Chapter Thirty-Seven
“Hah! Gotcha!” Harry Hamblin shouted and the other programmers seated in carrels shook their heads, rolled their eyes and declared that ‘Harry Houdini’ had done it again. This time, however, was different. He actually left his cubicle with his tablet in hand, ran to the bomb-proof glass doors and slammed them open before they could do so automatically. This urgent breach of protocol had Harry’s workmates following his escape with raised eyebrows as he reached the Assistant Director’s office. He burst in without waiting for the enter command.
Calloway looked up in astonishment as his chief programmer broke in without a word of apology or warning. He was on the phone with the Secretary of Defense, chatting about the lack of credible info coming through on certain phone taps.
“Call you later, Tim,” he said and frowned at Hamblin. “Let me guess, you finally found Elvis?”
“No. Better. Remember that incident in western Colorado three years ago that Director Hamilton was involved in?”
“Yes, so?”
“It just came on-line. Someone accessed that IP address. I traced it to Northern Georgia, near the Tennessee border.”
The assistant director’s eyes brightened. “Go, Harry, do your Houdini stuff and get me an address.” He dialed the Director’s cell phone.
“Uhh,” the programmer stuttered, his face turning an ugly shade of embarrassment. “I lost the trace.”
Calloway stared, his mouth hanging open. The world’s self-proclaimed best hacker of all time had just admitted failure?
“Whoever this dude is, he’s written one beautiful piece of software,” he enthused. “His trace disappeared as soon as my worm tickled its tail.”
“What’s that mean?”
“I’ve never seen a program like this - it’s part cell phone, part PC, tracker and hacking device. All in a cell phone package. You catch this dude, I want to meet him and pick his brains.” He stopped, thought for a moment and then smiled. “This is the same dude that designed those Spybot’s that came out of Dir. Hamilton’s lab? Cuz they smell just like the genius who did them and that portable Wi-Fi unit the size of a matchbox.”
“You’ll have first crack at him, Harry. Right after Chase and the President,” Calloway promised. “But first, you have to find him.” He shooed the Intel officer out and left a Priority One message on Allan Chase’s cell phone. He rang back within five minutes.
“What’s up? Terrorist attack? Bomb threats? Another school shooting?” Chase demanded.
“That signal you’ve been looking for just popped up in Georgia/Tennessee. Hamblin caught it and got a partial trace.”
“I’ll be there in ten minutes,” the hard voice returned. “Scramble three teams from both Domestic and Foreign. I want the area blanketed with every available agent we have on the east coast. Within the next two hours.”
“Yes, sir.” Neither said goodbye but went straight into high priority mode.
Aiken sat in the Ops Briefing room checking out his gear. All he had heard was that something big was going down in the Georgia/Tennessee area and that every available agent was being called in. Raylan sat next to him and looked through his own warbag. “Hey,” he said. “I’m on your team. Hear anything about the target?”
“Not yet. It’s a Red-One hit but not a terrorist attack. We’re looking for someone,” Aiken said.
“Any ideas who?” Raylan queried just as the room filled up with the operatives that were in the area. It was a surprisingly large group, over fifteen men and women. The duty officer was a man called Ben Jolson. He was short, built like a Navy SEAL with dark hair and eyes. Already going bald, he had been in Desert Storm I.
“Listen up, folks,” he said in a normal tone that caused the general hum to die down so that they could hear him. “We’re here because one of our pampered programmers has caught a trace we have been looking for these last few years. The subject is a 16-year-old boy named Lakan Strongbow, he uses the aliases, Blake Hamilton and Lakan Hamilton. He is a computer genius and can access the Net in ways a black hat hacker would kill to possess. We’re to locate and apprehend. This comes from the director’s own lips - anyone harms a hair on this kid’s head, well, don’t plan on seeing your retirement. We have pictures and packets for you before you leave the building.”
One of the other agents passed around the folders. Aiken opened his to stare at the face of the boy he had tracked years earlier. Lakan was older, a wariness in his eyes that hadn’t been there before in a face that would stop any teenage girl in her tracks.
His partner murmured, “good looking boy. Never seen red hair that dark before. Says he’s half Amerindian. Got the nose, cheekbones and skin tone. He looks familiar, too.”
“His mother was Rachel Strong, an FBI agent,” Aiken added.
“That’s right. I met her once on a detail, had the hots for her. She was one fine redhead - she was seeing Mike Hamilton, wasn’t she?” His mouth gaped open. “This is Mike’s kid?”
“Does it matter? We’re here to track him down and bring him in.”
“That’ll be a piece of cake,” Rogers snorted. He was from the NY office and was more used to dealing with drug scum.
Aiken said, “Don’t underestimate this kid. I tracked him for a week in the Colorado mountains. He almost got away from us. We were a team of six when we started. Only three of us came out.”
“How’d you catch him?” Raylan asked.
“Circled around and drove him into Chase’s arms.”
“The Director was in on the chase, out in the field?” Rogers asked in surprise.
“Surprised me, too. He can ride, hunt and track pretty good for a civilian,” Aiken admitted. He picked up his overnight bag with two changes of clothing. “We issued a bureau car?”
“Naw. A pickup truck with a camper top. They’re less conspicuous in the country. Talk about Deliverance, those crackerjacks down there will skin you alive in a heartbeat. I’ve been closer to death there with moonshiners, backwoods weed farmers than any gangbangers in the city,” Raylan returned. “You ready?”
Aiken led the way outside to the Bureau’s parking lot but it was his partner, Raylan that got into the driver’s seat of the Dodge Ram 2500. It was a cherry red, a crew-cab monster of a truck, a drug seizure with chrome wheels and 4x4, power everything and must have set the dealer back a cool fifty K. Aiken didn’t say anything but pulled out his cellphone as the agent drove off. He dialed a number he hadn’t used in two years.
“Hey, doc,” he greeted. “You heard?”
Dr. Cameron’s voice came through the speaker and the encryption made a hum in the background. “Aiken,” he said flatly. “Some geek in Computer Analysis picked up a data stream from the boy in southern Georgia/Tennessee.”
“What are the odds that it’s not him?”
“With the kind of technology, this program required? One in a million. There’s hi-tech stuff coming out of China but it’s nowhere close to his code. I have some other reports I want you to look into.”
“Sorry, no can do. I’m on a job for Dir. Chase,” Aiken returned. “I just called to see if you had any pointers where he might be holed up or heading to?”
“Michael Faraday Senior’s son came home from an institution for severe brain damaged veterans, Aiken,” he interrupted and a photo came up on Aiken’s cell. It showed a severely injured man with obvious traumatic brain injuries, contractures of his arms and legs. There was no way the man could stand, let alone walk. “He walked out of the hospital and into his father’s limo, Aiken. They did it late at night so no one would notice but a photographer from the Boston Herald was there on another story and caught the pic.” It showed the handsome, solemn-faced son of the billionaire minus any scars, contractures or wheelchair, striding forward on two sound legs. He was dressed in jeans and a heavy leather jacket reminiscent of the old bomber coats with sheepskin linings.
“There was a solid rumor going through Washington that Senator Lourdes was about to resign his campaign bid for President and step down from his Seat. Terminal cancer. One of his aides had already typed up his resignation speech and e-mailed it his editorial staff at Campaign Headquarters. It was pulled six hours later. Six hours! I’ve examined the Senator’s appearances and they showed a man high on heavy-duty painkillers but still in pain. Not now, he’s in the peak of health. I accessed the lab where his blood test was done and the first labs clearly showed the markers for terminal liver cancer. The latest one done shows nothing.” Aiken was silent. “There’s more. I’ve found over seven cases like this in the last six months, all centered around a day’s drive from a central point in southern Georgia. There are twelve towns in that area, it’s called the Pine River Valley. I would check there first. Look for private clinics, nursing homes and mental hospitals.”
“You looking for a common denominator?” Aiken returned.
Cameron snorted. “I’m a researcher, it’s what I do. It started with an accident involving a garbage truck and five passenger cars. Several eyewitness reports said the injuries were horrific, amputations and dead kids yet when I pulled up their medical reports, all I found were bruises and scrapes. They treated one child for shock and a cerebral hematoma but she died. The doctor’s name in the ED is Arvin Costanza. Right here in Washington, D.C., Aiken. He was here! I’m sending you the files on it.”
“Okay, doc.” Aiken’s heart accelerated. “Have you told Dir. Chase all this?”
“He’s flying down as we speak and we’re running through the hospital database and Costanza's phone records, home PC, and work files. Any cross references we find, I’ll e-mail you.”
“Okay.” He turned to Raylan. “Change of plans. We’re heading for Pine Valley, GA.” Raylan shrugged and slid the truck over two lanes for the Interstate ramp joining the other vehicles in the search team.
He merged onto the Beltway and because the traffic was so bad, it took them nearly two hours before they were humming along at 80mph on I-95S. It was a nine-hour drive, nearly six hundred miles to their destination, heading for the area around Savannah. Aiken let Raylan drive; he came from a long line of men that had outrun everything that life had thrown at them. Cars and racing were a part of his makeup.
“You want to switch halfway there?” he asked the driver and wasn’t surprised at his answer.
“Naw. I’m good.”
They drove straight through, reaching the area around 3.30 p.m. The first thing they did was establish a base of operations which was a safe house in the neighborhood near the warehouse district; a place where multiple vehicles coming and going would not arouse suspicion.
Chase had arrived earlier, coming in on the agency’s private Lear jet and was based in Savannah, a half hour’s ride away. He had already assigned people to track down the information provided by Cameron on the ED doctor and had come up with several names in common with all the incidents. He had a list of nursing homes, clinics and mental hospitals still in business. When Aiken mentioned Pine Valley, Chase told him that a Dr. Albans tied the hospital in Washington with a Psyche Hospital and nursing home with the town of Macon Springs in Pine Valley. Just inside the circle that they were investigating.
The two teams of Aiken and Andrews met with Chase before they would spread out to track the target.
“You want us to show his picture around?” Andrews asked the director. “If so, what cover story do you want us to use?”
“Witness in a drug shooting,” Chase said. “But only if you attract attention from local law enforcement. Remember, this kid likes to hightail it for the woods. And he’s trail savvy, years older and smarter. He makes it into the Smoky Mountains, he’s history.”
It wasn’t until they were on the way to one of the doctor’s hospitals that the call came from HQ. A girl had phoned in a tip stating that she had information on a teenage boy wanted by the authorities and wanted to claim the reward. She had called from a payphone in a town called Poplar Bluff. They turned around and were headed that way in less than a minute. The GPS told them that it was only twenty-five minutes from their safe-house.