Lockout

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

Silver Springs, Maryland (9:45 p.m. EST / 0245 Zulu)

“I think I’ve got it!” Jenny Reynolds jabbed a fist in the air as she turned to Will Bronson.

“Really?”

“Yes! I figured out the enabling order, and I’ve reversed it… in theory. Now the small remaining problem is how to get it transmitted to that aircraft on a frequency it’s monitoring.”

Will rushed to her side looking somewhat bewildered at the complex strings of letters and numbers on her laptop screen. “Didn’t you get a read on the frequency when you picked up the transmission?”

“Yes, but remember it was a piggybacked signal, kind of like a harmonic. But that’s not the problem. I can transmit it in the clear, but I have to have something to transmit it over, and I don’t have the authority to just tap into any satellite transponder I want to commandeer.”

The electronic warble of Will Bronson’s cell phone caused Jenny to look up as he pulled it out and studied the screen, a frown darkening his features as he turned away from her.

“What?” she asked.

“Keep working, please,” he said, getting to his feet and moving toward the far end of the room, his voice low and tone urgent with words she couldn’t hear and was trying to ignore. Normally she could hear the other side of a cell phone conversation, but he was holding the phone so tightly to his ear she could hear nothing.

Suddenly he was back, standing uneasily beside her, a distracted expression on his face.

“Okay, what’s wrong?” she asked.

He shook his head and tried to laugh, but the effort was disingenuous.

“We need to hurry.”

“No kidding. What was that call? Why are you looking haunted all of a sudden?”

Again he glanced toward the door before turning back to her. “Jenny, my agency thinks I’ve gone rogue.”

“What?”

“Or some rogue faction at DIA thinks I’m a threat. “

“Meaning?”

“Meaning we’ve got to get that code you figured out transmitted and get out of here.”

“I thought this was your safe house?”

“It’s DIA’s safe house, and I’m DIA, and… apparently… some of us are of the opinion that you and I are up to no good, or hell, who knows, maybe they think I’ve kidnapped you!”

“Can’t we just explain it to… them? You want me to talk to someone… a proof of life kind of thing?”

He was shaking his head vigorously.

“If there was time, Jen, yes, but remember we don’t know who sent the first messages, and they came from your building. Get finished, and let’s get out of here.”

“Is someone on the way?”

He leaned in close to her, eye to eye. “Jenny, just work as fast as you can. We need to go, or we might not have the chance to solve this. Just save your work and don’t try to transmit it yet.”

She nodded slowly, momentarily lost in his eyes again. “Okay. But why? If I have a chance to transmit it, why not try?”

“There’s a good reason!”

“Which I need to know.”

“It has to do with monitoring. I don’t want anyone cancelling out whatever you send. We could have only one chance.”

“And time is running out, right?”

“One shot, Jen! You want to gamble?”

She snapped back to the computer, re-focusing on where she’d been when his phone rang. Both of them stared at the screen in silence for a few moments.

“I know a transponder you could use clandestinely, but we can’t trigger it out of this place,” he added.

Jenny sighed and bit her lip, racing her mind’s eye around a planet full of communications satellites and trying to recall a classified vulnerability she’d read about within the last few weeks. It was a geosynchronous communications satellite over the eastern Atlantic, which would cover the Mediterranean and some of the Middle East, but what was the vulnerability?

“Jenny?”

“Shh-h. I’m thinking.”

“About what?” Will got to his feet and stood aside quietly, watching her as she tapped a pencil on the desk and then started nibbling the eraser like a crazed chipmunk, occasionally shaking her head as if in deep dialogue with an unseen colleague. He was wholly unprepared for her to turn suddenly and yelp.

“What?”

“I think I’ve got it. I hope I’ve got it!”

“Okay. Can I ask what?”

She was already back at the keyboard typing frantically, bringing up a series of pages of some technical site and landing finally on a blinking cursor. She typed in a series of keystrokes and waited as some distant server considered her request.

The screen filled suddenly with a blue background and a series of open fields.

“Yes, yes, yes! I did remember. They were testing this one transponder and someone left the portal open with a very mundane sign-in code.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning I’ve got one shot at uploading the reversal string and firing it toward the Med. If we’re lucky, it will repeat three or four times before self-cancelling. But, hopefully, that will be enough.”

“And the frequency is the same?”

“I’m not certain, Will, but I think this covers the same spectrum.”

“Will NSA intercept it?”

“Yes, but not immediately.”

“Then for God’s sake, don’t do it! Not from here.”

“Will… why?”

“Save your work. Here’s a flash drive. Save it, and let’s get the hell out of here.”

“What aren’t you telling me, Will Bronson?”

“That we may have every cop in the Beltway looking for us! Please, let’s go!”

She worked quickly to transfer the computer code to the flash drive, her head spinning with the pressures of time and Will’s sudden panic over transmitting. But the opportunity was there and the transponder was waiting, her finger poised over the execute key he hadn’t seen her pull up. She glanced over as he moved to the window to check outside, and tapped the key, immediately collapsing the transmit page. Maybe it would be tracked and maybe it wouldn’t be, but she’d taken her best shot. He was wrong to want to wait, she was sure of that, yet something wasn’t quite making sense about his concerns.

Just as suddenly, he was back at her side, nodding as she ordered the computer into hibernate mode and snapped it shut, handing him the flash drive.

“Okay. Done.”

“What do you mean, done?” he asked, searching her eyes.

“I mean it’s on the flash drive and saved, I’m ready to get back to that transponder when you think it’s safe, and I’m ready to get out of here. Okay?”

“Okay.”

“Although I’m worried we may have blown the one chance to stop this,” Jenny said, wondering why she was lying about it. What was she doing, testing him?

Will was already turning toward the door, his hand on her shoulder.

“Worry not. I’ve got it under control.”