The sound of gunfire crackled along the corridor, rising above a bed of screams and commotion.
“I have to finish this,” Jack said.
Fuller studied him for a moment, and then nodded. He handed Jack his sidearm. “Take this.”
Jack rose, and Dinara made to follow.
“No,” he said.
“What do you mean, no?” Dinara replied haughtily. “You think I’m sitting this out after what they did to Leonid?”
Jack thought for a moment, and quickly relented.
“Here,” the wounded Secret Service agent said, and he handed Dinara his pistol.
“You’ll need this.” Fuller gave Jack his swipe card, and then set about using his belt to tie a tourniquet around the injured agent’s leg.
“Come on,” Jack said.
He ran down the corridor; Dinara followed. She checked her pistol as they came to the security door.
Jack paused, gave her a confirmatory nod, and she replied in kind. He swiped the key card and the pressure door unlocked with a clunk and a hiss. He pulled it open, and Dinara followed him inside.
CHAPTER 111
WE ENTERED A vast, super-chilled server farm. Rows of in-active servers ran back as far as I could see. They were stacked in floor-to-ceiling racks inside climate-controlled glass cabinets.
The security door closed behind us, and thick mortise locks snapped into place and the pressure seal gasped as it inflated.
None of the computers were on, and the thick door had muted the sound of the gun battle. Veles’ team must have used ceramic weapons to circumvent the base’s security measures.
I looked at Dinara and could sense her anxiety. I felt it too, and the silence somehow made it worse.
We crept through the huge room. Dinara checked the aisles running away to our left, and I kept my eyes on the ones going right. There was no sign of Veles, Kavanagh or Secretary Carver.
We picked up our pace as we passed one deserted row after another. After another two dozen rows, the narrow alleyway seemed to open up a short distance ahead, and I signaled Dinara to slow. We crept forward, and I saw we’d reached a control station at the heart of the server farm. A thirty-foot-square space was broken only by a ten-foot bank of screens and computer terminals set in an onyx plinth.
Ann Kavanagh stood at a computer in the center of the console, her back to us. I signaled Dinara to stay put, and inched into the control station.
“Don’t bother, Mr. Morgan,” Kavanagh said without turning. “Veles isn’t here. He’s with the secretary. An insurance policy in case you try to be disruptive. I needed Secretary Carver’s biometrics to override the FORCE System’s security controls, but I don’t need him anymore, so his life is very much in your hands. Behave yourself and you both might live.”
I was startled when every single server suddenly came to life. Thousands of operating lights illuminated, and the machines began to hum as one.
“Step away,” I said.
“Shoot me, and the secretary dies. Stop me and the secretary dies,” Kavanagh said. “I’ve worked far too long to let you interfere with what’s happening here, Mr. Morgan. In six minutes, the system will link with the Pentagon satellite network and it will go online.”
She turned to face me, and I saw triumph writ large. “And you know what that means?”
I didn’t dignify her gloating with a response.
“We’ll be able to access every single American military and intelligence system. They put everything in here”—she gestured around the huge room—“thinking it would give them real-time strategic advantage. They thought it would make them stronger, but it is their biggest weakness.”
“Karl Parker wanted me to stop you,” I said. “Doesn’t that tell you something?”
“It tells me he was weak,” she replied.
“He’d come to love America,” I countered.