It took Trish less than a minute to get clearance for Kovak to do whatever was needed.
“Well done, Emily, and good thinking, Trish,” James said. “You seem to have a lot of clout at Groom Lake. You may yet get your sample.”
Guido was hardly the brains behind any operation, and he knew it. Mr. Müller paid him for his ability to follow directions, not to figure things out for himself. What was there to figure out, anyway? Guido thought. Abduct a young girl from the care of an old lady and keep her prisoner until further instructions. And those came a few hours later. Beat the girl, ensuring there were lots of visible bruises on her face and make a short video. It seemed important to Mr. Müller that her face was clearly visible. Okay, if that’s what he wanted, no problem.
Guido knew how to take videos but sending one as an email attachment proved a real challenge. After several phone calls back and forth to Mr. Müller, he finally got it. Mr. Müller was starting to get angry that Guido was having such difficulty, but he wasn’t tech savvy. Not like Mr. Müller. Still, he was glad that the video was finally sent off successfully. Mr. Müller was a really smart man for knowing how to do these complex things.
“What do you want me to do with the kid?” Guido asked.
“Do what you want. Just make sure she’s dead within the next forty-eight hours.”
“Sure thing, boss.”
Guido could never remember how to hang up on a phone conversation. Was it the little picture of the phone handset on the left, or the one on the right? He always waited for the other person to hang up first. He knew this because the display showed ‘Call Ended’. Guido prided himself on being able to figure that out; and all by himself too. Yes, maybe modern technology wasn’t all that complicated after all. He had had that call with Mr. Müller the previous day and if memory served him correctly, forty-eight hours was the same as about two days.
He had been told to kill the girl, which he would. Guido always followed instructions and Mr. Müller was a real smart man. Well, if he had to kill her anyway, he may as well have some fun first. Old women, young girls, he didn’t care. Sex was sex.
“Do you know who was heading the investigation into the cause of Trans-Commercial’s Boeing 737 tragedy?” Kovak asked the chief maintenance technician on duty at McCarran International.
“I can check it on the log,” the technician said. “What’s it in connection with?”
“We believe we know what hit the engine and caused it to disintegrate.”
The technician’s eyes lit up. “That’s great. Please come with me.”
Kovak was led to the maintenance hangar where the engine had been stripped and all remaining parts catalogued.
“Good, he’s still here,” the technician said, pointing to a young man lubricating the undercarriage of an older United Airlines Boeing 720.
“Liam,” the technician shouted. “This is Mr. er…”
“Kovak.”
“This is Mr. Kovak. He wants a few words.”
Liam grabbed an old cloth, wiped the grease off his hands and walked over. “What’s up?”
“Hi Liam, I’m Kovak. We’re following up on the Trans-Commercial disaster, and in particular, the jet engine that was destroyed.”
“Yeah,” Liam said. “What a mess. There wasn’t much left of the aircraft or the engine. Do you want me to get the listing of the remaining parts?”
“Did you happen to come across a small black rock? It would have looked like a small lump of coal.”
“Funny you should mention that,” Liam said. “Wasn’t any engine part that I knew of, so I chucked it. Weirdest thing though, I needed a crowbar to pry it off the jet’s combustion chamber, well, what was left of the chamber, but then it attached itself to the crowbar and I couldn’t get it off.”
“Where is it now?” Kovak asked, with urgency.
“Probably in one of the dumpsters out back,” Liam said. His face suddenly looked worried. “Hey man, it was an old crowbar. We got dozens.”
“No, no,” Kovak said. “It’s the rock I’m interested in. I couldn’t give a shit about any crowbar.”
Liam’s face relaxed. “Let’s go check. They may not have carted off any of the dumpsters yet.”
Kovak was in luck. The dumpsters were still full, but it had taken almost an hour to find the crowbar and its devoted rock.
With the prized possession back at Groom Lake, Kovak readied the Lockheed Blackbird for immediate take off and flight to Baltimore. Afterburners ignited all the way, he made the trip across the continent in just over an hour. A government vehicle was waiting to deliver the lodestone to the labs at Fort Meade. By eleven eastern time, Uri had his sample.
Chapter Seventy-Five
Phil put a call through to James. “I’ve identified the signature of the virus,” he said. “I’ve created a ‘chaser’ program that will destroy it before any further damage is done to our data. Problem is that a replication of the virus keeps on popping up somewhere else, each one a little closer to the IBM’s main databanks.”
“Excellent work, Phil,” James said. He knew that Phil would pursue this problem, regardless of how long it took. “Can I suggest at this stage that you isolate our off-line backup server before the virus replicates itself there as well?”
“Already done, JW,” Phil said.
“Glad to hear you’re ahead of me,” James said, ending the call.
It was going to be a long night. Nathan was helping himself to some more coffee when his phone vibrated. “Sean, speak to me… Good. Phone me back as soon as you have something.”
Sven looked up from his dismal thoughts and saw Nathan smiling.
“We may not need verification of Kubacki’s document after all,” Nathan said. He had everyone’s attention. “I had a hunch earlier on and it proved correct. “That video was recorded on a phone.”
Sven suddenly spoke with urgency. “And a phone’s default camera setting is to store the date, time and… and GPS location.”
“Exactly,” Nathan said. “You have to change the video setting to display it during playback. Just before leaving the office, I did just that. Not wanting to raise any false hopes, I didn’t say anything. That was Sean on the phone. He’s in Queens outside an old railway warehouse on Austin Street. It’s less than ten miles from where we are now.”
Sven’s face lit up with hope.
“Sean?” Trish asked.
“Sean O’Brien,” Nathan said. “He’s SkyTech Tower’s senior security guard.”
“You sent a security guard?”
“He’s also ex-Special Forces,” James interrupted. “He’s very competent. Trust me; he knows what he’s doing.”
“Obadiah is with him,” Nathan added.
Ten minutes later, Nathan’s phone vibrated again.
Sean spoke quietly from the other end. “Mr. McIntosh, we have the right place. There’s a closed door not too far into the warehouse. There’s a small adjoining window and I see a large man moving towards the far corner of the room.”
Nathan’s face changed from a smile to immediate anxiety. A sudden high-pitched scream could be heard in the distance through his phone.
Sean and Obadiah rammed through the door. The scene in front of them was confusing. Kayla was on the bed shying away against the corner. She was naked, her clothes having been ripped off and discarded on the floor. Her face was covered in blood.