Ground Zero

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Gaming Center

  Joe configured for Lowell Guzman's terminal.

  Colorado Springs

  Lucy Giometti pulled thick white socks over her feet. Her pregnancy pants were really horrible looking, but they were comfortable and they fit. She pulled on a white button-up shirt -- also a pregnancy shirt -- and laced her running shoes tightly. Her heart was pounding and there was a slick feeling at the back of her throat. Part of her brain was telling her to stay in her safe little rabbit-hutch of a room. That part of her brain was telling her that she was pregnant. Going into danger while pregnant was not right. She should be protecting herself. She should stay put.

  The other part of her remembered the Tower of London, shattered and smoking. That part of her checked her gun. The shoulder holster fit under the baggy white shirt. Lucy slipped an extra clip into her hideous pregnancy pants, where it rested coldly against the swelling of her stomach.

  “Here I go,” she said to her reflection in the mirror, and blew out a trembling deep breath.

  Lucy remembered her room key and headed for the door.

  Highway 94, Colorado

  The highway was dark and empty. The cattle stood sleepily by the fences, washed momentarily by Eileen’s headlights as she held the Jeep on the bare edge of control. One large stone, one clod of debris, could tear the steering wheel from her hands and send her hurtling into the ditch. The Jeep was not meant to be treated like a sports car. Eileen took the chance that there would be no stone, and kept her foot on the accelerator.

  Turtkul, Turkmenistan

  Muallah was extremely unhappy with Ruadh. He was supposed to have targeted the missile and blasted it off within twelve hours, and look at him. He was still humming, still running his fingers on the console, still consulting manuals.

  “Ruadh,” Muallah said finally. “You must start the countdown to launch. We cannot wait any longer. Or you must admit that you cannot do it.”

  Ruadh looked over, and Muallah made sure he saw the look in his eyes. Admitting failure meant a very quick death at the hands of Ali.

  “I --” Ruadh looked stubborn for a moment, then sighed. “I can begin for you. I would like more time but --”

  “Then begin!” Muallah shouted.

  At that moment, there was a booming sound from far above. A shot.

  “Attackers!” Rashad shouted, and left the Command Center at a dead run.

  “Stay with me, Ali,” Muallah commanded. “Ruadh, be quick. For your life, be quick.”

  Gaming Center

  Joe watched Lowell's terminal, bored now and impatient. He wanted to go home and take a shower and think about Eileen, not stand here in the gloom and watch another Game. He was hungry. He wondered where they would go tonight. Joni's, perhaps? Would Joni see that they were lovers? Perhaps she would. This replay idea seemed so good a few hours ago. Now it was boring. Maybe Joe would fix dinner for Eileen himself. Maybe they'd order out for pizza because he wanted to take her clothes off as soon as she got there and crawl into bed with her and find out if every touch was as incredible as he remembered.

  The screen stopped. The mouse arrow stopped. The globe froze in place. Joe froze, one hand to his mouth, eyes widening. He looked at the Game clock, a display in the corner of each screen. It stood at 9:12 a.m. The mouse was still and unmoving and the globe turned, unattended, as Lowell Guzman crawled under the floors and rose up behind his wife with a screwdriver and drove it into her back.

  It was Lowell.

  “Oh dear god, it was Lowell,” Joe whispered. The strength ran from his bones and he sat back in the chair. Then he leaped out of it as though stung. That was Lowell's chair.

  His heart started pounding. He’d called Eileen, but she wasn't home. He’d called Nelson, but he wasn't home either. Probably out feeding the horses.

  Then the enormity of what he'd done hit him. He'd called Nelson. Just like Art. Just like Art. Lowell had Nelson's voice mail password. He'd done exactly what Art had done.

  Far away, down the long sloping corridor to the front of the Gaming Center, Joe heard the key clicks as someone on the other side keyed in the combination to open the door.

  Black Forest, Colorado

  Caleb Atkins loved his Appaloosa horse business. He was a genuine horse nut. His father insisted he attend college classes at the University of Colorado, and Caleb grudgingly admitted his business degree was going to help the business quite a bit. But he still felt like a six-year old when the last class ended and he could come home to the barns and the stalls and the creatures that he adored.

  When the thudding sound of the helicopter rose out of the forest, Caleb was looking at the slightly swollen foreleg of Annamarie in the Big Barn, where the pregnant mares were kept. Annamarie whickered softly. The barn smelled of warm horses and hay and disinfectant. Caleb stood up from Annamarie’s leg, eyes wide.

  The stories of the Black Helicopter of the Black Forest were many and varied. Some claimed the helicopter was merely some Army training mission from down at Fort Carson. Some claimed whoever saw the Black Helicopter always had missing time afterwards, and bloody noses at night. Always. Caleb didn’t believe in UFOs. He had no time for them. But everyone who lived in the Black Forest heard about the Black Helicopter.

  Caleb looked out the open barn door, stunned, as a huge black helicopter with absolutely no markings swooped over the trees and settled in for a landing in front of the main house. Annamarie whinnied sharply at the sound and shifted, pressing her warm shoulder into Caleb. Caleb clenched his jaw. They were coming for his dad, who worked out at Schriever on something that was so Top Secret he never spoke about it. That helicopter was going to abduct his dad.

  “No it’s not,” Caleb said. Cassie Atkin’s shotgun was behind the barn door, fully loaded. It was a Defender combat shotgun intended to kill rabid dogs, crazy mountain lions, and any Bad Men who had intentions about Cassie. Caleb’s mother taught him how to shoot her Defender years ago and insisted Caleb keep up regular practice. Caleb kept the shotgun and kept in practice, just as she would have wanted him to do. The length of her final illness had left them plenty of time to say all their good-byes, but it didn’t mean that he still didn’t miss her.

  Caleb hefted his mother’s shotgun and ran into the darkness as the helicopter settled on the grass and two figures ran for the door.

  He moved behind the helicopter, keeping to the trees, and scuttled towards his front door. The smell of jet fuel was choking. The two figures were knocking -- knocking? he thought blankly -- and when his father opened the door in bathrobe and reading glasses, one of them grabbed his arm as though to hustle him to the helicopter.

  “Oh no you don’t!” Caleb roared, and stood up. He leveled his shotgun at the closest figure. “You take your hands off my father!”

  Highway 94

  Eileen slowed to take the turn onto Enoch Road, her eyes leaping ahead to the lights of the Base. She was looking for flashing colors, the police lights that would mean she was too late. She kept mouthing Joe’s name. He had figured out what Art had done. Eileen had realized why her mind had supplied Joe’s image, and where he must be, when she saw the turn to Schriever. Who else but Joe, Art's partner, would be able to figure out what Art had done? Lowell must have found out what Art had discovered. What had Art known? Eileen would have pounded the steering wheel in frustration if she dared to take her hands from the wheel.

  She hoped that Lowell was even now in Joe’s house, waiting for him to return home, ready to kill him on the off chance that Joe might find out what Art had discovered. Lowell would be caught if he were, and Joe would be safe. But she knew she was foolish to think that. Lowell left the robot alibi in his house because Joe was out at the Gaming Center. Joe knew what Art had done, and Lowell had found out.

  Eileen bit her lip hard enough to draw blood, her hands cold and slick on the trembling wheel of the Jeep. Her portable siren was flashing on the top of her car and she flipped the audible
on as she blew by the guard station at the entrance to Schriever. She saw the guard in the rear view mirror as he ran out into the road and stood staring. Then he ran back into his shack and Eileen knew he'd be calling the other guards. Good, she thought.

  She pulled the Jeep up to the vehicle gate at the retinal scanner building. The Entrance Portals, Major Blaine had called them. Eileen left the siren blaring and in a few seconds there were soldiers at her car, looking dazed and frightened. Eileen flipped the siren off.

  “Colorado Springs Police,” she shouted. “We have an emergency at the War Game Center. I need to get on this base now!”

  “Ma’am, we can't let you drive on this base,” one of the guards said. He carried an M-16 on his back but Eileen doubted it was loaded. He looked obstinate and afraid, the way Eileen remembered all enlisted people looking when she was in the Air Force.

  “Look, we've got a possible assault in the Gaming Center,” she said. “You want to drive me? You can drive my car. You can get me there any way you want. But I need to get to that Center now!”

  “Do you have authorization to be on this base, sir?” the soldier asked.

  Eileen pulled out her police badge. Her Schriever badges were tucked in behind.

  “Will this do?” she said, trying keep her voice even. The best way to deal with the military was to follow all the right forms. Otherwise you ended up splattered on a mountain and the words “pilot error” engraved on your headstone. Eileen never wanted to pull her gun as much as she did at that moment and try to force her way. But there were six of the guards now, and they all looked concerned. The gates were solid. In the movies she would be able to drive through eight foot tall chain-link, but not in reality. Her Jeep would give a great bounce and a lurch and never run right again.

  “Yes, sir,” the guard said. “Let me call my commander and see if we can give you a ride over there.”

  Eileen got out of her Jeep and ran into the retinal scan building and for one horrified moment as she felt the glass doors lock behind her she thought she'd forgotten the number. Then it sprang into her brain and she keyed the access code. The green light flashed in her eye, the door clicked open and Eileen burst through the other side, officially on base. The guards stared after her. The head guard shrugged his shoulders to the other guards, as if to say, “What can we do?” Then he went in to call his commanding officer. They wouldn't get in trouble, at least. They'd followed all the right procedures. The woman had entered the base the proper way.

  Eileen ran into the darkness, her clever running shoes making no sound.

  Black Forest, Colorado

  “Oh my god,” Nelson Atkins said. “You need me to start up the system?”

  Captain Shelly, her hands locked firmly behind her neck, glared at the tall boy with the shotgun.

  “Can you tell your son to let us go, now?” Colonel Maclean said gently. His hands were behind his neck, too, and he didn’t like it any more than Captain Shelly. Why hadn’t they brought sidearms? The boy held the shotgun firmly, and Maclean felt the sweat start to drip down his sides. The opening of the shotgun seemed about as large as the Eisenhower tunnel. “We need to get you to Schriever to enable the -- uh -- system. There is a potential that the system might be used. Do you get my meaning, sir?”

  Nelson paled further.

  “Stop scaring my dad,” Caleb snapped. “And what are you talking about? What system?”

  “Son, this is about my job,” Nelson said gently. “They’re from where I work. I didn’t know they were coming or I would have said something. Can you put the shotgun up? They need me to do something very important. Okay?”

  Caleb put up the shotgun at once. Maclean could see the blush climbing up the boy’s cheeks. Caleb thumbed the safety switch and shrugged again.

  “No hard feelings,” Captain Shelly said with a wobbly grin, taking her hands down from her neck.

  “None at all,” Maclean said, working his shoulders and sighing. “You did a fine job of protecting your dad, son.”

  “Thank you,” Caleb murmured, flushing an even brighter red.

  “We need to go, sir,” Captain Shelly said.

  “I’ll be back,” Nelson said to Caleb. He didn’t go into the house to change out of his bathrobe, or put his reading glasses away. He hurried with the two Air Force people towards the helicopter, a section of the newspaper still clutched in his hand.

  Turtkul, Turkmenistan

  “Our men can hold the stairway for hours, Mahdi,” Ali said confidently. “The foolish Russian could have held us off until his ammunition gave out. We have plenty of ammunition.”

  “Grenades?” Muallah asked tersely, not taking his eyes off Ruadh. Ruadh was sweating heavily but at long last he appeared to be doing something. He’d fetched keys from all the dead Russian soldiers hours ago and had three of the keys in slots on the control panels.

  “The stairs are reinforced and block the bottom doorway. The only way they can blow the door again is by reaching the bottom of the stairs as we did. Rashad, Haadin and Assad will not allow that.”

  “Our escape?” Muallah murmured. Ali said nothing.

  “Many of the Russians will be dead shortly,” Ruadh spoke up, startling Muallah. “The silo tops blow sideways with explosive charges. I’ll blow them all, Mahdi.”

  “Excellent,” Muallah grinned. “Soon?”

  “Now, if you are ready,” Ruadh said, his sweaty face glowing with pride. “We need to turn the two keys at once.” Muallah knew this drill from a dozen Western movies. He went to the panel and watched as Ruadh took hold of the little silver key.

  “Two turns, on my count of three make the first turn,” Ruadh said. “One. Two. Three!”

  As Muallah turned his key, he heard a glorious roaring sound from eight stories above his head. Then the ground shuddered as the giant concrete covers, blasted sideways by explosive charges, thudded to the ground and shattered. The covers were the size of basketball courts. Any living thing in their way was now so much ground meat.

  “Now we launch,” Ruadh said. “I’ve set silo number two for the launch sequence.”

  Muallah nodded at Ali and watched as Ali slipped silently from the command center. Ali would see how many of the Russians were left. Muallah’s plans did not include a Russian prison.

  “On my count of three, again,” Ruadh said, and took hold of the second of the two sets of keys.

  Gaming Center

  For a moment Joe couldn't move. The fear poured into his body and he saw white specks in front of his eyes. There was a roaring sound in his ears, and he wondered if he was going to pass out. Then he heard the door open down the long hallway, and the trance broke.

  He looked around Lowell's room. Everything seemed very bright and very clear. He noticed with one part of his brain that the clock on the computer had slowed down. Each second ticked by an eternity after the last. The gadget to pick up the metal floor tiles was in the television studio, a few feet from Lowell’s room.

  Joe leaped to the television studio and, device in hand, was levering up a metal square while one part of his mind was still contemplating the curious slowness of the simulation. He left the carpet square folded up, hoping it would drop back down as soon as he put the tile down. If Lowell found him, he wouldn’t have much of a chance. A tile opener against a sharpened knife wasn’t much. But unlike Art Bailey, Joe Tanner knew who the murderer was. Joe wasn’t going to stand and let Lowell rip out his throat. He was going to fight.

  He had no flashlight, but that didn't matter. He kept the suction device, the weight reassuring to his hand, and squeezed into the blackness beneath the floor. As he lowered the tile back down, he heard Lowell calling his name.

  Highway 94

  “Colonel Ellison didn’t tell me why!” Stillwell shouted over the screaming of the little Datsun’s engine. Gwen’s car was a pickle-green B-210 with rusted out side panels and an engine that probably shouldn’t be driven over forty.

  Stillwell held the engine
at sixty, and the sound of the wind shrieking in through every faded seal was matched by the howl of the tiny engine. Lucy held onto the frayed dashboard.

  “Have they found another body? Did he say that?”

  “No!” Stillwell shouted. He banged the steering wheel with his fist, and Lucy jumped and shouted.

  “What?” he yelled. “What is it?”

  “Don’t hit this car!” she shouted back. “Are you crazy?”

  Stillwell started roaring with laughter and Lucy, after a moment, joined him.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Schriever Air Force Base

  The weight of her gun kept bumping against Eileen’s ribs, but she was used to that.

  The night air was soft and warm against her hot face. The long dark bulk of the CSOC loomed over her. A brief flicker caught her by surprise and she lost her pace for a moment, seeing something moving in the grass. Then she saw the white flip of a tail and realized she was seeing a jackrabbit. They must live on the base and come out at night to feed on the alien Kentucky bluegrass. What a treat for the rabbits.

  She crossed the road and headed up the slope towards the Gaming Center, and she felt like she could run straight up the side of the building. The fear was over now. This was the time for action. She no longer had to sit and wait. She would finish this. She would save Joe or she would avenge him. There were no other options open to her. She ran.