Page 28 of Cipher: Lethal Algorithm

“Task Force 9 employs operators capable of lethal intervention, yes.”

“Boyd Vance.” I name the man listed as the primary physical deterrent in the file. “Is he as lethal as the summary implies?”

Julian stops typing. He considers the screen for a moment, then looks at me. The dark circles under his eyes don’t dilute the sudden, feral sharpness in his gaze.

“More.” He holds my gaze quietly. “If Hutch sends Boyd Vance to retrieve the ledger, he won’t use a keyboard.”

I hold his gaze. “Good.”

It’s a lie. It isn’t good. But it serves the purpose. It drags the reality of the physical threat—the Consortium cell, the federal strike team, the guns—back into the room.

I turn back to my monitor, my hands finding the familiar keys.

I told him about my contact.

I replay the moment in my head. I didn’t plan to tell him. I didn’t run a risk assessment. The words just came out because we were building an exploit together, because he leaned over my shoulder, because for forty minutes I completely forgot I was supposed to be treating him as a hostile threat.

The heat isn’t just physical anymore. It’s lethal.

Julian Rhodes is the most dangerous man I have ever met, and he hasn’t even drawn his weapon.

8

Competence

JULIAN

A dual-access breachrequires an unhesitating forfeiture of operational control.

I do not forfeit control. I build the architecture, I secure the perimeter, and I dictate the operational tempo. Since founding Task Force 9 with Hutch, I have never run a synchronized cyber assault with another operator.

But sitting in the Coloane Village safe house, staring at the dark, scrolling logic of the Consortium’s maritime server farm, I’m not dictating the tempo.

I’m following hers.

“Garbage data compiled.” Her voice is a low, mechanical monotone matching the rhythmic strike of her keyboard. “Payload sits at four terabytes. Ready on the deployment queue.”

She’s positioned at the exploit layer, armed with an improvised denial-of-service packet so massive it’s mathematically guaranteed to crash the satellite uplink routing traffic to the offshore holding shell.

I’m positioned at the architectural level, waiting for the exact millisecond her attack chokes the server. The reboot will drop its firewall for a fraction of a second. That’s my window—stepinside, rewrite the handshake, lock the Consortium’s credentials out for good.

To execute the exploit successfully, we need a zero-latency, perfectly synchronized deployment sequence. We haven’t run a diagnostic. We haven’t practiced the timing string.

“Deployment algorithm is hot.”

“Routing intercept is prepped.” My hands hover over my keys. I don’t look at her. I watch the monitoring port I attached to her outgoing signal. “Call the sequence.”

We established a shorthand. It took exactly three hours and forty minutes for two inherently suspicious, deeply isolated operators to develop a fully integrated communication loop. I don’t know when it happened. I just know that she doesn’t need to speak full sentences for me to understand her logic.

“T-minus ten.”

Her screen reflects in the dark glass of the blackout window. The green code cascades at a blinding speed. It isn’t structured. It’s violent. It’s a digital battering ram currently aimed at a five-billion-dollar maritime defense grid, and she built it by hand while drinking black coffee.

“Five.”

I shift my weight forward, bracing for the execution.

“Execute.”