Geek Mafia: Mile Zero by Rick Dakan (reading tree txt) 📖

AN hour later, Paul had heard from Chloe about Bee’s plan. He wanted to be with them both right now, on guard against whatever Raff would inevitably try and pull when he met with Bee, but if it worked and they managed to separate Raff and Eddie, they needed to take advantage of the situation. If he could keep him from reuniting with Eddie after the meet with Bee, then Raff would have nowhere to go but back to wherever his own Crew was staying. To do that, they needed to force Eddie to abandon his hotel room and distrust Raff enough not to protect him anymore. That was the tricky part, of course, but together he and Sandee had a plan.

The Hyatt complex where they thought Eddie was staying sat right against the water at the end of Front Street, just a block from Mallory Square. It offered guests the whole package - pool, bar, restaurants, boat and jet ski rentals, sunset cruises and wireless access for their laptops through one of the big cell phone companies. If they had a skilled hacker, they might have been able to find Eddie and his crewmates by tracking their Internet usage or something like that. But they didn’t.

Nor did they have any useful contacts who worked at the hotel. Sandee knew one girl who worked as a maid, but wasn’t working again for another two days and couldn’t help them out. Under other circumstances, they might try to simply bribe someone behind the front desk or show them a pic of Eddie and say they were looking for him. But if Eddie was being as security conscious as he should be, he probably already had one or more of the hotel employees on his temporary payroll. If Paul talked to one of them, he’d not only not find out Eddie’s room, he’d be tipping his target off. So it was up to him and Sandee to find another way.

The first obvious step was to get a room for themselves in the hotel. Or that would have been the first step if the Hyatt hadn’t been fully booked. Which it was. So they were going to be operating without a safe base of operations inside. The only advantage here was that, with the hotel full, there were plenty of people coming and going. Dressed in typical tourist garb, (Sandee still in what he called his “boy form,” as if he had a super power that allowed him to change gender - which was not too far from the truth) they had no trouble slipping past the front desk with a larger group of actual guests.

Once inside, they split up. Paul went and found a public bathroom and ensconced himself in one of the stalls. Sandee took an RFID reader that Bee had given them from her supply. The device was destined to be surreptitiously mounted on a telephone pole or under a mail box or newspaper machines along Key West’s streets, and so looked like a plain metal box with stickers that said, “Florida Power and Light” and “City of Key West” on them. Just another anonymous box of wires in an evermore wired world. Normally, Bee’s devices needed to be hooked up to a power source when she placed them in her network, but it also had an internal battery that was good for a few hours in case of some sort of power outage. The machines used the city-wide wireless network to transmit information back to Bee’s tracking system at the house. But with Bee not at the house, the info was then being transferred from that system to the laptop Paul was currently firing up in his stall. It would record any contact with the RFID tag that Sandee had slipped Eddie last night.

Sandee’s job was to start on the first floor and walk every hall, past every room and try not to draw any unwanted attention from hotel security while doing it. It would’ve been faster if Paul had been helping - he’d grabbed a second RFID reader before they left the house, with just that intention. But on reflection, he realized he couldn’t risk running into Eddie or one of his Crewmembers in the hall while they were going to get ice or something. But in boy form, there was no way that Eddie would recognize Sandee from the night before, so he had to do it alone.

The readers had a range from ten to twenty feet, depending on the signal strength and the kinds of materials between the tag and the reader. If Eddie had put the card inside something that blocked the radio waves, they’d have no chance of finding him. If this didn’t work, then they’d have to resort to Plan B - activate the fire alarm and hope to spot Eddie’s movements in all the confusion. Sandee had pointed out that Plan B was pretty awful, and Paul had to agree.

He sat in the toilet for a lot longer than he normally spent in public toilets. A surprising number of people came and went, and Paul was treated to a range of noises and smells he could’ve gone without experiencing. One older gentleman, who took the stall next to his, started up a rather unpleasant conversation about his own bowel movements and how they related to his eating habits. Paul pretended to not speak English, answering only in gibberish of his own devising. The man seemed to take this as a go ahead to talk in even more detail, since his audience seemed to be having trouble understanding him.

Thankfully, the man was gone when Paul’s laptop screen finally flashed, indicating that Sandee had made contact. The contact then disappeared as fast as it had appeared, but the display recorded the exact time and duration of the signal. Sandee must have just walked by the door to Eddie’s room. He dialed Sandee on his disposable cell phone, who picked up immediately.

“That’s it,” Paul said.

“Right on,” replied Sandee in a whisper. “Is it reading right now?”

“No, but it did a second ago.”

“Let me back up.” A few seconds later the laptop flashed again, registering the contact with Eddie’s card.

“There!” said Paul.

“Ok, I’m on the fourth floor. So it’s either Room 412 or 413.”

“They probably have more than one room booked,” said Paul. “But we need to know which one Eddie’s in.”

“Hold on,” Sandee said. “Tell me when you lose it.”

Paul watched the display. Unlike the fancy map on Bee’s screen at home, this was just a simple text box that said the contact name, the ID number of the reader Sandee was using and a time stamp for when the contact was made. Bee’s master display had software that correlated specific readers to specific locations on a map of Key West, but since Sandee was moving the reader with him, such a map would’ve been useless. Not that they had a map of the inside of the Hyatt hotel anyway. As he watched, the contact ended again.

“There!” Paul said again.

“He’s in 412,” Sandee said.

“How do you know?”

“A little trick I thought of. I pressed myself against the wall and shielded the reader with my body. I’m right up against the wall to 413, the signal must be coming from 412, across the hall.”

“Sounds good,” said Paul. “Now get out of there before someone notices you pressing up against walls.”

“I’m on my way.”

Glad to be done in the bathroom, Paul closed his laptop and flushed the toilet before heading out to meet Sandee in the lobby. Time for fireworks.

CHLOE wished, oh how she wished, that they had more people in their Crew. Four was not even close to enough. She’d even tried to call Winston for