“Thank God,” she whispered, once satisfied that she had heard enough. “It all happened so fast. We got lucky.”
Lopez could only agree. Lucky they were not charred bones right now in the place of their pursuers.
She had put them back on the road, and for some time Lopez had drifted in thought and lost track of time and place. I’m in shock. Suddenly, they were pulling to a stop in a driveway of a suburban home. He had no idea where they were.
“Wait here,” she ordered. He was happy to wait.
After some time, Houston returned from the house accompanied by a large man. They went into his garage and several minutes later were wheeling out on a dolly a large object wrapped in an olive-green canvas bag. For whatever reason, this odd site helped snap him out of his delirium, and he exited the car to offer help. And ask questions.
“Julio, this is Father Francisco Lopez, the priest I told you about.”
The heavily muscled man smiled. “Your blessings, Father.” Lopez instinctively made the sign of the cross over him as he bowed to the priest.
“Julio has been a close friend and an asset hired by the Agency for certain needs.” Houston said nothing more.
Lopez indicated the large object on the dolly. “So, what is this?”
Julio looked over at Houston. She smiled. “He’s got some extreme hobbies that will come in very handy for us. I’ll tell you later. We need to go.”
And so they had returned to the road, eventually finding the motel. Along the drive, Houston began to outline the plan she had been developing for obtaining the hidden records. With each mile, Lopez found himself increasingly in disbelief. Now, as he lay on the bed, the thoughts returned to his mind. He sat up, focusing.
“Sara, this isn’t going to work. This is nuts. That pyramid is insane. You can’t hope to succeed!”
She laughed. “Yes. And it’s worse than what I had time to tell you on the drive. Come here and look. I’ve got the rough schematics of the building here. Feast on the over-design!”
Lopez looked at the screen. It was an aerial type view of the CIA compound. How she had gotten it, he didn’t ask. The pyramid looked like a square from above, and the parking lot, high wall, and gate were drawn to scale.
“OK. I see it. How in the world are we going to get in?”
“You see difficulties?” she asked mockingly.
The priest glanced sideways at her. “To start, at night — tonight, the gate will be closed. There is no way we’re going to get in that place by scaling the walls, unless we want to be filleted first.” He shuddered thinking about the embedded blades.
“That’s right. No climbing.”
“And no way you’re going to pick the lock to that gate.”
“No lock to pick. It’s all controlled mechanically. Pressure-sensitive alarms will ring if we so much as lean on it. Coded sequences, changed hourly, are required to activate it.”
“It’s impossible,” he concluded.
“Let’s say, hypothetically, that you get past the gate.”
“Let me guess, killer-dogs?”
“Low tech, Francisco. You can do better.”
“Twelve-foot-tall robots with plasma rifles.”
Houston laughed. A pure laugh devoid of sarcasm or bitterness. It seemed out of place in the demented amusement park they had entered. “Francisco, I wish I had known you as a little boy. Bet you were cute.” He smiled and Houston continued. “Not quite right, but it’s bad. More of the bee-eyed camera setup, but not near as dense, so they can’t ID us outside. But plenty to coordinate a series of automatic weapons systems that engage. If you’re within fifteen feet of the gate or walls at night, you’ll be swiss cheese from three or four weapons that will triangulate on your position with automatic fire.”
“God in heaven.”
“More like hell on campus.” She pointed to the schematics. “So, you have to pole vault over the wall and land at least twenty feet away from the walls.”
“Pole vault? Is that what the green bag’s about?”
“No!” she laughed again. “But close. We’ll get to that.”
“So, you get past the auto-weapons fire, and then what? Land mines?”
“No, that’s all there is for external security. Then it’s straight to the building. The problem is, ID cards don’t work after ten o’clock unless specifically activated.”
“So, wait — your ID’s no good? I thought you said he was dumb not to take it earlier!”
“Not good to get in, but useful inside. We’ll get to that later, too.”
Lopez frowned. He didn’t like how many things were piling up to be considered later. Come to think of it, he didn’t like the things they were considering now. “Then, how do we get in the building?”
“This will sound ridiculous.” She walked over to her bag and removed a tablet computer. “They have recently been testing a new facial-recognition security system. It’s pretty slick, actually. With that system, you don’t need ID cards. Kind of cool — great security and there is no risk of someone stealing a card and trying to use it to break in.”
“Break in after getting filleted and blown apart by ammo.”
“Right. This new system takes a 3D scan of your face and stores it. Then a series of three cameras mounted above the door scans people seeking entrance. If you match, and you have clearance, the doors open. One of these is located in the back entrance. We’ve been testing it for a few months.”
“I see, so you’ll walk up, it will open for you, and then I rush in behind you.”
“Sorry, no.” She shook her head. “It’s a tall turnstile embedded in a fence, not a door. One at a time.” She picked up the tablet. “That’s where this comes in. Look!”
He looked at the screen of the device. Houston had loaded a very blurry photo of herself.
“So, I’m supposed to believe that this system that has a 3D scan of your face and multiple cameras will be fooled by a lousy 2D photo?”
Houston eyed him approvingly. “You said you taught math, right? Not too dumb.”
“Thanks.”
“This is not a normal photo. Look again. It’s several photos together at slightly different angles. A friend of mine who works to defeat embassy security worked out a hack for the face-recognition system. He couldn’t resist. I don’t understand it — some sort superposition of eigenfaces or other technobabble. Point is that it fools the camera system. He played with it a little until his concocted images could be processed as my face — any face — by the software. I’ve tried it. It actually works.”
Lopez was amazed. “So, you go in with your real face. Then I walk by holding this up like the Book of the Gospels, and it lets me in?”
“Yes! It will think I simply tried to get access again. Sometimes the turnstile catches, whatever. You have to go through again. It’s designed not to freak out at that.”
Lopez pulled up a chair and sat down. She followed suit. “Now the real crazy begins. You know the system inside. It will ID us instantly or within a few seconds. For tonight, at least, I still have clearance. You don’t.”
“Sara,” began Lopez, “I’m starting to wonder why I need to be there at all.”
She sighed. “It’s a two-person operation, Francisco. There’s too much heavy lifting and too much material we’ll need to bring with us if there is going to be a prayer of this working. I can’t fly this ship mono.”