Wormhole (The Rho Agenda #3)(74)

Pressing the recessed power button, Jack leaned back, cracked open the pop-top on the Coke, and lifted the not-quite-frosty can to his lips. Not great, but about the best you could expect from a hotel mini fridge.

Three miles down the road, Heather, Mark, and Jennifer were locked inside separate cells at the top-secret NSA supermax facility code-named the Ice House, buried deep beneath an underground parking garage adjacent to the black glass headquarters. While the bleeding hearts complained about prisoners kept at Guantanamo, they had no idea that the worst terrorists were housed at the secret prison-laboratory at Fort Meade, a facility constructed with funds from the black budget, a place where the oldest coercion methods were mingled with the latest experimental data-extraction techniques.

Jack knew the place like the back of his hand, had taken part in many of those sanctioned interrogations. Ironically, the NSA thought it now held three young people who could help it find the Ripper. What it didn’t know was that it had the real prize, the most dangerous trio on the planet. And as far as Jack was concerned, that even included Dr. Donald Stephenson.

It was only a matter of time until those highly trained and augmented young operatives took that place apart, irrespective of the world’s most sophisticated security systems. Jack wasn’t worried about that. When it happened, it would be like taking candy from a baby. Jack was here to make sure nobody realized just how dangerous those three were.

As the laptop finished booting, Jack logged in, then plugged an SRT dongle into one of its USB slots. Holding down Control-Alt-Y, he launched the application that gave him access to the Fort Meade Military Police wiretap he’d installed two hours earlier. Although he was now tethered to this hotel room for the next few weeks, he had all the groceries he’d need for the virtual stakeout.

One thing he knew. When the shit hit the fan, all that C4 he’d strategically placed around Fort Meade was going to go a long way toward making the government believe Al Qaeda was back in the US terrorist business. Hopefully that, plus a little luck, would make them miss the obvious.

Jack picked up the telephone, glanced at the number written in blue ink on the hotel notepad, and dialed. Hearing the expected response on the far end, he began speaking.

“This is Karl Kroener in room 127 at the Sleep Inn in Laurel. I’d like a large Brooklyn-style pepperoni-and-mushroom. For delivery. Cash. No. That’s it. Thanks.”





Mark had been waiting for thirteen hours for some kind of reaction to tearing down the closed-circuit camera. But it was as if no one even noticed. At six p.m. a bouncing flashlight beam preceded a guard down the dark corridor. The circle of light danced as the man shoved a food tray under the door, then moved on without ever shining on Mark. The light and the footsteps retreated. In the distance, a heavy door opened, then slammed shut, the darkness once again complete.

Moving to retrieve the food, Mark lifted the tray to smell its contents. The odor wasn’t unpleasant, but it wasn’t good either. It was the smell of his standard meal. Mark knew the tray held the bland meat-and-vegetable mush that provided sufficient nutrients to keep him alive, while depriving him of the basic pleasure of eating. It was another aspect of his solitary confinement’s sensory-deprivation regime.

But he was hungry, so he ate.

With his fingers, Mark shoveled the stuff into his mouth until every morsel was gone. Then he licked the tray clean. Holding it out in front of him, Mark let the tray fall. The clatter radiated out from the point of impact, the bright sound waves bouncing off the walls, the bars, the sink, the toilet, the corridor, his augmented brain processing the reflected echoes into a three-dimensional color image. It was beautiful, far better than his Spartan surroundings looked through his eyes.

Mark had seen infrared satellite images of the Earth, where reds and yellows indicated warmer waters sandwiched by cold blues and purples. But this was different, producing lush, real-time 3-D imagery in which the echoes enabled him to see around corners and, to some extent, through walls. It didn’t take the clatter of the tray to produce the effect, but the volume the tray provided made everything much brighter.

Mark smiled. They could keep him in the dark, but they couldn’t keep him from seeing if he needed to.

He picked up the tray and slid it through the slot out into the hallway, then retrieved his clothes from where he’d hung them on the sink to dry. His touch found them damp, but dry enough for his body heat to finish the job, so he slipped into the orange pj’s and sat down against the far wall.

For the first time in weeks, Mark felt the urge to let sleep claim him, to let his conscious mind slip away into that vast nothingness where time had no meaning, into a dream world of his subconscious mind’s making. The thought settled over him like a fuzzy blanket on a winter night, an enticing siren’s call to lie back on the floor and sleep.

But what was wrong with that? There were no more interrogators torturing or drugging him for information, no reason to stay alert. Besides, he could bring himself back to full strength at a moment’s notice. It happened so rapidly Mark barely noticed. As easily as he slipped into his meditations, his consciousness melted away around him.

He didn’t think he was supposed to feel things while dreaming, but he felt this. A familiar nudge, like a sharp elbow in his side.

When was the last time he’d felt it? A lifetime ago. His father’s garage in White Rock. Jennifer had been at the workbench with Heather. Mark had just finished making one of his brotherly jibes designed to get under Jennifer’s skin and Heather had dug her strong, sharp elbow into his shoulder.