MindWar (Nick Hall Book 3) Read online

  “Done,” came the reply seconds later.

  Hall sneered at Poole in absolute contempt. “So why don’t you crawl back into your hole and never come out again!” he spat. “Do the world a favor, asshole!”

  As he expected, this was the straw that broke the hothead’s back. You’re going to fucking die, you fucking prick, Poole thought as he sent two fists flying toward Hall’s face in quick succession, both hitting nothing but air.

  Poole’s jaw dropped in disbelief. He knew how fast and unexpected his strikes had been. How could anyone duck both blows so effortlessly?

  “You finished?” asked Hall calmly. “We’re under video surveillance right now, so I’ll add this footage of your attempted battery to the rest of the shit I have on you.”

  “Who the fuck are you?” said Poole yet again, unable to process any of what was happening to him.

  Hall ignored the question for the fourth time. “If you don’t back off, you’re even stupider than you look,” he said, glaring at the man in contempt. “You really going to ruin your life over this? I can get you fired, humiliated, and arrested. I almost hope you keep coming, just so I can demonstrate.”

  Hall paused and forced his heated emotions down, taking on a calm, reasonable demeanor. “But if you never get near Sandra again,” he continued pleasantly, “and never strike another woman, you’ll never have to worry about me again. What’s it going to be? Think hard. Do you really want me as an enemy?”

  Hall read that Poole’s sense of self-preservation was finally overwhelming his irrational sense of rage. Whoever this mysterious guy was, Poole was thinking, he had mad computer hacking skills and there was no doubt he could make his life a living hell. He really was the last guy Poole would want as an enemy.

  And Poole had cheated on Sandra. Maybe this was Karma catching up to him. And he’d find other women soon enough. Maybe it was time to forget about this one, cut his losses. The bitch just wasn’t worth it.

  Okay,” said Poole finally. “You got it. She’ll never see me again.”

  For just a moment he reflected on how invasive and accurate Hall’s information had been, and a shiver ran up his spine. What if this asshole continued to stalk him? What if this guy thought he was lying? “I swear to God I mean that,” he added, now almost pleading. “You have to believe me. I’m out for good.”

  Hall dug into the depths of Poole’s mind and confirmed he was telling the truth. “You had better be!” he snapped. “And remember what I said about mistreating women in the future.”

  Poole nodded vigorously.

  Hall shot him a look that could have melted lead. “Now get the hell out of my sight!” he growled through clenched teeth.

  10

  The moment Poole sped away, Hall made a quick exit, extricating himself from Sandra Girvan as pleasantly as he could, accepting her tearful thanks, but refusing to get involved in a discussion and politely declining to come inside for a drink. He was forced to be more brusque than he would have liked, but Megan reassured him telepathically that he shouldn’t feel bad about this. After all, she told him, Superman never stood around waiting to be adored after he saved the day. He just shot off into the sky and was on his way.

  As the Yukon left the area, Hall spent a few seconds recounting his interaction with Poole. Everyone was happy it had worked out, and even happier that they were once again on their way, with their precious cargo safe and sound.

  “Good work,” Briarwood told Hall. “But that’s it. If you ask to take another unscheduled risk—even to stop something as horrendous and unthinkable as a man about to leave a bad review on Yelp,” he added wryly, “I’ll kill you myself.”

  They were just entering the highway, and Hall was just about to melt into a well-earned coma, when Briarwood’s phone rang. He listened for a few minutes, told whoever was at the other end he would call back soon, and then ended the connection.

  “Nick, I hate to do it,” he said, glancing at the man in question in the rear view mirror, “but that was a DHS agent. Are you up for one more quick interrogation?”

  Hall shot him a punch-drunk look. “Really?” he whispered wearily, knowing that the agents had been told to contact Briarwood for instructions if things didn’t go according to plan. “What happened?”

  “He just arrived on base,” said the captain. “Delayed because the guy he was bringing in ran. Led him on quite a chase. Wants to know if it’s too late to bring his suspect to the interrogation building.”

  “Shit,” mumbled Hall. “Haven’t I read enough of these guys for one day?”

  “I can’t argue with you there,” said Briarwood.

  Hall began to knead his temples with the tips of his fingers and he let out a heavy sigh. “Tell him it’s not too late,” he said miserably. “Have him bring the guy to interrogation room one. Since we reversed course, we have to go by the base anyway. Just park the Cockroach on the shoulder of the highway, near the fence, and I’ll read his mind from there.” He paused. “Just slap me awake if I lose consciousness while I’m doing it,” he added with a tired smile.

  “Thanks, Nick,” said Briarwood. “Sorry to do this to you. But in a way you brought it on yourself. If you hadn’t done the cat up a tree thing, we’d have been too long gone to circle back for this one suspect.”

  “No, no,” said Hall. “We’re good. This guy ran, so he probably has plenty to hide.”

  “We have time to stop for coffee,” said Megan. “A double espresso will get the juices flowing again.”

  Hall groaned. “Megan, at this point, I’m pretty sure that if you fed me coffee intravenously it wouldn’t help. But no worries,” he added stoically. “Plenty of time to rest when I’m dead.”

  They drove past the base once again and Briarwood parked on the shoulder. Hall closed his eyes and took a deep breath, ready to begin. Everyone in the SUV fell silent, almost holding their breath, waiting for him to do his thing. Several minutes rushed by.

  Hall gasped and his mouth fell open. He looked like he had seen the horrible visage of Satan himself. There could be no doubt he had found the mind he was after, and something within had horrified him to the core.

  “Floyd, get us inside the base!” he snapped. “Immediately! We need to borrow a jet.”

  Without a word Briarwood started the SUV and shot across the short stretch of parched summer grass separating the southbound and northbound lanes of the I-15, ignoring blaring horns and heated looks.

  When Hall had asked to exit the highway earlier because of Poole, Briarwood had tried to argue him out of it. But this was different. The fact that Hall was reading a terror suspect, and the horrified look on his face, which should have been comatose, told Briarwood everything he needed to know. He was now fully prepared to do whatever Hall asked without an instant’s hesitation, which included not wasting time waiting to get to the next exit to turn around.

  “A jet?” said Briarwood as he hit the northbound lanes and accelerated, the SUV’s engine struggling to keep up with his demands. “I assume that means that whatever this is requires your presence to stop it?”

  Hall nodded. “I’m afraid so,” he said grimly. “And we might be too late already.”

  11

  Justin Girdler drove to the edge of a shopping mall in Sandy, Utah, and parked in front of a tall building with an orange-and-black sign that read Momentum Indoor Climbing. He had a long night ahead of him and he relished the exercise he was about to get. He wasn’t sure why the sport of bouldering was so addictive for him, but he knew that it was. Addictive and therapeutic, both.

  He had elected to move THT’s headquarters to a previously abandoned warehouse at the base of one of the endless mountains that surrounded Salt Lake City for any number of reasons. With its back against a steep mountain, their headquarters would be easier to secure. And although THT personnel would have a view of spectacular wooded mountains when they ventured outside, the mountain their building abutted was steep and barren, so it was never visited by nat
ure lovers or hikers. It had been steadily mined for granite for over a hundred years, and the warehouse had been left behind by the last mining company to take what it needed from the earth and move on.

  Even though Hall had steadily gotten better at ignoring massive quantities of thought-static, the base was far enough away from pockets of civilization to minimize this issue. And finally, while the Salt Lake City area was known for many things, it would be one of the last places anyone would expect to harbor the most secret agency in America.

  Area 51, yes. Salt Lake City . . . not so much.

  The warehouse had once been a mining headquarters, and after an extensive remodel to fit THT’s needs, it was a mining headquarters once again. But this time the mining would be for resources far more valuable than granite. THT was mining to find the cure for ESP, the secret to quantum encryption, and for intelligence that would be devastating to America’s worst enemies.

  The fact that greater Salt Lake City was also home to Momentum Climbing, which ran several of the premier climbing gyms in the world, was just a happy and welcome bonus.

  Girdler grabbed his climbing shoes and chalk bag and left his car. The moment he entered the building his mood heightened even further. The old cliché of being a kid in a candy store came to his mind. It might be corny and overused, but in his case it was accurate.

  Girdler sat on the two-foot-thick floor mats and paused to change into his expensive climbing shoes, lightweight but firm, made of materials that could grip a smooth wall, and with toes so pointed they could find purchase on a lip that was half the width of a pencil.

  His eyes feasted on the walls of all dimensions and curvatures that surrounded him, up to six stories high, pockmarked with a rainbow array of thousands and thousands of hard plastic holds in many hundreds of varieties. He couldn’t wait to choose one of the dozens of color-coded climbing routes and begin. He reached into his chalk bag and had just begun to give his hands a good coating of the white substance when his phone rang.

  “Shit!” he muttered under his breath. It was his emergency line, and the ringtone indicated the call had been placed by Nick Hall himself, using his implants.

  He felt his mood deflate like a popped balloon.

  Was it just his imagination or did climbing seem to trigger emergency calls? Had he sinned so badly that the man upstairs took delight in punishing him this way? He had to admit, getting a call before he even began his first ascent was a new twist. Usually his phone waited to ring until he was hanging upside down like a bat, clinging to millimeter-deep holds with the very tips of his fingers.

  He rushed out of the gym, inserting an earpiece as he exited, and made his way to the back side of the building where there was open space and no chance of being overheard.

  Hall began the moment he answered, not asking if he caught Girdler at a good time or wasting time on pleasantries. “General, we were outside of Hill Air Force Base, ready to leave, when I read a straggler named Abu Patek. We’re headed back inside now. Everyone is with me in the Cockroach and is conferenced in on this call.”

  “How bad is it?”

  “Patek is the sarin gas expert we’ve been looking for.”

  Girdler swallowed hard. Recent intel had suggested ISIS had activated a sarin gas expert in the States, a precursor to a coming attack. Hall’s identification of the man should have been cause for celebration. But since Hall’s call was anything but celebratory, Girdler’s stomach tightened and he braced himself for the worst. “And . . . ?” he prompted.

  “He’s a brilliant chemist. Managed to make some dramatic improvements to the gas. Better potency. Better atmospheric dispersal kinetics. Apparently, ISIS has been planning a maiden voyage with it for months. They planned to keep Patek in the dark, but he’s smart, and he deduced the attack is taking place just before sunset tonight.”

  “Deduced?” said Girdler.

  “Long story,” said Hall. “I just sent you an e-mail with everything I got from him, which you can read later. But trust me, I have no doubt his conclusion is valid.”

  “If the attack is that near,” said Girdler, “then it’s likely they’ve already placed the canisters.”

  “No. They’ve loaded the gas into a canister all right, but they plan to use an advanced drone as a delivery vehicle.”

  “What’s the target?”

  “Patek doesn’t know,” said Hall. “Worse, he doesn’t know anyone who would know. No other human dots for us to connect. But he did manage to learn it’s going down in San Diego, California. Somewhere in a twenty-mile radius of the city.”

  “Which is why you’re re-entering the air force base,” guessed Girdler. “To get transportation. You want to be on scene to use your bloodhound skills to sniff this out.”

  “That’s right,” confirmed Hall. “We could use your help.”

  “Understood,” said Girdler, knowing better than to try to argue Hall out of it, and not wanting to if he could. “I’m putting you on hold, Nick. I’ll have Hill scramble a jet to take your team to the Naval Air Station on Coronado Island. I’ll make sure you have a helicopter waiting for you when you land. Coronado is a stone’s throw away from downtown San Diego.”

  “Thank you, General,” said Hall.

  Less than two minutes later Girdler was back. “Floyd, it’s all set,” he said to Briarwood. “You’re clear to drive the Cockroach directly to runway four. They’ll be expecting you. Your jet should be a go for wheels up in twelve minutes.”

  “Roger that,” said Briarwood.

  “I’ve also ordered Abu Patek to be rendered unconscious and brought to the runway. He’ll take the trip with you. Nick can root through his mind and fish out information if specific intel questions arise.”

  “I’m not sure he knows anything else that might be helpful,” said Hall.

  “I agree,” said Girdler. “But I’m not sure he doesn’t. He’ll be an added insurance policy. We can keep him asleep the whole time so he won’t get in your way.”

  Girdler paused. “Sergeant Plaskett,” he said, switching gears, “any thoughts as to which targets might be most attractive to ISIS?”

  Plaskett was a Navy SEAL, which meant he had been trained on Coronado Island and would know the city better than anyone else on the call.

  “It’s a target-rich environment if there ever was one,” replied Plaskett after a brief pause. “You’ve got Balboa Park, where thousands gather to picnic and go to museums and theaters. You’ve got the famous San Diego Zoo, a big tourist attraction. SeaWorld is nearby. Seaport Village. Old Town.”

  Plaskett let out a groan. “Just had a really bad thought,” he added miserably. “It’s late July. Nick, find out if the Padres are playing tonight. Also, find out if it’s Comic-Con week. If so, you’ll have tens of thousands of science fiction fans and Hollywood elites at the convention center.”

  Hall was so adept at using his implants to access the Web that the information appeared in his mind’s eye without him being consciously aware he had asked for it. “Bad news,” he said with a sigh. “The Padres are playing the Reds at seven tonight at their home stadium, in the center of downtown. They’re expecting thirty-two thousand fans. And Comic-Con is in full swing.”

  “Just perfect,” said Girdler sarcastically. “Anything else?”

  “I’m afraid so,” said Hall. “Turns out the horses are running tonight at the Del Mar racetrack, which is just at the outer edge of the twenty-mile perimeter. Which gives us another fifteen or twenty thousand sitting ducks.”

  “Damn!” growled Girdler. “Target rich is an understatement. It’s like tonight is the perfect storm of activities there. No wonder ISIS chose this time and this city.”

  “All of this airspace is drone restricted, right?” said Chris Guest. “So we can shoot down any drone we find over any of these locations, including downtown in general.”

  Girdler frowned. Drone regulations were much like gun regulations. They could be very useful in certain situations, but not when it cam
e to stopping those truly committed to doing harm. If you were willing to commit murder, breaking gun laws or drone laws was the last thing you’d worry about.

  “We’ll scramble our own drones in the area,” said Girdler, “and ready our anti-drone countermeasures. But I’m not optimistic.”

  Girdler had just read that drone use had tripled every year since 2019, and their numbers were huge to begin with.

  “In a beachfront tourist destination like San Diego,” he added, “commercial and recreational drones will be everywhere. Throw a baseball high enough in a random stretch of unrestricted airspace and you’ll hit a half dozen of them. And they can dart into restricted airspace in minutes, sometimes seconds. So we’d really need to down thousands of the bastards that are anywhere near these possible targets.”

  “And even if we could,” said Briarwood, “downing the sarin drone could release the gas and result in the mass casualties we’re trying to prevent. If they even see we’re coming after them, they could decide to trigger the canister. The only way this would work is if we knew which drone in the swarm belonged to ISIS, and made sure to down it over the ocean or some other unpopulated location.”

  “Agreed,” said Girdler.

  “I have even worse news,” said Hall. “This attack is going to be the unveiling of two new technologies. The improved sarin and an improved drone. Patek was told ISIS acquired ten of these drones last fall, but were waiting to deploy any of them for just the right moment. They have high end sensors allowing them to navigate and avoid obstacles at night, and defeat all currently available countermeasures. They’re relatively small, very powerful, and un-jammable, and have technology onboard that provides them a veritable invisibility cloak straight out of Harry Potter. Disguises an EM signature at all wavelengths: visible, radar, heat. We won’t find this drone unless we know where it is.”