Ground Zero

  Eileen moved carefully to one of the other chairs and sat down calmly as though invited to do so by the faceless thing in the armchair. She saw the woman lose her suspicious posture, and go on with some sort of homey evening cooking; probably cookies or some kind of treat. Eileen could almost smell the chocolate.

  It was then that she realized, all in a rush, what the robot and the woman meant. The neighbor would swear Lowell had been there; she'd seen him in his armchair all evening. And that could mean only one thing. Lowell needed an alibi because he was going to commit a murder. Another murder.

  Lowell Guzman was the murderer, not Major Blaine. Eileen couldn't move in the armchair. Everything came rushing together. It all fit. Lowell must have found out that Terry was selling secret documents. If she were discovered and convicted, he would go to jail, or at the least lose his clearance. Lowell was in the Gaming Center the day Terry was murdered. Lowell was the damn fine actor that Eileen watched on the videos of the Game, crumpled and weeping in the arms of 'Berto and Sharon Johnson. It wasn’t Major Blaine at all. It was Lowell.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Gaming Center

  Joe walked from room to room, flipping on lights and punching the buttons that turned on the graphics terminals. He had done this a thousand times, but always with Art chattering on the keyboard in the main room, or racing him to see who could turn on more terminals. His death surrounded Joe like a rough sea; sometimes it surged around him quietly and sometimes it took him and dragged him under and scraped him raw. It hurt. Then he thought of Eileen, and he knew how much better it was to feel, even if it hurt. For the two years since Sully died he hadn't felt much of anything. Now he was living again.

  Then the seas quieted down around him, and he forgot everything but the minutiae of the simulation, the terminal stations up and going, the computer network functioning without error, the ports between computers connected and transmitting perfectly. If anything was slightly less than perfect, his attempt would not work.

  Joe returned to the main console, his fingers moving rapidly over Art's grubby keyboard. His eyes, lit by the screen, showed a dazed, slightly puzzled look of concentration.

  Eventually he paused, sitting back in his chair and putting one foot up on the table where the terminal sat. The computer screen was full of square windows, each one filled with words. Joe flicked his gaze over each window, then nodded in satisfaction and punched the return key.

  The screens in the Gaming Center went dark, one by one, then lit up again with the blue globe of the Earth. Joe went to 'Berto's console, and stood plucking at his lower lip. He wasn’t aware he was copying Art’s favorite expression. On the console, the arrow that represented the mouse control suddenly jerked and moved across the screen, although there was no hand at the mouse. Joe nodded to himself, unsmiling.

  The arrow moved again, and the globe shifted to a view of the United States. Joe watched, fascinated, as the slightest move of Roberto Espinoza was played back in front of his eyes. Every move that he had made on the keyboard, every tremor of muscle or finger key-click, had been recorded faithfully by the computer system. Joe, as he suspected Art had done before him, had set the system up so that the recording was being played back, exactly as the Game had happened on the day of the murder.

  Somewhere, on one of the eight terminals in the Gaming room, one arrow would grow still. During a War Game the participants were required to have their hand on the mouse at all times, to monitor the battle and send the right commands.

  On one screen, the mouse would stop moving. The screen would stay unchanged. The person whose fingers should have been on the mouse, making it move and shift around the screen, would be gone. The mouse would stay absolutely still while the murderer crawled under the Gaming Center floor and rose up behind Terry Guzman like a cobra from a basket. The mouse wouldn't move again until the murderer was back in his seat, pretending all was well.

  The missiles burst from the ocean and 'Berto's terminal flickered towards the launch. Joe stood and watched as the missiles lifted and flared and eventually detonated in Washington D.C.

  He sighed, and walked back to Art's console. He pressed a series of keys and the screens went black, then lit up again with the blue globe of the Earth.

  Joe knew that the screens hadn't been live when they'd found Art. Art must have created a program to check on each of the terminals and make a decision when one was silent for too long. That was the “Found” phrase on Art's computer that Nelson told her about when Major Blaine discovered Art's body. Joe knew he could duplicate Art's code, but it would take him days where it had taken Art hours. He figured it would be easier to just replay the Gamer's screens and watch them one by one, in each person's room. Art was so good. He felt a surge of panic as he realized if there were more games to be played, it would be Joe Tanner at the helm now. He wouldn't ever be able to fill Art's shoes, but he'd have to try. He rubbed his hands together furiously and blinked hard. Finding out Art's murderer would be a good start.

  Joe walked to Doug Procell's terminal, and the light from the screen lit his face as he stood motionless, watching.

  NORAD, Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado

  General Kelton was on duty that night. There were three American generals and one Canadian general who shared the on-call duty at NORAD.

  Now that the Missile Defense program was more or less on line, crucial decisions had to be made. Most importantly, the whole system wasn’t operational yet. Control of the system alternated between NORAD and Space Command, out at Schriever. Eventually control would rest at NORAD, as it must, and Schriever would continue as a research-and-development station. For now, there was always a bit of a battle whenever there were War Games going on.

  Kelton, who considered himself a tough son-of-a-bitch and a damned fine soldier, contemplated the Real Thing. He’d been at NORAD for almost three years and he dreamed about incoming missile tracks. Sometimes he wondered if they weren’t printed on the inner side of his eyelids. He’d played enough War Games to understand decisions had to be made at lightning speed. Missiles were rockets, godddam it, rockets, and they came fast.

  So Kelton drank Coke all night long and slept in a darkened room with special window shades during the day. His children were grown and gone so his wife good-naturedly moved her schedule around to match his.

  The alert phone rang. Kelton picked up the red phone and heard a dial tone. The phone rang again. He looked down and realized the gold phone was ringing. The gold phone.

  “Alert!” he roared, and picked up the phone.

  “General Kelton, this is Admiral Kane,” the Admiral’s voice crackled.

  “Admiral Kane,” Kelton said. Around him, the Command Center at NORAD was exploding with running feet and flashing lights. But silently, silently. Kelton established silent alerts when he took command and now his people were as quiet as ghosts. His punishment for noise was a suspension of cafeteria privileges. No one messed up twice after having to eat sandwiches from a cooler when the rest of the crew were devouring the gourmet meals dished up at NORAD.

  “We have a Russian missile silo taken over by an Arab terrorist group,” Kane said briefly. “There is a potential for a launch at an American city.”

  “Yes sir,” Kelton said, and pumped his forearm at the Colonel standing four feet away. Kelton poked his index finger out of his fist, and the Colonel went white. Kelton glared at him so fiercely the Colonel should have burst into flames like a newspaper in the path of a flame-thrower.

  “Button up!” the General whispered, covering the phone with one hand. “Button up!”

  “You need to enable the Missile Defense system,” Kane said. “If this missile flies anywhere, we want to shoot it down. Europe, Israel, South America, anywhere.”

  “If it flies, it dies, sir,” Kelton said grimly.

  “Keep me informed.”

  “Yes sir.”

  Kelton heard, through the earth that surrounded him on all sides, the shuddering sound of t
he blast door slamming shut. NORAD was sealed.

  Colorado Springs

  Eileen sat in Lowell's chair, frozen with indecision. Who was going to be murdered? For precious minutes her mind raced without purpose or coherence. The sweat beaded and dropped down her back. The bland empty face of the robot stared straight ahead, the glass rising and falling in the metal hand, rising and falling. The robot would have been in this position the night before, when Art was being murdered. Eileen felt the rage rise and blossom in her body. She nearly reached out and swept the mechanical man from the chair. The urge was so overwhelming she found herself on her feet, fists clenched, wanting to kick and hammer and destroy. But Eileen wanted Guzman, wanted him behind bars or perhaps dead and rotting in a coffin.

  And if Eileen didn't do some fast thinking, there would be three Guzman victims instead of two.

  Eileen straightened with a jerk. She leaped to the phone and pawed at it for a moment with clumsy and sweat-slicked hands. She dialed Joe’s number from memory, waiting an agony of seconds before the connection was made and the phone began to ring.

  She knew he was gone -- or dead, a tiny cheerful voice in her head informed her -- before the answering machine picked up and Joe’s precise, velvety voice asked her to leave her name and number. Eileen almost put the phone down, then stopped.

  “Joe, this is Eileen. Please get out of your house, right now. Go to a phone and call the police. Don't talk to anyone or get close to anyone, do you understand? If you are hearing this, please get out and get to a phone now!” Eileen bit back a strangled sound as she slammed the phone on the cradle and headed for the door.

  NORAD, Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado

  “What do you mean, you can’t enable the system?” Kelton said in a voice as cold as frozen iron.

  “I can’t enable,” the Captain said miserably. Her hair was in disarray and her uniform skirt was rumpled. “We suspended the system when that girl got murdered at Schriever. The system hasn’t been reset, sir.”

  “That means we have to enable at Schriever,” Kelton said. His lips were numb. “Get the emergency helicopter ready to fly. Shelly, we’ll send you to Schriever to --”

  “Sir,” Shelly squeaked. “Sir --”

  “Yes?”

  “The Gaming Center has to be kicked on -- started up, sir. I don’t know how to do that.”

  Kelton stood contemplating Captain Shelly for a moment. He was in a cold rage but he was thinking fast. Rockets were so goddamned fast.

  “Who knows?”

  “The Truth Team leader got killed too, sir,” Captain Shelly said. “But the Game Leader, Nelson Atkins, he should know how to do it.”

  “Find out where he lives,” Kelton snapped at Colonel Maclean. “Get the helicopter ready for Maclean and Shelly,” he snapped to Major Dunn. “And open that goddamned blast door!”

  Turtkul, Turkmenistan

  Anna Kalinsk was allowing herself to feel a little kernel of hope. The terrorists hadn’t figured out how to blast the silo top off, or they had decided the little group of women and children weren’t worth the effort. She didn’t care about the reason, only the result. Her sons might live, after all.

  “Will our comrades sent troops, Anna?” Ilina whispered fiercely. “Will they come?”

  Anna closed her eyes and thought for a moment. Yes, troops could be brought in using Hinds. Would the little missile silo be worth it? Of course. Anna counted the hours in the silo, the last radio transmission by Boriska, the probable response time...

  She opened her eyes and smiled at Ilina.

  “Why, they should be here any time!” she said brightly, and as though her words were a cue, they heard the booming sounds of heavy guns.

  Ilina looked at Anna with her mouth hanging open. Anna offered a small shrug, and blushed.

  “Just luck,” she said.

  Gaming Center

  Joe watched Sharon's console next, although he felt sure Sharon Johnson couldn't kill anyone. Sharon's was the next in line, and Joe was a logical person. He wondered where Eileen could be. He’d called her at the office and they'd said she was out. He was nervous about telling some dispatcher that this was an emergency -- what if he were wrong? So he said it was a personal call and he left a message for Eileen at her home machine.

  The globe of the Earth showed blue and white and spectacular. Sharon, manning some of the communications satellite views, was positioned casually north, near England. That way the launch could be seen at Bermuda but she wouldn't commit the mistake of hovering directly over a launch that she shouldn't know was going to happen. The view shifted constantly. Joe gazed at the terminal and wondered if Nelson was going to call him at the Center. He’d left a message for Nelson on voice mail since he hadn't been able to contact Eileen. Maybe Lowell would call. Sometimes he picked up Nelson's voice mail when Nelson was out. Joe sighed, watching Sharon's mouse key move through the course of the game. Not Sharon, then, but he could have guessed that.

  Colorado Springs

  Eileen made the call as her Jeep squealed out of the subdivision. Rosen was still in the office.

  “Thank god,” she said to him. “Listen. I've been to Lowell's house. He's got a robot there, something that looks like him from the windows.”

  “It's Lowell,” Rosen said immediately. “Oh, shit, it's Lowell.”

  “Could be Lowell and Blaine both, for all I know. I think he's after someone. He used that alibi the night Art was killed.”

  “I'll send out cars to all the Gamer's houses,” Rosen said. “I'll take Lowell's house myself. We'll get the crew there to photograph for evidence. You're on your way to Joe Tanner’s house?”

  Eileen felt warmth in the cold yawning pit of her insides. Rosen was going to be a great partner.

  “On my way there,” she said. “Yes.”

  “I'll get a warrant for Guzman and Blaine both,” Rosen said. “We haven't had word one from Stillwell.”

  “Clear. I'll contact you when I'm there. Out.”

  Eileen’s stomach felt like a slick stone in her middle and her mouth was so dry she made a little clicking sound when she swallowed. Joe, Joe, she mouthed.

  She saw Constitution Avenue. The road upon which she would turn to go to Schriever Air Force Base. Eileen stared at the crossing, and the answer came to her. It was so simple. She swerved across two lanes and made the turn to Schriever, and the sudden hope in her chest was more terrible than the fear. She picked up the phone to call Rosen.

  Peterson Air Force Base, Colorado

  “Captain Stillwell?”

  Stillwell, in the hanger at Peterson Air Field, was just hanging up the pay phone. He felt dirty and tired and confused. That seemed to be his fate lately. He looked up and saw the on-duty officer holding a phone and gesturing to him. Behind the on-duty officer Stillwell could see Gwen and Richard and the flight commander of the base. The flight commander looked crisp and fresh. Gwen and Richard looked dirty and exhausted, but their faces were animated. They were standing at a map and discussing the salvage operation.

  “For me?” he said. The on-duty officer nodded and held out the phone.

  Stillwell felt sick to his stomach. He hadn’t lost his lunch when the Chinook dropped out of the sky into a corn field, but now his stomach was rolling like a ship at sea. Colonel Ellison had just told him to shut the investigation down, and the order wasn’t even disguised as a polite request. Stillwell intended to follow orders, but he didn’t have to like them.

  “Hello?”

  “Captain Stillwell?”

  “Yes,” he said. “Who is this?”

  “My name is Lucy Giometti. I’m from DIA. I just spoke to your Colonel Ellison and he told me you’d just gotten into town. Did he talk to you?”

  “I’m in town,” he said. “And I just finished talking to him. Why -- what are you to do with all this?”

  “I’m here to help out,” the voice said. “Let’s just say, I’ll hold up the edge of the carpet while you sweep.”

&nbs
p; Stillwell closed his eyes. “I see.”

  “Not too pleasant, I know,” Lucy Giometti said.

  “Alan,” Stillwell said. “Call me Alan. I was planning to shower and change. I’ve been --”

  There was a tap on his shoulder. The harassed looking on-duty officer was holding out another line.

  “Hang on,” he said, and took the phone to his other ear.

  “I called the Colorado Springs Police to tell them you were in town and to arrange a transfer from Captain Harben,” Colonel Ellison said in his deep, clipped voice, “And they tell me the detective is at Schriever right now. She called in an assault.”

  “I’m on my way,” Stillwell said immediately.

  “Good,” his commander said. “This is turning into a royal mess, Alan. I want you to get this under control.”

  “Yes, sir,” Stillwell said, through the click of the disconnecting line.

  “What was that?” Lucy Giometti said in his other ear.

  “That means I don’t get a shower,” he said. “Where are you?”

  “Day’s Inn, next to the Colorado Springs Airport,” she responded instantly.

  “Be out front. I’ll be there in ten minutes. We have to get to Schriever,” he said.

  “I’ll be there,” she said.

  Stillwell handed both phones back to the on-duty officer.

  “I need a car,” he said. “Mine is at the Denver airport.”

  “My car is here,” Gwen said from across the room. “You can borrow mine.”