Checkmate

  Having ruled out an airdrop, Fisher had chosen what he felt was the Burj al Arab’s most vulnerable point: its water supply. Rather than rely on the mainland for fresh water, the Burj al Arab’s architects had equipped the hotel with its own desalinization and pump stations, which were supplied by massive, propeller-driven intake ducts, two of them embedded in the island’s concrete foundation. According the schematics, each duct was as big around as a bus and driven by propellers worthy of a battleship. Working together, the intakes fed enough salt water into the desalinization/pump stations to supply the guests and staff with fresh drinking and bathing water while maintaining the fire-suppression systems at the same time.

  There was a hitch to his plan, however: getting through one of the intake ducts without being chopped into chum. His first hurdle wouldn’t be the propeller blades themselves, but rather the protective mesh screen on their outside. Still, that was little comfort. If he lost control and found himself trapped against the mesh, the force would pull him through like tomato sauce through a sieve.

  “I’m a quarter mile out,” he reported.

  “Watch yourself,” Lambert said. “Keep an eye on your current gauge. By the time you feel those pumps drawing you in, it’ll be too late.”

  “Got it.”

  He swam on.

  HE kept a steady pace and a steady watch on his OPSAT, checking his Distance-To-Target against Speed-Through-Water.

  DTT: 310 METERS/STW: 2.8 MPH . . .

  DTT: 260 METERS/STW: 2.8 MPH . . .

  DTT: 190 METERS/STW: 2.8 MPH . . . STW: 2.9

  MPH . . . STW: 3.0 MPH . . .

  “My speed just increased,” Fisher reported. Still six hundred feet away and the intakes were already creating their own riptide. Fisher felt the prickle of fear on his neck. With each foot he drew closer, the more he would pick up speed.

  “Stop kicking,” Grimsdottir ordered.

  “Already have.” In the few seconds they’d been talking, his speed had increased to 4.5 mph—on land, a slow jog; in water, a fast clip.

  He clicked on his light and looked down. A few feet below his belly, the seabed was rushing by, a dizzying blur of white sand and rocks. At this rate, he’d hit the intake screen at twenty mph. He clicked off his light. Don’t think; just do.

  “Grim, anytime you want to shut them down is fine with me.”

  “Relax, I’ve run the simulations backwards and fore-wards.”

  Fisher checked his OPSAT: DTT: 90 METERS/STW: 10.2 MPH . . .

  “Hold it . . . hold it . . .” Grimsdottir said. “Remember, Sam, I can loop a system casualty for at most seventy-five seconds before the backups kick in. Twenty seconds after that the intakes will be back up to full power.”

  “Got it.”

  DTT: 60 METERS/STW: 16.8 MPH . . .

  “Hold it. . . . Now! Shutting down!”

  Immediately, Fisher heard the roar of the intakes change pitch and begin to wind down. He felt the riptide loosen its grip on his body. The OPSAT readout scrolled down from fifty meters, to thirty, then twenty. His speed dropped past eight mph.

  He reached up and switched on his task light.

  Suddenly, the mesh screen was there, a massive gridlike wall emerging out of the darkness. Fisher kicked his legs out just in time for his fins to take the brunt of the impact. Still, the draw of the current was strong enough to plaster him face-first against the mesh. Through it, cast in the red glow of his light, the propeller was slowly winding down, each blade a massive scmimitar-shaped shadow.

  Fisher let out the breath he’d been holding.

  Grimsdottir’s voice: “Sam, you there?”

  “I’m here.”

  “The clock is ticking. Backups will start coming back on-line in fifty seconds.”

  From his waist pouch Fisher withdrew an eight-foot long cord. Nearly identical to the burn-ties he’d used during his penetration of the Newport News shipyard, this cord was coated with a water-resistant adhesive.

  He mashed the cord against the mesh in a rough circle, then jammed his thumb into the chemical detonator and backed away. Two seconds passed. The oval-shaped flash of white light lasted eight seconds. When the bubbles cleared, Fisher finned ahead, hand outstretched, and grabbed the severed section of mesh. He gave it a quick jerk and it came free. He tossed it away.

  “Time check,” he said.

  “Forty seconds.”

  He swam through.

  18

  ONCE through the gap, Fisher instantly realized they’d all misread the schematics for the ducts. Unlike a ship’s propeller, where each blade was mounted alongside its neighbor on the shaft, here they were mounted one behind the next lengthwise along the shaft, like threads on a screw. Worse still, looking down the shaft, he counted eight blades rather than four. The setup made sense, he realized, given their purpose was to provide suction, not propulsion.

  “Got a problem here,” Fisher radioed. “How much time?”

  “Thirty seconds.”

  He grabbed the edge of the first blade and pulled himself beneath it, then finned ahead, weaving and ducking his way beneath and over blades two, three, four, five.

  “Fifteen seconds, Sam.”

  Beside him, the barrel-sized shaft emitted an electronic buzz, then a series of steel-on-steel clanks as the propellers gears began to re-engage. He ducked under blade six, then veered right and arched his body, feeling the trailing edge of the blade seven scrape his thighs.

  “Eight seconds . . . seven . . . six . . .”

  He put all his strength into his legs and kicked. He felt rather than saw the propellers begin to move, as though he’d been shoved from behind by a crashing wave.

  “Starting up . . . power’s at twenty percent.”

  “I’m through.”

  “Don’t slow down. The maintenance shaft is fifty feet down the tunnel. Should be a circular opening in the roof. It won’t be marked; you’ll have to feel your way. If you don’t reach it in time—”

  “I know, I remember.” Into the desalinization tank for boiling.

  “Power at fifty percent.”

  Already, the roar of the propellers was nearly deafening. Beyond his mask he saw only froth. He angled his body upward. His outstretched hand touched corrugated metal.

  “Power at seventy-five percent,” Grimsdottir called. “There should be a ladder jutting from the maintence shaft, Sam. Coming up quick now . . . Thirty feet . . . twenty-five . . .”

  With his hand thumping over the ribbed steel of the roof, Fisher had sense of his speed. He switched on his light, hoping to catch a glimpse of the ladder as it approached, but the swirling bubbles had reduced visibility to zero. He switched off the light. He’d have to do it by feel and reflexes alone.

  “Fifteen feet . . . You’re dead on track, Sam. Almost there . . .”

  For a split second the froth cleared and he caught a glimpse of something, a horizontal steel bar. He latched onto the rung with both hands and was jerked to a sudden halt. Pain shot through his wrists, up his arms, and exploded in his shoulder sockets. His legs, fully caught in the slipstream, felt impossibly heavy. One of his fins was ripped from his foot, then the next.

  Climb, Sam, climb!

  He reached up, hooked his hand on the next rung, and pulled. Then again, and again. The draw on his legs lessened. He kept climbing, one rung at a time, until suddenly, his head broke into a pocket of air. Just as abruptly, the drag on his legs disappeared.

  He took in a few lungfuls of air until his heart rate settled; then he clicked on his task light and looked down. A few inches below his bottom foot, the water in the duct was rushing by as though driven by a fire hose—which, in essense, it was.

  He keyed his subdermal: “I’m in the shaft, all limbs and digits accounted for.”

  “Good work, Sam,” Lambert replied.

  “Any alarms, change of routine?”

  Grimsdottir said, “None. I’m tapped into the hotel’s security and maintenence frequencies. They read the int
ake shutdown as a routine glitch. Check in when you reach your first waypoint. That’s where the real fun begins.”

  “Roger.”

  It took some patience in the tight confines of the shaft to remove his rebreather harness and weight belt and get them hooked on the ladder, but after a few contortions he got it done. Though he didn’t plan to exfiltrate the hotel the same way he’d come in, he knew better than to assume anything. Having his gear here would give him insurance against not only Murphy’s Law—“If it can go wrong, it will go wrong”—but also what he’d come to think of as Fisher’s Law: “The road of assumptions is lined with coffins.”

  HE climbed to the top of the ladder, then spun the locking wheel, and lifted the hatch just enough to slip the tip of the flexi-cam through. The lens revealed what he’d expected: the hotel’s maintenance center. Dimly illuminated by fluorescent shop lights spaced down the length of the ceiling, the space was roughly one hundred feet long by fifty feet wide. The walls were lined with banks of monitoring consoles and framed blueprints. Down the center of the room stood row after row of floor-to-ceiling shelving for the odds and ends it took to keep the hotel running, from the smallest of screws to new showerheads to cleaning supplies and paint. Here and there were stacks of crates containing what he assumed were larger items like motors, pumps, electrical switch panels.

  After the roar of the intake tunnels, the maintainence room seemed eerily quiet, with only the occasional crackle of radio static and a faint electrical hum to break the silence. He panned the flexi-cam around. At the far end he saw a forklift pass between a row of shelves and disappear. Aside from that, he saw no movement. He wasn’t surprised. At this time of night the maintainence shift was likely run by a skeleton crew. Unfortunately, the same couldn’t be said for the security staff. According to Grimsdottir, it was fully manned twenty-four hours a day.

  He switched to EM, or Electro-Magnetic, view and looked for odd signatures that would indicate sensor grids or cameras. There was nothing. He withdrew the flexi-cam.

  “Okay, Grim, I’m not reading any cameras or sensors.”

  “Confirmed,” she answered. “There’s nothing until you reach the outer corridor.”

  “Roger, I’m moving.”

  He lifted the hatch, climbed out, closed the hatch. He paused in a crouch, waiting and watching. The fluorescent lights, which were likely fully lit during the day, had been switched to half-power. The walls and shelving units were cast in shadow.

  He sprinted to the nearest wall and flattened himself against it, then slid to his right, eyes scanning the room, hand resting on the butt of his pistol. His other hand touched steel. He knew without looking it what it was.

  “I’m at the main door,” he radioed.

  “First camera is twenty feet down the corridor. It’s on a ten-second span, no thermal, no NV.”

  “Waiting for your mark,” Fisher whispered.

  “Ready . . . ready . . . Go!”

  He turned the knob, swung open the door, and slipped into the corridor.

  19

  BURJ AL ARAB

  HE stepped into the corridor and pressed himself to the far wall. The first camera was twenty feet down the hall, high on the wall. Like the maintenance room, the corridor’s lights were dimmed for the night shift. Small halogen bulbs cast pools of light along the seam between the wall and the ceiling.

  He started sliding, eyes fixed on the camera as it finished its scan and began turning back toward him. There would be a blind spot directly beneath the mount. He kept moving: step, slide, step, slide. . . . The camera reached its midpoint. The lens caught a glimmer of halogen light and winked at him. He could hear the hum of the pivot motor.

  He stepped beneath the camera mount and froze. “At camera one,” he radioed.

  There was an art to the proper use of surveillance cameras, and luckily for him most security personnel either didn’t understand the nuances of it, or were too lazy to bother with it.

  Cameras that provided overlapping coverage were usually calibrated one of three ways: synchronized, offset, and random offset. Synchronized was just that, cameras moving in unison; offset staggered camera movements to better cover gaps; random offset used computer algorithms to provide full-area coverage combined with unpredictable movement.

  The most common and the easiest to defeat was synchronized, followed by offset. Random offset was a nightmare—and of course this was the method the Burj al Arab employed. Here, in the narrow confines of the hallway where the camera spans were restricted, the problem was negligible, but later, as he penetrated deeper into the hotel, it would require some finesse.

  “Blueprint overlay on your OPSAT,” Grimsdottir replied. “I’ve worked out the algorithim patterns. Just follow your traffic lights.”

  Sam checked his screen: His next waypoint was a supply closet between this camera and the next. He was tempted to watch the cameras, but he kept his eyes fixed on the OPSAT. On the blueprint, the hall cameras were depicted as solid yellow triangles; as each camera panned, the triangles changed colors—red for stop, green for go.

  When the camera above and the next one down turned green, he trotted forward. As he drew even with the supply closet door, it opened and a guard stepped out. He saw Fisher and opened his mouth. Fisher thumb-punched him in the larynx and his mouth snapped shut with a gagging sound. Fisher shoved him back into the closet, followed, and slammed the door shut behind him.

  Clutching at his throat, the guard backed into the wall and stood there gasping. Fisher drew his pistol and aimed it the man’s chest. “The pain will pass. When it does, if you shout, I’ll shoot you. Do you understand?”

  The guard nodded and croaked out what sounded like a “yes.”

  Fisher let him recover, then said, “Turn around.”

  “Are you going to kill me?”

  “Do you want me to kill you?”

  “No, please . . .”

  “Then turn around.”

  The guard did so. Fisher keyed his subdermal and said to Grim, “I’ve got a voice for you.”

  “I’m ready.”

  Fisher pressed the pistol against the nape of the guard’s neck, then reached over his shoulder and held the OPSAT before his mouth. “Say something.”

  “What do you want me to say?”

  In Fisher’s subdermal, Grimsdottir said, “Got it.” To the guard, Sam replied, “Just that. It’s nap time, pal.” Fisher thumbed the pistol’s selector to DART and shot the guard in the back of the neck. The man let out a groan and toppled forward onto his face. “Napper; clean,” Fisher reported.

  What the guard had just given Grimsdottir was a voice print she could now match to the backlog of recordings she’d been collecting from her eavesdropping on the hotel. Though a painstaking process, having a mosaic voice print to play back to the security center would keep anyone from missing an incapacitated guard. For the remainder of the mission, this guard, though unconscious on the floor, would continue to report in as required.

  Fisher frisked the guard, but found only pocket litter and a key-card ID badge, which was useless to him. The hotel’s roving patrols were assigned sectors; if this guard’s badge was used anywhere outside his sector, the alarm would be raised.

  He rolled the guard’s body into a corner and covered it with a pile of painter’s tarps. He rechecked his OPSAT, then walked to the closet’s opposite wall, felt around until he found what he was looking for, and pried back a hidden access panel, revealing a crawl space roughly two feet by two feet. He crouched down and stared down the length of it.

  “Waypoint two,” he radioed.

  He crawled inside.

  TRUE to the schematics, his NV and IR checks of the crawl space revealed neither cameras nor sensors, and after twenty feet the tunnel ended at a second access hatch. He worked the release pins, then carefully set aside the hatch, crawled through, and pressed himself against the wall. He replaced the hatch and glanced upward. Twelve feet above his head a camera hummed, slowly tu
rning on its mount.

  He was now at the lowermost level of one of the Burj al Arab’s six elevators—one of only two that remained inside the structure during their ascent. The other four left their interior shafts at the lobby level and rose along the hotel’s exterior, providing breathtaking views of Dubai, the Persian Gulf, and to the north, Iran.

  He stared up the one-thousand-plus feet of the shaft. Lit only by maintenance lights spaced every ten feet, the shaft itself seemed like a skyscraper rising into the night sky. The optical illusion gave him a momentary wave of vertigo. He shook it off and keyed his subdermal. “Waypoint three. Calling the elevator.”

  “Roger,” Grimsdottir replied. “Remember, Sam, you’ll only have twenty seconds.”

  “Yep.”

  The dozens of cameras located throughout the shaft were equipped with NV, laser-based beam sensors, and infrared cameras. If something moved or gave off heat, it would be detected. Knowing his chances of successfully climbing one thousand feet of elevator shaft while playing cat-and-mouse with the sensors were nil, he’d turned to another rule from the special operators credo: KISS. Keep it Simple, Stupid.

  In this case, the simple solution came from the secret vaults of DARPA. Like most DARPA inventions, this one had an official moniker that involved a lot of incomprehensible letters and numbers, and like most DARPA inventions it also had a nickname: Shroud.

  Essentially a heat-dissipating and radar-reflective blanket, the Shroud could for short intervals defeat infrared cameras and sensors. There was a catch, however. The user had to remain perfectly still and the coverage lasted only sixty to seventy seconds before his body heat overwhelmed the Shroud’s dissipaters.

  Fisher scrolled through the OPSAT’s menu until he reached a screen showing an overhead view of six squares surrounding a central, larger square—the hotel’s six elevators and, at the center, the hotel itself. He tapped one of the squares.