He used a cable from the pouch to connect the computer to the printer, and fired them both up. After that it was a simple matter of joining one of the many Wi-Fi networks broadcasting from the homes surrounding the park. He picked one at random, used the preinstalled software to hack past the password protection, and went to the website where Helen had set up the email account.
It was a well-used trick. Sign up for a free account, write an email with whatever secret message needed to be conveyed, but instead of sending it, just save it as a draft. The intended receiver of the message would also have the email account information. That person would then sign on, open the draft folder, and read the message. There would be no trail of the email being sent, no warning light flashing in some NSA data collection center, no indication of anything going on at all because in the virtual world, the email never went anywhere.
Helen’s draft folder contained a single message.
What is your definition of domestic terrorism? Someone who sets off a car bomb on a crowded street? Someone who targets a country’s leaders for death? Someone who calls for the overthrow of the government? Someone who advocates change?
The slope is slippery.
Peter frowned. It was the same philosophical question the intelligence community had been grappling with for decades. If anyone had come up with a definitive answer, he hadn’t heard it.
He clicked on the picture file attached to the message.
There was a delay as the appropriate program was launched.
Peter stared at it for a moment, unsure of what it meant. He recognized the face, but the name wasn’t coming to him right away. Whoever it was, it had been a while since Peter had Wait.
He did know who it was, but that didn’t really help him understand why Helen had sent it to him. He reread her message, and looked at the face again.
Project Cancer.
Cancer.
As the realization of what Mygatt and Green had done dawned on him, the skin on his face felt as if it had been suddenly pulled tight against his skull.
Holy shit.
If he was right, he wasn’t just sitting on a powder keg. He was straddling a hydrogen bomb.
CHAPTER 31
LAZIO REGION, ITALY
“Nothing,” Nate said, as he raced out of the basement cell Mila had been in.
He and Orlando had already checked the main floor and were now doing a thorough search of the area below ground.
Orlando popped out of the cell she’d been going through and shook her head.
“This place wasn’t built with any other way out,” Nate told her, his frustration starting to show.
“There’s got to be one. There’s always one.”
Nate did a full three-sixty, scanning the basement once more. “Well, I’m not seeing it.”
Orlando moved from one cell door to the next, scanning the room inside. As she turned away from the one closest to the stairs, she paused, her narrowing eyes focused on the door itself.
“I think it’s got to be in here,” she said, nodding into the cell.
Nate hurried over. “Why?”
She pointed at the inside part of the door. “You see it?”
Before he could answer, she put her finger in a small divot in the door, about a foot above the ground, and pulled out a ring handle, just large enough to get her finger into. She twisted it, and the door latch turned. In this cell, someone on the inside could actually open the door.
A quick check of the other cells revealed none had the same ring handle.
“It’s here somewhere. We just have to look harder.”
Nate dropped to his knees and started feeling along the tile floor for anything usual, while Orlando made a similar examination along the wall.
“Hey!” Mila called down from the stairway. “Get up here. Something’s going on.”
Nate and Orlando rushed out of the room, and found Mila at the top of the stairs.
“What is it?” Nate asked.
“I…I don’t know. But…” She pointed toward Daeng standing near the entrance.
They moved over to him.
“We suddenly heard a lot of noise,” Daeng said.
“Maybe they’re trying to get in,” Orlando suggested.
“No, no. Yelling, but not at us. And something else.”
“What?” Nate asked.
Quinn found a dry rag and tied it around a can of tomato soup he’d grabbed from a kitchen cabinet. The matches were a bit harder to locate. He thought they’d be near the stove, but instead they were in a drawer next to the sink.
He moved over to the window, raised it as far as it would go, and used a knife to cut through the screen.
He blew out the pilot lights on the gas stove, and turned all the burner dials to high. He then did the same with the oven, leaving the door open. The second he was sure gas was spewing out, he jogged over to the window, climbed out, and shut it behind him.
For ninety seconds, he huddled in the bushes a few feet away, letting the gas fill the kitchen. As much as he would have liked to wait longer, he knew he couldn’t afford to, so he moved as far away from the window as he dared, given his injury. He lit the rag, then cocked his arm back and awkwardly launched the flaming can of soup through the glass.
As he turned away, the kitchen ignited in a loud wah-umph.
He sprinted across the grass, making the cover of the vines seconds before two of Michaels’s men rushed around the back of the house to see what happened.
Flames licked at the windows. The exterior stonewalls wouldn’t burn, but everything inside would, leaving an empty husk if the fire wasn’t extinguished in time.
Quinn moved off to a point where he felt safe enough to circle around to the trees on the other side so he could better see what was going on.
He’d been hoping that Michaels and all of his men would switch their attention to the fire, giving Nate, Orlando, Daeng, and Mila an opportunity to get out. Instead, only five of Michaels’s men had repositioned to the main house, while Michaels and the three others remained near the detention building.
Which, of course, meant Quinn’s friends were still stuck inside.
Michaels was talking to the three still with him, aiming the majority of his words at the two men on his right. When he finished, the two nodded and separated, moving out wide to either side. Quinn watched, already having a pretty good idea of what they were up to. The moment they curled back toward the building, he knew he was right. Their plan was to approach the detention-building door from both ends.
While they were doing this, Michaels and the other man moved a car into the field fifty feet in front of the building, positioned themselves behind it, and aimed their weapons at the door.
A classic solution.
The two by the door would open it, then get out of the way while their boss and the other man would shoot into the building. At some point they would rush inside, and mop up whatever was left.
Quinn couldn’t let it get close to that point.
Again, the phone in his pocket rang, and again, he ignored it.
There was about a hundred and ten feet between him and the car Michaels and his man were now standing behind. He could probably pick them both off…if he wasn’t injured. While he knew his first shot would run true, he
