The Rig 1: Rough Seas by Steve Rollins Page A

you open that door and enter his office with me and try to find out what's going on?”
    Dave laughed as well and he got to his feet again. Together they walked in and went to the desk. Dave flicked the laptop open and turned it on. Of course it asked for a password. He ignored it for now and looked at the Smartphone and the tablet. He tutted. They were things he would loathe to use himself because of the operating system and the finger print reader. But though he hated the things, he knew he could not hack them, so instead he began looking around for clues as to what the password for the laptop might be.
    “If I could take this with me, I would run a program on it to crack this thing.”
    “Hack?” Joy asked him, looking through the personal items and the few papers on the desk.
    She saw a business card which looked odd and out of place to her. It had a weird logo on it. She put it in her pocket.
    “Crack,” Dave corrected her. “Hacking is the good stuff, testing systems and that. Cracking is breaking into programs, sites, computers, you name it.”
    “Ah,” Joy went. “Thanks, that's not superfluous information at all right now.”
    “Sorry,” Dave said. “Found anything?”
    “Nothing really,” Joy said.
    And then she froze as footsteps approached the door through the corridor.
    Wes came into the office and gave them a sharp look.
    “What the fuck are you doing in here?” he bit at them.
    “Finding out what Stryker is up to,” Joy bit back. “More useful than doing all the backup stuff.”
    Wes looked angry, but then shook his head.
    “Better get down there to help us out, you two. Make sure he doesn't catch you in here.”
    “Right.”
    Dave got up from behind the desk and took Joy's hand. They followed Wes out of the office and back down the corridor. As they passed Reg's tiny office, they noticed he was still filling in forms.
    As they went back down to the lab, they passed the stage in Central Plaza where a nervous looking man was setting up the things for the deejay who was playing that evening. The moment they came in, Dave set himself down at his monitor again and he clicked away the notice that his backup was ready. He opened a second hard drive on his computer and began making a backup of that.
    Joy took a box of processed samples and began packing them in a special case for transportation to the mainland. She set herself down next to Dave. After a few minutes she pulled the card from her pocket and gave it to Dave.
    “Know what that logo is?”
    Dave shook his head.
    “No idea. Looks like a family crest or something. You got this from Stryker's office?”
    Joy nodded.
    “Figured it might be important, but if the name means nothing then the logo doesn't either.”
    “Means nothing to me, but maybe right now we should focus on getting this done. And then later we'll worry about it all.”
    After a while Wes came and pulled a chair over so he could sit just behind Dave and Joy.
    “Want to tell me what you were doing in Stryker's office?”
    Dave and Joy looked at each other.
    “We think Stryker might be up to something,” Joy told Wes.
    Wes frowned.
    “Right...”
    “There is no need for any evacuation prep,” Dave said. “And we were able to check the shipping logs and found out that he ordered that supply ship to come in from Los Angeles today.”
    Wes looked them both over, trying to decide whether they were serious or not. He decided they were.
    ”Shall we finish this? Then I'll help you guys try to figure out what’s going on here.”
     
     
    Chapter Fourteen
     
    Akhmed was getting more nervous by the second. He couldn't help it. It was stronger than he was. He tried to keep himself busy, checking the leads and going through the records, but he kept feeling more and more out of sorts. He took out his Smartphone and began playing a game, but that didn't help either.
    Eventually, he got up and began walking around. He went into the shopping section of ‘The City’ and was