The Kill Chain

by Nichole Christoff

  That Shelby was here signaled Barrett had been right. His temporary assignment to the task force tracking down Madeline Donahue, the stolen CubeSat, and the people responsible for its theft was indeed a sign that his career could be back on track—and the fact that he’d been allowed to handpick some assistance only drove that point home.

  The fourth person in this law enforcement clique was the unfortunate agent who’d had to babysit me as I got dressed the night the FBI raided my townhouse. She was better put together than before in a navy-blue pantsuit that bore no coffee stains that I could see. But she must’ve forgone sunscreen, because the apples of her round cheeks were turning candy red. I hadn’t caught her name that night, but still, it was her, working alongside McIlvoy once again. And that made me worry.

  Because maybe they were here to arrest me.

  “Just because this hasn’t happened before,” McIlvoy snapped, “doesn’t mean it didn’t happen this week.”

  “Agent McIlvoy,” the cherry-cheeked agent explained, “means the FBI would value any information you can provide, Mr. Järvinen—”

  “Please. You must call me Niilo.”

  “Niilo,” she repeated, with more poise than her compatriot possessed. “Right now, you and Stellar Unlimited are in the key position of being able to provide critical information about Madeline Donahue, her contacts, and the transfer of the CubeSat from a government lab to your own.”

  Niilo wandered to a wide window not unlike the one over my shoulder. He turned his back on the investigators, but spoke directly into the camera. And to me.

  “I know little of Madeline personally. I know even less of her inappropriate dealings regarding this CubeSat. But I should be quite happy to have you examine her office, interview her colleagues, and confer with Human Resources.”

  “Thank you,” the agent said.

  “ ’Bout time,” McIlvoy grumbled.

  Niilo smiled coldly.

  I didn’t think he liked McIlvoy very much.

  He touched a call button built into the center of the steel-framed coffee table. Everyone rose from their seats. And that’s when Barrett spoke up.

  “Were you, or anyone at Stellar Unlimited, in contact with a Dylan Pruitt, Mr. Järvinen?”

  “Pruitt?” Niilo blinked and forgot to object to the way Barrett addressed him. “This name is familiar, but vaguely only.”

  “He was a US Army soldier,” Barrett said. “He was murdered recently.”

  “Ah,” Niilo replied. “By a senator’s daughter, yes? By Jamie Sinclair.”

  In Niilo’s odd workshop, I turned stone cold.

  On the screen, Barrett didn’t move a muscle.

  He didn’t even speak.

  Niilo said, “You have evidence this Dylan Pruitt dealt with Stellar Unlimited?”

  “No, sir,” Barrett replied. “Not at this time.”

  But he was looking for a connection because Pruitt had been found dead in Fraley’s house.

  And Fraley was linked to Madeline Donahue and the stolen CubeSat.

  “So, Jamie Sinclair,” Niilo said. “She is wanted by the authorities, yes?”

  “She is, sir.” Barrett’s chocolate-brown eyes glittered black. “She was last seen stepping into a car that arrived at a private airfield shortly before a private jet departed for the West Coast. Your jet, I understand.”

  Niilo dismissed this claim with a wave of his hand. “I do not own a jet, Adam.”

  “Your company owns several,” McIlvoy said.

  “They provide necessary transportation to my chief researchers, advisory board members, and the like.” Niilo offered a toothy grin. “Jamie Sinclair is none of these.”

  Barrett’s face was as hard as granite.

  McIlvoy looked like he wanted to spit.

  Enid bustled into the onscreen conference room before he could. A string of people followed in her wake. I could only assume she’d brought Assistants Two through Four with her. The remaining folks might’ve been senior members of the departments Niilo had mentioned. And if they were half as smart as Enid—which they certainly would be, given that they’d been hired at Stellar Unlimited—they would keep Barrett, McIlvoy, and their associates busy.

  “Please, gentlemen, ladies,” Niilo said. “Enid will assist you. And we will speak again after you conclude your inquiries today.”

  The agents and Shelby fell in with Enid’s cohorts. Barrett reluctantly brought up the rear. But before he could pass the eye of the camera, Niilo called out to him.

  “Adam, Jamie Sinclair is a civilian, yes? Surely, she is of little concern to you.”

  “She’s of great concern,” McIlvoy snapped, “to the Department of Justice.”

  As if McIlvoy had never spoken, Barrett said, “She’s charged with killing a soldier. That concerns me deeply.”

  “You would arrest her?” Niilo asked.

  “I would detain her,” Barrett acknowledged, spelling out the duties required of him as a military policeman—as well as the limitations.

  But if Barrett caught up with me, there would have to be more to it than that. I knew it. And so did he.

  “Ms. Sinclair couldn’t remain in my custody,” he admitted. “I’d have to turn her over to Special Agent McIlvoy and the FBI.”

  “And then?” Niilo persisted.

  “And then,” Barrett replied, “she’d need a hell of a good defense lawyer. Because Jamie Sinclair will likely be tried for murder.”

  Chapter 16

  Maybe Niilo Järvinen considered it a kindness to let me spy on his meeting with Barrett and McIlvoy. Maybe he considered it a strategic manipulation. Maybe he thought I’d now do whatever he’d brought me to California to do out of gratitude for his protection—or fear of discovery.

  In any case, he certainly hadn’t brought me here for the orange juice.

  Moments after the massive screen at the end of the room went dark, the brain and the bucks behind Stellar Unlimited waltzed into his Koti and I got my first look at Niilo Järvinen in the flesh.

  “Jamie…”

  He approached me, standing in the middle of his multicolored rug, with an outstretched hand.

  His clasp was cool.

  He said, “I must thank you for making the journey to see me.”

  “Thank you,” I countered, “for your hospitality. I hope hosting me hasn’t caused you some difficulty.”

  “Here, there is little difficulty. The governor is a friend.”

  No wonder I wasn’t arrested when I arrived in Burbank.

  “And what are your senators and your congressmen?” I asked.

  “Kind acquaintances. However, I would like to know them better.”

  Well, Niilo didn’t need me for that. Given his clout and his connections, he could have half of Washington and the entirety of Sacramento at his beck and call. All he needed to do was crook his finger, which he might’ve already done to prevent his jet from being ordered to the ground.

  “Your father,” he said, inviting me to sit on one of the sofas with a simple gesture. “He is a senator. He will campaign to be president, yes?”

  “Truthfully, I don’t know.”

  “Then perhaps I misunderstood.” Niilo folded himself onto one of the ergonomic, engineered-wood chairs. “It seemed Mads mentioned it to me once.”

  The baby-fine hairs on the back of my neck stood up.

  “Mads? Madeline Donahue? Does she know my father?”

  “I cannot say,” Niilo replied. “I cannot say much regarding Madeline, it seems.”

  “But she did work here?”

  Niilo nodded once in assent.

  “And despite what you said to McIlvoy,” I guessed, “you thought you knew her well.”

  Niilo rose, walked to his L-shaped desk. He touched a combination of pressure points
on the desk’s surface and a compartment opened in its side. He removed a stack of fat manila files from the compartment.

  “This, for you, is a copy of Mads’s curriculum vitae, a copy of her letters of reference, and a copy of her employee file.” Niilo dumped the files in my lap. “Her contacts, I spoke to them myself. One was already known to me. He is Professor Winovich of Chicago.”

  “Professor Winovich probably knows a Dr. Madeline Donahue,” I explained. “But I doubt this is her.”

  I’d flipped to her head shot, clipped to the copy of her personnel file. The woman in the photo was the same one who’d put in an appearance at my office. But she probably wasn’t the same Madeline Donahue who’d graduated from Cornell University as her CV stated.

  “These federal agents,” Niilo said, “these military police, they will find her, yes?”

  I wasn’t so sure about McIlvoy. But he had the entire FBI to back him up, including the smart agent who’d accompanied him out here. As for Barrett and Shelby, I knew they could get the job done.

  “Yes,” I replied. “They’ll find her.”

  Niilo nodded sharply. He dropped onto the edge of his chair and leaned close to me. “Jamie, you must find her first.”

  But I was ready for his demand. I’d known he’d make one since he’d set all those old pay phones ringing in the lower level of that Washington, DC, hotel. And I had a demand of my own.

  “I’ll find her,” I promised, “if you tell me all you know about the stolen CubeSat.”

  Niilo sat back.

  He regarded me carefully as he turned over my proposal in his mind.

  “You were the contractor charged with launching it into space,” I said. “You knew it had been developed in a government lab. You knew it never ended up on your campus—”

  “This is not so, Jamie. It arrived by special courier, delivered to Mads, the program manager.”

  “And who was this courier?”

  “A soldier at the government facility.”

  I knew the name of that soldier before Niilo even uttered it.

  “A young man,” he said, “named Dylan Pruitt.”

  I shot from my seat, paced to the wide windows.

  Dylan Pruitt had met his death at Fraley’s place. Fraley and Pruitt had both worked at the same hush-hush lab. Now this connected both Fraley and Pruitt to the mysterious Madeline Donahue and the stolen CubeSat.

  “What’s so hot about this CubeSat?” I demanded.

  “In and of itself?” Niilo replied. “Absolutely nothing.”

  He rose from his cockamamie chair and crossed to the soapstone workbench. From a bin below it, he plucked two cubes. He laid them on the work surface and grabbed two more.

  When he had eight or nine of the things scattered across the stone slab, he said, “Come, Jamie. What do you see?”

  “I see cubes,” I replied, drawing near. “Each is roughly the size of a grapefruit. They’re about the same, and yet, they’re not.”

  “How are they not?”

  I touched one with the tip of my index finger.

  It was as light and lacy as an old maid’s petticoat.

  “This one is made of metal. Titanium maybe. But it isn’t solid. I can see layer upon layer of circuits nestled in its frame. The one beside it is smooth and solid. It seems to be a gold-plated chunk.”

  “It is,” Niilo confirmed, sounding pleased. “Why is this?”

  “I wouldn’t know, except various metals have various properties. Some are more conductive than others—”

  “Yes!”

  “But what do these CubeSats do?”

  “Do?” Niilo scooped up the two cubes. He tossed them into the air, one after the other, and added a third. He juggled them like a big-city busker. “Alone, they do nothing. They are shells. Empty shells. Until we give them purpose, yes?”

  “And how do you do that?”

  “Hardware. Software. Solid-state components. Uploading code that will tell each part what to do while the whole is in orbit.”

  He caught the blocks, slapped them onto the work surface, and dug into his bins again. He came up with a grooved tube that looked rather like a toothbrush’s travel case. He slid the tube into a slot notched into the corner of a darkly glistening cube.

  “This contains Mylar solar panels, filmy like fabric. They are protected by the sheathing during launch and deployment, yes? Wire this into the CubeSat, and on command they unfold, like an umbrella. Thus, they generate power.”

  He abandoned his example, snatched up something else. He handed that something to me. Rolling across my palm, the small cylinder looked a lot like a .40-caliber shell casing.

  “This cartridge, it holds compressed gas. Signal the chip embedded in its end and it will eject a short blast to reposition the CubeSat in a minimal-gravity environment. A meter this way, a meter that. It makes a difference.”

  But I’d had enough of the theoretical.

  I wanted to know about the practical.

  “What was the CubeSat that Madeline stole made to do?” I demanded. “And why do you want me to find her for you?”

  Niilo sobered and grew still.

  “Come,” he said. “I will show you.”

  Chapter 17

  For the second time in as many days, I found myself strapped into a jump seat and on a helicopter ride. Niilo himself manned the controls of the bird. And from the way the lightweight chopper maneuvered through the canyons, over an arroyo, and across desolate desert flats, I suspected he’d made some Niilo-esque alterations to it as well. Throughout the forty-five-minute flight, my host kept up a running commentary, piped directly into my ears thanks to the oversized headset I wore. And I suspected he’d tweaked the headset’s performance, too.

  “Space, it is the richest resource,” he said, his voice coming through remarkably clearly despite the hot wind whistling by. “It is the obligation of governments and corporations to mine this resource for the people, yes? For one business, for one bureaucracy to control it, this would be wrong.”

  “What about one person?” I asked, unable to overlook the obvious.

  “You speak of me?”

  Sophisticated sunglasses with mirrored lenses hid Niilo’s pale eyes, but that didn’t stop him from turning his head to stare at me.

  “Well, I don’t have the capability to launch a payload into space,” I replied. “You, however, do.”

  “I do not launch my own endeavors. Only those of others.”

  “Sure. Communications satellites, scientific experiments…But I hear you’ve got your own moon colony in the works. You just need a couple more years of research and development under your belt and then you’ll be sending your own colonists skyward.”

  “Not my colonists, Jamie. The world’s!” He gestured toward the desert ahead of us. “It begins here, yes?”

  Through the helicopter’s windshield, dark smudges materialized against the sand. Eight of them, at least, grew large as we drew near. Each smudge was circular—a patch of scorched earth—and bracketed by specialized scaffolding.

  “Those are launch sites!” I realized.

  Niilo nudged the helicopter’s throttle forward and we buzzed past a rangy building that wasn’t unlike a bunker. It was flanked on the far end by a hangar large enough to house a fairy-tale giant. Behind it, a runway stretched into the desert. In the foreground, stylized railroad tracks ran from the hangar to the launch sites. And sitting on a flatbed cart in the middle of the tracks, halfway between the outbuilding and the first set of towering scaffolding, was a tall, slender rocket.

  “Liquid propellant and recovery capability,” Niilo boasted. “It is all we need.”

  “What’s it carrying?”

  “Progress. It is the effort of a client, a small province, which could maximize its grain yield to feed its ow
n people, if only its scientists could better track drought and monsoon seasons.”

  “So, you’re launching their satellite for them. To monitor the weather.”

  “I am launching their CubeSat. You could hold it in your hand. Their students at the polytechnic designed it. A quarter of their gross national product will put it into orbit.”

  “That’s not cheap,” I said, shaking my head.

  “Cheaper than previous methods. Plus, the return on their investment will be great. They will no longer be dependent on their neighbors for information, neighbors who remain strong by keeping their smaller province weak. As a result, their people will no longer starve. They will flourish—in every endeavor. A worthy goal, yes?”

  Niilo circled the sand flats below us once again. Our rotors kicked up reddish-brown dust devils out of thin air. One whirled across the tracks as if dancing with delight before spinning itself to oblivion.

  “On behalf of the US government, you were going to launch the CubeSat that Madeline managed to steal,” I said. “Did Uncle Sam have a worthy goal? Or did you?”

  Niilo brought the chopper around in a hard turn that tipped me toward the bunker and the hard, hard ground. “Please understand. I provide launch for a fraction of the cost incurred by a bureaucracy. In special circumstances, to piggyback on another payload means no cost at all and—”

  “I get it. You overcharge the feds, but still save the American taxpayer some bucks—”

  “Yes, and such a cost overrun is necessary to reduce expense for clients like—”

  “Niilo, I get why you won the federal contract to launch the CubeSat. And I get why you wanted to do it. But what was it intended to do and why did Madeline want to get her hands on it?”

  Niilo pointed the helicopter westward and we chased the late afternoon sun across the sky.

  “That CubeSat,” he said. “It is a prototype. It is meant to…how should I say…disable other satellites.”

  Disable?

  That word finally pointed me to the truth.