Immune (The Rho Agenda #2)(138)
The main GPS uplink antenna was an excellent example. It was hardwired to the GPS control center by a cable that ran adjacent to the metal maintenance building two hundred yards from the base of the dish.
Keeping to the deep shadows, they moved around the back side of the building, opposite the antenna, pausing at a padlocked door. With a quick twist of the pry bar, Jack jimmied the lock, then pushed the sliding door open along its track, revealing a forty-by-thirty-foot interior space. The twin beams from Janet and Jack’s LED flashlights sizzled into the darkness, illuminating a largely empty room that housed an assortment of tools and equipment, including four large spools of cable and a small forklift. Just to the left of the doorway, a steel-case desk snuggled up against the wall, its office chair tilting slightly to the right, missing one of its four rolling casters.
Janet scanned the room, quickly locating the electrical panel along the left wall. As Jack closed the door behind them, Janet walked to the panel, pressed downward on the latch, and popped open the cover.
The building was fused for both 220 and 110 volt circuits. She smiled. They had chosen wisely. This was the perfect spot to set up their wireless access point. The heavy voltage circuitry drove the motors that directed the massive GPS antenna. With a door on the side opposite the GPS control antenna, the building gave excellent concealment for their computational needs. It allowed Janet to establish secure communications with Heather McFarland and the Smythe twins while Jack did the heavy lifting at the antenna itself.
Janet ripped the corner from a cardboard box, folded it three times, and slid it under the chair leg. Plugging her laptop’s power supply into one of the 110V outlets, she set it on the desk and sat down. As the laptop struggled to wakefulness, she glanced over at Jack. He held a backpack that contained another laptop, just purchased at a Colorado Springs RadioShack, along with an assortment of electronic supplies that would soon be put to good use splicing into the GPS control cable.
Jack pulled out his walkie-talkie. “Commo check.”
Janet extracted her own walkie-talkie from the laptop bag. It was amazing what you could pick up at RadioShack. A pair of 900 megahertz, frequency-hopping walky-talkies with over ten billion frequencies, all for just a couple hundred dollars. Certainly adequate for secure communications during the amount of time she was going to be separated from Jack.
Thumbing the press-to-talk button on the side, she lifted her walkie-talkie to her lips. “Ground control to Major Tom.”
“Very funny,” Jack said into his radio, his words coming through her speaker loud and clear.
“Time to test our link to Mother.”
Janet typed in her login password, letting the laptop finish loading its startup programs. In their magical fashion, the McFarland and Smythe triumvirate had uploaded a new program to her computer along with instructions for its use. It was a chat program, very similar to the Voice over IP, or VoIP, applications that had become so common these days. Only this was Voice over QT, the quantum twin components creating perfectly secure, delay-free conversation, irrespective of distance.
She launched the application, waiting as the image of a whirling maelstrom dissolved into the control panel. Janet had to admit. Even under extreme pressure, those kids had panache.
The user interface was elegant in its simplicity, an image of a speaker and microphone above a single large button marked speakerphone. Janet clicked the speakerphone button, its image clicking down and locking into position.
“Heather, Mark, Jennifer? This is Janet Johnson,” she said, using the name they had known her by. “Can you hear me?”
After a short pause, Heather McFarland’s voice played through the computer speakers. “We’re all here.”
“Mind if we ask where here is?”
A pause, some mumbling barely audible in the background. “Fair enough. We’re in Colombia, at the hacienda of Don Espe?osa.”
Janet glanced at Jack, whose left eyebrow had risen, crinkling his forehead.
“The drug lord?”
“That’s right. At the moment, he’s tied up in a chair across from Mark. He was our test subject for the nanite deprogramming.”
Jack held up a finger.
“One second, Heather. Jack wants to say something.”
Leaning in close, Jack’s voice was serious. “Pay close attention. We don’t have much time, but it’s critical that you do exactly as I say. You listening?”
A brief pause on the line, then Heather spoke again. “We are.”
“As soon as we’re done with what we have to do in the next hour, I want you to get out of that house. Get to the Hotel Caribe in Cartegena as quickly as possible. A man named Juan Perdero works at the front desk. Tell him these exact words: ‘Don’t fear the Reaper.’ He will reply, ‘Agents of Fortune?’ to which you respond, ‘1976.’ Have you got that?”
“Yes,” Heather replied.
“Good. He’ll arrange to meet you in a more secure location. Once there, tell him I said to get you the papers and transportation you’ll need to get to Santa Cruz, Bolivia.”
“Bolivia?”
Jack ignored the question. “Once you get to Santa Cruz, hire a taxi to take you to the Mennonite community called Quatro Ca?adas. It sits on the far side of the Rio Grande, a couple of hours northeast of Santa Cruz. The Robertson family will take you in. Ask for directions to their farm.”