Blood List(85)

He let Dr. Frank spot him as he got close. Paul stood and stepped forward. "The data, Emilio?" he said without preamble, his hand outstretched. Frank plucked a small paper bag from his breast pocket. He placed it in Paul's hand and jerked back. Paul chuckled.

"This is everything, but none of it points back to me. Even if you try to connect the dots."

Paul looked inside the bag, then put it in his pocket. "I told you I don't care. Get out of here. I'll call you in twenty minutes for the password."

"You'll have it as soon as I—" He was interrupted when a blue sedan jumped the curb, followed by a white SUV. Emergency lights flashed from the dashboards of both vehicles.

Paul turned blankly back to Dr. Frank. "You set me up."

Frank cowered. "No, wait!" The bullet hit him square in the forehead. A woman screamed as the body fell. From the two vehicles poured Gene Palomini, Carl Brent, and Doug Goldman.



As the car slid to a stop, Gene bailed out with his sidearm drawn, shouting orders and using the door for cover. "Drop the weapon and put your hands on your head or we will kill you!"

"Watch his left hand." Doug clicked in over the COM.

Renner slowly took his left hand from his pocket as he dropped the pistol with his right. "You can't shoot me, Gene. Me holding this detonator is the only thing stopping the hundred-odd people in the restaurant behind you from being blown to bits."

Gene hesitated.

"He's bluffing," Carl said over the COM. "Let me shoot him."

Gene stood his ground. "Put your hands on your head, turn around slowly, and get on your knees."

Paul held the object out toward Doug, to give a better view. "It's military," Doug said. "It appears to be activated."

"He's bluffing," Carl said again. "I'm going to shoot him."

"Hold," Gene said.

Renner smiled. "Goodbye, gents. I have a camera in the restaurant and a couple surprises waiting along my way out of here. If you try to follow me or evacuate anyone or I even smell a cop for the next fifteen minutes, they all die." He turned and jogged down the path as Gene stood helpless.

"He's bluffing, Gene. He's bluffing." Carl's pistol tracked Renner as he disappeared through the trees. "We've got to go get him."

Gene looked back at the restaurant. The patrons inside rubbernecked at the windows to see what the commotion was all about. "We can't risk it, Carl."

Thirty minutes later, Gene, Doug, Carl, and Sam were en route to HQ in D.C. The restaurant had been evacuated and the bomb squad sent in. Gene sat in a holding room for two hours before he was told that there was no bomb in the first place.



* * *



February 11th, 11:02 AM EST; Fort George G. Meade; Anne Arundel County, Maryland.



Captain Sara Belonga looked at the caller ID on her desk phone. It read, USAIC, Huachuca, AZ. She picked up the phone on the fourth ring. "DYQ CNC." Anyone who called this number either knew what that meant or had called the wrong number. At the National Security Agency, you didn't give out information you didn't have to. Ever. Besides, only one person ever called her personal line from Fort Huachuca.

The voice on the other end was softly male, pleasant, and polite, with just a hint of Alabama to it. "Hello, Miss, this is Lieutenant-Colonel Jacob Rostan with the United States Army Intelligence Center. Is Captain Belonga in?" Sara smiled in spite of herself.

"Jake, you asshole, I mean Lieutenant-Colonel, sir, you know it's me. What's up?" She'd known Jake for two years, since she'd been assigned this post, but only over the phone. He always called her directly when he wanted something and was an insufferable flirt. They'd worked together several times on joint USAIC-NSA code-breaking problems.

"I've got an encrypted drive I need cracked, and I need it cracked as quickly as possible, then re-routed to me immediately."

"All right," she said. "Let me take a look at it." It took two minutes for their computers to shake hands, verifying access codes and identities, then another fourteen minutes to upload. They killed time talking about their families, then bad first dates. It never took Jake long to bring it to dating, even though he was, to all appearances, happily married. She was in mid-laugh when the computers finished.

She snapped back to business. "Okay, I've got it. Let me take a look."

She clicked on the icon, and a logo popped up–an exploding star surrounded by a halo of binary zeroes and ones.

"Ouch, Jake. SuPeRnOvA is a hard nut to crack. This could take months."

He replied, "Yeah, I know, but I need you to task a team with appropriate clearances to it immediately. I don't care what you have to pull people from. This could be huge. I'm sending another file with some possible cribs. It goes without saying that this information goes nowhere except back to me. But I'm saying it anyway."