A Murder of Crows (14 page)

Hicks opened Scott’s tactical screen on OMNI. He wasn’t surprised to see his team had already directed the OMNI satellite to begin a detailed scan of the Weehawken building. Scott and his Varsity boys loved kicking in doors, but they weren’t cowboys. They never went through a door without knowing as much about what was on the other side as they could.

If Hicks had only followed their lead in Philly, none of this would be happening now.

He cut the regret short. He forgot about what could have been and worked the current problem instead.

Scott’s thermal scan of the building showed it looked like an old warehouse because the readings on the top three floors of the building read black. No thermal signature at all, except from security cameras mounted on the roof to look down at the area below. It was an odd precaution for a building with three abandoned top floors.

Hicks began a frequency scan of the building, directing
OMNI to filter out all of the usual noise from cell phones and Wi-Fi networks. He wanted it to focus on encrypted signals instead. The scan uncovered a weak signal pulsing far below all the others.

Hicks had OMNI lock on the signal, amplify and identify it. It was a double-encrypted internal network running throughout the building. It had been mask to read like a domestic network any small business might run. No household Wi-Fi setup was this tough to crack.

In seconds, OMNI identified the network as part of the same elaborate, secure system the NSA had used in other installations. And since OMNI could identify the signal, it could find a way through the firewalls and other measures.

Within minutes, OMNI had gained access to the warehouse network’s main hub. He was able to get into the building’s computer network infrastructure. He was surprised to find each part of the network had been clearly labeled: email servers, phone servers, and security cameras. It was a typical government operation. Hicks loved bureaucratic predictability.

He ignored the facility’s emails and communications servers. He focused on the security cameras. Three floors appeared to be covered by an internal network. He began on the first floor and opened six camera feeds at a time on his monitor. He carefully eyeballed each one. He could have assigned OMNI to automatically identify Roger’s face on the feeds, but it would take more load time and analysis than Roger might have.

The first floor cameras covered what appeared to be storage areas and loading bays. Hicks counted seven armed men milling around the loading bays. He counted five vehicles, including the white van from earlier that morning.

No sign of Roger.

Hicks checked the directory again and saw one set of cameras was listed as L2. He opened those feeds next and saw those were the cameras located in the sub-basement.

The color images showed a dank basement where rows of fluorescent lights had been hung to give the hallways some illumination. A quick check of the camera feeds showed all the hallways were empty.

He switched to the feed labeled COMROOM and saw a room filled with advanced portable communications gear and a bank of desktops. It looked like a dressed down version of NASA’s mission control room. Two agents were clicking away at keyboards. One was sipping coffee.

Hicks knew the equipment was too elaborate to have been set up overnight. Stephens and his people had been working out of this building for a while.

He struck gold when he opened the next six camera feeds. The feed from the camera labeled L207 showed Roger Cobb sitting in a steel chair at a steel table in the center of a gray cinderblock room.

A one-way mirror made little effort to hide it was there for observation purposes. Hicks searched the server for a camera in the observation room, but came up empty. All he found was a camera filming Roger through the one-way mirror.

Someone didn’t want a record of whatever happened in there. Hicks understood why. He had never allowed cameras in any of his control rooms, either.

He went back to the feed from the camera in the upper corner of the interrogation room and analyzed the scene. Roger’s right hand was handcuffed by a long chain cuffed to a thick bar installed along the edge of the table. It was similar to the chain prison guards used while transporting prisoners. The same kind of shackle they’d used to bring Bajjah up to the roof earlier that morning.

Using such a long shackle was a standard interrogation move. It gave the subject the illusion of freedom during an interrogation. It was also Stephens’ first mistake. The chain was too long and Roger was ambidextrous. If someone got too close, he could use the chain to break someone’s arm or snap someone’s neck. Hicks hoped it wouldn’t come to that.

Roger didn’t look tense or nervous. He looked as passive and unassuming as he always did. He was fair-haired and small. His expression as inscrutable as it was blank. His eyes alert, but unfocused. He was like a blank canvas, but Hicks knew he was storing energy for whatever happened next.

Hicks caught movement at the bottom of the frame. Roger was drumming his fingers on the tabletop. It looked like mindless tapping of a song in his head, but Hicks saw it for what it was.

Morse code.

Morse code might have been a relic from the old days, but Roger had always been a history buff. The code was as effective now as it ever had been, which was why the Dean had insisted all Assets and Faculty members knew how to use it before going in the field.

Hicks zoomed in on his fingers, pulled over a pad and pen and began writing down the letters Roger tapped out on the table with his fingers. He knew Jason, the Dean and Scott also had access to his feed. They were watching this right now and probably doing the same thing. He was sure Scott was following the events as they happened. He wouldn’t have been surprised if Jason emailed him to complain about Hicks focusing on Roger’s twitchy fingers.

Hicks caught the tap in mid-code, but kept writing until Roger repeated the pattern. When he looked at the letters he’d written down, he saw a clear message:

GRABBED THREE BLOCKS FROM CLUB. BASTARDS WERE WAITING. COVERED MY HEAD IN VAN. THINK AM IN JERSEY. THINK ITS CIA. NOT HURT YET.

Hicks zoomed back out to get a full picture of the room. His desk phone buzzed and he saw it was Jason. “I see what you’re looking at but I don’t know Morse code. What does it say?”

Hicks told him.

“Good work,” Jason said. “I’m glad you were able to decipher it. Let’s hope our friends at the CIA don’t catch on.”

“They were smart enough to know where to grab him, so they’re smart enough to see he’s tapping in code.” Hicks didn’t know how they’d known where to grab him, but he’d worry about that later. “Let’s hope they’re not expecting anyone to hack their system.”

Hicks checked OMNI’s tactical screen on his other monitor and saw Scott and his team were about ten minutes out from Weehawken. The situation could go hot if Stephens tried hurting Roger. He wanted the Dean’s approval before ordering Scott’s men to hit the building.

He asked Jason, “Where is the Dean?”

“I haven’t heard from him in hours,” Jason admitted. “I’m worried. It’s not like him to disappear in a crisis.”

“He responded to my alert two hours ago. Try locating him on OMNI.”

“I already tried,” Jason said, “but no luck. Not even a blip anywhere on the system. Given what’s happened with you and Roger, we have to consider he’s been compromised in some way.”

Hicks couldn’t afford to consider that. Losing Roger was bad enough, but if Stephens had the Dean, things would go from worse to the unthinkable.

Hicks shut his eyes and focused on his controlling his breathing, allowing all of the new facts to settle in his mind like snow on the ground.

Speed kills. So does inaction. Find balance. Work the problem. The solution will present itself.

Roger had been captured. The Dean was out of commission. Stephens had tried to grab him on the street. The Beekeeper and his people had been racking up points before Hicks had even known there was a game.

He opened his eyes.

Time to take back some momentum. To Jason, “We’re going to do this without the Dean.”

“Wait a minute. Let’s not do anything rash. We don’t have the authority to act on his behalf.”

“I’ve got all the authority I need. One of our people is being held by the best Beekeeper in the DIA, and I’ve got a Varsity squad approaching five minutes away. I need to stop this thing before people get killed and the only person who can help me is you. If you want to argue about procedures, we can do that later, but for now, we need to act.”

Jason surprised him by responding quickly. “Fine. What do you want me to do?”

“I need you to access the Dean’s Black Book. Don’t tell me you can’t because I know goddamned well you can. Call some of his contacts at Langley who have the juice to cut Roger loose. You were his Dutchman for over two years, so you know who to call better than I do.”

“I’ll try,” Jason said, “but I can’t guarantee they’ll take the call. They never place a high priority on his calls and…”

“Just figure out a way to get someone on the line. Tell them it’s about the Bajjah op they bungled. That ought to get their attention. Get them to pick up the phone and I’ll take it from there.”

Jason hesitated. “I’ll see what I can do, but you’ve got to keep Scott from barging in there and causing a massacre. If people start shooting, I won’t be able to do anything.”

Hicks checked Scott’s tactical screen again. His team was about five minutes away from the facility. “I’m more worried about Roger.”

“Don’t be,” Jason said. “Stephens is a professional, remember? I doubt he’ll hurt Roger so soon in the interrogation process.”

“I’m not worried about that. I’m worried about Roger hurting Stephens. Get someone on the line for me. You have five minutes.”

O
N HIS
monitor, Hicks watched the door next to the observation mirror open and Mark Stephens walked into the interrogation room. Alone.

Now that they weren’t threatening to shoot each other, Hicks got a better look at the DIA’s best Beekeeper. He wore a black t-shirt and black cargo pants. His build was slightly more muscular than lean. His smooth head gleamed in the stark light of the interrogation room. He was darker skinned than Hicks had remembered from the street and didn’t have a goatee. He didn’t need one. Deep-set eyes and angular cheekbones made him look intimidating enough.

Hicks saw the psychological lines Stephens was already drawing as he entered the cell. The holster clipped on the left side of his belt was empty. He could have unclipped it with his gun and left it in the other room, but hadn’t. He’d moved it around from the back of his belt to the side so Roger could see it was empty. He wanted Roger to see he could have been armed, but had chosen not to be. Force perceived was force achieved.

Stephens also chose to lean against the wall instead of taking a seat at the table. This implied freedom of movement on his part, and therefore his power over Roger, who was chained to the table.

These were subtleties meant to influence the subject. Stephens clearly didn’t know Roger Cobb.

Roger hadn’t moved when Stephens entered his cell. Even his fingers had stopped in mid-tap, but his shackled arm remained outstretched on the table. There was plenty of slack to the chain.

“Hello again,” Stephens began. “Things were too chaotic back on the street for you and me to have a formal introduction. How about you show some good faith by giving us your name?”