Jake turned to Grant, but the man was already standing on a coffee table he’d pulled over, fussing with the overhead speaker. A moment later, he ripped it out of the ceiling and jerked the wires out of the back. The noise fell to nothing.
Jake felt better immediately. He glanced back, but Rik and Hollyanne had Lord Wraith in custody. Zipped and gagged. Trussed like Sunday dinner, as it were.
He nodded and turned to Nathaniel. That man was standing at the door listening intently. A moment later, he pulled out his pistol, holding it out of sight as he pulled the door open and peeked out.
“Clear here,” he said, closing it again. “Whatever she did worked. At least for now. Now what?”
Jake turned to look back down the hallway.
“You ladies need anything?” he called down the long hallway.
“Negative,” Hollyanne replied.
“Keep him tight,” Jake yelled, then turned to Spencer and dropped his voice to a whisper. “You and Nathaniel able to hack this system from here?”
There was a monitor on the desk and a sleek tower underneath. Both men nodded and got to work.
“How long until somebody gets smart?” Spencer asked.
“If you lock the outer door and change all the codes, nobody can get back in,” Jake answered. “But we need to get that one woman from under the desk. Grant, you watch the door. I’ll be back.”
He walked to the space where Lord Wraith had been pulled into a chair and zip-tied to it. Wallet, cash, and knives were nearby on a table next to Rik, so she’d frisked the man.
Jake focused on Hollyanne.
“Need you to run a quick sweep in costume and see if you can get any stragglers out of the building,” he said. “That includes the one under the front desk.”
“Got it,” she said, immediately moving past him.
He heard her talk to Spencer and Nathaniel up front, so probably back to watching interior cameras.
Whatever Amanda had done, hopefully it had been sufficient. Although Lord Wraith did have a back door he had almost fled through, but for Rik.
Jake studied the man now. Tall. Rangy. Shaved skull. Blond beard Nathaniel had said was probably a dye job. Sharp eyes.
Jake would have guessed the man to be about sixty now. Old enough to know better, but some folks never grow up.
He reached out and pulled down the cloth that someone had tied around his mouth to keep him quiet.
Lord Wraith looked like he’d sucked on a lemon. Jake smiled.
“You can save me a lot of hassle by talking,” Jake offered evenly. “If I have to take your entire computer system apart first, I’m likely to be really cranky by the time I call the Federal Police to come for you.”
“Who are you?” Lord Wraith snarled. “And who the hell do you think you are, doing this to me?”
“I’m Jake McNeil,” he replied coldly. “That’s Rik Farrell. Hollyanne Kadjar was the one in costume. Grant Collingwood and Spencer Sargossian are out front breaking into your computer system right now.”
Jake could tell the man recognized the names by the way his eyes got huge and his mouth fell open.
“Pacific Force,” he whispered. “How?”
“One of the women you hired was a double agent,” Jake lied with a breezy smile. “Waited until the right moment and called us in. Apparently, she didn’t agree with your plans.”
Helped, lying that one of his women had done it. Nathaniel had mentioned that all four of Lord Wraith’s top killers presented as female, as did more than half his staff in the building.
Redirected his ire away from the truth.
“You can’t stop me!” Lord Wraith snapped.
“Oh, I can,” Jake shook his head. “You can make it easy so I only have to make one phone call. Or you can be a pain in my ass and I have to tell everyone. That’s going to cost most of them a lot of money, so I imagine more than one might want to extradite you later. I won’t care at that point because I’ll have turned you over to someone. Maybe the highest bidder tomorrow. We’ll see. Feel like telling me something that won’t make me dangle you out there for the Russians and the Indians?”
Rather than wait for an answer, Jake turned and walked away from the man. Let him stew for now.
He headed up front.
“How are we doing?” he asked Spencer.
“Building appears empty at this point,” Spencer replied.
“How about the other business?”
“It will take a while to get through all those systems to find the data we need,” Nathaniel said. “He had a private server back here that I wasn’t aware of. Something Gothic Chip must have set up on a separate router from the main one I controlled.”
“Where is it physically?” Jake asked.
“Probably back in his room,” Nathaniel said. “In a server closet most likely.”
“We need to disconnect it from everything,” Jake said. “Now. If she set it up, she might be able to get into it remotely and wipe it.”
“Shit,” Nathaniel growled. “Spencer, you go with him so I’m not seen. Thank you for that, Jake. I was listening.”
“Anytime,” Jake nodded.
He grabbed Spencer and they jogged back to the back, looking in each of the four rooms. One of them was configured as an office, with a small tower for blade servers, about the size of a dorm refrigerator.
Jake stepped back as Spencer crawled around behind it and started tracing wires.
“We want it remote or off?” Spencer asked.
Jake considered his options. He wasn’t nearly the computer nerd he’s been in high school, but still wrote code occasionally. Mostly to learn new languages and keep up with tech.
“Let’s just pull the power and assume that the person who built it did a good enough job,” he decided.
“Going down,” Spencer laughed.
The whole assembly had been humming with fans but stopped suddenly as Spencer pulled plug after plug out of the back, including the router on top.
“Six blades,” Spencer noted, standing again. “Hell of a lot of horsepower for a rinky-dink operation like this.”
“That’s why disconnecting it probably wasn’t enough,” Jake nodded. “There’s a whole lot more here than meets the eye. And I don’t want to risk somebody triggering a job to overwrite it seven times when nobody is looking. This way, it’s preserved. You have the passwords?”
“Added myself and a default with superadmin privileges, then downgraded everybody else to regular users,” Spencer grinned. “They have about as many rights as a VAX terminal user at that point, but I agree that somebody might have buried a landmine somewhere. Only takes once. So now what?”
“You head back up with Grant and keep watch,” Jake said. “Hollyanne can stay up there with you when she gets back, but she can also patrol in case we missed somebody.”
“Got it.”
Jake watched him go, then headed back to talk to Lord Wraith again.
“I turned your server off,” Jake smiled down at the man. “And killed the router it was connected to. Shortly, I’ll have to call some friends in German Intelligence and turn you and it over to them. Feel like talking, or feel like sitting in a small concrete box for a while? No? Nothing? Suit yourself, then.”
Jake reached into his pocket and pulled out his cell phone, dialing a number.
“This is Steve,” the British agent answered quickly.
“Jake McNeil,” he replied. “You still on vacation?”
“I am,” Steve replied.
His name wasn’t Steve, but he also didn't exist. Worked reasonably well in this industry.
“I’m about to call Johann and Dieter,” Jake said, giving Steve an address. “If you happened to be here at the time, they might not immediately throw you out of the building. Especially if you called your boss and told him we had someone he might want to extradite at some point.”
“I’ll be there in fifteen minutes,” Steve replied.
“See you then,” Jake smiled and hung up. “Spencer and Grant, Steve will be here in a few minutes.”
Then he scrolled through the contacts on his phone until he found the one he wanted.
“Jake?” Johann asked as he answered. “What’s up?”
Jake gave him an address.
“I have somebody in custody,” Jake said. “And all his computer systems, but you’ll want to relocate them to a safe lab before you power them back up. I’d bring along a team of agents, a few supervisors, and maybe an Assistant Director when you come. Doubt you’ll need guns, but only because we scattered all the mice before we captured the rat. Still, you should hurry because I had previously promised British Intelligence that they could be here, and somebody is in route now.”
“Got it, Jake,” Johann replied. “I’m in Berlin right now, but Dieter is local. I’ll call him immediately. Can you give me more?”
“Not over the phone,” Jake said. “But we’re in the process of stopping another madman who wants to destroy the world. And you’ll have primary jurisdiction when you get all the stories.”
Jake hung up and smiled down at Lord Wraith.
“The only thing you can give me right now that I care about is the identity of the rocket itself,” Jake scowled. “Everything else is going to be governmental, so hopefully you don’t have assassins coming after you when this is all said and done.”
Lord Wraith scowled back.
“Why do you work for those capitalist pigs?” he demanded.
“Who’s paying you to do this?” Jake fired right back. “You didn’t come up with the idea yourself. You’re just the vector of chaos some other filthy capitalist pig is paying in his own private war. Your hands are dirtier than mine because I’m not lying about my motivations. I’m not sleeping with the enemy and letting him use me. I’m an agent. You’re just a tool.”
Jake turned and walked away again. Mostly so he didn’t slap the dumb son of a bitch across the face right now. He got to the door when Lord Wraith muttered a word.
Jake paused and looked back expectantly.
“Next Tuesday,” Lord Wraith repeated it louder.
Jake nodded.
Assuming the man wasn’t lying, they knew which launch it was supposed to be. And where to look in the records for the evidence.
“Let’s hope you’re telling me the truth,” Jake said, walking away.
Steve and Dieter would both be here soon enough.