Chapter 83: The Control Station
"To activate the satellite," Simon said, "Farook needs a ground control station." He spread a map of the Los Angeles area on the briefing table. "The closest one to the city is the uplink facility attached to the KNBC broadcast tower. It's out past the Burbank city limits, off the 118."
"Good reasoning," Sarah said.
Chuck was already standing. "We have a location and we're working on the code. What are we waiting for?"
"The code is your problem," Simon said. "Casey stays here to coordinate with Vandenberg. Sarah and I take the control station." He looked at Chuck directly. "Whether a lot of people get hurt today depends on whether you get that code. Find Jeff. Get it done."
Chuck nodded and left without further comment.
Simon and Sarah went upstairs.
In the parking structure, Simon walked to the Mustang.
"My car," he said.
Sarah walked past him to a silver Porsche 911 two spaces over. "Mine's faster."
"I'll take that bet," Simon said, and got in the Mustang.
Sarah looked at him through her windshield for a moment, then smiled and started the Porsche.
They left the structure together.
The Mustang's performance build had been optimized for exactly this kind of run — open freeway, consistent acceleration, the sustained high-speed work that the invitational had been designed to prepare for. Simon ran the 118 at speeds that weren't posted on any sign, reading the traffic pattern half a mile ahead and threading through it.
He checked his mirror periodically. Sarah was there — the Porsche was capable and she was a good driver — but the gap was opening.
He keyed the earpiece. "Accelerating. See if you can keep up."
"I see what you're doing," Sarah said.
"I know you do," Simon said, and pushed it.
Fifty-five minutes later, he turned off the highway onto the service road that ran toward the broadcast facility. The control station was a low concrete building set back from the tower, unmarked except for a utility signage that most people would look past.
Simon parked, checked his weapon, and got out.
He tried the door. Locked.
He got out the pick set Sarah had given him two days ago, inserted the tension wrench, and started working.
The lock was a standard pin tumbler — the same type he'd been practicing on. He could feel the pins through the wrench, the micro-feedback of each one setting as he worked the pick through the cylinder. First pin. Second. Third.
The fourth gave him trouble for about fifteen seconds.
Then the fifth set, and the cylinder turned.
He pocketed the tools and went in.
The corridor was standard utility construction — concrete block, fluorescent lighting, the smell of electrical equipment and recycled air. Simon moved along the left wall with his weapon up, checking each doorway as he passed.
In the break room off the main corridor, a man with a submachine gun was making a slow circuit of the space — not alert, just maintaining presence, the posture of a guard who expected nothing.
Simon watched the circuit from the doorway, timed the turn, and moved on the rotation.
He slid in behind the man, took both legs out from below simultaneously, and got his hand over the man's mouth before the impact registered as a sound worth making. The throat strike came a half-second later — direct, sufficient.
The man went to the floor quietly.
Simon dragged him to the utility closet off the break room, took his submachine gun and two spare magazines, and closed the door.
He came back into the corridor.
The second man was coming the other way.
They both processed the situation at the same moment.
Simon was faster.
The kick landed precisely where it needed to — the specific target that Casey had once mentioned, during a conversation about non-lethal incapacitation, as the most reliable option when you needed someone down immediately and alive. The man folded with the particular slow deliberateness of someone whose nervous system had just received an overriding input.
Simon hit him once in the jaw on the way down, which was a mercy rather than a necessity.
He took this man's weapon and magazines as well, carried both submachine guns to the Mustang, locked them in the trunk, and went back inside.
The control room was at the end of the main corridor — glass-walled, fully lit, the kind of space that had been designed for technical work rather than operational security.
Simon stopped at the glass and assessed.
Farook was at the primary console, working through something on the satellite control interface. A second man was positioned near the door — armed, watching the room rather than the console. Eight workers were zip-tied to chairs along the back wall, all alive, all frightened.
Two hostiles. Eight civilians. One entry point with no secondary approach.
Simon ran the options.
A direct entry could neutralize both men, but the second man's position relative to the hostages made the sequencing difficult. If the first strike on Farook took more than two seconds — which it might, given that Farook was clearly not someone who went down easily — the second man had a firing angle on the civilians before Simon could redirect.
The clean solution required simultaneous engagement of both targets.
Which required two people.
Simon heard footsteps in the corridor behind him.
"Took you a while," he said, without turning.
"I should have let you pick the car," Sarah said.
"Yes." He gestured toward the glass. "Farook on the left. His associate near the door. Eight civilians at the back wall."
Sarah assessed it in about four seconds. "Simultaneous entry. You take Farook, I take the door."
"That's what I was thinking."
She moved to the left side of the door. He moved to the right.
"One," Simon said quietly.
"Two."
"Go."
Simon went straight to Farook.
Farook saw him coming and grabbed the nearest chair — a wheeled office chair, swung two-handed like a weapon.
Simon took the impact on his forearms, deflected the chair's trajectory, and used the momentum to close the distance. He caught Farook's follow-up punch at the wrist, pulled the arm forward and down, and drove his knee up to meet it.
The snap was audible.
Farook made a sound and cradled his arm. "You broke it. You actually broke it."
"I know," Simon said. "I'm sorry about that."
He hit him twice in the face. Farook sat down and then lay down, in the specific sequence of someone whose body had completed its decision-making for the evening.
DING.
Simon looked across the room. Sarah had her man zip-tied and against the wall, the whole process apparently completed in the time it had taken Simon to handle Farook.
He looked at his own result.
"You didn't need help," she said.
"I might have," Simon said. "I'm glad I didn't have to find out."
He holstered his weapon and moved to the hostages while Sarah secured Farook and started working through the console to confirm the satellite's status.
The workers were shaken but uninjured. Simon cut the zip ties and directed them toward the corridor exit.
His earpiece came to life.
Chuck's voice, with the specific quality it had when something had worked: "I have the code."
"Good timing," Simon said. "Sarah's at the console now."
"Does she need it?"
Simon looked at Sarah, who was already navigating the satellite's control interface.
"Give it to her," Simon said.
He relayed the code. Sarah entered it with the focused precision of someone who understood that the margin for error here was zero.
A status indicator on the main screen shifted from red to yellow to green.
"Satellite weapons systems are offline," Sarah said. "Deactivated."
Simon keyed the comms. "Casey. Tell Vandenberg to stand down."
A pause.
"Confirmed," Casey said. "Good work."
Simon looked at Farook, unconscious on the floor with his arm at an angle it wasn't designed for, and at the cleared console, and at the eight people filing out through the door into the afternoon light.
"Let's go," Sarah said.
"Yeah," Simon said.
He followed her out.
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