Pavlov's Dogs (28 page)

“While we run another one up to the back of the island, all nice and quiet-like,” Julius said. “How far will we be from the quarantine area? And the underground?”

“Not far, really,” Mac said, shaking his head. “We’ll have to be quiet about it, because the island isn’t that big. If the security team gets an inkling that they’re shooting at the wrong thing, it won’t take them long to get turned around and aimed at something else.”

“We’re going to need guns,” Ken said. “And ammo. And gas.”

Mac laughed and slapped Ken’s shoulder. “Those are just the little details. The big picture stuff, like two boats? That’s what we need to focus on now.”

Julius stood. “All right, commandos. I’m going to take one of the men from upstairs and get some wiring from next door before it gets too late and too dark.”

Kelly watched the older man amble away. “He really is a genius. Too bad about his shop, though.”

Ken laughed. “Are you kidding? If the end of the world hadn’t come along, he might have lost everything. He’s too old to start over.”

“Let me see that map,” Mac said. He took the folded-up paper from Ken’s outstretched hand, then walked over and smoothed it out on the workbench. He rummaged around in the bins for a moment, then came back with four nails. With a hammer, Mac fastened the map to the workbench.

“Marker,” he said.

Once Ken passed that over, too, Mac had the cap in his teeth and was drawing a shape on the workbench. “This is the island. We can plan our assault like so...”

He squinted. The marker stopped moving.

“Well. There is one thing we probably have to handle first...”

“WE SHOULD NOT be doing this,” Lucy said. She was very aware of Jaden’s presence at her back. Her eyes flicked to his reflection in the monitor in front of her, where he was staring right back. “If I get caught...”

“You’re doing it for a good cause,” Jaden said.

“This is blackmail,” Pat chimed in. He was tied to a chair, and as Jaden turned to face him, Pat’s eyes went right to the 9mm in the security chief’s hand.

“Pat,” Jaden said in a soft voice, yet it carried to both of the IT techs. “She’s doing this to help
you
. Remember when I said I would figure out who was stealing the morphine?”

Pat nodded, his sweaty bangs falling down over the pale skin of his face. Jaden reached out and brushed the hair aside with the barrel of the gun.

“Imagine my surprise, the day we relaxed the guard on the med tent, when IT Pat comes slinking in, looking for a fix. Now, I’m not going to judge you. The end of the world as we know it has put a strain on all of us. But there are people who need that morphine. So, Lucy here is going to do whatever I ask her to. Lord knows why, but she’s sweet on you. She doesn’t want to give me any reason to put you in a condition where you’ll
need
the morphine, Pat, which is the only way you’re going to get it. Do I make myself clear?”

Shaking and sweating, Pat nodded.

“Good. Have you found anything yet, Lucy?”

Her fingers clacked on the keyboard. “Not yet. The encryption is one thing. Whatever’s encrypted, we can get right past that. But the Command server, it’s just not on this network.” She moved her mouse around, clicking from box to box. “It’s not on any network I’m connected to.”

“Are you connected to all of them?”

She rounded on him. “Duh.”

“Lucy...” Pat said.

Turning back to the monitor, she blew out a breath of air, resolving to get better taste in men. “I’m going to need a drink if... hold on. There’s something. Huh.”

Jaden went to one knee next to her. “What’d you find?”

“Well there’s one computer that’s on the regular island network, and the MAC address matches our files for Dr. Crispin’s personal tower. But it’s not in his office; there’s only one computer in there, and it’s this one.” She pointed to a listing on the screen. “So, unless this is in his living quarters...”

“Check it,” Jaden said.

Lucy tossed her mane of dark hair and cracked her knuckles. “I need some Mountain Dew. And some Jack to drown it in.”

She clicked on the icon for the lone computer, and a prompt came up for a username and password. “Of course,” she said, reaching into her shirt pocket for a small flash drive. It was black with a yellow skull-and-crossbones motif. “A WPA key has a forty-eight bit initialization vector key. That makes a possible five hundred trillion combinations, did you know that?”

“Yes,” Pat said, rather sullenly.

Jaden ignored him. “So what does that mean to me?”

Pat’s head came up. “It’ll take hours for any hacker tool to eat through that kind of encryption. You get that, cop? You’re going to be in here with us for hours. Someone is going to notice me and Lucy aren’t around.”

Jaden smiled, showing a mouthful of teeth, and Pat decided he probably should have just kept quiet.

“When they come looking, little junkie, you want to be the one who explains what’s going on here? I don’t have as much a problem with it as you might think.”

“Shut
up
, Pat,” Lucy said. The computer pinged, and she clapped her hands. “We’re in!”

“Hours,” Jaden said.

Pat looked confused. “How did you...?”

Lucy petted the thumb drive sticking out of the computer. “This little baby is what got me noticed in the first place. I knew when I wrote it, it would either get me into college or jail.”

Jaden leaned forward. “What’s on the computer?”

She wrinkled her nose. “Looks like this was his entertainment center for when he was working. It’s full of old-man music. London Symphony Orchestra, Govi, Al Di Meola. What is this stuff?”

She clicked on a file called “Race with Devil on Spanish Highway,” and cringed at the sounds of an entire band playing something at breakneck speed, instruments playing notes together that sounded almost impossible to her Top 40-trained ears.

“Old man music,” Jaden said. “What else?”

“It’ll take a while to sort through everything,” Lucy replied. “The computer has a single five-hundred-gig drive; that’s a lot of files to sift through by hand. What are we even looking for?”

Jaden paced, hands behind his back, the 9mm still clenched in his fist. He wasn’t easily rattled, but tech bullshit got right under his skin. His first reaction was usually to see how much a computer liked a bullet through the CPU.

“I can narrow the search by excluding music files,” she said.

“Do that. I’ll be right back. You two stay in here. Do
not
fuck with me on this.”

He walked out of the room swiftly, and the IT people exchanged looks. Pat opened his mouth to speak, but Lucy put her hand up.

“Just... save it.”

’

Jaden slipped his 9mm into its holster as he walked to the IT center. Pat might have been a junkie, but he was right. Sooner or later, they would be missed. He had to defuse the situation before it became an issue.

He opened the door to the IT lab, and Carmen, the department head, looked up from a circuit board she was soldering. Her light-brown hair had started to go grey over the past month, and he idly wondered if it was because she had run out of dye.

“Mr. Jaden! What brings you around these parts?”

He cleared his throat. “I just wanted you to know, I’ve enlisted the assistance of Pat and Lucy in a sensitive matter.”

Carmen’s dark eyes widened. “Is that so? May I ask what it is?”

Jaden made a face and put his hands on his hips. “Well, I suppose you might hear something about it eventually. They do, after all, work for you.” He looked around the room, drumming his fingers on his belt. “Where’s the other Lucy?”

“Oh, her. She’s out with the maintenance crew, lending a hand with something Dr. Donovan wanted set up. I don’t even know
what
, but I know she’s terminating fiber optic connections for a batch of video feeds.”

Nodding, Jaden cleared his throat again. “Well, make sure this conversation stays between us. And if Lucy gets to wondering where her co-workers are—”

“Don’t worry,” Carmen said. “They’re running errands for me.”

“Excellent. Here’s the thing: we’ve been receiving a series of encrypted communications over the radio. None of the comms guys are cryptanalysts, but Winchester suggested to me that Lucy was good at that kind of thing.”

“Very good,” Carmen cut in, nodding.

“Well, she’s working on it. Pat’s helping her.”

Carmen snorted. “Whatever Pat’s doing, he isn’t
helping
. But,” she put her hands up, “if she wants him there, I’m not going to argue. Keeps him out of my hair.”

Jaden smiled. “Thank you.” He had more to say, but was cut off by the blaring PA system.

“
Jaden to Radio. Mr. Jaden, report to Radio.”

Carmen put her finger to her lips. “Maybe more coded stuff?”

“Maybe,” Jaden said, leaving the IT lab. He had no earthly idea what it was, but it couldn’t be good. He broke into a jog and was at the Communications door in minutes.

“What is it?” he asked Winchester.

The comms man turned, an odd look on his face. He held up a headset. “It’s Alpha McLoughlin, sir. It’s for you.”

’

“Is he ever coming back?” Pat said. As if in response, the door opened and Jaden strode in.

“Any luck?” he asked.

“Lots,” Lucy said, turning the monitor so he could see. “It looks like Crispy kept a video log. The files go back years and years.”

Jaden looked at the screen. “All I have to do to get these to work is double-click on them?”

“Yes.”

He tilted his head at the door. “Get out. Take Pat with you. Say nothing.” To punctuate this last point, he put the 9mm on the desk next to the keyboard.

“We are so gone,” Pat said as Lucy untied him. They left the room, closing the door behind them. Jaden got up and locked it, then sat before the computer and put on a pair of headphones.

He clicked the first video. It was old, old enough that Crispin still had color in his hair.

Have I known him that long?

“
Great strides in the experiment,”
Crispin was saying
. “I had some interaction today with them. They call me Master, but... I feel like their father—”

Stopping the video, Jaden clenched his teeth and went to the top of the screen, reversing the sorting order. The newest video was now on top, and the cursor hovered over the file for a moment. The date stamp was the day of Crispin’s murder.

Jaden clicked on it and sat back.

An image of Crispin appeared, his hair now totally grey.
“Picking up from an hour ago. Where was I? I think... yes. I refused to believe it at first, but I believe it is finally time to come clean. With my first son, I have made a mistake. The obedience training focused too heavily on negative reinforcement. With the others, that worked fine. But he’s not like them. Theta Kaiser—excuse me—Epsilon Kaiser’s only reward system is pain. He is an aberration, and I don’t know what to do with him now. Especially
now
, when the whole world has changed.

“
I must say, however, that Alpha McLoughlin has risen to the challenge estimably. I bred the Dogs to be man’s protectors, but McLoughlin... he has turned out to be man’s best—”

Jaden almost flinched when someone knocked on the door. He blew out a breath, realizing the knock had come from the video. Onscreen, Crispin spun his chair around, asking who was there. A man’s voice answered.

Switching from the chair in front of his private tower to the chair at the Command console, Crispin hit the door release so the door would open.

Grimacing, Jaden had already guessed who would be standing there, in this video created the day the project director died.

’

Donovan stood in Command, clutching the sides of his head. He was surrounded by piles of manuals, the shelves on the wall almost totally empty.

“That code is somewhere,” Donovan said to the empty room. “I know you’re in here. You have to be in here somewhere, and I will find you, Mr. Terminate.”

He turned and poured coffee into a white mug he’d found in Crispin’s locker. It said WORLD’S BEST DAD. Donovan made a face. Crispin had never mentioned any children.

After downing the coffee, Donovan slammed the mug on the counter. As he did so, a smudge on the inside cover of a manual caught his eye.

Smudges mean use
, he thought.

He squinted and picked up the book.

KEN LOOKED AT THE TOP of Mac’s now-shaved head, squinting. “So the first part of this here brain surgery, where we remove a delicate microchip thingy from inside your skull, involves a
chainsaw?
”

Julius shrugged, tightening the screws on the improvised head brace. “It’s his skull. He ought to know.”

The pastor, in the corner of the workshop, sat on an overturned milk crate, praying.