Marc heard a strangled moan from close by, and tasted cordite and blood in the air. A handful of NIS staffers – some of them armed guards like the men in the car park, others suited office workers who had made the fatal mistake of coming in early – lay scattered across the reception area. As before, one of the silent soldiers moved among the fallen, administering an extra shot to the head, to leave no chance of any witnesses. The moaning ceased as the soldier’s pistol spat out another round.
But what happened here would not go unseen. Marc looked up and saw the black hemispheres of security-camera pods mounted on the ceiling, above the main reception desk, security station and the doors leading deeper into the building. With the power restored, those monitors were working again, and everything the strike team did was being recorded. He looked away. His face was now committed to that same record.
One of the silent soldiers had been cut down in the advance. A body lay slumped over a chair a few metres away from a dead guard, who had taken down his attacker with burst from a submachine gun. The soldier with the pistol moved to the side of his dead comrade as the rest of the group advanced through the security checkpoint. Marc turned to watch as he was marched with them, under the bleating alarm from an untended metal detector arch.
The soldier behind them took a cylindrical grenade from the vest of the corpse and pulled the pin, dialling down the timer on the fuse before stuffing it back in the dead man’s gear and backing swiftly away. A jet of virulent orange fire surged out and wreathed the body in smoke and flames. In seconds, the corpse was burning in the grip of the thermite discharge, and the cloying stink of melting flesh curdled in Marc’s mouth. ‘They torch their dead,’ he gasped.
‘Leave nothing behind,’ Madrigal’s voice reminded him.
Ahead, a pair of the soldiers had used their weapons to blow out the locks holding shut the doors to the corridor beyond, and there were more dead NIS guards lying slumped along the walls. Marc looked down at them as he passed, then shot a look at Lucy. She pretended not to notice, but he knew she had seen their guns lying next to them.
If they made a move for the weapons, how long would they have before Madrigal saw it happen and triggered the shock bracelets on their arms? Marc tensed, feeling the bite of the bracelet’s contact tines against his arm. Could he risk it?
At the end of the corridor behind another set of sealed doors was an anteroom, visible through a pane of bulletproof glass. These doors were much thicker, heavy-duty panels with their hinges and locking mechanisms mounted on the inside, more suited to a military bunker than an office building. A second set of them were built into the far wall on the other side of the anteroom. It would be possible to blow the doors open with cutting charges, but that would be a lengthy and destructive process.
Inside the anteroom, shielded from the previous exchange of fire by the glass, there were two men, a stern-faced guard with an SMG and a younger guy in a jacket and tie clutching a pistol. Both of them warily watched the approaching intruders.
The body language of the soldiers changed again as they received new orders. The big guy and the woman who had marched Marc and Lucy from the Halo, and two others remained in the corridor as the rest fell back, disappearing toward the reception area and out of the building.
One of the masked figures moved to the bulletproof pane, shouldering their carbine on a sling, and tap-tapped on it like they were looking into a fish tank.
The guard with the SMG snarled and aimed his weapon at the intruder. He didn’t see the expression change on the face of the man with the tie, didn’t see the flicker of cold intent. The man with the pistol turned his gun on the guard and shot him through the back of the head, spattering blood and brain matter over the inside of the glass. A few moments later, he was working a control panel and the locked doors began to swing open.
‘DPRK deep cover agent,’ said Lucy quietly. ‘Makes sense they’d have people in the NIS.’
‘Yeah,’ agreed Marc. ‘And if they were willing to burn them for this operation, you have to wonder . . .’
‘What’s in there that’s worth the cost?’ Lucy finished the thought.
The second set of doors opened behind the first, and once more Marc got a push in the small of the back to propel him forward. The object pressing into his chest shifted and he tensed. If it is what I think it is . . .
The double agent led them inside, beckoning with one hand. The chamber on the far side of the anteroom security doors was a long, rectangular space with grey walls of poured concrete, and the air inside had the dead, flat quality of a rigorously climate-controlled environment. Weak illumination fell from grids of thick square skylights in the ceiling, sluices of rainwater washed across them by gusts of wind.
A line of five large metal cabins were set long the length of the chamber, each the size of a standard cargo container like those found on ships or the flatbeds of trucks. Each of the cabins had a door with a window in the narrow end, and they were mounted on raised jacks at each corner. The lines and ovals of Korean ideograms designated each of the units with an individual code. Some of the cabins were connected to power cables snaking through gutters in the floor, disappearing beneath the support jacks.
Marc’s curiosity led him closer to the nearest unit and he craned his neck to look in through the window. Inside, he saw skeletal wire racks stacked with hard-sided containers and what looked like an isolated computer server.
‘These . . . these are SCIFs,’ he said, putting it together.
Like the secure information room he and Lucy had broken into inside the offices of Horizon Integral, the cabins were a series of compartmentalised, armoured data stores. Each one held a library of information that South Korea’s intelligence agency wanted to keep off the grid. The bounty of secret information they represented was huge.
‘This is what this whole deal has been about, right from day one.’ Marc turned to Lucy. ‘Every dirty little secret the NIS don’t want the world to see. This is where they keep them.’
‘I knew you’d get there eventually,’ breathed Madrigal, and he could hear the smile on her face. ‘This is the truth behind the lies. And when the world sees what they’ve been hiding – what the American government and their lackeys in South East Asia have been colluding to cover up – it will start a fire that will topple nations.’
The masked female soldier abruptly jerked into motion and raised her carbine, finding the camera domes mounted on the ceiling. Taking careful aim, she shot them out one by one until all the monitors in the chamber were destroyed.
‘What was the point of that?’ sneered Lucy. ‘All of a sudden you don’t want anyone watching?’
‘No,’ said the hacker. ‘Not for what is going to happen next.’
One at a time, the silent soldiers reached up and unhooded, removing their helmets and clipping them to magnetic hooks on their belts. The older man and the woman with the scalded face from the attack on Hite’s house were there, and the biggest of the masked figures went next, looming over Marc as he twisted off the sealed headgear, presenting another unpleasantly familiar aspect. Null, the thug from the Antonov, the one with the tattoos who had been so generous with the stun baton, leered at him and showed his teeth.
Ice crawled up Marc’s spine as the last of the soldiers revealed themselves, and he knew who he would see before it happened. Metallic red hair pulled in a tight cluster spilled out and a pale face smiled wolfishly back at him.
‘Surprise,’ said Madrigal, relishing her unmasking like the performance of a magic trick. ‘You were right, back at the plane. I couldn’t watch from a distance.’ Her lip pulled into a crooked, victorious sneer. ‘I couldn’t stay away.’
‘I get it,’ Marc replied, and jerked his chin at the cabins. ‘This is your motherlode, yeah? Your pot of bloody gold at the end of the murder rainbow.’
‘That’s funny,’ she offered. ‘You’re not far off.’ Madrigal walked toward the cabins, scanning the ideograms on the side until
she locked on one unit in particular. ‘Here we are,’ she breathed, her face lighting up with anticipation. ‘Watch them,’ she ordered Null.
Madrigal produced a plastic injector from a pouch on her belt and jammed it into the lock of the third cabin along. Thick, glutinous liquid spurted through the mechanism, turning acidic as it was exposed to air. Sizzling and bubbling, the lock gave off a chug of white vapour and the metal frame collapsed in on itself.
Lucy called out to her. ‘What do you think you’re gonna find in there?’
‘Enough dark data to tear open the NIS and break what little trust the people of South Korea still have in their corrupt government,’ said the other woman. ‘For starters. And then there are the lies that track back to Washington DC, the CIA and everyone else who collaborated.’ Madrigal hesitated, and when she spoke again there was a momentary catch in her voice. ‘They’re going to pay for their sins.’ She wrenched open the door and became very still as she stared at the contents within.
Marc thought he saw a flash of emotion on Madrigal’s face, but then it was gone. ‘And the North will get their cut of the action, right?’ he added, glancing at Fox, who stood nearby with his weapon on the two prisoners. ‘That’s the deal you made.’
Madrigal spread her hands and took a deep breath. ‘Everybody gets what they deserve.’
Cat and the double agent were near the doors, the woman covering the man in the suit as he dragged the body of a dead guard into the chamber and dumped it up against a support stanchion. The man went out again and returned with guns looted from the NIS personnel.
Marc traded questioning glances with Lucy and she made a subtle gesture with her hands, as if she were pulling two ends of a string away from one another.
The meaning was clear: Play for time.
In turn, she nodded toward the SCIF cabin that was the focus of Madrigal’s attention, directing Marc to look. He saw the big guy crouching by the support jacks, wiring up pads of C4 explosive to the feet of the metal frames. After all the effort it had taken to get into this place, the last thing he expected the hacker to do was blow up her long sought-after prize.
‘See here,’ he began. ‘You have the same problem as someone breaking into a gold vault. There’s a metric fuck-ton of materials in each one of those container units and you can’t carry it out of here on your back.’
The whole reasoning behind the NIS’s use of this kind of secure store came down to a single factor – their contents were not linked to any outside database or internet connection. The stand-alone servers some of the cabins contained could only be accessed by physically entering the SCIF and using a terminal inside, and the others with cases full of hard copy contained files that existed nowhere else but here. It was deliberately offline, disconnected, old tech. Impossible to hack, unless someone was capable of crashing an entire city to get to them.
Madrigal turned to study Marc. Her eyes were shining. ‘You’re mistaken,’ she said. ‘And anyway . . . I don’t want it all.’
Gunfire blared and Marc tensed, but the shots were not aimed in his direction. He saw the woman, Cat, empty the clip on her carbine in random bursts into the walls and the ceiling.
When the weapon’s magazine ran dry, she pivoted and threw the rifle to Lucy, who caught it awkwardly. ‘What am I supposed to do with this?’ she said.
Cat didn’t answer her. She drew a SIG Sauer handgun from her belt and did the same as she had with the M4, firing at nothing until the slide locked back and the ammunition was expended. The woman crossed to Marc and pressed the smoking gun into his hand.
When the other assassin took one of the South Korean weapons from the double agent and loaded a fresh magazine into it, Madrigal’s finale for Marc and Lucy became horribly apparent. At once, Marc saw how it would play out: Fox would gun down the two Rubicon operatives and make it look like they had perished in an exchange of fire with one of the NIS guards, leaving their bodies in the SCIF chamber as a false lead for the Koreans to chase while Ghost5 and their allies from the North melted away.
Allowing the cameras to capture their faces in the reception, then shooting out the cameras in here so the deception would remain unseen, Madrigal had designed the scenario to drop the blame squarely at their feet. The NIS would eventually figure out their identities, and then the mother of all shit storms would break loose. South Korea’s security services, the Central Intelligence Agency, all of their forces would drop the hammer on the Rubicon Group. Solomon would never see it coming. Even if someone did eventually piece together the truth, by the time that happened Madrigal would be long gone.
‘Aw, hell no.’ Lucy’s lip twisted in a sneer as she saw the same thing that Marc did. ‘We’re not gonna be your goddamn patsies, Red.’
Madrigal smirked. ‘It’s amusing how you think you have a say in this.’ Behind her, Null had finished his work on the supports of the number three cabin and scrambled up on to the roof of the unit. He pulled the last of the demolition packs from his webbing vest as Madrigal went on. ‘I won’t lie to you, I’m impressed by what you have done,’ she said. ‘The only people who ever get this close to me are the ones I recruit . . . or the ones I have to delete.’
‘Like Kara?’ said Lucy. ‘Like Lex Wetherby?’
‘Now you’re getting it.’ Madrigal paused and pressed her hand to a radio bead in her right ear. Marc heard the faint crackle of an incoming transmission, saw her nod to herself.
‘With all due respect, Marie,’ said Marc, using Madrigal’s real name to get a rise from her, ‘you can go fuck yourself. We’re not playing your games anymore.’ He tossed the empty pistol into the shadows with an angry flick of the wrist.
‘Weren’t you listening, Dane? You never had a choice.’ She threw a nod at Null, who had finished attaching his last few charges in a ring around the skylights in the roof.
The thug jumped down and backed away, producing a radio detonator. ‘Feuer im Loch,’ he grunted, and mashed a button on the device.
Marc barely had time to cover his ears before the C4 around the base of the cabin blew in a cracking roll of concussion. The SCIF slumped off its mountings as the second set of explosives on the ceiling went off a heartbeat later. These were shaped charges, their detonation configured to blow up and away, and they took a great circular section out of the roof, blasting reinforced glass and concrete into the rainy air. Dust and fragments billowed back into the chamber, but the debris was almost immediately damped down by the heavy rain that lashed through the ragged hole in the ceiling.
His thoughts caught up with him and Marc started forward, hoping that the wake of the blast would give him vital seconds to get the drop on Madrigal and her team, but from the haze came Null, brandishing that wicked-looking knife of his. He gave Marc a mocking shake of the head, stopping him dead.
Marc heard a low roll of thunder and from the corner of his eye, out through the hole in the roof, he saw a blink of white light. The rainfall abruptly became a torrent as a powerful downdraft of air blasted into the chamber. He realised that the light was a tail indicator on the Halo, and the thunder was the sound of the massive rotors.
The hulking cargo helicopter drifted across to float above the shattered ceiling, and cables dropped down from a hatch on its belly, bouncing off the top of the damaged SCIF.
Null moved away, grabbing the cables and fastening them to thick steel eye-bolts in the metal cabin’s frame. Nearby, Madrigal watched him work with a beatific expression on her face, letting the rain wash over her.
The big man quickly finished his work and waved at the helicopter. After a moment, the cables began to slowly draw up as the Halo took the weight of its new cargo.
‘Well,’ Madrigal called out, turning back to Marc and Lucy. ‘We have to be leaving.’ The woman slipped a small device into her palm, a remote-control switch similar to the one Null had used to blow the charges. ‘I’m not without compassion,’ she went on, pitching up her voice to be heard over the noise. She nodded toward Fox as
he raised the stolen rifle. ‘He’ll make this quick. Unless you misbehave.’
Lucy held the spent M4 like a cudgel and shook it at the other woman. ‘You can kiss my ass, you skinny—’
‘Never mind,’ snapped Madrigal, mashing the trigger for the shock bracelets.
Marc braced himself for another onslaught of nerve-shredding agony, the memory of the pain from the stun baton strikes weathered on board the Antonov still fresh in his mind. It didn’t come.
The moment of confusion on Madrigal’s face was a new expression. She hit the button again, more forcefully this time, and still the bracelets did not trigger.
A crooked grin spread on Marc’s face and he slipped his hand behind his tactical rig, grabbing at the object hidden in the lining of the webbing.
‘Kara . . .?’ said Lucy, pulling at the inert shock device before giving him a sideways look, her eyes narrowing.
‘Kara,’ he repeated, meeting Madrigal’s gaze.
The woman’s face turned stony and cold, a shadow passing over her features as she ground out the words. ‘Ungrateful little whore . . .’ There was the briefest flash of a deep, wounded sorrow that faded under a murderous scowl. Marc saw the same killer’s face from the tape of the Cooper murder, a raw and naked hate exposed to the light. Behind her, the SCIF cabin had pulled free of its moorings and hung suspended in the air. ‘Erik!’ She shouted, tapping the radio bead in her ear. ‘Erik, anyone on comms, respond!’
‘Ah, I reckon she cut you off from the plane, didn’t she?’ Marc shifted, using the moment to draw away from Lucy, making it hard for Fox to target the two of them together. ‘Looks like we weren’t the only ones she was keeping things from.’
Marc’s hand dropped into view, and in it he held an EFL, a device that resembled the pistol grip of a large handgun, minus the barrel and receiver assembly. The emergency flare launcher could shoot off a half-dozen 19mm signal cartridges in rapid succession. Kara had slipped it into his gear, back at the airport. Not quite a weapon, but the best she could do. It had a trigger and a safety, which he flicked off as he brought the EFL up to aim in the direction of Madrigal and the others.
Ghost: Page 33
