to access the facility.
(2) Narrow down the search parameters and try to deduce where Alexei might have left Kayla Tatum.
(3) Touch base with Angela about her team’s progress in identifying Valkyrie and deciphering the “Queen 27:21:9” sequence.
(4) Evaluate the newspaper clippings and news footage, and watch the videos that the ERT had found in Reiser’s trailer.
First I tried contacting Margaret, but, unable to reach her by phone, I left a vm and then, to cover my bases, also sent an email requesting the ELF schematics.
I moved on to the search for Kayla.
Even though I’d analyzed Chekov’s travel patterns earlier, I decided to start over and take a fresh look at the data, hoping to do so as quickly and yet as thoroughly as I could.
After pulling up the geoprofile that I’d started at the motel, I went online and overlaid the findings against a satellite view of the area from two days ago, before the storm clouds had covered the sky.
And I began to study the map.
Donnie’s eyes were bloodshot, his voice barely audible. “So what about Lizzie?”
“I have no intention of harming her,” Solstice said truthfully.
“How can I know you’re not going to…”
She tapped at the computer screen. “Just verify the deactivation codes and everything will be fine.”
Leaving him under Cane’s supervision, she found Cyclone and had her acquire a voice sample from one of their captives, Chief Warrant Officer Dickinson. It took a little convincing, but at last he unwittingly gave her enough of an audio sample for a voiceprint by answering a few harmless questions about the base’s fitness room and the food prep area.
Utilizing the same software they’d employed yesterday to persuade Donnie Pickron that his wife was still alive, Solstice had Tempest call the Pentagon through the web-based router, and, pretending to be Chief Warrant Officer Dickinson, he assured the Navy that the sat comm lines had simply gone down in the storm and not to worry. “I came to the surface to let you know,” he said, and then told them a reference number Donnie had looked up to verify his identity as that of the chief warrant officer.
It wouldn’t hold off the Defense Department’s suspicions forever, but at least it would help buy the team a little more time.
Then, Solstice returned to Donnie’s side.
“When do you want to send the signal?” he asked her falteringly.
She looked at her watch. 5:44 p.m.
Three hours and sixteen minutes.
“It’s going to be a little while. Just get everything set.”
For now, sit low, monitor the JWICS, and wait for the USS Louisiana to sail into position in the Gulf of Oman for the 9:00 p.m. ELF transmission.
From the very start, Valkyrie had been aware that things could go either way.
After all, $100,000,000 is a lot of money, and when that kind of dollar figure gets put into play, people’s allegiances have a tendency to become malleable.
So far, Valkyrie had been careful to remain invisible, undetectable while playing people’s loyalties, their agendas against them.
Everything was a distraction layered inside a distraction.
Yes.
Wednesday night, Valkyrie, not Kirk Tyler’s partner, had been the one to film Erin Collet leaving the mall in San Antonio while her father, Dashiell Collet, was being interrogated by Tyler.
Valkyrie had been the one to kill Tyler’s cohort even before Erin Collet exited the back of the mall. Then Valkyrie was the one who’d taken the fresh corpse’s button camera and worn it while following Erin to the car.
Valkyrie was the one who’d drugged her and left her in the vehicle before detonating the cell phone that took off Kirk Tyler’s head.
And of course, Valkyrie was the one who’d sent Alexei Chekov to dispose of Tyler’s body, and arranged for him to speak with Rear Admiral Colberg in Virginia.
And now, Valkyrie was the one making sure everything was going to come together at 9:00.
Tonight, the queen would go up in flames, the Eco-Tech ideologues would be out of the picture, and Valkyrie’s future would be wide open and bold with possibilities.
With $100,000,000 to fund them.
69
6:02 p.m.
2 hours 58 minutes until the transmission
The geoprofile pointed me toward the region east of Woodborough, and I sent word to Tait, who’d since left the sheriff’s department and was now on patrol, to have his men begin searching homes as well as outbuildings and barns in the area. “Start with the ones that are heated. I don’t think Alexei wants Kayla to die.”
I checked my email and voicemail but still hadn’t received any word from Margaret. I tried her number again, and it went directly to voicemail. Annoyed, I left another message for her to call me and to send those schematics as soon as possible.
Earlier in the day, Alexei had hacked into Lien-hua’s cell phone and received, and then interpreted, the signal from somewhere. I knew a few hacking tricks myself, but I didn’t know how to back trace a closed-route wireless loop to find where its receiver might have been.
I wasn’t even sure there was a way to do it, but if there was, Angela Knight at Cybercrime would know how.
I tried her office and was thankful to catch her just as she was about to leave for the day. After a short greeting, she somewhat wearily agreed to a video chat. A quick tap of my mouse brought up the chat window. I hung up my cell and faced my laptop’s camera.
Angela was seated at her workstation, two of Lacey’s monitors to her right. Curly-haired and kindhearted, Angela wore conspicuous glasses and was no longer in the shape she’d been in eight years ago when she first became an agent. She’d been trying to address that issue lately, and instead of her typical can of Diet Coke and stash of Kit Kat bars, she had a bottle of Vitamin Water and a half-finished bowl of miniature carrots positioned prominently on her desk. As she situated herself in front of the camera, she gave me a smile, but it was marked with her typical look of irrepressible concern.
“The DoD sub route analysis didn’t bring up anything,” she began. “That looks like a dead end. Oh, it appears someone using the code name Valkyrie was present in Moscow when Tatiana Chekov was killed. As far as Alexei goes, we’ve learned that the GRU is very interested in finding him.”
“I’m sure they are.”
“The best Lacey could come up with for the ‘Queen 27:21:9’ cipher was Revelation 21:9.”
“How is that Queen 27?”
“Revelation is the twenty-seventh book in the New Testament.”
“But what does it have to do with a queen?”
“I’m not sure, but what troubles me is the reference to the last seven plagues. Here, look.”
She tapped her keyboard, and the verse popped up in a text window at the bottom of my screen. I read: “And there came unto me one of the seven angels which had the seven vials full of the seven last plagues, and talked with me, saying, Come hither, I will shew thee the bride, the Lamb’s wife.”
I’d gone to Sunday school as a kid and knew enough to realize that the Lamb here referred to Jesus Christ.
“The King of kings,” I whispered.
“What?”
“The Lamb is a reference to Christ, but somewhere else he’s referred to as the King of kings, so-”
