The Gatekeeper
Initially there had been a fuss over the mugs, too. A memo had gone out insisting that everyone consume company coffee from the canteen. Based on the outcry that followed, they might as well have suggested drinking tainted Kool-Aid. Getting between scientists and their espresso was a fatal error, and in the end the brass made a concession: as long as everyone brought in standardized, company-issued mugs, outside coffee was fine. Mugs that apparently had been all too easy for someone to manipulate.
Randall glanced over his shoulder before popping the flash drive in the port. The download would only take a minute, but he was antsy. There had been a close call yesterday, and he got the feeling Barry knew something was up. He’d been struggling to act normal, but it was just that, a struggle. He’d blamed it on lack of sleep due to residual stress from the divorce. A lifelong bachelor like Barry didn’t question that.
An icon popped up. Randall quickly slipped the flash drive out, inserting it into the mug’s base just as the door clicked open.
Barry squinted myopically at him. “Everything okay?” he asked hesitantly. His stringy hair was wet where he’d combed it over his bald spot, and his sweater had a mustard stain near the collar.
“Fine, Barry. Just didn’t sleep well again.”
“Oh. Sorry to hear it.” Barry shuffled to the desk beside his. In a space that small it was like being crammed in a cockpit together. “Did you see they moved up the date of the Texas shipment?”
Randall’s ears pricked up. “I didn’t have time to look at it yet. Any idea why?”
Barry shrugged. “Dunno. Maybe there’s another storm coming.”
“Hurricanes are usually in the late summer and fall, Barry. It’s June.”
“Right, right,” Barry mumbled, staring at his monitor.
Randall had to fight the urge to throttle him: an IQ of 165, and he was useless unless you were discussing primordial radionuclides. Sometimes Randall suspected they were both being punished for some transgression. Initially, he’d taken this assignment as a break from researching, to give himself time to recover from the divorce. They’d given him a big speech, too, about serving his country, blah, blah, blah…
Thankfully they had almost finished laying the groundwork, and once that was accomplished the day-today monitoring would be handled by computers. Of course, there was a good chance he’d be under arrest for high treason by then.
Randall tapped some keys and a map of the United States appeared, with different-colored dots identifying which materials were being stored where. He zeroed in on the spots off the Gulf Coast, offshore drilling rigs that used radiography cameras to analyze lengths of pipe. As newer cameras came online, older ones were retired, along with their low level radioactive source material. As he watched them blink, the ball in his stomach sunk an inch lower. This was just what the kidnappers were looking for, the right materials in the correct amount. And they were due to be transported imminently. Suddenly their timing made sense; they had known, somehow, that this shipment was coming. It was too much of a coincidence otherwise, and as a scientist he eschewed belief in chance.
Randall chewed his lip. Part of his job involved overseeing the transit of loose materials from one facility to another. He was in charge of constructing a safe route skirting all densely populated areas and providing the most defensible means of transportation. The kidnappers wanted him to change that route at the last minute to divert iridium-192 sources. Randall gritted his teeth as the dots flickered at him. He’d have to pray that Madison was found before the shipment was set in motion.
Madison struggled with the back of the console, prying it open as carefully as possible. She’d managed to work loose a metal coil from her cot, fashioning it into a makeshift screwdriver. But the tiny screws were proving tricky to undo, and she was panicked by the possibility of stripping one. For this to work, she needed the console more or less intact.
After repeated sessions of begging, she had finally convinced Lurch (as she’d christened the driver) to dig through her luggage for a fleece jacket, her face medication, and her Nintendo DS Lite. Madison now understood why prisoners went nuts in isolation. She almost looked forward to when Lurch cracked the door and slid in a tray of food, or came to empty her bucket. If she wasn’t mistaken he was lingering, too, and by her calculation there had been two straight days without a shot. When he opened the door she jabbered at him, a steady stream of information about her life, her old friends, her parents, anything to get him to stay an extra minute. Despite the fact he still hadn’t spoken to her, Madison was pretty sure he understood English. Maybe she was flattering herself, but if he was forced to kill her, now at least he might feel badly about it.
But Madison wasn’t counting on his generosity continuing. A few times she’d heard a low murmur outside the door, Lurch talking to at least one other person. He definitely wasn’t the brains behind this operation. And if whoever was in charge found out about the DS Lite, chances were it would be snatched back and the needle would return.
The final screw popped loose and rolled away. She scrambled after it, trapping it with her palm. There was a bang on the other side of the door, then the bolt scraped. Lurch jutted his head in, a frown marring his features.
Madison held the console in both palms, leaning back against the end of the cot. She cocked an eyebrow at him. “What? Did you miss me?”
He scanned the room, paying particular attention to the floor. After a minute, he grunted and closed the door. As the bolt slid back into place, Madison released a sigh. The screws were digging into her palms, and she tucked them in her jeans pocket. If she’d known she was going to be in the same clothes for days on end, she would’ve worn a sweatsuit on the plane. These were her nicest pair of jeans, but nice didn’t exactly equal comfort. She waited several beats, straining her ears. She knew Lurch was probably rethinking the decision to give her the console, and she needed to move quickly on the off chance he would take it back.
Unlike her father and Bree, she hadn’t gotten the physics gene. Every time she tried to wrap her head around certain theories, it felt like she was being sucked into a black hole. However, from a relatively early age it had been clear that she had exceptional mechanical skills. At six she’d been able to fix most of her friends’ electronic toys when they stopped working, and every year she’d been the runaway winner of the state science fair.
Madison and her father had even built a robot once. She’d been the youngest participant ever in Robot Wars, a series of steel cage matches between remote-controlled robots that ended when there was only one left in the ring. The two of them drove to San Francisco for the competition. They’d named their entry “Maxwell’s Law” (her father’s idea). They had to settle for second place after their robot’s rotary saw fell off in the final round. But her father had been so proud, he told everyone that his daughter had built the machine herself out of scrap metal, he’d hardly been involved.
Madison was startled to find a tear slipping down her cheek. She wiped it away, agitated, and focused on the task at hand. She’d almost left the console at home, not wanting Shane to know that she was secretly hooked on “The Legend of Zelda.” Thank God she’d decided there was only so much a person could sacrifice for true love. She wondered if Lurch had been the one e-mailing her, pretending to be Shane. At the thought she started cracking up, and bit her lip to stifle the giggles. She didn’t want him poking his nose back in, not now.
Handheld consoles had come a long way from when she got her first Game Boy. Thankfully, Lurch didn’t appear to know that. This particular model had been a birthday gift from her dad, a next generation prototype that wouldn’t even be on the market for another year. Like all the newer systems, it had Wi-Fi capabilities for multiplayer online games. Of course, an accessible wireless network had been too much to hope for. She’d done a search immediately, but the only one in radius was secured and she was no hacker. She’d made a halfhearted stab at passwords to amuse herself, typing in Addams Family, Lurch, and, with a pang, Shane’s girl. No luck, she’d need the proverbial million monkeys tapping away for years to crack it. And she didn’t have that kind of time.
Fortunately, there was one more feature of the unit that Lurch had overlooked: a GPS transmitter. It was an add-on that worked by comparing the signals received from several satellites, then running a complex set of computations to triangulate the results and produce a set of coordinates. Unfortunately, the thick metal hull of the ship prevented access to most satellite signals. Luckily Madison had spent the past few months studying an alternative.
In 2006, when GPS devices started glutting the commercial market, the U.S. government became concerned that military receivers might be lost in the barrage of white noise. The military relied upon a GPS system for navigation and targeting, and any compromise of that system could prove catastrophic. To protect themselves they launched new satellites, with “boosted” signals that were only available to the Department of Defense. Madison’s last science fair project had been disqualified, thanks to her claims to have tapped into the new satellite systems. At a conference with the school principal, her father had explained that scientifically speaking there was no way she could have done it, and her mother had grounded her for a month. The principal still gave her funny looks whenever she passed him in the hall. They all thought she was trying to get attention, still reacting to the divorce.
Well, yeah, maybe she had been. But that didn’t mean she hadn’t done it. After conducting experiments with her iPhone all over the city, Madison discovered a rogue signal. Honestly it hadn’t been all that hard, just time-consuming. And once she had that signature down, all she had to do was find it again.
If she could tap into it and recalibrate her DS Lite’s GPS to send a signal rather than receive it, maybe someone would be able to track her down. She just hoped one of her moron family members remembered the console.
Her tongue jutted out the side of her mouth as she concentrated, squinting in the dim light, carefully manipulating the interior components. Madison was careful to touch the plastic exterior each time to ground it. She’d have to reconfigure the power settings, too—it would be a race against battery life at the end. She just hoped someone out there would be listening.
Seven
Jake forced himself to tear off a bite of turkey sandwich. He was trying to eat healthier these days, a losing battle for a guy reared on steak and lots of it. All those months of setting up the new business had kept him out of the gym, and he recently realized with alarm that his six-pack was morphing into a two-pack. Kelly had teased him, grabbing his middle and riffing about the slow march of time and declining metabolisms. Well, screw that. Jake Riley wasn’t giving in without a fight. Even if that meant switching to light beer and turkey.
He was in one of the ubiquitous sandwich factories lining the Berkeley campus, trying to get his mouth around a sandwich so stuffed with sprouts they should have named it the “Colon-Cleanser.” The place buzzed with students grabbing a bite between classes. Their tie-dyed shirts and Birkenstocks reminded him of when he first met Kelly, during an ugly case at a university. At least in the end something good had come out of it.
As he took in the fresh faces he experienced a pang: Madison Grant wasn’t much younger than these kids, another two years and she might have been among this crowd. He hoped to God she’d still get the chance, but based on the day he’d had so far, things were looking bleak.
The pressure was compounded by the fact that if Randall was telling the truth, more than just Madison’s life hung in the balance. Jake preferred to think he was just blowing smoke up their asses, trying to make sure they did everything possible to find his daughter. But a small voice in the back of his head argued that Randall was scared enough to risk his job and reputation by trusting them rather than Homeland Security. The lab he was working in had produced most of the major advances in military hardware in the past century, along with biochemical weapons that could wipe out civilization as we know it. And whoever had stolen Madison Grant was a pro: not only were they good at covering their tracks, there were almost none to speak of.
Syd and what he referred to as her “shadow network” had diligently run down every lead, no matter how tenuous. There was a moment of excitement when the license plate trace turned up a limo company based in South San Francisco. But that died down fifteen minutes later, when Syd got a faxed copy of the stolen car report. And ten minutes after that they learned that the final destination of the Lincoln Town Car had been a chop shop in Oakland. It was currently being returned to the limo company owner in pieces.
Jake had immediately headed over to the chop shop, driving through a section of Oakland that closely resembled war-torn Beirut. A few guys were hard at work on an Escalade. It took a few hundred to convince them he wasn’t a cop, and a few hundred more to find out where they got the car. If they were telling the truth, when they showed up at work three nights ago it was sitting in front of their garage, keys in the ignition, like a gift from the gods. And they knew better than to question it.
Syd had considered calling in a favor, trying to get the remaining parts dusted for prints, but Jake convinced her otherwise. They’d probably end up with the oily imprints of a few grand theft auto felons. Whoever possessed the car before them was too careful to be that sloppy, it had probably been detailed inside and out before materializing in Oakland. Syd was running a background check on everyone at the limo company in case it was an inside job, but so far they’d turned up clean. So he was sitting here choking down a sandwich while he waited for Syd to call.
Jake rubbed his face. They had two leads left to follow: the shadowy image of the driver’s face, and the mythical Shane’s e-mail account. At the moment he wasn’t holding out much hope for either. Facial recognition software was notoriously unreliable even when you had a good image to work with, and good didn’t describe what they had. As for the e-mail address, computers weren’t his thing, but he knew that any hacker worth his salt could bounce messages through dozens of servers worldwide, rendering them untraceable.
Jake’s phone buzzed and he tossed the sandwich back on its biodegradable plate, strewing a comet trail of sprouts. “Hey, Syd. What have you got?”
There was a pause before she replied, “Not much, I’m afraid. All the texts trace back to a disposable phone. I managed to track down its batch number. It was sold to a Walgreens distributor in the Bay Area, but from there it could have gone to a dozen different stores. And whoever purchased it probably paid cash.”
“So the number kept switching?” Jake asked. “Why wouldn’t that make Madison suspicious?”
He could almost see her shrugging. “Don’t know. She’s a bright girl—according to Randall she’s some sort of mechanical genius—but he must have given her a rational explanation.”
“What about the e-mails?”
“Same deal. Bounced all over the damned place, last location we got was somewhere on the Caspian coast.”
“Which country?”
“Turkmenistan.”
Jake’s brow furrowed. Could this be the link? Maybe some foreign power stole the kid to force Randall to share intel. It would certainly explain the level of organization, and the deep pockets. Syd’s voice interrupted his train of thought. “What’re you thinking?”
“You worked that part of the world, right?”
There was a lengthy pause. Officially they’d decided not to discuss past cases unless absolutely necessary. As far as Jake was concerned, this was the exception to that rule. Apparently Syd agreed, because after a moment she said, “I was stationed in Tbilisi for a few months.”
“That’s a little off the grid, isn’t it?”
“Way off the grid. Officially we were afraid that some of the decommissioned nuclear arms weren’t being appropriately monitored and might fall into the hands of rogue nations. Unofficially, I was being punished for not sleeping with my boss when he asked me to.”
Jake decided to ignore that last part. “What do you think? Any chance we’re dealing with a group that’s trying to get hold of some nukes?”
Syd went so long without saying anything, Jake was concerned he’d lost the connection. “Hello?”
“I’m still here. I’m just thinking.”
“Ah, Christ. You know something,” Jake said. “What the hell, Syd—”
“Nothing specific, I just…I’ve got some idea what Randall has been working on these past few months. And it might tie in with that.”
An image of the driver’s face flashed through Jake’s mind. Big white guy, could definitely be Slavic. “Great. I agreed to take this case, against my better instincts, as a favor to you. And you keep me in the dark. That’s it.” He resolutely pushed his chair back from the table and stood. “Call Randall, tell him I’m getting on a plane. You want to help him, come out here yourself.”
“Jake, wait—”
“Nope. I’m done, Syd.”
“All right.”
Jake paused at the door to the sandwich shop, rental car keys in hand. It wasn’t like Syd to give in so easily. “Bullshit.”
“What?”
“I don’t believe for a minute you’re letting me off the hook.”
“No, you’re right. I promised that the minute it smelled bad, you could back down. Besides, if this Turkmenistan thing is the real deal, I can follow up just as well from here. The Bay Area part of this operation seems dead in the water anyway. Just because she got off a plane there doesn’t mean anything, she could be on a container ship halfway to China by now.”
Jake had thought the same thing, but there was something about her tone he didn’t trust. Besides, if they’d wanted Madison on a container ship, it would have been just as easy to yank her from the East Coast. Even easier, maybe. The truth was that despite his posturing, he wasn’t ready to ditch Madison Grant yet. He walked to the car, as if physically calling Syd’s bluff. “Okay. So I’ll head to the airport.”
“Perfect. Oh, one thing…”
Jake grinned. He knew it wouldn’t be that easy. “Yeah?”
“Randall’s getting nervous, he’s starting to think she might already be dead.”
“Yeah, well. He has a point.”
“Right, I know. I was just wondering if you could stop by his place and talk him down from the ledge. Give him some tips on what to say next time, how to ask for proof of life. That sort of thing.”
Jake repressed a snort at the thought of Randall Grant attempting to negotiate proof of life on his own. “You’re a piece of work, you know that, Syd?”
“What?” she asked innocently.
“I’ll hang around to make sure Randall doesn’t screw this up. But if I get the sense that either of you is jerking me around again, that’s it.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Syd said smugly. “You’re out of there, I know.”
“Next time I’ll mean it.”
“Sure you will. Oh, and Jake? Give Randall a big kiss for me.”
“Go to hell. And keep running that facial recognition software. All that bragging about your tentacles extending everywhere, and so far you’ve given me a crappy chop house.”
“Hey,” Syd said, wounded. “That was a good lead. I had to pay off a slew of people for that one.”
“A name, Syd. We need something to go on.”
“Gotcha. The shadow network is on it.”
Jake hung up. Shadows was right. He felt like that was all he’d done so far, chase Madison’s shadow. He glanced back at the sandwich shop and considered grabbing another turkey club for the road, then decided against it. He’d seen an In-N-Out near Randall’s house, and if anything could help clarify his thought process, it was a one hundred percent all-beef American burger. Sprouts weren’t going to cut it on a case like this. Better save the diet for later, he decided.
Kelly skidded to a halt, breathing hard. On the other side of a six-foot-high fence a dog barked frantically. She jumped up and caught a glimpse of a Doberman chained to a pole, lunging at flannel and ragged jean shorts. She skirted the edge of the house, yelling into her radio, “Rodriguez! He’s back on Van Buren Street!”
Her breath was loud as she ran. Turning the corner, she caught a glimpse of Emilio Torres tearing across the street, stopping a cab short. Jesus, he was fast. No more than twelve or thirteen by her estimate, and small for his age. It didn’t help that he knew this neighborhood like the back of his hand. He could probably dodge them for days in here.
Kelly tore after him. After a morning of paperwork she’d decided to investigate “Psycho’s” claim that a hanger-on gave them the gun. The lawyer had provided Emilio Torres’s name and address. She didn’t expect the lead to pan out, but eliminating it would strengthen the prosecution’s case against the gang at trial. So after lunch she and Rodriguez knocked on Torres’s door, only to have the kid bolt at the sight of them. If Kelly knew she’d be dealing with a runner, she wouldn’t have ordered the grande burrito.
They’d been chasing Emilio for over ten minutes, from the back of his grandmother’s house down countless streets and alleys. Every time they thought they’d lost him, he’d pop up again. On the plus side, he didn’t appear smart enough to go to ground and stay there.
He bowled over a guy walking his pit bull and sent a Chinese food delivery man flying in a tangle of spokes and handlebars. Kelly almost sprawled on top of them. She vaulted over with a gasped apology and continued running.
Emilio glanced over his shoulder and saw her gaining. She caught a look of panic in his eyes. Kelly was ten feet behind him now, the beginnings of a cramp in her calf muscle. Sweat poured down her back, it had to be over a hundred degrees and she was getting dizzy. Emilio’s blue-checked flannel shirt trailed behind him as he sharply changed direction, turning right. She was hard on his heels, halfway up the block when a dark form hurtled out of the alley. It slammed into the kid hard. Both figures flew into the street. The screech of brakes pierced the air as an old Buick jerked to a halt. Kelly edged around it, slowing her pace, ignoring the tirade spilling out of the driver’s open windows. Rodriguez and Emilio lay in a tangle on the ground.
“Jesus, Rodriguez,” she said, grabbing the kid’s hands. He’d risen to his knees, prepared to bolt again. With one smooth gesture she knocked him flat and cuffed him. “You both could’ve been killed.”
“Little son of a bitch would’ve deserved it,” Rodriguez said, standing slowly and brushing himself off. The knees of his trousers were torn, and he raised his hands in supplication. “Christ, look what he did to my pants!”
“I didn’t do nothing, fool,” Emilio spat as Kelly yanked him to his feet. He was tiny, just over five feet, wearing baggy jean shorts, an enormous flannel shirt over a white undershirt and a blue-and-white Colts hat cocked to the side.
“Shut up, you little punk,” Rodriguez grunted.
“Agent Rodriguez,” Kelly said warningly. “Save it.”
“I got nothing to say to you,” Emilio sulked.
Kelly looked him over: too young to even be shaving. She repressed a sigh. “Your grandma seems like a nice lady, let’s have her join us. We need an adult present to question you anyway.”
“I ain’t answering no questions, bitch. I don’t disrespect the colors.” He jerked a thumb at his baseball cap.
Rodriguez rattled off something in Spanish, and Emilio responded with a tirade, struggling against the cuffs to get in Rodriguez’s face. Kelly pulled him back.
“Stop it, both of you,” she said sharply. “Not another word until we get him back to the house.” She cast a warning glance at Rodriguez. Anything said by a minor without a legal guardian present would be inadmissible. And she was hoping the grandmother might prove helpful. The woman had been shocked to find them on her doorstep, and judging by the way she called for Emilio, she didn’t tolerate back talk. With any luck her presence would cut down on his posturing.