The Immortality Code

by Douglas E. Richards

  “Understood,” said the AI into the comms of the entire group.

  “Try to extrapolate its most probable routes,” continued Reed. “Calculate intercepts and possible destinations. Trace the origins of the limo, and run the driver through all facial recognition databases.”

  “Acknowledged,” replied the AI. “Sending map of fastest possible current intercept to your lenses and your team’s phones now. This will be continuously recalculated and updated, depending on the limo’s movements.”

  Reed swerved in front of traffic to take a sharp right, accompanied by several angry honks, as the limo had begun to head east away from Allie Keane’s home.

  “Facial recognition inconclusive,” reported the AI. “The target never looked up, so the satellite wasn’t able to get a proper read,” it went on to explain.

  “What about her doorbell cam?”

  “After Dr. Keane opened the door, its memory was wiped and it stopped working. Her visitor must have remotely knocked it out somehow.”

  “Access street cam footage then!” barked Reed impatiently.

  “Not possible. Even though the limo’s windshield is not tinted, it is actively sending out an infrared strobe, invisible to humans, which is interfering with any camera trying to image the driver or front passenger.”

  “Goddammit!” fumed the commander. Whoever they were up against hadn’t missed a trick.

  “I tried to trace the origin of the vehicle,” continued the female voice pleasantly, ignoring Reed’s outburst as only an inhuman AI could, “but the license plates are fake. I’m working on running down the origin of all models of this limousine known to be within one day’s drive of Vermillion and accessing ownership or rental records. But given the fake license plate, I suspect false names were given also, leaving no way to learn more.”

  “Assume Chinese ownership and dig deeper,” said Reed. “Explore limo companies for hidden connections to China. Look over checking accounts for payments linked to Chinese nationals. And so on. Be creative. But only get back to me on this if you find anything interesting.”

  “Working,” said the AI, to indicate that it was on the job, but that this took enough digging to preclude coming to a quick conclusion.

  “Why not alert the police in the direction our mystery driver is traveling?” said Quinlan from beside him. “Get them to lay out an ambush. Even if they can’t stop him, just delaying him would be a big help.”

  Reed considered. “I like the general idea,” he said, “but not the ambush. Alerting the cops and having them stay out of sight in front of him makes sense. We can have squad cars ready to act if we become desperate. But we’d have to be pretty desperate. I’d only authorize them to confront the limo as a last possible resort.”

  “Understood,” said Quinlan. “Are you worried the driver isn’t alone?”

  “Very,” replied the commander. “He could have an entire army hidden in the back of his vehicle. Why not?” he added, allowing a smile to flicker across his face. “I do.”

  Reed shook his head. “But even if we knew he was alone, it would still be too much of a risk. This driver is a pro. If there was a SWAT unit within range, maybe. But even hardened cops in Chicago would be out of their league against him. And here we’re talking about South Dakota cops whose territory is about as dangerous as Disney World. And the limo’s on civilian roads. The cops would end up dead, along with innocent bystanders.”

  The lieutenant frowned. “You’re right, of course. I was forgetting the disparity in skill. And if the cops did fail, Dr. Keane could get hit in the crossfire. And the driver would be alerted that he’s being followed.”

  Reed nodded. He was sure the driver was enough of a pro to assume he was being followed, but it was still better not to provide proof. He was about to order his AI to pull the strings needed to give the limo an out-of-sight police escort, but delayed this action as the satellite feed showed the target vehicle accelerating up an onramp onto I-29 South.

  “Eve, what’s the next city the I-29 passes through?” he asked instead.

  “Sioux City, Iowa. The vehicle has now increased speed to ninety miles per hour. It also just released four small quadcopter drones out of a back window. Zooming in on that footage now.”

  Reed stared at the 3D video replay hovering in front of him. The window in question slid down about a foot, just enough for four sleek drones to sneak through and quickly dart off to the south, easily outpacing the speeding car. Impressive.

  “What’s the airspeed of those drones?” he asked.

  “Approximately one hundred ten MPH.”

  “The driver is scouting ahead,” said Quinlan. “Smart. So readying cops in front of him is out.”

  Reed frowned deeply. Their adversary seemed to always be a move or two ahead of them. China had begun to hire a smarter breed of mercenary, which was a bad sign. “Eve, if you assume Sioux City is his destination, what’s his ETA?”

  “At current speed, a little over thirty minutes.”

  “And ours?”

  “At maximum speed, a little under forty-five.”

  All seven men in the van rechecked their equipment, preparing for a possible war, while Reed took the opportunity to provide a quick situation report to his commanding officer. Colonel Hubbard didn’t look happy, but she reiterated that she had complete confidence in him and his team, and left him to his job.

  He had confidence in himself also. But this time he was more worried than usual.

  He was playing from behind. His quarry had a hostage, a plan, and had shown impressive competence and tech, performing remote tricks with a phone that had stymied even Eve.

  And he had a nagging feeling that what he was seeing was only the tip of the iceberg.

  8

  Reed and his team of commandos continued following the limo as it raced down the I-29 freeway, breaking speed limits themselves, which was rare for an Amazon delivery vehicle to be doing.

  Less than a half hour later the satellite feed showed the limo taking an off ramp and making its way slowly through downtown Sioux City, the driver now taking great care not to speed or otherwise attract attention—beyond the attention he naturally attracted driving a stretch limo of spectacular proportions.

  Reed was still ten minutes behind the limo when it arrived at an underground parking garage below a twelve-story high-rise, apparently the city’s principal office building, with an unobstructed view of the nearby Missouri River.

  The feed on Reed’s lenses and his teams’ phones disappeared as the limo entered the structure. “Eve, show us the limo from the garage feeds,” he ordered in frustration, as this was something the AI should have been sophisticated enough to do on its own.

  “I can’t. The garage and building have a number of cameras, but the limo seems to have found a dead zone in the coverage.”

  “Of course it did,” mumbled Reed in frustration. Their adversary must have scouted this location in advance. But why? Why bring the physicist here? Why take the girl to an office building in Sioux City, Iowa? It made no sense.

  Reed tried to look on the bright side—their quarry had gone to ground, giving them a chance to catch up. The problem was that he didn’t believe in gift horses.

  This was too easy, and his opponent was too good. He was missing something.

  Reed checked the time. They were still six minutes out.

  “I just picked up what I believe to be Dr. Keane and her assailant,” announced the AI. “They’re heading toward the south elevator,” it added as the camera feed appeared on Reed’s lenses and the teams’ phones.

  The physicist was being escorted by a man who appeared to be the limo driver, based on his clothing and non-facial physical characteristics. And it also appeared that she was being pushed forward at gunpoint, judging from the location of the man’s right hand, which was hidden behind her back. Both were studiously looking down, so the camera couldn’t see their faces, which is why Eve hadn’t been certain of the identification.
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  Allie Keane was still a hostage, but Reed was heartened to see her walking under her own power. The tranquilizer dart that had hit her must have carried a short-acting payload. They stopped before the elevator and the man reached out and pressed the button.

  Moments later the lift arrived and the doors slid open. Just before entering, the slender, green-eyed scientist threw her head back for just a moment and sneezed, the movement a blur of motion, and then continued onto the elevator with her head down.

  “Eve, did you get a shot of her face?” he asked.

  “Affirmative. Facial recognition confirms that she is, indeed, Allison Keane.”

  It might have been a real sneeze, but Reed doubted it. She had been clever enough to get her face on camera, after all, despite the driver’s obvious insistence that she keep her head down. Reed already knew she was a genius. But in his travels, being a genius didn’t make one savvy or street-smart—often, just the opposite.

  The two figures rode the elevator up to the first floor and exited into the building, but as soon as they turned into a nearby corridor, the cameras lost them entirely.

  “Eve, access the floor plan of this building,” ordered Reed immediately.

  Several long seconds ticked by, as even the most impressive AI ever constructed needed time to find, access, and analyze the floor plan of a random building in a random town.

  “They’re presently moving through a corridor with about a forty-foot gap in the video coverage,” reported Eve finally. “So they should reappear any moment.”

  Reed counted to fifteen, becoming more agitated each second their quarry failed to reappear on camera.

  “What were they near when we lost the feed?” he barked. “What’s in the stretch of corridor between where we lost them and the next camera?”

  “Four small offices and a family restroom.”

  Lieutenant Quinlan’s eyes widened. “Does the bathroom have a widow to the outside?” he asked urgently.

  “Affirmative.”

  “Shit!” barked Reed, his mind racing. He had never been outplayed to this extent before, and he didn’t like it. “If they do leave via the window, is there a street nearby?”

  “Yes, about ten yards away. Palmer Avenue.”

  “Give me a satellite feed of the area outside the bathroom window and of the street nearby. Look for our targets, who will likely be moving toward a parked car, or one just arriving.”

  Seconds later the backs of two familiar heads could be seen entering the backseat of a silver Mercedes sedan, which had pulled over to them abruptly as they reached Palmer Avenue, and then quickly sped off the second the door closed.

  Reed was now just a few minutes away from the parking garage and he pressed down hard on the accelerator, causing the heavy armored van to jerk ahead with all the grace and responsiveness of a cement truck. He had recently been going the speed limit, thinking his quarry would remain in the office building at least long enough for them to arrive, but he had been wrong.

  He spied the office building and its underground garage only a minute later and prepared to speed by in the direction the Mercedes had taken, when some instinct caused him to slam on the brakes before quickly pulling over into a curbside parking spot. The men in back were tossed like salad, and Reed and Quinlan were slammed into their now-rigid seat belts with considerable force.

  “What’s going on?” asked Quinlan.

  “I’m not sure,” replied the commander. “But this feels wrong.”

  Reed had long since learned to trust his instincts, especially in desperate circumstances, as his subconscious had a way of analyzing information and reaching the proper conclusions many times faster than his conscious mind, which usually caught up only after the fact.

  “Wrong, how? You think the Mercedes is a diversion?”

  “Maybe,” he said slowly, examining the entire situation now with his conscious mind, hoping to identify the source of his inspiration. “I’m wondering if the driver and Dr. Keane even entered the elevator in the first place. The best magic tricks are executed before the audience even knows they’ve begun. So I’m not moving until we think this through. He’s been outsmarting us too easily. It’s time for us to up our chess game.”

  “He’d need a body double in the back of the limo,” mused the lieutenant, thinking out loud. “One dressed exactly like him. And a girl with a trim, athletic body and green eyes to mimic Dr. Keane’s. And then what? A mask good enough to fool our best facial-recognition software?”

  “Why not? Anyone with a 3D printer can make a latex mask that’s all but perfect. And this would explain why she only flashed her face for a moment. Long enough to fool our algorithms, but not long enough for us to find any flaws in her disguise.”

  “Are you saying he not only sent in decoys,” said Quinlan, “but expected us to realize they exited through a bathroom window? That he was counting on it?”

  “I am. He’s sophisticated enough to have prevented the garage cam from seeing Dr. Keane’s face no matter what, sneeze or no sneeze.”

  “So you think he wanted us to see her?”

  “I do,” said Reed. “And jump to the conclusions we did. And even if we didn’t track them leaving through the window, he’d still win. We’d still think they were inside. We’d be sitting tight and waiting for them to return to the limo. Or we’d eventually go in after them. If we were smart enough to discover they left the building, on the other hand, that Mercedes would just lead us on a wild goose chase. Either way, while we’re focused on the decoys, the real driver could leave in another car. One he stashed there earlier. He could drive right by us and we’d never even think to look.”

  Reed shook his head. “Pretty damned clever,” he added, unable to keep admiration from his tone.

  “Seems like a lot of effort to go to, especially if you aren’t sure you’re being followed.”

  “He’s as close to sure as he can be,” replied Reed. “In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if we aren’t the only ones following. The key players were all caught off guard by Dr. Keane’s discovery. The group behind this must have expected severe competition from any number of powerful parties. So they came armed for bear. Ready to do whatever it took to get their prize. Which, in addition to a show of force and advanced tech, included clever sleight of hand.”

  “So they were expecting a battle.”

  “Yes. And they decided that the spoils would go the boldest player, whoever was willing to flex the most muscle on US soil. You don’t reach in and remove the queen from the beehive without expecting the bees to mount a challenge.”

  As Reed spoke, one of the feeds on his lenses showed the Mercedes entering the onramp to I-29 south once again, which Eve displayed along with the next major city the highway would dissect, Omaha, Nebraska, eighty miles distant.

  Reed considered going after it once again, but the more he thought about it, the more convinced he became that the escape from the bathroom into the luxury sedan had been nothing more than performance art.

  “Eve, access the cams at the parking garage’s exit,” he said. “I want footage of every car and every driver that left after the limo entered.”

  Only five cars had exited in the specified interval, with three being driven by men, and two women.

  “Follow all five cars on street cams,” Reed ordered his AI. “Get license plate numbers as soon as you can, and trace their ownership. Cross-reference against the appearance of the drivers.”

  Less than a minute later, the requested exercise was complete. “All cars check out except for the white Tesla,” reported Eve. “It’s registered to a man named Mort Goodman, who lives in a part of town called Morningside. The picture on his license does match the appearance of the man leaving the garage. But digging deeper, a further search reveals no other indication that an Iowan named Mort Goodman even exists. If he does, he has zero online presence other than his registration and license.”

  “Well done,” said Reed appreciatively. “Continu
e to track the Mercedes, just in case. But the Tesla will be our primary focus until further notice. Send us a video feed and directions for an intercept. You know the drill.”

  “Understood,” said the unflappable female voice of his NSA-powered assistant.

  9

  The white Tesla drove on for almost forty minutes before arriving at an isolated factory, whose windows were boarded up with plywood. The building and grounds had been carved into the southernmost edge of a thick, old-growth forest, and the factory was straddled on its east and west sides by thick woods. A concrete parking lot served the facility, but the builders had taken the unusual step of placing it behind the factory.

  In the front, rather than a cold sea of concrete and parked cars, dozens of massive trees had been left standing, with a lawn of grass between them, beautifying all vehicle approaches to the facility considerably. Either the owners were able to buy this land on the leading edge of a woods for very little money, or they believed that they would attract and retain workers better if their factory was nestled in tranquility.

  Either way, given that the factory was boarded up, their business hadn’t gone as planned.

  The vehicle containing Allie Keane drove carefully through the massive steel door entrance to the factory’s warehouse on the west side and continued deeper into the building, putting it out of range of surveillance, while the door slowly lowered itself back to the ground behind it.

  Reed frowned as the Tesla disappeared from his lenses. They were still seven minutes behind it. He had made every effort to gain ground on his quarry but had only fallen farther behind. He could ignore speed limits. What he couldn’t ignore was the inevitable outcome of an exceedingly heavy van trying to chase down a high-end Tesla. It was a laughably unfair contest.

  Still, he decided it didn’t matter. Dr. Keane was inside the factory, and it was hard to imagine that she wouldn’t remain there for at least seven minutes. And if anyone did leave, Reed would know about it immediately.

  He ordered Eve to activate and control the van’s self-driving feature and race to the factory, while he studied an aerial view of the site that hovered before his eyes. The structure was rectangular, about fifteen feet in height, with the approximate area of a football field.