‘Hector, you with me?’ Cobb asked.
‘Ready when you are,’ Garcia replied.
‘Okay. We’re moving in.’
While the others listened in, Cobb and McNutt made their way toward their target, a low, flat shed where Garcia believed they would find the communications system that serviced the underground bunker. If they could hack into the network, they would have access to the entire facility.
They scurried across the sand while keeping a watchful eye for tripwires and IEDs, but neither expected to encounter any. Between the harsh climate and the terrain, few people ventured this far from the safety of Siwa. The brutality of the desert coupled with rumors of deadly boogeymen meant that uninvited guests were seldom, if ever, an issue.
When they reached the shed, they ducked low and glanced in all directions, searching for any sign that their movement had drawn attention. Eventually, McNutt looked at Cobb and shook his head. There were no signs of life or detection.
They had made it inside the guarded perimeter.
They were standing in the eye of the storm.
McNutt let the others know. ‘At primary.’
Cobb lifted a hatch on the side of the enclosure, giving him access to the circuitry inside. He crawled into the shed and slithered through the tangled web of cables, searching for the clues that Garcia had explained to him earlier. Once he found them, he was sure that Garcia was right: this was the nerve center of the compound.
‘Target confirmed,’ Cobb whispered. ‘Please advise.’
Garcia walked Cobb through the process of linking his equipment to the system that they had found. And even though Cobb was a layman compared to Garcia, it took him less than five minutes to install the hardware.
Back at the tent, Garcia smiled when his monitors came to life. By physically hacking the signal, he now had access to everything on the network. ‘Nicely done, sir.’
‘We’re good?’ Cobb asked.
‘GoldenEye is live. I repeat: GoldenEye is live.’
Cobb ignored the movie reference and focused on what really mattered. He wanted a preliminary report on the facility. ‘Anything we need to know?’
Garcia grimaced. ‘It will take me a while to sort through all of the data feeds, but I can tell you one thing for sure: the bunker is a hell of a lot bigger than we thought.’
72
It was well after midnight by the time Cobb and McNutt reached their camp on the outskirts of Siwa, but they knew no one would be sleeping. It wasn’t caffeine that would be keeping them awake, it was the surge of adrenalin that all of them felt now they were back in the field. It was a good thing, too, for each of them had duties to tend to in their effort to rescue Jasmine.
Having already survived one massacre, Manjani had no intention of pressing his luck a second time. He opted to stay on the yacht with Papineau, who would be piloting the boat across the Mediterranean toward Siwa. If Cobb, McNutt, and Sarah failed to accomplish their goals — if they were captured, killed, or otherwise defeated by the shadow warriors — it would be up to Papineau to send in reinforcements.
Unless, of course, he decided to cut bait and run.
He had put one team together. He could always do it again.
In his mobile command center, Garcia pored over the streams of information that he was receiving from the hacked communication lines, while Sarah kept a watchful eye through a narrow slit in the tent for any unexpected visitors.
She glanced away to check on Garcia. ‘How’s it going?’
Garcia shook his head in agitation. ‘It’s fine! But this isn’t exactly ideal, you know. I’ve got exabytes of data to comb through, and just two computers. That’s like telling a chef to cook a fifty-course meal with only a pot and a pan.’
‘First, settle down. I wasn’t criticizing; I just asked how things were going. And second, don’t mention food. I’m freakin’ starving.’
‘I’m just saying that I’m working as fast as I can.’
Garcia wasn’t exaggerating. If he’d had access to the array of technology at his home, the expensive gear back in Fort Lauderdale, or even the full complement of devices on the yacht, he could have made short work of the information he was pulling from the enemy’s network. But with limited equipment in a tent in the desert, the process would take considerably longer. Even with his backup laptop pressed into service, it would still take hours to sort through all of the raw feeds streaming through the system.
‘And I’m sorry if—’
‘Shhhh,’ she demanded. ‘Someone’s coming.’
She wrapped her fingers around the grip of her pistol as she glanced at her phone. The program she was running was linked to several motion-detectors that McNutt had buried in the sand around the tent before he had left. The tiny capsules, filled with drops of mercury, were known as rattlers because they would rattle under the pressure of a foot hitting the ground. According to the sensors, someone was approaching.
Sarah was a split second from ordering Garcia to turn off his computers and to grab a rifle when they heard a familiar voice in their ears.
‘Stand down. It’s just us,’ Cobb said.
‘Copy that,’ she said, relieved.
A minute later McNutt emerged from the blackness of the open desert and stepped into the tent. ‘Honey, I’m home. What’s for dinner?’
Cobb entered a moment later. He skipped the pleasantries and cut right to the chase. ‘Have you found anything useful?’
‘Sure,’ Garcia answered. ‘At least I think so.’
‘Show me,’ Cobb ordered as he took off his gear.
Garcia tapped his keyboard, and the single image on the screen instantly split into a grid. Each of the eight squares offered a different feed from one of the cameras inside the bunker. He waited for Cobb to gulp down some water before he started his briefing.
‘There are hundreds of camera angles being routed through the system. It looks like every inch of the place is accounted for. Not the best news if you’re trying sneak in without being seen, but pretty damn useful if you’re trying to map the structure.’
He punched in a different command, and the screen switched from video feeds to an unfinished architectural rendering.
‘What am I looking at?’ Cobb asked.
‘By analyzing all the footage and matching where the angle of one shot intersects with the next, I was able to piece together a rough schematic of the bunker’s layout.’
Cobb was impressed. ‘Is that everything?’
Garcia shook his head. ‘Like I said, there are hundreds of angles to look through. I still haven’t seen them all.’ He pointed to the map. ‘That was drawn by the computer. I just had to choose the right parameters to tell it what to look for as it scanned through the feeds. As you can see, it’s still compiling. That’s why the map’s unfinished. It will keep adding details as it continuously analyzes the incoming feeds.’
Cobb stared at the map, appreciating the advantage it gave them. If they could get inside, they would know their way around. ‘Nice job, Hector. Really nice.’
‘Don’t get too excited,’ he replied as he selected a particular camera feed. ‘Take a look at this.’ He spun on his makeshift seat to face the others. ‘You too, Josh.’
Sarah wasn’t about to be left out. The three of them crowded around Garcia to see what had caught his attention. Once he enlarged the footage to fill the whole screen, they could see that he had located a depository of some kind. Inside row upon row of wide wooden crates were stacked from the floor to the ceiling. It appeared that each box was marked with a serial number spelled out in a different language.