Free Strike Force Charlie by Mack Maloney

cracks,” she replied. “I know one file seems to be an interrogation and the other has something to do with a sportswriter.”
    Then she turned and looked directly at Ozzi. “You weren’t the only hacker in the office.”
    â€œSomeone we’re working with has been sending these files to your address,” Fox told her, his tired voice now betraying some aggravation. “So when this day came we’d be able to finally get to them. But you weren’t supposed to see any part of them.”
    Li just shrugged. “I had time on my hands. Once you two were gone …”
    Outside came the rumble of two more fighter jets flying high overhead. Fox and Ozzi just looked at each other again, as if to say, Now what?
    Here Li saw her opening. Exactly who were these people hiding in her house? And what were they really here for? She had to get to the bottom of it, one way or another, because that’s just the way she was.
    â€œYou see, I know a lot,” she told them boldly. “And that means you’ll either have to tell me everything … or you’ll have to kill me. Because if you don’t, as soon as you leave I’m heading right for Pentagon CID.”
    Â 
    Fox and Ozzi put Li in another bedroom, this one at the other end of the second-floor hallway. They would just have to deal with her later. A member of the shadow group had retreated to this room in hopes of getting some sleep. Failing that, he agreed to keep an eye on her.

    The two DSA officers then hurried back to the master suite, calling the remainder of the team in with them. On cue, the storm outside doubled in intensity. Lightning flashes could be seen coming from every direction, with thunder booming off in the distance. Or was that the fighter jets circling over D.C. again?
    The group gathered anxiously around Li’s laptop. They were, in fact, the infamous “ghosts,” the people who had pulled off the miracle at Hormuz and the rescue at Singapore. Or a handful of them, anyway. The actual rogue team numbered more than 50. Marines, Delta guys, SEALs, Navy sailors, Air Force pilots, State Department bodyguards—the rest of them were still back in Gitmo, still behind bars. The individuals here had been handpicked to escape, selected because each had a skill requisite for the very nasty business they knew lay ahead. Fox and Ozzi, for instance, were plugged into the military’s internal security apparatus; that’s where their talents lay. Two Delta Force guys, Dave Hunn and Sal Puglisi, were also at hand. At six-three, 240 pounds, Hunn provided the muscle. Nearly as big, Puglisi was the bomb maker. It was these two who’d taken out Palm Tree and then swum across the Potomac Reservoir to evade any pursuit. That’s why both were still soaking wet.
    Ron Gallant, a USAF pilot and dead ringer for Clark Kent, right down to the goofy eyewear, was here as well. He’d flown one of the team’s Blackhawk helicopters back before the Hormuz Incident when the ghosts were prowling around the Persian Gulf using an undercover containership as their floating base. Though he cut his teeth on helos, Gallant could fly just about anything these days. That’s why he was here.
    The youngest of the small group was Gil Bates. Tall, thin, goateed, with punked hair, and barely 22 years old, Bates had been an employee of the super-secret National Security Agency for almost four years before getting involved with the rogue team. A graduate of MIT at 17—in Advanced Military C(3) Theory, no less—he was a superhacker, someone who could break into just about any computer and any
computer file, no matter how many security barriers had been placed around it. When he was on, it was almost magical what he could do.
    He was sitting in front of Li’s laptop now. He’d downloaded her most recent e-mails, they being the mysterious “Fast Ball” and “Slow Curve” files. Both