Rogue Angel - Polar Quest Part 30

Annja shrugged. "Well, what exactly are we up to down here and who is the enemy?" Annja asked.

"There's no we we anymore, Miss Creed. You are no longer a member of the scientific research team a.s.signed to this unit." anymore, Miss Creed. You are no longer a member of the scientific research team a.s.signed to this unit."

"Great. Send me on home, then," Annja said.

"We've already gone over that."

"Yeah, well, I thought I'd try again." Annja sighed. "So where's the big bad evidence you have that proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that I was responsible for yesterday's intrusion?"

Colonel Thomson looked beyond her to the soldiers standing behind Annja. "Bring it in."

One of the soldiers walked outside. Annja waited, her heart beating a little bit faster. Surely they wouldn't have found Dave's phone. Wasn't he one of them anyway?

Thomson continued staring at her through the smoky haze. He kept puffing on his pipe, generating more smoke and making Annja extremely uncomfortable. Her eyes hurt from the smoke.

The door reopened and Thomson looked up. "Did you get it?"

"Yes, sir."

The soldier walked over and handed Thomson a satellite phone. It was the exact model that she'd used yesterday to connect to the Internet. She couldn't tell if it was really Dave's, but it sure looked like it.

"This is the satellite phone you used to make a call to an Internet service provider yesterday morning."

"I've never seen that before in my life."

Thomson nodded. "We thought for sure you would say that, so we took the liberty of having it dusted for fingerprints."

"And?"

"We also took the liberty of taking your fingerprints last night while you slept that nasty concussion off."

Annja frowned. She thought her hands had smelled odd this morning. But she'd chalked it up as part of the medical evaluation she'd undergone as a result of her misfortune in the cave.

"Did you get a match?"

Thomson smiled. "A partial, actually."

Annja wanted to laugh at him. Of course they'd only gotten a partial. Annja had wrapped the sat phone back up the way Dave had hidden it. The friction would have destroyed much of her prints.

"Partials aren't enough to convict, Colonel. You're grasping at straws here and you know it," Annja said, hoping her bluff would work.

But the colonel seemed unfazed. And Annja's stomach continued to ache.

What does he have? she wondered. What does he have that he can use to pin this on me? Her laptop? Had they cracked her personal security codes?

She frowned. They had Dave's phone. And they might know about her laptop. Was Dave working with them, after all? Or was he something else entirely?

"Are you all right, Miss Creed?"

She glanced up. Thomson was looking at her with a renewed sense of interest.

"I'm fine."

"Forgive me for saying so, but you don't seem fine. In fact, I'd even go so far as to suggest you're feeling a bit nervous right now."

"Nonsense."

"Could it be that you're wondering what else we have to connect you with yesterday's crime?"

"I'm wondering how soon I can get out of here and go back to work."

"Ah, but I've already told you there will be no more work for you. You're off the team. Permanently."

Annja sighed. Zach was going to kill her.

"The time to come clean is now, Miss Creed. If you want to tell me everything about your conspiracy, I might be inclined to be more lenient on you than if you continue to cling to the notion that you are an innocent in all of this."

Annja eyed him. "More lenient?"

"It's going to be a very long winter. Temperatures, as you know, dip well into the negative fifties at night. All this darkness, this isolation, anything can happen. And if we have no way of getting you back to the authorities at McMurdo, we'll just have to dispense our own justice out here."

So that was it. He was going to kill her? For hacking his computer? Talk about a little baby, she thought. "That seems a bit extreme for a crime like this. I mean, what happens if someone steals your lunch around here?"

Thomson didn't rise to the bait. "The compromising of security is a very serious offense. People's lives are at stake here, and hard decisions have to be made regarding the operational security of this establishment. If that means severe punishments for violators, I am granted that authority by virtue of my rank and position within the United States armed forces."

"I wouldn't think the hacker would want anyone to get hurt, Thomson. That's being a bit far-fetched," Annja said.

"I take my job very seriously. And the lives of my men depend on that fact. I want to bring them all home alive. That won't be possible if we've got people who insist on sabotaging our efforts."

"Well, as I said before, you've got the wrong woman. I'm not guilty of hacking your system. I don't care if you've got a partial print match or not-it wasn't me."

The colonel smiled and then leaned forward again. The air was thick now. Annja coughed and tried to take a deep breath.

"So that's it, then?" the colonel said.

"What?"

"You're going to insist that you're innocent?"

"Absolutely," Annja said.

Thomson sighed. "Very well. You leave me no choice."

Annja looked up. "No choice?"

Thomson nodded at the soldiers. "Do it."

The doors behind her opened, blowing a fresh stream of frigid air into the shelter. Fortunately it cleared out some of the smoke. Annja heard footsteps behind her and looked up.

Garin walked in.

Thomson smiled. "Major Braden. You have something for me?"

"Yes, sir."

Annja saw the movement and then looked as Garin slid Annja's laptop computer onto the colonel's desk.

Colonel Thomson looked at Annja. "This, I believe, is yours."

30.

For a few seconds, Annja said nothing. Her laptop sat on Thomson's desk looking vulnerable. Thomson stared at Annja as if expecting she might break down and cry.

She frowned. "That's my personal property."

"You're upset," the colonel said. "As you should be. After all, one has certain expectations when it comes to private property-be it actual physical or more in the realm of, shall we say, intellectual property?"

Annja wanted to kill Garin for betraying her like this. What was he playing at, handing her over on a plate to the colonel? He'd already stymied her earlier and now he'd sealed her fate by giving her laptop to Thomson.

Thomson smiled. "Not going to say anything? Have I finally got you to the point where you realize how futile it is to keep insisting you had nothing to do with yesterday's intrusion?"

Annja glared at him. "You took my laptop. So what?"

Thomson gestured to one of the armed guards. "Open it," he ordered.

"I wouldn't do that if I were you," Annja said.

"Why not?"

Annja frowned. "In the short time you've known me, do I really strike you as being foolish enough to leave my laptop unprotected?"

"What-you've got a pa.s.sword?"

"Nothing so pedestrian as that," Annja said with a smile. "I took some more, shall we say, extreme methods to ensure its protection."

Thomson steepled his fingers. "And I should believe you-why? I'm not sure you've told us anything even remotely truthful since you got here."

"You don't have to believe me," Annja said. "In fact, go ahead and open it. See if I care. All I ask is that you move me away from it when you do it. Would you mind if I sat over by the door?"

Thomson glanced at Garin. "Major?"

Garin cleared his throat. "It was sitting right out in the open. I have to admit it struck me as being a little odd it would simply be so exposed if she was really trying to hide something."

"What-you've never heard of hiding in plain sight? It's an old trick."

"If you say so, sir," Garin said. "But I think she might be capable of a little more than we've thought so far."

Thomson took a deep breath and put his pipe down. Then he leveled a finger at Annja. "You're going to open that laptop."

"No. I'm not," she stated flatly.

"You are. If you don't, then-"

"Then what? You'll shoot me? On what grounds? You've got to remember that anything you do here will have a lot of repercussions. Even if you killed me, there would always be someone around who is willing to talk. Unless, of course, you're planning on killing everyone in the camp."

"Open the laptop, Annja," the colonel said.

Annja smiled. "We're on first names now? That's not fair. I don't even know yours."

Thomson frowned and spoke to one of his soldiers. "Get me someone over from the demolitions team." He stared at Annja. "We'll see how complex it will be to disarm your laptop."

Annja smiled and sat waiting. She'd gained herself a little time, but it would be over soon enough if the demolition guy saw through the charade. How could she make it more convincing? Annja racked her brain for any stories she'd heard about laptops being converted to bombs.

The door opened and a man walked in. "Sir?"

"You're Hawk, right?"

"Yes, sir."

"Good. Sergeant Hawk, this woman has b.o.o.by-trapped her laptop and is refusing to open it. I want it opened."

Hawk looked at the colonel. "I'm a.s.suming, sir, that you want the laptop intact as much as possible?"

He nodded. "We need access to her hard drive. There's a file on there that we need to see."

Hawk bent over the laptop and then looked at Annja. "What'd you use?"

Annja batted her eyes. "Now, if I'm not telling him anything, then what makes you think that I would be any more forthcoming with you?"

"My sparkling personality?" the sergeant said.

Annja smirked. "Sorry."

He nodded. "Had to ask." He turned to Thomson. "Has it been moved?"

"I brought it in," Garin said. "It seemed safe enough."

Hawk nodded and moved the laptop around. As he peered at it from a variety of angles, he kept talking to Thomson. "You should know, sir, that my specialty, as with all of my team, lies with planting demolitions. Not disarming them."

"Yes, but you and your men can disarm what charges you've set, isn't that right?"

"Sure, but that's because we planted them. We know what we're dealing with. But this is someone else's work. And to be honest, it's a real risk. If I guess wrong, the thing could blow."