Chen’s revelation succeeded only in sparking impatient
guffaws. Those in the audience were understandably bored.
Minutes later, the committee members quietly exchanged
comments around a replenished tray of tea and coffee service. Rong stood nearby
with arms folded, nursing a cigarette, disappointed himself by the lack of
activity. As he surveyed expressions weary after an extended day of work, he
wondered what he might do to rekindle interest in this new style of warfare. The
authentication process conducted by his loyal recruits had been of mild
interest; there had been some suspense associated with watching them coordinate
the inputting of their various codes. Their synchronized rotation of keys was
to Rong arcane but seemed to impress his colleagues. This had all been followed
by a dazzling accumulation of data to watch.
Rong glanced up at the video monitor. It reported to him
that the satellite was following a declension of minutes and seconds on its way
to the target, whose geophysical definition, Chen assured him, coincided with a
facility located slightly northeast of Richmond, Virginia. Once more, their
attack would be staged within the contiguous borders of the United States. At
least
that
achievement warranted a measure of excitement, pity though it
was he had yet to attain the position from which he could relish it.
There was nothing exciting about a video screen that
was overwhelmingly blank. Maybe all the better, Rong thought with a yawn, to
dramatize the climax once it arrived.
* * *
“WE ARE YOUR BACK-UP,”
advised
the Deputy Assistant Director of Counter-terrorism, whose presence represented
for Hildebrandt only his latest puzzlement. “Why don’t you explain what’s going
on here?”
Recalling that McBurney had mentioned the possibility of Assistant
Director Lance Lee meeting him at the airport earlier that morning, Hildebrandt
led Lee and Special Agent Han, the younger agent accompanying him, into the
dead executive’s office. Mindful of the urgency several stories beneath them,
he quickly recapped events of the previous night, beginning in Reston and
leading up to the grisly discovery before them; Hildebrandt found it difficult
to follow his own convoluted explanation. He added finally that today’s murder might
or might not be the handiwork of the elusive espionage-turned-terrorist
suspect.
“We haven’t even begun to get our arms around a motive,”
Hildebrandt concluded.
Lee speculated that perhaps the CIA agent might have
something to contribute on that note. “What do you think?” The latest FBI
arrivals appeared eager for his opinion.
Hildebrandt shrugged. “He doesn’t seem to know much of
anything.”
“Maybe there’s something that I can pry out of him.”
“I’ve generally found Mr. McBurney the cooperative type. But
you’re certainly welcome to try.”
The official and his associate started at that. “You mean,
they’re still here, on the premises?” Lee asked.
Their response struck Hildebrandt as a little bit odd. “Sir,
we called in back-up to help secure the building. There doesn’t appear to be an
imminent problem, but yeah, if you’d care to join me, I left them all
downstairs with my partner.”
Hildebrandt followed behind Lee and Han, who stepped
hesitantly around the barrier cones and into the elevator. His hand trembled
with fatigue as he reached for the button to descend. Not since some fairly
grueling rights-of-passage doled out by the academy had he felt so stressed.
The doors slid shut and Hildebrandt experienced a burst of
adrenaline.
I hadn’t told Lee that McBurney was still on the premises
. Yet
Lee had instantly drawn that conclusion—why? It also seemed that the
high-ranking official had a habit of materializing whenever Devinn was at large.
Outlandish.
Hildebrandt considered the broad
implications and rejected them outright. Why, then, had his legs become
rubbery?
“I think last time we must’ve just missed each other,”
Hildebrandt reflected, allowing fatigue to feign relaxation in his tone.
Lee turned toward him wearing a scowl. “What?”
“Yeah, my partner and I were walking onto the George
Washington Bridge, and the agent-in-charge told us you were escorting material
evidence away. Or maybe it was the transit authority guy...guess it doesn’t
matter.”
Lee and the other man stared at him.
“You were driving the big pickup, right? Had this crane
mounted on the bed? We were actually quite impressed, sir. I for one didn’t
know the brass got out and roughed it up, you know, getting their hands dirty
with us grunts.”
“The grunts sometime don’t give us any choice.”
Probing the senior agent’s stare, to Hildebrandt the guy
seemed absolutely humorless. “They said the thing in the bed was heavy. You
could’ve at least had somebody accompany you.”
“I didn’t need anybody along. That was the whole idea of
the crane.”
You lying son-of-a-bitch
. Hildebrandt realized his
error in not removing the rubber disc propping open the security door. How
could he get word to Brophy and the others with Lee and Han standing right next
to him?
You can’t, Eddie Boy—you’re on your own.
In the chromium surface of the elevator door, the diffuse
reflection of two featureless faces reminded Hildebrandt how dulled by fatigue
his reactions were likely to be. Turning his head fractionally, he noted Agent
Han’s clasped hands. While inside the dead executive’s office, he had noticed
that half of the last two fingers of Han’s right hand were missing. Perhaps
that would level the playing field some...
Hildebrandt advised his fellow agents to take standard
precautions. The car slid to a stop. He withdrew his Smith & Wesson from
the Bianchi leather strapped beneath his soaking wet armpit. Behind him, he saw
the men follow suit before the elevator doors retracted their reflected image
away.
Nobody moved.
“Is this not the right floor?” Lee asked too casually as he
stepped past Hildebrandt out of the elevator.
Agent Han remained in the rear of the elevator, holding his
gun at his waist. “After you,” the man said.
“Sure.” He would try to make it look fluid. With Han
standing to his left, he angled himself toward the door and, rotating his arm
at the elbow, he extended his shoulder—
The blast drove him stumbling from the elevator. His first
thought while falling forward was that his vest had trapped the slug. Pain
ripping through his chest as he hit the floor delivered the truth. The mistake
that the shooter made was not following through—Hildebrandt squeezed off two
shots before a spasm rendered his hand useless. The shooter seemed to slip from
sight beneath his feet as Hildebrandt’s head fell back with a smack on the
floor. The fading image of the ceiling tiles transformed before his eyes to the
kitchen floor inside his own home, his son clutching his leg and gazing into
his face, smiling his gappy tooth six-year old’s smile. Everything became dark.
“
Motherfuck!
” screamed Special Agent Han as he slid against
the back of the elevator to the floor, clutching his groin, pain and fear
twisting his face. “I’m hit! I’m
really
hit...”
“I can see that.” Lance Lee actually was not without
sympathy. He knelt beside Agent Hildebrandt to retrieve the fallen agent’s
revolver. Then he leveled it at Han’s head. “Sorry.”
FATIGUE AND DISBELIEF
tempered
Emily’s response to the incoming lines of text scrolling onto her screen. “It’s
here...” she whispered. “Hey! I’ve got it!”
Thackeray clambered out of his chair. “What’s the
encryption?”
Emily opened the largest file first. It would take a
minute. Good—there seemed to be more definition than they had expected. “Looks
like DES!”
Thack dashed back to his workstation. “Plug it in!”
Digital Encryption Standard was a relatively common
routine, which Emily found almost too good to be true. She counseled herself
not to let her thoughts get too far afield from her fingers.
Maybe, just
maybe...
“Okay, got it. I need the transmission frequency and the
key—
the key
, Emily,
the key!
Hey, how long is it?”
Emily’s finger came down on
send
. “You’ve got it!”
They heard deep in the distance what sounded like an
explosion, then another and another. Emily spun her chair when a fourth echoed
through the facility. Stuart had gone pale and was looking at McBurney. Emily’s
voice trembled as she asked, “Was that—”
BOOM!
Emily jumped from her chair. Obviously a gun
had been fired just outside the door.
McBurney got there first. He cupped his hands to his mouth,
“Brophy!”
Brophy’s shout was muffled. “Open the door!”
McBurney gripped the handle with both hands and gave it a
pull—it unlatched with Brophy pushing hard from outside. In the instant the
door burst open, a stray bullet sheared through the thin steel of the door and
zipped inches past McBurney’s head. He tumbled backward beneath Agent Brophy,
whose neck exploded in a bloody spray on their way to the floor.
“Get him off me!” McBurney shouted, kicking his legs and
wriggling frantically to free himself of Brophy’s lead-heavy torso. “Shut the
door, shut the door!”
But Brophy’s legs were blocking the door. Stuart grabbed
two fists full of the immobile man’s clothing and—
phutt!
—a bullet
whizzed past his ear. Emily screamed, Stuart flinched and he reached for
Brophy’s handgun. He gritted his teeth and thrust his arm around the half-open
door. Without seeing to aim he squeezed the trigger three times—the
semiautomatic coughed three deafening blasts. They cleared McBurney and Brophy
and slammed the door shut.
Stuart and McBurney dragged Brophy by his armpits over the
floor to the workstations. They knelt, chests heaving, collecting their
bearings. McBurney reached to make the obligatory check for a pulse. Shaking
his head, the CIA officer bunched the collar of Brophy’s parka over the
eviscerated throat. He draped the man’s arms over his chest.
“We need some more time here, Stu,” snarled Thackeray, who
then muttered something angrily that nobody understood. A badly shaken Emily
spun her chair around in order to resume her work.
Stuart asked McBurney, “Could you see who it was?”
“Are you kidding?” He used his sleeves to wipe Brophy’s
blood from his face.
“What do we do now?”
McBurney was nonplussed. “There’s someone out there with a
gun.
Do you want to challenge him to a duel?”
Stuart lowered his voice to a harsh whisper. “So we just
sit here and hope he decides to go away? Maybe you noticed that door isn’t
bulletproof. Or maybe he’ll choose the back entrance.”
“Ah, Jesus...”
Stuart removed the clip from Brophy’s semiautomatic pistol.
Forty-five caliber, he saw.
“How many?” McBurney asked.
“Five, plus one in the chamber.” He rammed the clip back
home.
“Be careful with that thing,” McBurney advised. “What about
those distant shots?”
Brophy had reported that the gun used by Devinn, or whoever
had killed Perry, must be fitted with a silencer. “Maybe that was Hildebrandt.”
Remembering Hildebrandt should have called by now, Stuart walked over and
picked up the telephone. He dialed Linda Potter’s number, received no answer,
and then he followed with several others. In each instance, nobody answered.
“They must all be outdoors,” he said, “or something.”
“Will cell phones work down here?” McBurney asked.
“Forget it,” Thackeray said, eyes glued to his screen.
Both engineers remained hunched over their keyboards. Stuart
suspected nothing short of a bomb going off would impede the frenzy of their
work. “Here’s how I see it,” he said, turning toward McBurney. “They’ve killed
twice trying to get in here, assuming Hildebrandt isn’t among the casualties. We’ve
got one gun to cover two doors. I had the impression in the van that you and
Hildebrandt thought Devinn might not be acting alone.”
McBurney rubbed his hands over his face.
“Am I right?”
“Probably. You seem to know how to use that.”
Stuart hefted Agent Brophy’s Glock 30 in his hand. Unlike
the .357 caliber Colt he had kept loaded bedside for years, this gun consisted
primarily of a lightweight polymer. He found the feel a bit discomforting, like
a toy from his youth. It certainly didn’t shoot like a toy. “I can manage. You?”
“I’m actually not a big fan. All right, this is what I
guess we should do...”
122
STUART THOUGHT THE
DISTANT,
metallic clang sounded as though it might have come from inside
the well. Hoping he was wrong, he left Emily and Thackeray oblivious to all but
their monitors and crept toward the rear of the computer facility.
Staring down the dark stairwell entrance to the well, it
was tempting to blame the hum of the powerful servers for playing tricks on his
ears. He thought of McBurney, who at that moment probably was dodging cubicle
to cubicle racing for cover more illusory than real. Stuart chided himself and
started down the stairwell.
Leading with the barrel of the dead FBI agent’s handgun, Stuart
was met by the usual rush of pressurized air as he eased open the door. The
well inside was minimally lit, like the rest of the facility, but his eyes were
drawn to an object near the middle of the empty floor. It looked like a simple box
wrench—his ears had not deceived him, after all. Sticking his head past the
edge of the door had not gotten it blown off, so he stepped fully inside the
well. He had no sooner let the door close gently behind him than he swore under
his breath for having forgotten to ask Thackeray for the access code.