here's the portal in.' He clicked on the secret link and was sent to another page, this one with an error message on it. He added a slash and the name Kyle to the URL on the error page, and another page popped up. This one showed only text, a string of complicated-looking computer code.
With his finger, Kyle pointed to the code on the string. 'Every sixth letter is the code,' he said. 'He's kept it changed every time we send him something. He's making sure to cover his tracks and ours. No one will find us this way. “
Roswell, New Mexico A few months earlier, shortly after the 'incident' at the West Roswell High School graduation ceremonies on June 1, 2002, the members of the federal government's secretive Special Unit had met in a safe house forty miles southwest of Roswell, on the way to the town of Elk. To any member of the public, the clandestine meeting site appeared to be nothing more than a large ranch house whose absentee owners didn't often visit.
In actuality, the dwelling had previously been a tempo- -rary home for several members of the Witness Protection Program, and the acreage behind the house held more than a few secrets… as well as bodies… dating back to 1947.
The de facto leaders of the Unit-… at least those concerned with this particular operation… were the pair who had tried to kill the alien quartet during graduation. Matthew Margolin, code-named 'Viceroy,' was in his late fifties, his hair gone gray, but his body still strong and whipcord lean. His face bore the scars of past covert missions; he could have had some of them fixed with plastic surgery, but he chose to think of them as a testament to his survival skills. He was alive. His opponents weren't.
Margolin's second-in-command was Dale Bartolli… or at least that was the name he was using these days. Bartolli had the look of a wolverine, with fierce dark eyes, a predatory grin, and slicked- back, thinning hair. In his younger days he had been a Navy SEAL, but he had been recruited for Black Ops wetwork during the late 1980s. Margolin often fancied himself as cool and emotionless about his work as it was possible for an operative to be, but even he sometimes visibly got goose bumps in BartoUi's presence.
At the meeting, various members of the Special Unit presented their surveillance files on the Parker, Evans, DeLuca, and Valenti households, as well as on the UFO Center where Max Evans had worked, and the dossier on Max Evans's boss, Brody Davis, the owner of the UFO Center.
After a thorough review of the files, the group concluded that the six teens who had fled Roswell had likely not had any contact with their families, at least through any conventional methods. All phone lines had been tapped, most of their rooms had been bugged, and every known e-mail address used by any of the families had been trapped with a recursive program. One agent was always on constant surveillance of the spy devices. Just in case, Margolin thought, E. T. tries to phone home.
The one fly in the ointment appeared to be Deputy Valenti, the ex-sheriff of the town. Valenti had already 'made' two of the Special Unit's agents, and he clearly knew that surveillance was still ongoing. And although his house had been easy enough to watch, the Roswell Sheriff's station wasn't quite so easy to bug.
Margolin and his agents discussed briefly arranging an 'accident' for Valenti… after taking him in to answer a few questions, of course… but the group consensus was that such a course of action was extreme, at least for the moment. After all, none of the parents had made a move to leave town, and although their private conversations and phone calls to one another were often full of expressions of concern for their kids' safety, they never, ever discussed the alien aspects of their 'children. “
'It's almost as if they don't even know,' one of the agents had said.
But Margolin knew that the evidence just didn't support that. A videotape of Isabel Evans using telekinetic powers had been recovered from the Evans's VCR during an air force search, and the search dogs had tracked the smell of alien blood to the Valenti and Evans homes just prior to the mass destruction of Rogers Air Force Base by the blond girl they had later identified as Tess Harding, the daughter of a former military consultant who had since gone missing. At minimum, Phillip and Diane Evans and Jim Valenti had to know something.
But whether they knew the whole truth was a legitimate question. Of them all, Valenti seemed the most likely to know all there was to know about the alien nature of the Roswell teens, as well as the complicity of their friends. Valenti had been involved in far too many strange and unexplained circumstances with various members of 'The Six,' as the fugitive kids were now known, to plead ignorance about them and what they were up to now. He had even lost his job as Roswell 's sheriff because of a case related to the teens, although he had eventually been rehired as a deputy.
'If we're going to find them, it will be Valenti who leads us to them,' Margolin said to the other members of the Special Unit, most of whom were nodding in agreement.
'Don't forget,' Bartolli said, idly gazing at a gleaming, razor-sharp knife he'd carried with him since his navy days. 'Valenti stands to lose his son if he does lead us to those kids. He's gonna take precautions. “
Margolin nodded. 'Exactly. So this won't be an easy hunt. “
Bartolli put the knife away, his grin saying, Bring it on.
This time it was the other agent's sharklike smile that made the hairs on the back of Margolin's neck stand on end.
Agent Harrison looked up from the magazine when his computer beeped. He quickly scanned the data on the screen. His storefront office, part of what was ostensibly a realty company, faced the west outer wall of the sheriffs station on East Fifth Street; the window overlooked the parking lot, enabling him to keep track of Valenti's departures and arrivals. The signals from the few bugs and traps they had managed to set up inside the sheriff's station were strong enough to be received here.
The programs the Special Unit was using were beyond cutting-edge. They had been developed by a few of the top hackers in the country, each working independently, each hoping that the 'help' they gave the federal government's Office of Total Information Awareness (TIA) would mean leniency for whatever computer crimes they had committed. The task was made easier in the post… September 11 world; even hackers were patriots if they thought they could stop terrorists. And while the programs they developed were already in use for the tracking of human-made terrorist threats, the Special Unit was free to deploy the very same technology in its ongoing effort to trap the aliens who lived among an unsuspecting populace.
Today the T1A surveillance programs were working very well indeed. Quickly, Harrison punched a phone button that gave him a direct line to Director Margolin. Simultaneously, he brought up the file he'd need to send and began scanning all the relevant numbers and map coordinates.
'Yes,' came the voice on the other end of the line.
'Sir, I've got them with the encryption trap. They've just transmitted three e- mails from a site in Cheyenne, Wyoming. “
'Good. Alert the FBI field office immediately,' Margolin said.
'Already on it,' Harrison said. Updated copies of the fugitives' files… which contained photos of the six teens… went to the FBI field office, as well as to both the state and city police departments. Harrison included an e-mail message: To all departments: Suspects in terror plot spotted at 'Cybernet Cafe' establishment, 2376 Cypress Avenue, at 1400 hours. Suspects are armed and dangerous, but must be subdued. No lethal force. Use Bags, tranks, or tasers. Do not interrogate. Press blackout. Call 888-555-2938 with confirmation of capture.
'Sent, sir,' Harrison said.
'Send me copies of the three e-mails as soon as you can.' 'Right away,' Harrison said, scrambling to do just that. 'Let's hope we catch them this time,' Margolin said. 'Good work, Harrison. “
The young agent grinned. He hadn't been a part of the Special Unit for very long. This would look very good in his files. He began to read the e-mails he had trapped. Deputy Valenti will never know they'd been intercepted.
Cheyenne, Wyoming Sitting in the cafe between Maria and Isabel, Liz watched Kyle and Michael and wondered if any two people could be more different. Kyle sat behind a computer terminal, a model of Zen calm. Like the Buddha, she thought, if he'd ever tried to find nirvana by surfing naughty Web sites.
Michael, however, didn't appear capable of sitting, as far as Liz could see. He
