ITEMnumber four was Fisher's most immediate concern. Aariz Qaderi was their only known auction attendee. If he left before Fisher could nanotag him, they'd have no hope of tracking him to the meeting and the 738 Arsenal would be lost. Fisher considered his options and realized he had none: On his own, with standard technology, he would lose Qaderi.
He needed the final line of code for Lucchesi's nanobots.
25
HAVINGtraveled so far, so quickly, through so many time zones, Fisher's internal clock was scrambled. Though he knew better, it seemed there hadn't been a day in the past two weeks that he hadn't been waiting for nightfall to either leave his hotel or hostel and go on the run or don his tac-suit and go about his business.
Tonight was no different. He caught a few hours of sleep before ordering room service, then walked out to his umpteenth rental car. He dropped a new backpack, containing his new equipment loadout, into the trunk, then left Olbia and headed south, arriving in Lucchesi's hometown forty-five minutes later. As before, he followed the SS392 northeast, but where the road turned north toward the bridge, Fisher took a dirt tract heading south. Following prompts from his Garmin, after three miles he slowed down and doused his headlights. Ahead, to the right, an acre-sized clump of trees appeared against the night sky. Fisher let his car coast to a stop before the gravel driveway. Predictably, the farmhouse looked different from ground level than it did from Google Earth, but the overgrown weeds, dilapidated barn, and empty animal pens had been clear enough, and now, looking at the sign on the chain spanning the driveway, he knew there was no mistake. The farmhouse had been foreclosed upon six months earlier and had been vacant ever since.
Fisher got out and walked to the chain and found it was padlocked to an oak tree on either side of the drive. It had been done sloppily, however, with both loops set too high and the chain drooping to low. After a brief search, Fisher found a pair of fallen branches with the right configuration and used them to lift the chain off the ground. He drove through, stopped, and got out and kicked the branches away, then pulled behind the barn and shut off the ignition.
He checked the Garmin once more. Good. A short walk followed by a not-so-short swim, and then the real challenge would begin.
BEHINDthe boarded-up farmhouse Fisher found a dry creek bed that meandered down through the hills toward the reservoir. In the wan glow of his night-vision goggles the landscape looked alien, the slopes around him barren, save for the occasional tree rising in silhouette against the sky. After thirty minutes of walking, he heard the lapping of water ahead, and soon the creek bed fanned out into a V-shaped alluvial plain. Directly ahead lay the mouth of a finger inlet.
Fisher stopped and checked his OPSAT. Lucchesi's laboratory, shown on the map screen as a pulsing red square, lay a quarter mile to his south over a series of dunes. His route, however, would be indirect.
He walked down to the water's edge and took a moment to check his belt and harness, his SC holster and SC-20 sling, and his gear pouches, then waded out until the water reached his chest. He kicked off the bottom and set out in a steady sidestroke.
He'd estimated the mouth of the inlet at eight hundred yards. So ten minutes after setting out, the sand-and-rock walls of the inlet disappeared and he found himself in the reservoir proper. On his hip, he felt the OPSAT give three short vibrations, signaling the first waypoint.
He stopped swimming, lifted his digital compass to his face, and rotated in the water until the blue numerals read BEARING 237. He found a landmark--the lights of a house or cabin--on the headland a half mile away and started swimming toward it.
The second leg was short, not quite eight hundred feet, which he covered in three minutes. The OPSAT buzzed on his hip and he stopped for a compass check, this time rotating himself on a bearing of 121. Lucchesi's lab lay deep within this next inlet, around four S-shaped curves. As the crow flies it was a mile; in the water it would be almost twice that.
FISHER'Ssidestroke ate up the distance at a slow but steady and energy-conserving 2.5 miles per hour, or 220 feet a minute. Around him the erosion-slashed hills rose steeply from the water, and as the inlet narrowed, first to a half mile, then a quarter, then a hundred yards, the cliffs seemed to grow higher, until he felt as though he were swimming among half-sunken skyscrapers. Finally, after forty-five minutes, his OPSAT buzzed again, this time two quick signals followed by two long ones. He stopped swimming and let himself float, still, for a moment as he caught his breath.
He lifted the compass to his face to double-check his mark and made a slight adjustment until the numerals read BEARING 087. He unslung the SC-20, brought it up to his shoulder, and peered through the scope, zooming and adjusting until he spotted, two hundred yards ahead, the upper corner of Lucchesi's cube peeking out from behind a curved cliff face. Illuminated by the moon and set against the dark sky, the corner was startlingly white. Fisher saw no lights, either outside or in. He slung his rifle and continued on.
He stopped again at a hundred yards and could now see most of the cube sitting atop its hill. Still no lights. Fisher zoomed in with the SC-20's scope, looking for indications of security--paths worn into the ground around the laboratory, protrusions on the walls or along the roofline that might indicate security cameras or sensors. . . . He saw none of these. An EM/IR scan once he got closer might reveal something, but from here the laboratory looked abandoned.
Could it be?Fisher wondered. Could Lucchesi have closed the laboratory without anyone knowing? By all accounts, the man virtually lived here, only occasionally leaving for brief, mysterious stints; similarly, his handpicked staff of eight scientists lived on-site in two-week shifts: four on, four off. Here again was a by-product of hurried mission preparation. Had he the time, he would have known by now the comings and goings of staff, visitors, and repair and maintenance personnel; he would have studied security procedures, lighting schedules, the frequency with which doors opened and closed. . . . Spilled milk,Fisher thought. You came to a mission with what you had, not what you wishyou had. Adaptability, not technology, was a Splinter Cell's bread and butter. The latter could fail you, the former rarely.
Fisher kept swimming, angling toward the far cliff until he rounded the bend and the laboratory came into full view. Now, too, he could see the water-cooling system: four silver conduits, each three feet in diameter, rising forty feet from the surface before turning forty-five degrees and plunging into the earth beneath the facility. Fisher zoomed in on the water at the base of the conduits and saw a slowly swirling vortex. First sign of life,he thought. If work wasn't going on inside, there would be no need for cooling water. There was only one way to be sure. He donned the Trident goggles and scanned the cube, the feed-water system, and the cliff, and saw nothing. Not so much as a blip on the EM scan, and on the infrared the laboratory showed as a dark block. The building's white exterior, combined with whatever insulation the architects had chosen, had made the structure all but thermally invisible.