Spooky spoke then, softly. “And surveillance on their houses. See what their routine is. See where their boat is. Find the helo. Also exfiltration plan. Snatch will be the easy part. Getting away clean is harder.” He pursed his lips, brooding. Took a sip of his special tea.

“Element of surprise, boys, element of surprise,” Larry rumbled. “They won’t know what hit them. But Spooky’s right. We’re going to blow the lid off this thing. We can’t expect to get everyone, so someone will go to their boss or bosses, and then there will be some heavy-duty blowback. If word of this gets out – and it will – we’re going to need a bolt-hole deeper than this cabin. No offense Zeke, but this place is a matter of public record, right?”

“Sort of. It’s in my wife’s maiden name.”

“Well, that will take them an extra hour to find out,” Vinny said sourly.

“What’s wrong, you getting cold feet?” Skull asked accusingly. Vinny glared at him and folded his arms.

“My nephew’s manners may be in question, but not his courage,” said Spooky quietly, and Skull sniffed, mollified. He looked away, as if he didn’t care. He probably just didn’t want to cross the little man.

“We have a bolt-hole. Never you worry.” Zeke showed off that I’ve-got-a-secret grin. “All right, team, because that’s what we are now, a team, let’s start acting like one,” he stated with emphasis, “Let’s get planning. DJ, put some more coffee on and start making more stew out of that venison, will you? I know you can cook.”

Daniel nodded, going into the kitchen and rattling, getting things together. Zeke obviously wanted to talk to the others without him around, reassure them a bit, he guessed. Right now they needed space. So he puttered around, unloading and repacking his van, poking through the barn, checking out Vinny’s gear. He didn’t touch anything – it was mostly out of his league, though he recognized a frequency-hopping tactical radio base station of the latest type, and what looked like an encryption module, designation KY- or KV - something.

And a flashing red light.

He looked at the light, which was attached to another box of unknown purpose, and the computers. There was a little noise, bip, bip, bip, each time it flashed. He thought it had to do with the satellite uplink, though, so he figured Vinny might want to know.

He went toward the cabin to tell him.

It looked like he already knew, since he bolted past Daniel as he was coming to the cabin door. Vinny had a smart phone in one hand and made a beeline for the barn, slipping once on the thin snow cover, cursing under his breath.

All the rest of them came after, not moving quite so fast, except Spooky, who somehow managed to get around everyone and follow Vinny into the barn first. By the time they all trooped into the structure, Vinh was furiously banging away at keys and cursing like a sailor on speed.

“What is it, dammit?” asked Zeke.

“Alarm and repeater transmitter for my smart phone, local mode. It means one of several things happened…” He started hammering furiously on the controls, switching views, windows, displays.

“Transponder…it’s my ATC back door – air traffic control. Something flying at low level…” He brought up a map of the local area with an overlay of moving dots with tails and numbers beside them. He pointed at one flashing. “Rotor-wing…someone turn off the overhead light in here. Uncle, unplug the transmitter please? It isn’t sending but might as well be sure.”

Larry flipped the wall switch and they were plunged into cold darkness, lit only by the glow of the computers.

Vinny held up a pointing finger, straight up. “Hear that?” Everyone fell silent. There was a faint eggbeater buzzing somewhere, which grew louder.

“Helo. Sikorski. Probably a Black Hawk,” said Skull.

Daniel agreed.

The sound swelled, then burst overhead. Spooky moved off to a side door, weapon ready, but the helicopter continued on, flying fast, fading.

“They’re looking for us,” said Skull. “For him,” he said, looking at Daniel accusingly.

“Maybe,” said Vinny. “Probably. Military transponder. Huh.” He grunted in irritation. He pulled up another display, flashing.

Zeke leaned over Vinny’s shoulder. “What’s that?”

“It’s a threshold alarm on all the things related to this INS Inc. situation. It means my bots have detected a certain level of cyber activity looking at what I have been doing. Nothing from NSA yet, thank God, but there is one hot node that I know is Langley’s.”

“Somebody finally reported the feces impacting the rotating oscillating device, and the Agency is waking up. The helo probably has ELINT gear on board. Our timeline just got shorter.” Electronic Intelligence equipment would try to find  transmitters, cell phones, anything that radiated.

“How much shorter?” Daniel asked.

“At a guess? I’d say we should have twelve hours, less if I transmit on anything but the Harris net.” He meant the frequency-hopping secure tactical radios, almost impossible to detect or intercept.

“Well, shut it all down!” cried Larry, looking around as if for an off switch for the gear. He started to move toward the main power cable running to the lone outlet in the barn.

“Leave that alone!” Vinny yelled. “We already shut off the transmitter. Don’t panic.”

Larry stopped, looked sheepish.

Vinny went on, “I’d say fifty-fifty they find us at all. They probably have us to within two to four hundred square miles right now, but unless we transmit, they have to do it the hard way – with people. That means identifying your acquaintances, friends and family, you know, six degrees of separation stuff. Nodal analysis. Then they have to dig through everyone’s records, and even digitized stuff isn’t necessarily textual data.”

Blank looks.

“Like if it’s a document that’s been scanned in, but wasn’t generated on a computer – it’s just a picture. Needs a lot of processing power and human-in-the-loop to dig stuff out. If it’s a handwritten document they might miss it entirely except by a human. How much manpower do you think they have devoted to this?”

“You tell me,” Zeke said.

“Well…if it’s just one bigwig in the Agency, he could probably form a small team of three or four analysts and set them to work without drawing any attention. So…it’s a crap shoot. At least twelve hours, more likely several days, and like I said, they may never make the connection to Zeke’s wife’s maiden name.”

“What about HUMINT?” asked Spooky. He meant human intelligence. Boots and eyeballs. “If they come here and ask the sheriffs, ask people.”

“No way,” said Vinny. “That would take forever. There are at least five thousand residences within ten miles of here. Besides, people around here aren’t going to tell tales to a stranger, or the Feds.”

“Okay,” started Zeke, “no panic, but we tear it all down. We can’t risk being caught. Take it all apart, pack it up. And everyone pull your batteries from your cell phones if you haven’t already. Dan, your van is going into the lake. Sorry, but it’s the only vehicle they have positive ID on. Spooky, you have to park the Porsche somewhere, it’s too noticeable. We’ll use the other four SUVs. Pack everything in there. And rip out your lo-jacks, your GPS units, everything that can be traced. Come on people, chop-chop.” Zeke clapped his hands.

Everyone tore down and packed all the gear in a flurry of activity. Boxes went from vehicle to vehicle, all sorts of cases and high-tech-looking containers. Daniel wondered what all they had besides weapons and Vinny’s commo gear.

He cleaned out the van really well, took the plates off and tried to sanitize it. Spooky helped. They couldn’t get rid of every identifying mark and number, but the more they could slow those guys down, the better. He put all his stuff in the Land Rover, his long gun case, his ruck and his aid bag. One or two men in each vehicle meant they had plenty of cargo room.