The Stefan Mendoza Trilogy Boxed Set, page 46
part #1 of Stefan Mendoza Trilogy Series
Seconds passed.
She flicked another rock. Larger. Tink!
A uniformed guard appeared behind the rectangular viewing panel of the door. Middle-aged, puffy faced, red bulbous nose, a mustache going white. His bloodshot eyes darted left, right, left.
He stepped back, the door lock buzzed, and he pushed it open. He poked his head out.
Ichi’s view shifted, moving away from the building. She was using her lower body strength to create a pendulum effect. Just as the guard started to pull his head back in, she launched. The world flipped around in a sickening roll, and then she was on the ground, gloved fingers inserted into the door crack. She yanked it back—young, powerful muscles easily wrenched the handle free of the guard’s old, surprised hand.
She was in the hallway lightning quick, her hand coming up with a sai. The guard’s eyes bulged; his hand dropped for his pistol.
She struck his forehead with the top of the sai’s hilt.
His head rocked back, and his eyes lost focus.
Another strike. Harder.
He collapsed.
She dropped to his side, pulled a small canister from a belt pouch, and sprayed it on his thumb, then peeled the resulting strip of material off and attached that to her gloved right thumb. With her new fingerprint secured, she collected the badge hanging from the guard’s breast pocket, the keycard suspended from his belt by a retractable reel, the radio clipped to his collar, the speaker curled over his ear, and the pistol from his holster. I heard clipping and rustling sounds through the ski mask—probably the radio and speaker being attached. She slipped the badge into a thigh pouch and clipped the keycard to her wrist. The pistol stayed in her left hand.
The hallway was bare except for the guard station. She loped to a door at the far end and peeked through the viewing panel.
“It is shorter,” she said. “Another hallway and a bathroom door—that is all I see.”
Beyond the door, a bathroom door stood on the right-hand wall. The hallway ran to the left, then hooked to the right, out of sight. There were no obvious ways the blueprints would have been changed to have moved the bathroom to where it was, and the hallway Ichi was in seemed to end about ten feet early. The changes were substantial.
We were close to six and half minutes. Where the hell is Huiyin? I had to make the call. “Take that hallway left until you find a door. We want a secure room.”
“Labeled cryptography or network, yes.” Ichi slapped the keycard on the door, then thumbed the biometrics panel.
The door buzzed, and she was in the hallway. About sixty feet in, it hooked right. Doors appeared on either side. Janitor. Machine room. Security.
She stopped at the fourth: Crypto.
There was a keypunch below the card and biometric readers.
We had just under six minutes.
Ichi unzipped her tool pouch and fumbled around, finally pulling out a scanner. She ran the light over the keys, identifying five that had more wear and tear than the others—14570. The scanner went back into the pouch, and a cracking device came out. She attached two probes to the keypad skin, typed the five most-used numbers into the device’s interface, then hit the button to kick the cracking attack off.
Something scraped on the concrete behind me. I spun, pistol raised.
Huiyin was crouched about twenty feet back, mask up, hands raised. “Radio’s out.”
I waved her forward and holstered the pistol. When she was beside me, I showed her an updated layout of the facility.
She braced herself with a hand on my thigh and tapped the display. “They moved the entire wall out. Why?”
“More security, bigger area for the processors. It’s certainly not for more staff.”
She looked up to the wall but didn’t pull her hand from my leg. “It’s a messy bundle to untangle—all the ownership changes. My contacts aren’t sure who’s running this or what it does. Yours?”
“Everyone I know in the game is here, dead, or wants me dead. I’m not a people person.”
“People don’t understand intensity.” Her hand drifted up to my neck, then cheek.
“Huiyin…”
She pulled away. “We’re alike. You know it.”
Maybe my body sensed the sameness quicker than my mind. I turned back to the data device. Focus. “We can talk about it later. Right now—”
Ichi’s cracking device flashed a string of six numbers: 717045. She punched those in, slapped the card onto the reader, then ran her thumb over the biometric scanner. The door lock buzzed, and she shouldered it open.
The timer read 4:39.
It was a narrow room, maybe twenty feet wide and twice as deep. Racks of equipment with flickering lights lined the walls. Most of it looked the same—gray, blockish, with thick cabling and plugs on the back. Wingnut screws secured the devices to the racks with mounting braces.
I un-muted to Chan. “You seeing this?”
“Yeah.” There was a new tone to Chan’s voice, something approaching awe. “Heavy crypto. Like banking cartel uplinks.”
I’d forgotten about Jacinto’s hacking effort, what everyone thought had gotten his snowcrash killed. “You see one we could grab?”
“Not one we want. These are good. We want something—” Chan gasped. “Ichi? Your left. The silvery one? Stainless steel? Shiny?”
Ichi’s view shifted so that the device in question moved from peripheral to center view. “This?”
“New,” Chan whispered. “The only one. That’s it.”
Ichi unscrewed the mounting brace. “The plugs are different.”
Chan sighed. “One second.”
Time remaining: 3:48.
The video flickered, then deafening klaxons came to life.
We’d been discovered.
I put the data device in my shirt and sprinted for the field. “Ichi, time’s up. Get the device and go.”
Chan screamed, “No! Unplug it wrong, dump the code.”
Shit.
Huiyin was beside me, not matching my stride but matching speed. “We can fight—”
“No.” I skidded to a stop, fighting the urge to storm the facility. Ichi could handle herself. “Bring the SUV up here. We need to be ready to go.”
Huiyin tensed; she seemed ready to argue, then her shoulders relaxed. “All right.” She darted across the field, headed back for the gas station.
At least we had our escape prepared. “Danny, get your bird up higher. Keep an eye out for incoming. Chan, what’s on the Grid? Law enforcement? Private security?”
Chan mumbled, “Checking.”
The drone video shifted again as Danny sent the aircraft higher. “Roads are…um.” Danny’s voice faded. “Yeah. Roads are still clear.”
When Huiyin was well out of sight, I sprinted for the wall and leapt up, gaining a fingertip hold. I pulled myself up just as a charcoal gray form dashed from the corner of the building.
Ichi. Her strides were long, her form poetry.
The front door opened, and a guard burst out. He knew where Ichi was.
I said, “Danny, discourage him.”
A section of the wall just ahead of the guard shattered, spraying the air with concrete chips. The guard dropped flat a second before the rifle’s muffled whumpf echoed through the air.
I tore away the concertina wire. “Take out their vehicles. We’ll need a lead.”
Another whumpf, followed by a car alarm, then others.
On my belly now, I dangled an arm down for Ichi. She jumped, caught my hand, and ran up the wall as I hauled her higher. I twisted, sat up, pivoted on my butt, and lowered an arm down the other side of the wall. She slid over me, dropped down my arm, then hit the ground and bolted for the ditch. I followed her down a second before pistol fire told me the guard had rediscovered his courage.
Chan said, “Private security. En route. Locals. Fifteen minutes.”
Fifteen minutes could be forever, or it could find us hemmed in. Huiyin would have to take us cross-country, get us back to the highway without putting us in the path of incoming vehicles. Our eye in the sky gave us a chance.
I reached the road and started closing on Ichi. Lights flashed on and off, and the SUV’s motor grew loud enough to hear. A minute later, we were inside, buckled up, and headed across the field. Ichi pulled the stainless steel device from her backpack with a mischievous grin and handed it to Chan with a bow. Chan rolled the thing around with pale umber fingers that were hooked like clamps. There would be no dropping the device in the bouncing vehicle.
Huiyin glanced into the rearview mirror, then at me. “Where to now?”
The device might as well have been a block of uranium for all the potential danger it held. We needed to get rid of it as soon as possible, but there was only one hardware hacker I trusted. “Back to D.C. We need to go into the Canyon.”
We needed Abhishek Varma.
Huiyin drifted through the smoky haze of Abhishek’s shop, touching one piece of ancient equipment after another. Chan ignored the MSS agent and focused on the old data devices lining the table closest to Abhishek’s storefront window. I smirked when Huiyin stopped to examine an ancient video recorder with a cracked metallic-painted plastic chassis, then moved on to a slightly newer smartphone, then examined the control paddle for an old entertainment system. She cocked an eyebrow at me, as if to ask if this was all for real.
Abhishek glanced up from the tall stool he’d set behind the grimy, smeared glass case where he conducted business. Even seated on the stool, he was shorter than me. His nicotine-stained fingers patted the tangle of salt-and-pepper hair curled around the back of his head. Like most days, he wore dress slacks that were too short and a long-sleeve shirt. The slacks were slate gray, the shirt either white or gray or saffron; the staining was so severe that it ended up a dull gray. He took a long drag on a cigarette that was near its end, and when he exhaled, the smoke crawled along the deep chestnut and gray of his face.
He pointed his cigarette at Huiyin before crushing it out in his old elephant-shaped ashtray. “You find this one at one of those…” He bowed his head.
Don’t say it.
His head came up, asymmetric eyes wide in delight. “Massage parlors?”
Huiyin’s nostrils flared, and she took a step toward him.
I barred her path with an arm. “That’s his way of saying you’re pretty.”
Abhishek tittered, then squinted at the disassembled cryptographic device with his larger eye, huge behind the lenses of his old, greasy glasses. “You never bring ugly ones with you.”
Chan’s head came up, magenta eyes dancing around for a moment, then turned back to the old data devices.
Had that been confusion on Chan’s face or embarrassment?
I tapped at one of the circuit boards laid out on the countertop. “Quit trying to stall. Can you help Chan or not?”
Abhishek waved me away, agitated. “This is all new. No one manufactured it. Not abroad.”
“So it’s something built here.”
The agitated wave continued. “No one builds here. Too expensive.”
“A boutique manufacturer. Robotics cost the same everywhere. Can’t you reach out to some of your contacts?”
He shook his head. “No need. The story is the same, no matter. This is something built for a specific, limited purpose. The hardware encryption modules are all new. The power system, very innovative. No one will have design information on this. It is secure on many levels.”
Chan hovered a few feet away. “Nothing like it? Anywhere?” Challenging. Not good.
Abhishek pulled a cigarette pack from a breast pocket that was coming loose. He dug a cigarette out, eyes locked on Chan. “Those things.” He tapped the top of his head. “Spikes? They looked better. Now you’re just another girl. Skinny. But you have very bouncy hair. You wash it now?”
Chan’s eyes closed. “The—” A gulp. “The encryption. Modules. Hardware.” Arms crossed over narrow chest, Chan looked to me, near tears. Imploring.
I blew out a frustrated breath. “Okay. Maybe we should take this somewhere else.”
Abhishek nearly spat out his cigarette. “No! I did not say it couldn’t be done! No one but me could do this. Not the same thing.”
He wandered into the back room and rumbled around through who knew what, kicking up a raucous clattering and mumbling indecipherably.
I sidled up to Chan. “He always gets defensive over challenges.”
Chan ran a finger under an eye and shrugged.
“But he meant what he said about your hair as a compliment.” I snorted. “He just doesn’t know how to deliver them.”
Chan looked away. “Bouncy? That’s nice?”
“Wavy, full. Guys don’t do good watching advertisements. We either like what we see or we don’t.”
Chan ran black-metallic nails through magenta waves. “I…I guess.”
“Don’t let him get to you. He means well.”
Abhishek pushed back through the curtain separating the shop from his personal space and set a couple devices on the countertop. One of them had a large antenna on the back and several things that looked like specialized probes or antennae on the front. The other looked like a signal capture device, the sort I’d used to try to steal signal traffic in my early military years.
He searched around the exposed circuits, pointing antennae at different spots, then flicking a few switches. The strange device hummed, then the signal capture device came to life.
That made him chuckle; he patted the top of the odd device. “It is an old simulation system.”
Chan edged closer, neck craning head forward. “Simulation?”
“Feed an array of signals—sine waves, square waves, sawtooth. See what goes across the circuit, adjust, capture, interpolate. Like your software hacking? All guesswork, no grace. Very brute force.” Abhishek dragged on the cigarette. “Where did you get it?”
“The—” Chan turned to me.
“We honestly don’t know,” I said. “We need this to figure out who’s behind trying to kill me.”
Abhishek tapped at the simulation device. “You have any more to it?”
“The computing device? Chan?”
Chan pulled the device I’d taken off the assassin outside Denver and passed that to Abhishek.
Abhishek tapped ashes into the tray and then fiddled with the computing device, tapping through the interface. “You talk to the FBI agent? The black woman.”
“Lyndsey Hines? She came to you?”
“A few weeks after you went away. She had questions.” Irritation flashed across his face. “Don’t like having FBI in here. Not at all.”
“What kind of questions did she have?”
“She asked about a Chinese man.” Abhishek pointed his cigarette at Huiyin. “A spy. Like her. You tell him you’re a spy? She works for State Security, same as this man the FBI was looking for.”
Huiyin looked like she was ready to shoot Abhishek right there.
I stepped between them. How much did Abhishek know about foreign intelligence? His act about not caring was authentic to a point. I had never considered the possibility he worked both sides of the fence. “His name was Dong Jianjun. He’s dead. Huiyin’s trying to figure out why he flipped sides, probably the same as Agent Hines.”
Abhishek squinted and shook his head. “Dong didn’t work for the Agency.” Low, where only I could hear it.
A bell rang, and he straightened. He shuffled through the curtain, mumbling and sniffling.
Chan seemed transfixed by the devices. “He found signals.” Out came a computing device, and Chan began tapping and swiping away. “Signals. The same keys.”
Abhishek set an old computing device on the countertop. “Not quite so innovative. Those are old circuit designs. Modified. Updated. But still old designs.” He tapped at a miniature keyboard, yellow fingernails somehow sliding between tight spaces. “What do you see?” His eyes looked up from beneath bushy black brows.
“The key.” Excitement made Chan’s voice higher. “The other half.”
They raced against each other—tapping, swiping, dragging, shrinking windows, expanding them. Chan’s lips seemed to convulse, then a smile broke through.
Abhishek pulled another cigarette out and lit it from the dying glow of the old one. “Not the Agency.”
“Yeah.” I had been sure of that for a while. “So who?”
“Cytek?” Chan looked up, clearly confused. “What is that?”
Huiyin pushed up against Chan and turned the computing device to where both could see the display. “Cytek’s a front. An old MSS company.”
Chinese Intelligence was trying to kill me? Because of Dong? “You sound surprised.”
“Cytek was compromised years ago.” Wrinkles danced across Huiyin’s brow. “A double agent told the Agency everything. It was sold off. Is this someone’s idea of a joke?”
Chan pulled the computing device free and handed it to me. “Ever heard of her?”
A hard-looking woman glared at me—thick neck, square jaw, dark brown hair cut shy of the collar of a blue jacket that almost looked like a uniform.
“Lilly Duvreau? I can’t recall the face or the name, no.” I flipped through the data Chan had dug up. “Marines.”
Huiyin’s head reared back. “Military running a company? That sounds very Chinese.”
I couldn’t help chuckling. “It’s an American thing. The Marines are…proud. They say things like ‘once a Marine, always a Marine.’ But she’s ex-military. She’s run this Cytek company for the last six months. Is that right? She’s a security specialist, not a business executive. They’re in debt up to their ears. No revenue streams to speak of, no products or services announced. Does that sound like a real company?”
“No.” Huiyin held a hand out for the computing device; I handed it to her.
Abhishek waved for me to follow, then headed through the curtain. The back room was dark, lit by flickering fluorescents strung from the ceiling where there should have been tiles. Instead of walls, there were shelves stuffed with electronic equipment, components, and an assortment of tools.
