Текст книги "Conviction (2009)"

Автор книги: David Michaels

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Текущая страница: 11 (всего у книги 18 страниц)

"You're in the water."

"I can see that. . . ." Zahm struggled, trying to chin himself up, but gave up after ten seconds. "What the . . . What's around my legs?"

"The anchor."

Now Fisher saw the first signs of fear in Zahm. The man's eyes flashed white in the darkness as he turned his head this way and that. "What the hell is this?" he shouted again.

"Psychologists call it a stress trigger," Fisher replied. "I've got a theory about you, Zahm: First you volunteered for one of the toughest units in the British military. Probably saw your fair share of action, I'm assuming?"

"Yeah, so?"

"Then you leave the SAS and dive headfirst into writing novels; then you buy a seven-million-dollar yacht and spend most of your time at sea."

"What's your point?"

"My theory is this: When something scares you, you attack it. The more it scares you, the more of it you do."

"Go to hell."

"You're afraid of the water, Chucky."

"No chance, mate."

"Drowning, sharks . . . Whatever it is, you hate the ocean."

Zahm shook his head a little too quickly.

"Let's put it to the test," Fisher said, then scooted forward, drew his knife, and flicked the tip over Zahm's forearm, opening a one-inch cut. Blood trickled down his skin and began plopping into the water.

Now Zahm's eyes bulged. He thrashed in the water.

"Wouldn't do that," Fisher said. "Sharks love that. What kind do you have in these waters? Tiger? Bull? Great white?"

"Come on, mate. Get me out of here."

"As soon as you tell me what I want to know."

Zahm didn't reply immediately. He craned his neck around, checking the water around him. "What . . . what did you say?"

"As soon as you tell me what I want to know I'll bring you back aboard.

"Talk! Come on!

"You and your Little Red Robbers–

"Hey, that's . . ."

Fisher stopped talking. He simply stared at Zahm until the man barked, "Okay, okay . . ."

Fisher continued. "You and your Little Red Robbers did some work for a man named Yannick Ernsdorff." This was half a hunch, but with men like Zahm, bravado was currency. "I want you to tell me what you did for him. The what, the when, the where–everything."

"And if I do?"

"Are you bargaining with me, Zahm?"

Zahm jerked around in the water. "Something bumped me! Something bumped my feet!"

"Didn't take long, did it?" Fisher observed. "That bump is a test. It's trying to figure out if you're a threat. Next it'll give you a test bite."

"Oh, God . . ."

"You done bargaining?" Fisher asked.

"Yeah, sorry, sorry . . ."

"Here's the upside for you: One, you stop being live bait. Two, we part company and never see each other again. And three, I'll keep your sideline job a secret– providing you and your boys retire permanently. I assume you can afford to do that."

"Yeah, we're set."

"Do we have a deal?"

Zahm nodded. "Now, for the love of bloody Christ, get me out of here!"

Fisher hauled him over the gunwale, leaving his feet jutting over the side and the anchor line trailing in the water. Fisher rolled Zahm onto his back and waited until he'd caught his breath. "Yannick Ernsdorff," Fisher prompted.

"Yeah, he hired us about eight months ago. One job, six million dollars, U.S. Don't know how he found us, but he had proof–enough to put us away for good. Knew every job we'd done. He never said the words, but I got the message: Do the job, take the money, and stay out of jail."

"Where was the job?"

"China. Someplace in China, near the Russian border. I've got documents in my safe."

Fisher smiled. "I thought you might. Insurance?"

"With a guy like Ernsdorff? Hell, yes, I got insurance."

"You deal with anyone other than Ernsdorff?"

"Nobody by name."

"Descriptions?"

"A Chinese bloke . . . lean, hair graying at the temples; a Russian . . . hoop earring and ponytail; an American . . . gray hair, crew cut."

"Okay, go on."

"So we spend three months prepping for the job. Turns out the place is a government-run research laboratory in the middle of nowhere. Disguised as a chicken farm. Good internal security but almost no external stuff. Tough nut, that place."

"But you did the job?"

"Yeah, yeah. Ernsdorff didn't tell us what we were after. Just told us where to go and what to look for. Just shipping crates–high-end Lexan stuff–with serial numbers on it. He told us not to look inside."

"But you looked inside," Fisher said. "You took pictures."

"Damn straight we did. One of my guys is good with seals. We broke open the cases, took inventory, then sealed them up again, pretty as you like."

"And? What was inside?"

"Weapons," Zahm said.

"I assume we're not talking about AK-47s."

Zahm shook his head. "No, mate, we're talking about World War III stuff."

23

HAPPILY,Fisher found he was wrong about Zahm's technological foibles. The man had no issues with modern conveniences. He simply enjoyed life too much to partake in them. In that alone, Fisher admired him.

What he'd found upon opening Zahm's safe was not only a cardboard accordion folder filled with document scans and four-by-six photos in both color and black and white but also a Sony 4 GB Memory Stick Pro Duo.

After making sure Zahm's guests were still bound and unconscious, Fisher made sure the former SAS man understood both the benefits of forgetting what had occurred over the past two hours and the consequences of pursuing the matter after Fisher's departure.

ITwas almost 3:00 A.M. before Fisher returned to his Setubal home. Just before 8:00 in Washington. He inserted the Memory Stick into the OPSAT's multiport, uploaded the data, then waited for a response from Grim. It didn't take long:Data received.Proceed ASAP to Madrid safe house.Lisbon Portela Airport. Flight 0835. Ticket at Iberia desk.Contact upon arrival.

Short and sweet,Fisher thought. He'd worked with Grimsdottir long enough to know what that meant: She'd found something of value.

HEcaught three hours of sleep, then got up, packed, and drove his rental car to Cabo Espichel, a promontory overlooking the ocean. There he set the OPSAT for timed self-destruction and dropped it, along with the rest of his gear, in the backpack, into the ocean. However slight the chance of its being noticed, he was wary of repeating his DHL gear-shipment procedure one too many times. Patterns attract attention. And, though Fisher was not a superstitious man, he half believed in not pushing one's luck too far.

He arrived at the Lisbon airport an hour before his flight, had a bite of breakfast in one of the concourse food courts, then boarded his flight, arriving in Madrid an hour later, two hours on the clock. He was at the safe house by eleven thirty, and talking to Grim on the LCD a few minutes after that.

"We got a break," she announced. "Multiple breaks, in fact."

"You have my attention."

"First, this is mostly hunch work, but the three men other than Ernsdorff that Zahm claims to have dealt with . . . I think I know who they are: Yuan Zhao, Chinese intelligence; Mikhail Bratus, GRU, Russian military intelligence; and Michael Murdoch, an American. Does import and export, runs a handful of companies, most of them tech related. He's also elbow deep in defense contract work.

"Second, we extracted another name from Ernsdorff's server data: Aariz Qaderi, a Chechen from Grozny."

Fisher knew the name. Two years earlier, after assassinating his predecessor, Qaderi had taken control of the Chechen Martyrs Regiment, or CMR. It was well financed, tightly organized and disciplined, and made no bones about its mission: the subjugation or eradication of all nonbelievers.

"What kind of data?" Fisher asked.

"Just his name, an account number, and a pending payment of ten million U.S. dollars."

"Big money. Pending to whom?"

"Ernsdorff. Or whomever he's fronting for. Here's part two of the story: One of the serial numbers from Zahm's China job–"

"He didn't remember where exactly. . . ."

"The Jilin-Heilongjiang region, near the border with Russia, about a hundred miles northwest of Vladivostok. Anyway, one of the serial numbers from Zahm's job turned up during a raid of a CMR weapons cache outside Grozny. It was a land mine."

"Hardly worth ten million dollars," Fisher observed.

"No. I'm thinking the ten million is buy in. The land mine was a teaser–a freebie to get Aariz Qaderi interested.

"That's the bad news. I've waded through Zahm's 'insurance' records from the theft. What Ernsdorff had him hit was a doppelganger factory."

Fisher paused, sighed. "Oh, hell."

For decades China's foreign intelligence agency, Ministry of State Security–the MSS or Guoanbu–had been focused on industrial espionage. Through its Tenth Bureau, Scientific and Technological Information, the Guoanbu had been successfully targeting private military contracts in the West. The existence of doppelganger factories–laboratories applying the raw intelligence data gathered by the Guoanbu –had been suggested by the CIA in the late nineties, but solid evidence had never been found.

Doppelganger factories were dedicated to one purpose: creating perfect knockoffs of the West's latest and greatest weapons, often systems that weren't yet even in use by Western militaries.

"The official name was Laboratory 738," Grimsdottir said. "But based on Zahm's data, there's no doubt what it was."

"You said 'was.' "

"I went back and checked the satellite imagery. About a month after Zahm's job, all activity at that chicken farm stopped. In the space of forty-eight hours it became a ghost town."

"Can't say I blame them," Fisher replied. "What else are they going to do? Admit to the rest of the world they stole the biggest and baddest secrets, then used those secrets to create an uberarsenal that they then lost? What are we talking about, Grim? What kind of weaponry?"

"I'll download the encrypted list to your new OPSAT when you're ready, but suffice it to say that Zahm wasn't exaggerating: If this arsenal falls into the wrong hands, they'll become a first-world power overnight."

HEREwas one of the reasons–the other had been settled months earlier–Fisher had been on the run for the past year and a half. Long before Lambert died he'd become one of the few U.S. intelligence officials convinced that doppelganger factories were, in fact, real. Worse still, Lambert had come to believe the Guoanbu had been getting help from within the Pentagon, the private defense industry, and the U.S. intelligence community, including high level NSA officials–all of whom were, in essence, sowing the seeds of America's destruction. Armed with the most sophisticated–and often improved-upon–weapons and systems, China, its nuclear weapons, and its billion strong People's Liberation Army would become invincible.

While it hadn't taken much time for Lambert to convince Fisher and Grim that his theory was sound, it had taken much more to convince them that his plan was their only viable course. In killing his boss, Fisher had not only laid the groundwork for his entry into the mercenary underworld, but he'd also removed the specter of Lambert uncovering the corruption and treason that had infected virtually every aspect of the U.S. military-industrial complex. With Lambert dead and Fisher on the run and hunted, those involved would breathe a sigh of relief, go about their business, and hopefully make a mistake on which Fisher and Grimsdottir could seize.

"So let's put the pieces together," Fisher said. "Ernsdorff is playing money man to whomever hired him to hire Zahm."

"Mister X," Grimsdottir suggested.

"Okay. Mister X takes delivery of the 738 Arsenal. . . . Did Zahm indicate where this happened?"

"Korfovka, Russian Federation, about sixty miles from Laboratory 738 and five miles over the border. I'll send you the particulars later."

"Mister X takes delivery of the 738 Arsenal, then uses Ernsdorff to put the word out to the world's major terrorist groups about the auction. They invited anyone with the resources to provide the ten-million-dollar ante. To sweeten the deal, he sends out party favors–like the land mine they found at the CMR cache."

"I can buy that."

"What was it, by the way? The mine, I mean."

"Antitank. Essentially a miniature MIRV," Grim replied, referring to a multiple independently targetable reentry vehicle. "It uses range and bearing tremble sensors to target multiple tanks. When they're in range, the mine pops up and launches up to six kinetic-energy armor-piercing penetrators–tungsten carbide combined with depleted uranium–moving at about eight thousand feet per second."

"About five thousand miles an hour," Fisher added. "Even with a thirty percent miss rate, one of those things could take out a tank platoon."

"In the space of about ten seconds," Grim added.

"OKAY,it's a safe bet Aariz Qaderi and the CMR are invited to the auction. Do we know where Qaderi is now?"

"As of two days ago, still in Grozny. I'm retasking a satellite right now for a pass over his house. We'll know something in about four hours. In the meantime, we've got a problem we have to solve first."

"Which is?"

"Our tracking method just got flushed down the toilet–or at least partially."

Four months earlier, having decided the arsenal auction was genuine, Fisher and Grimsdottir began searching for a method, not only to tag and track the weapons once they left the auction site, but to find the auction site itself. Standard GPS-oriented tracking methods were a nonstarter. With hundreds of millions of dollars at stake, Ernsdorff and his employer would make sure the attendees and the weapons were clean when they arrived at the auction site. No matter how small and how well disguised, GPS trackers emit electromagnetic waves. It was the unavoidable nature of the beast. If Fisher was going to have any chance of making sure the weapons didn't disappear into the black hole of the terrorist underworld, he needed an unorthodox tracking method.

As it turned out, such technology existed, but it did not belong to the United States or any of her allies but was instead the brainchild of private Italian researcher named Dr. Terzo Lucchesi, one of perhaps six scientists who had pushed the field of nanotechnology to its farthest reaches. What Lucchesi was doing in his Sardinia-based laboratory was the stuff of science fiction.

In an ironic twist, Grimsdottir and Fisher attempted to start their own doppelganger factory, writ small, by hacking into Lucchesi's mainframe and stealing what they needed: an atomic scale tracking beacon that Fisher could deploy at a distance and Grimsdottir could monitor remotely. The most promising approach came from one of Lucchesi's projects, code named Ajax, which involved molecular, photonic-crystal-based robots designed for microscopic electronic repair. Of course, as did most nanotechnologies, Ajax had a plethora of collateral applications, including the signal-hijacking of silicon microchips.

Once Grimsdottir had extracted the details of Ajax from Lucchesi's mainframe, she turned the project over to her own private laboratory, deeply firewalled within Third Echelon, which set out to transform Lucchesi's robots into microscopic, and therefore untraceable, beacons designed to infiltrate cell phones, laptop and desktop computers, modems, broadband routers–anything that used microchip technology to transmit digital data–and send a prearranged burst transmission using the host device's own internal circuitry. Alone, each Ajax robot was ten nanometers, or one hundred thousand times smaller than the head of a pin; the number of bots required to hijack the average silicon microchip was 125–in all, smaller than a virus.

"So what's the problem? Your lab geeks leave the door open?" Fisher asked.

Grimsdottir laughed. "Not quite that simple. We're missing a line of code. We've got the bots working like a charm–we can program them to magnetically gravitate to anything with whatever EM signal we choose; they infiltrate, congregate, and diffuse where they're supposed to, but they don't transmit."

You think Lucchesi left it out?"

"Yes. We don't know why. Maybe he didn't have it finished when we hacked in, or he held it back for security reasons."

"How long is this line of code?"

"Four thousand or so characters."

"Long line. You've tried to hack back into his mainframe?"

Grim nodded. "It's not there."

"At four thousand characters it's not something he memorized," Fisher observed. "Which means he's got it stored somewhere else–somewhere not linked to his mainframe."

"Agreed."

"So I'm going to Sardinia."

"Already got your flight booked."

24

ANafternoon Iberia flight took him from Madrid to Milan's Malpensa Airport for a charter connection to Olbia on Sardinia's northeastern coast, where he drove inland on the E840 until he reached the small town of Oschiri. Whether it was coincidence or sentimentality, Fisher didn't know, but according to Grimsdottir's biographical brief on Terzo Lucchesi the doctor had been born in Oschiri. He'd built his cutting-edge laboratory two miles from Oschiri, on the arid hills overlooking the Coghinas Reservoir, a location that had as much to do with water access as nostalgia, Fisher guessed. Nanotechnology fabrication produced copious amounts of heat; without fresh cooling water . . . Fisher hadn't done enough research to know what happens to superheated nanotech, but he doubted it was pleasant.

Fisher drove into Oschiri, found a restaurant from whose terrace he could see the Lucchesi laboratory, and ordered lunch. While waiting, Fisher, again playing the lookie-look tourist, snapped photos of the countryside around the facility. As laboratories went, the building was architecturally impressive but petite: a white cube measuring two hundred feet to a side and sixty feet tall, with mirrored slit windows on each floor at five foot intervals. Six stories aboveground,Fisher estimated, and an unknown number underground. At least one, judging from the massive cloverleaf of water conduits that climbed the side of the reservoir before disappearing into the angled hillside beneath the laboratory. That much piping translated into a lot of water, and a lot of water required machinery. As for exterior entrances, Fisher counted two, both on the east side of the building: one pedestrian door and one garage door complete with sloped loading ramp.

During his approach to Oschiri, Fisher had seen signs of neither a police nor a military presence, which told him Lucchesi had pulled off a minor miracle beyond those he creates in the lab: He had managed to keep the Italian military and intelligence communities at bay. As it seemed unlikely neither entity was unaware of Lucchesi's work, Fisher guessed this meant he was placating them with marvels peripheral to his nanotech work or that he had promised them something juicy in the future.

Or Fisher was simply wrong, and Lucchesi had a company of 9th Parachute Assault Regiment troopers inside the cube.

AFTERlunch Fisher followed the SS392 northwest out of Oschiri and to the reservoir. The winding road took him within three-quarters of a mile of the laboratory before curving north along the shore, over a bridge, then east, following the contour of the reservoir before curving once again, this time north into the mountains. He stopped the car, turned around, and retraced his course to Oschiri.

He'd confirmed his suspicion: There were no boats to be rented on Coghinas Reservoir. If he wanted to exploit the laboratory's natural weaknesses, he'd have to do it the hard way.

ANhour later, back in Olbia, Fisher drove to the airport, found the FedEx pickup desk, and collected the box Grim had sent him. In a hurry, Fisher had decided against visiting another cache, which was in San Marino, on the opposite site of Italy's boot. He drove to his hotel, unpacked the box, and powered up his OPSAT. As promised, Grim had left him an update:1. Team returning to U.S. pending your results.Fisher was under no illusion: With Kovac still breathing down her neck about whether he, Fisher, was verifiably dead, Grimsdottir might soon reach a place where she had to either actively continue the ruse or manufacture evidence that Fisher was still alive. Perpetrating the lie would give Kovac cause to fire her; coming up with new evidence would send Hansen and his team back in the field. Fisher would have to consider his options.2. Started covert investigation: Ames's finances, history, communications, etc.Ames had lied about the source of the information that had sent the team to Vianden, and Ames had probably ordered van der Putten killed to cover it up. Why? If not Third Echelon, who was Ames's master? Where had he truly gotten his information? For these two questions, the finger seemed to point to Kovac, but they had no proof. Lambert had believed the corruption ran deep and high within the U.S. intelligence community. Could Kovac be among the bad eggs, or was he simply a bitter bureaucrat with an ax to grind with Grimsdottir?3. Details thin re Lucchesi facility: none available. "Mystery Question" still remains.At this message, Fisher smiled. Terzo Lucchesi was perhaps the best-known unknownin Italy, a Howard Hughes-like figure whose secretive research and lifestyle had kept the collective tongues of the tabloids wagging for a decade. Not even Third Echelon's reach had shed any light on Lucchesi. What Fisher and Grimsdottir had dubbed the Mystery Question was this: How exactly did Lucchesi fund his research?4. Signs at Aariz Qaderi home of pending departure. Attempting to electronically penetrate target computers for further information.5. Detailed inventory of 738 Arsenal theft.

Fisher scanned the list and immediately realized Zahm hadn't been exaggerating: In both quality and quantity, the weapons in the 738 Arsenal were staggering and apparently perfect, if not improved, versions of the original systems:French high-impulse thermobaric mortar and grenade rounds

South African Milkor MGL (multiple-grenade-launcher) systems

Heckler & Koch HK416 assault rifles

Swiss TDI Vector close-quarter-combat machine pistols

American Intelligent Munitions System (IMS) land mines

British AS50 .50 sniper/antimateriel rifles

American Mk44 Bushmaster II 30mm chain guns

American XM307 Advanced Crew Served Weapons (ACSW)Swedish ADWS (acoustic direction weapons system)

British Starstreak High Velocity antiaircraft missiles

Fisher continued reading until he reached the bottom of the list, then read it a second time, counting as he went. Sixty-two different systems or weapons and hundreds of thousands of rounds of ammunition–all with three things in common: They were cutting-edge, they were portable, and whichever terrorist group got its hands on the 738 Arsenal could wreak havoc on any armed force in the world.

ITEMnumber four was Fisher's most immediate concern. Aariz Qaderi was their only known auction attendee. If he left before Fisher could nanotag him, they'd have no hope of tracking him to the meeting and the 738 Arsenal would be lost. Fisher considered his options and realized he had none: On his own, with standard technology, he would lose Qaderi.

He needed the final line of code for Lucchesi's nanobots.

25

HAVINGtraveled so far, so quickly, through so many time zones, Fisher's internal clock was scrambled. Though he knew better, it seemed there hadn't been a day in the past two weeks that he hadn't been waiting for nightfall to either leave his hotel or hostel and go on the run or don his tac-suit and go about his business.

Tonight was no different. He caught a few hours of sleep before ordering room service, then walked out to his umpteenth rental car. He dropped a new backpack, containing his new equipment loadout, into the trunk, then left Olbia and headed south, arriving in Lucchesi's hometown forty-five minutes later. As before, he followed the SS392 northeast, but where the road turned north toward the bridge, Fisher took a dirt tract heading south. Following prompts from his Garmin, after three miles he slowed down and doused his headlights. Ahead, to the right, an acre-sized clump of trees appeared against the night sky. Fisher let his car coast to a stop before the gravel driveway. Predictably, the farmhouse looked different from ground level than it did from Google Earth, but the overgrown weeds, dilapidated barn, and empty animal pens had been clear enough, and now, looking at the sign on the chain spanning the driveway, he knew there was no mistake. The farmhouse had been foreclosed upon six months earlier and had been vacant ever since.

Fisher got out and walked to the chain and found it was padlocked to an oak tree on either side of the drive. It had been done sloppily, however, with both loops set too high and the chain drooping to low. After a brief search, Fisher found a pair of fallen branches with the right configuration and used them to lift the chain off the ground. He drove through, stopped, and got out and kicked the branches away, then pulled behind the barn and shut off the ignition.

He checked the Garmin once more. Good. A short walk followed by a not-so-short swim, and then the real challenge would begin.

BEHINDthe boarded-up farmhouse Fisher found a dry creek bed that meandered down through the hills toward the reservoir. In the wan glow of his night-vision goggles the landscape looked alien, the slopes around him barren, save for the occasional tree rising in silhouette against the sky. After thirty minutes of walking, he heard the lapping of water ahead, and soon the creek bed fanned out into a V-shaped alluvial plain. Directly ahead lay the mouth of a finger inlet.

Fisher stopped and checked his OPSAT. Lucchesi's laboratory, shown on the map screen as a pulsing red square, lay a quarter mile to his south over a series of dunes. His route, however, would be indirect.

He walked down to the water's edge and took a moment to check his belt and harness, his SC holster and SC-20 sling, and his gear pouches, then waded out until the water reached his chest. He kicked off the bottom and set out in a steady sidestroke.

He'd estimated the mouth of the inlet at eight hundred yards. So ten minutes after setting out, the sand-and-rock walls of the inlet disappeared and he found himself in the reservoir proper. On his hip, he felt the OPSAT give three short vibrations, signaling the first waypoint.

He stopped swimming, lifted his digital compass to his face, and rotated in the water until the blue numerals read BEARING 237. He found a landmark–the lights of a house or cabin–on the headland a half mile away and started swimming toward it.

The second leg was short, not quite eight hundred feet, which he covered in three minutes. The OPSAT buzzed on his hip and he stopped for a compass check, this time rotating himself on a bearing of 121. Lucchesi's lab lay deep within this next inlet, around four S-shaped curves. As the crow flies it was a mile; in the water it would be almost twice that.

FISHER'Ssidestroke ate up the distance at a slow but steady and energy-conserving 2.5 miles per hour, or 220 feet a minute. Around him the erosion-slashed hills rose steeply from the water, and as the inlet narrowed, first to a half mile, then a quarter, then a hundred yards, the cliffs seemed to grow higher, until he felt as though he were swimming among half-sunken skyscrapers. Finally, after forty-five minutes, his OPSAT buzzed again, this time two quick signals followed by two long ones. He stopped swimming and let himself float, still, for a moment as he caught his breath.

He lifted the compass to his face to double-check his mark and made a slight adjustment until the numerals read BEARING 087. He unslung the SC-20, brought it up to his shoulder, and peered through the scope, zooming and adjusting until he spotted, two hundred yards ahead, the upper corner of Lucchesi's cube peeking out from behind a curved cliff face. Illuminated by the moon and set against the dark sky, the corner was startlingly white. Fisher saw no lights, either outside or in. He slung his rifle and continued on.

He stopped again at a hundred yards and could now see most of the cube sitting atop its hill. Still no lights. Fisher zoomed in with the SC-20's scope, looking for indications of security–paths worn into the ground around the laboratory, protrusions on the walls or along the roofline that might indicate security cameras or sensors. . . . He saw none of these. An EM/IR scan once he got closer might reveal something, but from here the laboratory looked abandoned.

Could it be?Fisher wondered. Could Lucchesi have closed the laboratory without anyone knowing? By all accounts, the man virtually lived here, only occasionally leaving for brief, mysterious stints; similarly, his handpicked staff of eight scientists lived on-site in two-week shifts: four on, four off. Here again was a by-product of hurried mission preparation. Had he the time, he would have known by now the comings and goings of staff, visitors, and repair and maintenance personnel; he would have studied security procedures, lighting schedules, the frequency with which doors opened and closed. . . . Spilled milk,Fisher thought. You came to a mission with what you had, not what you wishyou had. Adaptability, not technology, was a Splinter Cell's bread and butter. The latter could fail you, the former rarely.

Fisher kept swimming, angling toward the far cliff until he rounded the bend and the laboratory came into full view. Now, too, he could see the water-cooling system: four silver conduits, each three feet in diameter, rising forty feet from the surface before turning forty-five degrees and plunging into the earth beneath the facility. Fisher zoomed in on the water at the base of the conduits and saw a slowly swirling vortex. First sign of life,he thought. If work wasn't going on inside, there would be no need for cooling water. There was only one way to be sure. He donned the Trident goggles and scanned the cube, the feed-water system, and the cliff, and saw nothing. Not so much as a blip on the EM scan, and on the infrared the laboratory showed as a dark block. The building's white exterior, combined with whatever insulation the architects had chosen, had made the structure all but thermally invisible.