Running Blind (18 page)

Then he looked at his team. “A move this bold tells me that she's done fooling around. She's coming after us again. And she's coming soon.”

30

“I knew you could do it.”

“Well, I
sort
of did it.” Rhonda continued pecking away at the keyboard. It was closing in on three p.m., and she'd been at this for several hours. “You said you wanted to physically get into the room.”

“And we will, eventually,” Cooper said, peering over her shoulder at the monitor. “For now, a little covert camera surveillance is the next best thing to being there.”

Since they'd been given full access to everything in the facility except the “No Admittance” rooms, as long as Rhonda could access a computer connected to the network, she could get into any part of the system she wanted—even the one place they'd been told was completely off limits.

She'd known there had to be cameras in the “No Admittance” areas. What if something went haywire in there? A test went wrong? A fire broke out? No way would they not have something in place to confirm exactly what happened.

“Hold on a sec, and I'll see if I can figure out how to control the camera.”

After the long process of identifying the cameras and then isolating the one she wanted, this part was a breeze. She quickly wrote a simple script, then fed it to the camera so that anyone monitoring it would see only what she wanted seen: a shot of an empty hallway, which she'd created to block what was
really
going on while she manipulated the camera to scan the lab.

Piece of cake. Well, not for everyone. For whatever reason, hacking had always been easy for her. She'd never been able to explain her techy instincts, but when it came to computers and networks, she generally knew exactly what to do and how to do it.

“Okay.” She keyed in the final command. “Here we go.”

With the dummy shot in place, she guided the real-time camera and started panning the large room.

Six office cubes were lined up against the closest wall. Computers, the occasional plant, the messy desk, the OCD clean desk, and some in between. To the right of the cubicle, a long stainless-steel worktable was set up with more computer monitors, intricate robotics, and a variety of hand tools.

“Wait. Stop it there.”

Rhonda stopped and squinted at the object that had caught Cooper's eye.

“Can you enlarge that shot?”

“Can a cow moo?” She zoomed in on the object and gave it a good once-over. “Is that what I think it is?”

“If you're thinking missile, you get the grand prize.” Cooper leaned in closer. “Can you make a screen print of that? And a shot of the worktable?”

“Give me a sec.”

She froze the frame, sent it to the printer, then zoomed in and froze several other frames, which she also printed.

“Can you access any of the computers in that room?”

“You don't ask for much, do you?”

He rubbed her shoulders as if she was a prizefighter about to step into the ring. And damn if she didn't feel one of those electric, sexual zings shoot through her. He must have felt it, too, or noticed when she stiffened, because he gave her shoulders a final squeeze and dropped his hands. “Can you do it?”

“Of course, I can do it.”

He chuckled, probably because she'd sounded offended that he'd even asked. “All right, hotshot, check out the nameplates on the first cubicle. We want to look for the mad scientist who's creating this ‘No Admittance' project. Holy shit—stop right there,” he said abruptly. He not only sounded surprised, but he looked puzzled when she glanced up at him.

“What?”

“Does that say ‘Corbet'? ‘Dr. A. Corbet'?”

“Yeah. That's what it says. You know him?”

“Yeah, I know him. I'll tell you about it later. Right now, I figure we're running out of time.”

“You figure right.”

She didn't have to tell him why. While she'd been locating the camera that covered the inside of the lab and scrambling to get access, Cooper had been watching the hallway camera. He'd timed the fourth-floor guard's rotational pattern at every half an hour, which meant she originally had thirty minutes on her fake loop. If the surveillance team saw an empty hallway when there should be a guard making the rounds, they'd get real suspicious real fast.

“I've only got about five minutes left.” She ran a quick search on the network's addresses, found Adolph Corbet, and scanned the directory for the most up-to-date files. Then she started copying.

“How's it going?”

“Almost got it,” she said, willing the system to move faster.

“Better make it quick.” He nodded toward the screen.

A balding, weary-looking man in a white lab coat and worn black shoes shuffled into the room.

“It's Corbet. And he's heading for his desk. Hurry up, Buttercup.”

“I told you not to call me that,” she muttered without looking away from the computer or losing focus. “Yes! I've got it.”

She quickly saved the file, named it, and reset the camera view to real time. Then she copied Corbet's saved files to a zip drive, deleted the logs and files she'd generated, along with her spoofing script, and backed completely out of the system. If staff security dug hard enough, they might find traces of her handiwork, but she'd covered her tracks pretty well. Even if someone found it, they'd never know what she'd been up to. Most likely chalk it up to some system glitch.

With a relieved breath, she leaned back and handed Cooper the drive. “That was a little too close.”

“Welcome to the wild side.”

She laughed. “Too late. I crossed over around four this morning.”

To be more exact, she'd crossed over when she'd knocked on his hotel-room door, invited herself inside, and then attacked him. Libido, chemistry, abstinence—­they'd all been in play. But she had never let her physical needs overrule her common sense before.

So why had she done it? And why with him? Because his story about what had happened in Afghanistan had touched her? Had made him real to her? Had made her remember what it felt like to relate and care?

Maybe all of the above. And maybe it had something to do with Cooper himself. He was more than she'd thought, more than she'd wanted him to be. And now she had more things to think about than she wanted to.

But it didn't matter what made her do it. It didn't matter what she felt or even if she thought he might care, even a little bit.

What mattered was what was real—and love wasn't. No matter how hard she'd once tried to make herself believe it, no matter how completely she'd given herself over to it, it just wasn't.

The only thing that was lasting and real was the pain that came with that truth.

•    •    •

Dr. Adolph Corbet. Coop could hardly believe it. A man he'd never thought he'd see again—at least, not alive.

“So what's the deal with Corbet?” Rhonda asked.

Her curiosity level was off the charts, but Coop wasn't ready to talk about Corbet yet. “Later,” he said. “When we can be sure we won't be interrupted.”

While he was itching to get back to their temporary living quarters and read the doctor's files, he suddenly felt an urgent need to run through some of their security.

“Can you keep yourself busy in the computer lab?” he asked Rhonda.

“Of course,” she said, looking a bit perplexed.

“Then go do your thing. We'll meet up around 5:00 p.m., and I'll fill you in on Corbet then.”

“You're the boss,” she said, and headed for the elevator.

He stood and watched her go, suddenly filled with a niggling sense of dread for her safety.

Top-security facility.

“No Admittance” lab.

Credible threat.

Dr. Adolph Corbet.

His inclusion in this tableau was a game changer. His presence upped the stakes and the possibility of an imminent threat by about one hundred notches on the danger meter.

For that reason, Coop spent the rest of the afternoon running intense spot checks on security protocols. He poked for holes and felt only a modicum of relief when he found none.

He interviewed a number of staff about everything from food delivery to shift changes, all the time wondering about Corbet and what his role was in the “No Admittance” room. Unfortunately, he thought he had a pretty good idea.

By the time he was finished and met up with Rhonda in the computer lab, it was close to 5:00 p.m. Except for a small weekend crew, everyone else was making preparations to go home.

“I didn't think the military punched a clock,” she said as several workers passed them in the hallway, heading for the elevators.

“I did some more extensive reading this afternoon, so I can fill you in on that. Most of the staff are civilian contractors. For them, it's a five-day workweek and an eight-hour day. It's Friday night. Except for a skeleton crew, this place will be a ghost town from tonight through Monday morning.”

“The staff doesn't live on the base?”

“Through the week, yeah. But in about five minutes, they'll all be hopping on a jet and heading home to Vegas for the weekend.”

“A jet?”

“Special transport just for them. Most likely the same one we flew in on.”

“I'd have thought they'd be locked down here, given the secrecy of the projects.”

Coop shook his head. “Everyone on staff is fully vetted before they even get an employment interview. Once they're hired, they sign their life over to confidentiality clauses. And we're not talking fines for a breach of confidentiality here. We're talking treason if a leak is traced back to an employee. Treason and very hard time.

“You've got to remember, too, that the facility is highly compartmentalized,” he continued. “Everyone has their place and job, and they are not to cross boundaries into other people's business. There could be a major project going on at one section and no one would know anything about it at another section—or admit it if they did. That compartmentalization is a fail-safe in itself.”

“So how many staff remain?”

“Inside, there'll be just one guard per floor, most likely civilian contractors overseen by an Air Force MP at the main door. Outside, they'll have one guard positioned every eighth of a mile around the perimeter fence, which is five miles out. Another three directly outside the bunker, patrolling the building, with direct radio contact to the AFB five miles away. If anyone tries to breach the outside perimeter, this place will be crawling with armed Air Force personnel within minutes. And some mighty big guns will be aimed at any vehicle not marked with paint that can only be ID'd through specially fitted lenses.”

These security measures were reassuring, now that he knew Corbet was in the mix. If anyone came within a quarter-mile of the perimeter fence or dared to breach the no-fly zone, World War III would break out before a bad guy ever got close enough to try to get inside the building.

“So you think most of the staff are gone now?” Rhonda's question broke into his thoughts.

“There's one way to find out.”

They hit the elevator and rode to the first floor.

“Access log, please.” Coop waited for the MP manning Helen's desk to hand it over.

Coop scanned the list of personnel still inside the building, taking note of several things of interest before nodding his thanks. Then he gripped Rhonda's elbow and walked back toward the elevator.

“So?” she asked, once they were inside and heading down to level five.

“It's just us—except our names were removed from the log per Sec Def's request, so officially, we aren't even here. Only the MP and the five floor guards. And Dr. Corbet, who never logged out.”

“Corbet's here? Isn't that unusual?”

“Apparently not. When I saw his name on the log, I looked back a few weeks. He works a lot of weekends.”

“That's kind of sad. Why wouldn't he want to go home to his family?”

“Because he doesn't have a family to go home to,” he said soberly.

He could see she was dying to know what he knew about Corbet, but she didn't ask again. So he gave her an opening.

“Before you dig into the data you ‘borrowed' from his computer, why don't you see what you can dig up on Corbet and his family?”

31

“This is so sad,” Rhonda said a little over an hour later.

They'd settled in her living quarters. Coop had plopped onto his back on her bed, his arms crossed behind his head, his eyes closed. She sat at the small desk, her tablet plugged into a network port that accessed the main network, acquiring data on Corbet.

“He was born near Ukraine. Taken away from his family by the Russian government when he was only ten and sent to a state-run school when his aptitude for science and physics caught the attention of one of his teachers. It's barbaric,” she said.

“That's the good old USSR for ya.” Cooper was clearly as disgusted as she was.

“You already know all of this, though, don't you? How he was rushed through accelerated classes, paraded around Moscow like some pet protégé? How he was running a government-sponsored weapons lab at the age of twenty-five?”

“Actually, the only part I knew about was the weapons lab.”

That uneasy feeling she'd had ever since seeing the missile in the “No Admittance” room raised its ugly head again.

“What else did you find out?”

She read on. “He fell in love with one of his research assistants when he was in his late thirties and was only allowed to marry her after he refused to continue working for the state. That was thirty years ago. Her name is Svetlana. They have a daughter, Anna. She'd be twenty-five now.” She turned in the chair to look at him. “I thought you said he didn't have a family to go home to.”

“He doesn't.” His face had hardened. “When he sought asylum and defected to the U.S., they didn't make the trip with him.”

“How could you know that? I haven't been able to find any more information. Everything ends with him defecting.”

His jaw clenched, and it was clear that he couldn't or didn't want to meet her eyes. And just like that, she knew.

“Oh, my God. You . . . you and the team. You made it happen. You got him out of Russia.”

His silence was her answer.

And suddenly, she understood. There had been a cost involved in bringing Adolph Corbet to the United States. The cost had been leaving his family behind.

“Months of work. Careful preparation. Precision planning. Everything was in place,” he said softly. “But the day it went down, Anna missed her bus because of a flat tire. For sixty-eight consecutive days, that bus had picked her up from her job at exactly three forty-five p.m. and taken her to the library, where her mother would meet her, and then they'd walk the rest of the way home. On the one day that it mattered, Anna didn't make it to the library on time.”

Her heart fluttered wildly. “So you left them there?”

Guilt filled his eyes. “We had no choice. Corbet was already with us. It had taken months to make that happen, and other lives were on the line. Good people had stuck their necks out for Corbet and would die if we didn't stay the course. We had to move him before he was missed. Uncle wanted him out of Russia as much as Corbet did. So we got him out.”

“And Svetlana? Anna?”

“Were waiting at home when the Soviet police went looking for them.”

Oh, God.

“We had a team on the ground that intercepted. They got them across the border and finally to Budapest and safety.”

This was no spy story. This was real life. Agonizing, terrifying, real life in a Communist country. “How long ago was this?”

He let out a weary breath. “It'll soon be two years.”

Two years. How horrible. How sad. “Why haven't they come to the States to join him?”

“Because there are eyes everywhere. They're in hiding. At least, I hope they are.”

Her heart jumped again. “What does that mean?”

Again, he didn't look at her. But his tone revealed his anger. “You know what it means. If they're not hiding, then either they're dead or the Russians found them and are holding them in prison.”

She was quiet for a long while, digesting it all, thinking of the suffering they'd been through. “Why do you think Corbet ended up here? At Area Fifty-One?” she asked. That, it seemed, was the million-dollar question.

“You saw the same thing in that room that I did.”

The missile.

“Whatever he had in the works when we got him out of there was big. We made sure he escaped the lab with most of his research, and what he couldn't bring with him we destroyed. That's why we had to get him out that day. That moment,” he added, and she knew he was again feeling guilt over leaving Svetlana and Anna behind.

He dug into his pocket, pulled out the zip drive with Corbet's copied files, and stared at it for a long moment before tossing it to her. “Now's as good a time as any. Let's see what's on this puppy.”

“Here goes everything,” she said, and plugged it into her tablet.

•    •    •

Corbet's files were thorough. And shocking. Just as shocking as the title of the first document she opened up.

“Eagle Claw,” she murmured, not believing what she was seeing.

“Say again?” Cooper sprang off the bed.

“He's working on Eagle Claw. My God, I thought that was a myth.”

“Scroll down. Let's see the overview.”

Eagle Claw:

Hypersonic cruise missile

Speeds between Mach 5 and Mach 7

Range 500+ kilometers, the capability to
reach any target on earth in less than an hour

Prototype includes advanced avionics GPS, radar terrain matching, and internal guidance

Semiautonomous terminal guidance, the ability to use heat signatures or radar to provide final targeting, results in extreme accuracy

Titanium alloy construction

Scramjet engine and a rocket booster power

Adaptable to conventional and nuclear payloads

Can launch from the ground, ship, or an aircraft

“Holy, holy hell,” Cooper swore. “Do you know what this is?”

“A doomsday missile?”

“I was going to say Armageddon, but that's close enough.”

“No wonder the U.S. wanted Corbet and his research.”

“And what do you want to bet that the Russians would do just about anything to get it and their scientist back?”

“Let's back up a sec.” She scanned the overview again. “These are merely specs. This doesn't mean the project is anywhere near completion—or even operational, for that matter.”

“You saw it. It looked pretty damn complete to me.”

“Hold on. Let me check out some of these other files, see where they're really at with the production.”

She quickly opened file after file. Most of them contained indecipherable equations and formulas, test runs, and databases. And there were hundreds of them.

“This is going to take a while,” she said. “Looks like I'll be pulling an all-nighter.”

Cooper walked restlessly to the door. “I need to figure out how to get to Corbet. I want to talk to him.”

“What do you plan to do? Take out a guard?”

“It won't come to that,” he assured her.

Yikes
. She'd been kidding. “What if I find something here? Something you need to know about? How will I get a hold of you?” Cell phones wouldn't work in this five-level underground bunker designed to shield against electronic eavesdropping.

He dug around in his duffel and pulled out a small case. Inside were two earpiece radios. “The latest and greatest technology Uncle's money can buy.”

“They're so tiny.”

“Which means they have a pretty short range. Not too sure how well they'll work in reinforced concrete, but we'll give it a go.”

He turned one on and handed it to her before carefully fitting his in his ear, making sure the appropriate tab lay against his cheek.

When she struggled with hers, he reached up and helped her. “This tab stays against your cheekbone. It's a bone-conduction microphone. You don't have to key anything to transmit—just speak as clearly as you can.”

“Pays to have spooky friends, huh?”

“Let's hope so. Don't wait up for me.”

As he headed for the door, she said, “Don't do anything stupid.”

Two minutes later, she heard his voice in her ear. “Hondo to Buttercup, do you read me?”

Despite herself, she grinned. “Burns to Cooper. Some nitwit intercepted our private line. If you see him, shoot him. Over and out.”