Halon-Seven (43 page)

Cyrus looked up from the screen of his laptop and found her smiling at him. She felt her face instantly flush. She hadn’t realized she was staring.

How embarrassing!

She further flustered herself with a small laugh that bordered on a giggle. Not knowing how to react next, and not wanting to prolong her self-conscious display, she turned quickly back to the sink. She drained it and rinsed her hands, then dried them on a dish towel. The entire time, hoping he wouldn’t ask what she’d been thinking about.

She was saved by the bell, literally, when Cyrus’s cell phone chimed. Glancing over her shoulder, she saw him snatch the phone from the counter. She had a feeling he had been waiting for a call. Apparently this was it.

—————

The trill of
the cell phone was magic to Cyrus’s ears.

Finally!

He grabbed the phone from the counter, beside his laptop, and swiped his finger across the display to answer it.

“Hey, what’d you find?” Cyrus asked, forgoing any greeting.

“Just what you expected,” Hondo said from the other end of the line. “Underwood’s home was bugged. And whoever did it wasn’t concerned with overkill. I found taps on every extension in the house, as well as bugs in his home office, living room, bedroom, kitchen, dining room—hell, I even found one in the hallway by the front door.”

Cyrus massaged the corners of his eyes and took a slow deep breath. “I wish I was surprised. But that does seem a bit excessive.”

“Excessive? It’s bloody nuts. And, Cyrus? This isn’t your normal off-the-shelf hardware. I’ve never seen tech like this. If I hadn’t stopped to see Nathan before coming here, I don’t think our normal gear would’ve picked this stuff up.”

This meant they were up against people with skills and resources. Not a good combination. It was about what he’d anticipated after running into Yuri Dargoslav in that alley in Manhattan, but he’d hoped for better news. News of the high-end tech jived with the toxicology report Nathan emailed earlier that morning. Nathan had run a chemical analysis of the substance in the syringe Cyrus took off the team at his apartment. The drug was some sort of exotic compound that Nathan had never seen before. He could only guess at its prescribed effects. He was fairly certain the drug was not intended to kill, but even that was speculation. It could’ve been a sedative, it could’ve been a truth serum, or it could’ve been the latest designer stiffy prescription, Nathan had joked.

“What about his offices?” Cyrus asked.

“You’re not going to like this. The locks at both the home and the office showed signs of being popped. Really skilled work, but they’d been messed with, no question. The home office wasn’t a problem. Underwood didn’t have anything relevant to the Prof or the project there. He said he was very regimented when it came to the information. The Prof was very specific. Said it was out of concern for Underwood’s safety—and that of his wife.

“The office across town was another story. Good news there, though. Underwood kept everything in a hidden burn vault. I think it’s safe to say that the location of the vault was discovered, but I’m certain the contents were never accessed. The problem is that Underwood is a civilian—he didn’t know…what he didn’t know.”

Cyrus felt his stomach drop. “The copy machine?”

“Worse. The copy machine was also the office printer. Every document he copied, scanned, or printed went through the bloody thing. I pulled the drive and took a look-see. Everything Underwood has touched in the last two years was cached on the printer’s hard drive. You can bet your last dollar, whoever broke in got everything they wanted, and they never had to open the safe.”

There was no stopping the throbbing headache behind Cyrus’s eyes. His worst suspicions had become manifest. For all of their work to keep their secrets secure, Meade and Underwood had made one of the more classic mistakes. They’d failed to realize that high-end multi-function copiers often included an onboard computer. That onboard computer utilized a hard drive to store documents, intended to accelerate printing, and even
 
archive files for later reprinting or auditing. Such machines were an espionage goldmine.

Cyrus knew this was very bad for their cause.

“Clone the drive and dump a hardcopy of everything so we can do an assessment. Bring the clone, the original, and the hard copy back with you. Let the service guys earn their keep and replace the drive. It’s like closing the barn door after the horses are gone, but it’s the best we can do now.”

“The clone’s already in progress. Dumping a hard copy will take some time, but I’ll get on it. Anything else?” Hondo’s professionalism shone through. Always ready and willing to take orders, but not unwilling to think for himself and take the initiative. Working with people like Hondo was one of the only things Cyrus missed from his old life.

“Just one,” Cyrus said. “Any signs of an onsite surveillance team when you popped in on Underwood?”

“Negative. If I had to guess, based on his peripheral involvement, the ridiculous number of bugs planted, and the fact that whoever is behind this already raided the printer’s hard drive, I don’t think they found him worthy of an on-site team.”

Cyrus weighed the factors and had to agree. He would have come to the same conclusion if he had been tasked with surveilling Underwood and had access to similar resources.

“Alright. Do me a favor? While you’re printing the hardcopy, can you start going through the cloned drive? There’s one document I need above all else.”

Cyrus went on to explain exactly what he was looking for, and then signed off. He set the phone aside and stared blankly at the screen of his laptop. His mind drifted as he considered the ramifications of Hondo’s discovery. It was several moments before he realized Reese was standing on the opposite side of the counter, waiting to hear what had happened.

He explained how he had sent Hondo to Underwood’s home first thing that morning. They’d been looking for any potential security breaches. Cyrus had phoned Underwood from the car on the way back from Vegas the night before. Underwood had insisted that Meade had devised the security protocols himself, and Underwood claimed that he was meticulous in obeying them.

While Cyrus hadn’t doubted Underwood’s integrity, evidence suggested there’d been a security breach. Something beyond the information Chad gave the Alvares Cartel. A team had ambushed Cyrus at his apartment in Chicago, and another was instantly on him when he made an impromptu trip to Manhattan. Both teams were comprised of experienced operators. They were all eastern European but their nationalities were incongruent. It had lead Cyrus to suspect they didn’t have an affiliation with a specific government. They were likely independent contractors. Mercenaries. Yuri Dargoslav’s presence supported that supposition. And if Yuri was on the job, it was likely his father, Dargo, was also involved.

That was troubling.

Cyrus had a complicated history with Dargo. They’d crossed paths before and things had ended badly. Dargo still harbored resentment toward Cyrus, and he couldn’t blame the man. Cyrus, too, carried bad feelings from that mission. Ghosts that would haunt him until the day he died. It was the operation that had brought an end to his work for the Coalition. The mission left Cyrus unable, or at least unwilling, to ever trust anyone at the Coalition again.

If Dargo were here now, he would want to see Cyrus dead before his job was over. But Cyrus had to put that out of his mind. The more he thought about it, the more certain he became that Dargo was leading the opposing team. Right now Cyrus needed to figure out what Dargo was after and how to stop him. It was the only way to keep the Meridian team safe.

Miami, Florida

Friday, 5:40 pm (3:40 pm Colorado Time)

This time Cyrus parked a block and half up the street. Once again, he fed far more change into the parking meter than was required. He pulled a duffle bag from the trunk of the rented Mercedes and slammed the lid. The car was flashier than he preferred, but it fit in among the other vehicles parked in this section of the upscale shopping district.

He walked to the nearest intersection and turned right. From there it was only two hundred feet before a narrow alley opened on the left. He reflected on the change in scenery. This alley was located in a high-rent part of Miami, and it was nothing like the last one he visited in Manhattan. This area was well maintained, free from trash, and there were commercial dumpsters evenly distributed between the windowless steel doors spread across the back of the block-long building. The presence of bright sunlight and the distinct lack of a urine odor also made the current venue a welcome change.

Moving silently down the alley, Cyrus watched the numbers stenciled on the whitewashed steel doors. Each was the rear entrance of a shop fronting the main boulevard. Locating unit 324 proved no problem at all. An electric meter hung on the wall a few feet from the door. A thick pipe was used as a conduit for the electrical service, running up the wall, before curving into the building above. A small access panel was on the face of the meter. Cyrus had been looking for it.

Laying the duffle at his feet, he pulled back the zipper and removed a Phillips-head screwdriver. A minute later, he’d freed the access panel from the face of the meter. Looking down into the device, he could see the heavy bolts that anchored the thick power leads, which supplied electricity to the store.

He cringed. This wouldn’t be pretty, but it would work.

Pocketing the screwdriver, he pulled a lock-pick gun from the bag. It would have to do. He was out of practice, and time wasn’t on his side. He needed to move fast. With the lock-pick gun at the ready, he returned to the power meter. He pulled one of the removable bits from the screwdriver’s handle and took a deep breath.

Not pretty at all.

Stepping back as far as possible, Cyrus dropped the long screwdriver into the meter horizontally, bridging the gap between the positive and negative terminals. As soon as the metal dropped into place there was a thunderous bang, a blinding flash, and a whizzing sound. Cyrus had already stepped to the left and inserted the lock-pick gun’s pins into the key slot of the door to unit 324. As the lock-pick clicked away at the deadbolt, he glanced at the smoking power meter. The face of the meter had a tear in its sheet metal housing. Glancing over his shoulder, he found the cause of the slash. The screwdriver was embedded in the cinderblock wall behind him. It had winged past, just as he had stepped aside to begin work on the door.

The last click of the lock-pick gun told him he was in. Without waiting a moment, he tossed the lock-pick away, moving through the door and into a dark hallway. Just as he stepped inside, a flashlight came to life in a room to his left. He headed for that room. As he reached the doorway, he came toe to toe with Nathan.

At first, Nathan could only look at Cyrus slack jawed. The man didn’t know what to say. Cyrus knew Nathan could read the determination in his eyes. The man was in a profession where he couldn’t succeed without being good at reading people. Cyrus watched Nathan’s eyes as the man put it all together in the span of two seconds. Nathan’s shocked expression switched to concern after he glanced up at the now extinguished ceiling lights. When his eyes met with Cyrus’s again, he knew there was trouble.

“What?” It seemed all Nathan could manage as he struggled to understand what was happening.

Cyrus pointed back into the room, his expression deathly serious. “Have a seat.”

Nathan knew better than to ague. Friendship only got you so far, and Cyrus could see the man knew he was walking a tenuous line.

Nathan went for his customary seat behind the desk but Cyrus stopped him. “No,” he said and slid a tall stool over from the work counter, placing it on the opposite side of Nathan’s desk. “You sit here.”

After Nathan sat, Cyrus walked around the desk and sat in Nathan’s office chair. The entire time Nathan’s eyes were glued to Cyrus. A large battery-powered camping lantern cast the only light in the room. Cyrus had placed it beside the door, so the rest of the room was cast in murky half shadows. Nathan’s eyes still watched Cyrus with great anxiety.

Cyrus was watching the man’s expression carefully. Based on it, he had a pretty good idea what he would find. Without taking his eyes off Nathan’s, he palmed the underside of the desk and pulled free a .45 caliber Colt 1911. Cyrus’s eyes narrowed as he set the gun gently on the counter between them.

For several tenuous moments neither man spoke. This only served to raise the tension in the room. That was fine with Cyrus. Nathan would be wondering how far Cyrus was willing to take this. Truth be told, Cyrus was curious himself.

“I’ve done you a courtesy,” Cyrus said finally, breaking the silence but not the tension.

Nathan took a visible breath. He nodded slightly. “When you took out the power, you took out the bugs,” he said referring to the listening devices they both knew to be planted in the office. “For God’s sake, Cyrus, why not just call and have me meet you somewhere?”

It was a fair question. There were two reasons. First, such a call would tip off the listening party, and the listening party might send a tagalong. Cyrus didn’t need that. The second was that he wasn’t entirely sure of Nathan’s loyalties. Cyrus fished a small object from the pocket of his jacket. When he laid it down on the table beside the Colt, he never took his eyes off Nathan’s.

The object was half the size of a dime. It was all black, and had the room’s lighting been better, they would’ve been able to see the small lens on the device, which was no larger than the tip of a ballpoint pen.

The tension in Nathan’s face flared. His eyes were locked on the tiny camera. After allowing a moment of silence to enhance Nathan’s anxiety, Cyrus opened the palm of his hand and dropped over a half dozen additional tiny cameras onto the table beside the first. Now he could see that Nathan wasn’t breathing. The man’s eyes had stopped blinking. Finally, the man seemed to snap out of his trance. His eyes went to Cyrus, then back to the miniature cameras. His eyes flicked between the gun and the cameras once more.