American Traitor Page 5

  He opened the console, then saw a text alert from Pike Logan.

  Despite himself, Dunkin was a little surprised.

  Pike had talked about visiting for the last year, and then had said he was coming for real. They’d planned the trip to coincide with the Christmas holiday break, but Dunkin knew Pike’s career, and had half expected him to say he had been delayed, without any reason why. In what seemed now a lifetime away, Dunkin had once worked for the Taskforce and understood that the Operator’s life was not his own.

  In truth, he was a little nostalgic for those times. The sense of mission. The sense of doing what was right for the world. Now he only worked for the almighty dollar, and while that had been very lucrative, he didn’t have the same job satisfaction as he did before—even if his time in the Taskforce had meant Operators like Pike ripping him a new asshole on operations, asking for computer miracles about things they didn’t fully understand.

  He didn’t want to admit it to himself, but he missed it.

  The text told him Pike would be here in less than four hours. With the Christmas schedule, he could leave midday and make it home before Pike showed up. He typed out a quick message saying he wouldn’t be able to text when Pike arrived because his phone would be in the car, but he was looking forward to the visit.

  Pike had said something about diving the Great Barrier Reef, and Dunkin’s girlfriend had been talking about that for a year, so it was the perfect opportunity to do so. Christmas break was coming up, and as it was the middle of summer in Australia, it would be perfect. Especially if he could get the Taskforce to pay for the trip.

  Pike had said the entire thing was a vacation, but from past operations with him, Dunkin knew half of the time he was lying, doing some government business under the cover of his company. In the past, he’d been on the inside, knowing the lie. Now that he was on the outside, he wondered if he was being lied to for the support of some operation. But he honestly didn’t care.

  Pike had mentioned some wild story about an operation in Europe culminating with a Syrian refugee he’d brought back to America, with him wanting to make sure she was able to survive on her own and thus he was leaving her in Charleston, and the story was so crazy Dunkin knew it was a lie.

  It sounded like a Taskforce operation. Who the hell would come to Australia because of a Syrian refugee? Pike himself used to make fun of some of the ridiculous cover stories they used, and this sounded just like one.

  But if he could get his girlfriend on a dive trip that was paid for by the U.S. government, he’d be more than willing to open his small apartment for a night’s stay with Pike and Jennifer. He just hoped his girlfriend didn’t get jealous about Jennifer. And that Pike didn’t mention his previous infatuation with her, which had almost caused Pike to pummel his ass.

  Unlike his own girlfriend, Jennifer was a hammer in the looks department, but she was also quite possibly the most honest human he’d ever met. She was . . . well, just a good person. Different from Pike, she saw the hope in people, and always sought it out. Pike gave you one chance, and then just broke you in half when you failed to live up to his expectations.

  And he liked that too. Pike was an apex predator, but he understood skill, especially when it was directed at the enemies of the United States. Something Dunkin had in spades in his own unique way, and it was a respect he missed in his current job.

  He missed them both. Missed the life. Missed being respected for his skills. Missed it all. He shoved the phone into the glove compartment and exited, heading to the front gate of his company.

  Located in what was known as the Edinburgh Defence Precinct—a squat, military-looking expanse of concrete buildings that spanned the size of a small town—it was adjacent to the RAAF Base Edinburgh and the Australian Defence Science and Technology center. With every compound surrounded by razor wire, and every building with a security entrance, the entire complex was made up of defense companies of all stripes, a veritable smorgasbord of military contractors. BAE, Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, Airbus, you name it—they all had offices here. And the security was commensurate with the stakes involved.

  He walked up to the gate, showed his badge, and then leaned into a retinal scanner, a biometric device that would prove he was what his identification claimed. He pulled back and saw another employee approach. Jake Shu.

  A short man with a wide waist from too much time behind a computer, Shu looked like an Asian Danny DeVito, complete with a balding head, ponytail, and a small gold hoop in his right ear.

  Dunkin said, “Hey, Jake, I thought you were headed out on vacation today.”

  Jake smirked and said, “I was, but I’m apparently needed here more than there. I’ll be leaving as soon as I can.”

  Jake put his eye to the scanner, and they were both let in, the walk down the long hallway awkward, with neither talking.

  Dunkin had reported Jake two months earlier, after Jake returned from the ill-fated F-35 flight in Japan. The plane had slammed into the ocean at six hundred knots, and after the endless investigations, when Jake finally came home—the one person from their cell sent to help with the construction—he’d been noncommittal about the crash. It was quite possibly the biggest setback in F-35 operational capacity, with all of the various countries demanding to know what had occurred, and Jake had acted like it was expected.

  Nobody in their company seemed to pay it any mind, but Dunkin did. He’d watched Jake on the floor and seen him do strange things. Nobody was allowed to have any separate media on the floor. All work had to be conducted on the terminals they had been assigned. Nothing was ever recorded or transferred from one computer to another—unless you had one of four accounts.

  Jake was one of them. A genius at artificial intelligence, he’d been recruited from a start-up in Silicon Valley, and had the all-important gold badge. The one that let a person actually download information from a system and transport it to another.

  The Department of Defense had realized early on that a thumb drive could be a recipe for disaster, and had forced all subcontractors to work through the problem within the systems themselves, over established secure lines, which was inefficient as all get out when dealing with similar problems across different platforms, but it prevented theft or hacking of the very information in play. That had lasted about a year before the contractors began screaming for a fix. And they came up with one—the golden badge.

  Only select individuals would have the ability to transfer information outside the network of their specific program, and because of Jake’s travel to oversee the software installation in Japan for the initial F-35s, he had that badge.

  Dunkin had seen Jake do some quirky things prior to leaving, using his badge to access systems that had nothing to do with his work, but at the time he’d just thought Jake was a scientist. And scientists did quirky things, like Doc Brown in Back to the Future. There was no doubt Jake was a genius, with skills that eclipsed Dunkin’s own.

  And then the F-35 in Japan had gone down into the ocean, with Jake the sole representative of their company on site. The company that designed the artificial intelligence for the entire fleet of aircraft.

  Dunkin followed the mantra of “If you see something, say something” and informed his superiors. They’d done a check of Jake’s access and had determined that he was working within the parameters prescribed. Dunkin thought the security team was lax, intent on protecting their own fiefdom from embarrassment. So he’d held his tongue.

  It hadn’t taken long for the insular world inside the company to spring leaks about the attempted whistleblower. Dunkin’s life had grown more difficult, with everyone assuming he was out to torpedo the company for a vendetta, while Jake had been allowed to roam free.

  There was no love lost between them, even as they pretended nothing had happened. No official report had been filed, and no official reprimand had been administered, and thus, standing in the hallway, scanning their retinas to enter one of the most classified projects in U.S. Department of Defense history, they both just acted like the entire affair did not exist.

  Chapter 10

  They reached the elevator together, and Jake pushed the button.

  “Where you headed for your leave?” Dunkin asked.

  “Cairns. I only have another year here and I haven’t seen anything of the country. I’m taking the train from Sydney all the way up.”

  The elevator opened and Dunkin said, “I’m thinking about taking my leave up there too. I got a buddy coming into town today, and he’s talking about diving the reef. You going to do that?”

  Jake gave him a sideways glance and said, “No. I just have a relative that lives up there. A cousin from China.”

  “No shit? What are the odds of that?”

  Jake chuckled and said, “I don’t know. My parents moved to the United States, and his came to Australia. We’ve never met.”

  “Well, how’d you even know he was here?”

  Jake gave him a look and said, “Family.”

  Dunkin took the hint and they rode the rest of the way in uncomfortable silence. When they exited on the third floor they had to badge in at yet another door, this one unmanned, and entered the beating heart of Gollum Solutions. Taking up the entire floor, it comprised nothing more than computer terminals in a cube farm, like one would see on Wall Street or in a library, with the outer area ringed by offices.

  Dunkin went to his cubicle and logged in, keeping his eye on Jake. That last look Jake had given him seemed almost like a threat telling him to back off, and he didn’t like it. He was a computer geek, sure, but one with more than a little skill. He’d been through the direct support training course at the Taskforce, and had served in the military. While he wasn’t an Operator, he was decidedly better than the average geek.

  Most of the floor was empty, the majority of staff already having left for their Christmas break. In truth, Dunkin wouldn’t have come in today at all, except his girlfriend had to work until three. He figured he could wrap a few things up and make a little money instead of just sitting around his apartment staring at the television. He did wonder why Jake was here, though. Dunkin knew that there was no rush for anything they were doing. The F-35 had been plagued with delays from the inception, and he knew it was a complete fabrication that management had “ordered” Jake in because he was indispensable for some problem. If that were the case, they’d all be in here working.

  It crossed his mind that maybe it was because nobody else would be around.

  He did his work, but occasionally scanned the floor, looking for Jake. He always saw him behind his own cubicle, banging away on some artificial intelligence code. Four hours into his shift he glanced up and saw Jake at a different terminal, doing something strange, and Dunkin knew he had no business at that terminal. Dunkin stood up, and Jake saw him, his eyes hooded like he’d been caught with his hand in the cookie jar.

  At least that was what Dunkin thought.

  Jake shut down the computer, and Dunkin saw him pocket a portable hard drive. He went back to his own computer, logged out, and walked to the door, passing Dunkin. He said, “Done. Gotta catch my flight to Sydney. How much longer are you staying?”

  The conversation raised Dunkin’s hackles, because the two were most decidedly not friends. After the elevator ride, the question was odd, to say the least. That he might acknowledge Dunkin’s existence with a head nod on the way out of the door would have been odd. Dunkin said, “I got a couple more hours until my buddy arrives. Might as well make some cash until then.”

  Jake nodded and said, “Enjoy your leave.”

  Dunkin smiled and said, “Same to you.” He waited another twenty-five minutes, ensuring Jake was off the compound, before getting up and jogging to the security office in the corner.

  Scott Mulroney, the chief in charge of cybersecurity for Gollum, was behind the desk, his appearance startling Dunkin.

  Dunkin said, “Hey, what are you doing here today? Where’s Paul?”

  “He wanted an early leave. I took his shift.”

  Which wasn’t good. Scott was the original person Dunkin had brought his suspicions to in the first place. And the one who had rejected them.

  Scott said, “What’s up?”

  “Hey, I was just wondering why Jake still has a gold pass. He got it for that Japanese F-35 construction over seven months ago. Why does he still have it? Shouldn’t we rescind it now?”

  Scott rolled his eyes and said, “What is it with your hard-on for him?”

  “Nothing, really. He was just in here today, and he was on both Kibler’s and Larson’s computers. No reason to be on them. They’re working the artificial intelligence A2/AD for Taiwan. Not the F-35 program.”

  The anti-access/area denial program was the missile defense system that would prevent the landing of any Chinese forces on the island. Using artificial intelligence, Gollum Solutions was working to decrease the decision times prior to missile launch from minutes to seconds. It was the most highly compartmented program Gollum worked on—and another reason that Dunkin thought the company was a little shoddy in the security department. Why keep that on the open floor? Because you just trusted everyone to stay in their own cubicle? He remembered his work with the Taskforce and knew that the project should have been stovepiped somewhere else.

  Scott put down the book he was reading and said, “He was doing work. That’s what we pay him for. You heard the boss. The guy’s a genius.”

  Dunkin knew Jake’s history. Undergrad at Stanford, doctorate from MIT, blah, blah, blah. As far as Dunkin could tell, he’d done nothing but university research on artificial intelligence until Gollum had hired him.

  Dunkin said, “I saw him with removable media, and both Kibler and Larson have nothing to do with the interface for visual simulations for the fourth-generation helmet. It’s just odd. That’s not what Jake does.”

  Scott turned to his computer and started tapping. Three minutes later, he turned and said, “No penetration or access to either system. They’re locked down, last login yesterday.”

  What?

  “Scott, I know what I saw.”

  “No, you think you know what you saw. You keep this shit up and we’ll be locked down. Lose the contract. Let it go, man.”

  Dunkin remained silent, and Scott said, “Unless you want me to take it to the boss, because you’re accusing me of not knowing my job.”

  Dunkin shook his head, saying, “No, no. I don’t need any more trouble. Sorry to bother you. I must have been confused.”

  Scott smiled and pointed at his screen. “Trust me, if he’d been rooting around like some Snowden clone, I would see it here. He didn’t.”

  Dunkin nodded, thinking that having a beer in front of his television would be a better use of his time than continuing work here today. He said, “Yeah, okay. I’m headed out. Have a merry Christmas.”

  Scott brought his book back up with a wave of his hand. Dunkin badged out and exited the building, fuming over the lack of action. He reached his car, unlocked the door, and saw another car leaving the compound.

  One that looked like Jake’s. But he’d left over thirty minutes ago.

  Hadn’t he?

  Chapter 11

  We landed in Brisbane after one of the longest hell-trip flights I’d ever experienced. We’d purchased the cheapest tickets we could because, at the end of the day, we really couldn’t afford this vacation. I was now having a little bit of buyer’s remorse, and not just because of the seats on the plane. Australia was way out of our budget. I’d broached going to California or something else closer, but Jennifer had talked about doing something really exotic. Something beyond just building a gap between us and Amena.

  I’d wanted to tell her no, but I just couldn’t. She’d mentioned the Great Barrier Reef in an offhand way, talking about diving and how that was stupid, because she didn’t know how to dive. But I could see her eyes light up at the thought. That had been enough. I’d set up some SCUBA training with a buddy of mine, and she’d taken to it like a fish to water, to coin a phrase.

  Now, eighteen hours later, exiting the aircraft, I was thinking going to Disney World in Orlando would have been a better bet. We had one more flight to catch, and all I wanted was to find a bed. But that was not to be.

  We stumbled around the airport, getting our bags and clearing customs, then tried to find our next flight. We grew more and more frantic because the damn thing was boarding in forty minutes and the airport might as well have had Chinese signs for all the good they did. Nothing was helping us to find our terminal. We saw a sign for domestic ticketing on the upper level and took the elevator, which led us nowhere. I began cursing, which is something I just do.

  Jennifer said, “Calm down, Caveman. This can’t be that hard. People on The Amazing Race do this all the time.”

  I bit back my response, and we reentered the elevator, this time with a guy who looked like a Crocodile Dundee reject, complete with cowboy boots and a leather hat. I had no time for him, and internally begged him not to say a word, because I was seriously getting pissed.

  He said, “You guys Yanks?”

  Jennifer, because she can’t be friendly, said, “We’re from America. Yes.”

  He nodded, like he knew what we were doing. He said, “I figured. You guys can’t find your next flight, right?”

  She said, “Actually, that’s right. We’re taking a flight to Adelaide and there is nothing in this terminal that tells us what to do.”

  He said, “Because you’re in the wrong terminal, mate. That terminal is a mile away. Get back down and take the bus. You’re literally at the wrong airport.”