Spy Thriller: The Fourteenth Protocol: A Story of Espionage and Counter-terrorism (The Special Agent Jana Baker Book Series 1) (4 page)

William Macy looked at Johnston above the stupid glasses hanging from his nose. There was a protracted silence that felt like it went on for at least a minute. He nodded his consent, which apparently meant Cade was cleared to be on the elusive seventeenth floor.

“It’s about damn time,” said Johnston, motioning to Cade. “Williams, get your ass over here.”

Cade wasn’t used to being called by his last name, but he wasn’t about to tell Johnston that. Johnston was walking at high speed back to the work station that contained all the monitors displaying server status.

“Look,” continued Johnston, “don’t pay attention to them assholes. They don’t add up to a pile of dried grits.” Cade wasn’t so sure about that. “Take a look at these logs. The e-mail being sent across these servers can’t be stopped, understand me? We gotta figure out what in the Sam Hill is the matter. For some reason, we’re seeing a power spike every thirty-nine seconds. It’s sending the server past its max load, and it’s really starting to piss me off.”

Johnston’s description of the problem was bizarre. Cade had never seen something like this. His head swirled with questions. What would make the server load spike like that? Why was it happening every thirty-nine seconds? Who were the guys in suits, and why was one of them carrying a gun?

“Every thirty-nine seconds exactly?” Cade said.

Johnston just looked at him. “Did I stutter, boy?” Johnston gave Cade a look that reminded him of tenth grade at Chamblee High School when Mr. Butler, the vice principal, had seen Cade shove an envelope into the slot of a locker and then run off like a ten-year-old girl hyped up on sugar. Butler couldn’t decide if he wanted to laugh or resume his disciplinarian role to make Cade explain what was in that envelope. Cade was just dropping a note into a girl’s locker to tell her he liked her.

“Sorry, dumb question,” he said. “Um, sir, has this pod ever shown this type of activity? I mean, what in the world are we sending in this e-mail job?”

“We’re seein’ this type of activity repeat itself durin’ e-mail jobs about every two weeks. It cycles higher each time. And this time, it looks like it’s going to finally blow that pod apart like my daddy’s grain silo,” said Johnston, evading the question.

“Sir, I’ve never seen a pattern like this. Are you sure you want me up here? I mean, surely there’s somebody more experienced who can . . .”

Johnston cut him off. “You are who I need right now. Sit down, take a look. Be thorough. That pod can’t go down, son. It can’t.” Somewhere deep inside his southern accent was a sense of urgency far more extreme than when a normal customer’s e-mail job was having trouble. No, this was something different.

“But, sir, the redundant server will kick in if this box blows past max load. The e-mail job won’t skip a beat.”

“There is no redundant backup.”

Cade looked up at him. “That’s not possible, sir; Wright said every server would have a redundant . . .” But Johnston’s face made it clear there was no redundant server. It was as if he was saying you’re not in Kansas anymore, Toto. This was not the sixteenth floor, this was someplace different, and Cade had no idea why.

The suits turned in the opposite direction, and the argument heated. This time, over the drone of the servers, Cade couldn’t hear a word of it.

5
 

It was midafternoon and across town, Cade’s father, Cal Williams, was pulling out of Dobbins Air Force Base in Marietta. The retired Navy pilot had a lot of friends still in active service at NAS Atlanta, the naval air station, which was located smack-dab in the middle of Dobbins. Since the base was primarily for reservists, much of it only came to life on the weekends. But, with all the activity in Iraq, Afghanistan, and North Korea, there weren’t many pilots left on maneuvers inside US airspace.

Cal always found an excuse to make his way over to the naval air station. He may have been retired, but he liked staying in touch with the guys. Cade had heard him say on more than one occasion that the only time he really felt alive was when he was being flung off the deck of a carrier and headed into harm’s way. Strange to hear that from the same man who had also told Cade how glad he was to have never killed a man, not directly anyway.

Cal’s job as an Electronic Countermeasures Officer, known as ECMOs, was to run the electronic gear that jammed enemy radar and produced false radar trails, making the enemy think there were US planes in a spot where they weren’t.

Cal always had the radio in his SUV tuned to WBS, so he could hear the news.

“. . . more reports coming in to the news desk now. The death toll in that Tucson bombing has risen again. Skyrocketed, in fact . . .” There was a short period of silence. It was as if the newscaster, Mike Slayden, had dropped his script or something.

“Ah, hellooooooo,” said Cal towards the radio with a little smile, wondering why Slayden had stopped mid-sentence while on the air.

There was a shuffling, echoey noise. Slayden was speaking but was turned away from the microphone.

“. . . what do you mean? But . . . but he was fine, I just talked to him thirty minutes ago,” Slayden continued. Cal’s expression turned serious. Something was dreadfully wrong. He’d never heard anything like this out of WBS radio before. Mike Slayden was a consummate professional and had been on the air there as long as Cal could remember.

“Mike, we’re on the air,” boomed a voice from the background.

A sound reminiscent of an office chair overturning, rushed footsteps, then Slayden’s voice trailed off as it moved farther out of range of the microphone.

“He can’t be! He can’t be! It was just a flesh wound. I talked to Stephen not thirty minutes ago! The shrapnel passed right through. They gave him twelve stitches and released him. The only thing he said was bothering him was the ringing in his ears from the blast . . .”

The voice was gone. More shuffling sounds were audible, then dead air space.

After a protracted silence, a voice came on the radio and said, “Folks, if you can bear with us for a minute here, ah, we’ve had some events here, right now we’re going to go to a station break. You’re listening to Newstalk 780, WBS Radio.”

A commercial began playing, and Cal sat baffled. He reached Cobb Parkway and turned left. Atlanta traffic was a royal pain in the ass most of the time but was light at this time of day. Cal continued north and passed the Big Chicken, a 1950s-style Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant built into the shape of an enormous chicken—a true Atlanta landmark. The Big Chicken always caused Cal to grin when he drove past the thing. It was the most well-known landmark in this part of the city—in this part of the state, for that matter.

A few minutes later, the commercials ended, and Cal turned up the volume.

“WBS. News, weather, traffic. Always on at 780AM. John Carden here, sitting in for Mike Slayden. The death toll at that deadly bombing in Tucson, Arizona, has risen from the earlier confirmed number of four, to twenty-nine.”

Cal’s eyes darted to the car stereo, his mouth hanging open.

“Earlier reports indicated four had died in the initial blast at a Little League baseball park in the Sabino Canyon area, a suburb of Tucson, Arizona. Another twenty-five were treated and released with minor injuries. Now, emergency officials at the Tucson Sheriff’s Department are confirming that every one of the twenty-five minor injuries have resulted in fatality. No explanation for the sudden spike in loss of life has been given at this time. We’ll have more on this developing story as it unfolds. Now, in other news . . .”

Cal turned the volume down, a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. He didn’t know anyone from Tucson, but Mike Slayden sure must have. He couldn’t imagine a Little League baseball field being the scene of such a tragedy. Cal thought back to those days when Cade was a Little Leaguer. Cal had been an assistant coach for the first half of one season when his unit had been abruptly deployed. He missed the rest of the season. Cal remembered how upset Cade had been at his leaving. That was 1994. Cade was just six years old at the time.

The first George Bush was in office, and Cal’s unit was deployed to enforce the no-fly zone over Iraq. Serving your country was very important to Cal, but serving his son . . . well, that was a big deal too. Early on, Cal knew much of his son’s life would be spent without his dad around. It wasn’t exactly what Cal had intended. In fact, he never thought he’d qualify for jets in the first place.

But, he’d wanted to fly for as long as he could remember. And it’s not as if he was even married at the time, much less married with kids. One thing led to another, and the next thing he knew, he had qualified for a jet. He never told any of his Navy friends, but the truth of the matter was he struggled terribly in those early days of flight school. After he made it past the first few rounds of cuts, he knew most of these jobs with small jets involved killing people. Actually being the guy who was given the order to put his finger on a firing device and deploy a deadly weapon was something he wanted to avoid. Cal knew he’d do it. He knew if ordered he’d pull the trigger, but that he’d have hell to pay later. His conscience was different than the typical fighter jock. Those guys are warriors. They may not walk across a battlefield wearing armor, but they are warriors in their souls. Cal wanted to have a clear conscience later in life and to find a seat flying into a warzone where you didn’t have to pull the trigger was a dream come true.

6
 

Cade wasn’t exactly solving the server problem. Having Rupert Johnston, a man the size of a modern-day gorilla, standing over him wasn’t helping matters. He tried to concentrate on the endless sea of code spilling across the server log files that were displayed on his monitors. Whatever was causing the servers to yellow line wasn’t going to be easy to find. In fact, it was a giant pain in the ass.

“Dammit!” yelled Johnston, looking over his shoulder. “There goes another one. What the hell is going on with my damn servers, son?!”

The iPhone in Cade’s pocket vibrated, then rang. The ringtone was reserved for Cade’s dad, and Cade scrambled to shut it up.

“Crap, ah, sir, give me a minute, I don’t know. I just need some more time.” Johnston pulled out an actual calculator. One of those ancient HP financial calculators you still see bankers use.
Why anyone would carry a calculator is beyond me,
thought Cade. Johnston banged away at the thing like a mad scientist.

“We’re down to fourteen minutes. Shit-fire! This thing is cyclin’ faster than we thought. That server is going to crash.” A red strobe light mounted on the ceiling started pulsing and reflecting off Cade’s monitors.

“That’s the warning,” yelled Johnston, “we just hit redline.”

“Fourteen minutes? I thought we had twenty-five . . .”

“Hush, boy, concentrate. Look at them log files. Tell me what cha see.” Cade noticed for the first time that Johnston seemed to revert back to his stronger southern drawl when his blood pressure got up. But this time he sounded more like a football coach revving up his players for the big game. Cade drew a deep breath and exhaled like he was trying to rid his lungs of a toxin. The pulsing red light bounced off his monitors.

This server was cycling on a predictable, timed pattern. The processor was now hitting 89 percent capacity, which was definitely in redline. If the pattern didn’t stop—and quick—the box was going to sputter to a halt.

Cade couldn’t help wondering why there were no redundant servers up here. The pressure was intensifying to stop the server from crashing.
But we’re still just talking about e-mail. I mean, no one dies right? It’s just e-mails going out. What’s the big deal?
But just then a piercing alarm sounded at the other end of the server floor. The noise was deafening.

“Oh shit!” yelled Johnston, running towards the lame server rack. People flooded onto the server floor from all directions, and out of the corner of his eye, Cade saw the suits rush back through the door at the far side.
They’re running, actually running,
thought Cade. The William-Macy-looking one slid to a stop, his leather-soled Johnston & Murphys having no traction on the slick floor. Cade shook his head at all the commotion. People were panicked. Johnston looked frantically back over his shoulder in Cade’s direction; the men surrounded the ill server. Johnston tried to hide it, but his face betrayed an underlying terror. At that moment, Cade knew something was dreadfully, dreadfully wrong. This wasn’t just some e-mail marketing campaign that announced a 30-percent-off sale at Penney’s; this was something far different. Whatever it was, it was serious, and Cade was petrified.

7
 

Cal Williams didn’t qualify for a pilot slot on a fighter; instead he qualified for a role that suited him much better. He could use his technical skills to run radar-jamming equipment and protect other American pilots. And he got to be in the front of everything. Every mini-war that flared up, his unit would be deployed. Since there aren’t many radar jammers, Cal would get frequent deployment orders, and he and his crew would saddle up and fly out to the soon-to-be warzone. They’d fly for up to eighteen hours, refueling in midair to get to the carrier that might be stationed in the Persian Gulf or off the Gulf of Tonkin. From that point on, he had a great job. The best part was that it was rare for anyone to shoot at you in one of these things. Most of the time, the enemy had no idea you were there because Cal would so badly screw up their radar screens; the enemy wouldn’t know where to tell his pilots to go.

Cal realized early that his son was paying the price for his success. A son growing up with an absentee father doesn’t get off easy. Through different deployments, Cal would return to Dobbins Air Force Base to a local high school band playing a welcome-home greeting. But as he would get off the transport plane and jog across the tarmac towards his wife and child, little Cade would stop. Just stop dead in his tracks and not come any closer to his father.

There he would be, nine years old, then ten, then twelve. And with each homecoming, it got a little worse. Cade was mad at his father, no question. Mad at him for not being there. Over the next couple of days, Cade would come around, but Cal noticed harsh temper tantrums from Cade during those early years. Like he was lashing back at a father he didn’t understand.

Cal would respond by over-responding. He would immerse himself into activities with Cade, trying to rebuild the damaged relationship. Cade was a good kid, but he needed something, and that something was his dad. The pattern repeated itself with each deployment. There was Bosnia in 1994, Somalia in 1995, Haiti, also in ’95, back to Bosnia in ’96, Sierra Leone in 1997 . . . the list went on. Many of these deployments were talked about infrequently on the news. Some of them weren’t talked about at all. A lot of the time it involved flying cover for evacuations of American citizens from places that no one really ever heard of. And to make matters worse, Cal often couldn’t talk about where he had been or why he had to be gone. He’d do his best to make it up to Cade, but Cade would have none of it.

Now that Cal was retired from the service, he had done a pretty good job of reconnecting with Cade. But he carried a guilt complex with him. It was like boarding a commercial flight and having an extra carry-on bag that wouldn’t quite fit into the overhead compartment. But, unfortunately, this was not a bag he could check.

Cal picked up his cellphone and, even though he was driving, flipped it open and hit *2 to speed-dial Cade. Holding the phone to his ear, he thought about how Cade always razzed him about still having a flip phone, especially since he came out of such a high-tech background. After the second ring, Cal knew he wasn’t going to get Cade to answer. Cade never let his phone ring more than once before answering if he wasn’t busy. After the fourth ring, Cal hung up. Things were still uncomfortable between father and son.

Cal continued up Cobb Parkway, turned left on Roswell Street, and headed towards Cool Beans, a favorite local coffee shop where grunge was the norm.

He may have been way older than the kids in here, but that’s what made it what it was. It was a place he could relax. Before any doctor’s appointment, like the one he had today, he would come here, take a cup of coffee onto the back patio, and read his paper or just people watch. Cool Beans had a coffee roaster machine that sat just inside the shop. The aroma of freshly roasted coffee only added to the smooth bitterness that was unique to the bean. Cal sat under the shade trees, leaned back in his chair, and closed his eyes. As the door swung open and closed, the aroma wafted out onto the patio. It was intoxicating.
Just take that in. Man, kids today don’t pay enough attention to the little pleasures,
he thought. His mortality had been on his mind a lot lately.
Hell, I never paid enough attention. Just to sit back, relax, close your eyes, and take it all in.
The sounds, the smells. In his mind’s eye, he drifted. This particular aroma took him back to a godsend of a place in Kandahar they nicknamed “the Starbucks of Afghanistan.” Being in such an unfamiliar place was always unsettling. So whether in Kandahar or Kabul, Cal would go down to a local coffee joint, assuming they had one, and in a country where nothing looked, tasted, or smelled like home, he’d get to sip something familiar. The coffee was great. In Kabul, there was this little place called Chaila. Just walking in felt like you were stepping off the surface of the moon and into a café like the one his dad had taken him to in the 1950s. The place had a brick oven, and the pizza that came out of it had Uncle Sam written all over it.

Cal hung out at the coffee shop for a little while, wanting to stay longer, but that damn doctor’s appointment was calling his name. He glanced at a young couple leaning across their table and kissing. They looked to be in their young twenties—a nose ring here, a tattoo there; they melded into the atmosphere of the place well. “I don’t think I knew a single girl with a tattoo when I was that age,” he mumbled to himself, taking the last sip. He pulled out a set of old aviator sunglasses from his top pocket and slipped them onto his nose, then walked off the patio, down the couple of steps, and out to the car.

This next part was not something he wanted to face. Out loud he said, “They flung you off the deck of a carrier in the middle of a typhoon, and you’re scared to go hear the news from some stupid doctor?” The small lump in his throat turned a little bigger.