| |
––––––––
Alina sipped the steaming coffee and turned away from the sliding door. Dawn had broken a couple hours before, and the sun was making a valiant effort to disperse the cloud cover that had ushered in the new day. Its success was minimal, and long shadows still extended from the trees, casting her property into gloom.
Crossing the dining room, she circled the bar and went into the kitchen, pulling down the sauté pan from the pot rack above the island. Damon was out for his morning run. He'd left just as she was finishing her daily yoga practice on the deck. She set the pan exactly in the center of the island and the furniture slid aside silently, revealing the stone steps leading down to her command center. If the truth were to be known, Viper was still adjusting to having Hawk around the place. Waking up beside him was unfamiliar, and watching him go about his morning routine was downright bizarre. The fact that it so closely resembled her own didn't make it any better.
She carried her coffee down the steps into the long room that housed the nerve center of her profession. Servers hummed and multiple computers lined one side of the room, while three plasmas commanded attention on the opposite wall. At the far end, another door led into her personal armory. She hit a button on the wall at the foot of the steps and the opening above her slid closed. This was her work center, her haven from the world above. This was where she controlled her life, or at least her work life. The personal life was another story. She was fast coming to the reluctant conclusion that that was completely out of her hands.
Walking over to a chair, she sat down and spun around to look up at the three plasma screens. They were all running different searches, continually scanning CCTV footage, security footage at travel hubs and toll points, and private security cameras throughout the entire tri-state area. The algorithms were searching for two faces: Kasim Jamal and Tarek Masood.
Viper pursed her lips and watched the plasmas for a moment before turning in the chair and waking up one of the PCs. Now that she'd been able to narrow her search field to Philadelphia, she had every confidence that she would get a hit sooner rather than later. They couldn't stay hidden forever. Eventually, one of them would venture out from under his rock. Her fingers moved rapidly over the keys as she logged into multiple portals on what was commonly known as the dark web. Until then, she would concentrate on the underground chat rooms and forums frequented by terrorists, mercenaries, and assassins alike. Between the two, Kasim couldn’t hide for much longer.
Glancing at the bottom right corner of the screen, Viper confirmed that her incognito firewall was functioning, then reached for her coffee. It was time to start trolling the rooms she knew they frequented. While the spying malware she had coded especially for searching secret chat rooms ran around the clock, the algorithms would only pick up specific phrases and keywords. It was no substitute for real-time, physical presence.
She glanced at her watch and began popping in and out of chat rooms and forums. It was mid-day in the Middle East, and the site traffic was light but consistent. Viper wasn't concerned about being seen; her firewall made her invisible to other IPs on the web. She could move in and out of the rooms without any participant ever knowing she was there. The Organization had not only taught her how to be invisible in the physical world, but also online. Life skills, she mused, scanning conversations in multiple boxes open on her screen. Who would ever have thought eleven years ago that these would be the ones she would depend upon to keep her alive?
It was almost an hour later when the opening above the steps slid aside, and Hawk descended into the command center with a mug of coffee in one hand and a bottle of water in the other. Alina glanced up from the screen. He had showered and changed into faded jeans and a black t-shirt, his hair brushing the tops of his shoulders.
“I figured you were down here,” he said, pressing the button on the wall to slide the island above back into place.
Alina sat back in her chair and stretched with a yawn.
“How was your run?”
“Uneventful.” He handed her the bottle of water and looked up at the plasma screens. “Any luck?”
“No.” Alina opened the water and took a long drink. “I'm in the chat rooms right now. So far, no sign of the targets.”
Hawk moved past her to another chair a little further down.
“They'll turn up,” he said, seating himself and opening his own laptop. “It's only a matter of time.”
She nodded and turned her attention back to the script streaming over her screen. A comfortable silence fell over the room, broken only by the sound of Hawk typing on the keyboard a foot away. Alina sipped her water, reflecting once again on how odd it felt to have him there. Odd, and yet strangely comfortable, as if he had always been there.
A beep sounded from one of the servers, slicing through the quiet room and causing them both to spin around and look up at the plasmas. Two of them had stopped scrolling and were flashing a match.
“Bingo,” Hawk said.
Viper switched over to another hard-drive and pulled up the search program, accessing the image feeds that had triggered the match alert. Hawk slid his chair over, looking over her shoulder at the screen.
“Where are they?”
Alina accessed the first image that had locked onto Kasim and pressed her lips together grimly.
“In Center City,” she said, pulling up a grid map of the city. “At the Liberty Bell.”
“Oh, that's not good,” he muttered, leaning forward to look at the grainy image on the screen.
“No. The second image is also at the Bell, but from a different angle.”
She pulled up the second image and moved them side-by-side. In the first, Kasim was looking away from the camera, studying the view outside the glass wall. He was standing a few feet away from the iconic bell, but looking out across the grass in the direction of Independence Hall. In the second image, he was on the other side of the monument, facing the camera. There was no mistaking him. Viper lowered her eyes to his left hand. Only three fingers. The other two were blown off when he was building one of his bombs a few years ago. It was definitely Kasim.
“He's doing reconnaissance,” Hawk said after looking at the images for a minute.
She nodded.
“Yes, but for what? In this one, he seems to be more interested in what's outside.”
“Independence Hall?”
“Let's find out.”
Viper typed quickly and, a moment later, she was pulling up footage from the cameras in and around Independence Hall, across the street from the Liberty Bell.
“Better go back to the beginning of the week,” he advised. “If he's smart, he wouldn't have gone to both on the same day. He has to know there are cameras everywhere.”
She nodded, entered the search parameters and hit enter. The program began scanning through hundreds of faces, looking for another match. Redirecting it onto the plasma, she pulled up a new browser window.
“Let's see what's happening in the city this weekend,” she murmured.
Hawk slid back to his laptop. “I'll take the Bell. You take Independence Hall.”
A few minutes later, she sat back and glanced at him.
“Anything?”
He shook his head.
“Nothing. It's still too early in the season. I don't see anything that would draw a big enough crowd to interest them.”
Alina turned to look up at the plasma, still searching through the images. She frowned thoughtfully.
“Unless they're not trying to make that large of a statement?” she wondered absently. “Perhaps it's more of a psychological play? Attack the center of Western Independence?”
Hawk turned to look at her, leaning back in his chair and hooking his fingers behind his head thoughtfully.
“Do we have any idea how much material he's got access to?” he asked.
Alina shrugged.
“Not really. Dutch was moving additional product up the coast for Dominic, but there's no way of knowing how much. At the very least, he has enough for one bomb.”
“And at the most?”
“Maybe two? You figure it took five drivers to move enough for five bombs.”
“Don't forget the smaller bombs that took out Dutch and John,” Damon pointed out, lowering his arms. “More materials were moved up the coast than just the five main bombs.”
She nodded.
“True. So, it's entirely possible that Kasim has the materials for two full-sized explosives.”
As soon as the words left her mouth, the server got another hit, this time at Independence Hall. Alina spun back to the computer and brought up the image.
“That was on Tuesday afternoon,” she said, glancing at the time stamp.
“And he was at Liberty Bell when? Today?”
She went back to the first image and shook her head.
“Yesterday. He went to one Tuesday, and one Wednesday.”
They both looked back at the plasma and the images of Kasim.
“Possibly two bombs, and the two largest monuments to freedom in our country,” Hawk said grimly. “Why is nothing ever easy anymore?”
Michael pulled his cell phone from his pocket, his eyes on the monitor in front of him. It was mid-morning and he was in his office, working. He’d gotten back from New York after ten last night, and was in the office by six.
“Hello?”
He answered absently, scanning the information on the screen and reaching for his now cold coffee.
“Hey Mike,” Blake greeted him. “You at work?”
Michael lifted his eyes from the screen and sat back in his chair, a faint frown crossing his face.
“Yes. Aren't you?”
“Technically, yes, but I'm on the road. I'm in New Jersey. I came up last night.”
“Just couldn't stay away, could you? You’d better be careful or you'll be in a committed relationship before you know it.”
“It's not like that. At least, not...oh shut up,” Blake said, irritated. “Don't make me bring up the Black Widow.”
Michael chuckled.
“How is Stephanie?” he asked, sobering. “How's the leg?”
“She's walking with a cane and it's giving her some pain, but she's back to work part-time.” Blake cleared his throat. “As it turns out, I'm glad I came up last night. Something happened.”
Michael frowned. “What?”
“Someone broke into her apartment. They were waiting for her when she came home last night. I was a couple minutes behind her and when I got there, Buddy went nuts. He chased them out her back door.”
Michael felt a chill roll over him.
“Did they take anything?” he demanded. “What happened?”
“Stephanie went in and she thinks they were behind the door. She got knocked out from behind and never saw a thing. When we got there, she was unconscious inside the door. By the time I’d checked her and followed Buddy to the door, whoever it was had gone. Nothing was missing. It didn't look like they touched anything, but this morning Stephanie said her laptop had been tampered with.”
“Tampered with how?”
“They copied her drive, but didn't erase the logs,” Blake said. “Probably didn't have time before she came back, and then Buddy came at the door.”
“What the hell is going on up there?” Michael got up and took a restless turn around his office. “First Angela last week, now this. Everyone is getting into trouble up there!”
“I note you don't include the friendly, neighborhood assassin in that. Are we just going to ignore that someone tried to blow her head off last week?”
Michael scowled.
“I'm not ignoring it, but apparently that's par for the course for her these days. Why would someone want Stephanie's laptop? What's she working on?”
“The Casa Reinos, but this wasn't them. It was too civilized, and they left her head on her body. This was someone else.”
Michael ran a hand over his short hair and stopped behind his desk. He stared down at the polished wood surface, his brows furrowed in thought.
“Trent is dead. Carmichael is dead. We're running out of suspects,” he said. “What does Alina think?”
There was silence on the phone, and Michael raised an eyebrow.
“Stephanie did tell Alina, didn't she?”
“No.” Blake said disgustedly. “I told her to call her last night, but she refused. Said she didn't want to worry her over something that was probably nothing.”
“And this morning? After she found the logs and saw they copied her hard-drive?”
“She still won't tell her. She said Alina has enough to worry about right now, and she wasn't about to add to it.”
“That's the biggest load of crap I've heard yet,” Michael exclaimed.
“Agreed.” Blake paused. “What's going on? What is she worrying about now? Stephanie said the shooter from the church was no longer a threat.”
Michael sank into his chair again and sighed.
“He's not, but the person who sent him is,” he said reluctantly. “You shouldn't know any of this. I'm surprised Stephanie told you that much.”
“I was at the church. I'm in the loop, no matter how much the Black Widow may not like it,” Blake retorted. “Mike, what the hell is going on? I need to know what I'm dealing with up here.”
Michael shook his head.
“All I can tell you is to keep both eyes on Stephanie, and be careful. And if I were you, I'd try to convince Stephanie to go to Alina and tell her everything. I'm ready to bet my salary that it's all connected.”
“My gut's telling me something like that too, but Stephanie's being stubborn. Hell, I'm tempted to hunt the Black Widow down myself and demand some answers.”
Despite himself, Michael grinned.
“Oh, I'd love to see how that works out.” The grin faded. “Blake, be careful. This is getting uglier every day. Somehow, I don't think New Jersey is the safest place to be right now.”
“Unless Stephanie comes back to DC, I don't see that I have much of a choice,” he replied. “And she's not leaving. Trust me. I tried. I don't suppose you want to come up and make it a party?”
Michael glanced at the monitor on his desk.
“I'd love to, but I'm in the middle of something right now. You'll have to hold down the fort without me, at least for a couple days.”
“Here's hoping last night was an isolated incident.”
Blake didn't sound confident, however, and Michael hung up with a deep sense of foreboding. He had a feeling it was just getting started.