“He’s insane,” Jessie said. “Crohn is completely batshit insane. He just attacked an NSA facility.”
“Exactly.” I raised my mug and took a swallow. I needed the caffeine more than ever. “A facility housing a totally illegal program, run by a company that doesn’t exist and is paid for by siphoned taxpayer money. What’s the NSA going to do about it? It’s like ripping off a drug dealer: they can’t exactly go to the cops and complain.”
“If we’re lucky, Burton’s dead.”
“Jessie.” I stared at her over the rim of my mug.
She gave me a halfhearted shrug. “You’re the moral compass here, Harmony. I’m operating in survival mode right now. Or did you forget I’m a wolf on two legs?”
It was easy to, sometimes. Jessie was my friend. My best friend. I could honestly say I wished I’d known her my entire life, because I’d spent too many years alone, without one. She was quick with a joke and a smile, and sometimes I let myself forget who and what had raised her. Human empathy didn’t come naturally to Jessie. But she was working on it.
“You have a point,” I said grudgingly. “Burton packed RedEye with biometrics and code triggers to make sure he was the only person who could operate the system. The ultimate in job security. If Crohn doesn’t know that, we’re safe.”
“And if he does . . . ” Jessie said.
I finished the thought for her. “If he does, he’s gonna let Mikki go to work on Burton. How long do you think he can hold out under torture?”
Jessie curled her lips back, showing her teeth as she grimaced. “An hour, tops. Burton’s not a field operative—he’s a bureaucrat with a marshmallow spine. And Mikki’s good at what she does.”
“We’ve got to warn the team.” I picked up the phone, flipping through my dialing directory. “What do you think? Fly ’em out of here and finish this on our own, or bring them into the city?”
Jessie took a deep breath. She let it out between her clenched teeth.
“I want to send them away. Realistically, though? Neither one of us knows jack about cracking an electronic safe. April’s intel, Kevin’s toys, Aselia’s transport know-how . . . we need them. Besides, RedEye’s got nationwide reach; if they unleash that system on us, it’ll be biting all of our heels no matter where we go. Might as well get comfy in the belly of the beast.”
“Agreed. I’ll ask them to—”
I froze as a text message came in from Burton’s number. One stark line.
RedEye is hunting you. I bought you five minutes. Use it wisely.
I set the phone back down, gingerly, as if it was packed with nitroglycerin.
RedEye was designed as the ultimate in fugitive pursuit technology. It was the Echelon program on steroids, a system monitoring nationwide cell-phone traffic in real time. Listening for keywords and phrases, text-message scanning and voiceprint recognition, instant triangulation of its targets. Back in the day, the Glass Predator team had used RedEye to stalk its targets. Not one of them, Burton told us, had ever survived more than a week on the run.
And that was with a whole country to flee across. We were snuggled up close and personal with our would-be killers, in the very same city.
“Well,” Jessie said.
I squinted at the phone. This wasn’t right. I sipped my coffee, grim, as the answer came to me.
“Burton didn’t send that text. And we don’t have five minutes—the tracking is already live.”
Jessie glanced over at me. “How do you figure?”
“We know how they operate. Crohn’s men captured Burton, and Mikki hurt him until he agreed to sic RedEye on us.”
“Right,” Jessie said. “But if he got a chance to send us a warning—”
“A warning that RedEye would pick up on instantly. Just saying or typing the word RedEye on any phone in America is an instant security flag. And Burton knows that—he built the damn thing. If he somehow got access to his phone—and I don’t see that happening, once they took him prisoner—he wouldn’t have worded the message like that.”
“So what is it? A bluff?”
“No,” I said, “impatience. They know how we operate, too. You and me in the field, April and Kevin on logistical support. Crohn knows we’re in town, after our little run-in with his boss.”
“And April’s the one Crohn wants more than the rest of us,” Jessie said.
“Bingo. See, we’re supposed to panic now. We think we’ve got a five-minute window, we make a quick, desperate call to warn the team, RedEye locks in on both of our phones, and Crohn sends Panic Cell to round us up. So, what do you think? Travel back upstate by train and collect the team in person?”
Jessie rubbed her chin, thinking. “Now that Crohn knows we’re here, he’s gonna tap all his local resources. FBI, NYPD. There’s, what, six thousand street cameras running twenty-four-hour surveillance and another four thousand in the subways? We’ve gotta go on the offensive, and fast. Every minute counts.”
“We’ve gotta warn the others, though. If they make a phone call . . .” I trailed off, thinking it through. “Okay. So we do make a call. Then we get the hell out of here, fast. We’ve got to tell the others where to meet us without letting Crohn in on the secret.”
I sipped my coffee. Then I picked up the phone.
April answered on the second ring. “Harmony, I—”
“Listen carefully,” I told her. “Burton Webb just sent us a warning: Crohn is about to activate the RedEye program and use it to hunt us down. I know you and Jessie were opposed to this, but Kevin was right: you and the rest of the team need to get out of New York, right now. Leave us behind.”
The exact opposite of the argument they’d had when we arrived. There was barely a hitch in April’s voice as she picked up on my meaning. She knew we were being listened in on.
“If you insist,” she said, “but I’d really rather stay and fight.”
“Just keep doing what you’re doing, looking for the pattern. We’ll meet up with you when we can, once you’re deposited safely elsewhere.”
A slight pause. Then: “Understood. Be careful.” She hung up.
I popped the back of my phone, pried out the SIM card, snapped it in half, and dropped it into the last half inch of my coffee. The black plastic pieces bobbed on the surface like shipwreck debris. Then I tossed a couple of rumpled bills onto the table.
“Let’s go,” I said. “They’ll meet us in Manhattan.”
Jessie gave me a lopsided smile as she figured it out. “The National Equity Bank.”
Our last mission had started right here in New York City, at the scene of a bizarre bank robbery. April had walked me through the puzzle, looking for an intentional pattern in a wall of “randomly” drilled safe-deposit boxes. That hunt had brought us head-to-head with Jessie’s own mother and her pack of killers: it was fresh in all our minds. I knew April wouldn’t need more than a tiny nudge.
We hustled out of the diner, jumped on the motorcycle, and I revved the engine while Jessie hopped onto the saddle behind me. She was right: playing defense would just delay the inevitable. Soon enough, with the electronic dragnet closing in around us, we’d run out of hiding places.
Time to go on the attack.
We found an alley near the National Equity Bank, stashed the bike, and loitered in a patch of shadow. Watching every passing car and taxi, my shoulders tensing as a patrol car cruised on by. A surveillance camera hung from a nearby lamppost, its dark eye turned away from us. One slipup, one moment of carelessness, and we were as good as dead.
Jessie stifled a yawn behind her hand. I felt my own yawn rise up to greet hers and covered my mouth.
“Sorry,” Jessie said. “Contagious yawn.”
When had we slept last? I’d caught a nap on the flight to New York, but since then we’d been on the move nonstop. Now the sunrise was coming, turning the eastern horizon to muddy gold, and our biggest fight was still ahead of us.
“Well,” I said, “look at it this way. We’re being hun
ted by the government, the law, at least one infernal court, a team of satanic special forces operatives, a psycho pyromaniac, and the director of the FBI. Who has something like a dozen or so demons inside him. Oh, and they’ve got the NSA’s magnum opus hunting for us along with the NYPD’s real-time surveillance camera system. And we’re all in the same city. On the bright side? Things can’t possibly get any worse.”
Jessie stepped up behind me. She put her hands on my shoulders and gently turned me to face the sunrise.
“G’morning, Harmony.” She leaned in and whispered, “Hey, it’s the thirty-first. Happy Halloween.”
I sighed. “Goddamn it, Jessie.”
A Cadillac Escalade, deep ocean blue with tinted windows, rumbled up to the mouth of the alley.
The driver-side window hissed down, and Aselia leaned out.
“Get in. Fast.”
I blinked. “Where did you get this car?”
“I stole it. Get in.”
Kevin was in back, hunched over his laptop, typing so fast I expected to see smoke rising from his fingers. Beside him, April pored over a foldout gas-station map of the city. She’d drawn circles here and there, x-ing off certain streets. The second we were on board, Aselia hit the gas. I fell back into an open chair and reached for the seat belt.
“Glad you found us,” I told April.
She adjusted her bifocals, keeping her eyes on the map. “I have been known to put clues together, now and then. Goodness, I could have been an FBI agent.”
“I’m on police band, monitoring comms traffic.” Kevin waved a flustered hand at his screen. “Tracking Bureau movements the best I can, but I can only do so much from here.”
“RedEye,” Jessie said. “We need to go in there, kick some ass, and take that system down.”
“Crohn’s entire team is most likely on-site,” April replied.
Jessie folded her arms. “I’ve got two legs, and I can kick all day long. The morning is young.”
“I doubt the NSA will be happy if we hurt their pride and joy.” I paused. Frozen in midthought.
“Uh-oh.” Jessie looked my way, lips curling into a slow smile. “I think Harmony just got an idea.”
“I think I did.”
I looked across the seats, taking in the faces of my teammates. Putting together the pieces to save all of us—our lives and our freedom.
“Jessie was right. Benjamin Crohn knows he can get away with hijacking RedEye because the NSA can’t admit it exists. They’d rather sweep the whole thing under the rug than risk a scandal.”
I glanced out the window, watching the city glide by. Vast concrete canyons, teeming with life—and under the surface, the digital machine sweeping, combing, hunting for the five of us.
“Smart move,” I said. “Except in doing so, he just showed us how to take him down. Crohn’s got one massive weak point, an Achilles’ heel of his own creation, and that’s precisely where we’re going to hit him.”
TWENTY-EIGHT
“The first thing we need to do is get a message to Linder,” I said. “Without being detected by RedEye. Any ideas?”
Kevin shrugged. “I can still set up an encrypted channel and bounce it from Istanbul to Prague and back again, but that won’t stop the system from running voiceprint matches or listening for keywords.”
“No reason they’d be monitoring for Linder’s voice,” Jessie said. “He thinks he sold Crohn on his innocence, anyway, and for all his countless flaws, the man knows his tradecraft. So we just need to worry about our voices and making sure neither side of the conversation says any naughty words that’ll flag the call.”
Aselia glanced at her in the rearview as she drove. “Voice changer. There’s software for that, yeah?”
“Like in Scream,” Jessie said.
“Consider it done,” Kevin said. “Give me ten minutes.”
It took him five. I squeezed in next to him as he hooked my phone to his laptop, juggling open windows on his screen.
“Okay,” he said, “say something.”
“Testing, one, two—” I paused, thrown as my voice bounced back at me, gravelly and distorted.
“Exactly like in Scream,” Jessie said. “Kevin, you’re my favorite geek.”
He tipped an imaginary fedora. “M’lady. Anyway, I don’t know exactly how RedEye runs voiceprint checks, but it’s a safe bet they’re using existing architecture, probably bought the code wholesale from a commercial firm. Burton Webb’s claim to fame is cracking cell-phone encryption: everything else the system can do on top of that is just gravy. This ought to throw your scent off.”
I took a deep breath, steeling myself. All I had to do was tell Linder what our plan was without saying any trigger words that’d draw RedEye’s attention. And make sure he didn’t, either.
“Let’s do it. Patch me in.”
Kevin rattled off a command string. I watched a thin green line snake across a wire-frame map of the globe, side windows reeling off connection statistics and upload times. Then a click echoed from my phone, and Linder’s voice filled the SUV.
“Yes.”
“Choose your words very carefully,” I said, hearing my distorted voice echo back at me.
“Who is this?” he asked, a steel edge of suspicion in his voice.
“No names. You know us. Your employer has taken control of your old workplace and turned it against us.”
He fell silent. Don’t say the word, I thought. My nails dug into my palms. Don’t say RedEye.
“I understand completely,” Linder said. “Can you tell me your status?”
“Ask him if he likes scary movies,” Jessie whispered. I shot her a look.
“We have a lead on the legal documents. Changing mission parameters to deal with the present situation before we’re boxed in.”
“I’m not in a position to assist with that,” Linder said. “I have no access or authority at my former workplace.”
“I’m calling about our last discussion. Specifically, the man in position to replace our mutual problem.”
“I’m still working on winning his support,” Linder said.
“We may have a way,” I said. “Make sure he’s in the city where we are, as soon as possible. The window of opportunity will be very tight.”
“Acknowledged,” Linder said. “And . . . be careful out there.”
He disconnected the call.
Jessie whistled under her breath.
“Be careful?” she said. “Wow, coming from him, that’s positively human.”
I saw Aselia’s hands tighten on the steering wheel. “Still not one hundred percent convinced we shouldn’t have sanctioned his ass in DC. But I’m open to being convinced. Someone want to tell me where I’m supposed to be driving?”
“The Lower East Side,” I told her. “Let’s get eyes on the target and hash out a battle plan.”
RedEye Infometrics stood at the end of a crowded block, next door to a temp agency and a cell-phone store. The building stood two stories tall—and ran far deeper, we knew from our last visit inside. Anonymous beige brick and glazed windows. It was the kind of place designed to slide right off the eye and out of memory; you could pass it every day for years and never notice it, let alone think it was a top-level government black site.
Our first drive-by, I was focused on the pedestrian traffic. The facility had permanent spotters out front, men in coats a little too heavy for the weather, keeping an eye on the street. Operative word: had.
“No watchers, no shooters,” Jessie murmured. She leaned close to the tinted passenger window and slouched low in her seat. “Crohn’s guys took ’em out in the middle of a crowd in broad daylight, didn’t even raise a fuss. That’s . . . impressive.”
Aselia drove around the block. Our second pass, we focused on the front door.
“Looks like . . . two guys in the lobby?” Jessie said.
I nodded. “One close to the door, one back by the desk. The rest are probably deeper inside.”
�
�Too many. We’ve gotta thin the herd before we charge in there. Any ideas?”
“If the system picked up our location, they’d have a reason to come out and look for us,” I said. “Problem is, they know that we know RedEye is active.”
“So if we expose our location, it’s an obvious trap,” Kevin said.
“We need to make it look like an accident.” I furrowed my brow. Thinking about our enemies. “Or a necessity. A situation where we just have to risk it. April, is it safe to say Crohn’s been studying you from a distance?”
She lifted an eyebrow. “Is that a polite euphemism for ‘obsessing over’?”
“I was just thinking about the conversation we had, back at that rest stop on the way to Des Allemands.” I nodded at her tote bag. “How’s your supply of medication holding up?”
“I have two days left.” She gave me a wry smile. “But he doesn’t know that. I think we’re about to have an emergency on our hands. Kevin, what can you do with a pay phone? Can you make a call look as if it’s coming from a different location?”
“A real, actual pay phone? No.” He gestured to the window. “Fortunately, they’re going the way of the dinosaur. LinkNYC’s been replacing the old infrastructure with public Wi-Fi hot spots. Now those, I can play with.”
We got some distance between us and the black site, prowling the congested streets at a slug-slow crawl until we found the holy grail: a hot spot with no street cameras in sight. The kiosk was over on East Twenty-Fourth Street, next to a pawnshop. Kevin took April’s phone and jumped out at the red light.
“Just keep circling,” he told us. “This is gonna take a little doing. I’ll give you a wave when I’m done.”
Our eighth time around the block, Kevin flagged us down like he was hailing a taxi. Aselia slowed down just long enough for him to jump in back. He passed April’s phone back to her and grabbed his laptop.
“Okay,” he said, “now we need a different public hot spot. Preferably one nowhere near here.”
“As close to RedEye as we can get,” I told Aselia. She gave me a thumbs-up and flicked her turn signal.
Cold Spectrum Page 18
