Encrypted: An Action-Packed Techno-Thriller Read online

  * * *

  Lino ignored Brother Loubom. The man would be dead soon enough. His legacy of betrayal ended. Lino studied the half-burnt Picasso. Such an ugly painting. Why would one take God’s most perfect specimen, man, and distort it so?

  Man was made in God’s image. Such a painting was not just in bad taste; it amounted to heresy. It should be burned. Not to see what lay beneath the oils, but to destroy the thing, so that no man’s eyes ever had to look upon it again.

  With one ear, he listened to the deacon arguing with the FBI officer. Another sign of Havar’s weakness. At the first sign that the FBI was not going to cooperate fully and immediately, Lino would have ordered their destruction. They had already spread God’s gift to the four corners of the world. These FBI agents would be stricken within days. Why prolong the time that they breathed?

  Lino itched to take action. To purify this office and slit the old man’s throat, but for now the deacon outranked him. However, with such a poor showing here, Lino seriously doubted how long even that would last.

  * * *

  While the argument continued between Deacon Havar and the FBI agent, Francois watched the blond acolyte. To look so very innocent, but to be filled with such hatred. Lino seemed the obedient servant, which he was, only to a most vile master.

  Francois knew Lino’s callous soul from experience. No wonder the boy had risen through the ranks so quickly. Even as a child, the boy had shown no remorse or regret. He had been raised to be the perfect instrument of the Hidden Hand’s grotesque experiment.

  Havar’s group stood cloaked in priestly black. The crosses hanging from their necks mocked Francois’ faith and the very Church that they pretended to serve. Certainly, these emissaries loved the Catholic Church. However, they wished it to regress to the time of the Spanish Inquisition.

  “Special Agent Danner,” the deacon barked loud enough to draw Francois from his musings. Havar must have realized that every head in the office turned his way, for his next words were far more measured. “I believe that Interpol made it clear that we were to be given all due consideration.”

  Francois watched, spellbound, as the Special Agent in Charge sat on the corner of the desk. He did not seem agitated or overly impressed by the deacon.

  “And you have been. We have agreed to hand over the prisoner despite the fact that the State of Texas could detain him on breaking and entering charges, arson, and—”

  Deacon Havar shoved his chest forward, glaring—the look of a man seldom thwarted. “All of which dim in comparison to Francois’ moral crimes.”

  “Which is why the Attorney General has expedited your extradition request.”

  Ah, so that is why the Federal Government cared for someone as inconsequential as he. Of course, the Hidden Hand moved deep within the shadows, orchestrating the events as they saw fit. However, they did not seem to count on the resolve of Special Agent in Charge Danner.

  The deacon gritted his teeth. “But the painting—”

  “Is the property of the El Paso Museum of Art, which has declined to donate the work to the church,” Danner said.

  “But it is damaged beyond repair,” Havar said, unable to contain his exasperation.

  Special Agent in Charge Danner cocked his head to the side. “Which does beg the question—why you would want it so badly?”

  Francois felt a grin form on his otherwise stolid lips. Seldom was the Hidden Hand’s desire kept at bay for even a moment. It was clear that the deacon had to take a moment to regroup. Spinning a plausible reason why the church would want the half-burnt work of a communist painter took some time.

  In the end, Havar simply changed the subject. “Fine, then. We shall depart with Brother Loubom.”

  Francois tensed. His luck had run out. He doubted very much if he would live long enough to see even the airport once deposited within the deacon’s care.

  Danner stood. “As soon as the doctor gets here and gives me a medical release stating that he is healthy enough to travel, he is all yours.”

  “We have a plane to catch.”

  “And this guy committed arson, attacked an FBI agent, and then proceeded to cut himself up over the last twenty-four hours,” Danner stated, indicating Francois. “He’s not going anywhere until I receive third-party verification that he’s mentally stable enough to travel.”

  The deacon’s wide face blotched with anger—a blazing shade of magenta. A color Picasso himself would have approved of. “So, this is your country’s highest level of consideration?”

  “Guess so,” Danner said, turning toward his office. “Take it or leave it.”

  The deacon gathered himself to go. “We shall leave it…for the moment.”

  Swiftly, Havar turned his bulk toward the door, forcing his entourage to hurry behind him. All, except for Lino. Lino stayed, glaring into the cell.

  Francois did not flinch from his gaze. The boy may be anointed in blood, but Francois had seen more death than any man should bear. Try as he might, Lino could not unnerve him.

  “Lino!” the deacon barked.

  The boy’s frown deepened as he finally turned away and strode from the office.

  Once the door shut behind them, Francois breathed out. Fortune had granted him a stay of execution. But a stay only. He had no doubt that the Hidden Hand would be back to collect him.

  Until then, all Francois could do was pray that God sent him a guardian angel.

  CHAPTER 14

  Somewhere over Mexico

  9:34 a.m., MST

  Ronnie strained to see past the dusty helicopter window. The rotors beat overhead, drowning out even her thoughts. But she didn’t need to hear her thoughts, for she had only one.

  Zach.

  What if her stunt hadn’t intimidated the CIA? What if they decided to kill Zach, rather than release him? She knew that she shouldn’t be thinking about that right now, but what else could she think about?

  “Visual confirmation,” the burly pilot grunted.

  The guy must have topped two hundred and fifty pounds. He smelled as though he had drunk two hundred and fifty gallons of bourbon last night. But his hand was steady on the joystick, and damn, he could see farther than Ronnie could.

  She pulled up the binoculars to scan the ramshackle tumble of buildings up ahead. Low and squat, they hugged the desert, and the desert protected them with a heavy covering of sand.

  “Fire?” the pilot asked gruffly.

  “No!” Ronnie answered. “Jesus, no.”

  The guy chewed on the butt of a long-dead cigar. “Your dime.”

  She shot a look at Quirk. The question on her face was clear.

  Where in the hell did you get him?

  Quirk rolled his eyes as he broke out tech equipment in the back of the helicopter. “You do not want to know.”

  Ronnie tensed her jaw. She loved Quirk beyond all measure, but this was Zach’s life they were talking about. Without having to say a word, her assistant got the message loud and clear.

  “Look, darlin’,” he said while stringing Ethernet cabling between two computers. “You didn’t give me much time to scrape up a combat-ready helicopter pilot.”

  “I thought you were getting us some gunmen?” she asked.

  Quirk glanced up from what he was doing. “Even in Mexico, it’s a little hard at four in the morning to scare up some discreet gunmen. Your request, not mine.”

  Chewing her lip, Ronnie wondered if she hadn’t been overly cautious. Would the CIA expect her to commission a helicopter? Would they expect her to storm their castle? She was known more for her finesse than her use of firepower.

  “You’re still pinging them, right?” she asked.

  Quirk rolled his eyes again. Even distracted and traveling in a speeding helicopter, Quirk could put on a cyber attack show. They had to keep the CIA believing that they were trying to hack their way out of this problem. So far, they made runs at the safe house’s firewalls, tried to cut off the power, and scramble their security measur
es. Of course, none of that had worked, but that was also part of the plan.

  Given a few days, she and Quirk could have taken the place down from the inside out. However, Ronnie knew that they did not have a few days. It turned out that “in your face” hacking actually took days, if not months, of careful study. Control attacks to monitor how a system reacted, then perform another calculated breach. The process could be slow and tedious, but that’s how she had earned her 100 percent success rate. A lot of good it did her now.

  If the CIA really did believe that she held the key to unlocking a code involving the outbreak of the plague, Zach had a few hours—maximum. They needed quick, decisive action. Not exactly her strong suit.

  Ronnie looked over her shoulder at the array of monitors that Quirk had set up. That CIA safe house may look like a ghetto from the outside, but scans revealed several gun turrets covered by desert camouflage, and even a tank hidden within lead-lined walls. Heat signatures showed five people in there, but that could have been a grossly low value. With the right amount of heat shielding, two dozen men could be in there, all waiting to take them down.

  How well prepared were the CIA for an all-out assault?

  “We are bulletproof, right?” she asked. Her nerves were getting the better of her.

  “I refer you to the lack of Helicopters-R-Us in the general vicinity.”

  Groaning, Ronnie really started to doubt herself. “Picking up any signals?”

  They had knocked out all satellite feeds in the area and shut down the site’s radar and thermal imaging capabilities, but still…

  “Besides a rather loud Mexican radio station giving away what sounds like bull testicles to the sixth caller, no.”

  “Are you sure? The CIA has been toying with—”

  Quirk’s deep frown stopped her inquiry. Of course, Quirk was checking all the frequencies and bandwidths.

  “Sorry.”

  Normally, he would have made her pay for her micromanaging with some form of 1980s music trivia, but clearly Quirk was giving her some leeway, given the circumstances. For that, she was grateful. She really was not in the mood to figure out the B-side track from the 1982 single by A Flock of Seagulls, “I Ran (So Far Away).”

  “And just as a heads-up, it looks like this plague is on steroids,” Quirk reported, texting his contact back.

  Like Ronnie needed any more bad news.

  “So, check your lymph nodes already,” Quirk scolded. She wasn’t going to check anything until Zach was safe and sound.

  “Is that a friendly?” the pilot asked.

  She scanned the area ahead. The dirt road appeared empty. Wait! Was someone leaving the safe house through its dented tin door? More accurately, someone was stumbling out the door. Trying to adjust the binoculars, Ronnie knocked them out of focus. Her fingers scrambled to bring them back from blurry-ville.

  “Should I fire?” the pilot asked casually.

  “For the love of all that is holy, no!”

  Ronnie fumbled with the dials until the image fuzzed out, and then came back into sharp focus. She would know that chin anywhere.

  “It’s a friendly,” Ronnie said with a smile. It was the friendliest.

  * * *

  Quirk took the binoculars from Ronnie. How such an incredibly competent hacker could mess up the world’s most expensive binoculars was beyond him. Fiddling with the multiple rings, he brought Zach’s face into such relief that it looked like the FBI agent stood right in front of him.

  Even in pain, those features were chiseled to perfection. Quirk let out a whistle. “Even bruised, he is one fine specimen.”

  Ronnie did not argue with him as she turned to the pilot. “Set us down.”

  But the beefcake shook his head. “No can do.”

  “Um…yes can do,” his boss countered.

  Quirk could have warned the pilot not to bother arguing with Ronnie when she was in this mood. But in truth, Quirk wanted to watch the pilot’s jaw tense up and down. Clearly, his lymph nodes were not bursting with the Black Death.

  “We are in a hostile environment chosen by the enemy,” the hunk guffed. “If I land, we lose any slight advantage that we may have.”

  His boss put two fists on her hips and skewered the pilot with a look that would have melted solid metal.

  “Yeah, like you said. It’s my dime.” Even more forcefully, Ronnie commanded, “Land.”

  The pilot grunted. Not quite accepting, but not arguing, either. So maybe the guy was as big a teddy bear as he looked.

  While the pilot maneuvered the chopper, preparing for a landing, Quirk’s phone vibrated in his pocket. For the tenth time. He loved Jennifer with all his heart, but he just didn’t have the time to dish on why Tim Gunn wasn’t a part of Project Runway All Stars. There it went again. Okay, maybe it was actual plague stuff she was talking about. Quirk pulled the phone out and scanned her texts. Jennifer was asking for CIA clearance? Um, a weird request, but since he was already patched into the agency’s mainframe, there was no reason he couldn’t accommodate her. The CIA wasn’t exactly in Quirk’s close friend “circle.”

  “As you wish,” he typed, and then routed the data stream to her IP address. Quirk certainly hoped Jennifer’s day was going better than theirs.

  Then the helicopter set down on the dusty, dusty ground. Before Quirk could offer even the slightest scolding on how careful she should be, Ronnie was out of the helicopter. As soon as her boots hit the dirt, the chopper lifted off again.

  “Um, I think Ronnie meant for us to stay on the ground.”

  The pilot looked over his shoulder. “Sorry. It’s not your dime,” he said.

  Even though their gazes met for only a second, Quirk felt his cheeks flush and his heart race.

  A teddy bear and a top?

  This must be Quirk’s lucky day.

  “So,” Quirk said as he sat down in the copilot’s seat. “How long have you been an illegal mercenary pilot? Hmmm?”

  * * *

  Ronnie raced toward Zach as he lurched forward. She caught him just before he went down.

  She forced a playful tone. “Hey, sexy.”

  Zach couldn’t pretend that he was in anything but agony. “Hey there, yourself.”

  Even that seemed to take the last of Zach’s energy as he sank to his knees. Ronnie lowered beside him. To her surprise, his lips tugged up in a little grin.

  “I don’t know what you were expecting,” Zach said through pain-clenched teeth, “But this is not how I pictured our first date.”

  She couldn’t help but smile back. “Yeah, you missed quite the outfit.”

  How many times had she dreamed of this moment? Their slow walk across the room. Her hair flowing back. His eyes gazing into hers. The reality? She was too busy choking on dirt to really appreciate the moment.

  Besides, they didn’t have a moment. They needed to get the hell out of there before the CIA decided to drop a bomb on them. Literally. Ronnie rose to her feet, expecting Zach to follow, but he stayed down.

  “Um, I’m digging the scenery,” Ronnie said as playfully as she could under the circumstances, “but we’ve got to get back into the air.”

  Zach tugged up his shirt, exposing his midsection—mottled in blacks, purples, and blues. Ronnie’s hand flew to her mouth. She knew he had been tortured, but to actually see the damage…

  And all for her.

  He could have just told them where she was. He could have lured her here without her being any the wiser. She would have followed him without question. Yet he hadn’t. Zach had taken this beating to protect her. If they weren’t under threat of death, she would have laid a lip-lock on him right there.

  However, she saw the pain in his eyes. Not from the physical pain, but from shame. That somehow it was his fault that he was injured. Too injured to even rise.

  Men.

  So she joked, “Okay, this is going a little far to prove that you didn’t stand me up.”

  He chuckled. Even that seemed to hurt,
but it softened his features.

  “Come on,” Ronnie encouraged. “We’ve got an ultrasound on board. Let’s get you up there.”

  Ronnie watched Zach accustom himself to the pain. He gritted his teeth and took three short breaths before he leaned in to her. It took the strength of both of them to get him on his feet, and even then, Zach pressed against her. Not that she was complaining.

  As they hobbled over to the landing helicopter, Zach winced. “An ultrasound machine? On a helicopter?”

  “Yeah, and trust me,” Ronnie said. “It did not come cheap.”

  * * *

  Zach landed hard on the chopper floor as it lifted off before they climbed fully in. Zach would have thought at some point that his pain receptors would give out. However, that was just wishful thinking. The helicopter lurched, and he slammed into a metal bench as his vision blurred.

  Ronnie tried to steady him, but the damage was done. As tenderly as she could while riding a bucking, accelerating helicopter, Ronnie helped him into a jump seat. Even with all of that, he couldn’t take his eyes away from her. Okay, some of that may have been him trying to keep his head from spinning. The other was for a much less practical reason.

  She turned to the pilot, sending her blonde ponytail swishing across his face. Zach wouldn’t complain. They were finally in the same ZIP code and on the same chopper. Too bad that he felt halfway to passing out.

  “Anything?” she asked the pilot.

  “All clear,” the big man replied.

  “All?” Ronnie emphasized.

  “Nothing on the deck,” the pilot said as he held the cold butt of a cigar between his teeth. Zach knew from experience that old dogs like the pilot didn’t like to be questioned.

  Ronnie swung back to the young man sitting behind half a dozen monitors. From the dark hair to the well-manicured fingertips, Zach could only assume that it was Quirk. How very jealous Warp would be.