Joe Ledger: Code Zero Part 36

"I deleted all traces of what I took from the Jakobys. No, Aunt Sallie has been retracing all the stuff we took from Terror Town. And I saw that there were special eyes-only requests for any files I accessed."

"I thought that Haruspex thing could hide from MindReader."

"It can ... but this was right after I started using it. I've upgraded it a lot since then."

He stopped caressing her and sat up. "You erased your tracks, though, right? Haruspex is just like MindReader, right? It doesn't leave a footprint. That's what you told me."

"Yes."

"Then what's the problem?"

She shifted to look at him. "I know everything Pangaea could do, and I think I know everything MindReader can do..."

"But-?"

"But what if I'm wrong? What if MindReader can somehow track erasures, even ones made by software that does what it does?"

"Is that even possible?"

She was silent for a long time.

"Bliss?"

"Maybe."

Collins launched himself off the bed and walked across the room, then wheeled on her. She could feel his anger. It filled the whole room.

"And you're f.u.c.king telling me this now?"

"I-"

"You do know that Deacon wants my head on a pole," he growled. "After the NSA dropped the ball in shutting them down last year, Deacon all but tore me a new a.s.shole. Came right up to the edge of threatening my f.u.c.king life, you know. He came right out and told me that he had his eye on me, that if he discovered any impropriety he would bury me. His words. Bury me-and knowing him I don't think that was a metaphor."

Bliss shook her head. "He can't touch you."

"He can if he gets inside Haruspex and sees what we're doing. Jesus f.u.c.k, Bliss. There's enough there to have me arrested and jailed."

"No..."

"Yes there is and you d.a.m.n well know it."

"I ... I'll wipe the files. Demagnetize the drives and wipe everything," she insisted.

He came back and squatted down in front of her. "Can you dupe everything and hide it?"

"Hide it?"

"Yes. Make a master copy and put it somewhere safe. Somewhere MindReader can't find it. No Internet connection."

"Sure, I can copy it to a master drive and-"

"How long will that take?"

"I don't know, Bill. A day...?"

"Do it. I'll have one of my guys come by your place. We need that data. All of Vox's notes, the security game modules, the pa.s.s-code interpreter ... we need all of it. If we lose it then we lose any chance of doing some real good."

Bliss said nothing but she gave him a token nod. Bill Collins had a different worldview than she had. He was, in his own way, a patriot. She was genuinely apolitical. He wanted the presidency so he could rebuild America into a form that he believed would approximate the way the country would have been had politicians not spent two centuries wandering in the opposite direction of what the Founding Fathers intended. Bliss wanted to publish file patents, and revise the current definition of what "filthy rich" meant. So far, though, both paths led through a landscape she thought of as "deliberately chaotic." Funny how fanatical idealism and rampant greed sometimes look the same from a distance.

"I can make the copies," she said, "and I can blank out my own laptop. But what happens if they hit me with a warrant? Think about it, Bill, if they really think I hacked and copied those files, a warrant would be a no-brainer."

He nodded. "Yeah, d.a.m.n it."

"So what do I do? I could get arrested."

That was a big ugly truth and it hung in the air, leering at them. Collins refilled their winegla.s.ses and they sat next to each other, naked and slumped, thinking it through.

Collins said, "We have to stop using Haruspex, that's for certain. At least for now."

"I know."

"When I send my guy to get your drive, let him have that, too. I have places to hide it where no one can find it. Believe me."

She gave a weak little laugh. "I'll feel naked without it."

He touched her face, then trailed his fingertips down over her chin, her throat, her breast.

"Bill-?" she asked, her voice small.

"Yeah, babe?"

"What will happen to me if they really arrest me?"

He didn't answer. Not at first. Long moments drifted past them like burning embers.

"We'll think of something," he said. It sounded weak.

"If they find out," she said, her voice even smaller, "we'll never see each other again."

Collins put a smile on his face. Bliss wanted to believe that it was real.

"Sure we will," he said. "We'll find a way."

And then he took her winegla.s.s and set it on the night table next to his. Then he took her in his arms and they fell together onto the tangled sheets.

When Bliss arrived at the Hangar the following morning, Aunt Sallie and Gus Dietrich stood beside her workstation. Their eyes were ice cold. Harsh. Angry and unforgiving.

Before Bliss could say a word, Dietrich tossed a pair of handcuffs onto her desk.

Chapter Fifty-five.

Fulton Street Line Near Euclid Avenue Station Brooklyn, New York Sunday, August 31, 2:04 p.m.

We moved through darkness that had never seen sunlight or felt rain. Our footsteps sounded strangely m.u.f.fled. With the lights off we used night-vision goggles, which painted everything in eerie shades of green and gray.

For the first hundred yards we saw nothing. Not a rat, not even a c.o.c.kroach.

The original members of Echo each carried a BAMS unit clipped onto their shoulder straps. Ivan kept checking his, murmuring the comforting "Green" every few dozen yards.

We ran around puddles and long steel rails, guns in hand. Ivan was on point, leading the way with a combat shotgun fitted with a heavy drum magazine. Bunny had an identical shotgun. Lydia had our backs. I knew the newbies knew their jobs, but they didn't yet know ours, and I needed someone I could trust without supervision.

Suddenly, Ivan stopped with his fist raised, the universal signal to stop.

We stopped.

He unclenched his fist and pointed to something attached to a pillar. A small high-tech camera with a burning red eye.

I tapped my earbud. "Cowboy to Bug."

"With you, Cowboy."

"What do you know about this?" I tilted my helmet cam toward the device on the wall.

"It's not regulation," he said.

I snapped my fingers. "Green Giant."

Bunny moved past me, pulling a small scanner from a pocket. He reached up and swept it past the camera. "It's not a bomb," he said, then pressed a b.u.t.ton to switch the nature of the scanner. "Not sending a signal. Whatever it is, it's not doing anything."

"Getting the scanner feed," said Bug. "Wow, that's a nifty toy. Mucho expensive and it should not be there. Since company policy is that we don't like coincidences, my best guess is that it was put there by our bad guys."

"Is it safe to touch?" I asked, stepping up beside Bunny.

"Yeah. It's just a camera."

I reached up and punched it with the side of my fist. Very d.a.m.n hard. "f.u.c.k it."

We moved on. There were more cameras. Bunny scanned each one, and once the bomb detector gave a green light, he smashed them.

"That's like eight thousand dollars a pop," said Bug.

"Not anymore," said Bunny.

We kept going, running through darkness as quickly and quietly as we could.

Then we crossed a line.

It wasn't something you could define, nor was it an actual line on the ground. But within the s.p.a.ce of a few steps the world suddenly changed. It no longer felt like we were running through an empty tunnel toward something. No, all at once it felt like were in something.

Something ugly.

Something wrong.

That fast, Ivan's pace slowed from a careful run to a wary walk.

I could see it in his body language, in the tightening of his shoulders, the hunch of his back as if following a primitive instinct to shield his vitals against an unseen claw.

We slowed, too.

And then Ivan held up a fist again.

We froze. n.o.body was stupid enough to ask what was wrong or if Ivan actually saw anything. Even the newbies knew better than that. In that polluted darkness we stood as still as statues in some lost and forgotten tomb of ancient warriors.

Then Bunny raised his BAMS unit and showed me the display. The warning light was no longer green. Now it was a faint orange. There was something in the air and I didn't need the digital display to tell me what it was.

Seif-al-din.

Although the pathogen was a serum transfer, traces of it could be carried in moist air. Not enough to infect on inhalation but enough to scare the living s.h.i.t out of me.

Something ahead of us moved. It was a soft step. Faint, dragging. Around the bend in the tunnel. Coming our way.

I signaled the others to hold their positions as I crept forward to stand with Ivan. We stood shoulder to shoulder in the center of the tracks, guns up and out. The sound grew louder. A shuffling step, a sc.r.a.pe of rubber soles on the wet concrete. Footsteps without emphasis. Listless. The way a dazed and injured person walks.

The figure moved around the bend in the tunnel and into our line of sight. Behind me I heard Noah whisper something.

"Jeez, it's one of our boys. Good ... maybe they have everything contained."

The figure was dressed in full SWAT gear. Limb pads and body armor, a helmet, weapons. Sergeant's stripes.

No mask, though.

That was gone.

Beside me Ivan gagged. "Oh ... b.a.l.l.s..."

Behind me I heard a sharp intake of breath. Maybe Noah, maybe one of the others. The SWAT sergeant moved toward us without haste. Limping, dragging one foot. He stopped for just a moment, head coming up, eyes seeming to flare with green light because of the night-vision distortion. But I knew that the SWAT man could not see us. And it wasn't because the tunnel was so dark.

You need eyes to see.

He had none.

No eyes.