Luthecker (38 page)

It was a purposeful display of numbers.

“The boss isn’t going to like this.” The driver replied.

“Yes he is; they tipped their hand. This is exactly what he wanted.”

The passenger checked the side view mirror.

“It gets better.”

A small crowd had gathered behind the vehicle, blocking its exit.

“Incoming.” The driver said, nodding towards the front windshield.

The passenger looked up. He saw a large, muscular black man with carefully pulled back dread locks approaching them. He reached for his sidearm.

“No.” The driver said to him, grabbing the passenger’s arm. “Not now.”

They watched as the black man approached the driver’s side window. He held his hands out for them to see he carried no weapon. He appeared to have a pair of sticks strapped to his back. He stopped at the window and waited. The driver motored it down.

“Can I help you gentlemen?” Yaw asked.

“Fuck off.” The driver responded.

Yaw slowly nodded, showing no emotion.

“Got it. You tell whoever it is that sent you, that we’re ready this time. You got that? Now get the fuck out of here, if you know what’s good for you.”

Yaw stepped back just as a rock hit the left side rear door window of the Suburban, spider-webbing the glass.

Both men inside the vehicle reacted to the noise, and each instinctively reached for their weapons.

Both froze as they saw that several men now surrounded their vehicle. Regardless of race, and there were all races, White, Black, Asian, and Latin, they all had the same dead serious stare, locked onto both of them.

The one other thing they all had in common was what appeared to be a pair of sticks strapped to their backs.

“C’mon. Let’s get out of here.” The passenger in the Suburban said to the driver.

The driver turned the key in the ignition, and the engine of the vehicle roared to life. He quickly put the Suburban in gear.

“We’ll be back, motherfucker.” The driver yelled out, as he turned the vehicle around, and drove off.

Yaw watched as the Coalition vehicle disappeared around the corner.

Chris Aldrich stood next to him.

“They are going to be back.” He said to Yaw. “A lot more of them, next time.”

“I know.”

Yaw turned back towards the safe house building.

“C’mon. We got work to do.”

• • •

“This is good. This is very good.” Nikki said, excited, as she unpacked the Mac Pro Tower from its box.

“How long will it take for you to set up?” Castillo asked.

She carefully pulled the slick looking silver machine from its box, and carefully set it down. She briefly examined her inventory, the computer box, and three monitors, along with the various connective wiring.

“Forty-five minutes. An hour, tops. Most of that’s accessing and recalibrating Phoebe for this kind of gig.”

“You want to set up right here?”

She looked around. The small living room table would work as a desk for the monitors and keyboard. She could place the tower by the table, put a pillow on the hardwood floor, and sit directly across from all three monitors.

“As good a place as any.”

Stern entered the room carrying a small brown paper bag. He dumped the contents on the table. Three prepaid cell phones.

“So how’s this going to work?” He asked, as he watched Nikki connect computer equipment. She kept working while she answered.

“First, I’ll find blueprints of the building. They’ll be online as a matter of public record.”

“They’ll have made changes to the layout.” Castillo countered.

“Not structurally.” She answered.

“I already know the layout. I’ve been inside the building.” Stern chimed in, sensing he was slowly being pushed aside as leader.

“You’re going to want options. I can find you those. After that, I’ll sick Phoebe on their server.”

“That’s Pentagon-grade encryption.”

She shot him a look.

“Pentagon’s been hacked. Several times.” She said, like it should be open knowledge.

She looked over the computer configuration a moment, making sure everything was in place, the CPU tower by the table and the three screens side by side on top of it before powering it up. The Mac quickly sprang to life.

“So what’s the play here?” Castillo asked.

“You two go in, I quarterback the moves.” Nikki answered. “But let me find out what I’m dealing with first.”

She waited for the machine to run through its start up protocols.

“Once I’m in their system, I’m pretty sure I can wreak havoc. Turn things off, turn things on, that sort of stuff. The more elaborate the system, the better. I can provide both distractions and a path in and out for you guys. If he’s in a cell and it’s an electronic lock, I can probably spring it from here.”

“Won’t their system catch on and shut you out?”

“Like I said, I can outrun them.”

The final system icons popped up on the computer screen. The hardware was ready. She looked at Castillo and Stern.

“For about thirty minutes. It’ll probably take less than that for them to find out where I am. That’ll be the bigger problem.”

Stern looked at her.

“If it takes longer than that, we’re not getting out anyway.” He answered.

“Jesus. This is insane. It’ll never work.” Castillo nervously mumbled under his breath. Sweat was visible on his forehead.

Stern turned to him.

“I’ve run ops out of Afghanistan worse than this. “ The determination and Marine Sniper pride in his voice was palpable.

“Now, they’re going to have something special waiting for us when we get there. That’s for sure.” He continued. “I don’t know what it is, and I don’t give a shit. Because we’re going to go in there and kick some ass.” Stern’s voice was clearly gaining energy. He hadn’t seen straightforward conflict since his last combat tour, and the hardcore Special Forces testosterone in his system was beginning to build in anticipation.

“You got her some tools, now I’m going to need some. Ones that are a whole lot easier for your C.I. to get.” He added.

“What?”

“Weapons. I’ll make you a list.”

• • •

“Play time is over, Alex. What did you see in Deng Zemin’s fate?”
The electronically enhanced voice asked Alex. It was his Alpha captor.

Alex sat up in his bed. He winced slightly as he carefully removed the IV from his arm. He had been waiting for this conversation.

“You.” He finally replied. “I saw you.”

“Remember what I said about games, Alex. I’ve been tracking your friends since the desert, and they are one phone call away from disappearing. I promise you it won’t be quick and it won’t be painless. Cheap leverage, I know, but leverage none-the-less.”

Brown waited for a response, as he sat alone in the observation booth. He had come down to the holding cell and shooed out his two remaining analysts. Time was of the essence, and he had decided he would deal with Luthecker directly, one on one. He knew that water boarding and similar techniques would create far too many false statements and delays to be of any use, but he wouldn’t hesitate to use the threat. He also believed that the lack of direct contact would nullify any advantage Luthecker’s inexplicable perceptive abilities would have. Sitting safely in the observation booth, he was actually excited to take the young man on.

The video monitors showed Alex moving from the bedroom to the living room.

He hit the microphone button and spoke.

“I want details, Alex. You watched the video. Your eyeballs did that strange thing that they do, whenever you’re absorbing the minutiae the rest of us can’t see. I watched it happen. I know you had to read something on Zemin, about his fate, and how it all ends for him. Does it end well, or does it end badly? As I’m sure you’ve figured out, his fate is intertwined with my own at the moment. He runs the Chinese Army, and nothing in that country happens without his knowledge. I want to know what his plans are, what they have that they aren’t telling us. How serious are their dealings with Iran? Russia? Are they planning to form an alliance against the United States?”

“You already know the answers to those questions. You fear the consequences of those answers and think I can help you outrun them. But it was your actions, and the like-minded actions of those before you that set the answers in motion.” Alex replied, his voice echoing throughout the observation booth.

“I could waterboard you, Alex. Pull your fingernails out. I could do that to all of your friends. I could do whatever I wanted to you or any one you love to get what I want to know.”

“You could do those things. But we both know that wouldn’t get you what you want. I told you before. It doesn’t work this way. I don’t read video of people. I read people.”

Brown watched as Alex moved from the bedroom and sat down on the living room couch, flexing his arm where the IV was.

Alex tried not to react as his captor trumpeted his ego with threats in order to remind him who was in control. But his captor was mistaken. Threats were not control they were fear, and to gain control all Alex had to do was be the one who was not afraid.

“I could tell you what you want to know.” Alex told his captor. “Tell you what your…options are. Put you one move ahead of your enemies. That’s what you want, isn’t it? One would think that that would be tremendously advantageous to the creation of history. Not just immediate, actionable information. But actionable future information. Worth more than gold, wouldn’t you say? Being ahead on the timeline of someone’s fate? Including your own? Because time is running out. Or you wouldn’t have me here. Time is always running out, isn’t it? That’s the one constant. The one big fear. The running out of time. The running out of everything.”

“Philosophical rants that border on sociopathic don’t make the world a safer place, Alex. I do. And you’re not that fucking smart. You’re the one in the cage, remember?”

“Maybe. But there’s nothing that you have, that I want.”

“We’ll see about that.”

“It would be easier if you’d just sit down across from me.”

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

“No. It’s what you want. If you’re honest with yourself. And it’s the only way I can help you. But that would require an amount of courage that I don’t believe you truly possess.”

“Are you calling me a coward?”

“Yes.”

“I could kill you with my bare hands.”

“That’s not courage.”

“I know what you’re thinking Alex. That you can break me down like you did David Lloyd. Or worse, scramble my thinking like Marcus Stern or Nicole Ellis.”

Alex perked up at the sound of her name. His captor’s mention of her meant the odds of him seeing her again increased. Something he very much wanted to do. All he had to do was manage to survive the next few hours. And get out.

“Well let me tell you that there’s nothing I’ve ever done that I can’t face.” Brown continued, interrupting Alex’ thoughts of hope.

Brown’s bold proclamation contained a certain amount of desperation detectable behind the bravado. “Nothing I’ve ever done that I’m not proud of.” He kept going. “Nothing I’ve done that I didn’t have a reason for. That I didn’t understand the sacrifice behind. What you can do may work on weaker minds, but not mine. It’s men like me who keep the darkness back so those with weaker minds never have to face it.”

“Then you should want this. You should want to come in here and face me. And let me read your destiny.”

“My destiny’s the same as everyone’s. I do what I have to do, and then I die.”

“Now who’s playing games.”

Alex looked directly into the camera and waited.

“We both know I can’t sit across from Zemin. But you can be his proxy. It’s up to you.”

Brown sat back in his chair. Face to face with Luthecker, he thought. What the young Terrorist had wanted all along. Had he manipulated events somehow to make this happen? It was a direct challenge, and something to be expected. Brown smirked to himself at the timeline of events that had led here. He had always had others to work the tactical side of human intelligence. First David Lloyd, then Lax and Lansky. It was not that he was incapable or feared direct contact, but it had been his belief that interaction with lower food chain individuals by management would compromise the overall vision of a better world. As leader of Coalition Properties he was the guardian of said vision, and to keep its integrity required staying one step removed from the influence of the actual flesh and blood.

But Luthecker was different. In the back of his mind, Brown had always known that it would eventually come to this. That there was only one man with strong enough convictions to face a terrorist mind of this magnitude, and that was Richard Brown. He knew now that he didn’t need Alex to tell him his destiny. This moment was it.

He believed every word he had said to Luthecker. And he believed it with every fiber of his being. There was nowhere to go with Brown, no doubts, no regrets, and no psychological games to play. He would succeed where David Lloyd had failed, three years ago.

His phone rang, with that ominous selected ring tone that told Brown it was Secretary of Defense Alan Mason on the other end of the call. He answered right away.

“Alan.” He said with manufactured enthusiasm to the Secretary of Defense.

“Richard.” Mason replied, his Southern drawl almost sounding mocking in tone. “I just called to check in. See how are you coming along in regards to the topic of our previous conversation.” He asked.

“I’ll know within a few hours.”

“Make it happen sooner. Because the Chinese didn’t take too kindly to our actions in Saudi Arabia. And now, they, the Russians and the Iranians are no longer denying their discussions to move oil off the dollar and onto the RMB—they are threatening it.

The “RMB”, short for “Remninbi”, was the official currency of The People’s Republic of China.

“What do they want?” Brown asked, knowing that on the world stage, threats are thinly veiled negotiations.

“For us to cede control of the Persian Gulf. Obviously we can’t have that.”