I owe her. At least I’ll die with my freedom.
Kara took the off-ramp, turning left at the stoplight and right at the Kentucky Fried Chicken before pulling into the Cracker Barrel parking lot.
There were a few cars and pickups in the parking lot. Older men made their way to the entrance, local farmers and retirees eager for their morning breakfast. John grunted. “Maybe coffee at the McDonald’s drive-thru?”
Kara parked the car. “Relax, John. We’re over a thousand miles from the base. They haven’t had time to put out a BOLO. They probably just found Elliot. Why would anyone be looking for us at a restaurant in Ohio?”
“They might have cameras—”
“At a Cracker Barrel?” Kara said. She reached into her purse and withdrew an M11 pistol, handing it to him.
“Where did you get that?” he asked.
“I swiped it from the armory.”
He stuffed it under his hoodie. “I don’t want to shoot anyone ever again.”
“It’s just a precaution.” She took his hand in hers. “We’ll get some food, and gas, and then we’ll head for Pittsburgh. Uncle Phil’s cabin is not too far from there.”
“You’re sure they won’t look there?” John asked.
“He’s my great-uncle,” Kara said. “I never listed him on any of the background checks, and my mom has no legal ties to him. They’ll be looking for us in Maryland, not in northern Pennsylvania. Trust me.”
He wanted to believe her, but Karen Kryzowski was thorough, not to mention that creepy friend of hers that Eric always complained about. “What have I got to lose?”
They entered the restaurant and waited for a few minutes next to a counter full of old-fashioned candies and wooden toys until they were led to a table near the back by a plump waitress who smiled so much John thought she might actually be on illicit drugs.
He took one look at the menu and handed it back to the waitress. He ordered coffee, black, with no cream or sugar while Kara ordered coffee and the Smokehouse Breakfast.
The waitress left, and Kara said, “See? This isn’t so bad.”
“This is the first time we’ve actually been outside of the base together.”
Her eyes widened. “I hadn’t thought of that.”
“Thank you,” he whispered.
“For what?”
“For everything. I just don’t…”
“It’s okay,” she said. Her eyes got shiny. “I wish there was some way I could help you. Nobody should go through what you did.”
Their waitress brought them their coffee and left to wait on another table. He sipped the coffee, but it tasted like burned toast. “That’s weird.”
She sipped from her own cup and then asked, “What’s weird?”
“My coffee doesn’t taste right.”
She took his cup and sipped from it. “It tastes fine to me.”
He squinted at her. “Is that a side effect of the cancer?”
“I… I don’t think so.”
He slumped back in his chair. “You’re a terrible liar.”
“I’m not a doctor,” Kara said. “Even if I was, I couldn’t tell you what’s going on. No doctor could. Elliot’s work was years ahead of its time. The cancer was unexpected.”
“Unexpected,” he said. “That’s hard to believe.”
“It’s just that he was doing work that no one else had ever dreamed of,” Kara said.
“Yeah,” he said. “And they did it anyway. It’s funny. When you know you’re going to die, you see things differently. I’m mad at them, but… I helped people. I saved the world. That’s got to count for something. Did I tell you why I joined the Army?”
She frowned. “You never did.”
“I just wanted to help people,” he said. “All my classmates were going to college, but I never even considered it.”
“Really?”
“I thought I’d serve my country, then come home and be a cop, maybe, or a firefighter. That IED in Iraq changed all that. I see things so clearly now. Everything is just…”
The way she stared at him was enough to make his eyes tear up, and then her eyes went wide and her hand holding the coffee cup started shaking.
“They found us,” he said. “Didn’t they?”
Chapter Nineteen
Clark pointed at the screen in amazement. “Is that what I think it is?”
The email was addressed to Fulton Smith and had been delivered from an SMTP server in one of their own data centers.
“These guys are good,” Dewey muttered.
The hairs on the back of Clark’s neck bristled. “Who did this?”
“Beats me,” Dewey said. “I mean, it would have to be someone who knew about the OTM and knew Smith ran it.”
But they don’t know about Smith’s condition, and they don’t know Eric is the director. “Is this because of the last leak?”
Dewey shook his head. “That information has been out for, what, twelve hours? Even if the DFA put all their resources behind this, they wouldn’t have had time to find one of the data centers, let alone hack the mail server and craft an email to Fulton Smith.”
“What about the contents?” Clark asked.
“It’s an IP address.”
“I know that, Mr. Green. What about it?”
“I don’t know,” Dewey said. “You want me to trace it?”
Clark sighed. “Only if you have the free time, Mr. Green. I mean, it’s not exactly a high priority…”
Dewey turned to him with a questioning look on his face. “Is that sarcasm?”
“Yes!”
“Oh. Sometimes I can’t tell. You want me to do it now?”
“Yes,” Clark snapped. “Do it now. I want to know the location of that IP address and why it was emailed to Smith.”
“Geez,” Dewey said. He spun around in his chair and typed furiously. “How was I supposed to know what you wanted? I thought it might be that new thing Elliot has me working on.”
“What are you talking about?”
Dewey’s typing slowed. “Did I say new thing? That was a mistake. I’m not supposed to talk about it.”
“In Eric’s absence, I speak for him,” Clark said. “I could order you to tell me.”
Dewey’s typing resumed its frantic pace. “He has me researching CRISPR.”
“What?”
“Clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats,” Dewey rattled off.
“I have no idea what that is.”
“Neither did I,” Dewey said, “until about four weeks ago. Elliot is working on the next generation of StrikeForce technology. It’s biological instead of nanotech. Didn’t you see Elliot’s requisition for all that new hardware?”
For the past two years, Clark had argued with Greg Hicks about the StrikeForce technology. He wondered what Hicks would think when he found out that Elliot was working on the next generation. “Elliot doesn’t report to me, and Steeljaw has been a little busy.”
“Uh-huh. The new, biologic StrikeForce platform will increase the subject’s strength and skeletal density without the nasty side effects of the nanotech. No need for the weave.”
“You’re not supposed to know about the weave,” Clark said.
“I kinda had to know to figure out how to help,” Dewey said. “I mean, Elliot didn’t exactly give me clearance, but it’s not like he made it hard to find.”
Clark glared at Dewey. “Any luck with that IP address?”
“Yeah,” Dewey said. “It’s the NAT address in a building in downtown Pittsburgh. It’s… fiber. Pretty beefy for a business.”
“Where is this business?”
An online map appeared on one of Dewey’s screens, and he pointed to a five-story building on the Boulevard of the Allies. “Right there.”