“You have my word.”
“Wait a minute,” said Harry. “I don’t think—”
“I’m the Incident Commander here, Mr. Lewton. This is a police site, and what I say goes. I’m telling you they can stay.”
A voice came from the utility shaft. “Captain! We’ve got Tony free. We’re passing him down now.”
Avery pushed through the crowd and clambered partway up the pyramid of wreckage. “Is he … is he—”
“He’s gone, sir,” said one of the bomb techs, who backed out of the shaft, holding the lower part of the blackened torso of what had been a young man in his twenties.
Avery’s voice quavered as he caught sight of him. “Aw, sweet Jesus! Aw, God! Not fuckin’ Tony!”
Dutch slung his camera at his waist, but Harry noticed that the little red light was on as Avery and his men pulled down the body of Tony Passalaqua and set it upon a waiting gurney. In a moment the transport orderlies were whisking the gurney to the ER, as though there were still a chance of life for the charred, smashed heap of flesh.
In the dark part of the corridor, Lee hung up a wall phone. “Lewton!” he shouted. “The cyber squad’s here. I want you with me when I talk to O’Day.”
“Coming,” replied Harry. Turning to Kathleen Brown, he tipped his hand to his eyebrow in a mock salute. “Field goal to you, kiddo. Make the most of it. The instant I see you upstairs, I’m having your ass escorted out of this medical center.”
* * *
“You’ve got visitors.”
Kevin looked up from the floor of the Isolation Room, where he sat handcuffed to the drainpipe. The pudgy cop named Dayton had just come in, and began to unlock his leg irons.
“That explosion, can you tell me what the fuck just happened?” asked Kevin.
“Ask them.” Dayton pulled Kevin onto his feet and led him out into the guardroom. Harry, Lee, and a few of the cops he recognized from before were waiting for him, grim as tombstones. With them was a strapping man in a three-button black pinstripe suit, and a tiny, dark-skinned young woman with large eyes and short black hair.
Dayton made Kevin sit down at the table in the center of the room. A chair leg screeched as Lee sat down beside him. “We’re recording this. Understood?” said Lee, slapping his recorder onto the table.
Lee and Harry were sopping wet and streaked with white dust. “Th-that explosion, where was it?” Kevin asked.
“You ought to know, Mr. O’Day.”
“Was it in the Tower?”
“You tell me.”
It had to be Tambora or Krakatoa, thought Kevin. If it were Thera—the Big One—we would all be dead.
Kevin cleared his throat nervously. “Do you understand the situation now? You can’t go on holding me.”
“On the contrary, Mr. O’Day. You’ve just murdered four public safety officers. There is no possibility whatsoever of my releasing you. If I were to do so, you would not get out of this building alive. There are several dozen cops who would just love to get you in their sights.”
Kevin felt a bead of sweat run down the side of his face. “Murdered … who?”
“Four men from the bomb squad were killed in that last explosion. I just came from viewing the bodies. What was left of them.”
Kevin scanned the faces arrayed about him. “That … that wasn’t in the plan. If you had fucking listened to me, it wouldn’t have happened. Goddamn you! It wasn’t me. It was you who killed them, you sons of bitches!”
“How many more bombs are there, Mr. O’Day?”
“Plenty. They do all kinds of things. It’s … it’s like a chess game that’s already been played out in advance. Whatever move you make, there’s a countermove in position. You can’t win. Every possible angle has been covered.”
“I think it’s time you cut the crap and started to cooperate before anyone else gets killed.” Lee gestured toward the two new agents. “Meet Special Agent Dail and Special Agent Ganguly, from the Computer Crimes Division. Now, I understand that all of these bombs are under computer control—something called Odin. Is that correct?”
“You can’t hack into Odin. If you try, or if you attempt to cut power to his mainframe, he’ll go into doomsday mode.”
“Ah, yes, the mainframe. We’ve had some trouble getting into your laboratory, Mr. O’Day. It seems the entry code’s been changed, and an unauthorized deadbolt system has been installed in the door. The first thing you can do is tell us how to get inside.”
“You don’t want to go into the lab. Project Vesuvius is active. Under its operating rules, anyone but me in the lab will be regarded as an intruder.”
“The lab is booby-trapped?”
“Yes.”
“Then give us the security codes you use for access.”
“It doesn’t work like that. You have to be me to get in. The lab’s under surveillance by a microphone and a couple of video cameras—running on batteries, not the main power circuit, just in case you get ideas. They’re Odin’s eyes and ears. He knows what I look and sound like. He knows my speech patterns—favorite words I use, inflections, things that are uniquely and incontrovertibly me. If you think you can fake that, be my guest. Otherwise, I wouldn’t go in there, if I were you. You wouldn’t last ten seconds.”
Lee got up, seemingly overcome with emotion. Folding his hands behind him, he turned away from Kevin and paced to the far end of the tiny room. “Did you just refer to this plan of yours as Project Vesuvius?”
“Yeah, Vesuvius. So what?”
“Vesuvius being the volcano that wiped out the city of Pompeii, back in Roman days?”
“It’s a metaphor.”
Lee stalked back and slammed a cell phone onto the table.
“What’s this?” asked Kevin.
“Your handiwork,” said Lee.
Kevin squinted at the tiny screen of the cell phone. It was difficult to see without his glasses, but he made out something dark and lumpy, like a log or the chewed end of a cigar. Only after hard scrutiny could he identify a row of white teeth, and two dark and boiled-out eye sockets looking back at him.
“Oh, fuck! Tambora!” he gasped.
Lee gripped the edge of the table and overshadowed Kevin. “This is the face of one of the men you killed. His name is Tony. He looks a lot like one of those mummies they pulled out of Pompeii, doesn’t he? As I recall, a couple thousand people got toasted just like this. Quite a metaphor, isn’t it?”
Kevin’s throat went dry. He pushed his chair back, distancing himself from his silent accuser, yet he couldn’t tear his eyes away from the image. “Look, I didn’t want this. I’m … I’m not sure what happened. They might have tripped a circuit or something. But it proves my point. You have to let me go.”
Lee picked up the cell phone and shoved it in Kevin’s face, so close that it was nothing but a blur. “Do you understand that you’re facing the death penalty? A lot depends on what happens right here and now. If you have one tenth of the brains people say you have, tell Agents Dail and Ganguly how to get into the Odin program.”
“You don’t.”
“Is it a UNIX-based system?” asked Ganguly. She stood next to Lee, petite and prim in a gray skirtsuit. Her voice was clear and dulcet, like a crystal bell.
Her query seemed like the crown of FBI pigheadedness. “Girl, you look and sound like a summer intern out of high school,” Kevin said. “Odin has as much in common with UNIX as Shakespeare does with the sign language of an ape. He’s protected by an integument, a programming layer that regulates all input functions and command sequences. Everything gets checked for consistency with my past instructions. Any attempt to access his code or even communicate with him will be instantly red-flagged as an alien intrusion.”
“We’ll go in through the back door.”
“There is no back door. I never needed one.”
“Then we’ll make one. We’ll link a Trojan horse to the data from the Cerberus surveillance system that Odin is presently hijacking. It will
plant a virus that will allow us to circumvent the usual access portals, and directly enter core programming. We’ll shut him down, with or without your help.”
“Make sure your life insurance is up-to-date before you try that one. Really, you’re not hearing a thing I’m saying, are you? This isn’t your dad’s PC we’re talking about. How many people have to fucking die before you people get it?” He turned to Raymond Lee. “There is one and only one way to shut down Odin. Give me back my property, and let me go. I want to end this as much as you do. But don’t waste time with this shit.”
“Forget it,” said Lee.
“The data stream—” said Ganguly.
Both were cut off by a commotion at the door. Captain Avery, his uniform torn and bloodstained and his hair caked with mud, charged into the room, a pair of uniformed officers in his wake.
“This him?” he growled. The police guards in the room stood to attention as Avery pushed his way through to Kevin. “Are you the son of a bitch who set these bombs?”
A new face—maybe a chance at reason, thought Kevin. He smiled urbanely and made a point of calling out this new cop by name. “Hello, Captain Avery.”
But there was perhaps a sukoshi too much smugness in his voice. Like a sprung trap, Avery lunged across the table and slammed his fist against Kevin’s jaw, knocking him out of his chair and to the ground. The table grated against the floor as Avery bumped it to one side and dove down upon Kevin, hitting him with two or three lightning strokes to his face and stomach. “I’ll kill you, you little prick!” he roared.
Kevin rolled to one side and held his arms out to block the punches. Avery hit like a sledgehammer, and the whole roomful of cops simply stood by in shock, as though they were going to let him be beaten to death. But then Harry Lewton jumped in and caught Avery in a half-Nelson, pulling him away.
“Get away from me, you pissant rent-a-cop!” shouted Avery. “Get your meathooks off me!”
“Let him be!” said Harry.
Avery shook off Harry’s hold and spun on him, glaring at him nose-to-nose. “Fuck you! Back off or I’ll throw you and all your black-and-white flunkeys into jail!”
Lee interposed a hand. “Glenn, lighten up.”
Avery was bright red in the face. “I’m the Incident Commander here. I’ll do what the hell I please.”
“No, Glenn. This man is in FBI custody now. I have to answer for him.”
Avery glared at Lee, fists clenched, his breath coming in loud and heavy snorts. “Four men dead! Four good men! Christ knows, they were as good as they come. Bill Kraus, for Chrissakes! He … he had no legs left. Blown away at the knees. Not a drop of blood, Ray! It killed him so fast he didn’t even bleed. And Tony Passalaqua … his wife’s expecting. What am I supposed to tell her? Why is his kid gonna grow up an orphan? Because … because this fucking piece of shit—”
Lee put his hand on Avery’s shoulder. “I know they were good men, Glenn. They don’t come any better. But let’s save the rest of ’em, okay? We’ve got plenty more to save.”
Avery watched sullenly as Dail and Ganguly helped Kevin back into his chair. “That son of a bitch is coming with me! I’m gonna chain his ass to a water pipe and make him watch what the fuck he’s done. The next booby trap that goes off, he’ll be the first to burn.”
Kevin couldn’t believe what he had just heard. “Are you still trying to disarm the bomb?”
“Of course we are, you stupid prick.”
“D-don’t. You’ll set it off.”
Lee jumped in to block Avery from making another charge. “How can you reach it?” he asked the Captain. “The utility shaft’s nothing but a pile of debris.”
“Below. But we still have access from the upper basement level, above the bomb. We’ve opened a service panel up there and had a good look. It’s trickier. We’ll have to lower a man head-first. But we aren’t about to give up. The real problem is these goddamned booby traps. I don’t know how we missed the first one, but it’s not gonna happen again.”
“Work smart, Glenn. This guy thinks he could teach the Unabomber to suck eggs. There’s no telling what he’s laid up for you.”
Avery was so tall Kevin could see his entire face over the top of Lee’s head. It was like the face of a bull pawing the ground before a charge. “Maybe I oughtta dangle this prick up and down the shaft until he spills his guts.”
“We need him here, Glenn. The bombs are set off by computer, and he’s gonna help us shut the computer down.”
“Look at him. Goddamm it, Ray, look at that smirk! No fucking way is he gonna help with anything.”
“Let us work on it, okay?”
Avery sighed. “This is the worst I’ve ever seen, Ray. Four men in one swoop. Four good men. What am I … what am I gonna tell their—” He suddenly pivoted away from Lee and the other onlookers. From the way his shoulders shook, Kevin knew that he was choking back tears.
Lee, his hand still on Avery’s shoulder, guided Avery out of the crowded room. Three of the uniforms followed them out to express their condolences. The other two stayed, but accompanied the procession with their eyes. Special Agent Dail sat down behind the computer at the nurse’s station. Harry stood near the door, brushing dust off his blazer.
And for an instant, Kevin noticed that Special Agent Ganguly was the only person in the room with her eyes on him.
* * *
A thud. A scrape of table legs against the floor. Harry turned and looked, just in time to see Ganguly in mid-air, plummeting toward the ground. Kevin had leaped on top of the table, and was swinging the chair he had just bashed Ganguly with, holding it by its two rear legs. The chair went into a swift, wide arc, then punched through the ceiling as it knocked aside a twenty-four-inch-square acoustic panel to expose a dark crawl space above. There was a clang as the two front legs of the chair hooked around a sprinkler pipe. Harry grabbed at Kevin’s ankles, but missed as Kevin plucked up his legs and swung by the hooked chair like a trapeze artist, kicking out a second panel and wrapping his legs around a pipe. For a second, he hung upside down, his orange hair drooping from his forehead. Then, with a lithe, screwlike motion that only an experienced rock climber could have attempted, he pulled his upper body through the hole in the ceiling, and disappeared into the darkness above.
“Shit!” yelled Harry. “He’s getting away!”
“Where?”
“The ceiling!”
In an instant, half a dozen guns were drawn, their sights flitting chaotically toward every part of the ceiling.
“Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot!” shouted Lee. “We need him alive!”
Harry sprang onto the table and tried to lift himself by the still-hanging chair the way Kevin had done. He was too heavy and could barely get his feet up off the table. “Fuck,” he muttered. Quickly he unhooked the chair, set it on the table, and climbed onto it. Sticking his head into the dark crawl space, he could see Kevin worming his way through a tangle of pipes and wires.
No time to think. Harry grabbed the nearest pipe and pulled himself up, boosting his momentum with a kick off the chair. The pipe sagged under his weight as he swung his right leg up, knocking out another panel. Another heave, and a piece of the aluminum frame of the drop ceiling clattered to the floor. But Harry had made it into the crawl space.
By the scant light from below, Harry saw that Kevin had already covered half a dozen yards, and was spidering between a ventilation duct and the concrete ceiling. Watching Kevin’s lean body moving effortlessly through the crevice, Harry felt like a tortoise trying to chase a monkey up a tree. But he wasn’t about to give up the chase.
Harry lay as flat as he could across a pair of sprinkler pipes and scooted sideways, aiming for a solid steel beam. His face grazed the dusty chalklike surface of the ceiling panels, which stung his eyes and left a dry, bitter taste in his mouth. Bigger in the chest than Kevin, Harry had to exhale in order to slip into the space above the duct. But following Kevin’s example, he hugged it between his legs an
d arms, and inched forward with a caterpillar-like motion.
He kept on crawling until his hands scraped against a concrete wall. He was in total darkness now, and had lost sight of his quarry. He heard a creaking noise, but it seemed to come from directly above. Groping his way, he discovered that the duct made a right-angle turn at the wall and ran upward to the floor above. Alongside it was a narrow tunnel-like space, just wide enough to squeeze through. It was the only place Kevin could have gone. Harry wriggled inside the tunnel and began to shimmy upward.
After maybe twenty feet, Harry wormed his way out of the tunnel, emerging into yet another crawl space. Kevin had vanished, but there was a square of light about forty feet ahead, where one of the ceiling panels had been pried up and slid to one side. Harry moved toward the light. When he reached the gap, he looked down and saw a beige linoleum floor twelve feet below, and something else—the white and black clad form of a hospital security guard, lying half-doubled up on the floor.
Gripping an oxygen gas main, Harry dangled himself through the gap and dropped, landing beside the prostrate guard. It was Judy Wolper. She looked up sluggishly, her eyes unfocused, and her blond hair hanging over her face.
“H-hit me. He hit me,” she mumbled. “Came out of nowhere and hit me.”
“Which way did he go?”
“I … I don’t know.”
There were only two directions. On the left, the corridor joined the main passage coming out of Tower A. That led to the Pike, where Kevin could quickly lose himself in a crowd of people. On the right, only a dead end at some faculty offices for Physical Therapy. No contest. Left! Harry thought. It’s the only way out.
But no sooner had he risen to his feet than he heard two gunshots, coming not from the left, but from the right.
“Oh, hell,” said Judy, fumbling at her holster. “He’s got my gun.”
Harry ran toward the gunfire. He paused at a turn in the corridor, and then sprang out, instinctively crouching into a low Weaver stance, the Beretta in both hands, right arm straight, left arm slightly cocked. Kevin was at the far end, kicking furiously at a door.
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