Black Pawn (Michael Cailen Book 1) (36 page)

Michael arrived back at Kevin's rented cabin in the white
Mercedes.  Lauren and Emily opened the door as he walked up the steps.  Emily
had her arms crossed and a big frown on her face.  “You didn't say goodbye,”
she pouted.

Michael smiled and knelt down in front of her.  “I'm sorry
Emily.  I won't do it again.”

“Okay.” She immediately broke into a huge smile and wrapped
her arms around his neck.  He laughed and picked her up as he walked inside. 
He patted Lauren on the head and shut the door.  Jessica came out from the
other room, followed by Jinx and Kevin.

“What happened?” she asked as she glanced at the Mercedes
parked out front.

“Elaina had a miscarriage.  Russians and CIA showed up before
we could leave.  We had to ditch the truck.”

“How did the Russians know you were there?”  Jinx asked.

“Morgan tipped them off,”  he responded.  “How did you guys
make out?”

“Good,” Kevin answered.  “In fact, we're almost done.  I
borrowed a good chunk of the coding.  Element and ClosedCasket have also been
helping.  We should be ready to go this weekend.”

“That's great because I get the feeling we're running out of
time.  And if this goes on any longer, I could end up with my own village to
protect.”

The ever increasing amount of people involved was beginning
to weigh heavily on him.  With so many lives at stake it was not an easy burden
to bear.  He felt responsible for everyone, including Josh and Martin.

“Will you need me to bring the girls back tomorrow?”  he
asked.

“If you don't mind.  I think I can finish with Element and
Casket, but I'd like an extra pair of eyes to look over the programming so we
don't make a mistake.”

“All right then.  We'll see you tomorrow.”

Michael made sure he said goodbye to Emily and Lauren this
time.  They both wanted hugs and he was happy to oblige.  Emily kissed him on
the cheek and told him she wanted to see him again real soon.  Everyone got a
chuckle out of her outspokenness.  Especially Michael who then promised he'd see
her tomorrow.  As they walked down the steps to the car, Michael handed Jessica
the keys.

“You want me to drive?”  She stopped.

He kept walking.  “Damn right.  This thing is stolen.  If we
run into cops, I want you behind the wheel.”  He stood at the passenger side
door grinning and waited for her.

She smiled then continued down to the car, pleased at his
confidence in her driving skills.

“I can't believe you're letting her drive.”  Jinx said in
disbelief from the backseat.  “She drives like a maniac.”

“Hey!”  Jessica protested.

Michael laughed.  He turned around and looked at Jinx.  “I'm
not disagreeing with you.”

Jessica slapped his arm as she backed out of the driveway.

“What?  You do drive like a maniac.  Who crashes through
police barricades?”  he teased.  He looked back at Jinx.  “You should see the
last car she drove.”

Jessica rolled her eyes.  “Shut up or I'll let Jinx drive. 
We'll get back to the hideout in three days.”

“Oh come on!”  Jinx laughed.  “Just because I'm a safe
driver and go the speed limit ...”

WITH THE
loss of their truck, Michael called Martin
to see if they would be able to make use of the Mercedes they acquired.  The
phone rang a few times and Martin answered.  Michael could hear a lot of noise
in the background.

“I take it your place is bugged,”  Michael surmised.

“That would be correct.  What's up?”

“Any chance you could arrange new plates for a stolen car?”

“Maybe.  You'll have to pick them up though.”

“Yeah, I figured.”  Michael gave him a description of the
Mercedes.

“Give me a few minutes.”  Martin hung up.  In less than five
minutes, he was calling back.  “They'll be ready in an hour.  Plates and a
registration to match.”  He gave Michael directions to pick them up.

“How exactly does that work?”  Michael asked.

“They just duplicate an existing registered car, making the
plates to match.  So there's two vehicles driving around with the same plates
and registration.”

“Neat.”

“Yeah, it's good in a pinch.  You'll have to pay them when
you get there.  I can't do it, obviously.  One grand, cash.  Do you have it?”

“Yeah I do.  Josh and I mugged a few drug dealers the other
night.  Thanks a lot, Martin.”

“No sweat.”

JESSICA AND
Jinx spent the next few days helping
Kevin with the programming while Michael contemplated the best way to make sure
they left no trace behind.  He came to a decision and pulled Josh aside to
discuss it.

“I want to get your thoughts on security for the warehouse
we'll be using as base.  I don't want to be breaking down and removing
equipment.  Especially if we have to leave in a hurry.  I'd like to just drop
and run.”

“What did you have in mind?”

“I was thinking a firebomb.”

“That should work,” Josh agreed.  Have a plan on how to get
one?”

“Even if we could find one, I wouldn't want to risk buying
it.  I was thinking we should make our own.”

“Ah, the safe way,”  Josh remarked sarcastically.

Michael shrugged.  “You got a better idea?”

Josh looked down at the floor and shook his head. “Nope.”

“Let's make a shopping list.”

Saturday came.  Josh stayed behind in the hideout and
babysat Kevin's girls, along with the Gomezes.  Michael placed the four
firebombs they concocted while Jessica, Jinx and Kevin set up the computers. 
The bombs took significantly less time than the computers.  Done with his part,
Michael walked the perimeter to pass the time.

Suki arrived a little early and helped them finish preparing
the computers.  Phuzz and Snipe arrived together about ten minutes later.  Sun
parked just as Phuzz and Snipe were walking inside. Michael walked in with her.

He leaned over Kevin's shoulder as he was working.  “Will we
know if they've traced it back to here?”

“Yes.  We should be able to keep tabs on their progress
too.”

“Should?”

Kevin shrugged his shoulders.  “We can't anticipate
everything.”

It wasn't what Michael wanted to hear.   He stood up and
addressed everyone in a loud voice. “You may have noticed the explosives. 
They're firebombs.  They're designed to destroy through fire rather than blast
effect.  Once we're finished, I'll be blowing the building.”

“Isn't that a bit excessive?”  Snipe remarked.

“Do you want to spend hours after we finish combing the
building and computers, making sure we've wiped away every trace of our
existence?”  No one answered.  “What if we don't have hours?  What if we have
only seconds to leave?”  Again, no one replied.  “Let me assure you, if they
find this place intact, they will scrutinize every centimeter of it.  A strand
of hair is all it would take.  I don't know about you, but I'll sleep better if
this place isn't left standing.” No one could argue with his logic.  He turned
to Jessica.  “Are we ready to go?”

“Not quite.  We need to update our zombies with the programs
we've written so they will do what we want them to.  We're doing that now, but
it will take a few hours before we're finished.”

“How about our foreign friends?” he asked.

Voices blared from the computer speakers.  “We're here.”

Michael hadn't realize they were listening.  “How long have
they been there?” he whispered to Jessica.

“First thing we did was conference them in,” she answered.

Feeling awkward about that, he let them get back to work and
went outside to keep watch.  Three long, dreadfully boring hours passed and
Michael wished he could trade places with Josh.  He went back inside to check
on their progress.  The room was buzzing with commotion.  “What's going on?”

“We started,”  Suki informed him.

He stepped behind Jessica who was intensely focused on the
task at hand, trying to find a way into the CIA network.  Kevin waited
anxiously next to her, ready to spring into action with the search program the
second she was in.

“I bet their IT guy is rocking in the fetal position right
now,”  Snipe laughed.

Everyone but Jessica laughed along.

“They're tracking!”  a voice called out through the
computer.

“I see it,”  Suki yelled back.

“Not anymore.”  Sun grinned wickedly.

Michael was starting to feel uneasy.  He looked back at
Jessica.

“I can't do it,” she grieved.

“Jess,”  Kevin spoke calmly.  “You need to relax.  You can
do this.”

She looked at Kevin then back at her computer appearing
distraught and upset.  She kept trying to no avail.  Just when Michael was
about to lose hope, her face lit up.  “Why didn't I think of that before?” she
mumbled to herself and started pecking away at her keys again.  A few minutes
later, she ecstatically declared she had done it.

Kevin immediately began the search program.  “It's running.”

“I'm going to open a couple more back doors in case they
find this one.”  Jessica kept working.

“What are you searching for?”  Michael asked Kevin.

“I used keywords from the information on the drive and email
Jessica received.  Any document or file containing those words or dates is
being harvested.  We don't have time to pick and choose so it's programmed to
take everything.  We can sort through the data after to find what's relevant.”

“There's a secure archive section I just broke into,” 
Jessica announced.

Kevin quickly added it to the search.

“They almost had me!”  One of the hackers yelled through the
computer.  “I'm out.”

“Everyone on your toes!”  Snipe called out.  “They're
tracking again.”

“They've initiated countermeasures,”  Jinx added.  “Half my
army just got wiped.”

“Me too,”  Suki moaned.

“They locked me out,”  Jessica announced.  “Glad I opened
those other ports.”  Within seconds, they were searching again.

“We don't have much time left,”  Kevin stated the obvious.

“How far along is the search?”  Michael asked.

“The program has searched about eighty percent of what we
can access so far.”

“Michael,”  Jessica called to him.  He bent down and looked
at her screen.  “I have what look like a bunch of shipping requests signed by
Edward Morgan.  They're all from China.”

“Can you download it?”

“Done.  Anything else I should look for?”

“Yeah, see if you can get Timothy Gatti's personnel file.”

She tapped away at her keys.  “Done.”  She turned to him and
grinned

He smiled and looked at Kevin.  “How much longer?”

“Ninety-seven percent,” he answered.

“I gotta break guys, they almost have me,”  Phuzz called
out.

“I'm out,” came another voice over the computer.

“They just toasted my whole army,”  Jinx deflated.

“Mine too,”  Suki pushed away from his PC.

“SpaceBird has been shot down,”  the last hacker announced
over the computer.

Only Snipe and Sun remained and they wouldn't last much
longer.  Michael looked at Kevin who was watching the search progress on the
computer.

“That's it!”  Kevin yelled out.

Snipe and Sun broke off the attack and Jessica severed their
connection to the CIA's network.

“All right, let's go,”  Michael insisted.

“Can't yet,”  Kevin stopped him.

“Why?”

“We were using over twenty thousand computers to do the
searching so it would only take a few minutes, but it will take a while for
that information to be uploaded from them to us.  Right now, the upload is only
a third done.”

Unaware that would happen, Michael wasn't thrilled to say
the least. “The rest of you don't have to be here.”  He glanced around.  “You
should go now.”

Jessica thanked them as they filed out.  She packed her
laptop into the trunk of the Mercedes while they waited for the upload to
finish.  Michael wasn't convinced they hadn't been able to trace the attack. 
He was also fairly confident that with enough time they would eventually be
able to.  He didn't want to be there to find out.  He went outside to keep an
eye on the roads and sky for any approaching vehicles or aircraft.

Fifteen more minutes passed before Jessica, Jinx and Kevin
emerged from the building.  Kevin placed the CPU with the search data in the
trunk, along with a keyboard, mouse, and monitor.

When they were far enough from the building, Michael hit the
detonator and a giant fireball erupted behind them.  The blast shook the car
and sent fire and smoke billowing up into the sky.  No one was prepared for the
size of the explosion.  Jinx, Kevin and Jessica stared in amazement at the
towering mushroom cloud behind them.

“That was ...  A little bigger than I was expecting,” 
Michael remarked as he stomped on the gas, now more anxious to put distance
between them and the explosion.

ONCE BACK
at the hideout, Jessica eagerly began
processing all the information they retrieved.  She was looking through files
and sorting them according to relevance.

“Find anything yet?” Michael asked.

“I don't know.  I was going to ask you.  These shipping
requests, is this normal?”  She pulled up shipping requests from China, one
after another.  All requested by Edward Morgan.

“I have no idea.  We should ask Alonso.”  He called Alonso
over.  “Is this normal shipping activity?”

“Let me see.”  Alonso took his spot and looked over the
requests.  “This is highly abnormal.”  He flipped through the pages of
requests.  “The CIA often makes use of diplomatic immunity to smuggle things
into the US.  So a few requests here and there are totally normal but the
frequency of these requests is above average, to put it lightly.”

“I think we know how he's smuggling the heroin into the
country now,” Michael surmised.  “Where are they shipped to?”

“Looks like three main locations,” Jessica answered.  “L.A.,
New York, and Miami.”

“Any active requests?”  Michael asked.

“One currently due in L.A. today and New York in three
days.”

“New York in three days.  I think we can swing that.”

“What do you have in mind?”  Alonso asked.

“I'm still working on that.  In the meantime, see what else
you can dig up.”