McCoy’s flushed face had gone pale. His eyes widened, pupils expanding into black dots. “When did this happen?” he asked.
“An hour or two ago at the Nordquist house,” Jack replied.
“But — what was Kling doing there?”
“That was Harvey, always freelancing,” Hickman interjected, taking up the thread of the cover story he and Jack had worked out earlier. “He was always going off on his own, snooping around for leads, digging for clues. This time he dug up a hot tip and was following it up. He died a hero, for what it’s worth.”
“There’s more,” Jack said.
McCoy groaned. “More?”
“Carlson’s wife, Carrie, is missing. We don’t know if she was abducted or went off on her own.”
“Oh god!” McCoy became indignant. “I can tell you this: Mrs. Carlson is not the sort of woman to go wandering off on her own on Saturday night, or any other night for that matter!”
“No?”
“Certainly not!”
“You know her personally?”
“Socially — and I consider her a friend,” McCoy said primly. “Carrie Carlson is a model of probity, a genuine humanitarian. Respected not only by our lab community but throughout the greater Los Alamos area, thanks to her charitable works.”
“She wouldn’t be the first respectable married woman to have a little something going on the side,” Hickman suggested.
McCoy looked at him like he was something that had just crawled out of a sewer. “Preposterous! I know you keyhole-peeping G-men are inclined to believe the worst about everyone but this is going too far. It’s a smear, a slander, on one of the finest human beings I’ve ever known.”
“Kind of fond of her, eh?” Hickman said slyly.
McCoy openly sneered at him. “I admire and respect her, yes. But if you’re trying to make anything more out of it than that with your nasty-minded insinuations, you can go to the devil—”
Hickman held up his hands palms out in an I-surrender gesture. “Don’t get sore, McCoy. I’m only trying to get a fix on her, who she is and what her personality’s like, that’s all. The kind of thing I need to know to do my job.”
“I can assure you that she didn’t take it into her head to go out alley-catting on a night that her husband is working late.”
Jack Bauer was grim-faced. “So much the worse for her. That means she was probably grabbed.”
McCoy was agitated. He looked ready to tear his hair out, what was left of it. “This is monstrous! Ironwood is under attack!” He halted, grabbing Jack by the arm. “Is it terrorists, Bauer? Is it?”
Jack, silent, looked at McCoy’s hand clutching his arm. McCoy got the message and released his grip. “The dead kidnappers were career criminals, associates of the Blanco gang,” Jack said.
McCoy’s eyes narrowed in recognition. “The Blancos? I’ve heard of them, seen them in the papers and on the local TV news. Drug gang crooks, aren’t they?”
“And then some,” Hickman said.
“What have they got to do with defense weapons research?”
“Plenty, apparently.”
Jack said, “There’s an extensive interface between the worlds of crime and terror and it’s getting stronger every day. Organized crime routinely terrorizes its victims to promote underworld enterprises. Political terrorists use the tactic to promote ideological causes.
“Where does the political shade into the criminal and vice versa? The line between the two is blurred and crooks and terrorists jump the fence as they please. The Taliban uses the heroin trade as a major funding device. Mexican drug gangs kill prosecutors, police officials, politicians, and reporters to maintain their illicit empires. I could give you hundreds of similar examples from all over the world.”
“Yes, but here in Los Alamos — it’s unthinkable!” McCoy said.
“Maybe that’s why it’s working. It could be that some political intriguer or group has hired the Blancos to do their dirty work. How many files does your office keep on local drug gangs and gunmen? Not many, I’d say.”
“That’s outside the parameters of a counterintelligence office,” McCoy said.
“Which is why it’s proven so effective so far.”
McCoy turned on Hickman. “It’s the FBI’s job to monitor violent criminals! Seems like you’ve been asleep at the switch.”
“We’re on the case, aren’t we? That’s more than you can say,” Hickman fired back.
“What’s being done about this Blanco gang?”
“Everything possible. The gang leaders are smart and tough — and lucky. A rival outfit blitzed a Blanco meth lab today. The firestorm that’s eating up half the county is collateral damage from that strike. The attack put the Blancos on alert and they’ve abandoned their usual haunts and gone to cover. And there’s a hell of a lot of cover with all the canyons and arroyos in this area. The fire hasn’t made things any easier, either.
“The hell of it is that there’s nothing to implicate Torreon Blanco or his sister Marta in any of the violence that’s been turned against INL today. The shoot-out at Rhee’s apartment, the attempts on Bauer’s life, the botched kidnapping were all carried out by Blanco gang members.
“But there’s no hard evidence tying Torreon or Marta to the assaults. Like other top crime bosses, they know how to legally insulate themselves from acts carried out by their underlings.
“Not that we plan to be too fussy about legal technicalities once we apprehend them. The attacks on Ironwood affect the national security and we can use the Patriot Act to hammer the Blancos once we apprehend them,” Hickman said.
“It was negligent and worse of you not to share this information with OCI,” McCoy accused.
“You can’t share what you don’t know. We just discovered the Blanco connection ourselves a little while ago. You’re hearing it now. So what have you got to kick about? Hell, it’s your office that’s been maintaining all along that the Ironwood kills were purely coincidental and that there was no pattern behind them!”
“Let’s save the finger-pointing for later and get down to the LRF now,” Jack said.
He fit deed to word by moving forward, resuming the progress toward the Snake Pit that had been interrupted by the confrontation. The others fell into step alongside him and hurried through the halls. Crosstalk sniping and mutual suspicion continued along the way.
“I can see why you wanted Carlson’s phone calls monitored, in case the kidnappers tried to contact him. But why Nordquist?” McCoy asked Jack.
“They might have tried to run a bluff on him that his family had been successfully abducted, spooking him into running so he could be more easily grabbed on the outside. The scientists are the object of the exercise; abducting their loved ones is just a means to an end to influence them,” Jack Bauer said.
“But Nordquist and Carlson aren’t the only members of the cadre. There’s Stannard, Tennant, Delgado—”
“They’d already left the lab building by the time we got the big picture. Vince Sabito has arranged protection for them and their families. But they’re the smaller fish. Nordquist and Carlson are the big brains of the project, Nordquist for the conceptual breakthroughs and Carlson for making them work,” Jack said.
He neglected to mention the other reason for focusing on Nordquist and Carlson — and for that matter, McCoy. They were the only three — the only three still alive — whose tenancy at INL predated the Sayeed affair, making them prime suspects in Rhodes Morrow’s hunt for Big Mole.
The final portal accessing the LRF opened up, allowing the trio to enter the mezzanine overlooking the blockhouse. Precipitating the discovery that the laser was in the process of being energized.
* * *
Jack Bauer, Hickman, and McCoy now closed on the front of the blockhouse. They approached it at an angle that allowed them to keep its front and long left side in view. From where they stood, they could see that the area outside the front entrance was unoccupied.
“I
sn’t there supposed to be a guard on duty outside?” Jack asked.
“Yes — Harry Stempler’s on duty now.” McCoy was huffing and puffing, winded from the long trot across the main floor.
“He’s not at his post,” Hickman said.
“He must be inside,” McCoy suggested. He swiped his badge card through the scanner reader accessing the front door. He started forward, stopping short to keep from bumping into a closed door.
“What’s the problem, McCoy?” Jack asked.
“The scanner didn’t respond. I must have swiped it too quickly. I’ll do it again.”
McCoy ran the blue badge edge-first through the slot. Again, nothing. “What the—?”
McCoy slowly and deliberately inserted the badge and repeated the process. Results: negative.
“What did they do, deactivate your badge?” Hickman said.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” McCoy snapped. He made several more attempts to activate the auto-door opener, all with an equal lack of success. He held the badge card up to the light, peering at the leading edge holding the data strip. He ran it between thumb and forefinger to clean it. “Maybe there’s some dirt or gunk fouling the strip so the scanner can’t get a reading,” he said.
He tried again.
Failure. “That’s the damnedest thing! I don’t understand it—
“Let’s try my card. It’s cleared for total access so it should work,” Jack said.
He swiped his badge card through the reader slot several times, experiencing the same lack of success as had McCoy.
Hickman stepped forward to try his luck with his badge card, with the same results. He scratched his head. “Maybe they deactivated all of us,” he said, only half joking.
“The badge cards worked fine all the way here,” Jack pointed out.
“Maybe the scanner is broken.”
“Not a chance,” McCoy said. “The scanners have internal self-regulating software. In the rare event one goes out of commission — which almost never, ever happens — the reader sends a signal to SECTRO notifying them immediately.”
“Could the reader have been shut down from inside the blockhouse?” Jack asked.
“Impossible! There’s another reader indoors to monitor exits from the building. Even if it was defective, it wouldn’t affect the reader controlling access — they’re both on independent, self-contained circuits. All the scanners are.”
“Maybe the locking mechanism is jammed,” Hickman said.
McCoy shook his head. “Mechanical difficulties would trigger a red alert light on the reader. But the green on light is on. The scanner’s simply not reading the cards when they’re swiped.”
“You better sound a general alert.”
“Let’s not lose our heads over what most certainly is a perfectly explainable minor snafu, Bauer.”
“How do you explain it then?” Hickman asked.
McCoy ignored him. “There’s any number of other entrances into the blockhouse. We’ll try several of them first to assess the situation. Then we’ll know what we’re dealing with.”
“The laser’s charging for an unscheduled firing and suddenly we can’t get into the building. I’d call those grounds for an alert,” Jack said.
“Perhaps you would but you’re not in charge here, Bauer. I am. I decide when to hit the panic button, and I’m a long way off from being convinced of the necessity for that drastic step.”
“You’ll have to take the responsibility for that choice. Or the blame,” Jack said pointedly.
“I’m comfortable with that,” McCoy said. He crossed to the left front of the building and rounded the corner, saying over his shoulder, “There’s an access door to the blockhouse tank not far from here—”
A glimmer of light suddenly appeared near the far left corner of the blockhouse. It widened, becoming first an acute and then an oblique angle spilling through an oblong open doorway and slanting across the floor.
“What’s this?” Hickman said.
“There, I thought other doors would be working,” McCoy said, smug.
A figure exited through the door into the open. At this distance it was a black man-shaped silhouette, identity undistinguishable. “Who’s that?” Jack said, pointing.
“Stempler, I suppose,” McCoy said. Cupping a hand to his mouth, he shouted, “Hello, there!”
The figure started, then ran back through the doorway into the blockhouse.
“Uh-oh,” Hickman said.
McCoy frowned. “I don’t like the looks of this.”
Jack Bauer was already in motion. “Cover the front and make sure no one gets out that way,” he told Hickman and took off running.
“Hey, wait!” McCoy said, starting after Jack. Jack’s pace did not slacken, he did not look back to see if McCoy was following. He made for the oblong of yellow-brown light that was the far doorway. It was a long run.
Jack Bauer slowed as he neared his goal. He knew better than to go charging in without looking. He stood to the right of the doorway, covered by the wall, out of any line of fire.
The light shining out through the portal was not a static thing. It was restless, stirring, pulsing. The color cycled, dark bronze ripening to a rich honeyed amber, then darkening back to bronze, all within the space of a few beats.
The door was mounted on oversized mechanized hinges, like a vault door. It was about a foot thick. It was motorized to move all that weight. It was now open, motionless.
Inside, a torrent of noise sounded like a power plant pumping itself up. Percussive machine sounds underlined a deep booming drone. The sound was as much felt as heard. Jack felt it in his bones; it rattled the fillings in his teeth.
The hum rose and fell, synchronized with the light. As the hum grew louder, the light dimmed. As it fell, the light brightened.
McCoy, exhausted and out of breath, finally caught up with Jack. He started toward the doorway but Jack stuck out an arm, holding him back. Jack ducked his head down and peeked inside.
The portal opened on the rear of the Snake Pit. The ground floor was a narrow border surrounding the sunken floor holding the machinery and testing apparatus. Grouped around the floor at the near end of the tank were armatures of various sizes and intricacies, each mounting various sheets, squares, and slabs of mirrored metal. In the middle ground stood the laser gun and its energizing apparatus. At the far end, a metal scaffolding staircase accessed the control room. The window on the viewing module was a horizontal bar of dimly glowing light.
There were lots of places where a lurker could hide. Jack drew his gun. That prompted McCoy to draw his gun, too, a small, snouty, big-bore semi-automatic pistol he wore under his jacket in a clip-on belt holster.
“Cover me,” Jack mouthed to McCoy. McCoy nodded. It was the standard Alpha/Bravo pattern: one man advances while his partner covers his advance, then covers for his partner as the other advances.
Jack went in first, rushing through the doorway in a crouch and angling toward a nearby piece of equipment on the walkway hemming in the tank. The hardware was a podium-shaped and-sized console at the near corner of the sunken floor. Jack ducked down behind it, gun in hand.
He scanned the scene. Overhead lights flickered as the energies of the charging apparatus waxed and waned, providing an unwanted distraction. Shadows moved, restless, shifting.
The ceaseless motion fooled the eye into thinking it saw lurkers where none existed. Or did they?
The walkway was a strip of rubber-coated flooring about ten feet wide. Spaced on it around the tank were various odds and ends of equipment: a wheeled portable ladder, handcarts, crates, worktables, and the like.
Jack surveyed the immediate area for signs of the intruder, came up blank. He glanced back and saw McCoy edging around the outside of the door frame. Jack motioned to him, signaling him to advance while he covered him. McCoy made his move, darting through the doorway with leveled gun. He ducked down behind a waist-high metal tool bin.
At the opposite end of
the blockhouse, a shape detached itself from the shadows in a corner and ran along the long walkway toward the front of the building.
Jack darted out from behind the console and started across the short walkway. Short only by comparison to those bordering the long walls. It seemed lengthy enough as he rushed across it.
One thing he knew for sure — he wasn’t going down into the Pit, not while the laser was charging up. He wasn’t entirely comfortable with an armed McCoy at his back, either. If McCoy should be Big Mole—
The intruder stopped running, turned, and fired at Jack Bauer. He was a long way off for effective handgun accuracy but some of his blasts were too close for comfort.
Slugs cratered the wall a few yards ahead of Jack. He stopped short to avoid running into the other’s line of fire.
Shadows were thick along the long wall; between them and the flickering lights the intruder was a faceless, man-shaped blur whose gun spat streaks of orange light.
The intruder’s sex was indeterminate, it could have been male or female. Impossible to discern if it was a man or woman.
When the gunfire stopped, Jack started forward again. The intruder still hadn’t had his fill of fight. He stuck to his ground, covering behind a vertical support beam and snapping shots at Jack. Something struck the left side of Jack’s face with a sharp sting. It was a rock chip gouged out of the rear wall by a too-close shot.
Jack dove, rolling across several yards of rubber-matted walkway. He came up out of the roll, crouching behind a handcart laden with stacked sections of pipe.
McCoy opened fire at the intruder. Jack was not far from the foot of the long walkway. McCoy, behind him, was halfway across the short walkway.
Motion at the opposite end of the blockhouse caught Jack’s eye. The motorized vault-type door was closing, sealing the doorway through which he and McCoy had entered.
The energizer droning in the Pit reached a new height in volume. There was motion down there, too—
The laser gun was rising, its snout lifting. Without warning a ruby-red beam spat from its muzzle. Instantly a scarlet line extended from the tip of the laser gun to the rear wall of the blockhouse. It angled up out of the Pit, above the top of the tank, to lance into the wall about four feet above the walkway.
24 Declassified: Death Angel 2d-11 Page 22