by Reece Hirsch
When they were near the gate to the baking company, Chris stopped.
“What are we doing?” Ian asked.
“There are plenty more trucks like that one behind the fence. We’re going to wait here until another one comes out, then try to buy ourselves a ride south.”
“What if it’s not headed south?”
“Then we wait for the next one.”
A half hour later another truck rumbled through the gate. Chris and Ian tried to flag the driver down, but he ignored them and didn’t slow.
They waited an hour and a half longer on a grassy embankment beside the frontage road. Ian drifted off to sleep, so he didn’t notice when the next truck emerged. Chris gave Ian a shove to wake him, then ran to the truck, standing in the middle of the road to block its path.
The truck came to a halt with a series of pneumatic gasps, snorts, and squeals as Chris squinted up into the high headlights with his hands raised. Chris ran around to the driver’s-side door, hands still in the air to show that he meant no harm.
The driver had a full beard, and the portion of his face that wasn’t covered in salt-and-pepper scrub looked baked by the sun. He appeared wary but not scared, which probably meant that he carried a gun.
Chris made a cranking motion with his hand, suggesting that the driver roll down the window. The driver stared at him for a long, appraising moment, then complied. While the window was coming down, Ian caught up with Chris and raised his own hands to the driver.
“You could get your ass killed like that,” the driver said in a voice that sounded like it had been aged in an oak cask. “Whaddaya want? Somebody hurt?”
“If you’re heading south, we’d like a ride,” Chris said. “We can pay.”
“Then why don’t you pay Greyhound and take a bus wherever it is that you’re heading?”
“We’re looking for something more private.”
“You rob a bank or something?”
“Nothing like that.”
“We’re the good guys,” Ian added.
The driver looked back and forth between them for a long moment. “You kill anyone?”
“No, but I’d be lying if I didn’t say that we got ourselves on the wrong side of the law.”
“No shit. You’re not going to tell me what you did, are you? And even if you did, I couldn’t trust it.”
“That’s a fair assessment. But I swear to you that we haven’t hurt anyone. And I can also promise that if you give us a ride, we’ve got some good stories to tell.”
“A couple of raconteurs, huh?”
“That’s us,” Ian said.
The trucker stared at them for a long moment in the peripheral glow of the headlights as the truck loudly idled. Ian’s contribution didn’t seem to have helped their case.
“All right, climb on up. I’m headed to San Diego.”
“Perfect,” Chris said.
As they drew closer, the trucker caught a whiff of the sewer stench. “Whoa,” he said. “What did you two do? Rob a sewage treatment plant?”
“We still have a deal, right?”
“Those stories better be pretty damn entertaining. You’re lucky that I don’t have a book on tape for this haul. And when we stop at a truck stop down the road, you’re going to have to wash up—and buy yourself some new clothes if you can.”
“Thanks,” Chris said.
When Ian climbed into the passenger cabin, the smell only intensified.
“Damn,” the driver said.
19
Zoey awoke with a headache on the couch in the living room of Damian Hull’s hideout in Loja, Ecuador, to the bleeping and gunfire of a video game. Serge had his back to her and was still working the console. For all she knew, he’d been playing all night.
She rolled over and turned her face to the upholstery, not quite ready to confront the reality of her predicament. Haltingly, like a slow-to-load web page, the events of the previous night came back to her.
The interrogation by Damian, and then Roland.
The threat to take out her eye with the handle of a spoon.
Her conscription into the crew’s plan to steal money from the Sinaloa drug cartel.
It was that last part that brought her fully awake. She had imagined that joining Damian in exile would be a low-key affair. Watching bad Ecuadorean TV, brushing up on her high school Spanish, eating exotic takeout, and reading lots of books. But clearly that had been wishful thinking. Stealing from the world’s most powerful drug cartel was a suicide mission, which was fine if you wanted to commit suicide.
Zoey did not.
She heard footsteps and Damian’s voice behind her. “I know you’re awake, love.”
Zoey rolled over and squinted at him through watery eyes.
“The stuff we gave you has a kick to it, doesn’t it? Would you like some hair of the dog?”
Zoey scowled. “I’d rather have actual hair of the dog than ingest that poison again.”
“And she’s back.”
“What you said last night,” Zoey said. “You can’t be serious.”
“About the job? Oh, yes, serious as a heart attack, but let’s not talk about that just yet. Right now I have one question for you.”
“Yeah?”
“Can you cook?”
“Some.”
“Then I want you to come with me to the market. Let’s see what you can do. It has to be better than what Maria and Roland are capable of.”
“What about Serge?”
“Are you kidding? I don’t even allow Serge near the kitchen. It’s a public health issue. Now get yourself tidied up. We need to make it to the market before all the best stuff is gone.” Damian motioned to the hallway that led to the rear of the house. “Shower’s back there on the left.”
Zoey walked with Damian on a cool, cloudy morning through the streets of Loja. They passed one local after another wearing similar attire—a fedora with a feather in the band and a brightly colored serape.
“There are more fedoras here than in a Humphrey Bogart movie,” Zoey said. “What’s up with that?”
“That’s probably what they would say about us and baseball caps.”
Zoey gave a nodding shrug.
Damian went to a stall loaded with green plantains, examined a few, and began filling a brown paper bag. Zoey watched him work, not assisting. She closed her eyes for a moment and inhaled the intoxicating stew—raw fish and citrus and passion fruit. The place smelled like a seviche.
“What looks good to you?”
“That coffee vendor over there,” Zoey said. “That’s what looks good to me. My head is still foggy from last night. Forgive me if I’m not more helpful with the grocery shopping, but you might have thought of that before you drugged me.”
“There’s no point in being pissy about it,” Damian said. “It’s the price of admission. You’re the one who decided to join forces with the world’s most wanted cybercriminal.”
“Listen to you,” Zoey said. “Did you have that engraved on a coffee mug?”
Damian was leaning in to sniff at a mound of gray uncooked tiger prawns on ice. He nodded at the fedora-clad vendor, who scooped a couple dozen prawns into a plastic bag. “It’s not bragging if it’s true.”
“This isn’t what I was expecting when I came here,” Zoey said. “I thought I would just lie low.”
“Everyone pulls their weight in this crew.” Damian had filled his shopping bags, and he motioned for Zoey to grab a seat on a bench off to one side of the market, where they could watch culinary business being transacted before hauling their purchases home.
“You know what I like about this place?” Damian asked, squinting into the rising midmorning sun.
“What’s that?”
“I like the feeling of not being watched.” He took a 180-degree survey of the plaza as if to savor the anonymity. “It’s not something that you immediately appreciate. It takes a while to sink in.”
“How do you know that’s really true
?” Zoey asked. “You’re not supposed to know that you’re being watched. Isn’t that the point?”
“There are fewer CCTV cameras here, and the government doesn’t have the capability to conduct coordinated domestic surveillance. Even if Ecuador wanted to collaborate with the NSA, they couldn’t have that much to give them. They don’t have the infrastructure.”
“Most people don’t worry about it all that much—the ones who don’t rob the Federal Reserve.”
“They may not worry about it, but you better believe they know about it after Snowden—and that’s the problem.”
Zoey nodded as she watched workers unload gleaming speckled fish from a refrigerated truck. “Yeah, I think I see where you’re going with this. I always hate it when people say, ‘If you’re not doing anything wrong, then you don’t need to worry about surveillance.’”
“Exactly. It’s Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle.”
“The Heisenberg principle, right—if you’re going to make meth, then you should also control distribution.”
“Ha-ha,” Damian said. “Heisenberg said that using an electron microscope changes the behavior of subatomic particles. The act of observing them alters their behavior. Same rule applies to people who are watched—it changes them.”
“You really think that’s true?”
“Sure it is. If you live in a nation where everyone can be watched all the time, it seeps into the way you live your life. You think twice about running that Internet search that might be misinterpreted, saying that thing that is politically incorrect, loving that person that you shouldn’t love.”
“I never took you for an idealist.”
“Oh, I’m not. At heart I just like to steal things. I know I’ve sort of abandoned the moral high ground, and I’m okay with that. But cooling my jets here in Ecuador has given me time to ponder the big picture a bit.”
Zoey pointed at the market workers. “So these people are living life differently than people in the US?”
“Yeah, they kind of are.”
“Don’t people in the US just forget that they’re being watched, put it out of their minds?”
“They try, sure. And they probably succeed most days. But thanks to Snowden, everyone knows what our government is up to. You can put it out of your mind for days or weeks at a time. But when you’re thinking about doing something that your government or law enforcement might not approve of, then you remember—and you think twice. There is no more effective means of repression.”
Zoey picked up half the shopping bags, readying to leave. “So maybe it’s kind of a variation on the Heisenberg principle. Maybe the NSA isn’t trying to spy on its citizens as much as it’s trying to keep them in line. Maybe the point of observation is to change behavior.”
“Spot on.” Damian nodded in enthusiastic agreement. “That’s why I’m going to enjoy having you around. Maria, Roland, and—God help me—Serge are fine, but I can’t have a chat like this with them. I was going a bit mad before you arrived.”
They began walking back through the cobbled streets of Loja’s oldest district, which were barely wide enough for a car. They waded through a soccer match where the kids had learned to use the close quarters to craft a new kind of game, caroming kicks off the walls of the shops that lined the street.
Halfway back they stopped at a grocery with café tables out front. They set their bags down and sipped strong black coffee as the day tipped from the cool of the morning into the heat of the afternoon.
Zoey leaned in close even though there was no one nearby to overhear. “I hope this cartel hack is just talk. Those are the last people you want to steal from.”
“It wasn’t my idea initially, but sometimes you have to rise to the challenge, don’t you?”
“It was Roland’s idea, wasn’t it?”
Damian shrugged in acknowledgment. “It was a group decision. Sometimes being a leader means listening to what your people want.” His eyes shifted away.
“You don’t want to do this at all, do you?”
“Did I say that?”
“You’re as afraid of Roland as I am, aren’t you? Is he really scarier than the Sinaloa Cartel?”
“Don’t try playing us off against each other, Zoey.”
“At least tell me that this is an easy one. Does the cartel have decent security?”
“Hard to tell at this point, but probably. The cartel is one of the biggest cash businesses in the world. Wherever you find that kind of money, you usually find someone who knows how to protect it.”
“So why are we doing this again?”
Damian slugged down his coffee to the dregs. “Look, the cards are dealt, and we’re doing this. However it turns out.”
Zoey didn’t know whether to be terrified or relieved: Damian was as much a prisoner as she. He knew precisely how dangerous the hack was and how unlikely to succeed. Whether Damian was willing to admit it or not, this was Roland’s crew.
20
As Sam prepared to pass through the metal detector at the entrance to the Working Group’s offices, he removed his new smartwatch and placed it in a plastic tray. He drew a deep breath, held it, and tried to calm his nerves.
Pretend this is just another day at the office. Pretend you’re not about to steal some of the nation’s most sensitive national security documents.
The security guard leaned in to examine the watch before it passed through the scanner. He noticed that the watch looked different but didn’t seem to recognize that it was a smartwatch. The Working Group didn’t allow employees to bring phones or cameras into the facility, but if the policy had been expanded to include smartwatches, this guard hadn’t gotten the memo.
As with many crimes, getting in would be the easy part. Not a great start to feel so anxious already.
As Sam walked down the hallway to his office, he saw Anton Corbin approaching with his sardonic I know twenty ways to kill you with a pencil look. Sam wondered if Corbin knew, or guessed, that Sam had tipped off Bruen and Ayres. On second thought, clearly he didn’t, or Sam would be dead.
“Sam,” Corbin said with a nod.
“Agent Corbin.”
“I guess you heard about how things turned out with Bruen and Ayres.”
“Yes, that was a tough break.”
“You know, it was almost like they knew we were coming.” Corbin did a little thing then, a momentary widening of the eyes that seemed like a brief slip of the mask to acknowledge something that they both knew. All subtext, and Sam didn’t like it a bit.
“I’m sure we’ll have them soon.”
“Count on it. You can run but you can’t hide. In fact, you can’t even run.”
Sam went to the bull pen to greet his team, who were hard at work. He leaned over the cubicle wall and said, “Good morning, guys. Are we focused on the job, or are we snooping on more Snapchat sexting?”
Josh started to respond, then thought better of it. Instead, he pointed at Rajiv behind his back and nodded.
When Rajiv noticed him, he swatted him away. “Dude!”
Sam sat at a vacant monitor and pulled up some surveillance feeds for Van Ness Avenue. “I’m going to work from here today. Clearly you all could use some adult supervision.”
He knew that he couldn’t extract data using his own computer because a system audit trail would then point to him as the source of the leak. He needed to be in an area where workstations were shared, which meant sitting in with his team. Fortunately, he had the perfect excuse for that.
The problem was it would be tricky to find an opportunity to extract the data in the midst of his team. Even though they were often distracted and certainly immature, Josh and Rajiv worked long hours and didn’t take many breaks. They weren’t exactly dedicated to the mission, but they did seem to be endlessly amused by one another and playing with the agency’s supersophisticated spy toys.
“And just to make things interesting I’ve brought a motivational tool,” Sam said, removing a handful of coupon
s from his pocket. “The first one of you to pick up the trail of Bruen and Ayres gets coupons for coffee and a breakfast sandwich at the Full Code.”
The Full Code was the coffee shop on the first floor run by a former agent and paramedic, who had named his shop after the medical term for a full cardiac arrest, a tribute to his artery-clogging omelets.
“You really think we can be bought that cheaply?” Josh asked.
“You’re thinking about this all wrong,” Sam said. “First, you’re not being bought, because this is the job that you’re paid to do anyway. Second, these coupons don’t just represent a delicious—well, a breakfast; they represent bragging rights.”
Rajiv and Josh exchanged a glance.
“Yeah, it’s on,” Rajiv said.
“You’re so going down,” Josh said. “Dead Man Walking, here I come.” The Code’s double-egg, double-cheese special. “And it will taste like victory—high-cholesterol victory.”
“You have ordered that before, right?” Rajiv asked. “It actually tastes like napalm in the morning.”
Sam nodded and grinned at the banter, but the smile felt pasted on. He still wasn’t sure he had the nerve to carry out his plan.
The team settled in through the morning, the clicking of keys punctuated only by the occasional smart-ass taunt. They were definitely working with more intensity than usual.
At eleven fifteen Rajiv leaned back in his chair. “I think you can pay me now.”
Sam stood and approached Rajiv’s monitor. “What have you got?”
The monitor showed a frozen CCTV image of an empty alleyway.
“I don’t see anything here,” Sam said. “What am I supposed to be looking at?”
“That’s the point. Everything’s back in place. The camera was set to record at one minute intervals, so let’s back it up to one minute before.”
Rajiv dialed a knob and reversed the image frame by frame. Sam was expecting to see Chris Bruen and Ian Ayres step into view, but there were still no figures visible in the alley.
But something had moved.
“There was something there. What was it?”
Rajiv pointed to an area of the image. “The manhole cover. Here it’s off.” He scrolled forward a minute. “And here it’s back on.”
