Hidden Allegiance: A Jackson Quick Adventure Read online

  “I looked at the order already and—”

  “And nothing!” Mack is amped. “I’m labeling this with a piece of tape and a marker. It reads Do Not Touch—Security Protocol Testing!!” The marker squeaks out the letters as he writes them. “Now go back while I finish the setup. Otherwise, I’ll report you to your superior for insubordination and the Office of Personnel Security and Suitability will make sure your five year review happens early and often.”

  “Fine,” Nieto ignores his first instinct and succumbs to Mack’s force of will.

  “It’s good to go,” Mack whispers to me. “Corkscrew can go to work.” He disconnects the call.

  “That was close,” Bella exhales and sinks in the driver’s seat. “Thankfully it’s done.”

  “Oh,” I laugh. “It’s just getting started.”

  CHAPTER 14

  “Do we have to face west?” Bella lowers the sun visor to block the nuclear orange glow blasting into her eyes. “This is killing me.”

  “Corkscrew told us to meet here ahead of tonight’s adventure,” I remind her. “Sunset is in twenty minutes.”

  “So why are we here already?” Her blood sugar must be low. “We could be grabbing something to eat.” Bingo.

  “Better to be early than late.” I toss her an energy bar from Wal-Mart. “I’ve been saving this for you.”

  She rips open the foil and bites off half of the bar. “You’re such a gentleman.” She squirrels a huge chunk in her cheeks and takes another bite.

  “Whoa!” I raise my hands. “Nobody’s fighting you for it. The bar’s gonna be there.”

  She laughs, spitting out a little bit of the bar, which makes me laugh. She’s adorable even when cranky and malnourished.

  “I love you.”

  “I love you too,” she says, though it sounds more like, “I grub boo too.”

  We’re still laughing at each other when a black Suburban pulls up next to us in the parking lot behind a vacant warehouse. The driver rolls down his window. I roll down mine.

  “She coming?” Mack asks me, handing me George’s laptop.

  “As far as I know,” I say, tossing the computer onto the back seat. “She indicated you did what you needed to do.”

  “Any chance she’ll double cross us?”

  Bella leans across me to say to Mack, “There’s always a chance. Right, Mack?” Her tone is sarcasm mixed with energy bar.

  “Point taken, Bella,” he says with a salute. “I’m out of here, if you’re good with it. I’ll get things set for phase two.”

  “Okay,” I nod. “Good work today.” I thank him for his help and he speeds off to catch a commercial flight with his airtight false identification.

  “You think we can pull this off, Jackson?”

  “I don’t know. But we’re a third of the way there.”

  Bella washes down the bar with bottled water as another vehicle pulls into the lot. It’s a plain white bread truck with Pennsylvania plates. Rays of sunlight are fighting against the horizon, hanging on as long as they can. The van pulls directly in front of us, parking perpendicular to our SUV. The rear door slides open with a bang and the hacker emerges. She hops onto the gravel lot, dust kicking up dramatically as she trudges to Bella on the driver’s side.

  “You ready for this?” She asks, sniffing and crinkling her nose like a rabbit. “It’s gonna happen fast. You’ll have to be on your game.” She pulls her hoodie off of her head, revealing an avant garde haircut that says, “I’m so different, I’m just like everyone else who wants to be perceived as different.”

  It’s shaved along the right side, her ear decorated with a half dozen piercings. The left side is longer, curling forward toward her chin. A severe part, missing the green die staining the rest of her hair, gives her face an angular look not as obvious with the hoodie up and drawn tight. Still, her eyes are round, the whites bright and the pupils large.

  “We’re ready,” Bella assures the hacker. “We know what to expect.”

  “Here are some earpieces.” She opens her hand, revealing two flesh colored beans. “I’ll have to talk you through security as I work the system. They’re one way. You can’t talk to me.”

  “These work through phones or what?” I ask.

  “They’re radio,” she nods at the piece in Bella’s hand. “VHF digital. Good penetrating capabilities. Less line of sight needed,” she says. “I don’t want to rely on a cell signal for this. Plus, there’s supposed to be rough weather tonight. A front’s moving through. Two-way is better.”

  “How will you know where we are?” Bella asks. “I mean, how will you know what security to punch at the right time?”

  “I’ll be tracking you with these,” Corkscrew produces two rectangular white boxes. They fit in the palm of her hand. “Got them on Amazon. Cheap but effective. Slip them in your pockets and these little dudes will pinpoint where you are.”

  “What are they exactly?” Bella takes both of them, flipping them over in her hand. “GPS trackers?”

  Corkscrew nods. “Real time. Accurate to within five feet. Batteries last a couple of weeks. I can set up alerts if you’re heading outside of the desired path. It’s satellite and map view of your location. It also leaves breadcrumbs for your return trip out of the facility.”

  “What does that mean?” Bella hands me my device. It’s lightweight and feels cheap.

  “Breadcrumbs are electronic markers,” Corkscrew explains. “They’re like real breadcrumbs you’d leave to prevent yourself from getting lost in the woods. It’ll help me more than you. I’ll have you pulled up on one of my displays.”

  “Why not use the OnStar in the Suburban, since you hacked into it before? Doesn’t it have GPS?”

  “Yessss,” Corkscrew says, sounding like a frustrated fifteen-year-old whose mother just asked her to make her bed. “But it’s not the same. It doesn’t track the same way and it’s not as accurate.”

  “Why can’t we communicate with you?” Bella asks

  “I don’t want you talking. Enough questions, okay?” Corkscrew pleads. “I know what I’m doing.”

  “I get that, but—”

  “Remember when the Chinese hacked the U.S. Postal Service or the time when they got into the servers for the National Weather Service? They shut down their satellite access for days, remember?”

  “Vaguely,” Bella responds.

  “It wasn’t the Chinese,” Corkscrew folds her arms across her chest, arching her back to stick out her chest. She looks like a rapper on a cheaply produced music video.

  Bella rolls her eyes. “Good for you.”

  “I’ve done a lot of homework,” Corkscrew explains. “Your friend Spencer and I have been working this up for a while. We just needed…” she searches for the right word with her hands until she finds it, “partners to help us execute it.”

  “You say ‘us’ like you’re a team,” Bella infers.

  “Not a team so much,” Corkscrew smirks, her face splitting into the closest thing to a smile she can muster. “I’m a gun for hire.” She forms her hand into the shape of a gun and puts her index finger to her lips, blowing onto it. “No different than the two of you. I’m just more expensive.”

  “Make sure he pays you up front,” I warn.

  Corkscrew throws her hoodie back over her head. “You won’t see me again,” she says. “Either way this goes down, I disappear.”

  “Okay,” Bella says, not impressed with the drama as she starts to roll up the window.

  “One more thing,” Corkscrew says, slipping her hand onto the window. “Your buddy the governor is dead.”

  “We heard,” I acknowledge.

  “Sir Spencer’s kinda wondering how that happened.” She looks at me, the semblance of a smile gone. She raps on the windowsill and spins on her booted heel, walking back to the van.
/>   “What is that supposed to mean?” Bella watches the hacker climb into the van and tug the door closed.

  “It’s a warning.”

  “You think he knows we’re working with Blogis too?” Bella whispers, as if the hacker could hear us.

  “Maybe, maybe not. It could be a bluff.”

  “If it’s not?”

  “Does it matter?” We’re in so deep that we can’t stop now. We can’t call it off.

  “Probably not.” She shifts into drive. “We’re screwed no matter how this ends.” It’s the first time I’ve heard her parrot my negativity. She turns and blows me a kiss. “I still love you.”

  “I love your enthusiasm,” I say pulling my seatbelt across my lap as she accelerates into light traffic. Can’t ever be too careful.

  ***

  The trees lining Upton Road near Brookhaven National Laboratory are rustling from the slight breeze sweeping across Long Island from the Atlantic. A low-pressure system swirling offshore has the temperature dropping by the minute. I can feel it in my knee. The ache grows with every incremental drop in barometric pressure.

  The moon peeks out from behind some clouds, backlit by the satellite’s reflected sunlight, before disappearing again. The clouds are moving quickly from the southeast. In the distance, there’s the faint flash of lightning.

  “Of course,” says Bella. “The weather would turn on us.”

  “It was worse at Chernobyl,” I say, reminding Bella of our adventure in that radioactive wasteland, securing a part of the neutrino process before getting chased, lost, and barely escaping with our lives. “Plus there were a lot of bullets flying at us.”

  “Good point.” Her shoulders are raised, held tight against her body to protect her from the chill that’s settled into the SUV. The engine is off and we’re awaiting the go-ahead from Corkscrew.

  We’re parked off of Upton Road, near the facility’s North Gate. It closes at 5:30 and is accessible with a pass card. Corkscrew is parked in the apartment area, south of the main facility, next to the laundry building. She figured she could park her van there, amongst the other cars and trucks in the lot, without anyone noticing. I suggested we park there too, but the hacker had her plan set in stone. She said security was easier to work if we came in from the North.

  Brookhaven is laid out like a college campus with probably close to one hundred buildings. Aside from the two dozen in the apartment area, BNL is a series of laboratories and research centers.

  It’s as if Arthur Hailey named the buildings. There’s the Tandem Van de Graff Cyclotron, the Linac Isotope Producer, the National Synchrotron Light Source I and II, and the Star Detector Wide Angle Hall.

  Star Detector is as close as I can get to understanding what goes on inside any of them. And I’m just guessing that’s where they detect stars.

  Brookhaven gets most of its funding from the U.S. Department of Energy, so there’s a lot of high level work happening here and has been for decades. I read online it was opened after World War II on the site of a former Army post specializing in post-war rehabilitation. It makes sense. From the pictures I’ve seen of it, it looks like a military installation with a utilitarian feel.

  “It’s eight o’clock,” Bella says. “She should contact us in five minutes.”

  “She’s testing the earpiece.” I tap my left ear. “She’s playing Taylor Swift.”

  “Seriously?” Bella pinches the earpiece between her thumb and index finger, inserting it into her right ear. “Oh lord,” she sighs. “This is akin to the stuff I’ve heard the CIA does to soften up detainees.”

  I check my revolver, ensuring all six chambers are loaded.

  “Why are you bringing that?” Bella asks. “We’re not supposed to hurt anyone.”

  “Better safe than sorry,” I explain and hand her the Kimber Micro-Carry. “Take this.”

  “I don’t—”

  “Just take it, Bella.”

  “What about the tasers Mack gave us?” she holds up the crude device made from a disposable camera. “Why don’t we just take these?”

  “We can take those,” I agree. “But they’re for close-up, stun-someone-for-just-a-second-to-gain-the-upper-hand, kind of stuff. They won’t really protect you if it comes down to it.”

  “Fine.” She relents and takes the handgun. “It’s loaded?”

  “Yep.”

  The Taylor Swift music goes silent mid twang. “If you can hear me, text me the number three six nine,” says the hacker. “If Bella can hear me, text the number two four six.”

  I punch both sets of numbers into my phone and hit send.

  “Good,” says Corkscrew. “I see both of you on the GPS map, so the tracker’s working.” Her fingers are clacking away at a keyboard. “I need you to put the Suburban in drive and move south on Upton Road. Do not exceed thirty miles per hour.”

  Bella pulls onto Upton Road and turns right, heading south toward the main campus. To our right, traffic whirs by in both directions on a parkway running parallel to Upton. In less than a minute we approach a gated entrance. The guard booth is dark. There’s an automatic card reader alit in red on the driver’s side.

  “Give me a second,” says Corkscrew, typing feverishly. “There.”

  The red light turns green and the gate arm swings up. Bella drives past the gate. “So far, so good,” she mumbles.

  “You’re going to make a left just past the Linear Accelerator,” says the hacker. “That’s Michelson Street.”

  Bella turns left onto Michelson, driving past a long narrow building which is glowing orange from the lights illuminating its facade. “I guess that’s the Linear Accelerator,” she points at the facility.

  “Follow this road until it forks,” Corkscrew instructs. “Go left and drive past building 938. It’ll be on your left. It looks like a shed. Then make a left. It should be coming up… now.”

  Bella swings the steering wheel to the left. The headlights sweep onto the short road in front of us, freezing a mole in the middle of the pavement. Bella slams on the brakes, jerking me forward into a locked seatbelt.

  “Whoa!” I snap, bracing myself against the dash with my forearm.

  “Sorry,” she says, “I just didn’t want to hit that mole.”

  “Too late.” The rodent is in a defensive posture, fighting off two birds intent on eating him. One of the birds hops toward the mole and pecks at his back, and then the other takes its turn. “He’s already dying.”

  “You’re stopped,” says Corkscrew. “I didn’t tell you to stop. Keep going. You’re there. The road curves to the right and then sharply to the left. There’s a short concrete path to the right between two clumps of trees. Park there between the two buildings closest to that path.”

  Bella follows Corkscrews directions, navigating between the trees and onto the worn path. There’s a long, narrow space between two parallel wings of Building 197 extending toward the path. Bella drives past the space about a car length and then reverses, slipping the SUV in between them tailgate first.

  “Just in case we need to leave in a hurry,” she explains, “it’s probably better to back in. Right?”

  “Good idea!” I pull a set of ID badges from the glove box, handing Bella hers and slipping mine around my neck with the attached lanyard. “Here you go, Olivia.”

  “Very funny, Alex.” She shuts off the engine and we sit in the dark for close to a minute, awaiting instructions from Corkscrew.

  “Okay,” the hacker says, breaking the silence. “We should be good to go. There should be a rear entrance to the building. Get out of the SUV and walk back toward the road. At the end of the wing to your left, facing some trees, there’s an access panel and coded door.”

  We hop out of the Suburban and quietly shut our doors. I shove the six shooter into my waist band, covering it with my untucked shirt.

&nb
sp; “It’s gotten colder,” Bella comments as we turn the corner to the end of the building. “And it smells like it’s about to rain.”

  “You should see the panel now,” Corkscrew interrupts. “It’s to the right of the door.”

  It looks like a miniature ATM with a key panel at the bottom, a slot for a card to the side, and a camera at the top. In the middle is a 6x6 inch screen. Above the wall mounted machine is a black placard inscribed with plain white lettering: Nonproliferation & National Security Department

  “There’s a three step process here,” Corkscrew explains. “I’ve input your data here. Both of you will have to run through the protocol, or an alarm will sound when you pass the threshold of the door.”

  Bella looks over at me, the dim light casting a dark shadow across her face. “I’m not so sure about this.”

  “We’ll be fine,” I assure her, putting my hand on her shoulder. “Just do exactly what she tells us to do.”

  “Bella,” Corkscrew says, “ladies first. Step to the panel and slide your BNL access card through the card reader. It should activate the LCD screen above the keypad. I’ll give you ten seconds.”

  Bella swipes her card through the reader and the screen illuminates.

  Brookhaven National Laboratory, DOE

  NNSD Building 197, Main Campus

  Welcome Dr. Olivia Triblet!

  Please enter facility access code

  “It should be asking you to enter a code,” Corkscrew chirps. “Enter your birthdate. Punch in the two-digit month, two-digit day, four-digit year. Then follow the instructions on the screen. When you’re finished, the door should unlock. Go inside by yourself. Let Jackson repeat the process and enter on his own. I’ll give you both a couple of minutes.”

  Bella enters the eight-digit code and the screen changes.

  Brookhaven National Laboratory, DOE