Grave Mistakes (The Grave Diggers Book 3)

by Chris Fritschi

“I get that a lot,” said Nathan as he wrote in the notebook and handed it back to her. “That’s my home away from home.”

  Kaiden took the notebook and typed in the location on the nav-computer. A moment later the directions appeared on Wessons screen. She turned off the dirt track and back onto the paved road.

  “I put my people on the line to save you,” said Tate. “You better do a lot damn better than optics.”

  Nathan looked meaningfully at the Grave Diggers sitting next to him then back at Tate.

  “This is my team,” said Tate. “They’re cleared for anything you say.”

  Tate meant what he said and wanted his team to know he trusted them. He was rewarded with a smile from Rosse, then motioned for Nathan to continue.

  “Someone sabotaged a satellite that’s very important to The Ring,” said Nathan. “Now they suspect I had something to do with it and after that computer gave them the information they wanted, I’m pretty sure they were going to kill me.”

  “And destroying it made it look like you were protecting that information from us,” said Tate.

  Nathan smiled with a nod as he closed his eyes. “I haven’t slept in a couple of days. Lets pick this up when we get to my place.”

  It had been more than two days since Tate had slept and instead of demanding Nathan to explain what was going on, he sat back and closed his eyes.

  * * *

  Tate was aware of sounds and movement on the distant fringe of his consciousness. He closed his mind to it and let himself slip into the buoyant arms of blackness. A sharper sensation jostled his frame and his numbed senses slowly groped for the source behind the intrusion. Little by little he dragged his way towards the lights and sounds that tugged at him until finally opening his eyes. His herculean effort was rewarded with an image of Rosse standing over him.

  “C’mon, top!” said Rosse, shaking Tate’s shoulder.

  “Yeah, okay,” slurred Tate as he gathered his wits. “I’m up. What’s going on?”

  “We’re here,” answered Rosse. “That guy’s place.”

  Tate looked around and was surprised to find he and Rosse were the only ones in the PLAV.

  “How long have we been here?” asked Tate.

  “Not long. He said something about pizza and everybody piled out.”

  Tate got up and stepped out, bare earth crunching under his boots, into the cool night air. The moon painted the surroundings in light the color of burnished steel. The PLAV squatted next to a weathered farmhouse with a sagging roof. Next to it was an, equally aged, barn with a silo attached. Neither building showed any signs of life.

  Something in the way the old house creaked in the breeze made Tate feel melancholy and alone. He looked up at the vast night sky, filled with stars, older than time. How many people, before him, had looked at those same stars. All of them gone now, yet the stars lived on, watching generations come and go. Tate thought about his life, the tragedies and joys, the devastation of losing his little girl; but to the stars, wheeling above, he was a momentary wink, small beyond notice. They were there long before and would be there long after he a forgotten memory. Someday, would those stars look down on a world empty of people, where only the dead walk?

  Tate sensed someone near. Next to him, Rosse stood quietly gazing upward.

  “You ever think what it would be like to travel space?” asked Tate. “Find civilizations on other planets?”

  “Nah,” said Rosse. “I don’t like foreign food.”

  “Makes sense,” smiled Tate. “Let’s get inside.”

  Thumbing to the barn, Rosse led the way and stopped at the door. Something buzzed and Rosse pulled open the door. Tate was surprised to see that under the rust streaked sheets of corrugated metal, the door was thick steel. It closed behind them with a smooth click of oiled, metal rods locking into place.

  They moved down a bare hallway to the only other door and walked into a brightly lit room. Rows of shelves were filled with boxes, electronics and a variety of mechanical and electronic parts. Somewhere ahead he heard voices.

  “…Not some 007 gadget that explodes, or shoots killer lasers,” said Fulton.

  “It’s a real radio,” said Nathan.

  Tate heard the hiss of static as he rounded the last stand of shelves into an open, comfortable room. Nathan was sitting at a desk with Fulton next to him, holding something small and square, and was the source of the static.

  “Check it out Top,” grinned Fulton. “He gave me a radio.”

  Tate threw Fulton a distracted thumbs up having spied a stack of pizza boxes, making stomach rumble, and headed straight for them. Savory cheese and pepperoni filled Tate’s mouth and he nodded to himself, relishing the flavors.

  “Slam’n my head! Make a wish when I’m dead, when I’m dead, when… I’m… dead.”

  The loud music pumped out of the radio startling Tate and inciting sharp protests from the rest of the team. Fulton pawed at the blaring radio, frantically trying to turn it down. “Sorry!” he said, struggling.

  “That was Chronic Crow, and you’re listening to White Hat radio. The enemy of the Deep State. We’re watching you. Tonight we’re…”

  Nathan dabbed his finger on the radio and the volume instantly dropped. Fulton stood awkwardly under the weight of everyone’s stare as Nathan patted him on the shoulder.

  “How about I show you the controls, later,” offered Nathan. Fulton nodded in agreement.

  Still chewing, Tate took the opportunity to see what the room could tell him about Nathan. Against the far wall stood several computer towers with cables snaking up into the ceiling. Central to the room was a large work bench. Circuit boards, meters, and cubbyholes of equipment lined the perimeter of the desk.

  “Ready to talk?” asked Nathan, at Tate’s shoulder then led the way into another room.

  Overhead lights automatically came on revealing a comfortable, tastefully appointed, living area.

  Two brown, leather couches bordered a wood and glass coffee table. Rustic wood-slat walls were accented by a black, slate floor. An impressively large TV screen took up most of the farthest wall.

  “Do you get a lot of company at your secret lair?” asked Kaiden, noticing the ample seating.

  “Better to have it and not need it,” said Nathan and sat back on couch, kicking off his shoes.

  Tate sat across from Nathan as he swallowed down the last of his food, and took in the looks the rest of the team were giving Nathan now that the attention was back on him.

  Tate had constantly stressed, to his team, the life, or death, importance of keeping their purpose and knowledge of The Ring absolutely secret, and it was understandable they’d be suspicious of this stranger in their midst. “Before we get started,” said Tate, looking around at his team, “I’ll fill in the blanks about Nathan and how our interests are connected.”

  He told them how he and Nathan had crossed paths, crediting Nathan with revealing The Ring’s ultimate goal of taking over the government, and Nathan’s offer to provide intel if Tate and Kaiden rescued him from being tortured to death.

  “And I thought we’d never hear from you again,” said Kaiden.

  “You sound disappointed,” said Nathan with a grin.

  “No,” smiled Kaiden, “but the day is young.”

  Tate coughed, breaking into the exchange, getting Nathan’s attention. “Lets get on topic,” he said, “your message said you had info that could destroy The Ring.”

  “When I sent that message,” said Nathan, “I was rushed for time. There were a couple of details I left out.”

  The overhead light cast a shadow on Tate’s face as he leaned forward, highlighting his scowl. “What details?”

  “He doesn’t have the information,” said Kaiden.

  Tate kept his eyes fixed on Nathan, taking his time as he drew a long breath. “I took a huge risk to come here and it could come back to bite me. After the day I’ve had my good nature is in short damn supply, so what you say in the next fe
w minutes had better be very important.”

  Nathan’s expression gave nothing away as he placidly met Tate’s stare. “All right,” sighed Nathan, sitting up. “Some time ago The Ring hired me to piggy back their communications onto a satellite, named Vulcan 4. They chose it because it uses an encrypted microwave frequencies, which would safeguard their own communications from prying eyes.”

  “The entire country is criss-crossed with fibre-optics,” said Monkhouse, unable to resist jumping in. “It doesn’t make sense they’d use a satellite.”

  “It does if The Ring’s connected to someone overseas,” said Tate.

  Nathan’s subtle nod confirmed Tate’s statement.

  “I figured we were punching above our weight, before,” said Rosse, “but if these clowns are getting help from another country, I mean, look at us. We can hardly put a dent in em.”

  Expressions around the room turned somber as the magnitude of their enemy hit home. Tate wanted to say something to bolster their spirits, but he was struggling under this unexpected revelation, too.

  “Before everyone starts singing dirges,” said Kaiden, “why don’t you finish what were you saying.” She looked at Nathan and twirled her finger in the air for him to get on with his story.

  “Whoever picked that satellite didn’t do their homework,” said Nathan. “Vulcan 4 belongs to the NSA and those guys take the concept of Big Brother to a psychotic level. They record every phone call, email and text everyone makes.”

  “You mean, like, everyone, everyone?” asked Fulton. “That’s like, I don’t know, like, millions of emails, and calls and stuff.

  “Everyone, everyone,” confirmed Nathan. “And it’s closer to billions, but the real irony, and what The Ring just found out, is that Vulcan 4 also records its own transmissions. It doesn’t have the onboard storage capacity to record the contents of each transmission; those are archived one of a dozen server farms around the country. But, the satellite carries an onboard database key of every transmission, date, time, origin and destination, including keywords and other markers.”

  “Anyone with that database key,” said Kaiden, “could review and access every communication The Ring’s sent and received.”

  “Including operational names, dates, contacts,” said Tate as he wondered at the possibilities.

  “Every plan,” added Wesson.

  “It gets better,” said Nathan. “Two days ago, somebody accessed Vulcan 4’s navigation systems and sent it on a course back to earth.”

  Tate could only chuckle at the chaos that must have erupted when The Ring heard about that. “Was that you?” he asked.

  “No,” said Nathan, “but they suspect me.”

  “That would have been enough reason for them to kill you. Instead they lock you up with a mainframe?” said Kaiden thoughtfully. “They wanted you to put it back in orbit.”

  “Very good,” smiled Nathan. “Then what?”

  Wesson, sitting across from Tate, looked at him questionably at the interplay between Nathan and Kaiden. Tate put his head in his hands with a sigh.

  “The rest is simple,” said Kaiden. “Whoever brought it down knew where Vulcan 4 would crash. You changed its reentry and were using the mainframe to calculate the new location.”

  “Now it makes sense why you shot up the computer,” said Tate, “The guards will say you sabotaged us from getting the information and look like a hero. All of that is great, but do you know where it’s coming down?”

  “Yes,” said Nathan.

  “Did you stop the back-up in time?” asked Kaiden.

  Nathan didn’t have an answer. If he had stopped the backup, all well and good, but if he hadn’t…

  Puzzled, Tate looked over at Kaiden. “What back up?”

  “When we charged in,” said Kaiden, “I saw him knock a gate drive out of the mainframe. He wouldn’t have done that if it wasn’t backing up the crash site location. Did you stop it?”

  “I can’t be sure,” said Nathan firmly. In the confusion of Tate and the Grave Diggers appearing with guns drawn, Nathan had taken his eyes off the monitor. It was only for a second, but could that vital data been saved in that moment? He didn’t know. Realizing he’d lost track of the download, he slapped at the gate drive, not sparing the time it would have taken to check the status first.

  Did the mainframe finish its calculation in that time? Inwardly, Nathan admitted it was possible. But, did he think it was likely? No. Possibly a 2% chance, he thought. “I can’t give absolutes. There’s a very small chance the back up finished before I knocked it out.”

  Tate wearily got to his feet, stretching the kink out of his back as he frowned in thought. The others watched him pace the short space behind the couch, as he sorted out his thoughts until he faced the group, putting his hands on his hips.

  “We still hold the advantage,” said Tate. “Worst case scenario, The Ring knows where Vulcan 4 will come down, but they believe Nathan doesn’t. They won’t expect any opposition and they don’t want a lot of people knowing about their downed satellite. They’ll send a small team. That will reduce the risk of someone getting clever and making off with the database key.”

  “There’s one more thing,” said Nathan.

  “Aw crap,” blurted Rosse. “I heard just about all the bad news I need for one day.”

  Everyone looked at Rosse and he instantly regretted not keeping his thoughts to himself. “What?” he said defensively. “Am I wrong cause I want things to be easy for once?”

  “It’s all right, Rosse,” said Tate with a smile. “I feel the same way. What else have you got, Nathan?”

  “The mainframe could only narrow down the target site to seventy five square miles,” said Nathan, “but,” he added quickly, “when Vulcan 4 lands it will trigger a transponder signal. I know the frequency. The Ring doesn’t.”

  “Their team could spend weeks running a typical search grid,” said Wesson. “The transponder will point us directly to the satellite,”

  “He could’a led with that,” chuffed Rosse. “This mission’s sounding a lot better now.”

  “How much time do we have before it comes down?” asked Tate.

  Nathan looked at his watch, doing a quick calculation in his head. “Fifty three hours from now.”

  “I, uh, couldn’t help noticing,” said Monkhouse, “those shelves full of gear, we passed. Any chance you have something able to receive and locate the satellite?”

  “Vulcan 4 is an NSA bird,” said Kaiden. “Its transponder will be encrypted.”

  Nathan looked at Kaiden with a sardonic raise of his eyebrows.

  “But…,” she said, “you already knew that.”

  “I’ll put something together to help you track it,” said Nathan, turning back to Tate. “After that, it’s up to you and your team.”

  “Let’s get it done,” said Tate.

  * * *

  Tate walked into the gloom of the workroom as Nathan hunched over a pool of light on his desk.

  He didn’t look up as Tate peered over his shoulder at the splay of electronics. The tracker was laid open like a dissected alien with wires stringing out to a confusing array of equipment.

  “Impressive,” said Tate.

  “Most of this is standard stuff,” said Nathan. “Function and protocol analyzers. I’m boosting the signal generator for longer range.”

  “I meant that you know how to do this.”

  Nathan smiled, but kept his attention on his work.

  “After I freed you from San Roman,” said Tate, “I had my doubts I’d hear from you again.”

  “That cartel boss had psycho written all over him. You took a big risk for me. That’s not something you see in my world.”

  “When you said you’d let me know if you got any good intel on The Ring I didn’t expect to see a message on my sat-phone,” said Tate.

  “It seemed the quickest way to reach you,” shrugged Nathan.

  Tate watched Nathan study a scrawl of alpha-numer
ic characters on one of several screens.

  “And all you had was my name,” said Tate.

  Nathan said nothing as he kept his focus on the tiny components of the tracker, but Tate saw a Nathan’s eyebrow arch.

  “Even as an outsider,” said Tate, “I can appreciate not everyone could have hacked my phone. Isolating a satellite’s transponder codes. Bypassing NSA security and getting past my sat-phone encryption.”

  “You forgot lifting your fingerprint to program the biometric lock my GPS,” added Nathan. “That wasn’t easy.”

  “Yeah. I didn’t see that coming,” chuckled Tate.

  Tate pulled over a nearby chair, its legs screeching across the floor. Nathan resisted the urge to lean away as Tate sat down uncomfortably close to him. He silently watched Nathan work, indifferent to his claustrophobic presence.

  Nathan shot Tate a meaningful look as the impulse to squirm eroded his concentration.

  “Uncomfortable?” asked Tate.

  “Was I obvious?”

  “It’s human nature,” said Tate. “Having someone too close makes people instinctively feel vulnerable. There’s no time to react to an attack.” Tate looked squarely at Nathan. “It’s like how you could find me; hack my phone; get my fingerprints. It makes me feel vulnerable. That’s a problem,” said Tate, gravely. “For both of us.”

  Nathan stopped his work on the tracker and looked at Tate with sigh. “Is there a threat implied?”

  “I don’t imply,” said Tate. “Besides,” he said as he shifted his chair back giving Nathan room to breathe, “you and I are on the same side. In order to fix our problem you and me are going to devote the next few minutes to improving my level of trust in you starting with who you really are and where you learned your skills.”

  “I’m disappointed, sergeant major,” said Nathan. “Enhanced interrogation doesn’t seem your style.”

  “It’s not me you have to worry about,” said Tate as he leaned forward. “I’ll put it in perspective. Twice I’ve stood between you and a bullet in the head. The next bullet is inevitable. If you don’t get me to trust you, well…” Tate gently tapped Nathan on the forehead, “I may not be there to stop it.”