by Terry Mixon
Sometimes, it seemed like it. One on her. “Nope, completely serious, though I need you to keep the details confidential. I’ll send the general assets list for the company, too.”
Once he had it, he continued. “This says the company owns a spaceship constructed from the ISS2 skeleton. It lists tens of billions in assets. And you’re getting an outright stake of thirty percent? Jess, I’ve never seen a contract so straightforward. I don’t see any gotchas.”
“That’s what I needed to know. Remember, keep it under your hat and watch the news over the next few weeks. I owe you one.”
Jess hung up and signed the contract. She sent a copy to Clayton, Harry, and herself.
They’d relocated to the spaceport proper. To say that security was heavy was an understatement. Several of Harry’s special operations teams had arrived and all of them seemed to be keeping an eye on her. And the building they were in, to be fair.
Sandra was back on her feet and mad as a wet cat. For her, that meant brooding silence. The rest of the original team was off doing other tasks. The room Jess and Sandra were in had four men standing guard, armed for war. Four more stood in the hall outside.
“Sandra, I’m sorry about Allen.”
The other woman looked up with cold, hard eyes. “Me, too. He was a good man. It’s not your fault. It’s mine. I let that traitor get behind me and almost lost you, too.”
The sniper visibly shook herself. “Sorry. My mind is already on payback. That’ll come in time. Allen took them out and got you free. That’s what matters.”
“Actually, no. I wish he had.” She gave Sandra a rundown of what had happened.
The other woman’s eyes widened as she listened. “Oh, God. I’m sorry you had to do that. To see that.”
Jess shrugged. “I didn’t have a choice. They had it coming, but I’m going to have some bad nights. I just know it.”
“You need to talk to someone,” the sniper said firmly. “If not today, then soon. PTSD isn’t a joke and you don’t want to let something like that take over your life. I don’t know if you’re religious or not, but you might see someone there, too.”
“I will. When I have time. Harry’s figuring out what we’re doing next. I need to be part of that.”
“Then what the hell are we doing sitting here? Let’s go.”
Sandra stood and keyed her radio. “Scotty is on the move.”
“Scotty? Seriously?”
“Harry suggested it. You want a different call sign? Pitch it to me and I’ll see what I can do. It’s like a nickname, though. Sometimes you don’t get to pick the one you like.”
“That sucks.”
Several of the mercenaries stayed at the office while the rest formed up around Jess and Sandra. The Rainforest guards wisely got out of the way when they saw them coming.
Harry was in a conference room in the basement of the security building with one of his guys and several Rainforest types. He had a satellite view of what looked like a college campus up on the screen. He paused what he was saying when she came in. “Jess, I hope you’re feeling better.”
“I’m riding the tiger.” She picked out the most senior looking Rainforest guy and held out her hand. “Jessica Cook.”
“John Cradock, chief of Rainforest security operations.”
Part of her felt sorry for him, but the rest wanted to slap him for hiring traitors. “I’m sorry you lost some people.”
He grunted as though someone had punched him in the stomach. “I’m sorry one of them turned on you. That’s on me.”
The large man gestured to the screen. “We’re planning on returning the favor. Mister Rogers—the elder—told me about the change in organizational structure. The younger Mister Rogers is in command of these operations going forward. As a minority stakeholder, you’ll have input, too.”
Harry gestured toward the chair beside him. “Have a seat and I’ll fill you in.”
Jess sat down while the mercenaries took up places against the wall. “Did you sign the contract? I signed mine just before I came down.”
“Not yet.” He pulled out his tablet. “Let’s get that out of the way so this is official. Done. It’s off to my father. God help me.”
He pointed to the screen. “That’s BenCorp headquarters in the US. My mother’s flagship company.”
She leaned forward and examined it closely. “Is this a retaliatory raid? Do we have time for that?”
“We always have time for payback. In this case, though, it actually has some relevance.” He touched the controls and brought up the image of a skinny man. “Meet Vincent Cruz. He used to work for my mother as the assistant IT manager of BenCorp.”
“Used to?”
Harry nodded. “Right up until the moment she found out he was spying for my father. Now he’s almost certainly a prisoner. He was supposedly in the process of stealing a trove of classified information that he never had a chance to turn over, including detailed plans for the facility where they built the reactor. We need them, so we need him.”
Jess could only imagine the trouble the man was in. “He must’ve stood to gain a lot of money to cross people like Kathleen Bennett. She doesn’t even know me and yet she’s tried to kill me several times. How can I help?”
“Honestly, you can’t,” Cradock said. “This is a straightforward security operation. Having you along would be a major distraction. With the damage here at the port, it might be best if you worked on getting ready to launch the fuel and reactor once we get them.”
She agreed with the basic sentiment. The last thing she wanted was another gunfight. “Do we have the fuel?”
“Not yet, but we will. The militants won’t be able to hold onto the facility. I’m taking care of that operation while Harry gets the data on the Paris facility. Then he’ll lead his people there to get the reactor.”
“It’ll need to go into orbit as soon as we get it back here,” Harry said. “We don’t want to give them a chance to strike back before we can boost it.”
Jess considered the two assaults and their timing. “With one pad out of operation, we can only do launches on two. We could fuel one of the lifters and carry it over to pad three. When the reactor arrives, we’ll load it and fire it off. I figure maybe an hour, if we’re on the bounce. You’ll need me in Paris.”
Harry didn’t look pleased at that news. “Why?”
“Because it’s a nuclear reactor. You need a skilled engineer in case they’ve made it operational. Based on what I’ve seen of the design, we could move it locally even while it’s running, but flying it in that configuration is out of the question.
“Worst case, we’d need to power it down, disassemble it, and fly it out a few days later. That would require a secluded area that no one could find for three days. Hopefully, it won’t come to that.”
“It better not,” Harry said. “The French will lock the country down as soon as they know its missing. We need to get clear before they realize what we took.”
“The laws of physics and thermodynamics are outside my control,” she said. “I also need to be at the factory in Africa, once you have it locked down.”
“That’s not happening,” Harry said bluntly. “The area is overrun by fanatics. The fuel extraction will almost certainly be under fire.”
She shrugged. “Then you probably won’t get the fuel.”
Harry and Cradock glanced at one another. “And why is that?” the Rainforest security man ventured.
“Because it’s locked down in an area where the militants aren’t looking for it. Only a few people were ever on the access list. They died when the militants took over the factory. The computers are isolated, so it’s too late to add anyone else. I’m on the list already.”
“Crap,” Harry said. “Give me a minute to think about this.”
Her tablet chimed. She looked at the incoming message. “Your father just signed the contract. We’re committed now.”
“Yea.” The young mercenary’s tone indicate
d anything but excitement. “You can go, but you’re not going in until they’ve suppressed the enemy. You land, open up the storage area, and get the hell back out of there. The security teams will extract the fuel. You got that? I want you in and gone before the militants can strike back.”
“No argument from me. I’m tired of getting shot at.”
“And Sandra takes a team in with you. If she says it’s too hot, she’ll abort your portion of the mission. You got that, Sandra?”
“Orders received,” the sniper said.
Jess was both relieved and annoyed by the exchange. Somehow, she suspected her life would never go quite the way she expected from this point forward.
* * * * *
Once Jess and her team had left, Cradock gave Harry a searching look. “Are you sure that’s the best idea? We need her for the reactor.”
“Then make sure the facility is locked down. Hit it with everything you have, clean it out fast, and get clear.”
Harry stood. “My people and I need to get moving. I need you to get us out of here without advertising it. My mother obviously has eyes on what we’re doing. I don’t want her to know we’re coming.”
“How about you make a big show of boarding some cargo planes bound for the Middle East?”
“And then what?”
The security guy grinned. “Then we play a shell game. Swap them out for other planes going to the US for high tech equipment. We just lost a fueling station. We need those parts.”
Harry liked the plan. It played into the events his mother had caused.
“So long as no one knows, we can work with that. Military equipment is more difficult to get into the US, so we’ll need some help on that end. France, too.”
“I’ll work something out,” Cradock said. “The US is the more difficult of the two. You can buy heavy weapons on almost any street corner in Paris these days.”
“Okay.” Harry stood. “Let’s get this in motion.”
Chapter Eighteen
Clayton spent the next several hours getting things in order. Harry was heading to the US, his other teams were diverting to Paris, and Jessica Cook was on her way to the factory in Northern Africa.
Her mission would kick off first. The ruckus might give Harry an opening to get into the BenCorp facilities. Clayton had a few more people on his payroll that could provide some kind of cover, but the less they took for granted, the better.
Where were they keeping his spy and where was the pilfered data? Hopefully, the man had secreted it somewhere they could get to it. They wouldn’t know that until they had him.
His ex-wife’s chief of security was a real sweetheart. Rumors swirled around the man’s penchant for torturing people. If he had Cruz, odds were good the man was in whatever dungeon the sadist had constructed.
And that just might be the right place to look first. Kathleen was a terrible person, but he doubted she let her security chief torture people in her office building. The man probably had a private facility for his personal amusements. One where the screaming wouldn’t disturb the neighbors.
Clayton smiled. Time to see if he could locate it.
* * * * *
Kathleen Bennett examined the book closely. The cover looked like leather, but it wasn’t natural. It had a slickness that spoke to something artificial. The pages were definitely synthetic. The lettering didn’t look like anything she’d ever seen before.
The tools were a combination of modern and other. They didn’t look like any alloy she was familiar with, but that would come out in the lab report.
It wasn’t much. She’d expected significantly more from a direct intervention. Dammit. They had a spaceship in the jungle. Surely, they had more than this to examine.
She glared at her son. “This can’t be everything.”
He shrugged. “It’s all they had in their makeshift lab. Your man in the hotel said that the permanent facility wasn’t ready yet.”
“Why would Clayton call Harry’s people in? Not for guarding the spaceship. They’ve buried the site in Rainforest security people. What are we missing?”
“Maybe the mystery is right under your nose, Mother. He’s on a spaceport, paying Harry to protect a space engineer. Perhaps the secret is in orbit right over our heads.”
She made a derisive noise. “The space hotel? Don’t be any more of an idiot than you have to be. He’s welcome to pour money down the drain on that project.”
“Are you certain it’s what you think it is? The old bastard is sharp enough with the rest of his business ventures. Could the space hotel be a cover for something else?”
She considered that. “A weapon’s platform? There’s no way. All of the leading nations are keeping an eye on nukes. The little power plant he has up there is barely strong enough to keep the lights on.
“Besides, I paid to have the construction monitored from a telescope in Hawaii. They watched it for months. There’s no place to hide missiles.”
“You asked the question,” he said. “If my answer doesn’t satisfy you, perhaps you should look elsewhere.”
“Go figure out where your brother is,” she snarled. “If he’s going to get even, I want to know where to double the guard.”
She dismissed her son from her mind as soon as he was out the door and picked up the phone. She’d rouse her staff and figure out if anything was going on in orbit, just in case.
* * * * *
Getting into the US proved to be anticlimactic. The plane flying Harry and his people in landed in Texas and the inspector never even looked inside. It lifted off and was in Chicago two hours before the sun rose.
They’d spent the entire trip gathering intel and rejecting plans. The security chief, Donald Reynolds, lived in company housing to one side of the facility. His home was large and somewhat separated from the rest, but it was inside the perimeter.
The man himself had an unsavory reputation and a criminal record. His rap sheet looked like the guidebook to a serial killer. Animal torture and mutilation, assault of the elderly, and the police suspected he’d had a hand in the disappearance of a high school classmate.
Those run-ins with the law stopped once BenCorp hired him. Apparently he’d found someone willing to use his talents and provide a cover for his hobbies. He wished he could say that surprised him, but it didn’t.
The team exited the plane once it landed at a smaller airport near Chicago and piled into an unmarked van. It took them to a disused warehouse about half a mile from the target. Two men who didn’t give their names were waiting for them.
The larger one, a black man with closely trimmed hair and a diamond stud in one ear, gestured toward a number of boxes stacked neatly on the floor. “You’ll find weapons and electronics there. The plane will be ready to take off the moment you get back to the airfield. Good hunting.”
Harry helped his people unpack the boxes. The selection was a little sparse on the weapons front, but more than he’d expected to have available in the US. The police would freak if they had any idea of what was in the warehouse. He made sure everyone had burner cells just in case.
Jeremy Gonzales went over the electronics. “This is good stuff. Top of the line. If we can get past the perimeter fence, I can get into the house.”
“And how do we slip past the live guards and electronic security?”
“With these.” Jeremy held up some jumpsuits. “They minimize IR radiation. I can get us through the exterior fences. We time the patrols and slip in right after one passes. The monitors will see something, but probably mark it as an artifact of the team that just went by.”
“And if they don’t?”
The Hispanic man grinned. “Then we better not take our sweet time. The guards will circle back and check the area again. By then, we’d better be gone.”
Harry liked the audacity of the plan. “That’s entry. Next up, we need to breach the target residence. You can bet that he’ll have top of the line intrusion detection. Once inside, we have to locate Cruz
and get him out. Preferably without making a big scene. We still have to retrieve the data, if possible. Then we exit stage left, possibly with everyone on alert and hunting us.”
Rex hefted a rifle with a grenade launcher. “That’s where I come in. I can make a ruckus in a different area and draw their attention. If you need me, then they’re already aware of you. It won’t matter if I blow something up.”
Harry examined the communications gear. It was similar to what he normally used. Encrypted burst transmissions. Anyone hearing it would think it was static. Unless, of course, they had the very best equipment and were on the lookout for strange signals.
“Okay. Gear up and we’ll make entry in thirty minutes. We need to be in the target house by dawn. We’ll plan on exterior guards and a very short window of opportunity. Keep communication to a minimum.”
* * * * *
Jess slept through the flight to Northern Africa. She blearily stared out the window as the aircraft touched down. She was almost awake by the time they pulled up to a hangar. Two other large aircraft sat nearby.
Cradock and his people exited first and many went inside the hangar. One of them gave a high sign.
Sandra started down the stairs. “That’s the all clear. Let’s get in there and get this show on the road.”
People crowded the hangar, all of them dressed in desert camouflage and heavily armed. Cradock’s people were gearing up from open crates.
The senior security man gestured for Jess to join him at a table. Several other young security types stood around. The map in front of them showed the manufacturing plant.
“Where’s the fuel stored?” Cradock asked.
She pointed to one of the barracks. “Under here. The cover story was that the building had bad pipes. They kept it locked during the plant’s operational run. The rear wall butts up against the plant where the finished product came out. Trusted personnel moved the fuel into the secure facility and shipped out water in its place.”
