Internal Threat (17 page)

“We don’t know about any delivery.”

“Of course you don’t! Idiot!” She brushed by him and made her way towards a bank of stairs at the far end of the room. “Stay out of my way and let me do what I’m supposed to.” She met Matt and hurried up the steps with him closely on her heels, leaving the hushed murmurs of the kitchen staff in their wake.

“How long do you think we’ve got?” Matt asked her.

“I’d guess about five minutes. Ten max.”

“Better hustle then.”

They quickened their pace, arriving at the second floor. The stairway ended at a rickety landing that faced a door propped open on rusty hinges. Variegated lights pulsated beyond. Matt crept forward to peek around the corner. Looking back to Ashley, he whispered, “There’s a catwalk to the other side. I see another stairway over there.”

With Ashley following, the pair moved through the doorway. Their senses were assaulted instantly. The blaring beat of techno music struck their ears like slaps while the strobing lights threatened to blind them. Hurrying across the swaying catwalk, Matt glanced down to see an ocean of writhing bodies, their images flashing, then disappearing between the bursts of light. He noted a grouping of tables behind velvet ropes, crowded with people hunkered over their glass surfaces.

They reached the opposite doorway and passed through it, leaving the cacophony behind. Spotting the new stairway, Matt guided Ashley towards it. Taking the steps two at a time now, they bounded up to the seventh floor. A large metal exit door stood before them. Matt placed his hand on the bar across it and pushed, saying a silent prayer of thanks when he found it unlocked. As Ashley moved forward, though, he suddenly stopped.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

“The door,” replied Matt.

“What about it? It opened,” she said with a hint of annoyance.

“Yeah, too easy. If this place is supposed to be abandoned, it should practically be rusted shut. Just like the back there that was propped open.”

“We really don’t have time to analyze this right now, Matt,” she reminded him, stealing a look at her watch.

“Right, sorry.” He stalked forward into darkness. Their heels tapped across a cement floor. Matt’s eyes frantically tried to adjust to the lack of light.

“There,” Ashley said, touching his arm and pointing so he could see. At the far end of the room was a small window riddled with cracks. They rushed to it, Matt instantly feeling his way along its edges for a handhold. His fingers found purchase on the bottom and he pulled upwards.

“It’s locked,” he told Ashley. His eyes strained in the dimness to see the lock. “Any light would help.”

“Let me see what I can do.” Ashley inched her way along the shadow-splashed wall, using her hands to guide her. As she hit the corner of the room, a cold metal box with a plastic switch in its center materialized beneath her palm. “Here we go.” She flicked the switch up with her fingernail. Fluorescent bulbs crackled and hummed above before popping to life.

Matt immediately found the rusted lock at the side of the window sill. He reached for it just as Ashley gasped behind him.

“What is it?” he asked, spinning around. Ashley was staring wide-eyed at a group of metal shelves that extended from the floor to the ceiling. Matt followed her gaze to one nearby, where the shelf was lined in brick-sized bundles tightly wrapped in brown paper and cellophane. She plucked one of them off, hefting it in her hands.

“If this is what I think it is, we’d better hurry.”

“What do you mean?”

Ashley pierced the cellophane with an immaculately painted fingernail and stabbed it through the paper. As she withdrew it, a fine white powder leaked out and sifted on to the floor. “For the party downstairs,” she whispered.

Matt’s eyes snapped back to the shelves. Dozens of bricks stared back at him. Turning his neck to the opposite side of the room, he saw a mirror image of more shelves lined with similar bundles.

“John,” Matt hissed into the microphone clipped to his shirt.

“Yes?” the voice instantly answered.

“There’s a little bit of a problem.”

“I assume you are referring to the several million dollars’ worth of cocaine you just discovered.”

“Exactly.” Before Matt could say anything else, a sound caught his attention.

Feet pounding up the stairs.

Ashley heard it too, tossing the brick aside and hurrying with Matt to the window. Her fingers joined Matt’s in tugging at the rusted lock. Nervous sweat made the job more difficult.

The footsteps were accompanied by urgent voices now, shouting. A small group was about to burst through the door any second.

At last, the window’s lock gave way under a strong tug from Matt. He yanked open the window, crisp night air streaming in.

BOOM!

The door behind them flew off its hinges. Four shadowy figures streamed through in its wake. Guns blazed fire in their hands.

Matt tackled Ashley down to the ground, bullets pocking the wall where she stood only a millisecond before. They took shelter behind one of the large metal racks, as Matt peeked around the corner. A quartet of young men in street clothes were across the room, lowering their guns. The assault paused momentarily, replaced by the ‘ka-chuck’ of new rounds being smacked into place.

The attackers stalked forward slowly and methodically, knowing their prey was cornered.

A desperate idea blossomed in Matt’s head.

“When I tell you to,” he whispered to Ashley, “run towards the window. You’re going to have to jump to make it to the fire escape.” She inclined her head in assent.

Raising himself on to his haunches, Matt placed his shoulder against the lower half of the metal rack. With a forceful heave, he levered against the rack. It tipped forward. Instantly, a chorus of urgent Spanish voices began shouting.

“Now!” Matt shouted to Ashley.

She streaked towards the window as, behind her, the rack groaned and toppled to the ground. A colossal cloud of white exploded into the air as the bricks burst upon impact with the cement floor.

Ashley’s sprinted to the window sill and propelled herself off of it, making the short jump to the fire escape across the way. The rusty metal took her weight grudgingly, swaying with the impact but holding firm. She turned to see Matt leaping across the chasm, legs stretching forward to catch the edge of the metal grate. Heart in her throat, she suddenly had the realization that he would not make it. She stepped out as far as she could and extended her arm out from the fire escape.

Matt’s fingers brushed hers, then fell away. His mouth froze in open-mouthed shock. Legs pinwheeled in the air. Their eyes met as he began to fall.

“Matt!” she screamed.

With a loud ‘whang’, Matt’s hand struck the metal where Ashley’s feet rested. His other hand swiftly joined it, instantly halting his descent. He drew himself up with Ashley’s help and caught his breath as she pulled him back towards the brick wall of the building.

“Thanks,” he croaked.

Before she could answer, bullets spat from the window they had just exited. One of the men was leaning out, drawing a bead on them. There was a smile on his black-stubbled cheeks as he took aim for the easy shot.

Suddenly, a single shot rang out.

The gunman’s forehead popped in an eruption of brain matter. He pitched forward, the remnant of his head leading the rest of his body down to a bloody end on the alley below.

“Nice shot, John,” Matt complimented the air.

“You need to keep moving. All of this noise will surely alert the security in the building,” John responded.

Another of the gunmen appeared at the window across the way. As he brought his weapon up, a burst of bullets chewed the sill by his chest. He immediately ducked back for cover.

Matt grabbed the opportunity to climb the fire escape ladder, urging Ashley ahead of him. At its apex was an unlocked window. Pushing through it, Ashley and Matt hopped down to a darkened room filled with the comforting hum of dozens of servers.

“Back this way,” Matt led Ashley to a server at the end of the row. Finding his thumbprint identifier, he pressed it, causing the gate to instantly pop open. He reached behind the black server box and to locate the correct wires and yanked them out. The green light sputtered to dark. Using both hands, he withdrew the box from its metal coupling and tossed it to the floor. His foot slammed down on to its top with a satisfying crunch that spit screws and plastic.

John was in his ear again. “Use the exit stairs at the east of the building.”

Matt did not hesitate, following the killer’s directions. He and Ashley rapidly made their way down the steps, encountering no resistance. In a couple of minutes, they pushed open an exit door that deposited them in a trash-strewn back alley. They raced around the corner. Matt’s Porsche beckoned from twenty feet away.

Ashley allowed a breath to escape her lips. “Well, that was easy,” she said with a sidelong glance to Matt.

He chuckled, whether from nervousness or the adrenaline still coursing through his veins he did not know. Looking at her, he found Ashley smiling at him.

“I’m glad you’re with me tonight,” he offered.

“I wish I could say the same thing,” she said good-naturedly.

“Ashley, I-”

His words died in his throat as they reached the car. Ashley looked through the windshield and realized why.

Luke was gone.

T
wo wars and dozens of bloody skirmishes had taught General Abraham Griggs a few important lessons. Chief among them was the ability to narrow his focus and monitor his enemy’s maneuvers from afar. As his eyes tracked Emma Hosobuchi’s movements across the room, he felt practically psychic, sensing her increasing desperation. To the untrained eye, Emma would have seemed perfectly ordinary. To Griggs, however, something was clearly amiss.

He noted the way she was currently hunched over her keyboard. For Hosobuchi, the simple act of sitting down to log on to a computer was usually a relaxed and enjoyable operation, but not now. Emma was leaning forward, one foot drumming a nervous tap dance on the industrial carpet. Her eyes were fixed, almost unblinking, on the screen. Her fingers flew across the keys at a speed Griggs would estimate at around 125 words per minute. If he had grabbed his field glasses from his desk, he did not doubt that he would see the tiniest droplets of sweat beginning to collect on her brow.

Suddenly, she spun in her chair. Their gazes met, both unflinching. She narrowed her eyes and turned back to the screen, unconsciously smoothing the wrinkles in her skirt and taking on a more casual air.

Griggs knew she did not want to appear disturbed to the other workers and least of all to him. The general took some amount of pride that he was the only one in their division that gave Hosobuchi the least ounce of discomfort.

They had been at odds from the moment of their forced relationship. Although many of their colleagues characterized it as a classic example of the clash of the older generation with the new, Griggs felt there was something deeper to it. He had been raised on the battlefield. The son and grandson of decorated soldiers, he had spent every year of his life either on an army base or in a tent waging war. He had dealt with impertinent youths before but Emma Hosobuchi was a new breed. A disaffected private in the field could be screamed at, humiliated or forced to do enough manual labor to bring them back into line. In Griggs’s opinion, a solider was unfit for duty until their shirt was tucked, boots spit-polished and their life was ready to be offered up for the glory of their country.

Emma, however, was nothing like that. She was disheveled in her appearance and abrupt in her personal dealings. Most disturbing of all to Griggs, she had never seen a millisecond of real battle. Her conflicts were ones of pixels fought on a hi-resolution monitor; her weapons were the pecking fingertips on a keyboard. She knew nothing of the terror that came when confronting your enemy in the flesh, nor the honor that came when a foe was vanquished at your own hands. She could not describe to someone the sensation of bullets screaming in your direction, the shuddering fear in your belly traversing a field of landmines or the searing pain of shrapnel.

A knock at the door called his attention away from his ruminations.

“Come,” he called out.

A crisply uniformed soldier entered, snapping a salute. “Sir.”

“Shut the door, Feltz,” Griggs ordered quietly.

Feltz complied, approaching the General’s desk.

“Well, what do you have?” Griggs demanded with impatience.

“She’s up to something, sir.”

“I didn’t need you to educate me on that. Do you have anything more specific?”

“We are guessing that something is wrong with FALCON.”

Griggs leaned back in his chair, a feeling of satisfaction blossoming beneath his practiced scowl. He knew the ‘we’ that Feltz was referring to was the cadre of loyal acolytes Griggs had gathered beneath him over the past year. The general made it his business to cultivate relationships with those soldiers that he felt fit his mold. Although they were increasingly outnumbered by those loyal to Emma and her lackey Jason Worth, Griggs knew he could count on them to provide a steady stream of information when he required it.

“Just knowing something is wrong isn’t good enough, Feltz.” He watched the young man deflate before adding, “But it’s a start. Get me something more concrete. I want to know details.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Life is war, son. Whether it’s on the desert sand, the jungle floor or the windowless confines of an ugly government office. We are consistently at battle with those who threaten the status quo of this great country. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

“Sir, yes, sir,” the young man answered loudly.

“Dismissed.”

Feltz snapped a salute before turning on his heels and exiting the office. As the door shut behind him, Griggs leaned back in his chair. The pill had brought a permeating warmth to his limbs. With a deep sigh, he spoke aloud to the empty room.

“I’m going to win, Emma.”