Nick shifted his box to one arm and checked the knob. It turned. The three of them moved quickly inside and set their boxes down. Drake closed and locked the door behind them.
“All right, Scott, you’re in,” said Nick, pulling a black duffel from one of the boxes. “Now tell me which apartment is our target.” He tossed the heavy bag at the engineer, hitting him in the chest and nearly knocking him over.
Scott glared at him for a moment and then pushed his glasses back up on his nose and turned to scan the room. He zeroed in on a gray plastic box mounted on the wall next to a row of water heaters. “This area uses DSL. Their Internet will be running through the phone lines.”
Inside the panel was a black hub with sixty phone lines running out of it. Each connection was labeled with an apartment number. “All we have to do,” said Scott, pulling a wire-stripping tool out of his bag, “is find the line with the right IPs. We don’t even have to disconnect them.”
While Nick and Drake looked on, the engineer stripped the line labeled 101. Then he traded the wire stripper for a black box with a small LCD screen and a set of alligator clips. He attached the clips to the exposed phone line. A series of numbers scrolled up the screen. Scott compared them to a document from the NSA and shook his head. “That’s not the one.”
Drake raised an eyebrow. “That’s your method? This is going to take all night.”
“Agreed,” said Nick. “There has to be another—”
Before he finished the statement, his eyes fell on the rows of electricity meters mounted on the wall opposite the phone box. “Hey, Scott,” he said slowly, walking over to the meters, “would you ever be caught dead in a dump like this?”
Scott was busy stripping the line for apartment 102. “I believe you’ve seen my condo in the Southwest Waterfront district. You already know the answer to that.”
Drake started to catch on. “And you’re a megalomaniac techno geek just like our terrorist hacker. No offense.”
“Genius. The word your gorilla brain is looking for is genius.” The engineer put down his strippers. “And just because you say ‘no offense’ after calling me a megalomaniac geek doesn’t make it okay. What’s your point?”
“This place is in one of the poorest sections of Budapest,” said Nick. “You wouldn’t live here, and neither does Grendel. He’s just using the apartment to house a small stack of servers. No oven use. Minimal heating. I bet he’s drawing way less power than the other residents.”
Nick’s finger moved along the panel as he scrutinized the readout of each meter. It came to rest three rows down from the top and seven units over. The dials were hardly moving. “This one. Three oh seven.”
The door behind them rattled, and then rattled again. A tired voice grumbled in Hungarian just outside. Keys jangled.
Drake shot a withering look at the engineer and hissed, “What did you do?”
Scott stuffed his equipment into his bag. “Nothing! There’s no way my reader alerted anyone.”
A key slipped into the lock. Nick pushed the engineer behind the water heaters and rushed to one side of the door. Drake was already on the other side, bent down and digging through a black bag in one of the cardboard boxes. He raised up with a heavy flashlight and two pairs of dark glasses just as the knob turned.
The big operative lobbed one pair of glasses over the opening door and Nick grabbed them out of the air. The two of them backed into the shadows.
A balding man with a sagging middle and two days of dark gristle on his chin shuffled into the utility room, still grumbling. He started toward the row of water heaters where Scott was hiding, but he stopped when he saw the open phone panel.
“Mi ez?” he asked, walking over to the panel. He touched the first line with his forefinger, squinting at the section Scott had stripped bare.
While the intruder’s back was turned, Nick nodded to Drake. Both men donned their dark glass and then the big operative strode into the open behind the Hungarian. He whistled.
The heavyset man spun around, and Drake aimed the flashlight at his face and depressed its trigger, filling the room with strobing green and blue light. The Hungarian fell forward in a dead faint.
“A little help here,” grunted Drake, catching the overweight super in his arms.
Nick rushed to help his teammate lower the man to the ground. Then he pulled a small cylindrical CO2 injector from his pocket and gently dosed the super with a sedative. “That’ll keep him down for a while. He removed his dark glasses and glanced around the room. “What happened to the geek?”
They found Scott lying flat on the floor behind the water heaters, passed out. Drake slapped him on the cheek a few times. “Wake up, Sleeping Beauty.”
“Ohhh. Why did you do that to me?” the engineer moaned.
Drake lifted him to his feet and guided him out of his hiding place. “I used a MOID,” he said, pronouncing the acronym as a word, “a multifrequency optical interference device. It knocks you out with sequenced pulses of light.”
Scott doubled over and put his hands on his knees as soon as Drake let go of his arm. “Yes, I know what the MOID is, you idiot. Why did you use it on me?”
“He used it on the super.” Nick nudged the unconscious Hungarian with the toe of his boot. “If you’re going to hang with us in the field, you’ve got to pay attention.”
“I didn’t think the MOID would get you in your hiding spot,” offered Drake. “Normally it only knocks people out who look directly at it. Even then it doesn’t always work. Some just get nauseated.”
As if on cue, Scott stumbled over to a wastebasket in the corner of the room and heaved up the contents of his stomach.
Drake stifled a laugh. “Apparently some people get both effects.”
Nick was not amused. Before Scott was done retching, the team lead had him by the shoulder, dragging him back to the phone panel. “We’re on a time limit now. I dosed our friend here with six hours of juice, give or take, but if someone comes looking for him, our clock will run out fast.” He pulled the reader and the wire strippers out of the bag and shoved them into Scott’s hands. Then he used the inside collar of the engineer’s coat to wipe the bile from his chin. He slapped the man lightly on the cheek. “I need you back with me, Scott. Apartment three oh seven. Get on it.”
Scott mechanically did as commanded, stripping the wire and setting the clips in place. Once the numbers started rolling up his LCD screen, he stared at them blankly.
Nick’s patience grew thin. “Well, genius?”
The engineer blinked a few times and then finally came out of his daze. He nodded. “This is—” He choked on the words, fighting the bile still in his throat. “Ahem. This is the correct line. This is Grendel’s apartment.”
CHAPTER 12
The team propped the building super up on a chair and left with their black bags slung over their shoulders. They locked the door. With any luck, no one would disturb his slumber.
Despite the late hour, a woman in a flower-print headscarf, stooped with age and leaning on a cane, came through the entrance just as the three of them came up the stairs. She eyed the bags suspiciously.
“Jó estét,” said Nick, bidding her good evening. He did not speak Hungarian, but he had picked up a few phrases on previous operations and he had boned up during the crossing. The woman just frowned at him and started up the stairs.
“These people keep odd hours,” whispered Drake once she had passed the first landing.
They gave her three minutes to clear the stairwell and then started up, pausing to listen at the third floor. A rhythmic thumping sounded from the hallway. Nick peeked around the corner and couldn’t believe his bad luck. The old woman lived on this floor. Her cane thumped into the worn carpet with every shaky step. Nick stepped aside and nodded for Drake to lean out and take a look.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,�
�� said the big operative when he ducked back into the stairwell. His eyes widened. “You don’t think she’s—”
Nick shook his head. “No, although, at this point, I’m not averse to Tasing her.”
After another few seconds, the thumping stopped and they heard the scrape of a key in a lock. They waited until they heard the door open and click closed and then Nick checked the hall one more time. “We’re on.”
They moved quickly, padding down the hall without a sound until Scott caught a toe on a lump in the carpet. His shoulder thudded against the old woman’s wall. Nick shot him a glare.
The engineer winced. “Sorry.”
The old woman did not reappear and they continued on. At the door marked 307, Nick pulled a small black leather wallet from his coat and flipped it open. A few years ago, it would have held the snakes, rakes, and hooks of his lockpick set, but picking locks was now a dying and largely unnecessary art. These days, the wallet held bump keys. Nick checked Grendel’s dead bolt and doorknob and then selected a matching pair, handing one to Drake.
Both men drew pistol-style Tasers from their coat pockets and inserted their keys into the door locks, Nick standing at the dead bolt, Drake crouched in front of the doorknob. After a final check that his teammate was ready, Nick whispered a count to three and they both gave their keys a sharp bump and a turn.
As the door swung open, Nick and Drake rushed in with their Tasers leveled, searching for targets. They saw no one. Scott opened his mouth to speak, but Nick shut him up with a sharp look. He pointed at Drake and with a wave of his hand, directed him toward the kitchen while he moved silently into a short hallway at the back.
The door on the left of the little hall was too narrow to be an entrance to a room. It had to be a closet. Nick checked the door to the right. The knob turned easily and he pressed into the room. Again, there was no one.
Drake appeared at his shoulder. “The kitchen and living area are clear.”
“Same,” said Nick, pocketing his Taser. “No one’s here.” He returned to the living area and shut and locked the apartment door.
“Do we even have the right apartment?”
“If I could have permission to speak now, I think I can answer that,” said Scott.
Nick nodded. “Speak.”
The engineer pointed over Nick’s shoulder to a short, unobtrusive rack that stood against the front wall of the apartment. There were four shelves, each holding a whirring silver box, ten inches wide, flat and unadorned except for a single green LED blinking on one end. A bundle of cables ran from the rack to another silver box that sat on a small desk. That box was connected to a laptop with a simple USB cable. “This is the place,” he said.
“That’s it?” asked Drake. “That’s our terrorist communications network.”
“It is. At least, it’s the heart of it.”
Drake strode over to the rack. “Then let’s pull the plug and get out of here.” He bent down to pull the servers away from the wall. “You can hack into the servers at the hotel while we search for Grendel.”
“Wait!” said Scott, rushing toward him with an outstretched hand.
Drake abruptly stepped back, surprised by the command carried in the engineer’s voice. “What?”
“The servers will be booby-trapped.”
“You mean a bomb?”
Scott frowned at him. “No, you Neanderthal, I mean a delete program. It’s common practice in the hacker underground. Almost any computer can be hacked if you can get it to the right people, so you have to rig your servers to wipe clean if they’re moved.”
Nick eyed the laptop. “Can you hack the system here?”
“Yes, but it’s likely that Grendel included additional security measures. If I work too quickly, I could miss a digital trip wire that has the same effect.”
“Then get to work. The clock’s ticking.”
Scott picked up his black bag and tentatively approached the desk. A foot away from the chair, he froze.
“What is it?” asked Drake. “Is the desk booby-trapped too?”
“No. It’s filthy. How can any hacker work in an environment like this?” Scott pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and dusted the laptop keys and the chair cushion. When he finished, he considered the handkerchief for a moment and then flung it at the wastebasket next to the desk. It flopped across the top, knocking a crumpled paper onto the floor where several others were already gathered.
Nick picked up the paper and unraveled it. The fading print listed the address of a nightclub and a hefty bar tab. He set it on the desk and picked up several more. All of them were receipts from the same club, all paid in cash. “We have a hangout,” he said.
“And we have a picture,” said Drake. He nodded at the laptop that Scott had brought to life. The screen saver showed a young man in his early twenties, reclining on a leather bench with three women in micro-miniskirts. His hand was raised to the camera in some gesture that Nick did not recognize and his tongue was hanging out. The women looked bored.
“It looks like our hacker has a taste for the nightlife,” said Nick. “I’ll take Quinn and stake out the bar.” He turned to Drake. “Watch the door. Grendel might come here at any time. If he does, bag him and call me on SATCOM. Whatever happens, be out of here in five hours.”
CHAPTER 13
A well-executed snatch-and-grab required weeks of planning. A CAT, a covert abduction team, might burn a hundred or more man-hours documenting a subject’s routine—learning his habits and clearing away the chaff of random daily occurrence to isolate predictable behaviors. Nick didn’t have a team. He had Quinn, and he had the time span of a drive across Budapest to plan the abduction, using nothing but a smartphone and a bar receipt.
In ad hoc situations like this one, common sense dictated that the team at least take the subject at a point with no potential witnesses and with easy access for the abduction vehicle. The satellite imagery on Nick’s smartphone showed that the Black Dog—Grendel’s favorite nightclub—offered neither.
“Maybe we could wait for Grendel to come out and then follow him,” said Quinn, eyeing the steroid-pumped bouncer outside the bar as he and Nick approached on foot. The Black Dog was a basement bar, with its primary entrance in a stairwell on an otherwise dark and narrow cobblestone street. In addition to the bouncer, there were three large men hanging out at the edge of the alley, chatting up a couple of bleach blondes in tight jeans.
“We can’t afford the time,” replied Nick. “We don’t even know if he’s in there. You want to stand out here all night?”
“What if the bouncer pats us down?”
“He won’t.”
As Nick led his young teammate into the alley, the girls broke from their conversation to cast flirtatious taunts in their direction, alternating between stunted English and only slightly better German. A muted, pulsating beat emanated from the stairwell—club music stripped of everything but the bass by the heavy black door.
The bouncer pushed off from his post against the brick wall and barred their path, his hands gripping the lapels of his black leather jacket. His eyes shifted from Nick’s blue irises up to his blond hair and back. “This is Hungarian bar. We don’t take dollars or euros here.”
“Kak naschet rubley?” asked Nick in cool Russian, roughly pressing a thousand-ruble bill against the brute’s chest.
The bouncer smiled. He took the bill, the Russian equivalent of a U.S. fifty, and stepped aside. “Naslazhdaytes’, ser.”
A blast of heat greeted Nick as he opened the door, and a cacophony of digital tones joined the thumping bass. Dim red light glowed through a haze of cigarette smoke. He and Quinn cut through the sparse crowd of dancers, making for one of the shiny black couches that lined the walls. A few of the patrons looked their way, but no one challenged them. They had already passed the gatekeeper at the top of the stairs. That was enou
gh.
“How did you know to bring rubles?” asked Quinn once they had settled onto a secluded stretch of overstuffed vinyl.
“In this country, rubles almost always grease palms better than dollars,” said Nick, slipping his hand into the inside pocket of his coat, but he immediately removed it again as a fair-skinned girl with raven hair approached the table. She was young, far too young to be dressed as she was, in a thigh-length minidress that might have been cut from the same cheap vinyl as the couch.
The girl bent down with a tray of drinks and said something in a sultry voice that did not fit her young features. Her eyes flitted over to Quinn.
Nick didn’t pick up all the Hungarian, but he could gather the gist of what she said. The thought made him ill. He selected a pair of dark beers from the tray and replaced them with a wad of rubles, letting his hard expression tell the girl that he and his young friend were there for drinks and nothing more. She didn’t press him, almost looked grateful. She straightened and turned back toward the bar, wobbling on her stiletto heels as she did.
Nick watched her go for a moment. He knew what she was, and he could easily reconstruct how she got there. He wanted to drag her back to the airport and put her on the team’s Gulfstream, send her home to DC where she could be a barista instead of a barmaid, but his team wasn’t here for her.
Quinn also watched the girl walk away, likely with different thoughts. “Snap out of it, junior,” said Nick. “Let’s find our boy and bag him.”
He reached into his coat again and withdrew his phone, a slim unit a little larger than an iPhone. The device consolidated both his civilian and company needs into one unit, with a firewall that separated the more interesting functions from the mundane. Walker had placed only two restrictions on apps for the personal side. No Facebook. No Twitter. No big loss.
Nick had Angry Birds, though. Everyone had Angry Birds.
The program he used now came from Scott rather than the App Store and resided on the classified side of the firewall. The engineer had pulled the screen saver from Grendel’s laptop, trimmed it to just the face, and transferred it to Nick’s phone. The app identified the subject’s key features: skin tone, hairline, bone structure. Then an algorithm built a three-dimensional predictive model.
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