Page 60 of Cross Down
Maynard is justoutside Arlington, Virginia, in a small motel room near I-66; interstate traffic passes at a constant low roar. The place is starting to get on his nerves. There are cigarette burns on the walls and the carpet, and the air smells of grease and Lysol. And then there’s the clacking keyboard soundcoming from the room’s other occupant.
The obese man—Willard—is a former fellow contract employee from the National Security Agency, and Maynard owns him, lock, stock, and barrel. Many years ago, due to a slip on Willard’s part—when his little man was definitely doing the thinking for the big man—he used the NSA’s incredibly powerful and classified computer system to access certain video files on the dark web.
Willard spent only two minutes and ten seconds on that site, but Maynard, his supervisor back then, knew it was enough. An agreement was reached, and Willard’s violation was covered by a postdated work authorization.
“But don’t think you’ve gotten away with it,” Maynard told him. “Your ass is mine for the foreseeable future. One word of pushback, and your search history and the resulting video will be sent off to the FBI’s Crimes Against Children task force. And what you saw and downloaded guarantees a life sentence, which in your case might mean a year or two before some guys in your new home shank you to death.”
Now Willard is staring at two large screens fed by banks of servers on the floor beside his fat legs. Even with his fat fingers, he works the keyboard quickly.
“All right,” Willard says in a soft voice. “Give me what you’ve got.”
Maynard passes over a thumb drive. Willard takes the drive, and Maynard is repulsed by the touch of Willard’s fingers.
“How long to decipher?” he asks.
Willard shrugs. “Depends on how encrypted the voice sample is. On the quality of your recording. Whether the NSA’s software can find the back door to let us in.”
“Get to it,” Maynard says. “I don’t have all day.”
“Yeah, I figured.”
The thumb drive is nearly invisible in Willard’s fingers, but he inserts it into a port at the side of the nearest terminal, puts a pair of earphones over his head, and starts working, murmuring to himself.
On the left screen, there are jagged lines in green that repeat and repeat, and Maynard knows Willard is listening to the original recorded message from the Boss.
“Okay,” Willard whispers. “Let’s try this.”
On the right screen, rows upon rows of green numbers and letters flash by on the black background in one long rolling display. Every few seconds, Willard slaps the space bar, the scrolling of the numbers and letters stop, and he peers at the screen like he’s the first man to look at the Rosetta stone.
More work, more keyboard pounding, and then Willard leans back in the chair and scratches his plump neck. After a moment, he snaps forward, works the keyboard again. The jagged lines on the other side appear, and there’s a second display right below it. Willard tears off the earphones, turns as best he can, and says, “Got it.”
Maynardsteps closer. “Show me.”
Willard grins. His teeth are damn near tan. “You mean, let you listen.”
Maynard clenches his hands. “Just do it.”
Sensing the anger, Willard says, “Okay, here we go. This is a bit of the sample you gave me.” He presses a key, and from the speakers comes the familiar electronic voice of the Boss: “We’ve an emerging situation, and I want you to take care of it. Personally.”
“And now,” Willard announces triumphantly. “This is what the real voice sounds like.”
He presses a button, and Maynard listens to a human voice saying, “We’ve an emerging situation, and I want you to take care of it. Personally.”
Maynard says, “This is it? The real deal?”
“Yep,” Willard says, still grinning. “One hundred percent guaranteed. How does it feel, working for a woman?”
Chapter
70
Deacon and Icrowd around Bastinelli at his kitchen counter as he looks at eight small screens showing feeds from security cameras. Two of them point at dirt roads where armed men climb out of three black Chevrolet Suburbans.
About a dozen of them in black jumpsuits, boots, and ballistic helmets head into the woods surrounding Bastinelli’s compound. Three remain back at the parked Suburbans, radio handsets in their gloved hands.
Bastinelli whistles. “Man, when you guys take a stick to a hornet’s nest, you don’t just hit it—you knock it on the ground and use it as a fucking soccer ball.”
I say, “They started it.”
