Once Dead Read online

  CHAPTER 79

  The sun rose behind her as Janet drove the silver Lada Niva into Kyzylorda. It was a mid-sized town, population a little under two hundred thousand. For a brief period of its history, it had been the capital of Kazakhstan but, to her eyes, there was nothing particularly impressive about it. Despite its location along the old spice road from Asia to Europe, Kyzylorda was almost entirely forgettable.

  This was the likely reason that Vladimir Roskov had chosen to build his warehouse complex ten kilometers southwest of town. The Russian mafia dealt in new brands of spice. The question that worried her was what brand now connected them to Rolf Koenig and the CIA.

  Jack slept in the passenger seat murmuring in his dreams. Janet listened closely, trying to make out the words that whispered from his lips. Although she failed to decipher them, they sent that familiar electric thrill crawling up her spine, as if death itself whispered in her ear.

  Jack opened his eyes, yawned, and stretched. He sat up and looked around.

  “Lovely.”

  “It’s a shame we won’t be staying.”

  Jack glanced at the GPS display, zoomed out, and pointed to a spot southwest of town.

  “I’d like to find a suitable place right around here, right in the rice paddy country.”

  “Have you been here before?”

  “No. But I’ll know the house I want when I see it. We’ll only be there until it gets dark, so it doesn’t have to be perfect.”

  Eighteen minutes later, on the south side of the Syr Darya River, Jack saw it. The house and its attached barn sat at the edge of a large rice paddy, two hundred meters off the M32 highway. The man working to attach a piece of equipment to the back of a tractor looked as ancient as the house. When Janet turned onto the dirt road that led to the front of the house, the man straightened and turned toward them. As they got closer, Janet could see a questioning look on the man’s gray-bearded face.

  “You’re not going to kill these people.” The words spilled from her lips, half command, half question.

  “I’m not going to hurt these people,” Jack said, trying to make himself believe it. “We’re just going to inconvenience them for a while.”

  Jack opened the passenger door and stepped out, a sheepish smile on his face. When he spoke, his Russian was flawless. And although it was no longer the official language of Kazakhstan, it was universally understood.

  “I’m sorry to trouble you, but my wife and I are looking for a distant relative’s farm. Perhaps you can help us?”

  The old farmer wiped his greasy hands on a red rag and smiled. “I know all my neighbors. What’s his name?”

  The smile disappeared when he found himself staring into the muzzle of Jack’s pistol.

  As Janet stepped out of the car, drawing her H&K subcompact, Jack motioned the farmer toward the house.

  “Into the house.”

  When the man remained frozen in place, Jack’s trigger finger moved ever so slightly into the trigger guard. “I don’t want to hurt you, but I will.”

  “Please. My wife. Her health is not good.”

  “Do exactly as I say and you’ll both be fine.”

  The old man glanced down at the gun, then looked into Jack’s eyes and nodded. When he turned toward the front door, he stumbled slightly, then righted himself and, with shuffling steps, led them to the house.

  Janet stepped to the side of the door. With Jack standing directly behind him, gun leveled at the back of his head, the old man turned the knob, opened the door, and stepped inside. Immediately Janet was through behind him clearing the left as Jack swept the room to the center and right. While it was highly unlikely that anyone would be waiting to ambush them in this old farmhouse, making that sort of assumption eventually ended up getting you killed.

  “Clear.”

  “Clear.”

  The words came out of their mouths almost simultaneously. Jack moved to his right, leaving the farmer with Janet, then ducked through a doorway into what Janet guessed was the kitchen.

  “Clear.” Jack’s voice preceded him back into the living room.

  “What’s upstairs?” Jack asked.

  The old man stared at Jack, a dazed expression on his bearded face, as if he didn’t understand the question.

  “What’s upstairs?” Jack repeated, nodding toward the stairway on the left side of the room.

  “Our bedroom, a bathroom, and a guest room.”

  “Anyone up there?”

  “Only my wife. She is confined to bed. Please do not startle her.”

  Janet watched as Jack considered the request.

  “Alright. But for that to happen, you’ll have to do something for me.”

  “Yes?” The hope in that question hurt Janet’s ears.

  “Listen carefully. We will need to lock you in your bedroom with your wife. Before we do that, we have to search that room for any guns, telephones, or cellphones. Once that is done, we will lock you inside and you must stay there until tomorrow morning. Sometime in the night we will leave, but do not come out of your room until morning. Do you agree to do that?”

  The farmer nodded. “Yes.”

  “I will let you go into your wife’s room first, but I will be watching you from the hallway. You must introduce us as Kazakh federal agents, looking for a dangerous fugitive believed to be hiding in this area. After that, Elena will carefully search your bedroom and bathroom. Then we will shut you inside and you will not come out until morning. Understood?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay then.”

  Jack motioned toward the stairs and the farmer nodded, then turned to lead the way. The worn boards squeaked beneath their feet as they ascended. Janet let her pistol move with her eyes as a semi-dark narrow hallway opened up before them. The first door on the left stood open, daylight pooling in a rectangle just outside it. Sparkling dust specks floated above it, highlighted by the dark hallway beyond. Ten feet farther down on opposite sides of the hall, two closed doors faced each other. The one on the right would be the guest room; the other would be the bath, which Janet guessed had another door that opened into the master bedroom.

  The farmer paused, glanced back at Jack, and then stepped into the bedroom. Janet repositioned herself so that she could see the man lean over the bed and gently touch the gray hair of the woman that lay beneath the colorful quilt, careful not to disturb the oxygen tube attached to her nose. Her eyes fluttered open.

  “Anna, do not be startled, but we have two guests.”

  “Guests?” Her voice was husky, barely louder than a whisper.

  “Yes, dear. They are undercover police, searching for a criminal.”

  Seeing his wife’s eyes go wide with fright, the man placed a finger on her lips. “Don’t worry. They are here to protect us tonight, but only until the bad man is caught.”

  Janet holstered her weapon, put on a warm smile, and stepped into the room.

  “Hello, Anna. I am Special Agent Elena Kozlov.” Sensing Jack step up beside her, she continued. “This is my partner, Special Agent Nuriev.”

  “So sorry to trouble you,” Jack said, a tender smile on his lips. “It is just a precaution.”

  As the woman looked into Jack Gregory’s face, the worry lines in her face relaxed. Then as if the excitement had drained her last vestige of energy, she settled back into her pillow and closed her eyes.

  Seeing the farmer sit on the edge of the bed to take his wife’s bony hand in his, Janet moved quietly around the room, checking the dresser drawers, the closet, and the bathroom for phones or weapons. Jack walked out of the bedroom and she heard him open the door to the guest bedroom across the hall. He returned as she finished her inspection.

  “Can we get you anything before we shut you in?” Jack asked.

  The man shook his head. “We have water.”

  “What about food?”

  “I have no appetite. We’ll eat again when you’ve gone.”

  Janet understood the feeling. As she
stepped out into the hall and Jack closed the door behind them, despite not having eaten since they had left Astana, the thought of food made her ill. As Jack retrieved a length of cord from downstairs and bound the bedroom and bathroom door handles to one another so that they could not be opened from the inside, a single desire filled Janet’s body. She just wanted the night to get here so they could leave these poor souls in peace.

  CHAPTER 80

  T-minus twenty-four. Rolf stood at the launch pad gazing up at the huge proton rocket as the crew went through their checklists and Rolf’s payload team ran their final series of tests. Even the weather looked like it was going to cooperate. With the sun high in the sky, there was no sign of the thunderheads that had been building for the last few afternoons. That bade well for tomorrow’s launch.

  Having just finished another of a series of interviews with one of the handful of international news organizations that had sent TV crews to cover this launch, Rolf kept his anticipation in check. With Rachel’s arrival, almost all the pieces were in place. Tonight, after midnight, Jacob Knox and Vladimir Roskov would bring in the rest of the security detail and ready themselves for their predawn takeover of the Cosmodrome.

  The team just had to keep it together for another day to open entire new worlds of opportunity.

  Once the launch happened there would be no stopping it. Despite the presence of an Aegis guided missile cruiser in the North Pacific, the only real chance that the Americans had of intercepting his payload would fail to detect it. He’d written the subroutine that would make sure of that and Nolan Trent had succeeded in getting that software module incorporated into the Ground-Based Midcourse Defense System’s tracking and targeting software. The disagreement between what the Aegis and GMD radars were seeing would only add to the overall confusion, further reducing the chance that Aegis would be allowed to engage.

  His secure cellphone vibrated in his pocket. Seeing the caller ID, Roskov, Rolf stepped away from the nearest workers and answered it.

  “Do you have your people ready to travel?”

  “Knox is giving me some trouble.”

  Rolf glanced around, focused on keeping his voice low and his face calm. “What do you mean?”

  “It’s Gregory. Knox is convinced he will make his play at the warehouse tonight. Knox wants me to delay our departure until after midnight to provide time for that to happen.”

  “Bullshit. The plan calls for you to be here at midnight and there will be no changes to that plan. You just get your ass here on time. I’ll make sure Knox is with you.”

  Rolf hung up and dialed another number. It was 7:32 a.m. in London, but he could catch Nolan Trent before his scheduled meeting at MI6. The deputy CIA director answered on the second ring.

  “Is there a problem?”

  “One you need to handle. Jacob Knox.”

  “Go on.”

  “Knox is refusing to depart Kyzylorda on schedule. He wants to give Gregory a few more hours to show. That’s unacceptable.”

  “No shit. I’ll deal with Knox. You stay on schedule.”

  “I’m on schedule. You just make sure your man doesn’t screw it up.”

  Rolf hung up, returned the phone to his pocket, and took a deep breath, letting it out slowly. Then, putting on his enthusiastic face, he headed back toward the car that would take him to the Control Room and his 1 p.m. interview with CNN.

  CHAPTER 81

  Daniel Jones reached for the ringing phone, his searching hand knocking over the water glass on his nightstand before he found it. Struggling to clear the sleep from his head, he answered it.

  “Dan Jones.”

  “Dan, this is Janice Weston. Sorry to wake you up in the middle of the night, but I think there’s something you need to see.”

  Dan glanced at the clock. “Jesus, Janice! It’s three a.m. Can’t this wait until morning?”

  “As head of the software team, I think you’re going to want to look at it before the boss gets in. We need to figure out how this happened.”

  “How what happened? What the hell are you talking about?”

  “I was doing some work on the source code repository tonight and I came across something that shouldn’t be there. Somehow a small block of code got checked into the last release anonymously. I haven’t been able to figure out exactly what it does, or who checked it in, but it damn sure looks suspicious. I’m going to have to report it at the end of my shift and I thought you might want to come in and take a look for yourself before that happens.”

  “I’ll be there in twenty-five minutes.”

  “Okay.”

  Dan didn’t bother to shower or shave. He just slid into his jeans, a pullover shirt, and Nikes, grabbed his security badge and car keys, and then headed for Crystal City. The commute from Reston sometimes took him almost an hour, but this time of night there was no traffic to speak of. The drive took him nineteen minutes.

  When he walked in the door, Ben Gerald, the night security guard, glanced at the badge hanging from the strap around Dan’s neck, a look of mild surprise crossing his tired features. “In kind of early this morning, aren’t you, Mr. Jones?”

  “Unfortunately. There was a problem with the nightly build, so I’m the lucky one who gets to fix it.”

  Stepping into the elevator lobby, Dan pressed the call button. The third elevator on the left opened and Dan pressed button number three. When he walked out of the elevator on the third floor, he entered the hallway on his right and stopped at the door to swipe his badge and enter his six-digit personal access code. Hearing the click of the lock opening, Dan walked into the Sensitive Compartmentalized Information Facility known as the SCIF.

  Janice Weston, the only person in the lab at this hour, rose to meet him. Tall, charismatic, and beautiful, she was his opposite in every way except for intelligence. Tonight, as she walked toward him, she looked both intrigued and worried.

  “Ahh, Dan. Glad you’re here.”

  “What have you found?”

  She motioned toward the workstation behind her. “Have a seat. You’re not going to believe this shit.”

  Dan shook his head. “You know what you’re looking at. You drive.”

  Nodding, she sat down as Dan stepped up behind her. Her fingers moved rapidly across the keyboard, scrolling through the repository’s check-in history. She paused, and pointed at the screen.

  “See this? The last check-in before the release build was at 3:13 p.m. on the 21st. I looked at it. It was just a minor bug fix. But then as I was getting ready to log out of the system, the last modified time on two source files caught my eye. They were both changed at 6:22 p.m. on the 21st, a little over thirty minutes before the release build started.”

  “Modified by who?”

  “That’s just it. I didn’t think it was even possible, but someone checked in those files anonymously. It had to be done with root permissions, I just don’t know how.”

  “Have you looked at the files?”

  “Of course.”

  She brought them both up, side by side, in the source code editor.

  “I diffed both files against the previous versions. The only change in the one on the left is a single statement that calls the subroutine on the right. Look at this.”

  Janice highlighted an if-structure. “It does the same thing as in the previous version, except in a very special case. I haven’t finished analyzing it, but it looks malicious.”

  Dan leaned forward, reaching for the mouse. “Do you mind?”

  Janice removed her hand from it. “Go ahead.”

  As his fingers closed around the small device, he pulled hard, ripping its USB cord out of the computer and wrapping it around Janice’s slender neck in one quick motion. Pulling with all his might, he dragged her backward, tipping over her chair, and dumping her facedown on the floor. Dan landed on top of her, his legs straddling her back.

  Gagging and twisting beneath him, Janice’s fingers struggled to loosen the cord that bit into her neck. B
ut as Dan continued to tighten the loop, the lack of blood supply to Janice’s brain ended her feeble effort.

  Dan felt her body go limp beneath him. Still he continued pulling the looped cord, not stopping until he watched the clock on the wall tick through two full minutes. When he finally did release it, he verified that Janice had no pulse, either in her wrist or her left carotid artery.

  Dragging her across the room by her feet, Dan stuffed Janice’s body into a supply closet. When he straightened, he paused to wipe the sweat from his brow with a paper towel before shutting the door on Janice Weston.

  Without pausing to think about what he’d just done, Dan walked back to her desk, righted the fallen chair, closed down all the applications Janice had been running, and shut down her workstation. He knew he wouldn’t get away with the murder, but by the time anyone figured out what he’d just covered up, none of this would matter.

  When he exited the lab, Dan paused one last time to survey the room before flipping off the lights.

  At the security desk, Ben asked. “Get it fixed?”

  Dan waved as he headed for the exit.

  “Problem solved.”

  CHAPTER 82

  Rachel Koenig stepped out of the shower onto the red tile bathroom floor and reached for the thick white towel. She knew she was in Kazakhstan, but the house in Baikonur that Rolf had procured for her stay felt like the villa they had stayed at last year in Puerto Vallarta. And now that the drugs had worked their way out of her system, she could appreciate it. Unfortunately the fact that she’d been brought here against her will and that her waitstaff was preventing her from doing anything that Rolf didn’t want her doing put a real damper on the resort feeling the place should have had.

  Rolf’s voice interrupted her reverie.

  “I need you ready in forty-five minutes.”

  Rachel turned to see her husband dressed in an Italian suit, as if they were going to a cocktail dinner instead of taking the drive from Baikonur out to the Cosmodrome.

  “I’ll be ready,” she said, giving the towel a twist, knotting it on top of her head.