by Mike Maden
“Wow. Didn’t expect that,” Gavin said. “That’s either a top-secret government facility or somebody paid big bucks to do that.”
“I think it’s time we paid a visit to Runtso’s real office.”
64
Jack and Gavin took the Wrangler for the sixteen-minute trek toward the travel node they identified as Runtso’s primary workplace. They left Runtso’s Tesla parked at the funeral home but took the fob with them in case somebody else finally figured out what Gavin had already put together.
Jack reminded Gavin to play it cool on the drive-by. No finger pointing or phone cameras or even long stares at the place were allowed. He didn’t want to draw any attention from their security people as the two of them made their surveillance run.
They drove past the main gate. The property was protected by a fifteen-foot-high chain-link fence topped with razor wire. Tall lampposts were planted like trees everywhere and lights were fixed to the warehouse walls. The place lit up like a Christmas tree at night, Jack assumed. Security cameras were everywhere.
A simple white sign facing the road displayed three letters: WML, along with the street address. A uniformed guard stepped out of his booth and approached an eighteen-wheeler that had just pulled up. It wasn’t hard to see the pistol on the guard’s hip, even from the road. Several other freight trucks were backed into loading bays. Civilian workers loaded and unloaded the trailers with forklifts and dollies. Jack spotted at least one security man on the loading dock as well, wearing civilian clothes. But his short-cropped hair, physical build, and determined gait gave him away.
It looked like the main offices for the facility were located at this first building. White decal letters with the same WML were stuck on the glass doors leading inside.
Jack drove on farther down the road past a second gate and more security guards. Freshly painted military combat and support vehicles were parked in rows in the expansive yard. A freight train rumbled slowly past behind the property inside the fence. From where he sat on the road, it seemed to Jack that the railroad track was elevated, along with the rest of the property, above the wide and greenish river. Power lines paralleled the train track as well.
Jack kept driving, following Gavin’s tracking program. It beeped when they passed a third gate, indicating that this was the place where Runtso had driven to so many times in his Tesla.
A tanker truck hauling liquid nitrogen was parked just outside the closed gate. The driver was showing ID to an armed uniformed guard while another security man in civilian clothes climbed up into the cab. A second uniformed guard examined the undercarriage of the truck with an inspection mirror.
A dozen refrigerated trucks were unloading. Several were branded with familiar food company names. Jack saw forklifts driven by men wearing insulated coveralls inside the open rolling doors. The same freight train rolling past the other building was now approaching this one, its brakes and steel wheels screeching to a coupler-clanging stop.
Jack kept driving. He knew that security cameras pointed at the road captured every vehicle entering and exiting the gate of this more secure facility. And almost certainly every vehicle driving on the frontage road. He put another mile between him and the distribution facility before pulling into a vacant lot on the side of the road.
“What’d you see, Gav?”
“Pretty big place. Three entrances. Armed guards, which I guess isn’t that big of a deal for a place storing lots of stuff.”
“Did you notice the undercover guards? Not your typical rent-a-cops.”
“Not really. My peripheral vision kinda sucks.”
“Some of those guys were strapped. Real operator types.”
“That second facility had military vehicles parked there,” Gavin said. “Maybe that’s why.”
“What about the refrigerated facility? Why do you need armed guards there? And they seemed to be the most paranoid.”
“They must be guarding something really valuable. I’m guessing it’s not the trailers full of Stouffer’s Meat Lovers Lasagna—my personal favorite, by the way.”
“So tell me about Runtso. Why would a brainiac like him work in a frozen food warehouse? The transition from ORNL to here doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me.”
“Unless they’re working on a top-secret frozen pizza recipe inside of that place, I don’t think they’d need the kinds of clearances he had.”
“And he wouldn’t need a physics degree to work in there. So what would he have been doing at ORNL?”
“It was redacted from the records. But he was working on a project even your dad would have a hard time accessing. It had to be something on the bleeding edge of national defense. Next-gen nukes? Directed-energy weapons? Electromagnetic railgun? Something like that.”
“At ORNL, sure. But at a frozen food warehouse?”
Gavin scratched his flaky scalp. “I know. It doesn’t make sense. We need to get in there but the security was too tight back there to try and fake our way in. And there’s only two of us, so it’s not like we’re going to fight our way in.”
Fight our way in? Jack fought back a smile. “Good call.”
“I think we should call the FBI or DoD and have this place checked out.”
“And what would we tell them? There’s a warehouse full of Swanson TV dinners that pose a threat to national security you need to investigate?”
“Yeah. I guess it does sound kind of stupid.” Gavin’s stomach gurgled like a jar of fermenting kimchi. “I’m getting kinda hungry. How about we go hit up Calhoun’s? I think it’s only like fifteen minutes from here.”
“Sure. Why not? Give us a chance to regroup and plan our next move.”
Jack put the Jeep in gear and checked for traffic in his rearview mirror.
A big refrigerated truck rumbled past, throwing brightly colored leaves, heading back toward Knoxville. As soon as it cleared, Jack pulled back onto the two-lane and followed him, his mind working on the problem at hand while Gavin scrolled through Calhoun’s online menu.
They rolled along at the posted thirty-mile-an-hour speed limit for a few miles. Suddenly, Gavin shouted.
“I’m such an idiot! How can I have been so stupid?” He thumped his forehead with the palm of his hand.
“Whoa, Gav. Take it easy. It’s just lunch.”
“We need to get back to Runtso’s.”
“Why?”
“Now, Jack. We need to get back now!”
65
Jack pulled into the back of Runtso’s house again, keeping the Wrangler out of sight from the street.
Jack and Gavin each pulled another pair of gloves on, then made their way back into the house and into the gaming room. Gavin led the way.
“Jeez, Gav. What’s got your tail knotted up?”
Gavin ran over to the broken shadow box with the Commodore 64 and picked it up. He stared longingly at it through the cracked glass, like he was reuniting with a lost love.
“Do you have a knife, Jack?”
Jack pulled out his EDC blade, the same Kershaw Blur he’d plunged into van Delden’s thigh back at the steel mill. He snicked the razor-sharp steel open and handed the knife to Gavin, handle first.
Gavin turned the shadow box over and set it facedown on the carpet. He took the knife and carefully cut away the backing, revealing the power plug and connecting cords and cables. There was another, thicker backing that supported the computer on the other side. There were also three small packages wrapped in plain brown paper.
“Oh, baby.” Gavin opened the first wrapped package carefully, as if he were handling an original version of the Constitution.
Gavin sighed with deep satisfaction, even reverence. “And it has the cartridges, too.”
“And that’s a good thing?”
Gavin then wedged the tip of the blade beneath the thin, twisted wire ties that he
ld the computer in place against the thick backing.
“Is this really the time to play a game of Pong?” Jack asked, watching Gavin proceed with surgical precision.
“Runtso’s a genius. I know, because I’m one, too,” Gavin said. “And every young genius that could get his or her hands on one of these babies did so, or drove their parents crazy trying.”
A minute later, Gavin had the Commodore 64 removed. He picked it up along with its accessory parts and the cartridges and carried it over to the big-screen TV that was attached to a wall mount. He set the sacred objects down like a priest placing a sacrifice on the altar. He pulled the TV away and exposed its back and connecting ports.
“Runtso thought of everything,” Gavin whispered. He turned to Jack. “He was one of the good guys. I just know it.”
“Because he played old video games?”
“Just watch.” Gavin hooked up the Commodore 64 and powered it up. “Come to Papa,” Gavin whispered as the machine’s start-up screen displayed on the TV.
**** COMMODORE BASIC V2 ****
64K RAM SYSTEM 38911 BASIC BYTES FREE
READY.
“Now watch this.” Gavin inserted one of the gaming cartridges into the slot on the side of the unit. The TV display pulled up another screen:
PASSWORD?
“Aha! I knew it!”
“What?”
“You don’t password games, Jack. Not back then. He’s hiding something.”
“Can you hack this thing?”
“Pffft. I’m hurt, Jack. I really am. Runtso’s a gamer, just like me, and a gamer’s gotta game. So I know how this dude thinks.” Gavin’s chubby fingers began dancing on the keyboard.
“You keep on that. I’m heading back to Runtso’s job site. Call me if you find anything.”
“Will do.” Gavin glanced up at Jack, worried. “Careful, okay?”
“You keep your ears open, too. No telling who might be coming back.” Jack pulled his Glock and held it out, butt first. “You might need this.”
Gavin glanced at the pistol and shook his head. “I think you might need it more.”
* * *
—
After studying the map, Jack made a turn onto a side road five minutes away from the distribution center, a plan forming in his mind. His phone rang. It was Gavin.
“How’d it go?”
“I got in.”
“Fantastic! You really are a gen—”
“It’s far worse than we thought, Jack. Dear God.” Gavin’s voice cracked with emotion.
“Worse? What? How?”
“Runtso was working on a project called TRIBULATION.”
“TRIBULATION? We’re looking for RAPTURE.”
“TRIBULATION is RAPTURE, but not exactly. They’re both quantum computer projects. Universal QPUs, entangled particles, the whole nine yards. Only, RAPTURE is the ORNL project and TRIBULATION is a parallel project—stolen, basically, by Runtso and a lady named Parsons.”
“Is a true quantum computer even possible?”
“It must be, since they did it.”
“That’s not good. A quantum computer that powerful changes everything.”
Jack knew something about them from his time in Singapore when he busted a Chinese attempt to steal quantum software technology. But the stuff they were doing back then was nowhere near this powerful.
“Yeah. It does change everything,” Gavin said. “And in the wrong hands, it changes everything for the worse. There isn’t a computer in the world today that can withstand a quantum brute force attack.”
“What else?”
“It gets worse.” Gavin filled in the details.
Gavin was right.
It was far worse than they could ever have imagined.
66
WASHINGTON, D.C.
OVAL OFFICE, THE WHITE HOUSE
President Ryan was sitting at the Resolute desk when his private cell phone rang. The people who had access to that number were a privileged few, including his wife and kids. They knew to only use it for an extreme emergency because they knew he’d answer it, no matter what, even if the world was on fire.
It was Jack Junior.
“Son, what’s wrong?” He could barely hear Jack for the interference.
“I don’t have time to explain but Gavin and I just found out that there’s going to be a five-trillion-dollar robbery any time now. It’s an operation using a quantum computer called TRIBULATION. And there’s more—”
Ryan was stunned. How did Jack find this out?
“You’re too late. It’s already happened.”
“What?”
“Son, I’m putting you on speakerphone. I’m here with Secretary of the Treasury Stephen Hodges and the chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, Wesley Moorcroft. Tell them what else you know about TRIBULATION. We still need more information about which banks were hit.”
“The banks? Forget the banks. Gavin can fill you in on that later. Right now we’ve got a real DEFCON situation about to hit us.”
“What do you mean?”
“TRIBULATION’s next target is a joint Chinese-Russian military exercise in the Bering Sea called Snow Dragon. They’re going to use TRIBULATION to hack their systems. These assholes want to start World War Three.”
“When?”
“Now!”
The color drained from Ryan’s face.
“So we’re too late?”
“Not necessarily. The intel said the launch date was today. I’m assuming it’s happening now. Or maybe we still have a little time. All I know is that we’ve got to shut it down now no matter what.”
“How?”
“TRIBULATION is in Knoxville. That’s where I am, too.”
“There’s an FBI SWAT team in Knoxville,” Ryan said. “What’s the address for this TRIBULATION thing?”
He grabbed a pad and pen from his desk and wrote the address down as Jack recited it. He ripped the paper from the pad and shoved it into Arnie’s hands. “Call Director Medina. Tell her to get her SWAT team to this address ASAP. Fill her in on what you’ve heard and have her call me for anything else she needs—and get Scott, Bob, and Mary Pat up here pronto.”
“On it, boss.” Arnie bolted into action.
“One more thing, Pop,” Jack said over the speakerphone. “Get an FBI team down to Houston.”
Ryan shouted at Arnie, halfway out the door. “Arnie, hold up.” He turned back to the phone. “Why Houston?”
“Because Buck Logan is the asshole behind all of this.”
“Logan?”
“Gavin can fill you in. But you better grab Logan before he hears about Knoxville.”
“You catch that?” Ryan asked van Damm.
“I’ll put the call in to Medina right now.”
“Son, any chance you can get over to that address, be our eyes on the ground? It’ll be at least thirty minutes before the FBI can saddle up.”
“Get there? I’m already here.”
“Sit tight, then. I’ll get back to you when I know more. You did good, son. Son?”
Jack’s line was dead.
67
SULU SEA
OFF THE COAST OF MINDANAO, THE PHILIPPINES
Guzmán leaned on the starboard rail of the Lupita admiring the luminous full moon shimmering in the boundless dark of the infinite sea.
He smoked his cigar, contemplating his next move. TRIBULATION had launched according to the encoded text from el jefe, though the meaning and purpose of it had never been fully explained to him. The same text also confirmed that another payment had been deposited into the Sammler account. Sablek’s widow would get her husband’s share, and his as well. Money meant nothing to Guzmán.
Loyalty was everything.
His people would end this mission
with enough cash to walk away if they wanted to. Many of them would.
He could not.
He’d thought long and hard about van Delden’s death as well as Sablek’s and Bykov’s, now confirmed. Death was not such a bad thing, he’d decided. It was the negation of suffering, and the end of fear.
Unless, of course, there was a hell. Then suffering and fear would only be the beginning. But he’d given up on the concept of such things long ago. This life was hell enough.
He felt strangely content. The mission he’d been hired to do had been accomplished. The next two weeks were secondary. He’d complete those as well.
And then the next job.
He blew a cloud of smoke into the cool night air and tossed the butt into the water near the hull.
It bounced against the oily gray hide of a tiger shark . . .
* * *
—
Halfway across the world, a digital monitor displayed four red icons in oceans around the globe. They represented four Sammler mother ships. A fifth, located in the Sulu Sea, the Lupita, was still yellow.
It turned red in that instant.
The technician smiled. She had remotely activated the automatic return homing devices in the tiger shark drones. She had also deactivated the mother ships’ drone-tracking devices and ignored requests for technical assistance.
The nearest drone sharks returned undetected to their respective mother ships and, on command, detonated as instructed. Guzmán’s was the last. The remaining sharks also self-detonated, destroying all evidence of their existence.
Everything had gone exactly according to plan. All of the loose ends were tied off.
She sent an encrypted text to her employer.
GUZMÁN DEAD—PROJECT TERMINATED
She shut down her computer, smirking with satisfaction at a job well done. She would receive one heck of a bonus for this.
She stretched and yawned but the sound of automatic gunfire outside shut her pretty little mouth.
