Dead Run m-3

by P. J. Tracy

  "Looks that way . . ." Knudsen's phone rang, and he jammed it up to his ear so hard that Gino thought it was a miracle it didn't go all the way through his head. "Knudsen!" he shouted, listened for ten seconds, then threw the phone down on the ground. "Apparently, Bill Turner took a goddamned fucking Sunday drive in the country with his family."

  Suddenly, Grace jerked her head to look at something, then took off at a run. She stopped at Doug Lee's patrol car and nearly ripped the passenger door off the hinges when she opened it to dig inside. A second later, she was running toward them, carrying a dripping black case. She wiped it on the grass and set it in front of Roadrunner.

  "Whose laptop?"

  "The guy in the car. He was one of them, but he wasn't wearing fatigues like the others. His job was something else, maybe that setup in the building, since this was where he brought us-someplace he was familiar with, someplace he knew was empty so he could kill us without any interference. . . ."

  Roadrunner smiled faintly and popped open the case. "So he was the geek."

  Annie and Harley had already crowded close to see the screen. "And geeks always have backups," Annie said.

  The monitor came to life and proved them right.

  By that time, everyone else was kneeling or crouching around them, all watching the little laptop screen like wide-eyed kids examining an exotic bug. Sharon was behind Annie, her hand on her shoulder, for balance of many kinds.

  Magozzi recognized the first image as a duplicate of what had been on the computer inside the building. "So it's a sort of a mirror image?"

  "It had better be."

  Roadrunner punched a few keys, accessed the programming code, and scrolled down at warp speed.

  "What are you looking for, precisely?" Knudsen asked from the back of the group. He was on his knees, getting grass stains on his nicely pressed pants.

  Harley answered without looking around. "All this stuff scrolling by? This is the brain that runs the whole shebang, and somewhere in here, there are command lines that control whether or not that bomb goes off."

  Bonar was staring, shaking his head. "It all looks the same."

  Gino nodded. "Alphabet soup with numbers in it. My kid eats that stuff. How the hell do you tell when you find the right line? There must be a million of them in there."

  Roadrunner stopped the scroll and pointed. "Here."

  Harley looked, then nodded. "One of those two, anyway. Funny that this guy would be that sloppy on the bomb command lines, when the rest of it looks so tight."

  "They didn't expect Four Corners," Grace reminded him. "This was a last-minute setup when they thought they might be discovered."

  "Man, I don't know." Harley was shaking his big head. "Could be either one of those two command lines, and fifty percent are some pretty bad odds when you're talking plastique. Let's get this thing in the rig and online and see if it's a talker. If it is, we can work on it on the road while we get the hell away from that building."

  The only bad part of that good idea was that it didn't work. After thirty minutes in the RV trying to connect the laptop to the computer in the building, Roadrunner disconnected the thing from his software analysis unit in the bus and headed for the door, laptop tucked under his arm. "If there ever was a communications program in here, it's been wiped. No way we can talk to the trucks through this thing, no way we can get into the main computer to stop the clock."

  Magozzi was hurrying after him. "I thought it was a mirror image."

  "Yeah." Harley stomped behind. "But somebody broke a piece off, and that was the piece we needed. Roadrunner, where the hell are you going?"

  "To shut off the bomb."

  "Roadrunner." Grace's voice stopped him when no one else's might have. He turned back and looked down the aisle at her, and then he smiled, which seemed an odd thing to do under the circumstances.

  "What is it, Grace?"

  "We've got two possible command-line sequences hooked up to that plastique. We don't know which one it is."

  "I'll figure it out. Be right back."

  Knudsen was just outside the RV, talking into his sat phone; Halloran was a respectful distance away, smoking. Knudsen was flapping his hand in front of his face as if all the outside air in the world weren't enough to save him from the ill effects of secondhand smoke. Halloran thought that was pretty funny, since they might be standing a few yards from a building that was full of nerve gas.

  Suddenly, Roadrunner jumped the steps out of the RV, with Harley, Magozzi, and the women right behind him.

  "You'll figure it out?!" Harley was bellowing. "You've got a fifty percent chance that you're going to blow yourself to the moon, you goddamn stupid Lycra stick!"

  Roadrunner stopped right in front of Knudsen, who put down the phone and said, "Bomb squad, one hour out."

  Roadrunner shrugged as if it was meaningless information. "You're some kind of a bomb expert, right? That's how you recognized those weather stats on the screen."

  Knudsen didn't answer.

  "So if that building over there blew, how far away do you have to be to be safe ?"

  "If all those trucks are full of sarin, it could be as far as seven miles. . .." He stammered to a halt, understanding exactly what Roadrunner was going to do and what he was asking. "If you know a way to disarm that plastique, tell me what to do and I'll go in there."

  Roadrunner smiled like a boy. "No offense, Agent, but that would take way too long."

  Knudsen just looked at him for a second. "Five, ten minutes on these roads."

  Roadrunner looked around worriedly. "Do a lot of people live around here?"

  "Four Corners was about it. This is mostly state forest."

  Roadrunner nodded, still troubled but resigned. It was the best he could hope for. "You've got to make everyone else leave. I'll wait ten minutes from right now," was the last thing he said before he turned around and walked toward the building.

  They stood there with stricken expressions, watching Roadrunner walk away. Magozzi turned to Grace and Annie and Harley a second too late. They were already gone, following quietly in Roadrunner's wake without saying a thing. Charlie was right by Grace's side.

  Roadrunner turned on them when he heard Harley's leathers swishing against the grass. "Get the hell out of here, Harley. Take Annie and Grace and get the hell out of here."

  "Fuck you, you fucking fuck." Harley stomped past him, seething. "What if you hit the first line and it calls up a chain? That screen shows thirty lines at a time, and you're going to need more eyes to find the right one before it shuts you down."

  Roadrunner had to trot to pass him. "That's bullshit, Harley. I'm better than any of you, and you know it."

  "The hell you arc. You've only got a fourth of a brain, you dumb-shit. The other three fourths are right behind you. Keep walking. We're running out of time."

  Sharon had automatically started to follow Annie and Grace. Part of it was some twisted sense of duty, part of it was guilt, and part of it was just knee-jerk. The three women had been following one another for what seemed like forever. Separating now didn't seem possible. She'd gone two paces before Halloran grabbed her by the upper arm and turned her to face him. "Not. This. Time. You get that, Sharon'" His words blew across her face. "This time, I'm not letting you go."

  Sharon felt something ripping inside, pulling her in two different directions, felt Halloran's fingers tight against her arm, and figured she'd have to shoot him to get him to let her go. She decided not to.

  Magozzi, Gino, and Agent Knudsen stared after the Monkee-wrench people, thinking things that none of them would ever say out loud. Finally, Knudsen spoke.

  "Between the three of us, we could probably take down all of them and drag them back to the RV. Except maybe the big guy."

  Magozzi smiled a little, watching Grace. Funny. It should have looked like she was getting smaller, walking away like that, but instead she seemed to look bigger. "Don't follow me, Gino."

  Gino didn't look at him. "Y
ou go, I go."

  "Don't be an ass. Everything I've got is walking into that building right now. Everything you've got is back in Minneapolis."

  Gino watched him walking away.Not everything, buddy.

  MAGOZZI WALKED ACROSS what seemed like an endless expanse of concrete floor toward the desk, the computer, the bomb, and the entire Monkeewrench crew. All he saw was Grace-and Charlie, of course. Goddamnit, she was going to get the dog killed, too.

  She felt him coming. "Get out of here, Magozzi," she said without looking at him when he moved up beside her. "Go with the others. You've only got eight minutes left to get out of range before Road-runner starts hitting those keys."

  It was the first thing she'd said to him directly, and for reasons that defied logic, they made him ridiculously happy. He waited until she got tired of his infuriating disobedience and turned on him, glowering. Then, the second he had her eyes, he smiled and said, "Hello, Grace."

  She jerked her head back coward the computer screen almost immediately, but the corner of her mouth twitched just a little. "Seven minutes."

  "Okay. You want to make out?"

  OUTSIDE, Gino, Bonar, Halloran, and Sharon had piled into Knudsen's bare-bones sedan. Knudsen hadn't started the car yet. Dying in the line of duty was one thing. You accepted that the minute you put on any kind of badge. Dying senselessly was another thing. No agency pretended there was glory in pointless self-sacrifice, not even the FBI. And this would be pointless. Living to fight another day was the ticket, and this was his case. Getting blown up and gassed right at the beginning wasn't going to do anybody any good, which was why he was driving out of here. So if the unthinkable happened, he'd be around to sort through the aftermath, find the bad guys, if there were any left, and uncover the things they'd know to look for the next time, so it never happened again.

  Except he wasn't driving out of here. He was just sitting like a slug behind the wheel while the seconds ticked away, thinking of the civilians and the cop inside that building who happened to think that this particular self-sacrifice wasn't that pointless after all. He waited for one of the other four people in the car to start banging on the seats and screaming for him to get the hell out of there, but none of them said a thing.

  "HOW MUCH LONGER?" Annie asked. Harley looked at his watch. "Five more minutes." The waiting was killing Magozzi. Grace hadn't exactly jumped on

  the making-out idea, and the others were preoccupied with the programming language on the laptop screen, which left him with nothing to do but stand there and contemplate his own death. He could have been working on what he would do with the rest of his life if Roadrunner picked the right command line instead of the wrong one, but it seemed safer to go with the worst-case scenario. Grace had taught him that.

  Suddenly Roadrunner slapped his forehead, said "Duh," of all things, then moved the mouse and clicked.

  Magozzi sucked in a breath and watched numbers flying by on the screen, waiting to blow up and die and see the light at the end of the tunnel or whatever else was supposed to happen.

  After a few seconds, the monitor blinked black, then a new screen came up. The rest of them released a collective exhale that sounded like the wind. Magozzi looked down at his body. He wasn't dead, and he hadn't blown up. Not even a little.

  "What just happened?" His voice sounded squeaky, and his face colored.

  "Harley said the guy was sloppy on this. I just didn't read far enough, the command sequence was so long." Roadrunner pulled the screen back up and pointed. "It's right at the end; see those four letters? B-O-O-M at the end of this sequence"-he paged down a little-"and M-O-O-B, that's boom backwards, at the end of this one. Christ. That's absolutely puerile."

  Harley looked a little tense. "So which one did you punch in?"

  "Moob, of course. Boom sets the bomb, boom backwards unsets it. I mean, how obvious can you get?"

  Harley smacked him across the back of the head. "You dumbshit. What if the guy had set it the other way around so itwouldn't be obvious?"

  Roadrunner rubbed his head. "Shit. I never thought of that."

  Harley smacked him again, lightly. "That's the trouble with you linear thinkers. You have no imagination, no understanding of human psychology, and psychology rules the world, man. Magozzi, you want to get out there and call the others-tell 'em it's safe to come back?"

  Magozzi looked down at his shoes. Sure, he could do that. Just as soon as he could get one of his legs to move. "So the bomb's disabled?"

  Annie gave him one of her slow, signature smiles. "Of course it's disabled, sugar. That's why it says 'Bomb Disabled' on that screen."

  AGENT KNUDSEN'S car was still outside when Magozzi walked out of the shed. Knudsen was standing next to it with his phone pressed to his head; everybody else was inside the sedan.

  Magozzi was furious. He stormed up to the passenger side and jerked open the door where Gino sat. "What the hell are you still doing here?"

  Gino glanced at his watch. "We've still got three, four minutes."

  "The hell you do. And what the/"c^ is he doing on the phone?"

  "Calling off all the people coming in, keeping them away from this place."

  "He couldn't do that when the goddamned car was moving?" Magozzi was nearly spitting.

  "Well, it's a bumpy road. Makes it hard to dial."

  "Goddamnit,Gino . .."

  "Take it easy, buddy. You're going to stroke out. Glad you changed your mind about leaving, though. Hang on. I'll move over and make room."

  "I didn't change my mind about leaving, goddamnit, I came out to call you and tell you it was safe to come back!"

  "No fooling?" Bonar said from the backseat. "They deactivated the bomb?"

  "Yeah."

  Halloran and Sharon both closed their eyes at the same time. They looked like a couple of Kewpie dolls going to sleep.

  Gino looked down at his knees for a minute and just breathed. When he looked up again, he was grinning. "Knudsen's going to be pissed. Now he'll have to call back all those people he just told to stay away and tell them to come back, and I wouldn't blame one of them for not believing him. What about the trucks in there? Any chance they'll blow when the two on the road go?"

  Magozzi dropped to a crouch in the grass by the car, arms across his thighs. "Grace says no. There are only the two trucks online. The computers in the trucks in there aren't even linked up, which probably explains why they aren't on the road with the others."

  "So we don't have to worry about dying in the next couple hours."

  "No. Just about a lot of other people out there somewhere dying. Roadrunner thinks there has to be a fail-safe in the program-some kind of an abort command. They're trying to find it now."

  Gino stared out the windshield and shook his head. "Godspeed.'

  They waited outside as the minutes ticked by. Their guns, badges, and law-enforcement expertise-even the hotline to D.C.-were utterly useless. Everything depended on one skinny guy inside that machine shed finding one single circuit in a dizzying maze of computer language.

  Halloran, Sharon, Magozzi, and Gino paced in mindless patterns close to the shed door while Halloran smoked one cigarette after another. Knudsen continued to walk his own private circles around his car, phone pressed to his ear, putting on the miles.

  "You sure they don't want us in there?" Sharon asked Magozzi for the tenth time.

  "They were pretty specific aboutnot wanting us in there. This is their thing. There's no way we could help them. We'd just get in the way."

  "This is driving me crazy, not doing something. Anything."

  Magozzi saw the hollows under her haunted eyes and thought it was all getting lost. Everything the women had been through in the last eighteen hours-things the rest of them would never be able toimagine, no matter how many times they heard the story-was getting lost in what was happening right now, and what was going to happen if they couldn't find a way to stop it. And yet there were Grace and Annie in that building, right in the thick of it, an
d here was Sharon, pacing around like a caged animal because she wasn't in there with them. She reminded Magozzi of a combat vet who signed up for another tour through hell because he couldn't stand the thought of his comrades fighting without him.

  "You did good, Sharon Mueller," he told her on her next pass.

  She stopped where she stood and looked at him, and what he saw in her face almost made him wish she hadn't. "Thank you, Magozzi," she said, and then started to pace again.

  Knudsen finally signed off the phone and walked over to where Halloran was sitting. He scowled down at the burning cigarette, and Halloran glared back at him. "What," Halloran growled. He was spoiling for a fight, any kind of a fight. They all were.

  "You got another one of those?" Knudsen pointed to the cigarette.

  Halloran handed him the pack. "Never in a million years would I have pegged you for a smoker."

  Knudsen lit up, took a drag, and coughed for a long time. "There are no nonsmokers in this business. Just people trying to quit, and people who haven't started yet. They've got the fire under control. My people are starting to move into what's left of Four Corners. The bomb squad and the computer expert should be here in thirty minutes." He took another drag and looked back toward the RV. "Monkeewrench," he recited the name painted on the side. "Those are the people traveling all over the place, donating their programs to law enforcement, right?"

  "That's right."

  "Huh. And you've got two of them on your force."

  Halloran looked him straight in the eye. "They're kind of subcontract."

  Knudsen almost smiled. "How good are they?"

  "From what I hear, the best in the world."

  "They'd better be. We're running out of time."

  Within a few minutes, the field started to fill up with the people Knudsen had called in: a couple HAZMAT vans, sedans with more suits, and an ominous-looking black helicopter that had emptied out some ominous-looking men in black suits in the last five minutes. That contingent was standing in a tight, motionless group near the building. As far as Magozzi knew, they'd said a few words to Knudsen and hadn't talked to anyone since.