Sleeper Cell Super Boxset (34 page)

Perry found Ozier with a group of their men, gathering together at the entrance to the bunker, each of them bloody with their own wounds, some of them barely able to walk or even stand. “Where are the engineers?”

“I don’t know,” Ozier answered. “The bombs took out a lot of our men. Radios are down.”

The entire base was going up in flames. The bombs from the U.S. planes had caused more devastation than the missiles that Perry had launched. Perry peered through the flames and spotted one of the scientists, face down on the pavement but his leg moving. “There!” Perry pointed, and Ozier and the rest of his men retrieved him.

Perry watched the sky, waiting for the inevitable return of the bombers looking to make another pass, killing whatever survived. Ozier propped the scientist up against the wall of the bunker’s entrance, and Perry gripped him by the collar.

The scientist’s head lolled back and forth lazily, his eyelids flitting open and closed. Perry smacked the man’s cheek, snapping him out of the daze. “I need you to go through the encryption codes for the bunker.” Perry shoved him over to the control panel then aimed his rifle at the man. “Now!”

The scientist shook his head, slightly wobbling back and forth on his own two feet. Perry held the Taipan for him as he hooked it up to the network. The distant hum of the bombers sounded in the night air once more, and all of them searched the sky except Perry. He jammed the rifle’s tip into the scientist’s temple. “Open the fucking doors!”

The encryption code ran through the Taipan, and the doors opened, accompanied by the rumble of the ground as the bombs once again decimated the base. Perry and the others jumped inside and descended into the elevator before a wall of fire consumed them.

The elevator rattled all the way down, the lights flickering on and off in time with the explosions. The farther they sank into the earth, the less the explosions rocked them. Perry reached for his rifle, and the others mirrored his actions. “They’ll have a team of six down here.” He reloaded the rifle, stealing a magazine from one of the Egyptians. “Could be more since they had an idea of what was happening. And they’ll be armed with pistols, but they won’t have any automatic weapons or artillery with them. It’s protocol.”

Ozier and the rest of them faced the elevator’s doors while the dazed engineer cowered behind all of them. Perry hung back, tucked behind the small sliver of space to the left side of the elevator’s entrance, and waited. When they finally slowed and came to a stop, the doors didn’t open. Everyone shifted uncomfortably, anticipating the moment to come, and when the doors finally separated, the silence was torn apart with gunshots.

Two Egyptians immediately went down, but Perry managed to get a good look at the guards in the bunker before they did. Ozier was on the opposite side, returning fire in the lulls from the soldiers. “Three on the left and two on the right!” Perry shouted between bursts of gunfire.

Ozier nodded then barked orders at what was left of the men that had made it down. He plucked a grenade from his belt, and another Egyptian did the same. The two pulled the pins then chucked them into the corners where the soldiers were hidden. Perry and the rest of them hid behind the side panels in the elevator, and the screams from outside were cut short by the explosions.

Before Perry looked up, Ozier and the others were already in the hallway, guns up, looking for any survivors. Perry waved the smoke out of his face and trailed behind Ozier and the team. He stepped over the bloodied arms and legs, his eyes focused down the hall, where Ozier turned the corner.

Another round of gunshots echoed from where Ozier had disappeared but then quickly died out. “We’re clear!”

Perry lowered the tip of his rifle, bounding around the corner to the sight of Ozier and his men standing over the body of another dead guard inside the control room, where a couple monitors revealed the images of the devastation at the surface.

Smoke and fire had consumed most of the base, and what wasn’t pocked with burnt scorches was covered in blood and bodies. Perry tossed the rifle on the floor and snatched the Taipan from the scientist, his eyes hollow and his motions that of a zombie.

Perry hooked it up to the mainframe and turned the power back on to the base, taking control of all its automated functions and, most importantly, its nuclear missiles. Even if the military decided to perform a nuclear strike on the base, deep beneath the earth in this bunker, they would still survive. The U.S. military couldn’t get to them. “Check the radio frequencies,” Perry said. “See if any of our men survived the bombs. We’ll need to get them below if that’s the case. The government will be setting up a perimeter on the facility, watching us, and using anyone that survived as an opportunity to catch them and try and make them talk.”

Ozier echoed Perry’s orders in Arabic, and the men started their search. Perry opened the computer hooked up to the Taipan and looked at the arranged display of nuclear weapons at his disposal.

Chapter 5

The file room was stacked from floor to ceiling with cabinets, folders, documents, anything and everything that Homeland had collected about its employees. Cooper had spread out what she could on the conference room table that had been brought in for her investigation. When she heard the news of the base being taken, she started sifting through the files twice as fast, but with the sheer amount of data, it was an overwhelming task.

Cooper chose to start with the educational background that had led Perry into the work with the government. He had his doctorate in psychology from Stanford University and had specialized in social psychology, which, given his talent for manipulation, made perfect sense. He’d graduated at the top of his class, and his achievement had been flagged by Homeland’s recruitment department.

From there, Perry started out as a profiler and analyst, working with field agents in developing premeditated patterns of criminals and terrorists to determine what their next move would be so the U.S. government could take them out. After he’d been on the job only six months, Perry’s teams were responsible for the capture of three senior-level Taliban leaders and the (alleged) prevention of a terrorist attack on the United States embassy in London.

Perry’s rise through the Homeland ranks was like clockwork. He had a promotion almost every year until he arrived at the deputy director position, where he’d been for the past three years. His access and contacts covered multiple agencies, including the CIA and FBI. And in all the years Perry had been an employee of the U.S. government, there hadn’t been one filed complaint or reprimand—nothing. The man glided through the department with his ability to get the job done effectively and efficiently. With Homeland being the party that had recruited him, he already held the built-in belief that he was simply performing his patriotic duty.

There wasn’t any doubt in Cooper’s mind that the grades and academia that started after high school were aimed at the direct goal of arriving in the position he now held. Perry was smart enough and devious enough to have been planning this for a long time. But when had it started? There had to be a tipping point somewhere.

The family/childhood section of Perry’s file was the smallest. From what she read, both parents were dead, but the father had been hauled off to jail when Perry was still in grade school. She searched for the police file, but the folder was empty.

Outside work, Perry didn’t seem to have anyone he regularly socialized with. Aside from a few sporadic women that he had seen, scattered over the last decade, his personal life didn’t really exist. But the fact that his career was the main focus wouldn’t have triggered a red flag to anyone in the agency. Hell, she hadn’t been able to stay in a relationship for longer than a night for the past six years.

After the arrest of Perry’s father, his mother had filed for divorce and then died alone a few years ago. Perry’s father had died in jail after a gang-related stabbing and was found bloodied and disemboweled in his cell. There hadn’t been any witnesses in the event, and the cameras had been turned off.

Cooper rubbed her eyes as she looked over Perry’s financial statements. For the past two years, he’d been slowly draining his assets, liquefying all his accounts. She scrolled down bank statements, scanning the transactions, but all of the transactions were random with no pattern except for one. She noticed one withdrawal repeated on the same date of the month, with the exact same amount for each transaction.

The description for the payment was nothing more than automatic withdrawal. She wrote down the bank’s number and had just decided to contact it when Moringer called. “Hello?”

“Perry made it into the bunker.”

Cooper dropped the pen and leaned back in her chair, a sigh escaping her. “Has he reached back out to Dylan yet?”

“No, but the first deadline is coming up fast. Where are we with the investigation?”

“Perry’s family tree seems a little barren. Both parents were only children, no siblings, cousins or other blood relatives, and what family he has listed is dead. Perry’s father was arrested when he was a kid, but the police report isn’t anywhere to be found. I’ve got his prison records but nothing on the conviction that put him there. I’ve put in a request to the local PD who made the arrest to send me the files on their end.”

“Well, keep digging. If something is missing, it’s most likely because Perry made sure it was gone, and if he was involved, you know it’s going to be hard to track down. I’ll call you when we hear from Perry again. Let me know if you find anything else.”

“Yes, sir.” Cooper hung up the phone and looked back over the financial section and dialed the bank’s number, and after a few long holds and the verifying of her badge number, she managed to get a hold of the bank’s president.

“Agent Cooper, how can I help you?” the president asked.

“We’re doing an internal audit for a Homeland Security agent, and we were taking a look at their bank transactions. Specifically, the amount of thirty-five hundred dollars that occurs on the twenty-first of every month. I tried speaking to the local branch managers, but they told me they didn’t have access to see beyond what I could.”

“This is in regard to Richard Perry’s account?”

“That’s correct.”

“My apologies, Agent Cooper, but I’m afraid Mr. Perry had certain security arrangements made with our bank. While I do have access to the information you’re looking for, I’m afraid that unless you have a warrant, I won’t be able to divulge that to you.”

“This is a matter of national security.”

“Then it should be easy for you to obtain the warrant.”

Cooper snapped the phone shut and tossed it onto the desk. Even in the middle of nowhere, hundreds of feet underground, Perry was still pulling the strings. She cracked her neck and rubbed her eyes. She got up and reached for the pot of coffee warming on the burner and poured herself a cup. It was going to be a long night.

***

Moringer drained the last few drops of coffee in his mug then slid it onto the table, where it collided with the messy pile of papers in front of him. The other directors shared the same frustrated stares as he did, and while the coffee was helping keep him awake, it was shattering what was left of his patience. “We can’t launch a nuclear strike against our own bases.”

“I’m not saying that we do it, I’m simply offering it as a suggestion.” The CIA director articulated each syllable with a nasty sting in his tone. “Obviously another strategy would be preferable.”

“What about another attack on the facility?” the FBI director suggested. “We get enough guys in there, and we overwhelm them.”

“Perry has control of over four hundred nuclear warheads right now. The moment we do anything he doesn’t like, he’ll set them off. This guy is smart, he’s dangerous, and he doesn’t care who he kills to get what he wants. We can’t risk it.”

“Well, we’ve gone over the schematics for the control bunker at Minot, and the only way in and out is through one elevator, which Perry has control over,” the FBI director replied.

“What about the air vents?” Moringer asked, talking more to himself than to the rest of the room. “They run along the elevator shafts, but we might be able to sneak in some gas, smoke them out without them even noticing it.”

“The vents have built in filters,” the CIA director answered. “I don’t know of anything that could get past the security features in order for it to be effective, and even if we did find something, if the filters couldn’t stop the gas, the alerts would still be triggered. It’s a built-in failsafe to make sure the bunker is always protected.” The CIA director tossed the pencil in his hand and rubbed his cheeks, nose, chin, and forehead red. “The bastard is in a safe house, and he knows it. Has your agent found anything worthwhile that we could use?”

“Not yet,” Moringer answered. And the truth was, he wasn’t sure if Cooper would be able to or not. This wasn’t some thug or mafia boss; this was a man who’d climbed the ranks of the most powerful intelligence agency in the world and, in the process, gained the trust of several top ranking government officials while gaining access to confidential and top-secret information that even the president didn’t see. “Perry’s thought of everything.”

“Moringer,” the CIA director said, “we need to start thinking about evacuation. We’ve got less than an hour before Perry’s first deadline, and I don’t think he’s the type of guy that’s going to bluff.”

Moringer nodded and picked up the schematics of the bunker. He’d looked over that picture hundreds of times over the past forty-five minutes. The lines and edges were permanently imprinted in his brain. Whatever Perry wanted to do, he could. He just hoped they’d be able to get a jump on him before it was too late for the rest of the country.

***

Perry ordered the bodies stacked and placed in a room, where they were locked and sealed shut. For as long as
he
was down here, he didn’t want to have to smell the corpses. The idea of putting the engineer in there with them briefly crossed his mind, but the man had reached the breaking point. One more shove, and he wouldn’t be able to crack the last base.