David Koepp - Cold Storage

“Active shooter,” Griffin said.

He hadn’t felt this good in years.

Roberto was on Highway 73, just eight miles outside of Atchison, when Abigail’s call came. His cell phone was still sealed in the pouch, so he’d left his laptop open on the passenger seat, using an AT&T card to stay connected to the internet. He put in his Bluetooth, hit the space bar to answer, and listened while she explained the latest development from inside the storage place.

He wasn’t quite sure he actually understood. “They left? What do you mean they left?”

“They’re not in the unit.”

“Why the hell not?”

“She said there were others inside the facility and they had to warn them.”

“Great. They’re noble. How many others?”

“She didn’t say.”

“Can you get her back on the phone?”

“I’ve tried four times. She doesn’t answer.”

“How long ago was this?”

“Less than two minutes.”

“What about the other person?” he asked. “The infected one, outside their door.”

“She didn’t say.”

“You didn’t ask?”

“It was a very short conversation. She hung up on me. You know everything I know.”

“Okay,” he said, thinking. “Okay. Okay.” He repeated everything she’d just said, because that’s what he’d been taught forty years ago. “Naomi told you she and the other clean body were leaving the storage unit because they heard others had arrived. She did not say how many. You have not had contact with her since. This was about two minutes ago. Do I have that right?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Do you know their names?” he asked.

“Yes.”

Roberto thought quickly. Damage assessment, diminishing returns, risk versus reward, evaluating the rotten situation and deciding on the least rotten course of action. He had an idea, but it meant widening the circle. Could help, but it would have to be a cloudless night. He put down his window, stuck his head outside, and looked up. The sky directly overhead was clear, a brilliant canopy of stars. Okay, they got lucky on the weather. He put the window back up.

“I’m going to need some aerial help,” he said into the phone.

There was a pause on the other end. “I don’t see how that’s possible.”

“Anything’s possible, Abigail. Some things are just more possible than others.”

“I don’t have those types of resources.”

“I know exactly what kinds of resources you do and do not have, okay?” He didn’t mean to snap at her, and he softened his tone. He had exactly one ally at the moment and couldn’t afford to lose her.

“You want satellite reconnaissance.” She said it the way someone would say, “You want a billion dollars.”

“I want a Global Hawk directly overhead at ten thousand feet, but we’d never get one here from Edwards in time. I’ll settle for a Keyhole. A ten-minute redirect would do it.”

“That would require attorney general approval.”

“Yeah, if we were going that route. But we’re a little more informal on this one.”

“You’re crazy. Operationally, I mean. You’re almost delusional.”

“No, I’m ambitious, Abigail, and so are you. Come on, who do you know at the NRO?” The National Reconnaissance Office handled coordination of surveillance satellites and dissemination of data within and among the NSA, CIA, FBI, and Homeland Security.

“I don’t know anybody there,” she said with irritation.

“Can you please lose the attitude? I will be on-site in nine minutes.” He looked down at his speed and saw he was over eighty. He lightened up on the gas.

There was another pause on the other end of the line, then Abigail’s voice came back, still tentative, but he could almost feel her mind engaging with the problem. “My friend Stephanie dates a guy at the ADF-E.” The Aerospace Data Facility–East was located just on the other side of Fort Belvoir and was the operational hub of reconnaissance satellites all over the world.

“See?” Roberto said. “You see what you can do?”

“But I’d have to wake her up—he’d have to be on duty—”

“We’ll need a few things to break our way, no question.”

“I’ll call you back.”

“Wait,” he said. “Have you ever met this guy?”

“No. I saw a picture of him once.”

“Who’s better looking, him or Stephanie?”

“I don’t know. Do we really have time for that?”

“Stephanie, I mean, Abigail—goddammit.” He was getting tired and seriously cranky. “Please just answer the question. Who is better looking?”

“Stephanie is gorgeous. She’s way out of his league.”

“That’s our first break right there. Wake her up. You have the coordinates already. I need eyes overhead in five minutes. If any infected people leave that place, I need to know how many there are and where they go. Got it?”

“Got it.”

“And get me some personal information on both of the people inside that place. The clean ones. Work history, favorite ice cream, whatever you can come up with, I might need it. Understood?”

“Understood.” Abigail hung up to get to work.

Roberto pulled out the earpiece and closed the laptop. He allowed himself a tiny sigh. This was sort of, possibly, maybe going to work out. He’d forgotten how many people he knew and how good he was at getting the best out of the ones he didn’t. Wrinkles appeared, and he ironed them out. There’s just no substitute for experience. You take a lifetime of acquired skills, season it with the wisdom of age, throw in some good instincts and reflexes—you can’t learn those, you have to bring ’em to the party—and you’ve got yourself a pretty damn effective operative. Hell, maybe he never should have retired in the first place. He’d be there in eight minutes and have this resolved within the hour. He smiled.

Then the cop popped his lights.

Roberto looked up into the rearview mirror, a familiar sinking feeling in his stomach. The cop was so close behind him and the flashing red cherries so bright they stung his eyes. He looked down at the speedometer. The needle was pushing ninety. Speeding? He was speeding ? Yeah, you’re a real genius, Roberto .

He banged a fist off the steering wheel and drove on for a moment, his mind racing in eighteen different directions, every single one of them a dead end. The cop double-tapped the siren, and the whoop whoop almost made Roberto jump out of his skin.

He had no choice. He pulled over.

The gravel shoulder crunched under Roberto’s tires and he brought the minivan to a smooth and responsible stop. He looked up into the rearview to see if there was anything he could learn. The cop’s car was a standard four-door sedan, probably a Chevy Impala. It had a red light bar on the roof, square headlights with alternately flashing high beams, and a blue zipper light in the front grille. This information, taken as a whole, was of absolutely no use whatsoever.

A look back over his shoulder was too much an admission of guilt, so Roberto switched to the side view, where the angle would mean he was a bit less blinded. The police car hadn’t pulled as far onto the shoulder as he had, so he could make out the cop’s silhouette through the windshield. The man was looking down, radio in hand, probably just ran the plates and was waiting for a response. Roberto steadied his breathing, running through options. There weren’t any good ones. Taking off was the worst—you can’t outrun radio waves. He’d end up in a high-speed chase that he would lose.

He thought about throwing the minivan in reverse and slamming into the cop’s front end, hoping he’d get lucky and pop a tire, but he was just as likely to blow one of his own, which would make it a real short chase. And even if he got lucky and disabled the police car without damaging his own, see section regarding radio waves.