Jerome Preisler - Net Force--Attack Protocol

Wheeler had noticed that the bottom of the shaft had a smaller circumference than its mouth. Looking straight down into the well shaft was like peering into the wide end of a funnel. The floor was tiled and had a faded red symbol in the center. He recognized it at once. As a CIA man, he should have.

It was a compass rose—this version with four triangular arrows pointed in the cardinal directions.

“Do you see what I see?” Begai peered into the well. “We hit the jackpot.”

Wheeler grunted his acknowledgment. The kid reminded him of the guys on his old SFOD-D unit. No fear, no low gear, everything full speed ahead. But he was right. They had found what they came for. There was a computer workstation on each arrow of the rose. Setups like the ones used by floor traders in stock exchanges. Or by serious hackers. Horseshoe desks with multiple terminals, multipanel flat-screen display rigs and freestanding acoustic partitions.

No one was at the stations. The desk surfaces were bare. The monitors were all dark.

Wheeler felt inclined to hurry up and grab whatever he could out of the computers. But he also wanted to know more about what the hell he and Begai might be getting into down there.

He suddenly visualized Carmody outside the tower room, asking Pickles to identify the dragon crest hung above the armor and weapons. During their haunted-house mission rehearsals at Janus, the boss had stressed thinking of the AI as a full-fledged teammate. He might have trouble typing on a keyboard with his big, clunky fingers but he was good at utilizing technology. Wheeler figured it was time to get with the program.

He looked straight down into the shaft.

“Pickles, tell me what I’m seeing,” he said. Then, using Begai’s call name, “Patch in Four-Boxer, proximate data sharing.”

The AI synched their helmet terminals, accessed Wheeler’s helmet camera, and tracked the position of his head and eyes to determine where he was looking. It took just three seconds to run a successful image recognition and project its findings onto their HUDs.

Initiation well . Circa 11th century CE. Cross-reference: Inverted Tower of Sintra, Quinta da Regaleira, Portugal. Origin: Order of Knights Templar.

Wheeler exhaled heavily. Knights Templar. They were way, way through the looking glass here.

He stayed put another moment, studying the bottom of the well. There were more arches around the rose, one at each of the four cardinal points.

“Pickles, zoom in,” he said.

The AI tracked and zoomed. Each arch framed a wooden door with steel bands and rivets and hardware that looked exactly like the one Begai had blown up on the rampart.

“Can you tell me what’s behind the doors?”

The Sintra comparison suggests a high likelihood of radial passages. No other data is available.

Which wasn’t good. Once they were down at the bottom, he and Begai would be surrounded. By those doors, and the passages behind them, and potentially anyone laying an ambush inside the passages.

But the computers were why they had come this far. They couldn’t access them from where they were right now. They had to go down there.

He looked over at Begai. “Give me a minute,” he said.

He turned back toward the rotating door and stepped through to the chamber where Sparrow was standing lookout. He didn’t like leaving him. But there was no getting around it.

“Stand your post,” he said and quickly explained what he’d found on the other side of the door. “Keep your eyes open. We won’t take long. Signal us if you get a whiff of anyone getting close.”

Sparrow nodded.

“Questions?” Wheeler said.

“Only one, sir. What if they don’t come at you from up here?” He pointed at the door opening with his chin. “What if they come from down there?”

“Then listen for my orders. If you don’t hear from me, get out of this hellhole.”

Sparrow was silent.

“Don’t be a hero,” Wheeler said a bit more firmly. “Okay?”

Sparrow looked reluctant. But he was, above all, a soldier.

“Yes, sir,” he said.

Wheeler clapped him on the shoulder. Then he turned and hurried back to the well.

9

Baneasa, Romania

(FOB Janus)

Mario Perez hunkered with Laura Cruz in the cramped darkness of the freezer chest, his ear pressed to its sidewall, listening carefully to the hedgehog’s swift approach. It was returning from the far end of the row of Quonsets and sounded like it had almost reached the alley between Laura’s hut and the one next to it.

This would be its third probe in exactly twenty minutes. Mario had timed its comings and goings with his smart watch; he wasn’t sure why, not altogether, but he thought that might turn out to be important.

He heard the robot swing around into the alley. There wasn’t much here for it to inspect—the hobbled bicycle, the trash bin, the kitchen chairs, and the discarded freezer where he and Laura were hiding out. That was all. Even so, it had returned twice after prowling off down the line of huts.

Searching.

Searching for them .

He kept an eye on his watch. Fifteen seconds passed. Thirty. The ’hog was theoretically designed for stealthy surveillance, but in reality it was a big, wide, heavy contraption with a lot of moving components, and the alley was a tight squeeze. If somebody knew what to listen for, it was easy to picture its movements out there.

Mario knew. He could hear the metallic clatter of the ’hog tilting the trash bin for a third inspection. He could hear it lifting the bike from against the side of the hut to search behind it. He could hear the click of metal bearings, the hum of servos and battery-powered drives, the high-pitched whine of torque manipulators, the soft slide of its pincer arm extending and retracting, and the crackle of its treads rolling over the frigid, snow-covered ground. He could hear the combined, complementary actions of its different mechanical parts and visualize the ’hog probing, testing, and identifying the objects around it.

Whirrr. Click. Whirrrrrrrrr.

He checked the time again. Almost two minutes had ticked by. Beside him, Laura sat with her hand protectively covering the small lump in her peacoat that was Buttons the cat. She had tucked him under its front flap to keep him calm, and so far it had worked. He was still and quiet. Mario hoped to God he stayed that way.

Two minutes now. He heard a clattering racket outside. The ’hog moving the trash bin around again. Inside the chest, meanwhile, it was getting very warm, very fast. Laura’s breathing had become arduous, and that wasn’t good. Mario also felt the lack of air.

He listened and waited and thought. Sweat trickled down his forehead. The ’hog kept searching. It stopped and started, edged this way and that, circled, advanced, backtracked, about-faced...

There was a sudden, loud knock against the freezer. The ’hog had bumped it hard, possibly an accidental collision, hitting the outside of the metal panel Mario was leaning on. He felt it quiver against his cheek, felt Laura tense against him, and glanced over at her without turning his head—a hard, quick flick of his eyes that cautioned her not to move or make a sound.

She stared back at him. Her face was barely two inches from his own, its features pale and ghostly in the bluish radiance of his watch. He saw tension in it, and he saw fear. But he didn’t see panic.

They waited together in silence, neither of them moving a muscle.

Click, sssst, click.

Twenty seconds passed.

They waited.

And then, finally, they heard the ’hog withdraw, the sounds of its mechanical functions growing fainter and fainter as it once again left the alley to range off along the row of Quonsets. Five seconds later, it was out of earshot.