Biowar

6

While Lia DeFrancesca was in a general sense en route to London, the route was rather circuitous and included a climb down a nearly sheer cliff at a nature sanctuary in New York’s Hudson Valley. The cliff itself wasn’t much of a problem for Lia, who had done much harder climbs with full combat gear during the Army Special Forces Q, or Qualifying, Course, which she was one of the few (if not only) women to complete. But Lia was making her descent in decidedly unmilitary attire — a skirt that stopped some inches above the knees, and a pair of black heels, which went well with the skirt but not the rocks.

It did not help that her runner — a Desk Three officer monitoring her progress via a satellite link from the Art Room, Deep Black’s special situation center deep within OPS 2—thought the situation rather humorous. Lia could hear Jeff Rockman’s high-pitched giggle in her ear as she shifted her weight on one of the ledges, her backpack leaning precariously off her arm.

“I’m going to put you in a skirt and see how you like it,” she growled at him.

“You’re the one who didn’t want to wait for the next guard change, when you could have walked right down the main road,” said Rockman. “‘Let’s take the shortcut,’ you said. ‘Bring it on,’ you said.”

Lia glanced to her right and saw a middle-aged man and woman walking down the path toward her, at the moment oblivious to her. She continued to descend, unable to do anything to reinforce her modesty. As she stretched for a fresh foothold, she heard the faint yet distinct sound of over-stretched panty hose giving way.

“Son of a bitch,” she complained as the stockings ran halfway up her left leg.

“Well!” said the woman, stopping just below her.

Lia looked down. She was now only eight feet above the path. “Get the hell out of my way,” said Lia, kicking off her shoes.

“What?” demanded the man.

“Move or catch me,” Lia told them as she leaned down. She intended to grab onto the footholds but missed and so did, in fact, practically jump on them. She rolled as she hit the ground; naturally her skirt hiked in the process.

Disgusted, she got up and reached into her backpack for a substitute pair of panty hose.

“Hanes Her Way. Satisfied?” she snapped as she reached up to change.

The couple started to back away. Lia rolled off the panty hose, exposing her sensible cotton to the fauna. She put on her shoes and began walking up the trail, which led to a gravel road.

“Turnoff in another hundred yards,” said Rockman.

Lia could hear him through a small device implanted in her skull just behind her ear. His voice was like a whisper in her head, audible only to her. The microphone and an antenna array were embedded in her jacket.

“Any more surprises?” she asked. “And I’m telling you, I’m not swimming a moat.”

“There’s no moat,” Rockman assured her. “Just the cameras and the physical security, plus the fence.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah.”

Lia continued up the path, slipping her handheld computer from her jacket pocket and using its GPS function to find the exact point where she was to go in the woods. The small computer looked like a Palm PDA, the sort of device a traveling businessman might use to keep his schedule and contact information. But the NSA version had a wide range of capabilities, thanks to its capacious onboard memory and four processors that, ten years before, would have been found only in a supercomputer. It hooked into the Desk Three communications system, allowing it to accept downloads of satellite views and other information. The Art Room beamed her a situation map showing her position overlaid on a diagram of the facility she was approaching. She got her bearings and returned the handheld to her pocket.

Lia could see the security wall of the research building through the trees on her left as she turned. She had to walk along a very precise path about five feet wide — the gap in the coverage of the facility’s perimeter cameras. Fortunately, the woods were cleared, and even with her heels on she found it easy going.

“There poison ivy here?” she asked Rockman as she got near the wall.

“Got me. Leaflets three, let it be,” he added.

“Learn that in Boy Scouts?”

“I doubt there’s any poison ivy,” said Telach. “Hold at the wall. There’s a jeep just starting a sweep.”

Lia leaned against the smooth concrete, listening. Rockman had tapped into the facility’s security system and was watching the video feeds as they were presented to the security desk. The high-tech system was controlled by a computer, which had made it relatively easy for the NSA snoops to break into.

Not that they wouldn’t have found a way if it were more difficult. The FBI was still at least twelve hours away from obtaining a subpoena allowing it to review all of Dr. Kegan’s experiments here. In the meantime, Desk Three’s standing mandate to preemptively gather intelligence against potential terrorist threats would be used to covertly examine the facility’s computer records for anything untoward.

While she waited, Lia took what looked like a bunch of small, flat spoons and a lipstick holder from the inside pocket of her jacket. Unscrewing the top of the lipstick holder, she slid one of the spoons into the slot and held it against the wall. As the truck roared past, she pressed the end of the lipstick holder and fired the spoon into the wall about head high. When the truck was gone, she used the small handhold to hoist herself up and then over.

“What’s going on?” Rockman asked.

“What do you mean?” she asked, taking out her compact and lipstick — the real one — and seeing to her makeup.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m smoking a joint.”

“The patrol will be back in two minutes. You want them to see you?”

“God, Rockman — why the hell do you think I’m wearing a skirt?”

Lia walked in a diagonal across the perimeter road toward a garage building, once more treading in a black spot of the compound’s defenses. At the building, she opened the pack and took out her tiny Kahr, a custom-built pistol so small it could be palmed. Removing her handheld computer and a package of cigarettes, Lia took off her jacket and rolled it into a ball, sliding it into the backpack. Then she slid the ruck into an empty garbage can and put the lid on.

“You hear me?”

“Barely,” said Rockman.

Lia adjusted her belt. The com system sent its signal from the belt to the jacket; the signal was low-power and worked in discrete bursts so that it was extremely difficult to detect.

“Now?”

“Still low.”

“All right, hold on.” She took the backpack out and put it behind the garbage can rather than inside. “How’s that?”

“We’ll fix the levels here,” said Telach. “Get into the building. You have three minutes.”

“Stay to the left of that driveway,” added Rockman.

Dating from the early seventies, the Drumund University Research Site/Hudson Valley Division Laboratory had been designed to be heated by solar energy. Two years after it opened, however, the trustees belatedly realized the system maintenance and electricity for the pumps cost five times the amount an old-fashioned gas-burning furnace would. The high-tech system had been scrapped in favor of an oil burner, but the large roof arrays with their water panels remained. Lia headed toward one now, climbing up a narrow metal access ladder to a mechanical door at the outside. There were two locks on the door: the first took five seconds to pick; the other was considerably more stubborn, giving way to her small file in just over thirty.

Lia pulled the door open slowly, checking to make sure no one was there — the area wasn’t covered by the security cameras. Stepping onto the metal catwalk inside, she pulled off her belt and stuck it in the door, maintaining her connection with the com system.

“I’m inside,” she said.

“Yes,” said Rockman. “All right. You want that stairwell on the right.”

Lia walked quickly to the stairway. The top of the stairway was clear, but the landing was covered by one of the video cams. Rockman had to blank the feed as she passed — a three-second blip. He had already gotten the security people used to the short blips over the past forty minutes; they had checked out the areas twice and now had a call in to their tech people about the problem.

Actually, they thought they had a call in. Rockman had erased it from the voice mail system.

“Ready?” Lia asked.

“Hold just a second,” said Rockman.

Lia took a long breath. “Find me a bathroom soon, all right?”

“Should’ve thought about that before you left home,” replied the runner. “On my mark. Ready, set—”

Lia pulled the door open as Rockman gave her the cue. She took three steps down the stairs, then vaulted over the side rail onto the next landing and repeated the procedure, deeking past a second camera.

“Impressive,” said Rockman.

“I’m impressed that your shoes held,” said Telach. They had watched her through the uncorrupted portion of the feed, shunted down to the Art Room.

“Where’s my bathroom?”

“Join the visitors first,” said Rockman. “Door to your left, don’t forget your smokes.”

“And your badge,” said Telach.

Lia had almost forgotten to take out the badge. She slid it from the inside of the cigarette pack, still wrapped in a foil wrapper. Once unwrapped, the badge would set off transponders in the building that were used to help track authorized personnel. Lia had to unwrap outside in the courtyard where people went to smoke, so she didn’t suddenly appear in the middle of the building.

As she stepped toward the door, it swung open. Lia froze for a second — she had expected to be warned if anyone was coming — but quickly recovered, plastering a smile on her face. A good-looking Ph.D. fellow, roughly her age, stood in the doorway, gawking at her.

“Thank you,” said Lia, starting past.

“Um.”

“Just having a smoke,” she told him, showing the cigarettes. “Care to join me?”

“You new here?”

“I’m trying to decide whether to accept a fellowship.” Lia cocked her head slightly. “Maybe you could answer a few questions.”

“Um, you should uh — you have to wear your badge,” said the scientist. His eyes were boring holes in her breasts.

“Oh.” She poked at her chest; a button magically slipped open. “I must’ve left it on my jacket.”

The biologist’s glance moved southward toward her legs.

“Yes,” he murmured.

“So is it a good place to work?”

“Absolutely.”

“Come on and have a smoke. Tell me about it.”

“No, really I can’t,” said the man, glancing at his wedding ring. “Maybe later.”

“Later,” she said, sliding out the door.

“Smooth,” said Telach when she made it outside.

“Next time I’ll just shoot anyone who stops me,” she said. Lia reached beneath her skirt and secured the gun beneath a thick garter strap.

“Just gave the security people an eyeful there,” said Rockman.

Lia pulled her badge out of its wrapper. “Where’s the rest room?”

“Cross your legs,” said Telach.

“Should I pee right here?”

“There’s one in the corridor you have to go in,” said Rockman. “Light up.”

“Oh yes,” said Lia, pulling out one of the three cigarettes in the box along with the disposable lighter. She had had to bum the cigarettes off the helicopter crew earlier.

The first hit of tobacco set her off coughing uncontrollably.

“Giving your lungs for your country,” said Rockman.

“Can it, runner boy.” She tossed the cigarette. “All right, which door? The one on the left or the right?”

“I can’t see you here.”

“You know where I am; left or right?”

“Left,” said Telach.

Lia reached for the door just as Rockman started to warn her not to.

It was too late. The door slammed open so fast it smacked her hand and sent her stumbling back. One of the two men who’d come out reached for her, trying to keep her from falling.

She didn’t, but he did — surprised, Lia reacted instinctively, catching the man by the forearm and sending him tumbling over her to the pavement. Before the second could react, her elbow had dropped him to his knees.

“Jesus,” said Rockman. “They’re security.”

Oops, thought Lia.

“You bastards,” she said loudly. “You touch me again and I’m turning you in. I don’t care if you are security — I understand the need for security. But I’m not going to be frisked by a man. No way. Searched by a woman, all right.”

A gray-haired professor and two middle-aged women came up behind her.

“If this is the way guests are treated,” said Lia loudly, “I can only imagine what happens to staff. He was trying to touch my breasts.”

“They have no right to search you,” said one of the women. “That’s not right at all. No one else is searched.”

One of the security people started to rise, reaching for his walkie-talkie.

“Call your boss,” said Lia loudly. “Call him. This is the second time. The second time.”

“The second time?” said the other woman.

“I’m sure it’s just a misunderstanding,” said the professor.

“Get going,” warned Rockman.

“I’ll bet it was a misunderstanding. I’m going to report this,” said Lia, whisking around into the building.

“Left up the stairs. Move,” said Rockman.

Lia took the stairs two at a time. At the top, she turned into the first room she saw — which just happened to be a rest room.

Men’s, but times were desperate.

Lia went quickly to the far stall, her heels making a rather distinctive sound on the tiled floor. A pair of sneakers two stalls down jumped up and quickly retreated.

“Not good,” said Rockman.

“I’m inside, right?”

“This isn’t a shopping mall,” said Telach.

“Yup.” Lia peeled off the badge, realizing it would now be a liability. “Plan B. Where do I go?”

“End of the hall, make a left, then a quick right. The lab is down the stairs.”

“Talk to you there,” she said.

A potbellied virologist stopped dead in the doorway as Lia emerged from the stall. She smiled at him, then washed her hands.

“The women’s room is down the hall.”

Lia pointed at him. “Don’t get any ideas,” she said, drying her hands.

While she followed Rockman’s directions to the lab, the Art Room launched an attack on the facility’s security communications network, disguising it as a circuit blowout. This delayed the alert about the encounter with what the slowly recovering guards termed a psychotic visitor.

“How are you going to get into the lab area without your tag?” Telach asked as Lia headed down the stairs.

“I’ll just wait for someone to come by and slip in with them,” said Lia.

“We chose this lab because there’s hardly anyone who uses it,” said Telach.

“So open the door for me,” said Lia.

“We can’t without the tag.”

“Right,” snapped Lia, but when she reached the door it did indeed fail to open. A metal shield prevented anyone from slipping a nail file into the latch and prying it open — which would have been Lia’s next choice. Before she could decide on Plan C, she spotted someone coming down the hallway toward the door.

“Rarely used, huh?” she muttered to the runner as she reversed course and started back up toward the stairs. She turned into the stairway as the person cleared the door, then waited on the steps. As the man — a twenty-five-year-old doctoral candidate who specialized in the study of RNA replication — turned into the stairwell, Lia skipped down and collided with him.

“Oh, Jesus,” she said, falling against him and then away, her blouse somehow popping open in the process.

“Sorry,” said the Ph.D. candidate.

Flustered, Lia helped him up, apologized, slipped down herself, scooped up a folder that had fallen, apologized, laughed at herself, and continued quickly to the automatic door — which opened thanks to the man’s ID card, which Lia had palmed.

“Excuse me, excuse me,” said the man, trotting toward her.

Lia turned at the door. “Oh my God,” she said, staring at the folders in her hands.

She was still unbuttoned. Her bra, not nearly as sensible as her panties, provided a more than ample diversion as she dropped the folder on the ground. His badge tumbled with it; she apologized again, retreating down the lab hallway.

“Smooth,” said Rockman in her ear.

“Never underestimate the power of Intimate Moments,” she said.

“Or male lust,” said Telach.

“You even got me hot,” said Rockman.

“Before you melt down, tell me which of these doors I want,” she said.

“Any one on the left,” he told her. “Um, better get moving — the guys you kneed in the courtyard are at the supervisor’s desk.”

“I didn’t knee anyone,” said Lia, opening the door into a long, narrow room dominated by flat-panel computer displays mounted on benchlike desks parallel to the hallway. Lia walked to the back of the room, remembering the layout she had seen on her computer. She entered a second room, where a row of servers sat behind a locked panel. Ignoring the servers, she went to a PC at the far end, sat at the chair in front of it, and pulled off her right shoe. She removed a small keylike device with a USB plug from the cavity below the heel. The plug’s USB interface, common on all PC-style computers, allowed the hardwired program on the device easy and immediate access to any machine it was plugged into. The Desk Three ops called the device a dongle. They had named it after software protection devices that plugged into early computers. The name was easier to use than the official nomenclature, which referred to the device as the “Universal Access Interface, A54, WIN mod 2, 3.7.”

After placing the dongle into the proper slot, she hit the keys to reboot the computer; as soon as the PC checked the USB drive the worm program lodged in her dongle slipped inside the system.

“So?” she asked the Art Room.

“Give us a minute,” said Telach.

“I’d rather not be caught here,” said Lia.

“Odd time to start worrying about that,” said Telach.

“I do have a plane to catch.”

“These things take time.”

“Guards in the hallway,” warned Rockman.

Lia ducked down, waiting while the NSA-written code infiltrated the lab’s computer system. The system was physically isolated from the outside, unlike the other systems at the lab, which had been compromised by Desk Three earlier. The small device Lia had plugged into the port was now communicating with the Art Room via the com system contained in Lia’s clothes. The physical compromise of the system was not without risk — the agent might be caught, after all — but it would supply the Art Room with a complete copy of the data on the hard drives.

“Okay,” said Rockman. “Go — they’re going for your rest room upstairs. Go. We’re set here.”

Lia pulled the device from its socket and stomped on it, crushing it beyond recognition or use. Its memory had already been erased, and it was now just a useless piece of silicone and metal, which would be unnoticed in the garbage. She found an empty soda can and threw it inside, shocked that the scientists didn’t recycle. Then she made her way outside the hall, where she once again confronted the closed door.

“Can you take the door out for me?” she asked Rockman.

“The alarms will go off. They’ll lock down.”

“Didn’t you just tell me we were in a hurry?”

“You want the video cameras off, too?”

“Not yet,” she told him, since that would mean he wouldn’t be able to see what the guards were doing.

The lights in the facility blinked off. Lia grabbed at the door, pulling it open as the emergency beams came on. The lights came back, but a fire alarm was sounding. Lia trotted up the steps, intending to either find her way back to the roof through the mechanical section or go outside with the rest of the scientists, then slip away. But just as she reached the main floor hallway, one of the guards she had kneed earlier appeared near the doorway, helping herd people out of the building.

Ducking her five-four frame behind two researchers in long white lab coats, Lia pretended to sneeze as she passed by the door. The guard said something as Lia slipped past, but she didn’t hang around to see if he was referring to her. She made it outside, walking quickly from the bricked area to a gravel walkway that skirted around the comer of the building. She turned the comer and quickened her pace, aware that she could be seen on the surveillance cameras. She retrieved the cigarette pack, squeezing one of the cigarettes to make it look like a marijuana joint. With the garbage pails in sight just at the edge of the black spot in the surveillance net, she stopped, made a show of looking around, and then lit up. She stepped out of the camera area, tossed the pseudo-blunt, and ran toward the cans and her backpack. She’d leave the belt; its function wouldn’t be obvious, and as far as she was concerned it wasn’t worth the risk retrieving it.

As she was unzipping the ruck to retrieve her jacket, she heard the security Jeep approaching. She pulled out the cigarette pack and took out the last cigarette, lighting it just as the Jeep pulled up.

“Excuse me, ma’ am,” said one of the security people from the truck.

Lia turned around, holding the cigarette out as if she were embarrassed to be discovered. There were two guards in the truck, a man and a woman.

“You really have to be back in the gravel area,” said the man.

“I’m sorry.”

“Hold on a second,” said the woman as Lia started away. “Who are you and where’s your badge?”

“Corina Jacobs,” whispered Rockman in her ear. He had undoubtedly chosen the name from a roster of legitimate visitors, but Lia realized it was an unfortunate choice — she was Asian-American, and she undoubtedly didn’t look anything like a Corina or a Jacobs.

Then again, she didn’t look like a DeFrancesca, either.

“Jacobs.” Lia patted her blouse as if looking for her name tag. “Must’ve left my jacket inside.”

“Jacobs?” said the woman.

“I was adopted,” said Lia. That much of her story was true, though the particulars she spun from it now were fiction. “Chinese Jew, New York City, over-the-hill hippies, yada-yada-yada. Pretty interesting around the holidays. Let’s. not tell anyone I smoke, okay?” She stomped on the cigarette. “Please?”

The name was on the list the guards had; Lia saw the woman frown when she spotted it.

“That’s how I got into viruses,” said Lia. She walked toward the truck. “Because, see, my birth mother was HIV positive, which was why I was put up for adoption. I think she might have been a prostitute or something.”

The female guard rolled her eyes and prodded her companion — whose eyes had been pasted on Lia’s chest the whole time — to resume the patrol.

Lia took out her handheld computer as the Jeep drove off. She put her thumb on the sensor at the rear, waiting for the machine to recognize its owner and wake up. When it did, two taps on the menu in the left-hand corner brought up the map of the site with the black spots of the surveillance net and her own position marked out. She turned, still on camera, made as if she were going back to the courtyard, then twisted back into the clear area.

“They’re coming back,” hissed Rockman in her ear. “Probably make you repeat the whole story.”

In two steps, Lia had reached the wall. With the third, she had vaulted to the top, grabbing on the ledge and swinging upward. She nearly lost her balance but managed to slide her other arm far enough over the top to pull herself up and over as the Jeep returned. Lia fell to the ground, cursing, but sustaining no bodily injuries.

Her panty hose remained intact as well — her luck was starting to change.

“All right. Have the helicopter at the rendezvous in fifteen minutes,” she said, starting back toward the nature area.

“Better make it twelve,” said Telach. “You have less than a half hour to get to Kennedy Airport.”