PART 10

Author's Notes: So, I use a little technology that's pretty much, oh, pivotal to the plot. I think I got it right but if you find yourself saying, "Hey, that wouldn't work that way," just put on your suspension-of-disbelief goggles. Lord knows we fans have to do that enough with professional tv writers.

Also, my computer got a virus this morning and I won't be able to post another part for a week. Sorry!

…

A fierce kick sent a plastic recycling bin shooting through the air to bounce against JD's desk. The handful of administrative staff at the far end of the office raised only the slightest of glances toward the tall agent in the Team Seven bullpen. They knew the situation. They were ready for anything that might be asked of them but none of them would approach the area unbidden.

Nathan immediately regretted the impulsive action. He ran a hand down his face, rubbed his eyes and crossed to retrieve the blue bin. Kicking a bucket's not gonna change anything. He inwardly winced at the choice of words. As he righted the recycle container, his eyes fell to a little sketch he had left on JD's desk—five fire-fighting clowns rushing, with a hose, in the opposite direction of a fire where two other clowns were trapped atop a building, one shouting an extended cry of "Help!"

He snatched up the sketch and crumpled it into a ball before slamming it into the bin he so recently kicked. The sandwich he had purchased sat, untouched, in its white paper bag on his desk. Frustration and worry had purged hunger from his body. Of all the times to not be at the office, to not have his phone. And now all he could do was sit and wait, offering no assistance. He hated feeling useless.

He dropped into JD's chair and the young man's last words to him echoed in his head. "…and if you see a long yell for help running down the screen—come get me out. I don't trust any of these clowns…."

For a second, his heart felt like it stopped. He grabbed for the computer mouse, shaking it to awaken the dark computer screen before him. "Come on, JD. I'm listenin'."

…

The air in the hangar office was stifling. JD sat at the laptop and Vargas remained standing close behind him while Timothy filled the doorway. Between the warmth and the hovering, JD felt like a dying animal in the desert; the vultures' eyes were locked on him.

"So, just these three accounts?" he asked. " 'Cause I can blanket more if you want." He reached for the piece of paper next to the computer and the trembling of his hand was evident. Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed that Vargas saw it too. JD forced himself to look directly at the two men and splayed the shaking fingers. "Don't suppose either of you fellas smoke? I quit two days ago and all I got to show for it is this."

He prayed they would buy the lie and not suspect that the tremors were linked to the bold plan he was about to attempt.

Vargas's expression remained neutral but he looked at Timothy and nodded. The bodyguard stepped to the doorway and called out to Aaron. "Hey. Smokes?" Several seconds later a swish accompanied a small red and white box sliding to a stop at Timothy's feet. He passed the pack to his boss.

As he handed the cigarettes to JD, Vargas's lips formed a smile but it struck the young agent as perfunctory. A thought hit him and he did his best to channel Buck. With his eyes still up toward Vargas, he leaned forward as he took the pack, and let his fingers linger on Vargas's. He held the other man's gaze for several seconds while adding a bright smile. "Thanks, Ian, you're a life-saver."

Vargas's smile warmed and JD forced himself to punctuate the thanks with a light slap to the other man's thigh. He kept his body toward Vargas and tried to look practiced as he fished out a cigarette. With a match from the book that had been tucked inside the pack, he lit the tip of the Marlboro.

Most of his Southie friends in Boston had smoked since they were in middle school. For a second, the rough smoke that heated JD's throat as he inhaled took him back to hot New England summer nights. There were a handful of times he had taken drags from friends' Lucky Strikes while trying to impress a girl with his epic coolness. It was a thousand years ago.

He held the glowing stick aloft. "Cigarettes and computers, the only things that ever helped me relax." He hoped it sounded true. "You guys ever do any programming?" He didn't wait for an answer but observed the other two men carefully. "Man, C++ and Ada were my first late night loves." He issued a light laugh and tapped Vargas thigh again. "And who here remembers LISP?"

The man showed a small, sincere smile. "Never an interest that caught my attention."

"Yeah," JD said, "I was pretty much a wicked bad geek. You guys were hanging with the jocks, am I right?" He summoned a mental picture of Casey to help him conjure a warm smile up at Vargas. It was returned and JD hoped he had managed to get the man's mind on something other than killing him and Ezra.

He spun toward the laptop. If they answered his last question, it didn't matter. The blank look in Vargas's eyes and the split second furrowed brow on Timothy when LISP was mentioned sealed the deal. He had free rein to do whatever he needed.

He laid the cigarette atop an old Coke can on the desk. "Let me just walk ya through what I'm doing here." As he typed, a flow of convoluted "computer speak" rushed from his brain to his lips. Ezra's voice rang through his head. "Never lie when the truth will do." He did tell them what he was doing as he did it; he just altered the reasoning. He may as well have been explaining Loop quantum gravity to seven-year-olds, in French.

He reached for the cigarette and used the time it took for a drag and an exhale to scan the general area in his eye-line for what he sought. A pilot's map hung on the wall directly in front of him. It could not have been more perfect. Yes! Thank you, God.

…

"Wait, Nate, back up. You have him where? Remote what?"

Nathan unconsciously pressed his cell phone tight to his ear and could picture Chris's frown and furrowed brow. He forced himself to slow down as he stared at the computer screen. A minute earlier, he had been watching JD's monitor as an invisible hand opened a new Word document and odd strings of letters and numbers poured forth. Seconds later, he was on the phone with Chris.

"Wherever they're at, JD is on a computer." He spoke loud, knowing he was on speaker phone in the truck. "He's gotta be going through a browser to access Remote Desktop. But I'm not sure what he's doing. None of this makes sense."

"What doesn't make sense? What are you seeing?"

"It says rain and then an equal-sign, then skips a line and repeats that five more times."

"Rain equals, Rain equals. What does that mean? Rain equals what?"

Through the phone, Nathan heard Buck. "Big, big trouble! Yeah! You go, kid! That's my boy!"

"Hang on, fellas, there's more… 'Dumb and Dumber.' Then two dash two equal-sign zero."

Several seconds of silence passed and then Vin spoke. "Aw shit, minus not dash. Two minus two equals zero…I think Dorison and Hilliard are dead."

"What?" Ray exclaimed. "What the hell were they doing there?"

"Maybe something Arthur planned," Josiah offered.

"It doesn't matter," Chris spat. "Nate…?"

"Hang on, Chris, trying to figure it out…$Tand1$h 423 and a period. Then KevinCostner comma 409 x, or maybe a multiplication sign, two comma pound sign 1. Then RT 410." He ran a hand roughly over his head. "I don't know. I don't know what he means!"

Tyler's voice cut in. "Kevin Costner? Do you guys use code?"

"Code!" Nathan blurted. "That's it! Computer code! Messages. 423…um, 423, think, think, think. 423. Locked! It means the resource being used is locked. Those aren't dollar signs, that's for s! S-T-a-n-d-1 for the letter i-S-h. Standish 423."

Chris ventured a guess, "Locked up, maybe? Could be they've been separated."

"409," Nathan said. "We'll say multiplied by two. 409—conflict. Kevin Costner, Conflict times two?"

"There've been two fights?" Josiah puzzled out. "Two sources of conflict?"

Ray could be heard in the background. "Kevin Costner? Okay, um, Dances With Wolves? Bull Durham? The Bodyguard? Waterworld?"

"The Bodyguard!" Vin answered. "Bodyguard times two. Janquist and the other guard are there."

"Number sign!" Nathan added. "It's not a pound sign; it's number one. Vargas. Okay, last one is the letter R and the letter T next to each other and 410. Let's see, 410 means the resource you're looking for isn't available anymore—permanently gone. RT 410…RT 410."

"Artie's dead too," Buck said. "Christ almighty, Chris, he's on his own."

…

JD moved a hand from the keyboard to take up his cigarette. He pulled a long drag and held the smoke for a second before making a show of blowing it into the air. He knew neither Vargas nor Timothy could tell he was not really inhaling. The last thing he needed was a coughing fit to belie his implied severe habit. He dropped the near-finished butt into the Coke can and heard the hiss of the tip hitting liquid.

He grabbed the pack and lit up another. By filling the room with as much smoke as he could, JD hoped to add more distraction for the two non-smokers. He kept on with his fast chatter as he stalled for time.

"What you're looking at here, Ian, is a safety buffer. I'm routing through proxy servers all around the world. DumbandDumber, that one is in Nigeria. Standish is in Paris. Kevin Costner, New Delhi. Did you know the Indians love Kevin Costner? Batshit crazy for him, who knew? The proxys make it impossible for the Feds to figure out where the transaction came from. They'll still be chasing their tails while you're three deals down the road. The numbers are computer code for what I want done…close the backdoors I've opened, delete the string after the satisfiable range has been authenticated."

JD was now just slinging nonsensical phrases to explain his code. As he prattled on, he glanced again at the pilot's map pinned on the wall in front of him. His eyes bounced repeatedly from map to screen to make sure he accurately transcribed the tiny numbers that he needed. He could feel his nerves start to clatter again and he reined his chatter back in. C'mon, please tell me someone is getting this.

…

"I'm getting more, Chris! RDF on Jag. 302 underscore us. It's written like the word 'us', then period. LatiN 40.168817&LonnW 104.37193. What the…? I don't recognize this. I mean, 302 is temporary redirect, like where something is found. But the other numbers, that's all too long to be code the way he's written it."

"Just start at the beginning, Nate," Josiah said.

"RDF on Jag…gotta be the Jaguar. RDF, all caps, like initials."

"No," Josiah answered, "abbreviation. Radio direction finder. The Vega! Jag isn't for the car, it's probably for Ezra; he's still wearing the body-pack transmitter from lunch. If Vargas is watching what JD is doing he can't type Ezra's name. RDFs track transmitters."

"A body-pack isn't going to send a strong enough signal," Ray said. "We'd have to have some idea of where to look."

Nathan read aloud what they had figured. "So, he's saying, 'track the Vega using RDF, find us here'. Then LatiN and LonnW—the n and w are capitalized—followed by the numbers. Write 'em down. Maybe if you see them they'll make sense. L-a-t-i-capital N 40.168-"

"Latitude North!" Vin nearly shouted. "He gave us their coordinates."

"Nate," Chris started, but his teammate cut him off.

"All ready on it, Chris. Hang tight, I'm lookin' up the location now." In the background, he heard Tyler scrambling his tactical air unit as Chris communicated with the inter-agency teams in the other vans. "Wait, he's giving us something else. M7 remote back two roger comma one four y comma two four n."

Buck answered almost immediately. "One for yes, two for no. Nate, you type him a big ol' hell-yes-number-one that that's a roger from Los Siete Magnificos! Fuck yeah, kid, hang on, we're comin'!"

…

JD retrieved his second cigarette from where it rested on the Coke can, took a drag and exhaled into the room while turning toward Vargas. He leaned back in an attempt to block the monitor and fed Vargas some more meaningless babble. "Almost done with the safe routes, Ian. The final server just has to process the locking access. We need to wait about ten or fifteen minutes to see if we pick up any tracers."

He knew how long a hack, a link, and a transfer should take. And he had to assume Vargas had looked over the shoulder of his previous hacker a time or two. JD figured it would be a good time to explain the amount of time he was taking.

"Other guys aren't careful enough, too full of themselves. Think they can't be caught. They just hook up, hit a couple of proxies and transfer. But do you know how easy it is for even in-house security to notice that? Let alone if it's the Feds and they're actually looking. Now, the way I do it takes a lot longer but it's tight, ya know? I learned from this old-school Russian guy, he was wicked 'leet—Escher with a hard drive. He was like, seventy, had never been busted for anything. Taught me to fly low and slow." Barely taking a breath he hitched a thumb toward the door. "You wouldn't mind if I just real quick check on-"

"That can wait, John. The sooner we're done here, the sooner the two of you can get on the road."

JD didn't expect Ian to let him see Ezra but talking was buying him the time he needed. "Yeah. No, I understand." Another drag, another exhale of smoke. "Could I maybe get one of those Cokes? I got a pissah of a headache. Caffeine helps, ya know. If not, it's okay, I understand."

Vargas was still close enough to touch and JD rested his hand briefly on the man's forearm while looking up at him with, what he hoped was, a kind smile.

"I can allow that."

JD wasn't sure what emotion he saw in Vargas's pale gray eyes. He relaxed a fraction when Vargas looked at Timothy to relay the request to Aaron.

"Thanks, Ian. I really appreciate it." To cover his nerves, he took another pull off the cigarette and brushed a hand through his hair. He had not realized how heavy with sweat it was. "Let's see where things are at."

He turned back to the monitor and barely contained an emotional response. The screen was clear except for the number one.

…

The trucks idled on the side of a rural road, close to the coordinates given by JD. The muffled voice came down on them like a voice from Heaven. "Air Support One to Ground One…RDF found a signal."

A whoop from Buck covered the next few words but they received the information they needed.

"…quarter mile off the road that's up ahead of you on your right. IR indicates three individuals in center area, two around south room. Very little movement. Three other unknowns grouped in south room—heat signatures are very low—could be a false read. Be advised, there is no approach cover. Recommendation for Ground One to access solo. Copy?"

Tyler replied. "Copy, that, Air Support One. Give us some room and stand by. Over."

"Will circle around, Ground One. Give us a shout out when you need us, sir. Air Support One over and out."

Tyler eyed Chris. "Your men, your call, Larabee."

Chris nodded a thank you to the FBI Senior Agent and clicked his mic button to address the teams. "The aerial infrared backs up our suspicions—our agents and three suspects. Ground One will go in first. Agent Martinez, I need you and your Qwest uniform up here. Martinez and Wilmington will initiate a soft engage. SOP for enclosed conditions. Ground Three and Four, you're on sweep. A reminder—we will secure our agents to keep their aliases intact. I want suspects separated from them asap. Questions?"

Silence was the only reply and Chris closed communications. The truck's passenger door opened from the outside and Rafe smiled at his DEA teammate. "Mind if I take your seat, there, Marco?"

"Just as long as you don't take all the fun," the younger agent answered. He slipped from his spot and closed the door after Rafe was situated. "Keep it tight, mi 'mano." He held up a hand and his friend lightly high-fived him before their fingers interlaced for a quick shake.

"Como siempre," Rafe answered.

…

Nerves nearly pushed Ezra's phone from JD's hand as he fished it from his back pocket. He had slipped it there earlier when they had left the Jaguar and though it was useless to make a call from, he could use it buy more time.

"I just need to-" His attempt to stand was frozen by Timothy reaching for his pistol. JD quickly held the phone out. "The number…Ezra's account. It's his phone. I-I don't know where he has his account number stored." Despite desperately wanting to go and check on his partner, to give him hope, he thought it best to stay in front of the laptop and keep Vargas's attention.

The phone was passed to Timothy who returned a moment later and handed it back to JD.

"Thanks," JD said, looking at Vargas to avoid staring at the bruises under Timothy's eyes. He may have only landed two punches earlier but the damage was obvious. He said a silent thank you for the lack of a mirror in the office. Apparently, Timothy didn't realize how he looked. JD dropped back into the chair and knew he was out of stalls. He tapped the screen of Ezra's phone to bring it to life. He had to make the transfer.

…

Buck had forced himself to keep the truck speed around five mph during the bumpy ride down the dirt road to the hangar. Anger and apprehension rolled through him when he spotted the Jaguar.

He took advantage of the large area in front of the hangar to pull the truck around until the rear of the vehicle faced a small door. He knew his teammates and the other federal agents in the truck were itching to bust through. But he was going to be first to the fight.

…

"You're a very talented young man, John." Vargas laid a hand on JD's shoulder and the agent wondered if his flinch registered. He knew Vargas could tell the transfer was complete but JD attempted one more play for time. He glanced up and over his shoulder, lighting up yet another cigarette while laying down another line of irrelevant speech. "I just need to run one final control to reroute the paths away from the proxies' backdoors."

"Almost time for you gentlemen to be going on your way." Vargas withdrew his hand from JD's shoulder and looked at Timothy. "Have Ezra join us."

JD knew the odds were nearly non-existent that Vargas would actually let them walk out. A brief thought flitted through his brain. Well, even if we die and he gets away, at least he won't have gotten any real money from us. He shook off the notion and again took up the silent chant that had buzzed in his head since he had spoken with Ezra.

We are walking out of this. We are walking out of this. We are-

The sound of a heavy truck engine stopped his breath in his chest. From somewhere outside the office, Aaron called to his boss. "Mr. Vargas, a Qwest truck just pulled up."

"A what?"

"Qwest," JD piped in, barely able to contain his emotions. It was a coincidence delivered from God. Dorison and Hilliard had taken out the phones, but Vargas and his men probably would not be aware the phone company could not have knowledge of that. "Communications company." His team could not have chosen a better cover.

JD could see Aaron and Ezra standing now in the middle of the main room, focused on the door. The guard stood behind with a hold on his prisoner's left wrist and a pistol pressed to Ezra's spine. The southerner's unsteady stance indicated that the grip on his wounded limb was not a gentle one.

A voice from outside nearly brought JD to his feet. He quickly brought the cigarette to his mouth to cover any emotion and left it clamped between his lips.

"Hello?" Buck called out, affably, "Anybody home?"

A second sound—a solid double click at JD's right ear—dragged his attention back to his immediate predicament. Vargas held one of the detective's weapons next to JD's head, and his left hand fell heavily on the agent's left shoulder. JD took note, however, that the pistol was pointed distractedly toward the laptop's monitor. He didn't want to risk any movement so he tried to ignore the cigarette smoke that drifted up into his eyes.

...

As soon as I get my laptop virus-free I'll rescue my trapped stories and post the next chapter. But it will probably be a week.