Extinction Machine

Chapter One Hundred Ten

VanMeer Castle

Near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

Monday, October 21, 7:45 a.m.

First thing I did was make sure the door was locked. I put my ear to the wood, but there was no sound at all from outside. Soundproof indeed.

“Ghost,” I called, and he snapped to attention. “Scout.”

Instantly he began casing the room, sniffing for anything that could be a problem. Ghost is heavily cross-trained to find people, bombs, blood, and hidden things—like concealed doorways. Electronics will take you a good long way, but nothing beats the nose of an inquisitive dog.

There was a heavy chest against one wall—dense wood banded with studded iron strips—so I shoved that against the jamb. A determined group of men could break in, but nobody was going to sneak up on me. Then I checked to make sure Shelton was still breathing.

He was.

The juice in the dart I’d shot him with was a fast-acting but mild tranquilizer. One that Dr. Hu insisted wouldn’t trigger Shelton’s next heart attack. I had a syrette in my pocket with a stimulant that would bring him back up to the surface, but before I did that I swept everything off of Shelton’s desk and hauled him onto it. Then I fished out a coil of silk cord from my jacket and lashed his ankles together and then stretched his arms out wide so the hands dangled off the edges. I ran the silk cord under the desk. I wanted his hands exposed. The silk was thin but he wasn’t going to break it. Then I removed a small roll of duct tape, tore off long strips and ran them from one edge of the desk to the other so that they effectively anchored Shelton’s head in place. He could open his eyes and mouth but would not be able to turn his head at all.

I snapped my fingers and tapped the desk. Ghost came rushing over and jumped up, then stood glaring down at Shelton. Two fat droplets of drool fell from Ghost’s mouth onto Shelton’s shirt.

“Hey,” I said, “he’s not a breakfast entrée.”

Ghost gave me a withering stare.

I tapped my earbud for Bug and got nothing. So I picked up the jammer and played with the buttons until I found one that switched it off. When I tried Bug again he was right there and he sounded like he was having kittens.

“Cowboy! Are you okay?”

“It’s okay,” I said. “There was a jammer, but it’s off now. Ready for a little smash and grab?”

“Always, man, you know me.”

Shelton’s laptop was on a small table beside the desk. It was a style I’d never seen before. I removed a MindReader uplink and plugged it into the USB port. The little device flashed with green lights to let me know that it was happily gobbling up all Shelton’s files. Encrypted or not.

“Getting the feeds now,” said Bug. “Whoa … what kind of system is this?”

I bent and peered at the display on the side of the uplink. “The readout here says this stuff is heavily encrypted. How bad is that going to hurt us?”

Bug chuckled. “Silly mortal. I laugh at encryption. Ha! Ha, I say.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, just tell me how long will it take you to—”

“My whole team’s locked in the bunker with me,” he cut in. “You have the undivided attention of twenty-six world-class computer rock gods. It’s just … oh shit, man … You know what this is? This is that Chinese Ghost Box. The actual f*cking Ghost Box. I am so getting wood here, man. This is soooo sexy.”

“Bug, you’re scaring me.”

“No, hey, this is how they’ve been screwing with us.”

“What the hell is a Ghost Box? Sounds like some kind of weird porno.”

“No, no, no, man, this is all over the rumor mill. A super-computer system designed not to be noticed. It was built to be invisible to other systems. Long technical explanation that would make your head hurt. Short version is that without an actual hardline connection, we could never interpret that system.”

“Does my five-dollar USB cable count as an actual hardline?”

“Oh, hell yes. Achilles’ heel, man. Direct cable connection. Nothing beats it. And if the Chinese geeks who built this ever find out that they were punked by something you can get at RadioShack, they’ll kill themselves.”

“Well … that’s…,” I fished for a word along the lines of “lucky,” but it had been so long since any word like that actual fit that I let the sentence hang. “Just tell me you can crack the encryption.”

“Not in the next minute, no, but eventually? Yeah. This is huge, man. Really huge.”

“I like huge. Okay, as soon as you get anything that puts Shelton in my crosshairs I want to know about it.”

“You got it.”

“Outstanding.” I switched to the team channel. “Prankster, Ronin? Give me a sit-rep.”

“Prankster here, boss,” came Pete’s immediate reply. “I’m in the building, hunkered down in a little bit of nowhere till you’re done with your business. Ready to entertain the tourists.”

“Copy that, Prankster. Sit tight until I give the word,” I said. “Ronin, how’s the view?”

“Clear and bright,” said Sam. He was a superb sniper—cold, precise, and patient. I would not want to be out on the grounds tonight. Not unless I was wearing an Abrams tank. “Found myself a nice spot for a high angle.”

“Excellent,” I said. “But the show doesn’t start until I give the word.”

“Hooah,” they said.

“And, Ronin … nobody dies unless I give a kill order. Copy?”

“Copy that, boss.”

I looked around the office Most of the rear wall of the office was taken up with towering stained glass depicting the Wild Hunt from Celtic folklore, but there were louvered panels near the bottom. I cranked one up and peered out. All quiet on the western front. Or, in this case, the eastern lawn.

Shelton groaned and I checked his vitals. So far, so good. I busied myself creeping the room and planting all sorts of chameleon bugs in useful places. Some were active units that would allow Bug to tap into the house’s computer-controlled alarm systems. Others were passive units that would remain inert for now but which would come to life with a signal sent from a satellite. Those were for later.

I gave Bug all of three minutes and then tapped my earbud. “Talk to me, man. Tell me you found anything. Unpaid parking tickets, kiddie porn … give me something I can use on this a*shole.”

“Damn, Cowboy,” said Bug, “you weren’t joking when you said this stuff was encrypted. I mean … we’re having to fight through multiple levels of very weird protection. I’m kind of impressed. If I didn’t have MindReader but knew about it, I might build something like this.”

“Cut to the chase. Can you hack it? Do we have anything?”

“Give me a little credit. I said that it was tough, I didn’t say that it was tougher than me.”

Sometimes it’s hard to tell whether Bug is referring to himself or to MindReader. Or if he knew that there was a difference.

“We’re in now, but it’s going to take us a lot of time to evaluate this stuff. And the Ghost Box system keeps trying to counterattack with all sorts of viruses. I tell you, Cowboy, I might need to bitch slap this thing to keep it in line.”

“Meaning?”

“We have some seriously f*cked-up viruses that would turn their whole network into Chernobyl. If Ghost Box keeps trying to counterhack us I’m going to have to clone MindReader’s command protocols onto—”

I cut him off. “Do whatever you have to do, Bug. Put a leash on it, but don’t ruin anything until you’re sure you have all the goodies. What about that drive?”

“Ah,” he said, “there’s really a lot of crazy stuff on that puppy, and it’s ringing ten kinds of bells. We got eyes-only stuff from Department of Defense, Homeland, NASA, jeez … there’s so much good shit here.”

“Hey,” I growled, “stop drooling and let me know the second you find anything illegal, or anything classified that we can—”

“Cowboy, you’re not listening to me. All of this stuff is classified. This is deep, deep shit here. I’m seeing stuff that even with black budget clearance codes the president doesn’t get to see. We got missile defense systems, we got HAARP stuff, spy satellite stuff, black ops sanctions … jeez-oh-man.”

I straightened and looked at Shelton. “Whoa, back up, Bug, and tell me that you’re not kidding here. Tell me that we hit actual pay dirt on the first try.”

“Well … it’s not the Black Book or anything, but there’s no way Shelton has legal clearance for this stuff. No way in hell. His official clearance level is in the basement compared to this stuff.”

“Who does have this level of clearance?”

“I … don’t know, man. God? This is weird, weird shit. I need Deacon to look at this, but I’m telling you that if we leaked even a little of this to a congressional oversight committee we could put Shelton away for two or three thousand years. But … and I’m not joking around here, we could tear down half of Washington, too. You should see some of the names that I’m finding here.” He paused and there was a click that changed the audio signal. “Look, I cut everyone out of this conversation, okay?”

“Okay. Talk to me.”

“Cowboy … this is actually scaring me. This is stuff they kill people over. This is actual black budget stuff.”

“On a laptop? You cracked it in a couple of minutes.”

“That’s it, man,” he said, “only a system like MindReader could crack this. You know that, there’s nothing else—and I mean nothing else—that could decrypt this stuff. We found and neutralized six separate erase programs. That’s one of the first thing MindReader looks for—self-destruct and hard-dump programs. If anyone else had hacked this that whole laptop would be smoking slag by now.”

“Okay.”

“The stuff we’re finding, though, is making my paranoia-o-meter go haywire. Deacon is going to freak when he sees this. This is … well, jeez, man, this is scaring the shit out of me.”

I knew Bug well enough to know when he was joking or exaggerating.

He wasn’t.

“But … Cowboy, so far I don’t see anything that links him to what happened at Dugway or the Warehouse. Or M3. Not yet.”

“Find it for me, Bug. I’m on thin ice here.”

“Working on it.”

“Contact Aunt Sallie and Deacon on scramble and cycle them into this.”

Bug rang off. The lights on the uplink told me that the file transfer was complete. I knew it also meant that MindReader had done the other part of its job: rewriting the software on the laptop to eradicate every possible trace of intrusion. Smiling, I pulled the uplink and dropped it into my pocket, then I closed the Ghost Box and repositioned it exactly as I found it.

The clock in my head was ticking as loud as gunfire.

I turned to Shelton. Now for the next phase of this insane little game.

“So,” I said to his comatose form, “whatever else you are, you’re really part of an illegal shadow government. Like right out of one of the Bourne movies. Until now I was going to cut you some slack, but—oops, you’re an actual bad guy. What a damn shame for you.”

Ghost looked from me to Shelton and uttered a low growl. I knew that he couldn’t understand everything I said, but he reads emotion very well. Or, maybe he reads me very well. The look he gave Shelton was probably every bit as cold and unsympathetic as mine.

I removed a small leather case from a pocket, unzipped it, and began removing some toys Dr. Hu had provided for me.

“Well hell, guys,” I said as I pulled the syrette out of my pocket and jabbed it into Shelton’s throat, “guess it’s time to play Truth or Consequences.”

It took four seconds for the stimulant to counteract the tranquilizer. It took another five seconds for Shelton to wake up completely. After that it took less than one second for him to realize how deep in the shit he was.

I leaned close to him and smiled. The three aspects of myself were all clamoring for dominance. The Civilized Man wanted to have a reasonable conversation, to appeal to Shelton’s better nature. The Cop wanted to throw the Constitution at him and use threats of prison and disgrace. The Killer wanted to wire him up and play bad games. I felt my control slipping.

That seldom ends well for anyone.

When Howard Shelton opened his eyes and looked up into my face, guess which face I showed him?