Hafer couldn’t be prouder of the plan, although he had to concede that Victor and his son Lucas had been responsible for most of it.
Hafer and his seven associates passed through security at staggered times, making it through with ease. None were armed, and only two had any concerns, whatsoever, about what was in their carry-on bags, Chuck Hafer and a man named Andrae Marquise.
Hafer had a battery powered electronic interface, about the size of a pack of cigarettes, which was unusual and risked being examined, but was not illegal, as well as a pen with a tiny needle hidden at the tip. Marquise had this same pen, with the same hidden needle, but one filled with a different drug. As expected, both bags containing these items sailed right through without raising a single eyebrow.
Each member of the team waited alone at various gates and bistros for over an hour until they received a group message from the man stationed closest to the security line. Arrived was all it said, indicating that Dennis Sargent had finally made it to the airport and was now in the TSA line.
The men receiving this message calmly moved into positions that had been planned out for days, all based on the locations of security cameras that had been installed throughout the terminal.
Only two of the men had starring roles. The others were mere supporting actors, only present to block Nessie’s line of sight for a short time, if this even proved necessary.
The actions of the team had been rehearsed and would be as well-orchestrated and precise as a wedding ceremony planned by a control freak. Hafer sat one gate away from the one Sargent would use, facing a wall of glass, gazing at the jumbo jets parked at their gates and the mountain ranges just beyond, seemingly close enough to touch.
He glanced down at another incoming text. He’s through. FRP.
Hafer smiled. FRP: Front Right Pocket.
Victor was correct again, although this one was more obvious. If you were carrying a data stick of great value, you’d want it firmly in your deepest pocket, not in a carry-on that might be stolen, as unlikely as this might be. You’d transfer it to your bag just before going through the airport scanners, and then immediately place it in your pocket once again.
It was good to know that Sargent was behaving precisely as predicted.
Now through security, Dennis Sargent began to make his way toward his gate, oblivious to the many sets of human eyes that followed his every step from afar, joining those belonging to Nessie that had followed his every movement since leaving THT.
Hafer removed the small electronic device from his carry-on and slid it in his shirt pocket. He rose from his seat and appeared to wander aimlessly, noting with approval that throngs of fliers were coursing through the terminal. Perfect, he thought. More than enough people to block out Nessie, even without the supporting players he had assembled.
Not that he was about to take any chances. Not for this kind of money.
His phone vibrated twice, indicating that Andrae Marquise had fallen into step behind Sargent at the precise position they had calculated, about seventy yards from where Hafer was waiting.
In seconds Marquise would bump into Sargent and dose him with a drug. The bump and the tiny needle prick would occur simultaneously, with a good chance the target would never even feel it, too distracted by Marquise’s misdirection. Marquise was the best pickpocket for a thousand miles. Others were there to block Nessie’s vision when he made his move, but his skill was so impressive that this was more of a precaution than a necessity.
Hafer’s phone vibrated once again, an indication that Marquise had completed his job, with Sargent being none the wiser. The typical walking speed of three miles an hour translated into four and a half feet per second, which they had calculated would put Sargent in the general vicinity of Chuck Hafer when the drug took effect.
Marquise had wandered away from the action after performing his duties, but the other six men on the team casually drifted toward Hafer’s position, their eyes on the incoming bogey.
Sargent’s gait began to shorten, almost imperceptibly, and those watching knew the drug was seconds away from its final stranglehold. He was already in the middle of any number of passengers heading to and from gates, but the team added to the crowd, blocking cameras, while Hafer fell into step beside the target.
Hafer took a deep breath and braced himself mentally. After only five steps Sargent stumbled and would have collapsed to the ground had Hafer not been waiting for this moment. He reached out and caught his target, managing to keep him upright.
Hafer freed the data stick from Sargent’s pocket while three members of his team stopped, in heated conversation, just behind, so traffic would have to flow around them. Another of his men paused just beside Sargent to pull an energy bar from his bag.
Hafer shoved the data stick into a slot on the small device he was carrying, which had been previously programmed to copy all files the moment the stick was inserted. The device signaled it was done before Hafer was even certain he had shoved the stick in all the way, and he returned it to Sargent’s pocket with practiced efficiency, not needing the pickpocketing skills of an Andrae Marquise when dealing with an unconscious man.
Less than seven seconds had passed since Sargent had stumbled. Hafer injected him with the antidote to the drug he had been given, which worked faster than smelling salts, bringing him back to life, and quickly steadied him on his feet. Once he was sure Sargent had regained his consciousness and balance, he walked calmly toward a men’s room, secure in the knowledge that the drug would strip Sargent’s memory of the last few minutes.
The other members of his team casually went about their business as Sargent paused for a moment, a confused expression on his face, and then, with a shrug, continued on toward his gate.
Hafer wandered over to his own flight with Victor’s prize in his pocket, fantasizing about what he would do with the payoff for this relatively painless operation. For just a moment he considered making a copy of the data for himself. After all, if Victor was willing to spend this much money, and go to this much trouble, something truly monumental must be on the disk.
But then he remembered the rest of Victor’s reputation and thought better of it. Crossing him was a very bad idea. Best to take his winnings and move on to live another day.
Had Nessie been aware of Sargent’s smuggling mission for President Cochran, even this flawless operation wouldn’t have fooled her. As it was, she recognized that Sargent’s brief pause in walking, out of her vision, and the coalescing of random passengers near this point were unlikely occurrences, but not at the level that would cause her concern. These minute anomalies in the fabric of Sargent’s ordinary reality had to be nothing but coincidence, her complex algorithm decided.
After all, if these movements had been orchestrated rather than random, there should have been a point to them. But there wasn’t. Dennis Sargent was unharmed and walking purposefully once more toward his gate, not in the least concerned about his well-being.
And unlikely coincidences happened all the time.
PART 6
Craig Bostic
43
Craig Bostic had always excelled in school, but had realized early on that he wanted to do something out of the ordinary. His father worked as an accountant in a major corporation and he had visited him on a number of occasions, horrified by the large number of people working forty or more hours a week in tiny, soul-crushing cubicles, their only view the walls of their prisons, and beyond nothing but more and more cubicles, stretching on for as far as the eye could see.
He couldn’t imagine how they did it, or even his father for that matter. His father at least had an office with a window, but he, too, spent endless hours glued to his desk, staring at a computer.
Seven-year-old Craig Bostic knew in his gut that this was unnatural, and he became more convinced of this with every passing year. Human beings weren’t meant to live this way.
The brainpower and knowledge of the species may have evolved rapidly, but primal
needs remained relatively untamed. These were still hardwired in, resistant to the beehive existence of modern cities. You could take the primate out of the savannah, but you couldn’t take the savannah out of the primate.
Bostic believed that all humans needed a healthy dose of fresh air and the ability to roam outside to be truly content, to challenge both their bodies and their minds in equal measure. That’s how the species had climbed the food chain with nothing but the most primitive tools, using cunning to ensure survival, pitting human skills against nature, despite being hopelessly outgunned when it came to claws, or teeth, or speed, or strength.
Young animals at play were doing nothing more than practicing hunting skills they would need to survive as adults. Which explained why sports were always such an integral part of human society. These, too, represented a microcosm of the skills once needed for survival, requiring strategic thinking, eye-hand coordination, throwing and kicking accuracy, strength, and endurance.
But while sports satisfied the primal craving to challenge both mind and body in pursuit of a difficult goal, this wasn’t enough for some. Some needed to ski down dangerous mountains, jump out of planes, and scale cliffs.
Because a human being was never so alive as when his or her life was on the line.
Craig Bostic had known from a very young age he could never be happy at a desk job, but hadn’t known at the time that he would be happiest when pitting his skills against others, for the ultimate stakes. When he finally did come to this conclusion, he joined the Navy and trained hard to join the SEALs, knowing this would be his best destiny.
But the truth was, even when he reached this stage, it was not enough. There was too much rehearsal, too much waiting around to go on missions, and not enough days in which his mettle was truly tested, his life was truly in jeopardy. He was a star quarterback who wasn’t on the field nearly enough for his tastes.
So Bostic set his sights on SEAL Team Six, the elite of the elite. This team saw the most action and was deployed in the most challenging of situations. Naturally, he couldn’t tell his superiors or those giving his psych evaluations just how much of an adrenaline junkie he was, but how could this not be a given? Those who weren’t adrenaline junkies didn’t become commandos. He and his comrades were all addicted to life-and-death missions, although Bostic didn’t doubt that he was addicted more completely than most.
So he had not only made it onto SEAL Team Six, he had become one of its most respected members. He had learned Farsi, Arabic, and Kurdish over many years, and had honed his skills in hand-to-hand combat, weapons, sharpshooting, and technology. He had kept his nose clean and developed a reputation for daring and cunning, but also for showing restraint where needed.
But even he could never have imagined there might be a level beyond that of SEAL Team Six.
Because there hadn’t been. At least not until now. Until the president and Bob Siegel had decided to create one. A four-man team with Bostic at the helm, with the unofficial name of SEAL Team Six-and-a-half.
So the president and the admiral had told him about implants, about mind reading, and about their vision for the team, and had given him the option to back out. But they knew he wouldn’t. They wouldn’t have chosen him if there was any chance of that. They knew that he was a man who bored easily, and who detested this state more than any other.
And now the moment of truth had arrived.
Bostic laid on his back on a steel bench and slid his head into an oversized helmet, open at the top to expose his skull. Only two people other than the president and Director of National Intelligence had any knowledge of what they were attempting, both from a Black Ops lab running out of Area 51, a brain surgeon and a top programmer. These two men were with him now, his only company, having joined him at a safe house on a large tract of farmland outside of Richmond, Virginia, a hundred miles from DC.
They assured him the AutoSurge robotic unit—Surge standing for Surgery—was programmed and ready to go. The stainless steel unit was about the size of a refrigerator, with a large touch-screen monitor and six robotic hands, each capable of millionth-of-an-inch precision.
A liquid gel was pumped into a flexible bladder inside the helmet, which contoured precisely to the sides of his head, ears, jaw, and neck. Then a mild electric current was sent through the gel, hardening it, so that Bostic’s head was completely immobilized.
Bostic’s hand was free to press the start button himself, and didn’t require the presence of any outside parties, but since the two men from Area 51 had been read in and had taken the trip out to program the robot, they remained in the room.
Not that they provided much comfort. The procedure would happen too quickly for their intervention. The robot was not only a hundred times as precise as a human surgeon, it was a hundred times faster.
The robot would perform a detailed scan of his brain, which would account for all but a tiny fraction of the time required, and then take four BrainWeb implants on a wild ride through his gray matter. Cochran and Siegel weren’t sure if this procedure would work, but the last time such implants had taken this precise but frenzied path through a man’s brain, that man had ended up with the capacity to read minds. But there were no guarantees.
Bostic took a deep breath. He would know for sure in about twenty minutes.
Unless the procedure didn’t result in mind reading, but in severe brain damage instead.
In which case he might not know anything ever again.
“Are you ready, Craig?” said the brain surgeon, who had done little more than check to be sure the coordinates had been entered correctly.
As ready as I’ll ever be, thought Bostic, but since his mouth was currently out of order and these men couldn’t read minds, he gave a thumbs-up signal to communicate this readiness.
Bostic didn’t know how things would turn out, but he did know this for sure: he would not be bored today.
Dead, maybe. Perhaps a vegetable.
But definitely not bored.
44
Bostic knew within seconds after the completion of the procedure that it had been a success.
Thank God he had been prepared. If not, he would have been certain he was going insane.
Thoughts swirled in his head that were not his own, screeching at him, impossible to ignore, impossible to even soften.
Cochran had told him he had not just chosen this particular safe house at random. It was secluded enough that Bostic wouldn’t be inundated with voices, but there would be enough minds within a projected five- or six-mile range to get him acclimated. Not letting him become parched with thirst, not forcing him to drink from a firehose, but allowing him to take a few experimental sips. Just right: the Goldilocks zone.
For the first few hours after the procedure, Bostic was sure that even the limited number of people in his range were too much. Random, unceasing voices filled his skull, stabbing into his brain. He found himself clutching at his own head, moaning, convinced he would lose his mind. Or somebody’s mind. He was rarely certain where his own mind ended and another’s began.
But as the hours passed he gradually learned to separate himself from the voices, to use a mental muscle that he didn’t know he had, partitioning them, lowering their volume, finding a way to disregard the relentless static that never stopped.
After the most taxing, maddening seventy-two hours of his life, he was finally beginning to believe he would be able to operate effectively once again.
But this was the mildest of environments. How would he handle being in a crowded city? He shuddered every time he even considered it.
A day later the other three members of the team joined him at the safe house. Each of the three arrived with emerging beards and implants to match his own, but only he had been gifted—or cursed—with mind reading.
Bostic tried to respect the privacy of his comrades, but he hadn’t yet learned enough control to begin to do so. At first they had fun with it, asking him to read their thoughts to demonstrate
his powers, like he was a headlining magician on the Las Vegas stage, but they quickly sobered up. Their friend’s abilities were real, total, and unstoppable, not just clever tricks performed by an entertainer.
The more they realized just how exposed they were, the more uncomfortable they became, even panicky.
These men had been on so many missions together, had put their lives in each other’s hands so often, they were closer than any brothers could ever be. They had mutual respect and admiration, and kept few secrets from each other.
Few, but not none.
Bostic soon learned things about his comrades he wished he never knew, and they would never be fully comfortable around him again, at least until he proved that he wouldn’t violate their trust and had learned how to stay out of their heads.
Day by day Bostic got better and better at doing just this, ignoring the thoughts of those he chose to ignore, and also better at sorting thoughts, suppressing them, and handling white noise.
He and his team also trained and planned for the mission in Iran, but there wasn’t much to the planning. Mostly, each of the four practiced using the breathtaking technology in their heads, setting up a PDA function to their liking and becoming adept at using their implants to conduct telepathic-like conversations with each other, surf the Web, and send information to the cloud.
The technology was so user friendly, and such an instant amplification of their abilities, that after only a few days of practice it seemed as though they had been born with it, wielding it as effortlessly and efficiently as they did their own arms and legs.
They had been thoroughly briefed on all current intel on the situation in Iran, but Cochran gave them enormous latitude on how they accomplished their mission. No operation had ever been this open ended, their instructions amounting to a four-word phrase: play it by ear.
They were instructed to take the path of least resistance to their goal, depending on conditions on the ground. To let Bostic do his thing, read minds, and see where this led them, what opportunities it presented them with.
MindWar (Nick Hall Book 3) Page 25
