“Sorry. I’m not helping these assholes clean out that jewelry store. We shut off the alarm for them. Find another window while we deal with him.”
“Okay. We’re inside. Wait until I call again, then meet us in the jewelry store.”
Johnny cut in. “Koko, didn’t you say the travel agency was on the fourth floor?”
Jennifer clicked once, not stopping her climb.
“You still have the thumb drive?”
Now on the fourth-floor ledge, she stopped and said, “Yeah. I’ll see what I can do.”
She snaked through the window and retraced her steps from a few days ago. Within short order, she was inside Noordin’s office, waking up his computer. When it came to life, she saw a password screen. She shut down the computer, inserted the thumb drive, and rebooted. When the screen came back up, she was inside his system. She accessed the Internet and typed in the Web page Johnny had given her. The only thing on the screen was a button that said ENTER. She clicked on it. Nothing appeared to happen.
“Johnny, I’m inside and clicked on the Web page, but it didn’t do anything.”
“It’s not supposed to. We got it. We’re good.”
She left the office exactly as she found it, rebooting the computer to bring up the password screen. She reached the stairwell and was about to head down when her radio crackled again.
“Pike, the other two assholes have entered the building. They’re in the stairwell headed up.”
We had just finished tying up the first thief when the call came in.
“Koko, this is Pike. Come down the stairs until you see them. Let them get a good look at you, then haul ass to the jewelry store. Come right through the door. You copy?”
After a pause, I heard, “Uhh… Okay. You’d better be right there.”
“We’ll be there. Hurry.”
Bull and Knuckles looked at me like I had started smoking crack.
“Bull, get over by the counter. Knuckles, grab that chain.”
Knuckles got the idea and laid it in front of the door, me on one end and him on the other.
Jennifer came on, out of breath. “I’m on the way! And they’re right behind me!”
Seconds later she came flying through the door. Once she passed, we raised the chain to ankle height. Both thieves hit it at a dead sprint, sending them sailing across the floor and crashing headfirst into the wall. Bull was on them immediately, but it was unnecessary. Like their partner, they were out cold.
Knuckles stood up, surveying the damage. “Man, what a clusterfuck. It’s great being back with you, Pike.”
Jennifer was sucking in oxygen as if she’d just run five miles, her hand on her knees, still pumped by the adrenaline, but the comment brought out a laugh. “Look at the bright side. At least we accomplished the mission.”
Bull stared at her for a second, apparently sizing her up for the first time. “Yeah, I guess you did.”
I winked at Jennifer.
“Well,” I said, “if you guys think I can get us out of here without a lightning strike, I say we take these assholes out and drop them off somewhere. When they wake up, they won’t come back here and certainly won’t be going to the police about a bunch of gringos.”
Bull said, “What about all the damage in here? This wasn’t too clandestine.”
“Let ’em think Batman showed up. Nothing’s missing. We’re not on camera and neither are they. Johnny’s replaced that footage.”
It was a little bit of work, but forty minutes later, I opened my hotel room door, completely spent from the adrenaline of the last couple of hours. When I turned on the light, I saw my room had been ransacked.
Luckily, I had nothing of value that couldn’t be replaced. Jennifer had our laptop, and the only thing I cared about was Kurt’s camera. With a start, I realized it wasn’t where I had left it. The journal was there, but not the camera. I ripped through the small room to no avail, finding the film in my shirt pocket on the bed, but not the camera. It was gone.
18
Kurt Hale quit listening to the director of Central Intelligence, since the man was saying the same thing he had already heard from a score of other officials, including his own team of analysts. Hell, even the DEA was reporting on it. A hit was coming. Potentially a big one. The indicators spiked from all sources, HUMINT, SIGINT, everything. And despite all of the intelligence, there wasn’t a single concrete thread of when or where. The only unique thing, which wasn’t a comfort, was that at least four different terrorist groups were discussing it.
Kurt watched the facial expressions on the Oversight Council members and saw that some weren’t convinced. As the Taskforce commander, he wasn’t a voting member of the council, so he waited until he was asked to speak. Waited and watched the debate.
When the DCI finished, Anthony Brookings, the secretary of state, said, “We get this sort of intel all the time. It doesn’t mean something catastrophic is going to happen in the next few weeks. It doesn’t even mean it’s going to happen at all. I don’t think loosening the reins of Project Prometheus is the answer.”
The DCI threw his briefing folder on the table. “No, we
“Quit being so melodramatic,” said Secretary Brookings. “We heard this same level of chatter at the turn of the century. There were going to be these massive terrorist attacks on the millennium, and we got nothing. Nada. Zip.” He turned to President Warren. “Sir, letting Prometheus run riot is asking for trouble. What happened with the team in Indonesia is a prime example. I was against that, and I’m against this. I was hoping that incident would have knocked some sense into people.”
Kurt bristled at the comments about the Taskforce. He was also against pushing the issue in Indonesia, preferring to let the hackers work it out, but he’d sent in the team when told to by this very council.
The secretary of defense cut in. “Hang on, nobody’s saying let ’em run riot, but something needs to be done. We’re getting nowhere with traditional intel. If there’s another 9/11 on the way, then the risks have increased.”
“Risks? Risks! What do you think’s going to happen if word gets out that we’re running some sort of secret assassination squad around the world? This whole administration’s going down. Congress will dismantle our entire counterterrorist apparatus. You think that’s good for America? We won’t get any intelligence next time.”
President Warren’s voice was cold. “Tony, I never want to hear you categorize Project Prometheus like that again. I understand your misgivings, and I welcome your insight, but I won’t tolerate you belittling the men that we put into harm’s way. Those same men saved your ass last year.”
Secretary Brookings flushed, but pressed ahead. “Sir, remember it’s an election year. Now is not the time to get more aggressive.”
President Warren said, “What the hell does that have to do with anything? I don’t think the terrorists care about my campaign, and I’m certainly not going to let an attack occur because of politics.”
Brookings said, “That’s not what I meant. It’s not your choice. The opposition probably has a hundred people trying to dig up dirt on you. Your greatest strength is on national security. They’ll be digging hard to find something to turn that strength into a weakness. They don’t need to worry about domestic issues, because the economy’s in the gutter. All you have going for you is national security, and they’ll be looking to put a stake through your heart. We should be getting more cautious, not less, because they might stumble on the Taskforce.”
President Warren turned to Kurt. “What do you think?”
