by Bill Myers
COLEMAN AND KATHERINE BEGAN their shopping spree in the early evening. Most of the stores in the Arlington area were closed, but Coleman was used to shopping at all hours, with or without anyone’s permission.
Katherine, on the other hand, insisted on keeping track of each broken window and smashed lock, along with the estimated retail value of every stolen item. Maybe it was the fact that she was a struggling retailer herself, or that she had been married to a cop. For whatever reason, she had promised herself that when it was all over they would eventually pay for whatever they smashed or stole.
The first break-in was at Dr. Tolle’s Family Dental Practice. Nothing of real value would be missing. No dental equipment, no computer, no petty cash — nothing but one size E nitrous oxide tank and some surgical tubing.
Then there was the two-hundred-foot roll of ten-gauge Romex electrical house wiring, the five-gallon gas can, the ax, the roll of duct tape, the 220-volt extension cord, the timer, and the hank of #6 white braided cotton clothesline — all courtesy of Burnett’s Hardware and Lumber. That left only the large box of Ivory soap flakes and the five gallons of gasoline, both of which Katherine felt obligated to purchase in a more orthodox fashion.
It was 9:42 when their headlights glinted off the perimeter fence that surrounded the Genodyne complex. The six-story building was lit, but blurred by a heavy fog that lay in the parking lot. They turned onto the wet asphalt that followed the fence and drove until they passed the main gate and adjacent security building — a small one-story affair.
Katherine continued down the road until they passed a large stand of firs that momentarily blocked the building’s view of them. She pulled into the wet grass, as close to the ditch as she dared.
Coleman climbed out of the car and walked back to the trunk. He was shivering again. The fever was up full. He opened the trunk, which gave a rusty creak. He cringed, hoping the sound would be absorbed by the fog. He reached inside and removed the tank of nitrous oxide as well as the duct tape and clothesline.
O’Brien had explained that Genodyne was not a high-security area. No sweeping video cameras, no state-of-the-art gadgetry. Just a perimeter fence, guards who patrolled the grounds once an hour, and motion detectors near all the doors and windows of the ground floor. Inside, the magnetic ID cards and the six-digit Personal Identification Numbers were the primary source of security. “It’s not like we’re a nuclear testing facility,” he had joked.
Maybe not, Coleman thought, but what was now being housed inside there could be even more dangerous.
As he approached the security building he heard the dull blare of a TV. Some cop show with shouting and shooting. He pressed close to the damp, concrete wall and crept to the nearest window.
He paused there to listen for conversation. He could only make out the voices of two men. There were supposed to be three. The third must still be out on rounds.
Coleman glanced at his watch. 9:52. O’Brien had said the guards began their rounds, which took anywhere from thirty-five to forty-five minutes, on the hour. By arriving this late, Coleman had hoped to catch all three together. No such luck. Guard Three was taking his merry time. If Coleman waited, another guard might leave. If he began, Guard Three might arrive and discover him.
Then again, Guard Three could be dozing or reading the latest Sports Illustrated in the john.
Frustration began to boil up inside Coleman. Wasn’t it always that way — the greatest plans thwarted by the tiniest detail? For a moment he thought how much easier it would be to just bust in, take the first two out, then pop the third when he arrived.
Of course he knew the source of that thought and immediately pushed it aside. But it resisted more than he had expected, and that fact unnerved him. He wasn’t unnerved that such thoughts were present; he knew they were there and growing stronger every hour. He was unnerved because he now realized that he would have to double-guess his every action. A plan like this was hard enough when all of his faculties were at a hundred percent. But if he couldn’t trust his own instincts, if he had to double-think his every move, there could very well be trouble.
The security fence surrounding the complex was butted up to the security building. A neat design that saved money and looked sleek, but it had obviously been created by an architect and not a breaking-and-entering expert. In a manner of seconds, Coleman had used the fence to climb onto the roof. A moment later, he had fed the surgical tubing down a sink’s air pipe, sealed the pipe with duct tape, and turned on the nitrous oxide.
Within five minutes, both guards were sound asleep.
Coleman dropped to the ground and entered the building through the door, holding his breath as he threw open the windows for ventilation.
He had two minutes before the effects of the gas would start wearing off. He moved quickly and expertly. When the guards woke, they would find themselves locked in the bathroom, bound together, with their mouths securely taped.
>ERIC: WE ARE GOING INTO GENODYNE. IF YOU ARE THERE, LET US KNOW WHERE. DON’T LET THEM CATCH YOU READING THEIR FILES. YOU ARE IN DANGER. TRUST NO ONE. I LOVE YOU, MOM.
Eric read the e-mail twice before clicking the REPLY box. He was about to type in his answer when he heard the door behind him rattle faintly. Someone had just stepped out of the front door of the large cabin, and the difference in air pressure had shaken his own door.
Eric stood and stepped quietly toward his second-story window. Below him Tisha was racing across the driveway toward the idling Mercedes that Murkoski had started up. Eric had heard her answer the other phone line a moment or two earlier. And now, judging by her urgency as she relayed the message to Murkoski and by his angry response, Eric guessed that the news wasn’t so good.
He had no idea where he was. Some fancy cabin up in the mountains. Just Murkoski, Tisha, himself, and the two men who had brought him. The older kidnapper was sprawled out on a bed down the hall, nursing his broken nose. The younger guy was downstairs watching TV.
It had been Tisha’s job to keep an eye on Eric. But now she was outside.
He looked back at the screen:
YOU ARE IN DANGER. TRUST NO ONE.
He had a choice. Wait until tomorrow and hope that they would release him like they had promised. Or take Mom at her word and get out while the getting was good.
He crossed to the door and carefully pulled it open. No one in sight. He stepped into the hall, moved past the bathroom, and past the closed door where the older man was snoring up a storm. He reached the top of the stairs. Below, he could see the younger guy on the sofa, his back to Eric, engrossed in some karate flick.
It would be tricky, but there was a chance that Eric could make it down the stairs and to the outside door without being spotted. After that — well. Still, between Mom’s warning and his own uneasiness, he figured it was better to do something than nothing.
He eased down the steps, one at a time. There was no chance he could be heard. The whirring fan up in the cathedral ceiling and the blaring TV made certain of that. But he had to make sure that his reflection would not be caught on the TV screen.
He had two steps to go when the front door opened. For a millisecond he froze, then leaped the last two steps and ducked behind the sofa just as Tisha entered followed by the ranting Murkoski.
“Incompetent! Why is everybody we hire incompetent?”
As Murkoski stormed toward the kitchen, Eric edged around the far end of the couch. Now the stairs were to his back, the TV straight ahead, and the kitchen on the other side of the sofa.
He heard Murkoski yank up the kitchen phone and demand. “Yeah, what is it?” There was a pause. “What time?”
Tisha headed for the stairs. Eric scrunched low, knowing that, if she looked in his direction, she would spot him.
“What’s wrong?” the man on the sofa asked, his voice less than four feet from Eric’s head.
“There was a break-in at the lab,” she answered.
Eric tensed, expecting to hear his nam
e called, his escape ruined. But there was nothing. Just the simple padding of feet up the stairs. She had never looked toward the sofa.
“No, don’t report it!” Murkoski ordered into the phone. “Not yet.”
The man on the sofa clicked off the TV remote and rose to his feet. He gave a slight yawn and stretch. He was so close that Eric could have reached around and touched his leg. But he stayed low, afraid even to breathe.
“No, you investigate it!” Murkoski yelled. “You’re security, that’s what we pay you for! Get in there and —”
“Kenneth!” Tisha called from upstairs. “Kenneth, he’s gone!”
“What?” Murkoski shouted.
The man at the sofa cursed, headed for the stairs, and took them two at a time to investigate. Murkoski slammed down the receiver and followed. “What do you mean, gone?”
A moment later, the room was empty. It was now or never.
Eric sprang to his feet and raced for the door. He threw it open and bolted into the fog and darkness. The gravel driveway popped and scuffed under his feet, sending the dog in the run beside the house into frenzied barking.
The woods lay thirty feet away. He made it into the first group of trees just as the light from the front door spilled out onto the driveway.
“Kid! Hey, kid!” It was Murkoski. “You out here?”
Eric froze. He could see the man, but there were enough shadows to keep him hidden, as long as he didn’t make any sudden moves.
“Hey, kid! I’m talking to you!”
Tisha appeared in the doorway, followed by the younger man, a flashlight in hand.
“He couldn’t have gone far,” Tisha said. The light came on and swept across the trees, its beam clearly outlined by the night fog. For a moment it caught the edge of Eric’s sweatshirt. But it didn’t stop.
“Eric?” Tisha called. “Eric, where are you?”
Eric slowly edged toward the nearest tree, a large cedar, to better hide himself. There was no gravel here, only a floor of soft needles and underbrush. There were, however, plenty of sticks, and one of them snapped when he stepped on it.
The beam darted back in his direction, and he ducked from sight.
“Eric?” Tisha called. Apparently she had the flashlight now. He heard the crunching of gravel as she moved across the driveway in his direction.
The dog continued to bark.
“Eric? Eric, you don’t want to be out here all alone. Come on now.” Her voice sounded gentle and kind, but there was something wrong. She was lying. Under all that kindness he felt a ruthlessness, an ambition ready and willing to do whatever was necessary to have her way.
It was odd. He’d been experiencing these feelings most of the day — knowing from people’s tone of voice what they were really saying, seeing in their eyes what they were really thinking. He hadn’t thought much about it — until now. Now he needed all the help he could get.
“Come on, kid,” Murkoski called. “Just come on back and everything will be okay.”
The beam danced on the branches and bushes around him. In a matter of seconds, he would be spotted. He had no choice. He had to move.
Remembering what he’d learned from Coleman’s Indian stories, he slowly, and this time soundlessly, worked his way through the undergrowth, watching every step, taking one at a time, keeping at least one tree between himself and the searching beam.
“Eric?” Tisha had entered the undergrowth now too. She was making enough noise to mask any he might make, so he picked up his pace, slowly veering to the left, ducking or freezing whenever the beam came in his direction.
“Come on, now,” Tisha called. “It’s too scary to be out here all by yourself.”
She had that right. But it would be even scarier to trust her. It wasn’t just what Mom had said over the Internet. It was also what he now knew, what he somehow sensed in the weird way he’d been sensing things all day.
There was a clanking noise, iron chain against steel fence. The dog barked louder, more frantically.
“What are you doing?” Tisha called back to the house.
Murkoski’s voice answered. “We’ll let the dog find him.”
Chunks of drywall flew in all directions as Coleman chopped into the forest-green wall of the executive office. With each jarring slam of the ax, his head and body exploded in pain. And still he continued. He had tried opening the two-and-a-half-foot-wide Testron safe with the combination O’Brien had given him, but it hadn’t responded. Given the short amount of time they had, it would be impossible to drill, torch, or blow the 1,800 pounds of high-tempered stainless steel. There was only one way to destroy the computer backup disks inside, and Katherine was the only one who knew how.
They had dumped all of their stolen items into an old gym bag Katherine had found in her trunk — a remnant of the days when she actually cared how she looked. Knowing that the third guard was still at large, they had carefully made their way through the security gate on foot, then dashed across the parking lot to the entrance of the building. O’Brien’s mag card and PIN had opened the door. They had skipped the elevator and taken the stairs. The guard, if he was alert, could have easily keyed off the elevator and trapped them between floors. They had arrived at the executive suites and found the office with the safe exactly as O’Brien had described.
Now, as Coleman swung his ax, chopping out the drywall around the safe, Katherine sat at the executive’s desk, exploring the computer system.
“All I need is about eighteen inches around it,” Katherine called. “Soon as you get that cleared out, let me know.”
Coleman nodded and continued swinging, stopping only to pull out the debris and pieces of wall that fell around the safe.
Katherine couldn’t resist the temptation to check her e-mail one last time to see whether Eric had left any messages. She switched to the modem, dialed in the phone number, entered her password, and waited. A moment later she had her answer:
NO NEW MAIL
Katherine’s heart sank. Where was her son? Why wasn’t he answering her mail? She switched over to the Computer Forum lobby that they had originally met in, just in case.
Not there.
Katherine fought a growing depression and returned to her task. Not only would the backup disks in the safe have to be destroyed, but so would the information stored in the computer system itself.
She re-accessed the mainframe. In just over twenty minutes, she had introduced a virus that she hoped would be destructive enough to eat up any info inside the system — as well as any computer that would log onto that system. Of course, Genodyne’s computers were well equipped with virus sniffers and blockers, but her government experience still provided a few tricks that the civilians weren’t yet aware of.
At one time, Katherine had been good — the best in her field. Maybe she still was. After all, in the twenty minutes she had just spent, a less-experienced hacker might have been able to introduce a virus equivalent to a bad cold, or maybe even the flu. Katherine had just infected the system with something she hoped to be closer to Ebola.
She paused to double-check her work. Then, holding her breath, she hit ENTER.
She stared at the screen, watching. Slowly, a smile spread across her face as the virus began its work. Within five minutes, there would be no stopping it. The virus would continue to infect and destroy all vital information within the mainframe, up to and including all maps and info on the GOD gene.
“Now what?” Coleman called.
Katherine looked up and saw a two-foot hole cut completely around the safe and running all the way to its back.
Coleman was breathing heavily. “What’s next?” he repeated impatiently.
Katherine rose and walked to the gym bag, where she pulled out a roll of heavy Romex wire, the same heavy-duty wiring used inside the walls of most homes. She found one end of the wire and began to twist the three conductive strands together.
Coleman approached, sweating from the fever and obviously fighting th
rough the pain. “So are you going to tell me what’s next,” he demanded, “or do we turn this into a guessing game?”
She saw such hostility in his eyes that a chill ran through her body. She turned back to the Romex and forced her voice to stay calm and even. “Start wrapping this Romex around the safe. Twenty-five turns.”
He lugged the heavy wire over to the hole in the wall. That put him less than a dozen feet away from her, but she was grateful for every foot of that distance. Katherine had been through plenty, and it took a lot to unnerve her, but that last look had done it. She knew that he was struggling with more than just the pain. Coleman was changing. Clearly and irrefutably.
“What’s all this supposed to do?” he demanded as he fought the stiff wire, forcing it to bend around the safe.
“I’ve calculated the inductive reactance that comes from a two-and-a-half-foot-diameter coil wrapped around an 1800-pound steel core.”
“Meaning?”
She began stripping one end of the 220 extension cord to connect it to the Romex. “Meaning I’m turning the entire safe into a giant electromagnet.”
Coleman nodded. “We can’t get to the disks on the inside of the safe, so we’re turning the entire safe into a giant magnet and erasing them that way.”
“Exactly.”
Coleman said nothing. She could feel his eyes on her. Maybe it was approval, maybe it was something else. Whatever it was, it made her uneasy and self-conscious. This was not the man she had known just a few hours earlier.
Once she had connected the extension cord to the Romex, she rose and began stringing the cord into the hall and toward the executive lunchroom, where O’Brien had said a 220 stove outlet would be.
But she had barely entered the hallway when she heard: “Okay, Ma’am. I think you better lay that down and turn around to face me.”
Katherine’s heart pounded; she dropped the extension cord to the floor and turned around.
It was the third guard, a college kid looking very clean-cut and dapper in his crisp white shirt and blue security uniform. He reminded her of Gary, back when they were first married, back when he had first worn his uniform. The boy was twenty feet away, but even from that distance she could see him sweating as he held the gun on her.
