Chasing Fire

by Brandt Legg

  “We’ll be okay,” Daisy said. “Thanks for getting us safe, Convoy.” She gave him a hug. “But what about you?”

  “We’ve got all kinds of help,” Chase said. “The government has our back, and we’re not staying in one place long enough to attract any attention. Those were the best, Dad, I haven’t eaten that much in a month. ”

  Daisy looked at Wen for confirmation. She knew about her past with the Chinese MSS.

  Wen nodded. “We’re all over this. Really, Zack, I’d like the recipe for those one day.”

  Daisy smiled.

  “Mom, I need you to do me a favor. Can you go see Mars and ask him to call me at this number?” Chase handed her a slip of paper.

  “Sure, when?”

  “I need you to go today, as soon as the security team gets here.”

  “I never need an excuse to see Jason,” she said, using Mars’s real name. He’d worked for her for years before winding up in prison. “I’d been planning to go see him today, anyway.”

  “You were?”

  “Don’t you remember? You told me yesterday to talk to him about all this crazy business.”

  “Oh, yeah,” Chase said. “It’s just that yesterday was a year ago.”

  They spent the next twenty-five minutes working on the Antimatter Machine. It fascinated Daisy, and after ten minutes with a can of air, they got the thing to power up.

  The first button Wen pressed was the Astronaut’s icon.

  “The reports of your death were apparently exaggerated,” the Astronaut’s words came across the little window that had opened. “But I knew that . . . and so does everyone else interested in your whereabouts.”

  “Like who?” Wen typed back, fearing the MSS was on to her.

  “Tracers all return to US Government agencies,” he responded, as if knowing her concerns. “I see you are in Cotati. I hope you are not going to Balance Engineering. It is most certainly going to be hit tonight or tomorrow night. MatterTech was destroyed in Austin last night. It clearly establishes a second pattern, and Balance is next.”

  Chase, reading over her shoulder, took over the typing. “What is the second pattern?”

  “I don’t know yet, but there is one. The Fire Bomber has two objectives, and has woven the targets together like a long braid.”

  “Doesn’t that make it more difficult to determine his motive?”

  “Maybe for mere mortals,” the Astronaut typed back. “But for me, the more patterns, the better, because a pattern of patterns leaves its own pattern that even the Fire Bomber isn’t aware exists.”

  “How do we know the pattern is correct?”

  “You can’t trust words or people, but you can always trust patterns.”

  After they finished with the Astronaut, Wen did another adjustment on Chase’s leg. She’d worked on it last night, but it was aching again.

  “Where you’d learn how to do that?” Daisy asked.

  “China. They teach us how to heal the body. I wish I had my acupuncture needles. That would fix him better.”

  Daisy asked Wen if she could do something with her lower back. Wen instantly obliged.

  “That’s like a miracle!” Daisy exclaimed. “My back hasn’t felt this good in ages.”

  Wen asked Zack if he wanted a treatment, but he declined, instead insisting on taking a dozen photos in every possible group combination, of which he had thousands of his boys, filling more than thirty thick albums. As usual, his eyes teared as Chase said goodbye.

  “Don’t mind him,” Daisy told Wen. “He’s the sentimental one in this house.”

  Wen smiled and gave Zack a hug. “Stay safe.”

  Thirty-Nine

  Bull felt like she was in a dungeon. The dingy, concrete block walled basement, which smelled of mildew and urine, looked like a modern-day version of a tower prison cell. She couldn’t believe how these stupid Russians had screwed up not only her plans to get rich, but their own attempts to capitalize on her find.

  Bull had spent much of her time in captivity agonizing over how to beat them at the game. First, she considered telling the Russians what a mistake they’d made by taking her prisoner and letting Lenny remain free. Their idea that he could sell her find was obviously flawed fifty different ways. But then she heard those awful words.

  “Do not worry, sweetheart, we are only keeping you alive to make sure your boyfriend does what he is supposed to,” the one who seemed to be the leader said. “Once he delivers the money, of course we are going to kill him and that Skrunch. But you, you are sorta almost pretty, and maybe young enough . . . if you do good sex with us, we will let you live.”

  She’d rattled off a string of profanities.

  They’d laughed. “Ahhh, sweetheart, we will not keep you for ourselves. Nyet, nyet. We have clients we sell you to, but only if you are good. Are you good? You make us happy, we’ll do you the favor. Otherwise, you go dead with boyfriend.”

  She pulled at the duct tape binding her to the rusted galvanized steel pipe that she’d already discovered was firmly bolted to the wall.

  One of them smiled at her struggles. “Oh, sweetheart, it may sound not good now, but you wait. When you watch us kill your friends, you will change your mind. You will realize it is better to be alive than to be dead.”

  “I’m going to kill you!”

  They’d all laughed again. The one who most liked to talk said, “What is big deal for you? It’s only sex. You are made for that. Women make sex. And it is good for you. They take you and let you live in a clean, nice place. You sure will change your mind.”

  Bull wouldn’t change her mind. All those hours of thinking had hardened her resolve.

  She would kill them.

  Her thoughts had been difficult to face, first having to admit to herself that if she had been the one on the street and Lenny had been the one held captive, she probably would’ve just kept going and not tried to save him. It was a terrible realization, especially because she knew he was out there this minute, trying to do everything he could to rescue her. And, now, knowing what she did about the Russians, she wished he would just forget her and run away. But she knew he wouldn’t.

  Bull also understood there was a chance Lenny wouldn’t be able to access the find, and therefore not be able to sell it to get the money. What would he do if that turned out to be the case? Lenny was an incredible salesperson; he knew everyone, and he was smarter than she usually gave him credit for. He’d find a way. But then Lenny and Skrunch would come to her dungeon and she’d have to watch the Russians kill them.

  Bull decided right then that she was going to figure out a way to save Lenny, Skrunch, and herself.

  Maybe the find was the answer, or the Russians wanting sex, or something else.

  It was new to Bull, thinking without her fingers attached to a keyboard, trying to find solutions without the help of the Internet. She’d forgotten one of the reasons that made her so good at hacking—Bull was also smarter than she gave herself credit for.

  Chase arrived at the Balance Engineering headquarters building for the first time since he’d become a fugitive. He was there against the advice of the Astronaut. Wen agreed with the math savant, but went anyway, not wanting Chase to go alone. As soon as they walked in “the garden,” a forty-foot high atrium filled with trees and plants that took up half of the first three floors of the BE headquarters, he felt calmer. He had spent countless hours there meditating.

  His business partner, Dez, met him in a lush corner of the “forest” and took them up in a private elevator so they could get in undetected. Once at the top floor, Chase immediately went to the fifty-foot wall of windows to absorb the incredible view of the city and bay beyond—it was another meditation point for him.

  Later he would visit the “lab,” as they called the three thousand square-foot room packed with monitors and computers with a direct feed into the underground servers located below the building, but for now they needed complete privacy.

  Chase, still n
ot used to seeing Dez with a prosthetic leg, turned back into the room and asked him if he’d made any progress on ALAI, a project Dez had begun the moment he’d been discharged from the hospital. Artificial Limbs controlled by Artificial Intelligence. The interface had been based on the super “Rapid AI” the pair had developed, resulting in their billion-dollar fortunes.

  “Yeah,” Dez, one of the brightest engineers in the country, responded. “I can stand and walk pretty smoothly, but I can’t run yet.”

  “Is that the goal?” Wen asked. “To run?”

  “Backflips, mountain climbing, no limits,” Dez said. He showed them his leg, full of circuits and hydraulics.

  “He’s fearless,” Chase said, truly admiring his old friend. Dez, already the most prominent African American in Silicon Valley, had been a huge influence on Chase. More than anyone, Dez had taught him that anything could be figured out, anything accomplished. Chase felt good being back at Balance and in the presence of the man with whom he’d worked side-by-side for so many years.

  “Wait until you see what SEER spit out,” Dez said as the elevator opened to a security station on the building’s top floor. After they made their way through the biometric scanners, Wen saw, for the first time, what Chase had so often spoke of, the thing that had consumed him—SEER.

  The entire floor was filled with the most advanced servers she’d ever seen. The MSS had several immense cyber warfare installations scattered around the globe, but none of them, even with the most sophisticated and advanced technology the Chinese leading edge firms could produce or steal, came close to the elegance and futuristic appearance of what lay before her.

  SEER, an acronym for Search Entire Existence Result, was actually a super AI program that acted as a simulator which interpreted history, trends, and virtually all known data, to predict the future. Everything was sleek aluminum and glass, with indicator lights giving everything the appearance of the bridge of a spaceship right out of the latest sci-fi flick.

  “You must really love me,” Wen said, “to be able to stay away from all this.”

  Chase smiled as he nodded. “True.”

  The temperature of the room was kept low to protect the servers, and Dez handed them each a black down vest emblazoned with the Balance Engineering logo.

  “Does SEER have anything on who is doing the bombings?” Wen asked.

  “No,” Dez said, moving toward the central command area, appearing in the dim light as if he had two normal legs. “Remember,” Dez continued, “SEER is about predicting the future, and so far it has predicted the next three targets.”

  “You mean we know who’s going to be bombed tonight?” Wen asked.

  Dez nodded. “And tomorrow night, and the next night.”

  “We can be there waiting,” Chase said. “I knew SEER could do this.”

  “There is one problem though,” Dez said, pointing to the screen.

  Chase stared, stunned. “Why would they bomb us?”

  Forty

  Although a typical, sticky summer evening in Washington DC, Tess’ Pentagon contact had been to a meeting at the White House, and often, on his way home, he liked to stop at the Lincoln Memorial and walk along the Reflecting Pool on the National Mall, always taking a few minutes to stop at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall. That’s where his phone rang.

  He checked the caller-ID and then looked around to make sure no one could hear the call. A man in a suit, about ten feet away, bothered him. In Washington, someone can always be a problem—a reporter, foreign agent, FBI, CIA, a hundred different agencies, a congressional aide, a thousand other possibilities. “Trust no one in Washington,” was a mantra often repeated in the nation’s capital, and rarely heeded.

  “Tess,” he said, answering the call once he was a safe enough distance from anyone, including the suited man, who might be listening. “Where are you? I hope you have good news.”

  “Same place I always am . . . on a damned plane!”

  “Where to?”

  “Doesn’t matter,” Tess said. “We have a problem to solve.”

  “I’ll say.” Suddenly he was aware of the heat and humidity that hadn’t bothered him until now.

  “I’m not talking about the Fire Bomber. At least not directly. It’s the victims.”

  “That can only be good. Obviously not for the families of the deceased, but now that we finally have some casualties, public sentiment will shift and pressure will build,” he said, looking up at the Washington Monument. “We’ll reach a tipping point.”

  “The FBI is closing in on the origin of Doomsday, and I’m told they have identified the remains of the Fire Bomber from India. He was an American, and they’re working on linking him to anti-government groups.”

  “Damn,” the Pentagon man said. “We need that information.” His eyes darted around, scoping the area. He moved slowly.

  “I’m all over it.”

  “The President has authorized the steps we discussed should the FBI find the Bombers first.”

  Tess knew that meant using a special team to make sure the Bomber(s) and any key people who organized the attacks were killed “resisting arrest” or while “attempting to escape.” The President of the United States had implicitly ordered a cover-up. Not the first time, she thought.

  “The FBI is only part of the problem,” Tess said. “One of the people killed in Austin wasn’t an employee of MatterTech.”

  Lenny’s hands were shaking when the convict finally called him back. It had been at least six hours since he texted him the words “urgent life or death.” He and Skrunch had been eating cold fast-food in an abandoned clothing store. The total darkness of the windowless interior space was broken only by the glow of their cell phones and an old LED flashlight Bull had given him—one of her few “gifts.” The dampness and stale air left him cold and shivering, even though the outside temperature was in the upper 80s.

  “Of course it’s life or death,” the convict said. “I told you that you should already be dead.”

  “It’s not like that. We didn’t even get a chance to try to sell it before—”

  “Lenny, listen to me. Do. Not. Try. To. Sell. This. Information.”

  “Some Russian mobsters found out we had something really, really valuable, but they don’t know what we have, just that we can get a lot of money for it. And they beat the hell out of me and kidnapped Bull.”

  “Then you got off easy. You’re still alive.”

  “But don’t you get it? They’re going to kill Bull unless I get them half a million dollars.”

  “It’s the Russian mob, they’re going to kill her whether you get them a million dollars or ten million dollars.”

  “I can’t let that happen. And I’m begging you for help.”

  “There’s nothing I can do. You’re in more danger than you can possibly realize. I’ve never seen anyone in this kind of peril. Danger-squared. It really is remarkable that you’re still alive.”

  “Man, I got nowhere else to go. I don’t care what happens to me, I just want to save her.”

  “You don’t care what happens to you. Don’t insult me with your melodramatic soundbites.”

  “Okay, I do care what happens to me, but you know what I mean. Please.”

  The convict was silent for almost thirty seconds.

  “Hello, are you still there?” Lenny asked, afraid the convict had been caught with his phone by prison guards.

  “Do you have the information?”

  “I will.”

  “You will? Forget it.”

  “I really will. I just need a few hours.”

  “I know a guy.”

  As soon as Lenny heard those words from the convict, he knew he had a chance. For somebody like Lenny, who traded in secrets and lies and brokered between contacts at that shadowy intersection between crime and corruption, the only four words more important than “I know a guy” were “you got a deal.”

  Lenny told the convict where he and Skrunch were staying�
�a dark and dilapidated abandoned shopping center just outside Los Angeles. Once a prized part of the suburban culture, it had been a victim of the Internet success and now lay in ruin, caught in a web of endless litigation between the city, developers, landlords, and former tenants.

  The convict agreed to set up a meeting between Lenny and a man who might be interested in paying him $500,000 for the dangerous information.

  Lenny said thank you at least ten times as he signed off. “I mean it, I owe you my life, and Bull’s life. I’ll never forget this, Mars.”

  Forty-One

  Tess and Flint never did make it to San Francisco. Minutes before their government jet was to take off from Albuquerque, Tess received word about the Austin bombing and its eleven fatalities. She immediately took the plane back to Washington while Flint caught another flight to Austin. They both felt a shift in the case. The world, already out of control and burning, was now bleeding.

  Once in Austin, Flint received a confidential copy of a report from a CIA friend who was also in Austin. The general consensus was that the Fire Bomber was part of an organization attempting to destabilize the economy. That was nothing new. But there was another thread that surprised him—the CIA was receiving input from the NSA, who was covertly tracking the FBI.

  “Alphabet soup,” Flint said to his buddy.

  “Yeah, this one is so hot—excuse my pun—that everyone is watching everyone else,” the CIA agent said, sipping coffee as they leaned against a police car, watching teams scour the site. “If we don’t catch this guy soon, we’re in big trouble. Did you see the assessment from Red Envelope?”

  Flint knew “Red Envelope,” one of the CIA’s most secret and reliable sections, was a group of about thirty analysts who in the “old days” had delivered their work to the Director in a red envelope. Although it was no longer done that way, the name stuck. He also knew they were seldom wrong.