Chapter 9 - The Ghost of Fort Meade
The guard’s combat boots stood ankle-deep in the mud at the edge of the ditch, the barrel of his carbine casting a long, menacing shadow across the water. My finger rested lightly on the trigger of my Sig Sauer, my muscles coiled like a spring. One wrong move, one deep breath from my mother, and the entire perimeter would light up.
Then, a harsh static hiss cut through the guard’s radio.
“Sector One, fall back to the main house immediately. Command has intercepted an incoming signal from a federal relay. We have company.”
The boots shifted in the mud, turning away from our position. “Copy that. Pulling back.”
The crunch of gravel faded as the operative hurried toward the driveway. I let out a long, controlled breath, sliding my safety back on.
“Close,” Vance whispered, wiping mud from his forehead. “Too close. What signal was command talking about?”
“Mine,” I said, pulling the satellite phone from my tactical vest. Before we left the bunker, I had programmed a delayed automated burst transmission to ping the nearest Department of Defense secure node at Fort Meade, embedding the encrypted Project Janus hard drive data straight into the Pentagon’s main intelligence server.
“You uploaded the files?” Hayes asked, his eyes widening.
“Auto-routing,” I nodded. “The second those files hit the main server, every high-level official tied to the syndicate just got flagged by automated counter-intelligence protocols. They’re scrambling because their own network is turning against them.”
“Which means we just painted an enormous target on our backs,” Vance countered, though a grim smile touched his lips. “And they know you have the physical backup drive right here.”
“Then let’s give them what they’re looking for,” I said, standing up from the ditch and motioning toward the metal shed behind the garage. “Move.”
We slipped through the shadows like ghosts, reaching the corrugated steel walls of the shed without drawing another alarm. The padlock on the door was a standard commercial Master Lock—easy work for an experienced operative. With a couple of tension picks pulled from my kit, the mechanism clicked open in seconds.
Inside sat Michael’s old silver Ford pickup truck, smelling faintly of gasoline and stale tobacco.
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“Vance, get my mother into the passenger seat,” I ordered, sliding behind the steering wheel. I popped the steering column cover with a pocketknife, exposing the ignition wires. “Hayes, cover the door.”
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