DEAD BEEF (Our Cyber World Book 1) (19 page)

“You do that,” Ochoa said. “I’m going in.” Just like that he sped up the trail at an even faster rate.

Beloski considered his options. Immediately he decided being alone didn’t seem like a good idea. His best chance was to stay with Ochoa. He took a deep breath and ran as hard as he could.

Though his heart wanted to explode out of his chest, either through a pure adrenalin rush or because Ochoa was cautiously slowing down, or both of the above, Beloski started to catch up. He was beginning to feel relief at gaining on Ochoa when he felt a sharp blow on his right hand. He dropped the gun, and something wrapped around his neck and dropped him to the ground.

“Ochoa!” a woman’s voice shouted in his ear. “Halt now or die!”

Ochoa stopped, spun and dropped to one knee, pointing the gun right at Beloski.

“Drop it now! Now!” the woman’s voice shouted in Beloski’s ear. “Drop it or I swear I will spray you down! And then I will kill this piece of trash here!”

Ochoa seemed to hesitate.

“Please,” Beloski heard himself say. “Don’t.”

“Oh, God, Ochoa! Just do it now before Stan goes number 2 on me!”

Even this far out, Beloski could see Ochoa’s face twitch with anger. “Cynthia! What the hell are you doing!” Ochoa shouted.

“Killing you in five seconds if you don’t drop your weapon! That’s what I’m doing!” she shouted. “I can put five rounds in the air for your one!”

“OK, OK,” Ochoa said.

“Toss it in the forest.”

Ochoa did.

“On the ground! Flat on the ground! Now!”

Ochoa complied.

“OK, Stan,” she whispered now. “On your feet. It’s going to be OK.”

“OK,” he whimpered.

They both stood up and Cynthia released her choke hold.

“God, I think you broke my wrist,” Stan said.

“Walk,” she said.

Beloski felt the steel of a gun against his back, and yet she walked behind him, just to his right, with a machine gun fixed on Ochoa.

“Stop,” she said when they were about 20 feet from Ochoa. “OK, fellas,” she said, stepping away from Beloski and taking a step into the forest. Cynthia kept her handgun fixed on Beloski and the machine gun on Ochoa. “I would spend a few minutes here saying how utterly pathetic this little operation of yours is, but I’m on a tight schedule. State your intentions, Agent Ochoa.”

“We’re here for S0 on Martin Spencer.”

“Do you expect me to fall for that?”

“Stan, you saw the text,” Ochoa said, calmly.

“Is that true, Stan?” Cynthia said.

“Yes.”

“Don’t lie to me, Stan. A 22 caliber round in a knee cap is not a pleasant thing.”

“Oh, Jesus!” Stan said, falling on his knees. “Please, it’s true!”

“Thank you for being so forthcoming, Stan,” Cynthia said. “We’re making progress. Now, here’s the deal.” She crouched down to be closer at eye level with Ochoa and lowered her handgun. “I have Martin up there, four Mexican Mafia corpses, and the one and only Sasha Javan. Yes, she has reappeared. Unfortunately, she’s shot-up and lost a great deal of blood, with more trickling away. She needs medical attention. I was on my way to get it, and now I’m all tied up with you two, losing valuable time. My best option seems to be to shoot you both and keep running, but if you have any alternative ideas—”

Beloski shouted. “Hey, Rod, you were a medic in the Navy, right? You told me so on the flight to San Jose!”

“Yes, I was, Stan,” Ochoa replied.

“Stan. 22 caliber and knee caps, remember?” she said.

“I’m not BS’ing you. It’s true!”

Turning her attention to Ochoa she said, “I thought you were a Seal.”

“I went in as a medic. I actually tried medical school, dropped out of residency at UCLA. Couldn’t cut it.”

“And now you have a career chasing hackers and lying down on dusty trails in the Sierras,” she said. “Should have studied harder.”

“Look,” Ochoa said. “If she’s bleeding out, you’re killing her, right now, wasting time insulting us, when I could be patching her up. I’m here on S0 duty for Martin, and I can help Ms. Javan. It’s a no brainer.”

“Good job on staying calm and being persuasive,” Cynthia said. “On your feet, sailor. Ever so slowly, please.”

Ochoa stood up and held his hands up.

“Excellent. Turn one-eighty, walk ten paces, stop.”

Ochoa did as he was told.

“Stan, go join him please.”

Beloski walked up trail and stood next to Ochoa. There was a pause during which Beloski heard her moving.

“OK, got your guns. Let’s walk up, smartly. We’re about 10 minutes from our location.” They started walking, and behind them she was saying, “Please start reviewing your training on thru-and-thru abdominal wounds, Agent Ochoa. It will serve you well once we get there.”

Ochoa looked up after examining Sasha. By now she was awake and groggy. Cynthia watched on, beginning to despair.

“It doesn’t look too bad,” Ochoa said. “I think you guys did good to stop the bleeding, and the wound is clean so far. The bump on her head is no big deal, though in a hospital I’d test for concussion. But judging from her skin color, she’s pretty low on hemoglobin. She needs a transfusion. Tonight.”

“Do you think she’s stable enough to make it down the hill?” Cynthia asked.

“Nah, she’ll bleed out,” Ochoa said.

“Martin, what’s happening?” Sasha asked.

“It’s OK,” Martin said. “Just take it easy and rest up.”

Cynthia watched Martin caress Sasha’s forehead and felt a strange mix of resentfulness and compassion.

“What do you recommend?” Cynthia asked, looking back at Ochoa.

“I recommend we focus on the mission,” Ochoa said.

“Which is?” Cynthia asked.

“Keeping Martin alive and operational,” Ochoa said. “S0. Shield and protect.”

“We can’t just let her die,” Stan said.

“She’s not the mission,” Ochoa replied.

“Please, Ochoa,” Cynthia said. “Must you do the robot impression? Think a little. Outside the box, preferably. Can you do that? Formulate a self-generated thought, just this once? Your country needs it.”

“I know why I’m here, and she’s not it. I showed you my cell phone when we got here. Did you see a #3 on it?” Ochoa stood up. “That’s right, there is no #3. And like I explained to Stan just yesterday, I’m not here for the technology, whatever it is you all have been cooking up all these years. My mission is about safeguarding a person, and that’s what I’m going to do.”

“Come on, Rod,” Beloski said. “That makes no sense. Why have you been ordered to safeguard that person? Why does Martin need to keep living and operating? That’s the point!”

“I’m not paid to think,” Ochoa said. “If I think enough to question my orders, I die, and so do my quarries. Cynthia, you should know that better than anyone in this room.”

This guy was incredible, Cynthia thought. She should have shot him, let Stan pee in his pants and kept running down the hill. Well, at least Ochoa had confirmed Sasha was stable, for now.

Cynthia took a deep breath and said, “What do you recommend, Agent Ochoa?”

Ochoa looked around. “This looks like a good place for the time being. It looks like we have connectivity, so Martin can do his work from here. As for Sasha, taking her down or bringing someone up will raise flags, put more of a target on us. I think she has a good chance of making it. Now, if anyone here is type O negative, we can figure out a way to do a direct transfusion.”

Cynthia shook her head. “I’m not.”

“Me neither,” Martin said.

Stan shrugged. “I don’t know what I am.”

“And I’m not,” Ochoa said. “Since we have no way to test Stan’s blood type here, we’re O for 4 on that course of action. That leaves me with status quo. Back to focusing on my mission.”

“Everyone listen up!” Martin shouted at the top of his lungs.

Sasha moaned. “What’s going on, Martin?” she asked.

Martin caressed her face until she calmed down.

In a lower voice, he added, “I’m not doing a damn thing for this country or any other unless you, Agent Ochoa, make every effort to save this woman’s life. I will sit on my hacker ass until the world comes crashing down on all of us, and you can be sure that it will. If you think L.A. blacking out is a scary prospect, you lack imagination in a desperately pathetic way.”

Martin stepped up. “And I swear, I’ll let it happen and watch it like it was my favorite Sunday NFL game. That would make your mission moot, null and void. Pointless. Vanity. A chasing after the wind. So if I were you, I’d start making a direct, straight line connection from this woman’s life to your precious mission.”

Ochoa regarded Martin for one long moment. He wiped his forehead and said, “There’s is one other possibility. I could probably get a drop in here within the hour.”

“Tell us more,” Cynthia said.

“Is there an open spot around here?” Ochoa asked, looking at Martin. “A place where we could land a helo, or bring down a package?”

Martin shook his head. “No place to land.” He was thinking, Cynthia could tell, though he was also grimacing. “Only place to make a drop is at the fire lookout, where the cameras are mounted. It has a high rock wall, fully exposed, 360 degrees. A helicopter could approach and tether-drop a package.”

“OK,” Ochoa said. “Can we get GPS coordinates?”

“Stan, you see that computer there?” Martin said. “Bring up Google maps and type, Mono-Mammoth fire lookout.”

Stan went over to the computer controlling the video monitors, brought up a browser on the main screen. “I got it. Here are the GPS coordinates.”

Ochoa looked at Cynthia. “I can make the call right now.”

“Your decision, Martin,” Cynthia said. “Chance of saving Sasha, yes, but also a chance Ochoa will drop a recovery team on us.”

“I’ll play it,” Martin said, standing up and pointing at Ochoa. “OK, make your call, ask for more O negative blood than Sasha needs, just in case, and any medical supplies you deem necessary.”

Martin walked over to the counter where weapons recovered from the intruders neatly lined up. He took a small sub-machine gun, checked it was fully loaded, slung it across his neck and added, “I’ll go and take the drop.”

“Is that a good idea, Martin?” Cynthia asked. “I can do it.”

“No way. You need to stay here and watch these two. If I stay, there’s no guarantee they’ll waltz me down the hill to make sure their sacrosanct S0 state is satisfied. If you go up there and take the drop, there’s no guarantee they won’t gun you down from the helo and drop a team on us.”

Martin pointed at Ochoa then at Beloski. “And if we send either of these two, assuming Stan could even get up there and not fly off the cliff or pee his pants in the process, ditto. A team could drop in on us, whisking me away to preserve their mission, and Sasha is left hanging.

“Now, if I’m up there,” Martin added, “that’s a different ball game. First of all I know the way, and I know what it takes to get up there. Did it just this morning. Second, I’m the mission, so they won’t shoot me. But you better believe that if I see just one SOB coming down that rope, I’ll splash him, and blow that helo out the sky while I’m at it.”

Martin walked over to Ochoa and pointed the gun at him. “In your call, let them also know that any tricks involving blowing propeller wind onto the target will blow me clear off the rock face. There’s only about 2 feet of usable standing space up there, and any gust can blow me off clear to Mono Lake. Am I crystal?”

“Clear,” Ochoa said.

Martin backed away from Ochoa, lowered the gun and walked over to Stan. “Take camera 4 and swing it left, about 90 degrees.” He walked Stan through the commands and clicks, and one of the screens showed an update in the video feed for camera 4. “Good, stop it there. Zoom in. Good.”

Martin turned to Ochoa and pointed at the monitor. “For the sake of illustration, Agent Ochoa, that’s the platform where we’ll take the drop. Does the visual help convey my point?”

Cynthia also walked over to take a closer look.

“Oh, God,” Stan said. He was swinging camera 3, at a wider angle, to get a better view of the whole thing. “Jesus, Martin. Are you sure?” he added.