The screen was alive with red flashes. The search engine had reached secure files at the highest levels and was matching, comparing, translating languages, turning spoken word into written. A small box in the upper right-hand corner showed six matches already between some element of the GC operation in Ptolemaïs with top brass at the palace. Top.
Chang feared multitasking would slow the search, but he had to take the chance. Mac and the two women were in danger, outnumbered, without any idea what they faced.
He checked the first three matches and found they were routine interactions of Ptolemaïs administration reporting statistics to GC command. But the fourth was different. It was highest security interaction, a series of e-mails between TB and OT, plus more than one phone call, also between the same two, being reduced to typed transcription.
Chang keyed in, “Match logic?”
The response was immediate. “Meets broad, simple criteria: initials one letter removed from key personnel in GC Greece and GC Palace.”
Chang squinted. That’s what he had asked for: any connection based on standard search sequences and codes. TB was one letter away from SA. OT was one letter away from NS. Chang shot from his chair and stood hunched over the keyboard. He typed in, “Show interaction,” and as the files cascaded onto the screen, he called Mac.
Mac heard the car running and footsteps jogging toward him from the north and the east. “Ladies?” he said.
“Yes.”
“Yep.”
His phone buzzed. “Stand by. Hey, Chang.”
“Mac! I’ll say this once and get back to you as fast as possible with details. Ready?”
“Go.”
“Akbar and Stefanich have communicated personally several times today.” Click.
“Busted,” Mac said. “Listen up. No time for questions. Hannah, you’re driving. Chloe, you’re riding. Take the DEW, Uzi, and a sidearm each, phones on, radios on. Get to the Co-op now. Clear ’em out, including anything they don’t want found in a midnight raid. Then straight to the airport and wait out of sight for Sebastian and me, ready to hightail it to his plane. If we don’t show, that means we’re dead and you’re on your own.”
Mac bent and heaved the Fifty up against his chest. “Time to go to work, big boy,” he said.
Hannah and Chloe ran around the shack to the idling car.
CHAPTER 8
“Thank you, Lord,” Chang said, still standing as his fingers danced on the keyboard. In seconds he had opened the transcripts of four phone conversations on a line so secure that Carpathia himself had once said even he didn’t have access to it.
But David Hassid cracked it, Nicky. Access that.
Chang also had copies of e-mails that showed up on neither the palace nor the Ptolemaïs mainframe and were supposedly guaranteed to disappear from every record after they had been read. Hassid’s master disk probably had the only copies in existence, including the correspondents’.
Though he was curious, Chang knew it was irrelevant how someone at Stefanich’s level had personal access to the director of Security and Intelligence. The way they interacted evidenced some history, but if the box in the corner had not begun flashing again, Chang would not have wasted the time tracking it down until the crisis was over. He quickly clicked on the box to find “100 percent primary match, no decode necessary.”
He opened the manifest and sped read: “Straight correlation from List A to List B: Suhail Akbar and Nelson Stefanich registered at Madrid Military School, overlapping tenures.”
From the years listed, Chang calculated they had been there together as teenagers, more than twenty-five years before. That would get a phone call returned.
Chang was flying now, his eyes darting over the copy, looking for how the ruse fell apart.
Stefanich had asked whether Howie Johnson was “a fair man.”
Akbar responded that the name didn’t ring a bell.
Stefanich told him, “Senior Commander under Konrad.”
“I’ll look him up.”
Akbar found him and reported, “Stellar record, but our paths have not crossed. Unusual for someone at that level, but it happens.”
“Don’t want to be a pest,” Stefanich had followed, “but does Konrad vouch for him? Want to be sure before exposing him to prisoner.”
“What prisoner? And who’s Konrad?”
“The Judah-ite, George Sebastian.”
“Still nothing out of him?”
“We’ll break him or kill him.”
“Break him. I know you can.”
“You’re not Konrad’s immediate superior?”
“No. Do I need to look him up too?”
“You’d better. He’s supposed to be your top guy, deputy commander, office on your floor.”
“Send documentation.”
Later, Akbar told Stefanich, “You’re being duped. Johnson and Konrad are in the system, everything adds up, except they don’t exist.”
“Permission to reverse sting them?”
“With my best wishes. Bring them in, dead or alive, and I’ll move you to the palace.”
As the phone calls and e-mails progressed, the women’s identities proved phony too. “The one from Montreal was in my office.”
By early afternoon, Akbar had decided, “If Sebastian is worth all this, they’re tied in tight with the underground. Announce a raid and see if they reveal location.”
Chang called Mac. “The raid’s phony. If you warn the believers, you could give them away.”
“Call Chloe or Hannah. I’m occupied.”
“Your location is a trap too, Mac.”
“All right, listen, Chang. You saved our lives. But whatever you do, find Sebastian. I’ll get him out or die tryin’.”
Chloe answered her phone.
It was Chang. “Raid was a setup so you’d lead the GC to the underground. Abort.”
“Hannah, you were right.”
“What?”
“Hannah was right, Chang. She suspected we were being followed. I didn’t notice a thing and thought she was paranoid.”
“I told you!”
“Ditch them or lead them nowhere,” Chang said. “From what I can tell, the GC has no clue where the Co-op is or that it’s the meeting place. I gotta go. Mac is calling.”
“Go, Mac.”
“Question. If this is a trap, why wouldn’t Peacekeepers have come back with Chloe and taken me then?”
“I don’t follow.”
Mac told him of her encounter with the half-dozen.
“You got me. I’m still reading the back-and-forth between Akbar and Stefanich. Possible not everybody knows.”
“That could be.”
“It’s to your advantage.”
“Confirm if you can.”
“Will do.”
Mac had moved east far enough to see the lean-to, if there was one. He saw nothing. Not even the GC Hannah or Chloe had seen. That meant the meeting place for the ground troops was at least a little farther on. If Chang was right, Sebastian wouldn’t be within miles of there.
Brilliant military mind, Mac. Left yourself alone in the wilderness, way outnumbered.
Mac considered his options and few advantages. He was hard to see. He knew enough not to be lured to where Sebastian was purported to be. He had the Fifty. He was a long walk or a medium jog to the car, but the car had to already be under surveillance. It would be surrounded, so if he were stupid enough to try to get to it, he would be easily apprehended. “Lord,” he said quietly, “I’m gonna thank you for keepin’ me motivated to stay in shape, and I’m gonna ask you for more stamina than I’ve got. All I’m tryin’ to do is get your man and my two partners out of here alive. Now I’m thankin’ you as if you’ve already done it, ’cause I’m going to be busy here awhile. And if you’ve chosen not to, I figure you know best and I’ll be seein’ you real soon.”
Mac made his way back toward the shack and stopped about a hundred yards above it. He removed his big, outer jacke
t, kept only three fifty-caliber shells and two clips for the Uzi, then wound the Uzi strap twice so the weapon was snug to his body.
He couldn’t actually run carrying the Fifty, but he loped the best he could, staying high on the ridge and following the terrain, often as far as two hundred yards above the road. The air was cool on his arms and neck and face at first, but soon his body heat made him sweat. This, he knew, was only the beginning.
Mac’s muscles ached and knotted and all but cried out, but he would not stop. He didn’t even slow. He just kept moving, farther and farther west, trying to gauge the distance to where he had left the car. After traversing a rugged stretch with loose rocks that nearly made him fall several times, he finally decided to look for the vehicle.
Mac stretched out on the steep slant, facing down toward the road. He set the bipod, his arms shaking from effort and fatigue, popped open the telescopic sight, loosened the connection so he could scan with it rather than trying to move the heavy gun, and searched the road.
It seemed to take forever for his eye to adjust in the darkness. The gravel road was a ribbon of only slightly lighter gray against the blackness of the woods, but he knew what he was looking at. At the far right of his field of vision—far enough that he knew he would have to move the weapon nearly a hundred feet—he spotted something that picked up a hint of starlight. Only the white car would do that.
Mac gulped another minute’s worth of the cool air, then forced himself up and over to where he could line the Fifty up with the car. He was nothing if not patient. While he tightened the sight and made several seat-of-the-pants calculations, he swore he saw movement on the north side of the road. If he was right, GC waited for him down there—and almost certainly on the other side of the road too.
He remembered from experience to tear cloth from his undershirt and stuff both ear canals. He set an extra round of ammunition next to the weapon, then dug himself footholds. It was a huge benefit to be pointing downhill, because the recoil could shove him up and back only so far. He had to remember to keep his knees bent.
Mac’s plan was to fire two rounds into the car in as rapid a succession as possible, knowing that he would have to force himself to follow through, because no one who had shot this rascal once—and that included him—ever wanted to shoot it again, let alone right away.
He stretched out and settled in, leaving his finger off the trigger until he had drawn the butt of the rifle to his shoulder. He maneuvered it until it lay in a soft spot and not on bone, aware that the thing would still wreak havoc with his whole body.
Mac ran through the checklist. Steady. Relaxed. Pull firm to the shoulder. Trigger finger relaxed. Ears protected. Feet in holds. Elbows slightly bent. Knees flexed and ready to give. Barely visible crosshairs dead on the roof of the car, a tick left, allowing for wind. Distance just under two hundred yards. No matter what the thing does to me, reload and fire again, not worrying about accuracy the second time.
It warmed Mac as he silently counted himself down from three that he definitely saw movement through the lens. Unless someone was so spectacularly unfortunate as to step into his line of fire, no one would be hit, certainly not by the first round. By the second, even if he got it off inside a few beats, he expected the GC to be halfway back to the shack already.
When he got to one, Mac aborted. Better idea. Go for broke. Aim a little left, hope to hit the gas tank. Even if he missed, these guys had to think they were facing a tank or at least a bazooka. But if he got lucky, they’d think they were facing eternity.
He reset, just a smidge. Checklist. Three, two, one, zero, oh, Mama!
Mac thought he had been prepared. It was as if he had nothing in his ears. The sound was so massive it seemed to weigh on him. The woods had exploded, and yes, the erupting of that gas tank and the rebounding of that car on the gravel would have made a sound whether or not people had been there to hear it. The perverse nightmare of the sheer volume of it lay atop him longer than the orange ball rode his eyeballs.
The violence drove him back and onto his left side. As Mac struggled to gather his senses, he rolled back to his belly and slid back down into the same position. Fingers fluttering, he wrestled the extra round into the chamber, made sure the thing was generally facing away from him again, and forced himself against every instinct to pull the trigger again.
He should have run through the checklist again. One foot had not been secure. He was neither tight nor firm. The butt had been at least a half inch from his shoulder. The recoil sent it back seemingly at the speed of light and drove a ridge into the top of his shoulder he was sure would be there for weeks.
The sound was lessened only by the damage the first shot had done to his eardrums. His ears buzzed and rang, and he dumbly lifted his head to see trees falling, two on this side of the road, one on the other. His aim had been ten feet to the left of the now flattened and burning car, which prettily illuminated the carnage of machine and fauna—all wrought by two fairly simple pulls on a metal lever.
Mac wished only that he could have heard what had to be the frightened cries of the young Peacekeepers on the dead run. He awkwardly forced himself up on all fours like a spindly newborn colt and fought to keep from pitching down the hill.
When he was finally standing, arms outstretched for balance and to stop the woods from spinning, he waited. And waited. When his balance mechanism finally made the necessary adjustments, Mac caught his breath, shook his head, stretched each limb—even the one with the violated shoulder—and began to jog.
His intention was to jog what had taken him more than a half hour to drive. He would find his way back to where he and Chloe and Hannah had engaged in their sortie soiree that late afternoon that now seemed so long ago. There Mac would find the hidden Jeep, hot-wire it, and set off on what he truly hoped was his last caper of the day. Surely by the time he got there, he would have heard from Chang where he might find George Sebastian.
And after all this, may God have mercy—or not—on anyone who dared stand between them and freedom.
CHAPTER 9
Chloe didn’t know the specifics of the directed energy weapon lying across the backseat, but she’d heard the effect it had on a target. And she was curious. She carefully lifted it into her lap, making Hannah alternate from watching the road to watching the DEW.
“Don’t point that thing at me, Chloe.”
“It’s not even on!”
“That’s like saying a gun isn’t loaded. People get killed all the time with guns they swear aren’t loaded.”
“Looks pretty simple. You know the deal with these, right?”
“Yes,” Hannah said. “Now, Chloe, please.”
“Looks like you just turn it on, let it heat up or whatever it does, and fire away. It’s nonlethal.”
“Yeah, I know. But 130 degrees on soft tissue’s going to make you wish you were dead.”
“Bet I can get those guys to quit following us.”
“Don’t even think about it. You miss, they start shooting, and we’re not going to help anybody.”
“We’re not helping anybody anyway,” Chloe said. “We’re sitting here with Uzis, sidearms, a shotgun, and a DEW, and we’ve left Mac up there by himself with all those GC.”
“And how long are these guys going to let us lead them all over town before they realize we’re playing them?”
“We’ve got to shake ’em before we head for the airport, Hannah. They’ll never let us in there.”
“Shake them? Chloe, their ranks may be decimated, but they’ve got other personnel, more cars, radios. We’re not going to shake them.”
“I’m calling Chang.”
“What for?”
“I want to know how many people know where we are.”
“Why?”
“Hang on.”
Running was much easier without the cumbersome Fifty, but Mac had not run this far since . . . since when? Since never. No high school cross-country race was this far. This was longer than
a marathon. With the slow but sure staccato of his steps, he repeated in his mind, “God, I’m yours. God, I’m yours. God, I’m yours.”
If he was going to reach the Jeep, it would be only because God wanted him to. This was way past Mac’s human capabilities.
Chang frantically read every tidbit of the communication between Akbar and Stefanich, hoping for something, anything, to help Mac. His secure phone chirped, and the readout told him it was Chloe.
“You okay?” he said.
“For now,” she said. “Is there a way to know how many people are following us?”
“I can try to find out. What’s your thinking?”
“If it’s a bunch, we’re dead. We’ll run them around town, and we could try to outrun them or shoot it out with them, but you know the odds there. If it’s just one car, waiting to tell everybody else where the underground headquarters is, I have an idea.”
“Hit me with the idea before I start trying to access the Ptolemaïs mainframe again.”
“Why? If you don’t like my idea, you don’t look? Is that it?”
“Chloe, don’t do this. Mac is in more imminent danger, and we have no idea where Sebastian is yet, so I have to prioritize.”
“Sorry. I’ll make it quick. If they’re looking to us to lead them to the underground, we’ll lead them to one. Only it won’t be the real one. It’ll be some other unfortunate citizens who’ll get raided soon.”
“I like it.”
“That’s a relief.”
“No, I really do. And I think you two are small potatoes to them. Not that you’re in the clear. Getting out of that airport tonight is going to be next to impossible, but they probably assume you have nowhere to go anyway and they can round you up when you try to leave. They want the locals.”
“And we’re going to lead them to ’em, only not really.”
“Back to you as soon as I can.”