Okay, I am this close to locating the system partition the hacker is working behind. Once I find it, he—or she—is toast.
Yeah, but when you breached the DIA, your life wasn’t on the line then. Worse, you weren’t the reason a whole school’s worth of people are on lockdown.
Al. Most. There. Aha! Found you, phreak. I’m coming for you now. You can’t hide from the great Jake Mor—
And then the system crashes. That ain’t good.
A second later, the walkie-talkie phone vibrates.
“Bunk?”
“Yeah. It’s chaos up here.”
“What did you do to that guy?”
“Well, right now I’m sitting on him, because he’s threatening to escape the library and turn you in. But after Dodson’s announcement, I think the rest of them are on your side. Any luck with the hacking thing?”
“Uh … I think the hacker knows what I’m up to, which means he—she—probably knows my location in the school. I have to get out of here,” I say, scanning the walls and ceiling of the library for an air vent.
“I’m coming with you.”
“Don’t think so, Bunker. I’m going through the air shaft.”
“Tell me where you’re going and I’ll get there.”
“Ms. Flagler’s bio classroom. I can drop through the vent there to reach the supply room,” I say, grateful I memorized the building’s blueprints before I even landed at the Denver airport. “There’s an old desktop.”
“But you said the phone was dead in there.”
“I don’t think the hacker took down connectivity wholesale; she’s just taking off-line any PC she thinks I might access.”
Saying the words and naming Katie as the culprit sounds so wrong, like saying Lois turned on Clark and joined forces with Lex Luther, but I can’t deny what’s happening.
“Doesn’t that include the supply-room computer?” Bunk asks.
“That PC has a phone line plugged into the wall,” I explain as I drag the table closer to the nearest vent. “It uses dial-up on a separate dedicated landline, and it’s so infrequently used I’m hoping she doesn’t even know about it.”
“I won’t ask you to explain all that, but I am coming with you.”
“That computer is a long shot, but it’s the only shot I have. It’s a risk you don’t need to take, so just—”
“No, sir. I’m not going to just hang out in the relative safety of this library and let my first best friend also be my last. I’ll get there. I’ll find you, and then—”
And then the line goes dead.
CHAPTER 14
I pull my Swiss Army knife from my backpack before climbing onto the table and removing the screws holding the vent to the wall. Once inside the air shaft, it’s easier to move through than I expected. The ducts are wider than I thought, and look brand new. Air-shaft-crawling was part of the syllabus in my Breach and Incursion class at tradecraft school. The ducts we practiced in were the usual flimsy sheet-metal type that buckle and groan as you move through them. Thanks to Carlisle standards requiring state-of-the-art everything, these ducts are not only wider than most, but they’re made of a heavier stainless steel, allowing me to move through them noiselessly.
It doesn’t take long before I’m in the shaft above my chem class. Through slats in the air vent, I can see down into the room where my classmates are still being held by the hostiles. Only one is within my view. But I can’t slow down to determine whether the second one is still in there, so I continue on toward Ms. Flagler’s bio classroom, which is when I hear voices on a radio. It only takes a few seconds of chatter before I recognize the radio is tuned to a police band. The hostiles must be listening in, trying to see if their location has been made by the cops.
“Unit thirty-one, please check in with a status on Carlisle Academy.”
The kids in the room below let out a collective sigh, but no one is more relieved to have heard those words than I am. It’s confirmation that my 9-1-1 call lasted long enough to register as a hang-up call and for the system to give my location, forcing the PD to roll a unit to check on us. Yay for landlines. Bunker is right. Sometimes old-school is better.
But my relief is short-lived.
“Thirty-one. Carlisle is an all clear,” says a voice I recognize as fake-cop Andrews. I can only imagine what she’s done to the real Unit 31. “Just a kid high on something, so messed up he threatened to prank us again if he isn’t allowed to skip an exam.”
“No additional unit needed, then?” asks the dispatcher.
“Affirmative. I’ll wrap this up soon, get the parents in here to deal with him or drop him at the ARC if he gives me a problem.”
“Roger that, thirty-one.”
The ARC is the Addiction Recovery Center in our town—what police departments used to call the “drunk tank” in the old days. Unless these hostiles did one helluva reconnaissance mission before they arrived, there’s no way they should know that level of detail about the local police. I only know about it because Duncan The Douche landed there a few weekends ago and was stupid enough to brag about it, trying to show me how gangster he is.
So there’s a reason she sounded so much like a cop when I first heard her in the office—a reason the police-band dispatcher didn’t question whether Andrews was impersonating the officer known as Unit 31.
Andrews is a cop. A dirty one.
Directly below me, I hear someone say, “We’re screwed.”
“Notice how he got away right before this happened, like he knew it was coming and didn’t even warn us?”
I know that voice, even if it’s only a loud whisper. Duncan.
“You heard Dodson,” says the other guy. “It’s good he got away. Maybe he’s trying to get help.”
“Yeah, you keep believing that. I’ll be over here working on an actual plan.”
One of the hostiles yells, “Shut up back there! No talking.”
This is just what I need—The Douche going rogue, but not before inciting a riot in chem class. Maybe I was right to include him on my suspect list. Maybe I should have been looking for more than one. Could Duncan be in on it with Katie? Nah, Jake, that’s the paranoia talking. Duncan is just being Duncan. But one thing I can agree with him on—I need to handle business myself because there is no cavalry coming.
When I start moving toward the next classroom, the hem of my pants snags on the pointy edge of a screw in the vent, pulling on the metal panel just slightly before it releases. My heart starts racing a mile a minute while I pray no one heard it. But that small noise was enough. I hear a male voice say, “Go check it out. I’ll stay here to watch over our backup plan out of this place.”
This remark starts my classmates talking, which makes the lead hostile freak out and start yelling at everyone to “shut the hell up or else,” which only encourages the talking to turn into shouting and screaming, providing cover for me to move through the shaft, past the ventless supply room, until I am over Ms. Flagler’s room.
The vent gives me the perfect vantage point to the classroom’s door. Just as I’d expected, one of the gunmen arrives, peering through the window. He must see what I see—an empty room—because he leaves after unsuccessfully trying the knob, apparently satisfied.
But I’m not. He hasn’t studied the school’s security system schematics the way I have. The lockdown from individual rooms can only be initiated from the inside. Someone is inside the room, hidden from the hostile’s view and mine.
I have no choice. I have to get to that supply-room computer, but I’m hoping whoever’s down there is a friendly.
I drop into the room, knowing I’m completely vulnerable to attack. My heart nearly stops beating when I hear a squeaking noise the minute my feet hit the floor. But it isn’t a human. It’s a complaint from a pack of guinea pigs I almost crushed. They’ve somehow escaped their cages, running all around the room. I think I know why the bad guy was satisfied with what he saw. Hopefully he figured one of the pigs had gotten in
to the walls or the air shaft, that it wasn’t a human who’d made the noise that caused his partner to lose his shit.
I just about do the same thing when I hear a noise. It’s the turning of a doorknob, but not the one the hostile just tried to open. It’s coming from behind me. I scan Ms. Flagler’s classroom in search of a weapon. The closest thing is a stool at one of the lab tables, which is a joke of a weapon if this guy is armed.
The door to the supply room slowly creaks open. His actions are deliberate. Fearful. Whoever it is probably isn’t armed either, which means I have a fighting chance. All I can do is turn around, get into a defensive stance, and hope I’m right. Or better yet, hope it’s a friendly coming through that door.
CHAPTER 15
Oh, thank God. They don’t come any friendlier. It’s Bunker emerging from the supply room, and he’s dragging Mr. Maitland with him.
“Found him hiding out in there,” Bunker says in a near whisper. “Says he was on the way from his class to the office when you made your announcement, so he ducked inside. Fortunately, he didn’t have the wits about him to lock down the room until after I arrived.”
“You got here?” I say, mostly ignoring his Maitland story. It’s more of a statement than a question.
Bunker smiles. “Told you I would. Had to cut you off because the real loser in the library was giving me a hard time. But the rest of the kids took over for me so I could come help you. They’re on your side. Besides, this whole thing will make for a great story when I ask out my future girlfriend.”
Bunker is talking about this girl, and all I want to know is how he made it here in one piece. “But how?”
“Just took the stairs and the hallway. You were right. There can’t be many bad guys running around. Didn’t see a single one on my way here.”
I don’t even try to hide my astonishment. Bunker pretends he doesn’t notice it and continues on, sounding like it’s just a regular day at ol’ Carlisle Academy.
“I released the pigs for cover.”
“Great idea, Bunker. It worked.”
“And I already checked out that PC. The hacker must have guessed you were headed here next, because it’s down, too. But Maitland here is going to let us borrow his laptop. He claims he can still get a connection.”
That is strange if it’s true. Why leave Maitland with access? But I hope he’s right. “Hand it over,” I say.
“No,” Maitland says, holding the computer in a death grip against his chest with both arms. “I need it so I can receive—”
I throw a left hook across his face and knock him the hell out. Not only don’t I care what he needed the laptop for, I’m pissed he’s in here hiding out instead of heading back to his class and trying to keep them calm like I’m sure every other teacher is doing right now. Plus, I just can’t stand the guy and will probably never get this chance again. I did it for national security, not to mention Carlisle. At least he had Bunker there to catch his fall, because I wouldn’t have.
“Better hide him in case a bad guy checks the room again,” Bunker says as he drags Maitland to the corner.
Out of sight of the door’s window, I open Maitland’s laptop, close out the classroom roster he had up, and bring up a DOS screen.
“Now, let’s see if he really is connected. I was this close to finding where and how the hacker is jamming our signals.”
My hope-o-meter goes from zero to sixty and back to zero in under ten seconds.
“Should have known I wouldn’t catch a break like that. If Maitland had a connection, he doesn’t now.”
The hacker probably detected Maitland’s usage and shut him down. I try looking in the laptop’s disk cache in case there’s at least a clue that might help me track her down.
Bunker comes over and stands behind me. That usually drives me insane, but I’m thinking, after the day I’ve had so far, I’m going to be a lot more chill about stuff like that.
“One day you have to show me how to do some of this stuff,” Bunker says. “I just don’t get how a bunch of zeroes and ones can shut down every phone in the building. I mean, how is that even possible?”
I stop typing for a second and let his words sink in.
“Bunk, you’re a genius.”
“I am?”
“I don’t think she’s spoofing. The whole reason I was ever in U—” Gah, I’m so excited to figure this out that I almost blabbed about my Ukraine mission. “Um, earlier this year, the hacker did a thing that put the two of us on a collision course.”
“What thing?”
“That’s classified. But trust me, she screwed up big time, which means she probably doesn’t have the skill to spoof. She has to be using a jammer.”
“How does all that make me a genius?”
“Your average pocket-sized cell phone jammer has a range of maybe eighty feet. But this school is huge, with high-grade construction and very thick walls.”
“And so…?”
As I talk it through, I feel my heart race like it did when I was in the air shaft over chem lab, but in a good way this time. I know I’m onto something.
“Everywhere I’ve gone in the building—the exits, hallways, stairwells on all three floors—I could never raise a cell signal on my phone. Not only that, I heard the janitor talking on his phone. That can only be possible if the hacker is using one seriously hard-core jammer, one with an external antenna that can be tuned to individual frequencies.”
Bunker shakes his head like he’s trying to clear water from his ears. “Dude. You’re talking gibberish.”
It makes so much sense to me now, and I’m so relieved to finally take a step forward instead of two steps back that I’m talking so fast Bunker probably wouldn’t understand me even if he had a clue about zeroes and ones.
“A jammer like that needs its own electric source and would be very noticeable inside the building. She’s on the roof. Or at least her white noise generator is. The signal jamming is too effective to be coming from anything else or anywhere else. We need to get up there and take out that noise generator.”
“Okay, let’s do it,” Bunker says, already heading for the door.
“Slow your roll. With those two hostiles next door, we can’t risk taking the hallway. We don’t have time to escape through the air shaft,” I say, already working on a plan. “Help me carry Maitland back in sight of the door.”
Once that’s done, I pull the expandable baton from my backpack, unlock the door, then stand on one side of it, out of view. Bunker gets the idea, grabs the metal coat rack from behind Ms. Flagler’s desk, and takes up guard on the other side of the door.
“Now we just need to get their attention.”
I grab a textbook from a bookshelf, open the door, and throw it at the lockers across the hall before closing the door and getting back into place.
We aren’t in position for ten seconds when we hear someone trying the doorknob. And just as I’d hoped, when the hostile enters, there is a brief moment between him seeing Maitland on the floor and realizing someone else must be in the room.
That’s when I land the steel baton against his pterion, the weakest point on the skull, immediately incapacitating him.
Or possibly killing him.
That’s a step in my development as a covert operative I’d hoped never to take. I never expected I’d have to, despite all the scenarios the Company psychologists tried to prepare me for. It calms my stomach a little when I place two fingers against his neck and find he still has a strong pulse. He’ll probably live long enough to die of something else. Hopefully while in a supermax prison.
I motion to Bunker, and he immediately drags the body out of sight of the window while I close the door, leaving it unlocked. Maitland remains in position, bait for the hostile’s partner, who will surely arrive at any moment.
The problem I’ll face with Hostile #2 is that he’ll be more on guard. Not only does he know I’m in here, he’ll suspect I’ve taken out his partner. He’ll be angry about l
eaving the classroom, which means leaving his hostages—and his safe passage off the campus—unattended. He’ll be worried the hostages won’t believe whatever story he told to keep them from leaving the classroom. His adrenaline will be pumping just a little harder. He’ll be a little afraid. He’ll be far less predictable than the first guy.
I take my position beside the door again. When Bunker moves to take the same position he held for the first hostile, I raise my hand, signaling him to stay near our latest unconscious captive. Bunker gets it. He knows I want him to make sure the captive stays that way. I’ll have to deal with the next guy on my own. With my back pressed against the wall, I can feel the vibration of the door in the next room opening, then closing again. I nod at Bunker. The second hostile is coming.
As soon as he hits the doorway, and before he can put one foot in the room, I slam the baton into the man’s stomach.
The plan was for me to knock the wind out of him so I could easily get him into a choke hold. But dude didn’t get the memo. When the wand hits his stomach, it’s as though I’ve struck metal, and the energy of the strike reverberates through my hand.
For a brief moment, the sensation causes me to loosen my grip on the baton, allowing the man to take it from me with one hand and aim his sidearm at me with the other. He smiles, but there is nothing in his eyes but cold, hard murder.
“Doesn’t Marchuk want me alive?” I ask.
“Yes. But I don’t care what Marchuk wants.”
You know how they say your life flashes before you when you’re about to die? It doesn’t happen like that for me, not like a movie, anyway. Right now, I’m thinking it was good Rogers made me that offer, and I’m glad I said yes, even if it’s about to get me killed. She gave me something when I’d given up on having anything. I’m thinking I’ve already gone out with a really dope girl and maybe it’s okay that I’ll never know for sure whether she was one of the bad guys. And I’m feeling so afraid, so desperate for something to hold on to even as I’m on my way out, that I try to remember my parents’ faces and, for the first time since forever, they come to me as clearly as the last time I saw them.
Prettyboy Must Die Page 9
