“DeShaun, I’m not sure what you think you know, but I’m here to work on some computer coding for some medical equipment that my company sold to this installation. What you heard was me tripping over my chair when I got up to stretch my legs a bit ago. Now if you don’t mind, I need to get back to work.” Ben started back into the lab.
“I misunderstood the situation, Mr. Witter,” DeShaun said. “Sorry to bother you, won’t happen again.”
“Thanks DeShaun.”
“I’m here if you need me. Otherwise you won’t even know I’m here. Just an invisible patriot.”
Ben stopped in his tracks and slowly turned back toward the MP.
“Actually, DeShaun, can you step into the lab for a moment?”
Jennifer Maldek watched Ben on the computer monitor in her office in the underground medical facility. She didn’t fully trust the man. He had declined her advances last night, and that didn’t sit well with her. She was sure he was straight, and he seemed cocksure. In addition to the DoD brief she received, she had Googled him before his arrival. She was aware of the media reports of his eligible-bachelor status. The current word on social media and the tabloid websites was that Ben was single. She knew men were attracted to her, and she had felt his eyes sliding over her body. She never would have believed he would come to her apartment, de-frag her laptop, and then fall asleep on her bed without making a move on her. Definitely something shifty about this guy.
The closed-circuit camera hidden in the air vent relayed video of the playboy biotech geek in his natural environment: the computer lab. For most of the morning he had been planted in his chair, fingers twitching atop the keyboard, but close to noon, he started to fidget with his right ear. She couldn’t read any characters on his screen, but she could tell it was a page full of geek-code jibberish. A little bit later he flung his chair across the room and stalked around while nibbling on his fingers.
Maldek was amused. Serves you right, you limp-dick nerd, she thought. She knew she was the epitome of the woman scorned cliché, but she didn’t get many male visitors as good-looking as Ben Witter. Plus he had put off clear signs of attraction, staring at her chest, looking at her the same way he had looked at the steak on his plate. Maybe he’s not straight after all, her ego consoled.
She was enjoying watching him pace in anxious frustration when he stopped and looked toward the door. Then he walked over to it and swiped his key card.
“Where the hell are you going?” Maldek said aloud. “And why the hell don’t I have audio in there?”
The camera didn’t have a good angle, but she could tell the door was open and she could see his feet. He was just outside the lab, apparently talking to the MP. That’s a no-no, boys, she thought. Then Ben re-entered the lab with the MP following behind him.
“Not cool, Airman!” she said to her monitor. “What are you guys doing?”
Maldek slapped a few keys on her computer and pulled up the live relay of the hallway outside the door. The hallway was empty save for the MP’s vacant chair. She rewound the video a little and watched the interaction between the two men, again cursing the lack of audio on the closed circuit cameras. She rewound the feed to a few seconds before Ben opened the door. The Airman was seated immediately to the right side of the lab door. With a motion so smooth and quick it was almost imperceptible, his right arm dropped to his side and reached over and knocked three times on the lower part of the lab door. That’s what brought Ben out of the lab. What did you have to say to him, Airman…?
Maldek switched the camera back to the current feed in the lab and saw that the MP was seated at the computer, Ben standing just off his right shoulder. The MP’s fingers were a blur. Oh, shit, Maldek thought as she jumped up and flew out of her office.
“You said online you were a contractor,” Ben said to DeShaun.
“Yeah, well, I couldn’t say I was an Airman. Can you imagine the shitstorm?”
“You know I thought you were nuts when I starting reading your posts, right?”
“That’s ok, it’s better if most people don’t take me too seriously. The folks that count know I’m legit,” DeShaun said. “You figured it out.”
“Why’d you disappear without responding to my private messages?”
“Sorry, man. There’s no way I could know one-hundred-percent I could trust you. Couldn’t risk the communication.” DeShaun’s fingers rapped on the keys with calculated precision, hammering home the ‘Enter’ key after each completed section of code.
“Are you sure you can get past the firewall? How do you know how to do this? How did you know I was coming? How did you get assigned to this detail?”
“Whoa — slow down, Ben,” DeShaun said. “First off, I’m better at this than you. You just gotta accept that.” He cracked an easy smile. “I’m self-taught for the most part. Ma passed away when I was little. My brothers played sports, but me and my pops, we played computer games when I was growing up. He passed away right after I enlisted, and now I’m out here in the damn desert. There ain’t nothing to do when I get off shift, so I started messing around, hacking. Turns out, I’m pretty much brilliant.” DeShaun looked up at Ben and shrugged his shoulders.
“How much longer?” Ben asked. He looked at his watch for the thousandth time since DeShaun got on the computer. He had been firing the keystrokes like a machinegun for ten minutes. Ben wiped the sweat from his forehead with the palm of his hand.
“Not long… Just about there… Okay!” DeShaun slapped the ‘Enter’ key one final time. “This is the map of all areas of the underground complex.”
Ben’s mouth fell open. The hallways on the map looked like tunnels in an ant farm. Tunnels sprawling everywhere, leading to chambers that were multiple levels deep. The web of passageways extended off the screen on both sides. He felt like Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson had just punched him in the stomach.
“Take note of the path you want to follow. Here’s where we are now.” DeShaun pointed to a spot left of the middle of the map. “See this area?” DeShaun pointed to a section of the map on the far right of the screen. This room is where I saw your sister being strapped to the chair, but over here…” DeShaun scrolled further to the right, to a part of the map that wasn’t initially visible because it was so far from the computer lab. “Over here are the dorms. This is where you’ll find your sister.”
“Oh shit…” Ben said. “I can’t save her.” His eyes stung at the corners.
“Why not?”
“I don’t have clearance on my badge to open any doors except this lab and the breakroom. I can’t get past the end of this hallway.”
Maldek and the four MPs flanking her left and right turned the corner of the hallway, and she could see DeShaun’s empty chair forty yards down the corridor, sitting beside the lab door.
“Airman Downsen abandoned his post. You two…” Maldek looked at the two guards on her left, “arrest him and take him away as soon as we get in there.”
“Yes, ma’am,” said the two MPs in unison.
“You two stay with me until I decide what to do with Mr. Witter. Unfortunately, he’s a damn civilian,” she said to the MPs on her right just as the group arrived at the door to the lab. Maldek swiped her badge and yanked the door open.
“While I was in the lab, I adjusted your clearance level. Your badge now has Colonel Maldek’s clearance access, which means you can go anywhere you damn well please,” DeShaun said.