Arch Enemy by Leo J. Maloney

Author:Leo J. Maloney [Maloney, Leo J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Kensington
Published: 2016-01-12T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 56

Morgan reclined in the seat of the empty Gulfstream jet after his gourmet meal. After a hell of a couple of days, it felt damn good to stretch out in luxury for a few hours, rest his weary legs, and apply cream to the mass of mosquito bites that covered most of his skin. He glanced out the window, clouds white in the moonlight far below. They must be somewhere over Spain. He pulled down the blind. He didn’t care for heights.

He closed his eyes for a rest, but that didn’t last for two minutes before the flight attendant cleared her throat and set a computer in front of him. “A little dessert, sir.”

The screen came on and resolved into the Zeta War Room as seen from around the big screen. Kirby was sitting like he owned the place, at the head of the table. Shepard was in his usual seat at the far end, on the side. Almost every inch of the table was strewn with reams of paper that seemed to have their own chaotic order.

“Whoa, that’s not a great angle for you,” said Shepard. “Look at the size of those pores.”

“How about we get to the point? I’m missing precious sleep for this.”

“This is your debrief for your next mission,” said Kirby. “Our analytical team has gained access to the data on Dominic Watson’s hard drive.”

“Yeah? What did you find?”

“Chat logs and forum posts,” said Shepard. “Thousands of pages’ worth. We’ve been piecing together the story while you were off tramping in the jungle. Here, I’m sending them to you now.”

A folder full of text files popped up on the screen. Morgan opened a file at random. It was a chat log for a conversation between a capt_omega and trackoverflow. It was mostly gibberish, peppered by the odd ha-ha or lol.

O’Neal trudged in from the lower right corner of the screen with another ream of paper in her hands, two or three hundred sheets’ worth, her light frame bent under their weight. She slammed it down on an empty corner of the table, adjusted her glasses, and swept her bangs out of her eyes. “Here’s the last of the trickster convos.” Morgan looked through the files Shepard had sent and saw that it was spelled Trixxter. “Hi, Morgan.”

“Karen. Any of you care to fill me in on why I’m going to Dublin?”

“When we first made contact with Watson, he was spooked,” she said, rifling through papers. “He wouldn’t say what it was that had gotten him scared, but I got the impression it wasn’t Acevedo. He said he wanted to disappear. We promised to make that happen if he—” Her voice faltered, her gaze was cast down. “If he did this for us.”

“We knew that Watson was on a number of electronic security forums,” broke in Shepard. “People who get together to talk about hacking. Mostly about how to stop it. That’s what most of this is.”

“I found a conversation he had saved on his computer,” said O’Neal, holding up one of the packets and setting it back down in its original place.

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