Immune

by Richard Phillips

  “It’ll hold up,” said Mark. He sure as hell hoped he was right. This was the last thing they had to have working before they could go after Jen. As crazy as his twin had been acting, he was still desperate to find her. The other pissant stuff didn’t mean anything. Getting Jen back safe was what mattered.

  As the laptop finished booting, Heather slid it over in front of her. She might not be as fast as Jennifer on the keyboard, but she was no slouch. Activating the subspace transmitter, she set the signal location, watching the readouts as she adjusted the wave packet synchronization.

  “The Rho Project?” Mark asked, glancing at the coordinate she had entered.

  “I won’t be in long enough to be noticed.”

  Mark nodded. “Okay. Just so it’s a quick in and out.”

  “Almost done.” Heather pressed the transmit button. “That’s it. We have confirmation of packet insertion.”

  Before he could say it, she shut down the transmission and brought up a second software control panel, this one of her own design.

  “Now to find out if my math’s as good as advertised.” Heather’s lips moved in a nervous tick that may have been intended as a smile.

  As much as he wanted to, Mark found that he was having difficulty watching. So much depended on this next test. Heather had come up with the idea that the alien headsets remained in contact with the Second Ship, even when it was powered down, so that they could send commands that would bring its systems back online. And if they did, that meant those subspace signals could be detected.

  Of course, it wasn’t that easy. First, you had to have a subspace receiver capable of detecting them. Second, you had to know the precise location where the signals were directed. Third, you had to know the wave packet characteristics of the headsets in order to separate the signals from the background noise. They had the first two answers. Now they would find out if her theory about the headbands transmitting a periodic ping to mother held any water.

  Heather reached down into her backpack and pulled out her alien headband, setting it on the workbench beside her. She held out a hand and Mark gave her his own headband, which she placed beside the other. Although she could have performed the test with just one band, Heather wanted both so she could analyze the Fourier transforms of the subspace signals. Even if everything else worked, if those signals were too different she might not be able to get a trace on the two headbands in Jennifer’s possession.

  Mark leaned in close, his head almost even with Heather’s right shoulder. The data scrolled along the left side of the display, a jumble of digits forming a cascade of numbers. Shit. For the first time in his life, he wished he’d paid a little more attention in math class. He was stuck, helplessly waiting for Heather to say something.

  Instead, she leaped up, catching him around the neck in a hug that threatened to leave bruises.

  Her breath stirred the hairs in his ear as she spoke. “Look’s like tonight’s the night. Let’s get packed.”

  ~ ~ ~

  Raul raised his head until he seemed to be staring directly at the circuit panels that covered the room’s ceiling. The anomaly had been so brief that he had almost missed it. He certainly wouldn’t have noticed it without his new linkage, but now, as he analyzed the data on his neural net, there could be no doubt.

  Another subspace probe had penetrated the Rho Ship.

  98

  Pauly Farentino moved through the mass of humanity toward the Union Station exit to the parking garage, his right hand hidden inside his jacket pocket as he screwed the linear inertial decoupler (LID) and silencer onto the nose of the Glock 9mm. Unlike the Beretta, the Glock used a Browning action, which tilted the barrel down after about a quarter inch of recoil, letting the slide move freely backward to eject the spent round. Without the recoil assistance provided by the LID, the inertia of the suppressor prevented this tilt. It was an added complication that just didn’t matter. Pauly had done this so often it came as natural as shaving.

  He increased his pace slightly, making sure to keep his target in sight. The transfer had been so smooth that Pauly would have missed it if he hadn’t recognized the man helping Natalie Simpson recover her bag. Garfield Kromly. That meant that Kromly had the disk. It also meant Pauly had a new target.

  Even though this raised the operation profile way above the hit he was being paid for, there was no time to call in the Colombian. Kromly had to be taken down before he could get to a computer and access that data. Pauly could report this new development when the job was done.

  A homeless man blocked his path through the crowd, thrusting out a greasy palm in supplication.

  “Out of my way,” Pauly said, stepping in just close enough to send an elbow into the fellow’s gut.

  To his surprise, the blow failed to land. In a movement Pauly only saw from a corner of his eye, a knife glittered, then plunged forward in three quick strokes.

  Trying to bring the Glock around toward this new threat, Pauly stumbled, a scarlet fountain spraying from his throat onto the people crowded around him. As the screaming bystanders scrambled to get away, Pauly felt the wet slipperiness of the floor rise up to kiss him.

  The red eyes of the vagabond followed him down.

  99

  Her face, arms, and legs tanned to a dark brown, Janet stared at her reflection in the mirror, another of the small but regular gifts from Tall Bear. She had dyed her already dark hair black and clothed herself in the manner of modern Navajo women, something she thought of as Avant-Arabic. Plumped out with her advancing pregnancy, she doubted that even Jack would recognize her at first glance.

  Now, as she surveyed the hogan that had been her home and office for the last several weeks, Janet double-checked her pack. She had the laptop, her 9mm subcompact, and an assortment of false documents.

  Shit. She had been so close to sending her next communiqué to Jack, information he desperately needed to know, that the loss of the link to her mysterious source of Internet access had come as a complete shock. It had been so reliable, she had begun to take the amazing capabilities of the system for granted, hacking her way along progressively more complex links in her search for the people who had betrayed Jonathan Riles and his team. If not for the urgency of her need to contact Jack, she would have waited a few days, just to see if the link restored itself. But that was out of the question.

  Although Janet didn’t yet know the name of who was behind their betrayal, she had been able to trace a string of encrypted communications that had originated from within the White House, possibly from someone within the new president’s inner circle. Just as importantly, the messages had been directed to Jorge Esteban Espeñosa, the head of the largest and most violent of the Colombian drug cartels.

  Piecing together what she could obtain directly from CIA and FBI files had brought her to a dead end, but early this morning Janet had gotten a break. As she checked one of the Interpol subnets she had been monitoring, she discovered an obscure report from a Caracas field operative assigned to track the movements of the Espeñosa Cartel’s top hit man. Eduardo Montenegro, a.k.a. El Chupacabra, a.k.a. the Colombian. Apparently, the Colombian had dropped out of sight completely just before the string of US killings attributed to Jack, including the assassinations of the FBI director and the president.

  Janet had run a complete background check on El Chupacabra. The man had weighty dossiers at the CIA, the FBI, and the ATF, but the French government files had the best information. The hit man had come to the attention of French Interpol because of his interest in all data related to Carlos the Jackal. Following this line of inquiry, the French security services had discovered that the Colombian had a much stronger obsession, the American killer codenamed the Ripper.

  Janet stepped out into the gathering twilight, pausing just long enough to fill her twin canteens from the water tank. Looking up at the stars starting to populate the darkening sky, Janet glanced down at her stomach. No use crying over something she couldn’t change. She sure wouldn
’t get to the end of her long trail by standing here.

  Hitching her pack higher onto her shoulder, Janet began climbing the arroyo that led up to the ridgeline south of the hogan. Fat and pregnant or not, Jack needed her, and Janet was about to reenter the game.

  100

  The sunlight streaming in the floor-to-ceiling windows caressed her face, bringing Jennifer back from the land of the dead. Her dreams had not been good, images of her mom and dad holding each other in grief contrasted with the joyful laughter of Mark and Heather, as if her brother and best friend were glad that she was gone. It was all the senseless random imagery of dreams, but it left her cold.

  A knock on the door brought her bolt upright in bed. What time was it? She had fallen asleep without bothering to undress.

  The door in the other room opened.

  “Hello? Maid service?”

  Jennifer cleared her throat. “No, thank you. Could you come back later?”

  “Sí, señorita.” The click of the door closing once again brought Jennifer’s heart back out of her throat.

  Jesus. It was only the cleaning lady. You’d think she’d never stayed in a hotel before.

  Jennifer rose from the bed, stretched, and ran her fingers through her hair, surprised by how little of it there was. She had heard of people having lost limbs and still feeling them, but phantom hair? Please.

  The window beckoned to her, and she answered the call, moving right up against the pane, looking out and down across the cityscape below. Something about the bright sunlight on the streets of Las Vegas seemed wrong. Like Dracula’s castle in daylight, it was somehow diminished, robbed of the glory that only darkness could bring. She had really been looking forward to the luxury of this penthouse suite, but the opulence of the Bellagio made her feel so small and out of place that she might as well have picked the vampire’s castle as her lair. That would have better fitted her mood.

  A shower would help. Maybe the hot steam of the “His” shower would do more to lift her spirits than a jetted bath.

  By the time Jennifer had finished toweling her hair, she realized just how hungry she was. She’d seen a Waffle House down a side street on her cab ride over, but if she ate in one of the Bellagio’s restaurants she could charge it to her room. Since she was short on cash at the moment, that option seemed to make more sense, even if it did mean she would have a lot more of the camera video to clean up later. That thought didn’t bother her. She needed to write her video editing tool anyway, and that would give her a chance to do both at once.

  By the time she had made her way down to the buffet line, Jennifer was so hungry she suspected the other guests could hear her stomach rumbling. She considered dining at the Café Bellagio or at the Pool Café, but she just couldn’t resist experiencing all the buffet had to offer. The wait proved worthwhile, although she felt a bit embarrassed at the number of foods she selected to sample. As if anyone here cared.

  A glance at the table to her left revealed a family with six kids attacking plates piled high with pastries. From the way they were inhaling the food, this clearly wasn’t going to be their last course either.

  Jennifer rose from the table and began walking through the crowd, back toward the elevators that would carry her up to her room. As she walked, she glanced up at the black glass domes housing the hotel’s video surveillance cameras. No doubt about it, these Vegas casino owners were one paranoid bunch. They made it hard for an honest young woman like herself to maintain her privacy.

  As soon as she opened the door into her suite, she saw that the room had been cleaned while she was gone. A moment of panic sent her rushing into the bedroom. Seeing her laptop on the desk where she had left it, she quickly checked her backpack, a wave of relief passing through her body as she saw the two alien headsets tucked in right where she had left them, atop the extra clothes that comprised the remainder of her wardrobe.

  Jennifer knew she would have to remedy that situation shortly, probably with a trip to some shops right inside the hotel. Right now, though, it was time to start doing what she had run away to do. Ever since her last trip to the Second Ship, she had known what was required. It had just taken her a while to come to terms with the fact that she could never take those steps while under her parents’ supervision, and although it would have been nice to have Mark and Heather’s help, they just weren’t ready. Maybe they never would be.

  The Rho Ship was out there, and its technologies were about to be spread around the planet. Once that genie was completely out of the bottle, there might be no way to put it back in. From what she had seen in the Second Ship databanks, no civilization that had succumbed to that addiction had ever been saved.

  Heather and Mark believed that they could stay safely on the edge of the fight, dropping little hints to government agencies in the hope they would recognize the evil and put a stop to it. Jennifer no longer held such illusions. Even the deadly Jack Johnson or Gregory, whatever his real name, had failed to stop the Rho Project. In the process of their meddling, the president of the United States had paid the ultimate price for trying to slow the Rho Project’s forward march.

  Jennifer slid onto the chair and typed in the password, which bypassed her laptop’s encryption program. Anyway, she was through playing second fiddle to Mark and Heather. She’d been the one to discover how to access the Second Ship’s internal databanks, and it had accepted her. It had chosen its champion, and no matter what anyone else thought, Jennifer was it.

  The time for half measures was over, but her next actions were going to require money and lots of it—more fake identities, more offshore bank accounts. Jennifer grinned. In an odd way, she was about to become the Robin Hood of her day. She had already identified over a dozen drug cartel bank accounts that were begging to have some of their ill-gotten gains put to better use.

  Having spent the last few weeks analyzing how the cartels laundered their money, Jennifer found their methods almost laughable. They had certainly never seen anything like the convoluted money trail she was about to inflict upon them. And if it caused the various cartels to suspect each other, so much the better.

  But first she had some video cleanup to do. The fun stuff would have to wait just a little bit longer.

  101

  3:42 p.m. Jennifer glanced at the digital display at the lower right corner of her laptop monitor. What she had expected to take a couple of hours had turned into an all-day project, although the outcome was far better than she had originally envisioned.

  Shortly after starting development work on her video editing program, the idea had hit her. Why should she be spending all this time every day manually hacking into the hotel security systems to find and edit video frames that contained her image? Surely she could come up with an automated way to do that.

  The first part of the problem involved facial recognition software, something that would have been difficult for someone of lesser talent, which basically meant everyone else on the planet. The algorithm she selected used a combination of relative facial measurements based upon a matrix comparison. Since she had already produced an OpenGL three-dimensional representation of her face, all she needed was the routine that would identify key facial features in each image frame, grab the measurements from that image, and compare against the stored data matrix.

  Ironically, the hardest part had nothing to do with the complexities of facial recognition. The camera imagery involved more than just faces. It did no good to just erase her head, she had to find the face and then resolve the outline of her body by forcing a comparison against earlier and later frames from the same camera. While not overly difficult, the first several algorithms took way too much computer time to process, and although she refined the program several times to optimize the calculations, the results were still way too slow.

  The real problem was the laptop. It just didn’t have the kind of speed bigger systems had. Then a new idea presented itself. Of course. The hotel was loaded with networked high-end computing systems
. Why not use their system to do the work for her? After all, she already had a virus she could insert the new code into, the same New Year’s Day virus they had originally used to contact the NSA. With a few modifications, it could be programmed to limit itself to the hotel subnets, processing all imagery products, looking for a match to her face and replacing her image with background data copied in from other frames or with background approximations if other frames were unavailable.

  Jennifer took a deep breath, then reached forward and initiated the virus launch sequence. A button press on her screen and it was done. Just like that. No bells. No whistles. But the virus had been released and was already replicating itself throughout the designated Bellagio subnets.

  Pushing away from the desk, Jennifer stood up. Such brilliant work and nobody here to see it, nobody to tell her just what an amazing thing she had just accomplished. Heather and Mark would have been oohing and aahing, telling her how they couldn’t have done it without her. But that was okay. She was beyond them now.

  Down on the street below, just loud enough to penetrate the insulated glass, a lone siren’s wail drifted into the room.

  102

  Bobby McKinney pushed his way into the room, followed closely by Danny Norman, the Bellagio security chief, the coolness of the room causing him to rub his hands together for warmth. A relic of the days when real computing meant massive Cray supercomputers or perhaps even before that, when vacuum tubes attempted to do a fraction of the work an acid etched piece of silicon wafer now performed, computer centers were still commonly cooled to temperatures that would make an Eskimo reach for his parka.

  Larry Fielding rose to meet him. “You’re not going to believe this.”

  “Show me.”