Rise of the Pheonix: Act 2 Read online

  Tucker walked to the center, next to Edge, to add his two cents about the mission. “Our primary goal is to secure that mainframe, whether anyone is there or not. If this organization succeeds in obtaining those funds and the money transferred, they’ll have an almost unlimited bankroll for whatever they want to do next. Miami’s attack could be repeated many times over. We have to stop them.” Tucker ensured them.

  Edge stepped forward to conclude the mission brief. “One last thing, guys. I’m proud to be going in there with you. And I know you are a tight team. But,” he emphasized, “if someone goes down, do not endanger yourself to rescue or recover them. There aren’t enough of us to take such a risk.”

  Edge let that last statement sink in. The group looked at him and nodded slowly, the gravity of what he was saying hitting home. Death was a hard concept to face, and Edge was sure none of them wanted to picture their partners dying, but it had needed to be said.

  Edge had taken one final inventory of the group before he said, “All right; let’s arm up.”

  ۞۞۞۞

  Reid convinced the crew on watch at the armory to take an extended coffee break, allowing Edge and the team to enter. On their way down to the large steel cage in the basement, Edge continued to review the plan in his head: what should each person do, how should they move, even commands that would provide the clearest and most precise directions amid the chaos. Pushing those thoughts aside he selected weapons from among the assortment that the Department of Homeland Security armory held: varied assault rifles, shotguns, submachine guns, and handguns.

  For himself, Edge chose an MP7A1. The A1 variant was optimized for close quarter combat, unlike the original MP7, by having added foldable iron sights, a shortened stock, side mounted rails and pistol grip. Its combined compactness, reliability and accuracy made it a formidable weapon. He checked the Berretta on his side; it was his long-term personal favorite.

  “I see that Berretta never leaves your side,” Tucker observed.

  “Yeah, we’re pretty much married. All my guns are modified with custom made parts - specific barrels, hand grips and so on - so I know the bullet is going exactly where I aim. That’s why I was so intent on getting it back down to the cabin.” He finished with a wink.

  Edge handed Tucker a machine gun. Tucker was not all that familiar with the tactical specifications of the weapon, but he did like how cool it looked with the attached reflex scope and laser sight on the side rail. Edge also equipped Tucker with a standard-issue Glock 9mm with a laser attachment on the bottom.

  He handed Crawford the M4 tactical shotgun, a semi-automatic version that was faster than the typical pump action. Yeah, this is going to ruin their day. Crawford thought with a smile as he packed the gun.

  The weapons, tactical clothing, vests, and communication equipment went into duffle bags to lower their profile as they left the building. Best to suit up en route, Edge thought. Time was of the essence.

  “This bag is going to weigh a ton,” Crawford said, zipping up the bag he was to carry on the mission.

  “Well, you won’t need to go to the gym for a few days,” Webster joked as she packed flashbangs and smoke grenades into a bag of her own.

  Holding up a flashbang, Edge said, “Remember, only use these on my orders and when we do, keep your head down or you’re going to be worse off than the bad guys.”

  “Okay,” Edge said as everyone finished selecting their weapons. “We’re on a deadline so let’s roll out. We have a bank to visit.”

  Everyone picked up their bags and started out of the armory. Crawford was the last one out. Yeah, and we have a ton of payback to dish out, he thought as he hefted the bag onto his shoulder.

  Chapter 4

  1 Hour After Bombing

  10:30 pm EST

  Under the smoke-filled darkness that lingered over the city, a CH-146 Griffon disguised as a medical helicopter made its way through the Miami night sky, its destination the Global Trust International Bank. Dozens of medical evacuation helicopters were also in the airspace, ferrying wounded civilians and evacuating patients from the now powerless hospitals to the many field hospitals that had been set up outside the city’s center. The Griffon’s IDs and transponder codes authenticated them to what minimal air traffic control had been established, and they slipped in without a blip.

  The elite Black Unit sat crammed into the helicopter double checking their night vision goggles and other equipment. Their leader sat silently with a smile on his face, reading his tablet as he reviewed the various news updates about the world’s reaction to the attack.

  A few of the men took the opportunity to look out over the city. Their emotionless eyes looked down upon the destruction as if it was a fine work of art. Fires still blazed amid the twisted metal and concrete, construction crews with heavy equipment worked to clear the rubble, and the flashing lights of emergency vehicles strobed the streets below. “One minute,” The pilot informed Keeast of their distance out.

  “Roger that,” Keeast responded, as he signaled his squad to turn on their communication radios. “We have exactly forty minutes to extract the package after breaching the bank’s mainframe; after that red flags will be sent to the local law enforcement. By the way it looks down there, I doubt they will be able to get here before extraction.”

  Once the Griffon landed on the roof’s helipad, the eight-man squad swiftly exited the helicopter, fanning out in all directions to secure the rooftop. Keeast leads his team across the windy roof. He raised his fist, and his men formed upon the door. “Lox you’re up!”

  Lox pulled a silver canister from his supply bag. A press of the container’s nozzle released a white frosty mist, freezing the door’s surface on contact. He sprayed the liquid nitrogen onto three sections housing the internal iron rods that secured the door. The intense cold quickly degraded the metal’s strength, dropping the sprayed areas to negative one hundred ninety-six degrees Celsius.

  Strength becomes a weakness, Lox philosophized. He then placed three perfectly measured explosives on the bright white sections of the door. “Set,” he said as he gave himself some distance.

  The shaped charge blew its force and sound inward, shattering the security rods and leaving the door swinging on its hinges.

  Keeast gave the signal to Draggo to secure the eighteenth floor. The giant lead the team down the flights of narrow stairs. The backup generators powered red emergency lights, but the men of Black Unit saw only green through their night vision goggles. Draggo stopped when they reached the floor that housed the server farm and impatiently looked back as Hitoshi ran up and attached a hacking device to the door’s access control panel. The goliath that was Draggo looked down at the technology expert.

  “I still think you should let Lox blow it,” Draggo stated his preference.

  Not looking away from his device Hitoshi responded, “Told you; the network is connected to security systems. Blowing it could cause the system to tell mainframe to shut down, and we lose everything.”

  “So could that,” Draggo grunted as he pointed to Hitoshi’s device.

  “Only if you make a mistake,” Hitoshi schooled him.

  The door swung open.

  “I don’t make mistakes,” Hitoshi stated flatly as he detached the device.

  Without waiting for Draggo’s men to perform a sweep of the room, Hitoshi strode in and made straight for the consoles. Draggo’s job is to provide security. Mine is to defeat their firewalls. Let him worry about my flank.

  After the “all clear” confirmation had come through, Keeast entered the room and checked his watch. Three minutes ahead of schedule. Perfect. “Draggo. Start securing the lower floors.” The unit quickly exited the room and only Keeast and the hacker was left.

  The control workstations for the servers were in a series of stepped consoles, resembling mission control from the Apollo lunar program. Floor-to-ceiling windows separated the console area from the cluster of server cabinets at the center of the floor. Mounted at
ceiling height were a series of large, flat-panel displays showing various system statuses, including those of the security and intrusion detection systems.

  Agents of the Order, posing as maintenance personnel, had entered this area several times over the preceding months, installing bypasses that gave Hitoshi an unguarded access point to the server network. When he was properly hooked up, he gave a nod to his commander.

  “Squad,” said Keeast over the radio, “Listen up! We start the breach on my mark. Set timers for forty minutes. 3… 2… 1… Mark!” Each member of the team clicked the timer button on their watch.

  Hitoshi’s fingers flew over the keyboards like Mozart at a piano. Creating the transaction that transferred the money took only seconds and, at the speeds the banking networks used, the actual transfer would be complete before he released the Enter button. The majority of his effort would be spent faking out the approval processes to avoid trace-back detection.

  An interbank transfer had to be created by a bank officer and approved by multiple levels of management, depending on the amount being transferred. Given the number of zeros involved in this transfer, approvals all the way up to the Chief Financial Officer were going to be required. Hitoshi had been supplied with the authentication codes for each of the individuals whose approval was needed, so that was not a problem. The difficulty lay in the internal attributes of the sign-off system.

  In addition to the typed-in authentication codes, senior officers had biometric readers with encrypted verification codes that were checked by a separate system. Also, the system had delays of up to an hour, again depending on the amount of the transaction, precisely to provide time to detect this kind of improper transaction. For the amount of this transfer, the delays would amount to a full eight-hour day. Hitoshi had to compress eight hours of forgery into forty minutes while making the system perceive that biometric validations were successful, that proper intervals had transpired, and that this was all happening during daylight hours.

  Hitoshi felt that the challenge was enough to raise one eyebrow, but not both.

  As the computer wizard began his attack, the rest of the unit was busy on the sixteenth floor tossing desks, chairs, filing cabinets, and anything else that was not nailed down into heaps, setting up a maze of obstructions. With the sixteenth floor secured, Lox and Bricks set up at their positions at the southern end of the main hallway. From the moment, anyone entered the floor they would have two options: retreat or be gunned down.

  ۞۞۞۞

  Abandoned vehicles and rubble filled the streets. The urgency of allowing rescue and recovery personnel to move freely reduced the level of scrutiny Tucker, and Reid received as they bluffed their way into the quarantined zone. Edge took no chances. The group moved with a combination of speed and stealth. There were some close calls and at one point they had to crawl behind rubble for fifty feet to keep out of site of a National Guard patrol, then sprint full speed across buckled and rubble-strewn pavement. It felt like they were practicing Parkour. Edge was the trailblazer; moving through the rubble with ease, given the low visibility. The rest of the team did their best to follow in his path.

  When they finally reached the door of Global Trust, Tucker let out a sigh of relief. The team waited as Edge surveyed the scene.

  “Looks clear,” Edge radioed. “Follow me along the wall. Reid, Crawford, you keep your eyes on the floors above. Tucker, Webster eyes to the right. I’ve got eyes straight ahead.”

  The group moved into the building, glass crunching under their feet. The main lobby was a large open area with pillars and windows rising to the ceiling three floors up. Moonlight provided enough illumination to see that majority of the reception area had remained intact. It was decorated with large plants and seating areas that should have seemed warm and inviting but, given the devastation just outside, felt somehow off-kilter. It reminded Crawford of the images he’d seen of Chernobyl: devoid of people for decades but looking as though it had only been abandoned a few hours ago.

  Edge led the group to the north stairwell, and when he was satisfied that there were no sentries or patrols around, he started one last check of everyone.

  “It’s quiet,” Tucker observed.

  “Yeah, my worst enemy,” Edge replied. “But from what I can see, it looks like my hunch was right. They’re waiting for us on the higher floors,” he said pointing to the ceiling.

  “So then why are we hiding and whispering?” asked Tucker.

  “Because I only said it ‘looks like’ my hunch was right.”

  “Gotcha.”

  “Okay, night vision only from here,” Edge reminded. “Silenced weapons, same order of tasks we said earlier.”

  Edge looked to Webster and asked, “Remember where the cameras are?” “Top right corner of every stairwell,” she replied. Webster had to memorize their locations in a very short time. Feels like I’m back in college cramming for a test I forgot about; except the professors back then wouldn’t kill me for failing.

  “Start shooting the cameras out on the thirteenth floor and continue up to the sixteenth. If they see us, I want them thinking we’re going to hit them head on. Then you need the one in the hallway after we leave the library,” Edge reminded her.

  He knew the enemy would tap into the security system. Their only hope of surviving this would be to remove the eyes of Big Brother.

  “Remember, if the shit hits the fan and you need to move, call for cover fire. The spaces we have to navigate will leave you vulnerable if you go out on your own,” Edge said as he flipped the safety off his gun. “Ok, let’s go.”

  As they went up the stairs, Reid checked above for the first time. Holy shit! He thought when he saw the number of steps they were about to climb. Crawford slowed next to Reid after everyone passed.

  “Remember that hostage scenario we got dragged into in Tampa?” he whispered.

  “Yeah, you and I had to run up ten flights of stairs in like ten minutes,” Reid recalled.

  “Uh huh, well this is more than that,” Crawford smacked him good-naturedly on the shoulder as he moved by.

  “Thanks for the morale boost,” Reid snorted as the two covered the rear.

  Trying to keep up with Edge was like trying to compete with an Olympic athlete. The man moved unbelievably quick and showed no signs of fatigue, despite the gear he was carrying.

  Dear God! Reid thought, Okay, you can make it; you’re halfway there, he encouraged himself as his legs started to burn. When he arrived at the next stairwell, he saw the sign “4th Floor” posted on the door. I shouldn’t have read that.

  ۞۞۞۞

  “Sir we have a breach on stairwell E,” Hitoshi reported, looking at a monitor displaying video feedback from the bank’s various cameras.

  Days before recent events, the Order had sent in a few of its agents disguised as technicians to repair some ‘minor glitches’ in the security system feed, that may or may not have existed. A few snips, a few clips, and the wireless transmitters were in place sending all video feeds back to Hitoshi’s computer.

  “Tsk, tsk,” Keeast responded, watching the small group move up the stairwell. “All right; inform the men. I’d hoped for a quieter night.”

  “Copy that,” Hitoshi acknowledged. “Lox, Bricks, you’ve got five tangos making their way up stairwell E.”

  “Confirmed, five tangos,” Lox responded. “We’ll give them a warm welcome.”

  “See that you do,” Hitoshi said as he continued to attack the security system.

  ۞۞۞۞

  The low crack echoed in the stairwell as the security camera sparked and fizzled as Webster hit her mark. One more to go, she thought as she and Reid moved past Edge and Tucker, who had started unpacking the climbing gear. A few steps and another quick pull of the trigger and the task was done.

  “All cameras offline. They’re blind,” Webster reported.

  “Perfect. Come back and get ready,” Edge answered as he finished equipping his gear. He crawled over to the v
ent and started removing the bolts. Once done, he spun around expecting to see everyone else all ready to go; instead, he saw all of them still getting their gear repacked. This is not your team. Remember that. Gonna take a little more care and feeding to keep them alive. As he waited, he used the time to recall how the vent system worked.

  On 9/11, smoke flooded the upper floors of the World Trade Towers, disorienting and trapping victims. Global Trust took the precaution of revising their ventilation system to prevent any similar problem from occurring. Now, the system was designed to exhaust in the event of fire, pulling smoke away from each level into the main shaft and out of the building. Each duct was three feet by three feet, just large enough for an individual to crawl through, and it provided the team with the perfect access point.

  Tucker was the last to close up his bag and before he could say he was ready Edge started, “This is going to be a tight one so be careful and move silently. The duct we need is six feet in.”

  “Exactly how do we get these things to work silently?” asked Tucker, reminding himself again that he had never done anything like this.

  “Just remember to release your palm from the wall, roll your hand from wrist to fingertips. To release the foot grip just pull your leg away from the wall. It’s easy,” Edge replied though Tucker’s facial expression made it clear the analyst didn’t buy the idea of “easy.”

  “Okay, same order through the vent. Follow my lead.” Edge disappeared into the vent like a mouse into a hole.

  Reid’s crew all looked at each other. Webster looked eager to get in and try it while Reid and Crawford stared at the gloves and mimicked the motion a few more times. Tucker entered the shaft, then Reid.

  Crawford had whispered to Reid before he started his ascent. “Don’t fall bro.”

  “I think I got this.”

  “Good, because I won’t be able to hold up your ass if you don’t,” Crawford jested. Reid’s fist, with a single finger extended, was the last part of Reid to disappear into the opening.