Cutting Loose (13 page)

“That's a very recent development,” Gabriel said. “Dr. Mila Yanukovich, one of Russia's and the world's leading nuclear scientists, has been secretly going in and out of Iran for the last two years. We have documented—or rather we
had
documented proof of her involvement in the Iranians' successful conversion of yellowcake into uranium hexafluoride gas, and in the sale of a dozen centrifuges for their underground enrichment plant in Natanz, south of Tehran. Unfortunately, the data was compromised. It disappeared in transit, and even though it was recovered, we don't know who all else might have it now.”

“Wasn't it encrypted?”

“Yes, but the encryption key was also lost in transit, which has started a feeding frenzy. All the sharks are in the water on this, everybody putting their resources into finding it, including our government, the Russians, the Iranians, of course, and every major player in the international black market, including the Russian mob. The code is worth millions of dollars, but its real value is as a political bargaining chip. Whoever comes up with it and decodes the documents has the potential to reshape foreign policy in half a dozen countries. And that is unacceptable. Our government
will
authorize assassination before it lets some thug dominate any kind of political arena within our sphere of influence.”

Dylan took a moment to breathe, because the kid hadn't.

“And you work for the Commerce Department?” he asked. Gabriel Shore did not sound like any Commerce guy he'd ever met.

“Yes, sir, their Security Division in the Marsh Annex.”

Well, that had to be one helluva division over there at the Marsh Annex. He needed to ask General Grant what the hell went on next to his office on the other side of the boiler room.

“And Kendryk is one of the sharks?”

“A great white.” The kid's glance strayed back to his sister. “And he's here. He entered the country three days ago with Spencer Bayonne. There's been a lot of activity up and down the Potomac and into Virginia over the last few days, a lot of those major players slipping into the country. We at Marsh think the code is going to surface, and I think Kendryk is here to claim it when it does.”

“And Bayonne? What does he do?” Dylan didn't look at Gillian, but he'd felt her reaction, felt her kick everything up a notch. He'd never asked her doctors over at Walter Reed, but he'd been wondering for a while if the drugs they'd both been given had created some sort of synergy between them. He couldn't read her mind or anything, but he could read her to a far greater extent than he could any of the guys, and they'd all been together for a very long time.

“Given the importance of the code, my guess is that Kendryk hired Bayonne specifically to retrieve it. You have to understand, a man like Kendryk has an intelligence-gathering system that exceeds most Third World countries' abilities, and in some areas, his network can almost rival our own.”

“And where are Kendryk and Bayonne now?”

“New York.”

“I think we need to take a look at your files,” Dylan said. “Unfortunately, I don't think we've got a piece of hardware that can accommodate your—”

“Yes, we do,” Gillian said, and Dylan gave her a curious glance, a damned curious glance.

“Good.”
Jesus
. He always thought he should spend more time at the office, but he never did, and things happened here. Important things, and they happened a lot faster since Skeeter had taken over the place. “Then we'll—” He gestured to the main office, but Gillian interrupted again.

“It's not here, sir. It's at the Commerce City Garage, one floor up from my place.”

“Why?” he asked. Weapons, languages, tactics—those were Red Dog's areas of expertise, not computer systems.

“Hacker International took over the third floor a couple of months ago. I think you were in Singapore at the time. Cherie and Danny are working out of there, until they can get into their new office space,” she said. “Hopefully, next week.”

“And she's got what we need?”

“Yes, sir.”

And that made perfect sense. Computers were the forte of the Bitch Musketeers, and anything advanced enough to hold Gabriel Shore's attention was guaranteed to hold Hacker's.

“You're storing a Marsh Annex DREAGAR 454 Subliminal Neuron Intel Interface in a garage?” Dr. Shore looked highly skeptical and more than a little appalled.

Kids these days, Dylan thought, and their damn Subliminal Neuron Intel Interfacers.
Jesus
. The flash drive was hanging back around Dr. Shore's neck and looked like something he could have gotten out of a cereal box.

“It's a very secure installation, Dr. Shore. The Commerce City Garage is our version of an annex,” he said, which seemed to appease the guy.

“Then we can download there and send the files over a secure line to you here at Steele Street.”

Dylan liked people who could think on their feet. They only needed one more ingredient to make the plan work.

Walking over to his door, he yelled out into the office. “Hacker! Get your butt in here.”

         

Cherie had drifted off.

She'd finished her cigarette under her desk, gotten back in her chair to think about the best way to approach Dylan—and she'd drifted into dreamland, where there was this guy who looked like Henry Stiner, surfing on the ocean, and her on the beach, waving at him, but he never got any closer. He just kept surfing, out on the ocean, and never came in to the shore, and then he yelled at her.

“Hacker!”

Her eyes came open, and for a moment, she was disorientated.

“Get your butt in here.”

That was not Henry Stiner. That was Dylan Hart, and he wanted her butt in the lair. She was not in Cabo San Lucas, standing on a beach. She was at Steele Street.

She blinked behind her sunglasses and carefully lifted her feet off the windowsill and put them solidly on the floor.

“Have you been smoking in my office?” he yelled again.

“No, sir.” She took a breath. Champagne, all-nighter, too many cigarettes, not much food, less sleep, about—she glanced at her desk clock. Oh, she'd nodded off for about fifteen minutes, just enough to really screw her up.

And the boss was yelling at her.

She took a breath, and then another, and gave herself a small shake to make sure she was awake, before she rose to her feet. She couldn't possibly be in trouble. She'd just saved everybody's ass by getting the Bazo up and running.

Yawning, she crossed the main office and headed into Dylan's private office. She was still yawning when she passed through the door. This was torture. Dylan only had one chair in his office, and it was his.

“Hey, Gill-ian,” she said through her yawn, noticing her friend standing next to Dylan.

So this was going to be a meeting, she thought. Well, they were going to have to move it to the main office, because no way was she going to stand there, swaying on her feet, teetering on her heels, and hanging by a thread while Dylan went on about whatever. She started to tell him, but he spoke first.

“Hacker.” He gestured to his left, and Cherie's gaze followed—and froze, her pulse taking a sudden leap, her attention riveted by an exquisitely delicate piece of electronic gear hanging by a black lanyard against a backdrop of starched white cotton.

“A Marsh Annex DREAGAR 454 Subliminal Neuron Intel Interface.” She breathed the words, transfixed by its multifaceted shell and microscopically applied metallic fluoride coating. The small polyhedron caught the light with every breath its owner took, glinting purple and blue and yellow.

“Exactly.”

Dylan sounded so far away.

“Cherie,” Gillian said off to her left. “If you'll lift your gaze about eighteen inches, I'd like to introduce you to my brother Gabriel.”

That's right. Gillian's brother was visiting this morning, the pencil-pushing geekazoid from Washington, D.C. She lifted her gaze the proscribed eighteen inches—and her pulse took another, much more erratic leap.

Gabriel, an auburn-haired Archangel with his very own DREAGAR 454, who dressed like the Men in Black. He looked like Red Dog, except bigger, with more angles than curves, higher cheekbones, a narrower gaze, and the hint of a dimple. His hair stood a little on end, as if he'd dragged his hands through it a few times on the flight to Denver. His tie was loose, one of his shirt buttons undone, and he was cute, very cute, startlingly so for a geek.

“Cherie,” she said, holding her hand out. “Hacker.”

“Gabriel,” he replied, taking her hand. “Shore.”

“That's a DREAGAR 454 flash drive.” She shook his hand.

“Yes.”

“From the Marsh Annex.”

“Yes.”

“I was there in April, a couple of months ago,” she said.

“I didn't see you.”

“Rhonda Blake showed me around, at General Grant's request.” His grip on her was very solid, and warm, and they were still shaking hands.

“Oh, you're the…uh…the, uh—”

“The CEO of Hacker International. We're going to be supplying your 2Z8s for the DREAGAR.”

“The, uh, girl with the shoes.”

Cherie smiled, surprised and delighted by the designation. “Yes.”

“Rhonda really liked your shoes.” He was still shaking her hand.

“My Michel-Leon's.”

“She said they were orange.”

“Persimmon.”

“High heels with shoestrings.”

“Silver braided rope.”

“And clunky heels.”

“Patent leather stacks.”

“And, uh, holes in the sides.”

“Teardrop cut-outs.”

“Yeah,” he said, a shy smile curving his mouth. “That's what she said.”

Cherie couldn't stop shaking his hand, and she couldn't stop smiling, and yet everything was shifting inside her, like psychic tectonic plates. She could see big chunks of her life sliding about, making room, and he was smiling, too, and still shaking her hand, and he was so incredibly damn cute, and he was Red Dog's little brother.

         

From where he stood next to the two of them, Dylan checked his watch, wanting to record for posterity the moment he'd first seen the opening moves of the genius-level computer geeks' mating ritual.

It was an awkward thing, with a lot of handshaking involved, and it explained why there weren't more genius-level computer geeks to go around. With an opener like the one he was observing, he couldn't imagine that they got to the reproductive stage of the game all that often.

He glanced at Gillian, who cocked an eyebrow in his direction. Yeah, she was thinking the same thing.

“Well,” he said, “with the introductions out of the way, may we continue here.”

Two people turned their heads to look at him, but curiously, they did not let go of each other's hands.

“Hacker, I need you to take Dr. Shore to Commerce City and give him complete access to whatever it is you've got in the garage as it pertains to the DREAGAR 454.”

He didn't get any response, and for a moment he wondered if she'd been mesmerized by Dr. Shore, or if she'd fallen back asleep behind her sunglasses.

“You mean my DREAGAR 454 hard drive?” she finally said.

Yes, he supposed that was what he meant, unless she had a DREAGAR 454 ice-cream machine, or a DREAGAR 454 boom box she was keeping up in Commerce City.

“Yes,” he said.

“Uh…yes, sir,” she said. “I'll be…uh, happy to do that.”

Good. He liked his people happy, even if they didn't have any more sense than to stay out all night. He shifted his attention to Gillian's brother.

“Dr. Shore, while you are in Denver, you are under my command. I want that clear before this goes any further.” If he'd been assigned to SDF, however temporarily, then he belonged to Dylan for the duration.

“Yes, sir,” Gabriel said—and he was still holding on to Cherie's hand.

Dylan liked the kid. He liked him a lot—just not as much as Hacker, who either didn't mind or hadn't noticed that she and Red Dog's little brother were doing some kind of hand meld.

This, Dylan decided, could easily turn out to be a very long day. He had the whole thing with Zach, and the CIA, and Albuquerque going, and no clue, really, what it was all about—a condition he wasn't going to allow to continue past the next few minutes. And now this whole Kendryk and the DREAGAR 454 situation had landed in his lap.

“Gillian, make sure he has his gun before he leaves.”

Red Dog nodded. “Would you like me to go with them?”

“No,” he said. “I need you here when the team calls. You helped plan the mission. They're going to want to talk to you.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Hacker, how long is it going to take you to set up a secure link and download the files off Dr. Shore's flash drive back to me?” he asked.

“Download?”

“Yes.” Isn't that what she did all day long? Download stuff?

“An hour, maybe…uh, two, or longer, boss,” she said. “I'll have a better idea once I get there. Maybe Dr. Shore should stay here with you, and I'll just run up to Commerce City with the DREAGAR flash drive myself.”

An hour, or two, or longer? That seemed a little vague for someone who had just jerked the Bazo into shape in record time. But she really was the expert in the room—along with Dr. Shore, of course, who gave her a curious look, very curious considering that he was still holding her hand.

“The DREAGAR 454 Subliminal Neuron Intel Interfacer doesn't go anywhere without me,” the young doctor said.

Yes. This was definitely going to be a long day.

“I agree,” he said. “Dr. Shore keeps his flash drive, and maybe he can speed up the downloading process. Then as soon as you're back, Dr. Shore and I will go over the information.”
And figure out what in the hell to do with it.