Checkmate

Hoping to bridge the chasm between simply gathering actionable intelligence and acting on that intelligence, the NSA had years earlier been directed by special Presidential charter to form Third Echelon, its own in-house covert operations unit.

Third Echelon operatives, known individually as Splinter Cells, were recruited from the special forces communities of the Navy, Army, Marine Corps, and Air Force, then shaped into the ultimate lone operators, men and women capable of not only working alone in hostile environments, but of doing so without leaving a trace.

* * *

Fisher’s sudden introduction of the fire hose to the Trego’s reduction gear had had an immediate effect. With a sound that was a cross between a massive zipper and a bullwhip, all fifty feet of the hose disappeared into the catwalk in the blink of an eye. Fisher threw himself backward and curled into a ball.

The engines gave a screech of metal on metal. The catwalk trembled. Black smoke burst through the grating, followed by thirty seconds of rapid-fire pings and clunks as the reduction gear tore itself apart. Shrapnel zinged around the engine room, bouncing off bulkheads and railings and punching holes in conduits. Alarms began blaring.

And then suddenly it was over. Through the slowly clearing smoke he could see the smoldering remnants of the fire hose wrapped around the mangled shaft. He became aware of the faint voice in his subdermal. It was Lambert. “… Fisher… Fisher, are you—”

“I’m here.”

“Whatever you did, it worked. The Trego’s slowing, coming to a stop.”

“I sure as hell hope so. Now tell the pilots to break off before I get a missile down my throat.”

* * *

Now, four hours later, sitting under dimmed track lighting at the polished teak conference table in Third Echelon’s Situation Room, Fisher shifted in his chair, trying to avoid the dozen or so bruises he’d gathered aboard the Trego. It was nothing a liberal dose of ibuprofen wouldn’t cure. Besides, he told himself, given the alternatives, he’d take bruises over shrapnel or flaming chunks of fire hose any day. Getting old was hell, but getting dead was worse.

Per Lambert’s orders, his first stop after leaving the Trego had been at the Army’s Chemical Casualty Care Division, located at Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland. A division of the Army’s Medical Research Institute, the CCCD specializes in the decontamination and treatment of biological, chemical, and radiological exposure. Fisher was sent through a series of decon showers and then poked and prodded by space- suited doctors before being declared “contaminant free.”

“Where are they taking the Trego?” he asked Lambert.

“She’s being towed to Norfolk’s secure shipyard.”

Lambert aimed a remote control at one of the half-dozen plasma screens that lined the Situation Room’s walls. A satellite image of Norfolk harbor faded into view. The Trego was easy to spot. Flanked by three Navy frigates and an Arleigh Burke-class destroyer, the freighter was under tow by a harbor tug.

“They’re prepping a dry dock for the NEST team as we speak.” Lambert said, referring to a Nuclear Emergency Search Team from the Department of Energy.

Before FBI investigators could board the Trego, the NEST would have to determine the source and level of the ship’s radioactivity. Luckily, so far it appeared nothing hot had leaked from the hull — something that certainly would have happened had she run aground.

“And our prisoner and his laptop?” Before boarding the Blackhawk helicopter Lambert had dispatched for him, Fisher had grabbed the laptop and then hoisted the Trego’s lone crewman onto his shoulder. In some cases, prisoners were better than corpses.

“Grim is working the laptop. Whatever key he pressed did more than set the engines to flank. It scrambled the hard drive, too.”

“Yeah, he seemed a tad determined. He’s in medical?”

Lambert nodded. “He’ll make it.”

“Good,” Fisher said, taking a sip of coffee. He screwed up his face and frowned at the mug. “Who made this?”

“I did, thank you very much,” a voice said. William Redding, Fisher’s advance man and field handler, walked through the door. With his horn-rimmed glasses, sweater vest, and pocket protector, Redding was a bookworm of the highest caliber with an almost fanatical focus on planning and details. As annoying as his intensity could be, Fisher couldn’t imagine going into the field without Redding guarding his flanks.

“And by the way,” Redding said, “the nerds from DARPA called. They want to know what you did with their Goshawk.”

Fisher said, “Let me get this straight: You’re calling the DARPA people nerds?”

Lambert chuckled under his breath. Redding wasn’t known for his sense of humor.

“I’m a geek, Sam. They’re nerds. There’s a profound difference.”

“My apologies.”

“The Goshawk?”

“Safe in the equipment room.”

“And its condition?”

“Hard to say, given how little there was left of it.”

Redding’s eyes narrowed. “Pardon me?”

“There was fire—”

“Pardon me?”

“A joke. Relax, it’s as good as new.”

Redding was already heading for the door. He stopped at the threshold, hesitated a moment, then turned back. “Sam?”

“Yeah?”

“Glad you’re in one piece.”

* * *

Grimsdottir walked in twenty minutes later. Born in Iceland, Anna was tall and statuesque, with a model’s cheekbones and short, brown-auburn hair — a choice Fisher suspected had more to do with function than it did with fashion. Above all else, Anna was practical. Worry about whether she was having a “hair day”—good or bad — wasn’t on her list of priorities.

“Welcome back, Sam. I don’t see anything glowing.”

“The day is young.”

“I talked to the docs at Aberdeen. They confirmed that whatever’s aboard the Trego, you didn’t receive enough of a dose to worry about.” She walked over to a nearby computer workstation and tapped a few keys. A frisbee-shaped 3D model of what Fisher assumed was the hard drive from Trego laptop appeared on the screen. The disk was broken into irregularly sized geometric chunks outlined in either red, green, or yellow.

Grimsdottir said, “Okay, what do you want first, the good news or the bad news?”

Lambert said, “Bad news.”

“All the red data sectors you see were wiped clean by the self-destruct program. They’re gone, period. No coming back.”

“That’s a lot of red,” Fisher said.

“About eighty percent. Green is probably recoverable; yellow is iffy.”

“And the good news?” Lambert said.

“I may be able to tell who wrote the self-destruct program.”

“How?”

“Most programmers have a signature — the way they block code, handle syntax, write background comments… Those kinds of things. Sometimes it’s as distinctive as handwriting. And I can tell you this: Whoever wrote this program is sophisticated; his signature is unique. It may take me a few—”

Suddenly a muted alarm came over the loudspeakers. In unison, all the computer monitors began flashing, their screens overlayed by a large red exclamation mark.