The Unknown

by Brett Battles

  “Wait!” the man yelled as they stepped outside. “Wait! Wa—”

  Quinn slammed the door shut.

  Nate walked down the center of the runway, back toward the building where the others were.

  Two silhouettes, one small and one large, separated from the woods to the right and passed through the hole in the fence Daeng had cut.

  Jar and Kincaid.

  Nate picked up his pace and intercepted them as they reached the airstrip.

  Kincaid said, “You let them get away!”

  “I’m going to ignore the tone of your voice,” Nate said. “And we did not let them get away. We put up a pretty good fight to keep that from happening. Besides, we know where they are, right, Jar?”

  “Yes.”

  “If you have a problem with anything,” Nate said to Kincaid, “take it up with Quinn.”

  Kincaid grimaced but said nothing more.

  Nate glanced at Jar again. “Hey, by the way.”

  A flicker of a smile on her face, then all serious again. “Hello.”

  While Nate and Jar talked to each other several times a week, they hadn’t physically been in each other’s presence in nearly two months. Usually it was voice or video calls, often involving her help with his new hobby. Like when she’d assisted him in his search for a California killer and they ended up unearthing a conspiracy a lot bigger than either of them had expected. Other times it was just him checking on her, prodding her to tell him about her day, and solidifying the ties that were turning them into each other’s best friend.

  “Can I carry something for you?” he asked her.

  She had her opened laptop tucked between an outstretched hand and her chest, a small duffel in the other hand, and a backpack over her shoulder.

  “I am fine.”

  Nate rolled his eyes. “Jar, we’ve talked about this.”

  She continued to walk for several steps before expelling a breath and handing him the duffel. She had the habit of sometimes feeling like she needed to do everything herself. That’s the way she’d survived through most of the first twenty or so years of her life. As part of Quinn’s team—and a charter member of Nate’s Hobby Club—she was slowly learning it was okay to rely on others.

  “Khob khun ka,” she said.

  “You’re welcome,” he replied.

  She hesitated before saying, “You, um, did very well with putting the trackers on the plane.”

  “Thank you. That was sweet.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “Are you being…what is the word? Fatuous?”

  He chuckled. “Technically, yes, but I think the word you’re looking for is facetious.”

  She tried the word a few times but kept stumbling over the final syllable. She gave up and said, “You did not answer my question.”

  “I was not being facetious.”

  She stared at him for a few steps. “Okay. Good.”

  Orlando, Quinn, and Daeng were coming out of the building as Nate, Jar, and Kincaid reached the aircraft parking area. They met up in the same spot where the jet had been waiting.

  “Where’s it headed?” Orlando asked Jar.

  Jar checked her screen “East. Still over Slovakia. If they keep their current path, they will be over northern Hungary in approximately eighteen minutes.”

  “East,” Quinn said, thinking.

  Orlando nodded back at the building. “If our friend in there is right, they could be heading for Russia.” She gave Nate, Jar, and Kincaid a quick rundown of what they’d learned from the injured man.

  “We’re going to need our own plane,” Quinn said.

  Nate looked around at the bodies strewn in front of the building. “And someone to clean up this mess. I mean, we don’t have to do it, do we?”

  The team—minus Orlando, who was working on logistics—returned to the cars to collect the rest of their gear.

  “You three start gathering everything,” Quinn said to Nate, Daeng, and Jar. “Kincaid, come with me.” He motioned for the bodyguard to follow him down the dirt road.

  “What?” Kincaid said after he joined him.

  “I know you’re not very happy right now.”

  “You think I should be?”

  “No. But be careful where that anger is focused.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  Quinn said nothing for a moment. “Tell me, what would you have done differently back there?”

  The combination of irritation and uncertainty on the man’s face told Quinn Kincaid had been thinking a lot about that but had come up with nothing.

  After a few more seconds of silence, Quinn said, “I think we have a better chance of succeeding with you on the team than not. But I need you fully with us. If you can’t do that, then I won’t have any choice but to leave you behind. If you can, I’ll work things out with Misty.”

  Kincaid looked down the road. “I can’t go back. I need to be a part of making this right.”

  “You promise you won’t try to take things into your own hands? Maybe even take off on your own?”

  Kincaid nodded.

  “I want to make sure you’re clear about this. Staying means you will do everything I or anyone else on my team asks you to do. No questions.”

  “Everything? What if they—”

  “These are the terms of your employment, Mr. Kincaid. Take it or leave it.”

  “I do whatever I’m told.”

  Quinn held out his hand and Kincaid shook it.

  As they turned to walk back to the others, Kincaid said, “So what are you going to tell Misty?”

  “I’m not going to have time to call her until we’re in the air. And I doubt she’d then make us turn around just to drop you off.”

  Kincaid stared at him for a second, and then chuckled to himself.

  When the team returned to the landing strip, Orlando informed Quinn two aircraft would be arriving within the hour—one a long-range Gulfstream G650 that would fly them wherever they decided to go, and the other a helicopter bearing a Czech-based CIA clean team to deal with the prisoner and the bodies.

  “Where’s the stuff you found at Brunner’s apartment?” Orlando asked Nate while the team waited for the transport.

  Nate patted his backpack. “Right here.”

  “We’ve got a few minutes. Let’s take a look.”

  The first thing Nate pulled out was a hard drive. Before he could hand it to Orlando, however, Jar snatched it from him.

  She turned the unit around, examining every side of the box. “Solid state.”

  “Doesn’t that mean whatever’s on it might still be intact?” Nate asked.

  She either ignored his question or was too engrossed in her examination to hear him, because the next thing she said was, “The connector is cracked. It will need to be replaced. I do not have the hardware for it here.”

  She turned to Orlando, but Orlando shook her head. “Me, neither.”

  Jar glanced at the building. “Are there any electronics inside? Maybe there’s something I can use.”

  Quinn shrugged. “Wasn’t exactly looking for that kind of thing when we were inside.”

  Jar started toward the door.

  “Ignore the bloody guy in the chair!” Daeng called out.

  “When have I had a problem with that?” Jar said without stopping. A moment later, she disappeared into the building.

  Nate pulled out a group of three books, and handed two to Orlando. “They’re written in some kind of code. There were several more, but I didn’t have any way to carry the rest without them being noticed.”

  Orlando opened one of the notebooks and leafed through the pages. “This looks like it might take a while to break.”

  “What’s the other book?” Quinn asked, nodding at the one Nate still held.

  “You tell me.” Nate grasped the book by one of the covers, and held it out so that the pages should fan downward, but they didn’t.

  “Let me see that,” Quinn said.

  Nate hande
d it to him and Quinn turned it around a few times, studying it.

  “I’m thinking it’s some sort of box,” Nate said. “Gotta be a hidden button somewhere but I didn’t see anything. Of course, I didn’t really have a lot of time to look. Hell, maybe it doesn’t even open at all.”

  Quinn didn’t see a button, either. He tapped on a cover. No echo, like one would expect if the thing had been hollow, and yet it felt lighter than a book of its thickness and type should be.

  As he flipped it over for another look, Jar exited the building. In her arms was a tower-style desktop computer that was almost the length of her torso.

  “You found what you were looking for?” Daeng said.

  “Ask me again in a minute,” she said.

  She raised the computer as high as she could and dropped it on the ground. The outer shell shattered, and the inside spilled out across the pavement. Kneeling, she sifted through the mess for a few seconds, then snatched a bundle of wires out of the pile and rejoined the others.

  “Well?” Daeng said.

  “This is not perfect but I can make it work.” Her gaze locked on the book in Quinn’s hand. “What is that?”

  “We’re not sure,” Quinn said. “Might be a safety box.”

  “Or a doorstop,” Nate suggested.

  “Here.” Jar shoved the wires she’d just collected and Brunner’s hard drive into Nate’s hands, and said to Quinn, “May I?”

  “Be my guest.” He handed her the book.

  It wouldn’t have surprised Quinn if she’d figured it out right away, but the box appeared to confound her as much as it had him and Nate. She was still at it fifteen minutes later when Kincaid pointed at an approaching light in the sky and said, “I think our taxi’s here.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  HUNGARY

  Tiana should have been smiling.

  They had Brunner. They were en route to Lonely Rock. And, with the pilot’s announcement that they’d crossed into Hungarian airspace, they had just put the first of several international borders between themselves and the people who had tried to stop them.

  But a sense of unease in her gut kept her from feeling relief.

  She pushed out of her seat and headed back to the toilet. On the way, she stopped at the case containing the prisoner and checked the tablet computer velcroed to the top of the box. It displayed two readouts: one, a gauge for the oxygen tank strapped to the wall beside the container, currently reading 93 percent full; and the other, a digital display of Brunner’s pulse rate, at the moment a slightly elevated 84. Given the circumstances, it was not unexpected.

  She continued on to the toilet. As she opened the door, she realized what was eating at her. She whirled around and rushed toward the cockpit.

  “What’s wrong?” Grigory asked as she passed, but she flew by, saying nothing.

  When she reached the pilots, she said, “Find someplace to land. Now.”

  The copilot looked at her. “But we’re not supposed—”

  “I don’t care what your orders are. I’m the officer in charge. I’m telling you to land so take us down!”

  The two men exchanged a glance, and the pilot said, “Of course. Anton, check for the closest airport.”

  The copilot conducted a search on the computer in the dash. “There is nothing ahead of us until we reach Ukraine.”

  “We can’t wait that long,” Tiana said. “You need to land now.”

  “Well, all right, um….” He consulted the computer again. “The closest is in Debrecen. But it’s to the south. About one hundred and twenty kilometers off our course.”

  “That’s fine. How quickly can you get us there?”

  “That will depend on air traffic control. Since we are not scheduled, they will have to fit us in and we might have to wait until—”

  “No waiting! Declare an emergency. That should clear the way, right?”

  The copilot stared at her, shocked at the suggestion.

  The pilot answered, “Yes, that should do it.”

  “Wh-what kind of emergency?” the copilot asked.

  “I don’t give a shit. You figure it out. Just get us on the ground as quickly as possible.”

  Quinn closed his eyes and rubbed his forehead. “Misty, stop,” he said into his phone. “I give you my word—when this is all over, I’ll deliver Kincaid to you myself.”

  As he’d promised Kincaid, he’d waited to call Misty until after they lifted off. That had occurred seven minutes earlier, putting them exactly thirty-six minutes behind the other plane. Closer than he’d feared, but still too far behind for his liking.

  “Fine,” Misty said, clearly not happy. “But I would appreciate it in the future that if I give an order, you back me up on it.”

  “I will. I promise.”

  A pause. “If there isn’t anything else…”

  “There is,” Quinn said. “Two things, actually. First, and I know I’ve asked this already, but it could really help us if we had a better idea of why Brunner was kidnapped. What he’s been working on. Who exactly would be interested in him.”

  “I’ve checked. No one has that information.”

  “You know that can’t be true.”

  “Let me rephrase. I’ve checked with my contacts and no one is willing to share that information with me.”

  “That, I believe. But perhaps you can push a little harder.”

  “Do you think I haven’t?”

  “Of course not. But it couldn’t hurt to try again. What’s the worst that can happen?”

  “They close down the Office. Maybe throw me in prison on some trumped-up charges to keep me quiet.”

  Quinn said nothing.

  “Fine. I’ll ask, okay? But don’t expect much. What was the other thing?”

  “The mercenary we questioned gave us the names of the couple I believe helped Clarke on the train. No idea if the names are real or bogus.”

  “Give them to me. I’ll check them out.”

  “The woman’s name is Snetkov and the man Krylov. He called each of them commander. That could also be made up.”

  “I’ll see what I can do.”

  “Thanks, Misty.”

  As Quinn hung up, Orlando announced, “They’re changing course.”

  The last time Quinn glanced at the tracking software on her computer, the kidnapper’s jet had entered northern Hungary on an eastward heading that, if maintained, would take it into Ukrainian airspace in about thirty minutes. Now, the dot representing the aircraft was finishing a turn to the south.

  “Looks like they’re descending, too,” Orlando said.

  “Just a change of altitude or are they landing?”

  She watched the screen for a few seconds before saying, “Landing, it looks like.” She brought up a browser window and did a quick search. “The nearest airport on their path with a runway long enough for them is in Debrecen.”

  “I’ve never been there.”

  “Me, neither.” She performed another search. “Population around two hundred thousand. Some light industry, regional business headquarters, and a lot of agriculture in the surrounding area.”

  “No obvious reason why they’d be landing there?”

  She scrolled down. “Oh, here it is. ‘Popular location for secret bases and private prisons.’”

  “You could have just said no.”

  “I could have, but where would the fun have been in that?”

  They watched the screen for a few more minutes.

  “No question,” Orlando said. “They’re landing. But they must have filed a flight plan to get clearance so quickly.”

  “How long for us to get there?”

  “I’d say probably forty-five minutes or so before we could be on the ground. We’ll have to be slotted into an opening in their landing order since the airport doesn’t know we’re coming.”

  “I’ll talk to the pilot,” Quinn said, pushing himself out of his chair.

  Nate sat next to Jar, on one side of the only tab
le in the aircraft. Their chairs faced the back of the plane, while Daeng, sitting in a chair on the other side, faced forward. Kincaid probably would have like to be sitting next to Daeng, but he was too big for the two of them to comfortably sit side by side for any length of time, so he was in the seat directly behind the former monk.

  “Hold it still,” Jar said.

  “I am holding it still,” Nate said, pressing Brunner’s hard drive against the table. “It’s the plane that’s moving.”

  She grimaced but said nothing more as she clipped wires and hooked them into the connector she’d salvaged. After about five minutes, she sat back and put the connector into the appropriate slot on her laptop.

  Immediately, the drive warmed under Nate’s hand. After a few seconds, a dialogue box appeared on Jar’s screen, the message in Thai.

  “That is not a surprise,” she said.

  “What’s not a surprise?” he asked.

  “It’s encrypted,” she replied.

  “Can you decrypt it?”

  “I do not see why not.”

  “Great. How long will it take?”

  “How can I know that? I have only now turned it on.”

  “A guestimate. You know, a range.” He was well aware she hated to partake in guessing things like this, so he was goading her a little—partly in fun, and partly because estimating things was part of being in this business.

  “Fine,” she said. “Here is your guestimate. It could take an hour. It could take a year.”

  “A year won’t be very helpful.”

  “An unnecessary observation. I am well aware of our time constraints. If you will stop asking me questions and let me get started, maybe we will be lucky.”

  Nate’s eyes narrowed. “You don’t believe in luck.”

  “I said that only for you.”

  Nate bowed his head in defeat and motioned at her computer. As she went back to work, he could hear Quinn talking on the phone a few rows up. From the bits and pieces he picked up, he assumed Misty was on the other end.

  Not long after Quinn finished, Daeng said, “I wonder what that’s all about.”