Left Behind Series - The Remnant Part 27

"Yes " " yep "

His phone buzzed. "Stand by. Hey, Chang."

"Mac! I'll say this once and get back to you as fast as possible with details. Ready?"

"Go "

"Akbar and Stefanich have communicated personally several times today." Click.

"Busted," Mac said. "Listen up. No time for questions. Hannah, you're driving. Chloe, you're riding. Take the DEW, Uzi, and a side arm each, phones on, radios on. Get to the Co op now. Clear 'em out, including anything they don't want found in a midnight raid. Then straight to the airport and wait out of sight for Sebastian and me, ready to hightail it to his plane. If we don't show, that means we're dead and you're on your own."

Mac bent and heaved the Fifty up against his chest. "Time to go to work, big boy," he said.

Hannah and Chloe ran around the shack to the idling car.

Chapter.

"THANK YOU, Lord," Chang said, still standing as his fingers danced on the keyboard. In seconds he had opened the transcripts of four phone conversations on a line so secure that Carpathia himself had once said even he didn't have access to it.

But David Ha.s.sid cracked it, Nichy. Access that.

Chang also had copies of e-mails that showed up on neither the palace nor the Ptolemais mainframe and were supposedly guaranteed to disappear from every record after they had been read. Ha.s.sid's master disk probably had the only copies in existence, including the correspondents'.

Though he was curious, Chang knew it was irrelevant how someone at Stefanich's level had personal access to the director of Security and Intelligence. The way they interacted evidenced some history, but if the box in the corner had not begun flas.h.i.+ng again, Chang would not have wasted the time tracking it down until the crisis was over. He quickly clicked on the box to find " percent primary match, no decode necessary."

He opened the manifest and sped read: "Straight correlation from List A to List B: Suhail Akbar and Nelson Stefanich registered at Madrid Military School, overlapping tenures."

From the years listed, Chang calculated they had been there together as teenagers, more than twenty five years before. That would get a phone call returned.

Chang was flying now, his eyes darting over the copy, looking for how the ruse fell apart.

Stefanich had asked whether Howie Johnson was "a fair man."

Akbar responded that the name didn't ring a bell.

Stefanich told him, "Senior Commander under Konrad."

"I'll look him up."

Akbar found him and reported, "Stellar record, but our paths have not crossed. Unusual for someone at that level, but it happens."

DOn~t vv amt to be a best," Stefanich tiad f ollowed, "but does Konrad vouch for him? Want to be sure before exposing him to prisoner."

"what prisoner? And who's Konrad?"

"The Judah ite, George Sebastian."

"Still nothing out of him?"

"We'll break him or kill him."

"Break him. I know you can." "You're not Konrad's immediate superior ? "

"No. Do I need to look him up too? "

"You'd better. He's supposed to be your top guy, deputy commander, office on your floor."

"Send doc.u.mentation."

Later, Akbar told Stefanich, "You're being duped. Johnson and Konrad are in the system, everything adds up, except they don't exist."

"Permission to reverse sting them?"

"With my best wishes. Bring them in, dead or alive, and I'll move you to the palace."

As the phone calls and e mails progressed, the women's ident.i.ties proved phony too. "The one from Montreal was in my office."

By early afternoon, Akbar had decided, "If Sebastian is worth all this, they're tied in tight with the underground. Announce a raid and see if they reveal location."

Chang called Mac. "The raid's phony. If you warn the believers, you could give them away."

"Call Chloe or Hannah. I'm occupied."

"Your location is a trap too, Mac."

"All right, listen, Chang. You saved our lives. But whatever you do, find Sebastian. I'll get him out or die tryin'."

Chloe answered her phone.

It was Chang. "Raid was a setup so you'd lead the GC to the underground. Abort."

"Hannah, you were right" "What? "

"Hannah was right, Chang. She suspected we were being followed. I didn't notice a thing and thought she was paranoid."

"I told you!"

"Ditch them or lead them nowhere," Chang said. "From what I can tell, the GC has no clue where the Co op is or that it's the meeting place. I gotta go. Mac is calling."

"Go, Mac."

"Question. If this is a trap, why wouldn't Peacekeepers have come back with Chloe and taken me then?"

"I don't follow."

Mac told him of her encounter with the half doyen.

"You got me. I'm still reading the back and forth between Akbar and Stefanich. Possible not everybody knows. "

"That could be."