Pale Horse (A Project Eden Thriller) (13 page)

“You should not go alone,” Kusum said.

“It will be easier on my own.”

She looked unconvinced.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “I will meet up with you by this evening. No later than eight, okay?”

She stared into his eyes for a second, then nodded. “Eight.”

Sanjay gave her a reassuring smile, and turned for the door.

“Wait,” she said. She disappeared into the other room. When she returned, she was holding a mobile phone. “Take it. Father has one, too. His is the first number listed.”

“Thanks,” he said.

She leaned forward and kissed him on the cheek. “Come back to me,” she whispered.

17

NEW YORK CITY, NEW YORK

3:03 AM EASTERN STANDARD TIME

A
TOTAL OF
fourteen suspicious shipping containers had been discovered within the five boroughs of New York City. The NYPD and FDNY had moved in quickly and cordoned off the areas surrounding the boxes. At first, the off-limits zones stretched for only a couple of blocks, but after news of boxes exploding elsewhere, they were increased to eight square blocks.

Unfortunately, there was not enough manpower to watch every inch of the boundaries around the restricted areas and continue basic services to the rest of the city. So unmonitored sections were unavoidable.

Joey Chin saw this as an opportunity.

Near the middle of the evacuated area was the building where Walter Natz lived. Joey had been trying to figure out how to get into Natz’s place for weeks. While the guy was often away on business, his building had a doorman, at least ten roaming security guards at all times, and cameras on every floor, meaning any kind of incursion was next to impossible.

Until the evacuation, Joey had been unable to work up any viable options, and, understandably, his client was getting antsy. Four weeks and no visible progress had a way of doing that. The documents the man needed were inside a safe in Natz’s home office. Joey knew he could get into the safe, no problem. It was getting to the apartment that was the challenge.

Until the evacuation order a few hours earlier. Officials had made it very clear there were no exceptions for anyone, security staff included. Best of all, Joey had found a vulnerable point in the boundary to the off-limits zone.

He had watched it for over an hour just to be sure, then simply walked across the darkened street, picked the lock on the door to a dry cleaner, and let himself in. As expected, the place had an alarm, but he quickly disabled it, and made his way through the building and out the back door.

From there, it was just a matter of working his way through the streets without being spotted by the helicopters that occasionally flew over the area. That was a piece of cake.

When he reached the block where Natz’s building was, he gave it a thorough scan to make sure no one had secretly stayed behind. As expected, it looked deserted.

Of course, there were still the cameras, but those he could deal with.

He went around to the alley behind Natz’s building, disabled the single camera covering the back entrance, and busted one of the low windows meant to allow light into the basement level. He knew the building’s alarm system utilized touch plates at all doors and windows, but not the more sophisticated motion sensor that would detect a window breaking. He had identified that as a weak point right at the start, but the problem had always been the guards. The information he’d been able to obtain indicated one guard was always in the basement, which meant he would probably hear any breaking glass.

Not today.

Joey made his way to the utility room that controlled the power to the building. He had no intentions of killing all the power; that would make his job difficult. He was only interested in the power supply dedicated to the security system. The actual box was unmarked, designed to look like it was part of the larger electrical system. There were even dummy wires running from it to the main boxes. It was a good camouflage job. Someone not quite as experiened as Joey would have continued looking elsewhere. Joey, though, had studied the true plans, the ones most people would never be able to get their hands on. That was part of the skill set he brought to any project—his contacts and ability to get whatever he needed.

Cover off, wires cut, job done. The offsite monitoring facility would wonder what was going on, but what could they do? It wasn’t like they could send in cars full of security men. And even if they called the police, the NYPD had its hands full at the moment and would probably just hang up on them.

He headed for the elevator.

There were grander buildings in New York for sure, skyscrapers that allowed residents to live in the clouds. Natz’s building was not nearly as tall as those. While he lived in one of the penthouse apartments, it only put him nine floors from the street.

Once Joey got there, he wasted no time opening Natz’s door. As soon as he was inside, he glanced at the alarm and noted, with satisfaction, that the display screen was dead.

The only surprise was how warm the apartment felt. He went over to the thermostat and saw that it was set at seventy-eight degrees. He considered turning it down, but needed to limit his impact on the place so that his visit would remain undiscovered.

The door to the home office was closed, but not locked. The room was even warmer than the rest of the place. He guessed it had to be at least eighty-five degrees, if not hotter. While it had been only annoying at first, the temperature was now a problem. The last thing he needed was for any sweat to drip from his face to the wood floor, leaving a potential DNA sample that could be traced.

He looked around for another thermostat, but there was none in the room. Since the building was only nine floors high, the windows could actually be opened. He stepped over to the nearest one, flipped the latch, and pushed it out.

As he was bringing his hand back inside, something wet landed just above his lip. He wiped it off with his fingers, and glanced out the window, thinking it might be starting to rain. But he could see no clouds.

What he could see were several sets of bright lights illuminating a small lot two blocks away. He couldn’t see all the way down to the ground from where he was, but he knew the lights had to mark the shipping container that was the reason he’d been able to get into the building.

Another drop of water blew in from outside, striking him on the bridge of his nose. Perhaps the clouds were above the building, just out of sight. If so, he hoped any storm they might bring would hold off until he was done.

Turning back to the room, he set to work.

Everything went as smoothly as he expected. An hour and a half later, he was back in the hotel room, the desired files in hand. At midnight, he would hand his client the prize.

But that wouldn’t be the only thing he’d pass on.

RIDGECREST, CALIFORNIA

12:53 AM PACIFIC STANDARD TIME

M
ARTINA GABLE HADN’T
intended to go to the party, but her friends Noreen and Jilly wouldn’t take no for an answer, and had made her come along.

As she knew would happen, she ended up hanging in the back of the room, nursing a Coke and thinking about Ben. She liked how they just kind of got each other right from the beginning. The problem was, he went to school up in the Bay Area, and she was stuck down in L.A., limiting the time they were able to spend together.

Eventually Noreen and Jilly found her again, then a few of their old friends from their high school softball team joined them. At first it was the standard tell-us-what-you’ve-been-doing type of conversation, but it didn’t take long before talk turned to the events that had dominated the news that day—the mysterious shipping containers.

“Just glad there’s none of those things here,” Jilly said.

“I heard they found one over by Walmart,” a girl named Wendy told them.

“I didn’t hear that,” Jilly said.

“Neither did I,” Noreen agreed. “Who told you?”

“A friend,” Wendy said, her tone a bit meeker than before.

“Was it on the radio?”

She shrugged. “Maybe. I don’t know.”

The mood darkened as they spent several minutes guessing at what might be inside. Finally, they decided to hop into Noreen’s Honda Civic and make sure there was nothing weird going on at Walmart.

Martina, being Noreen’s best friend from high school, was assigned the front passenger seat, while the three other girls crammed into the back, but Walmart was a bust.

No police. No bright lights. No shipping container.

They ended up going to Carl’s Jr., taking the same booth they’d often used back in their high school days, and sharing several bags of fries while they continued to speculate on the purpose of the boxes.

Finally, with a promise of getting together at least one more time before the holidays were over, Noreen took them back to their cars. Martina’s was last.

“Really is good to see you,” Noreen told her.

“Yeah. Same here.”

Noreen tried to smile, couldn’t pull it off.

“You all right?” Martina asked.

“I’m just a little, uh, freaked out,” Noreen said.

“About what? School?”

“School’s okay for the most part. It’s just…” She looked up, a tear running down the side of her nose. “It’s just this stuff today on the news. What the hell could be going on?”

“I don’t know,” Martina said. Though she’d been acting otherwise, it was kind of freaking her out, too. “It’s probably nothing.”

Noreen looked at her. “You think?”

“Sure.”

“Then what is it?”

Martina put on her most comforting smile. “Nothing we need to worry about.”

A few minutes later, they hugged goodbye, and both girls headed home.

In the strictest sense, Martina was right. She and Noreen didn’t need to worry about the boxes. Their immunity ensured that.

But there would have been little comfort in that knowledge.

LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM

8:55 AM GREENWICH MEAN TIME

W
ITH ONLY TWO
days left until Christmas, retailers had been anticipating that this would be one of the busiest shopping days of the season. The majority of customers on this day was also expected to be men. Typically, they were the ones who waited until the last minute, then rushed in and scooped up whatever they could find, no matter the cost. Savvy store managers made sure there were several items front and center specifically meant to catch the male eye.

Daniel Wheaton was such a manager, and he was in charge of one of the Marker’s department stores. Marker’s wasn’t a large chain, only five locations throughout the UK, and it certainly wasn’t high end, but it did fill a nice niche in the middle, and generated more than enough business to keep its doors open year after year.

During the Christmas season, Daniel all but lived at the store—going over receipts, making sure customers were being helped, checking inventory, and, in the words of most of the employees, doing anything he could to get in their way.

The one thing Marker’s did not have was an electronics department. This made “catching the male eyes” a bit more difficult, but not impossible. It also meant that when the first news about the shipping containers appeared not long before closing the previous evening, no one in the store had any clue what was going on. Once the day’s receipts had been tallied and the special last-minute displays were in place, it was nearly midnight, so Daniel took the tube home and went straight to bed.

That morning, his alarm woke him at five a.m. He was showered and on his way to the store before six.

The first sign that something was up came when he played the phone message for the automated office line and learned that two employees were not coming in. This was nothing more than an annoyance. He left messages on both of the affected managers’ phones, asking them to call in whoever was next on their list. Once that was done, he promptly forgot about it.

In the next hour, though, six more employees left similar messages, and he began to wonder if there was some sort of mass sickout happening, maybe a coordinated effort to get more pay or something along those lines. But he thought someone would have approached him first before taking this kind of drastic action. He was so concerned about this possibility, it didn’t even register with him that none of the employees had actually said anything about being sick, just that they wouldn’t be coming in today.

Disturbed, he walked out of his office to see if any of the support staff had heard anything, and found only empty desks. Out helping the other employees get ready, he thought, trying not to jump to conclusions. After all, it was almost nine o’clock, nearly time to open.

He sauntered out onto the main floor, and was greeted by dead silence.

“Hello?” he called out.

The office was right outside women’s wear. There should have been half a dozen employees making sure everything was in order, but the department was empty.

“Hello? Where is everyone?”

He walked briskly out into the main aisle, and did a quick circuit of the other departments. He was the only one there.

His jaw tensed.
Definitely some kind of protest
, he thought.

This was going to be a disaster. Being closed two days before Christmas would be something that would affect them for months. He might even get fired.

He stormed back to the office, and put in a call to Edgar Keller, Vice President of Operations at Marker’s headquarters. Instead of someone answering, the night system picked up. He punched buttons until he reached Keller’s line. After the third ring, he was sent to voice mail.

Confused, he said, “Mr. Keller, this is Daniel Wheaton at London store number two. I seem to have a situation here. I have a feeling there must be an employee protest in the works. It’s five minutes until we’re supposed to open and no one has shown up. I was wondering if someone might have contacted you. Please call me back.”