Дэвид Балдаччи - King and Maxwell

He blinked and looked at her. “Great job,” he said quietly. He looked around the room. It was small, and the only pieces of furniture were the two chairs in which they sat. There was a window, but it was blacked out.

“Okay, I’m going to get your blindfold off. Lean your head toward me. It’ll be easier now that I can see.”

In less than a minute Kathy’s cloth dropped away.

They sat there staring at each other, visibly heartened by this small victory.

“Now we have to get these bindings off,” said Tyler.

“How about if we sit back-to-back? I can work on yours. I have really strong fingers.”

“All right, but we have to take it slow. They might hear the chairs scraping the floor.”

They managed to turn their chairs around as quietly as possible until they were back-to-back. Tyler could feel her fingers clenching and unclenching around the rope holding him.

“They’re tight,” she said, “but I feel them giving a bit.”

It took about thirty minutes, and Tyler could hear Kathy breathing hard with the effort. But then his hands were free. He undid the rope around his feet and then quickly freed her.

“Now what?” she said in a whisper.

Tyler pointed at the window. “If we can get out there, we can make a run for it.”

“What if they have someone posted outside?”

Tyler slid up his baggy pant leg. Strapped to his calf was a cylinder.

“Pepper spray. My dad. He’s kind of paranoid.”

They eased across to the window, taking their time because the floorboards were old and had a tendency to squeak.

Tyler slipped aside the black cloth covering the window and peered out.

“It’s dark outside,” he whispered. “That’s good for us.”

He examined the window lock. It was a simple one. He had the window up in another minute, taking care to slide it slowly in case it made any noise.

He passed through the open window first and then helped Kathy.

They stopped to look around. A black SUV was parked in the front. It was the same one Tyler had climbed into at the mall. They had driven away and then a cloth had been placed over his face and he had quickly fallen unconscious.

“Looks like we’re in the woods,” he said quietly to Kathy. She nodded, shivered, and said, “Which way?”

“Hey!”

They turned and saw a man standing on the porch.

“Run, Kathy,” yelled Tyler.

She turned and raced away. The man hoofed it after her. Tyler stepped in front of the man and blasted him in the eyes with the pepper spray. The man screamed, staggered, collided with Tyler, and they both went down in a tangle of arms and legs. Tyler punched and kicked at the blinded man until he saw something. Kathy was not running anymore.

A man shrouded in the darkness had placed a gun against her head.

Tyler instantly stopped struggling.

“Big mistake, Tyler, an unforgivable mistake,” said Alan Grant.

“Please, don’t hurt her,” Tyler yelled, tears flooding his eyes.

The gun fired.

“IT’S BEEN TWENTY-FOUR HOURS!” EXCLAIMED Sam Wingo.

“Yes it has,” replied Sean calmly.

They were at the motel where they had stayed the night, waiting for the phone to ring or a text to come from Tyler.

Michelle was leaning against the wall of the motel room. “And we told you they would do this to string you out, to make your nerves get the best of you.”

“And we know Kathy is with them,” added Sean. “The news story confirmed that she’s missing.”

Wingo looked miserable. “I know her parents. Her mom’s in the Air Force. All that was left… was a tennis racket and a can of balls on the sidewalk.”

“No one saw or heard anything,” said Michelle. “Which tells us these guys are pros.”

“But the good news is that although they’re aware we met, they don’t know that we’ve officially hooked up,” said Sean. “We’re going to provide backup that they might not anticipate.”

“We’ll have little time to prep,” added Michelle. “They’ll call and expect us to be there shortly thereafter.”

“How do we get back on the offensive?” asked Wingo. “I don’t like reacting to others, particularly when they have my son.”

“We’ve still got prep work to do,” said Sean.

“Prep work based on what?” asked Wingo.

“On being Secret Service agents,” replied Michelle.

“I’m Special Forces. If it comes to it, we’re used to close-quarter combat a lot more than you guys.”

Michelle looked at him. “But you liked all the guys you fought with?”

“Of course. You go in willing to die for the guy next to you.”

“Did you ever have to eat a bullet for someone you didn’t like?” asked Sean.

“No,” said Wingo.

“It kind of sucks,” added Michelle. “But it’s in the job description for the Secret Service.”

“And it gives you perspective,” amended Sean.

“Such as?” asked Wingo.

“Such as never let the other guys see what you’re looking at. It’s why we all wore reflective shades. Now let’s get to work.”

Grant was at the radio station.

The construction work was done. Those workers were now gone and had been replaced with another set. These were not muscular young men. They didn’t carry guns. They did not act macho. Their weapon was their brain. Their bullet was their keyboard. They were cyber warriors.

He made his way around the interior of the old building with the new guts that had transformed it into a state-of-the-art tech center with only one goal.

Focused mayhem.

That meant one act that would bring cataclysmic events across the globe. Grant didn’t really care about that part of the equation. Others could reap the benefits from that. He was just righting a wrong. It was that simple. He was not going to let his focus waver from that.

A reader outside the vault scanned his retina and he entered the space, the only one with access here. He sat in front of a bank of computers and studied each of them. Progress was being made. His bird in the sky was searching for what it needed. It was like a private detective looking for a thread that would provide him a solid lead, which would coalesce into a suspect that could end in an arrest and a conviction.

Only the elements were bunches of ones and zeros instead of flesh and blood, and his sleuthing was confined to wireless data zipping across the ether. The system they were trying to crack had more than thirty million lines of code. There were many ways inside, but once inside the malware to be planted had to remain hidden. And that limited the possible ports of entry.

Grant continued to watch the unique confrontation taking place on the computer screen. It was a delicate ballet of choreographed movements, feints, probes, counterattacks, and more sparring. It was actually far more intriguing than any clash on the ground involving guns and bombs. They were brutally efficient killing devices. But they lacked the intellectual purity, the high level of sophistication needed to carry off something like this.

With any other target Grant would have been successful by now. But his target wasn’t just any target. It was heavily protected. It was known to have threats against it. It was one of the most famous targets in the world, in fact. And it had never been seriously threatened. But that didn’t make it invulnerable. That just made it challenging, and Grant loved a challenge. Even the best security sometimes grew lax as year after year passed and no successful attack was ever launched against it. That was why he had a chance to do what no one else had ever done before.

And he noted, with a degree of confidence, that the barriers to entry depicted on the screen were falling one by one. In fact, given this burn rate, he would be through in a shorter period of time than he thought.