Chemical Burn (25 page)

Back-Up

We walked out of the parking garage, down the street, and approached the building. As I had hoped, the streets were clear. We crossed through the parking lot where the Audi had been and went up to the main entrance. I pulled the Prox II card out of my pocket and swiped it over the reader. The light went green, and the door-latch clicked. I pulled the door open and motioned for them to go inside. We walked quickly across the lobby, and as we entered the hallway, Xen and Rachel grabbed their hoods and pulled them over their faces. I slipped the pack off, slid my coat on, then replaced the pack. As my features dimmed to near invisibility, my companions stared at my visible head perched six feet above barely visible shoes. The rest was like looking through a pane of distorted glass.

“What the fuck?” Xen blurted.

“Nifty,” Rachel cooed.

“Business suit,” I said to both of them and pulled the goggles and hood over my head. I pressed the UP button. The door dinged immediately, we stepped in, and I pressed the three button. “Jeepers Creepers” by Tony Bennett played over the speakers.

Rachel and Xen looked at my goggles—the only thing really visible on me. They looked at each other, looked at my goggles again and started giggling. I could only shake my head, the goggles appearing to sway with a life of their own in mid-air, which made them laugh even more.

“Alright, alright. Game-faces. Let’s pretend this is serious, shall we?” My goggles shifted back and forth, glancing at both of them a few times.

Xen put a thoughtful finger to his temple. “I’m reminded of the story of a pot, a kettle, and shades of obsidian,” but he and Rachel stopped laughing and sobered up a bit.

I pulled down the facemask, and the goggles disappeared. I palmed the Prox card in my hand. “This should be easy.”

The door opened, and we stepped out into the empty reception area. If anyone was actually watching, this would get hairy fast, but corporate offices, even those owned by goombahs, rarely have twenty-four-by-seven eyes on security cams. I walked up to the door and swiped the card over the reader. The latch clicked, and Xen opened the door. As we stepped in, our motion set off the detector above the door and a loud, piercing
BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!
erupted above us.

“Shit!” he cried an octave higher than normal. Then he turned and bolted for the still-open elevator.

Rachel and my shifting outline calmly turned in the doorway and stared at Xen as he practically dove into the elevator.

“Xen,” I spoke quietly and calmly as the poor guy hammered at the down button over and over again. “Hold up a second.” I stepped into the office, put in Jackie’s code on the panel just inside the door, and the alarm stopped. The elevator doors began to close, but Xen stepped out before they did, a slightly embarrassed look on his face.

I leaned out into the office doorway and looked at him. “SOP,” I explained in a friendly, almost parental tone. “You get thirty seconds to disarm the system before anyone is notified. You okay? Need to change your shorts or something?”

“I’m fine, damn it.” He walked past Rachel who was unsuccessfully trying to keep a straight face. “Nobody says another fucking word,” he added with venom.

Rachel motioned, locking her lips and throwing away the key, but she shook slightly, trying to hold in the laughter as she followed Xen inside.

“The good news is that nobody is here, otherwise the alarm would have been off.” The door swung closed behind us. “Our luck is holding so far.”

I headed to the left towards the glassed off area at the back of the mostly dark office. We walked up to the door that opened into the lab. I slid the Prox card again, opened the door, and we stepped in. Rachel hit the light-switch, and fluorescent lights flickered to life, exposing a fairly elaborate lab facility with a half-dozen desks and a wide array of equipment.

“There it is,” Xen pointed to a large cubicle in the far corner.

“How do you know?” I asked.

Xen walked over to the wall of the cubicle, slid out the nameplate from the bracket on the wall and held it up. It had JACK SHAO printed on it. “See?”

“Smart ass,” I said with a smile on my face.

“I learned from the best.”

“Gee, I wonder who that could be,” Rachel added. Xen and Rachel stared at me deliberately, and they both chuckled. Rachel and I walked up behind Xen who had already sat down at the desk. There were two workstations in the cubicle.

“Just as I thought. That one,” I pointed to the one on the left. “No network cable or antennae.”

Xen moved the mouse, and the screen sprang to life. SHAOJ was in the user-field, and the password field was empty. “What’s his password?”

“I don’t know,” I said simply.

Xen and Rachel turned to me slowly with stunned looks on their faces.

“What?” I paused. I was toying with them and let the seconds tick by. “Don’t worry, I have a plan.” I reached into an inner pocket and pulled out a small gray box with a cable attached to it. “Here, this will do the trick, but it could take a while.”

“How long?” Rachel held her hand out so she could examine the device.

I handed it over. “Well, there’s good news and bad news.”

“What’s the good news?” Rachel looked at it closely.

“It can take as fast as a few seconds.”

“What’s the bad news,” Xen asked.

“It can take as long as thirty minutes to run through the permutations.” I almost sounded apologetic … almost.

“Thirty minutes?” Xen was appalled.

“I’m afraid so.”

Xen shifted in his chair. “We can’t stay around here that long, Justin. I’m barely holding it together as it is.”

“Wait a minute,” Rachel interrupted and reached between them to pick up a sticky-note hanging from a calendar on the cubical wall. “What’s this?” She held it out for them to read. In printed letters it spelled out
A-U-F-V-R-0-9
. “Could this be it?”

“Only one way to find out,” I said. “Try it, Xen.” Xen looked doubtful, but he typed in the capitalized letters and hit the ENTER key. The screen prompted:
The Username or Password is incorrect
. “Try lower-case.” Xen typed it in and got the same response.

“Wait a minute,” Xen said. “Let me see that.” Rachel handed him the sticky-note, and he looked at it for a minute, thoughtful furrows creasing his brow. His head cocked to the side and then a clever smile crossed his face. He turned to the keyboard and typed in some characters. He turned to us both and hit the ENTER key with a flourish. The login prompt disappeared, and the desktop came up on the screen.

“How’d you know?” Rachel asked.

“Think of it like a license plate,” he suggested, smiling.

She went through the options. “O-fever … aw-fever … ah-yu-fever … I don’t get it.”

Xen enjoyed watching her go through the puzzle. “Think like a
chemist
.”

Rachel’s head turned to the side as she wracked her brains for the answer. I was motionless for a few seconds, then I turned to a periodic chart of the elements on the wall.

“Gold fever,” I said quietly. “Nice work, Xen.”

“What?” Rachel was still confused. I reached over and pointed at one of the elements on the chart.

“AU is the symbol for gold,” I explained.

“And all caps,” Xen added, “just like it is on the sheet.”

“Start digging, Xen,” I said, putting the now unnecessary hacking device back in my pocket.

He grabbed the mouse and started in. He spent a few minutes running through folders and opening files, not really knowing what he was looking for. He’d zeroed in on a PROJECTS folder, but there were dozens of folders within.

“This would go a lot faster if I knew what I was looking for,” Xen said with a touch of exasperation, and then he double-clicked on a folder named KING.

I spoke up. “It has something to do with cocaine and meth. That’s what I …”

“Wait a minute,” Xen said, interrupting me and leaning in towards the screen. He opened a document and started reading. He clicked a few links in the document, and a series of three-dimensional molecule diagrams appeared in another program. He clicked through them, and the shapes appeared to morph from one structure through to another in a progression of four steps. “But that’s not possible … Is it?” he said to himself quietly.

“What have you got?” I leaned in.

“Well … I think this is it. It starts with cocaine and meth then a series of chemical processes and a reagent. I’ll have to read all the material to see what the catalysts are and how they’re being processed, but this has got to be what you’re looking for.”

“Are you sure?” I asked as I reached into a pocket and pulled out a thumb-drive.

Xen nodded. “Pretty sure.”

“Here,” I handed him the drive. “Copy the whole thing.”

“There’s a lot here, will it fit on this?” I nodded. Xen grabbed the drive, slipped it into a port and dragged the folder over. We all watched as about ten gigabytes of data was copied. Xen pulled the drive out and handed it to me. “I don’t suppose you have a copy of ChemPen on your PC at home, do you?”

I shook my head. “Do they sell it on line?”

“Yeah,” Xen confirmed.

“Done deal, then. Close everything down, and let’s get out of here.”

Xen did as instructed, and we headed out. Rachel turned off the lights as Xen opened the front door and waited for her. I stepped up to arm the security system, and they stepped through the door. I heard a brief scuffle in the lobby, and someone whispered a “Shhh …” that I’m certain wasn’t meant for my ears.

Shit … We’ve been made.
Fear clutched at my insides, something that had never happened before. I’d been worried about friends in trouble, but the thought of Rachel out there terrified me. I had to fix the problem, but barging in would lead to shooting, and I couldn’t afford to let that happen. I needed an opening.

I backed up against the wall a few feet away from the panel, completely camouflaged in the darkened room. I watched the barrel of a gun come slowly around the corner. I held perfectly still as an Italian face I didn’t recognize looked around the corner right at me. The man stepped up and put his back against the security panel, scanning the room for a couple minutes.

“Al, the video only showed two people,” another man’s voice said from the lobby. “Let’s go take them to Mister DiMarco.”

“Something about the video is bugging me … shut up a minute.” The man reached behind him while still looking into the room, and he turned on the lights. He circled the cube farm slowly, watching and listening. “Hmmph,” he finally said, shaking his head. He turned off the lights, turned to the panel and set the system. I began counting down from thirty. I could still set off the alarm if I was in the room when it reset. The man walked out the door at twenty-five seconds. The door closed at twenty-two seconds

“Let’s go,” someone said from the lobby.

I stepped around the corner and up to the door. The elevator door opened at seventeen seconds. I placed my hand on the doorknob and heard people being pushed into the elevator at twelve seconds. The elevator doors began to close at seven seconds and finished at four seconds. I opened the door and closed it behind me at zero, but I didn’t hesitate. I didn’t have much time. I couldn’t take them in the building but had to get them before they got into their vehicle.

I leapt across the room to the stairwell entrance and pulled out the vlain. I opened the door, stepped into the stairwell and jumped down the first flight, landing like a panther. I turned, leapt again down the next flight, careened off the wall, and kept going. I made it down the three floors of stairs almost as fast as if I had been falling. I stepped up to the first-floor door and silently opened it a crack. I’d beaten them down.

Stepping through, I closed it silently behind me and crouched behind a large potted plant in the hallway. I found myself at one end of a long hallway near the back of the building. Halfway down, a short hallway led to the elevators. Straight ahead, at the other end of the building, an exit emptied out into the parking lot.

The elevator doors opened and I heard Rachel ask, “How did you know we were here?” She sounded scared but in control. She knew I was out here somewhere. I hope she knew I would never let anything happen to her.

“Mister Shao is working tonight … at the
plant
. When we got the door login here, an alarm went off with the double entry, so we checked the video. When we saw you two going into the office, we decided to surprise you.”

Crap
, I thought. It should have occurred to me.
I must be getting rusty.

“Why didn’t you call the cops?” Xen asked.
He
sounded scared.

“We’re not a big fan of the legal system,” one of the guards said, laughing. “We handle things our own way … you know …
without
cops or lawyers. Shovels are a lot faster … and
cheaper
. We got a van out back, and we’re all going for a little ride.”

“No-no,” one of the other men said. “Not the front door. Back that way.” I heard them walking towards the hallway where I stood, and then they came into view. There were three goombahs, two of them jammed Rachel and Xen’s arms up behind their backs and held guns at the backs of their heads. The third trailed behind them. Neither Rachel nor Xen had their masks on.

“Hey Al, think we should have told Ricky about this?” the man holding Rachel asked.

“Nah …” Al replied confidently. “We got this. Besides, why wake him up? Maybe Gino will give us a bonus for bringing them in ourselves.”

The group turned away from me and walked down the hall towards the far door. Xen and Rachel were both looking around, searching for me, do doubt. I crept back to the stairwell entrance and opened the door as quietly as I could. I closed it behind me, went to the door leading to the alley, opened it and peered out. I could see the back of a black van at the far end of the building to my left. There were dumpsters between me and the van, so I quickly opened the door, stepped into the alley, closed it behind me, and ran to the dumpsters. I peered around the corner and spotted a face in the driver’s side, rear-view mirror. The back of the van lay fifteen feet away.