Cutting Edge by Ward Larsen

Author:Ward Larsen
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates

34

DeBolt was pushed and shoved into the backseat of a car. Two doors closed, and the car shot forward like a racehorse out of a gate.

Still cuffed and hooded, DeBolt was thrown left, then right, before the car’s accelerations dampened and fell in with the hum of steady traffic. Realizing he was finally outside the confines of the SCIF, he tried for a connection. His first request was simple: Own location.

The answer arrived instantly, a crisp map in vivid color. His blue dot was at the edge of something called the Thomas P. O’Neill Jr. Federal Building in central Boston. DeBolt was barely a mile from Logan International Airport, where he and Lund had been captured—the only word that fit. He searched for information on the building, and learned that among its tenants were the Department of Homeland Security, which encompassed Customs and Border Protection, and also the departments of State and Justice. The Secret Service was there as well, as was an administrative outpost of the Peace Corps. Even discarding the latter, it made for a long list of suspects who could be responsible for his abduction.

More ominous was the fact that he was leaving. The man who’d begun interviewing him—whom DeBolt had last seen on the floor of the Calais Lodge, and whose arm he’d nearly broken—had been interrupted by an important phone call. Had something in that call altered the situation? He didn’t like the trajectory of things. For a few hours a semblance of order and reason had taken hold. Now he was suddenly being hauled off to the notorious “undisclosed location.” He sensed someone in the seat to his left, and decided engagement was worth a try.

“Where is Shannon?” he asked. They already knew her name.

No reply. DeBolt used his knees and arms to explore. To his right was a door, and he could feel the buttons for the window and a recessed handle. There was no way to tell if the door was locked. Didn’t police cars have doors that could only be opened from the outside? It was yet another question he’d never before asked.

He decided to try again.

“I want to speak to an attorney. I have a right to—”

The blow struck DeBolt in the rib cage, an elbow probably, compact and heavier than it needed to be. It completely winded him, a nonverbal message that couldn’t have been clearer. DeBolt said nothing more.

He did not, however, give up on communication. There was a chance he was being transferred to a different federal facility, which meant he might end up in another SCIF where he wouldn’t have a signal. Sensing the car bogging down in traffic, DeBolt put META into high gear.

The first thing he did was call up the voiceprint of his interrogator, already recorded and saved—somehow—but never sent. DeBolt launched it into cyberspace. The reply took nearly five minutes, but was worth the wait. He received the identity of his interrogator with: “99.8% certainty.” Under present circumstances, good enough for DeBolt.

That name led to more requests, and soon the information floodgates opened.

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