Brad Taylor - The Polaris Protocol

The biggest risk was Retro being found in the room. Jennifer, as a maid, could easily have talked her way out, but Retro would have some serious splainin’ to do, which is why I had given him a time limit.

Retro came by our position carrying a clipboard and a radio, looking like an important member of the hotel staff. He ignored us, and I waited on a SITREP of entry.

The seconds ticked by, then finally I heard, “Pike, I’m in and we have a problem. There are five CDs here. What do you want me to do?”

Retro had entered with a specially constructed portable compact-disc ripper, intending on working with a single CD. While getting whatever information was on the CD was great, what we really wanted to do was identify the guy’s boss. In addition to copying the CD, the ripper would implant a small Trojan horse. Whenever the CD was booted, the virus would reach out to the Internet and contact the Taskforce. From there, the hacking cell would exploit whatever they could find and hopefully identify the moneyman. After that, it was a US government call as to what would happen with the information. Maybe another Taskforce team would get Omega authority for the guy, but more than likely the information would be passed to the CIA for them to leverage with the Saudi liaison services. The problem here was that the ripper took fifteen minutes. With five CDs, Retro didn’t have time to complete the mission in the room.

I said, “Do they look like the blank CDs we have in the TOC?”

“Yeah, the CDs do, but the cases are different.”

I looked at Knuckles and said, “I’m sending Knuckles up to get them. Meet him in the elevator. Switch out the CDs and rip all of them in the TOC.”

Knuckles stood, finally with a grin on his face, a perverse sense of pleasure coming from the curveball, like it had happened because I’d sent Jennifer home.

Retro said, “But what if he comes back while I’m upstairs?”

“Is there a laptop in the room?”

“Not that I can see.”

“Don’t worry about it, then. He won’t check the CDs for information. It’s just eye candy so you can rip them.”

“Pike, I’ll still have to get back in here to replace the real CDs.”

“One step at a time.”

Retro passed by me moving at a good clip, was gone for a minute or two, then came back holding the blank CDs and disappeared down the hall. Knuckles returned in time to see him scurry by again with the target CDs in his hands, headed to the TOC on the twelfth floor.

Knuckles said, “There’s no way Jake’s going to work out for an hour and a half. What are you going to do if he returns?”

I said, “Let’s cross that bridge when we come to it.”

Ten minutes later, the cursed bridge appeared. Decoy came on. “Jake’s headed back. He’s out of the gym.”

What? Who works out for twenty minutes?

With a bemused look, Knuckles said, “Maybe he forgot his iPod.”

I said, “Those CDs ended up being a blessing in disguise. If there had only been one, Retro would have been caught.”

We waited, and Jake didn’t reappear. So much for the iPod.

I said, “What do you think?”

“Fire alarm. Trip that and get him to the lobby. That’ll be enough time.”

“Yeah … but we don’t know what their procedures are. They could come knocking on every door. Or simply reset it after five seconds.”

“Phone call? From the lobby using an internal landline?”

“What’ll we say?”

“Tell ’em that he has a package waiting. All we need is a few minutes to get back in the room. The elevator ride itself will be enough.”

I thought about the pros and cons. Tripping the fire alarm would garner a lot of attention and would force us to vacate our surveillance positions. But the biggest problem was that we just didn’t know what the official reaction would be. On the other hand, the phone call would make Jake suspicious because he wasn’t expecting a package, then grow more so when there was nothing waiting on him. Especially when the desk claimed they’d never called.

In the end, I decided it didn’t matter. He could get as suspicious as he wanted, because we were headed to Gonur tomorrow and the mission would be done. The fire alarm option was flirting with contact with official authorities I didn’t want to engage.

I said, “Okay, you get in the lobby and make the call on my trigger.” I keyed my radio. “Retro, this is Pike, what’s your status?”

“It’s going quicker than I expected. I’m on disc four right now. Maybe another ten minutes.”

I relayed the plan over the radio, then said, “Retro, come down the stairs to Decoy’s position. I want you close, but I don’t want you to pass Jake on his way out.”

He said, “Roger all.”

Twelve minutes later, he was done with the CDs and set. I got an up from Knuckles and said, “Execute.”

I waited for three more minutes, then Jake passed me, all sweaty from his manly workout. I let him get thirty feet away and stood, saying over the net, “Room’s clear. I say again, room’s clear.”

I began following Jake and heard, “Moving.”

I hoped the elevators would be slow getting to our floor, thus giving Retro that much more time. The bank came in view and I saw that wasn’t going to happen. One opened and a man in a bellboy uniform came out carrying a box with an address on it and an envelope of legal size.

Oh shit. They deliver packages to the rooms.

Jake spoke to him and the bellboy used a small radio to talk to someone else, then he shook his head at Jake. Our target turned and began heading back to his room.

I passed him and entered the elevator. When the doors closed, I said, “Abort, abort. Jake’s headed back.”

Retro said, “I’m not done replacing them. He’ll know someone’s been in the room.”

I said, “If he opens the door and sees you I don’t think there will be any doubt. Abort.”

I reached the bottom and immediately went back up. I turned the corner to the backgammon alcove and saw Knuckles had beaten me back. He shook his head.

I keyed my radio. “Decoy, you got a status on Retro?”

“Negative. He hasn’t come back this way.”

I paused, then keyed the radio again, “Ahh … Retro, status?”

I heard two clicks, and Knuckles realized what had happened at the same time I did. He’s hiding in the room.

I said, “What do you think?”

“I think if Jennifer were here she could have walked right out holding some towels.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“Fire alarm. That’s the only thing that will work. Another phone call’s asking for compromise.”

I nodded my head and was looking for an alarm to trigger when Retro appeared around the corner, pulling off his name tag.

We both stared at him, and he grinned.

“Well,” I said, “what the hell happened?”

“I swear, Pike, he would have figured out the CDs had been tampered with if I had aborted. I had to stay, but I knew he’d been to the gym. What do you do after working out?”

Knuckles said, “Take a shower.”

“Yep, and that’s exactly what he did. I hid under the bed until the water came on.”

Gutsy. But very switched-on thinking.

“You also gave us a heart attack.”

He said, “You? When I dove down I remembered I hadn’t checked to see if the bed had one of those boxes around it to prevent people from leaving things. That would have been embarrassing.”

We all chuckled at the near miss, the adrenaline subsiding and the camaraderie beginning to flow. I broke down the surveillance box, saying, “Meet at the bar on the sixteenth floor. Retro’s buying. Last chance before we head out to the desert tomorrow.”

Up top, in the restaurant bar, we poked fun at Retro and fended off the working girls out looking for a mate. Well, most of us did. I noticed Decoy sizing the women up when he went for another beer, plying his Tennessee charm. Man whore. I was in a pretty good mood, lubricated with the beer and happy at the successful outcome, when my phone signaled a voice mail from Jennifer, the intermittent cell service working on the top floor of the hotel. All my humor left when I listened to it. The Taskforce had located Jennifer’s brother’s phone.