T
HE PRISONER WASN’T TALKING
. The young,
square-faced operator was in an abandoned wine cellar, seated in a hardback
chair, ankles zip-tied to the chair legs, his hands tied behind him. His
tactical vest had been discarded and his pockets emptied. He seemed to be
taking it all in stride, ignoring Pete’s first few questions with a defiant
glare. Skylar stood beside the Irishman with an angry stare, and Jake sensed
she was anxious to play her role in the unfolding scene. Lacey paced behind
them, impatiently waiting for the results Jake knew would never come to pass.
How could they? he thought, thumbing a text into his phone
as he watched from his perch on the open staircase. Even if the man broke, Jake
doubted he could provide any helpful information. Hell, even the man’s boss, who’d
cornered Jake in the hospital laundry room, didn’t know who was behind the
operation.
Geppetto. The man pulling the strings.
Pete held the prisoner’s wallet up to his face and flipped
it open to reveal a silver and orange badge and ID. “Carabinieri? Special Intervention
Group? Aren’t ye lads operating a tad out of yer jurisdiction?”
The operator’s eyes narrowed.
Jake frowned. A Chinese triad in Los Angeles, Interpol
agents in Holland, and now a specialized branch of the Italian military police?
Lacey stopped pacing and he could tell she was on the edge of losing it. He
understood the sentiment but reminded himself that staggering odds had never
stopped him before, and he wasn’t about to give up now. Besides, he still had
an ace up his sleeve. He tapped
Send
on his phone and waited for a reply.
Pete continued, “Why would a bleedin’ counterterrorist group
be participating in the snatch and grab of Miss Lacey and her husband?”
The man refused to reply and Pete let out a long sigh, then nodded
at Skylar. She pulled out a large hypodermic from the side pocket of her cargo
pants.
The operator shifted in his seat.
“Oh, don’t ye worry about her, laddie. She’s only gonna give
ye a wee cocktail. It won’t hurt ye none. All it’s really gonna do is make ye
drowsy.”
The man’s eyes widened as Skylar rolled up his sleeve,
squirted a bit of fluid from the needle, and poked it into a bulging vein on
the inside of his elbow. She hesitated before depressing the plunger, looking
to Pete.
Jake had to hand it to them. They put on a good show. His
phone vibrated, he turned away to read the text—and his heart sank. It was
Doc’s reply to his request to activate the tracker Jake had placed in the Asian
woman’s purse:
It’s dead. Nothing I can do. It must have been discovered.
Jake’s captors had been unconscious when he’d placed the
tracker, and he’d been careful to hide his actions from the camera he thought
was in front of him—
He gasped, and his hand grabbed the pocket holding the
specialized glasses.
“Son of a bitch,” he muttered. One of the guards during his
interrogation had been wearing a pair. The man had been slumped on the floor
from the aerosol drug Jake had released, but that didn’t mean the device had
stopped transmitting. The man watching it all from his ivory tower was probably
still laughing at Jake’s inept spy craft.
A surge of despair swept through him and attempted to grab a
foothold but his brain wouldn’t allow it. Already it was recalculating,
analyzing the situation, and sorting through options, discarding one after another.
He couldn’t turn to Doc for further help, because Doc’s ties to DARPA and its
resources would ultimately be too tempting for his friend to resist, and Jake
was convinced that involving the US government would cause far more harm than
good, especially with Geppetto’s mysterious ties around the world. He’d hoped
the discovery of the glasses had been a major coup, but Marshall and Timmy, his
normal go-to guys with the cyber know-how necessary to back-trace the signal,
were both MIA. Which left him with a stunt crew and an actress as his only
resources.
No, they were much more than that. They were warriors in
their own right, with a loyalty toward one another that Jake embraced. They’d
shown more heart in the last few hours than an army of soldiers. Sure, they
didn’t have Marshall’s cyber genius or Tony’s spec-ops experience or Kenny’s skill
with hi-tech toys, or even Jake’s previous super reflexes and telekinetic
ability. But the way his brain kept hiccupping without the mini, his memory
couldn’t be counted on anyway. They would just have to approach the problem in
a different way.
Old school.
“Let’s keep this simple,” Pete said, as if hearing Jake’s
thoughts. The Irishman crouched so he was eye to eye with the prisoner. “You’re
gonna tell me where ye took Marshall, or I’m gonna let my partner here put ye
to sleep.”
The guard’s confused expression suggested he didn’t
understand the dire nature of the threat any more than Jake did.
“Oh, I forgot one thing,” Pete said, pulling a fragmentation
grenade from his pocket. He yanked out the pin and stuffed it between the man’s
legs.
“No! Per favore,”
the prisoner cried out, frantically
squeezing his legs together to prevent the grenade’s release lever from
snapping open. Pete nodded his approval and removed his hand. The operator’s
knees were shaking. His voice quaked. “But I know nothing.”
“Now that’s a damn shame,” Pete said, standing up. “Because
if ye did, ye might be wakin’ up on the morn to find yerself all tight ’n’ cozy
in yer own bed. Instead... ” He shrugged and nodded to Skylar, and she pressed
the plunger to its hilt.
The operator gasped and his face turned white.
Pete and Skylar turned toward the staircase as if to leave.
Lacey followed.
“Whatever you do,” Pete said over his shoulder. “Don’t fall
asleep.”
“Aspetta.
Wait. Please!”
The trio hesitated, and Jake caught the glint of a smile
from Pete. He was turning to face the man when Lacey spun around and charged at
him. She grabbed a fistful of collar in either hand and shoved backward until
the wide-eyed operator was balanced on the two rear legs of the chair.
“Where did you take my husband?” she screamed.
“C-Ciampino airport!”
“What flight?”
“Private jet,” he said. “Terminal seven.”
“Where was it going?”
“I-I don’t know.”
“Where?” she shouted, her face inches from his, her arms
quivering at the effort to keep the chair from toppling.
“Please,
signora
,” the operator pleaded, his words
tumbling over one another. “We were not told. On my mother I swear it. I was
only following the colonel’s orders.
Per favore!”
“You lie! You bastards took him and you—”
Lacey stopped when Jake rushed behind the man’s chair and propped
it up just as she was about to shove it backward. “It’s okay, Lace. He’s
telling the truth. I talked to the colonel.”
She frowned, her grip on the man’s collar loosening. “But—”
“It’s okay,” Jake repeated, trying his best to soothe her
emotions with his mind as he eased the chair’s front legs back to the floor.
“We’ll find him. I promise.”
Lacey stepped back, her gaze empty, her head shaking from
side to side. “He’s gone,” she whispered. “He’s gone.”
Skylar draped an arm around her and guided her up the
stairs. Jake followed, already planning their next move.
Private jet. Terminal seven.
Pete trudged after him.
“Wait,” the prisoner called out. “I told you everything. The
grenade!”
At the top of the stairs, Pete flicked off the light
switch. As he closed the door behind him, he said, “Night, night, laddie.”
The operator’s muffled shouts faded as they made their way
to the garage.
“A dud?” Jake asked.
Pete winked. “Smoke ’n’ mirrors.”
An hour later Jake exited the flight service center at the
Ciampino airport and slumped into the front passenger seat of the Peugeot.
Lacey and Skylar were in the back and Pete was behind the wheel.
“Well?” Pete said.
“Hong Kong,” Jake said flatly.
Lacey gasped. “Are you sure?”
“It was the only flight that departed from terminal seven
after Marshall was taken. Gulfstream 550. It departed at midnight and flew
nonstop. Twelve-hour flight.” It was a thin lead, but it seemed to jibe when Jake
considered Doc’s mention of the chatter emanating from Southeast Asia, and the
Asian gangs that had pursued Jake in California and Amsterdam, and even the
refined colonial accent of the woman who’d interrogated him. He rubbed his
chin, recalling the whipping strike of her braid. Plus, hadn’t de Vries made
his fortune in Hong Kong? Jake pictured the life-size oil painting of de Vries
and his Asian wife. Somehow, it all fit. With one big exception: none of the
flights that had left the private terminal at LAX after the kids were taken had
been destined for Hong Kong. The closest destination had been Tokyo, which was eighteen
hundred miles from the former British territory.
Could they have transferred to another flight? Did they
even get on the plane?
“But what if Marshall wasn’t actually on the plane?” Lacey
asked.
Then we’re screwed
.
But no more so than if we sit
around here staring at each other.
Shoving aside his doubts, he reached over the console and
gripped her hand. “It’s a solid lead, Lace. Marsh
was
on that plane and
we’re going to find him, and then we’re going to find the rest of them. And
when I say we, I mean me
and
you, because there’s no way I’m letting you
out of my sight.”
She nodded, and a flash of steel tightened her expression.
Squeezing his hand, she said, “I hear that.” Then she reached into her grab bag
and pulled out two passports, one blue and one green. “I can play Olivia from
Quebec or Gabriella from Milan. When do we leave?”
“As soon as Pete drops us off at the international
terminal.”
Pete scoffed and made no move to start the engine. “Do ye
really think we’d let ye two go off on yer own just as things are finally
startin’ to get interesting?”
Skylar chuckled.
“Besides,” Pete added, “have either of ye ever been to Hong
Kong? Have ye worked there on half a dozen shoots like Sky and I have? Because
if ye haven’t, trust me—the Pearl of the Orient is far more than it’s cracked up
to be in the tourist brochures. Ye’ll have to dig deep beneath the surface if
ye expect to find yer family and friends. So tell me, lad, do ye know the back
alleys, seedy bars, or any of the low down nasty buggers that yer going to have
to enlist in order to get anything done over there?”
Jake hesitated before replying; he’d never been to Hong
Kong. He studied his two new friends.
Pete arched an eyebrow while Skylar crossed her arms and
cocked her head, as if daring Jake to say the wrong thing. The last thing he
wanted was to draw them into his circle of chaos, but Pete and Skylar had stuck
their necks out for Lacey—and him, too—and regardless of what he said, they
weren’t about to stay behind.
He sighed, breaking their gaze as he fastened his seat belt.
“Low down nasty buggers, huh? Sounds perfect.”
J
IAOLONG PACED ANXIOUSLY
as he watched the
interrogation through the one-way mirror. It had been forty hours since his
operators had abducted Marshall—the only man who’d ever hacked their system—and
Jiaolong had wanted answers the moment the prisoner was delivered to
headquarters. But Marshall’s physiology had reacted adversely to the drug
they’d used to render him unconscious, and the doctor had insisted they allow
him to sleep it off before introducing a new drug into his system. He’d finally
come out of it an hour ago.
Lin and Marshall sat on a loveseat in the adjoining room,
enjoying sips of tea in Jiaolong’s private lounge. So far, the drug-induced
conversation had gone well. Although Marshall’s unshaven face was haggard, he
seemed content. He’d been led to believe that his wife and other friends had
been gathered for their own safety, that a terrorist group had been minutes
away from murdering them all.
Jiaolong ground his teeth as he contemplated what had really
happened. The plane carrying Bronson’s children and his friend Timmy had
disappeared without a trace. Then Jake Bronson had managed to whisk Marshall’s
wife from the hospital where she’d been in critical condition, and his men on
the scene had allowed Bronson, and whoever was helping him, to escape.
I will deal with their failure later.
Marshall had been nearly brought to tears when Lin told him his
wife and the others were all fine and would be joining him soon. In the
meantime he’d been more than happy to talk to the woman who represented his
benefactors.
Lin had guided the conversation with a masterful touch, the
cocktail of hypnotic drugs in Marshall’s system opening his mind to her
suggestions. They’d gathered some excellent footage of his comments regarding the
launch of the pyramids, the Grid, and the destruction of the island, including
a heartfelt admission that Jake Bronson had triggered it all. Coupled with what
they’d captured from Bronson’s interrogation in Amsterdam, as well as the
footage Jiaolong expected to get during the upcoming interviews with the others
at the village, and the pieces on the final game board would soon be in place.
But it would be all for naught if he couldn’t uncover TurboHacker’s
deeper secret.
Marshall had grinned when Lin mentioned his online handle.
“That’s me,” he had freely admitted, before diving into a long-winded story
about how he’d earned the name in high school. But when Lin had asked him about
the Spider game, they’d gotten nowhere, the man claiming he’d never played.
She’d continued to probe, but it was as if the portion of Marshall’s mind
dealing with the game had been cordoned off, protected by an impenetrable
firewall of its own.
Lin glanced at the mirror as if to ask,
What now?
Jiaolong kicked over a chair as he paced, a part of him
wanting to strangle the truth out of the man. Until they discovered how Marshall
had breached their network, Passcode could not be levered to its full potential;
the risk of exposure was too great. Jiaolong forced himself to steady his
breathing as he considered his next move. If the hypnotic drug wasn’t enough to
bring down all of the man’s barriers, perhaps a more subtle approach would work.
“Put him back to sleep,” he said into his headset microphone.
All memories of the session would be wiped from Marshall’s brain in the
process. “And see that he gets a clean shave before he’s taken to his dorm
room.”
***
Lin heard Jiaolong’s instruction in
her earbud and nodded. She’d grown accustomed to following his orders over the
years, though doing so lately was testing her patience. She offered Marshall a
demure smile. It was one of hundreds of looks she’d practiced since she was a
child, passed down to her by her mother, who’d taught her that a woman’s
expression could pierce a man’s armor more effectively than the sharpest blade.
She tilted her head and allowed a look of concern to shadow
her features. Though Marshall’s eyelids drooped from the effects of the drug,
his gaze remained fixed on her face. He never noticed the powder that spilled
from her ring into his cup.
“Your lips look dry,” she said softly, running her tongue
along her own lips. She handed him the cup and raised hers in a silent toast.
“Thanks,” he said. He sipped his tea, eyes on her.
“Your wife will be here soon,” she said, guiding the
conversation to a topic that would keep him talking. The drug would take effect
in a few minutes.
He blinked several times, as if commanding his brain to
change gears. His expression softened and his mouth lifted into a dumb grin. “I
can’t wait to see her.”
“How did you meet?”
He looked at the ceiling a moment. “She was a server at
Sammy’s back home, and the guys and I always sat in her section. We were just
friends then. It grew to something more when...”
She tuned him out as he rambled on, feigning interest as her
mind drifted to her meeting with her grandfather two days earlier.
***
Out of respect, Lin and her sisters
were dressed in ritual
Hanfu
attire as they knelt on the floor of Grandfather’s
study in his home on Victoria Peak. Each of them wore a
shen yi
, a
wide-sleeved silk robe that tied at the waist and draped to the floor. Lin’s
was red, representing the fire element, with an embroidered azure phoenix that
spilled down the front fold from shoulder to knee. Sister Min’s robe was green,
the wood element, and included a sparkling design of the Dragon of the East.
Zhin wore yellow, the earth element, with a stalwart depiction of the Guardian
Beast. Grandfather sat on a cushion in front of them. His black
shen yi
set
off his white hair and long goatee.
“I grow more frustrated with each passing day,” Lin said.
Her grandfather raised an eyebrow, studying her with a calm
authority honed during a lifetime of working his way up the ranks of one of
Hong Kong’s most feared triads. He’d been a rising star in the organization
during his early twenties, and it was then that he’d first become acquainted
with Jiaolong’s grandfather, Frederik de Vries, who’d just inherited the reins
of his father’s arms-dealing empire. Lin had never been told the entire story
of their history but knew there had been a strong alliance between the two men,
and that the bond had been sheared when de Vries chose to steer his wealth
toward legitimate ventures.
Her grandfather had lost face as a result. It had cost him
dearly.
She tensed under his scrutiny and wondered at the manner in
which his mind seemed to be constantly shifting the pieces of a massive puzzle.
In addition to his current esteemed position within the triad, he was also a
long-standing member of the Order. It was in this latter role that he’d kept
track of de Vries, whose family had all along been high-echelon members of the
secret organization. Frederik de Vries had sold off his father’s empire piece
by piece, educated himself in the neurosciences, and gained favor as a wealthy philanthropist.
He had residences in Amsterdam and Hong Kong, and strong ties to the village in
Fujian province where he’d met Jiaolong’s grandmother.
Lin’s grandfather had watched. And waited.
She knew his patience had finally been rewarded when he
learned of de Vries’s groundbreaking research into neurocybernetics, especially
his progress in the area of thought-controlled interfaces between man and
machine. And when he had discovered that the man’s grandson, Jiaolong, exhibited
extraordinary cyber talents of his own, it had sparked the plan that had
changed Lin’s life.
“Frustration?” Grandfather asked sternly. “We have no use
for such feelings.”
Lin bowed her head at the rebuke. She loved her grandfather.
He’d guided her and her sisters ever since their father had died when they were
children. She always obeyed Grandfather’s wishes. To do otherwise was
unthinkable. But her role in his plan was taking a toll.
“Time is our friend,” Grandfather said. “And patience is our
ally. You have done wonders managing the de Vries boy and your efforts will
bear the ultimate fruit soon enough. In the meantime, savor the victories you
have achieved along the way. If it weren’t for you and your sisters, Passcode would
have been destroyed on the island, and everything we’ve worked so hard to achieve
would have been lost.”
Lin nodded. It was true. Like Frederik de Vries, her grandfather
had remained home when the Order’s worldwide exodus call had gone out. But she
and her sisters had accompanied Jiaolong on the journey, not because of any
love for him but as a double-edged insurance policy. On the one hand, if the Grid
destroyed civilization, then at least they’d be saved for what was to come. And
if not, they’d be in a position to safeguard Passcode. But when Grandfather’s
agents on the island had reported it was under assault, he’d commanded the
triplets to turn back. The command had paralyzed Lin and her sisters because
Jiaolong’s parents hadn’t been the only family members awaiting their arrival; their
mother had been there, too. In any case, Jiaolong wasn’t about to turn around.
He’d ordered the boat’s captain to proceed at maximum speed. It had been sister
Min who’d finally found the strength to do what was required, and by her hand
the boat suffered its mysterious mechanical breakdown just two miles offshore.
Lin and her sisters had stood with Jiaolong on the bow,
bearing witness to the explosion that had obliterated their loved ones. The
experience cemented their shared hatred for Jake Bronson and his friends. What
they
didn’t
share was Jiaolong’s convoluted plan for vengeance. It was a
foolish and frustrating distraction. If it had been up to Lin, Bronson and his
allies would have been executed as soon as they’d been located. This desire
continued to simmer in her and her sisters’ minds.
As if sensing her consternation, Grandfather leaned forward
and covered Lin’s cupped hands with his own. It was a rare sign of affection
from the old man. “You are Chinese,” he said softly. “Patience is in your blood.”
She felt a flush of warmth. “Yes, Grandfather,” she said,
bowing again.
The moment passed and he released her hands. “Do you remain
certain of your control?”
Lin hesitated. Jiaolong had become so obsessed with the pending
arrival of TurboHacker that her advances had been ignored that morning. That
had never happened before and it had worried her. But it was not something she
was ready to share with her grandfather or her sisters. So she said, “Of
course.”
“Good. Managing the boy is critical, especially at this
juncture. Until Passcode is fully secured, he serves a valuable purpose. More
importantly, keep in mind that his elaborate plan for revenge is laying the
groundwork necessary to ensure that our triad establishes control of the arms
race to end all arms races. We need both Passcode
and
the alien
technology that nearly destroyed our planet. That can only be obtained through
Jake Bronson, and only through his family and friends shall we achieve the
leverage necessary to pry what we need from his grasp.”
The sisters nodded.
“So, until Jiaolong’s plan brings Bronson to our feet, you will
bury your frustrations and continue on your current path. Am I understood?”
“Yes, Grandfather,” Zhin and Min said together.
The old man looked pointedly at Lin.
“I know, I know,” she finally said. “I will perform my
duties to my utmost abilities, as always.”
The old man’s eyes narrowed as if he knew there was more.
She sighed. “But that doesn’t mean I can’t wait until I am
allowed to finally shed the whelp!”
Zhin and Min gasped but the old man grinned. He patted her
head with his pink, frail hands.
“Soon, Granddaughter. Very soon.”