Internal Threat Page 10

  “Don’t!” Matt cried out, but the warning came too late. Bullets spat in his direction. He pushed Ashley to the side of the elevator car, using the slim alcove as shelter.

  “Put your guns down and come out now or I’ll continue to fire!” the guard yelled. A few seconds passed before more bullets slammed into the back of the elevator.

  “Who is this guy?” Ashley wondered aloud.

  “Must be new, I don’t know him. But he takes his job seriously. He’s pinning us in with his fire until the police get here.” An idea blossomed. “John,” Matt said, tipping his chin towards the button microphone.

  “Yes?”

  “Did you see with my button camera what kind of gun this guy has?”

  “Yes. It was a Beretta 92.”

  Matt’s mind latched on to old memories. “That means there’s ten, maybe fifteen, rounds in his clip, right?”

  “Correct.”

  And he must have already used five, Matt estimated in his head. He planted his feet, then raised his gun. Swinging it outwards, he fired four wide shots in rapid succession which pinged off the cage’s grill. A breath later, a barrage of gunfire came back in his direction. He placed himself in front of Ashley, pushing her further back into the wall.

  “What are you doing?” she whispered.

  “Just wait,” was his answer.

  Suddenly, the bullets stopped, replaced by a hollow clicking sound. Matt was expecting it and he burst out of the elevator, gun blazing. From his experience, it was more difficult to not hit a target when you were trying to avoid casualties, just as he was now. The guard looked up in shock, fumbling to reload his clip as Matt strode towards him.

  “Throw your gun away,” Matt said, pausing his fire and thrusting the barrel against the man’s forehead.

  The guard complied, dropping his sidearm to the floor where Matt kicked it out of reach.

  “You did good,” Matt said, earning a perplexed look from the guard. “Give me your zip cuffs.” The guard handed them over and Matt quickly bound his hands. Ashley exited the elevator to join him.

  Matt stepped to the keypad at the side of the cage door and punched in his entry code. The door swung open and he sprinted to the blinking stack of servers in the middle of the room. Finding his thumbpad, he pressed it and the small cage swung open. With no time to waste, Matt raised his gun and fired three point-blank shots into the server’s core. Sparks flew as its green light turned dark.

  He ran three cages over and repeated the process, knocking out the other server. “We’re good,” he said aloud so John could hear. He waited for a response but received none. Knowing he had no time to spare, he quickly made his way back to Ashley.

  “Just in time,” she informed him.

  “Let’s go,” he said, brushing by her.

  Before his foot could take another step, a voice boomed out from the building’s PA system. “Matt Weatherly, this is Detective David Larson with the LAPD. We have the building surrounded. Drop your weapons and come out.”

  Nineteen

  Nearly two miles beneath the craggy surface of a snow-capped Colorado mountain, Emma Hosobuchi was losing patience.

  “I’m sorry, Ms. Hosobuchi, but you’re going to have to step a bit higher,” a tinny voice said from a speaker somewhere nearby.

  Emma held in the exasperated sigh she was eager to let go of. She knew that it was part of her job to remain completely unflappable, even in mundane situations such as having her retina scanned. She perched herself on the front tip of her shoes, inching her eye up closer to the opaque lens implanted into the wall.

  A thin flash of bright red light pierced her vision, then disappeared. A whir and a metallic thunk followed, with the voice now giving a dull ‘thank you, ma’am’ through the speaker.

  To her left, a steel door Emma knew to be over six inches thick swung outward on silent hinges. She stepped through it, shrugging off any traces of the annoyance she had felt.

  The morning commute was always arduous. It began roughly an hour before Emma passed through this door, at her tidy house in Manitou Springs. Her route was one continuous road that began at the foot of a high hill, morphed into a piece of the local highway, then branched off in a straight asphalt line towards the Rockies. A soaring electrified fence topped with coiled wire greeted her arrival, along with a rotating crew of guards.

  Upon being granted entry with her top secret clearance, she followed a narrow gravel footpath to another guarded entrance, this one being a low-slung steel building pressed up against the granite base of the mountain. Most people in town knew of the government offices housed here that dealt with routine issues regarding administration of the surrounding military bases.

  Few knew what lay beneath them.

  When Emma boarded the unmarked elevator in the rear of the building each morning, it whisked her down 1.8 miles beneath the ground. This was the home of the National Intelligence Agency, a rather bland sounding name that hid secrets as deep and dark as the elevator shaft that Emma descended daily. Among the two hundred and sixty-seven agencies formed after September 11th, the NIA, as it was commonly referred to, was formed as a new kind of agency. Instead of being populated by the usual jaded collection of Grade 14 career government employees with top secret clearance, the group’s mandate was to find the best and the brightest that America’s schools had to offer. The goal was to draft the superstars that were routinely plucked by prestigious investment banks and law firms, convincing them that a career for their country was far more enticing.

  On paper, the recruitment process was laid out in simple straightforward steps that led to guaranteed success. In reality, however, it was a disaster. Most ambitious young people were lured by cash and perks that the NIA could not compete with.

  After several years, little had come of the drafting efforts. The only true success was Emma herself.

  She began her life in the town of Newton, a short train ride from the heart of Boston. The burg had served as the refuge for her grandmother many years before Emma’s birth, a petite Japanese woman who had endured the humiliating horrors of a California internment camp during World War II. She vowed never to return to the state that had placed her behind barbed wire for nothing more than the shape of her eyes. The elder Hosobuchi moved to the opposite end of the country, far from the Pacific Ocean she had played in as a child.

  As a teenager, Emma excelled in high school. Her combination of prowess on the running track and multiple advanced placement classes secured her scholarships to every college she applied to. When Harvard’s thick envelope arrived, she was overjoyed. Bursting into her grandmother’s room, she swelled with pride as she read the acceptance letter out loud to the gray-haired woman.

  “So proud,” her grandmother beamed. “I am so proud of you, Emma.”

  Her intention was to go to medical school but it was a freshman elective class that brought Emma’s career path into focus. Computer science presented her a world unlike any she had ever known before. Math skills became art in HTML coding and her big-picture thinking allowed her to imagine entire new IT infrastructures where others only saw obstacles. Whether it was mere coincidence or some divine fate that she was also being reared in an age of ceaseless invention and innovation, it all served to help Emma realize her calling.

  It was during her senior year that she learned others had realized it, too.

  The recruitment began, simply enough, at a standard career fair. Harvard’s square bustled with students circling the various booths for Goldman Sachs and Manatt Phelps. Although she knew many of the companies would covet her skills, Emma drifted to a sparsely populated booth at the far end of the quad, mostly because of the attractive man that was staffing it.

  “Welcome,” said the trim man in a gray suit, his smile sparking in the sunlight. “Glad to see you made it our way.” He gestured at a banner behind him which read, “US Government: You Are The Future!”

  “Hello,” Emma replied, extending her hand for a shake.


  “I’m Agent Mike Saunders.” He grasped her hand in a firm shake. “To be honest, I’m glad you came over. I was going to approach you soon anyway.”

  “You were?” she answered, more flustered than she would have liked.

  “You are Emma Hosobuchi, aren’t you?”

  “Yes,” she answered, now becoming unnerved and pulling her hand back. “How did you know?”

  The man chuckled softly. “I suppose it wouldn’t freak you out any less if I said we’ve been keeping tabs on you.”

  Emma felt her stomach drop to her feet. Dizzy, she turned on her heels, mumbling ‘excuse me.’ She walked swiftly across the quad, ignoring Mike calling her name as she did so. An hour later, she was finally calming down from the weird encounter and taking refuge in the library to study. Feet scuffed nearby and she looked up to find Mike Saunders standing across the table from her.

  “Emma, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to offend you,” he said in a hushed voice while taking the seat opposite her.

  Emma glanced around, noting the stares of the students at the neighboring tables. She was not sure if it was because of Mike’s suit or because a girl like Emma seldom had a guy that looked like him talk to her. In any case, it made her feel a bit safer to be around people; safe enough to answer him. “You didn’t offend me, but you did give me the creeps,” she said.

  “Well then, I apologize for being creepy,” he replied good-naturedly.

  “So what do you want?”

  “Your brain, quite frankly.” His eyes scanned the room, then nodded towards the front door. “Mind if we take a quick walk?”

  “As long as we stay in a public place.”

  “See? That’s the brain I’m talking about.”

  A few minutes later, Mike and Emma were pacing down the length of a sun-dappled sidewalk still populated with students from the career fair.

  “You’re very talented at computers, I hear,” Mike began.

  Emma shrugged, “Good enough.”

  “You’re being modest. Your professors said you were the brightest person they’ve seen in years.”

  “They did?” she said with some surprise. She had always thought to herself that might be the case, but had never dared to voice the opinion out loud.

  “Look, Emma, I’ll be honest with you. You can go off and join one of those investment banks or technology firms and make a great living. Nice car, nice house, as many fancy vacations as you want. Maybe you’ll get married, invest safely in a 401K and pre-pay for your funeral in fifty years.” He stopped, turning to her. “But I don’t think that’s what you really want, is it?”

  She felt his eyes studying her, watching her face for its reaction. “No,” she finally answered.

  “And what do you want?”

  It took a moment for her to find the words but when she did, they felt right. “To be a part of something that’s bigger than me. To make a difference, not just make money. And, I suppose if I’m making a wish list, it would be to always make sure the people I care about are safe.” It was an answer she thought her grandmother would be proud of.

  Mike grinned, reaching into his breast pocket. “Then I think I have the perfect job for you.” A business card appeared in his hand. She took it, glancing down at the black letters etched into the white paper.

  “National Intelligence Agency? I’ve never heard of it.”

  “Good, we like to keep it that way.”

  “What is it?”

  “The future.” He gave her another small smile before turning and walking away.

  “Wait,” Emma said, looking the card over again and finding it blank besides the letters. “How do I contact you? There’s nothing else on here.” All she received in return from Mike was another wave over his shoulder.

  She shook her head, pocketing the business card. That weekend, she headed home for a much-needed visit. She found the house more comforting than usual, especially when she discovered her grandmother in the kitchen hovering over a batch of noodles.

  “Grandma, can I ask you something?” she said, sliding into a nearby kitchen chair.

  “Of course.”

  “Do you ever think about your time at Manzanar?”

  Her grandmother paused in her stirring for a moment before answering, “Every day.”

  Emma nodded. “Do you still hate the government?”

  “I never said I hated the government. I said I hated what they did. There is a difference.”

  “Is there?” Emma wondered.

  Her grandmother put down her wooden spoon and focused her attention on Emma. “Why all the questions?”

  “I was doing a paper at school,” Emma lied. “I just thought I would ask.”

  Her grandmother crossed to the table, sitting heavily into the seat next to Emma. “When I was younger, I was very angry,” she said. “Then, as I got older and I had a family, I gained some perspective. I began to see things in a different way.”

  “How so?”

  “People were scared,” she said softly. “And when they are frightened, people cannot think rationally. They will do anything to protect those they love. At that time, no matter how wrong it was, the government thought they were doing the right thing to protect their people.”

  “That doesn’t excuse it,” Emma countered.

  “No, it doesn’t,” her grandmother agreed. “But it explains it.” She stood up, heading back to her boiling pot. “In life, you will find far more explanations than excuses.”

  Emma stood up and wrapped the woman in a hug. “I love you,” she whispered.

  “I love you, too,” her grandmother said, patting her. “Now get out of the kitchen and do what you have to do.”

  Emma squeezed her affectionately, then headed to her room upstairs. From her pocket, she withdrew the card that Saunders had given her. She flipped it over for what must have been the twentieth time, finding nothing but the blank white again. Falling back on to her bed, she grunted with annoyance as she tossed the card on to the floor.

  “The future,” she scoffed. “Not much of a future if I can’t even call you-” She stopped, noticing something. From this angle, the edge of one of the letters in “National Intelligence Agency” looked as if it bulged out more than it should. She picked it back up, bringing the card closely in front of her eyes. Though blurry, she thought she could see something on the curve of the letter ‘g’. Hurrying to a nearby desk drawer, she pulled out a magnifying glass. As she held it over the letter, she expelled a small breath. The letter was revealed to be a mass of 1’s and 0’s crammed together.

  “Computer code,” she whispered in awe.

  She ran to her bookbag, yanking out her laptop and powering it on. Her hands flew across the keys, mind churning as she worked out the algorithms. An hour later, she was finished. A black square suddenly appeared in the center of her screen as her webcam popped to life. Green letters reading ‘Securing Connection’ flashed for a few seconds before the face of Agent Mike Saunders filled the square.

  “Ms. Hosobuchi, I didn’t expect you so soon.”

  “I guess my professors were right,” she could not hold back her grin. “So, about that job…”

  “Consider this your interview. You just passed it.”

  The weighing in was Emma’s least favorite part; a fitting finale to the rigors of entry into the NIA headquarters. She stepped on to the small metal square just inside the thick steel door. Working as another verification process, the electronic scale calculated any fluctuation in her weight. Of course, small increases or decreases were in the acceptable range. However, any great change over the last twenty-four hours would be a signal that the person on the scale may not be who they claimed they were.

  “Thank you, Ms. Hosobuchi,” came the disembodied voice again from a side speaker. The two frosted glass doors in front of her whooshed open and she stepped through. Here, in the nest of ergonomic cubicles, the NIA looked like any other office that might be home to a venture capital firm or new social
media company. The men and women in military uniforms were the only thing that stood out among the plain-clothes workers hovering over flat-screen monitors and chatting on Bluetooth-enabled desk phones. Glass-walled conference rooms lined the entire right side of the space, half of them occupied.

  As Emma passed, people nodded in deference and offered polite ‘good evenings’. Although her features and size may have been pixie-like, Emma cut an imposing figure within these halls.

  Nearly everything that went on in the organization had been her brainchild. All of the achievements were impressive, but it was her creation of FALCON that was, by far, the most dazzling.

  A memory flash came: Mike calling her into his office, a year after she had finished reorganizing the division’s computer system to increase its efficiency tenfold.

  “I’ve got a new project for you,” he said.

  “Great,” she replied. She had found the last year rewarding but somewhat tedious. Her instinct told her that it had been more of a test for her abilities than anything else. “What is it?”

  Mike tossed a blue folder in front of her stamped “Top Secret.” Emma flipped it open to peruse the pages inside. A short gasp of surprise escaped her lips.

  “This is our missile defense system,” she said, still examining the information.

  “A big chunk of it, yes,” Mike agreed. “We’re entering a new age, Emma. One where it’s not just about the size of the shield we carry but who can sneak behind it.”

  “Hackers,” Emma surmised.

  “Exactly. We get hundreds of thousands of attempts each day to access that network. And some of them have gotten too close for comfort.” He leveled his gaze at her. “I want you to redesign it.”

  “Okay,” she answered simply, eliciting a laugh from him.

  “Never afraid of a challenge. That’s what I love about you, Emma.” The words made her blush but Mike did not seem to notice. “Think outside the box on this one. Way outside the box. If you just come in and talk about throwing up some more firewalls, they’ll kick you right out.”

  “I won’t disappoint you, Mike.”