by Sussman, Ben
He smiled. “I know you won’t.”
The task had been more difficult than she anticipated. Although she found several vulnerabilities in her examination of the system, it was Mike’s order to ‘think outside the box’ that plagued her. She had to come up with something wholly new, something that no one, especially the country’s enemies, would ever think of.
At last, it was Mike’s business card that again provided the answer. When she told him the broad strokes of her idea, he was thrilled.
“Flesh it out and put together a presentation,” he said. “I’m going to call a meeting ASAP.”
A few days later, she found herself presenting a PowerPoint slideshow to a group comprised of top Pentagon officials and military commanders. Mike sat in the back of the room, offering silent encouragement. After spending the first twenty minutes detailing weak spots in the current defense, she reached her moment of truth.
“Gentlemen, I can strengthen the current system but I would like to present you with another option. Something ‘outside the box’, if you will.” Mike smiled at her from his chair.
“Get on with it,” grumbled a gray-haired general in the middle of the table.
“Our enemies know where our systems live, in the secure government sector. I propose moving them.” The table murmured in confusion. “To the private sector.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” said one of the Pentagon higher-ups.
“Hiding the system in plain sight.” She flipped to the next slide, which gave visual representations of her speech. “Through a series of shell corporations, we take over seven secure servers. In those, we compartmentalize one component of our missile defense system.”
“This isn’t some goddamned video game we’re talking about,” the same general barked. “It’s the United States of America’s protection. You can’t just outsource that or send it out via the Facebook or Tweet or whatever the hell it is this week.”
“Calm down, Griggs,” one of the Defense Department officials ordered. “Go on,” he said to Emma.
“With all due respect, General Griggs,” she looked to the man glaring at her, “over ninety percent of government communication, much of it top secret, is already sent out over private sector systems.”
“It’s true,” Mike backed her up.
Emma flipped through more slides to illustrate her point. “We’ll use only servers that are protected by the most state-of-the-art security, which is usually ahead of whatever we in government possess. While our enemies are busy looking in one place, we will be hiding in another.”
“And what if the servers all go down?” Griggs quizzed her further.
“The odds of that happening are statistically impossible. All of these servers are backed up by redundant systems, generators…it can’t happen.” She reached for a pile of bound documents at the edge of the table. “I’ve prepared a detailed report showing how this will work.” As the documents were passed around and studied, a hush fell over the conference table. One by one, the men turned to the head of the table, where a slight man in a tailored navy blue suit sat, still studying the screen.
Emma knew that he was the current Secretary of Defense.
“I like it,” the Secretary said at last. “I think she’s right. It’s something they won’t be suspecting.”
“Puts money into the private sector, too,” another official agreed.
“Let’s move forward,” the Secretary continued. “Start with the Western region to test it before we go national.”
“Thank you, sir,” Emma beamed.
“One condition, though, Ms. Hosobuchi.” The Secretary pointed at the grey-haired objector. “You’ll be working together with General Griggs who will be reassigned to the NIA next month. I don’t want you getting too cocky.”
Emma flushed red but kept her mouth shut. If she objected, it could end everything right then and there. Besides, she thought, Mike would still be around to help her.
The Secretary stood to indicate that the meeting was over. As he headed for the door, he suddenly turned. “What do you call it?” he asked Emma.
“Foulkon,” she responded, earning a sea of blank looks. “It’s an ancient Greek defense,” she nervously stammered, “where the soldiers would group their shields together in formation.”
“That won’t do,” the Secretary shook his head. “Call it FALCON. I always liked those birds.”
Emma was about to enter her office when a deep voice interrupted her, “Good evening, ma’am,” Emma looked up to the familiar face of Specialist Jason Worth, a broad-shouldered young man who was still trying to lose the last of his Alabama twang.
“What have you got for me, Worth?” It was customary for Worth to update Emma on the day’s activities since she began her work shift at night. When the sun set in America, its enemies ramped up their efforts and she quickly learned that it was the best time for her to be on duty.
Worth’s eyes cut across the room to an empty conference room. “I need to speak with you privately.”
“What’s wrong?” she asked, sensing it immediately. For nearly the past two years, Worth had been her loyal and dedicated assistant. She knew that he was thankful for the position, having received it after recovering from an injury received in Iraq. His usually jovial face was frowning and Emma noticed that he was unconsciously rubbing his palm on his right thigh, where his scar was. It was a nervous habit that came out when he was under stress.
“We need to talk, ma’am,” was his cryptic response as he gestured again at the conference room. Emma acquiesced and led the way. When the door shut behind them, she crossed her arms and turned to him.
“Well?” she demanded.
“Three of the servers on FALCON are down.”
Emma felt the ground sway beneath her feet. “What? That’s impossible.”
Worth shook his head. “I’m afraid not. I just confirmed it. One, four and five are inoperable.”
“How long until they’re back online?”
“At least twenty-four hours, ma’am. There’s no way we can get to them without attracting too much notice.”
Emma bit her bottom lip. For the first time in many years, she felt vulnerable. She took a deep breath to steady herself, then looked back to Worth.
“Does Griggs know?”
“No, ma’am. I thought I would keep this between you and me for as long as possible.”
“Thank you, Worth.”
“Although,” he added, “I wouldn’t doubt that he already knows something.”
“He’s got spies everywhere,” Emma agreed. Her mind was frantically flipping through possible solutions as she brushed past the young man and headed for the door.
“What are we going to do, ma’am?” Worth asked her quietly.
“We’re going to fix this. As soon as possible.”
“Guess we’d better, or we’ll be out of a job tomorrow, right?”
“Which probably won’t matter,” she said, reaching for the door’s handle. “Because we’ll all be dead.”
Twenty
“Matt. Matt, are you listening?”
He shook his head to clear the cobwebs, turning to see Ashley waiting for him to answer. “I’m thinking,” he answered.
“Think faster. We need to get out of here.” She moved towards the window but Matt yanked her back.
“Stay away from there. They’ll have snipers around itching for a chance to shoot.”
“Right, of course. I should have thought of that with all the sniper training I received in my real estate licensing class.”
“If you want to die, just say so,” Matt snapped. “I thought I was being helpful.”
“Don’t start with me, Weatherly. If you hadn’t-”
John’s voice crackled in Matt’s ear, “If I could interrupt this lover’s quarrel for a moment.”
Matt scowled, turning away for privacy. “What do you want?”
“You need to be moving on and obviously you have a problem. I can start s
hooting anytime. It is likely I will be able to remove most of your obstacles, allowing you a chance to leave.”
“They’re not obstacles, they’re people,” Matt reminded him.
“That is one point of view.”
Matt heard the distinctive clanking of a gun being assembled through the earbud. “I had a commander who used to say that guns only create problems, not solve them,” he said to John.
“Interesting. My commander told me to shoot everyone first and ask questions second.”
“I can figure something out. Just give me some time.”
“Time is the one thing you do not have. We are on a schedule.”
Matt’s mind was spinning, fumbling in the dark for possibilities. There had already been so much death in the past hours. The last thing he desired was to be responsible for more.
Think of this as a sales pitch, he told himself. What would you do now?
Bluff, came the answer in his head.
“How about this?” Matt finally said to John. “You give me five minutes to think of something. If I don’t, we do it your way.”
“You have sixty seconds,” was the terse reply. Silence followed.
Matt sighed in frustration as Ashley appeared again at his shoulder. “What now?” she asked.
“Now, I’ve got less than a minute to come up with a plan.”
Twenty-One
Detective David Larsen watched the Wertheimer Building in tense anticipation. His gut grumbled; not from hunger, but from adrenaline and that ongoing nagging feeling that something did not quite add up in this scenario. He looked to his left, where several SWAT members clad in black huddled and whispered. One of them broke away to approach Larsen.
“Detective, we’re awaiting your green light to enter.”
Larsen nodded without answering. His eyes remained glued to the building.
A shout erupted to his right. “Let me in there! I’ll kill the bastard!” bellowed the gravelly voice of Larry, the lobby guard they had discovered tied up and seething. His arms were restrained by a policeman on either side.
Larsen rolled his eyes. The man had been a bundle of anger since they untied him and cleared the first floor of the building. “Somebody keep him quiet,” Larsen reminded the pack of uniformed officers at his rear. He looked back to the building.
Suddenly, the windows went dark.
“What the hell just happened?” Larsen turned and screamed at the policemen gathered behind him.
Galpin, the young officer who had spoken to him at Weatherly’s house, pulled his ear away from a crackling walkie-talkie. “He’s shut off the building’s lighting system.”
“I can see that, Sherlock. The question is ‘why?’“
Galpin shrugged apologetically. “By the way, sir, you got a message from Dr. Burns at the morgue. He said you were right about Weatherly’s nanny. She did have traces of chloroform in her mouth.”
Larsen chewed on that briefly before his thought process was disturbed by the SWAT leader leaning into his vision. “Give me the go-ahead,” the man requested. “My team can shred this guy in three minutes.”
Damn SWAT guys always want to be the hero. No matter who gets hurt, Larsen thought to himself. He recalled a situation a few years back with this same elite unit that ended with two bank hostages dead as collateral damage. As the detective opened his mouth to remind this guy who was in charge, a voice boomed out of the front door. “Detective Larsen.”
Larsen spun to face the building. “Yes?” he called out to the air.
Galpin was at his shoulder, handing him a cell phone. “He’s using the building’s PA system, sir. We’re tapped into it so he should be able to hear you inside with this.”
“Detective Larsen, this is Matt Weatherly,” the voice from the building called out. “I don’t want this to go any further.”
“That’s good to hear,” Larsen replied into the phone. He heard his words echoing inside.
“I’m going to come down the main elevator and exit through the front door with my hands up in the air. I want to surrender,” Weatherly’s voice said. “I only have one condition.”
“Which is?”
“You won’t shoot me.”
Larsen glanced at the SWAT commander who narrowed his eyes in boiling frustration. Screw him, this is my case.
“You have my word, Mr. Weatherly. Come out peacefully and you won’t be hurt.”
“Thank you. I’m coming down now.”
Tense silence filled the air as Larsen motioned for officers to flank the lobby doors. In the quiet, Larsen’s mind churned.
This is too easy, he thought. Weatherly has gone this far, killing anyone that gets in his way and now he just stops and strolls out into the police’s waiting arms. Like everything else about the night, including his recent discovery that Ana had been drugged, it did not make sense.
“Galpin,” he whispered. “Let me see the schematics for the building.” The officer handed him a stapled sheaf of legal-sized papers.
“The elevator is descending, sir,” the young policeman informed him.
Larsen flipped through the building plans until spotting something. “I wonder…” he mumbled beneath his breath.
“Elevator is on the third floor,” Galpin said with a tinge of excitement in his voice. “Should be here in about thirty seconds.”
A soft ding echoed out from the lobby, indicating the elevator’s arrival. Everyone listened as the doors slid open and footsteps echoed out across the lobby floor tiles. In the shifting gloom, a shape appeared. It was discernible as a man, dressed in collared shirt and slacks with his hands held up high in the air.
“We’ve got him!” Galpin said.
The shadowy form slowly approached the front entrance. As its foot reached the doorframe, there was a shout from Larsen’s left.
“You son of a bitch!”
Larry the lobby guard slammed into Weatherly, roughly throwing him to the ground. He climbed on to his back, ramming punches into Weatherly’s midsection as he writhed in pain on the ground. The SWAT team materialized, half of them pulling off the guard and the other half subduing the prone Weatherly, whose face was planted into the sidewalk. Blood streamed from the man’s ear and on to the cement. He rose up slightly, causing a baton to be rammed into his back.
“Stay down!” one of the team warned menacingly.
“What the hell is going on?” Larsen demanded, running up to the melee and barreling through to its front. “I told you to keep that guy away!” he pointed at the seething security guard.
As Weatherly thrashed on the ground, Larsen noted that he was trying to say something. His voice was muffled by a SWAT member’s hand pressing his head against the ground. Larsen shoved his way towards the suspect.
“Let him up!” he ordered. The grumbling SWAT guy backed off for a moment and Weatherly lifted up his head.
With his first glimpse of the face, Larsen’s eyes went wide with realization. “Damn it!” he yelled in frustration.
The man on the ground was wearing Matt Weatherly’s clothes but was not him.
“Who is he?” Galpin asked.
“He’s the cage guard from upstairs,” Larry sheepishly informed the group.
“Detective Larsen, what do we-” Galpin looked to where the detective had been standing a second ago but found it empty. He caught a glimpse of Larsen rounding the back corner of the building before disappearing completely from view.
Twenty-Two
“Move, Ashley, move!” Matt whispered fiercely as she silently pushed through an exit door.
“Quit rushing me. I’m going as fast as I can.”
Matt knew she was telling the truth but could not stop himself from urging her to hurry. By his calculations, they had maybe thirty seconds to reach the Porsche and his son. As the building’s door snicked shut behind them, he risked a glance back. Nobody followed.
It had been a Hail Mary type of plan but, so far, it appeared to have worked. Just a few minutes ea
rlier, Matt had hurriedly untied their captive security guard while Ashley kept a gun trained on him.
He exchanged clothes with the man and gave him precise instructions. “I have a partner outside this building who will have a gun trained on your head. If you don’t come out of that lobby exactly as I just told you, he’s going to shoot. No hesitation. Do you understand?”
The security guard nodded. “I just want to go home,” he replied in a shaky voice.
Matt looked at the young man with sympathy. How many times had he heard the same phrase uttered by boys under his command? Forcing himself to shake off the pity, he steeled his voice again. “Do like I said and you will.”
Immediately after the guard began his descent, Matt and Ashley raced to the side of the floor and found the entrance to the freight elevator Matt knew was there.
“You think this will work?” Ashley asked as the large car creaked to life and slowly descended.
“They should be focused on the front of the building, not the side,” Matt reasoned.
“And if they’re not?”
“Then I’m wrong and we’re probably dead.”
“How comforting, thank you,” Ashley retorted.
Once outside, they spotted Matt’s car parked in the same spot and found the alley completely empty. They crept towards it and threw open the door.
Luke gasped, eyes swimming with fright.
Matt moved to him. “It’s okay, Luke. Just us.”
Luke clung tightly to his father. “I didn’t know if you were coming back.”
“I always come back. Remember?”
Luke kept his arms clamped around Matt’s ribs. It felt good to hold him. He did not want to let go so he tossed the car keys to Ashley.
If he dies…Matt pushed the thought away.
Ashley keyed the ignition and the engine purred to life.
“Keep it slow out of the alley and then get us the hell out of here,” Matt ordered.
“Yes, Miss Daisy.”
The Porsche stalked forward on hushed wheels. Ashley maneuvered it to the end of the alley and curled around the back of the building. She lifted her foot off the accelerator pedal and prepared to floor it.
