Point of Contact

by Mike Maden

  Every parking space was full. That made sense. The hotel, casino, restaurants, and other amusements were packed shoulder to shoulder with tourists and locals as they had passed through upstairs, but down in the garage no one else was around. Lian’s gait was steady but a little slower than before, so Jack slowed down as well. Their footfalls echoed on the concrete. Making their way to the farthest row, Jack noticed that the security camera on the concrete pillar was disabled by a disconnected cable and the overhead light nearest the Range Rover was smashed.

  “Wait here,” Jack said.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing.” Jack scanned his surroundings again. Didn’t see anything. He pushed the alarm disable on the key fob. The Range Rover beeped twice and the interior lights came on.

  Just enough light to shine on the muscled mai-tai punk leaning against the SUV. He grinned.

  “Hallo, mate.”

  Jack noted the thick Aussie accent. “You looking for a ride home, bud? I can call you a cab.”

  The Australian straightened up to his full height. He was even bigger than Jack remembered, at least an inch taller and twenty lean pounds heavier than he was.

  “You see? I come down here for a friendly little chitchat and all I get is more rudeness.” He pointed a thick finger at Lian. “Her I get—she’s a stuck-up little bitch. I know the type, believe me. And you? A Yank, and rude little wanker you are, too. Manners is what you need.”

  Lian shouted from behind, “Get your hands off me!”

  Jack whipped around just in time to see Lian struggling in the grip of another thug from the bar, his ropy arms wrapped around her from behind. He was smiling and whispering something in her ear that made her growl and struggle even harder.

  Jack started to move in her direction when he caught sight of the shadow of the third man from the bar circling around behind him.

  Jack turned back and faced the ringleader, older and larger than the others. He recognized the tat on the big man’s cabled forearm. The sword Excalibur, with flames. SASR—Special Air Service Regiment.

  Australian Special Forces.

  Jack lifted his hands chest high, palms out, a surrendering gesture. “Dude, look, I don’t want any trouble.”

  “Well, mate, you found it just the same.”

  The man who was circling in the shadows stepped out. He stood to Jack’s left, four feet away.

  The tattooed leader darkened. “I just wanted to buy the lady a drink—”

  Jack stepped cautiously toward him, just three feet away now, his eye on the Rover’s interior light.

  “I know. I’m sorry. I was in a bad mood—”

  “And flashing your filthy money around.”

  Jack stepped his right foot forward, closing the distance, and reached with his left hand for his left rear pocket. “Money? Sure. No problem.”

  Just then, the interior light snapped off.

  Just what Jack was waiting for.

  He lunged forward and threw a sharp jab at the big man’s throat with his open left hand. The man tried to scream but gurgled instead, clutching at his windpipe.

  Jack stepped backward and pivoted left, turning forty-five degrees, using the momentum of his twisting torso to help propel his exploding right fist straight into the nose of the other man charging directly at him. Jack felt breaking cartilage and hot blood gushing onto his knuckles as the man’s head snapped back with a crack. He crashed to the ground at Jack’s feet, splayed out in front of the gasping thug, now on his knees.

  “FUCK!” echoed off the concrete behind Jack. He spun around in time to see the last Aussie doubled over in front of Lian, clutching his balls. Lian launched a kick, the toe of her shoe slamming underneath his jaw. Jack winced at the crack of his breaking teeth. The man flew backward, arms high in the air, knocked out cold before he thudded into the concrete in a heap.

  Jack ran over to her. “You okay?”

  “Caught me by surprise.” She turned to the downed man. “Bastard!” She spat at him, started to lunge at the body, but Jack seized her by the arm.

  “You already nailed him. No point in killing him.”

  She whipped around at Jack, her eyes blazing. “Let go of me!”

  Jack let go, lifting his hands in mock surrender. “You win.”

  She ran a hand through her long hair to get it out of her face. The gesture calmed her down. “It’s those assholes from the bar.”

  “Really?”

  She shot him a look.

  “Sorry.” Jack glanced around the garage. Still nobody around.

  Lian picked up her purse, dropped at her feet when she was grabbed from behind. “I’m calling the police.”

  “I wish you wouldn’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “I think they’ve suffered enough—”

  “JACK!” Lian screamed.

  The tatted thug was rushing straight at Jack, his big hands open, grasping for his waist.

  Jack stepped aside just in time and threw a punch at his temple as the man was sailing by. It landed. The force of the perfectly timed blow crashed the man’s brain against his thick skull, knocking him out instantly. The Aussie tumbled to the concrete, smacking it like wet meat.

  Jack rubbed his knuckles and turned to Lian. “Like I said, they’ve suffered enough, and I’d like to avoid any publicity. So would you, I’d think.” He pointed out the disabled security camera. “Nobody upstairs saw anything.” He nodded at the downed thugs. “And they sure as hell won’t file a complaint.”

  “Maybe you’re right.” She looked at the two bodies Jack had put on the ground. “Not bad for a financial analyst.”

  “Let’s hurry, before someone shows up. Grab any ID you can find.” Jack pulled out the big man’s wallet and shoved it into his pocket before seizing him by the boots and dragging his unconscious body between two parked cars, careful to get him out of the way of any traffic. Lian pilfered the smallest man’s wallet, then grabbed his shoes and did the same while Jack hauled the last man up by the lapels and propped him against a pillar.

  “Let’s get out of here before they wake up,” Jack said.

  “Give me my keys. I’m driving.”

  Jack tossed her the keys. “You sure?”

  “Trust me, I’m sober now.”

  “I’d hate to see you in a fight when you weren’t drunk.”

  She fought a smile as they climbed into the Range Rover. She fired up the engine and pulled away, careful not to draw any attention to their departure.

  —

  Lian sped east along the East Coast Parkway, heading back to Jack’s place. Jack kept checking his side-view mirror, scanning for any cars that might be following. He noticed Lian doing the same in the rearview mirror. Confident they weren’t being followed, Jack pulled out the big man’s wallet and rifled through it.

  “According to his Australian driver’s license, your boyfriend with the drinking problem is named Archy Hamilton, from Melbourne.” He didn’t find any military identification. Maybe he was just a wannabe special operator or had a relative in the service.

  Lian hit her turn signal and merged into the next lane. “I have a good contact in the SPF. I’ll run all three IDs through her first thing tomorrow.”

  “Any ideas?”

  Lian shook her head. “I’d say they were just three punks looking for trouble.”

  “I guess they found it.” Jack wasn’t so sure. Lian caught the tone in his voice.

  “You think we were being set up?”

  “Did you see the man’s tattoo? On his forearm?”

  “Yes. It looked familiar.”

  I bet it did, Jack said to himself. Especially if you’re the one that hired him. He checked the side-view mirror again. “Special Air Service Regiment. Australian Special Forces. Some seriously badass operators.”
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  “What would an Australian operator be doing here?”

  “Oh, I dunno. An operation?”

  Lian’s face masked with confusion. “You’re kidding, right?”

  A few drops of rain hit the windshield. The automatic wipers turned on.

  “Just have your friend look into it. Maybe they can get access to his service records, if he has any.” Jack knew that if the man really was black ops, his identity would be hidden from the prying eyes of a metropolitan police inquiry.

  “You know, not every ex-serviceman is a hero. Sometimes bad apples fall into the barrel. I’d bet you another mai tai that if he is ex-service, he has a criminal record.”

  “Yeah, maybe you’re right.” Jack dropped the subject for now. If Lian or her brother were behind this, she’d cover it up.

  He stole another quick glance at her. The shadows of the raindrops on the windshield marred her otherwise perfect face.

  24

  Jack dashed in the front door of their guesthouse, caught in a sudden downpour. He shook himself off just as Paul approached in his slippers and pajamas with a bowl of cereal in his hand. He wiped away a drop of milk perched on his lower lip.

  “Have fun?”

  “Fun? Yeah. I guess so.”

  Paul frowned when he saw Jack’s red, swollen knuckles. “Anything I need to know about?”

  “No.”

  “Seriously. You okay?”

  “I’m fine.” Jack pushed past him. “I just need a shower. And a drink.”

  Paul wondered what the hell Jack was up to. And why was he being such an ass? He crammed another spoonful of cereal into his mouth.

  Must have had a bad night.

  If he had to guess, Paul thought it looked like Jack had been in a fight. But Jack was a financial analyst, not a street brawler. If he’d been in a fight, why wouldn’t he just tell him that?

  Paul stood chewing his cereal in the foyer, thinking. He wiped away another drop of milk dribbling down his chin, running through the possibilities.

  Booze? Drugs? Brain chemistry?

  Maybe.

  Or maybe Jack wasn’t the man Paul thought he was, after all.

  —

  Paul was nervous. He wanted a drink. Needed one, in fact. But he needed his mind clear more.

  After thinking about the Dalfan security protocols all day, Paul finally figured out a way to work around them. Like most brilliant solutions to complex problems, it was frighteningly simple. It was also kind of crazy.

  His plan had only a few moving parts: Download the CIA program onto his laptop, then copy the CIA program from his laptop to a Dalfan encrypted USB. Once it was infected, Paul would then install the Dalfan USB into a Dalfan desktop and, thirty seconds later, his mission would be completed.

  Tonight was the easy piece. All he had to do was download the CIA program from Rhodes’s USB drive to his laptop. Easy.

  Unless it didn’t work.

  Relax, he told himself. One step at a time.

  He double-checked the lock on his bedroom door to make sure Jack wouldn’t suddenly walk in. No point in getting him tangled up in this mess.

  He then sat on his bed and opened his laptop in order to load Rhodes’s CIA drive onto his computer. But what did Rhodes say? It was an automatically executing file. But it would execute only after he used his thumbprint to unlock it and typed in his verification code. Once he did those two things, the program would automatically launch.

  That was a problem. Paul didn’t want the program to launch automatically—otherwise, he might not be able to copy it.

  But Paul figured out a crack in the system. He inserted the CIA drive into the USB port, then pressed his thumb against the thumb pad. The drive recognized Paul’s print. It unlocked, as expected, flashing red, then blue.

  The laptop screen then flashed a dialogue box, asking Paul for his security code, which would initiate the program launch. Paul ignored it. Instead, he opened up the USB drive icon on his laptop and examined its contents.

  Paul saw a single unnamed file folder. The file didn’t appear to be doing anything. So far, so good.

  He swallowed hard, then dragged the unnamed CIA file onto his laptop. A copy progress bar opened up. It was going to take about two minutes to transfer. Paul drummed his fingers nervously, waiting for the transfer to complete . . .

  . . . waiting for an explosion.

  It never came.

  The progress bar completed, and the CIA file was successfully copied to his machine’s desktop. He ejected the CIA drive and the passcode dialogue box disappeared.

  Paul stared at the copied file on his screen. It didn’t seem to be doing anything.

  What was really interesting to Paul was that his MilSpec-grade antivirus software wasn’t picking up anything. In theory, the CIA program hadn’t launched inside his computer because he hadn’t entered his passcode.

  Paul’s heart raced as panic set in. How could he enter his passcode and launch it on the Dalfan machine without the CIA drive inserted? Maybe the CIA program wouldn’t run on the Dalfan· machine without it.

  A second later, a new passcode dialogue box generated by the copied CIA file opened. The copied CIA file was now ready to launch. That meant a copy would run from the Dalfan machine without the CIA drive inserted. Paul sighed, relieved.

  Tomorrow he would copy the CIA file from his laptop to an encrypted Dalfan USB drive, then install the infected drive onto a Dalfan desktop. The copied CIA program would ask him again for his verification code, and once he entered it, the program would launch and his mission would be complete.

  At least, that was the plan.

  There was still one problem. He needed to acquire an encrypted Dalfan USB.

  But how?

  25

  The next morning, Jack did two of his three S’s in quick succession and brushed his teeth. He pulled on a pair of chinos and a blue oxford shirt with a pair of his favorite urban hiking boots—super-comfortable and just dressy enough for the business-casual atmosphere at Dalfan. They were also waterproof. There was the strong possibility of thundershowers again today.

  He’d promised Paul he’d be down in twenty minutes, and his watch told him it had already been twenty-two. But Jack needed to do one more thing before heading out the door.

  He pulled out his iPhone and tapped on his Photo Trap app—the best ninety-nine cents he had ever spent, as far as he was concerned—and then went around to his closet, his clothes drawers, and his bathroom sink. At each stop, he pressed the + button to record the date and time of an initial photo. Later this evening he would come back and stand in the same position and take secondary photos and then compare them on the app by hitting the manual flip function, which switched back and forth between the comparison photos to see if anything had been moved.

  It was standard operating procedure at The Campus to establish personal security checks when on assignment—foreign hotel rooms were notorious surveillance traps for any visitor, especially Westerners. But beyond electronic devices, it wasn’t uncommon for hotel security—or, worse, national security personnel—to enter one’s private hotel room and search around in person for contraband.

  Of course, this wasn’t a Campus assignment, but the habits drilled into him by Ding and the others were hard to break, including this one. For an extra thirty seconds of effort, the Photo Trap icon would scratch an itch that would otherwise drive Jack crazy, and would keep Ding’s nagging voice silent. Besides, Clark told him to always trust his gut, and Jack’s gut was telling him to stay vigilant.

  Until recently, the way to find out if someone had broken in and searched around was to place a single piece of lint on a drawer lip or leave a zipper slider at an exact location on a piece of luggage, but most skilled surveillance people knew these kinds of tricks because they employed them themselves, and that meant they knew ho
w to spot and defeat them. The great thing about the Photo Trap application was that it took a picture of everything, so that if anything was even slightly out of place, Jack would know someone had been in his room and what they had touched.

  Not that he had anything to hide. But he hated the idea that someone would have been snooping around and he wouldn’t know about it.

  He thought about telling Paul to do the same thing, but he didn’t want to give Paul any reason whatsoever for him to suspect that Jack was anything but a financial analyst for Hendley Associates. Finance guys on business trips didn’t do OPSEC. The less Paul knew about him, the better.

  —

  Paul and Jack arrived at the Dalfan building and split up. Paul was met by Bai, and the two of them headed for his office.

  Jack waited for Lian, who arrived a few moments later, clearly off her game. She greeted him formally, then escorted him to the third floor for his appointment with Dr. Singh. She didn’t say a word on the elevator ride up. Neither did Jack.

  Dr. Singh greeted Jack and Lian at the security desk and directed them toward the floor. He was taller than Jack but thinner, with a lean, handsome face that was heavily bearded. His turban was brilliantly white and perfectly wrapped. Dark, smiling eyes were framed by square glasses with stylish clear acetate frames.

  “Are you familiar with our Steady Stare program, Mr. Ryan?”

  “Only what I read from your materials. It’s a twenty-four-hour-a-day drone-based surveillance program for civilian applications.”

  “That’s correct. But when you put it that way, it sounds rather boring, doesn’t it? What I want to show you today is how we put it all together, and what it really means for the bottom line for our customers and for Dalfan.”

  “Can’t wait.”

  “Good. Please, follow me.”

  The Steady Stare floor was organized into two main divisions, much like the one downstairs. The first division was composed of offices and computer workstations.