Numa Files: Ghost Ship Part 34

"Probably hard to get stonemasons out here."

"Front gate has cameras," Joe said, studying the layout. "Can't see any others."

Kurt glanced along the dirt road that led up to the gate. "If a pizza delivery guy came by right about now, that would be ideal. But considering that isn't likely to happen, I say we climb the wall."

"I can see a spot over there where a tree is growing up beside the wall," Joe said.

"Too inviting," Kurt replied. "Let's just use our hands and feet."

Joe nodded again and Kurt began to move, heading farther upslope. Joe followed, and the two met up again at the base of the stone wall. In a moment they were over the top and inside, and the first thing they came to was the maze of manicured hedges.

Unlike the gentle slope of the hill outside the walls, the grounds inside had been excavated and flattened. The entire compound was built on a series of terraces, with the lowest by the front gate, then two intermediate levels containing the hedge maze and the other small buildings, and finally the main house in all its grandeur sitting up on the highest of the four terraces.

Unlike the rest of the grounds, the house was well lit. Kurt studied what he could from where he was. A pair of guards milled around the main entrance. At least one other man stood near the far side.

"Not exactly girded for battle," Kurt said.

"You say that like it's a bad thing."

"Just not used to so much going our way."

Kurt ducked down behind the hedge and opened the flap that covered the GPS tracking unit strapped to his right arm. In dull gray and black tones, it displayed the grounds around them. There were three buildings on the lowest terrace that were considered possibilities. According to Hiram Yaeger, men who appeared to be armed had been seen going in and out of all three.

"We have to get to the other side of this maze," Kurt said.

"Do we risk going through it?" Joe asked. "The hedges are at least six feet high. They'll help keep us hidden."

Kurt was about to say yes, considering that he had an overhead diagram of the maze displayed on his arm, but as he navigated the labyrinth in his mind he discovered one salient feature: there was only one way in and one way out.

"Better go around," Kurt said. "The maze has no other way out. It's a big circle that doubles back around and only takes you back to where you started. Considering how this undertaking has felt from day one, I'd say I've had about enough of that."

Joe laughed. "We still have eight minutes of chameleon time."

Kurt motioned to the right. "Around that side. Stay close to the hedge. We should come across a building that looks kind of like a shed."

This time Joe led the way and it was Kurt's turn to marvel at how rapidly he vanished, like a ghost in the fog. Kurt moved quickly to keep up, and on the far side of the hedge he came upon Joe.

The shedlike building was right in front of them. Kurt was just about to step forward when a door opened and spilled some light onto the grounds. Kurt froze as two men came out, allowing the door to bang shut behind them.

Leaning against the building, one of them lit a cigarette. The tip brightened to an orange-red hue as he inhaled. After releasing a puff of smoke, he turned to the other man. "I'm telling you, Laurent is on the rampage. Don't get him angry right now or question him. I asked him about Acosta and he told me to back off."

"Acosta is a gutless traitor," the other man said. "He sold us out on one of Sebastian's deals. Mark my word, we're going to be at war with him soon. Next time you make a delivery, you watch your back."

"It's more than that," the smoking man said between drags on the cigarette. "Sebastian is edgy. I think he's losing it. Been spending too much time with Calista."

Both of them laughed at that. "Who cares?" the other man said. "We just got paid. Now, finish that smoke and get back in the game so I can take your money."

The man with the cigarette laughed. "Sure," he said. "Set me up a drink, I'll be there in a minute."

The first guy went back inside while the second man smoked for a moment longer before tossing the cigarette to the ground and crus.h.i.+ng it out with his boot. As he finished grinding it into the dirt he looked up, staring almost directly at Kurt. He lingered in that pose for a moment the way a hunting dog might freeze as it pointed toward a sound its master couldn't hear.

Kurt held perfectly still. Hidden in the shadows at a distance of forty feet, he doubted the man could see him. All the same, he firmed his grip on the railgun and slid his gloved finger onto the trigger.

The smoker held his place for another second and then he turned, grabbed the door handle, and stepped back inside.

"Cover me," Kurt whispered. He moved quickly toward the door and placed his ear beside it. He heard the sound of a radio and voices. Too many voices. They were loud and boisterous and, as near as he could tell, all male. It sounded like a locker room inside.

Convinced the prisoners were not present, he moved back to where Joe waited.

"Do we have the right address?" Joe asked.

"Not unless you're looking for a frat party. I think this is a bunkhouse of some kind. Brevard's men are blowing off some steam."

Joe looked around. "So where to next?"

Kurt glanced down at the screen on his arm. The next building was a hundred yards off. Closer to the wall of the third terrace. "Just up the road," Kurt said. "Follow me, if you can."

"Better be quick," Joe said. "We turn back into pumpkins in less than five minutes."

Moving past the building that housed Brevard's men, Kurt and Joe snuck onto another path. The next building was much like the first, low-lying and rather plain, without any windows, but it was guarded. Two men at the door, one sitting in a chair with his feet propped up on a bucket, the other standing with a rifle over his shoulder.

The main problem was a pair of exposed bulbs on a black wire above the entrance. The suits would not keep them hidden in that kind of glare.

"This has got to be it," Kurt said. "I'm going to work my way around back and find the power line. Get in position. When I cut it, take the closest guy out with your Taser. By the time the second guy figures out what's happened, I'll be on him."

"Sounds like a plan."

As Joe moved to a new position, Kurt doubled back and went around the far side of the building. Moving quickly and quietly, he arrived on the far side of the structure and began looking for the power cable. He found a spot where a buried line came out of the ground and ran up the wall, held in place by rusted clamps. Pulling out his rubber-handled knife, Kurt sawed through the insulation and then with a quick cut severed the cable.

As the light spilling from the front of the building flickered and died, Kurt raced for the corner. He came around it just as Joe hit the standing guard with his Taser. The man went stiff as a board but made no sound, and all Kurt heard was the rapid clicking and snapping sound that the Taser made as it electrified the man's body and triggered his muscles into a rigid state.

Realizing that something was wrong, the guard in the chair grabbed for his rifle, but Kurt was on him before he could bring it to bear. He clamped one hand over the man's mouth and yanked him backward, bringing the black carbon steel blade of the knife up against the man's throat.

"You make a sound, it'll be your last," he warned the man.

The guard went still and then nodded, his sense of shock growing as Joe appeared under the overhang like a specter materializing from another dimension. As Joe dropped down on the ground to truss up the other guard, his movements were a blur as the armor continuously changed both its color and texture. Kurt noticed the man he'd captured scrunching his eyes shut and then looking away as if he were hallucinating.

"You people are holding some friends of ours," he whispered to his captive. "Are they here? In this building?"

The guard nodded.

Kurt glanced at Joe. "Check the door."

Joe was already in the process. "Locked tight."

"Keys," Kurt demanded.

The guard reached a shaking hand into his breast pocket and pulled out a ring with two keys on it.

Joe took the ring and went to work, finding two bolts, one for each key. Having unlocked the door, he cracked it open. "It's dark, I don't see anyone."

"I must have cut the power to the entire building," Kurt said, pulling the guard to his feet.

As Joe pulled the door open, Kurt pushed the guard through first in case someone attacked. Fortunately, that didn't happen.

Looking around, Kurt saw a dozen people huddled in the far corner of the darkened room. They were hiding behind a pile of mattresses, a small table, and several chairs. He counted three men, three women, and seven children of various ages. They seemed as frightened of him and Joe as the guards had been. After what they'd been through, Kurt didn't blame them.

"It's all right," he said, "we're here to help you. We're getting you out of here."

They seemed too afraid to respond, so Kurt flipped up his goggles and pulled out a flashlight, s.h.i.+ning it on them. He didn't recognize most of the group, but two of the grimy-faced children looked like Sienna's son and daughter.

"You're Tanner, right?"

The boy nodded.

"And you're Elise?"

The girl was too afraid to say anything. She just stood there, gripping the hem of her s.h.i.+rt.

"It's okay," Kurt said, brus.h.i.+ng her hair back. "We're taking you home. Where's your mom?"

Elise just stared at him, but Tanner pointed at the guards. "They took her."

Kurt looked at the guard on his knees.

"Where's Sienna Westgate?"

"I don't know," the guy said. "They took her up to the main house, but I don't know where."

One of the other adults came forward. He looked familiar. "I saw you in the tunnel in Korea," Kurt said.

His English was vaguely European. Kurt guessed that Spanish, Portuguese, or even Italian was his first language.

"You're Montresor," Kurt said, using his hacker name.

The man nodded again. "My real name is Diego. I know where they took her. The man who runs things, Sebastian, he has a control room on the top floor. He watches everything from there, I think. Directly below him is a networked series of high-end processors and computers. When they took me up to the house to work, that is where they kept me."

"What did they have you do?" Kurt asked.

"I hack into a system and edit programs. I create hidden doorways and what we call hides or blinds."

"Those are hunting terms," Kurt said. "What do they mean in the programming world?"

The man paused as if thinking of a way to explain it. "They're like black holes into which we can hide a virus. Even the most advanced antivirus software will not find it. And then at a later date, we activate the code."

"And what does the code do?" Kurt asked.

"I just create the blind," Montresor said. "Others build the virus."

"And what does the virus usually do?"

"Takes control of the system," he said. "Forces it to do something it is not supposed to do."

Montresor, Kurt thought to himself. How perfect a handle for someone who hides things in a labyrinth where they will never be found.

"What kind of systems did you hack? Pentagon? CIA?"

Montresor shook his head. "Banking systems mostly. Accounting programs. Transfer protocols."

Kurt's mind raced. Banks and a gang descended from bank robbers and counterfeiters. He wondered if there could be a connection and then decided this was not the time to find out. All that mattered was stopping the Brevard family, whatever they were doing.

He turned to Joe. "Call it in," he said. "I'm going to find Sienna."

"I should go with you," Joe said.

"No," Kurt said, "stay with them. They're going to need you to lead them out when the Marines come over the wall."

Aboard the lead Black Hawk, code-named Dragon One, Lt. Brooks studied his men as the strike team continued inbound. Some of the men talked and joked, some checked their weapons and gear repeatedly in some kind of ritual, and others had faces of stone. Different personalities got ready for battle in different ways, but one look told Brooks they were ready.

So far, they'd come three hundred miles south, met up with the tanker aircraft, and completed the tricky nighttime refueling operation without incident. From that point they'd turned southeast and were now tracking for the coast, traveling in formation, at a hundred thirty knots a mere fifty feet above the surface of the Mozambique Channel.

"We'll be crossing into Madagascar airs.p.a.ce in seven minutes," the pilot informed him.

"Any word from the Bataan?"

"Nothing yet," the pilot said. "If we don't get final authorization by the time we hit that limit, I'll have no choice but to abort."

Brooks understood. He was in charge of the mission, but those were the standing orders. "Throttle back a bit," he suggested. "And take us parallel to the line for a while." "Sir?"

"It'll save us some fuel," Brooks said, "and it'll give those marine biologists a little more time to make contact." "You really think they're going to pull this off?" the pilot asked skeptically.

"I'm not sure," Brooks said, "but I'd hate to be headed home if they call for help."

The pilot nodded his agreement, made a quick radio call to the other helicopters, and then banked to the right and began reducing speed. The other Black Hawks matched him, and the headlong race toward the coast became a more leisurely flight parallel to it. There was little danger of them being picked up on radar-Madagascar had only a primitive network. Fuel and time were bigger concerns.

"Okay, Lieutenant," the pilot said, "we've dialed it down to the economy setting. But we can't do this for too long." As it turned out, they didn't have to. Fifteen minutes later, a signal came over the satellite downlink.

"Dragon leader, this is Courthouse. Do you copy?"

Courthouse was the Bataan's code name. Brooks pressed the transmit switch. "Courthouse, this is Dragon leader, go ahead."

"You are cleared to the objective. Current target status is green. Friendlies have been identified. Total of fifteen, possibly sixteen. Their location will be marked by a green flare and smoke. Other buildings are believed to hold up to twenty hostiles. Light weapons are indicated."

A surge of adrenaline pumped through Brooks and he glanced at the pilot and toward the coast like a referee signaling first down. The pilot took the hint, turned inbound once again, and brought the Black Hawk back up to full speed.

"Roger that, Courthouse. We are two minutes from continental divide and inbound to the target. Will contact you on our way home."

As the mission director from the Bataan signed off, Brooks considered the state of things. In a world that had grown used to watching their military operations play out in real time, this one was being blacked out. There was no feed being broadcast to the Situation Room in the White House, no group of generals and politicians watching the play-by-play as if it were a movie or a big game. With the whole government unsure which systems were still secure and which had been hacked, no one was taking a chance. The powers that be would wait in silence. Eventually, they'd receive a simple phone call from the Bataan's commander telling them if the mission had succeeded or failed.