Marc had dropped the computer tablet, but with his hands free he was able to snatch at the security guard’s belt. The man’s holstered pistol was on the wrong side, but Marc could still get a grip on the nightstick dangling from a belt loop, and he snagged it.
He was holding it wrong, but that didn’t matter. With all his might, Marc used the weapon like a hammer and cracked it against the guard’s bull-neck. Breath gusted out of the man in a choked cough, and Marc kept up the attack, this time going low to smack him in the back of the knees.
‘Motherfu—’ The guard swallowed the half-formed curse and struck out blindly, getting a good hit in Marc’s belly that made him double over. The two of them connected again and lurched back.
The floor indicator was on 12 and falling. Marc had no desire to reach ground level and have the two of them come tumbling out into the middle of the well-heeled party-goers in the atrium. He pushed off the wall and slapped the heel of his hand against the keypad, and the lift stopped on the tenth, doors parting to reveal an expanse of open-plan office cubicles.
The guard snarled and charged at Marc, reaching out, intent on grabbing him in a bear hug, but Marc dropped and struck out with the nightstick, hitting that same spot on the man’s injured shin. The big Samoan tripped and couldn’t overcome his own momentum. He stumbled, cracking his head against a fire extinguisher mounted on the wall. The man swayed for a long moment, his eyes misting, before he finally went down like a ton of bricks.
‘Shit,’ Marc said to the air.
‘I’m sorry, I didn’t catch that,’ began a synthetic voice.
‘Oh, piss off!’ He shot back.
It took longer than he wanted to drag the unconscious man into the nearest restroom. He used the guard’s handcuffs to secure him to the pipes behind a toilet cistern before dumping the man’s gun, his keys and his walkie-talkie in a nearby waste bin.
Marc swore again under his breath. The operation had always been on a clock, but now that timeline had contracted to as long as Sleeping Beauty here stayed out cold.
Lucy shot a look at the elegant Cartier watch on her wrist and tapped the comm bead in her ear. ‘Dane? Are you on?’ When he didn’t reply, she tensed, anticipating a chorus of alarm sirens.
‘Do we abort?’ Assim said nervously. ‘I think we should abort.’
‘Wait one.’ The elevator was coming back up, and the indicator above the doors flashed and chimed to announce the arrival. Lucy pulled the ML-12 and moved to the side, taking aim so she could put a round in the chest of whomever got off.
But then Marc stepped out and he recoiled in shock at the sight of the weapon. ‘Fucking hell!’ He pushed the muzzle away. ‘Watch where you point that!’
‘You’re giving me shit?’ she retorted, jerking her thumb at the elevator. ‘What the hell was that?’
His jaw worked. ‘An unexpected variable,’ Marc offered.
‘Uh-huh?’ She holstered the pistol. ‘And where is Mr Unexpected right now?’
‘Sleeping it off in the men’s room.’ He walked past her, and she noted the beginnings of a nasty bruise starting to form on his face. ‘So, we better make this quick.’
‘Nice trophy,’ she noted.
‘Yeah,’ he allowed, wincing. Marc looked at the display on the tablet in his hand. ‘The server’s this way.’
Through another set of tinted glass panels, they arrived in front of a large compartment that the rest of the floor had been built around. It had only one entrance, a thick brushed-steel door set flush with the walls. Lucy put her hand on the edge and felt for a seam. It was a perfect fit, airtight with no visible hinges or mechanism.
Marc moved to a digital panel mounted next to the door and tapped it with a finger. A glowing blue display lit up, and a tiny plate slid back to reveal a sensing grid.
Lucy rapped twice on the metal door with her knuckle. It made the same noise as tank armour. ‘This is some serious protection.’
Marc nodded. ‘Top-end kit. Tempest barrier materials, hardened against electromagnetic pulse, fire-safe, even flood-proof. This whole tower could collapse and you’d be able to dig this compartment intact out of the rubble.’
She stepped back to study the door. ‘I guess Horizon Integral really like their secrets.’
‘Here we go.’ Marc typed a string of text into his tablet and held it up to the panel. A slightly off-kilter rendition of Martin Wehmeyer’s voice spoke from the device, identifying itself as the company’s CEO. A glowing green tab illuminated on the locking screen.
‘Recognise: Martin Wehmeyer, Chief Executive Officer. Tier one authorised.’
‘It worked.’ Lucy made a face. ‘All right.’
Marc looked her way. ‘Yeah, but this isn’t a low-priority system like the lifts. You have the ring?’
She tossed the golden signet to him and he snatched it out of the air. ‘The king’s royal seal,’ Lucy added airily.
‘Something like that . . .’ Marc pressed the ring to the sensor panel and the building’s computer spoke again.
‘Tier two authorised. Proceed to retina scan.’
‘And the last one. Here we go.’ His fingers danced over the tablet’s touch-sensitive surface, bringing up a video window showing a disc of complex lines – the pattern of veins inside Wehmeyer’s right eye, captured by the gigapixel digital camera fitted to Lucy’s spyPhone. Back on the plane, Assim had run the images she had taken through an animation program that would simulate the appearance of a real human retina. Like the voice synthesiser, the idea was that the building’s security software wouldn’t be able to tell the difference.
Marc blew out a breath and held the tablet up to the scanner. ‘If this doesn’t work, we drop everything and run.’
The scan seemed to last forever, but finally the voice spoke once more.
‘Final security tier authorised. Thank you, Mr Wehmeyer. Please proceed.’
The tension across Lucy’s shoulders lessened a little. Hidden magnetic bolts retracted with a series of hollow thuds, and the metal door slid out of its frame, yawning open. Cold, dry air wafted out into the anteroom, and inside she could see stacks of black computer hardware, their surfaces covered with lines of blinking green-red LEDs. ‘It’s a SCIF,’ she said to herself, pronouncing the name as ‘skiff’, like the rowing boat.
Lucy was familiar with concept of a so-called Secure Compartmentalised Information Facility, having often been briefed inside one during her time with Special Forces. SCIFs were usually deployed to manage the transfer or storage of highly secret information, but this was the first time she had seen one being used by a civilian group. It was Horizon Integral’s information vault, isolated from the office’s internal network and the global internet beyond, accessible only to staff with the right clearance.
Or so they hoped. To one side sat a workstation, already booted up and ready for use. Another thought crossed her mind. Does Solomon have a place like this back in the Monaco office?
Marc glanced at his watch. ‘All right, this shouldn’t take me long. Keep an eye out, yeah?’ He pushed past her and dropped into the seat by the workstation, quickly threading a cable from his tablet to the waiting computer. ‘Radio won’t work inside here,’ he called over his shoulder. ‘I’m downloading the files now.’
‘Copy.’ Lucy left him there and wandered back out across the office floor, keeping her pistol handy. ‘Assim? We’re through the door. Marc’s doing his thing. What’s your status?’
‘I’m monitoring the New South Wales Police Force channels,’ he explained. ‘No alerts at this time.’
‘That’s good . . .’ she began, but then her words trailed off as one of the elevators closed its doors and dropped away, falling back down toward the ground floor. She walked back across, eyes narrowing as the level numbers spiralled down until the indicator display showed a letter ‘L’.
Lucy held her breath. Maybe it was the system resetting itself. Maybe it was—
The numbers began to climb again
. 5. 10. 15. The elevator was coming up fast.
She sprinted back to the anteroom and stuck her head through open door to the SCIF. ‘Dane! Are you sure you nailed all the security layers? Someone’s coming up here in a tear-ass hurry.’
He gave her an affronted look. ‘Unless someone added a completely new protocol to the system in the last twenty-four hours, there’s no way . . .’ The expression on his face froze. ‘Well, I mean, unless it was set up covertly . . .’
‘Like, by someone working at the company who’s actually in bed with a bunch of rogue hackers?’
‘That is possible,’ he said.
On the far side of the office floor, the elevator bank chimed to announce a new arrival.
TEN
Hite pulled at the collar of his designer T-shirt and glared at the two security guards sharing the confines of the elevator with him. ‘Back off,’ he told them. ‘You don’t get paid enough to crowd me.’
The pair, a man and a woman whose names he couldn’t be bothered to learn, shared a look and stepped away, or at least as far as they could inside the glass lift car. Hite dug in a jacket pocket and pulled out a small-frame Beretta Nano semi-automatic, checking for a round in the chamber.
The male guard raised an eyebrow. ‘Sir . . . should you be carrying that? Perhaps we should—’
‘Don’t fucking tell me what you should be doing,’ Hite broke in. He jabbed a finger at the holsters on their belts. ‘Get them out. I’m giving you an order.’
Reluctantly, the guards drew their firearms. ‘Mr Hite,’ began the woman, ‘We haven’t had any alarms from the upper floors.’
‘You told me one of your men hadn’t reported in!’ He glared at her.
‘That could be a radio down,’ offered the other guard. ‘Like, a dud battery. He won’t be overdue for another ten minutes.’
‘Trust me, it isn’t!’ Hite said firmly. ‘We have intruders. They’re up here.’ He looked out as they passed the fifteenth floor. ‘Assume they are armed and dangerous.’
The female guard sniffed. ‘If that’s the case, we should notify the police, sir. Those are the regulations.’
‘No,’ Hite insisted. ‘You work for this company! You do as I say! Cops stay out of this until we have the situation under control, is that clear?’
‘Yes, sir,’ said the other one, giving his partner a warning look. That was good. It meant these people remembered where their wages came from each month. Hite never liked having to be around the security team. He always got the sense that they were looking down their noses at him, the computer geek in the expensive jacket. But Hite could have them fired on the spot, and he made sure they knew it.
He glanced down at warning message on his smartphone. Someone had accessed the isolated server on the twentieth floor, and apparently using the CEO’s authority to do it. He smiled thinly. The software patch he secretly uploaded to the building’s secure net only a few hours ago had done its job, adding an extra hidden monitor program to the existing security layers.
Earlier that day, when Wehmeyer had told him that a delegation from the Rubicon Group were coming to the reception, Hite had almost choked on his chai tea latte. His first instinct had been to cut and run, but he had squashed that cowardly impulse immediately. No one could be allowed to interfere with his plans, and he wasn’t ready to pull the ejector switch with Horizon Integral yet. This was a problem that he would have to handle. In fact, it might work to his advantage.
Exposing these Rubicon idiots and their industrial espionage would strengthen Hite’s position with the company board and make the CEO look like a fool into the bargain. That would all help Hite’s ultimate plan to enrich himself and pave the way to getting out from under Wehmeyer’s shadow.
He pocketed the smartphone, exchanging it for the cheap, commonplace burner handset that had arrived on his desk in a courier package the day before. Hite knew where it had come from the moment he opened the padded envelope. There was only one number stored in the memory. This was how Madrigal and her Ghost5 rabble liked to communicate, through links on untraceable devices to covert voice-over-internet protocols. That was fine with him. Hite would play their little spy games as long as it got him the money and the power he needed.
He gripped the metallic phone in his hand and hit the speed-dial key, pressing it to his ear. The answer came after a single ring, the familiar, not-quite-female tone of Madrigal’s disguised voice. ‘Hello, Dart,’ she said, using the agreed-upon codename. ‘So tell me. Was I right to warn you about potential visitors?’
‘Yes. Rubicon’s here.’ Hite spoke quietly, covering his mouth and facing away from the guards so they couldn’t hear him. ‘They’re poking their noses in where they shouldn’t.’
‘I told you they might be coming,’ she said, a hint of a smile almost audible in her voice. ‘Aren’t you going to thank me?’
He glared out at nothing. Until Wehmeyer’s announcement that morning, he hadn’t believed what Madrigal had said. ‘How’d you even know about it?’
‘A little bird sang me a song. Now, the big question. Can you deal with them?’
Hite weighed the pistol in his hand. ‘That’s already happening. I’m on it.’
‘Good. Use the burner to contact me when it’s dealt with.’ Madrigal cut the line and he jammed the phone back in his pocket as the lift slowed.
‘This is it,’ said the female guard.
‘Yeah.’ Hite waved irritably at the doors as they started to open. ‘Get in there and sort these pricks out!’
*
‘How much longer is this gonna take?’ Lucy demanded.
At the workstation inside the secure chamber, Marc stared at the ruggedised tablet computer in his hand, watching a status bar on the screen slowly march toward the 100 per cent mark. ‘I need two more minutes.’
‘I’ll get them for you.’ Lucy turned and strode back across the anteroom as the elevator doors opened, and a pair of figures in Horizon Integral security uniforms fanned out, SIG Sauer pistols in their hands raised and ready. Charles Hite came after them, cautious and wide-eyed.
Lucy kept her own weapon held down. ‘Well, this is awkward,’ she offered, keeping her tone conversational. ‘Would you believe I got lost on the way to the ladies’ room?’
‘Gun!’ The closest of the guards, a white woman with an austere blonde bob and a narrow face, spotted her pistol. She took aim at Lucy. ‘Drop it!’
The other guard, a big guy carrying a little more paunch than he needed to, cast around, looking toward the server chamber. ‘You alone up here?’
‘The men she came in with are downstairs,’ snapped Hite. He had a weapon of his own, a boxy little hold-out pistol that he held like an amateur.
‘Take it easy,’ Lucy said reasonably, and she dropped the bean-bag gun to the floor. ‘I can explain everything.’
‘Kick that to me,’ said the woman. Lucy complied, deliberately taking her time over it.
‘You’re on company property, so we can shoot you,’ Hite insisted. ‘Try something!’
‘Hands on your head,’ said the blonde. ‘Turn around and get on your knees.’
Lucy obeyed, moving to face the wall. The other guard headed toward the SCIF’s open door. She knew she had slow this down. ‘Does Mr Wehmeyer approve of what you’re up to, Chuck?’ She deliberately used the diminutive name, counting on the fact that it would piss Hite off. ‘He already knows you’re creeping on his daughter. But this? I would guess not.’
‘Shut up,’ said Hite. ‘Make her shut up!’
‘I mean, why else would you come up here personally?’ Lucy added, making eye contact with the male guard. ‘And bring a gun too? You wouldn’t do that unless you had something to protect.’ She allowed a grin into her words. ‘You have a dirty little secret, don’t you Chuck?’
‘You are a criminal,’ Hite snarled. ‘Keep running your bloody mouth and we’ll see where that takes you!’
She heard the clicking of the female guard�
��s handcuffs coming open, near to her head. One metal band went around her right wrist and snapped shut. She tensed for what would happen next.
*
The guard stepped cautiously over the threshold of the security compartment, shifting his aim to look inside. His gaze passed over the server tower and the workstation, catching sight of the out-of-place tablet computer wired into the setup.
Even as his mind registered that, he saw movement from the corner of his eye and swung his gun arm around to bear.
Waiting until the last second, Marc had flattened himself against the wall of the SCIF and held his breath. Now he lunged at the control pad that operated the thick security door and slammed the button with his fist.
The door hissed into motion and the guard reacted, too slow to get out of the way, crying out in shock. The thick, heavy panel slammed into his chest and shoved him back into the doorframe. His arm flailed, his trigger finger jerking.
The gun in his hand went off, the sound of the discharge like a thunderbolt within the SCIF’s close confines. Marc recoiled as the bullet ricocheted off the wall and the floor before embedding itself in one of the stacks of computer hardware with a flash of sparks.
The door didn’t crush the guard – there was a built-in safety mechanism that sensed resistance, and it juddered to a halt before retracting again – but it struck the man with enough force to batter him against the wall and leave him dazed and reeling.
Marc scrambled to tear the man’s weapon from his hand, as more shots cracked through the air out in the anteroom.
*
The echo of the first shot inside the SCIF made everyone jump, but Lucy was fast enough to make the surprise work for her.
She twisted around in the female security guard’s grip, the woman still holding on to her with the open ring of the handcuffs around Lucy’s wrist, and yanked her off-balance. Springing back to her feet, Lucy spun the woman around, even as she tried to dig her heels in and claw back some momentum.
‘Shit!’ Hite flinched backward, raising his hold-out pistol in the same motion.
Ghost: Page 19
