Kowalski kicked out a couple of chairs. “I’ve been waiting for you,” he said, not in an unfriendly way. “Glad you made it in one piece. Did you bring the parts?”
A cigarette stuck between his lips and bobbed up and down with each word, ash dripping onto his sweat-stained white shirt, the sleeves rolled up to his elbows.
It looked like he’d been pulling a long shift.
Laramore and Chavez walked past the dining area and went through an arched doorway into what Jacob assumed was a kitchenette.
“Yeah, I’ve got them here,” Jacob said as he took a seat, happy to be off his feet. Emma sat on the chair opposite, coughing as she wafted the smoke from her face.
“Good,” Kowalski said. “Perhaps we can find out what that creepy bastard is up to. Now if you wouldn’t mind, time is of the essence here.”
“Oh, sure.” Jacob took the plastic bag from his jacket and handed it to the agent.
Kowalski’s eyes widened when he looked at the biochip. He placed it on the table’s surface, poking at it with a ballpoint pen, seemingly fascinated by the combination of organic material and hardware.
“It degrades,” Emma said. “You’ve only got so long with it before it breaks down, like the old one.”
“This isn’t the original?”
“No,” Jacob added. “I sourced a new one, just in case.”
“You did good, kid,” Laramore said as he reentered the room with a large pot of black coffee and a bowl of spaghetti. The bowl had the hotel’s signage on its side. Much like the outer sign, the lettering was rubbing off, fading. Two forks stuck up from the meaty food. “Dig in, you two.” Laramore handed the bowl of food and coffee to Emma and Jacob and Kowalski made room for them as he shifted his myriad laptops across the table.
Chavez leaned against the arched doorway, cup of coffee in hand. “How long, Kowalski?”
“Shouldn’t be more than a few minutes. Just need to hook everything up and see what we’ve got. By the way, while you were out I spoke with the commanding officer at Lewis-McChord. Gray landed at a private airfield and has taken Vega with him by car. It seems they’re heading for Seattle.”
“And our guys are intercepting?”
“Yeah, but get this. Gray’s got a sub waiting for him in port. Part of Devereux’s personal fleet. One of his investments. A science vessel. Port Authority has impounded it and is awaiting Gray’s arrival.”
“And Zoe’s still transmitting?” Jacob asked, hoping nothing had happened to her.
“Yeah,” Kowalski said. “We’re tracking them right now.”
“Good,” Chavez said. “Now get that stuff connected and let’s see what Gray’s got up his sleeve. Let me know as soon as you’ve got anything; I need to update the president.”
***
Jacob watched in silent wonder as Kowalski stripped parts from Gray’s shattered laptop and installed them on a breakout board. The agent tested the circuitry with power and was delighted that the biochip seemed responsive.
Emma had left them to it, snoozing on a bed after consuming a carb-baby from all the pasta. Jacob was too wired on coffee to care about his indigestion or the haziness of the painkillers Chavez had brought him for his ankle.
“Okay, this should be it,” Kowalski said as he switched power to the breakout box containing the processor board and the SSD drive from Gray’s machine.
The dongle was attached to the biochip, and the agent had bridged the connection to his computer. A few keystrokes later Kowalski let out a low whistle.
“You got something?” Jacob asked.
Laramore and Chavez came out from the kitchen area to hover over Kowalski’s shoulders. Jacob inched his chair around until he could see the screen.
Streams of IP addresses and long numbers flowed down a terminal window.
“What am I looking at?” Chavez asked.
“Looks like GPS pings from nodes,” Kowalski said, typing commands into the laptop. “Here.” He pointed to a different terminal window. “I’ve isolated fourteen distinct nodes.”
“Synthetics,” Jacob said. “It must be them.”
“Where are they?” Laramore asked.
“Hang on, just plotting the GPS onto the maps app.”
A frenzied, tense thirty seconds went by as Kowalski transposed the GPS coordinates from the nodes onto a map of the United States. A red dot appeared for each node. A ring of eight surrounded a location in Wyoming. Three others were heading west into Washington State. One was in Montana, another in New York, and the last in Maryland.
“That one,” Chavez said, pointing to the Montana one, “is right here.”
“Yeah, it’s the chip,” Kowalski said. “They seem to be what locates these things on the network.”
“What about the one in New York?” Jacob asked.
“That’s the one that killed your friends,” Laramore said.
Jacob tried not to think about how Brian died, but that image would never leave him. But he couldn’t dwell on it, not while the others, and Gray, were still out there.
“We know those three must be with Gray heading for the sub,” Chavez said, “leaving those eight. The eight we knew were missing from that fucking idiot Hatfield’s other safe house programs. Where exactly are they?”
Kowalski zoomed into the map and switched it from basic vector graphics to a satellite image. “Crap,” he said, sitting back in his chair, running his hand through his hair.
“What is it?” Jacob asked.
Laramore and Chavez remained silent as they stared at the laptop screen. Chavez took a deep breath and finally said, “It’s a Missile Alert Facility… one that has ten of the Minuteman ICMBs.”
“As in the nukes?” Jacob said.
“Uh-huh. I really need to call the president.”
“Wait,” Jacob said? “What’s the one in Maryland?” They’d forgotten it as they zoomed in on the Wyoming eight. “Isn’t the NSA HQ in Maryland?”
“Go back,” Laramore said to Kowalski. “There, zoom in.”
“What are the coordinates?” Chavez asked.
“39.108889, -76.771389,” Kowalski said, pointing to the overlay on the map.
“That’s definitely HQ. Laramore, get in touch with Foster, have her team track it down. There’s a synthetic over there.”
“I’m on it.”
Jacob watched as the agents made the calls. Kowalski just stared at the laptop as the eight synthetics got closer and closer to the Wyoming MAF.
“They can’t launch anything from there, right?” Jacob asked.
“If they’ve got the codes and can gain access before the system is shut down, it’s possible.”
Jacob’s stomach tightened as he imagined the Minuteman missiles launching, detonating nuclear warheads on U.S. soil. How could this have happened? How could no one have noticed? He hoped against hope they could stop them in time. He couldn’t bring himself to think of the devastation just one warhead would cause.
Laramore ordered Foster to search for the synthetic over the cell. “Yeah, we’ll direct you. It’s right in the building. Sure… hang on.” He turned to Kowalski. “How accurate can you get that?” he said, pointing to the red dot in the NSA HQ.
“Five meters.”
“That’ll have to do.” He lifted the cell to his ear. “Foster, listen to me, okay, it’s in the northeast segment of the building. We can’t say what floor. What? The director’s office? Yeah, start there. We’ll update you if it moves. No, it’s currently stationary.”
Jacob turned to see Emma standing at the bedroom door. “Did I hear talk of nukes?” she said, looking paler than she’d ever looked.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
11:15 a.m., Day 4, NSA HQ
Director Hatfield sat in his luxurious leather chair and placed his cuffed wrists on the highly polished mahogany table. Selena, his secretary, sat opposite, her back to the door. Next to her, looking nervous, sat Vice Director Chambers, whose already sagging face looked like it was droopi
ng to the floor.
Standing guard in either corner beside the door were two armed military policemen. Hatfield sighed, shook his head, and wished they would all stop looking at him. His own shame was bad enough without their accusatory glances.
“I can’t believe it,” Chambers said, lifting his eyes from a hastily written report. A report the president had asked Hatfield to write. A confession. It had all come out when the dummy synthetic transceivers were found. Damned FBI tapping the NSA’s phone systems.
If he were in any other situation, he might enjoy the irony of it, but right now he was trying not to think about suffering a lethal injection.
The media would be talking about this long after he was gone. A traitor.
He, of course, would never be able to explain his motivations, why he’d thought he could use the XNA technology to build a better army, a better surveillance system, a better everything. No, visionaries like him were never allowed to flourish.
“I knew the risks going into it,” Hatfield said to Chambers.
“But why? Such a risk, you must have known the consequences. Couldn’t you have gone through DARPA or something?”
“XNA-based BCIs is beyond anything we’ve got,” Hatfield said. “The moral implications would never allow it to be fully explored, that’s why I trialed them my way. If I could have just—”
The door burst open. The military policemen raised their rifles but soon lowered them as three FBI agents came in, led by Agent Foster. She scanned the room, a cell phone to her ear. “Three of them,” she said. “How do we ID?” She grunted a confirmation and placed the cell in her jacket pocket.
She and her two colleagues aimed their pistols at Chambers, Selene, and Hatfield.
“What’s the situation, ma’am?” one of the military guards said.
“One of these three is a synthetic,” she said.
“What? Are you truly mad, Foster?” Hatfield said. “You really think Chambers or Selene, or even me is one of those things? I told you everything I knew in the report; this is crazy.”
“Chambers, Selene, place your hands on the desk with your back to me. Jones, Wesley, keep your weapons on Hatfield.”
The two guards aimed their rifles directly at Hatfield. Agent Foster’s two colleagues kept their pistols on Chambers and Selene. The latter turned her head to regard her. “You think we’re artificial people? We’ve worked here for years. Way before this situation with the director.”
“I was nominated by the president himself,” Chambers said. “How dare you treat us like criminals.”
Foster stepped forward and placed her right hand on the back of Chambers’ neck, squeezing and probing. With his face pushed against the desk, his hands flat, Chambers questioned Foster. “What the hell are you doing, Agent Foster?”
“Shut up,” she said as she continued to squeeze her thumb and fingers into his neck. With her free hand she lifted the cell phone. “What exactly is it I’m looking for? I’ll definitely notice it? Okay, hold.”
She placed the phone back into her jacket pocket and stepped behind Hatfield’s personal assistant. Hatfield couldn’t help but think of the times he’d stood behind Selene as she bent over his desk. Only this time he was on the other side, looking into her eyes, remembering how good she had felt, how good she had been to him in the three years that she’d worked with him.
He wanted to reach out, push Foster away; Selene had been nothing but a Godsend in her time at the NSA. She was bright, witty, and possessed great analytical skills, not to mention her discretion.
He’d even had his wife in the office a few minutes after one of his many sexual encounters with Selene; the girl had straightened up and presented a picture of utmost professionalism. She even got on well with his wife, always asking after the kids and her family.
“Agent Foster,” Hatfield said as the agent reached out for Selene, “I can assure you this is absurd. You’re barking up the wrong tree here.”
Foster ignored him and reached out to grab Selene’s neck. Selene looked at Hatfield with those intense blue eyes. They seemed to flash briefly, then her face hardened as she spun around, knocking Foster’s hand away. She kicked out, sending the agent sprawling.
The first of Foster’s colleagues, to her right, raised his pistol, but Selene chopped down on his wrist, making him drop the weapon. Foster’s second colleague was quicker and got off a round, striking Selene in the chest, forcing her back against the desk, knocking Chambers to the ground.
It didn’t seem to slow her as she rebounded forward, kicking out at the armed agent and catching the man in the leg, sending him sprawling forward, where he cracked his face against the carpeted floor.
Hatfield stood but was useless to stop the situation as the two policemen opened fire with their automatic rifles, peppering Selene as a dozen rounds smashed into her body, arms and head.
She slumped forward and hit the ground face first. Hatfield’s ears rang with the blasts. He screamed, lunging forward with his cuffed wrists.
Foster got to her feet, shook her head and bent down to Selene’s body, checking her neck. “Jones, your knife, please.”
The young officer handed her the knife from his belt.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Hatfield said shakily. He made to move around the desk, but the two men raised their rifles. He had no doubt they would shoot if he continued on, so he just stood there and watched as Agent Foster cut into Selene’s neck.
Two careful cuts created a pocket. Foster opened it wide with the knife, exposing a bulbous organ attached to the spinal column.
Hatfield stepped back in horror.
Foster took the cell from her pocket and raised it to her ear. “Synthetic located. Stay on the line.” She turned to help her two agents up. “Everyone okay? Chambers?”
The vice director raised his hand as he pulled himself up onto the desk. “I’m good. Director Hatfield?”
Hatfield didn’t respond. He just stared at his beloved Selene, dead… a synthetic. A tear dripped from his eye. “Selene,” he whispered. “How?”
Foster looked at him in disgust. “You were screwing it, weren’t you?”
Hatfield slumped back into his chair, shaking his head, unable to comprehend the depth of Gray’s deception. “Three years she’s been here. Three! And I didn’t know. How could I not know?”
“Foster, there’s something here you should see.” Agent Shaw, her colleague, stood up from beside Selene’s body. “She had this in her right sleeve.”
Foster knew what it was instantly. The biscuit with the gold codes stamped across it. Just like the one carried by the team flanking the president.
“Is this yours?” she said, showing it to Hatfield.
The muscles in his face loosened. “My God, that’s my code card… She must have taken it from the safe.”
“Launch codes. As in the Minuteman launch codes?” Chambers said.
Hatfield nodded.
Turning away from him and placing the cell to her ear, Foster said, “She had launch codes on her. Yes, confirmed by Hatfield.”
“What have I done?” Hatfield said. “What have I done?”
***
Jacob watched Chavez’s face flinch as she received news. She closed her eyes for a moment before addressing the room. “The synthetic has been neutralized. But it got the launch codes. At this moment, we have to assume those heading for the MAF have those codes too. I’ll speak with the president and Joint Special Op Command right away. Kowalski, make sure you watch those nodes like a hawk and note everything you see. The Rangers are going to need any scrap of intel we can give them.”
Emma sat next to Jacob and he put his arm around her waist. Together they watched the laptop screen as the eight synthetics closed in on the MAF.
CHAPTER FORTY
11:20 a.m., Day 4, Wyoming
The base phone in Wyoming Bravo-Two Missile Alert Facility rang. Captain John Featherstone reached over and picked it up.
&n
bsp; Probably dinner, he thought. Earlier than usual.
“Let me guess, noodles?”
“Sir, we’re under attack. Armed men. Two facility guards—”
He heard banging, a muffled shout.
Featherstone bolted upright in his seat. “Staff Sergeant Mills—”
Somebody replaced the receiver. He dialed the topside; no answer. Featherstone ran to the entrance of the sleeping area.
“McPherson, get here, now!” he shouted.
The curtain at the far end of the MAF swished open, revealing Second Lieutenant Dave McPherson, bleary eyed, fastening his green jumpsuit.
“What’s up?” he said.
“Not sure yet. We’ve had a breach. The topside team are dealing with it.”
They both peered at the monitors showing footage from above. A monitor flicked to the outer facility gate, showing two uniformed men, spread-eagled.
“Holy shit,” McPherson said.
Featherstone twisted his chair towards the console, almost knocking over a glass of water he’d placed on the spare chair between them. “I’m calling the command center…”
“Who’s that?”
He looked back over his shoulder. “What?”
“Two, at the southern end, by the antenna. Just appeared now,” McPherson said, pointing at a monitor.
Featherstone leaned forward. One non-uniformed man knelt on the grass, another stood a few yards away by the base of the communications mast. Both were armed.
The console rang with a low electronic tone, different from the old-fashioned tinkle of the base phone. Featherstone grabbed the receiver, planting it to his ear.
“Wyoming Bravo-Two, Captain Featherstone.”
“This is Major Booth. We’re expecting an imminent attack—”
“It’s started; they’re here. Who the hell is it?” Featherstone said.
“Is the blast door closed?”
He paused, biting his lip, “Roger that. We’re all secure. Who is it?”
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