The Hermetrius Conspiracy Page 3

  About an hour later he saw them walk back into camp and set the rifle down against the tree. Thirty minutes later two big black bears lumbered into the camp. One went straight for the tent and tore it up looking for the fish he smelled. The other sniffed the ground until he found the fish under the rifle butt, swatted the rifle into the woods, and ate the fish.

  By this time both men, who were too stunned to act at first, got to their feet and ran for the Explorer. They came back armed with a shotgun and a pistol. They raised their weapons to fire but nothing happened. The bears, seeing them as competitors for the food, charged the men as they ran back to the Explorer. Jack didn’t hear any screams, but he did hear an engine roaring as the Explorer crashed through the woods to escape.

  Chapter 5

  It had been a week since the bear incident. Jack checked the campsite a couple of times but saw no sign of their return. They may have set up their watching post somewhere else, but he saw no sign of it.

  He had a special set of binoculars he modified by adding a small infrared laser pointer. If there was an optical lens – camera, binoculars, rifle scope –wherever he looked, the laser retro-reflected from it and displayed the location in his binocular view. A couple times a day he scanned the forest looking for optics but so far hadn’t seen any. He almost wished he saw someone watching him so he could sick a bear on them.

  He spent a few hours on the Darknet but found nothing new. He was putting the finishing touches on some software code that would let him hack into the Agency’s computer and would try it out this afternoon. May he would finally get some answers about the guys who were watching him. He opened his lap top and saw Lynn’s latest email. She sent it three days ago and he hadn’t read it yet so he opened it:

  Good to hear from you, Jack,

  It sounds like you’re enjoying your retirement. I guess growing up in the mountains is in our blood since we have both retired there. The Rockies are a bit different from the West Virginia hills – much taller and covered with snow year round.

  I left Coal Creek in 10th grade because my family moved to Florida, so I graduated from high school there. After high school I went to Florida State and majored in business management. After I graduated I had a financial career with several different companies, and retired last year to our ski lodge in the Rocky Mountains. My ex-husband visits now and then, especially during ski season. My kids also ski. I guess that’s why I moved up here. It lures the family up to the lodge a couple of times a year for a ski vacation and again in the fall when the aspens turn to gold.

  I told Selena and her friends about the hot dog cooker and they can’t wait to make one and try it out. They’re talking about having a hot dog “cookout” once they get it finished. Thank you for taking the time to answer me.

  Lynn

  She sounds like an interesting person, and is probably who she says she is. But in this business you can’t be too careful. He typed out a short answer, hoping to cut off further emails:

  Glad to hear your life is going so well, Lynn. Let me know how the hot dog cooker turns out.

  Jack

  #

  He woke up at dawn after laying awake for half the night thinking about his software design for hacking into the FRA computer. The software program he was writing hadn’t hacked into the Agency’s computer system yet, at least not all the way. Every time he tried her got a little deeper into their system. But he would keep making changes until he got deep enough into their system to get the information he was after. Once he got that he would have more pieces of the puzzle.

  A cup of coffee on the porch should get his mind back in gear. A few deep breaths of forest air and he was feeling better already. He watched the trout rising for a bit and then was treated to a bald eagle swooping down to catch it’s breakfast. He watched it soar high in the sky with a trout in it’s talons and head for its nest across the lake.

  As he lowered his gaze he did a double take. Was there something else flying high over the lake? It was too small to make out, so he got his binoculars. There it was. He zoomed the image and saw a small drone aircraft! Nothing big, wide wingspan, propeller driven, super-quiet engine. He watched it until it circled back for another loop over the lake and his cabin. He pushed the retro laser button and immediately got a glint back from the lens on the drone. So that’s how they were watching him now.

  His mind immediately ran through approaches to counter this threat. Maybe he could train the eagle to go after it. (Another wild thought from his creative A.D.D. mind. Get serious here!) He could build a jammer for the radio control signals. That would crash the drone in short order. Or he could pull out his 10-watt laser, mount it on a tripod with a rifle scope, and burn out the video camera. He had used that approach a few times on missions that required neutralizing surveillance cameras and it worked well.

  Maybe that would be the best approach because they would have no clue what made the camera quit. They probably would just put in a new camera and send it back up so he could take out another one. After three or four camera replacements, they would conclude it must be the power supply. When they sent the plane up with a new power supply and he killed that camera, they would get a new camera supplier, and when he killed that one they would . . . He could keep this game going for a couple of weeks or so.

  A week and four dead drone cameras later they quit sending them up. He would have to keep his eyes open for their next attempt to keep him under surveillance. He still wasn’t any closer to figuring out who they were. And why would they watch him at his home? It wasn’t to see where he went and who he talked to.

  That’s it! They must be watching for someone to come up here to talk to him. Who would want to talk to him? Maybe whoever sent him the warning letter. He, or she, knew where he lived, but they also knew he was being watched, so it’s not likely they would come here, at least not in daylight. If someone was trying to meet with him he needed to give them an opportunity somewhere else. Time for a road trip.

  #

  His plan was to drive to the Washington DC area using the main roads and keeping an eye out for vehicles that might be tailing him. He had rigged his car with miniature video cameras built into the front and rear license plate frames. The images were fed into an on-board computer that read the license plate numbers and vehicle images of any car in front of or behind him. It stored them in a data base and if any of them showed up frequently, his laptop screen would alert him and display the vehicle information. He would keep varying his speed so traffic wouldn’t stay behind him. If he saw any vehicles in the pack matching his speed variations, it was suspicious and he would keep his eyes on it.

  If he positively identified a tail car he would drive to a place where he could loose them, then circle around and follow them back to their home base. Once he knew who they worked for, he would have a much better chance of finding why he was under surveillance.

  He didn’t see anyone following him when he left, but now that he was on the main highway he would have to pay more attention. Keeping watch was easier with four traffic lanes since he could change lanes and see who followed. If they were a few cars back and moved to a left to get in his lane the camera would get a clear shot at their car. If he didn’t catch a tail on this trip he would try again in a few days.

  He pulled off the freeway and into a gas station to see who followed. After a few minutes a grey sedan pulled in with two men who looked like they could be agents – shirt and tie, sunglasses. When he looked right at them they turned their heads. They must have been a few miles behind him – too far to keep him in sight. That meant there must be a plane overhead that was watching, and they were there to follow him if he left the highway.

  He went inside, bought a roll and a cup of coffee, and went back to his car. As he stood by the car door he did some body stretches – twist left, twist right, bend forward, then bend backwards and scan the sky from that position . . . There it was, at about five-thousand feet and twenty degrees left of the
highway. Not much he could do about that right now, so he drove back onto the highway and headed for Alexandria where the FRA headquarters were.

  As he drove he thought about the aerial surveillance. They were spending big bucks to track him. What could be that important? When he got to Alexandria he would throw them a curve by disappearing. That should stir up the hornet’s nest and flush out something he could work with. He could have his friends in the Darknet watch to see where the phone and computer traffic picked up.

  He checked into the Alexandria Hyatt early so he could find a space on level 1 of the underground parking garage. He had booked a room on the first floor and he found a parking space underneath where he guessed his room was located. This would give the wireless video cameras enough power to be picked up by his laptop in his room.

  He got into his electronics stash in the trunk and pulled out four tiny cameras. He had designed them to look like mud dauber nests so they were easy to hide. He stuck them on support posts and the back wall, then went back to his room to test them. They all worked fine. The cameras were motion sensor activated and would only be active when someone was near his car, so he wouldn’t have to review hours of recordings in the morning.

  #

  He ordered supper brought up and started working on the latest changes to his hacking program. By midnight he was finished but he would have to wait until morning to test it. He only hacked when the network traffic was high to make it harder to detect the intrusion.

  He was ready to call it a night when his email alarm went off. He checked and saw another one from Lynn. ‘May as well have a look before I turn in.’

  Jack,

  The girls tried the hot dog cooker and it was amazing. They made it with four sets of nails to cook four dogs at a time. Four dogs in two and a half minutes! About the same as a microwave but a lot more fun to watch with all the sparks and popping. You should patent it. That made me think that maybe you have patented it, so I entered your name in a patent search. There was no hot dog cooker, but it looks like you have a few other patents. It could have been another Jackson Preston, but the inventor had your middle name, Joshua. How many people could have the name Jackson Joshua Preston? Your patents were for computer, video, and electronic gadgets. I knew you were smart.

  The early October chill is starting to move into the high country. The first snow won’t be far behind. I get snowed in up here often, sometimes for a couple of weeks at a time. I don’t mind it, but I have to stock in plenty of food, get my propane tank filled, and get the generator serviced. I have a commercial freezer in the basement so there’s room for lots of food. I can always ice fish if I run out of everything else. I have a couple of deer rifles and can go out hunting on my snow shoes if the snow is deep. I also have a snowmobile, but it doesn’t do well in deep fluffy powder.

  It’s nice to have someone to exchange emails with. The house is pretty remote so I don’t have neighbor to chat with.

  Lynn

  Well, maybe he didn’t want to cut off the correspondence yet. She sounds more and more interesting. He typed an answer, throwing a couple of questions from high school to see if she couldn’t answer them. If she could, she was probably who she said she was.

  I’m glad the hot dog cooker worked. Try it with a big dill pickle in a darkened room. You’ll get quite a light show.

  Before I even got out of high school GE introduced a kitchen appliance that used the same principle to cook six hot dogs at once, so even if I wanted to patent it, they beat me to it. As for the other patents, I plead guilty. In my job, whenever I need something that doesn’t exist I just invent it. I’ve only patented the ones with commercial potential.

  After awhile I concluded that a patent is only worthwhile if you are willing to pay big bucks to protect it in court, and I wasn’t interested in that. If big companies, especially overseas imitators, want to steal your idea, they have a permanent staff of lawyers whose only job is to defend their patents and steal others.

  I have a machine shop and an electro-optics lab in my basement so I still create things – robotic vehicles, laser devices, and model rockets. I got into that in Coal Creek right after Sputnik was put in orbit. I saw a movie a few years ago, October Sky, that reminded me of my teen years in Coal Creek. It was a true story about a West Virginia mountain boy who started out making rockets and ended up a NASA scientist. It was pure luck that kept me alive back then. Especially during my bomb-making years. I used to make pipe bombs and set them off up the Coal Creek holler where no one could get hurt.

  My best buddy in Coal Creek was part of all of this fun. Do you remember him? We used to hang out at that lunch room across from the junior high school. I don’t remember what it was called, but every noon hour a bunch of the girls and some of the boys would go over there and dance.

  As for my personal life, my wife died earlier this year. I have 3 grown boys and 4 grandchildren, but I don’t see them much because they live all over the place.

  I’ll be on the road for a few days. I’ll check my email when I can.

  Jack.

  He hit send and punched up the video monitor screen from the parking garage cameras. No action yet. ‘It’s time for bed. I’ll check again in the morning.’

  He woke at 3 a.m. to the beeping of his computer signaling the video cameras sensed human motion. He opened the video feeds and, sure enough, there were two men around his truck – one reaching under the frame and the other trying to pick the lock on the cargo compartment cover. Lot’s of luck with that. He had a locksmith friend build a pick-proof lock for the lid. And the lid itself was a sandwich of steel and titanium that would take a carbide-bladed Skilsaw to penetrate.

  Jack grabbed his camera and went out the back hotel exit to the parking garage exit ramp. He hid in a hedge next to the ramp and, as the two men left, he got photos of their license plate.

  Back in his room he watched the recorded video. Then he went through the frames with face images and selected the clearest one of each man. Next he logged on to the Federal face recognition web site and entered the two faces.

  While he was waiting for it to run through all the face files for comparison he opened another web site to search for the license number. It was a Virginia plate, so it didn’t take very long to identify that it belonged to an unlisted company . . . he sort of expected that.

  Next he went to the parking garage and looked for the bug. He found two, which was standard procedure in the surveillance business. You put one where it could be found easily and another hidden in the framework beneath the car. Jack always smiled when movies showed the characters finding THE bug. Maybe he could get a consulting job as a technical advisor who has “been there, done that.” He put the GPS bugs in his pocket, walked across the street to a truck stop, and stuck then on the frame of a semi. I wonder how long they’ll track that truck before they figure out that it’s not me making a run for it.

  He returned to his room and saw that the face recognition search had found a hit on one of the men, Alex Cooper. The name didn’t trigger any of his memory circuits, so he Googled it to see what came up. The guy was ex-Army and had served in Afghanistan as an intelligence officer. He lived in Silver Spring, MD with a wife and two children, ages 10 and 14. He had no felony convictions, but a couple of recent traffic tickets. His employer was listed as Blackworth Security, one of the top agents-for-hire firms in the country. They don’t bother with adultery and divorce cases. They only do classified and deep cover work. The guy must be under contract to FRA.

  After trying to hack the FRA computer for the next hour, he gave up. Every time he went in he got deeper into the system, but not far enough to get the full details of operational missions. Well, back to the drawing board. He made some notes about the next changes he would try.

  Since he only got a couple hours sleep last night, he turned in early. He ran a check on the security system at home and found nothing suspicious. Just a deer tripping a motion camera. He thought about answ
ering Lynn’s latest email but he was too tired. Maybe tomorrow.

  Chapter 6

  Jack woke up, showered, dressed and went down to the hotel coffee shop. The brew-in-your room coffee in styrofoam cups tasted terrible. The hotel had a Starbuck’s that would make it just the way he liked it. “I’ll have a grande mocha latte, 115 degrees, and an apple scone.” He took his breakfast and a morning paper, compliments of the Hyatt, to a vacant table. Nothing big. The paper had nothing big to report. An early snowstorm was about to move into the Colorado Rockies. He thought of Lynn and hoped she had stocked up for winter in time.

  A man carrying a coffee cup sat down at the table behind him. Jack didn’t get a good look but he didn’t seem to pay any attention to him. Jack finished his coffee and was about to slide his chair back when he saw a napkin on the floor by his foot. He picked it up, meaning to return it to the man behind him but it has some writing on it.

  I sent you the letter. Don’t turn around, ignore me. Finish your coffee and leave. Come to room 342 at 8 pm tonight and we’ll talk.

  The napkin had a room key card taped inside. Jack slipped them in his pocket, drained his coffee and left. Back in his room he pulled out the note and read it again. Neat printing, definitely not a scribbled note after the guy sat down. He must have written it ahead of time on a napkin he got earlier. That, and the fact he has a room here, shows that he had things planned. Jack thought back to the warning letter: “They know about the mission and they are watching you. Be careful!” Again, who’s “they?” Maybe this guy can tell him. Jack thought this might be a trap, but if they wanted to grab him they have had plenty of opportunities. But just in case, he would go to the meeting armed.

  He went down to his truck, lifted up the bed lid, and stuffed a few things into a leather bag. Back in his room, he took out a handgun, some used coveralls, and thin leather gloves. The pistol was a Walther PPK-22LR with a Yankee Hill silencer – standard issue for covert operations where a small, light, easily concealed handgun is needed.