Joe Ledger: Code Zero Part 33

The Jakoby twins-Hecate and Paris-were geniuses on a par with Dr. Hu and, she had to admit, herself. That rare group of supergeniuses whose nature suggests an evolutionary leap forward. Granted, the Jakobys were sick, twisted, murderous sociopaths whose father was attempting ethnic genocide on a global scale-a genocide that would have wiped out those of Asian blood as well-but Bliss had to admire the science. It was so vast, so b.a.l.l.sy.

So d.a.m.n s.e.xy.

As she worked, she wished there was someone she could talk to about it.

Someone who was not William Hu or Bug or anyone even remotely related to the Department of Military Sciences. With every single pa.s.sing day Bliss felt less able to open up to them, to share her thoughts with them.

Though even she had to admit that sharing those thoughts would make for one very awkward conversation. Quickly followed, she was certain, by emergency phone calls, a psych evaluation, and her walking papers. She'd be out the door so fast that it would make her head spin.

Out, or maybe worse. Aunt Sallie watched her like a hawk, and Bliss was positive that the old b.i.t.c.h was waiting for the first opportunity to strike.

Let her wait. Caution was part of Bliss's skill set. When you helped to crack systems designed to counterattack, you learned caution. When you helped design security protocols for the highest level of ultrasecure facilities, you learned caution. Bliss knew that her old, unevolved self had been smart but not necessarily sharp; whereas her evolved self was as sharp as a scalpel and intensely sly.

She wondered what Aunt Sallie or Church's actual reaction would be if they suspected that she was duplicating every bit of evidence, each file, each report on genetic design, each computer program.

Would they have her locked up?

Or would Bliss wake up one night and find Colonel Riggs or Captain Ledger standing over her bed, dressed all in black, with a pistol aimed at her head.

She rather thought the latter was a more likely possibility.

Though ... what could they prove?

She sighed. Depends on where they looked.

There was nothing at her apartment, of course, except some deeply encrypted stuff hidden inside video games. Not even her games. She'd built dozens of "libraries" into new game levels she'd hacked onto the existing software of popular games. She concealed petaflops worth of data in the virtual game world, all of it disguised as something else, all of it protected by what she was absolutely certain was the most sophisticated can't-beat-them levels of game play.

To her, it was like hiding diamonds in the sand at the playground. No one would think to look there, and anyone who found them by accident wouldn't believe they were what they were.

Bliss sat hunched in front of Paris Jakoby's personal workstation computer as a steady stream of data was flash-downloaded onto dual drives. That dual-drive system was her own design. Bundled flash drives feeding off a single rebuilt USB plug. Since the data was being downloaded only once-albeit in two exact and simultaneous copies-the system only registered a single download.

She paused and looked around.

Paris Jakoby's office was built onto a balcony and it had a gla.s.s wall that looked down onto the main lobby of the facility. The last of the corpses-human and otherwise-had long since been removed, but the tiled floor and carpeted areas were still stained with dried blood. She'd watched the battle on the big screen back at the TOC, her lip caught between her teeth, fingernails digging into her palms. Major Grace Courtland had led the first wave of DMS agents onto the island, followed by Captain Ledger's Echo Team and others. And then a wave of Navy SEALs. That should have been overwhelming force, but there was a shocking amount of resistance, the core of which were the Berserkers-mercenaries with silverback gorilla DNA. The men were ma.s.sive, enormously strong, and filled with a nearly uncontrollable rage. She rewatched the videos of them in action a dozen times. So much power.

But there were other horrors on the island, and Ledger's team encountered those first. When Bliss saw those she nearly screamed. Monstrous mastiffs that had been surgically and genetically altered so they had the chitinous armor plating and deadly arching tails of scorpions. It was like something out of an old Michael Crichton novel. Or one of those corny monster movies on Syfy.

The main part of the fight was recorded on helmet cams until Church ordered an E-bomb to be detonated over the island. The electromagnetic pulse knocked out all electronics and ended the show.

It became fun again for Bliss only when the science team was sent onto the island with orders to catalog everything. Absolutely every single thing.

Weeks of work.

Weeks of fun.

They were to be sequestered on the island during the forensic collection and initial a.n.a.lysis period, and then would be debriefed once they returned to the Hangar. That, however, was still many days away. The first part of the job was rebuilding the power systems and replacing those components necessary to make the computer systems functional again.

Still plenty of time to continue the process of copying everything. Of duplicating samples. Not everything, of course. But everything she was a.s.signed to collect. It was too dangerous to interfere with what other techs and scientists were doing.

One of the most fascinating things she found was the complete record, including all research and procedures, for the Berserkers. Although intensely complicated and enormously expensive, it was a step-by-step guide to creating the transgenic mercenaries. There were even samples of all of the chemicals, drugs, and genetic materials necessary, stored in bio-safe bins.

All of the data was on an external hard drive stored in Paris's closet. Not one byte of it was on the main computers.

On a whim, Bliss took the hard drive, duped the data onto her own laptop, and destroyed the original. Obtaining samples of the genetic material would have to wait until her team was ready to leave the island. She would, however, manage it, even though she had no idea what she was ever going to do with it.

Not yet.

It was late on a Sunday night when Artemisia Bliss made the single most significant discovery while she was decrypting a series of files labeled BULK DATA-MISC UNSORTED. The encryption was particularly difficult, and Bliss opened a fresh Red Bull and dived in with gusto. So far, the encryption on all of the Jakoby files was exceptionally tough, some of it so mind-bogglingly complicated that it felt like pulling nails out of hardwood using only her mind. But it was so d.a.m.n much fun. This was what she lived for. Each layer she peeled back, each level she cracked made her feel more powerful, more alive. Naturally, the encryption on the Jakoby main research files was devious, but after two weeks Bliss found her way in, which opened the system to her whole team.

That Bulk Data file was something, though.

The encryption was many layers deep and had some very strange traps built into it, including a counterattack tapeworm that was strangely familiar. The tapeworm tried to intrude into her MindReader substation and rewrite the software. That stunned Bliss. MindReader was una.s.sailable. It was the ultimate intrusion monster and even Bliss had never been able to hack into its programs. But this program attacked in the way MindReader typically did.

Ultimately, though, MindReader slapped it down. Bliss was able to remove the attack programs with some effort and then began rooting around inside the data files.

What she found at first startled her, because there were monstrously large files hidden inside the nondescript "misc unsorted" folder. Ma.s.sive files, including hundreds of subfolders filled with computer code.

As she scanned through them, Bliss felt her pulse quicken. Then her heart began racing. Sweat popped out along her brow. She couldn't believe what she was seeing.

She simply could not.

The files contained a complete schematic for a computer system. A system with ultrasophisticated intrusion software. A system with multiphasic pattern-search capabilities. A system with a subroutine designed to erase any trace of its footprint after it hacked other systems.

A system labeled "Pangaea."

But one that she knew under a different name.

MindReader.

Chapter Fifty-one.

The Hangar Floyd Bennett Field Brooklyn, New York Sunday, August 31, 1:35 p.m.

Everyone snapped to attention as Mr. Church came hurrying into the training hall. Lydia cut a surprised look at Sam. Neither of them had ever seen Mr. Church hurry. The world usually waited for him. His aide and bodyguard, a monstrous gunnery sergeant known as Brick, was right at his heels, keeping up despite an artificial leg.

They came right over to where Echo Team formed up at a right angle to the line of candidates.

"Chief Petty Officer Ruiz," said Church, "Captain Ledger says that there are three candidates he likes for Echo Team. Call them out."

Lydia did a neat half-turn. "Sergeant Duncan MacDougall, Sergeant Noah Fallon, Special Agent Montana Parker, step forward."

The three named candidates did. A short, squatty man with no neck and Popeye forearms, a tall, ascetic man with a poet's face and shooter's eyes, and a tanned blond woman with cold gray eyes.

Church gave them one full second of appraisal. "You three now work for me. Welcome to the jungle." They saluted, but he turned to the others. "You are dismissed and may return to your units."

Once more he turned, this time to Echo Team.

"A Black Hawk is smoking on the roof," he said. "You will be on it four minutes. It takes off in five. Weapons and equipment are already being loaded. Hammer suits and BAMs for everyone. Full kits for the new team members."

"Sir," began Lydia, but Church cut her off.

"No time. You'll be briefed en route and will rendezvous with Captain Ledger. This is a Code Zero."

They did not argue or hesitate.

A few blurred minutes later they were in the air.

Interlude Twelve The Barn DMS Special Teams Field Office Near Houston, Texas Three Years Ago Dr. Bliss sat next to Dr. Hu, both of them sipping Diet c.o.kes and swinging their feet off the side of an open Huey. The big helicopter was a rebuilt holdover from a war that ended before either of them was born. It was also the personal property of Colonel Samson Riggs. It was parked on the side of a runway behind the Barn, the ma.s.sive former dairy farm that had been recommissioned as the field office for the DMS's new "special teams" division. Riggs ran two teams out of the Barn, Shockwave and Longhorn. The latter was used as backup for whenever the ATF ran up against something coming over the border other than cartel gun thugs and drugs. Bioweapons and teams of foreign terror squads trying to use the Mexican pipeline as a conduit. That sort of thing. The former, Shockwave, was a go anywhere, do anything all-purpose team. Freed from normal duties as a regional team like those at the Warehouse in Baltimore or the Hangar in New York.

A few feet away, leaning a muscular shoulder against the Huey's frame, was Gus Dietrich. He was pretending to look at something on his smartphone, but Bliss knew that he was listening. Dietrich was always listening, always watching. Because he did such a stellar job of fading into Mr. Church's shadow, and because he looked like a muscle-bound mouth-breather, people tended to regard him as slow. He wasn't. No one who worked for Church was slow. No one who worked for Church was even ordinary.

Bliss and Hu were at the Barn to take possession of boxes of scientific research records Riggs and his shooters had taken from a biological warfare lab in Bucharest. That lab was supposedly closed during the last days of the Cold War, but Interpol had discovered otherwise. Sadly, the Interpol team had been wiped out. Riggs brought Shockwave in and got some useful backup from Echo Team, which had been in Europe anyway. Echo was the only other team authorized to go anywhere.

Beyond where the tech people were offloading the boxes of records, two figures stood together, talking and laughing. Colonel Riggs and Captain Joe Ledger.

"They seem to have bonded," observed Bliss. There had been a running bet at the Hangar that the two team leaders would do nothing except b.u.t.t heads. Instead they'd developed a quick and, apparently, deep friendship. Their combined teams had mopped the floor with a much larger force of mercenaries in Bucharest. A four-to-one fight, and every member of Shockwave and Echo Teams had come home, alive and whole.

Hu sniffed. "Cut from the same cloth," he said in a way that implied no compliment.

She looked at him. "What is it with you and them? You can't stand either of them."

"They're at the wrong end of the evolutionary curve," sneered Hu. "Useful when we need something dead, but otherwise they're meat. And arrogant meat at that."

"Oh, come on, Willie," she countered, "that's not fair. If you combine their clearance rate for high-profile jobs it exceeds the rest of the DMS combined."

Hu made a small, disgusted noise. "So they can pull triggers. Big deal. Hugo Vox has compiled a list of men-and some women-with the same potential. Same military and martial arts background, same psychopathic tendencies. Same lack of intellectual refinement. Don't fool yourself, Artie, they're entirely replaceable."

There was another sound, equally disgusted, but not from Hu. The two scientists leaned out to look at Dietrich.

"Excuse me," said Hu with chilly contempt, "did you have something to add?

Without looking up from his cell phone, Dietrich said, "For a smart guy, Doc, you do say some stupid s.h.i.t."

"What did you say?" The chill in his tone turned to arctic ice.

Bliss jumped in. "What do you mean, Gus?"

He glanced up at her. Pointedly at her. "You think that Riggs and Ledger have such a good clearance record because they're lucky? You think shooters of their quality are interchangeable? If that's what you think, then you either don't understand them or don't understand how the DMS works."

"As if you do?" demanded Hu.

Bliss elbowed him lightly.

"Ow!"

"Go on, Gus. What were you saying?" she asked.

Dietrich put his cell phone into a pocket and folded his arms. He had a bulldog face that was scarred and weathered. "I've seen Hugo Vox's list. I recruit from it all the time. I'd have any of them at my back in a fight. Any kind of fight. But none of them have a certain thing that Riggs has and Ledger has. Major Courtland had it. I mean, don't get me wrong, all of the operators on Hugo's list are top-notch, best of the best, but they don't have that thing, that X factor."

"What X factor?" asked Hu belligerently.

"Well, Doc, if I knew exactly what it was I wouldn't call it an X factor, would I?"

Bliss had to bite down to keep a laugh from bubbling out. Hu went livid.

"Can you explain it at all, Gus?" Bliss asked.

He nodded, shrugged, shook his head. Shrugged again. "If you understand combat from a spec-ops perspective, then you know there's a lot of variables. You guys, the science team, and Bug's team, do a great job providing real-time intel so that the field teams can adjust to the variables and react in the right way. Without the science and computer teams we'd have lost a lot of fights, no doubt and no joke. But sometimes, deep in the heart of something, there comes a point when things are going south so fast there isn't time to ask for or use additional intel. Not just the heat of battle," he said, "but times when everything is totally crazy, shifting inside the firefight, with radical new elements being introduced that no one could foresee. Like when Echo Team ran into the Berserkers the first time. No one could have predicted mercenaries amped up with DNA from silverback gorillas. I mean, seriously, who could have seen that coming? It wasn't part of the game as we understood the game at the moment. The first DMS team that ran into them was slaughtered. So was a Russian kill team. Then Ledger, Top, and Bunny got ambushed by them. They should have died right there and then. No doubt about it. Do a statistical-probability a.s.sessment of it and it comes out with them dead ten times out of ten."

"But they didn't die," said Bliss, fascinated by where Dietrich was going with this.

"No. Joe Ledger changed the game. It wasn't exactly what he did, 'cause from a distance it was just him using a knife. But it was how he did it in the moment. The lack of hesitation, the choice of target, the way he reacted, the fact that he attacked rather than retreat, that he wasn't trapped by how freaky and f.u.c.ked-up everything was. It was his X factor that changed it from a certain loss to a win that just p.i.s.sed all over the odds. The same thing goes for how Riggs dealt with those cyborg baboons. I mean, s.h.i.t, cyborg baboons. Most guys, even top shooters, would be like, 'holy f.u.c.k, those are cyborg baboons, what the f.u.c.k?' And they'd have died. Riggs just adapted to it because in his mind it wasn't Freaky Friday, it was how things were in the moment. I'll bet those frigging baboons where thinking 'what the f.u.c.k' when Riggs went apes.h.i.t on them."

Bliss nodded, seeing it.

"If those were the only instances, you could throw statistics at me again and say it's a fluke. But go browse their files. Those two. And look at how many times they've thrown Hail Mary pa.s.ses and won a game that everyone-every-f.u.c.king-body-said was lost. Time and time again, and those are numbers that do not lie."

Hu sniffed dismissively, but he said nothing.

Bliss was still nodding. "So ... this X factor is what defines them."

"Yeah, I guess so."

"And they're the only two who have it?"

"So far," said Dietrich. "The big man is always scouting for others, but guys like that are pretty scarce. And believe me, we are looking."

"Gus," she said, c.o.c.king her head to one side, "have you ever played games?"

"Games? Like what? Poker?"

"Video games, board games. Ever play Dungeons and Dragons?"

"Nope. Never much gone in for wizards and dragons and all that s.h.i.t. Not fake ones. Why?"

"There are a lot of qualities that make up your characters in D and D, and it's all based on how you roll the dice. You can be good, evil, neutral, or chaotic."

"Chaotic?" Dietrich thought about that and a slow smile grew on his face. "Yeah, Doc, you might have put your finger on it. It's not an X factor-"

"It's chaos," said Bliss, finishing it for him. "Chaos resists computer models, it can't really be predicted. What Joe Ledger and Samson Riggs bring to any fight is a chaos factor."

Dietrich nodded. "Yes, ma'am, and that's what makes them so d.a.m.n dangerous. Understand something, I'm good-I'm real f.u.c.king good-but if it came to it, I would never want to go up against either of them."