Dead Shift (The Rho Agenda Inception Book 3)

by Richard Phillips

  And though Jack couldn’t see him, he could feel Qiang Chu moving within the building. A tremor born of raw desire vibrated his body as he ran, but Jack angrily forced it down. Spider was depending on him to stay on target, and Janet had once again extended her trust. So as difficult as it was to turn away from Qiang, he bound himself to the task at hand.

  Ignoring the gunfire behind him, Jack rounded the metal tank in the center of the lab and launched himself at the closed door in the east wall, putting all of his rage and frustration into the kick. This was a simple office door and the force of the blow splintered the frame, sending the door rocketing inward, being torn free of its upper and middle hinges so that it careened to rest at a crazy angle. Jack allowed his forward momentum to carry him into what appeared to be a hospital room.

  He hadn’t felt any danger in this room and he didn’t find any. Instead, two men in surgeon’s scrubs cowered in the far right corner, having left their unconscious patient lying atop a hospital bed, the head of which was centered against the far wall. In the pitch darkness, periodically backlit by the muzzle flashes from the room behind him, Jack imagined that he must look like death itself to these men. They weren’t wrong.

  Jack pulled the trigger twice in rapid succession, permanently freezing the terror on those two dead faces. What regret he might have felt for the killings of these defenseless men was wiped away when he got a good look at the man lying on the hospital bed.

  Jamal Glover lay facedown, his body covered by a thin sheet, his head supported in something like a masseuse’s donut-shaped face cradle. The reason for this was immediately obvious. Hundreds of pins extended a half inch out of Jamal’s skull, each partially healed wound cemented with surgical glue. Where the scalp had been peeled away from the skull prior to the brain surgery, it had been stitched back in place with that same glue, a line that extended from his frontal lobe down around both ears to the base of the skull.

  As Janet and Spider entered the room behind him, Jack removed the IV needle from Jamal’s left arm.

  “Jesus!” Janet breathed at his shoulder.

  “Grab him and let’s go!” Spider yelled from his covering position at the door. “Take him up the southeast stairwell to the roof.”

  Jack maneuvered the unconscious man to a slumped seated position and then lifted Jamal over his left shoulder. Picking up his MP5 from where he’d set it on the bed, Jack followed Janet and Spider out into the lab and toward the southeast stairwell. If all had gone according to plan, the demolition team would have already cleared it.

  Spider’s voice in his earpiece asked the question. “Harry. Status?”

  “Stairwell clear.”

  “Inbound,” said Spider.

  “Roger.”

  Jogging through the strangely quiet laboratory, Jack’s night-vision goggles clearly showed the bodies splayed beneath computer workstations and in the hallway leading back toward the main entrance. For those men, trapped in the dark between the hammer of Spider’s team and the anvil formed by the ICE assault team that secured the exits, there had been no escape.

  When he reached the stairwell, Jack followed Spider and Janet past Harry and Bronson. Farther up the stairs he could see Bobby Daniels leading them up, a set of glowing ghosts climbing through a green-tinted world toward the military helicopter that waited on the rooftop three stories above. It was as smooth an operation as Jack had participated in.

  So why did he feel like something was so very wrong?

  CHAPTER 69

  Qiang Chu climbed the elevator shaft toward the car stopped at the ground floor above. Even if the switches hadn’t been modified to remove that option, it couldn’t have descended beyond that point due to the steel beams that had been installed to block its access to the lower level. But a faint sliver of daylight wormed its way through the cracks around the first-floor access doors, booted shadows moving just beyond.

  Qiang ignored it, instead squeezing himself through the elevator support rails, slithering up between the elevator car and the rear shaft wall. Then he was in the open space between the top of the car and the top of the shaft fifteen feet above. It didn’t provide roof access, but the second floor would do just fine for his purposes.

  He climbed up onto the small lip where the closed elevator doors blocked his exit, gripped a vertical support beam to steady himself, and drew the SIG Sauer from its holster. Qiang didn’t think any federal agents would have bothered to secure this door into the middle of a civilian workspace. They would have surrounded the building and blocked all the external exits and the roof access, trapping their targets inside the building while the assault team blasted their way into the sublevel.

  Nevertheless, Qiang didn’t believe in making assumptions. He fired a five-round spread through the closed elevator doors. Screams of terror and a howl of pain echoed into the shaft, but the lack of return gunfire told him all he needed to know. Thrusting the steel blade of his combat knife through the crack between the doors, Qiang levered them apart far enough to get the fingers of his left hand through the opening, sheathed his knife, and grabbed the edge of the left door.

  He threw his weight hard to the left and watched the doors separate just enough to allow him passage. Just ahead, a woman writhed in pain on the floor. Others scrambled away from the elevator room and into the maze of cubicles beyond, their screams sounding distant in his ringing ears.

  Qiang slid sideways through the crack, stepped across the body of the convulsing woman, and headed toward the southeastern stairwell, herding two dozen panicked call-center workers in that direction. A man tried to duck into a hallway that led off in the wrong direction and Qiang put a bullet in his back.

  “Get out!” Qiang yelled. “Use the stairwell. Now!”

  The remainder of the workers bolted toward the stairwell, trampling a man that tripped and fell before them.

  Qiang ejected the partially full magazine and slapped home a fresh one. Transferring his gun to his left hand, he again pulled the black-bladed knife from its sheath and forced his way into the crowd fighting each other to get into the stairwell. Most plunged down the stairs, but some moved up toward the rooftop, and Qiang moved with them, plunging a knife into the throat of a man who tried to turn on him.

  At the top of the stairs, the door banged open and an armed agent stared in shock at the mass of screaming civilians clawing their way up the remaining steps before him. Qiang shot him in the head, sending his tactically armored body thumping down onto the rooftop.

  Strident yells from below told him that more agents had entered the stairwell and were forcing their way up through the civilians who desperately struggled toward safety. Ducking low behind a heavyset blonde woman, Qiang pressed the knife to her throat and shoved her forward, pushing the three people in front of her out onto the roof where another tactically garbed agent aimed an MP5 at them.

  And exactly as Qiang had known he would do, the man hesitated to fire into the half dozen civilians that masked his line of sight to Qiang. Qiang didn’t hesitate. The SIG bucked in his left hand, its bullet passing through the neck of the man who stood between Qiang and the American agent and impacting the agent’s body armor, sternum high. To his credit, the man merely stumbled backward from the impact. Qiang reached him as he tried to raise his MP5. At close quarters it was no match for the black blade that tore out his throat.

  Suddenly Qiang became aware of a familiar sound, the whup whup of a helicopter preparing to take flight. Rounding the northwest edge of the stairwell access structure, he saw it. And twenty feet away, the pilot saw Qiang sprinting toward it. Seeing that he would not get the bird in the air in time, the pilot reached for his own sidearm, his hand just managing to draw it clear of the holster when two bullets tore into his body, sending him slumping over the controls.

  Running around the front of the helicopter, Qiang ducked into the rotor wash, grabbed the dead man, cut his seat bel
t straps, and dumped him onto the concrete rooftop. Seconds later the Blackhawk canted forward, nose tilted down as it swept off the roof and accelerated away from Hayward toward the hills to the northeast.

  No gunfire rose up from below to chase it into the sky.

  CHAPTER 70

  The crowd of panicked workers jammed up in the stairwell surprised Janet. Up ahead, Bobby Daniels yelled at the civilians to clear a path, but they couldn’t. Not with another dozen or so behind them pressing them forward and down.

  “Back up,” Spider yelled into his microphone. “Let them out the first-floor exit.”

  Up above, the sound of more gunfire echoed into the stairwell, but with the switchbacks, it was impossible to see what was happening above them. The civilians pressed forward again and Spider’s team retreated back down to ground level to allow the stairwell to clear, Jack just managing to maintain his footing as the crowd threatened to topple him and Jamal down the stairs toward the basement. Janet heard his muttered curse in her earpiece; then a path opened before them as the last few civilians stumbled by and out the door into the waiting arms of the ICE agents outside.

  Running upward, Janet stripped off her night-vision goggles, stepped over two bodies, and then swung her MP5’s muzzle out to cover the rooftop as Bobby and Spider sprinted past her. Right behind them, Jack climbed out on the roof with Jamal slung over his left shoulder. Up ahead, Janet saw Spider pull up short, lowering the barrel of his MP5 until it hung limply in his right hand, a look of disbelief on his face.

  “Son of a bitch!” Spider’s voice in her earpiece matched his look.

  When she rounded the corner of the blocky structure that provided roof access to the stairwell, she froze. On the roof, three federal agents and a civilian lay dead. A small group of civilians cowered near the southeast corner. Low in the northeastern sky, the Blackhawk helicopter that was supposed to carry them and Jamal to Moffett Federal Airfield flew away from the city, dwindling toward the distant hills as she watched. And as she stood there, beneath the warm, midday sun, the smell of helicopter exhaust fumes mixed with the unpleasant odors of violent death.

  Spider’s voice snapped her out of it. “Okay, people. Back to the SUVs while I call this in. I’m right behind you. ICE can mop this up after we’re out of here.”

  Janet turned to see Jack, his jaw clenched tight, staring after the helicopter, the angry glint in his eyes barely visible in direct sunlight, but it was there. Then he took a deep breath and turned back toward the stairwell. Janet followed him inside and down.

  Apparently this extraction was going to be a lot lower and slower than they had planned. Hopefully Jamal would survive the ride.

  CHAPTER 71

  Seated at the head of the eight-person conference table in his private briefing room, Admiral Riles listened attentively as Levi Elias wrapped up the operation briefing. Despite the death of several federal agents and civilians and Qiang Chu’s escape in the helicopter that had been sent to carry Jamal and Spider Sanchez’s team back to Moffett Federal Airfield, the operation had accomplished both of its primary objectives.

  The team of Chinese hackers responsible for the cyber-attack on San Francisco had been destroyed and several of their data drives had been recovered intact. More importantly, Jamal Glover was in stable condition and being cared for onboard a medevac aircraft that would be landing at Andrews Air Force Base within the next three hours. And Admiral Riles intended to be there to meet that plane.

  As for the stolen helicopter, it had been located on a farm in rural Sonoma County, along with the bodies of the property owners. After killing the elderly couple, Qiang Chu had stolen their Ford F-150 pickup, which had subsequently been found abandoned on the outskirts of Petaluma.

  Riles studied Levi’s hawkish face as he stood at the far end of the table, patiently waiting for his boss’s response to the information he’d just presented.

  “Qiang Chu can’t just disappear without a trace,” Admiral Riles said. “Not from us.”

  “Apparently he can. I have our team scanning everything to see if we can pick up his trail. No luck so far.”

  “Has he gone to ground?”

  “Not in Petaluma. He wouldn’t have dumped the truck close to wherever he’s heading. That means he’s probably stolen another vehicle and swapped the plates. You can bet he’s using some means to avoid facial recognition. But so far nothing’s been reported stolen.”

  “I want you to identify every vehicle that left Petaluma after the truck was dumped there. And have Denise get Big John looking for anything that might have a correlation to this, even if it’s tenuous.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Admiral Riles felt a new worry worm its way into his mind. “Pull up the picture of Jamal again.”

  Levi pressed a button on the remote control, cycling back through his briefing slides, stopping on a photograph that had been taken after Jamal had been loaded aboard the medevac plane. The doctors aboard had been forced to lay Jamal facedown to avoid applying pressure to the hundreds of electrodes that extended from the top, sides, and back of his skull.

  Riles had his own thoughts about their purpose, but he wanted to hear Levi’s. “Do you think they were using the electrodes to torture information from Jamal?”

  “Not likely. Some of our people think this might be part of an advanced lie detection procedure.”

  “But you don’t?”

  “We won’t know for sure until we get Jamal to Walter Reed. Once the doctors there get a good CT scan, they’ll be able to map out the specific parts of the brain targeted by the electrodes. And when Jamal regains consciousness they’ll be able to ask him some questions. I’m not sure that’ll do much good, though.”

  “Why not?” asked Riles.

  “He’s been heavily drugged, including some powerful hallucinogens. According to the doctors who are treating him onboard the aircraft, Jamal may not remember anything.”

  Riles leaned forward in his chair until his elbows rested on the conference table, gazing over his steepled fingertips at the image on the large display.

  “You said the medical facilities inside the Quantum Biodynamics laboratory could not have supported the brain surgery performed on Jamal only a week ago. So where was the surgery performed?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Admiral Riles felt his teeth grind and forced himself to unclench his jaw. “Sometime early this week Jamal was moved from another location into the lab we just raided. It would have required a vehicle big enough to hold a gurney and a couple of doctors. Get any of our cyber-geeks who aren’t assigned to finding Qiang Chu looking for the vehicles that entered the Hayward parking garage. I want every one of them traced back to its point of origin.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Riles paused. “Levi, is there anything else you can think of that I’ve missed?”

  The analyst’s dark eyes narrowed. “Admiral, for the last two hours I’ve been asking myself a couple of questions. Why hasn’t Qiang Chu tried to leave the country before today? Either he was trying to extract additional information from Jamal, something that doesn’t seem likely, or he’s waiting for something. What is so important that he’s willing to sacrifice the lives of all those around him and risk capture in order to buy that extra time? What the hell is Qiang so desperately waiting for?”

  Levi Elias had just driven a blade into the heart of the matter. What indeed?

  CHAPTER 72

  Having been notified of Qiang Chu’s arrival at Grange Castle, Steve Grange waited for the assassin in the meeting room situated in the underground laboratory’s surgical wing. As bad as today’s news about a government raid on Quantum Biodynamics had been, this unexpected visit was worse. Grange knew what Qiang wanted, and it wasn’t ready yet.

  When Qiang entered, he immediately took a seat across the table from Grange, his dark eyes as inscrutable as ever. To lo
ok at him, Grange would never have known he’d spent a large part of this day killing American law enforcement officers and citizens.

  “I want your latest copy of Jamal Glover.”

  Grange felt a lump form in the back of his throat. “It’s not ready.”

  “What do you mean it’s not ready?”

  “Just what I said. Yesterday’s iteration figured out it was uploaded to a simulation and triggered a trip wire that shut it down. I’ve made some changes that should prevent that from happening, but I haven’t yet tested the new iteration.”

  “I’m not asking,” Qiang said.

  Grange stood, running the fingers of his right hand through hair that felt greasy to the touch, reminding him of how long it had been since he had last slept or bathed.

  “Look! Do you have any idea what might happen if we give virtual Jamal access to the Internet without knowing for sure that all of our safeguards will be enough to contain him? Didn’t you hear what I just told you? Yesterday, Jamal recognized that he was being contained inside a simulation and he attempted to bypass my trip wires. We’re not dealing with an upload of Joe Six-Pack. Jamal Glover might be the best hacker on the planet. He specializes in bypassing security protocols. Virtual Jamal has all of that skill, but is far faster than his biological counterpart.”

  Grange clenched his fists at his waist, tempted to strike out at the Chinese killer to try to beat the importance of what he was saying into the man’s head.

  His next words came out in a hyperventilated rant. “Imagine Jamal Glover copied millions of times across the Internet, able to absorb all of mankind’s knowledge in a matter of days, able to access all of the networked machines that control the world’s economies, able to self-modify his own code and evolve. If my containment measures fail, our actions could unleash an existential threat.”