Spectre Black (21 page)

Chapter
26

Landry started work the following week. A sport jacket over an open-collar shirt and slacks—“casual dress”—was required, as well as a laminated ID card clipped to a ribbon around his neck. An H&K 9mm and a holster to go with it was issued to him as well.

There were plenty of rules, everything from where he could park and where he couldn’t, to the length of his two short breaks and one half-hour lunch, to the places that were off-limits (there were several areas like that) and a list of policies he was told to memorize.

Landry was a good employee. Mainly, because he knew he wasn’t going to be stuck in the job forever. If at all possible, this would be a get-in-get-out kind of situation. He would concentrate on being a reliable security guard but not a great one. When in doubt, stick to the middle of the road and don’t stand out in any way. The only drawback in this regard was his height.

He learned about the phones first off. There were seven sat phones set into a four-point charging station—five for security and two for higher-ups, including Miko Denboer himself. Landry was intimately familiar with sat phones from the military. They looked like black bricks with telescoping antennas, and were nearly as heavy.

Landry was briefed by the chief of security, a beefy guy with a red face named Derek Talbot, who demonstrated how to use the phone. “Be sure to pick a different one each time,” Talbot said. “Even Mr. Denboer switches phones, so you make sure you do, too. We really like to change them up.”

Smart.

“You keep your phone overnight, then bring it back in to be charged first thing in the a.m.”

“Yessir.”

“Recharge it every day.”

“Yessir.”

“Former military, right?”

“Yes
sir!
”

He nodded curtly. “Good. You’ll toe the line, then. You come in by seven a.m., on the dot, no slackers here, and you put that phone into the charger. It takes three hours for a full charge, but you can use one if you need to after the first hour and a half. Don’t let it get away from you, do you understand me?”

“Yessir.”

“Good. You listen to instructions and you do your job to the letter, and you won’t get any misery from me.”

“I understand.”

“Where did you serve?”

“Iraq and Afghanistan.”

He kept his face level with Landry’s but Landry thought his gaze slid away—no more than a micro-eyelash—as if he couldn’t look Landry fully in the eye. It was the same exaggerated behavior a dog would exhibit to its better, just short of slinking. “Good for you,” he said curtly. He paused, about to add something. Landry guessed it would be an explanation why he didn’t serve. But his face hardened up again and he said, “Be sure to recharge every day. And always choose a different phone. The number is here, on the bottom.”

“Yes sir.”

The man cleared his throat and walked away.

Landry spent a couple of days learning the ropes and observing the people he worked with.

Two of the employees were excellent—top-notch. He would have to be careful around them. The other four were average. They did their jobs, but they were either lazy, uncertain, or downright hostile to work. Landry didn’t take any of them for granted.

The first thing he did was become a person to all of them, a guy they could get to know. He stuck to the truth as much as possible. His interests: football and handicapping the ponies. He mentioned an ex-wife and daughter who lived in another state, which was not only close to the truth—it
was
the truth. This, Landry knew from years of training and experience, was the key to lying. Stick as close to the truth as possible, and use situations and certain turning points in your own life. Those memories were easy to remember in an emotional sense. Do it that way and you didn’t have to rummage through your memory files. The memories were already there, baked into the cake.

Landry also made sure that he seemed smart enough, but not too smart. Just an average everyday Joe Blow doing his job and trying to do it well. Likeable but not too chummy.

When he had learned the routine, he called Jeff Briggs at Fort Meade.

“How’s it going?” Jeff asked. “Did you get everything you need?”

“To be honest, I could use your help. You know what I was checking out? Now it looks like there are some bigger implications here.”

“Elaborate.”

Landry said, “I think I stepped in something big. From what I’m picking up, this could have national implications. I can’t go into it on the phone.”

“I understand.”

“You remember Fallujah.”

“I do.”

“So you know my word is my bond.”

“Tell me what you need.”

He told Briggs he needed a powerful parabolic mic and a couple of operators with Briggs’s unit. “Can you dispatch a crew?”

“I’ve got two in your area. Albuquerque and El Paso.”

“El Paso would be faster.”

“You want this ASAP?”

“Yeah. If this is nothing, no one will ever know. But if it isn’t . . .”

“I understand.”

“This won’t be a problem, will it?”

“No way. They go where I tell them to go. They listen in on what I tell them to listen to. If it’s a dry hole, it’s a dry hole.”

“This won’t be a dry hole,” Landry said.

“I’ll see who I’ve got and I’ll deploy. It will be no later than tomorrow morning.”

“I can send you satellite images of the area—”

“No problem. Our guys know how to hide in plain sight. Just make sure the signal isn’t scrambled. We can’t tap in if it is.”

“Roger that.”

Every day at eight a.m. on the dot, Miko Denboer drove his dark blue Jaguar XJ sedan to the entrance of the main building, handed the keys to one of the security guards, and walked inside the main building, which held his office. The main entrance was a box, mostly plate-glass on two sides with a long standup counter, a couple of desks behind that. There were also plants, a couple of western art paintings on the wall—a welcoming introduction to the maze of hallways and larger buildings beyond. The kitchen, complete with a long table, was off to the right. Denboer always went straight to the charging station to pick up one of the phones. The charging station was in a recessed alcove off the hallway, one door down from the kitchen. Denboer was careful to look at the number—the habit of a man who left nothing to chance.

On the morning of the conflagration, Landry came in early, around a quarter to seven in the morning. Fifteen minutes ahead of the others. Denboer wouldn’t be in yet—you could set your clock by him. Landry was grateful that Denboer was a creature of habit. He sat in the kitchen area and watched as his fellow security guards deposited their phones in the charger. The sat phones were on a “trickle-charger” and took approximately three hours to achieve a full charge. The security team would let the phones charge partway before going on their first rounds around eight, then return the phones to the base for a full charge.

Landry checked one of the phones for warmth. It was now partially charged, good enough for the first inspection of the grounds. He made his rounds and came back fifteen minutes early to return his sat phone to the base. From here on he would need to move quickly and efficiently. He had fifteen minutes before his fellow security guards trickled back in.

Landry walked into the break room dining area again, selected a powdered donut, and sat at one of the rickety tables near the window. He looked over the local newspaper as his fellow guards stopped at the quad charger to return their phones before heading in for their morning coffee and breakfast rolls. There was a knot of guys sitting at a table some yards away from Landry. He had yet to prove himself. As it stood right now, he was the New Guy who had replaced a pal of theirs. At the moment, they largely ignored him. It would take time for them to thaw—he knew that—and as far as he was concerned it was the best possible situation. He went to one of the coffee urns, filled his coffee cup, and added cream to it. The cup was not one of the ceramic mugs sitting facedown on the table beside the urn. This was Landry’s cup, which he’d picked up at the dollar store in town—a cheap china cup sporting a gold-painted decorative ring around the rim. Landry shuffled over to the microwave and placed it inside, setting the timer for ten minutes.

He went back to his rickety table and cleared up the mess—napkins, crumbs from the donut, paper plate—then headed for the restroom off the break room. And waited.

Inside the microwave, the coffee cup was heating up and so was the gold ring. The coffee would evaporate and one of the resulting sparks on the ring would blow the cup apart—shards of china would go flying. Likely, this would disable the microwave. Smoke and the burning stench of fried coffee and china would ensue—

He heard a loud
whumpf
as the cup exploded. The smoke billowed black. The fire alarm went off, so loud you could barely think. And then he heard the sound of the sprinkler system coming on. He heard voices, shouts, footsteps running. “Over here!” someone shouted. “Grab the fire extinguisher!” Some people running to the kitchen, some running out the door to the outside. There might even be a call to the fire department, although Landry wasn’t sure if Denboer wanted that kind of scrutiny, not for a microwave mishap. Landry headed back to the alcove where the quad charger was. The alarm was deafening. Everyone ran in one direction or the other. But nobody watched him. He was just another shocked employee distancing himself from the explosion.

He had a guaranteed ten minutes, fifteen at the outside.

All the sat phones were seated in their base.

Landry knew the backs of the sat phones were held together with Torx heads. He inserted the right size Torx screwdriver blade and tightened it. He removed the six screws on the back of one of the sat phones, removed the back, and split the casing with the screwdriver. He broke one of the wires inside, snapping the casing before plugging it back into the phone. The phone would sit there, looking as it always did, and no one would be the wiser that he’d just unscrambled the frequency. He quickly moved on to the next and the next after that—thirty seconds to each phone—until all seven were done.

In the course of that time, a few people funneled out of the break room but barely registered his presence. When he heard footsteps, he stood with one of the phones, looking confused, a man wondering what he should do in this situation. One of the guys just shook his head and kept going, his personal cell phone to his ear. He could have been calling the fire department or he could have been talking to his wife. Whatever it was, the man appeared to be completely absorbed.

The guy with him didn’t even bother to look in Landry’s direction.

Landry turned back and finished what he was doing. Every time he heard footsteps and voices, he put on his worried face, looking focused as he held one of the phones to his ear. “Don’t put me on hold! We need—” He stopped. One or two people ran by him but barely noticed him. The noise, the smoke, the smell of the burned coffee and the shrieking of the alarm shattered normalcy.

He got to all seven phones.

No one would suspect they were tampered with. The sat phones were now unscrambled, and no one but Landry, Eric, Jolie, and Jeff Briggs’s crew knew about it. Pretty soon the mess in the break room would be cleaned up, the kitchen area back to normal except for the burning smell and perhaps a simple remodel. There would be a new microwave, definitely. And now Landry’s friends in the satellite van would be able to listen in to everything that went on at the ag farm.