If Reese did not actually work here, she would have considered the Reserve the scariest place on earth. Forget Kabul at midnight. Skip the Kurdish borderlands between Iraq and Syria. Knowing what she did, she would rather march through Tehran wearing nothing but an American flag than take on the Reserve.
But since this was her own personal enclave, Reese’s secret name for the Reserve was Power Center.
“The founders had three models in mind when they designed the Reserve. The first was a high-tech retreat center called Jason’s, where each summer the nation’s top fifty physicists are brought together and given a problem the Department of Defense cannot solve. Jason’s was originally run by the Stanford Research Institute, but when the California university system started its leftist drift, the project was taken over by the Mitre Group out of Washington. The name originated from the myth of Jason and the Argonauts, in which the Golden Fleece offers total protection from the gods of destruction.”
Reese was midway through the part of her job that she most detested. Once each quarter, every corporate member of the Combine could send their new reps on a tour of Reese’s world.
The Reserve was the headquarters for a group that did not exist. But it had to have a name, so some bright individual had come up with the idea of calling it the Combine. Each corporate member appointed three senior executives who attended the Combine meetings and acted as point men. These executives were the only ones who could visit the Reserve. Just three. New corporate members often complained this was not much in return for a joining fee of fifty million dollars and annual dues of another five. But all such comments died away the first time they sought the Reserve’s help.
Reese went on, “The second model used in structuring the Reserve was STRATFOR, where twenty futurologists make initial design concepts for so-called impossible tasks. Stealth technology was a direct result of their work. The third model was DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which made its name with advances in anti–submarine warfare known as MADs, for Magnetic Anomaly Detectors.”
Every three months, Reese did this little go-round for new Combine execs. Weldon flatly refused to have anything to do with them. The trouble with most corporate power guys was, they couldn’t keep up. They were all cloned from the same gene pool—conservative, old, stodgy. They resented change because change threatened the company’s bottom line and their own grip on power. Their talk centered on risk management and hedging bets. Given the chance, they would lock the future in a cage.
Thankfully, Reese was almost done with this ordeal. They had dined in the residence and attended their first power talk in the main conference center. They had met the current team of live-in brains, brought together from a variety of fields. Four of the execs had slept right through the brains’ summary of future trends. Reese had brought them outside for a breath of fresh air before the final act. They were fully alert now, waiting for what Reese secretly called the big bang.
The Reserve’s nine acres dominated the largest plateau on the La Jolla cliffs. A hundred meters below them was the house that had cost a certain talk show host thirty million dollars. The Reserve’s sculpted gardens contained four large buildings and fifteen elegant two-bedroom bungalows, all designed in a bizarre mixture of Spanish hacienda and Southern California bling. The structures reminded Reese of ritzy bordellos lining the Mexican Riviera.
“If you gentlemen will please take your seats.” Because they were here for the first time, Reese added, “You may find it more comfortable to restrict yourselves to one company per table.”
This next act was definitely not something they would want to share with members of other corporate teams.
Reese gestured to the security agent hovering in the background. He set the briefcase chained to his wrist on her table and handed her the key. Reese pretended not to see the execs share a smirk, clearly thinking this was just unnecessary theatrics. She unlocked the briefcase and passed out the files.
These updates were specifically tailored to each member company. They contained confidential reports from their biggest competitors, news about bids they were in the process of losing, products that could well wipe away all green from their bottom lines. There were a couple of gasps, a few soft moans.
“Thank you for your time, gentlemen.” Reese stowed away her professional smile as she left the group. She followed the covered path away from the cliff edge and the glistening Pacific, entered the carriage house, and shared a smirk with the security guy unlocking the steel door. The Combine’s newest members would not need to worry about falling asleep any time soon.
Two hours from now, the corporate jets would whine their way into the San Diego municipal airport and Weldon Hawkins would supervise the Combine’s quarterly meeting. Reese’s job was done. She could return her attention to other matters. Which was a good thing, because they had a problem. A big one.
She took the circular stairs into the Vault. There was a glass-walled elevator, but this was only used by Weldon and the few top Combine officials who were permitted to ever set eyes on where the Reserve’s real work was done. The Vault’s staff disliked being caged by the elevator. It wasn’t the walls. It was the speed. Even if the elevator had descended like a bullet, it would still be too slow for Reese’s crew. They all took the stairs. Unless they were really flying. Then they slid down the steel banister, which was very dangerous because the stairs deposited them at the top of a four-tier arena. One wired techie had flown down the ninety-three-foot spiral railing, flipped over the waist-high glass barrier, and done a headfirst dive into the first tier of flat-screens. That had happened the month before Reese’s arrival. The crew loved to regale newcomers with the Vault’s secret lore.
The Vault was modeled after a Defense war room. That was hardly a surprise, since it had been built by the same group that had refitted the Pentagon’s own underground chamber. The Vault was 130 feet wide and 100 feet high. The front wall was dominated by massive flat-screens, while the rear wall stretched out like a concrete fan. The shape directed the crew’s attention forward, surrounding them with a constant reminder to take aim.
Four semicircular tiers rose like arena seating from the flat-screen array. Each contained seven tech stations. Each tech station possessed five thirty-inch flat-screens. At first glance, the streaming electronic arrays were overwhelming. It usually took a new techie about a month to find their feet.
Reese demanded, “Where’s Patel?”
“In Playpen One.”
Reese walked around the outer rim. She passed her office with its glass wall overlooking the main arena and stopped before the next chamber. The chamber was the size of an executive conference room and contained a miniature version of the arena’s data display. The Vault contained three such chambers. The techies called them playpens because they were assigned to temporary teams and tasks. Normally being assigned to a task force meant the gloves were taken off. The techies could do whatever they needed to do, ask for whatever support they felt they required. Just so long as they delivered.
All the rear offices had walls of glass. At the flip of a switch, the glass walls turned opaque and a current scrambled all internal sounds. Reese tapped on the grey glass and waited for the electronic buzzer to unlock the door. She pushed through and said, “What do you have?”
Patel whined, “We lost Hazard. The man is gone.”
“That is unacceptable.”
Patel Singh was Reese’s favorite techie. The Vault crew was supposed to be leaderless, a cluster of independent operatives who answered directly to either Reese or Weldon, depending on the task at hand. But there was a problem with this approach. Most of the Vault crew’s interpersonal skills were just terrible. Many preferred to skulk in the electronic shadows and let somebody else do the talking. Like now.
“Charlie Hazard left the plane in Fort Myers,” Patel said. “It’s taking forever to locate him.”
Reese slipped into a chair now vacated by a woman who clung to the side wall. “Hazard argued with Strang. He either quit or was fired.”
“He rented a car from Alamo.” The front wall held another bank of flat-screens. The top segment flashed up a map of the Florida peninsula. “There are eleven different routes he could have taken across the state.”
“You’ve got a watch on his home?”
“Of course. Surveillance is 24-7.” The bottom half of the screen now displayed a live-stream video of a sixties ranch-style home. “The trip should only have taken him three hours, four tops. Hazard has not gone home.”
Reese pointed at legs protruding from beneath a car in the garage. “Who’s that?”
“Julio Lopez. He’s nobody.”
“Patel.”
“The guy is on our screen. He’s at Hazard’s house.”
“He’s not at the house. He’s in the garage,” Patel said. “He was working on the yard for a while. Now he’s got his head stuck in some old car.”
“That happens to be a vintage Stingray.”
“Whatever.” Like most techies, Patel held the past in supreme disdain. “It’s so last week.”
“We don’t know anything about Hazard. We don’t even know where he is. Why don’t we have audio feed?”
Patel gave her a withering look and clicked his mouse. Instantly the playpen was filled with the clamor of Hispanic hip-hop. On the screen the kid’s feet danced where they stuck out from the car.
“Turn it off.”
Patel hit the switch. “The kid is nowhere.”
“I want a watch put on him. Full background feed. The works.”
“It’s a waste of time.”
“Do it. Now tell me where Hazard has gone.”
“Well, I do have something.” On the map, all the cross-state lines vanished but one. “This is not the most direct route. But it does take him through Lakeside Estates. We’ve spent all night running down all of his previous known associates. Hazard’s last posting was FLETC, which stands for—”
“I know FLETC. Give me the connection.”
“Colonel Donovan Field, former commandant of FLETC, retired to Lakeside Estates.” One of Patel’s silent minions typed into her keyboard. The Florida map was replaced by a photo of a grizzled warrior. “Donovan Field is your basic gung-ho fanatic. Three Purple Hearts. Two Bronze Stars with clusters, and a Silver Star. He personally recruited Hazard.”
“What do our Pentagon allies say about this Field?”
“That he is not a player.”
Reese grimaced. The Pentagon had its own code. “Not a player” meant someone who treated military suppliers as outsiders. These were people who put patriotism above their future careers and above corporate profits. For Charlie Hazard to refuse their offer, leave Strang, and go straight to a man described by the Combine’s military allies as not a player was the worst possible news.
“I have to check this out.” Reese rose from her chair. “In the meantime, extend your scope on Hazard. And move back into the arena. Bring the entire crew up to speed, in case we need them.”
Even the limpets clinging to the walls disliked that news, but they let Patel complain for them. “We can handle this guy.”
But it wasn’t just the guy anymore. “Do it. I want a full workup on Julio Lopez in an hour.”