The Second Ship Page 32

  For a harried scientist, annoyed by the new security rules, the special character would be the first one on the keyboard, “!”—or “bang,” as it was commonly known among hackers—most likely appended to the end of the sequence. As her savant mind worked the problem, a sequence of likely answers presented themselves, and the second of these got her in. Raul—birthday—bang.

  As hard as her heart pounded in her chest, Heather barely paused to congratulate herself. A rapid scan of the files on the hard drive drew her attention to a folder named “Nano-Test-Subjects” and its two sub-folders “Carlton Williams” and “Raul Rodriguez.” Each folder contained a large number of spreadsheet data files as well as documents that appeared to contain detailed notes on test procedures and results. Without bothering to read any of the contents, Heather removed her PDA from her pocket, slid the connector into the USB slot on the front of the computer, and began copying the folders. Exactly eighty-seven seconds later, she disconnected the portable device and re-engaged the screen lock on Dr. Rodriguez’s computer.

  As she started to stand, a large hand closed across her face, covering both her mouth and nose with a soft, moist cloth. Her surprised inhalation sucked a vaguely familiar smell deep into her lungs. A desire to fight back surged through her mind, but never quite made it to her rubber limbs. Through the rapidly narrowing straw of her vision, she saw Dr. Ernesto Rodriguez staring down at her with sad eyes.

  “Young lady, I’m sorry you had to find this.”

  Indeed, as he strapped her down to the metal bed, the sorrow that shone in his damp eyes looked real. If Heather could have remained conscious, she thought that she probably could have felt pity for the man. Probably. 52.163 percent.

  78

  Mark had endured just about enough of the girls’ overly cautious thinking. After all, they had worked for almost three weeks to develop a microchip version of the quantum twin device, and it had tested out perfectly. The thing was a masterpiece.

  It looked exactly like a wide variety of small multifunction chips common in TV remote controls, cell phones, and computers. Countless numbers of electronics used this chip type. And this one didn’t have to be directly inserted into any circuitry. It worked by Faraday's principal of induction, picking up the faint signals from nearby circuitry. Of course, its quantum twin also picked up the same signal with no communications between them.

  Even better, a signal could be injected into the quantum twin, and that signal would be propagated to the remote device where the other chip had been placed. It allowed for two-way communications.

  There was nothing new about any of this. They had long since modified their own cell phones to have a QT mode, which let Mark, Heather, and Jennifer talk with complete security. What was so exciting about the tiny version was that they could place a bug in someone else's electronics that was completely undetectable unless a person happened to open the electronics and had enough knowledge to spot the extra microchip stuck to the circuit board.

  Even though they could now hack into any system through their subspace transmitter, that system was bulky. Worse yet, it required them to specify the exact coordinates of the system where they wanted the subspace tap to occur. If someone was moving the equipment around, like a cell phone, then that just didn’t work.

  What annoyed Mark most was the two girls refusing to accept his plan to plant one of the new QTs on one of Jack’s or Janet’s devices. When he had mentioned it, Jennifer’s mouth had dropped open wide enough to swallow an orange.

  “Mark, are you insane? You’re not talking about any Tom, Dick, or Harry here. Those two are intelligence agents.”

  “Jen’s right,” said Heather. “There are too many things that could go wrong. We can’t risk it.”

  Mark had argued with them, pointing out that without being able to monitor Jack or Janet, they were flying blind. And hadn’t Jack hidden bugs in both the McFarland and Smythe houses?

  But the girls refused to cooperate. They had outvoted him, two to one. The subject was closed.

  For two weeks, Mark had chaffed under the yoke of the girls’ decision, but no more. At least he could stop by the Johnson house after school on the pretense of asking about homework. No doubt Janet would just think he was there because he thought she was hot.

  Well, that was true. But it still provided a good excuse to get inside the house. Then he’d just have to see if the opportunity to plant the QT presented itself.

  As Mark approached the street with the Johnson house, he saw Janet’s car pull out of the driveway and head down the street in the opposite direction. Mark stopped, found a secluded spot to secure his bike, and walked up to the house on foot, a new plan forming in his mind.

  Skirting around into the backyard, Mark glanced up to the second-story windows. As he had hoped, one of them remained open, just a crack to let the air in. Apparently, Janet did not plan on being gone for long.

  Measuring the distance to the windowsill, Mark jumped, his hand just catching the edge. With a quick pull, he lifted his entire body, holding himself in place with one hand as he lifted the window with the other. Within seconds, he was inside.

  His eyes swept the bedroom, but he did not linger. Mark needed to quickly find something they used, plant the bug, and get the hell out. He moved down the hallway, past the stairway leading down to the den, past the bathroom, to the spot where a rope dangled down from the trapdoor to the attic. Mark glanced up, then moved past it to the door at the far end of the hall. The door stood open and led to a room with a desk covered with school papers and a laptop, the screen saver busily constructing a network of multicolored 3D pipes. Bingo.

  Moving quickly, Mark flipped the laptop up onto its side, extracted the set of tiny electronic screwdrivers from his pocket, picked a small Phillips head, and began removing a single screw.

  Within seconds he had removed the small panel allowing access to the circuit board and memory cards. Picking a spot directly adjacent to the central processing unit, Mark retrieved the QT chip from his pocket, added a tiny drop of superglue, and pressed it into place, holding it just long enough for the adhesive on the back side to take hold.

  As he finished replacing the cover and spun the screw tight, he heard the front door open.

  Shit.

  Mark set the computer back in its spot on the desk, grabbed his tools, and moving as quietly as possible, left the room. As Mark moved down the hallway, he spotted Janet’s head in the den. Ducking back from the spot where the stairway opened to the room below, he barely avoided being seen. Making it down the hallway to the bedroom and the window he had entered was impossible without being spotted.

  Mark moved back to the spot where the rope dangled down from the attic. Holding his breath, praying that it would open silently, Mark pulled on the cord.

  For once his luck was good. The hatch opened, soundlessly lowering the steps leading up into the dark opening above. Mark climbed up and pulled the hatch closed behind him. As he glanced around, he found the small room cluttered with sophisticated-looking electronic gear. Unfortunately, it did not have the one thing he was looking for: another way out.

  The sound of footsteps on the stairway ended his perusal of his surroundings. Janet passed through the hall below him heading directly for the office. Through a small crack where the trapdoor closed, Mark could just make out her lithe form.

  Suddenly she stopped, staring directly at the laptop computer. As Mark watched, a new horror dawned in his mind.

  Damn it. He had forgotten. When he touched the laptop, the screen saver had stopped, leaving the secure login screen in its place. The timeout on that screen had not expired, so the screen saver had not yet restarted. And as she did with everything around her, Janet had noticed.

  79

  Hunger gnawed at his guts like a tapeworm so large he could no longer satisfy the primal need that drove him. As he watched Janet walk out of her house and get into her car, Priest was consumed by it. Today it was bearable, though. Today, at l
ast, his hunger would be sated.

  Priest started his truck, letting Janet pull out of her driveway and disappear around the bend before he moved out after her. As he slid onto the street, he passed a high school kid walking down the sidewalk. The face looked vaguely familiar. Then he remembered. It was the basketball player in the tabloids, the kid who almost blew the state championship by hitting the bottle before the game.

  Priest chuckled softly to himself. Shit. The kid reminded him of himself at that age.

  But he did not have long to dwell on stupid high school kids. He wanted to make sure he did not lose Janet. If he was lucky, her outing might just give him an opportunity to invite her over to his place. Priest licked his lips. His type of invitation never got refused.

  Priest stayed well back, only getting close enough to catch an occasional glimpse of her car. He knew the twists and turns of the streets by heart and how to maintain the perfect distance. When she turned into the grocery store parking lot, Priest passed on by, his disappointment palpable. He would get no chance here. Not at this time of day. At least he knew a trip to the grocery store meant she would be returning directly home from the errand.

  Priest made his way back to Janet’s house by a circuitous route, picking a different spot to park his truck. This time he parked in the woods a full two and a half blocks away from the Johnson house. After all, he wouldn’t be needing the truck’s secret compartment below the bed for a good while yet.

  Priest reached around behind the driver’s seat and pulled out a large plastic box. Flipping up the catches, he extracted the tranquilizer gun and put it in the second of his two shoulder holsters. After examining the liquid-filled darts to ensure the little plastic tip-covers were in place, he grabbed a handful and deposited them into the large outer pockets of his fatigue-style pants. He would need only one of them, but Priest liked to be prepared.

  Then, closing and locking the door, he slipped into the woods lining the canyon slope behind the winding row of homes. As he approached the back side of Janet’s house, he noticed the second-floor window had been left wide open. Unfortunately, there was nothing around to climb on, and it was a couple of feet too high for him to jump up and grab the sill.

  Instead, he made his way to the back door, inserted a small, oddly shaped tool into the lock, pressed a button, and turned. The lock clicked open. As he stepped inside, he heard a car pull up out front.

  Moving quickly to the pantry, Priest ducked inside, leaving the door open, just a crack, behind him. Through that crack he watched as Janet entered the house, two bags of groceries in her hands. She set her purse down and dropped the groceries on the kitchen table. Priest could feel his pulse pounding as he watched her slender body move. Soon now, very soon, she would move to the pantry, open it, and get the biggest surprise of her life.

  But Janet did not move directly to the pantry. Instead, she left the kitchen. Priest could hear her light footsteps climbing the stairs to the second floor.

  As soon as the sound indicated she was upstairs, Priest moved, his footsteps making no sound as he climbed. At the top of the stairs he paused, but only for an instant.

  Janet had stopped in a small room at the end of the hallway, her posture suddenly alert as she stared at the computer on her desk. She must have heard him. Having no time to load a dart into the tranquilizer gun, Priest charged. And as he did, Janet turned to meet him, her spinning side kick only barely missing his groin as he twisted sideways and barreled into her. Still, the blow from her foot disrupted Priest's momentum so that his shoulder only partially caught her side, preventing him from pinning both her arms.

  As they hit the floor, Priest scissored his legs in a wrestler's move that would have successfully gathered her into a submission hold had it not been for the quick twist of Janet’s flexible torso, a twist that whipped her left arm free. And in the small hand at the end of that arm, a hairpin glittered briefly as it plunged through Priest's right eye socket and into his skull.

  His body twitched and then slid limply to the floor as she kicked him in the throat. Through the red-limned blackness in his head, Priest could hear Janet rise to her feet.

  “Good night, sweet prince.”

  80

  Mark froze. The scene below him unfolded so rapidly he barely had time to assimilate what was happening.

  A man, who he only partially saw through the crack, suddenly charged into the room where Janet stood staring at her computer. She twisted, quick as a cat, partially connecting with her foot to his midsection before he hit her and they spun out of view. Before Mark could move to open the trapdoor and jump down to her aid, it was over.

  Janet strode back into view looking as unruffled as if nothing had happened.

  “Good night, sweet prince.”

  The casual, flippant response, the way she barely glanced back over her shoulder, said more than her words. The man who had attacked her must be dead.

  Janet picked up her cell phone and pressed a single key. After a couple of seconds, she spoke into it.

  “Jack, I’ve had a situation here.” She paused for a moment. “No. I handled it, but I’ll need you to help me with the cleanup…Right. Just get here as quickly as possible.”

  Snapping the phone shut, she turned, just in time to catch a feathered dart high in her left shoulder. Her look of surprise was quickly replaced with a slackness that spread to her arms and legs. The cell phone clattered to the floor as Janet followed it to the ground.

  Instantly, the man was on her, ripping duct tape free from a roll and wrapping it several times around her hands and then her feet, placing another strip across her mouth.

  “I guess it’s my turn to say good night to you,” he said with a low chuckle. “Don’t worry, little princess. You’ll have plenty of time to think about what went wrong over the coming days.”

  Mark, who had been too stunned by this new development to move, jerked into motion, kicking open the trapdoor and leaping into the hallway below. As he landed, the man’s head snapped toward him, a long, wicked-looking knife appearing in his hand.

  Seeing who faced him, a mirthless smile spread across the chiseled features of the man who stood over Janet’s prone form, not twenty feet away from Mark.

  “Kid, I don’t know what you are doing here, but this isn’t your lucky day.”

  81

  5:38 p.m. Crap. Heather had said she would be back by now. The tardiness worried Jennifer. It filled her mind with strange imaginings that left her knees shaky and made her wish she hadn’t just eaten half a bag of potato chips. What was going on?

  Could Heather have been hit by a car on the way home? What if she was in the hospital? Or worse yet, what if she was hurt and no one even knew to go look for her?

  It was all silly. No doubt Jennifer’s imagination was just inventing things because of the thought of Heather going to the prom with that creepy Raul. And yes, he was creepy. Him and that bunch of losers he hung around with. That didn’t apply to Heather, of course. But the others were some seriously odd birds.

  Jennifer glanced at her watch again. 5:39 p.m. Damn it. One thing was for sure: she couldn’t just stand around letting worry drive her crazy. Besides, it wouldn’t hurt anything to bike over to Raul’s house and meet Heather. It would actually be fun to ride back with her.

  Jennifer stuck her head into the kitchen. “Mom, I’m going for a short bike ride to link up with Heather.”

  “Okay. You two don’t be too long, though. You know the big grill celebration is set for seven o’clock, right?”

  “Mom, we’ll be here. Don’t worry.”

  “Then have fun.”

  With a quick heave, Jennifer lifted her bike off the ceiling hooks in the garage and set it down next to their experiment bench. She was just about to press the button to open the garage door when she glanced at the bench. Her heart froze.

  The QT microchip was gone. Glancing up, she saw that Mark’s bike was also gone. She couldn’t believe it. Her idiot brother had take
n the chip and gone to the Johnson house to implement that crazy scheme of his.

  Jennifer opened the garage door, set her bike outside, and then returned to the button. With one more press, she darted back to the lowering door, stepped over the electric eye beam, mounted her bike, and pedaled off. She could only hope that Mark wouldn’t do something really stupid.

  82

  “Kid, I don’t know what you are doing here, but this isn’t your lucky day.”

  It was the same high school kid Priest had seen on the street when he was following Janet. The lad was tall for his age, about six feet, with a quintessential high school athletic body: muscular and wiry. Too bad for him. That athletic career was about to come to a very abrupt end.

  Priest moved forward, and surprisingly the kid moved to meet him, gliding along in a rudimentary aikido style. Priest's smile grew wider. The kid thought he was trained. It was always nice when you didn’t have to chase them.

  As he approached the optimum range, Priest feinted with his left hand, then darted in low, the SAF survival knife coming in flat to facilitate its passage between the ribs and into the vital organs beyond.

  The kid moved to counter the feint, leaving himself wide open for the knife attack. What shocked Priest was the speed with which the kid moved, his motions a blur, even to Priest's trained eye. Unbelievably, the knife missed its target as the kid's fist rocketed into Priest's midsection.

  The impact of the blow was extraordinary. It felt more like the kick of a mule than a blow from a human fist. Priest felt himself slammed back into the wall with sufficient force to break three ribs and dislodge the knife from his hand, sending it sliding down the hall toward the stairs.

  In full reaction mode now, Priest reached for his shoulder holster, only to have the young whirlwind close with him, the open palm of his left hand slamming into the underside of Priest's chin, sending him sliding down the hallway floor toward his knife.