Man-Napped - Santiago (Chapter 04)

CHAPTER 4

Day 2 (Sunday) – 37 hours after emergency alert.

The next day, at 10.00 a.m., Janet called the two guys at the gate on the intercom and asked them to come help her lift some very heavy file cabinets. She said they were to move them up the stairs.

Exactly sixty seconds later, the gate opened a crack and Rachel peeped in. after making sure there was no one around, she motioned for Adams to come in. They both entered through the small gate and closed it silently.

“I hate this” Adams said

“You’ll enjoy it much better if you keep quiet”

They went over to the designated portion where Janet had informed them to hide out until she gave them the all clear to move into Dr. Daniel’s office.

“So, let’s go over this one more time…” Rachel said

“I know the whole thing offhand” Adams interrupted. “Once Janet gives us the all clear, you go out and open the door and check if there’s anyone around, then you sign for me to come in. once inside I set up the backup process and you snoop around for clues – of which I doubt we’ll find any. Twenty five minutes is all we’re allowed to spend in there and then we move out before the guards return.”

“You forgot the locking the door aspect.” Rachel said

“Well, that’s your job not mine” Adams replied.

A few minutes later, after the guards lifted the first of ten cabinets upstairs and Mr. Lucas’s office doors (the bioinformatics expert) were locked firmly behind him, Janet’s voice came over the phone (they had kept an open line since she called them to come in after drawing out the guards).

“Coast clear”, she said silently.

Rachel nodded and without ending the call, put the phone in her left hand and moved silently across the open office space to Dr. Daniel’s office. She opened the door in a few seconds and motioned for Adams to come in. All the while, her heart was pounding furiously within her ribcage.

In a few minutes, they were in Dr. Daniel’s office with the door firmly locked behind them. Janet’s voice came over the phone.

Thanks a lot, you carried that one quite easily, I don’t know what I would do without you guys

No problem someone replied.

That was Janet’s way of telling them the guards had moved one cabinet. Just nine more to go, they had to hurry. Adams moved straight to the computer sitting on the table and powered it on. Immediately the system booted completely, he disconnected it from the intranet. If he hadn’t done that, someone might have noticed the computer pop up on the network.

He plugged in the external hard disk. He was tempted to snoop around and see the files on the computer but there was no time, he had to focus on his primary assignment. However, a certain mail caught his attention. He opened it and it was from a contact simply named ‘contact 1’. It was a simple line:

 ‘Tests complete, attention required.’

Adams checked previous chats with the contact. A message read:

‘I know how to stop the nightterror’ it was from Daniel.

Adams copied the mails unto a flash drive and then started the backup process. The process would take an estimated two hours. Daniel then wrote a short bat program that would shut down the computer after two hours, thirty minutes. He placed the hard disk inside the printer and camouflaged the cable, just in case someone came in before Janet did. He had already informed Janet of this.

He also did something that wasn’t part of the plan. He fixed a tiny camera on the wall facing the computer. He wanted to be able to monitor the process from his computer. He looked over at Rachel; she was picking the locks of a drawer. Janet’s voice came over the phone.

Wow, six down, four to go. The men with her were panting.

These damn drawers are heavy. Someone said.

They had a very short time left. Rachel had managed to open the drawer and she was pulling out some files. Janet’s voice came over the phone again.

Mr. Lucas! I didn’t realize you were in there all this while

Oh! Just had some things to finish up. what are you doing in here today anyway?

These cabinets need to be moved before Dr. Daniel returns. He’s probably coming back tomorrow, he’s asked me to move them since last week.

Oh, I see. I really need some stuffs from his office to complete the task he’s given me

Janet gasped but quickly regained control of herself and said Oh! I guess you have to wait for him till tomorrow. It’s not like there’s any way you’ll enter without the key which I don’t have. Even if I did, I’m afraid I can’t allow you, the doctor left very specific instructions.

There was a brief silence and the voice came again Oh, I see, well done anyway.

Rachel and Adams both let go of the breath they didn’t know they had been holding at the same time.

Thank you, Janet. Rachel’s voice said into the Bluetooth earpiece in Janet’s ear.

Okay guys, let’s move this, we have just two more to go after this. That was Janet’s reply.

Rachel packed up the documents she picked from the drawer and closed it. She signed to ask Adams if he was good to go, the latter nodded. They packed up and Rachel said into the phone

“We’re moving out”

Okay came Janet’s reply but she quickly added. I’ll stay here and sort out the files in this cabinet, you guys can move on.

That was meant for the guards, but it also informed Rachel and Adams that Janet would be standing guard near the door. They quickly opened the door and moved out. Adams nodded to Janet who winked in return as Rachel silently locked the door.

The partners-in-crime then moved outside the facility and sneaked out of the gate as silently as they had snuck in. Soon they were in Rachel’s car parked a few meters from the gate. The whole operation had taken twenty minutes.

“That was easy” Rachel said after they were seated in the car and were breathing easily.

“Yeah” Adams replied. “Good thing too, cause you didn’t have a backup plan if it failed.”

“Well, I don’t usually need a backup plan” Rachel replied.

“Well, you had better start preparing backup plans for your operations, one day your luck will run out and you’ll need them”

Rachel strapped in her seat belt and started the car. “Thanks a lot, Janet” she said into the phone before ending the call. She then drove off. In Dr. Daniel’s office, the computer continued making a backup of itself.

***********************************

Day 2 (Sunday) – 40 hours after emergency alert

During the drive to Rachel’s house, Daniel informed her of the email he had found on Daniel’s computer, Rachel promised to inspect the mails once they got back to her house.

In Rachel’s sitting room, they set up Adam’s laptop and hacked his way into Daniel’s email account. After inspecting the mails, they concluded that contact1 must be in charge of the lab Dr. Daniel used on campus. Their conclusion was reinforced by a message that had the same date as the day Janet drove the doctor to campus, the message read: ‘I’m coming in today’.

Preceding it were messages that read

Daniel: I know how to stop the night terror

Daniel: I’m coming in today

Contact1: Great, right on time. Our friends can help you out, feel free to play with them.

The last two messages were dated Sunday, May 11; that particular day and they read:

Tests complete, attention required

Schedule moving too fast, we need you to come in ASAP – URGENT!

The last message had a foreboding sense to it. Adams felt the hairs on neck stand up.

Rachel picked up her suit.

“Where are you going?” Adams asked.

“To talk to contact1” she replied.

“How do you know they’ll be…”

“The message asked Adams to come in today, they definitely are going to be around.” Rachel interrupted. “We can’t waste any more time, I have a feeling that last message is predicting some doom. I need you to go through his mails and look at those files I retrieved from his office, find out anything you can. You can call to update me if you find anything useful.” She picked up her keys and left. Adams set to work.

He read several of Daniel’s other mails, he found some pretty suspicious mails. He also found his way into the Daniel labs intranet. After all, he designed the network, he knew his way around.

After thirty minutes of snooping, he was pretty well informed. He typed a summary of what he had discovered.

On April 26, Daniel was contacted by someone named Anonymous by email and he was invited for a very important, top secret project. The email had praised him for his articles on the ebola virus and mentioned that he would be doing a very important lifesaving work if he joined them.. Two days later, he received his first mail from contact1, asking him to delete the previous message he received. From the documents retrieved from Daniel’s locker, his doodles on some of the papers and his logs, it can be deduced that Daniel had been informed of a new strain of the ebola virus and a plot to use it as a weapon of mass murder. Daniel had thus been tasked with finding a cure for the virus before the terrorists started killing people. Daniel consulted his team - which comprised of several top scientists not just from the country but abroad as well- probably via video conferencing. Daniel sent reports of their progress as logs to contact1 via another - unknown - media.

On Thursday may 8, he informed contact1 that he found a solution: probably a cure. On Friday, may 9, he was kidnapped.

That was as much data as Adams could gather. He sent the data as a text message to Rachel. Then he set out to find out those who were trying to use the virus as a weapon. If they were going to use the virus to kill people, then they would target large gatherings. They might probably want to test it first. He started with the assumption that the people who kidnapped Daniel were based in the locality –since the research had been based here- and he went looking for large gatherings within the city.

********************************

Rachel was already on campus by the time she received Adams’ message. She smiled as she read the message. ‘Well done, Adams. Good boy you are.’ She said to herself. She parked in front of the building Janet had described to her and got down.

At the gate, she was asked for her id card, when she had none, she was informed that no unauthorized person may enter the building. She nodded her consent and said “Alright then, I want you to inform whoever is the highest authority here that I need to see them. Tell them that I know about nightterror, I know they are close to a solution and that I also know something they don’t.”

The guard motioned for her to wait while he called someone on his phone. A few minutes later, the –now very angry- guard came over and said “You’re full of baloney! There’s nothing called nightterror and you are probably just here to waste my time. So turn back now before I change my mind”

“Wait a minute!” she said. “I know your boss will deny it because you probably don’t have the clearance to know about it. But believe me, if you deliver my message you’ll get a raise. I promise you that”

The guard paused for a while and listened.

“Tell him I know he’s contact1, tell him that he probably doesn’t know that his contact is missing; sooner or later, he’ll find out. Finally, tell him I’m specialized in finding people who are missing. Then give him my card.” Rachel extended her card to the guard and turned on her heels.

*******************************

Day 2 (Sunday) – 45 hours after emergency alert

By 6.00p.m.’ Janet was ready to leave. However, she first had to pick up Adam’s hard disk. Her heartbeat rose rapidly as she opened the door to Dr. Daniel’s office. She let herself in and quickly unplugged the hard disk and turned out.  As she locked the door, she saw Mr. Lucas’s door open. She quickly ducked behind a door nearby.

She watched as the scientist looked around suspiciously and walked over to the doctor’s office. He picked a key from his pocket and opened the door. After looking around one more time, he walked in and locked the door.

Janet ran outside, her heart pounding. She was almost sobbing by the time she got into her car outside. She started her car and drove out of the gate, barely waiting for the guards to finish opening the gates. She saw Mr Lucas in her rearview mirror as he came outside the building to watch her leave. She drove crazily across town for about five minutes before stopping to catch her breath. She took in sharp breaths and tried to calm herself. She then brought out her phone and called Adams.

“Janet”

“Adams” she said, her voice shaking.

“What’s wrong?” Adams asked.

“Lucas… He has a key to Dr. Daniel’s office… He knows I saw him.”

“Calm down…” Adams said. “Do not go to your house. Did you hear me? Do not go back to your house.”

“Okay…” Janet said amidst sobs. She was scared silly. She had suddenly discovered that Mr. Lucas was a spy all along. Rachel had said that they were dealing with very dangerous people. If Lucas was part of those who kidnapped her boss, then she had reason to believe that Lucas would not hesitate to kill her to keep his secret.

However, it could be that she was panicking for no real reason. Maybe Lucas was up to no evil, maybe he didn’t even know she saw him. She kept trying to calm herself while she drove down to the address Adams had given her.

A few minutes later, she found herself in a strange neighborhood. Adams was standing a few metres ahead waving her over. Adams got into the car beside her when she stopped and he directed her to Rachel’s house.

Rachel had also returned from campus. She saw that Janet was not looking well.

“What’s wrong?” she asked. “Did you get it?”

Janet nodded and Adams asked her to calmly explain what she had seen.

Janet narrated what happened and Adams pulled up a video on screen.

“Okay, I have a confession…” He started. “While we were planning our espionage earlier, I wasn’t comfortable with the vagueness of your plans, so I thought, what would they do in a typical American spy movie? So I got this idea…”

Rachel shook her head and said “You implanted a camera in Dr. Daniel’s office while we were there.”

“Yes.”Adams said, nodding. “You’re not going to scream at me, are you?”

“Rachel sighed and shook her head again. “As long as that piece cannot be traced back to you. I mean, yes it could be helpful but what if it is found?”

Adams was dumb stricken for a while but Rachel said “Let’s see what you found”

Adams nodded and said “So, when Janet called me, I immediately pulled up the footage from the camera and found this”

He played the video on screen. Mr. Lucas was found walking into Dr. Daniel’s office facing the camera. He locked the door behind him and looked around. He moved with the grace of someone used to sneaking around. He went straight for the computer on the table and had his back to the camera, blocking direct view of the screen. However when he left, what he had been doing became obvious. He had formatted the computer.

“I think this is the point where I say ‘Thank God for backups’” Adams said.

Rachel nodded and put her arm around Janet “You did well” she said.

The younger lady nodded and sniffed.