The Missing Mile by M. K. Dreysen
Oh, it's there, if you're driving it you see every yard. According to the state and the county and the federal government, it ain't there. There's mile marker sixty-two, and there's mile marker sixty-two again, and what connects them?
Yards and yards of concrete, that's what. Traffic buzzing by, all oblivious to that which they pass.
Hang around at night, and what happens? No wrecks. There are no crosses in the median here, no skid marks on the tarmac, none of your torn down signs or tread marks in the grass and gravel. The racers don't line up at one end and scream out their mile times over this stretch. The drunks always take the turn before, each way, and go around. It's one of the few places in New Mexico you can do that, safely go around without having to travel a hundred miles out of your way.
The hawks pass it by every day, and the vultures, and they know there's never a roadkill buffet. But they do it anyway. The blackbirds fly in spring, they swirl off to the south where the fields lie. Buzz the little grove of trees off to the north and the subdivision beyond. Watch carefully, and you'll see them part. Half the flock one way and half the flock the other as the group of them passes that mile. The one that isn't there.
Go to the state engineering library, pull out the maps, break out your ruler and your notebook and your pencil, and start measuring.
You won't add up to the same number you'd get if you were to drive the stretch between New Mexico and Texas. Just short of the border between the two, where the signs tell you you're about to speed up, or slow down coming west, and the GPS greets you with a happy little "Welcome to New Mexico" or "Welcome to Texas", that's where the mile lives.
This isn't aliens, that's Roswell, a good hour or two, depending on the oilfield traffic, north and west. They'll give you all the aliens you can handle, and more than that these days. Stop in, have a cup of coffee, read the billboards and order the enchiladas half and half.
Over here though, there's no place to stop, and the locals don't think about it, talk about it. Leanna Rodriguez has tried for sixty years to get the county to fix the mile markers. She sends her letters, makes her phone calls, drops in on whichever wet behind the ears state rep is in office this year.
Every third year or so of this, and the state sends a crew. They start at the last red light, mile sixty, and they replace every mile marker in between that light and the state line.
Every time they do it, mile sixty-two and mile sixty-two get brand new signs. Clean, clear, reflective at night and legible in any weather that doesn't include blizzard or duststorm conditions. And always, no matter how much Leanna complains about it, the signs always insist, just like the state engineering office insists and the Bureau of Land Management insists and the Department of Transportation insists, that the number of miles along that particular stretch of notated highway is fixed and immutable and exactly ninety-seven point seven miles. And not a twittle more.
Always, there's an extra mile there, between sixty-two and sixty-two. Hiding in plain sight.
Trina didn't find the mile on purpose. She'd flown into El Paso because that's where Grandma lived, and if she didn't take advantage of the company travel to stop in with her grandmother she'd have to hear about it 'til the end of time. She flew out of Midland because, one, why not, and two, the way things were going she'd be working the Carlsbad area for the next few years so she might as well get familiar with the options.
The trip to Ruydoso would have to wait for next year. When the bank account had built up to the point where a condo on the mountain for a weekend wasn't too big a hit. And, when the peace of mind that came with the positive ledger balance would mean a weekend with her grandmother and her aunts and uncles could be spent not worrying about the questions she was only just beginning to be able to answer.
Hit seventy-five on the cruise control and ride.
The crack in the windshield, where the rock bouncing along off the back of a gravel truck met the glass, drilled down through the road hypnosis. Trina jumped in response to it; even she admitted her reflexes didn't kick in for what seemed like second after second after... and then she did kick into it in time to yank the wheel back to middle standard. Her heart caught up to her then, as well, and the only sound wasn't the road noise or the college radio station.
The beat of her pulse drowned it all out, hard and loud and all-encompassing. When that faded, just a touch, her breaths filled the gap.
She was most of the way through the mile before the traffic cleared and she could pull over. Off into the grass where no one could sideswipe her, and they wouldn't have to pull over unless they wanted to. She wasn't all that worried about the glass, sure the chip was there but it hadn't spread yet. And she'd be turning the thing in, just over an hour and a half from now if the phone was truthful.
She got out of the car because she needed to know if her legs were up to it, or if they'd just collapse out from underneath her. The shock was there, now the adrenaline dump had passed and the weariness and the nausea came on. 'Just keep your head down and keep breathing,' she told herself. So she did that for a while, grateful for the first time for the heat of the desert, pushed into her face with every passing truck and car. It wasn't pleasant, right now it was concrete and in the moment and it felt like the only thing between her and a faceful of caliche rock.
Trina reached for her water bottle, and that's when she realized she wasn't alone.
"Miss, are you ok?" asked the little old lady.
Trina spit her mouthful of water out, all over the inside of the driver's door but at least she didn't put it in the lady's face. For the second time in as many minutes, Trina's heart shoved up and took over everything. She pulled the bottle down, watching it crinkle where her fingers gripped the thing with far too much force but control wasn't anything, right now the only thing she had control of was her bladder. Maybe.
"Miss?" the lady asked again.
Trina could answer now. She hoped. "Um," she tried. "I think so." She tried to stand then, everything mostly worked, but she grabbed the top of the door just in case.
"What happened?"
Trina had to think that one over. A couple minutes and the reason for the season was already out of her mind. And then it came back, the rock rolling down off the back of the truck, one bounce only and then it was headed for her face and the only thing that mattered then was the integrity of the glass but her mind didn't know that her body couldn't care less the only thing it wanted to know was why she didn't react to the great big rock headed for their face...
"I caught a rock from the back of a gravel truck," Trina responded. Finally. "I guess I had to make sure everything was ok."
"Stupid oilfield trucks. I've had to replace my windshield three times in the past two years." The lady shook her head. "All the money they bring in now, it'll be gone tomorrow, and in the meantime do they pay for the damage they do?"
'No we don't,' Trina admitted inside her own head. Not that the trucks were her end of the business, but the stuff they were all drilling for sure was. That was the reason she was out here, after all.
And there was for sure no reason to get involved in...
"You work for one of the oil companies, don't you sweetie?" the lady said. "It's ok, my son's a welder, if it wasn't for the oilfield he'd be off in Houston or Corpus or somewhere." She'd have kept going, but a truck was pulling in behind her car. "Oh, look, it's that nice Mister Watkins, he teaches History at the high school."
Mister Watkins got down from his truck and walked up to join the other two. "You two ok?"
"Right as rain," the lady replied. "This young lady had a moment, she caught rock from the back of a gravel truck and stopped to make sure her rental was ok. And then I stopped, and now you're here."
Watkins nodded. "Couple cars pulled over out here and you never do know if someone needs a little help." He walked around the front of Trina's car, shrugged and came back. "Doesn't seem like anything they'll charge you for. Shoot, way things are around here, they might have to start giving bonus money for cars that come back without chipped windows."
The older lady stood there, Trina stood there, Watkins stood there, all three of them looking back and forth between the car and each other, and swaying as the wind from the passing cars forced them to balance in place. Trina broke the silence, or tried to. "I'm ok, really, but I do need to..."
And that's when the taco truck showed up. "You folks ok?"
Mister Watkins laughed at that. "You know what, I think we are all pretty ok. How's your supply, Ricky? Got a half dozen or so ready to go?"
"As a matter of fact," Ricky replied. "I do. I've even got a little chicharron, just for you." He disappeared into the back of the truck.
Trina held her hands up even as Watkins reached for his wallet, and stopped her mid-opening with his off hand. "Nope, I insist. You've had a bit of a rush just now, and you probably didn't even schedule in time before your flight to get any lunch. A taco, and I promise you Ricky's got the cleanest and best truck in this part of the world, and you'll be right back on the road with a full stomach and a little better understanding beneath you."
Trina would have, should have turned him down anyway. But her stomach chose that moment to remind her that the airport food, as much as it had improved, wasn't likely to be worth the wait.
And she might not have the time to even get that much, the way things were going. 'Might as well get the taco and get on down the road, Trina,' she told herself.
"I might need an extra pair of hands," Watkins called out from the side of Ricky's truck. Ricky had laid out three cold sodas, the half dozen promised tacos, salsa for each and a handful of napkins to catch it all in.
Trina shrugged to herself and walked up to the truck.
By the time she got back to the rental car, two sodas in one hand and tacos in the other, she and the little old lady and Watkins and Ricky had picked up another three or four people, or maybe more. They were all standing in line at Ricky's side window.
"He must make good tacos, then," Trina said. "A line like that comes out of nowhere."
The lady said "Thank you," caught her tacos and soda from Trina, and continued. "First bite and you'll figure out why they all pulled over."
Which, when Trina did get a bite, she had to agree. The salsa was fresh, cold, then hot as a rattle-snake with a ruptured disk, the meat was tender brisket with that smoke taste teasing her nose, a little avocado and cilantro and lime to go along with it, and the tortillas...
"Oh, wow," she mumbled around the bite, and the overstuffed rest of it in her hand that she juggled to keep contained in the tortillas.
"Told you," the other lady said around her smile and her own bite.
"I really do have to be going," Trina said when she'd swallowed her mouthful. "I didn't leave myself a lot of time, and the way the TSA is these days..."
"Don't worry," the lady responded. "You've got more time than you know."
And by now, there were a good twenty cars and trucks strung out along the shoulder. To go along with the taco truck. "Only thing we're missing now is a beer truck," Trina said.
"Wrong time of the year for it," the older lady replied. "Come back in September, October really, after the first good cold front comes through and lays the dust down, that's when you'll see a beer truck pull into our little stretch of road."
Trina didn't answer that. She was afraid to, like if she chased too far down the rabbit hole she'd find something she didn't want to find.
That, or she'd summon a margarita truck.
As it turned out, what did come in, and parked right in front of Trina's rental, "It's the only space left" as the driver helpfully pointed out, was a snowcone truck. Shaved ice and too much grape flavor in a paper cup with the syrup dripping down over her hands, and Trina waited to get hers until the line had wound down.
"Might as well wait," she told Watkins when they finally did get in line. "I can't leave until she's gone, anyway." The back of the truck, the way it was angled in front of her bumper. If they'd been on concrete, Trina could have backed and filled and made it just fine, but here she didn't trust the caliche shoulder. That stuff had a way of twisting out from under the tires, as she'd found out when visiting some of the derricks on her list.
Besides, the lineup for the snowcones blocked her in even more than the truck did. "Hola, Maria," Watkins said when they got to the front of the line.
"Howdy, Greg," the snowcone slinger responded. "Rainbow for you?"
"Yep," he said. He started to reach for his wallet again but Trina caught him. She already had a twenty in her hand, and that might have been the only thing that stopped him.
"I'll have a grape, please."
"Thank you both. How'd we all end up here this time, Greg?"
Greg Watkins gave Maria the summary of the events. The line had wound down a bit, but Maria had that look, like she could pack ice and drain syrup and give a dissertation on the weather, the traffic, and the likelihood of the Lobos making the tournament in March without breaking a sweat. "Huh," Maria responded when Watkins finished. "At least it wasn't like last time, you remember, Greg?"
"I do," Watkins responded with a smile and a shake of his head.
Trina looked from one to the other. Maria answered her unspoken question for her. "Porta John truck had a bit of an accident, let go half his load at the Texas state line."
Watkins was waving his hand in front of his face. "You could smell it for miles, just about. Except right here. All the traffic pulled over, we had the whole mile filled, this was the only part of the highway where you could take a deep breath without worrying what you'd be tasting when you did it."
Maria laughed when Trina's face showed her skepticism. "He's telling the truth, ma'am. The wind must have been blowing just right, maybe."
"Or maybe it's our little mile," Watkins put in.
"Most likely," Maria said, "But you don't have to go making her think we've spent too much time in the sun."
Trina laughed. "I'm thinking at this point that I'm the one who's been out in the sun too long." She reached for her phone, automatically, to get the time, but she'd left it in the car. "At this point I guess I'm going to end up getting a room in Midland tonight."
"Why?" Maria asked.
"No way I'm making my plane now," Trina responded. "Another hour and a half of driving, I'd put in a couple hours for security like they tell you to, but that's all used up with tacos and snowcones."
The other two smiled at each other. Watkins answered for them both. "You'll be ok, miss. We promise."
"That's just what the other lady said," Trina replied. "I'm not saying I don't believe ya'll..."
"We know you're going to need a little believe-me backup before you buy in," Maria said. "For now you'll just have to trust us." She looked down the line of cars and trucks stretching down the shoulder, the snowcone truck the head of the line. "About half full this time, not too bad for a Wednesday morning now."
"Yep. And I'll be able to get back before the end of my lunch hour."
"If you ever wonder why he's so dedicated about going out for lunch, there's your answer," Maria told Trina. "Either way, I think we've just about fueled everyone up for the rest of the day." And she started in on pulling her window screens down and closing everything up.
Ricky was doing the same thing with his taco truck; the little crowd took the hint and spread out for the climb-in and saddle-up.
Trina shook her head. "How often do you all end up doing this?" she asked Watkins as they walked back to her rental.
The older lady was still there at the driver's side door. "I took the opportunity of a place to sit, young lady. Hope you don't mind?"
Trina didn't have to touch her pocket to check her wallet and the keys to the car. She could see her cell phone sitting on the dash, and her bags were all in the trunk, safely undisturbed. "Not at all."
Watkins leaned in to the conversation. "The young lady asks how often we get together for our little shindigs, here on the mile."
The older lady pulled herself out of the car. "About every three months, more or less. Some years it seems like it happens more often, but then when we all get together the next time and start counting and telling stories..."
"It always works out to about once a season," Watkins finished. "Depending on when you get through here again, keep your eyes out."
"You never know when a Porta John truck will spill?" Trina asked.
The other two laughed and laughed; the three of them shook hands all around, and then it was time for Trina to climb back into the rental and move on. She was resigned to another night on the road.
As it turned out, though...
See, when the road hypnosis was still in control, and then the panic took over, when Trina rolled past the first mile sixty-two marker, her phone and the clock on the car both rolled to 10:01 a.m., precisely.
When Maria's snowcone truck pulled out, and Trina put it in gear and followed her, when the rental rolled past the second mile sixty-two marker, both the cell phone and the car clock clicked another minute over.
To 10:01 a.m., precisely.
Trina was halfway to Midland before that fact clicked into place. "I guess I should be glad I didn't try and reserve a room already," she told the empty car.
Thursday, May 14, 2020
This week's free story brings you to a place that's almost not quite there. And yet it's as real as the mile markers drifting by... I call this one The Missing Mile.
Trina's just doing the boring part of the job: marking miles until the airport.
Only, there's this piece of New Mexico between that has other plans...
Trina's just doing the boring part of the job: marking miles until the airport.
Only, there's this piece of New Mexico between that has other plans...
No clue of what's happening to you...
Gloria Estefan and Miami Sound Machine: Rhythm Is Gonna Get You; Gloria Estefan and Enrique Garcia, songwriters
Saturday, May 9, 2020
Thursday, May 7, 2020
Half A Rye by M. K. Dreysen - An R. M. Danelev Story
The conversation was one of those types; long on talk, short on information. The man and the woman filled the empty spaces with food and tea and water, and people watching. The deli was busy, the perfect place to let the words get lost in the buzz.
She asked him, when they got to the point where they were both starting to worry about cleaning up and getting out, "Do you want the job done, or not?"
He hemmed and hawed. She was used to it. They always did this. When it came down to the money. "Cheap, fast, good, pick two," she continued.
"I'm an engineer, I know the catechism," he replied. "Fast and good is best if I can get it."
"Which means you can afford it," she said. "I like that. It's always nice to work with someone who's ready to pick up their responsibilities." She gave the theatric sigh. "Unfortunately, I think fast is off the table for this one. So you're getting the discount by default."
He didn't ask why there would be no fast resolution. He knew the answer, he'd set her the problem, after all. And he'd worked the idea himself, projects and plans were bread and butter, the things that paid the bill she'd hand him. "How much, then?"
There were no standards for this sort of thing. The costs were always more than she'd anticipate, up front; the risks similarly vague. No worries. "Ten grand now," on top of the five she'd charged just for meeting, "Here's the account number." She passed him a piece of paper, empty on both sides except for the routing and account numbers. "Twenty when I'm done. Look for the account numbers in your mail."
She left that place then, and him settling the check behind her. Her mind wanted to work the problem, get started. She made it focus on the immediate. Was she being followed? Drones, the flyspecks she'd never notice, except that she'd trained herself to look for them anyway. She used them, she knew what they could do.
Cars that showed up more often than they should? The old standards worked because they worked.
She didn't see anyone following her. Maybe that meant she and the man whose name she didn't know were clear. Maybe it meant the company he worked for hadn't yet twigged to the fact of his duplicity.
And maybe if she looked under her pillow in the morning she'd find change from the Tooth Fairy. Sure, the dude's company might not have people following him around on the street.
That didn't mean they weren't keeping track of him. Given what he did, the projects he worked on, she could book it. Big-time companies with property to protect didn't let their engineers far off the leash. They couldn't afford to, not when there were governments the world over ready to kill for what was in the dude's head. And competitors willing to do worse.
No, it was given. His emails were logged, his phone calls as well. Every trip; his passport tracked, his accounts monitored. The dude wasn't in any danger of getting out from under the umbrella they'd crafted. Company man living over the company store, all but indentured.
And he was looking for the big score, the one that would free him. Send him down the road to a beach somewhere warm. One of the quiet ones, no cell phones and by God no major corporate presence.
She'd spent her own time in the life, she knew how it was done. That was the part where "Fast" was off the table. She'd get him his score all right. It just wasn't going to happen quickly. It might have to wait until he'd shown a little faith.
Maybe she'd push it until the day he walked off the job, told them he'd found a community college that needed an E.E. to fill in the night classes; could be he'd stumbled over a little startup working on prosthetics for the poor and the disabled. Whatever it was, Randi just might make him sweat until he'd plunged into the unknown before she stole the thing, sold it, sent him the proceeds. Less commission and the thirty-five already deposited, of course.
The dude wasn't public-facing. No social media accounts, those were right out. No jobhunter websites; he was probably listed in his professional society directories, too bad she didn't care enough to pay the fees and find out. No matter, he'd whispered what it was, and she was tech, she knew enough to guess at the value of the project. A board, not a quantum computer itself, just a communications board. That would let the bits on the inside talk to the bits on the outside. The kind of thing that was expensive now, cheap tomorrow, but would eventually be ubiquitous, and rolling in a few pennies on the dollar every time another copy shipped out.
By the standards of the bigwigs at his company? Nothing major, the thing was a sideline. By the standards of a forty-year man who'd never quite been in on the IPO's and the big money splits?
Oh, it would do. If he could cash in, it would do nicely. There were only two problems. He had to get it out to the world, and he had to time it so that the competitors didn't have their own projects getting ready to roll. If Apple and IBM and Microsoft all had their own versions, maybe not perfect but good enough, why would they pay for his? Why would they care?
Right now they would care, because they, and the others in that class, had only whiteboards and powerpoint presentations. He had the board, sitting in his little corner lab, counting electrons and photons and, best of all, putting out the numbers just as his simulations predicted. Wait six months? Yeah. Wait six years and the opportunity would be gone. He was smart, her dude, but he wasn't unique. Not when everyone and their dog knew where the next generation of computers were going, and were throwing money to lay the weeds down and build the path to that future.
Assuming the guy wasn't a plant. A dangle, bait on the hook for someone foolish enough to come along and take a big bite of.
Which was her second problem. Preparing for the doublecross. But that was ok. For now, it was time to get the crew together.
"We'll need the plans, and we'll need the prototype," she told them. "And we'll need to put together the bids."
Sami volunteered to find the bidders. Marlan took on the acquisitions side of the project. "Careful of the timing issues," she told them both. "We need room to maneuver."
Marlan shrugged. "No promises, Randi," the big man said. "But you know that."
She did, they all did.
She took the unstated part of the problem. The other half, the one where they ended up with a trail of private security folks and FBI and CIA agents.
She wrote email, worked contacts new and old. Security teams, management, human resources, there were handles all over the place, she turned them all. Until she got the first meeting, the pitch over lunch. And then the second meeting. The one where she bid the contract for grey-hat services. "Stress tests."
Randi had shaken the tree until she'd found the vice-president with the budget and the interest. Same company as the guy, the engineer, who'd brought her the gig, but not his boss. A branch or two over on the hierarchy.
"I'm most worried about our manufacturing lines," the lady told her. "Anybody who can read patents can figure out what our boards look like. It's putting them together where we make our money, though."
Randi didn't scoff. She wasn't the one stuck running the company, why question where the manager put her time and worries. "If I'm to be comprehensive, I'll need to work on the other divisions. Their interfaces with the fab lines are also points of vulnerability."
The manager nodded her agreement. With one caveat. "My authority runs out at half a million."
'Ok, a million,' Randi translated to herself. 'With the proper leverage.' Not that the board would fetch that. Setting up a real auction was out of the question, under the circumstances. "I'm sure we can keep it in budget," Randi said out loud.
Marlan greeted the news with elation. And stress, because it didn't matter how soft the net was, they still had to walk the rope up above. "Well, if we do end up on somebody's cameras, we've got a story to go along with it. Best not though." He walked Randi through his plans. The building, the cameras, well, the cameras they both assumed were there. The security team, onsite twenty-four seven. Hi-tech they were, all the tools would be hidden from casual viewing but they'd be there.
Randi noticed something, about halfway through the walkthrough. "Wait, where am I in this?"
"In the van with me, as usual. We'll be down the street at the Mall."
"You're making everyone walk?" The building where the engineer worked his magic wasn't part of some giant complex. It hid in the trees; she didn't know whether they still called the Woodlands a mixed development or not, but that was the effect. Office buildings sheltered by the pines, precious few roads through the trees, neighborhoods suggested but never found unless you knew where to drive. "Why not just pull into the parking lot? There are people there all day long, right?"
"In theory, yes. In practice, the only one I've seen work nights, besides the janitors, is a woman with agoraphobia. Half a dozen cars in the parking lot, and the cops pull through two, three times a night. We'd stick out like a clown at a funeral."
The thing that impressed Randi the most was the detail about the engineer working nights. Agoraphobia, sure it was an ADA accommodation, the company says, "Set the schedule you need to." Marlan finding that information, well that's why she loved her team.
She had a few edits, though. A tweak, here and there.
On the night. "I'm doubling my rates," that was Squeaks' comment. "You're making me do real work tonight, Randi. We talked about that."
She and Marlan sat in the van, about a mile and half away from the site. "You're telling me you can't do a night's honest work, Squeaks?"
"It sort of goes with the territory, doesn't it?" his partner, Dave tonight, put in. "We work nights so we don't have to. Work, I mean."
"Gentlemen of leisure?" she asked.
"I'd love to be so," Dave continued. "But first I've got to deal with this crap job my boss shoved on me."
Sami'd worked the lines to set it up. First, she tracked down the janitors, the contract and the company filling it. Then, she'd done a one and done, show up, get a temp gig, find out who and where the HR for the janitor company was hiding. Ghost away after a couple days, then spend a week or two making noises, showing up saying, "Just coming to get my check, I'm not causing trouble."
Put a USB stick into a convenient port when no one was looking, they all being distracted by finding her paperwork and making her just go away. Pull the stick's payload up and get the back door open, just a crack. Enough so that Sami could make a tweak to the schedule. Well, a couple of tweaks, three or four false trails so it wouldn't be obvious, if anyone ever came looking, which one of the buildings had been the target. They'd put it together, of course, if the tech company made a nuisance of themselves.
So, on the night, four of the janitor teams in the area found themselves with paid holidays. Sami'd appended notes to each, "Paid time off" for company reasons. Private parties, that's the rumor that went around the janitors, not that they cared much because a paycheck and a night to sleep in was nothing to complain about. Just so long as the companies didn't leave them a mountain of trash to clean up.
Randi and her team weren't going to leave a mess. They had standards.
Borrowing a van wasn't necessary. The usual janitor team drove their private cars to their gig, they'd all been badged into the building. Sami's other trick was replicating the other half of the deception. "Yes ma'am," she told the HR rep at the tech company. "We've got a few temporary staff we need to badge into your facility. No ma'am. Well, one of the new hires will be full time, I think, after the new year, when Sandy retires." Amazing what Sami picked up in just a couple days working with the janitors. "We're rotating staff, as well, making sure we've got you covered for sick days and so on. Tomorrow? Yes ma'am, I'll be happy to come in tomorrow, should I send you the files?"
While she still had the email address that went along with the deception. The HR team had been happy to work with her. "We very much appreciate that, you're so thoughtful. Most places, they'd just shortstaff us if someone couldn't show up."
"We're always working to give our clients the most professional work we can," Sami responded.
Sami walked out with half a dozen badges. "They'll expire Saturday night, of course," the HR lady told her.
"Do you need me to send them back to you when they're done?" Sami asked.
"No, not at all. This way, when one of your new hires needs to fill in for our permanent team, we can just renew the badge and they're good to go." The lady gave Sami the big smile, the one that said she was doing Sami a favor, matching the one that she thought she was getting from the janitor company.
Sami didn't disappoint her. "That will be a big help, thank you! And thank you again for all your help with this."
Since she'd shown up on cameras, Sami wasn't part of the team that hit the tech company on the night. That fell to Squeaks and Dave and Yala. Three person team, matched up to the three janitors who worked the four story building every night. Sami had promised they'd deliver a full staff, and she tried always to keep promises.
The other question she'd made sure to answer, was how the agoraphobic engineer figured into the picture. "Oh, her? She stays in her office all night. I make sure to knock when I need to get into her office, close the door behind me. She's nice, a sweet lady." So Sami warned Yala.
"I treat her with kid gloves?" Yala asked.
Sami shrugged. "I don't know the woman, all I know is that she stays in her office while the janitors are working. Mena said she talks to her all the time, she just makes sure she doesn't sneak up on her."
"I'm not sure about this," Yala said. "Do I need to mask up?"
"We'd have to put some weight on you to look like Mena," Sami replied. "Just remember the story, you're a temp learning the ropes."
Yala kept up her stream of worries; since she was the one showing her face, everyone on the radio understood her concerns. She'd work through it, they all knew. They'd just all have to listen to her do it.
Just the way the team worked, Randi reminded herself. Like her and Marlan, sitting here in the van trying not to grind their teeth down to the nubs, watching video streams listening to chatter counting down the hours. "Who's bright idea was this anyway?" she asked the air in the van.
Empty air because Marlan wasn't one to rub her nose in her own impatience.
The whole thing was tedium more than it was an exciting hit. Dave took the top floor, all offices, the place where the managers of the tech company, the vice-presidents but not the one that Randi had talked into funding a grey-hat hack team, that was another part of the company, this was the R&D division. The interface was there of course, that was the whole point, she had brief for her team to go anywhere hit anything that might put the v.p. at risk, so this counted, please God let this count.
Yala was on the next floor down, the one with the night shift of one. More offices, the design team, where their guy had had his office. Not his lab. Just his computer, still up and running, gathering dust in the office just two doors down from the lady with the fear of open spaces and people. Yala did her thing, plugged the USB drive into the port and went about cleaning up the rest of the floor.
Marlan sighed relief when the breaker program called home. Not to send data, the drive had more than enough space to store what it needed, the program just pinged Marlan's phone with a random port access sequence. It told him it was starting its business, copying everything on the drive.
The labs were on the second floor. Squeaks worked that one, where the rest of the night's business rested on his shoulders. He didn't have clean room access, but he didn't need it. The rest of the lab spaces were all open to his badges, the workstations where half-built boards, pieces of computers and boxes of chips, wiring diagrams decorating whiteboards and coming together in red and green and black and blue bits of wire on benches scattered around the floor. "Which one was it again?"
Marlan and Randi rolled their eyes; neither one of them rose to the bait. Yala did, though. She was getting ready to knock on the engineer's door, her nerves were at their highest pitch so far. "You're kidding right? Dude, if I have to come down there and roll your ass over..."
"Sorry, Yala, I'm getting there, I'm getting there. We're flying slow, right, just cleaning the offices, right? How's the drive doing?"
Marlan keyed the mike, two quick bursts and a slow one. Enough for the team to know they were getting where they needed to be.
Squeaks had made sure he knew where their target sat, like it was almost as forgotten as the guy who'd put it together. Just another board, this one finished at least, half a dozen wires sprouting from it. Their target wasn't plugged in, it sat in a protective clear plastic sleeve, on a shelf in the back with a few other completed projects. Squeaks left it there while he went about the rest of his business. Cleaning the lab space.
Yala knocked on the door. Waited for "Come in" from the other side, then slowly snuck her head around the jamb. "Ma'am, I'm filling in for Mena tonight, my name's..."
The radio reception was poor, so the rest of the team heard a mumbled staticky conversation with no details. They all held their breath, waiting, until the vacuum cleaner roared to life and drowned out everything else. The collective sigh over the link would have made Yala laugh, if she could have heard it over the sound of the vacuum. When she was done, she said "Thank you", closed the door, and trundled back down the hall. "She was nice," she said.
Randi and Marlan shook their heads. The uniforms would have to do their work, would do their work because that's what uniforms and hats did, anonymized and made everyone wearing one just another part of the crew, part of the background.
The rest of it was just waiting. For the second set of pings, knockbacks telling Marlan the program had finished transferring all their guy's files; that Marlan could send out two slow pulses and a fast one over the radio. Then Yala pulled the cord and stuffed the drive into her pocket. Finished up, with a knock on the only closed door on her floor and a "Good night" and a mumbled "Good night" from the other side, and then it was time for Yala to get on the elevator with Dave.
And meet Squeaks and his cart on the second floor. "Finish up the first floor?" "Yep." "Might as well do it right."
The first floor was bathrooms, conference rooms, a lobby and the elevator bay. Vacuuming and a quick swipe here and there and they were all out of there just about three in the morning, a good eight hour shift like clockwork. Or like they'd planned it or something. Squeaks put his backpack with the board stuffed inside it over his shoulders, and the three of them got out of that place.
Marlan and Randi met Squeaks at the pre-arranged spot, a hospital just up the road where all-night comings and goings didn't mean anything special. Squeaks passed them the backpack, and then they were all on the road again. The van, the rest of the cars, they'd return to the rental companies they'd got them from.
And then Randi began the rest of the operation. Well, she would have begun it, except that she'd already prepped the v.p. of the tech company for the possibility. "You and your team really do deliver. It was that easy?"
Randi met the lady at the company's other main campus in the Houston area, way out toward Katy. The company had followed all the latest trends and built a nice cafeteria for their high-tech, high maintenance workforce. Randi was comfortable making the meeting, the open design of the first floor didn't allow for a really intrusive level of snooping. Not to the level it would have taken to detect the contents of the bag at her feet.
She wasn't badging into the upper floors, where the scanners and the x-ray machines were hidden discreetly in bays just past the elevators. That was the v.p.'s problem. If she came up with a good price, of course. "No, it actually wasn't all that easy."
Randi wasn't interested in giving away all her secrets, either. There'd been a few other finished projects sitting on the shelf next to their guy's work. If she gave away too much, there wouldn't be any ripe fruit for picking at a later harvest date. Not that she was aiming for anything in particular. Randi just liked to keep her options open. "My team's good at their job, though."
"I'll need a complete rundown, a report to send along to my security teams. They need to know the holes to plug."
'And you need a justification when you're defending the money you're about to spend,' Randi added to herself. "I'll be happy to put a report together. It's all part of the service." She'd just have to make sure she left herself a backdoor, that was all.
The negotiations were almost too easy. In the end, Randi had guessed right. The v.p. had more purchase authority than she'd wanted to admit to. Then again, Randi reminded herself, it was one thing to ask a consultant to put together a threat assessment.
It was another thing entirely to have that board sitting there, stolen so cleanly that the R&D division had yet to discover it missing. The v.p. paid up the million without blinking.
Randi walked out of the building split between emotions. Glad, that she'd never promised the guy one way or another who she'd sell the thing to. And, kicking herself for not asking for more. She was halfway home before better sense took over from the momentary flush of greed. "Team's paid, our guy gets his retirement topped off, and we get out of this clean."
She celebrated by stopping by the deli where she'd met the guy in the first place. They made a killer corned-beef on rye.
The conversation was one of those types; long on talk, short on information. The man and the woman filled the empty spaces with food and tea and water, and people watching. The deli was busy, the perfect place to let the words get lost in the buzz.
She asked him, when they got to the point where they were both starting to worry about cleaning up and getting out, "Do you want the job done, or not?"
He hemmed and hawed. She was used to it. They always did this. When it came down to the money. "Cheap, fast, good, pick two," she continued.
"I'm an engineer, I know the catechism," he replied. "Fast and good is best if I can get it."
"Which means you can afford it," she said. "I like that. It's always nice to work with someone who's ready to pick up their responsibilities." She gave the theatric sigh. "Unfortunately, I think fast is off the table for this one. So you're getting the discount by default."
He didn't ask why there would be no fast resolution. He knew the answer, he'd set her the problem, after all. And he'd worked the idea himself, projects and plans were bread and butter, the things that paid the bill she'd hand him. "How much, then?"
There were no standards for this sort of thing. The costs were always more than she'd anticipate, up front; the risks similarly vague. No worries. "Ten grand now," on top of the five she'd charged just for meeting, "Here's the account number." She passed him a piece of paper, empty on both sides except for the routing and account numbers. "Twenty when I'm done. Look for the account numbers in your mail."
She left that place then, and him settling the check behind her. Her mind wanted to work the problem, get started. She made it focus on the immediate. Was she being followed? Drones, the flyspecks she'd never notice, except that she'd trained herself to look for them anyway. She used them, she knew what they could do.
Cars that showed up more often than they should? The old standards worked because they worked.
She didn't see anyone following her. Maybe that meant she and the man whose name she didn't know were clear. Maybe it meant the company he worked for hadn't yet twigged to the fact of his duplicity.
And maybe if she looked under her pillow in the morning she'd find change from the Tooth Fairy. Sure, the dude's company might not have people following him around on the street.
That didn't mean they weren't keeping track of him. Given what he did, the projects he worked on, she could book it. Big-time companies with property to protect didn't let their engineers far off the leash. They couldn't afford to, not when there were governments the world over ready to kill for what was in the dude's head. And competitors willing to do worse.
No, it was given. His emails were logged, his phone calls as well. Every trip; his passport tracked, his accounts monitored. The dude wasn't in any danger of getting out from under the umbrella they'd crafted. Company man living over the company store, all but indentured.
And he was looking for the big score, the one that would free him. Send him down the road to a beach somewhere warm. One of the quiet ones, no cell phones and by God no major corporate presence.
She'd spent her own time in the life, she knew how it was done. That was the part where "Fast" was off the table. She'd get him his score all right. It just wasn't going to happen quickly. It might have to wait until he'd shown a little faith.
Maybe she'd push it until the day he walked off the job, told them he'd found a community college that needed an E.E. to fill in the night classes; could be he'd stumbled over a little startup working on prosthetics for the poor and the disabled. Whatever it was, Randi just might make him sweat until he'd plunged into the unknown before she stole the thing, sold it, sent him the proceeds. Less commission and the thirty-five already deposited, of course.
The dude wasn't public-facing. No social media accounts, those were right out. No jobhunter websites; he was probably listed in his professional society directories, too bad she didn't care enough to pay the fees and find out. No matter, he'd whispered what it was, and she was tech, she knew enough to guess at the value of the project. A board, not a quantum computer itself, just a communications board. That would let the bits on the inside talk to the bits on the outside. The kind of thing that was expensive now, cheap tomorrow, but would eventually be ubiquitous, and rolling in a few pennies on the dollar every time another copy shipped out.
By the standards of the bigwigs at his company? Nothing major, the thing was a sideline. By the standards of a forty-year man who'd never quite been in on the IPO's and the big money splits?
Oh, it would do. If he could cash in, it would do nicely. There were only two problems. He had to get it out to the world, and he had to time it so that the competitors didn't have their own projects getting ready to roll. If Apple and IBM and Microsoft all had their own versions, maybe not perfect but good enough, why would they pay for his? Why would they care?
Right now they would care, because they, and the others in that class, had only whiteboards and powerpoint presentations. He had the board, sitting in his little corner lab, counting electrons and photons and, best of all, putting out the numbers just as his simulations predicted. Wait six months? Yeah. Wait six years and the opportunity would be gone. He was smart, her dude, but he wasn't unique. Not when everyone and their dog knew where the next generation of computers were going, and were throwing money to lay the weeds down and build the path to that future.
Assuming the guy wasn't a plant. A dangle, bait on the hook for someone foolish enough to come along and take a big bite of.
Which was her second problem. Preparing for the doublecross. But that was ok. For now, it was time to get the crew together.
"We'll need the plans, and we'll need the prototype," she told them. "And we'll need to put together the bids."
Sami volunteered to find the bidders. Marlan took on the acquisitions side of the project. "Careful of the timing issues," she told them both. "We need room to maneuver."
Marlan shrugged. "No promises, Randi," the big man said. "But you know that."
She did, they all did.
She took the unstated part of the problem. The other half, the one where they ended up with a trail of private security folks and FBI and CIA agents.
She wrote email, worked contacts new and old. Security teams, management, human resources, there were handles all over the place, she turned them all. Until she got the first meeting, the pitch over lunch. And then the second meeting. The one where she bid the contract for grey-hat services. "Stress tests."
Randi had shaken the tree until she'd found the vice-president with the budget and the interest. Same company as the guy, the engineer, who'd brought her the gig, but not his boss. A branch or two over on the hierarchy.
"I'm most worried about our manufacturing lines," the lady told her. "Anybody who can read patents can figure out what our boards look like. It's putting them together where we make our money, though."
Randi didn't scoff. She wasn't the one stuck running the company, why question where the manager put her time and worries. "If I'm to be comprehensive, I'll need to work on the other divisions. Their interfaces with the fab lines are also points of vulnerability."
The manager nodded her agreement. With one caveat. "My authority runs out at half a million."
'Ok, a million,' Randi translated to herself. 'With the proper leverage.' Not that the board would fetch that. Setting up a real auction was out of the question, under the circumstances. "I'm sure we can keep it in budget," Randi said out loud.
Marlan greeted the news with elation. And stress, because it didn't matter how soft the net was, they still had to walk the rope up above. "Well, if we do end up on somebody's cameras, we've got a story to go along with it. Best not though." He walked Randi through his plans. The building, the cameras, well, the cameras they both assumed were there. The security team, onsite twenty-four seven. Hi-tech they were, all the tools would be hidden from casual viewing but they'd be there.
Randi noticed something, about halfway through the walkthrough. "Wait, where am I in this?"
"In the van with me, as usual. We'll be down the street at the Mall."
"You're making everyone walk?" The building where the engineer worked his magic wasn't part of some giant complex. It hid in the trees; she didn't know whether they still called the Woodlands a mixed development or not, but that was the effect. Office buildings sheltered by the pines, precious few roads through the trees, neighborhoods suggested but never found unless you knew where to drive. "Why not just pull into the parking lot? There are people there all day long, right?"
"In theory, yes. In practice, the only one I've seen work nights, besides the janitors, is a woman with agoraphobia. Half a dozen cars in the parking lot, and the cops pull through two, three times a night. We'd stick out like a clown at a funeral."
The thing that impressed Randi the most was the detail about the engineer working nights. Agoraphobia, sure it was an ADA accommodation, the company says, "Set the schedule you need to." Marlan finding that information, well that's why she loved her team.
She had a few edits, though. A tweak, here and there.
On the night. "I'm doubling my rates," that was Squeaks' comment. "You're making me do real work tonight, Randi. We talked about that."
She and Marlan sat in the van, about a mile and half away from the site. "You're telling me you can't do a night's honest work, Squeaks?"
"It sort of goes with the territory, doesn't it?" his partner, Dave tonight, put in. "We work nights so we don't have to. Work, I mean."
"Gentlemen of leisure?" she asked.
"I'd love to be so," Dave continued. "But first I've got to deal with this crap job my boss shoved on me."
Sami'd worked the lines to set it up. First, she tracked down the janitors, the contract and the company filling it. Then, she'd done a one and done, show up, get a temp gig, find out who and where the HR for the janitor company was hiding. Ghost away after a couple days, then spend a week or two making noises, showing up saying, "Just coming to get my check, I'm not causing trouble."
Put a USB stick into a convenient port when no one was looking, they all being distracted by finding her paperwork and making her just go away. Pull the stick's payload up and get the back door open, just a crack. Enough so that Sami could make a tweak to the schedule. Well, a couple of tweaks, three or four false trails so it wouldn't be obvious, if anyone ever came looking, which one of the buildings had been the target. They'd put it together, of course, if the tech company made a nuisance of themselves.
So, on the night, four of the janitor teams in the area found themselves with paid holidays. Sami'd appended notes to each, "Paid time off" for company reasons. Private parties, that's the rumor that went around the janitors, not that they cared much because a paycheck and a night to sleep in was nothing to complain about. Just so long as the companies didn't leave them a mountain of trash to clean up.
Randi and her team weren't going to leave a mess. They had standards.
Borrowing a van wasn't necessary. The usual janitor team drove their private cars to their gig, they'd all been badged into the building. Sami's other trick was replicating the other half of the deception. "Yes ma'am," she told the HR rep at the tech company. "We've got a few temporary staff we need to badge into your facility. No ma'am. Well, one of the new hires will be full time, I think, after the new year, when Sandy retires." Amazing what Sami picked up in just a couple days working with the janitors. "We're rotating staff, as well, making sure we've got you covered for sick days and so on. Tomorrow? Yes ma'am, I'll be happy to come in tomorrow, should I send you the files?"
While she still had the email address that went along with the deception. The HR team had been happy to work with her. "We very much appreciate that, you're so thoughtful. Most places, they'd just shortstaff us if someone couldn't show up."
"We're always working to give our clients the most professional work we can," Sami responded.
Sami walked out with half a dozen badges. "They'll expire Saturday night, of course," the HR lady told her.
"Do you need me to send them back to you when they're done?" Sami asked.
"No, not at all. This way, when one of your new hires needs to fill in for our permanent team, we can just renew the badge and they're good to go." The lady gave Sami the big smile, the one that said she was doing Sami a favor, matching the one that she thought she was getting from the janitor company.
Sami didn't disappoint her. "That will be a big help, thank you! And thank you again for all your help with this."
Since she'd shown up on cameras, Sami wasn't part of the team that hit the tech company on the night. That fell to Squeaks and Dave and Yala. Three person team, matched up to the three janitors who worked the four story building every night. Sami had promised they'd deliver a full staff, and she tried always to keep promises.
The other question she'd made sure to answer, was how the agoraphobic engineer figured into the picture. "Oh, her? She stays in her office all night. I make sure to knock when I need to get into her office, close the door behind me. She's nice, a sweet lady." So Sami warned Yala.
"I treat her with kid gloves?" Yala asked.
Sami shrugged. "I don't know the woman, all I know is that she stays in her office while the janitors are working. Mena said she talks to her all the time, she just makes sure she doesn't sneak up on her."
"I'm not sure about this," Yala said. "Do I need to mask up?"
"We'd have to put some weight on you to look like Mena," Sami replied. "Just remember the story, you're a temp learning the ropes."
Yala kept up her stream of worries; since she was the one showing her face, everyone on the radio understood her concerns. She'd work through it, they all knew. They'd just all have to listen to her do it.
Just the way the team worked, Randi reminded herself. Like her and Marlan, sitting here in the van trying not to grind their teeth down to the nubs, watching video streams listening to chatter counting down the hours. "Who's bright idea was this anyway?" she asked the air in the van.
Empty air because Marlan wasn't one to rub her nose in her own impatience.
The whole thing was tedium more than it was an exciting hit. Dave took the top floor, all offices, the place where the managers of the tech company, the vice-presidents but not the one that Randi had talked into funding a grey-hat hack team, that was another part of the company, this was the R&D division. The interface was there of course, that was the whole point, she had brief for her team to go anywhere hit anything that might put the v.p. at risk, so this counted, please God let this count.
Yala was on the next floor down, the one with the night shift of one. More offices, the design team, where their guy had had his office. Not his lab. Just his computer, still up and running, gathering dust in the office just two doors down from the lady with the fear of open spaces and people. Yala did her thing, plugged the USB drive into the port and went about cleaning up the rest of the floor.
Marlan sighed relief when the breaker program called home. Not to send data, the drive had more than enough space to store what it needed, the program just pinged Marlan's phone with a random port access sequence. It told him it was starting its business, copying everything on the drive.
The labs were on the second floor. Squeaks worked that one, where the rest of the night's business rested on his shoulders. He didn't have clean room access, but he didn't need it. The rest of the lab spaces were all open to his badges, the workstations where half-built boards, pieces of computers and boxes of chips, wiring diagrams decorating whiteboards and coming together in red and green and black and blue bits of wire on benches scattered around the floor. "Which one was it again?"
Marlan and Randi rolled their eyes; neither one of them rose to the bait. Yala did, though. She was getting ready to knock on the engineer's door, her nerves were at their highest pitch so far. "You're kidding right? Dude, if I have to come down there and roll your ass over..."
"Sorry, Yala, I'm getting there, I'm getting there. We're flying slow, right, just cleaning the offices, right? How's the drive doing?"
Marlan keyed the mike, two quick bursts and a slow one. Enough for the team to know they were getting where they needed to be.
Squeaks had made sure he knew where their target sat, like it was almost as forgotten as the guy who'd put it together. Just another board, this one finished at least, half a dozen wires sprouting from it. Their target wasn't plugged in, it sat in a protective clear plastic sleeve, on a shelf in the back with a few other completed projects. Squeaks left it there while he went about the rest of his business. Cleaning the lab space.
Yala knocked on the door. Waited for "Come in" from the other side, then slowly snuck her head around the jamb. "Ma'am, I'm filling in for Mena tonight, my name's..."
The radio reception was poor, so the rest of the team heard a mumbled staticky conversation with no details. They all held their breath, waiting, until the vacuum cleaner roared to life and drowned out everything else. The collective sigh over the link would have made Yala laugh, if she could have heard it over the sound of the vacuum. When she was done, she said "Thank you", closed the door, and trundled back down the hall. "She was nice," she said.
Randi and Marlan shook their heads. The uniforms would have to do their work, would do their work because that's what uniforms and hats did, anonymized and made everyone wearing one just another part of the crew, part of the background.
The rest of it was just waiting. For the second set of pings, knockbacks telling Marlan the program had finished transferring all their guy's files; that Marlan could send out two slow pulses and a fast one over the radio. Then Yala pulled the cord and stuffed the drive into her pocket. Finished up, with a knock on the only closed door on her floor and a "Good night" and a mumbled "Good night" from the other side, and then it was time for Yala to get on the elevator with Dave.
And meet Squeaks and his cart on the second floor. "Finish up the first floor?" "Yep." "Might as well do it right."
The first floor was bathrooms, conference rooms, a lobby and the elevator bay. Vacuuming and a quick swipe here and there and they were all out of there just about three in the morning, a good eight hour shift like clockwork. Or like they'd planned it or something. Squeaks put his backpack with the board stuffed inside it over his shoulders, and the three of them got out of that place.
Marlan and Randi met Squeaks at the pre-arranged spot, a hospital just up the road where all-night comings and goings didn't mean anything special. Squeaks passed them the backpack, and then they were all on the road again. The van, the rest of the cars, they'd return to the rental companies they'd got them from.
And then Randi began the rest of the operation. Well, she would have begun it, except that she'd already prepped the v.p. of the tech company for the possibility. "You and your team really do deliver. It was that easy?"
Randi met the lady at the company's other main campus in the Houston area, way out toward Katy. The company had followed all the latest trends and built a nice cafeteria for their high-tech, high maintenance workforce. Randi was comfortable making the meeting, the open design of the first floor didn't allow for a really intrusive level of snooping. Not to the level it would have taken to detect the contents of the bag at her feet.
She wasn't badging into the upper floors, where the scanners and the x-ray machines were hidden discreetly in bays just past the elevators. That was the v.p.'s problem. If she came up with a good price, of course. "No, it actually wasn't all that easy."
Randi wasn't interested in giving away all her secrets, either. There'd been a few other finished projects sitting on the shelf next to their guy's work. If she gave away too much, there wouldn't be any ripe fruit for picking at a later harvest date. Not that she was aiming for anything in particular. Randi just liked to keep her options open. "My team's good at their job, though."
"I'll need a complete rundown, a report to send along to my security teams. They need to know the holes to plug."
'And you need a justification when you're defending the money you're about to spend,' Randi added to herself. "I'll be happy to put a report together. It's all part of the service." She'd just have to make sure she left herself a backdoor, that was all.
The negotiations were almost too easy. In the end, Randi had guessed right. The v.p. had more purchase authority than she'd wanted to admit to. Then again, Randi reminded herself, it was one thing to ask a consultant to put together a threat assessment.
It was another thing entirely to have that board sitting there, stolen so cleanly that the R&D division had yet to discover it missing. The v.p. paid up the million without blinking.
Randi walked out of the building split between emotions. Glad, that she'd never promised the guy one way or another who she'd sell the thing to. And, kicking herself for not asking for more. She was halfway home before better sense took over from the momentary flush of greed. "Team's paid, our guy gets his retirement topped off, and we get out of this clean."
She celebrated by stopping by the deli where she'd met the guy in the first place. They made a killer corned-beef on rye.
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