Red emergency lights flashed on. He quickly scanned the lobby. No movement.
“Gerrit, follow me! Tell Willy to stay right behind us.” Alena’s sharp command caught him unaware for a moment. She brushed past him and, using her M4 rifle, blew the lock off a door leading from the lobby. “Forget the elevator. It’s no use.”
Gerrit scanned the lobby once more. Empty. Where was everyone? This place had to have a small army working inside.
She kicked the door open and rolled another flash-bang down a bank of stairs. They turned away from the blast, standing on either side of the doorway, until it triggered below. After the explosion, Alena dashed down the stairs with speed Gerrit thought bordered on recklessness. He quickly tried to catch up, knowing that there had to be more security below.
A pulsating red glow illuminated the stairs in the same way the lobby had been lit up. Somewhere, a lockdown system had kicked in, triggering emergency lights and automatically locking all passageways through the building.
She moved through the building like someone who’d been here before. How did she know the door above led to these stairs? There were no markings in the lobby.
A chill began to work its way through his chest. Unless…? What were the chances Richard Kane had two traitors in their midst? Gerrit had watched her in action, and he found it hard to believe she worked for the other side. She had been genuinely shocked to find Redneck had been a plant. The look on her face was as if Redneck had betrayed her-personally-not just the group she worked with.
He forced these thoughts from his mind. Needed to concentrate on finding Joe and getting out of this building alive. Later, when they had time, he’d confront her.
Gerrit motioned for Willy to rejoin them. “Move ahead of me, but stay behind Alena. I’ll cover our six, make sure no one climbs down our back.”
Nodding, Willy moved ahead, trying to stay up with Alena.
The stairway snaked back and forth, carrying them deeper belowground. He’d lost track of how many flights of stairs they traversed. Four or five? The last landing led to a concrete slab, bordered by a wall of cement. A single metal door stood at the foot of the stairs. Off to the left, a keypad.
He moved closer to Alena. “The only way we can get through that door is to blow it with the det cord I have left.” He heard a backup generator pounding away nearby, and the keypad lit up.
Alena looked at him earnestly. “Gerrit, do you trust me?”
The thought that troubled him earlier came back in a flash. He paused for a moment, thinking hard about his answer. “Yeah. I do.”
“I’ll tell you everything later. Right now, just trust me to do the right thing.” She strode over to the keypad and punched in a series of letters and numbers. The lock clicked and she opened the door, then held it open. “Stay close.” She peeled through the doorway to the right, and Gerrit moved to the left, leaving Willy behind.
At first, the place seemed empty.
They stared at each other and then scanned the room once more. A cluster of consoles and monitors, grouped together at one end of an expansive room, stood next to a forest of tall computer servers. Each workstation was linked to a series of cables that rose to the ceiling, strung together like strands of spaghetti until they reached the servers. The cables came to a glass wall, through which they passed into what appeared to be a climate-controlled and dust-free environment.
Kane’s nerve center.
The workstations looked like a duplication of NASA’s control center, everyone’s desk facing the mammoth screens like so many pagans worshiping their god. On these screens, streams of data code and file directories were broadcast. In the far corner, a half-dozen men and women cowered, their white lab coats broadcasting that they were technicians-not soldiers.
Willy came in behind them and whistled. “Oh my! What do we have here?”
Gerrit moved toward the huddled technicians, ordering them to lie on the ground. He found a box of plastic ties and used these to bind up the technicians. Within minutes, he had the group bound hand and foot.
Willy was already at one of the consoles, his laptop tied to a USB port. “I can get a signal down here. They must have a wireless system set up to reach upstairs. I am going to start sending out data from their system to ours.” Willy glanced at one of the screens. “Uh-oh.”
“What?” Gerrit moved closer. “It looks like they’ve accessed NSA, Langley…and the Pentagon.”
He and Willy watched a stream of data flow across the screen, files created in directories clearly marked. He saw the names of countries, with subdirectories identified by public and private entities.
Willy quickly zoomed on to the main directory listed as United States, and an array of subdirectories formed into two categories, public and private. After clicking on Public, Willy scanned down the list until he reached Intelligence Agencies. Clicking on the one for NSA, files began to pop up by division, listing organizational structure and personnel.
Willy chose one file identified as NSA’s Central Security Services (CSS) and clicked on the personnel file. A page opened, listing the names of executives in that branch. Some names were in red and others in black. As more data streamed in, some of the names switched from black to red as they viewed the list.
Gerrit pointed. “Click on that one listed as Director, NSA/Chief CSS in red.”
Willy complied, and the screen flashed color as hundreds of source documents started to open. Gerrit stared at the screen and recognized the director’s face, a brigadier general from the Unites States Air Force.
“Oh, man.” Willy clicked on a file where video and voice files seemed to have been merged. “Look at this, Gerrit.”
The time stamp on what appeared to be surveillance footage indicted this information has been downloaded earlier in the day. They watched the brigadier general sitting at his desk inside NSA. He was on a telephone, and they could hear the conversation as it was instantly converted to text. Words appeared at the bottom of the screen as they were spoken, like watching a foreign film with subtitles.
Willy looked at Gerrit. “I would imagine that phone has been encrypted by NSA. This means Project Megiddo is able to break through NSA’s firewall, gain access to their in-house camera system while simultaneously intercepting and recording this guy’s telephone conversation. We’re talking top-secret, NSA-protected stuff that anyone in Kane’s organization can access at any time.”
Gerrit stared at the screen Willy zoomed in on, then glanced at the group huddled in the corner. Several of the bound technicians kept glancing at one man, an older gentleman who just stared at the ground. The man seemed to be listening closely to what Willy said to Gerrit.
Striding over the group, Gerrit pulled out a knife and sliced the plastic cuff binding the man’s legs. “You, get up and follow me. Now!”
The man with gray hair and thick-rimmed glasses stood, his hands still bound in front, looking belligerently at Gerrit. He had the look of someone in charge.
Gerrit grabbed the man’s arm and dragged him over to where Willy worked on the computer. “Tell my friend what you have just done here.”
Barely hiding his look of contempt, the man glared back, saying nothing.
Gerrit drew near and whispered into the man’s ear. The man’s face paled and he turned toward Willy. “What do you want to know?”
“You just launched Project Megiddo?”
The man looked surprised. “I…we started about an hour ago.”
“Where is the data stored?”
“Here. On our servers.”
“Anywhere else?”
The man shook his head, but Gerrit distrusted the look in his eyes. “With the right passwords, others can remotely access the information, but it is all stored here. I swear.”
Gerrit knew the man was lying, but they didn’t have time to push him further. He edged closer, threatening. “Where’s Kane?”
The man’s eyes shifted to another door at the far end of the room. “There.” He pointed with his chin.
Gerrit dragged the man back to where the others were sitting. “Stay here and you won’t be hurt. Move, and you die. Understood?”
