Jarvis waved Ethan’s argument aside with a waft of his hand.
‘They wouldn’t be informing, they’d be listening on our behalf without ever knowing it and what we learn would be available to us in real — time. If we thought that somebody was in danger we could prevent an attack long before MJ–12 could put it into action. And besides, the goal behind my plan was not to implant any civilians or military personnel at all.’
‘Who then?’ Lopez demanded, and then she got it.
‘LeMay,’ Ethan murmured, almost afraid to say it. ‘You want to implant the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation with an illegal monitoring device that hacks into his brain.’
Jarvis nodded, clearly aware of the magnitude of what he was proposing.
‘If you want to kill the Hydra…’
‘You can’t keep cutting off its heads because they’re replaced. You have to pierce its heart,’ Lopez replied. ‘Jeez, how would we even go about something like this? LeMay knows about what’s happening, right?’
‘Wrong,’ Jarvis replied. ‘The task force behind this is being held back by the President, remember? Nobody knows right now, because everybody wants it covered up. That means that MJ–12 may not yet have the full story, and we know that LeMay has dispatched Agents Ford and Vaughn to Hong Kong in an attempt to discover what’s going on, presumably because they’re aware of a connection to what we’re investigating. I figure that means he knows squat, at least for now, because both Vaughn and Ford are missing.’
‘They’re missing?’ Ethan asked.
‘We intercepted communications between two FBI field offices,’ Jarvis explained. ‘The two agents disappeared somewhere on the south of Hong Kong island.’
Ethan looked at Lopez, who despite her dislike of Hannah Ford could not conceal her concern.
‘Mitchell,’ she said.
‘We should have made more of an effort to warn them,’ Ethan snapped at Jarvis.
‘I did everything that I could,’ Jarvis insisted. ‘Ford wouldn’t listen to me.’
‘If both Ford and Vaughn are missing,’ Ethan added, ‘then LeMay’s main source of information on the ground in Hong Kong is limited, unless Mitchell is working for him. LeMay might by now know about the implant technology.’
‘Either way, you’re ahead of them,’ Jarvis pointed out. ‘If we do this, we do it soon and get an implant into LeMay during the security operation around Abrahem Nassir at the White House.’
‘But the security will be tighter than ever,’ Ethan said. ‘How do we get to him and pull this off?’
‘I don’t know,’ Jarvis said, ‘but remember; LeMay is in bed with MJ–12 and as such has already betrayed his country in favor of his own pursuit of power and financial interests. He has become the enemy. What we do now, however illegal it might be, could be the difference between justice being done and our country falling into the hands of businesses obsessed with their own profits over Americans’ civil rights. This isn’t about turning our technology on our own people, it’s about using MJ–12’s own techniques against them. Now, are you in or not? If Ford and Vaughn did uncover what’s happening, joined the dots and decided to inform LeMay, then they’re likely dead. Do you want their sacrifice to be for nothing?’
Ethan and Lopez exchanged a glance and then made up their minds.
XXX
Consciousness came slowly, drifting toward her and then receding like dark waves on a beach at night. Hannah Ford was lying on her back on something hard and she could feel her skin as cold as ice, her bones aching.
The pain reached out to her, called her in, and she opened her eyes and stared into absolute blackness. For a moment she panicked, believed that her sight had failed her, and then she heard the faint sound of a breeze among the leaves above her, saw the subtle motion of branches against tiny stars in the night sky.
Hannah groaned as she forced herself up onto her elbows, her muscles stiff and her head throbbing. She rubbed her forehead with one hand and felt her skin caked with something dry that flaked off in her fingers. She reached down for her weapon but it was gone, along with her cell phone and her identification papers.
Hannah dragged herself to her feet and realized that she was in the same clearing in the forest as when she had been attacked by Mitchell. She turned as she heard a groan of misery from her right and saw another body lying in the foliage nearby.
She scrambled across and recognized Vaughn’s stocky form and black hair as he rolled over. To her horror his face was bruised and swollen, his eyes dark slits that she could barely make out in the starlight.
‘Vaughn?’
Vaughn groaned something as she helped him sit upright and he squinted at her as his eyes widened a little.
‘What happened to you?’ he asked, his voice distorted by his swollen lips.
Hannah realized that she too must have been beaten to some degree as she could taste blood on her lips, could feel it oozing from her nose.
‘Mitchell got the jump on me,’ she said. ‘What about you?’
Vaughn shook his head to clear it, struggled to his feet.
‘I parked the car, started up here, and then somebody came up and slugged me from behind. Before I knew it I was being hammered by a lot of guys and I passed out.’
‘Did you get a look at any of them?’
Vaughn shook his head. ‘I didn’t see any faces, didn’t hear anybody speak. Mitchell must have had back up. We should have known.’
‘Forget it,’ Hannah said as they clambered to their feet and started walking through the darkened forest, seeking the way back to the road. ‘All we can hope is that they didn’t know which car we were using. Do you have the keys?’
Vaughn reached into his pocket and nodded. ‘Yeah, but my cell’s gone.’
‘Mine too,’ Hannah said. ‘Let’s just get back to the Consulate and get in touch with Director LeMay. He needs to know about what’s happened.’
Vaughn limped alongside her, and like two geriatric government agents they made their way down the hillside to the darkened road. The route was devoid of traffic at this time of night, although Hannah could not be sure of the precise time as her wrist watch had also disappeared.
‘They’ve made it out to be a robbery,’ she surmised as they hobbled through the darkness. ‘Two FBI agents overpowered by common thugs, maximum embarrassment.’
‘Mitchell’s a clever guy,’ Vaughn uttered. ‘He’s going to have been avoiding agents like us for years if he’s doing his job completely under the radar.’
‘I don’t give a damn,’ Hannah uttered. ‘What matters to me is that he was interrogating a man up there that he’d tied to a tree, and I got his name. Jin Chen.’
‘Who’s he?’
‘I don’t know, but we’ll figure that out when we get back. He confessed to Mitchell to being involved in the abduction of the NSA agents in 1997.’
Hannah looked up as Vaughn led her to a small wooded parking lot, and there saw their silver sedan still parked where he had left it. Hannah limped across as Vaughn deactivated the locking system and climbed in, Vaughn handing her the keys as he climbed stiffly into the passenger seat.
The drive back into Hong Kong was far quicker than the route out, but the city was still a dense galaxy of lights and moving traffic as they made their way back to the Consulate Building on Garden Avenue. Without papers, they had to wait at the main gates until their identities were verified to the guards, and even then when Special Agent Brad Hinkley walked out to them he was accompanied by two armed agents.
Hannah clambered wearily out of her vehicle and Hinkley hesitated as he saw her.
‘Jesus Hannah, what the hell happened?’ Hinkley turned to one of the guards before she could answer. ‘Get a medical team down here, right now!’