intimidate in his duties for Centaurus. The hireling never really looked at Farbeaux as he spoke. Henri smiled again and leaned forward, quickly examining the van's interior walls. They were standard. No reinforcement, and that was a major mistake.
'I guess Hendrix didn't inform you,' he said.
'Inform us of what?' the man asked, finally looking at Farbeaux.
'That I am no longer in his employ,' he said as he quickly raised his Glock nine millimeter and fired four quick rounds into the cab of the van, two each for the passenger and the driver, catching each twice in the side of the head. He then calmly took a step back. 'That's for that old man this morning,' he said quietly. Then he tossed the grenade he had been holding into the van, then quickly stepped forward of the front wheel well and ducked behind the thickness of the engine compartment as it went off with a crump, blowing out a bulge in the thin wall of the van and punching a hundred small holes as shrapnel blew outward.
Farbeaux quickly stood and made his way to the back of the van. The men who had driven up behind the vehicle sat and watched their boss at work. The Frenchman opened the back door without exposing himself to the open, smoky interior, and when no shots rang out, he deftly stepped up and started emptying his nine millimeter into the cargo compartment. The scene was one of shredded men who had not had the time to even start reaching for their weapons.
He calmly closed the door to the van and turned away. An old lady standing on the sidewalk with her dog about forty feet away was looking on incredulously. Henri replaced the Glock in his shoulder holster, then smiled as he raised his right hand to his mouth and placed his index finger to his lips.
'Shhhh.'
The old woman turned her small dog with a hard yank and walked hurriedly in the opposite direction.
The mirth went out of his eyes as he waved his men in the sedan on.
He had just made a public statement against the secret Genesis Group and their Men in Black. Now Hendrix would realize that Farbeaux was someone who deserved respect.
He pulled up to the second car at the stop sign a mile away and didn't look over; they had their orders and no further discussion would be necessary. The men in the car and even more at another location had entered the country this morning through Quebec and had flown to Las Vegas by charter jet. Now he had his own people on- site, men he had trained himself for black operations in the French army. The Event Group would have company when they went after that downed saucer and whatever riches it carried.
'Now, to find out where it is,' he said as he whistled.
TWENTY
Dr. Gene Robbins was patiently waiting beside the clean-room doors for the three military men to adjust the uncomfortable antistatic and hermetically sealed suits. He explained as best he could about the experimental Cray system known as Europa.
'You see, gentlemen, the systems that came before the Europa XP-7 were good, fast, efficient, and reliable. The system that Director Compton and Senator Lee managed to procure has yet to be installed anywhere else in the world. Europa is made not only to compute its assigned tasks With lightning speed, but to compromise other systems. It's just simply amazing.'
'In my experience a system, be it for military use or civilian use, is only as good as the people operating it,' Jack said as he tied off his hood.
'That may be true for most, but not Europa, Major,' Robbins said, shaking his head and gesturing for the others to step it up, seemingly hurt by the comment.
'Fine, Doctor,' Jack said, patting the tech on the shoulder, 'no offense, I'm sure Europa is everything you say it is. Now, can we cut the shit and get to it?'
Robbins looked hard at Jack, then turned and ran his key card through the door lock. The group of four had traveled down to level seventeen from the upper clean room in an airtight, separate pneumatic elevator, to an area known as the Clean Level. The entire center had its computing mainframes located here along with biological testing labs. The level was always sixty-eight degrees and the humidity was also a constant. As the door hissed open, they were surprised by the simple room the Europa XP-7 was housed in. A twenty-foot acrylic desk lined one wall, with seven chairs with bendable microphones in front of them. A ten-foot-by-five-foot monitor was attached. A simple keyboard was in place on the desk. In front of this was a glass wall, which had what looked like a metal curtain hiding what was beyond. Robbins gestured for the men to take seats at the seven chairs that were aligned in front of the clear desk.
'I expected something out of a science fiction movie,' Ryan said.
Robbins looked at him and pushed his glasses back up onto his nose. He sniffed and took his place opposite the keyboard. He tapped a single key and the monitor above came to life. The view was of all four of them sitting and looking at themselves.
Suddenly the high-definition monitor separated the picture of them and slid it to the right side. On the left, words started to appear in rapid succession. Under each picture was their name and date of recruitment and below that their department.
'It knows who I am, but I just came in today,' Ryan said.
'Save it, we can wow ourselves another time. Doc, let's get on with it.'
The doctor worked the keyboard and the metal wall started sliding into the sill; behind it was a triple pane of bulletproof glass. And beyond that was Europa. The system was a marvel to behold. There was cylinder upon ten- foot cylinder of programs that were stored. There were four sets of Honda Corporation robotic arms installed for placing and removing those programs.
'This is the automatic program loading system, or APLS. It will use the different programs for lightning-fast calculations and research.' Robbins used the keyboard and ordered up a still picture the men had recovered that morning from the lounge. It was the man Gunny had identified as possibly being Farbeaux.
'Thank you for dumbing it down for our benefit, Doctor,' Jack said, looking at the picture. 'Let's save some time here and say Gunny was right, it's the Frenchman at the club. That means he and whomever he works for more than likely broke Reese and they know what we're after. That means we can expect a visit from either our French friend, or whomever he works for, or maybe the assholes that tried to kill him outside the club.'
Jack watched as file after file, hacked system after hacked system, swam before his eyes. The three officers and Robbins had been into every hard drive and networking system they could think of trying to uncover anything that would lead them to Farbeaux's employers. It seemed that every computer manufacturer the world over was supplied with almost identical parts, and a few of those highly technical components had been hybrids substituted by the NSA and CIA. These reengineered microchips allowed a back door into every system using the components. That included almost every agency in every government and every system that was networked in every university in the world. Europa tapped into these deep-cover 'spies' and activated them for piggybacking onto their host security programs and culled them for information, covering her tracks as she went. In other words, Europa would create a back door with the help of the magic chips, then cover that hole on her way out of the system, thus leaving no trace.
They had discovered that Farbeaux had started with the Antiquities Bureau after his discharge from the French army. That was obviously where he had acquired his taste for antiques and artifacts. Europa had discovered offshore accounts in the Caymans; the Swiss deposits they had uncovered were shallow to their prying eyes. It was Robbins who came up with an idea that none of them had caught.
'Maybe the guy isn't paid in money, maybe he's paid some other way,' Robbins said as he looked at Jack and the others.
'You mean like artifacts and antiquities?' Everett asked.
'Why not? It's the hot investment of the last hundred years, safer than cash and easier to get rid of... or to hide,' the doctor said. 'Plus it would explain his high interest in our Group.'
'Okay, where does that leave us?' Jack asked.
