The Midnight Watch: A Sigma Force Short Story (4 page)

“Why?”

“My computer is doubly secured, both with an alphanumeric password and an EyeLock myris system.”

“What’s that?” Kowalski asked.

Jason groaned, knowing the answer. It was a commercially available iris scanner used for identity authentication. “Looks like we’re all sticking together a while longer.”

F
IFTEEN MINUTES LATER,
Kowalski drove the Jeep down a small, winding road through Rock Creek Park. The darkly forested route led toward the rear of the National Zoo property, where a private gate offered easy access to the campus of the Rock Creek Research Labs.

“The gate should be around the next bend,” Sara said as she shivered against the gale of cold wind sweeping across the open-air vehicle.

Kowalski had cranked the heater up as high as it would go, but it was like holding your hands around a candle in a blizzard. He found his own teeth beginning to chatter.

“My office is only a short distance past the fence,” she promised them.

Jason leaned closer to Kowalski. “The director has the campus locked down by the Zoological Park Police. They should be waiting for us at the gate.”

Sara lifted a white staff card. “If not, I have my pass.”

As the Jeep rounded the bend, the perimeter fence appeared. A small service gate stood open, lit by a single lamppost. Kowalski spotted no guards or the promised police escort.

He shared a worried look with Jason.

“Maybe the staff left it open for us,” the kid offered. “Or maybe they’re waiting for us at Sara’s office.”

And maybe pigs fly out my ass
.

As he approached the gate, Kowalski goosed the Jeep faster, just in case anyone tried to ambush them at the fencerow. None of his passengers asked him to slow down.

He sped through the gate and onto the zoo grounds. A cluster of office buildings hugged both sides of the road ahead, looking like any business complex. Beyond them, past another fence, the main park beckoned.

“My office is in the second building on the left.”

It appeared to be the only one lit up this night. A lone figure stood limned against that glow.

“That’s Jill Masterson,” Sara said, sighing out her relief, plainly happy to see a familiar face. “She’s a lieutenant with the park police.”

Kowalski drew alongside the officer, still searching for any threat. As he kept the engine idling, he could make out the nighttime cries and calls of the neighboring park’s denizens. The breeze carried the scent of cherry blossoms, along with an underlying heavier musk blowing from the grounds.

The lieutenant approached. She appeared to be in her midthirties. She was fit, dressed in a crisp park uniform with her auburn hair tucked into a cap. From the scowl fixed to her face, she was not happy about this midnight assignment.

She introduced herself, then added, “I’m not sure why my boss roused park services to open the gate and secure this building. Everything’s been quiet.” She offered a brief smile toward Sara. “But it sounds like you’ve had a rough night, Dr. Gutierrez.”

“And I’ll be happy when it’s over.”

They all unloaded and headed toward the office building.

“I thought there would be more boots on the ground here,” Jason commented.

Masterson cocked an eyebrow at him. “At this hour? We’re not DC Metro. With budget cuts, we barely have enough staff during the day. Still, I managed to corral three officers to canvass the building and make sure everything is secure. I still have a man inside.”

“What about the other two?” Kowalski asked.

“Once we had matters in hand, I sent them back into the park. We got a glass-breakage alarm at the front gate’s kiosk a few minutes ago. They went to check—” From their expressions, she must have known something was wrong. “What?”

“It’s like back at the museum,” Sara moaned.

Jason forced them to move faster. “Everyone inside. We need to secure that computer and set up a defense. Radio your man, Lieutenant.”

She obeyed, confirming that all remained quiet inside.

Still, Kowalski pulled out his Desert Eagle, which earned a double take from Masterson. Jason took out his cell phone and called Painter, filling him in on the fly. As they entered the front door of the building, Sara guided them in a rush toward her lab offices at the back.

“Help’s coming,” Jason said as he hung up.

Let’s hope they get here in time
.

As they crossed the lobby, a loud roar echoed to them.

Kowalski froze, but Sara smiled nervously back at him. “That’s Anton, a Siberian tiger caged in the neighboring Reproductive Sciences Department. They’ve been collecting semen from him this week as part of an endangered tiger breeding program.”

Lucky him
.

She glanced down a side hall. “Anton’s generally a pussycat, but he’s notoriously cranky when woken up early.”

Me, too
.

They hurried to the back of the building and found Masterson’s other man waiting inside Sara’s office. He introduced himself as John Kress and joined his boss in guarding the hall as Jason followed Sara into the depths of her lab. The small space was cramped with stainless steel equipment, shelves of glassware and pipettes, tall freezers, and a workbench holding a trio of computers.

“Mine’s in the center,” Sara said.

Jason pulled out a portable thumb drive. “If you can get me access, I need to copy the root directory to capture any malicious executable code and get a record of the night’s TCP/IP connections. After that, I’ll try to—”

Sara cut him off. “Do anything you have to.”

She woke up her computer, typed in the long string of a password, and lifted a wired blue puck toward her face. A small light flashed across her left eye, then the blank login screen cleared, revealing her desktop.

She stepped back. “All yours.”

Jason took her place and slipped his drive into a USB port on the side of her keyboard. He began typing rapidly with one hand, while manipulating her wireless mouse with the other.

“Interesting,” Jason mumbled.

Sara drew closer. “What?”

“The hackers seemed to have targeted any of your files tagged as
N_sis
.” He glanced back to her. “What does that stand for?”

“It’s just my shorthand for
Neanderthalensis,
” she answered. “Those are my files comparing Neanderthal sequences with those of modern man, highlighting those genes we obtained from our long-lost ancestor. Most of us carry a small percentage of Neanderthal genes, some of us more than others.”

Kowalski waited for someone to glance in his direction at this last statement, but thankfully no one did.

Jason suddenly swore, lifting his hands from the keyboard. Files flashed on the screen, opening and closing on their own, as if there was a ghost in the machine. But it wasn’t any
ghost
.

“We’re being hacked,” Jason realized. “Right now.”

J
ASON KICKED
HIMSELF
for being so stupid, so shortsighted. He considered yanking the power cord to the computer, but he knew it was already too late. In just that fraction of inattention, they’d stolen everything.

“What’s happening?” Sara asked, watching as he furiously typed.

“As soon as you logged on, the first thing I did was cut your computer off from the Internet, from the world at large, but someone attacked your server through your LAN. Your local area network.”

“And that means what?” Kowalski asked.

“The hacker must still be in the area, close enough to have connected to the system locally. Probably in the same building. They must’ve waited to ambush the system but first needed Sara to unlock it.”

No wonder the enemy tried to avoid killing her at the outset. They wanted her to return here and access her computer.

“Even the false alarm must have been used to lure Masterson’s forces away,” Jason realized aloud, “long enough so that they could get an operative close enough to orchestrate the attack.”

“But
where
are they?” Kowalski asked.

Jason continued to type. “That’s what I’m trying to figure out, but whoever did this mirrored their trace across
eight
different computers.”

Sara clutched her arms across her chest. “That’s the number of computers networked in this building,” she said, confirming his fear.

“Doesn’t matter,” Kowalski said, swinging toward the door. “I know where they’re at.”

Jason looked over a shoulder at him. “How?”

K
OWAL
SKI COLLECTED
L
IEUTENANT
Masterson and the other officer on his way out the door and down the hall. “One of you, head outside and canvass the perimeter. The other, stay in the lobby and cover the front door.”

Just in case I’m wrong.

He had a narrow window to catch the culprits red-handed and retrieve what was stolen. He left Masterson in the lobby as the other officer ran for the front door. He headed to the left, to the hall he had noted Sara glancing down earlier—when the tiger had roared.

He remembered her earlier words:
Anton’s generally a pussycat, but he’s notoriously cranky when woken up early.

He hoped she was right on both counts.

He had initially written off the tiger’s outburst as a complaint against their arrival, but what if whoever had bothered the tiger was closer at hand, invading the animal’s private space? Maybe that was what had made him cranky.

It was a thin lead, but better than nothing.

He reached a set of double doors with a sign that read D
EPARTMENT OF
R
EP
RODUCTIVE
S
CIENCES.
He hoped Jason was as good as he claimed to be. The kid had said he could hack into the building’s security system and unarm all the building’s electronic locks, opening a path for Kowalski.

He tested the knob, and it turned freely.

Good job, kid
.

Leading with his Desert Eagle, he cracked the door enough to slip inside, then closed it behind him. The hallway ahead was dark, flanked by small offices. The main reproductive lab was directly ahead of him at the end of the hall.

That’s where Sara said the department’s main server was located. He hoped it was the correct networked computer. He had one in eight odds of being right.

He edged down the hall, sticking to one wall.

His ears strained for any sign of an intruder—then he heard glass break, followed by a shout from outside. A loud gunshot exploded from inside the lab ahead.

Kowalski rushed forward, hit the swinging set of doors, and slid low into the room. Skidding on his knees, he took in the view while bracing his Desert Eagle. The reproductive lab looked more like an operating room, with a pair of stainless steel hydraulic tables, overhead swing-arm lights, and banks of glass cabinets.

Between the tables, a computer rested on a large desk.

At the station, a small, wiry figure was detaching a palm-sized drive from the back of the monitor, while on Kowalski’s left, a man who matched him in size and muscle stood bathed in the moonlight flowing through a shattered window. The guy held a smoking pistol in hand—likely used to fire at the officer outside. The weapon whipped toward Kowalski and fired.

Unable to get clear fast enough, he took the round square to the chest. The impact knocked the air from his lungs and exploded his rib cage with fiery pain. He dropped to his back—and returned fire from under the table on that side. The cannon boomed deafeningly in his hand. The plaster exploded behind the man’s legs as the shot went wide. Still, Kowalski took advantage of the moment to roll behind a steel medical cart. The man fired after him, rounds pelting the side of the cart, keeping Kowalski pinned down.

He patted his chest, expecting to find blood, but instead he felt the dented steel plate in his front pocket. It was the nameplate he had unhooked from Elizabeth’s office door earlier. He had forgotten he had stolen it, absently slipping it inside his jacket. It had saved his life—at least for the moment.

Sirens sounded in the distance, racing closer.

Must be the reinforcements sent by Director Crowe.

Kowalski gripped his pistol and risked peering past the edge of his shelter.

The small figure by the computer—a young woman—also recognized the approaching threat and called to her partner while pointing to the window.

“
Kwan, zǒ
u!
”

The man grimaced, clearly being ordered to leave.

With the portable drive in hand, she headed over to her partner’s side, ready to make their escape. She had her own pistol out and fixed toward Kowalski’s position, as if daring him to show himself.

But Kowalski wasn’t the only one irritated by the intruders.

Farther to his left, a tall, shadowy cage door swung open with a creak of heavy steel hinges—and a massive beast stalked into the lab. It seemed Jason’s release of
all
the building’s electronic locks had included the tiger’s cage. A snarling hiss flowed from the cat’s throat, and its fur bristled in stripes of black and rust. Paws the size of dinner plates padded across the floor in slow, determined steps, drawn by the figures standing in the moonlight.

The woman backed fearfully from the sight. She tried to pocket the bulky drive, but it slipped from her fingers and clattered to the floor. Clearly panicked, she gripped her pistol with both hands.

Her partner also kept his weapon upon the beast. “
Bù, Shu Wei,
” he whispered to the woman, warning her not to shoot or risk antagonizing the tiger, who was still plainly confused by the noise and commotion.

Instead, he scooped his free arm around the small woman’s waist, lifting and drawing her to his side as easily as if she’d been a doll, then the pair fell backward through the open window. The tiger stalked over, drawn by the motion. It sniffed at the breeze, then stretched its neck to a jaw-cracking yawn.

Kowalski used the distraction to back slowly out of hiding—but his knee banged against the corner of the metal cart. The tiger whipped around at the sudden noise, dropping into a hissing crouch. Kowalski dove for the only refuge at hand. He flung himself headlong through the open door of the cage and yanked the gate shut behind him.