Betrayal Read online

  Ali had smiled at the time. “And you shouldn’t. We lie for a living. But trust me. If I learn the CIA is going to double-cross you in some way, I’ll tip you off. I owe you that much. Just make sure you have a plan to get out of the country and start a new life. I have one and I work for them. Look, it won’t happen. It’s never happened before. At least not since the nineties. Do me a favor and just do it for a few years. Two years is all I ask. If you don’t like the way things are going: bail.”

  So far, Ali had been true to his word. Despite that, DJ was nervous about a giant helicopter parking on his lawn. Whatever was going on, it must be big. He was sure Ali would have quite a story to tell.

  It wasn’t Ali who dismounted from the chopper and headed in their direction. DJ didn’t recognize him at all. He was tall and gangly, his limbs seeming slightly longer than they should be. His lenghty strides caused him to sway a bit as he walked. He had thick, curly black hair on his head, and his face was covered with even more of the stuff. Despite it all being neatly groomed, he had all the appearance of a spider monkey in a suit. The good news was that he was by himself. Aside from the three crewmembers for the Sea Stallion, he was alone. If the stranger had exited with a team of armed soldiers or people dressed like federal agents, DJ would have suspected the worst.

  DJ and the rest of his extended family, the only family DJ knew, stayed where they were. No one advanced to greet the newcomer with handshakes and smiles. They might have if Ali was coming to meet them. They liked Ali. As it was, they were on edge and ready for a fight.

  Spider Monkey advanced as the helicopter shut down behind him, striding through the tall grass in his black two-piece suit. He barely slowed as he arrived at the boundary of the field, easily hopping over the split rail fence separating the field from the main complex of the farm. It was then DJ began to fully appreciate the man’s size. Whoever this was coming to see them, he would look more at home on a professional basketball court than in the services of the CIA. If he was CIA. But who else could he work for? Few agencies had the ability to call up a naval Sea Stallion for use as a taxicab. There couldn’t have been more than a few hundred of them in service.

  The man made his way straight to Brett. It was obvious he knew who was in charge. It wasn’t the muscle-bound men and women who ran the show. It was the man in the wheelchair, and the stranger knew it. He sidestepped around the rest of the group to stand before Brett, leaning down with a polite smile and extending a hand. “The name’s Seymour,” he said. Behind Brett, Bradford Cashin, or Cash as he was known, eased closer. The man had worked in the FBI with Brett and was fiercely loyal to him.

  Brett did not shake the hand, nor return the smile. “Shouldn’t that be Agent Seymour?”

  The man retracted his hand and stood straighter. He glanced at the others with a worried look on his face. Holding a single finger to his lips, he said, “Shhhh. No one’s supposed to know that. Officially, I’m a scout for the LA Lakers.” He smiled again. “You would be surprised how many people ask me if I’m a professional ballplayer.”

  Brett wasn’t playing nice with Seymour. His distrust of the man was obvious. “ID,” he commanded, holding out his hand.

  The man didn’t move for a moment. He merely looked around at the group, his fake smile fading from his wooly face as he sized them all up. “Fine,” he said. “You would think with all the expensive gear that I know you have stashed around this place, you might want to add a smile or two to your inventory. Take it easy, guys. You don’t want to bite the hand that feeds you.”

  Brett was agitated and he let it show, snapping his fingers as he continued to hold his hand out. “We don’t know you. ID. Now.”

  Spider Monkey nodded, surveying the group once more. “I got you. No problem.” As he reached into his jacket, seven hands shifted closer to seven weapons. DJ held up a hand, signaling them to back off. Spider Monkey suddenly seemed genuinely concerned. “Easy now, I’m pulling out my phone. Please don’t poke me full of holes. This is a new suit.” He gingerly pulled forth a cellphone and held it up, showing them all.

  Brett’s voice was stern as he addressed Spider Monkey. “That’s not an ID.”

  Spider Monkey looked at his phone as he answered. “And I will hand it over too, but first I thought you might want verification of who I am from somebody you trust.” He tapped a few buttons on his phone and DJ could hear it dialing. While Seymour waited, he handed over his wallet.

  Agents for the CIA didn’t carry a badge, but they did have an access card with a digital chip they used when not undercover. Brett flipped through the man’s wallet and found it. He didn’t pause to scrutinize it. He tossed it to Carbon and fired off a one-word command. “Authenticate.”

  Carbon scanned the barcode on the back with his own phone and nodded to Brett a second later. “Seymour Sinclair. CIA. He needs to change his name, though. Sounds like a villain in a Bond movie.” He tossed it back as someone on the other end of Spider Monkey’s call answered.

  The familiar voice of Ali carried across the space. “I’m busy. This had better be important.”

  Seymour smiled at the phone, looking into the camera as he video-chatted Ali. “Life and death important.” He turned the phone around and did a slow circle, showing Ali the group. “I have a feeling if I sneeze, these people are going to shoot me. You want to vouch for me, please? Failure to do so and you’ll have to read my eulogy in a few days.”

  Ali laughed. “When you kick-off, no one’s going to eulogize you, Seymour. No one likes you that much. DJ, are you there?”

  DJ stepped forward and Spider Monkey aimed the phone in his direction. “I’m here, Ali. How come you’re not the one coming to us?”

  Ali shrugged. “I’m busy with something else at the moment and I guess your reputation precedes you. Look, I vouch for him. Don’t trust him much, but he is who he says he is. If he’s there to offer you a job, demand payment up front. Oh, and double your rate just because you had to look at his face. Hey, Seymour? Treat them right. I don’t want to have to clean up any of your messes. Gotta’ go.”

  The screen went black and Spider Monkey returned the phone to his jacket. Checking his watch, he said, “Look, I know we got off to a rocky start, but we’re on the clock here.” He pulled a portable drive from his other jacket pocket and tossed it over to Carbon. “You want to pull this up on a screen somewhere and let’s talk? If you accept my offer, I’ll need you to load onto the bird ASAP.”

  Carbon looked at Brett for approval. Brett looked at DJ. DJ shrugged. Two minutes later they were all standing in the ops room of the barn, staring at a video wall and hearing what Seymour had to say. What he had to say was disturbing.

  He pointed to a picture of an older gentleman with neatly groomed gray hair and thin glasses. “Dr. Julius Abreo, a naturalized citizen originally from France. For the last twenty years, Dr. Abreo has been working on cold fusion. Now, in case you didn’t know it, cold fusion is better than the typical kind of fusion in nuclear powerplants or submarines. For one, there is no radioactive waste generated. We have been able to do this for a number of years now, but the issue has been with containment of the reaction. The heat generated is too hot for any man-made material to withstand. We can create an energy field using superconducting magnets to solve that issue, but then you run into a whole other problem. The energy it takes to maintain the electromagnetic field is huge. You end up putting more energy into the system than the system can produce. Without going into details, Dr. Abreo recently solved this issue. Or so he says. He hasn’t got around to building the device to test it yet. Additionally, his design promises to make the reactor small enough to be portable. With his new method, if it works, we’re talking the Holy Grail of energy production. You can have one in your house, your car, almost anything. No more use of fossil fuels. We are talking science-fiction-like results.

  “Dr. Abreo has been keeping all of his research and designs on a central drive and encrypting the data to prevent theft. Not onl
y theft from a competitor, but theft from other countries. Yesterday, that device was stolen from the research facility where he works for the Department of the Navy.”

  Carbon spoke first, raising his hand as if he were in a classroom. “Excuse me, but so what? I mean, wouldn’t free, clean, unlimited energy benefit us all? Oh, let me guess, oil execs are having fits with the idea and are using their cash to bribe politicians. That’s why you’re here, isn’t it? You don’t want us to just get it back, you want us to prevent the information from getting out to protect the fossil fuel industry.”

  Spider Monkey smiled and shook his head. “One hundred percent wrong. While he holds patents on the design, his intention has always been to release the data globally once proof of concept was complete. No, the issue is much more sinister than that.” He turned back to the screen and tapped the control panel, bringing up a cascade of CAD renderings of a fantastical drawing of an aircraft that looked more like a pizza wedge. “This is why the Navy was funding his research. The power creation portion was just the first step. It would be used to create a craft that could go underwater at incredible speeds, exit to fly through the atmosphere, and even leave orbit for space flight. He was building us a UFO.” He paused and looked around at the room. DJ wasn’t sure what the others were thinking, but he felt as if he had been cast in a sci-fi movie. This was all a big joke, right?

  Spider Monkey continued. “I know what you’re thinking, and this is no joke. The energy from a portable cold fusion reactor could be harnessed to produce a non-polluting, high output thrust for propulsion. It could also generate an energy field outside of the ship similar to the one used to contain the reaction. That field would allow the ship to slip through our atmosphere at incredible velocities, as well as underwater. It could even be used to protect the hull from meteors and small debris encountered during space flight.”

  Argo interrupted. “How fast, exactly?”

  Spider Monkey shrugged. “No one knows for sure, but Dr. Abreo believes as much as five hundred miles per hour underwater.” A few in the room gasped in disbelief. “The field not only protects the ship in a sort of slippery bubble, but it reduces the gravitational mass of the ship inside.”

  Carbon interrupted. “You’re talking artificial gravity!”

  Seymour shook his head. “Not in the science fiction way you are referring to, no. But it does make it even easier for the propulsion system to make the thing move. In the atmosphere, we are talking speeds in excess of Mach 10. Outside our atmosphere, with reduced mass and in a vacuum, it would eventually make it to just under the speed of light. We could exit our solar system in days. We’re more worried about the rest of these plans falling into the wrong hands than unlimited, clean power generation.”

  DJ finally couldn’t take any more. “You’ve got to be kidding me. You can’t really expect us to believe all of this. Spaceships and force fields? Antigravity? Now come clean on why you’re really here or I’m going to let the team beat on you for a while.”

  Spider Monkey got real serious real fast. He shot a hard look at DJ. “Have your cyber jockey verify it.” He then turned to Carbon. “Go ahead. Look the guy up. I’ll wait. Authenticate.”

  Carbon blinked, then started tapping away on the tablet he carried with him everywhere. Spider Monkey crossed his arms and watched, his long arms and tall body making him look ridiculous. He resembled more a cartoon drawing than a real person. It didn’t take long before Carbon found what he was looking for and sent it to the big screen, multiple news articles from entities that focused on science. “The guy is legit. He’s a real scientist and recently was approved for patents on everything Agent Seymour just said. But the patents are limited in detail and vague on the drawings. I see multiple references from several physicists who seriously question his claims.”

  Spider Monkey addressed Brett directly. “I know how it all sounds. It’s far-fetched. I get it. And who knows if he really overcame the issues like he said he did? But just a few hours after he notified the Navy he had solved the problems in the design, the drive was stolen. I’ll tell you this as well. This guy, Dr. Abreo, he’s already come through for us on several things the public doesn’t know about. But here’s one you do. Hypersonic missile technology? That was him. He came up with the design one afternoon on a coffee break! His doodles were on a napkin, and I’m not even kidding you. While the Pentagon was dragging their knuckles on it, the design was stolen. How do you think the Chinese and Russians beat us to the punch on that? So, knowing the guy's reputation, can we really afford to let our enemies get their hands on these designs?”

  The room went silent, everyone looking at each other. It was Brett who broke the ice. “So how do you expect us to help you? Something this big, I’m sure you have much more useful assets than our small team.”

  Seymour nodded. “And we’ve already learned a lot in the short time it’s been since the theft. For one, it was a freelance team contracted by the North Korean’s who pulled this off. While we’re not sure where they are at the moment, we do know where they are going to be. Our intel says the team plans to hand off the drive to North Korean agents. We have the coordinates for the location and the time for the handoff.”

  It was Brett’s turn. “So then, why don’t you go there and get them? Why do you need us? And for that matter, why don’t the thieves just digitally transfer the information?”

  Spider Monkey seemed ready for the question. “The drive is encrypted, as I said. It’s likely the team who stole it doesn’t even understand how it works. And if the North Korean scientists get their hands on it, they’ll discover they don’t have the resources to make that happen. The encryption is biologically based. You need an active connection to Dr. Abreo’s brain. Everyone’s brain waves are unique and extraordinarily complex. The man has to physically connect to the drive in order to get to the data. And while we are pretty sure the North Koreans can’t work around that, it doesn’t mean it’s not possible. You would need a quantum computer to work through the issue. They don’t have one. But once they reach that conclusion, they’ll just turn around and sell it to someone who does have the expertise and the hardware. The Chinese come to mind. And they share a border.

  “As to your other question, the meeting will take place in Russia, about fifty miles from where the Chinese, North Korean, and Russian borders converge. While we have assets in Russia that could get there, they would be greatly outnumbered and without the combat assets to get the job done.

  “Our plan is to airdrop you over the Sea of Japan. We’ll have a sub pick you up. The Vermont will get you as close to the shore as possible. From there you will infil by RIB with a SEAL team for escort. You will make your way five miles in from the coast, and be waiting to ambush them when the bad guys show up. Exfil to the same location and the SEALs will get you back to the sub. So, are you in? The clock is ticking and we need to get a move on if we’re going to be there ahead of the handoff. To sweeten the deal, we’ll pay you double the normal rate just as Agent Ali suggested.”

  Brett shook his head, unconvinced. “We need a lot more information than that before I’ll greenlight this.”

  Seymour nodded. “I understand that, but as I said, time’s a-wastin'. Look, get your team on the bird and headed in the right direction. We can work out any details while we’re in the air. At any time prior to your jump, you decided to bail on this, then do so. We can’t make you. Our fallback plan will be to send the SEALs in any way. We prefer for there to not be a US Military incursion into Russia, but we’ll do it if we have to.

  Everyone looked at Brett. Brett shot DJ a questioning look. DJ shrugged. It took them less than fifteen minutes to load onto the Sea Stallion and leave Mother Earth. DJ wasn’t going to lie to himself; he was a bit nervous about this gig. He wasn’t overly fond of short notice deals with missing information. Doolie on the other hand was as happy as a clam. They needed his sniper skills, so DJ skipped the formality of the remaining week of training. Doolie was now on the
team. Besides, unless he had screwed up in some major way, the kid was going to pass. It would be good to have a sniper with his skills watching their back.

  Like normal, Carbon was along for the ride as their on-site tech support. Abbi and Brett would hang back and offer support from a distance. Carbon was less than useless in a firefight, but he was good to have around anyway. The trick would be hurling him out of an airplane. Their geeky team member had never jumped before. Since the landing was in water, he could just strap to someone else and jump tandem. DJ couldn’t wait to see the guy’s face when the door opened.

  Chapter 3: Garlic Parmesan Wings

  DJ sat in the back of the twin-turboprop Navy transport and looked over his team. As the Greyhound bounced through the night, buffeted by pockets of colder and warmer air of an approaching storm, he considered the people he had come to know as his extended family. There were the ones who had been with him the longest: Carbon, their genius hacker with his open disdain for corporate execs, the military-industrial complex, and all politicians, was an integral part of his group. The man was resourceful and calculating, seemingly always able to pull a digital rabbit out of his hat in time of need.

  Cash used to work with Brett. He was quiet and stone-faced, seldom displaying any kind of emotion whatsoever. His cold blue eyes were a striking feature against his otherwise bland personality.

  Sheriff, the black man who had once saved his life, had become their comic relief. He always seemed to know just how to issue a derogatory comment on one of his comrades that would make everyone else smile. The man was technically too old to still undertake missions such as this, but he always pulled his weight.