In Her Name: The Last War (152 page)
Read In Her Name: The Last War Online
Authors: Michael R. Hicks
Another photo showed Sheldon’s clothing. He had been stripped from head to toe, and his clothes had been systematically torn apart, with every seam ripped open. In the background, on the floor next to the wall, was his gun.
Jack had seen death enough times and in enough awful ways that it no longer made him want to gag. But he had never, even in the hateful fighting in Afghanistan, seen such measured brutality as this.
The last photo he had looked at had been a close-up of Sheldon’s face and his terrified expression. “He was still alive when they started...cutting him up.”
“I know,” Clement said, his own voice breaking. “I know he was.”
“What was he doing out there?” Jack asked, sliding the photos back into the folder with numb fingers. “This couldn’t have just been some random attack. What the hell was he working on that could have driven someone to do this to him?”
Pursing his lips, Clement looked down at his desk, his face a study in consideration. “This is classified, Jack,” he said finally, looking up and fixing Jack with a hard stare, “as in Top Secret. The kind of information you have to read after you sign your life away and go into a little room with thick walls and special locks on the door. Even the SAC in Lincoln doesn’t know the real reason Sheldon was there, and the only reason I’m telling you is because you held high-level clearances in the Army and you can appreciate how sensitive this is and keep your mouth shut about it.”
Jack nodded. He had been an intelligence officer in the Army, and knew exactly what Clement was talking about. He also appreciated the fact that Clement could lose his job for what he was about to say. That was the level of trust that had built up between them.
Satisfied that Jack had gotten the message, Clement told him, “Sheldon was investigating a series of cyber attacks against several research laboratories doing work on genetically modified organisms, mainly food crops like corn. The FDA was also hacked: someone took a keen interest in what the Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition was doing along the same lines. And before you say, ‘So what’s the big super-secret deal,’ there was also a series of attacks against computers, both at home and work, used by specific individuals across the government, including senior officials in the Department of Defense and the military services. Sheldon was convinced the perpetrators were from a group known as the Earth Defense Society, and that they’re somewhere here in the U.S. He’s been out in the field for the last three weeks, tracking down leads.” He frowned. “Apparently he found something in Lincoln.”
“What the hell are they after?” Jack asked, perplexed. It seemed an odd potpourri of targets for hackers to be going after. He could understand someone going after one group of targets or another, but what common thread could run through such a mixed bag, from labs working on how to improve crops to the military?
“That’s the sixty-four thousand dollar question, isn’t it?” Clement said. “So, now you know what Sheldon was doing. Just keep your mouth shut about it and pretend this conversation never happened.”
Standing up and coming around his desk, Clement continued as Jack rose from his chair, “I want you to take some leave. Get out of here for a few days until you’ve pulled yourself together. Then come back in and we can talk. And I promise you, I’ll keep you informed of what we find.”
“Yes, sir,” was all Jack said as he shook Clement’s hand. He turned and walked out of the office, closing the door quietly behind him.
As Jack left, Clement saw that he still had the copy of Sheldon’s case file in his hand. With a satisfied nod, he returned to his desk and checked his phone, which was blinking urgently. It hadn’t been ringing because he had ordered his secretary to hold all of his calls. Quickly scanning the recent caller list on the phone’s display, he saw that the director had called him. Twice.
He grimaced, then pulled out the two smart phones that he carried. He used one of them for everyday personal communication. That one the Bureau knew about. He had turned it off before talking to Dawson to avoid any interruptions, and now he turned it back on.
The other smart phone, the one he flipped open now, was used for an entirely different purpose, and something of which his bosses at the Bureau would not approve. Calling up the web application, he quickly logged into an anonymizer service and sent a brief, innocuous-sounding email to a particular address. Then he activated an application that would wipe the phone’s memory and reset it to the factory default, effectively erasing any evidence of how he had used it.
Putting it back in his pocket, he picked up his desk phone and called the director.
A SMALL FAVOR
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DISCOVER OTHER BOOKS BY MICHAEL R. HICKS
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In Her Name
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Born in 1963, Michael Hicks grew up in the age of the Apollo program and spent his youth glued to the television watching the original Star Trek series and other science fiction movies, which continues to be a source of entertainment and inspiration. Having spent the majority of his life as a voracious reader, he has been heavily influenced by writers ranging from Robert Heinlein to Jerry Pournelle and Larry Niven, and David Weber to S.M. Stirling. Living in Maryland with his beautiful wife, two wonderful stepsons and two mischievous Siberian cats, he’s now living his dream of writing novels full-time.