Panic slid down her spine, but she had to keep it in check. These men had to think she was helping them long enough for help to come…if help was on the way.
“Fine, but she needs information, not threats. She is a scientist, a thinker, not one of the fighters who will jump when you command. She needs logic.”
Jamal threw up his hands and stormed out of the room, slamming the door behind him. Short turned back to her, his eyes kind, a smile on his face.
Garnet couldn’t stop the shiver racing through her. This man was worse than Jamal. At least she knew where she stood with that guy. With Short, he smiled at her, though he probably wanted to gut her with the knife on his hip.
“We don’t have access to long-range weapons. We need something that will hit DC. So we want you to take over a weapon that will send a missile or a few of them to DC, killing everyone at the capital.” His eyes seemed to grow brighter as he spoke, almost like the idea of killing everyone in the capital of the USA excited him.
She weighed her words, trying not to let on that she had no intention of doing that. There was no way she could blow up DC. Millions lived there, worked there, or vacationed there. She wouldn’t kill them. She had to make Short think she would do his bidding, at least for a time.
Maybe there was a way for her to send a message to someone in tech. But would they understand or just see it as a hacking attempt and shut it down?
“So you will do it?” Short asked.
“I’m thinking. What you’re asking isn’t easy. I need to figure out the location and how to break in. It would be the hardest hack ever.”
“How long will it take?”
She shook her head, trying to look like she was contemplating actually helping. “More than hours. If I had a team of hackers, maybe a few days. By myself, more than a week. I’ll have to wear the system down. It won’t be a single-prong hack. I’ll have to hit it hard multiple times and from multiple devices. One device won’t do. I need to run multiple hacks atthe same time.” She shook her head, playing up the frustration. “This will be very difficult.”
Garnet hoped these guys didn’t know enough to understand that she was lying. What they wanted would be incredibly difficult, and even if she got a missile in the air, it would be intercepted before it hit DC. If they wanted her to dump it into the ocean, maybe, but DC, it would be taken out.
If it were really easy to do, someone would have already done it. Heck, they’d probably already tried to do it and failed. It was crazy how many people tried to find systems to hack into on a weekly basis. It was one reason she had a job. There was a vast web of safety features protecting the USA from a hack just like this, but she had intimate knowledge of those systems.
The question was, could she string these people on the wire long enough to plan an escape or allow time for a rescue? She wasn’t sure, but she sure as hell was going to try to deceive them long enough to get the heck out of here.
Dark would arrivein about an hour, so they were on their way to rescue Garnet. They believed a traitor to be active at the Embassy, but they had no clue who that person was. That could be dealt with later. For now, they would keep their head on a swivel and be ready for anything at the location where they believed Garnet was being held.
The flight in was uneventful. They had a twenty-minute trek to the facility where they believed Garnet had been taken. There hadn’t been much activity in or out, which further confirmed the likelihood that Garnet was being held here.
There had to be something crazy they wanted done to make them take a computer person hostage. From the information they’d been given about her, she was the best computer person in the government. She had been at the state dinner becauseshe’d found evidence of a hack that would have taken down all military satellites and stopped it before any damage could occur. Then, she’d found the people responsible, and they’d all been arrested.
She was brilliant and worked for the government because she wanted to. Garnet could have worked for anyone and done anything, but she felt a sense of pride working for the government.
“I can see the compound,” Stanley said over coms.
Mick’s voice sounded in his ear. “Same.”
The two guys had run ahead to find resistance. So far, there hadn’t been any. They didn’t even have sentries posted.
“We’re moving in,” Chase said over coms.
They closed in on the compound, Keel ready with the explosives to blow the door. The satellite image of the compound told them one person was in an interior room, and they hadn’t left that room since they’d started watching. There were four other people in the compound, two who kept going to the room. That had to be where Garnet was being held.
The building was only one story, so they didn’t have to worry about the second floor. They would move in fast, taking out everyone who got in their way.
Anticipation vibrated through him. Like all missions, he was more than ready. He didn’t need to go through a litany of checks, because he had before they loaded onto the plane back in the States. He knew how to operate like he knew the back of his hand.
He’d spent years getting to this point, but still, this mission felt different. Maybe he should have stayed back, but he couldn’t leave Garnet to chance. She was too important.
He didn’t know her, but there’d been a connection between them he couldn’t deny. Maybe nothing would come of that spark, but he wanted to have a chance with her.
Keel placed the explosive devices and stepped back. The countdown started, and Bean looked away, closing his eyes to the flash of light associated with the blast.
As soon as the blast was over, he moved fast, heading into the building right behind Chase. Mick was at the back, and Stanley and Link were staying outside.
Bean turned the first corner, seeing a man step from a room, his gun raised. Everything was cooking, and it was about to get hot real fast in here.
