by G. K. Parks
“It’s under a corporate listing that covers most of the public buildings. It’s no use.” The time crunch had made Mercer more of a defeatist than usual. “Were none of the other buildings in our estimated radius viable?”
“Alpha could be keeping her anywhere, inside a house or a storefront. There are too many possibilities, but given our assumptions, this is our best bet.” Donovan met his eyes. “It’s the type of place we would use.”
“Take the south entrance.” Mercer instructed after they circled the building once. “I’ll go in from the north. If you meet resistance, take them out.”
“Right-o.” Donovan checked his earpiece, making sure it was turned to the same frequency as the one he brought for Mercer before sticking it back inside his ear. Then he disappeared to the left, leaving Mercer to climb the rickety stairs.
Julian internally cringed at the creaking of the metal staircase. From the shrieks and groans it emitted beneath his weight, he was positive that anyone inside would know they had uninvited company. Checking the rusted latch on the door, he broke it with one hit from the butt of his gun and ducked inside. The room was dark except for the few traces of light that filtered in through cracks in the ceiling. Dust motes floated in front of his face, but he resisted flipping on the torch. Instead, he pressed against the nearest wall and inched his way across the room, checking for any signs of life.
From the other end of the building, he heard a loud bang. Holding his breath, Mercer waited, but nothing happened. Continuing through the first room, he entered a short corridor that led to another similar room. This one was practically identical to the first, and Mercer continued on his way.
The building layout continued in the same pattern. A dormitory-esque room that opened into a corridor that led to another empty room. It reminded him of a few hostels or the setup on certain refugee camps. The building could have been used for anything, and without furnishings, it was hard to determine its intended purpose. When he entered the next area, he found someone.
Aiming at the lump inside the sleeping bag, Mercer inhaled slowly, calming the rush that accompanied this unexpected discovery. He edged to the corner of the room, strategically placing his back against the wall so that anyone who might be entering from the opposite side would not see him immediately.
“Stand up,” Mercer hissed, “slowly.”
The lump on the floor didn’t move. Keeping his aim steady, he reached into his pocket, removing a small LED light. Flipping the torch on, he pointed it at his target. From this angle, it was impossible to tell who might be underneath it.
“Get up,” Mercer ordered. “I won’t ask again.” Slowly, he edged his way closer, prepared to fire at the slightest sign of danger. However, in the dim light, there didn’t appear to be any movement. If someone was underneath that blanket, it was unclear if they were breathing. “Bugger.”
Kicking the bag at the end, there was some give but not much. No one moaned or groaned or moved. She’s dead, Mercer thought. It was the sole concept that would explain what was before him. Alpha killed her and didn’t expect us to find the body this soon. Swallowing, Mercer prepared himself for the worst. He put the small flashlight back into his pocket, kept his gun trained on the sleeping bag, and reached out with his left hand to pull the blanket away.
He inched the zipper down half an inch, recognizing a familiar stench that was growing stronger. The chemical odor covered the bag, growing stronger as the inside was exposed. Mercer’s brain was half a second behind his hand, and before he realized it was a trap, he heard the zipper strike against something inside the bag. Diving to the left, Mercer barely cleared the blast zone before the bag ignited in a flash, casting blinding light throughout the room.
The explosion momentarily disoriented him, and when he looked up, Donovan was hovering over him. Julian squinted and shook his head, watching his friend’s lips move but being unable to hear anything over the ringing inside his own head. He pushed himself to his feet and reached for his dropped handgun. The bag was smoldering, but the blast had almost immediately burned itself out. It wasn’t meant to maim or cause serious destruction.
“Jules,” Donovan said, “there’s nothing here. Let’s go.” He tapped Mercer’s shoulder and made hand signals that they pull back.
Nodding, Julian brought up the rear, blinking at the odd green glow that had temporarily entered his peripheral vision. He turned his head, but nothing was there. “Did you see that?”
“What, mate?” Donovan stopped, checking behind them. He asked something else, but Mercer didn’t hear him. Continuing on course, they exited from the door Donovan had entered, having completely swept the building and finding nothing else of interest.
Outside, a small group waited. They exchanged whispers and stares, disbanding when Mercer and Donovan emerged from the side door. Mercer focused on their faces, catching a few words here and there. At least his hearing was returning. No one looked familiar, but he knew any one of them could be Alpha.
“What the bloody hell was that?” Donovan asked.
“A homemade flash grenade,” Mercer said, unable to wrap his mind around its intended purpose.
“Yo,” a man shouted, making his way toward them, “what were you doing inside?” He had a large revolver tucked into the front of his pants, and from the way the onlookers avoided him, it was obvious he was someone they feared.
Mercer shrugged, worrying slightly that he’d caught that condition from Brie Dawson.
The man’s mouth opened ever so slightly, a sign that he was surprised by the lack of response. He puffed up his chest, straightening his posture to bring himself to his full height. He stood in front of Mercer, staring into his eyes, but Mercer didn’t flinch.
“I’d step back,” Donovan said. His tone was firm, and the man glanced at him, noticing the laser sight pointed at his chest. “Is this your place?”
“Nah, man. I use it to stash some of my shit from time to time,” the drug dealer said.
“Is that it?” Mercer asked.
“Yeah,” the guy took a step back when Donovan shifted the laser from the man’s chest to his forehead. “Look, you’re not from around here. So you don’t get that causing trouble is a bad idea, but it is. I told your pal the same thing the other night.”
“Pal?” Mercer raised an interested eyebrow.
“Yeah. Some blond guy. I made him clear out and set the trap in case he came back. He was cozying up inside with my TV and heater like this is the freaking Motel 6.”
“Trap?” Mercer stepped closer, his fists clenched. The rage bubbled inside of him. This entire endeavor was a waste of time. This drug dealing tosser decided to squat inside a building and nearly blew them all to kingdom come because some homeless guy wanted a warm place to spend the night.
“Don’t,” Donovan warned, grabbing Mercer by the shoulder before the commander completely lost it. “We can’t afford to waste more time.” He pulled Mercer away, sprinting back to the car. “I’m sorry. I should have gone inside. I should have checked last night.”
“Yes, you should have,” Mercer snapped, equally angry at himself. “The possibility of a positive resolution rests with those protocols.”
“We’ll find a way to get them.” Donovan swallowed. “We will.”
Twenty-three
“What’d you get from Sarina’s e-mail address?” Mercer asked immediately upon entering the flat.
“Shite.” Bastian sighed. “Newsletters, ads, spam, hundreds of unread messages. Do you think Sarina was in the market for penis enhancement? Because there are two hundred and seventeen e-mails offering her a miracle product.”
“Ask the bloke she married,” Hans retorted as he entered the room.
“You okay?” Mercer asked.
“Fantastic.” Hans made an exaggerated gesture of stretching his jaw that caused an audible crunch.
“Can you shoot?” Donovan asked.
“My trigger finger’s fine, but my depth perception is a tad if
fy.” Hans held an icepack against his face. “Shouldn’t matter at normal range.”
“Okay.” Mercer leaned over Bastian’s shoulder, scanning through the e-mail addresses and subject lines. “What about read messages and sent messages?”
“They’ve been deleted, and with Sarina’s settings, the only way to recover them is with the actual device she used to initially open them. I hate to say it, but this isn’t promising. I’m searching the internet for this e-mail address, just in case there are sites or message boards she frequents, but I haven’t hit on anything yet. I take it the building was a bust,” Bastian said.
“Apparently, a local pusher was using it for his business,” Donovan offered. “He booby-trapped the center room with a homemade incendiary. We caused quite the ruckus.”
Julian circled the room, rehashing everything he knew. “Alpha’s better than us. He prepared for this. He took his time. He knew precisely how Trila International would react to the news and how they would treat their employee.”
“It could be an inside job,” Hans said. “Trila’s men don’t pull their punches, and they wanted nothing to do with the money I offered them.” He narrowed his one good eye. “I’d wager they let me trap them to find out more about us, rather than the other way around.” He cursed, kicking the bottom of the table hard enough to scoot it a few inches.
“They aren’t the same,” Bastian said, not taking his eyes off the screen. “It was made extremely clear that security is intent on protecting those protocols with everything they have.” He chewed on his lip for a moment. “Whatever that program runs must be extremely valuable, and Mr. Browne knows it. It must be why they bugged Porter’s home phone to keep tabs on Porter and us and to make sure we don’t get any crazy ideas.”
“Trila know we’re planning something,” Mercer said, recalling his conversation with Alpha prior to the discovery of the listening device. “The computer protocols are Alpha’s only ransom demand, and we’re out of options. So how are we going to steal them?”
“We aren’t thieves,” Donovan mumbled. Regardless of that assertion, he would follow orders. “Have we considered everything else?”
“We’ve exhausted the possibilities,” Mercer said, folding his arms and leaning against the wall. “If you have a bloody better suggestion, I’d love to hear it.” Donovan shook his head and fell silent. Bastian didn’t look up from the computer, and Hans suddenly found the condensation forming on the outside of the icepack fascinating. “Alpha won’t settle. He won’t compromise. He knows us. He knows how we work. He knows how Trila works. Frankly, it appears the only unknown is Logan Porter.”
“He’s not unpredictable. He acts the same way every grieving target acts,” Bastian said.
“Which is emotional, irrational, and terrified,” Mercer said, “but Porter was never compliant. From the beginning, Logan knew he wouldn’t be able to get the protocols, so he asked his boss. Then he reluctantly told us his dilemma.”
“Alpha must realize that we’re his best shot of getting the ransom,” Donovan added. “It’s why he won’t negotiate.”
“Why can’t he just get it himself?” Hans asked. “He abducted a woman from her home in broad daylight. He has the resources. He’s done this before. He must have his own team. Why involve a middleman?”
Julian listened to his teammates theorize. Slowly, the pieces began to fit together. “He’s been to Trila International. That would make him recognizable to them. It’s probably how he initially learned about Logan Porter. It’s why our client was targeted. From there, he must have researched the mark, finding Sarina. He made his approach, compiled his data, and abducted her.” He let out an exhausted sigh. “The bloody good that does.”
“If only I could get around Trila’s firewalls.” Bastian went into the kitchen and rummaged through the pantry for a bag of pretzel rods. Crunching on his bounty, he returned with a second laptop. Powering on the device, he entered a number of commands. “What the hell are these people hiding?”
After ten minutes, the laptop let out a shrill beep. “That doesn’t sound good,” Hans commented.
“It isn’t.” Bastian slammed the lid closed. “Bollocks.” He threw his half chewed pretzel across the room. “I’ve broken into the encrypted city surveillance feeds. I’ve had the ability to change traffic lights. I’ve gained access to Porter’s finances, his e-mails, his wife’s secret account, but I can’t get into Trila.” He stomped around the room. “Balls.”
“Relax,” Mercer insisted.
“Relax? Relax? For god’s sake, Julian, you are not someone who can say that, least of all to me.”
Without another word, Mercer walked out of the room. He and his team were wound too tight. They were feeling the pressure, and it was releasing itself in the worst possible way. It had happened before on their uglier missions. And while staying inside and arguing, possibly even throwing a few punches, held a certain appeal, it was a waste of valuable time.
Dialing Logan’s cell phone, Mercer waited for the man to answer. After three rings, Logan picked up, sounding just as nervous as ever.
“We need a list of visitors who have been to Trila within the last month, possibly longer,” Mercer said.
“Okay, how do you propose I get access to that?”
“Find a way.” Mercer thought about his own introduction the first time he entered the building. “There’s a list of approved guests in the lobby. The receptionists have access to that. Just get it.”
“Mr. Mercer, is everything okay?”
No, Julian thought. “We’re working on it.”
“He’s supposed to call in the morning, right?”
“In roughly fourteen hours.” Mercer looked at his watch.
“And then what?”
“Then we bring Sarina home.” Hanging up, Mercer took a breath and punched a hole through the drywall. He was wiping the dust and blood off his knuckles when someone cleared their throat behind him.
“Jules, there’s an incoming call to Porter’s home,” Bastian said.
“Patch it through.” It was too soon for Alpha to be making contact. Something had gone wrong.
Twenty-four
Mercer followed Bastian into the living room. He took a seat next to the computer and put the headset on. Briefly, he made eye contact with Hans and Donovan; both nodded encouragingly. Blowing out a breath, he waited for Bastian to nod his approval before answering the call. As usual, they were attempting a trace, but Mercer knew it was fruitless.
“My, my, my,” the computer modulated voice said, “you made quite a scene today, Mr. Mercer.”
“What can I do for you?” Mercer asked, forcing himself to remain professional.
“I want the protocols.”
“We’re working on it.”
“You might already have them if you weren’t wasting your time trying to find me,” Alpha said. Mercer looked at Donovan, who was equally perplexed. “Are you denying it?”
“No,” Mercer replied. “You could make this easier and tell me where you are.”
“When you get the protocols, I’ll tell you exactly where to go.”
Pressing his lips together, Mercer fought off the desire to vocalize his opinion, instead shuddering under the pressure of containing his anger. “How is Sarina?”
“Alive, but she won’t be if you fail to deliver.” The voice made an odd sound which Mercer interpreted as a sign of disapproval. “Since you have ample time to waste, I’m moving up the deadline. You will deliver the protocols by oh-eight-hundred and not a minute later. If you fail to comply, Sarina’s dead.”
“Alpha, we need more time.”
“Then you shouldn’t have been wasting time.”
Abruptly, the call ended, and Mercer threw off the headset. “Bas, pull up the blueprints for the building. I need an overlay of whatever data we collected off your tech. Hans, work some magic and see if there’s ever been a break-in reported at the Trila building. We’ll need police reports and any informat
ion they might have.”
“On it,” Hans said, obediently moving into the next room.
Mercer narrowed his eyes, shaking a wayward thought loose. “After the explosion, on the way out of the building, I saw a green light.”
“You think Alpha was recording us?” Donovan asked, recalling the drug dealer’s story of a blond man who had taken up refuge inside the building. “I’ll run through the city’s CCTV data and see if I can pinpoint the guy.”
“Facial recognition will take too long,” Bastian warned. His hands flew over the keyboard and within seconds the two-dimensional blueprint became an interactive three-dimensional rendering with distances and alarms marked from the data his trackers had transmitted. “Even if you find him on the feed, by the time we identify him, we’ll have missed the deadline.”
“Do it anyway,” Mercer insisted. “We know his alias, and I want to know what he looks like. I’d hate to kill the wrong man by mistake.” Shifting his focus to the model on the screen, Julian pointed at the server room in the basement. “They would expect us to go directly to the source, so we need to find an alternative.”
“The server room might be nothing more than a decoy. The protocols operate a computer program,” Bastian explained, “or a program to run within a program. They’re protocols. Trila must have a hard copy of the actual data.”
“So it isn’t a program?” Mercer asked.
“It’s code.” Bastian shook his head, not wanting to explain something this technically complicated. “I’d assume it’s stored on various devices. USB drives, hard drives, disks. Hell, with the amount of hacking that’s been happening lately, some companies have printed out their code in order to keep it offline and secure.”
“So where do we look?” Mercer asked, frustrated.
“Logan says he reviewed the reports and checked the protocols. He can tell you about their format.” Bastian pointed at the screen. “But given the amount of security surrounding this specific protocol and the ridiculous firewalls that protect Trila’s information, it has to be on their system. The access terminals on their R & D floor are protected by fingerprint and keycard scan. I wouldn’t be surprised if they didn’t have a retinal scanner on the actual computer.”
