Chapter Three

Rick scrubbed his hands over his face and hair. How had this happened? How had he gone from the elation of finally discovering the source of the problems with Oracle and finally having good news to report, to sitting alone in an interrogation room? Rick looked around the less than luxurious accommodations where Special Agent King had deposited him. At least he’d got himself a reservation at one of the special rooms somewhere on the third floor—of the NSA instead of the stockade. Carpenter had been an especially constipated asshat today, and Rick didn’t know what all his blustering had been about. Neither did he understand why the code he’d copied onto the jump drive differed from what he’d seen on the server. And what was with that drone business? Rick knew nothing about drones. Like, not anything! He’d crashed after, like, a minute when playing Ace Combat on Masterson’s Xbox.

He paced the room. What would the motive be for someone to hack into a requisition platform and a medical drone? Were the two even connected? King had said, no wait it was Carpenter, that the keystrokes they’d found in the log of the drone hack had belonged to Rick. If whoever was behind the Oracle hack was the same as the drone, why leave an identifying path at all? And why set Rick up to take the fall in one but not the other? They’d stayed completely anonymous in Oracle but left breadcrumbs in the drone? And what, if anything, did all this shit have to do with some developmental weapons system Rick had yet to even identify?

“None of this makes any fucking sense!”

The door opened, and Rick spun around to find King standing in the doorway. “So let’s talk it out.” He gestured to the chair at the table. “Please sit.”

Rick eyed the chair and the one-way mirror that took up a good portion of the wall opposite him. He didn’t know who was watching, but if he had any hope of not getting thrown in the stockade by the end of the day, it was probably best to cooperate. He sat down and met King’s eyes across the table. They were an attractive pair of green eyes. Rick estimated King was somewhere between 30 and 45 depending on how well he took care of himself. He didn’t appear to be a fitness freak, but clearly saw more activity than desk basketball while he sat at a computer all day.

“Sergeant Major Rick Davis. Thirty-eight years old. Originally from San Diego, California. Enlisted at seventeen with your parents’ permission. Initially, your MOS was twelve-Yankee-geospatial engineer but you requested a transfer into cyber division after your initial contract had been served in 2008. There are a few notes in here about deployments to Iraq. Lost several members of your unit because of an attack on the forward operating base in 2007.”

He forced himself to continue meeting King’s gaze. “Yes, sir. I remember.”

“Why the request? All your performance evaluations showed exemplary service with the five-one-two. Were you that eager to get nominated for OCS? Thought cyber might be the niche to get your foot in the door? Oops, guess that never happened.”

Maybe he should rethink the whole King being a reasonable person assessment?

“No sir. I’ve always been good with computers. Thought I might put those skills to use for my country.”

“Right. Rebooter. Isn’t that what the guys in your unit called you back then?” King looked down at the thin folder of papers sitting on the table. “Tell me something, Rick. Can I call you Rick?”

That seemed like a rhetorical question, so he elected to use his Article 31 right to remain silent.

“Great, Rick it is. You’ve served twenty-one years. Achieved the rank of sergeant major. You’ve impressed enough brass to be put in charge of an entire battalion at U.S. Cyber Command.” He whistled softly. “That’s impressive. You know what I don’t see anywhere in your file? A single mention of personal life. Past or present. So, either you are one of the few, the proud who have escaped the stereotypical relationship dumpster fires of military service personnel or you’re a loaner with commitment issues. Now normally I wouldn’t care, but here’s the problem. Statistically, loaners and those who can’t form meaningful relationships outside of hyper-focused environments are more prone to aggressive behavior.” He leaned in as if to share a secret. “That’s psychology geek-speak for terrorist.”

Rick leaned in and whispered, “Good to know, sir.” He settled back in his chair. “Is there a question in that monologue?”

King smiled. “I like you, Rick. In fact, based on everything I’ve read in your file there is no reason I should suspect you of any wrongdoing. That’s also why I wanted to meet you, because I think these files are a bunch of malarkey. I’ve been conducting investigations for a long time. Reading about a person on paper rarely provides as much information as looking them in the eye. Today in Colonel Riggs’s office I met two men. On paper, both appear to be all the Army could ask for. One I trust and the other I wouldn’t let feed my goldfish.”

Rick held back a smile.

“Which one do you think you are?”

“Well, I know which one I want to be, but then again, I’m also the one sitting in this room. So….”

“Fair point. Can you at least tell me why someone is determined to make me believe you are a danger to little Nemo?”

“Nemo is a clown fish. Not a goldfish.”

“Huh, well that answers a few questions. Why don’t we just cut the bullshit. What do you know? Tell me everything.”

“I told you everything in Colonel Riggs’s office. This morning I located a script in the live code of Oracle that effectively changes the command when someone enters a specific sequence. Now, it would be simple enough to change the sequence and eliminate the problem but based on my earlier analysis it’s never the same code, so we can’t predict or isolate the function. The adaptation appears to behave like artificial intelligence, as it selects random command functions to alter, but there are no AI features in the source’s framework code. Your turn, tell me again what happened with the medical drone.”

“Nice try, that’s not how this works. But I’m willing to drop a breadcrumb. We have an autonomous flight control system that changes the target coordinates after flight technicians input them.”

“I don’t suppose you’re going to let me look at said autonomous flight control system, are you?”

“Not a chance. In fact, you are going to sit here while I have my cyber-trolls verify your story.” King stood and headed for the door. He opened it and paused. “You know there is one thing that really bothers me. I never had you on my radar as part of the Battlehawk investigation until today, when your credentials suddenly appeared in the history log. Why do you think that is?”

“I don’t know.”

“Yeah, me neither. That’s really weird.”

Shit. He doesn’t believe me. I didn’t even bring up the mysterious phone call or experimental W7784.

Rick figured he might as well make himself comfortable, but just as he settled himself in for a nice long wait he noticed that the little red light on the camera up in the room’s corner started flashing. It only took him a few seconds to realize there was a pattern.

What the fuck? Is that Morse code?

He slouched down in the chair, keeping the light in his peripheral vision.

Door open. Thirty seconds. Exit left. Follow signal.

Sure enough, there was a beep and then Rick heard the lock on the door click. Did he dare? What if this was some kind of test? Would he get court-martialed if he left? King had said he wasn’t under arrest. They had brought no charges against him. Technically, he wasn’t required to stay in this little room. Then again, they had locked him in, so chances were pretty good that King intended for him to cool his heels while he did whatever he did as a super sleuth.

As casually as possible, Rick stood and walked toward the door. He gripped the handle and inhaled.

Here goes nothing.

He twisted the handle… and the door opened.

I’ll be goddamned.

Rick exited left. He hadn’t gone more than five feet before he came face-to-face with a pair of golden oak leaves walking down the hall. Rick came to a halt and saluted. “Ma’am. Do you know where the latrine is located?”

“Just keep heading in that direction and make a right at the end of the hall.”

“Thank you, ma’am.”

He kept walking and let out the longest breath of his life.

Jesus what the fuck am I doing? And where is this magical signal I’m supposed to follow?

When Rick turned the corner, he discovered the door to the stairwell.

Do I take the stairs? This feels like one of those red pill, blue pill games.

The stairwell door had an electronic keypad. Maybe he’d get lucky like with the interrogation room. His hand paused for a fraction of a second over the handle. He couldn’t afford to appear as though he didn’t belong in this hallway for the cameras, which judging by his tingling hairs had their lenses trained on the back of his neck. He turned the handle, but a hard stop and echoing click clarified that the door was locked.

Fuck.

Did he keep walking and try to find another exit? Did he go back to the interrogation room and pretend like he hadn’t just tried to escape the custody of the NSA? If he was sitting in his office with a laptop, he could undoubtedly hack into the security system and open this door with ease using a few black hat skills he’d picked up over the years, but standing in this hallway his hands shook and the end of the corridor seemed to expand into the never-ending distance while his breath sawed in and out of his lungs. He lifted a finger and hovered over the keypad.

What the hell.

He tapped out a series of random key punches, as he did not know how many digits the sequence required. Most numerical keypads used a four- to six-digit passkey. Right as he was about to enter the sixth number the lights turned green, and a beep sounded. Rick heard the lock disengage and he pushed the handle down. He stepped into a typical concrete column made up of dizzying levels of metal rails and quad-killing steps.

Now, did he go up or down? Logic said to go down, heading to the main exit and simply walk out as if he’d just finished a meeting. However, there was a guard desk where the MP had signed him into the building upon their arrival, and those guys were usually pretty observant. Rick did not know the layout of the building. If he went up, he may walk directly into a worse situation. Just as he was about to give up and turn around, because super spy he was not, the door opened behind him and a man stepped through. He grabbed Rick’s shoulder and gave it a hard squeeze.

“Follow me. Act like we’re just two colleagues chatting.”

Rick found his feet following the stranger before his brain caught up with what was happening.

“Who are you?”

“Not now. Keep walking” They headed down the stairs at a fast clip. “Here’s the deal. Special Agent King has received a message that Colonel Riggs has follow-up questions to this morning’s meeting. He is currently in the elevator headed for the fifth floor. His second in command got a text, while he was on the way to Colonel Riggs, that King was going to release you. So, we have about twenty minutes before anyone comes looking for you. If we time this right, we can walk right out the front door.”

“And if all hell breaks loose because King is not an idiot and when he gets to Riggs’s office and finds out there is no meeting then throws the panic button? What then?”

“Why would he assume it has anything to do with you? You’re in a room all by your lonesome. Oh, and I might have made the request come from a certain lieutenant with a penchant for speaking at elevated levels for no other reason than to make himself seem more important.”

Rick’s brow beaded with sweat. There were many agents wandering between the two high-rises and some ten acres of underground facilities, and he was convinced that every single one of them had a photo of his face with a target painted around it flashing on their monitors as he and this random guy navigated their hallways.

Miraculously they made it to the first floor without encountering another person in the stairwell. Every muscle in Rick’s body coiled tight, ready for flight.

“Don’t make any sudden movements. If you look guilty, they perceive you as guilty.”

“I am fucking guilty,” he hissed.

“No, you are not. There are still some unknown factors, but I can without a doubt prove that you did not sabotage Oracle or hijack a drone.”

Rick shoved his would-be savior against the wall of the stairwell. Pushing against the man’s body and getting right in his face with a snarl, “Then why not take that information to King? Why all the cloak and dagger? That makes me fucking look guilty.”

Indigo hair fell across the man’s forehead, high sharp cheekbones cut swaths across golden skin. His pupils bled out to encompass the darkest eyes Rick had ever looked into. The body against his clenched and had they been anywhere else under any other circumstances, Rick would have imagined a scenario where their two bodies collided as their mouths devoured each other.

“I’m the one who made it look like you hijacked Battlehawk. I never expected you to end up in Riggs’s office, but I also knew they would not let you walk out of this building.”

“You son of a bitch,” Rick growled. “You’re the one who made it possible for King to detain me!”

“King is not the problem. You don’t know me, but I know of him, and I can promise you he is a reasonable person. Right now he is upstairs arguing on your behalf with the breadcrumbs I’ve left alluding to your innocence. That would not be enough to keep you out of Leavenworth and he knows it. By escaping, you have a fighting chance to not only prove your innocence but take down the bigger threat looming over our heads. But we don’t have time to hash this out here. I swear to you, I will get you out of here and keep your career intact.”

Seconds ticked by, and Rick knew he had to make a choice. A door opening above them echoed through the stairwell and his time for deliberations screeched to a halt. He pressed tighter against the man’s chest while frisking him for hidden weapons.

“If you fuck me over, I will kill you faster than you can blink.”

“I believe you.” He reached up and gripped the back of Rick’s neck, stare for stare the two silently battled. “Now let me go.” Rick did.

They pushed away from each other and Rick fell in step behind the man as they opened the door to the first floor and were met by the controlled chaos of members of probably every alphabet agency and branch of service traversing the gleaming tiled floors of the public face of the National Security Agency. Rick forced his head to face forward and kept his gaze trained on the short hairs on the back of the man’s neck in front of him. His fingers itched for a weapon or some form of protection. They made it to the security checkpoint and Rick’s blood rushed through his veins faster than the last time he’d done the Murph Challenge.

“Special Agent Cheápo,” he said, holding out a badge. “Sergeant Major Davis is being remanded to FBI for further questioning.”

“I’ll need to clear this with Special Agent King,” the security guard said.

“Go ahead, but I’d think twice about interrupting him when he’s in a meeting with Colonel Riggs. Just check the transfer log.”

The civilian security guard held the phone for a few thousand heartbeats, then set it down. He typed away at the terminal, squinted down at the screen, then furiously typed in a series of strokes on the keyboard. Rick imagined he could see the entry just by listening to the cadence of the clacking keys, but even his computer skills weren’t that good.

“You’re cleared gentlemen. Have a good day.”

Rick took at least five steps away from the desk before he started breathing again. They walked out the front door and into the fall sunshine. He half expected a black van to pull up and be shoved inside, never to see daylight again, but they crossed the pavement without the sound of sirens or running feet blaring out behind them.

Rick jumped slightly when a car beeped in the sea of vehicles crowding the massive parking lot.

“Get in.”

Neither man said a word until they’d left the confines of base and were on the Baltimore-Washington Parkway.

“So you’re FBI?”

“Hmm? Oh, God no.”

“So who the fuck are you then and where are you taking me?”

“Sorry, sorry. I was still in a bit of a shock that actually worked. My name’s Keiji Pacheo. I’m a software engineer for Blackraptor and we’re going to Virginia.”