Code of Honor

38

Originally, the plan to get inside Lucky Optical had been to cut a hole in the drywall between the abandoned meat shop and the clinic, but a check of the flimsy back door and some quick work with a penknife made damaging any property unnecessary. The optomap was connected to an in-house server via Cat-5 cable. Midas connected a small notebook computer to one of the USB ports while Ryan checked the doctor’s desk for passwords that might be written down. It turned out that they didn’t need one, and they were soon scrolling through files on the server. There were no less than three male patients named Suparman. Gavin helped cross-reference with home addresses and telephone numbers, and they were quickly able to ascertain which one was their guy. The files were JPEGs, less than a gig for each eye, and downloaded quickly to a thumb drive. Ryan and Midas were back in their own Toyota Avanza twenty minutes after they went in.

Ryan drove while Midas talked to Gavin, working through the process of building the key to override the retina-scan lock, using the thumb drive and a Raspberry Pi — in the event the images on his smartphone didn’t do the trick.

Gavin held up the small green board, not much larger than a deck of playing cards. “I love these little computers. They can do almost anything.”

“Can that fight off a couple of armed guards?” Ryan asked. “Because that’s what Ding and Adara are going to need.”

Clark’s voice came across the radio, direct and taut. “CODE BLACK. Repeat. CODE BLACK.”

Ryan and Midas both reached to check their radios, making certain they were on PTT instead of intercom mode. CODE BLACK was an order to cease all radio traffic immediately. It usually meant they were being monitored. Since the radios were encrypted, the only obvious way that could happen was for someone to get one of the handsets.

Ryan’s phone rang an instant later. It was Clark. Ryan put it on speaker and passed it to Midas so he could negotiate the Manado traffic.

“Everyone rendezvous at the Blessing Jesus statue south of the city,” Clark said. “Ding’s missing. We have to assume he’s been taken.”

“Copy,” Ryan said, his voice grim.

Midas was already looking up the best route on his phone. He pointed south and whispered, “Take this to the Ring Road. It’s a straight shot south.”

Ryan gave a quick nod showing he understood. “Taken?” He glanced down at the phone as he drove. “By who?”

“I’ve got his tracker pulled up,” Clark said. “Looks like he’s at Suparman’s main office.”

“No shit?” Midas said. “That makes no sense. How could Suparman have known we were here?”

“The visit to the game store, maybe,” Ryan mused.

“Unknown,” Clark said. “But the fact remains, he’s at Suparman HQ — or, at least, that’s where the tracker in his belt is. Adara talked to a lady from the teahouse who said she saw some men helping another man into a van. When she went to the spot, she found Taser chaff on the sidewalk.”

“The bastards tased him,” Midas said.

“Looks that way,” Clark said, his jaw clenched, brooding.

Along with their twin steel barbs, the compressed-gas Taser cartridge deployed dozens of tiny circular tags known as Anti-Felon Identifications. These AFIDs were numbered and fluoresced when hit with a UV light, helping law enforcement — and in this case, Adara — see where a Taser had been deployed.

“So,” Ryan said, his mind reeling. “We link up at the statue… and then…”

“The mission’s still the same,” Clark said. “Except we grab the tech and Ding.”

“And no dart guns on the guards,” Midas said.

“Oh,” Clark said. “Hell, no.”