John Nance - Lockout

“Yes. Why not?”

“How much time do we have?”

“Before what?”

“Before running out of gas.”

“Maybe two hours. Maybe a bit more.”

“Then we should do it quickly,” Frank said.

“Agreed,” Dan replied, adjusted the gloves, and grabbed the two ends, screwing them back into uniformity.

When the job was complete, Dan sat back, aware Frank was looking at him.

“What?”

“That was precisely my question, Captain. What do we do now?” Frank asked.

“We start experimenting again and yanking relays, as fast as we can.”

Silver Springs, Maryland (9:25 p.m. EST / 0325 Zulu)

“So where do we run to, Mr. Bond?” Jenny asked, only slightly amused with her reference.

Will Bronson had been all but hunched over the steering wheel, guiding them into the night traffic southbound toward the heart of DC and obviously deep in thought. He looked over now almost in lack of recognition, a smile returning uneasily to his face as his eyes focused on her.

“Sorry. I was concentrating on where to go.”

“Any Starbucks will do,” Jenny said, not in jest.

“Too public, and a public server will be child’s play to trace.”

“Who cares, Will. We’re running out of time. If I had a portable hot spot… wait, I do!”

“Jenny, we’re being watched!”

“Okay, and I’m willing to trade my damned job for a planeload of passengers. Aren’t you?”

“That’s not the point.”

“What is the point, Will? I think I have the code figured out, but we need to be broadcasting it everywhere. I have only one transponder I know that might be usable. Who else can we turn to?” Jenny fumbled in her purse, pulled out her smartphone, and worked the screen to trigger its internal hotspot.

He was shaking his head and breathing a bit too hard, and Jenny heard the indecision in his voice.

“I think I know where to go for a secure channel, but… you’re right about the lack of time.”

“Then hush up for a moment and let me work this,” she replied, head down, making a tiny mental note that “hush up” might be too Southern a way to shush a spy. Then again, he was acting less and less like a serenely confident operative.

She pulled her laptop out of its case and fired it up, connecting to the cell phone’s Wi-Fi channel, then retracing her previous steps to the entry portal of the satellite array she had previously tried. She entered the appropriate string of keystrokes and tried to suppress the urge to scream “Dammit!” when the entry denial included confirmation that her previous attempt had never made it through their firewalls.

“This isn’t working, Will,” she said in disgust, tucking back an errant cascade of hair behind her ear.

“Okay, then we’ll have to find that secure entry point.”

“No. No, you don’t understand,” she said, turning to him. “I only had one satellite channel, and it won’t let me in. We don’t just need a place to get into the Internet, we need a transponder or about a dozen of them. I think I’d better call Seth at home, and in the clear.”

“No!”

“Why not? No way he’s the bad guy. I know you can’t guarantee that, but I can.”

“You can’t call him in the clear, Jenny. And I promise you he doesn’t have the horsepower to intervene and find a transponder for us.”

“Yeah? Well, Sherlock, find me someone who does, or I see no choice but to try.”

“I’m working on it,” he replied, negotiating Dupont Circle and steering them down Massachusetts Avenue.

Quietly, she opened a direct to text program and typed the most innocuous message she could think of.

“Seth, I’m with Will and have unlock solution for P10, but one hour left and can’t broadcast. Need advice! Jen”

Jenny hit the send button and simultaneously collapsed the program just as an oath reached her from the driver’s seat.

“Oh, crap!”

“What?”

Will Bronson was staring intently into the rearview mirror.

“We’ve got a tail.”

“What? Really?” Jenny whirled around in the seat, her eyes jumping through a series of headlights behind them, none of them close enough to finger as a tail.

“I don’t see who you’re talking about.”

“He’s back there. Came around the circle trying to stay aloof. Obviously a solo, not a team, which is good.”

“You’re sure?”

“I’m rather well trained in this, and high performance driving response,” he shot back, eyes darting between the crowded street ahead and the rearview mirror before screeching into a sudden left turn across traffic and darting into a side street, almost losing control in the process and barely missing a parked SUV.

“JESUS, Will!”

“Sorry.”

“What are you afraid of, anyway? That they’ll shoot us?”

“We need a portal and a transponder, and being in any sort of custody won’t achieve that in time,” he replied.

“Custody? What the hell do you mean custody?” she said, hanging onto the handgrip above the passenger window as he accelerated through the back streets.

“Not now. Gotta concentrate.”

Once more she turned to search behind them, seeing nothing that would qualify as a chase car, yet Will was throwing them through desperate maneuvers. Slowly, a rising tide of doubt began to trickle into the corners of her mind, where uncertainty had already created a void. The sudden departure from the safe house, no overheard voices on his phone calls, now a phantom chasing them, and a potentially precious cargo she couldn’t deliver.

There was a tiny vibration in her hand and she looked down at her phone’s screen to see an answer from Seth:

Company says Will is rogue and dangerous. Get away now, call me ASAP! Use any excuse.

Situation Room, The White House (10:28 p.m. EST / 0328 Zulu)

“Sir, Piper may be in DC right now.”

Walter Randolph switched the handset to his other ear and let Jason Duke’s words coalesce.

“Talk to me, Jason.”

“We know DIA is searching for their man who was at NSA this morning, the one we’ve wondered about. You said DIA briefed the president someone had gone rogue, and we think it’s the same guy, named Will Bronson. We don’t have much on him. If he’s an operative, he’s a new one or we haven’t been watching appropriately.”

“How do Bronson and Piper match up, Jason?”

“There’s an NSA woman… a Jenny Reynolds… involved somehow, an analyst, purely a desk type. She and Bronson are together. Apparently Bronson was working with her earlier at NSA headquarters.”

“Okay.”

“But we think the real Bronson never made it to NSA. God knows where he is, but we think this Jenny Reynolds woman is with William Piper and has no idea who he is. “

“Why?”

“Sorry?”

“Why would Piper be spending time with her? Are they lovers?”

“Could be, I suppose, although our source is her boss and he doesn’t think she’d ever met Bronson or Piper before. But here’s the thing. If this is Piper, and he is behind whatever satellite transmission triggered an internal hijack of that aircraft, and if he’s working for Lavi, the last thing he wants is someone figuring out how to send a countermanding code and turn it off. We’re trying to find Bronson, looking in his apartment, car, et cetera. Highly likely we’ll find a professionally disposed of body. Meanwhile DIA is going nuts and whipping everyone into a find-Bronson frenzy. We’re afraid they’ll shoot him if they find him.”

“Purposefully?”

“No, sir. Overreaction. Even the police are involved now.”