After Agent Njeim had helped me climb up into the vent, after we traversed the vent maybe thirty yards to another grate that Agent Njeim needed to kick at several times before it broke away, we found ourselves in a utility room where there was even more ductwork. The emergency lights were the only lights working here too. The place was dusty and smelled of grease and oil. The exit door opened into a corridor to the back of the building and led to an exit to the street. The room next door would be the access to the dumb waiter. Just like in the utility room, the only lights were the emergency lights along the walls.
We found a secure place to tie one of the ropes and tied the other rope to the end of the first rope, ensuring that it would be long enough, and then Agent Njeim climbed back through the vent with the coiled rope, and once she reached the end she let it drop down to the bottom of the shaft. Nate, who wore a bag with his laptop inside slung over his shoulder, tied the rope around his waist. Not the most ideal harness, but it would have to do. Once I heard from Agent Njeim that Nate had been secured, I began to pull him up the shaft. The gloves helped the rope from digging into my hand, but it still wasn’t easy. Agent Njeim stayed where she was in the shaft to monitor the rope to ensure it didn’t fray. When Nate was close enough, she took his hand just like she had taken mine and helped pull him up into the vent.
Once Nate was in the utility room, he untied the rope around him and handed Agent Njeim a radio to communicate with Roger. She radioed down to Roger. Roger said we needed to get back online and contact the president ASAP. He said the explosions had happened for a reason and we needed to find out what that reason was as soon as possible.
Nate was still massaging the sides of his body where the rope had nearly choked him on his way to the top. Then his eyes lit up as a thought crossed his mind.
“Have you checked your phones?”
We pulled out our disposables. Flipped them open and checked the screens. Mine had a signal, as did Agent Njeim’s. Just one bar, but it was something.
Nate said, “Let’s get closer to the street. There’s a chance the blocker won’t reach that far out.”
We followed him down the corridor as he explained—probably more for my benefit than Agent Njeim’s—how it was possible to create a sort of invisible barrier that blocked cell phone reception. He posited that the same thing had happened here, as before the explosion cell reception had been working like normal.
As we neared the exit door, the bars on our disposables increased to two bars, then three.
Excitement entered Nate’s voice.
“Sweet!”
He slipped a laptop from his bag as he dropped to the floor, sitting with his back against the wall, flipping open the laptop’s lid and powering it on.
Agent Njeim glanced back down the corridor as if someone might be coming in our direction.
“Do you have the flash drive?”
His focus on the laptop screen, just like on the screens back at his workstation, Nate nodded.
“Of course I have it.”
“Then access it before you check the system.”
This made Nate pause. He looked at her, his face tight.
“That might not be a good idea. Roger’s right—those explosions were no doubt coordinated with something on the outside. I need to get back online as soon as possible.”
I leaned forward.
“But there’s a chance whatever is happening is because of what’s on the flash drive.”
Nate turned his attention back to the laptop.
“Yeah, and there’s also a chance the flash drive has nothing at all to do with it.”
He typed for several seconds in silence, then realized Agent Njeim and I were staring at him and looked up at us, all at once uncomfortable. He groaned.
“Christ, fine, I’ll check it first. Gimme a sec.”
He withdrew the flash drive from his pocket, flicked off the top, and inserted the drive into the laptop.
“If this fucks up my computer, you can explain it to Roger.”
As before, once the drive was accessed, a screen was brought up asking for a password. This didn’t seem to worry Nate, who opened another program and typed a mile a minute and moved his finger around on the pad to move the cursor on the screen, clicking here and there, and then after a moment the screen asking for a password went away and a new screen appeared. Only it was impossible to tell what was on the screen because it all looked like gibberish.
“Shit, this is some heavy-duty encryption.”
Agent Njeim asked, “Can you break it?”
He gave her a look.
“Please. Do you know who you’re talking to?”
“Yes, someone who’s getting on my nerves.”
“I can break it, and there’s actually a good chance I can open the system and make sure it doesn’t know about this new file.”
“Are you sure?”
He hesitated.
“Pretty sure.”
“This could be life and death, Nate.”
“I know. But first I—”
He paused, squinting at the screen.
“Monarch.”
On the screen was still that gibberish, all letters and characters jumbled in a nonsense pattern, but near the top only that one word was legible.
Agent Njeim said, “What’s Monarch?”
“No idea. But that’s what this file must be named, or where it’s from, or whatever. I need to keep working on it, but first I need to get us back online.”
Nate closed out the programs, or at least he hid them from the main screen, and he typed more on the laptop, moved his finger around on the pad to move the cursor, and a new window popped up. None of it made any sense to me, so I stepped away as Nate did his thing and Agent Njeim watched. Finally Nate sighed, resting his head back against the cinderblock wall.
“Sentinel hasn’t been compromised. Thank God for small miracles. Let me see what else might—”
I cut him off.
“How do you know?”
“What?”
“How do you know Sentinel hasn’t been compromised?”
“All of them are online without any distress markers.”
“Is there any way one of them could be taken offline without you knowing it?”
“Absolutely not.”
Another pause.
“I mean, not unless …”
His expression changed as he realized he might have missed something. He refocused on the laptop, typing faster than ever. For a solid minute he was quiet, just typing, his focus intent on the screen, and then he sucked in air between his teeth.
“Shit.”
Agent Njeim said, “What is it?”
“Sentry Number Six. It’s been taken offline. They set it up so that no alarms would sound and that from the outside it looked like everything was okay and it was still online, but I’m looking at the security feed right now. Four guards are down, all of them dead. And both missiles—”
He swallowed and looked up at us. His eyes wide. His face pale.
“The warheads are gone.”