Red Knight Falling (20 page)

THIRTY-SIX

“This is Spearhead,” Cooper said, her fingers gliding over the photograph. “Code name for a Diehl Innovations R&D plant just outside Santa Monica. This is where his brain trust hatches their latest and greatest inventions. As you can imagine, given how the tech industry is rife with industrial espionage, it’s not the kind of place where you can take a casual stroll.”

The next photograph depicted a blurry blueprint, snapped by a palmed camera from a couple of feet away. Enough to make out how the plant was built like a series of concentric hexagons, only a narrow choke point linking each ribbon of corridors and labs.

“The outer shell has armed guards and K-9 units. These are Diehl’s handpicked men, like his security staff at the corporate headquarters. They’re trained to shoot first and ask questions never, and they get a pay bonus for bagging intruders.”

Jessie edged forward on the sofa, leaning in, brow furrowed as she concentrated on the blueprint. “Numbers?”

“On any given shift, at least twenty spread throughout the plant, some on permanent watch and some on patrol.”

“Those choke points.” I tapped the picture. “Those are constantly guarded, I assume?”

“Correct. Access requires a color-coded employee ID. Outer shell is white, middle shell is green, inner shell is red. Middle shell is higher-security projects. More armed guards, and . . . the burners.”

“That doesn’t sound good,” Jessie said.

Cooper tugged her employee ID out of its plastic sheath. She dug manicured fingernails into one corner of the card, carefully peeling back laminate.

“Trusted employees are given special identification cards to access Diehl Innovations’ most secure areas. Mine is one of them. They have a little something special inside.”

The card separated into two sheets of glossy paper. Between them, snuggled tight, was a razor-thin disk of silver. Runes etched onto the disk’s face glimmered in the lamplight.

“It’s a warding talisman,” she said, “so Diehl’s occult countermeasures will allow me to pass safely. The burners are curse traps, set into random hallways and access points midway through the complex. Trigger one without having one of these talismans on you, and, well, I’d charitably describe the result as a psychic lobotomy. Key nodes of a victim’s brain just . . . melt. All that remains, when the curse finishes its work, are the parts necessary to sustain basic life. That, and their pain receptors. Diehl was particularly proud of that one.”

“I don’t suppose we could borrow your card?” I asked her.

By way of response, she pressed the halves back together again, trapping the disk within, and slipped the card back into its glossy sheath.

“I’m afraid not. I’m expected to attend the party tonight, and several rooms of his home are similarly trapped. You’ll need to secure cards of your own, on-site. Whatever you do, don’t set foot in the middle shell without them.”

“Let me guess,” Jessie said. “The tablet’s
all
the way inside.”

Cooper nodded. “Inner shell. The smallest part of the complex, and Bobby Diehl’s personal playground. That’s where he runs his
special
experiments. I know the tablet is being kept in Restricted Materials B, but that’s all I can tell you. I’ve never been invited that far inside.”

“So we could be up against anything in there,” I said.

“I’m sorry,” Cooper said, “that’s the best I can do. When he comes back to retrieve the tablet, he’ll be bringing an armed convoy and his top men with him: your best bet is to infiltrate Spearhead and steal the tablet before he arrives.”

“I did bring you a bit of assistance,” Linder said. He walked toward the bed, waving for us to get up and follow him.

Three rugged plastic cases sat on the garishly bohemian bedspread, lined up side by side. I opened one, revealing tubes of night-black steel set into carefully cut foam compartments.

“Replacement threaded barrels for your sidearms,” Linder said, “and Osprey 9 sound suppressors.”

Jessie unlatched the second and third cases. She cooed, her eyes going wide as she hefted her prize: a Heckler & Koch MP5 N with a suppressor and a burst-fire toggle.

“Nobody told me it was Christmas,” she said, batting her eyelashes at the gun.

I reached into the third case, taking out a single black cylinder. The tube was a little bigger than my hand, riddled with divots and capped by octagonal screws on each end.

“Two M84 stun grenades,” Linder said over my shoulder, “in case you need a rapid exfiltration. Still, I recommend a silent approach. Setting off alarms will just draw more of Diehl’s operatives, and possibly Diehl himself. It’s safest—for you, and for Beach Cell’s undercover operation—if you avoid a confrontation at all costs.”

Cooper cast a dour eye at the grenades. “Alarms will also draw the Santa Monica police force, and all they’ll know is that heavily armed burglars are robbing one of the city’s biggest employers. Unless you want to go toe to toe with SWAT, keep it quiet.”

Jessie scooped up the other M84 and shook her head, glancing my way.

“You believe this? They give me a hand grenade and tell me
not
to use it.”

“They’ll never know we were there,” I told Cooper. “At least not until Bobby Diehl comes to collect his prize for the party. Are you going to be safe, once he finds out it’s missing?”

“He won’t tie it back to me, if that’s what you’re asking. Agent Black, could I have a word in private?”

“Go ahead,” Jessie told me, putting the MP5-N back in its case and shutting the lid. “I’ll get these babies down to the SUV.”

We stepped out into the hall together. Out of Jessie’s earshot, as she hustled past us with one case in each hand and the third tucked under an arm. Out of Linder’s earshot, too. Cooper shut the hotel room door behind us.

“I apologize,” she said, “for stepping on your op like that.”

“I don’t think apologies are necessary, but you should really be talking to Jessie, it’s her team—”

“I’ve read your files. Agent Temple is too unpredictable.
You
, I can talk to. I need to be very, very clear about this: Are we on the same page when it comes to Diehl?”

I shrugged. “Don’t worry. He’s your target. We’re hands-off.”

Cooper stared down at the carpet for a moment before her gaze met mine.

“Good. Because when this nightmare is finally over, nobody is pulling the trigger on Bobby Diehl but me. I
earned
this.”

I didn’t ask her for details or the reasons why. The tight edge in her voice, the sudden mingling of hatred and fear in her eyes, was the only justification I needed.

“If we come across any intel on Diehl, or the Network, I’ll make sure it gets to you,” I told her.

“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.” She glanced up and down the empty hall, then reached out as if to shake my hand. She pressed a folded slip of paper into my palm, dropping her voice to a whisper. “That’s the address for a secure dead drop, under Beach Cell control. Not a registered Vigilant asset. Anything you find, send it to me there. Do
not
pass it through Linder or any of his flunkies.”

“Why not?”

She looked back over her shoulder, at the closed door.

“My team found a few red flags in Diehl Innovations’ records. Weird patterns, suspicious data, tying back to certain elements in Washington.”

“Data tying back to Linder?” I asked. “To Vigilant Lock?”

“No time. Remember this, Agent Black: just because we’re fighting the bad guys doesn’t necessarily mean we’re working for the good guys.” The doorknob rattled behind her. Just before the door swung open, she leaned in and whispered,
“Don’t trust him.”

Linder poked his head out into the hallway, glancing from me to Cooper and back again.

“Time’s tight,” he said, “and you should both be on the move. I’ll be waiting for your reports.”

“Yes, sir,” I said, giving a sharp nod before I turned on my heel and strode away. Always the good soldier.

Sitting in the passenger side of the SUV, I used one of the plastic cases as a lap desk while I broke down my pistol. It was a familiar, peaceful routine I could do with my eyes closed, lulling my conscious mind into meditative silence and calming my heartbeat: firearm maintenance as a Zen koan.

“Agent Cooper is correct,” April said from the seat behind me. “It’s safest if we eschew the guns-blazing approach, or at least ensure no witnesses escape to raise an alarm. Make too much noise and we’re liable to end up battling an entire civilian police department, plus whatever reserves they can call in from neighboring towns. Our mandate is to
protect
the innocent, not outshoot them.”

“But you’re FBI,” Cody said. “Can’t you just show them your badges and walk right in?”

Jessie shook her head. “Not without a warrant, and we’ve got no legit reason to request one. Even assuming we could find a local judge who isn’t in Bobby Diehl’s hip pocket.”

“You didn’t have a warrant in Chicago.”

“It’s one thing to kick in a door and wave our badges around to scare a bunch of punk kids. If we pulled that at Diehl Innovations, they’d throw worse than thugs with guns at us. They’d bring
lawyers
. There’s the fast way to get this done, and the clean way. We don’t have time for the clean way.”

Reassembly. The new barrel clicked into place, its tip threaded like a screw. Then came the sound suppressor, locking tight, its matte-black barrel transforming my weapon from a peace officer’s sidearm to an assassin’s tool.

“I’ve got an idea,” Kevin said, his keyboard clicking away. “The Diehl Innovations website lists the names of their big R&D guys. One of ’em has to have superuser access to Spearhead’s systems. If I can hijack their account, I can wrap a blindfold and earmuffs over their security system without setting foot in the building.”

“You sound confident,” Jessie said. “You sure you can pull it off?”

He half smiled even as his brow furrowed in concentration, eyes locked on the screen.

“The weakest link in any network’s security is the employees who use it. And Diehl Innovations has a
lot
of employees. Gotta be a high-ranking dumbass with a default password in here somewhere. How much time do we have?”

“Figure we’ll be there in half an hour,” Cody said, turning the wheel as we pulled a left through a busy intersection.

“No worries, I got this,” Kevin said. “Sounds to me, from what Agent Cooper told you guys, most of the real security is supernatural. You ready for that?”

“Yeah,” Jessie said flatly, “invisible magic brain melters and whatever Bobby’s got brewing in his evil man cave. Fun city. Can’t wait.”

“There’s something else,” I said, and shared what Agent Cooper had said about Linder. Jessie frowned, slumping back in her seat as she thought it over.

“Linder’s shady, but he’s never steered us wrong. All we know about Beach Cell is that one of ’em set us up and nearly blew this entire operation. Cooper could be just as bent as Lawrence was.”

I shook my head. “I don’t think so. She seemed pretty sincere. Whatever she knows, she believes it.”

“Well, one of them has to be wrong. Once this is all over, we can dig into Cooper’s story and see what’s what. For now, we’ll just play it careful with both of them. We’ve got bigger fish to fry.”

We prowled through a string of industrial parks on the outskirts of Santa Monica, just off the highway. No beaches here, no tourist crowds, just dusty parking lots and rented offices with corrugated steel rooftops sitting quiet in the late Saturday-afternoon sun. Darkened glass doors and faded logos for graphic design firms and architectural engineers. Cody pulled the SUV across a row of empty parking spots and killed the engine.

I could see Spearhead from here. The dirty white-walled complex squatted at the end of an access road, safe behind rings of razor-wire fence. A delivery van chugged up to a guard shack, waiting while they ran the driver’s identification. Eventually they waved him through, an automatic barrier lifting just long enough for the truck to roll into the factory lot.

“Think I know how we can get inside,” I said. “Kevin, how’s that hack coming?”

“Don’t rush an artist,” he mumbled, typing faster. “I’m almost in.”

“Great. Cody, can I talk to you for a second?”

He didn’t say a word, he just got out of the SUV and shut the door behind him. From the look on his face, I think he assumed I was about to sideline him again and cut him out of the action.

I wished it was going to be that easy.

THIRTY-SEVEN

Cody and I stood out in the parking lot, alone together. He turned to face me as I walked around the front of the SUV.

“Let me guess,” he said, hands on his hips. “I need to stay with the car and wait, because I’m
such
a good getaway driver.”

“Cody, I—”

“It’s fine,” he said, with a look on his face that told me it was anything but. “You want me to drive, I’ll drive. Just don’t pretend that’s the reason you’re leaving me behind. I just . . . I just wish you
trusted
me a little.”

“Trust?” I asked him. “Is that what you think this is about?”

“I get it. You and Jessie have experience. You know how to deal with all this spy stuff, and the . . . weirder stuff, too. But I’m not useless, Harmony. I’m fast on my feet. I’m a damn good shot and you know it. I just want to help you, that’s all, and I wish you’d believe I wasn’t going to, I don’t know, slow you down or get you in trouble or whatever you think is gonna happen.”

“Is that what you thought . . .” I shook my head. I reached out, closing my fingers over his muscular arm. Squeezing it. “Oh, Cody, no. That’s not why I’m trying to keep you out of this. I would never think that about you.”

“Why, then?”

Good question. I turned my back on him. Walked a few feet away, collecting my thoughts before I looked back in his direction.

“Cody, there’s a good chance this is going to get violent. People are going to die in there.”

“You say that like I just got here. We ran up against those mercenaries in Oregon, then the shopping mall in Orlando—you saw me, Harmony. You know I hold my own in a fight.”

“That’s what I’m saying.” I pulled open my jacket, giving him a good look at my silenced pistol. “This won’t
be
a fight.”

He squinted. Not quite following me—or following me, and not wanting to.

“Sometimes,” I told him, “saving the day means doing some pretty ugly stuff. Like if we go in there and I see an unarmed man running for an alarm button, and I have to choose between sparing his life or compromising our mission, then that man is going to die. Because what’s at stake is just too damn important.”

He tilted his head, searching for something in my eyes.

“So you think . . . what, that I can’t handle that?” he asked me.

“No,” I said, “I’m not sure
I
can handle you seeing that side of me. And I’m afraid, because . . . when I look in your eyes, it makes me happy. Because you look at me like I’m someone who makes
you
happy. Your face lights up, and your eyes get a little crinkly around the edges when you smile, and I feel butterflies in the pit of my stomach. I can count on one hand the number of men who have ever looked at me that way.”

“And you think I won’t see you that way anymore,” he said.

“That’s right.”

He closed the distance between us. His firm hands closed around my hips as he gazed down into my eyes.

“I wasn’t all wrong, then,” he told me.

“How do you mean?”

He pulled me closer.

“It’s a matter of trust,” he said.

I caught the scent of his musk cologne, like a breeze coming off the ocean, and my words drained away.

“You said it right,” he told me. “What’s at stake is too damn important. Harmony, we’re looking at the honest-to-God end of the world if we can’t pull this off. Let me help. And trust me. Trust that I know
exactly
who I’m looking at when I’m looking in your eyes, and that nothing that happens between now and doomsday is gonna change that one tiny bit.”

“Okay,” I said.

“Okay,” he said.

The back door of the SUV chunked open, and Kevin leaned his head out.

“Good news,” he said. “I’m the Spearhead’s new director of security, and the entire facility just went deaf, dumb, and blind. So, uh, you guys feel like storming this castle or what?”

The bronze, rippling sun started its slow descent as we prepared for our mission. We’d be infiltrating Spearhead in an hour of long shadows. If all went well, we’d be leaving, as silently as we arrived, under the blanket of night. If . . .

A print shop stood not far from where we’d parked the SUV. It had a delivery truck out back, a squat boxy ride about the size of a U-Haul with a rolling back door. I wasn’t concerned about the SpeedPrint logo on the sides of the truck: a delivery was a delivery, and the truck only had to get us up to the guard shack without raising any alarms.

Jessie hot-wired the truck, the throaty diesel engine sputtering to life, and Cody gave Kevin a five-minute crash course in how to drive a stick shift. Then everyone got into their places, and we were off and rolling.

My place, at the moment, was clinging like an off-balance spider to the back of the truck. I stood on the tiny bumper outcropping, the knobby chrome barely extending past the balls of my feet, and held on to the side handle with a white-knuckled grip as I pressed myself flat against the cargo door.

“Doing all right back there?” April’s voice crackled over my earpiece.

“Define ‘all right,’” I said.

“This was
your
plan.”

“I know, I know. It seemed like a smarter idea in my imagination. Just tell Kevin to keep it under fifteen miles an hour, okay?”

It was only a few hundred yards, but my calves burned like I’d run a marathon by the time the truck rattled to a stop. Still clinging to the back of the truck, I peeked around the left side. One guard in a crisp blue uniform, a .38 special on his hip, strutted up to the driver’s-side window with a clipboard. His partner sat in the tiny glass-walled hut, leaning back in a folding chair with earbuds on and his eyes half-closed.

“SpeedPrint?” the guard with the clipboard said. “I don’t have anything on the schedule. You sure you’re in the right place?”

I lowered myself to the asphalt, shoes touching down as quietly as I could. As the guard lifted his clipboard, peering at his list and arguing with Kevin, I made my move. I darted in, a blur in the corner of his vision, grabbing him by the arm and swinging him around as I put my gun to his head. His partner was faster than I expected. Fumbling, trying to push up from his chair, he whipped out his revolver. I never gave him a chance to pull the trigger: the Glock made two hoarse coughs, and the chest of his uniform blues billowed scarlet red. The chair tumbled backward, clattering to the ground with his wide-eyed corpse still in it.

I shoved the live one into the hut, down on his knees next to his partner. I kept one hand on the gun and the other twined around a clump of short-cropped hair, yanking hard and forcing him to look at the body. I didn’t like this strong-arm stuff, but I needed him good and scared.

“
Look
at him,” I hissed. “Do you want that to happen to you?”

“N-no,” he stammered. “Please, I’ve got a family!”

“I don’t care. The only thing I care about is getting truthful answers to the questions I’m about to ask you. If you lie, I’ll know. And you wouldn’t want that. Understand?”

He gave a feeble nod. I pushed the muzzle of the silencer against the side of his head, pressing in hard enough to leave a welt.

“When’s the next scheduled delivery?”

“There—there aren’t any more for tonight. We’re just supposed to be ready for Mr. Diehl’s visit. He’s c-coming in a couple of hours.”

“When’s your next shift change?”

“Ten! Ten tonight.”

“And do you have any kind of call-in protocol? Anyone you need to radio and check in with, so they know you’re all right out here?”

He shook his head, a tiny tremor.

“No, I swear! The guards on patrol duty have to radio in once an hour, but we don’t.”

I let go of his hair and reached for a zip tie, the plastic slick against my fingertips.

“Good news,” I told him. “I believe you.”

I left him hog-tied, his face to the floor beside a pool of congealing blood, and gagged with a torn-off strip of his own shirtsleeve. We had two hours before Diehl and his entourage descended on Spearhead, intent on retrieving his prize for the party.

We needed to be long gone before that happened.

The next part was up to Kevin. I couldn’t even watch him drive, as I spent it hunkered down in back. Crouched low in the dark and waiting, feeling the empty truck cabin sway and rock with the tires as Kevin rolled around the plant and back to the loading docks.

He stopped. I heard a man’s muffled voice shout, “Okay, back her up,” then rhythmic beeping as Kevin threw the truck into reverse and inched backward.

“A little left—okay, you’re good, you’re good,” shouted the voice, and the truck stopped. I took a slow, deep breath, steadied my grip on the gun, and waited.