Twisted Mercy (Red Team Book 4) (5 page)

CHAPTER FOUR

Max’s phone vibrated a silent alert in the calm darkness of his cabin later that night. His house was a few miles east of the WKB compound, but he’d set up motion detectors in the woods surrounding his home as a precaution. He picked up his phone and checked the cameras that went with the motion detectors.
 

Greer was walking up to his front door. Max crossed the room barefooted, wearing only the jeans he’d been sleeping in, and opened the door for his friend. He lifted his futon seat and put it back in place as a sofa, sheets and all, then sat down.
 

“Tell me I don’t have to feed you,” he growled, his voice rough with sleep.

“You don’t.” Greer sat in a side chair.

“Good. ’Cause I got nothing.” He looked at his friend, catching his somber mood. “S’up?”

“I checked out the girl. You aren’t gonna like it.”

Max said nothing, just waited for Greer to spit it out.
 

“Hope Nelson was in fact a wrench out of Michigan,” Greer began.

“Was?” Max interrupted.

“She had two brothers,” Greer continued without explaining the past tense. “One died in the first Gulf War. The other died of cancer five years ago. Hope did work in a chop shop in Detroit. It was under investigation at the time she wrecked her bike three years ago.” He looked at Max. “She was forty-five when she died.”

“So who’s the girl, then? And who helped her build her false identity? It’s too well done to come from an amateur.” Max looked out the window at the girl’s tent that was set up next to her truck. What the fuck was she up to? He remembered her resistance to his edict that she camp at his place when he'd retrieved her a few hours ago. The look she’d had in those big doe eyes of hers slipped into his mind.
 

“I’m still trying to figure out who she is,” Greer said. “Working on a facial-recognition search now. It would be easier if we had some DNA or fingerprints.”

“I’ll see what I can do.” He looked at Greer. “Is she a Fed?”

“No. Owen checked with Loco Lobo and his other sources. None claim her. Kit wants you to move forward with mapping the silos and tunnels, but keep your distance from the girl until we know more.”

Max nodded. Could she be after the same thing he was—the entrance to the old missile silo complex? What did King have down there? Whatever it was, Max was determined to get a head start on her; he’d keep her here at night while he did his exploring. At least until the wrench’s house was made habitable. He had a few days, a week at the most, to get into that silo without her interference.

“What’ve you learned from their network?” he asked, changing the subject.

“I’ve injected some code to crawl their server. Should have some info soon. Kit wants you to come in tomorrow for a briefing.”
 

“I’ll be there. So is Kit really tying the knot with Ivy?” he asked, switching the subject again.

“Yeah, he is.” Greer had a shit-eating grin on his face.

Max felt himself smiling in response. “How’s Owen handling that?” The owner of Tremaine Industries, their employer, wasn’t known for his sense of humor…or his patience.

“What? You think the girls running down the halls between rooms, giggling at all hours, plotting God knows what would bug him? And why wouldn’t he be cool with Val ditching work to take them shopping? Or with Kelan insisting on escorting Fiona on the shopping trip since Val’s going to be there?” Greer smiled. “The Big O hasn’t hit his melting point, but it’s gotta be close.”

Max laughed. “Damn. And I’ll be here when he blows. I miss
everything
.”

Greer laughed. “No worries. You know I’ll record it.”

Max laughed too. “Feel like going spelunking? I gotta get into that silo before the girl settles in at the house.” He opened the closet and pulled on a black T-shirt, then started to gear up, covering his weapons with his club vest.
 

Greer grinned. “Sure. Rocco has watch at the house. Fucker doesn’t sleep anyway. You got an idea where it is?”

“Maybe. Angel did some analysis, said there are access doors to the missile complex under the bunkhouse where Holbrook’s boys are, under the warehouse, which the guys have seen. It’s too visible a place for us to use. And the last is under the old mechanic’s shop—where Hope’ll be moving into. There’s a grease pit in there. It’s the only place it can be, unless the garage’s foundation covered it up.”

“What about the girl?”

“What about her? We’ll take your vehicle. I’ll be back before she gets up. She won’t even know I’m gone.”

* * *

Max shoved the cover off the grease pit in the old wrench’s garage. Greer pointed his flashlight down into the pit. The hang-arounds had cleaned it out. The only things down there were the pressed steel panels that covered the walls. He went down the stairs into the pit. It was about five feet high. If the tunnel access was there, they were going to have to crawl through it.
 

The smell of the concrete and the small, cramped space fucked with his head. For a minute, he wasn’t in the grease pit of Hope’s shop but in a six-by-nine cell, walled in without a prayer of ever seeing daylight again.

“Anything?” Greer asked, snapping him out of his daze.

He tapped on the panels to the right and at the front. There were no hollow areas behind them. He tapped the left panel and immediately heard the echo it made.
 

“There’s an adjustable wrench on the workbench up by the front. Grab it and come down.”

Greer brought it down to him. Max removed the bolts securing the panel, and they pulled it free. Sure enough, behind it was a narrow tunnel, about four feet high and wide, leading off to the left. Heavy spider webs curtained the opening, a clear sign the entry hadn’t been used by humans in a while.
 

A cold sweat broke out all over Max’s skin. The pit looked like a hellhole specially designed by penitentiary architects, a place to stick a problem, living and breathing, to slowly die.
 

Greer’s voice came to him in stereo, in person and via their comm units as he checked in with Rocco, letting him know they found the access point to the missile complex below. Their convo reminded Max he wasn’t alone. Or forgotten.
 

He knocked the spider webs aside and crawled into the hole. Moving forward cautiously, he checked for traps or IEDs or faulty construction. At the end of the short tunnel, he shined his light down a flight of stairs that ended at a big steel door with a large spoke spin handle. Greer slid the pit cover back into place over them, then drew the panel back against the wall, camouflaging their intrusion.
 

Max fought the panic as the narrow space closed in on him. Greer joined him on the small landing in front of a steel fire door.
 

“There’s no security controlling entry,” Greer said, shining his light around the door. “Maybe they haven’t gotten to renovating the silo system.” He looked at Max. “You okay, man?”

Max swallowed hard. He blinked to clear his vision. The steel door looked nothing like his cell door. It had no window, no bean slot. This one had a wide spin handle of heavy steel spokes, like an old ship portal. “Fine,” he answered Greer after a long delay.
 

The door was stiff and resisted the turn of the handle at first, then the heavy bolts slid free and it swung open. Their flashlights revealed an access shaft that descended about thirty yards into the ground.
 

Greer looked at him and grinned, then gave a cheerful warning: “Careful. The rungs could be rusted through. If you fall and break a leg, I’ll have a helluva time getting you out. You weigh as much as a goddamned bear. I’d have to field dress you and carry you out in quarters.”

Max laughed. Some of the tension eased from his shoulders. He wasn’t abandoned in a concrete box. It was a passage, with openings at both ends. And he wasn’t alone. He started down the ladder. Greer held a light on him until he got to the bottom. Max turned around, checking out the area.
 

“Fuck. Me. Would you look at this?” he said, casting his light about.

Greer dropped to the ground next to him. He whistled low under his breath. “Where are we in the missile complex?”

“According to Angel’s schematics, we’re between the powerhouse and control dome.” He looked at his watch. It was 1:30 a.m. “We’ve got about two hours before we have to get you off the compound and me back to the house.” He looked in front of them and behind them, his light disappearing into the long, dark corridors. “You call it—east or west?”

“East.”

They turned in that direction. The walls were built out of steel rings thirty feet high, forming a huge cylinder around them. The floor had once been paved in concrete, but the sides of it had long ago crumbled away, leaving behind the steel framework that originally supported the floor. This part of the tunnel was only wide enough for one person to walk at a time. The edges of the corridor were lined with pipes and steel supports, discarded machinery, and other jumbled debris. It was a time capsule to a world gone mad half a century earlier.
 

They both heard a sound behind them—faint, but loud enough that they stopped and shined their lights on the area. Neither saw anything. Max looked at Greer and shrugged. They started forward again.
 

“So, Mad Dog, you believe in ghosts?” Greer asked.

“Seriously? We’re having that convo here—now?”

“It’s just a question.”

“No. I don’t.”

“So you’ve never seen one?”

“A ghost? No. Because they don’t exist.”

“What if they did?”

Max stopped and turned back to Greer. He lifted his light high enough to see his friend’s expression. “If you’re scared, you can go back.”

Greer laughed. “Steel and rust don’t scare me.”

Max wasn’t amused. “Truth. Have you seen ghosts?”

“See something that doesn’t exist? No.” He met Max’s gaze. “Maybe.”

“Shit.” Max started forward again. “If you see them in here, just don’t shoot while I’m in front of you, ’kay?” Maybe he wasn’t the only one with ghosts in his soul.

He was watching the floor a few steps ahead of him, when out of the corner of his vision, he could have sworn he saw something move way down the tunnel, at the point where light met shadow. “Fuck you, Greer. Now I’m seeing the beasties.”

Greer’s light lifted to join with his. “What did you see?”

“Nothing. Not a damned thing. Just pipe down about ghosts.”

“If you’re scared, you can go back,” Greer suggested.

Max laughed. “No. We’re doing this.”
 

They continued on in silence, hearing nothing else but a distant slow drip of water. “This reminds me of the weekend the Red Team recruited me.”

Max stopped and faced his friend. “How so?”

“I was invited to a hackers’ party. Twenty of us came out to a remote field in Colorado and were taken underground to a missile silo like this. It had been cleaned up some, though. We were each given a laptop, a target, and a packet we needed to retrieve. I got to my packet first.” Greer grinned at him. “Instead of stopping there, I hacked our host’s system and found locators and decryption keys for everyone else’s packets. I accessed them first and deposited instructions for them to walk over to the nearest wall and stand facing it in silence. In the final one, I ordered him to come to me, kneel, and shout that I was master of the hack.”

Max laughed.
 

“I was hired on the spot.”

“They hired you from a party.” Max shook his head, remembering the night the Red Team pulled him out of prison and into a different world. “That ain’t how they got me.” He started to turn back, but Greer’s next words stopped him.

“I wanted to be you.”

Max lifted his light to check if Greer was shitting him. He wasn’t. “Why?”

“You were legendary. Every guy there that weekend knew your story.”

Max felt sick. Greer admired him for the crime that sent him to hell, the crime that killed his entire family.

“You saw a system vulnerability that no one else had yet identified when you hacked in to that trading network. Only you would have thought of a side-channel attack. You slowed down legitimate trades in the network’s data stream, injecting your trade ahead of them. And you did it for eleven days, pulsing yours ahead of everyone else’s. Fucking genius.”

“Greer, I went to jail for that. I lost everything.”

“I know. What happened to your family is a guy’s worst nightmare. But I can’t help admiring your crazy thought process. I told myself to think like you do when I was a baby hacker. And not just when navigating networks, but when I get inside someone’s brain and want to short-circuit it. What you did got you a place on the Red Team. We're working together because of it. And I’m not sorry for that.”

Max drew in a long breath. “So, what, do we hug now or something?” he asked, trying to break the strange tension he was feeling.

Greer laughed. “Forget it. Don’t want your head to explode. Let’s just finish this so we can get some shut-eye before the meeting tomorrow.”

CHAPTER FIVE

Yusef Sayed picked up the line his wife had put on hold for him in the small motel’s office. All their rooms, save one, had been booked for Cheyenne’s big annual rodeo, and still their lobby was full of guests hopeful there had been a last-minute cancellation.
 

They did have one empty room—the one Yusef kept reserved for use by his associates from Afghanistan. Sometimes he rented it. Like now, when the rates he could charge were double and even triple the norm.

“Peace be upon you,”
a man greeted him in Pashto on the other end of the line. Hearing the language of his homeland, a sound his soul yearned to hear, tightened the nerves in his body. He wondered what would be asked of him now.

“Hello,” Yusef responded in English, unsure who might be listening—on the line or in the lobby. It was his way of warning his caller.

“
Yusef Sayed?
” the man asked.

“Yes. May I help you?”