Thermals

by Evan Currie

  Anselm surveyed the receptionists office through the clear lettering left in the etched and frosted glass, and watched as the somewhat overweight figure inside produced a lock pick gun from his pocket and went to work on the large doors that guarded Jacob’s inner sanctum.

  Most definitely not Tower personnel.

  Thief?

  Possible. Though Anselm was having a hard time imagining what might be worth stealing in the entirety of the Tower Project. There were no valuable materials being produced or mined here. It was an agricultural and energy producing plant, neither of which really fit into a satchel to be flung over one’s shoulder for a quick getaway.

  A Disgruntled associate was a distinct possibility, Jacob had never been known as a forgiving man, which was why his association with many of his fringe friends was known to be short and abrupt.

  Another possibility was that another Agency was now involved, though Anselm judged that to be an unlikely chance. The CIA wouldn’t have sent an overweight and obviously near retirement agent for this sort of wetwork, and most other agencies with an interest in this matter would probably coordinate with Interpol.

  In any case, he had good equipment, Anselm noted when the lock to the door gave way in less than a minute and the man let himself into the inner office.

  Anselm frowned, pulling out his Portable for a quick glance at the Project schematics.

  The Office was a dead end.

  Great.

  That meant that he’d have to find a place to wait for the man to come out, somewhere to observe without being seen.

  Anselm slipped into the receptionists office, and made his way silently over to the unobtrusive door in the side wall, letting himself into what appeared to be a combination coat room and secretarial bathroom.

  Perfect.

  Now he just had to wait.

  Chapter 6

  Bingo.

  Joshua Corvine smiled to himself as the lock gave way on the door at the back of the office and it opened up on a curving stairwell that sank down into the earth below. He let himself in, and then closed it behind him before beginning down the long run of stairs, moving quietly as he listened for any action below.

  The lights in the stairwell were well above the power saving emergency lighting that currently lit the ‘official’ part of the facility, and Corvine smiled slightly when he came to the bottom and saw that it was much the same there as well.

  Apparently they weren’t concerned with saving power so much as saving face, he supposed.

  The halls below the director’s office were empty, though, and he couldn’t find any cameras, either visually or through a WAN search with his portable, so the CIA Agent took his chances and quickly moved out into the corridors, looking for…something.

  Anything, if the truth were known. Curiosity had always been one of Joshua’s overriding sins, and one that had gotten him into a great deal of trouble in his youth. It had also gotten him commendations and a nice ‘cushy’ posting to Sydney to run out his last years of service.

  He’d take the good with the bad.

  The first thing he noticed about the corridors was that they were rough, unfinished, unlike the glassy smooth surfaces above. In fact he was almost certain that he was looking at the raw stone, with no finishing done at all, and probably not a particularly professional job of it either.

  Which, thinking about it, suddenly concerned Joshua a great deal more than he’d have thought.

  Somewhere above him there was a one kilometer high tower of concrete and twenty-five thousand acres of greenhouse, and the idea that some crazy lunatic had been tunneling under all of that on their own was a damned frightening thought.

  Especially since he was currently under all of it.

  He shuddered, but pushed the thought aside. The tower hadn’t collapsed yet, so either the morons who came up with this plan were at least mildly competent or, perhaps more likely, were simply lucky.

  Whichever it was, he doubted it would give out on them just because one Joshua Corvine had paid a visit. Even as a CIA agent, he wasn’t quite so self-obsessed that he thought the place had been waiting just to collapse around his ears.

  The rough cut of the stone ended about twenty meters along, smoothing out at a section where it was obvious that someone had laid concrete and taken some care, leading him to a pair of sealed security doors that stood alone in the glaringly lit corridor.

  He looked up in the corners, trying to convince himself that the evidence was right and the cameras he thought should be there really weren’t, but in the end it didn’t matter. He fished his Portable out again, and scanned for any RIF tags within range.

  The ‘Contactless Chips’ that were put into widespread use over the last fifteen years were small, unpowered, radio transmitters with tiny EEPROM chips embedded in the circuits. When the radio signal from his Portable flashed out, somewhat more powerful than a standard RIF Scanner, the tiny transmitters used that broadcast power to send a brief message pulse with the contents of the EEPROM.

  In a few seconds, Joshua had a list of every RIF tagged item within thirty feet and was carefully reviewing the data.

  Lab supplies, computers, two industrial freezers, a microwave oven, a fridge, and various other items, but no security equipment aside from the electronic lock on the doors themselves. Joshua shrugged, shaking his head slightly, and ran the odds through his mind.

  Lots of companies sold RIF ‘burners’, devices that sent an overpowered surge through the RIF tags and burned them out so that they couldn’t be used in precisely the way the CIA agent was doing just then, but if a burner had been used in the room it would have nailed all the tags.

  On the other hand, if those tags had been brought in after, then there could be some items in the room that weren’t responding to his Portable’s query.

  Only one way to find out, Joshua decided.

  He brought up the Electronic lock picking program and quickly ran through the sequence to key open the big security doors.

  *****

  Damn it, where was that guy?

  Anselm Gunnar grimaced, looking out over the secretary’s office, and then checked his timepiece.

  Twenty minutes.

  Twenty minutes with no sound. Twenty minutes with no sign, in fact.

  He was certain that the man had gone into the Director’s office, he’d seen him let himself in. So where was he?

  A thief would have found what he was after by now, Anselm decided. Anyone who could penetrate this deeply would have a target in mind, and would know how to get it. Getting in and out quickly and quietly was the only way to make a ‘living’ as a thief.

  So the man was something else.

  Perhaps he was doing much the same as Anselm himself had done earlier? Checking the Director’s records, maybe looking for something on the Director’s own computer?

  Unlikely.

  Few people kept any data on a local computer now, the security of a networked drive was better for almost everything one might need to save.

  Almost every legitimate thing, Anselm corrected himself.

  For the truly secret or the truly incriminating, which basically amounted to the same thing, having a secure hard disk without network access was still the best one could hope for in electronic security.

  Director Jacob wouldn’t be stupid enough to leave anything incriminating on his office computer though, would he?

  Anselm slipped out of the bathroom, creeping over to the big office doors.

  He had to know.

  *****

  It was a lab, alright.

  Joshua frowned, moving through the two long stainless steel tables, and took a seat by the computer at the far side of the room.

  Now he had to find out just what kind of lab.

  He set his portable down on the desk, propping it up on the little flip out stand that was embedded in the back of the device, and had it access the net and send an inventory of the Lab’s RIF Chips to the computers at Langley. The
y’d process the results and send him back a list of probable uses for the entire list within a couple minutes.

  In the meantime, he’d have a look at the computer himself.

  The security system was off the shelf, and easy to break. He had a list of back doors in use by major software companies, and keyed his way through the password screen in less than five seconds. After that, things became a little involved.

  Like most computers, and computer users, whoever had been using this one hadn’t bothered to really organize his data. That meant that coming at the system cold like Joshua was wasn’t really the easiest thing to do.

  Sometimes the best security could be as simple as not putting anything where one might reasonably expect to find it. Especially when one had to dig through several tera-bytes of information.

  Joshua could have keyed in a search, if he had the slightest clue of what he was looking for, but he didn’t so he clicked open the ‘Documents’ directory and started there.

  He was skimming through a treatise on genetic engineering when his Portable finished its transfer and gave him a list of likely uses for the equipment around him.

  Joshua blinked when he saw the first item on the list.

  Level Three Biological Containment Facility.

  Oh, that can’t be good.

  Don’t panic, Joshua caught himself, the sudden lurch in his stomach twisting him hard in place.

  He knew more than a little about Bio-warfare, more than most people to be sure, and he knew that the odds were overwhelmingly against any kind of truly effective bio-weapon on site. To be sure, a Level Three Vector wasn’t something he wanted to be playing around with, but generally speaking biological vectors made poor weapons.

  Unless you’re a terrorist.

  Joshua shook his head, pushing the thought back, and focused on the lab around him. One thing he knew, without doubt, was that it was NOT a proper level three environment. If it had been, he wouldn’t have been able to get this far without recognizing the signs.

  In fact, the majority of the precautions appeared to be Level One, with a few Level Two precautions that he could pick out.

  The single Level Three containment precaution he could see was a ventilated hood that had access ports built so that a man could insert his hands into thick rubberized gauntlets to manipulate a secured sample within.

  All of which told Corvine that whatever they were using the lab for, it was almost certain that they were not operating with appropriate precautions, which meant that he was in over his head, and it was just getting deeper and deeper.

  He picked his Portable off the desk and keyed in a Ping command, hitting the CPU of the computer in front of him with a query command. The built in Wi-Fi circuits activated under his governmental codes and he requested a total Drive Dump to his portable.

  It was time to get out of here and hunker down somewhere he could wait for the cavalry to come charging over the ridge.

  “Hey!”

  Corvine jerked around, staring at the man who’d appeared behind him, a man who was looking at him with about as much surprise as Joshua imagined he himself had on his face.

  “Who are you!?”

  Corvine’s free hand dropped to his belt, where his Nine Millimeter Long was supposed to be resting comfortably, but it wasn’t there and he cursed himself for leaving it behind. He hadn’t really imagined that he’d penetrate quite this deeply into a facility quite this secure, and being able to play act the ‘lost tourist’ had seemed like a good idea at the time.

  Now, though, he doubted it would fly.

  The man took a step toward him, uncertainty in his face, as if he wasn’t actually certain that Corvine was actually out of place.

  Joshua’s mind raced, running the numbers on automatic while he tried to think of a way to capitalize on that uncertainty, but before he could the man glanced down at the computer, then over at Corvine’s Portable, and seemed to come to a conclusion.

  He started back a step, his hand coming down to a pistol that rested openly on his belt.

  Corvine stopped thinking and moved.

  Twenty years and forty three pounds earlier, Corvine had been rated Expert in various armed and unarmed styles, and had even taught courses in Close Quarters Hand to Hand at Quantico while on loan to the FBI and Homeland Security for a couple years. Since then he’d gone soft though, and he knew it.

  That’s why he didn’t screw around with the guy as the man’s hand came down to the gun on his hip. Joshua stepped in faster than his physical size would seem imply he was capable of, and he hit the man hard in the sternum with a low jab that flowed out from his shoulder.

  He man gasped, the air forced out of his lungs, but tried to grab a hold of Joshua’s arm and throat as he started to keel over.

  Joshua’s hand snapped up, grabbing his wrist and pulling it away from his throat, twisting hard back and pulling the man up from where he was bending over. The pain in his arm caused him to hiss, but Joshua didn’t let up. He snapped it back, and the arm made a popping sound as the man’s shoulder gave way before he did.

  The man tried to scream, the pain from the shoulder overriding everything else, but he still had no air in his lungs to power the cry. Joshua kept pushing the arm back until the man’s feet came out from under him and he fall back. The CIA man followed his foe to the ground, grinding his entire two hundred and forty eight pound frame into the shocked figure as they both slapped to the ground with a meaty thud and sickening crack.

  The entire fight took less than eight seconds.

  *****

  The stairwell took him by surprise.

  Anselm Gunnar double checked the plans he’d gotten from Interpol, checking the Tower Facility for a fifth time, and came up with the same results. That damned stairwell wasn’t supposed to be there.

  The Director’s office was supposed to be a ‘Cul de sac’, so to speak.

  It wasn’t.

  That meant that a whole lot of things had just gone right out the proverbial window.

  Anselm looked down the harshly lit stairwell, hesitating. He wanted to know what was down there, Good God did he want to know, but he wasn’t convinced that it was a remotely wise idea to find out just now.

  His portable didn’t detect and security WAN transmissions, which made him suspicious right off the mark, plus he knew that there was the unknown individual down there ahead of him, doing God alone knew what.

  Counter balancing that, though, was the very real fact that there was every chance that he might find the final piece to the entire puzzle down there.

  To know what Abdallah Amir was doing here in Tower City, Why he’d apparently drawn in a number of other known and wanted terrorists from a variety of ‘movements’ here, and who else was involved.

  All questions that burned in the Interpol Agent, and ones he desperately needed the answers to.

  Softly, and slowly at first, Anselm let himself down the stairwell, always listening ahead as he undid the top of his jacket and let it flap open just enough so that his FN FiveseveN Magnum was within easy reach.

  Something told the cop that at the bottom of this stairwell was enemy territory, and anyone that he found there, or anyone that found him, wasn’t going to be overly happy to see him.

  *****

  Joshua was panting from the exertion as he pulled the man’s gun from his holster, checking the unmoving body for a moment to make sure that the man was unconscious before he slowly and painfully climbed to his feet.

  He winced halfway up, his free hand going around to his back.

  God, I’ve been too old for this for over a decade, The CIA Agent moaned silently, easing himself straight up as he cast about for his Portable.

  He found it on the floor a few feet away and groaned as he was forced to bend over again to pick it up, but retrieved it quickly nonetheless. The tough little device was intact, of course, it’s components were built to withstand the sort of nonsense that the average citizen would put it through, and a
bit of a bang from falling to the floor wasn’t even close to the crap most people put theirs through.

  The drive dump was almost complete, and Langley’s network feed was already indexing the contents by file type and keyword. He was about to put it away, satisfied, when the desktop computer he was dumping beeped for attention.

  Joshua frowned, peering at it.

  Now what…?

  A file had finished compiling in the background, and was now demanding a user’s attention, so he tapped through the explanations and opened the finished file.

  The screen went dark for a moment, and then turned a deep red as the file began playing.

  *****

  The tunnel looked like something out of an old pirate movie, Anselm decided, or perhaps the sort of thing he’d expect to find under a city like Paris or Rome, certainly not a modern place like Tower City. The rough floor and walls looked like they’d simply carved it right out of the stone, which was probably what they did, of course, so he figured that it was added after the Tower had been built.

  In many ways that made his job somewhat simpler, which was a good thing.

  An after the fact construction of this sort probably meant that the backers of the Tower Project weren’t involved, which meant a lot less paperwork.

  Anselm smiled slightly as he crept along the tunnel, feeling exposed and foolish as he did so.

  He really shouldn’t be worrying about arrests now, not yet at anyrate. And paperwork would be a Godsend if he survived long enough to get to it. For the moment, that was far from certain, because he had a bad feeling that he was in well over his head and sinking all too quickly.

  There was a pair of security doors up ahead of him when Anselm slowed a bit, and he could see that they were open just a touch.

  He drew his pistol this time, not caring too much about appearances anymore. He was well out of place, poking his nose around somewhere he shouldn’t be, so he may as well look the part in all respects.

  He edged the door open slightly, looking in slowly, and winced in frustrated anger when the damned thing squeaked.

  *****

  This was NOT a level three.

  Joshua Corvine felt ill as he looked at the results of the genetic compilation that had completed while he had been doing his Drive Dump.