Chapter
twenty-
three
AVANTEC COMPOUND
TRANSNISTRIA UNRECOGNIZED TERRITORY
THE OPEL SKIDDED TO A STOP fifty yards from the burning residence. Eddie opened an aluminum case in his lap, body swaying with the motion of the car. He offered Talia an earbud. “Take this and go long.”
“What?”
He nodded toward the building. “Just go. I’ll have comms up in under a minute.”
Steel beams groaned. Melting glass popped and crackled as Talia raced up the lawn, making for the cover of a smaller version of the lake fountain. Where was the HiLux full of armed guards? She felt exposed, running blind into a potential gunfight, but Ivanov’s life was at stake. Assuming he was still alive.
As she peered out from behind the fountain to scan for threats, Eddie’s voice came through the earpiece. “Comms are up. Watch out. Here comes Sibby.”
“Sibby?” Talia glanced back in time to see him chuck a black ball her way.
Eddie didn’t have much of an arm, but the ball never fell. Rotors sprang out at the apex of the throw, transforming it into a mini-drone. “Sibby,” he said, ducking down behind the car. “That’s short for Surveillance Intelligence Ball. She’s—” Eddie stopped, and the drone shot up twenty feet in the air. “Check your northeast quarter. I have a moving heat signature.”
Methodically, Talia pivoted in her crouch and moved to the opposite edge of the fountain. She lowered her weapon. A uniformed guard was running away from the fire. Coward. Bazin had some housecleaning to do.
The rat-a-tat of a three-round burst and the answering boom of a heavy-caliber weapon drew her attention back to the building. The boom sounded a lot like a .50-cal Desert Eagle. Bazin must already be inside. Talia had to get in there and help.
“Talia,” Eddie said. “I have two more bogeys, fleeing through the fence line. Should Sibby follow?”
Her first inclination was yes, but Talia’s training—and her failure at the Sanctum—had taught her better. “Negative. I need her eyes with me.”
“Copy.”
She watched Sibby zip through a shattered window, waited for an unbearable ten count, and followed. The explosion had come from the second floor, but it had shattered most of the first-floor windows as well, making entry a nonissue. Talia used her elbow to knock out a triangle of glass and ducked inside. Blue flame tinged with yellow snaked across the ceiling. The smoke threatened to swallow her whole. Talia coughed and shouted. “Pavel!”
Boom, rat-a-tat, boom. Somewhere ahead a gun battle raged. One or more of the attackers were still in the building. She followed the sounds as best she could. Where was that drone? “Talk to me, Eddie.”
“The heat is killing my infrared. Optical is not much better. Too much smoke.”
“What about acoustics?” Talia buried her face in the crook of her elbow to shield her lungs from the smoke. “Can Sibby follow sounds?”
“Ooh. Good . . . idea.” Eddie’s answer was stilted, as if he were typing on his tablet as he spoke. “Switching now. Check your phone for her video.”
Talia advanced from one hallway corner to the next and unlocked her screen the way Franklin had taught her. Sibby’s app came up automatically. Smoke passed across the video feed. She could make out a tile floor and a section of wall, but nothing useful. Before she could ask how to find the drone, Eddie gave her the answer.
“Glasses.”
“Right.” Talia put them on and slipped the phone in her pocket. Through the blue tint of the lenses she saw green arrows pointing her toward the drone. Sibby’s video ran in her right peripheral, still nothing but smoke and walls. “Find Ivanov, Eddie.”
“What sounds am I looking for?”
Talia answered between coughs. “Gunfire.”
“Oh. Yeah. No need to get snappy.”
The video in Talia’s peripheral came alive with blue and red lines. The drone was reading the acoustics of its surroundings. Talia heard another burst from the machine gun, closer now, and corresponding green circles appeared like ripples in a pond. The video moved. Sibby shifted to bring the ripples to the center of her forward camera. A polished concrete counter materialized through the smoke.
“The lab!” Talia broke into a sprint, still coughing. “They’re . . . in the lab!”
Steel doors appeared in front of her, one standing ajar. Talia placed a hand against one of them. Warm, but not hot.
Sibby had already flown through the gap. In the video, Talia saw Ivanov, hiding behind a lab counter with Bazin crouched beside him. The Russian shifted out into the open and squeezed off two ear-splitting rounds. A burst of machine gun fire answered, and the drone rotated to locate the source. The camera settled on a man in a hard face mask of black composite. The intruder had taken cover behind a heavy-duty 3D printer. A woman with strawberry-blonde hair lay motionless beside him.
“That’s Visser,” Eddie said. The video zoomed in on a dark pool. “She’s bleeding out. Talia, get in there.”
“Working on it. Bring Sibby higher. I need an overview.”
Eddie complied. Talia took a last look to gauge the layout of the fight, then kicked open the door.
The intruder saw her coming and shifted to the other side of the machinery. He couldn’t last there. The new position left him no angle to keep Bazin pinned down, and the Russian knew it.
Bazin advanced.
Talia advanced as well. “Give it up! Drop your weapon and show me your hands!” Bazin repeated the command in Russian, and the man tossed something at the opposite wall. It stuck there—a glob of white, not a machine gun.
“Bomb!” Talia turned and dove for the floor.
The explosion rocked her brain, but she forced her body to stay in the fight. Looking up, she saw the intruder pushing his way through the billowing smoke. How had he survived so close to the blast? A directional charge. The smoke dissipated to reveal a jagged hole in the wall, exposing the lab to the night air. The intruder ran through. Talia fired one, two, three rounds. She heard a grunt, but the man kept running and vanished into the dark.
“Eddie, follow him!” She watched her video feed as Sibby zipped out through the same hole, camera frantically shifting left and right. Even with the infrared, she found no trace of the thief.
Chapter
twenty-
four
AVANTEC COMPOUND
TRANSNISTRIA UNRECOGNIZED TERRITORY
HORNS BLARED amid the roar of the flames, more present in Talia’s earpiece than in her surroundings.
“Talia, the cavalry is here, such as it is. The HiLux and Ivanov’s miniature fire brigade are both on scene.”
“Better late than never.” Talia glanced toward the lab exit, now completely obscured by smoke. There was no way she would risk dragging Ivanov back through the burning building. “I’m bringing our boy out through the hole the intruder blew in the wall. Is our path clear?”
“Clear. Sibby can’t see any threats.”
“Doesn’t mean they’re not out there.” Talia retreated to Visser’s body and checked for a pulse. Nothing. But Talia wouldn’t leave her there—just in case. “Bazin!” She waved to get his attention, pointed to the downed scientist, and then thrust a flat hand toward the hole.
The big bear nodded in understanding.
As he did, the building groaned. They couldn’t stay much longer. “Are you sure the area behind the structure is clear, Eddie?”
“Positive. Get out of there!”
Talia kept one hand on Ivanov’s shoulder as she propelled him through the rear gardens. Bazin followed, Desert Eagle at the ready despite the extra burden of a limp scientist draped over his shoulders. Two paramedics rolled a gurney to meet them as they came around the house.
“Careful. Careful,” Talia said as Bazin laid Dr. Visser down. It didn’t matter. The older paramedic checked Visser’s vitals and shook his head. He pulled a sheet over her forehead.
While Talia gazed at the face beneath the cloth,
Ivanov stumbled away into the open, dazed. Men and women in a variety of uniforms swirled around him—too many people Talia did not recognize. On a gut reaction she rushed him, grabbed him with both hands, and pushed him back against the fire truck.
“What are you doing?” Bazin strode up beside her.
Talia caught the bear by his lapel and dragged his snout down to her level. “Your boss is too exposed out here. Take him to the dormitories. Clean him up and lock it down.”
“And what are you going to do?”
“What I do best. Gather intelligence.”
The duties of an intelligence officer and a detective were not mutually exclusive either, no matter what the gumshoes at the FBI said. Often, generating actionable intelligence had as much to do with following crime scene evidence as any murder investigation.
The fire brigade, however, was fighting a losing battle. Talia’s crime scene continued to burn, so she turned to her witnesses. A hostile expression, a commanding voice, and perhaps some terrifyingly bedraggled hair netted her and Eddie a line of subjects to interview.
None of them had seen a thing. No one even knew where to find the guard that had run away.
Frustrated. Empty-handed. Talia and Eddie found Ivanov in a room at the dormitories. Bazin had blocked off the whole floor, and his boss offered rooms for Talia and Eddie, giving her the one next door to his own. Talia asked Bazin to retrieve any security video he could find and pass it to Eddie, then dismissed them both. The bear didn’t like taking more of her orders, but a hard look from Ivanov sent him on his way.
“I can’t believe Ella is gone. Murdered, and for what?”
His lament brought a lingering question to the forefront of Talia’s mind. “What was Dr. Visser doing at your residence so late in the first place?” She made no attempt to mask the accusation in her tone. But her jealousy rang hollow the moment she gave it voice. Visser had been in Ivanov’s lab, not his bedroom—not that Talia had any right to care either way.
Ivanov looked stricken.
She didn’t wait for his response. “I’m sorry.”
“It is all right. Ella was a treasured colleague, nothing more. We were working on . . .” Ivanov’s voice faded, and he offered her a weak smile. “A pet project of mine.” The smile dropped away. “Now she is gone, a victim of a failed robbery.”
“Failed?”
“Yes. Lukon’s thieves took nothing of value.”
Talia didn’t understand. If they ran away with nothing, then why the explosion? Why the gun battle? “How can you be sure?”
Ivanov poured himself a drink in the room’s kitchenette. “Because there was nothing of value to steal.” He lifted an empty glass, offering to pour Talia a drink as well, but she refused. Ivanov nodded and went on. “If Mr. Lukon is after weaponry, as you and Mr. Tyler suggest, then his team hit my residence because of the data servers on the second floor.”
“The explosion?” A chill swept through Talia as the image of the blast returned to her.
“Just so. It would seem Mr. Lukon knew I use those servers for my most high-level projects. And he likely emptied the hard drives.” Ivanov downed his drink in one gulp and began pouring another. His smile returned. “What Mr. Lukon does not know, and what he will certainly discover when he tries to view them, is the files he stole are only shells—encryption nodes. My data is routed through them and immediately transferred to a secure, off-site vault.”
Talia studied his microexpressions. True or not, Ivanov was convinced of his story. For now, his weapon designs were safe. “Pavel, what was Lukon after?”
“That, I cannot tell you.”
Can’t or won’t? she wondered. “What about this data vault? Where is it?”
He took another drink, expression turning serious. “I cannot tell that either. Only Bazin and I know its current location. And few, even within Avantec, know of its existence. After tonight, I prefer to keep it this way.”
Talia didn’t press. They said good night in the hall. “Try and get some sleep.” She touched his shoulders—the same place she had grabbed him when she shoved him back into the fire truck—and then she retreated to her room.
Chapter
twenty-
five
AVANTEC COMPOUND
TRANSNISTRIA UNRECOGNIZED TERRITORY
NO AMOUNT OF SHOWERING could banish the smell of smoke from Talia’s skin. And no amount of scrubbing could remove Dr. Visser’s blood from her blouse. As she fought with the stain, dressed in a set of Avantec sweats, Talia felt the scientist’s death resting squarely on her shoulders. When had this assignment made the leap from a rent-a-cop security job to a life-and-death battle over unknown weapon designs? Talia paused in her scrubbing and looked in the mirror, anger tightening her features. Visser’s death was not her fault.
That blame belonged with Brennan.
Barefoot, she padded the twelve or so feet to the next room over, and quietly knocked.
After a long wait, the door opened. Eddie rubbed his eyes. “What’s wrong? Can’t sleep?”
Talia pushed past him and took command of his bed, leaving Eddie the small table in the kitchenette.
He flopped down in a wooden chair. “You know. Because I can sleep. But hey, come on in.”
“This doesn’t make any sense, Eddie.” Talia sat cross-legged at the center of the mattress.
“A pretty girl on my bed and me nodding off ten feet away at the kitchen table?” Eddie rolled his eyes. “No. That makes perfect sense.”
She pursed her lips at him.
“Sorry. Go on.”
“Brennan played this assignment off as small potatoes—a way to get our feet wet. Now we’re dealing with blown-up buildings and murdered scientists.” She crossed her arms. “I want to talk to him. Get him up on SATCOM.”
Eddie picked up a tablet from his table. “You want to see the security video first?”
“Bazin came through?”
“If you can call it that.” Eddie began working the screen. “The files he gave me were ugly, corrupted by the software Lukon’s people uploaded at the gatehouse. I spent the last half hour running enhancement algorithms.” He looked up at her, eyelids drooping. “I had just gotten to sleep when you knocked.”
“I get it. I interrupted your beauty sleep.” Talia held out a hand, curling and uncurling her fingers. “Bring it here, snowflake.”
“You’re the snowflake.” Eddie got up to bring her the tablet, then sat down again, cheeks flushing. “Um . . . Why don’t you come here . . . to the table?”
She had forgotten who she was dealing with. Eddie took chivalry and virtue as seriously as one of Arthur’s knights. Sitting on a bed with a girl made him uncomfortable. Talia bounced herself up and walked over. “Yeah. Okay.”
Two open windows on the tablet showed varying levels of grainy, wavy video. Eddie started the playback in both simultaneously. “These come from the residence. I matched up the times.”
Talia held a finger close to the second window. Amid the flickers and distortion, she could make out two standing racks of black boxes, all with green, blue, and red LEDs flashing at random. “That’s Ivanov’s personal server room.”
“Correct. Second floor of the residence. I was in there yesterday, checking it out with Bazin while your boyfriend gave you a personal tour of his six-thousand-square-foot living quarters.”
“You mean while I was checking Dr. Ivanov’s motion detectors.”
“That’s what I said, right?” Eddie glanced down at his tablet. “Oops. Here they come.”
Three figures moved through the first video window, all in black, making their way down a long hall toward the camera. The largest of them looked up at the camera as they passed. The prickling sensation in Talia’s neck told her it was the same man she had faced in the lab, and he wore the same rigid mask. The eyes were covered by tinted glass.
“We’re looking at the main hallway.” Eddie pointed out the spot on a rough diagram he had drawn on a notepad. �
��They entered through the front door. Brash.”
“Probably let in by our mystery guard. He wasn’t running away. He was on their team.”
“I’ll have Bazin check his rosters.”
“Good call, but I’m betting Lukon is too good to leave that kind of trail behind.”
Seconds after the three intruders passed the hallway camera, two of them appeared in the server room feed, blinking in and out of view like ghosts in the distorted playback. Talia watched for several seconds, then touched Eddie’s arm. “Whoa. Go back.”
He rewound the footage and played it frame by frame. Between the flashes of digital snow, the two figures moved within the server stacks, placing white globs.
“There,” she said, lifting his hand away to keep him from advancing further.
“Those are the bombs.” Eddie shrugged. “Can’t tell much about them from the video. Could be C4, but we can’t be sure.”
“Actually”—Talia used her thumb and forefinger to zoom in on a black box fixed to one of the figure’s belts—“I was looking at that. What would you say it is?”
Eddie held his glasses steady as he looked closer. “Portable hard drive. Ten petabytes, maybe more. The blue LED tells me there’s data on board.” Realization hit, and he let the tablet slap down on the table. “So Lukon got what he came for. We lost.”
“No. We didn’t.” Talia got up and started pacing. “I’ll explain later. For now, get me Brennan.”
BRENNAN HAD NOT GIVEN Talia the full story on Ivanov, Lukon, and Avantec. He couldn’t have. Talia wanted to throttle him, and the cumbersome nature of a secure call into a monster system like the CIA’s didn’t help. Satellite to hard line. Digital to analog. Multiplexing, scrubbing, encryption, decryption. Talia understood the process, but the pregnant pauses it caused before Brennan’s every answer still gave her the feeling he was hiding something.
“Stop,” she said when Brennan tried to explain away the explosives and the shoot-out as pointless violence from an overzealous thief. “Just stop. Lukon is a serious player, former CIA if Tyler is right. The stakes here are higher than a simple rent-a-cop security job. What is Ivanov working on? What type of weapon was I sent here to protect?”
The Gryphon Heist Page 10
