Aim And Fire - Cliff Ryder

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again.” She walked to the door and let herself out, all the while wondering what trap she may have inadvertently stepped into.

      6

      Kate Cochran pushed up her viewscreen glasses and rubbed the bridge of her nose. She had just logged out of a quickly convened meeting with the members of the International Intelligence Agency, the governing body that had set up and now oversaw Room 59’s operations. The shadowy figures—literally faceless silhouettes in a virtual, heavily secured conference room, which was all Kate or anyone else who worked in Room 59 ever saw of them—met to deliver assignments, or, in this case, to discuss a potential mission that any sector director brought to the table.

      Kate had conferenced in Pai Kun for support, and the diminutive Chinese head of Asian operations had performed with his usual spotless efficiency. Kate had also done well, opening a continuing surveillance file on Kryukov to find out what he knew about the suitcase nuke, and to try to track it down. The board, as concerned as the two directors were about missing nuclear weapons, voted both missions green with no opposition.

      Kate had gotten what she wanted; now the only problem was trying to find a nuclear needle among the world’s haystacks. But that was why she had the world’s best analysts on her payroll. At least, I hope that’s the case, she told herself. She was about to slip the viewscreen glasses back on and dive back into the virtual world to see what her Web scourers had brought up when there was a knock at the door.

      “Kate, you really need to take a break.” The slip of a girl who peeked into the room was Arminda Todd, Kate’s live-in housekeeper and, she often half joked, her link to both the outside world and sanity. Dressed in a red-and-black-plaid pleated skirt and a white boys’-cut button-down shirt, with her normally dark blond hair accented with streaks of black this month, she looked exactly like the moonlighting college student she was.

      “Hi, Mindy. Come on in. I assume it’s lunchtime?” Kate asked.

      “Do you ever look out those fabulous windows of yours? Try about three hours past dinnertime. I made you a plate.” She set a tray down with a heaped plate that gave off a spicy, heavenly aroma. “I was cooking with Grandmama, and of course, anything she makes will feed twenty, with leftovers.”

      The main course, what looked like zucchini halves stuffed with ground lamb and baked in tomato sauce, didn’t look all that appetizing, but the smell was irresistible. It was accompanied by a small green salad and still-warm flatbread. Once Kate dug in, the first bite awakened a ravenous hunger. “Thanks,” she mumbled around a mouthful.

      “Oh, I should warn you—” Mindy began just as Kate’s eyes widened, and she grabbed the glass of ice water, downing half of it in huge gulps “—Grandmama likes things spicy.”

      “If that’s ‘spicy,’ I’d hate to see what she considers hot.” Kate paused, took another drink and eyed the plate dubiously. “It is good, once my tongue recovers from, what was that, a pound of paprika?”

      Mindy shook her head, making her long pigtails swing back and forth. “Grandmama’s secret recipe. She says she will give it to me only on her deathbed, and that I can never write it down, but can pass it on to my own daughter when the time comes.”

      “That sounds like her, all right.” Kate tried another bite, and was pleased to find that her mouth had grown accustomed to the pungent blend of spices. “Delicious.”

      A soft chime from her computer brought Kate’s head up. “That’s what I’ve been waiting for. Give me a minute to see if I’m right, and I’ll quit for the night, I promise.”

      Mindy scrunched up her face in what passed as a stern expression, but only made her young face and china-blue eyes look even more adorable. “All right, five minutes, but that’s all. Otherwise I’m coming in here to drag you out.”

      “Deal, cross my heart.” Kate wolfed another bite while sliding the glasses down over her eyes. With precise movements, she navigated to the new message and opened it.

      Hey K,

      This slid into a DHS server twenty minutes ago. It isn’t much, but it’s the best lead so far. With the Rio Grande still leaking illegals like a sieve every day, maybe some homies from a bit farther east—like Mideast, if you know what I mean—are making a run for the border, too, before it really gets closed up?

      Let me know if you need follow-up or anything else, okay?

      B2S

      Kate smiled. She’d figured that Born2Slyde, as the hacker called herself online, would come up with what looked like a solid lead first. The eighteen-year-old girl could whiz in and out of supposedly secure mainframes and security systems with unparalleled ease.

      Room 59 had been organized as a decentralized operation, with no main ops center, like other agencies worked from, the better to not find it. Kate’s New York City town house, where she lived and worked, was the closest thing to one, and that was primarily because she hardly had time to leave the luxurious suite of rooms. Terror and threats to world security rarely took days off, so she didn’t, either.

      She opened the triple-encrypted, compressed data file. That brought up two e-mail messages, along with an itemized list, including plutonium, that had been highlighted by the sender. B2S had also included current statistics for incidents of violence or large drug caches coming across the U.S.-Mexican border. The name of the sender caught her eye, and a quick check of a top secret deceased-terrorist list confirmed her first suspicion—that the man using the alias Arsalan Hejazi was supposed to be dead.

      A deceased man placing an order from beyond the grave? Someone wanted to make a bomb, but what if they got the chance to pick one up that was assembled and ready to blow? All they’d need to do was get it across the border, which, while difficult, wasn’t impossible, according to the most recent border security review, Kate thought.

      She used one of the installed back-door programs that enabled her to access any government network without being detected. Bringing up the network for the U.S. Customs and Border Protection department of the DHS, she entered the keywords Mexico, nuclear, border, kill and terrorist, and directed the system to scan all files accessed within the previous forty-eight hours.

      Hundreds of messages back and forth between station offices and Washington filled her screen. Kate sat back and used a trick she had learned during grad school. She let her eyes wander over the long list, relying on her subconscious to home in on the message that would be most useful. Her gaze alighted on one subject line. Two Border Patrol Agents And Multiple Illegals Killed North Of Border Outside El Paso. Opening the message, Kate read a concise summary of an incident involving a pair of Border Patrol agents and twenty-three illegal immigrants, all shot at what should have been a routine stop. What was strange was that the coyotes had been killed, as well, and everyone had been shot multiple times, many in the back of the head at close range. The Border Patrol SUV had been found several miles away, a burned wreck, but the truck that had been carrying the human cargo had disappeared. It wasn’t just a random murder; it had been a massacre.

      Who would go to such lengths to kill everyone at the scene? she wondered. The answer came to her immediately. Someone who had something to hide, and when their cover was compromised, they didn’t hesitate to kill everyone to insure that they wouldn’t be seen. What could be that important? A suitcase nuke?

      Kate leaned forward again and brought up the e-mail from the Border Patrol agent, putting the two side by side. She felt a familiar strange fluttering in her stomach that heralded a leap in her intuitive logic. She knew the two incidents were connected, although she couldn’t explain why. It just felt right; that was all. But that was enough to start on, anyway. The proof would have to come later.

      She looked at where the agent’s e-mail had ended up—the in-box of an analyst named Tracy Wentworth. My dear, I think you may be doing a lot more than you expected tomorrow, Kate thought, letting the rest of her dinner grow cold as she made preparations to travel to Washington the next day. Hope you’re up for the challenge.

      7

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