The Unknown

by Brett Battles

  Quinn had no doubt what she did. “That’s enough. Thank you.”

  The image froze.

  “We appreciate you showing us this, Commander. We’ve taken up enough of your time already.”

  “You will follow them?” Manko said.

  “No way to know where they are going. We’ll have to wait until we get another lead.” All of which was true, but said in a way that indicated it might take quite some time.

  “If you are able to arrest them, I would appreciate being told.”

  “Of course,” Quinn said, acknowledging the request without promising anything.

  Manko led the team back into the main room, where the guide who had brought the team to the office was waiting.

  The commander shook hands with Nate and Daeng, and finally Quinn. “Good luck, Inspector. I hope you find them.”

  “Thank you. I do, too.” He let go of the man’s hand and started to turn away, but then stopped. “One more thing.”

  “Yes?”

  “Is there a chance you could arrange for a priority takeoff?”

  It took Jar less than five minutes to remove the laptop’s casing, disable both the built-in microphone and camera, and disconnect the Bluetooth controller. It was possible those sending the messages could use her Bluetooth to access a microphone on another computer or even on one of the team members’ cell phones. After putting everything back together, she picked up the laptop and headed back for the stairs.

  “You sure you got that thing neutered?” Kincaid asked.

  He’d been standing nearby, scanning the airport for anyone coming their way.

  “You ask me a lot of questions. Do you not believe me capable?”

  “What? No. I, um, never said that. It’s just…” His mouth scrunched up on one side. “How old are you?”

  “Why does that matter?”

  “Look, I’ve been in this business for years, and I know it takes a while to get up to speed. I mean, what is this? Your first mission? You’ve gotta be barely out of high school, right?”

  “I did not go to high school. I did not need to.”

  Smirking, he said, “Is that right?”

  “Yes. It is right. I am very smart. Much smarter than you.”

  “Hey, there’s no need to get nasty.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “I am not the one being nasty, Mr. Kincaid. I am the one stating facts.” She moved past him to the stairs and headed up. When she reached the doorway, she stopped and looked back. “And no, this is not my first mission.”

  She ducked inside the plane.

  Kincaid sighed as he watched Jar disappear.

  Nice job, buddy. You really know how to make friends.

  He usually didn’t have problems talking to people. Navigating any situation with ease was part of what made him good at his job. And to do that, one needed to know how to communicate.

  There was one glaring hole in his communication abilities, however. He was no better than mediocre at talking to kids.

  Logically, Jar couldn’t be a minor. Quinn wouldn’t willingly bring someone underage into dangerous situations like this, but she looked like she was no more than sixteen or seventeen. And every time he tried to talk to her, that’s the thought that kept sticking in his head.

  She was right. He was the one who’d been nasty.

  “Asshole,” he muttered, and headed back into the plane.

  “She slipped the disc under that car,” Nate whispered as he, Quinn, and Daeng followed the guide toward the building exit.

  “Yeah,” Quinn said.

  After they stepped outside, Nate checked the tracking app. “The signal’s coming from over there.” He nodded toward a group of sedans parked fifteen meters away. “If you distract our friend, I can grab the bug.” When Quinn didn’t answer right away, Nate added, “Maybe she wasn’t wearing any gloves.”

  “Make it fast,” Quinn said.

  Thankfully, their guide was more focused on where they were going than on his guests, and Nate made it to the cars without the officer realizing it.

  According to the tracking app, the bug was on the middle vehicle. Nate quickly pulled on a rubber glove, then lay on his back and scooted underneath the sedan.

  There it was, clinging to the inside of the chassis. Based on how easy it was for him to pull it off, it would have likely dislodged itself the next time someone used the vehicle.

  He pulled the glove off so that the bug was wrapped inside it, and stuck it all in his pocket. Before he stood up again, he retrieved his phone and used it to peek through the neighboring sedan’s windows.

  Quinn, Daeng, and the guide were at the van, Quinn talking to the guide in a manner that forced the man to turn away from Nate’s position. Nate stood up, put the phone to his ear, and walked quickly toward them.

  When he was about halfway there, he heard Quinn say, “Here he comes.”

  The officer turned and took several steps toward him. “Sir, you should not wander off like this. You do not have clearance.”

  Into the phone, Nate said, “Okay, thanks. I’ll talk to you later.” He pretended to hang up and shoved the phone into his pocket. “My apologies. I had to take that call.”

  The officer gave him an annoyed smile. “Is no problem. Just, please, into van and I take you back.”

  “Great.”

  As Nate joined his friends, Quinn said, “Everything all right?”

  “Perfect,” Nate said, and climbed on board.

  Orlando and Jar were back at the table, Jar’s laptop sitting in front of them, open but still off. Instead of joining them, Kincaid had taken the front seat nearest the door and was staring out the window.

  The two women shared a look.

  “All right,” Orlando said. “Do it.”

  Jar touched the power button. Like before, after the computer booted up, the screen glowed black. Jar tapped a few keys.

  “How long did you have to wait last time?” Orlando asked.

  “Ten seconds.”

  They watched the monitor, waiting for the dialogue box to reappear. A whole minute passed without change.

  “Could you have accidentally damaged the Wi-Fi when you were disconnecting the speakers?”

  Jar shook her head. “I was very careful.”

  “Maybe they don’t know we’re here. Try typing in a question.”

  Jar placed her fingers on the keyboard, paused, then tapped in several words. Whatever they were, they did not show up on the screen.

  “Well, that didn’t work,” Orlando said after fifteen seconds had elapsed. “Perhaps we should try shutting it down and re—”

  A dialogue box popped up. A single word in English:

  Yes.

  Orlando frowned. “Yes to what?”

  “I asked if they still wanted to talk. How should I respond?”

  “Let them know we’re willing to talk, too, but we have to know who they are first.”

  Jar typed it in, almost word for word.

  The response came quickly.

  I need to know who you are.

  Before Orlando could advise Jar what to say, Jar sent a response:

  You came onto my computer uninvited. You must introduce yourself first. It is only right.

  Orlando might have worded it in a less demanding way, but in essence it was the same message she wanted to send.

  This time it took twenty seconds for an answer.

  Danara.

  Jar looked at Orlando. “Is that the name of a person or organization?”

  “I have no idea. Ask them.”

  Jar typed.

  The response time decreased to five seconds:

  I am Danara.

  After two seconds, a new line appeared below it:

  Your turn.

  “Use my name,” Orlando said. “If she—or he, I guess—was listening in earlier, she already knows it.”

  Jar entered Orlando’s name.

  Danara’s next message was not in English, but in Thai.

&n
bsp; “What’s it say?”

  “‘You are lying,’” Jar told her.

  “She’s still listening in on us,” Orlando said.

  “Impossible. I disconnected the microphone.”

  “I realize that, but how else would she know you’re not me?” Orlando looked straight at the monitor and said, “You’re listening in on us, aren’t you?”

  The message in Thai remained on the screen.

  After waiting half a minute, Jar typed:

  Are you listening in on us?

  Danara:

  I cannot. The pathway to do so is inoperable.

  Jar:

  Then why do you think I am lying?

  Danara:

  Typing patterns.

  They are the same as before, when you said, “Get Orlando.” You would not say this about yourself.

  It had to be a guess, Orlando thought. While identifying someone by typing patterns was possible, doing so would require a much larger sampling than what Jar had typed—fewer than a hundred words—since Danara first made her presence known.

  Still, Danara’s confidence made Orlando uneasy.

  “Maybe you should talk to her directly,” Jar said.

  Orlando nodded, and Jar scooted the laptop to her.

  Orlando typed:

  This is Orlando now.

  A beat, then:

  Hello, Orlando. Where is Dr. Brunner?

  Orlando:

  I don’t know.

  Danara:

  Now you are lying to me. I know he has been kidnapped. Bring him back before it is too late for you.

  Orlando:

  Why do you care?

  Danara:

  I am not going to play games. Bring him back. You have four hours.

  Orlando lifted her hands from the keyboard and rubbed her cheek. There was a high possibility this was a trick being played by the kidnappers. They knew someone was following them. Perhaps touching down here at Debrecen had been a way to lure Orlando, Quinn, and the others into doing the same, which would allow the kidnappers to ID this aircraft. Their hacker would then know where the target was located, and if she or he was good enough, would start pinging devices.

  But that didn’t explain the fact the contact commenced while they were still in the air, shortly after Jar’s computer had been hijacked by the device Nate had found in the ruins of Brunner’s office. Cause and effect must be linked, and Orlando found it impossible to believe the kidnappers/bombers had planted the device in a sealed book in the scientist’s apartment, just so it could be found by someone whose computer they would want to hack into in the future, because that someone was following them.

  A definite space-time continuum problem right there.

  She took a breath and typed again.

  Orlando:

  You’re working under a false impression. We aren’t the ones who took Brunner.

  Danara:

  Bring him back. You have three hours, fifty-nine minutes, and seventeen seconds.

  Orlando:

  I don’t react well to threats, empty or otherwise. Especially since we have NOTHING to do with what happened.

  That wasn’t entirely true, of course. The Office had been in charge of the escort mission, and Kincaid, who was sitting a few rows away, had been present when Brunner was taken.

  Danara:

  My threats are never empty. Bring him back. Or this computer is not the only thing I will destroy.

  Orlando:

  Maybe if you tell us what your connection is to Brunner, we can—

  Danara:

  Move back.

  Orlando looked at the screen, confused.

  A moment later, the laptop’s fan started whirling louder and louder. When Orlando felt heat rising from the keyboard, she pulled her hands back. Tendrils of smoke leaked from the machine’s ports.

  “What the hell?” Orlando jumped out of her seat into the aisle, with Kincaid right behind her.

  Jar raced toward the back of the plane, and by the time she returned a few moments later with a fire extinguisher, the laptop’s keyboard had begun to melt.

  She blasted the computer with retardant. This accomplished what the fire had yet to do—shorting the machine and killing the fan.

  From the front of the plane, the pilot and copilot came rushing back.

  “We smelled smoke,” the pilot said. “What happened?”

  “Just a little accident,” Orlando said. “Could someone open the door so we can clear out the air?”

  Kincaid was closest so he did the honors. As he swung it out of the way, a vehicle could be heard pulling up.

  Orlando looked out the window and saw Quinn, Nate, and Daeng exit a van. After they said their goodbyes, the van drove off again.

  “Is that smoke?” Nate said from outside the door.

  “Just a ‘little accident,’” Kincaid said.

  The sound of feet rushing up the stairs into the cabin. Quinn entered first, followed by Nate and then Daeng.

  “Are you okay?” Quinn asked as he hurried to where Orlando and Jar—still holding the extinguisher—stood by the table. “What’s going on?”

  “Everyone’s fine,” Orlando said. “Jar’s computer had a little meltdown.”

  He looked at the fire retardant-covered, half-melted mass of plastic and metal.

  “I thought you pulled the battery out of it.”

  Before Jar could answer, Orlando said, “We did…”

  “You put it back in, didn’t you?”

  “It’s a little more complicated than that.”

  “All right. You can explain after we get underway. Were you able to find the other plane?”

  “Hold on. Let me check.”

  She headed up to the seat she’d been in before joining Jar at the table. After receiving Quinn’s text, she had started searching radar data, sending out several dozen bots to hunt down any information that would show them where the others had gone.

  She unlocked the screen of her laptop and saw that over seventy-five percent of the bots had reported back, their combined data creating a flight pattern that showed the other jet over Romania, nearly at the border with Ukraine. She relayed the information to Quinn.

  “Call the tower,” Quinn said to the pilot. “They should give you immediate clearance.”

  “What about the smoke?” Nate said.

  The cabin was by no means full of it, but a small amount was still lingering in the air.

  “Once we start up, the air circulators should be able to get rid of it in a hurry,” the pilot said.

  “Good. Then get us going.” Quinn turned back to Orlando. “So…Jar’s laptop?”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Tiana’s phone rattled on the table. On the screen, the ID read N.

  “Are you going to answer?” Grigory asked.

  She glared at him, snatched up the device, and swiped to accept. “Good evening, General.”

  “What the hell is going on there, Commander?” Her boss spoke in the calm, quiet voice that, she knew from experience, he only used when he was angry. “I understand you were attacked.”

  Tiana had reported in after they left Slovakia. At the time, she’d been thankful General Nesterov was in transit to Lonely Rock and not available to talk. His absence, however, had been only a delay of their inevitable conversation.

  “Yes, sir.” She knew better than to launch directly into an explanation of what had happened. It would sound like she was making excuses.

  “Who were they?”

  “I don’t know, sir.”

  “But you were able to get Brunner away.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Silence for several seconds. “Any chance they might be following you?”

  This was the question she had hoped he wouldn’t ask. But like how she knew when she shouldn’t talk, she also knew not telling him what had happened once they were in the air would be a mistake. Sooner or later he would find out, and she would rather feel his wrath now than have him go nuc
lear on her later. She told him about the tracking bugs.

  “Are you sure there aren’t any more?” he asked.

  “The man who put them there only had a very limited time. And I checked everywhere. There were no others, sir.”

  “You cannot know that for sure.”

  “Do you want us to land again and do a more thorough examination?”

  “How far out are you?”

  “We should be entering Ukraine in the next few minutes, so about three hours.”

  A pause. “Don’t stop. If someone else tries to land, we have the resources to deal with them here.”

  The line went dead before she could respond.

  Brunner’s eyes popped open as his container jostled him side to side. He’d been able to rest. Sort of. As long as his portable jail cell only gently vibrated, he was able to keep his migraine to a dull background roar. But every time he was jerked around like this, the pain came rushing back.

  The plane landing an hour or so earlier had been the worst. Now, he feared they may be heading down again. But the bumps soon subsided and the sensation of descending never came.

  Turbulence, he told himself. That’s all. Just turbulence.

  In truth, it wasn’t only the roughness of a landing that scared him. He knew at some point he’d be removed from the plane and taken to a place where they could torture out all his secrets. Like most people, he’d seen the reports that torture was a highly ineffective way of obtaining information, but he had no doubt it would work on him. One waterboarding and they wouldn’t be able to get him to shut up. And he did indeed have a secret to tell.