of the most sophisticated spy satellites ever created. If the satellite had been focused on the parking lot outside the Crystal Palace, not only could you have read the license plates, the multispectral imagery product could have told you how long the car had been parked there, from the heat of the engines. It could have shown you which parking spots had been recently vacated, from the differences in temperature of the ground that had been under the vehicles.
Denise pressed a sequence of buttons on the remote, pulling up the presentation she had spent the last two hours preparing.
“Balls. Gentlemen. I asked for this meeting to show you something that Big John brought to my attention this morning. The subject of the correlative data search was Jack ‘the Ripper’ Gregory.”
Seeing that she had their rapt attention, Denise flicked to the first slide. It showed the text message she’d received earlier in the day.
“I received this Big John alert shortly after noon today. What you need now is some context for the message so that you understand its importance.
“Several weeks ago Big John began reporting a sequence of data correlations with the Gregory search, data points that by themselves seemed very tenuous.”
Denise changed to a series of slides showing what Big John had identified as connected events.
“I’ll run through these quickly and then discuss the implied connections. The first of these events was the New Year’s Day virus from a little over a year ago. The virus came to the NSA’s attention for two reasons. It had the ability to encrypt data in a manner that our best methods couldn’t break. It also revealed the location of a computer that held
another encrypted message, this one breakable, with text that alluded to dangerous activity within the Los Alamos Rho Project. This was the event that caused Admiral Riles to send Jack Gregory’s team to Los Alamos.”
Next came an image showing Jack Gregory and Janet Price standing and cheering at a basketball game.
“This was taken at the New Mexico State Championship basketball game that same year. I’ve circled in red the people occupying the seats next to Jack and Janet. They are, from left to right, Gil McFarland, Anna McFarland, Fred Smythe, Linda Smythe, Jennifer Smythe, and Heather McFarland. You’ll recognize some of those names from my first slide. The other person mentioned in Big John’s message today was Mark Smythe. He was a young allstate basketball player, playing in the state championship game.”
Balls leaned forward. “I remember reading about that kid. Fantastic young point guard as I recall. ESPN was comparing him to a young Steve Nash.”
Denise clicked to the next slide. “This is an article that appeared in the Albuquerque Journal a short while later. A local EPA inspector named Jack Johnson, Gregory’s cover name, had shown up at the Los Alamos hospital with an injured girl by the name of Heather McFarland. The story goes on to say that Jack apparently encountered a crazed homeless man who had been attempting to kidnap Heather McFarland. The two men fought, with Jack getting cut on the arm before the homeless man ran off. That man has never been seen again.”
Balls laughed. “I’d say the chances of ever seeing him again aren’t too good.”
Karl Oberstein snorted in agreement. “Not much chance of that fellow surviving an encounter with Gregory. Surprises me he managed to cut him, though.”
“Probably had to do with protecting the girl,” said Balls.
“Here’s another story from Los Alamos. Heather McFarland kidnapped and attacked by Dr. Ernesto Rodriguez, a top Rho Project scientist. He kills himself before arrest.”
“McFarland kid? Kidnapped again?” Bert asked.
Denise changed slides again. “This is from the Washington Post. It’s the story about Jonathan Riles’s murder of Dr. David Kurtz, after which he took his own life.”
The atmosphere in the room acquired a somber cast.
“This next slide is the AP story about the FBI attempt to capture or kill Jack Gregory and his team. Another black eye for the FBI folks, this one even surpassing Waco. A couple of Gregory’s team killed, a couple dozen FBI agents and civilians killed, Jack and Janet escape.”
Oberstein nodded. “I assume this is going somewhere.”
Denise pursed her lips. “A few more minutes and I’ll put a bow around it for you.”
Her curt response drew another chuckle from Balls Wilson. “Careful. She’s got your number, Karl.”
She began flipping through the slides more rapidly.
The FBI director murdered.
President Harris assassinated.
Senator Pete Hornsby, the key Senate voice against the Rho Project, dead in a car accident returning from his native Maine.
The three McFarland kids win the National Science Fair with a cold fusion device, a prize that is stripped for plagiarism.
Another AP story, this one about three missing Los Alamos, New Mexico, high school students: Heather McFarland and Mark and Jennifer Smythe.
Top CIA trainer, Garfield Kromly, found murdered.
Then the body of Eduardo Montenegro, the assassin known as El Chupacabra, found at Schriever Air Force Base, not far from where Jack Gregory is known to have hijacked the satellite uplink, reprogramming global GPS satellites to shut down the Rho Project’s nanite formula.
Denise ended her slide presentation and faced the general.
“Big John has tagged every one of these events with a very high correlation to my Jack Gregory search query.”
Levi’s nasal voice redirected her attention. “And what was Big John’s calculated degree of correlation?”
“The worst correlation was 0.873.”
“That high?”
“Yes. And there’s more. It turns out that Jennifer Smythe stayed several days at the Bellagio in Las Vegas, was identified by the security staff as a very accomplished hacker, and subsequently moved to the Espeñosa hacienda outside Medellín, Columbia. Not long after that, Don Espeñosa and a number of his guards were killed. After that, Jennifer Smythe just disappeared.”
“What about the other two kids?”
“Nothing firm, but a member of Espeñosa’s cleaning staff reported seeing two young Americans arrive at the hacienda on the day that Don Espeñosa died.”
“Jesus.”
“There’s one more thing. That day was Thanksgiving here in the good old USA. The same day Jack Gregory killed the Espeñosa cartel’s number one hit man, the same day he reprogrammed the GPS satellites.”
Denise paused. “Now we’ve learned that the FBI is set to monitor a computer chat session between the McFarland and Smythe kids and their parents tonight.”
The room was silent for several seconds. Then General “Balls” Wilson rose to his feet.
“Karl, I want that computer hacked, the computer that the FBI will be monitoring for tonight’s chat. Work with Denise. Use her antivirus back door. Bottom line, I want us in virtual control of that system when tonight’s chat session begins. Oh, and remember, that Smythe girl is supposed to be a talented hacker. Keep our data copy local, nothing goes out on the Net while the chat session is in progress.”
“But what about the FBI? Aren’t they going to grab that computer right after the session?
“Not likely. It would be a dead giveaway to their quarry. They’ll remain in stakeout mode.”
“OK. You’ve got it, boss.”
“Make damned sure I do.”
Then the general turned on his heel and was gone.
Mark watched Heather’s eyes go white, then brown, then white again, changing color so rapidly he could almost convince himself that he’d imagined it. But he hadn’t.
She shuddered, shook her head, and grimaced. “Screw it!”
“What?” Mark asked, taken aback by Heather’s unusual descent into vulgarity.
Her angry eyes centered on his. “Sometimes I make myself so mad I can’t stand it. In a few minutes we’re going to get a chance to chat with our parents, something I want so bad I can taste it, and all I can do is second-guess our decision.”
“Understandable,” said Mark.
“Bullshit! If we can’t trust our parents, whom can we trust?”
Mark paused for several seconds. “True enough. But we know that both our houses were bugged by Jack and Janet. Who’s to say those bugs aren’t still active?”
Much to Mark’s relief, Heather nodded and calmed down. “That must be it. What’s been worrying me, I mean.”
“We’ve taken appropriate precautions, made a backdrop for our camera position with plastic sheeting, dressed ourselves in these white sheet togas. As long as we stay focused on not revealing anything about where we are, and remember we might be monitored, we’ll be fine. It’s impossible to trace our subspace signal.”
Heather’s eyes momentarily faded to gray, staying that way just long enough to concern Mark before they refocused. “You’re right. No reason to worry.”
Just then Jennifer entered the lab, the outside door letting in a breath of summer night air, thick with humidity and smells that signaled the gathering storm.
Her eyes swept across them. “You guys all right?”
“Fine,” said Heather, putting on what Mark knew was a forced smile. “Just a little anxious.”
Jen smiled back at her. “No kidding. Me too.”
Sitting down at her laptop, Jennifer logged in, then engaged the program that would connect them to Linda Smythe’s laptop. Her middle finger paused just above the ENTER key.
“Well, here goes.” She tapped the key, activating the subspace transmission.
Nothing happened for several seconds, then a video window filled the screen. There in front of them we
re the visages of their parents, crowded together in front of the computer camera.
Sadness engulfed Mark as he saw the tears streaming down Heather’s face.
She still managed to be first to speak.
“Hi, Mom, Dad. I miss you so much.”
“We miss you too, baby.” Mr. McFarland’s voice brought a rush of memories to Mark, memories centered in more comfortable times, better days from the past. Mrs. McFarland stared into the screen, eyes misted, rendered completely speechless.
Then everyone spoke in a rush, Mark, Jen, and Heather competing for airtime even as all of the parents stepped all over each other’s words on the far end. The expressions of love gave way to questions about how each of them was doing. Gradually talk shifted to questions about their situation. Where were they? Did they need help? Could they come home?
Although they’d talked through these likely questions, Mark found them difficult to answer. With every question they dodged, their parents pressed for more details. If they needed help, they would get it. If someone was holding them against their will, just list the demands. Everything could be made all right again. Home was still home.
Then, seemingly before they’d even started the conversation, the wall clock indicated the time they’d agreed on had expired and Mark found himself taking the lead in telling his mom and dad good-bye. Another round of tears from the girls and their moms, another round of sad good-byes from their dads, and then Jennifer terminated the session.
Jennifer leaned forward on the desk, elbows on the table, face in her hands. Heather’s white eyes seemed to stare right through him, tears cutting narrow trails down her cheeks. As Mark stared down at the blank computer screen, the distant rumble of thunder marred the silence that had descended on the computer lab.
Standing there next to Heather and Jennifer, listening to the gathering storm, he couldn’t remember ever having been so depressed.
Fred Smythe put his arms around his wife, pulling her into a bear hug that was joined by Gil and Anna, a tiny huddle sharing the most difficult game of their lives. When he finally released her, he smiled.
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