He went back downstairs, extracted an empty black accounting case from the closet that would typically have been used for linens, and left the building. Two streets away, he caught a cab that took him on a short ride to a neighborhood he hadn’t visited in over a year. He walked for several more blocks before turning down an alley.
Sixty seconds later, he was standing in front of a garage that was part of a three-unit townhouse complex only a few blocks from Georgetown University. As far as the residents knew, the electricity meter box along the side was solely for tracking each unit’s power usage. While the meters did do that, the box itself had an additional function.
Peter slipped a key into the lock on the side of the box. Others had keys to this lock, too, but his was the only one that turned in the other direction.
With a low clunk, the entire box hinged open from the wall. The back appeared to be a metal plate with another keyhole near the bottom. He stuck in the appropriate key, turned it, and opened the panel.
Mounted inside were two Dell laptop computers, two pouches containing all necessary wiring, and two thin, handheld printers. The laptops and printers had never been used before. To stay fully charged, each tapped into the electric supply running through the meter box. If anyone found them and tried to find their owners from the serial numbers, they would have discovered that the machines were listed as never having passed Dell quality control, and had been recycled.
Working quickly, he removed one computer, one pouch, and one printer, and placed them in his accounting bag. He closed the panel. If he ever needed another disposable computer, he’d be back. If not, well, who knew if anyone would ever find the remaining machine.
He walked to a park fifteen minutes away, and went directly to the bench where he knew he wouldn’t be seen from the street. There were only a few others in the park, most taking their dogs on a late evening stroll.
He used a cable from the pouch to connect the computer to the printer, and fired them both up. After that it was a simple matter of joining one of the many Wi-Fi networks broadcasting from the homes surrounding the park. He picked one at random, used the preinstalled software to hack past the password protection, and went to the website where Helen had set up the email account.
It was a well-used trick. Sign up for a free account, write an email with whatever secret message needed to be conveyed, but instead of sending it, just save it as a draft. The intended receiver of the message would also have the email account information. That person would then sign on, open the draft folder, and read the message. There would be no trail of the email being sent, no warning light flashing in some NSA data collection center, no indication of anything going on at all because in the virtual world, the email never went anywhere.
Helen’s draft folder contained a single message.
What is
your
definition of domestic terrorism? Someone who sets off a car bomb on a crowded street? Someone who targets a country’s leaders for death? Someone who calls for the overthrow of the government? Someone who advocates change?
The slope is slippery.
Peter frowned. It was the same philosophical question the intelligence community had been grappling with for decades. If anyone had come up with a definitive answer, he hadn’t heard it.
He clicked on the picture file attached to the message.
There was a delay as the appropriate program was launched.
Peter stared at it for a moment, unsure of what it meant. He recognized the face, but the name wasn’t coming to him right away. Whoever it was, it had been a while since Peter had—
Wait.
He
did
know who it was, but that didn’t really help him understand why Helen had sent it to him. He reread her message, and looked at the face again.
Project Cancer.
Cancer.
As the realization of what Mygatt and Green had done dawned on him, the skin on his face felt as if it had been suddenly pulled tight against his skull.
Holy shit.
If he was right, he wasn’t just sitting on a powder keg. He was straddling a hydrogen bomb.
CHAPTER 31
LAZIO REGION, ITALY
“N
OTHING,” NATE SAID,
as he raced out of the basement cell Mila had been in.
He and Orlando had already checked the main floor and were now doing a thorough search of the area below ground.
Orlando popped out of the cell she’d been going through and shook her head.
“This place wasn’t built with any other way out,” Nate told her, his frustration starting to show.
“There’s got to be one. There’s always one.”
Nate did a full three-sixty, scanning the basement once more. “Well, I’m not seeing it.”
Orlando moved from one cell door to the next, scanning the room inside. As she turned away from the one closest to the stairs, she paused, her narrowing eyes focused on the door itself.
“I think it’s got to be in here,” she said, nodding into the cell.
Nate hurried over. “Why?”
She pointed at the inside part of the door. “You see it?”
Before he could answer, she put her finger in a small divot in the door, about a foot above the ground, and pulled out a ring handle, just large enough to get her finger into. She twisted it, and the door latch turned. In this cell, someone on the inside could actually open the door.
A quick check of the other cells revealed none had the same ring handle.
“It’s here somewhere. We just have to look harder.”
Nate dropped to his knees and started feeling along the tile floor for anything usual, while Orlando made a similar examination along the wall.
“Hey!” Mila called down from the stairway. “Get up here. Something’s going on.”
Nate and Orlando rushed out of the room, and found Mila at the top of the stairs.
“What is it?” Nate asked.
“I…I don’t know. But…” She pointed toward Daeng standing near the entrance.
They moved over to him.
“We suddenly heard a lot of noise,” Daeng said.
“Maybe they’re trying to get in,” Orlando suggested.
“No, no. Yelling, but not at us. And something else.”
“What?” Nate asked.
__________
Q
UINN FOUND A
dry rag and tied it around a can of tomato soup he’d grabbed from a kitchen cabinet. The matches were a bit harder to locate. He thought they’d be near the stove, but instead they were in a drawer next to the sink.
He moved over to the window, raised it as far as it would go, and used a knife to cut through the screen.
He blew out the pilot lights on the gas stove, and turned all the burner dials to high. He then did the same with the oven, leaving the door open. The second he was sure gas was spewing out, he jogged over to the window, climbed out, and shut it behind him.
For ninety seconds, he huddled in the bushes a few feet away, letting the gas fill the kitchen. As much as he would have liked to wait longer, he knew he couldn’t afford to, so he moved as far away from the window as he dared, given his injury. He lit the rag, then cocked his arm back and awkwardly launched the flaming can of soup through the glass.
As he turned away, the kitchen ignited in a loud
wah-umph
.
He sprinted across the grass, making the cover of the vines seconds before two of Michaels’s men rushed around the back of the house to see what happened.
Flames licked at the windows. The exterior stonewalls wouldn’t burn, but everything inside would, leaving an empty husk if the fire wasn’t extinguished in time.
Quinn moved off to a point where he felt safe enough to circle around to the trees on the other side so he could better see what was going on.
He’d been hoping that Michaels and all of his men would switch their attention to the fire, giving Nate, Orlando, Daeng, and Mila an opportunity to get out. Instead, only five of Michaels’s men had repositioned to the main house, while Michaels and the three others remained near the detention building.
Which, of course, meant Quinn’s friends were still stuck inside.
Michaels was talking to the three still with him, aiming the majority of his words at the two men on his right. When he finished, the two nodded and separated, moving out wide to either side. Quinn watched, already having a pretty good idea of what they were up to. The moment they curled back toward the building, he knew he was right. Their plan was to approach the detention-building door from both ends.
While they were doing this, Michaels and the other man moved a car into the field fifty feet in front of the building, positioned themselves behind it, and aimed their weapons at the door.
A classic solution.
The two by the door would open it, then get out of the way while their boss and the other man would shoot into the building. At some point they would rush inside, and mop up whatever was left.
Quinn couldn’t let it get close to that point.
Again, the phone in his pocket rang, and again, he ignored it.
There was about a hundred and ten feet between him and the car Michaels and his man were now standing behind. He
could
probably pick them both off…if he wasn’t injured. While he knew his first shot would run true, he wasn’t sure how his sewed-up wound would affect the second, and he couldn’t afford to make a mistake.
He had to get closer.
Which meant he had to move out into the open.
__________
N
ATE PRESSED HIS
ear against the front door. Whatever yelling there had been, he didn’t hear it now. What he did hear was the roar of a fire.
Quinn
.
His mentor must have lit up the house to give them a diversion. The problem was, they had no way of checking outside to see if the route was clear. His hand dropped to the knob.
Just a quick look
, he thought.
But he couldn’t bring himself to turn it.
Instead, he said, “Basement. Everyone.”
__________
T
HE GROUND BETWEEN
the trees and the car was a patchwork of grass and dirt and weeds. His gun held firmly in his hand, Quinn stayed low as he moved in directly behind Michaels and the other man, staying out of their line of sight.
Through the windows of the car, he could see that the duo at the building had arrived at the door. Michaels waved his arm, and one of the men reached across the entrance and grabbed the handle.
Wait!
Quinn willed them, knowing he wasn’t close enough yet. If he tried to go faster, they would hear him.
The man started to pull the door open.
__________
N
ATE WAS THE
last one down the stairs. As his foot touched the basement floor, he heard something from above. A metal scratch, muffled and distant. He was about to ask the others if they’d heard it, too, when the unmistakable sound of bullets slamming into the walls of the ground-floor corridor answered the question.
“Go! Go!” he yelled, urging the others into the cell.
“Check everywhere,” Orlando ordered. “There’s got to be a hidden latch or panel or something we missed before.”
They spread out and ran their fingers over the walls and floor. Nate chose a spot nearest the door so he could hear what was happening above. Within seconds of the initial barrage, the shooting stopped. He imagined several of the others moving into the upper hallway. He couldn’t hear them, but that didn’t mean they weren’t there.
“I’ve got something,” Mila said.
Everyone moved over to her.
She jiggled one of the floor tiles. It moved, not much, but enough to show it wasn’t cemented into place.
“Is there a way to pull it up?” Orlando asked.
Mila ran her fingers around the edges. “I don’t think—”
“Let me,” Daeng said.
He was holding a twisted piece of metal that must have come off one of the doors during the explosion. He slipped the edge between the tile and the mortar, and levered it up. Underneath was another ring tab, only this one was large enough for a whole hand to grab.
“Please, everyone move back,” Daeng said.
Once the area was clear, he gave the ring a yank. A three-foot-square section of the floor opened.
“Get in!” Nate ordered. He was sure the people above were heading down the stairs at that very moment.
Orlando went first, then Mila.
When Nate entered, he put his hands on the underside of the hatch, and said to Daeng, “I’ve got it. You put the tile back in place, then sneak around behind me.”
After Daeng did as instructed, Nate shut the hatch.
__________
M
ICHAELS AND HIS
companion opened fire on the building.
With no choice left, Quinn ran, and was able to get within ten feet before Michaels cocked his head and began to turn. Quinn lunged forward and grabbed the man’s arm, shoving his SIG into the base of Michaels’s skull.
“Cease fire,” Quinn ordered.
The other man noticed Quinn for the first time and started to bring his weapon around.
“Don’t,” Quinn said. “Throw it on the ground behind me.”
The man hesitated.
“Do as he says,” Michaels told him.
The man tossed the gun behind Quinn.
“Now lie on the ground,” Quinn instructed. “Facedown, spread eagle.”
The man did as he was told.
Quinn glanced at the men near the door of the building.
“Tell them it’s all clear, and have them come back here.” Quinn emphasized the command with a gentle push of the SIG’s muzzle against Michaels’s head as he moved so that Michael’s body would shield him from their view.
“We’re all clear,” Michaels yelled. “Come here for a minute.”
Still looking confused, the men started walking across the grass.