Lockout

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

Silver Springs, Maryland (9:25 p.m. EST / 0325 Zulu)

“So where do we run to, Mr. Bond?” Jenny asked, only slightly amused with her reference.

Will Bronson had been all but hunched over the steering wheel, guiding them into the night traffic southbound toward the heart of DC and obviously deep in thought. He looked over now almost in lack of recognition, a smile returning uneasily to his face as his eyes focused on her.

“Sorry. I was concentrating on where to go.”

“Any Starbucks will do,” Jenny said, not in jest.

“Too public, and a public server will be child’s play to trace.”

“Who cares, Will. We’re running out of time. If I had a portable hot spot… wait, I do!”

“Jenny, we’re being watched!”

“Okay, and I’m willing to trade my damned job for a planeload of passengers. Aren’t you?”

“That’s not the point.”

“What is the point, Will? I think I have the code figured out, but we need to be broadcasting it everywhere. I have only one transponder I know that might be usable. Who else can we turn to?” Jenny fumbled in her purse, pulled out her smartphone, and worked the screen to trigger its internal hotspot.

He was shaking his head and breathing a bit too hard, and Jenny heard the indecision in his voice.

“I think I know where to go for a secure channel, but… you’re right about the lack of time.”

“Then hush up for a moment and let me work this,” she replied, head down, making a tiny mental note that “hush up” might be too Southern a way to shush a spy. Then again, he was acting less and less like a serenely confident operative.

She pulled her laptop out of its case and fired it up, connecting to the cell phone’s Wi-Fi channel, then retracing her previous steps to the entry portal of the satellite array she had previously tried. She entered the appropriate string of keystrokes and tried to suppress the urge to scream “Dammit!” when the entry denial included confirmation that her previous attempt had never made it through their firewalls.

“This isn’t working, Will,” she said in disgust, tucking back an errant cascade of hair behind her ear.

“Okay, then we’ll have to find that secure entry point.”

“No. No, you don’t understand,” she said, turning to him. “I only had one satellite channel, and it won’t let me in. We don’t just need a place to get into the Internet, we need a transponder or about a dozen of them. I think I’d better call Seth at home, and in the clear.”

“No!”

“Why not? No way he’s the bad guy. I know you can’t guarantee that, but I can.”

“You can’t call him in the clear, Jenny. And I promise you he doesn’t have the horsepower to intervene and find a transponder for us.”

“Yeah? Well, Sherlock, find me someone who does, or I see no choice but to try.”

“I’m working on it,” he replied, negotiating Dupont Circle and steering them down Massachusetts Avenue.

Quietly, she opened a direct to text program and typed the most innocuous message she could think of.

Jenny hit the send button and simultaneously collapsed the program just as an oath reached her from the driver’s seat.

“Oh, crap!”

“What?”

Will Bronson was staring intently into the rearview mirror.

“We’ve got a tail.”

“What? Really?” Jenny whirled around in the seat, her eyes jumping through a series of headlights behind them, none of them close enough to finger as a tail.

“I don’t see who you’re talking about.”

“He’s back there. Came around the circle trying to stay aloof. Obviously a solo, not a team, which is good.”

“You’re sure?”

“I’m rather well trained in this, and high performance driving response,” he shot back, eyes darting between the crowded street ahead and the rearview mirror before screeching into a sudden left turn across traffic and darting into a side street, almost losing control in the process and barely missing a parked SUV.

“JESUS, Will!”

“Sorry.”

“What are you afraid of, anyway? That they’ll shoot us?”

“We need a portal and a transponder, and being in any sort of custody won’t achieve that in time,” he replied.

“Custody? What the hell do you mean custody?” she said, hanging onto the handgrip above the passenger window as he accelerated through the back streets.

“Not now. Gotta concentrate.”

Once more she turned to search behind them, seeing nothing that would qualify as a chase car, yet Will was throwing them through desperate maneuvers. Slowly, a rising tide of doubt began to trickle into the corners of her mind, where uncertainty had already created a void. The sudden departure from the safe house, no overheard voices on his phone calls, now a phantom chasing them, and a potentially precious cargo she couldn’t deliver.

There was a tiny vibration in her hand and she looked down at her phone’s screen to see an answer from Seth: