by Draker, Paul
“Of course my math is correct. And this discrepancy isn’t related to your recent side project—a project which, you should notice, I’m respecting our little agreement and not asking Frankenstein about, even though it’s been maxing his CPU usage out at a hundred percent ever since you started.”
She shook her head. “No, whatever’s causing this has been going on for at least six months. As you can see, some of the time Frankenstein’s been drawing far more electrical power than his own CPU-usage records indicate he should be.”
“That’s weird,” I said. And it was.
“It gets even weirder,” Cassie said. “I looked at the time-stamp history of your software changes, Trevor. I wanted to see if you were intermittently checking in some buggy SNMP code that hosed up the tracking of Frankenstein’s actual CPU usage—”
“Nuh-uh,” I said. “I don’t make mistakes like that.”
“—but I found something else, instead.”
Cassie brought up another window. “Here’s an hourly graph of your code check-ins, plotted against the unaccounted-for power usage. By the way, it also shows you spend way too much time here at work.”
I stared at the graph. “But according to this, the weird extra power draw only happens when I’m not here. This has been going on for six months?”
“At least,” she said.
In the past six months, Bennett had been here fourteen times. When I showed Frankenstein to him, he had called it “a necessary element, but only a peripheral one.” I bit down on a hard kernel of anger that threatened to disrupt my train of thought.
“If I were them, here’s how I’d do it,” I said. “To hide my tracks, I’d use the same virtualization that Frankenstein’s operating system is built on. Whenever I wanted to steal cycles for some stealth project without leaving any traces, I’d launch a new virtual machine and cripple its SNMP, which would make it more or less invisible—a ghost in the machine. Then I’d use it as a hypervisor to launch as many additional hidden virtual machines as I needed. And when I finished, I’d roll them all back and delete them, leaving no record that they had ever existed at all.”
“But this doesn’t make sense,” she said. “If someone was using Frankenstein that way, they couldn’t save any of their work. It would all get wiped out, every time the virtual machines were deleted.”
“Forced amnesia,” I said. “Every time they used him, they erased his memory of it. They made him forget what he had done.”
“It sounds cruel when you put that way,” she said. “I don’t blame you for being mad.”
“Frankenstein’s a computer, not a person. You can’t be cruel to a machine; he doesn’t have feelings. No, I’m mad for a different reason: McNulty was doing all this behind my back.”
“Why go to all this trouble instead of just telling you?” Cassie asked.
“Because, whatever they were up to, McNulty knew I’d never go along with it. But he and…” Linebaugh, I almost said, but I didn’t want to upset Cassie. “…whoever else is involved… they must have figured you would.”
She frowned. “No one said anything to me about a second stealth development project, also using our supercomputer. But I can think of only one kind of project that wouldn’t actually require saving your progress.”
“The operational kind,” I said. “These bastards aren’t developing anything, Cassie. They’re using what we’ve developed for them already.”
CHAPTER 47
After Roger dropped us off at my place Cassie went home. She was flying back to California for the weekend, and staying through Monday, to help her old team at LLNL with some transition tasks. She was officially still employed there, but on a six-month sabbatical leave. I figured it was pretty smart of her to leave her options open. It gave her leverage, to make sure Linebaugh delivered on his education-money promises.
I called Hertz in Reno, rented a car, and paid a hundred dollars extra to have a guy drive it the two hours to my place. Then, sitting on the couch, I called Frankenstein. The new processors had already made a difference. His diagnostic accuracy had improved to 86 percent, and he was confident he’d be over 95 percent after the weekend. I figured that Monday afternoon, with Cassie out of the lab, was a safe bet.
That would also give me the weekend to dig into the disturbing discovery we had made: this sneaky, premature operational use of MADRID without my knowledge. I planned to learn exactly what they were doing with my computer, and put a halt to it.
To help my daughter, Frankenstein and I needed every bit of computing power we had.
I called Jen to make sure she and Amy could speak to Dr. Frank on Monday. With those arrangements made, it was time for the conversation I had been dreading.
“Jen…” My throat closed. Swallowing, I forced the words out. “I met someone.”
The silence that followed felt heavy, freighted with the weight of my words. It felt like broken glass, irreversible and unfixable, but still able to cut you deeply when you tried to clean it up.
“You… met someone,” she finally said. Her voice sounded dull and lifeless, but I could hear the storm clouds beneath. I knew that voice. It was Jen’s most upset voice—her voice when I’d well and truly fucked things up.
I closed my eyes.
“Why are you telling me?” she asked. “Isn’t this hard enough already?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I felt guilty not telling you.”
Another long silence.
“Isn’t it enough that we have to live this way? That I have to raise our daughter all alone?”
I had no answer for that. Jen was the one who had divorced me. The silence stretched again.
Then she sighed. “I’m sorry. I’m being unfair to you. I just thought… I thought… I don’t even know what I thought.” Her voice caught. “I’m happy for you.”
She wasn’t, though. I could tell. Not at all.
“I’m happy for you and Dan, too,” I lied.
“Dan?” She laughed—a brittle, pained sound. “Dan’s been a friend when I badly needed one. There’s nothing between us. For the longest time, I even thought he was gay. But then I realized just how terrified he is of you.”
“I never threatened him,” I said. “I never even said a word to him.”
Jen let out another bitter laugh. “You don’t have to say anything. The way you look at people is threatening. Even the way you walk into a room intimidates people. You’re a human pit bull.”
“I can’t help how other people react,” I said. “That’s not something I can control.”
“Don’t give me that bullshit, because I know you far too well. I’m your wife, Trevor. I know you fucking damn well can control it, because I’ve seen how you turn it off at will. But when you do—when, all of a sudden, you go as meek as a mouse—that’s when people really should be terrified of you. You’re like one of those deep-sea monster fishes with the light-bulb thing—always playing possum to lure some poor loudmouthed loser closer, right before you put him in the hospital. They never see it coming, do they?”—her voice cracked into a sob—”Just like I didn’t see this coming. I’m sorry, I’ve gotta go.”
Listening to her, I was having a hard time keeping it together myself.
“Next weekend,” I said. “Bring Amy, and you come stay for a couple of days, too. Please, Jen. Let’s talk.”
“There’s nothing for us to talk about, because there’s no point. I need to go. I’m picking up Amy at school in an hour. I’m sorry, Trevor, I’ve gotta go now.”
CHAPTER 48
A bright white-green flare lit the fuzzy darker green of the MP’s arm and face, then faded out as she lowered her arm. Checking the time on her cell phone. Again. What with McNulty’s murder and all, I would have expected her to be a little more vigilant.
The MP moved off, circling the giant Quonset hut where Roger had given Cassie the tour earlier today. As I followed her progress, her green-lit image was distinct against the rounded steel side of the
warehouse.
With the 4X magnification of my D-740 Gen3 night-vision riflescope, I could make out her bored expression quite clearly. Keeping the crosshair reticle centered on her head, I tracked her around to the front again, where three more MPs joined her. After a brief four-way conversation, they all took up their watchful station at the front of the darkened warehouse.
After spending three hours hunched inside my dark, cramped hiding spot, I almost sighed with relief. I knew I wouldn’t have to wait much longer now.
An electric golf cart rolled silently along the paved lane between the buildings, carrying four Navy guardsmen with AR-15 rifles slung over their shoulders. The cart stopped in front of the hangar-size double doors on the end of the building. I lowered the optic and rubbed my eyelids, blinking in the sudden darkness, then raised the night-vision riflescope to my eye again.
Of course, I didn’t have the scope actually mounted on the rail of my own AR-15 right now. I wasn’t some sort of lunatic, after all.
My rifle was back in the garage at home, locked securely inside my gun safe. But the detached scope was the only piece of night-vision equipment I owned, and I was now using it to monitor the activity around the warehouse. Despite the graininess of the pixelated image, it let me see plainly what was going on.
One of the Navy guys unlocked the big double doors, then waved another guy over to help him push, and together they slid the doors wide open. From my place of concealment, I couldn’t see what was inside. Then three of the Navy guys lined up on each side of the doors, facing outward, rifles held at port arms, looking like an honor guard.
I heard the train before I saw it, because it was running without lights.
It came from the north, where the tracks entered the Navy base through a wide gate topped with razor wire. The gate was always closed during the daytime, and usually unmanned, but someone must have opened it minutes ago to let the train through. The train’s arrival didn’t surprise me at all, though.
I had been expecting it.
Roger had mentioned getting more ammunition for his new toy tonight. It was obvious to me that the GAU got delivered last night, because Roger wouldn’t have been able to keep his mouth shut about it if he’d gotten it any sooner. And I knew it had come in by rail, because its empty delivery crate was still sitting in the train-depot warehouse this afternoon for Cassie and me to hide in while Roger smuggled us into our building.
He had simply been retracing his steps from this morning, when he had no doubt carted the gun over to be installed in his lab.
Later this afternoon, the same crate had served to smuggle Cassie and me back out of our building. After tossing Roger’s key-card holder back to him, I had made a big stink about needing to get home right away. My show of impatience had forced him to abandon the empty crate next to a stack of pallets a hundred yards from the warehouse instead of taking it back inside.
Now, six hours later, I was inside the crate once again, watching the train through a three-quarter-inch gap that split the corner seam.
Roger’s GAU-8 Gatling was an incidental delivery, I knew. The midnight trains served another purpose—one hidden even from most of the Top-Secret/SCI-cleared personnel in this half-decommissioned Navy base. Tonight, I would find out what that purpose was, but I had a growing suspicion that I knew already.
The train was rolling slowly—two or three miles an hour—as it approached the open doors of the hangarlike warehouse. The individual cars were short—no longer than fifteen feet. Each flatbed railcar supported a round-roofed gray compartment that looked like a horse trailer, complete with air slots on the sides. A raised section ran along the centerline of each compartment’s roof, with a row of narrow mesh-covered windows along its length.
A couple of dozen figures wearing black fatigues spilled from the sides of the railcars and started walking alongside the slow-moving train, looking alert and ready. Ensuring that the perimeter was clear, they flanked the train as it rolled into the warehouse building. They were armed with AR-15s and sidearms—SIG 229 or 239, I couldn’t tell which. No visible insignia adorned their featureless black SWAT-style outfits.
About half the train’s black-garbed escort also wore dark, blocky visors over their eyes—night-vision goggles. Easing a few inches deeper into the crate, I shifted my feet and got comfortable, knowing I had no choice now but to wait them out.
Another electric golf cart slid past my hiding place, and I tensed. Then I smiled a grim smile. The single passenger accompanying the Navy driver wore no uniform.
I watched Ronald Bennett, from Homeland Security, climb out of the golf cart, where he was met by one of the black-clad train guards—almost certainly their leader, judging from the way the others deferred to him. He greeted Bennett with a handshake and held out a clipboard. Bennett took it, tapping it with a pen while he read, then signed something and handed it back.
With a businesslike follow-me gesture, the black-clad leader pivoted on his booted feet and strode inside the warehouse. Bennett followed a pace or two behind him. A moment later, the last car of the train passed through the doors, and the Navy guys slid them shut, hiding the train from view.
According to my count, sixteen of the short railcars were now inside the warehouse, no doubt being unloaded. I thought about the ventilated horse-trailer compartments I had seen, each accompanied by a pair of black-fatigued guards, and the ultrasecure two-story building hidden inside the warehouse.
Fucking McNulty. How long had this been going on behind my back?
• • •
Forty-five minutes later, the hangar doors reopened and the train emerged, accompanied by its black-clad military escort. The horse-trailer shapes still sat atop the flatbed cars, but I could tell they were empty now, because the guards in black walked with the relaxed gait of off-shift personnel. Instead of splitting up two to a car, the way they had arrived, they all grabbed the sides of the last car and pulled themselves aboard. As the train slid from sight behind a building, I could see them filing through a door in the last compartment. Their body language was free of tension, as if the hard part of their shift was behind them and they were already looking ahead to some upcoming R & R.
Bennett emerged with the Navy folks. They slid the hangar doors shut again, and all of them climbed into the two golf carts and drove away. Minutes afterward, three of the MPs departed, too, leaving the original lone sentry to continue her circling of the building.
Timing her circuit, I calculated I had a three-minute window to work with: plenty of time. When she disappeared around the corner, I kicked the top of the crate loose, climbed out, and replaced it. Then, walking fast but confidently, like I belonged there, I crossed to the side door we had entered earlier in the day. I pulled out Roger’s key card and couldn’t help grinning.
If Roger had bothered to check inside his key-card holder when I gave it back to him, he would have noticed that it now held a gray engineering card instead of his own white one. He would discover the substitution sooner or later, but he would never say anything to anyone about it—his earlier role in smuggling us onto the base meant that he now had to keep his mouth shut.
I used Roger’s white key card to open the door.
Slipping inside, I pulled my hard hat low on my forehead and reclipped the key-card holder to my engineering coveralls. Thirty seconds later, I stood in front of the small internal building’s steel doors. Keeping my face turned away from the camera above, I inspected the multimode biometric lock mechanism and blew out a breath. There was zero chance I could defeat the lock, with its integrated retinal scanner and palm-print reader. It was cutting-edge stuff, more sophisticated than anything I had seen used anywhere else at Pyramid Lake.
Frustrated, I paced over to the black-painted steel lockers that ran alongside the concrete structure. They weren’t locked. I pulled one open. Staring at the row of orange jumpsuits draped on hangars inside, I saw all the confirmation I needed.
“A necessary element, but only a per
ipheral one,” I muttered, recalling Bennett’s words. “Well, fuck me.”
Gritting my teeth, I slammed the locker shut, thankful that Cassie hadn’t seen the one-piece orange jumpsuits. Because now I knew for sure why Bennett was here. What McNulty had been concealing from me for months. What dear old Uncle Jim had been hiding from his niece—from this caring, selfless, wonderful woman who was practically his daughter. I knew why that sneaky fuck Linebaugh had so eagerly agreed to all of Cassie’s education-money demands: to make sure she couldn’t walk away from this.
You’d think they would have at least changed the color.
Ten years ago, the jumpsuits were an image the media had grabbed on to. The bright orange was eye-catching in the pictures that had galvanized so much public outrage. Pictures taken at another Navy Base—that one also on foreign soil.
Because foreign soil was the only place where this could legally be done. And despite the fact that Pyramid Lake lay within U.S. borders, it was not really part of the State of Nevada at all. No, it was the territory of a sovereign government, one that had long-standing treaties with the United States. A sovereign government that was no doubt receiving a great deal of money right now to let its land be used for something the U.S. Government couldn’t legally do within the jurisdiction of its own States: the detainment and interrogation of suspected terrorists.
Machine-aided interrogation now, with Frankenstein’s help.
“Guantánamo motherfucking Bay,” I said to the empty warehouse. “Shit, Jim, I guess you and Linebaugh had to come up with something, didn’t you, since you’re stuck here in Bumfuck, Nevada, where Indian gaming doesn’t bring much to the table. But how could you do this to your own fucking niece?”
