Once inside with the lab door closed, Jasmijn turned to Dante and Naomi, whose eyes already scanned the room, comparing the layout to the photos they’d seen. They walked in opposite directions between the rows of lab benches while Jasmijn talked.
“I noticed that the security guards don’t carry guns. The campus police officers do, but not security. How are they going to help me against these terrorists if they come back? I’m sure glad you guys are here,” she finished, watching as Naomi lifted her head to gaze over a lab bench to the floor beyond. She was taking nothing for granted, posted guards or not. Naomi replied while continuing to stalk the lab.
“We have to assume that everyone here is compromised, guns or no guns. Those guards at the door could be card carrying Hofstad members, for all we know. Don’t trust anyone except us.”
Jasmijn watched as she reached a large, metal square door with a curved handle. “Cold storage, right?”
“Right.”
“Walk-in or just racks?”
“Racks. Don’t worry, nobody could hide in there. Too cold, anyway. Just above freezing. The key samples for the antidote work are in there.”
“Can I open it?” Naomi paused with her fingers over the handle.
“Yes. The sample material isn’t particularly toxic. They’re cell cultures.”
Naomi slowly pulled the door open and looked inside. A light came on and illuminated racks of test tubes on several shelves.
“Does it look like how you left it last?”
“It does.” She watched as Dante’s head poked up from behind a lab bench. He gave Naomi some kind of hand signal and then she seemed to relax. She addressed Jasmijn.
“Okay, everything’s clear in here. You can get to work whenever you’re ready. If you need to leave for any reason, including the bathroom, one of us will go with you and the other will stay here. Okay?”
Jasmijn agreed. As she set about preparing her equipment and samples, she saw Dante tap an earpiece and speak softly. Looking closely at Naomi’s left ear, she saw one there, too. She supposed they could communicate with Stephen, probably roaming the campus somewhere. Taking a deep breath, Jasmijn consulted her lab notes and tried to block out the extraordinary circumstances surrounding her while she got back into work mode.
EIGHT
Tanner Wilson hadn’t been fooled by the president’s address. He harbored little doubt that while the official talk was hard line, the White House was now pursuing every available option behind the scenes, including both negotiations and meeting the terrorists’ demands. The media was now in full fear-monger mode, spreading panic like wildfire. Reports of suspicious activity at high profile venues were everywhere, and everyone seemed to have seen something worth calling in. Meanwhile, Tanner thought, kicking his feet up on the conference table he now sat at alone, the clock was ticking. A day-and-a-half to go.
And while some of the talking heads on the news shows were willing to call Hofstad’s bluff, Tanner calculated the odds at 90 % that not only did they intend to, but that they would execute another attack according to their stated timeline. He knew Hofstad going back a long way. While they had stayed under the radar compared to flashier groups such as Al Qaida and more recently, ISIS, he had long noticed that they never failed to accomplish what they set out to do. Although their strikes, up to now, had been smaller scale, not generally commanding international headlines, they had always put their money where their mouth was when it came to executing them.
No, Tanner thought, shaking his head at a pundit on screen who was sure that the terrorists had already retreated back to Europe by now since it was too easy to keep America in fear without even having to do anything at this point — they had found a way to up the intensity of their attacks, but their gameplan was the same as ever.
And the worse part of it was that he doubted the White House would be able to stop it in time. As one live streaming view showed, the U.S. embassy in The Hague wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon. Tanner watched as a heavily secured gate rolled open in front of the compound, admitting a black SUV. U.S. policy would be the same as ever, Tanner lamented, running his fingers through his thick, wavy brown hair. They would act after more people got hurt and killed, and those acts would likely result in the loss of further liberties for American citizens, giving the terrorists yet another victory. A never-ending cycle. It frustrated him to no end, and that frustration was magnified further by knowing that he had once been in a position to actually do something about it.
He still was, though, just not in an official capacity. But he nevertheless had some people on his side who still occupied influential positions within FBI Counter-terror and other agencies as well. The same was true for all of his OUTCAST operators. There was a reason they garnered support — in the form of both information and funding — from government insiders and captains of industry alike. Even from a few foreign heads of state. The government had thrown out combined decades of experience when it had ousted the OUTCAST 6 for reasons that had nothing to do with their actual job duties, and meanwhile interagency cooperation — just when it was needed most — continued to be mired in convoluted tangles of bureaucratic red tape.
Tanner placated himself by considering what the optimal action against Hofstad should be. If he could do anything, what would he do? Dismantle the embassy? Although it would likely save lives in the short term, Tanner agreed with official U.S. policy that in the long term it was not a viable solution. Once that happened, once they gave in — terrorist organizations who wanted something done would demand it through violence and threats of follow-up. Tanner drummed his fingers on the smooth table surface. No, there had to be a real solution, one that involved actually solving the problem; that is, eliminating Hofstad’s key players.
How could he get to them? Waiting for them to strike next would likely produce no better results than last night’s fiasco. By now the halftime show production company breach had been reported, and shadowy photos taken by stadium surveillance cameras of the Hofstad terrorist posing as a production assistant broadcast all over the world. But he was gone. Security video showed him leaving the stadium tunnel in a golf cart, and even showed him getting into a car — a four-door sedan whose license plate was not readable in the video images. Tanner silently agreed with a guest speaker who speculated that the car had likely been ditched almost immediately following the incident. Even so, finding it would be a solid opportunity for clues, and that effort was ongoing.
Tanner knew that police procedural work was a slow-going endeavor, though, and with only about a day and a half to go before the next attack, they needed something more expedient. Tracking the terrorists like hunters after an animal would not save lives quickly enough. Tanner recalled the summer trips he spent as a boy with his grandfather, who was a game trapper. He killed animals not with guns but by tricking them to walking into his traps. He’d take Tanner out into the woods (he called it “camping” to downplay the violent aspect and thereby appease Tanner’s mother, although she knew exactly what they were doing), and teach him the ins and outs of hiding his traps, of presenting them in the most natural way from the point of view of their target as possible. It was much easier than hunting, if one had something the target wanted and knew how to offer it in a way that seemed unthreatening.
And Tanner’s work now was not all that much different. He clicked off the news reports as he thought about what he could put forward to Hofstad as bait. What did they want? The American embassy closed. Yet Tanner, for all his connections in high and not so high places, could not control that. If President Carmichael didn’t authorize the closing of the embassy — and he doubted he would — then it would remain open.