“The only way to have a reliable signal in the tunnels under present technological conditions would be to utilize the Aerial Internet Ranger,” he suggests, and I look up at the late-afternoon dusky sky as if I might spot our prototype AIR in the neighborhood.
But Ranger is ghosting us exactly as instructed, and I tell ART that sending in a PONG is a bad idea.
“For one thing,” I explain, climbing back into my truck, “it could be dangerous. I don’t want Lex panicking and hurting himself down there. And besides, how would Ranger get in and out of hatches and airlocks?”
“He can use his gripper to access doors,” ART replies as if lobbying on behalf of another artificial helper.
“He might not be able to lift the in-ground hatches,” I consider. “But airlocks he can manage for sure. Although we’ve not tested him out on opening any types of utility doors, and I guess we should have.”
I tell ART to give Ranger a shot as long as he isn’t seen or heard, drawing absolutely no attention to himself. Lex can’t be aware he’s being bird-dogged by a flying orb, I’m emphatic about it. I know he’ll panic.
“Let’s do what we can to intercept him. But in the process, we can’t end up with a loss of signal again,” I remind ART of recent mistakes.
“Copy.”
“Not aboveground or below . . . ,” I start to add when interrupted by the loud blast of a steam ejector at the scramjet test facility in the heart of the campus.
Punctuated by flames and gases suddenly erupting from stacks and vacuum spheres as emergency sirens begin to hammer, wail and whistle. While red lights flash as recordings of sonic booms and aircraft thundering overhead blare from giant voice speakers throughout the campus.
Alarms sound their earsplitting emergency tones as if we’re in the middle of an invasion, and I can see in my lenses other trouble Lex is causing. At least I assume he’s behind the cyber mayhem, starting up robots and other machines, waking up drones throughout our 200 facilities as I just as quickly tell ART to shut them down.
I’m back on Langley Boulevard when Fran’s badge number surfaces in the Advanced Concepts Lab for virtual reality and other simulations. I drive in that direction, and before I can get there, the ID number pops up like a whack-a-mole in another building. This time it’s the Acoustics Research Laboratory, where a reverberation chamber is broadcasting bone-rattling aircraft sounds over intercoms I yell at ART to silence.
Then Atmospheric Sciences, the thermal vacuum chambers going to town, and I tell him please to make them stop. Obviously, he’s to patch whatever the vulnerability is that’s allowed Lex access.
“And change the passwords. Do what it takes to shut him out,” I instruct when Carme appears in one of my truck’s displays, as if I don’t have trouble enough.
I watch my sister in the medical examiner’s live feed as she walks briskly through the morgue’s back parking lot.
She makes her way with purpose past windowless black vans, a mobile command center truck, a Zodiac boat for body recovery, and it’s as if I’m seeing myself in another dimension.
Dressed in my same tactical clothing, she must have raided my closet at home, my office at police headquarters. Or maybe Mom did. All I know for sure is anybody looking would think Carme is me right down to the CUFF on her right wrist, and the sporty-looking glasses tinted medium gray as the sun settles lower.
18
CARME heads toward the delivery bay, its massive door retracted, the Cadillac hearse idling inside and no sign of anyone as Neva Rong lifts off in her chartered helicopter on another display inside my truck.
All this while I’m driving through the most remote part of the NASA Langley campus where it would seem Lex is headed based on ART’s reports. Ranger is underground and has pinged on Fran’s ID badge several times, most recently in a utility tunnel that follows a steam pipe cutting through the woods in the direction of the Gantry.
I follow West Bush Road at a decent clip as the late afternoon thaws and is cast deeper in shadows, and I’m getting more concerned by the moment. There’s nothing much back here, mostly woods, test ranges and old rust-stained hangars where all sorts of unusual vehicles might be stashed. Empty fields host mysterious antennas, and you never know what you might find in the sheds and storage units.
Everything is snowy and quiet, the Gantry towering ahead like a giant candy cane–striped swing set against the darkening partly cloudy sky. I keep an eye on the sitemap while monitoring Carme on the OCME live video feed, alone inside the bay. She strides up to the idling Cadillac hearse, late model with a Landau top, no sign of a driver because there isn’t one.
Popping open the hood like she did at the Point Comfort Inn, she pulls out components and wires, the engine shutting off, lights out, loss of signal. As this is going on, security cameras inside the morgue show Dylan emerging from a cooler, steering a steel gurney carrying a pouched body covered by a maroon velour throw.
He pushes his morbid cargo through the intake area, one of the wheels sticking like a bad grocery cart. Rolling it past the floor scale, out the door, he freezes on the ramp at the sight of the hearse, hood up and stone still.
“Looks like my sister might have taken care of one problem,” I say to ART. “But where is Lex? He’s been underground for a while now, and there’s really no way to know where he might be or if he’s okay. And the sun will be going down soon.”
ART has no new data as I park next to a fenced-in scrapyard of crashed aircraft chassis near the steam plant that stinks to high heaven. I count 13 vans and trucks parked on the roadside, a lot of them nose in with their headlights on, illuminating the full-scale gumdrop-shaped spacecraft test model suspended from the Gantry.
Off to the left is the million-gallon Hydro Impact Basin, a swimming pool where the water’s never fine. Unheated, unfiltered, and routinely shocked with chemicals, it’s where we simulate splashdowns and crashes. I suspect the point of this afternoon’s test is to see how astronauts would hold up when they return to Earth, landing in the ocean at certain velocities and angles.
Done with good ole-fashioned geometry, and I’m always reminded of the game Mouse Trap that Carme and I used to play as kids, never tiring of the boot kicking over the bucket . . . sending the marble bouncing down rickety stairs . . . into a chute . . . falling through a hole . . . triggering the mouse cage to slide down a pole . . .
High-speed cameras are set up and ready on their tripods, hanks of cables leading to computer equipment on carts. The pullback line is retracted like a bowstring, ready for pyrotechnical explosions to cut through steel cables, slinging the test model over the splash basin where the shackle hook will be released.
Everything’s a go, and the engineers, flight dynamicists, crane operators and other experts from NASA and Sierra Nevada Corporation have cleared the area. Everybody is hanging back from a safe distance in the parking lot while the countdown continues on the digital clock.
“21 . . . 20 . . . 19 . . . ,” the seconds tick off in luminous red.
Then the badge number reappears on my sitemap, this time right under my nose inside the Gantry’s main hangar where my crash dummies live. And I’m out of my truck.
“17 . . . 16 . . . 15 . . .”
I’m rounding the corner of the hangar as Lex flies out a back door. He races like a rabbit across snow-covered grass, and I take off after him.
“10 . . . 9 . . . ,” blares loudly over the intercom now.
I run as best I can in slippery conditions and decreasing visibility, under the Gantry’s massive scaffolding, steering away from the splash basin toward the woods. Glancing up at the control room’s glass windows, I’m puzzled that no one seems aware of what’s going on, their attention elsewhere, on the pool and the test model, I suppose . . .
“. . . 2,
1 . . .”
A mad dash past a storage shed, and I tackle Lex to the snow as the pyrotechnic bolts blow, and the test model swings toward the water in what seems slow motion. It lands with a loud smack like a belly flop, waves swelling over the sides of the pool, flooding the wide concrete tarmac, stopping short of the parking lot while Lex struggles.
“Get off me! Get off me!” he shrieks as I straddle him, pinning his arms above his head.
“Stop fighting,” I growl in his ear. “The more you resist, the worse it will be.”
I get to my feet, plucking him up by the armpits, both of us brushing off snow and dead grass.
“So much as a twitch, and I’m putting you in handcuffs,” I warn him. “Give me your phone. Now!”
Digging in a pocket of his jeans, he hands it over.
“Also, the ID badge you swiped from Deputy Chief Lacey.”
He unloops the lanyard around his neck, pulling out the attached ID smartcard from inside his sweatshirt. Stuffing it in a pocket of my jacket, I escort him through the Gantry’s soaring sawhorse steel structure, looking up at the control room at the figure standing before a plate glass window.
I recognize Dick by his silhouetted stature, tall and ramrod straight in fatigues and boots, his arms folded across his chest. He’s staring off at the test model bobbing in the pool far enough away that Lex and I weren’t in harm’s way. Although it’s hard to say. Bottom line, it was too close for comfort, and Dick could have stopped the clock.
He could have shut down the drop test when the Langley campus went temporarily haywire, thanks to Lex and his cyber mischief. I have no doubt Dick witnessed all of it, and chose to do nothing. He has yet to offer any real assistance, and it’s beginning to feel like that will be the new status quo. Maybe he’ll intervene. Maybe he won’t.
As I deal with Lex, I’m keeping track of Carme in my lenses, walking away from the morgue as if she’s me. Cameras in the parking lot pick her up detouring away from news crews, headed to her gray Tahoe parked in a visitor’s spot while Neva’s helicopter circles overhead, flying low and slow, loud enough to wake the dead.
I imagine her looking down, waiting for the stolen autonomous hearse to drive out of the bay as programmed. Her sister was almost body snatched right out from under everyone, Neva’s elaborate plan foiled by the simple act of yanking out a few cables and cords. She’s looking out her window, waiting for something that by now she suspects isn’t going to happen.
No doubt she’s noticed the Chase Car in the parking lot, and possibly Carme parading as her NASA investigator twin who finally showed up. Whatever the case, I’m betting that Neva is getting the message that there will be no spiriting away Vera Young’s body to California or anywhere for further dissection and misinformation.
00:00:00:00:0
NEVA RONG must be seething, and I suspect she’s probably headed to one of our local airports where a private jet is waiting. But it’s not something I can ask ART about at the moment as I grip Lex’s shoulder hard enough for him to know I mean business. Marching him to my Chase Car, I warn him not to run or try anything.
“What’s gotten into you?” I ask severely. “Do you have any idea how much trouble you’re in?”
“I don’t have to tell you anything!” he’s out of breath and sweaty, coatless and bareheaded, his jeans water stained, smeared with dirt. “I don’t have to talk to you or anyone!”
“Nope, you don’t. You can remain silent if you choose. But I hope you’ll decide to talk openly with me. As long as you’re aware that anything you say can and will be used against you,” I emphasize, my hand firmly on his shoulder as we head to my truck.
“Some friend you are!”
“I’m not your friend,” I agree, hot as heck in all my gear, sweating and about to starve to death. “But I can help if you let me . . .”
“I told George you didn’t like me,” Lex fires back, and beneath his anger is pain.
“You’re not very likeable right now.”
“He’s always saying you’d want to be my friend but whenever I’ve run into you, you’re not nice,” he defiantly tramps along next to me. “All the times I’ve seen you around campus, you avoid me. Same thing when I’m with your dad on the farm. You’ve been unfriendly for no reason.”
As he’s saying this I realize that most of these chilly encounters were with my sister. I’ve run into Lex very little at Langley, once again making me wonder how often Carme’s been on campus posing as me. The times I’ve seen Lex on the farm have been few and from a distance, and that’s probably been intentional even if I wasn’t aware of it.
Things don’t always go well when Dad brings in a stranger without asking, and whether it was fair or not, Lex was going to be treated with suspicion. Maybe he’s been subjected to resentment mixed in because of recurring fears and bad memories that get stirred up. Especially if it’s Carme we’re talking about.
I don’t doubt that she’s ungracious when encountering yet another son our father doesn’t have, some stranger who gets more attention than we ever did. None of it is Lex’s fault but also not his business, and I tell him I regret if I’ve come across as indifferent or unkind on any occasion.
As I say it, I’m irked that I get blamed for my sister’s not-always-optimal behavior. But at least I’m getting used to it, don’t really have a choice. It’s not like I can let on when we swap places, tag teaming in ways that at first are off-putting.
“If you want to be my friend, Lex, you’re going to have to earn it,” I continue my lecture. “But right now, this is serious business. You’re in my custody, and we need to finish with your legal rights. Would you like another adult present?”
“No.”
“What about an attorney?”
“Very funny.”
“I’m not being funny. If you want a lawyer, you’ll get one even if you can’t afford it,” as I escort him through the Gantry’s parking lot. “Do you understand what I just said?”
“You read me my rights. Except you didn’t do it like on TV,” he says as we reach my SUV, and I give the signal to unlock it, my right hand concealed in my pocket.
“Unfortunately, this isn’t a TV show,” I open the front passenger’s door. “If it were, I’d change the channel.”
“How did you do that?” he climbs in.
“Do what?” I ask innocently, walking around to the other side.
“How did you unlock it without a key, a voice command, clapping your hands . . . ?”
“It’s a smart vehicle, saw me coming,” as I climb in.
I have no doubt he can tell by the solar paneled roof, the antennas, signal jammer, run-flat tires and thickness of the door that this isn’t a normal vehicle.
“And if you think you’re hacking into this thing, you got another think coming, Mister,” I make sure he knows who he’s dealing with, and we shut our doors, the engine starting, all the displays staying dark. “Buckle up, and don’t touch anything,” I add strictly as he ogles my new not-so-standard Chevy Tahoe, taking in the powered-off flat-screens front and back.
He alerts on the storage boxes, the joystick, the unusual pleathery upholstery and carbon fiber. No doubt Lex has deduced from the powerful engine that my Chase Car will give someone a run for their money.
“What’s it going to be? Do you want to talk?” I confront him, and we’re not going anywhere until I have answers. “Because you didn’t have much to say the other day,” alluding to his phone conversation with Carme while she pretended to be me. “Except to deny everything, to claim you’re as innocent as the driven snow,” repeating what Dick relayed earlier today.
“It’s not fair! I didn’t do anything!” Lex’s face is flushed to the roots of his fiery copper hair, his green eyes blazing.
“
I guess I’ll be the judge of that after you tell me the truth,” is what I have to say about it. “That’s assuming you want to have an honest conversation. Or maybe you’d prefer I take you home and the courts will appoint a lawyer to represent you like I mentioned.”
“No!” he sulkily stares out his window as we sit in our same parking place near the main hangar.
The chain-link fence in front of us encloses a salvage yard of battered and mangled old planes, helicopters, a race car, all rusty and gutted of anything salvageable, riddled with optical location markers that remind me of bullet-hole decals. In the near background diesel engines rumble as a crane, a truck and other heavy equipment move into position at the splash basin.
Beyond are trees, a service road and a small landing airstrip for drones, then acres of windswept snowy fields and dense woods. Had Lex made it through all that to the campus’s western border, he could climb the fence. I’m not sure how he would have dealt with the barbed wire on top, and maybe he hadn’t thought that far.
But had he managed to reach Wythe Creek Road without serious injury, he would have been home-free except for the mile hike home.
“Anybody seeing you would have figured something’s wrong, a kid with no coat on walking along a highway as it’s getting dark,” I paint a picture for him. “The police would have grabbed you. Or maybe someone else would have, maybe someone up to no good. And even if you’d made it back to the house without being caught, then what?”
“I don’t know,” he shrugs his narrow shoulders.
Digging into my pocket for my phone as if it’s my only electronic resource, I’m finding it increasingly difficult to deny ART’s existence. My impulse is to ask for his assistance as usual but I can’t do that in front of Lex or hardly anyone. Not openly, and already I’m becoming technologically dependent and spoiled.
Spin (Captain Chase) Page 15
