6-Stuff Happens

6

Stuff Happens

They rode the elevator up together and Josephine could tell that her husband was not happy.  He was scatter brained to the point of absent mindedness, but he was not stupid.  He knew the flash drive she had found in her purse was the flash drive.  Being the righteous hero he was, he had wanted to immediately take it to the D.H.S agents.

Joe had other ideas.

Curiosity had gotten the better of her and she had to know what was on it.  Too much crazy had happened around them to not at least take a peek.  “Come on, don’t be poopy.”

Leonard frowned at her.  “I’m not being ‘poopy’.  That thing is dangerous.”

“It can’t hurt just to look at it.” She countered, not seeing the harm.

“You sure about that?  As is, we are going to have a hard time explaining to the agents why we didn’t give it to them when they asked us about it.  Not to mention two people are dead because of that thing.”  Leonard ranted back towards her and Joe considered it.

He was right.  Two people were dead, and this thing had gotten them killed.  Now, she held it in her hand and wanted to look at the secrets that it held.  Not to mention, government agents rarely accepted the ‘accidental stupidity’ defense, so they might be in some trouble after all.

“Okay,” She gave in.  “You’re right.”

Leo was taken aback by her surrender.  “Yeah… yes I am.”

“It’s dangerous.  Looking at its contents could get us in trouble.”

Leo nodded.  “Right, it’s safer just to hand it in.”

“Right.”  Joe said.

“Right.”  Leo replied.

The elevator dinged to let them know they had arrived on their floor.  After a moment of silence and as the doors slid open, Leo couldn’t resist.  “Maybe just a peek.”

Joe couldn’t help but grin.  “A peek won’t hurt.”

With that, they hurried down the hall towards their room, energized by the decision not only to break the rules, but to unravel another layer of the mystery that had been following them around for the last two days.

Leo caught Joe’s arm as she came to the hotel room door.  The card lock had been drilled out and the door was open, propped on the internal hitch lock.  Joe froze as she noticed it too.  Leo stepped in front and moved, slowly, toward the door.

It was Joe’s turn to grab his arm.  She whispered.  “What are you doing?  Go get security.”

Leo freed his arm from her grip and pressed forward, pushing the door open.  Joe’s stomach clenched as horrifying images of Leo being brutally murdered in front of her played in her mind.  The thought was so horrid, it almost caused her to scream.

She didn’t scream and Leo was not brutally murdered.  Instead, the door just creaked open to reveal their empty suite.

They walked in and realized instantly that someone had been there and tossed the place, looking for something.  Neither of the Deveruaxs had to guess what they had been looking for.

“You think the agents did this?”  Josephine asked in the initial confusion.

Leo shook his head.  “No, I don’t think so.  I think there is someone else after that stupid drive.”

Joe agreed with the theory.  She had suspected as much after she really thought about the events of the day before.

“I’m going to go find those agents.  We need to tell them about this.”  Leo said as he headed for the door.

Joe knew the fun was over.  This had just gotten real.  There were people out there still looking for this thing, willing to kill for it.  The Deveruaxs were not spies.  It was time to turn in the drive and do the right thing.

“Be careful.”  She said as he left.

“Stay in the room and lock the internal lock.  Don’t open the door for anyone but me.” Leonard said as she left, letting the door swing closed behind him.  She went to the lock and flipped it into place.  She then took a deep breath and turned back to the ruined room.

She began to look through the suite, trying to figure out if anything had been taken during the tossing.  It was at that point that she saw the laptop they brought, lying out on the bed.

Like a siren’s call, it beckoned and suddenly she was very aware of the flash drive in her pocket.  A peek couldn’t hurt, right?

She pulled open the laptop and waited for it to boot up before plugging in the drive and waiting for the auto load prompt.  When it popped up, she quickly selected the ‘open folder to view files’ option and a window opened on the screen.  It read;

This drive is password protected.

Then, predictably, it asked for a password.

“Shit.”  She said, cursing her own stupidity.  It was a highly important piece of government hardware, why wouldn’t it have a password?

She shrugged and decided to put in something just on the one and a million chance that it worked.

She hit the buttons, 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 and grinned to herself at the joke while pressing ‘Enter’.

The window vanished and the folder promptly opened.  “You have to be kidding me!”

Inside was a series of files, all marked with a date and time and the file abbreviation ‘.dce’.

She had never seen that kind of file.  That’s all that was in the folder.  There was close to 200 of them, all dated for two years prior.  She double clicked on one just to see what would happen and she got a message informing her that the computer did not have the software required.

She frowned.  The clearing epiphany she had been hoping for did not come.  The flash drive had no information for her and she felt stupid for even trying to find something.  She should have left it to the professionals; left well enough alone.

She then remembered her husband’s knowledge of all things obscure.  She grabbed her cell phone and texted him;

“What is a .dce file?”

A second later, she got the response;

“It’s a video file.  It can only be played through a Drivecam event player.  Why?”

It took maybe half a second and then it hit her like a ton of bricks.  The flash drive was not an agent list.  It was a-

The crash came a second later, echoing through the room.  It was the sound of a door being kicked in.

Joe’s mind worked fast.  She knew there was no other way out of the room other than a five story drop off the balcony to the pavement.  She also knew that whoever was kicking her door in would be after the drive.  If they were brazen enough to kick the door down in the middle of the day, once they had the drive they would kill her.

She pulled the flash drive and opened the nightstand drawer putting her hand in and dropping the drive behind the drawer before sliding it almost all the way shut.

Just as she finished, she saw the dark eyed man who had stalked her in the hallway appear in the doorway.  This time, he had a mean looking gun strapped over his shoulder and hanging at his side.  She didn’t know what it was called, she was not a gun person, but she knew it shot a lot of bullets when the trigger was pressed.

His eyes were hungry in the wrong way.  He looked at her like a piece of meat and spoke.  “No take back.”

Joe tried to think of the right way to play the situation.

While she was trying to think of the right way, her panic stricken body ran forward and grabbed the laptop, hurling it at the Russian killer in her bedroom doorway and screaming at the top of her lungs.

The laptop struck the man in the head and he stumbled backward into the living room, falling over a recliner.  He yelled something in Russian, which Joe figured was some kind of curse, as he toppled awkwardly to the floor.

Joe sprinted through the doorway and turned the corner to head for the door and bumped directly into another man’s chest.

It was the giant from before, the one who had leashed the hungry man before he could let his dark ambitions loose on Josephine.  His massive hand clamped over her mouth as his giant arm wrapped her waist.  She struggled as hard as she could, but it only seemed to cause him to strengthen his grip.

“Calm yourself.”  He said with a heavy accent.  “I promise, this will be painless.”

****

Leonard frowned at the phone screen as the elevator took him to the ground floor.  She had not texted him back right away and he was struck with the sense that she had decided to look at the flash drive after all.

“Why did you need to know?”

He sent another text into the ether and got no response.

He began to worry and as he reached the bottom floor and the elevators opened, he switched to his contact list and found Joe.  He then moved to the small vending machine area next to the back door of the ground floor.  Not wanting to bother others with a call, he pressed her name and put the phone to his ear.

He heard it ring once before the bag was slipped over his head.

“What the-“ was all the chloroform would allow him to say before the blackness of the bag became the blackness of reality.

TO BE CONTINUED…

 

5- Eureka!

5

Eureka!

The knock on the door came and a lesser man would have panicked with the Department of Homeland Security knocking at their door, but not Yuri Chenkoff.  Yuri was a professional, he knew well enough that his alias and the aliases of his crew would hold up to the scrutiny of the D.H.S, but that it wouldn’t really matter.  They weren’t looking for them, they were looking for the flash drive.

That was most certainly not in the room.

Yuri eyed his men, Vadim, Boris, Oleg and Pavel were in the room.  Nestor, his last man was out following the couple down the hall.  Yuri was positive they were the ones with the flash drive.  Yuri noticed Vadim’s eye twitched and he gave him a hard look.

“Remember,” Yuri whispered in English so as not to be heard through the door.  “We are Russian business men here to pitch a computer program to interested buyers.  Keep it together and everything will be fine.”

The knock sounded at the door again, this time louder and accompanied by an American man’s voice.  “Department of Homeland Security, open up please.”

Yuri steeled himself then opened the door.  In front of him stood a stout blond haired American man in a suit.  Next to him was a woman who would be attractive if she stopped trying so hard to look like a man. They were accompanied by three Traverse City police officers.

“Can I help you?” Yuri said with a heavy accent.

The blond man eyed him for a second.  Yuri knew this was the effect his massive size had on normal people.  He eventually found his nerve.  “I’m agent Barkley and this is Agent Adams.  We are with the-”

Yuri cut him off.  “The Department of Homeland Security, yes I heard when you yelled it earlier.  I will ask again, can I help you?”

The woman stepped up, undeterred by Yuri’s size.  “There was a shooting downstairs.  We are investigating the incident and would like permission to search your room.”

Yuri’s eyes shifted to Adams’ and he attempted to feign fear on his face, not an easy task since Yuri Chenkoff feared nothing.  “My God, how terrible.  Of Course, but I can assure you we had nothing to do with this horrible thing.”

With that, he stepped aside and let the police and the agents pass.  They moved in and Barkley began to coordinate the search.  Adams, however, stared at Yuri’s men who all stared back with hard faces.  “What are you gentlemen in town for?”

Yuri shrugged.  “We are here to pitch our new computer software to a perspective buyer.”

The woman’s eyebrow rose as she turned to Yuri skeptically.  “You are a little big to be a computer programmer aren’t you?”[Z&M1] 

Yuri’s smile widened.  “Everything is bigger in Russia.”

Yuri bent down a little when he said it in order to intimidate the agent.  To his surprise, it had no effect.

“Can anyone corroborate your story?” She asked and Yuri’s eyes went to his men.

They all tensed slightly at the question as if waiting for Yuri’s sign, when given, would mean kill everyone in the room.

Yuri shook his head.  “I’m sorry.  Our buyers must remain anonymous.  The computer business can be one of treachery.  You understand, yes?”

Adams seemed to watch him for a second then decided to let it go.  Barkley had returned.  “Let’s get out of here Adams, there’s nothing.”

Adams nodded and the two of them left with the police officers.  “Good luck agents.  I hope you find what you are looking for.”

Yuri shut the door behind them and took a deep breath.  With that out of the way, he called Nestor. Nestor had been following the couple all day and, with any luck, would have gleaned a clue to where the flash drive is.

Nestor answered. “Yes?”

“Nestor, it is Yuri, what have you found?” He asked, his voice was all business.

“Nothing,” Nestor replied.

Yuri became agitated.  “What do you mean nothing?  You have been following them for six hours.  They have given you no clues?”

“Honestly sir, I don’t think they are what you think they are,” Nestor replied.  “I think they are just two stupid Americans on holiday”

Yuri’s fist clenched and he forced himself not to hurl the phone in rage.  “They must have it.  The way he ran to them, they must be his contact!”

“I am sorry, sir.”  Nestor said into the phone.  “In the last six hours they have gone out to breakfast, went for a swim at the beach, eaten ice cream, argued about renting Jet Ski’s, he won I think he is afraid of them, then they got ice cream again before returning to swim.”

Yuri took a few deep breaths.  “Have you learned nothing?”

“The man has very funny shirts.”  Nestor replied.

Yuri was shocked.  “What?”

“The man’s shirts, they are very funny,” Nestor said, almost jovially.  “He has a shirt on now that says ‘I’m with stupid,’ but instead of pointing to the person next to him it points to his penis.”

Nestor found this hilarious and began to laugh.  Yuri hung up before he got any angrier.  “Oleg, go to their room, break in and search it.”

Oleg’s grin widened.  He had a dark side to him that always bothered Yuri.  He had been the one who cornered the woman in the hall and almost blew everything.  Nonetheless, he was ruthlessly efficient as long as he could keep his deviant urges to himself.

 As he passed Yuri, Yuri grabbed his upper arm to stop him.  “Oleg, do not get caught.”

Oleg nodded and Yuri released him to get to his job.  They were running out of time.

****

“I am so full.”  Leo said as he held his stomach on the way back to the hotel.

Josephine knew what he was going through.  The Deveruax’s had a bad habit of over eating whenever they were on vacations.  This day had been no different.  “Tell me about it.  Why did we do that?”

“I don’t know,” Leonard said before letting an earth shattering belch go.

“Oh my God!” Josephine said as the stench wafted through the small car.

“I can’t help it!” Leo tried to defend himself and failed.

Joe used her console to roll Leo’s window down, in order to get some fresh air in the car.  She pressed the “lock” button so he could not roll the window up.  It had just started raining outside and Leo whined.  “Hey, come on!”

She couldn’t help but laugh as he and his ridiculous shirt got pelted with rain drops.  “That’s what you get!”

His eyes narrowed and he reached over towards her armpit, her most ticklish spot and she tensed, “Alright, truce!”

She unlocked his window and he rolled it up.  “Thank you.”

There was a silence as they both calmed down and her mind, as devious as it is, again brought her back to the mysterious shooting the day before.  “I just don’t get it.”

Leonard eyed her and she knew exactly what he was thinking.  He knew where she was going before she went there.  He knew she had always had a hard time letting things like this go.  She craved information, always had.  Leo had never quite let her live down the fact that she had Googled him after he had asked her out.  She couldn’t help it, she wanted to know what she was getting herself into.

“We are on vacation,” Leonard said.  “We are also not law enforcement agents.”

Josephine shrugged.  “I know, I know, but doesn’t it seem a little weird to you?  Why would the buyer shoot the seller before he had the item he was trying to buy?”

Leo considered this.  “Drug deals go bad all the time and people get shot.  I mean, it comes with the territory of being a criminal.”

Joe frowned.  “This is not a Van Damme movie, Leonard. This is real life.”

Leonard nodded.  “Got that right, there would be way more high kicks if this was a Van Damme movie.”

Joe ignored that.  “All I’m saying is that these guys are stealing national secrets, they’re not normal criminals.  I would think they would be more, I don’t know, organized.”

Leonard considered this.  “Okay, so what if the shooter isn’t the buyer?  Maybe he’s just ambushing the seller in the bathroom and maybe there is a different buyer?”

Josephine nodded.  That theory sounded better to her.  The shooter was a third party who took out the seller for what he was selling, meaning whoever the buyer was, he was still out there.

“Let’s let it go for tonight, huh?  We’ll just go upstairs and relax, no more talk of dead people?”  Leonard pleaded and Josephine had no choice but to surrender as they pulled into the hotel and parked.

As they began to get out, Josephine noticed the flash drive plugged into her radio, the one they loaded music on to listen to on the trip.  “Don’t forget the flash drive.”

Leonard shook his head.  “Nah, I just leave it in the car, it’s not like we are going to use it upstairs.”

Leonard opened his door but before he could get out, Joe grabbed his arm stopping him and forcing him to look back.  “Hold on, did you leave the flash in the car yesterday, after we had arrived?”

Leonard was confused as to why this mattered so much.  “Sure I did, why?  I don’t think anyone’s going to break into the car for a lousy flash drive.”

A cloud lifted in Joe’s head, she realized what had happened and grabbed her purse and began to dig into it.

Leonard still didn’t understand.  “What’s going on, babe?”

She ignored him and kept digging until she found it.  As she pulled it out of her purse, Leonard stopped talking and stared, realizing now what Joe and come to understand a minute ago.

She was holding a flash drive in her hand.

The flash drive.

TO BE CONTINUED….