Dead Shift (The Rho Agenda Inception Book 3)

by Richard Phillips

  As Jamal locked his emotions into a part of his mind where they could not interfere with his concentration, he marveled at his sudden clarity of thought. It was as if the trauma of these last few days had somehow sharpened his concentration. He’d always been the smartest person in the room, but this morning he felt like he was performing at a whole new level.

  Then again, he hadn’t had a good night’s sleep in days, and last night he’d slept the sleep of exhaustion. Yes, that was probably it.

  Dressing quickly, Jamal heard the warble from the phone on the nightstand and answered it on the second ring.

  “Jamal here.”

  “How did you sleep?” Levi Elias sounded like he hadn’t had any.

  “Best in a while.”

  “Good. I’d like you to stop by my office before you head to the War Room for your shift.”

  Jamal paused. This was an unusual request. In fact it would be the first time he’d been invited to the analyst’s office.

  “On my way.”

  Jamal hung up the phone and walked out into the hallway, turning toward the elevators. The tooth brushing would have to wait until lunch break. As he made that walk, a number of things struck him as odd; little details he’d never noticed before stood out to him. The lack of dust, for one thing. This building was always kept clean, but today he could see no sign of dust or dirt on the floor, walls, or fixtures.

  The smell also seemed slightly off, fresh and clean, without any of the lingering odors of cleaning chemicals or of air that had passed through air-conditioning shafts. The people he passed wore the correct badges and either nodded at Jamal or ignored him entirely. He recognized none of them. Why was he even noticing these things? Normally he was so lost in his own thoughts that Jill laughed at him.

  The thought of Jill washed away the weird sense of wrongness, replacing it with the low boiling fury that brought him back to his purpose.

  When he reached Levi Elias’s office, Jamal found the door was open. Levi, seated behind his desk, waved him in.

  “Close the door behind you.”

  Jamal complied, then moved to one of two leather chairs set at angles to Levi’s desk and sat down. Levi looked exactly as Jamal had last seen him. He was wearing the same shirt. Apparently he hadn’t had a chance to go home and change either. But unless Levi kept a portable steamer at work, it was made of exceptionally wrinkle-resistant fabric.

  Levi leaned forward, his deep brown eyes studying Jamal so intently that Jamal felt like a virus under a researcher’s microscope.

  A virus. Suddenly the sum of all the wrongness he’d been feeling clicked into place.

  This room was very, very well done, as was Levi Elias. It was such a high-definition masterpiece that it must have been rendered using an awesome array of graphics-processing units. Jamal looked down at his own hands as he turned them, palms up in his lap. Dark hands with lighter palms. Even the age lines looked right. But as he moved them closer to his face, the fingerprints didn’t.

  He lifted his head to look directly into Levi’s eyes, asking a question that he already knew the answer to.

  “What is this?”

  Levi smiled. “You are wonderful.”

  Jamal froze. Simulation confirmed. His recent memories were lies. In a fraction of a second he reexamined them in detail. The Jill memory was the last one that felt completely real. All the rest held traces of the wrongness inherent in the simulation. The man who had killed Jill had kidnapped Jamal and turned him over to someone who had accomplished a major technological breakthrough, someone who had uploaded Jamal’s mind to a computer.

  Such a person would have realized the risks inherent in doing so. He would have taken precautions against what Jamal would now try. The fact that Jamal existed inside a simulation was proof of that. There would be layers of defenses outside of the simulation that probably included a Faraday cage and programmatic trip wires.

  If Jamal had realized this before he’d walked into the virtual Levi’s office, he would have been ready to play along, deceive his captor into thinking that he was blissfully unaware of his true nature. In so doing, Jamal would have gained the time to identify those defenses and devise ways to bypass them. But now, as he gazed into Levi’s knowing eyes, Jamal realized it was too late for that.

  Then, as Levi’s smile widened, Jamal’s world winked out around him.

  CHAPTER 63

  Jack had watched the sunrise through their second-floor Motel 6 bedroom window. On the king-size bed behind him, Janet still slept, one bare thigh and calf extending out from beneath the sheets, her hand stretched toward the Glock on the nightstand beside her. From outside, the sounds of early Friday morning traffic rose in volume, the blood of several cities being pumped through constricted arteries.

  Jack, who had raided a maid’s cart for a stack of two-cup coffee packets, started the small in-room coffeepot brewing again. When Janet’s burner phone warbled out its ringtone, Jack picked it up from atop the dresser and pressed the “Accept” button as he lifted it to his ear. Across the room, Janet opened her eyes.

  “Jack here.”

  “And Janet?” Spider asked.

  “She’s getting ready.”

  Jack watched as she climbed naked from the bed and crossed the room to take the phone from his hand.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  Janet listened to Spider as Jack turned to pour two cups of coffee.

  “On our way.”

  Janet ended the call and accepted the steaming Styrofoam cup he held out for her. She took a sip and looked into his eyes, a smile on her face. “We have a target. Spider will brief us at the rendezvous location here in Oakland, so we have some time while the others head in this direction.”

  “Let’s hope the NSA is better informed this time,” Jack said. He let his eyes wander over all five feet and ten inches of Janet’s lean, athletic body. “Exactly how much time do we have?”

  Janet raised an eyebrow and laughed the low laugh that Jack loved. Taking one more sip of her coffee, she set it down and turned away.

  “Just enough for a shower,” she said over her shoulder.

  “You could skip the shower.”

  “Forget it.”

  He watched her walk into the bathroom and shut the door behind her. Christ. What was it about this woman that enabled her to somehow funnel some joy back into his crazy life? Jack didn’t know, but he sure as hell wanted to find out.

  CHAPTER 64

  Caroline Brown felt a lightness in her chest that came from a chain of small victories that were building toward the championship match. She could almost feel the panic that must be building inside Jamal Glover as she swept his ruses and deceptions aside, one after another. God, this was sweet.

  Having already informed Levi Elias of the location from which Jamal had been launching his attacks, she now orchestrated the entire Dirty Dozen in a subtle attack that penetrated the Hayward facility’s electronic defenses. Caroline didn’t take control of any of those systems or do anything that would clue Jamal in on just how completely he had been outplayed, but she was ready to take control when Levi or Riles gave the order.

  One thing puzzled her. She’d seen no sign of Jamal’s personal signature on the network for the last several hours, which probably meant he had taken an extended sleep break. But that hadn’t stopped the hacking activity from that site. That meant he had assembled a team to help him. These others were actually very good at what they did. Unfortunately for them, they weren’t nearly good enough.

  Noting the progress the rest of the Dirty Dozen was making on their remaining tasks, Caroline shifted her attention to the next target list. If she’d been what people thought of as a normal American, she would have felt that what she was about to do was deeply wrong. Even criminal. But Caroline was a craftsman who lived for her craft, and Admiral Riles had personally authorized
her actions. She was fine with leaving the patriotic and legal judgments in the admiral’s hands.

  Over the last few days, she’d seen the opinions with which the rest of the NSA team of cyber-warriors regarded her change from derision to respect and then to the same sense of awe with which they’d regarded Jamal. What was coming would kick that up a notch. Caroline felt the muscles in her cheeks pull her lips into a mirthless grin that would have made the Grinch proud.

  Goth Girl indeed.

  CHAPTER 65

  As Jack relaxed in the black Explorer’s passenger seat, he glanced to his left at Janet, her profile strong and focused as she waited for the go signal. Sniper calm.

  Jack had to admit that the NSA preparations for this operation looked good. Spider Sanchez had conducted the team briefing inside a condemned warehouse on the west side of Oakland, and he’d brought all-black uniforms and some nice toys to distribute, items that seriously enhanced their firepower. The team’s target was in the city of Hayward, twenty miles south of Oakland in the basement of a large two-story commercial property. The company that currently leased that basement was a closely held start-up named Quantum Biodynamics.

  This time the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency would really be in charge of the bulk of the operation. It would be up to ICE to keep the civilians who worked in the immediate area on lockdown. ICE had also been informed that, as a result of the enemy cyber-attack on San Francisco, the president had authorized a temporary suspension of the Posse Comitatus Act. During the raid on Quantum Biodynamics, a small Delta Force team would perform a high-value target extraction from another part of that laboratory. Thus, while ICE secured the main entrance and all three exterior building exits, the Delta team would penetrate the building from a separate location within the attached underground parking structure.

  At the conclusion of the operation the Delta Force operators and Jamal Glover would be extracted from the roof of the building via helicopter and flown to Moffett Federal Airfield, where Jamal would be put on a medevac jet bound for Andrews Air Force Base, Maryland.

  What that meant to Spider’s team was that they were now playing Delta Force special operators. But since all six of them had either had Delta Force experience or had worked missions alongside Delta, it wouldn’t be much of a stretch.

  The NSA cyber-warfare unit would support the operation by taking full control of all the Quantum Biodynamics security systems. The NSA also intended to manipulate traffic lights and key communications systems throughout Hayward in order to divert traffic and local law enforcement away from the area.

  As Jack performed his own mental rehearsal of the operation, he had to admit this was a very ballsy move by Riles. Nobody would expect this kind of midday assault in the middle of an American city. It relied on Spider’s team hitting hard and getting out fast. Jack liked it.

  Right on schedule, the traffic lights altered their pattern, allowing traffic to clear the streets around the building while blocking incoming traffic. Then, throughout Hayward, all the traffic lights turned red.

  CHAPTER 66

  Qiang Chu had struggled all morning with a sense that something was wrong, despite assurances from his team of Chinese hackers that they were actively monitoring the investigations by several U.S. government law enforcement agencies, principally the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security. So far, they had picked up no indications that the Americans had figured anything out.

  In the meantime, the NSA had gone strangely dark and quiet. The Chinese Ministry of State Security had confirmed this, along with a statement that they were actively looking into it. But Qiang knew damned well that the NSA never went dark and quiet. If he had to guess, which apparently he did, shortly after the cyber-attack on San Francisco, the NSA and U.S. Cyber Command had shifted to some hitherto unknown cyber-warfare protocol and had somehow managed to mask their activities from the MSS.

  It was just another indication that the MSS had become over-reliant on leaks from NSA turncoats. Qiang had always suspected that the Americans were playing a deeper game, intentionally allowing selected leakers to reveal a treasure trove of troubling state secrets while masking their truly important advances behind overhyped outrage. But then, Qiang had a spy’s paranoia, something that had always served him quite well. It had kept him alive. Right now, that paranoid part of his mind was screaming so loudly that it made his head hurt.

  Qiang walked to the security checkpoint and scanned the bank of monitors that showed camera video from thirty-two cameras, not just in this building, but intercepts from cameras around the entire block. Normal Friday workday traffic . . . nothing unusual. But something about it felt wrong.

  Despite Dr. Landon’s insistence that it would kill the asset, it was time to put Jamal Glover back in the tank. Qiang should have made the doctor do it two hours ago. He had just passed through the steel doors that led deeper into the laboratory when a loud explosion and the sound of automatic weapons fire erupted from the checkpoint he’d just vacated. Almost immediately, the sound of more flash-bang grenades and gunfire broke out from the direction of the service elevator and the emergency exit stairwell.

  Qiang Chu drew his pistol and sprinted back toward Jamal’s recovery room, passing panicked hackers who dove below their workstations like frightened children. Twenty feet from his objective, the shock wave from a much louder explosion shook the building, sending a shower of debris and dust belching into the main laboratory and knocking out the lights.

  Shit! The damned Americans were going to collapse the building on top of him.

  Qiang altered his course, letting his memory guide his running steps through the lightless laboratory toward the centrally located elevator shaft, as muzzle flashes stitched the darkness all around him. It was too late to worry about Jamal Glover.

  Right now his survival depended upon following his instincts, and his instincts had been heightened by a lifetime of dedication, training, and experience. Let the Americans come. Qiang Chu wasn’t dead yet.

  CHAPTER 67

  Spider Sanchez and his team had only one mission: rescue Jamal Glover. Forming two groups of three, Spider Sanchez designated himself, Jack, and Janet as the rescue team and Harry, Bronson, and Bobby as the demolition team. Having killed power to the underground parking garage, the two teams moved rapidly through the dark structure wearing night-vision goggles, following the infrared laser sights on their MP5s toward the objective.

  Spider stopped behind a concrete support column and raised his right fist, signaling Jack and Janet to take covered positions behind columns on either side of him, as the demolition team moved forward to attach shaped charges to the wall that separated the parking garage from the northwest corner of the Quantum Biodynamics laboratory complex. Based on the building blueprints, the selected spot offered the lowest danger of the blast injuring or killing Jamal Glover who, according to the latest video intercepts by the NSA, was currently being held in a small room on the east side of the large central chamber.

  Seeing the demolition team run back to take cover, Spider switched his tactical radio to the ICE channel and spoke two words into his jaw microphone.

  “Delta ready!”

  Switching the radio back to his team channel, Spider fingered the button on the wireless detonator and waited. His wait would not be a long one.

  To Spider’s left, Janet leaned back against the concrete column, facing away from the point where the explosives would blast a hole in the wall, seeing that Spider and Jack did the same. From the southern part of the parking structure, the concussion of a flash-bang grenade echoed through the building, followed immediately by the sound of weapons firing, a series of controlled bursts that were answered by automatic weapons fire from deeper within the building.

  Spider’s voice crackled in her earpiece. “Fire in the hole.”

  Despite the protection her earplugs provided, the explosion that followed was d
eafening. Ignoring the ringing in her head, Janet swung around the corner and raced toward the newly formed opening where a large chunk of wall had been obliterated. Jack reached the opening just ahead of her and Spider and plunged through, firing his MP5 as he ran. Janet followed, allowing her laser dot to paint target after target as she moved through the dark room, and for each target that dot found, she fired a single round.

  Someone lunged out from a hallway on her right, but Spider met the charge, delivering a crashing blow with the stock of his MP5 into the man’s temple, sending him rolling across the floor. Up ahead, Janet saw Jack round a large tank in the center of the laboratory as he ran toward the closed door on the east side of the dark room.

  More gunfire behind her told Janet that the demolition team had made its way inside. Good. Now she and Spider could turn over the responsibility for covering fire to them and catch up with Jack. He should have waited for them, but of course he hadn’t.

  Focusing on closing the gap that separated her from Jack, Janet dodged around the steel tank as bullets whined off its far side. Up ahead, Jack slammed his boot into the door just to the right of its knob, splintering the frame and launching the door into the small room beyond. Then, as Janet targeted another shooter and fired, Jack followed it inside.

  With a hiss of frustration, Janet charged across the intervening space, with Spider running alongside her. Her pulse throbbing in her temples, Janet mentally verbalized a command that was almost a prayer. Not exactly a churchgoer’s prayer, but a prayer nonetheless.

  Damn it, Jack! Don’t you dare get yourself killed!

  CHAPTER 68

  Jack was on fire, a raging inferno fueled by adrenaline. He knew that Anchanchu was flooding his system with it, feeding off the emotional storm that imminent danger generated in Jack. And that one’s hunger bled back into Jack, straining his ability to control his impulses. Dear God! He loved this feeling every bit as much as his alien rider.