31 | VIENNA
The door slid open, and Vienna was there, her keycard in her hand, a look of surprise and concern growing on her face as she saw Dodge.
“What’s wrong with him?” she asked.
Vienna stared. Sam stared back, unsure what to say.
The air-lock door began to slide closed between them. Sam stepped forward, blocking the door with his foot. The inner door behind him would not open until the outer door was shut.
“We’ve been attacked again,” he said.
“What? When?”
“Just now. Someone hacked into the building and attacked Swamp Witch, wiped her brain like the terrorists in Chicago, then tried to do the same to Dodge.”
There was a hammering from the door behind them.
“What the hell is going on?” Vienna asked. She took a few steps backward, retreating into the parking area.
“Have you been on a neuro-connection today?” Sam asked.
“No,” she said. “Why?”
“Dodge is in trouble,” Sam said. “He’s hurt and we need to get him to a hospital.”
“No,” Vienna said, regaining a little composure. “I don’t know what you’ve done, but let’s talk to Jaggard and sort it—”
“Listen to me, Vienna,” Sam hissed. “The hackers have got inside the firewalls, and they’ve got through the neuro-firewalls. They’ve done … something; I don’t know what. They’re manipulating Kiwi and Socks and Tactical and God knows who else. Help me get Dodge out of here, and I’ll tell you everything I know.”
“Sam—”
“Vienna, Dodge is going to die unless you help me get him out of here now.”
She started to say something to that but stopped and stared at him intently for a moment.
Finally, she grabbed one of Dodge’s arms. “Let’s get him into one of the vans.”
“You take him,” Sam said.
The hammering from the inner door was getting louder, but it was supposed to be bulletproof, and he knew it wouldn’t open until the outer door shut. He ripped off his jacket and rolled it into a ball, wedging it into the doorway as the outer door began to shut. Unable to close properly, it slid open again.
Vienna was already pushing Dodge into the van. He was compliant, malleable, but said nothing. Sam ran to the van.
“I’ll drive,” Vienna shouted. “You get in the back with Dodge.”
Vienna raced to the driver’s side. “Put his seat belt on,” she added. “Yours too. Where are we going?”
“Right now, anywhere out of here.”
Vienna hit the gas as Sam was still buckling Dodge’s seat belt. The van lurched forward with a squeal, and through the back windows, he could see a cloud of black rubber smoke.
The sharp acceleration slammed him into the seat next to Dodge, and he grasped wildly for his own seat belt, nearly falling out of his seat as the van careered around a concrete column toward the exit ramp.
Sam cried out, “They’ve shut the blast gates!”
Heavy metal, bombproof gates were trundling across the top of the ramp, shutting off the late-afternoon sunshine.
“Not yet they haven’t,” Vienna said, and floored the gas pedal. The black and yellow barrier arm at the exit crumpled like paper, and Vienna veered to the right, toward the rapidly closing gap. The edge of the gate scraped paint from the side of the van as they burst through into the sweet daylight outside.
“Where are we going?” she shouted. “We don’t have long before they shut us down.”
All government vehicles were fitted with the LoJack system that allowed them to be tracked by satellite and remotely shut down if they were stolen.
Vienna spun out onto San Carlos Street, just about collecting a trio of middle-aged women in a BMW sedan. There were thuds and crashes from underneath as she bounced the vehicle over the light-rail tracks in the center of the road, and the van leaned—surely on two wheels, Sam thought—as they twisted left onto the roadway heading east.
“Take the freeway,” Sam said, getting an idea. “Head for the Great Mall. Maybe we can lose ourselves in the crowds.”
? ? ?
In the CDD lobby, Tyler raged at the closed interior door of the air lock.
“Tyler, it’s Control.”
“Go ahead, Control,” he neuroed the response.
“Van four just left the car park at speed.”
“Copy that. I need you to open the inner air-lock doors and override the security system.”
“Can’t be done, sir. It’s a mechanical system, not electronic. When one door is open, it breaks the circuit.”
Tyler grabbed the radio off his belt and keyed the mike.
“McTurck, it’s Tyler, come in.”
A voice responded almost immediately. “McTurck.”
“Are you still on duty in the hotel lobby?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Come over to the CDD underground car park right now; we have a situation.”
“On my way.”
Tyler neuroed back to the command center. “Get the blast doors back open so McTurck can get in. And locate van four on the LoJack, but don’t shut it down yet. Wait till we get to it; otherwise they’ll abscond on foot. And get an alert out to the police. Tell them we have two fugitives, one who appears to be semiconscious. Give them a description of Dodge and Sam. Tell them not to apprehend them if spotted. I’d rather keep this in-house.”
“Copy that,” the confirmation came back from control.
“Where do you think they are headed?” one of his men asked.
“I don’t know,” Tyler replied. “And probably neither do they.” A thought struck him, and he mentally hit the Neuro-communication button again. “Stay off the radio; use only neuro or cell phones. They’ll be monitoring the radio in the van.”
“There’s a neuro-headset in the van too,” Control pointed out. “They could be monitoring our neuro too.”
“They won’t be,” Tyler said firmly, not even really sure how he knew that.
A sudden image intruded on his vision. A security cam feed from the parking garage. It was Vienna, helping Dodge into the van. Who had fed him the image, he could not tell.
“We are looking for three fugitives,” he neuroed. “Vienna Smith is assisting them.”
But where had that image come from?
Dodge’s head had lolled forward, but when Sam lifted it, it stayed up.
“How long has it been?” Vienna shouted back without looking around.
“What?”
“Since we left CDD, you egg!”
Sam checked his watch. What time had they left? “At least five, maybe ten minutes,” he guessed.
“Then why haven’t they shut us down?” Vienna wondered. “It takes five minutes max to locate a vehicle on the LoJack and kill the engine. We’ve got to get off the freeway! Hang on!”
She shot across a couple lanes without signaling, cutting in front of a delivery truck, which delivered its annoyance with a blast on its air horn.
As they spun around the long looping off-ramp, she said, “We have to lose this van now and leg it to the mall. They know our exact location.”
“It’s not going to work,” Sam said. “If they know where we are, it won’t take them long to find us after we leave the van.”
“I know,” Vienna agreed.
In front of them, a tow truck with a large orange towing arm and a mangy-looking dog standing upright on the bed turned on its hazard lights and drifted to the side of the road.
“What time is it?” Vienna asked urgently. “I may have an idea.”
“Four-fifteen,” Sam said.
To their right, a small Mitsubishi car was parked on the side of the road, the only car on the roadway. A few yards before it, a large sign proclaimed NO PARKING, 4 PM TO 6 PM MON–FRI.
The tow truck, its lights flashing, pulled over to the curb in front of the car and began to back toward it.
Vienna signaled and cut over to the right as well, sliding to the curb with a squeal of brakes, just in front of the Mitsubishi.
“Get Dodge out now,” she said. “And leave your cell phone and his in the van.”
Sam slid the door open and guided Dodge out of the van. A blast of cold air hit him. He wrapped his arms around himself and wished he had kept his jacket.
The tow truck driver was halfway out of his cab by now. A big hairy biker of a man. “Hey!” he yelled at them.
“Government plates,” Vienna called back, and flipped him the bird. She grabbed Dodge’s hand and began to walk briskly toward the huge shopping mall at the end of the avenue.
? ? ?
“Special Agent Tyler, this is Cuthbertson in Control.”
“Go ahead, Control.”
“The van has stopped. I repeat, the van has stopped on the Montague Expressway.”
Tyler cursed. They must have already escaped on foot. That would make things harder.
“Hold on a second,” the voice sounded again in his head. “They’re on the move again.”
Sam and Vienna walked swiftly along Falcon Drive to the huge outdoor parking lot of the mall, Dodge trotting between them. Security cameras on tall poles were scattered around the area.
“Don’t look up,” Vienna said. “Just keep moving. The facial-recognition software can’t ping you if you don’t look up.”
That was easy, Sam thought. The wind was bitter, scything around the sides of the building, and it was natural to hunker down and shove your hands in your pockets.
Vienna led them away from the entrance to the mall and around the side to a service lane.
She stopped at the entrance to the lane and scanned the walls of the surrounding buildings. “Two security cameras,” she said.
“Where?” Sam asked.
She pointed them out. “They rotate to cover the whole lane. When this near one is pointed away from us, run to the wall right below the camera, before it swings back and catches us. Do you think Dodge can do that?”
“Let’s find out,” Sam said.
The service lane was a long road, with concrete walls lining both sides. Nestled into the walls were large roll-up doors and smaller access doors. One or two of them were open, revealing loading docks inside. Signs next to each door gave the names of the retailers. Walmart, Borders, Sears.
“Okay,” Vienna said, watching the camera. “Now!”
They each grabbed Dodge by an arm and hauled him along as they ran into the lane. They slammed into the wall beneath the camera just as it turned back the way they had come.
“See the Walmart door?” Vienna asked.
“Uh-huh.”
Walmart was on the opposite side of the lane. The roll-up door was shut, but the access door next to it was open a couple of inches, propped open with a block of wood.
“Wait for the camera to swing back again,” Vienna said, looking straight up at the camera. “Move!”
They tore across the alleyway to the door, pulling it shut behind them.
Inside it seemed dark. Long overhead fluorescents filled the area with a flickering alien glow, but after the sunlight outside, it took their eyes a moment to adjust. The dock looked deserted.
They moved through into the warehouse of the big department store. Floor-to-ceiling shelving systems held every imaginable kind of product on flat, utilitarian racks. There were people walking around in here, but by carefully picking rows, they were able to pass through the warehouse without being spotted. A doorway on one side, near the entrance to the store itself, led into a dusty disused storeroom.
“Stay here. I’ll be back shortly,” Vienna said, and turned to leave.
“Vienna?” Dodge asked faintly.