Rachel Lee - The Crimson Code

“This could work,” Lawton said, nodding. “I go in just before close of business and disappear into a men’s room or closet. Once everyone’s gone, and assuming I can get a key card, I’m into the computer room, with comms to Assif, in the utility tunnel below the bank. He tells me what to do to send a SWIFTNET message, so he can tap the correct line, and tells me how to erase my key card entry from the log file. Then I hide out until morning, wait until things are busy, and leave as if I had just dropped off the parcel. It’s simple, and clean.”

“Yes,” Assif said. “That can work.”

“If we can get a key card,” Renate said. “And if we can get Assif to the right utility junction box.”

“And don’t forget the bicycle,” Niko said.

Lawton looked at him. “I don’t understand.”

“The couriers lock their bicycles at a rack outside the bank,” Niko said. “Someone will notice if it’s there when they leave and still there in the morning. So one of us will have to pick up the bicycle without looking as if we’re stealing it, then return it the next morning.”

Renate walked to the whiteboard and began to write. “Lawton in the bank. Assif in the utility tunnel. Niko, you will handle the bicycle, and be on watch when Assif enters and exits the tunnel. I’ll be here, monitoring our communications and the police scanner.”

Lawton nodded. “So we need to find the utility junction box and get a key card. Then, I think, we’re good to go.”

Renate looked at Niko. “I need you to go back to the Jürgen-Ponto-Platz and watch the bank employees as they come to work. We need to identify those who work in the computer room.”

“And how am I supposed to identify which employees work in the computer room?” Niko asked.

“I’ll go with you,” Assif said, breaking into a smile. “I can spot a fellow geek from a kilometer away.”

“Good,” Renate said. “Then we start surveillance on the computer room employees. One of them is sure to be single and male. And I will get the key card from him.”

Her tone left no doubt that she would do anything, anything at all, to achieve the downfall of those who had killed her family. Whatever conscience she might once have owned had been blown away by a bomb in a simple church.

Vienna, Austria

Yawi Hassan had spent the day in a café on the Gellerplatz, watching the apartment house two blocks down Quellenstraße. Three hours earlier, laughing children had streamed from the Catholic school across the street. Yawi was struck by the irony: terrorists who had murdered thousands of Catholics on Christmas Day were hiding out in an apartment house two blocks from a Catholic school.

Now a last group of students, young teenage boys, Yawi guessed, freshly showered after an athletic practice, approached him. With his limited German, Yawi realized they were asking him to settle a dispute over which Austrian football club would be strongest that year. Although he knew nothing of Austrian football, Yawi chose from among the team names the boys pressed upon him.

“Rapid ist sehr gut,” Yawi said.

“Ja!” answered the boy who had offered that club. “Rapid wird immer dominieren! Die san leiwand!”

As the boy broke into a wide grin, the other boys objected. Much to Yawi’s relief, for he had not understood the boy’s reply, they took the disagreement with them as they walked to the tram station. He smiled and shook his head as they left. In whatever language, in whatever culture, boys would be boys.

Now alone again, Yawi reviewed the plan in his head. All the pieces were in place. The last of their seven targets had returned to the apartment only a few minutes before, after a quick stop at a corner market. Even now, Yawi knew that his men were moving into their final preassault positions.

The target was a third-floor apartment, and Yawi and his men had gone over the interior layout several times. Each of his men had a specific assignment from the moment they burst into the open front room. They had rehearsed the assault in an identical apartment building across town until everyone on the team could perform his mission in total darkness and absolute silence. There would be no arrests tonight. Their orders were clear.

Kill them all.

“Ready,” a quiet voice whispered in Yawi’s earphone.

Yawi strolled down the street, taking a final look around. His secondary objectives were to minimize civilian casualties and to extract his men without their being identified. He saw no Polizei in evidence, and at this late dinner hour, there was little traffic on the street.

“Two minutes,” he whispered.

Ninety seconds later, he entered the building and began to ascend the back stairs. He didn’t need to check to ensure that the back exit was neither locked nor blocked. The Austrians were very careful about such matters. And even if they hadn’t been, his men had already verified that fact. As he climbed the stairs, he screwed a silencer on his Tek-9 automatic pistol and cycled the bolt to chamber a round.

Yawi reached the third-floor landing and pulled his ski mask down over his face, then placed his left hand on the shoulder of the last man in his team. That man in turn placed his left hand on the shoulder of the next, until the fifth commando, first in the line, placed his left hand on the door leading from the stairwell into the interior corridor. Now, simply by squeezing the shoulder of the man in front of him, Yawi gave the silent signal to go. In less than a second, the message had been relayed to the lead man, and he pushed open the door.

The corridor was clear, and they moved silently, each holding up fingers to count the doors they passed. One…two…three…four. Yawi checked each man’s count, for in the stress of an assault, he knew not to overlook even the smallest, most basic detail. Certain that they were at the right door, he patted the shoulder of the man in front of him.

That action was repeated up the line, and the lead man extracted a tiny video camera with a fish-eye tubular lens. As the tube slid beneath the door frame, Yawi studied the distorted image on the handheld monitor. He counted six people in the room, two on a sofa along the left wall, two in the kitchen area to the back and two at a small dinner table. A shadow moving in the distance marked the seventh target, walking along the back hallway.

As the lead commando withdrew the camera tube, Yawi relayed the information to his men with hand signals. Each nodded. Now the second man squeezed two small gobs of putty into the gap between the door and its frame, one at the catch for the doorknob, the other at the dead bolt. As that man pressed detonators into the plastic explosive, Yawi and the others readied flash grenades. The second man held up a thumb.

All was ready.

The men flattened themselves against the wall, and Yawi nodded. The second man squeezed a tiny plunger, and two muffled pops sounded almost simultaneously. Yawi felt a momentary rush of satisfaction. His man had done his job precisely as he had been trained, using the minimum amount of explosive necessary to blow the door. The satisfaction was quickly lost in the moment, however, for now he and his men burst into motion.

The lead man kicked the door open, and four flash grenades were tossed in immediately. Two seconds later, the grenades exploded with a rushing whoosh, as Yawi and his men shielded their eyes against the blinding, blue-white glare.

“Go!” he snapped.

The command was unnecessary, for his men were already in motion. The first two men burst in, pistols leveled, marking their targets, the quiet pops as they fired lost in the cries of panic within. Yawi followed and saw that two of the targets were already slumping to the floor, red holes punched in their chests.