52
The SUV had parked in a dirt lane off Frenchmans Creek Road, a few hundred yards from the long, winding driveway leading up to the Goulds’ residence. Moro pushed his way back through the soaking brush and came out next to the car. He climbed in and mopped the water off his face and hair with a towel.
“All good?” Lansing asked.
“Power and phone both cut.”
“See anyone?”
“Mister and missus in the living room with candles.” Moro mopped some more as the rain hammered on the windshield. This was crazy—it wasn’t supposed to rain in California. He was sick with fear. They had planned this operation down to the last iota, and so far it had gone according to plan, but Moro couldn’t seem to master his anxiety.
“Did the Kyrgyz brothers start moving in?”
“Yes. As soon as I cut the power and phone, they went in through the back door.”
Lansing glanced at his watch. “We wait ten minutes for them to do their thing, then we move.”
Those Kyrgyz brothers gave Moro the creeps. They were animals. On top of that, they were ugly mothers, all pumped up from weight lifting, pockmarked, Genghis Khan faces, thin dark lips, dressed in black. They could have auditioned as Hollywood killers.
Moro tried to tame the panicky voice running in his head. It would all be over in twenty minutes and they would have the program. Dorothy. Everything had been worked out. Nothing would go wrong. Nobody would get hurt.
The first ten minutes crawled by with excruciating slowness. From their position in the lane they could see or hear nothing. Moro had a terrible fear of hearing gunshots or screams, but all was silent.
Lansing removed a snub-nosed revolver from the glove compartment, checked it, tucked it into his jacket pocket. He pulled a stocking over his head. “It’s time.”
Moro reluctantly pulled on his stocking.
Turning on the car headlights, Lansing eased the car out of its hiding place, drove a short piece down the road, and pulled into the Goulds’ driveway. He drove up slowly, the headlights shining through the falling rain. Through a plate-glass window Moro could see some flashlights moving around and the dull glow of candlelight. All looked peaceful.
Lansing eased the car to a stop and got out, Moro following with the suitcase of his tools and the power pack. As planned, the Kyrgyz brothers had left the back kitchen door unlocked. They entered and made their way into the living room. Moro could hear sniffling and hiccupping.
The husband and wife were duct-taped to dining room chairs. The two Kyrgyz brothers stood on either side of the room, their arms crossed, each casually holding a pistol with a long, fat barrel. Silencers. The two people were utterly terrified, the wife’s face streaked with dried tears, the husband looking slack-jawed and shell-shocked. She was wearing a bra but no shirt, and she was hiccuping from fear. The man had a bruise on his face, and blood was trickling from one nostril. He’d been punched.
Moro looked away. At least the kid didn’t seem to be home.
Lansing stepped into the center of the room and began to speak, his voice low, calm, reasonable.
“We are here,” he said, “to get a computer device. We’re going to need your help finding it. As soon as we find it, we will leave. No one will be hurt. Understood?”
They both nodded, eager to help, hope appearing in their faces. Lansing always had a winning manner about him when he chose to turn it on, and Moro could see that these people were looking to him for reassurance and protection from the scary-crazy Kyrgyz brothers.
“Now,” continued Lansing, speaking to the man, “please direct me to the router in this household.”
“Over there,” said the man, his voice quavering, “on the top shelf.” He nodded toward a large entertainment center setup that dominated the living room.
“Go get it,” Lansing said to Moro.
Moro went over with his flashlight, found it on the top shelf, unplugged it, and took it down. Nobody said a word as he opened the suitcase, removed a laptop and a small power source, plugged the router into the power source, and connected it to the laptop via Ethernet cable. Sitting cross-legged on the carpeted floor, he worked away. In a moment he had the IP log up, and a moment later he had scrolled back to 4:16 that morning and found the UUID number of the device assigned to the IP address where Dorothy had vanished.
“Got it.” He read off the UUID number.
Lansing came over, looked at the screen. “All right. Now, Mr. Gould—or can I call you Dan?”
“Please call me Dan.”
“Dan, then. Now, Dan, do you have any idea what device this UUID number belongs to?” He read it off.
“Yes. I do. It’s a CPU on one of my robot motherboards.”
“Ah. Robots. You make robots?”
“Yes.”
“Excellent. And where are your robots?”
“They’re in my workshop.”
“Is this robot in your workshop?”
“I think so.”
“Would you please take us there, Dan?”
“Yes.”
Lansing gestured at one of the Kyrgyz brothers. “Release him. And you”—he looked at Moro—“bring your tools.”
The Kyrgyz brother Lansing had pointed to began using a box cutter to casually and sloppily slice away the duct tape that held Dan to the chair.
“Jesus, you cut me!”
Ignoring this, the man finished up. Dan stood up, his hand on his leg. It came away bleeding.
“He’s bleeding!” The wife began to cry.
“It’s fine, no problem,” the husband said hastily. “Just a scratch.”
It pissed Moro off, how brutal, stupid, and clumsy these brothers were. And now they were laughing. They thought it was funny. He wondered just how Lansing had managed to draw him into this horror.
“Let’s go,” said Lansing, a note of impatience in his voice.
Moro followed a Kyrgyz brother, Lansing, and Gould through a doorway, down a hall, and into a large workshop. Lansing flashed his light around. There were racks of computer equipment, parts, and rows of robots, some complete, others in various stages of assembly.
“How many robots are we talking about?” Lansing asked.
“About ten. Plus ten sealed motherboards.”
“Let’s start with the robots.”
Gould began bringing out the robots, some complete, some headless or legless, lining them up on the table.
“Open them up,” Moro said, “so I can read the UUIDs.”
With fumbling hands, Gould unscrewed a plate on the torso of the first robot, exposing its CPU. Moro peered in with a flashlight, compared it to the UUID he had written down on a piece of paper. “Nope.”
“Next.” Christ, he could see blood pooling around Gould’s foot. The man was shaking. Those stupid Kyrgyz bastards.
The inventor opened up each robot, but the UUID did not match any of them. Moro stared at Gould, who was now pale and sweating. “Could it be some other piece of computer equipment—say, a motherboard in one of those computers over there?”
“No, no, those all use Intel Xeon processors.”
“What about another computer in the house, cell phone, some other device?”
“Impossible. That UUID goes to an AMD FX 4300 gaming processor, which is what I use for my robots. That’s an expensive processor. You won’t find that in any laptop or cell phone in this house.”
“Let’s check those sealed motherboards.”
With fumbling fingers, Gould opened up the motherboard packages and passed them to Moro. No match.
“This is taking too long,” said Lansing. “There must be something else here you’re overlooking.”
“I’m trying to help you, I swear I am.” The man’s voice was shaking. “You’ve looked at every motherboard in the shop. You’ve seen every single one of them.”
Moro shined his light around the shop, even looking under the benches and tables. There was nothing.
“Go back to the living room,” said Lansing, his voice hard. The Kyrgyz man gave Gould a shove. He looked dazed as they went back into the living room. Now his leg was soaked in blood.
The Kyrgyz man shoved Gould down into the chair. He was about to tape him up again when Lansing said, “Don’t bother.”
Blood started dripping down the side of the chair. Gould looked like he was about to faint.
Lansing went over to the wife, pulled out his revolver, cocked it, and placed the barrel against her head. “I will pull the trigger in sixty seconds if you don’t tell me where that device is.”