The Siren Project (5 page)

Mitch tapped Mouse on the shoulder. “Set up
the call to Knightly.”

“If we’re using that,” Mouse nodded to
Christa’s scrambler, “It means a double scramble.”

“Will it work?” Mitch asked uncertainly.

“It should. I’ll chain her scrambler behind
ours.”

Mouse leaned forward, rerouted his
computer’s telephone cable through Christa’s scrambler, into his own device.

Christa furrowed her brow. “Why are you
doing that?”

“Being freelancers, we only got two fifty
six bit encryption, but then we don’t have your connections.”

“I know what it is. The question is, why are
you scrambling the signal my scrambler is generating. That will make it
unreadable to Gus.”

“Trust me, I steal for a living,” he
grinned, dialing out.

“I haven’t given you the number yet,”
Christa said. “Who are you calling?”

“No one.”

Christa walked around behind Mouse, reading
the information off the screen as his computer dialed. “You’re remote
buffering?” She leaned closer to read the country code prefixing the telephone
number displayed on the screen. “Forty four? That’s England isn’t it?”

Mouse glanced at her, with a hint of
irritation, then issued a command that hid the phone number he was dialing. “Do
you mind?”

“What’s in England?”

“The Royal Family,” Mouse snapped.

The call connected, followed by several
seconds of hissing and pinging as the electronic hand shaking was completed,
then silence.

“You’ve got a scrambler in England!”
Christa guessed, from the sounds. “Computer controlled?”

“You ask too many questions,” Mitch said.

Christa watched thoughtfully from behind
Mouse’s chair. “For that to work, the London computer must have two telephone
lines feeding into it, with your other scrambler receiving and decoding the two
fifty six bit transmission sent from this scrambler. It then passes on only the
one gigabit encryption. Two separate phone lines means any simple trace stops
at your English computer.” She considered the system for a moment, then slowly
shook her head. “No, I don’t like it. It’s too crude.”

“Crude!” Mouse said indignantly. “It’s
foolproof.”

“But we’re not dealing with fools. Your
system works only as long as no one gets control of the buffering computer in
England. Once that happens, you’re dead.”

“Yeah, well that’s not going to happen. That
mother’s rigged for anything.”

“It might appear ingenious to a high school
dropout, but it’s an insecure system.”

“I’m no high school drop out!” Mouse
exclaimed. “I wasn’t kicked out of MIT until my sophomore year, and that’s only
because the Dean didn’t have a sense of humor!”

Her face showed her frustration as she
turned to Mitch. “We can’t risk having this juvenile hacker control our
communications.” She pointed to the three inch high action figure perched on
top of Mouse’s computer screen. “You want to trust someone that has something
like that sitting on their computer?”

Mouse grinned. “That’s Worf, my rubber
Klingon. Got him at the last convention.”

“A rubber Klingon!” Christa shook her head,
exasperated. “I demand you disengage from that computer in England immediately.”

“Demand?” Mitch repeated in a tone
indicating no-one demanded anything from him.

“It’s vulnerable. Someone could get control
of it, and track back to us.”

“No chance,” Mouse replied confidently. “The
London computer can sense any signal riding our comm line. It’ll terminate the
call to us immediately, if it does. It then shoots a virus back down the line
to the trace’s point of origin. A nanosecond later, the virus activates on the
London computer, deletes the hard disk, then uses the hard drive's own
read-write heads to destroy the disk itself. That makes it impossible to track
back to us. When the virus finds the trace signal’s origin, it destroys
everything at the other end. By the time anyone can physically get to the
computer in London, they might as well be sniffing my old tennis shoes for all
the good it’ll do them.”

Mitch studied Christa’s response. “Satisfied,
Princess?”

“No, he treats this like a game. It’s
anything but that.”

“He’s a bit eccentric, but he’s never let
me down. So we do it his way.”

Mouse brightened, vindicated.

“I do this under protest.”

“Noted.”

Mouse checked the screen, satisfying
himself they now had a secure connection to London. “What’s the Professor’s
number?”

“I’ll dial. I can’t give you the number.”

“We aren’t going to be making crank calls
to Knightly in the middle of the night,” Mitch said.

“If one of you is captured, they’ll get the
number from you. I can’t take that risk.”

“And if they capture you, they will get it
from you,” Gunter noted dryly.

“No, they never could,” she replied with a
certainty that struck Mitch as strange. “In any event, one security risk is
better than four. The number stays secret.”

Mitch hesitated, then nodded for Mouse to
move aside. Christa typed the numbers into the keypad, shielding it with her
body, then stepped back as the London relay began dialing.

Mouse took his seat, pointing to the
microphone beside his computer. “Talk in there. You’ll hear him through the
speakers.”

After a few rings, Knightly answered, “Hello?”

Christa picked up the microphone. “It’s me.
They believe this call is untraceable, although I have my doubts.”

“I’m sure whatever method they’re using is
unorthodox,” Knightly’s voice sounded over the speaker. “Remember Christa, the
unorthodox will be unexpected by our enemies.”

Christa ignored the smile that appeared on
Mitch’s lips.

“Did everyone make it?” she asked.

“Yes. We’re not as comfortable as we were,
but we’re secure. Our neighbors saw some visitors go to the house after we
moved, but there was nothing left after the fire. How are you finding your new
home?”

“We’re not sure how to find my uncle,” she
said, using the code word they had previously agreed upon for Dr Steinus.

“You might try Cedar Sinai, he had a heart
bypass operation there about three or four years ago. I’m not sure where the
rest of the family is, but we’ll try to find out.”

“Is there any confirmation on the deputy
director?”

Mitch thought he detected a fragile edge to
her voice, but her face was impassive.

“No, nothing definite.”

“They may have tortured him before he died,”
Gunter suggested dryly, his voice too low for the microphone to pick up.

“Torture?” Mouse repeated anxiously. “No
one said anything about torture!”

Knightly continued, “Several of our cells
have not reported in. It looks bad.”

“Cells?” Mitch asked in a low voice.

Christa whispered away from the microphone.
“Covert teams. If they haven’t reported in, they’re . . . gone.” She turned
back to the mike. “Are you able to conduct any operations?”

“No, we’re locking down. You're our only
field operation. We can’t risk anyone else.”

“Nice to know he can risk us!” Mouse
murmured.

“I’ll call again when I have something to
report,” Christa said, then nodded to Mouse.

Mouse instructed the London relay computer
to hang up the second line and run a quick check. “Clean as a whistle. No
traces.”

“You mean, no trace you detected,” Christa
corrected.

Mouse gave her a dark look, then terminated
the connection to London.

“Was that Cedar Sinai thing straight, or
code?” Mitch asked.

“Straight,” she said. “We have no code words for something like
that.”

“If someone was listening at the other end,”
Mitch said, “They may try to beat us to the hospital’s medical records and
destroy them.”

“I’m on it.” Mouse said, already searching
for Cedar Sinai’s phone numbers.

“If the call was recorded, it will take
time to break the encryption,” Christa said.

“What was that thing about visitors to the
old house?” Mitch asked.

“Our neighbors is code for our satellite.”

“You have your own satellite?” Mitch asked.

“We share several. Gus must have had a
reliable source put a satellite on the facility to see who turned up. Obviously
someone did.”

“Glad we missed them then,” Mouse
shuddered, thinking of Gunter’s torture comment. “Sounds like these guys play
rough.”

“I play rough too,” Mitch patted the gun in
his shoulder holster.

“He’s not kidding,” Mouse said. “You should
see him play checkers.”

“I prefer chess,” Christa replied.

“You would.” Mitch chided. “You carrying?”

“No.”

“Come with me.”

Mitch led her back through the house to a
narrow staircase down to his basement. It was a long narrow room running the
length of the beach house, with sound insulation enclosing the room on all
sides. On one wall was a large metal cabinet with locked double doors. He
unlocked the cabinet, pulling the doors wide open to reveal an assortment of
hand guns, rifles and automatic weapons. “Take your pick.”

Christa’s eyes wandered across the
selection of weapons in Mitch’s private arsenal. “You must be a card carrying
member of the NRA?”

“Nope, just careful. I don’t have anything
for ladies. I prefer the heavy stuff myself.”

“I’d rather a change of clothes, than a
gun.”

Mitch ignored her, selecting a weapon,
feeling the weight. “This Beretta 21 is about the smallest I’ve got. Nice and
light, twenty two cal, seven round mag. Safety here, bullets go in there, out
there. The trigger I’m sure you know. Even an over educated Princess like you
should be able to squeeze off a few rounds in a pinch.”

He loaded the weapon, stepped away from the
gun case, then turned to face down the length of the basement. At the far end
of the room were three targets, one of a man and two circular target screens.

“Hold it like this, for stability, squeeze
gently.” He held the weapon two handed and fired off several rounds at the
man-like target, scoring hits on the torso. “See, nothing to it. Going for center
mass is your best bet. Now you try it.”

He handed her the weapon. “Hold it up like
this, you say?” She asked innocently, balanced it, then mimicking his two handed
firing position.

“Yeah, that’s right. Now inhale, let a
little air out, relax and squeeze the trigger.”

“Gee, so much to remember,” she said,
feigning light headedness, as she sighted and fired four shots with lightning
speed.

Mitch studied the target with growing
realization. Four bullet holes almost overlapped the target silhouette in the center
of the forehead. He nodded wryly. “Ten years of target practice I suppose?”

She allowed herself a slight smile. “Something
like that.”

“I guess they didn’t teach you, a head shot
is a low percentage target. Too easy to miss.”

“Not for me,” she said simply. She weighed
the tiny Beretta in her hand. “This popgun wouldn’t stop a rabbit.” She
returned the gun to the cabinet, then ran a professional eye over Mitch’s
armory. “This’ll do.” She selected a larger pistol, and examined it.

Mitch nodded approvingly. “Colt Combat
Elite, bit on the heavy side for a lady...”

Christa cast an amused look at Mitch.

“... but I’m not going to argue with you.”

She loaded the bullets into the magazine
and returned to the firing position, this time taking aim on the right side
circular target. She fired off the seven shot magazine rapidly, drilling the
central dot with every shot. “It pulls to the left just a smidge, but it’ll do.”
She turned and offered the gun to him. “Wrap it. And I’ll have a box of those little
metal things. What are they called? Bullets?”

“Okay Annie Oakley, I get the picture.” He
said, passing her an ammunition box.

She took the box, looking dubiously at the
gun. “You know, this isn’t going to help.”

“Maybe not, but if we go down, I want to
take a few of them with us.” Mitch said, locking the cabinet.

She thought about the members of her
organization already lost, especially the Deputy Director. “That’s the first
thing we agree on.” She pocketed the gun, then slipped out of the room.

Mitch stepped back up to the firing mark
and studied the targets again, showing the results of her precision shooting.

She’s a spoilt pain in
the ass
,
but she shoots
like the devil!

* * * *

“Nothing useful in the hospital
records themselves,” Mouse said from in front of his computer to Mitch and
Christa. “However, Steinus was brought in by ambulance, so I cross checked the
logs and found where it picked him up. It’s a private research organization
called the Newton Institute. I tried getting some background information on
what they do, so I ran a search on every article published in a dozen
scientific journals for the last ten years, and surprise surprise, zippo. Either
they’re lousy scientists and haven’t made a single discovery of any kind in ten
years–”