Free Eden Plague - Latest Edition by David VanDyke Page B

a couple of tables and started breaking out computers and mysterious electronic boxes from the Pelican cases in the back of the Toyota.
    By the time Zeke and Daniel were done showering and cooking breakfast, the electronic setup was done. They carried the food out to the barn and everyone ate while Vinny started on his hacking and cracking. Daniel wrote down everything he knew and could think of that would help, which was little enough. He kept himself busy by breaking out his own laptop and doing some general searches – the police blotters near where he lived, anything on his street, Trey’s name, and innocuous things like that. He got nothing, so after an hour or so he went back to the cabin to help Zeke with some home repairs, make-work while the wiz kid did his thing.
    By lunchtime Vinny had a preliminary outline. “All right, here’s the gist. Is this your girl?” He showed Daniel a picture of Elise, with longer hair.
    “Yeah, that’s her.”
    “Okay, Elise Wallis is straight up until about five years ago, when she gets diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma. She gets treatment, goes into remission, finishes her Masters in microbiology at Texas A&M, gets hired by the CDC – Centers for Disease Control. Cancer comes back with a vengeance after about two years just as she’s finishing up her PhD, at which point she goes on disability and into aggressive treatment, which fails this time. So she’s in hospice, and a month later, she gets hired.” Vinny had a smug look as he spun around in his chair.
    “Hired by who? Not the Agency, or you wouldn’t have that look on your face.”
    “Nope,” he grinned. “By a little company called Integrated National Strategies, Inc. get it? INS-INC, in-synch! Like the old boy band.” He laughed uproariously and spun again, until Spooky stopped the chair with his foot and a hard look.
    “All right. It’s indistinguishable from about a hundred little consulting companies that usually hover around the big defense contractors looking for scraps, usually because they have some Federal set-aside – Service Disabled Veteran Owned, or Minority, or Women-owned, like that. Except this company isn’t a set-aside, and they have never subcontracted with a big company. In fact, I can’t find who pays them, but they seem to have about fifteen employees…most of whom have worked in the black world before.”
    “Huh,” said Zeke. “So Elise isn’t working directly for the Agency…but indirectly…”
    “Right,” answered Vinny. “These guys got ‘Separate Cell’ and ‘Plausible Deniability’ written all over them. There’s probably only one guy in the company that really knows what’s going on and reports to their masters. The rest just do what the nice people that are paying them gobs of money tell them to.”
    Daniel said, “That means when she said ‘company,’ she meant a real company, not ‘Company,’ not Agency. That means we actually don’t even know who they are working for. Could be anyone in the black world – could be any government agency, could be a corporation, a rich individual…could be one canny operator that got ahold of this treatment, and is trying to develop it or market it or whatever…Vinny, what kind of people do they have working for them?”
    “Umm…if you can believe their online resumes, looks like a CEO, two program managers, an HR director, an executive assistant, an IT guy, a special security officer – that’s for clearances and information, not physical security. Six personal security specialists – these are your door-kickers and shooters. All of those have military or law enforcement backgrounds…Special Forces, Ranger, Airborne, Force Recon, sniper…Texas Ranger…if they aren’t BSing, a bunch of badasses.” He tossed a pile of stapled papers down on the table. “Figured you’d want to see these. Their dossiers.”
    “Anyone named Jenkins?” Daniel asked.
    “Yeah,” he picked one of the packets up. “Jervis