Oath of Office

28

Midas left for da Rocha’s hotel first, leaving Jack to pay for the tapas and beer. He would follow up two minutes later, watching for any sign of countersurveillance.

The Russians were pros and had decided on a modest hotel, the size and quaintness of which made tight surveillance difficult. Da Rocha, on the other hand, was in this for no motherland. When it came to priorities, God and country came in far behind the lifestyle of playboy international arms dealer, and the more flamboyant the better. Gold jewelry, fast cars, and five-star hotels. He’d booked a deluxe room at the Alfonso XIII, less than ten minutes south on the far side of the Alcázar palace and gardens.

“We’re on-site,” Midas said over the net. “How we looking back there, bud?”

“Clean so far,” Ryan said. He worked his way around a crowd of elderly couples getting directions from a carriage driver who’d stopped in the middle of Avenida de la Constitución, the horse standing hipshot and head down. This gave Ryan a chance to slow his pace and cross the street as if to make a turn, watching to see if anyone followed him, all while keeping an eye on Midas. At one point, Midas slowed, giving Jack time to step into a small shop to check his six o’clock while he bought a pack of gum. He could not count the number of pocketable snacks he’d purchased over the years to give him an excuse to slow down and watch while on surveillance-detection runs.

“Good deal,” Midas said. “I’ll hang out in the lobby for a minute and see if anyone comes in behind me. A guy just stepped out of the security office. Looks like DVRs instead of flesh-and-blood watchers. Maybe we caught a break on that front.”

“Maybe,” Jack said, doubtful even as he spoke. Breaks were for bones. It was a rare mission that actually went better than planned. “Walking through the front door now.”

Ryan strolled past Midas as if he were a guest, trotting up the marble steps and through the tiled archways leading to the Moorish upper lobby. It was redolent with tobacco and floor wax, and the muted lighting made it reminiscent of an old-world palace. Ryan pushed the call button on the rich mahogany paneling and took the time to look around. This place was like the White House, only bigger, and absent the somber air. The doors opened to an empty car, and Ryan stepped inside, glad to have the elevator to himself for the trip to da Rocha’s suite on the third floor. Spaniards ate dinner late, so most of the guests would still be out exploring the warm Seville nights or trying pacharán, the liqueur made from sloe berries and coffee favored in Spain as a digestif. Jack grimaced at the thought. His mom appreciated sloe gin in the winter, but he hadn’t inherited her taste for the stuff.

“Clear,” Jack said when he stepped off the elevator and into an empty hallway. The polished wood, arched ceilings, and gleaming tile floors reminded him of the old government buildings in D.C. — built before chintzy cubicles and cheap GSA carpet squares. “Our guy’s room is to the right and then on the right, five down.”

“Copy,” Midas said. “Boarding the car alone now. Be with you—”

“Company!” Jack cut him off, forcing a smile as he pretended to speak into the cell-phone buds that hung from his ear. Two men exited da Rocha’s suite, easing the door shut behind them. Jack had obviously caught them between an earlier quick peek into the hallway and their exit. Both men gave a startled jump when they saw him walking toward them. He gave them a nonchalant nod, looking past as if on the way to his own room. He even stumbled a bit, giving them the impression that he’d had too much good Spanish wine. Both men scanned up and down the hall, assessing the situation, and then began to walk toward Jack. Less than fifty feet away, Ryan raised his hand as if to cough, chancing a whisper into the mic on his neck loop. “Two bad guys. ’Bout to get real.”

“Twenty seconds,” Midas said.

“Gaspard’s men,” Ryan whispered quickly, and then cleared his throat before lowering his hand. He gave the oncoming men another friendly nod. Ignoring them would have been conspicuous, and the nod allowed him to make eye contact to see if either of them recognized him. One of them carried a laptop, the other was a broad, flat-nosed man who he recognized from Gaspard’s gray Mercedes in Portugal. It was a fair bet that this guy was in charge. No matter if it was a mob limo or the U.S. Secret Service, the big boss sat in the back. The driver was a specialist, good at his or her job but not particularly high up in the organization. Security leaders generally reserved shotgun for themselves. Flat Nose gave a sideways glance to his friend, a subtle shift of his eyes that said that hotel guest or not, Jack was a witness, which made him a threat.

Jack felt the surge of adrenaline he always felt when a fight was imminent. Metal detectors at various venues around Seville meant a couple of the team had to travel light — no weapons — or risk losing sight of their Russian rabbits if they ducked inside, an effective way to scrape away an armed tail. Tonight, Jack and Midas drew that duty.

Both Gaspard’s men wore loose short-sleeve shirts over T-shirts, untucked and open in front, perfect for breaking up the print of a concealed pistol. The bald man fell behind a step, protecting the laptop computer. Flat Nose put a hand behind his back, walking faster now, less than twenty feet from Jack.

Clark’s voice crackled in Jack’s earbuds. The comms net was good for about eight hundred meters but got spotty after that. A kilometer away and inside the hotel, the beginning of his message was garbled. “…your guy… leaving us. Possib… return… second location…”

Ryan was too close to respond now, too focused on the closing threat in front of him. Even if da Rocha ran straight to his room it would take him eight to ten minutes.

Whatever this was, it would be over long before that.

“Ding,” Clark said, “you and Caruso head to the Alfonso.” He watched da Rocha and Lucile Fournier leave the Russians’ hotel room on the screen of Adara’s iPad.

Chavez came back immediately, his voice unsteady from running down the stairs at La Giralda. “On the way.”

All of them had heard that Jack had seen someone coming out of da Rocha’s suite, presumably one of Hugo Gaspard’s bodyguards still out to avenge the death of their boss.

“Adara and I will stay here on station,” Clark said. “Ding, they’re out of comms range over there. Call me on my cell with a sitrep when you get there.”

“Roger that.” Chavez trotting now. “We should be ahead of them. We’re zigzagging southbound on the Plaza del Triunfo and then Miguel Mañara instead of going straight down Constitución.”

“The equipment?” Clark asked. The briefcase with the laser and receiving mic was purposely made of nondescript leather, but running with any kind of case was sure to arouse unwanted suspicion from police.

“Left it on the third floor, north corner behind the reliquary,” Caruso said.

The fact that the long-distance listening device was an expensive piece of equipment was not the issue. Tech like that was sure to make the news if it was found, and Clark didn’t want to spook the Russians if he could help it.

“On my way to pick it up,” Adara said. Retrieval of sensitive equipment often fell to her. Sexist though it was, getting past lonely security guards could be a little easier for a pretty woman.

Clark remained in the hotel room, watching the iPad. Where others might wear a trail in the carpet pacing to bleed off nervous energy, he sat motionless on the edge of his chair, hands on his knees, leaning forward slightly as if ready to pounce. A dozen different orders that he could give his guys ran through his head, things he would do, methods he would employ if he were in their shoes. But he held his tongue and listened. These guys were good. Trust came easy. Patience was an entirely different matter.

Most of the fights Jack had been involved in lasted just a few seconds — a couple went a bit longer. Six minutes — forget about it. Adara, the CrossFit diva of the team, had them doing “Fight Gone Bad” routines over the past couple of years. These killer cardio sessions consisted of three five-minute sets of assorted jumping, lifting, and throwing that were supposed to mimic the overall body workout of an actual fight. But even those dizzying, vomit-inducing routines lacked the shot of adrenaline and fear that went with facing another guy whose primary aim was to stab you in the liver.

Jack began to cheat his line to the right as he neared Hugo Gaspard’s men. The chime of the arriving elevator drew their attention down the hall. Midas barked something unintelligible, forcing them to split their focus and giving Jack the opportunity to close the distance between himself and Flat Nose, colliding with the big man’s chest before he could bring his arm around with the pistol. The Japanese called it butsukari—crashing in.

Jack squatted low the instant before he hit the Frenchman, keeping his body centered and pushing upward to drive the point of his shoulder into the other man’s solar plexus. The second man probably had a gun as well, but Jack used Flat Nose as a shield just in case that one decided to drop the laptop and engage.

A couple of inches shorter than Jack, Flat Nose had him by twenty pounds — and very little of it was fat. The Frenchman stumbled backward, but only a half-step, like a tree shaken by the ax blow, but certainly nowhere close to felled.

His hand already in position, Ryan slammed a hammer fist to the other man’s groin, this time driving him against the wall and pinning the gun hand there momentarily — long enough at least to give the guy with the laptop a side kick to the knee when he made a halfhearted advance.

Midas barreled by at that same moment, performing his own version of butsukari, and plowed into the guy with the laptop to smear him down the wall.

Ryan’s hand grafted upward, trapping the other man’s gun arm while he followed up the hammer fist with three rapid-fire knees. Flat Nose swung wildly with his left hand, catching Jack hard in the ear with a brutal slap. Reeling, Jack staggered just enough to allow the other man to free the pistol and bring it around. It was a small black thing with a stubby, piggish suppressor. A professional thug, Flat Nose didn’t have much in the way of technique, but he was extremely accomplished at gross motor skills. He didn’t worry about precision accuracy or who he happened to shoot, simply pulling the trigger as the gun arced toward Jack. Two rounds zinged down the hall toward the elevator. Jack got his hands up in time to parry the gun, deflecting a third shot upward so it slammed into a lighting sconce on the wall. Hot gases from the muzzle blast were close enough to sear a line in Jack’s cheek, narrowly missing his eye.

Braced by the wall, Flat Nose used it for leverage, pushing off to gain more space to employ the pistol. Jack ignored the left fist that now pummeled his kidney, and attacked the gun with both hands, arcing his knee out and then in, using a hooking motion to stun the nerves along Flat Nose’s outer thigh. Ryan’s foot slipped on the slick tile floor. This nearly caused him to go down and forced him to put all his weight on Flat Nose’s gun hand. The added pressure and resulting dead-leg from the knee caused the other fighter’s focus to shift just enough for Jack to yank the pistol sideways, attempting to wrest it from Flat Nose’s grasp. The Frenchman cursed, gripping the gun tighter, his finger convulsing on the trigger at the same moment the muzzle crossed his own forehead. The bullet took him just over the bridge of his nose.

Flat Nose fell away, sliding down the wall, leaving Jack holding the pistol. He spun to see Midas standing over the unconscious form of the other Frenchman. A laptop lay beside him on the floor.

Midas put a hand to his swollen nose, dabbing away a bit of blood.

“Throw a head-butt, earn yourself a throat punch,” he muttered. “Good trade.” His eyes fell to the dead man behind Jack. “You gotta go for the throat, Ryan. I’m not sure playing wild weasel with a handgun can be considered a tactic.”

Between the slap to one ear and the muzzle blast to the other, Jack only heard about half of what Midas was saying above the high-pitched squeal, but he got the gist of it.

He moved his aching jaw, unable to remember getting clocked in the face, but absolutely sure it had happened. “We need to get these bodies out of sight.”

“Copy that,” Midas said. “Eight minutes.”

Jack looked at him. “What do you mean eight minutes?”

Midas tapped his own ear. “Your comms are out.” He took the next twenty seconds to fill Ding and Caruso in on their present situation.

Ryan used the tip of his index finger to discover his earbud was missing, dislodged during the fight. He made a quick scan of the floor and found the flesh-colored piece of plastic along the baseboard just a few inches from Flat Nose’s elbow.

“…up in two,” he heard Ding say as he replaced the tiny device. “They won’t be far behind us. Get in touch with Gavin and see if he can image the laptop. Be best if we get it back in the room without da Rocha knowing it’s gone.”

Ryan helped Midas drag both Frenchmen to the stairwell before anyone happened out of a guest room or off the elevator, then trotted down the hall toward da Rocha’s room. There was a tray with a half-eaten room-service order on the floor three doors down the hall. Ryan pulled it over the bloodstains and broken glass from his fight, hoping da Rocha wouldn’t notice, and then called Gavin while Midas worked the lock on the room.

“Hey,” Biery whispered. Jack could hear another voice in the background.

“Are you in the office?”

“Intelligent Data and Security conference in Omaha,” Biery said. “I’ve never seen so many blond people in my life—”

Ryan gave him a thirty-second sitrep.

“You want me to image the computer remotely in six minutes?”

“Can you?”

“No,” Biery scoffed. “But you can drop in the malware from the thumb drive I issued everyone last month. You have it, right?”

Jack took out his keys and popped the endcap off a stubby single-cell flashlight attached to the ring, revealing the thumb drive concealed inside.

Ding got off the elevator, walking quickly to da Rocha’s suite.

“Caruso’s in the lobby,” he said. “He’ll give us a heads-up.”

Midas looked up from the suite door and smiled. “Got it.”

Ding remained in the hallway, walking slowly toward the elevator to keep watch while Jack and Midas slipped into da Rocha’s room.

Biery continued to give instructions. Ryan lowered the volume but put him on speaker so he could use both hands. “We’re gonna need his password.”

“That might be an issue,” Jack said.

“Maybe a birthday,” Biery offered. “An old pet, a girlfriend? Maybe he has it written somewhere near the computer.”

Jack looked around for the most likely spot for the laptop, hoping to leave the computer in the same location and condition Gaspard’s man had found it. If da Rocha was unaware of the encounter he’d continue to move forward, giving The Campus a chance to suss out more information about his deal with the Russians. The charging cord lay on the desk, still plugged into the wall. It was a safe bet Gaspard’s guy had snatched it from there. Ryan reattached the cord to the computer and picked up the aluminum briefcase from the floor. He used the clip of his ballpoint pen to shim the locks, feeling for the divot on each correct number as he rotated the drum. It took him less than thirty seconds to find the combination. Fortunately, both numbers were the same. Inside, he hit pay dirt with a little red notebook of ideas and passwords. It never ceased to amaze Ryan how many people went to the trouble of setting up an extra-secure password and then wrote it down on a notepad they kept in the computer desk or a locked briefcase, thinking that because it was made from aircraft aluminum and had two locks, it offered some kind of sacrosanct barrier. Ryan pitched the notebook to Midas while he booted up the computer.

“Read me that and then take a picture of it.”

Ryan typed while Midas read. He stopped looking at his watch, relying on Caruso and Ding to warn him.

The computer gave a soft chime when Ryan entered the correct password.

On the other end of the phone, Biery recognized the sound at once. “Insert the thumb drive and it will autoload.”

“Got it,” Ryan said. “How long will it take?”

“Three or four minutes.”

“It had better be three,” Midas said.

“Like I have any control over that,” Biery said.

“It’s working,” Ryan said.

“A GSM mic would come in handy right now,” the former Delta officer said, snapping photos of the notebook pages for future reference.

“No kidding,” Ryan said. There were lots of things that would have been nice — but pockets fill up quickly in tactical intelligence work. Often the only lockpick was a penknife and the only weapon little more than a steel pipe. Next to a flashlight, the item that got the most use was a credit card.

“A GSM mic,” Biery said. “Are you kidding me? Did you guys even come to the meeting? This malware is a thing of beauty, a phone-home masterpiece that hides as an innocuous system file and then calls us the moment he logs in and pops up on the network. You don’t need a GSM bug in the room. You’ll be able to take over the mic and camera in his computer. We’ll have keystrokes in real time, see what he’s seeing, read what he’s writing… You can even do things to his files when he’s not watching.”

“In the lobby!” Caruso said. “Heading to the elevator.”

Midas moved toward the door. “Time to haul ass, Jack.”

“I called both elevators to stall,” Ding said. “But that’s not going to buy you much more than a few seconds.”

“Thanks, Gav,” Ryan said. “Gotta go.” He slipped the phone into his pocket and then wiped a droplet of the Frenchman’s blood off the laptop as he watched the loading bar fill completely. “This room is full of intel,” he said.

“No time,” Midas said.

Midas pitched Ryan the notebook, and Ryan returned it to the aluminum briefcase, spinning the locks to the same numbers they’d been on before he tampered with them. Like Clark said, when it came to security it was all in the details. Overkill kept you alive. Ryan made a habit of noting where his combinations were when he left a briefcase unaccompanied, so he assumed everyone else was just as suspicious.

Ryan held up both hands, giving the workspace one last scan before ejecting the thumb drive and then closing the computer.

“Good to go,” he said.

“I hope we put it back in the right place,” Midas said. The door shut behind them and they turned to trot for the stairs.

“It was a best guess,” Jack said. “If we didn’t, maybe he’ll second-guess himself.”

Midas pulled open the door at the same moment the elevator chimed down the hall and the doors slid open with an audible rumble.

They’d just stepped over the bodies of Gaspard’s men when Ryan’s cell phone buzzed in his pocket. It was Gavin.

“Don’t forget to clear the ‘last device’ list.”

Jack kept his voice to a whisper, still moving down the stairs. “The what?”

“The computer keeps a record of devices and peripherals that are connected to it — video cameras, DVD players, thumb drives. He’ll be able to see you were on unless you delete it.”

“That ship has sailed, Gav,” Ryan said. “He’s already in the room and we’re out of there. How likely is he to notice it?”

Gavin was silent for a long time. “Depends,” he finally said. “On whether he’s more like you or more like me.”

“Okay,” Ryan said. “What does he have to do to see it?”

“Right-click the mouse,” Gavin said.

“Everyone good to go?” Clark said half an hour later, sitting at a sidewalk café on Avenida del Cid, approximately three blocks away from the Hotel Alfonso XIII. The thousands of people who’d attended the bullfights, mostly locals, had returned home but the streets around the Royal Alcázar park were still modestly crowded with tourists not quite wanting to give up on the vibrant Spanish nightlife.

Adara and Caruso sat at the table with Clark, while the others loitered at various points outside the hotel itself, making it a virtual meeting over comms. Adara had a view of the Russians’ rooms over her webcam. Gavin Biery was patched in via radio link.

By “good to go,” Clark meant physically. He knew Ryan and Midas had been in a scrap but he’d yet to lay eyes on them. They’d already told him they were fine — good to go — but Clark knew all too well that debilitating injuries had a way of showing up after the adrenaline of the incident wore off. Lucile Fournier had proven she was wicked good at killing people. He wanted everyone on their toes.

Midas said, “My nose is toast, but it’s been toasted before. I can still breathe with my mouth shut, and I can’t really get any uglier.” His tone was light, but they’d all been hurt before, and badly. The entire team took these reports seriously. If someone was operating at half speed, everyone needed to know.

“I’m good,” Jack said. “A couple of bruised ribs and some ringing in my ear, but I don’t think anything’s broken.”

“Roger that.” Clark moved on, taking them at their word. “So we’ll know when da Rocha opens his computer?”

“When he pops up on a network,” Gavin says. “His computer will send us a notification. The malware is designed to phone home to my system as well as whoever used their device to insert the program. In this case, it was Jack. I’ll contact you when I get an alert, just in case Jack happens to be otherwise occupied chasing some piece of tail through the streets of… wherever you are in the world.”

“Geez,” Ryan said. “Is that what you think we do?”

“Well,” Gavin said, chuckling, “not all of you.”

“Enough of that,” Clark said. “Good to have the redundancy. The point is that we’ve had no phone home from da Rocha’s computer as of yet. Maybe there’s a problem with the malware.”

“I doubt that, boss,” Midas said. “Gavin designed it to be robust as well as stealthy. It’s late. Maybe da Rocha just went to bed.”

Contrary to the public image of the knuckle-dragging Tier One military operator often imagined by the public, Midas and most of the guys in his cohort had advanced degrees, spoke at least two languages, and possessed a depth of knowledge and experience with phone traps, computer forensics, and other surveillance tech. Every Campus operator was accustomed to working with a variety of technical means, but of all of them, Midas was the most likely to trust it.

“Midas is right,” Caruso said. “From my vantage point through the window, it looked like the Russians were hanging plastic sheeting. Hindsight allows us to say they put it up to defeat any attempted surveillance, but it must have scared the shit out of da Rocha when he walked in and saw a kill room. Near-death experiences tend to spool up the drive to leave a little posterity on the planet, if you know what I mean. Good chance da Rocha and Fournier are just in there exploring their own mortality.”

Adara’s mic picked up her scoff.

“What?” Caruso said. “You know it’s true.”

Ding spoke next, bringing the conversation back on point. “We have some choices to make. Like you said, Mr. C., everybody we’ve got eyes on is involved in some kind of shit.”

“I’m not comfortable splitting up the team,” Clark said.

A good long-term surveillance operation on either da Rocha or the man they’d marked as the lead Russian would require double the number of people he had. The relatively small size of the tight-knit team offered the ability to change direction quickly, to lift and shift, but it brought limitations as well.

“Hard to tell if the Russians or da Rocha have the ball here,” Ding offered. “We need to follow whoever runs with it.”

“Agreed,” Clark said. “This da Rocha guy keeps showing up like a bad penny, and it’s always bloody when he does. We’re looking at the tip of the iceberg here. I want to know what we’re not seeing.”