Chapter 31
The brown UPS uniform fit Jack as if it had been made for him. As he walked from the truck toward the house, he adjusted the box he was carrying so it hid the small aerosol can in his right hand. He had expected the address to be close to Ft. Meade, and indeed, once the code was broken, it led to a computer inside a house in Glen Bernie, Maryland, just a few miles from the NSA headquarters.
It certainly looked like someone was doing everything they could to make sure the NSA was the first on the scene. But doing something like using an address near the NSA headquarters indicated a lack of sophistication, maybe even naiveté, that would have the organization’s profilers going nuts. If you wanted to put the message in a bigger nest of foreign spies than were located close to the Puzzle Palace, you would have to put it inside the UN.
Jack rang the bell, and a woman opened it with a smile. “Hi. I wasn’t expecting a—”
The knockout gas hit her full in the face, the surprised intake of air that followed finishing the job as her legs lost their rigidity. Jack continued his momentum, catching the woman’s slumping body as he stepped across the threshold. Immediately behind him, Janet Price, also in UPS attire, walked calmly up to the house carrying another package.
The two of them moved with quiet efficiency as Jack laid the unconscious woman on the couch next to the phone and then moved on, rapidly glancing in each room as he passed. Behind him he could hear Janet pick up the phone and dial familiar tones. 9-1-1.
“Hello, police? Help me. Please hurry. Someone is trying to get into my house. Aaaah.” She coughed weakly then dropped the telephone handset beside the woman’s body on the sofa.
Spotting the computer, Jack pulled the power cord from the back and rapidly disconnected all the other cables from the system. Then leaving behind the monitor and all the peripheral equipment, he opened the UPS box and placed the computer inside.
As he moved out of the small office back into the living room, he saw Janet coming down the stairs giving him the thumbs-up signal. There were no other computers in the house. They had what they were after.
Picking up the two boxes with which they had entered, Jack and Janet walked out the front door, closed it behind them, stepped into the truck, and drove off. The police would be there shortly, and that was a good thing, not that Jack was worried about the unconscious woman. People rarely died from a single whiff of the gas. But there was going to be unexpected company at that address before long, and those late arrivals needed to see the police already on the scene, or much worse violence was likely to occur.
Rounding a corner, Jack pulled the UPS truck into a parking lot where he and Janet left it, carried the box around the side of the building, and slipped into the backseat of a gold Honda Accord.
“Home, James,” Jack said.
Harold Stevens smiled as he pulled out into traffic.