Running Blind (20 page)

34

Rhonda had always looked at a computer system like a big jigsaw puzzle. Once you had the corners in place, then the borders, you could figure out a general picture. Even if the important details were jumbled, it was always solvable, given enough time. And the computer system at the Area 51 facility consisted of layers upon layers of puzzle pieces, all of them mixed up, all of them testing her patience and her stamina.

It had been a long day after a short night—although she wouldn't have traded that night with Cooper for more sleep. At least, that was how she felt at 1:30 Saturday morning. Fatigue had done a damn fine job of mellowing her out in the Jamie Cooper department.

The problem was, that mellowness was also a sign that she was losing her edge. And it was slowing her down.

She'd been working the system for over four hours, and she was close, she thought, as she suppressed another yawn and continued to tap away at the keyboard. She knew that she was close to finding the worm hole that would allow her to burrow out from under all the security blocks and make contact with the outside world. But repeated attempts that resulted in slamming into brick walls finally had her frustrated to the point of pulling her hair.

Literally.

She shoved herself up out of her chair and glared at the computer monitor. “You are the queen bitch of the world!” When she realized she was yelling at a machine, she settled herself down.

What was she missing?

And where the heck was Cooper? He should have schmoozed those guards by now. Should have been back with some good news. Like he'd found a trap door that led outside. Or he'd discovered a time continuum that could transport them back to Langley and reinforcements.

“I've got to get out of this room and make a fresh pot of coffee,” she muttered. And maybe take a quick shower to wake herself up before digging back into the system again.

Where
was
that man?

She'd tried to reach him several times just to see if they could keep in touch. Another go at it wouldn't hurt. “Hey, Cooper. You out there?”

When she stepped out of the room, she saw that the lights had cut to half power in the hallways. Probably because it was night and a weekend.

She went back into the computer room, rummaged around until she found a flashlight, then returned to the hall, more jumpy than she'd like to be. And because she knew she'd probably panic alone in a semidark elevator, she decided to take the stairs. Not that the dark, shadowy stairwell was much better.

“Cooper? Where the heck are you?” she asked again, feeling more uneasy as her boot heels echoed in the long, empty corridor.

This place was spooky enough when it was fully staffed and knowing it was daylight aboveground. In the middle of the night, with nothing but her own shifting shadows dancing against the stairwell walls, it was enough to make a grown woman downright jumpy.

When he finally answered, she did jump. “What's up, Butter—”

“Do
not
call me that,” she snapped, cutting him off as she pressed a hand to her racing heart. “I'm tired, I'm cranky, and I'm a failure to boot.”

“Poor Bombshell,” he soothingly. “You've had a long, hard day.”

She waited several beats. “What did you just call me?”

A guilty silence rang over the line. “Call you? I didn't call you anything.”

“You called me Bombshell.”

“Oh . . . oh, that. No. No, what I said was, it would take nothing less than a bombshell to break us out of this bunker.”

She didn't buy it, but she was too tired to raise a fuss. “Whatever. I'm heading for the commissary. Putting on a fresh pot of coffee. Then I'm taking a quick shower to wake myself up before hitting the system again.”

“I could use coffee,” he said. “And I could use a shower myself. Maybe we could—”

“Conserve on energy and shower together? That's not happening.”

“Actually, I was going to suggest that maybe we could take turns with a short combat nap.”

She finally smiled. “That is
not
what you were thinking.”

He laughed. “I guess my mind's not nearly as complex as those computers. See you by the coffeepot.”

•    •    •

The jump went exactly as planned. There had been no radar detection; otherwise, the entire compound would be lit up, with horns blaring right now. They'd landed a little farther from the planned drop zone than Vadar would have liked, but taking the wind into account, a slight deviation was to be expected. The good news was that they were a quarter of a mile closer to the target building than had been planned.

And when humping fifty to seventy pounds of gear, a mile hike was much preferable to a mile and a quarter.

Once all the men had gathered, they fell in line in single file behind him, with Ivan pulling up the rear. No words were spoken. Everyone knew his assignment.

Even in the bitter cold night and with the shorter walk, Vadar was soaked with sweat inside his American fatigues. Adrenaline still ran high in the wake of the jump—falling twenty-five thousand feet never became routine—so despite the uneven terrain and their heavy loads, they easily hiked what would normally be an arduous trek. It took less than twenty minutes to reach the target.

He checked his watch as they bellied down behind a berm at the rear of the low building. They were exactly on their timetable.

First course of action: take out the three guards patrolling the exterior of the building. Vadar lifted a hand, and three members of his team immediately crept forward, low and slow.

He waited for the first cough of the sound-­suppressed M4 rifles. The second and the third shots were mere seconds behind. Three shots, three down. Now nothing remained between them and the inside of the building but a little finesse.

He took a measured look around. Other than a tumbleweed blowing past, there was no activity. Assured that they'd raised no red flags, he stood and motioned for the remaining team to follow.

As a group, they approached his three gunmen. Along with the guards' uniforms, each held a badge and the bloody forefinger of the guard he had killed.

Vadar selected a uniform that fit, took the badge and the finger that went with it, and slipped on the uniform. Quickly moving to the security scanner, he slid the badge through the magnetic reader and was prompted to verify with his fingerprint. He pressed the dead guard's finger against the scanner, and the lock clicked.

He quickly opened the door and held it for all but the three team members who were hiding the bodies of the dead guards. Then they would keep watch outside, posing as facility security.

“What the hell are you doing in here, Leonard?”

The MP behind the desk couldn't see who had entered, but he knew the exterior door had been opened.

Vadar walked to the desk and shot the shocked MP between the eyes before he could reach for his gun.

Behind him, Ivan quickly checked the rooms directly off the security desk and nodded to Vadar. “No one else.”

“Matvey.”

The computer tech, still out of breath from the hike and his first experience at jumping—not to mention witnessing the cold-blooded execution of four men—shook as he stepped forward. “Sir.”

“You know what to do.”

Matvey Polzin shrugged out of his pack and sat down shakily in front of one of the computers in the security room. Ivan had assured Vadar that Polzin knew his tasks and had been instructed in exactly what he needed to do: take control of the security system, and allow the rest of the team into the areas they needed to access.

“How many more guards in the building?” Vadar asked.

Polzin scanned the printed log for any employees who remained in the bunker.

“As our sources reported, one for each floor, sir. Plus the military policeman who has been . . . taken out of commission.”

“Anyone else?”

“No one except Dr. Adolph Corbet, who is in his lab, as anticipated.”

Vadar smiled. So the doctor did not break his promise. Amazing what a man would do when he believed he could prevent the death of someone he loved. And Corbet, it seemed, would do anything, including betraying the country that had given him asylum.

Ivan had opened a secure cabinet and taken out several pairs of radios. He handed them out to the men, who set them to a common frequency.

One man was then assigned to each floor. Their mission was to eliminate the single guards roaming each hallway. Matvey would assist them by monitoring the cameras and alerting them of each guard's position, using the main radio.

Vadar glanced at a diagram of the facility. As their mole had told them, Corbet would be in his laboratory on level four.

“Quickly,” Vadar said, and his team scrambled after him and gathered in the hallway outside the security office. He held up his watch. Fifteen minutes was all the time they should need to accomplish their task.

Vadar felt a flash of satisfaction as he watched his men deploy, heading for the stairway to execute their mission.

Keeping Ivan and the other tech, Iosif Yakovlev, with him, Vadar returned to the security desk. There he waited, watching the cameras. He anticipated that it would take no more than ten minutes for his men to eliminate all five guards.

However, he had learned long ago that all was not always as it seemed. He would wait until he was assured that all threats had been eliminated. And then he would head down the stairwell toward the fourth floor and the prize that would make him a wealthy man.

•    •    •

Rhonda had revived herself on fresh coffee, then ducked in and out of a quick shower. Marginally refreshed, she set up shop at the small table in her assigned room instead of trudging up to the server room. Since there were no in-house computers in the living quarters, she plugged her tablet into the data port.

In his own room, Cooper was still in the shower. She would have figured he'd fallen asleep in there, if she didn't know he was as ramped up as she was trying to figure out a contact to the outside—

Whoa
.

She sat up straight, fingers frozen above her keypad, her gaze locked on her tablet.

What the heck?

Maybe she was seeing things. Maybe her screen hadn't just gone black, then popped back to life—but on a totally different drive from the one she'd been on.

She closed the program, keyed in the commands to return her to—

Startled, she blinked. There it was again. The black screen, then an instant return to a setting that took her to the security cameras.

What the hell?
She'd lost control of her tablet.

She sat back, staring, thinking. Had the “worm” she'd planted to test cyber-security tomorrow morning gone glitchy? Started up before she'd given the command?

There was only one way to find out.

She accessed the “worm,” removed it, and started in again.

And again, she went somewhere she didn't want to go.

Okay, she was tired. Maybe she'd left something open when she'd been working in the server room. Maybe the network port here in her room wasn't as fully connected to the main servers as she'd been told.

Whatever it was, she couldn't work like this. It was as if someone had taken control of her programs . . .

Her thoughts snagged—and stopped.

But that couldn't be. Someone couldn't have taken over her programs. There was no one here with a reason to do it.

“Wake up and figure it out, Burns,” she muttered. “This ain't rocket science.”

Still, she couldn't shake the feeling that something bigger than a faulty network port was the problem. It was as if the system was fighting her once she had gained access to it, but it seemed as though there was another presence on the network.

Just for giggles—at least, that was what she told herself—­she grabbed her badge and the flashlight. Then she headed down the dim hall to what she knew was a janitor's office.

Her badge got her into the room. The tiny office reeked of stale coffee and, except for the nude pinup of a buxom blonde on the bulletin board, was pretty much standard government issue.

She settled down in a battered chair and fired up the desktop computer. If it worked the way it should, then she'd know that the network port in her living quarters was the problem. Or that her tablet couldn't, for some reason, handle the magnitude of the data she was attempting to access. Since all the in-house computers were on the same network, she should have full access to everything in the building.

She opened up another window on the screen and checked the network usage map. And found something
else
odd. The security office on the first floor was utilizing a lot of the network resources—too much for a weekend skeleton security crew and no apparent physical security breaches. Was the MP on duty up there bored and playing solitaire and masking it with some data manipulation?