Echo breakthrough book 6, p.2
Echo (Breakthrough Book 6), page 2
A jolt of shock caused Miller to jump back. His eyes fought to peer through the glare at a figure who appeared oddly difficult to see.
“WHO ARE YOU?! GET THE HELL OUT OF HERE!”
The figure, dressed in dark clothing, did not respond. Or move. Instead, it remained motionless, staring at Miller.
“I SAID GET THE HELL OUT!” Miller yelled and retreated, searched for something he could use as a weapon. But there was nothing. Miller tried to rush back to the workbench, but the figure quickly moved closer. “Don’t.”
A defiant secretary whipped back around, squinting through the light. “LEAVE! NOW! AND I WON’T CALL THE POLICE.”
He was on the edge of panic. Adrenaline coursed through his aging veins, and his heart felt as though it was going to jump from his chest. It was all he could think to say, desperate in his hope that the person was some common thief. A thug looking to swipe something of value but caught in the act while rifling through Miller’s garage.
But the calmness in the stranger’s voice told Miller he was not that lucky.
The person’s demeanor and complete lack of nervousness told him just the opposite—that whoever it was…had been waiting for him.
“What do you want?!”
Again, there was no answer.
It was then that Miller realized the overhead garage door light was not on, unnoticed above the wash of bright light from his car’s headlights.
“I said what the hell do you want?!”
Silence.
Finally, the figure began to draw near, smoothly and without any sound until Miller could make out a face.
It was painted black, but oddly, the more Miller stared, the harder the man was to see. Even his clothing appeared indistinguishable from the shadow in which he was standing. Not in color, but for lack of detail. “Do you have any idea who I am?!” yelled Miller.
Any hope of intimidation evaporated when the outline of the man’s face appeared to smile. “Yes, I do.”
“Then get the hell away from me! Do you understand?! Take what you want and get out!”
There was another long pause as the man looked around.
“I don’t want anything.”
“Then get the hell out of my garage!”
This time the man’s voice hinted at amusement. “Or what?”
“Or I call the police!”
“And what will you do,” asked the man, “in the time it takes them to arrive?”
Squinting, Miller searched the garage for anyone else. When his eyes returned, the man in the dark had moved closer.
Miller’s hand fumbled with his key ring.
“Looking for your car alarm?”
The secretary fought to regain his composure. “Tell me what you want.”
The man moved forward again. His face was still not clear. “I don’t want anything,” he repeated. “Except to remember the look on your face.”
Miller suddenly felt as if his heart had stopped. “I’m…not afraid of you.”
“I think you are.”
Miller shook his head. “No.”
“Then you know why I’m here. And now you’re beginning to wonder who.”
“No. I’m not.”
“Not even curious?”
Miller stared at the man for a long time before surprising him by exhaling. A strange expression now glittered from Miller’s eyes. “Son, I’ve been in this world a long time. I’ve made a lot of friends and a lot of enemies.”
“That you have.”
The figure moved closer to the light, leaving Miller surprised to see the man held no weapons. He then spoke as if reading the secretary’s mind. “I don’t need one.”
Miller glanced solemnly through the pane of glass in the garage door to one of the house’s lighted windows upstairs before turning to face the man. Even at his age, he was far from feeble. But something about the man was strange. Very strange.
“Last words?”
“I’m not going to beg, if that’s what you’re asking,” Miller said.
The man grinned. “Maybe you should.”
Miller took a deep breath. “It’s not how you go out that matters, boy. It’s who you are when you leave.”
The secretary had barely finished the sentence when his car’s lights suddenly and automatically blinked off.
5
John Clay stepped through the entrance and into the Pathfinder's air-conditioned bridge, followed by Steve Caesare, where they found Captain Emerson waiting for both. The captain wore his usual pressed short-sleeve dress shirt and a stoic expression and was joined by Executive Officer Harris standing to his left.
Clay momentarily looked between the men and raised his eyebrows. “Sir?”
The captain said nothing. Instead, he merely raised a satellite phone and handed it to Clay, who took it and pressed it to his ear.
“This is Clay.”
On the other end, the weary voice was unmistakable. “Clay, it’s Langford.”
“Admiral.”
“I’m afraid I have some bad news. Secretary Merl Miller has died.”
John froze.
“He was killed last night at his home returning from an errand.”
It took several seconds for Clay to reply. “I’m sorry, sir.”
“That makes two of us.”
“What happened?”
“Not sure yet. A forensics team is onsite now while we work through protocol here at the Pentagon. We’re going to provide an official statement shortly, explaining that he passed due to complications from the virus.”
Clay looked toward Caesare. “How fast was it?”
“Probably not very. Indications are that he put up a fight before succumbing to strangulation.”
“What can we do?”
“At this point, nothing. Given your team’s secrecy, I need you to stay as low as you can for the time being until I sort things out.”
“Yes, sir.”
Secretary Miller and Admiral Langford were the only two in the Pentagon who knew about their group, at least in detail—what they were doing and everything they had found thus far. Moreover, Clay knew Miller and Langford had their secret protocol regarding Clay’s team should something happen to either of them. Or worse, both. Protective measures Clay knew may call for disbanding the group and deleting everything. Every byte of information linking the team and their findings together. Which now could also mean dissolving Captain Emerson’s entire crew.
“We’ll stay put until we hear from you, Admiral.”
“Good. There’s one hell of a shitstorm swirling around this.”
“I understand.”
“I’ll be in touch. Anything you share with your team stays strictly with them. Is that understood?”
Clay nodded. “Perfectly. And sir?”
“Yes?”
After another long pause, Clay asked, “What was the errand?”
“What?”
“The errand from which Secretary Miller was returning?”
On the other end, Langford gave a troubled sigh. “Picking up medicine for his wife.”
6
The lab was silent. Everyone in the room appeared like stone, utterly stunned by the news. Unmoving and unflinching. The only sound was an occasional creak from the gently rolling ship.
“I can’t believe it,” Alison finally stammered. “They don’t know who?”
Clay shook his head.
“Could be damned near anyone,” breathed Caesare.
“How’s his wife?”
“I’m not sure.”
It was a devastating blow. The plans Captain Emerson and most of the crew had been making were for Secretary Miller's arrival with his wife Elizabeth, sneaking her by helicopter out to the Pathfinder in an attempt to use the water around the alien ship to help stave off her advancing cancer. It was something that had appeared to work for a young girl in Puerto Rico, but they could not do so during the pandemic without tipping off people who may have been watching. Not just exposing Miller and his wife, but everything. The alien ship, the plants, perhaps even the vaults. Secrets that could all be revealed by one lone military chopper making an oddly conspicuous trip to the Caribbean carrying the Secretary of Defense and his wife.
So instead, they were forced to wait until the lockdowns had lifted or at least relaxed. Until military bases were reactivated, allowing them to fly under the radar along with the resuming burst of military air traffic as an entire nation attempted to regain their bearings.
They were only two days away. And now Secretary Miller was dead.
“Do you think someone knew?”
“It’s possible.”
“Or just a coincidence,” said Caesare as he leaned back and folded his arms, peering at Clay. “If only I believed in coincidences.”
“So, what do we do now?”
“We wait to hear back from the admiral.”
Caesare shook his head. “No…until then.”
Clay’s gray-blue eyes stared back at him quietly.
“They’ve got to have a massive team crawling all over the scene,” Caesare said. “Which means a lot of cooks in the kitchen. How long do you think it’ll take to get any decent intel?”
Clay remained silent, contemplating.
“I say we take the bull by the horns.”
Neely frowned. “What does that mean?”
“We find the bastard.”
“And how do we do that?”
Caesare shrugged. “We found a teenager on the run in the middle of China. With a population of what, a billion people?”
“One point three,” murmured Clay.
“One point three billion people,” said Caesare. “And we did it before anyone else. We even found her before the Chinese could.”
“That doesn’t guarantee we can do it again,” said Alison. She and Neely then turned to Clay, who was still quietly thinking. The simmer on his face was faint, but it was there.
***
Borger answered the phone immediately. “Hey, Clay. Been expecting you.”
“I take it you’ve heard.”
“About Secretary Miller? Yeah. I’m sorry, man. Really sorry.”
“We all are.”
“He was a damned good man.”
“Which is why I’m calling.”
“You realize you never call just to see how our day is going.”
Clay managed a slight smirk on the other end. “How is your day going, Will?”
“Don’t ask,” replied Borger, glancing at Kenwood sitting in a nearby chair staring back at him. “So, what’s the plan?”
“For the time being, we’ve been ordered to stay put while the admiral sorts things out.”
“Okay.”
“Of course, staying put doesn’t mean idle.”
Borger’s lips spread into a grin. “Idle hands are the devil’s workshop.”
“I was hoping you would say something like that.”
7
The death of Secretary Miller was almost beyond comprehension, both personally and politically. The cover story would be nearly impossible to maintain if a single reporter made it within a quarter mile of Miller’s residence and saw the mass of people surrounding it. Investigators from the FBI, DOJ, Homeland Security, city and state police, even the Secret Service appeared like a massive cloud of law enforcement descending upon the property.
Along each side of the street, crowds of nearby residents were being ushered back by police officers, trying to get them to disperse and return to their homes—a difficult task for those who’d been sheltered in their homes for months on end.
As expected, word was already quickly spreading and making the official story harder to maintain by the minute. And it would grow ever more so the moment someone leaked a picture, leaving the White House with little choice but to fall back to Plan B—obfuscation and confusion. Provide enough conflicting information during the investigation to leave the public unsure of what had happened. A tactic to buy enough time for their public relations strategy to take root—one upon which the heads of each security department were currently being briefed.
President Jonathan Carr sat quietly and stoically, surrounded by the rest of his security council. Commanding attention from the head of the table with his six-foot-four-inch frame, he wore a white dress shirt with the collar unbuttoned and opened beneath a head of slightly tousled hair.
It was disastrous.
Preliminary evidence had disproved the notion, the hope, that Merl Miller’s death was the result of something more innocuous, such as an ordinary burglary. Someone caught in the act while merely looking for valuables to steal.
No. The circumstances appeared much worse, like a targeted hit.
“Jesus,” Carr groaned, leaning back against his chair.
There was no sound to be heard until his new Chief of Staff Donna Backshall softly broke the silence. “Mr. President, we need to manage this investigation.”
Carr lifted his eyes and peered at the woman. Attractive, with shoulder-length black hair and intense hazel eyes. People close to her often described Backshall as part Mexican, part Irish, part German, and ALL fire.
“Meaning what?”
“Meaning,” she said, “that we’ve contained the scene. Now we have to contain the investigation.”
“You mean shrink it.”
“Yes. Before it’s too late.”
Stan Griffith, Carr’s National Security Advisor, nodded in agreement. “The leaks will start soon.”
“If they haven’t already,” Carr mumbled, staring forward before shaking his head. “God, we don’t need this right now.”
It was a rhetorical statement. Everyone in the room was acutely aware of the carnage the nation had already endured. That the entire world had endured.
“Who would do this?” he asked. “Who would do this now? When every nation on the planet is reeling. Struggling to get back on their feet. Who has the time to even think about this?”
No one spoke.
“Merl was a hell of a good man. He didn’t deserve this, and neither do we.” The president looked down the right side of the table and found Admiral Langford staring at the dark cherry wood table in front of him. “Jim?”
“Yes?”
“Any ideas?”
Langford stared at the president for a long moment before blinking and shaking his head.
“Maybe the Chinese,” Douglas Bartman offered, clearing his throat. “Or the Russians.”
Carr studied his secretary of state. “Why is that?”
“They have ample reason.”
“We all have ample reason to make any case we wanted. Any story. Just like everyone else.”
Bartman fell silent.
“If this is an act of war,” Carr exhaled, “then so be it. But let’s assume not yet. Frankly, none of us are in any position to fight a war. China, Russia, or us.”
The president pushed himself up from the giant table and moved to the window, staring through a set of vertical blinds out over the vast green lawn before the White House.
And just when he’d thought they were finally turning a corner.
***
Will Borger’s eyes widened when he saw the number of people in the satellite images. “Look at that!”
Kenwood let out a low whistle. “That’s a lot of police officers.”
“They’re not all police,” said Borger, who slowly zoomed in. “Very few probably are. These guys are feds.”
“From which department?”
“My guess is all of them.”
“Are you sure we can break into their systems?”
Borger began typing. “Not all, but a couple if we’re lucky. And hopefully, that’s enough. A lot of forensic evidence these days is digital, and if I were a betting man, I’d say most of those people are taking pictures and measurements of the same things.” He stopped and carefully double-checked the Linux syntax he’d just typed. “If I can locate where the evidence is being uploaded, we can find out what they know so far.”
“And you and Mr. Clay think we can figure something out before them?”
“That’s the hope.”
Kenwood nodded, studying Borger’s screen over the older man’s shoulder. “What can I do to help?”
“You can start by reading through everything with me. Soon, I should have a point-by-point map of every place Secretary Miller went over the last several months. We’re looking for anything that stands out.”
“You got it. We’re going to run this through The Machine too, right?”
“Absolutely.”
The Machine was another computer system, enormously powerful and nearly a hundredfold faster in overall processing speed than IMIS. It was the same system they had used to find and tie pieces of forgotten data to find the Spanish Galleon Clay and the others were still salvaging. Or at least they had been until a few hours ago.
The system was designed to use deep learning algorithms to connect and relate disparate pieces of data that may not at first glance appear relevant or related, even over hundreds of years.
Of course, they wouldn’t have to go that far back to use The Machine for this. But they would have to stop what they were currently using the system for, which was unfortunate given what it had just discovered.
8
It was over twenty-four hours before Borger rang Clay back, requesting to speak with both he and Caesare, along with M0ngol, also known as Yong Yang, their Chinese hacker and latest U.S. citizen, who was still aboard the Pathfinder.
It took several minutes before Clay stepped back from the tiny desk in the ship’s cramped communications room and into view of the video camera. Steve Caesare’s broad frame, topped by a head of dark, windblown hair, filled most of the narrow doorway behind him. At the same time, Yong Yang peered around the side of his left shoulder. All three stared at the same monitor.
“Okay, Will. We’re all here.”
“Can you see my screen?”
“Yes.”
“Good. This is footage of Secretary Miller’s residence from the Argus satellite as of two hours ago.”
