by Tom Clancy
No, she dared not do it. Dared not make a sound. Dared not move a muscle.
The moment she did, Kirsten was sure she would be theirs.
The optical mini-CDs were stored in specially designed, alphanumerically-tabbed electronic “stacks” lining the walls of the vault. Once inside, the pair of intruders had been able to locate the object of their search within seconds. At the touch of a button, the disc was scanned, identified by a bar code imprinted on its surface, and then ejected from the repository in a gleaming stainless-steel tray.
Slipping the disk into a protective plastic sleeve he took from a wall dispenser, Lombardi dropped it into the breast pocket of his jacket and gave his partner the ready signal.
The two men strode from the vault less than three minutes after entering it, passed through the waiting area without a glance at the dead supervisor, and reentered the outer corridor as if they had nothing to hide.
They were swinging back into the main entry hall when the lab tech’s screams pierced the air and all hell broke loose around them.
Kirsten knew she wouldn’t be able to hide from her pursuers much longer.
The man she’d heard on her left had reached the end of the aisle he’d been searching, swung into the aisle immediately beside the one where she was crouched, and then turned back up in her direction, pausing every couple of steps to poke his head back and forth between the cars. He was now standing directly across from her, separated from her by a single row of vehicles. And the others were closing in from elsewhere around the court.
The man on the left took a step up the aisle, then another. Kirsten’s breath came to a stop. She could see his boots and the bottoms of his jeans under the chassis of the car she was leaning against. Her heart was booming in her ears like a timpani, and in the panicky, half-crazed moment before she got a handle on herself, Kirs ten was afraid he’d be able to hear it as well.
In a minute or so he would turn up her aisle, and it would be over.
She had never in her life felt so terribly helpless and alone.
Gody God, what am I going to do?
No opening had presented itself. Nobody had driven in or out of the lot, and she had no reason to think anybody would before it was too late to make any difference.
She suddenly realized the only thing she could do was run for it, break for the driveway, and hope that by some miracle she could reach the street before they did. She knew even that wouldn’t necessarily mean she was safe— the men who’d come after her and Max had been willing to strike on a thoroughfare as busy as Scotts Road, strike with hundreds of pedestrians around, for godsakes. If this group was just a fraction as bold, they might not have the slightest concern about who saw them.
But she hadn’t any choice. It was either leave the pot or be cooked.
She waited another second, took a deep gulp of air, and then forced herself to spring to her feet.
The man on the left spotted her instantly. Their eyes made the briefest contact, hers full of hunted terror, his absent of any hint of sympathy or compassion.
Then he rasped an order to his companions and came hurtling across the aisle at her.
Kirsten turned and fled.
The first indication that something was wrong came the moment they pulled their rental car up to the curb, and was the only one they needed. If there were a way to think things were normal after arriving at a person’s home and finding the door kicked in, Nimec didn’t know it.
He glanced out the windshield at the street, at the outside stairs, at the walkways spanning the rows of doors on the building’s upper stories. All were empty.
“Have your weapons ready,” he said to Noriko and Osmar. He withdrew his own Beretta 8040 from its concealment holster, ejected its standard ten-round clip, and chocked in the twelve-round magazine/grip extension. ”Don’t seem to be any eyes around, but if somebody does call the local gendarmes, we’ll get it straight with them later.”
Following his lead, the others jogged out of the car and across the ground level unit’s front yard to the partially open door.
Nimec instinctively moved to the right of the door frame, gesturing the others to the left, making sure there was some wall between them and whatever potential threat might be inside.
”Kirsten, this is Pete Nimec!” he called through the opening, leaning his head around the splintered jamb. “Are you okay in there?”
No reply.
He pulled back against the wall, cocked his pistol, and looked across the doorway at his teammates.
“Go,” he said.
They rushed into the apartment and fanned out in a practiced crossover maneuver, Nimec moving to the left of the entrance, gun held ready, Noriko and Osmar following him and buttonhooking to the right. The three of them rapidly pivoted to cover the center of the room with their weapons, legs apart, making broad sweeps of their sectors of fire.
They seemed to be alone in the place.
“Kirsten, you here?” Nimec called again.
Still no answer.
Noriko tapped his arm. ”Look,” she said, pointing straight across the living room.
The back door was wide open.
Nimec’s eyes flicked between her and Osmar.
“Come on,” he said, and rushed toward the door.
The two intruders paused in the hall and exchanged glances. Confused, frightened staffers poured from doorways on either side of them. Not a word was spoken. They could see that the greatest commotion was down the left bend of the corridor, and knew the bodies of the guards had been discovered. Their original intention had been to walk out the main entrance, and they would have to gamble on still being able to leave that way in the disturbance. It would be dangerous, but any attempt to leave the building through emergency exits would trip sensors that would likely pinpoint the specific door being opened. And they had no illusions about having eliminated the threat from security. The men at the surveillance monitors would not have been the sole members of the plainclothes team on premises. And there was the uniformed guard at the door.
The intruders could only keep their fingers crossed that he’d be sufficiently distracted for them to slip past. Otherwise, they’d have to kill him, too.
They moved forward through the scared, noisy people in the corridor, and were nearly at the checkpoint where they’d had to leave their guns when an alarm sounded, a loud on-and-off noise that grated on the eardrums. The guard at the door seemed to be tracking them with his eyes as they approached.
“We’re going out to radio for assistance,” the one who’d called himself Lombardi said. His hand was in his jacket pocket.
The guard looked at him.
”I’m sorry,” he said. “The building’s been sealed.”
“Don’t insult me,” Lomardi said. “We have a job to do.”
He started to move forward, Samford walking beside him. The alarm grated on and on.
The guard clamped a hand around Lombardi’s arm.
“You need to call somebody, we have phones in here,” he said. “But nobody’s leaving.”
Lombardi smiled. His hand was still in his jacket.
“Don’t bet on it,” he said, and squeezed the trigger of the pistol he’d taken from the guards in the monitor room.
Hit at point-blank range, the security guard catapulted backward off his feet, a cloud of blood exploding from his chest. Lombardi pumped two more bullets into him as he dropped to the ground, finishing him.
He turned to his companion and waved him along. He was aware of screams, pale faces, racing feet behind them on the concrete floor.
They hastened toward the door, and got as far as the archway of the weapons detector when someone behind them shouted out an order to halt. They kept walking.
“I said freeze!” the voice repeated. ”This is your final warning!”
Without turning, they quickened their pace.
A gunshot fired out from behind them. Lombardi whirled and saw a plainclothes guard in the center
of the corridor, both hands around a gun, his knees bent in a shooter’s stance. Lombardi returned fire, missed, heard a thud-thud-thud from the suited guard’s gun, and then was slapped across the middle by something he didn’t see. He looked down at himself, his eyes wide with shock, and had just enough time to glimpse the bloody amalgam of flesh and shredded clothing that had replaced his stomach before he crumpled in a dying heap.
The other intruder reached for his own gun, but before he’d gotten it out of his pocket saw two more plaincloth-esmen emerge from the branching corridors at his rear. They all had their weapons drawn, and had triangulated their aim to put him in a perfect crossfire.
“Hold it!” he said. Dropping the gun to the floor, kicking it away from him, and slowly raising his hands above his head. “Don’t shoot, okay? Okay?”
Their guns extended, the Sword ops moved in and took him.
Swinging around the grille of a car, Kirsten tore into the aisle and ran like hell, making for the driveway in a wild headlong dash.
She heard overlapping footsteps behind her, close, close, and pushed herself to move even faster, her legs pumping, arms working at her sides like pistons—
And then, suddenly, one of her pursuers sprang from behind a parked car several yards in front of her.
Between her and the driveway.
His right eye was bloodshot and swollen, and there was a thin line of blood trickling down his cheek from its lower lid.
It was the man she’d grappled with in the apartment. He had some kind of gun in his hand—a submachine gun, she thought, though she was hardly an expert—and was holding it out at her.
“No more shit from you,” he said in Bahasa.
She halted, glanced over her shoulder.
Two more of the men who’d come for her were walking quickly up the aisle in her direction, their firearms held downward, flat against their legs. The fourth stalker had emerged near the spot where she’d been hiding.
“Just come on over here, I won’t hurt you,” said the one blocking her path to the driveway. He motioned with his gun. “Let’s go.”
Kirsten didn’t budge, and was amazed to realize she was shaking her head in the negative.
He shrugged, holding his weapon steady. She could hear the other three coming close behind her.
“You want to wrestle some more, we wrestle,” he said, and took a step forward.
“Hold it right there! Bayaso reyaF’
The voice echoing through the court stopped all four of the men in their tracks. An expression of stunned surprise on his features, the one in front of Kirsten abruptly looked around for its source.
”Drop the gun!” the voice said in Bahasa.
Still looking from side to side, the man blocking the driveway moved the gun off of Kirsten, but didn’t lower it.
Kirsten heard a crack like the sound of a detonating firecracker. And then a blossom of crimson appeared in the middle of the man’s rib cage and he pitched facedown to the asphalt, his submachine gun clattering from his grasp.
“I hope the rest of you are smarter,” the voice said. “It’s finished.”
Kirsten turned her head, saw one of the gunmen behind her start to raise his weapon, instantly heard two more sharp cracks—only now coming from a different part of the court. The man screamed and fell over clutching his knees, blood spraying out from between his fingers.
The remaining pair of men tossed down their weapons and started to run, scrambling out of the aisle, and then bolting wildly toward the driveway exit. No one tried to stop them.
Her eyes wide and staring, Kirsten looked uncompre-hendingly around the court, and all at once saw a brown-skinned Malay spring to his feet behind the tail of a car, several aisles down and directly across from where the first stalker had fallen dead. An instant later two more people appeared near the one who’d been shot in the knees—a white man with close-cropped hair and an Oriental woman.
The man with the short hair bolstered his gun beneath his jacket and approached her.
“Kirsten, it’s okay, you’re safe,” he said in a calm, level voice. “I’m Pete Nimec.”
She started to say something in response, but her throat had closed up, and her teeth were chattering too violently.
Instead, she strode over to him, put her face against his shoulder, put her arms around him, and started crying.
Noriko had gone to wait in the apartment with Kirsten while Nimec and Osmar took care of business in the parking court.
“Mr. Nimec,” Osmar said. ‘There is something I must show you.”
“Right.”
Nimec finished flex-cuffing the wounded man, folded a blanket he’d gotten from the apartment under his head, then went over to Osmar.
Kneeling over the body of the one he’d dropped, the Malay lifted his motionless hand off the asphalt.
“You see kris tattoo?” he said, glancing up at Nimec.
Nimec nodded. “Guy I cuffed has exactly the same marking on him. What the hell is it, some kind of cult sign?”
Osmar shook his head.
“Is more like what you Americans call…” He made a low sound of concentration in his throat, as if groping hard for words. Then he snapped his fingers. “Ah,” he said. ”Colors/’
“Gang colors, you mean,” Nimec said. “As in the Crips and Bloods.”
Osmar nodded, and placed his finger on the tattooed skin. “The kris, many pirate gangs have such marks. But you see designs on blade?”
Nimec squatted beside him for a closer look. He did indeed see them—grotesque anthropomorphic figures that reminded him a little of the paintings on Egyptian tombs.
“They are rakasa/’ Osmar said. “Demons. Different for each brotherhood.”
Sudden understanding spread across Nimec’s features.
“These two punks .. . someone familiar with regional gang crime would be able tell their affiliation from the markings,” he said
Osmar nodded again. “And this one, I know well from when I was with police,” he said. “The men work for Khao Luan. He is Kuomintang.”
The word rang a vague bell. Nimec searched his memory a few seconds.
“A heroin trader?” he said finally.
Another nod. “None are more powerful. The Thai army, they make him to flee during pacification program. Ten years ago, maybe more. Since then, he is in Indonesia.”
Nimec gave him an imperative look. “Where? Does anybody know where?”
“Everyone knows, and everyone fears to touch him,” Osmar said. “In parts of Banjarmasin, the Thai has longer arms than the government.”
Nimec was quiet, letting it all sink in. What connection could a man like that have to Monolith? What on earth had Max stumbled onto?
After a moment he clapped a hand on Osmar’s arm and nodded firmly.
“My friend, we’re about to do some more island-hopping,” he said. “And I promise you, if this guy’s involved in Blackburn’s disappearance, I’ll cut his fucking arms off myself.”
TWENTY-FIVE
VARIOUS LOCALES
OCTOBER 1, 2000
THE SURVIVING MEMBER OF THE PAIR THAT GOT INTO THE SACRAMENTO vault hadn’t talked—not to the Sword detail that apprehended him, not to the Feds after he’d been given into their custody. And it was anybody’s guess whether he was going to talk.
Gordian, however, wasn’t sure that was essential to determining who had been behind the act.
The main question for him, then, was of motive.
Back in San Jose now—he had booked reservations aboard a commuter flight while the A&P mechs continued their inspection of the Learjet in Washington—Gordian sat at his desk opposite Chuck Kirby, trying to put the pieces of a complex and profoundly troubling puzzle into place. They had already run through the whole thing a couple of times, but neither man felt it would hurt to bounce it around once more.
“Let’s try it back to front,” Gordian said. “Starting with the break-in at the Sacramento facility.”
> “Sure, why not,” Kirby said. “Doing it the other way hasn’t nailed it.”
“I don’t know whether it can be nailed, not with the fragmentary information we have,” Gordian said. “But we can get closer, make some more important connections.”
Kirby nodded. “The disc they took off the dead man, then,” he said.
“The disc,” Gordian repeated, sighing. “The key-codes are used in communications systems UpLink has designed for a wide range of naval vessels. Obviously they would be of enormous value to any number of interests, both foreign and domestic.”
“Allies and enemies, for that matter,” Kirby said. “Everybody spies on everybody else. It’s wide open until you look at how the thieves penetrated the vault.”
“Exactly.” Gordian’s face was sober. “And if not for the surveillance videos capturing what happened after they killed poor Turner, the techies might’ve taken weeks, even months to find out. The wicked beauty of it is that the system defeated itself.”
“And that’s still the part I can’t quite grasp,” Kirby said.
“It probably isn’t vital that you do .. . although the concept isn’t really that difficult,” Gordian said. “It involves basic computer file architecture, the way hard drives are set up. There’s a minimum amount of space allocated for every file on a hard drive … the larger the drive, the larger the allocation. Regardless of how much data you have in a file, the computer reserves that minimum space.” He thought a moment. “Imagine a department store that only has gift boxes of a single size for their merchandise, no matter whether you’re buying a ten-gallon hat or a gold forget-me-not for your wife’s necklace. Since the box needs to be pretty big to contain the hat, that tiny charm’s not going to be too visible when it’s placed inside. In fact, it may even get lost.”
Kirby nodded. “The data-strings that let the thieves through the system’s backdoor.. .you’re saying they were too small to be noticed. Like the charm. And they slipped past your whiz kids when the software employed by the biometric scanner system was examined for backdoors prior to installation.”
