Exit 9

entrance, and how to open it, which meant they knew about the Project, too.

Footprints. Leading to the slab.

So these weren’t just some random thieves.

Perez looked at his watch. The team flying in from Mexico was not due to arrive for another hour and a half. Under normal circumstances, he would have waited, but nothing was normal anymore. He pulled out the small flashlight he carried in his pocket, and descended the steps.

“It’s Perez, sir,” Ross said over the speakerphone.

The DOP snapped up the receiver. “Transfer him to me.”

There was a click.

“Perez?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Where are you?”

“I’m inside NB328.”

“And?”

There was a pause. “Everyone’s dead, sir.”

The DOP didn’t move for a full second. “Everyone?”

“Yes, sir. The entire security team.”

“And the people who did this?”

“Gone, sir.”

“What about bodies? Surely a couple of them must have been hit.”

“If they were, they’re not here now.”

The DOP was stunned. A whole security team wiped out by a local gang? How in the hell did that happen?

“Figure out what they took,” he said. “If any of it shows up somewhere, we can trace it back and deal with them.”

Perez took a moment before he replied. “This wasn’t a random robbery, sir.”

“What do you mean?”

“None of the supplies are missing.”

“That can’t be right.”

“I could be mistaken. I only did a quick look-through, but…well, sir, whoever it was entered through the emergency entrance using the code.”

“The what?”

“It was open when I got here, so I checked the surveillance footage and the sensor logs, knowing there should be a record of the break-in. Whoever they were, apparently they were able to hack into the system before they came in, and turned off all the surveillance.”

If the DOP wasn’t stunned before, he was now. The emergency entrance? Knowing the code and hacking into the security system? What the hell was going on?

“And something was taken.”

“What?”

“The vault was open. Two of the numbered boxes are missing.”

The boxes were similar to deposit boxes in a bank. Each contained printed-out, detailed instructions to be used in specific situations. They were the hardcopy backups in case something happened to the computer system after Implementation Day. Another redundancy in the Project’s desire to make sure nothing went off track when they set about rebuilding the world in the way they knew it should be. Every depot had a set of the boxes in its vault.

That someone had purposely broken into NB328 to get to them was unbelievable. The only people who knew about the boxes or the vaults were members of the Project, or at least that’s what he had thought.

This was a serious breach. They had to find out who had done this and why.

“Which boxes were taken?” the DOP asked.

“J923 and T121.”

The DOP brought up the vault database and typed both numbers in. J923 contained the list of all the other depots, and T121 a list of all the primary members of the Project. Both were disturbing, the second considerably more than the first.

“Go over every square inch of that facility,” he ordered. “There has got to be some clue as to who these people are.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And make it quick. I don’t want this becoming a problem.”

For several seconds, the DOP stared out the windowed wall into the Cradle.

It’s them, he thought. The ones who had been an annoyance to the Project for years.

Somehow they had found out about the vaults and the information they contained. He knew they’d been in one of the facilities before-NB7 in eastern Oregon. But every piece of security footage from that night had been reviewed, and neither Captain Ash nor the woman who’d been with him when he rescued his kids had gone anywhere near NB7’s vault.

He picked up the phone again and called Ross. His first instructions were to assign extra protection to people on the list from box T121, and to put the depot security teams on high alert. Then he said, “Operation Pest Control is a go.”

There was a pause, then, “Yes, sir. But…”

“But what, Major?”

“These added measures are going to stretch us pretty thin. If you want Operation Pest Control to happen right away also, we’ll need to sacrifice in other areas.”

The DOP closed his eyes and stifled a groan of frustration. “As soon as feasible, then,” he ordered, and slammed the phone down.

Perez had been in error. Boxes J923 and T121 were not the only two that had been removed. In fact, the two boxes were of no importance at all to Olivia.

“These are the two we want to break into,” Olivia had instructed, indicating boxes J923 and T121. They would be the smokescreen, specifically chosen to throw her former employers off and force them to allot manpower away from what she was focused on. She then pointed at a box near the bottom: G306. “This one we use the master key on.”

Once they had the door to G306 open, Olivia removed the single sheet of paper from inside, slid the box back in place, and shut the door. She carefully folded the paper and put it in her pocket. No one would ever suspect the box had even been opened.

This was the only reason they had come to NB328.

19

I.D. MINUS 88 HOURS

ST. LOUIS, MISSOURI

“There’s nothing here,” Blanton said.

Corey looked at his friend. “What do you mean, nothing?”

They were sitting in a booth at Old Tom’s Pub just off campus, Blanton’s laptop on the table. On the screen was the home page for Hidde-Kel Holdings.

“It’s just a bunch of corporate BS that doesn’t lead anywhere. It’s not tied to their company computer system