DEAD BEEF (Our Cyber World Book 1) (5 page)

Chapter 6

As soon as Julian completed the job on Martin’s new cell phone, Martin had helped him gather a few belongings. Since Julian did not have a car, usually traveling to and from the marina on his bicycle, Martin drove him there now that luggage required more robust transportation.

The two of them said their goodbyes quickly, Julian hesitating at first, then finally embracing Martin in a swift three pats and you’re out hug.

“Be careful, man. Don’t take any chances,” Julian said with a grin. Then he ran down the dock toward his boat, lugging duffel bags in each hand.

From there Martin drove on surface streets into a one hour parking lot in LAX. Going in made him nervous, knowing the cameras and police presence made this one of the most surveillance-heavy spots he could have chosen. He told himself they probably weren't looking for him here, but that brought little comfort. He found slightly more reassurance in his wide-brimmed hat plus Oakley sunglasses disguise. Keeping his head down as he walked, his disguise would slow down the examination of video footage that would soon follow, buying him more time.

He strapped on his camping gear backpack, where he had stashed his two laptops. Renting a cart from a dispenser, he packed it with his other two bags, one with the cash, and the other with his photo equipment, and pushed the whole thing to the nearest terminal. It was a heavy load, but in an airport with people carrying much bigger stuff, he would not be noticed.

He hailed a taxi and breathed easier when a few minutes later it sped down the 105 freeway. After several checks he convinced himself that no one was following. This was a good sign. They should be looking for him now, but a wide alert had not yet gone out, and they didn’t yet have a good fix on him. In another hour or so, that would not be the case. Julian’s place would be the first they’d hit. Just as he had figured, delayed notification of his termination had bought him the time he needed to execute his preferred plan.

L.A. traffic was beginning to thicken a few minutes before 8 AM, and though eastern outbound traffic was lighter, it still took 30 minutes to traverse 17 miles. The taxi cab exited on Bellflower Boulevard and headed south for 2 miles until they arrived at a public storage facility. He retrieved his bags and paid the fare with a nominal tip — enough to say thank you, not so extravagant as to attract attention.

He then headed inside and found his storage unit easily enough. As one of the largest units there, it occupied a bottom floor and near the exit slot. Martin unlocked it, rolled up the metal door, flipped a light switch and went inside with his belongings. He closed the door then took a long breath. The stale air filled his lungs, and he coughed.

“Step 4, complete,” he told himself. Step 1 had been to sign and transfer the paperwork to his wife. Step 2 took him to Julian’s place to retrieve his money, laptops and modified phone. Step 3 involved dropping off his Toyota Landcruiser at the airport. And step 4 brought him here, where he now peeled back a camouflage patterned cover to reveal a dull, luster-free tan Toyota Landcruiser FJ-40, model year 1983.

He grinned to himself. Having located the FJ-40 he drove from San Jose at LAX, the collectors and whoever else joined the chase would have that model checked off their vehicle APB list. Add the change in color, and no one would give him or his vehicle a second look.

Martin only had one decision to make before proceeding to step 5: leave now or wait. If the collectors bought the chaff that he had flown out of Los Angeles — he hoped, after assuming that he had fake ID or passport — the search for him around Los Angeles would be cursory at best. If, as he guessed, not finding his name on any outbound flight manifest they sent out the dogs into the city, the passage of time would only work against him. He assessed this second possibility as most likely if his pursuers were able to use airport video to identify him getting into a cab.

Martin decided to move at once. He’d take his time, not rush by speeding down streets and highways, and he would pause when he felt things weren’t quite right, but he had to move now.

As a last check, he pulled out one of the laptops. With it, he detected a nearby Wi-Fi network with decent signal strength, probably belonging to the storage facility's front office. Within a minute he hacked into it to gain Internet access. He checked sigalert.com for traffic. To his satisfaction, he saw that east outbound traffic was flowing freely.

Before returning the laptop to the camping backpack, Martin reached into the bag and pulled out a plastic grocery bag, from which he retrieved a wig and a baseball cap. He put on the wig and cap then checked his appearance in one of the Landcruiser’s mirrors.

Memories of an InfoStream company party where he had worn the wig to look just like Julian came rushing back. Still looking in the mirror, his lips formed a melancholy smile.

Martin packed his belongings into the back of the Landcruiser and noticed a metal case. He’d forgotten about it. Martin popped the lid and found a note. He recognized Julian’s writing. “Without COMM you have nothing.”

The satellite phone equipment looked pristine, probably brand new. He decided to test it, but he’d have to do it outside. He lifted the metal sliding door and after a brief look decided that he would have both enough room and privacy here. He grinned to himself as he came upon the perfect way to test it.

As soon as he left Martin in the marina, Julian knew he wouldn’t be making a run for Central America. A few minutes after setting out to sea he confirmed that was the right choice. The winds were tame and would not take him south fast enough to avoid the impending Coast Guard drag net. The best thing to do, he decided, was to head west toward one of the Channel islands, maybe lay low. Which island he didn’t know yet, but probably not Catalina since that’s where he would be most likely to be spotted. Wherever he went, he'd make it up as he went. Life was chaos, and planning anything was useless. The best way to keep the robots coming after him off balance was to keep things random.

A few miles out, he drew down the sails, and rocked by fairly gentle waves he carefully replaced his boat registration numbers with decals he had procured for just a time like this. Random ruled, but Martin wasn’t the only one that could think a few moves ahead.

He was getting ready to re-deploy the sails when he heard a faint familiar sound. Julian stepped down into the cabin to confirm that he had a new message on his laptop. The title read: “Taken with my new phone,” and the attachment was a picture of the note Julian had left for Martin.

“Without COMM you have nothing,” Julian read, grinning. “Game on, man. Game on.”

Chapter 7

Representatives from the Collections team arrived at the Information Technology Assurance Agency (ITAA) and were ushered into the war room shortly before 5 PM Eastern. They received a courteous and cool reception. It had been a long time since their assistance had been required, and everyone knew at some level that meant failure. Depending on how things turned out, their presence also signified an uncertain future for the ITAA and project Ouroboros.

Ohdel was the first to welcome agents Ralph Thompson and Rodrigo Ochoa. After brief formal introductions, Thompson, the more senior of the two agents, spoke first.

“As you may guess, you don't need to walk us through the events leading to our recovery effort.” He patted a red folder on the table. “We can read and have been reading about the incident. If we have questions, we will ask them.”

Odehl nodded. “Fair enough.”

“Great,” Thompson pushed on. “As for this operation, it is now a recovery operation. We take point, and you,” he added with a roundabout gesture pointing at the agency's members, “are here to support the recovery. Again, we'll consult you when we need your help, but we have point. Questions?”

Beloski followed Thompson's gaze around the room. There might have been objections, but no questions.

“Thank you for sharing the ground rules,” Odehl said. “We may also need to neck down if discussion of past operational details becomes necessary.”

“As a matter of fact, we can’t discuss any past operational details here,” Brixten put in.

“That’s not exactly true,” Odehl said.

“It is since Congress slashed our funding,” Brixten put in. “We are a development and support organization only. Ops happen and are discussed elsewhere.”

Thompson regarded Brixten with a blank expression. “We are aware and are taking steps to remedy the situation,” he said. “May I continue?”

“Please do,” Odehl replied.

“Very well,” Thomposon said then adding, “Agent Ochoa is my assigned lead on this recovery effort. I’ll defer to him for the rest of the meeting.”

“Thank you, sir,” Agent Ochoa said. “First let me acknowledge this is a difficult time for your team. We are here to remedy the situation in all haste to let you folks get back to the great work you’ve been doing.” He pointed at Brixten, and added, “As Mr. Brixten pointed out, we can’t discuss past operational details just yet, but I’ll just say that out in the real world I may have, hypothetically, come into contact with the tools you develop here, and if that were the case, I should have been very impressed.”

Soft laughter rippled through the room before the tense mood regained its grip on all there. Beloski used the pause to size up Ochoa. You could never be sure about these things, but Beloski guessed Ochoa was a retired or transferred Special Ops officer that had traded his uniform and beret for a smart suit. The tight military styled haircut gave him away, as did his lean and muscular frame, fully evident even with the suit. His face and skin bore the light milk coffee color of many Caribbean descendants of African born slaves who throughout the years had intermingled their ancestry with that of Spanish landowners. Ochoa’s features, his fine nose and thin lips, Beloski estimated, were perhaps the legacy of his Caucasian ancestry, though later Beloski would learn from Ochoa that he carried in him two brands of African blood: that of the slaves brought to the Caribbean from Central Africa and that of Moor warriors that invaded and occupied parts of Spain in the 8th century.

“To add to what Mr. Thompson said,” Ochoa continued, “we primarily need your help to get into the heads of Julian Rogers and Martin Spencer. Our job now is not so much to figure out their pasts and what they’ve done as it is to anticipate their next moves based on their motivations so that we can get there ahead of them and bring them home.”

Ochoa was smooth, Beloski concluded. He talked with a softer, more sensitive touch than his boss. Beloski surmised that Ochoa, in his role as a collector, had developed the persuasion that came in handy to “bring them home” peacefully, without injury or loss of life.

“As Mr. Thompson relayed,” Ochoa went on, “at this point this is an extract, recovery operation, not a rendition. We have no evidence in hand to believe that either Rogers or Spencer have hostile intent.”

Beloski walked in his mind through the four
PERT
degrees or states of Collections: Protect, also known as shield; Extract or recover; Rendition, also known as apprehend; and Terminate or remove. They were at the second state, Extract/recover, and he wondered what it would take for it to go higher.

“So why did they flee?” Brixten was asking. “Why are they hiding?”

“They could be afraid,” Beloski offered, thinking about the states again, hoping that at least for Martin Spencer, whom Stan considered a casual friend, they wouldn’t go to rendition, and certainly not removal.

“Of us?” Brixten asked with a heavy dose of incredulity in his voice. No one seemed to know how to respond, and Brixten wouldn’t have known how to let the matter drop if his life depended on it, so he added, “I mean, look at that note he left in his tablet: ‘Leave me alone and nothing goes blink-blink.’ What do you think that could possibly mean?”

Ochoa frowned and fixed his gaze on Brixten, “How do you read it?”

“A warning or a threat,” Brixten replied. “Not much space between them from where I’m sitting.” He pointed at Robert Odehl. “Did he tell you about Spencer’s first love?”

Ochoa frowned and browsed the first two pages of one of two personnel files he had with him. With his index finger he poked at one of the pages and asked, “Sasha Javan?”

“That’s the one,” Brixten said. “She wasn’t even an American citizen and somehow managed to get a high level clearance just because we wanted Martin so badly. I’m glad someone finally saw the light on that one.”

Odehl and Beloski nodded at each other. “It’s time to neck down,” Odehl said to Thompson.

“Very well,” Thompson said. “Here?”

“No, my office.” Odehl eyed Brixten. “It’s a small office.”

“Who do you want there?”

“You, Ochoa, Beloski and me.”

“Remember no discussions about previous operational details,” Brixten was saying as the quartet exited the war room.

Thompson whispered, “We should have clearance within the hour for all topics relating to project Ouroboros.”

“Let’s go on faith and act as if dispensation already came,” Thompson said then lowered his voice to add, “We’ve been talking about operations in my office for as long as Ouroboros has been in play.”

Thompson smiled.

Odehl sat behind his mahogany desk, which though elegant did not overpower the space. Thompson, Ochoa and Beloski sat around a mahogany top round table that stood in front of the desk.

“I think we could have easily accommodated at least three more people,” Thompson said after he scanned his surroundings. “But I suppose the fifth person would have been Mr. Brixten, and that makes four occupants the optimum limit.”

“I see you and I are of like mind,” Odehl said, and the two of them shared a good ol’ boy chuckle while Ochoa smiled mildly.

“So,” Ochoa said, “about Sasha Javan.”

“Ah, yes, Sasha,” Odehl said. “When I recruited Martin from MIT — he was there earning his doctorate — he was pretty hot and heavy with Sasha Javan. She too was a pretty hot talent—”

“A star hacker, I believe was your term?” Ochoa asked, reading from the file.

“Yes, a star indeed. Martin suggested we bring her along. We really only wanted Martin, but he swore by her. Her background investigation checked out well enough, and we said, ‘why not?’ It worked out OK at first. She really was quite good and quite a help to Martin during his early work. The initial product the two of them developed together was brilliant and almost immediately operationally worthy. Solid stuff, really. They found each other’s mistakes, to the point where their code operated almost totally clean through test.”

“And then?” Ochoa asked.

“Then things got complicated, just as the project was entering a new phase, one requiring a higher classification level. Martin was cleared to be read in. Sasha was not.”

“A parting of the ways,” Thompson interjected.

“Not quite that simple,” Odehl said. “Martin had just confided in me that he was planning to marry Sasha.”

“And that was a problem because?” Ochoa asked.

“Until then the government overlooked her foreign national status. She was not a U.S citizen, yet had a fairly high clearance. Someone in high places had made that possible—.”

“To keep Martin in play,” Ochoa said.

“Yes,” Odehl replied. “Until an updated background check revealed that Sasha’s family, her uncle and a second cousin, had ties to the Iranian Secret Service.”

“The Ministry of Intelligence and National Security?” Ochoa asked.

“Yes. We all wish they had a shorter name for it. Anyway, not only was Sasha out of the project, but Martin would have lost his clearance if he married her.” Odehl shifted in his seat as if he were trying to move off a sharp pin. “I begged him not to go through with it.”

Beloski detected a hint of pain and regret in Odehl’s voice and on his expression. Beloski knew he should have listened on, but against his better judgment blurted, “Martin would have never participated in that operation against the Iranian nuke program, would he?”

“We’ll get to that,” Odehl said with an edge to his voice.

“It sounds like Spencer did it your way,” Ochoa said. “He left Sasha for—”

“Relunctantly,” Odehl replied. “It tore him up psychologically. Even went AWOL for a bit.”

“Yes,” Thompson said. “I recall one of ours had to coax him down the tree. What was her name...?”

Odehl shifted in his seat again. “Cynthia.” Beloski could see he was struggling to get the rest out. “Cynthia Odehl.”

“I see,” Ochoa said. “Relation of yours?”

“Niece,” Odehl replied. “Great gal. Business major with a psychology minor degree, put in her time as one of your crew. Martin Spencer was her best retrieval. And her last.”

“They fell in love during the collection?” Ochoa asked.

Odehl nodded. “They grew close during the recovery operation and after. Eventually, Cynthia Odehl became Mrs. Spencer.” He leaned forward and rested both elbows on his desk. “It really worked out well. A few years later, thanks to a congressman who wanted a few more tech jobs in the San Jose area, and after an appeal by Martin that he’d be able to draft more local talent there, the agency agreed to set him up as the co-owner of InfoStream. The one condition was that Cynthia would be his CEO. That was just fine by Martin. He didn’t want any part of the business end. As Chief Scientist, he focused on research and development. It really worked quite well.”