Chapter Fifteen

Keiji glanced out the window of the office building. He’d never expected this suite to become an impromptu headquarters for an entire team of government agents. Keiji was a guy who was just so used to working alone. His choice to live and work in the U.S. after finishing his degree had created a natural separation from his family, and software engineering was inherently a field of independent projects. Sure he worked with other engineers at Blackraptor, but it was more of a monthly departmental meeting and progress update kind of relationship. Now, he’d jumped headfirst into a real-life action movie with more twists and turns than even Jerry Bruckheimer could come up with.

He looked over at Rick bent over his laptop, earbuds no doubt set so loud he was in danger of causing permanent hearing loss, hellbent on finding answers. It was one reason Keiji had reached out to him in the first place. He’d seen Rick’s dedication and drive to solve the problem with Oracle. He served his country with passion and commitment that wasn’t evident in the private sector. At least not in Keiji’s experience. Sure, the scientists and engineers he’d worked with could get lost in various projects but it was always about selling a product or an idea. He really hoped Riggs could provide answers why he would contract with Saber to write the virus because it was clear, now that they knew where to look, that it was him.

Keiji focused back on his own set of screens at the desk. On the screens he had the complete profiles of King, Linder, Tate, and BB on display. Keiji employed the same techniques to investigate the team as he had to research Rick. He had old school photos of Tate that would be fantastic blackmail material at a later date. Surprisingly, Linder had been a cheerleader in high school and a sorority president of her chapter at Ole Miss before being recruited by Army CID and joining their special reaction team. BB, whose real full name Keiji now knew, was everything he’d sold himself to be. Even King, who Keiji had almost suspected, passed all background and financial checks. Nobody on their team had connections either directly or indirectly to Colonel Riggs. Except for Rick of course, because of the Army command structure. Keiji couldn’t find any evidence that they’d even passed Saber on the street before that day in Montenegro. So how was it that every time they got close to finding an answer something either literally blew up or disappeared? It was as if someone was watching them or tracking their movements. Nobody was using their personal phones. King had implemented that rule before they left Virginia the first time. They were using laptops with more security than the Kremlin and data connections that required practically a blood sample before allowing them access to networks.

“It has to be something simple. Something so mundane that we would never question its presence.”

“What’s that, babe?” Rick asked, taking out his earbud.

“How did you possibly hear me say anything?”

“Lip reading. I just looked up at the right moment. Now, what is noodling around in your brilliant mind?”

“The team checks out.” He heard Rick sigh a brief prayer under his breath. “But I think you were right. There is just no other explanation why we keep hitting roadblocks. Someone, somewhere, is monitoring us. What have you found on the colonel?”

“More questions than answers, unfortunately. His service record is clean, I double-checked my earlier work and his personal life doesn’t have any indicators of extreme leanings, his financials are commensurate with his pay grade and just reaffirms that I probably should have applied to OCS because he makes, like, three times what I do. He’s made some savvy investments, but they all track to legitimate companies. None of which are in military Ramp;D. He’s divorced and pays his ex alimony every month, but apparently is very excited for her upcoming wedding because then he will stop supporting her. They had no children. I even ran checks for close friends or family members someone could exploit for blackmail.

“So I went back to Saber’s files. While he didn’t exactly create invoices, he did keep very detailed project logs. Based on what I’m seeing here, he was in communication with Riggs for at least the last two years. I think I need BB to help determine the application for some of these orders. I have to start to wonder if the NSA, under a covert operations division, had contracted with Saber for work. Maybe they pulled a CIA move and turned him into an asset?”

Keiji stood and stretched his back. He really needed to do some forms when they got home tonight. Get his body moving. Maybe he could even convince Rick to spar with him in the meadow?

Keiji turned his head as a sound in the hallway made its way through the closed door. Rick stood quickly and somehow had already lifted a weapon, aiming at the still closed portal.

“Get behind me,” Rick whispered.

Keiji adjusted his position so he wasn’t blocking Rick, but he would not cower behind his lover. Rick clearly wasn’t happy but strode to the door, gun at the ready. Finger just off the trigger but raised, so the sights were level with what would be center mass of an average human. They knew the other businesses on this floor had cleared out for the day. Rick reached for the handle of the door then pulled it open quickly.

“Holy shit!” Tate said, ducking.

“God damn it, I almost shot you assholes. Why are you lurking in the hallway?”

“We weren’t lurking. We were about to do the super-secret knock before Rambo here went all agro on us.”

“What was that noise we heard?”

BB rubbed the back of his neck, and Keiji could picture him being called out by his parents for some transgression of boyhood exuberance.

“I tripped getting off the elevator.”

“You tripped?”

“Yeah. The car didn’t go all the way up to the floor and I was looking down at my phone.”

The two of them walked in and Keiji got a text that King and Linder were minutes away. Keiji was typing out a reply when the entire building went dark. He froze, looking around at the others, then was being herded against the wall away from the windows by Rick. Keiji pushed away and kept low as he pulled up the external and internal security footage. He would have done this earlier but Rick had reacted too fast for him to share the information. The perimeter around the building was clear, as were the lobby and the hallway outside their suite.

“I don’t see anything,” he whispered.

“Backup whatever you were working on,” BB ordered.

“Already done. My system uses keystroke logging. I can access the files from the cloud server.”

“How is your computer and network still operational?”

“Because this is the Batcave and he has all kinds of tricked-out toys. Including isolated generators to run his system.”

Keiji smiled at the proud tone of Rick’s voice. He kept cycling through the security footage. Where and who was out there? The power interruption wasn’t widespread as they saw lights on all the neighboring buildings.

“Hey, there’s a car pulling into the lot at a high rate of speed. Looks like it may be the one King was driving.”

Rick made his way over to the windows near Tate and looked out. “Agree. They are coming in hot. What’s the situation, Keiji?”

“I don’t see anyone. Wait! What is….”

“Get down!”

Keiji jumped up at Tate’s scream but was quickly dragged beneath the desk by Rick. What good hiding under a glass desk would do he did not know. The building shuddered and there was a deafening roar outside.

“God damn it! They just blew up the car!”

He turned to Rick. “King? Linder?” He couldn’t seem to catch his breath and his insides felt as if they were vibrating.

Rick wrapped his arms around Keiji and whispered, “I don’t know baby. I’m going to get you out of here, okay. I promise.”

“We have to move,” BB ordered.

Keiji was going to listen to those with more experience. He wasn’t taking any chances though with his system. He wiped everything with a few keystrokes. They could cart his complete system out the door and it wouldn’t serve as anything more than a doorstop. He took Rick’s hand and let the man lead him out of the office. They double-checked the hallway and silently made their way down the pitch-black corridor. Not even the building’s security lights were activated. At least this time they weren’t walking through a raging inferno. They passed the elevators and reached the stairwell. Was it better to go up or down? The roof would leave them potentially trapped and exposed, but if they went down were they heading into the fight instead of away?

BB lead them down into the stairwell, his weapon at the ready as he scanned each flight. Tate took up the rear position behind him and Rick. The suite had been on the fifth floor, so it didn’t take them long before they reached the lobby. BB looked at Rick, who nodded, weapon at the ready. They exited the stairwell and Keiji held his breath. Cracked glass spread like spiderwebs across the lobby until they terminated in shattered panes. The scents of burning rubber, gasoline, and oil filled the air. Keiji froze in place as he watched the orange flames and blackened smoke fill the air.

“Oh my God,” he whispered.

“We have to keep moving,” Tate said as he squeezed Keiji’s shoulder from behind him.

The wail of sirens echoed from a distance and even Keiji knew they couldn’t get caught up in the emergency response circus. He closed out the world for a moment and said a silent prayer for his friends’ souls. The sound of their feet running across the tiled floor of the lobby reverberated against his eardrums; the sound seemed so loud after the silence of their trek down the hallways upstairs. He couldn’t think, he just moved. Kept putting one foot in front of the other. Following the man in front of him. He pinned his gaze to the back of Rick’s neck.

BB slammed through an emergency exit and they raced across the back lot. A blacked-out SUV careened around the corner of the building and the passenger side window was sliding down even before the vehicle slammed to a stop in front of them.

“Get in!”

Rick put his arm out to stop Keiji from taking another step.

“Sergeant Major Davis, I’m not ordering but I am asking you to get in the car if you want to save yourself and your friends.”

Keiji looked from BB to Tate, and then Rick. If only he could read their minds. Their bodies radiated tension and their weapons remained ready. Keiji couldn’t see inside the SUV, but Rick clearly recognized the driver’s voice. Rick grabbed his hand and they all climbed in then the vehicle took off.

“Colonel Riggs. I have questions.”

Rick stood across from one of the highest-ranking officers he’d ever come in contact with and stared him down. Under any other circumstances his bearing would be considered downright insubordination, but today he couldn’t give two fucks. Riggs had driven them straight into the heart of D.C. and through black iron gates and into another world. Rick had spent most of his adult life running around military bases and outposts. Some were held together with duct tape and bailing wire. But here he stood in the center of where they debated, monitored, and acted upon their nation’s most critical situations.

“I can see the restraint you are barely holding onto Sergeant Major, and I want to assure you that everything is going to be explained. We are just waiting for a couple of others to join us. Please, have a seat.” Riggs looked around the room. “Everyone. Please sit. We have some companions joining us but they were held up. I promise just a few minutes more.”

Rick took a seat at the big table along with Keiji, Tate, and BB. He captured Keiji’s hand and gave it a squeeze. Tonight was the second time in the last week that he could have lost the love of his life, and he was beyond pissed off.

The door to the room opened and Rick nearly fell over as he stood quickly and snapped a salute. He glanced down, ashamed of his less than regulation attire.

“At ease, please. Gentlemen, first let me express my condolences on your loss tonight. Officer Tate, I wasn’t expecting to see you again so soon.”

“I’m like a bad penny, Madam President. I always turn up.”

Rick forced his face muscles to remain firm. It appeared he and Keiji were rubbing off on Tate.

“So it seems. Colonel Riggs, am I going to call in the Joint Chiefs?”

“I hope not Madam President, but we are looking at the potential for attack and felt you needed to be made aware.”

“This is not exactly going through proper channels.”

“No ma’am. I’m not here on behalf of the United States Army. This is not Colonel Kenneth Riggs informing the President of the United States. This is Kenny talking to his friend Collette and asking for advice.”

Collette sat heavily in one chair along the table edge. “Well, shit. I don’t know if that makes me feel better or worse. Okay, let’s hear it. From the beginning.”

“Let me introduce you to the others who are joining us. We have Officer Benoit from the NSA’s Special Collection Service, Sergeant Major Rick Davis from Cyber Command, and Keiji Pacheo, a software engineer from Blackraptor Systems.”

Rick felt as though he’d gotten sucked through a void into some weird twilight zone. He was sure he looked erratic as his gaze kept bouncing back and forth between Col. Riggs and the president, who tonight were apparently just Kenny and Collette. This was not good. Not on any level, and apparently the rabbit hole they’d found themselves in just burrowed into a deeper one.

Riggs faced Rick, raising his eyebrows. “Why don’t you start?”

He nodded and briefed the president on the troubles the Army had experienced with Oracle starting approximately nine months after it went operational. He explained how he’d worked both with his team and independently to identify the malware that had been implanted into the operational code for the system. At this point Rick turned toward Col. Riggs, he just couldn’t think of him as Kenny. “I believe it’s your turn to share. Sir.”

“Two weeks ago Sergeant Major Davis came to my office… or more accurately was brought to my office by Lieutenant Carpenter. He attempted to share his discovery about the malware, but as I best understand it, when he opened the file the code had gaps in the sequence. Is this correct, Davis?”

“More or less.” He would not give anything more until he got some answers of his own.

“What the Sergeant Major didn’t know was that I was already aware of the existence of the virus or at least the initial purpose behind it.”

“Explain.” Ordered the president.

“General Arenado and I had been approached by an analyst at the NSA who indicated that Oracle was vulnerable to attack based on the programming language that was used in its development. Since we’d already launched the platform several months prior, we decided to test that vulnerability in real-world applications.” He met Rick’s gaze. “I commissioned Vladimir Rybicki to write a virus intending to test the security of our military networks.”

The president’s jaw dropped. “You contacted the world’s most notorious hacker to test out the security of our defense network? Are you out of your mind!”

“Actually, I asked agent Dmitriy Vasilyev of the National Security Agency. Agent Vasilyev has been in deep cover operating as Vladimir Rybicki, aka Saber, working joint operations between CIA and NSA for the last three years.”

“Holy fuck. Sorry, Madam President.”

“No, that about sums it up Officer Tate. Are you telling me that the world’s foremost hacker is one of ours?”

“Was. Agent Vasilyev was killed in Montenegro in an attack on his most recent base of operations four days ago. An attack that nearly killed the other four people in this room.”

Rick wanted to scream. He knew the military existed at a need-to-know level, but motherfucking son of a bitch there was a very real possibility that they could have killed Vlad/Dmitriy after they had tracked him down. It would have been an assassination of one of their own. He stood and stomped to the back of the room. He tried to breathe slowly and lower the fury raging through him.

Riggs continued to tell the president and others more about Saber’s history and the efforts he and his handlers had made in countering and preventing cyberattacks over the years, while simultaneously selling his identity as the go-to hacker to carry out the very attacks they were working to prevent.

“Davis!”

He spun and clenched his fists at his side. “Sir.”

“He knew the risks.”

Rick kept breathing in and out, clenching his jaw so tight that he feared he might crack a molar.

“We all do.”

Tate’s voice made Rick break his staring contest with Riggs. “We were right there! Why didn’t he say something? Why didn’t he clue us in to who he really was?”

“He couldn’t. He had to maintain his cover at all costs. Clearly he gave you enough that you found your way here. To me. Help me finish this. Honor his sacrifice. Honor all their sacrifices.”

Rick understood what Riggs was saying. Even though he still believed governmental compartmentalization was a pandemic of clusterfuckery. As pissed as he was, he knew focusing on his anger would not get them any closer to solving the problem at hand. He nodded and went back to his seat. Keiji reached for his hand, but then his eyes darted across the table to the president.

“Mr. Pacheo, in this White House everyone is welcome to be their true selves. If you’d like to hold your partner’s hand, do so.”

“Thank you, Madam President.”

“So what went wrong?” BB asked.

Riggs gripped the back of one of the large executive chairs. “Everything. Oracle stopped responding to Vasilyev. He tried every backdoor hacker trick he knew and he couldn’t get access to change anything about the code. Just like you, Davis, he could see the manipulations but couldn’t disrupt the process.”

“So when Carpenter brought me into your office, by a pair of MPs thank you so much for that by the way, you were hoping I’d found a solution to the debacle.”

He saw Riggs wince and felt slightly better after his little dig.

“Yes. Then Special Agent King mentioned his investigation of Battlehawk, and I knew there was a much bigger problem than we’d realized.” He looked at the president. “I had nothing to do with that.”

“What is Battlehawk?”

Collette looked over at Keiji. “Don’t look so shocked young man. Even the president doesn’t know every single thing that goes on. This job is hard enough, can you imagine the level of micromanaging that would be required for me to have a hand in every single aspect of this nation?”

“It would be inhuman.”

Collette nodded. “Quite so.”

“Col. Riggs, do you mind if I jump in here, given Special Agent King’s… absence.”

Riggs indicated for Keiji to take over and Rick’s lover stood. The president had called him Rick’s partner and that sounded so right. Maybe someday, if they all lived long enough, he could turn partner into husband.

“Do you have a board or piece of paper I can write on? I think better when I can sketch out concepts.”

Collette snorted. “Son, this is the White House Situation Room. I can pull up images from space that can see how long it’s been since you cut your front yard.”

Keiji smiled. “Yes, but do you have a pen and piece of paper?”

Collette laughed, and the room erupted into chuckles along with her, creating a crack in the tension that had encompassed their group.

“Touché.” She stood and pushed a button on the wall that made a panel slide to the side revealing a dry erase board. “Will this work?”

Keiji skirted around the table and picked up a marker. He drew Battlehawk, Oracle, and W7784 on the board laid out in an inverted pyramid. Then beneath them wrote the designer of each system.

Rick watched as Keiji continued to add values beneath each item related to their operational goals, integration software, networking abilities, and other factors. Then he started drawing lines connecting shared aspects and making circles around words that were proprietary to the military and squares around aspects that were proprietary to civilian contractors.

It was then that certain patterns emerged for Rick. “We’ve been so focused on who, we’ve lost sight of what.”

“You seem to know an awful lot about classified projects, son.”

Rick covered his grin at Riggs’s grumble. While King had cleared Keiji to work on this investigation, there was quite a lot up on that board he probably shouldn’t know. Even with his intimate knowledge of Blackraptor’s operations.

Keiji froze, his marker hovered an inch away from the board. “Umm…” He looked over his shoulder. “Scout’s honor I promise not to tell?”

Tate snorted. “What is the Okinawan equivalent to the Boy Scouts?”

Keiji spun and pointed his marker at Tate. “Hey! I’m American too. I could have been a boy scout. Or well… are there man scouts?”

“Oh, what I wouldn’t give to see you in a pair of khaki shorts and little yellow ascot. Is there a badge for blow—”

“Tate! Maybe I should say that everyone is free to be themselves in this White House except for you.”

Oh, BB did not like that little dig by the president. Rick didn’t know what was up with those two, but they both regularly displayed protective tendencies and shared looks of silent communication across the room.

“My apologies Madam President. I meant no offense. I’ll try not to open my mouth when my foot is nearby.”

“Anyway, can you explain what you’re seeing, Keiji?”

Keiji looked at Rick, and he nodded. He had absolute faith in his man. And now that his brain had switched tracks, he thought they might be on the same wavelength and Rick would back him up all the way.

“So we have three devices that have displayed evidence of compromise.”

Riggs frowned. “The first two we’ve discussed, but what is this third one up there? You’ll have to forgive my ignorance, but as part of military intelligence, I don’t have direct reports that deal with weapons development.”

“W7784 is the Blackraptor project number for a long-range smart weapon called Ascaris. It’s a drone, launched by humans, but once airborne uses artificial intelligence to recognize and analyze troop movements. Then it presents likely targets to operators for tactical engagement. That’s what it’s supposed to do, anyway.”

“So its job is to provide battlefield support, it does not have the authorization to engage autonomously? Seems rather Minority Report-ish, but I’ve been forced to acknowledge that warfare is a lot more like a video game than I will ever be comfortable with. If I wasn’t such a stubborn bastard, I probably would have retired about ten years ago. Is this weapon operational?”

“It is operational and there are a few units in beta testing currently. It’s scheduled for mass production by the end of the quarter. When I was doing final software tests, I discovered alterations in the code for the fire control system. The simulated scenario had changed from the one that was inputted. In its place was an entirely new scenario, almost as if the weapon was playing out a completely different war game. I tried tracing the alteration but just when I would see a line of foreign code it seemed to disappear.”

The room went silent. Rick watched as the body language of each inhabitant translated their thoughts. The only person who he completely could not read was the president, which is probably what made her so good at playing the politics game. BB stood and moved to the front of the room.

“So we have a medical drone altering flight paths, a logistics platform altering requisitions, and a smart weapon selecting its own targets. What do all three have in common?”

Keiji raised his hand. “Me. Well not me personally, but Blackraptor. We did platform development for Oracle before transferring the project over to the Army Corps of Engineers, Battlehawk was developed by General Dynamics but uses our navigation system, and Ascaris is born and bred by Blackraptor.”

God, Keiji looked so defeated. Rick wanted to gather him in his arms and just hold on tight.

“So why not get a warrant, seize data from Blackraptor, and shut them down?” Tate asked.

“You mean aside from the fact that our lead investigator, who had the power to request just such a warrant from a federal judge, was killed in a fiery explosion forty-five minutes ago?”

Rick saw the moment it all became too much for Keiji. He jumped up from his chair and made it around the table in record time. He gathered Keiji in his arms, fuck everyone else in the room. Keiji’s body vibrated against him. Rick was sure an unholy combination of exhaustion, adrenaline dump, and fear was fighting for control and his sweet man couldn’t process it all at once. Rick sensed movement behind him, and he glanced over his shoulder. Tate stood there but quickly stepped back when he got a look at Rick’s expression.

“Please?”

Rick tilted Keiji’s chin up and straightened out an errant strand of hair. He thumbed his jaw and gently kissed his lips. Keiji nodded and stepped out of Rick’s arms. He faced Tate and crossed his arms. There was his badass.

“I’m sorry Keiji. Really. When I get stressed, I’m a righteous bastard. King and I… I’ve known him for several years, and….” He put his hand on Keiji’s shoulder and glanced up at Rick who stood protectively behind him. “You are not at fault here.”

“Thank you. And I’m sorry for your loss. I didn’t know King or Linder well but they seemed like good people. Dedicated and driven. I think I’m having a bit of a crisis of conscience too. I worked for a company that develops weapons. Ones that kill, and I never really thought about how those same weapons could turn against people I care about. I’m supposed to be on the good guy’s side.”

“Young man, take it from an old soldier who has more blood on his hands than can ever be washed off. I’ve made decisions in battle and behind a desk that cost the lives of both my enemies and brothers. The concept of good guys versus bad guys is a fallacy. Humans react based on our collective experience and objectives.”

Rick studied the colonel. Maybe it was age or as he said experience, but the man was so different from Lieutenant Carpenter. Riggs wore his mantle of authority with pride, but the weight was clearly an ever-present burden. Rick had heard a fellow soldier one time talk about how just because they had to salute commanding officers, that didn’t mean they’d earned respect. Colonel Kenneth Riggs now had Sergeant Major Richard Davis’s respect.

“So where do we go from here?” BB asked. “Storming the castle at Blackraptor doesn’t seem like it’s going to stop the players already on the field. The same players that have now killed three people.”

The door burst open and Rick tensed, reaching for his weapon before he realized he’d had to check it upon entering the building. In walked the president’s chief of staff, followed by her press secretary and the secretary of defense. Keiji’s eyes widened to the size of spaceships.

“This is a closed meeting,” the president stated.

“Not anymore. In fact, you all need to leave right now.”

Rick took his cue from Col. Riggs, who wasn’t moving. Tate and BB both transitioned from the outspoken team members into the clandestine operatives they were. It was as if they still existed within the room and yet didn’t at the same time.

“With all due respect Dr. Wendle, that is not an order you have the power to make. Now, what is wrong? Because I know you didn’t interrupt my meeting without an excellent reason.”

The secretary of defense looked around the room, snorting at their ragtag group. “There is a situation that needs your attention.”

“Good thing we’re in the Situation Room then. Rest assured, all the men in this room have the clearance to hear whatever you have to say.”

Rick and Keiji didn’t, but he would not correct the president.

The chief of staff clicked a remote control, and screens around the room came to life. There were maps, satellite images, and body cam video playing. He looked more closely at the body cam footage. It could have been anywhere in the world, but it wasn’t a desert or mountainous environment. The footage was jerky, as clearly the wearer was running. The ground around him spitting up as it only did when pelted with bullets. Keiji jumped when the screen rocked as an explosion obscured any of the surroundings. There was no sound, but Rick heard the screams of his memories in his head. The wearer of the body cam fell to the ground and didn’t move. The video continued for some seconds then stopped.

“What you are looking at is the 2nd Armored Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Infantry Division who were participating in training maneuvers along with the French 6th Light Armoured Brigade in northern Senegal. The maneuvers were going according to plan until both units came under fire from a UAV. Both us and the French deny involvement and so far there is no intelligence on where or who orchestrated the strike. There are no survivors.”

“My God,” the president whispered. She looked around the room and sighed. “I think the expiration date on our opportunity to keep this quiet just passed.”

The newcomers to the room all looked around at Rick and their group. He had no intention of being the first to talk, and he touched Keiji’s foot with his own, trying to convey that he should do the same.

“Someone better start talking.”

“Colonel Kenneth Riggs, commander of the 780th. Mr. Secretary, please have a seat. It’s going to be a long night.”

“Fuck. Let me at least call my wife and tell her I’m going to miss our granddaughter’s recital.” He looked over at the chief of staff and press secretary. “I suggest you do the same to whoever may be waiting for you.”