He took two steps toward the window and reached it before identifying the hollow thump underfoot. He stooped to inspect the source of that sound.
Behind him the office chair slipped. The door popped open two or three inches and several fingers appeared in the crack, groping to remove the chair.
Dart flung himself across the room, drove his shoulder into the door, and broke all four of the man’s fingers. An animal cry erupted from the far side of the door. Dart hiked the chair back into position and leaped over to the windows.
Along the office’s perimeter, a series of floor panels covered spaces created to house phone lines, transmission lines, computer cables, and electrical conduit. To allow easy access, the office carpet had not been glued here, and Dart pulled it back. He yanked up the first-floor panel and found himself staring down into a darkened dead space through a tangle of wires. Three feet below him was the suspended acoustical tile of a fifth-floor-office ceiling. Steel I-beams supported the floor of the office Dart was currently inside.
He didn’t hesitate. He sat down, forced his toes through the mesh of wires, and lowered himself down.
The door banged and the chair slipped again.
Dart kicked at the pressboard panel beneath him, broke it in pieces, and could see through to a desktop in the office below. He let go his purchase and fell through the dead space and down into the office below, landing awkwardly on the desk, driving a sharp pain into his injured ankle.
He heard the chair explode above him. They were inside.
Dart jumped off the desk, ignoring his pain, and ran for the door. A moment later he was running quickly toward the fire stairs, hoping he had enough of a lead.
“That sounded ugly,” the voice said in his left ear.
“Patch me through to Ginny,” Dart said. “I’ve lost the phone.” Like it or not, Proctor’s people would now hear every word.
On Ginny’s instructions, Dart headed for the bottom of the stairs. As Dart ran, she talked nonstop.
Ginny’s detected raid on the Roxin server had triggered the mainframe to adopt a defensive position, eliminating an outsider’s ability to access the machine through modem and pulling the system temporarily off-line. The situation could be reversed, but only from the SYSOP terminal inside Roxin’s data processing center, which Ginny guessed was likely to be located on the facility’s basement level.
“How can you possibly be sure about this?” Dart questioned on the run.
“There are three different systems they could be using, and I know every one of them. They all share the ability to take modem communications off-line. By definition, they cannot be put back on-line using software; they require someone to throw a physical switch-a button. It’s what keeps them secure. The front panels are all basically the same: some system indicators and either one or two buttons. I know the way this works, Joe. This is my area of expertise,” Ginny reminded. “You’re going to have to trust me. And listen, Joe, once we’re back on-line, I need a couple minutes, minimum.”
“What am I looking for?” He asked.
“It will be a plain vanilla box-maybe a stack of them, depending how many incoming lines there are. If there’s more than one, you’ll have to trip each master. The front panel will show a series of seven small lights across it, red probably; in all likelihood, only the farthest right-hand light will be lit. On the far right-hand side of the box itself will be a vertical stack of red lights-one for each incoming line-these are actually buttons, not lights. Below these lights,” she emphasized, “there is another button off by itself.” Then, editing herself, she said, “On two of the machines it is below. On the Black Box model it is above. But it will either read ‘Master,’ or ‘Group On-line,’ or ‘All.’”
“Master, Group On-line, or All,” he repeated.
“Yes. And that is the one you want. One or more of those masters is going to be red. When you push it, it will change to green or amber. At that point we’re back on-line.” She asked, “Is that enough of a description?”
“Sounds good.”
“You can describe things to me and ask, once you’re there.”
“I missed that last bit,” Dart said, finally arriving at the bottom of the stairs. Ginny repeated herself. “Okay,” Dart said, cowering from the time pressure. “I’m on the basement level. What room am I looking for?”
“Data Processing,” Ginny replied.
Dart reevaluated his situation. There were, at the very minimum, three guards after him. Proctor, and anyone accompanying him, had to be thrown into the mix. That made four or more after him. They had lost track of him. With Proctor running things, Dart felt certain they would do the smart thing: conduct a floor-by-floor search. At the same time, at least one guard would watch the computer, monitoring the system to see if Dart attempted to use a security card to gain access anywhere. This person would guide the search team.
The voice of the lookout scratched into Dart’s ear like fingernails down a blackboard. “They’re taking their time, but they’re working their way down. I’m showing them at the second floor.”
By going to the basement level he had, in all likelihood, trapped himself.
He ran down the hall where, instead of the cryptic color system, the doors actually carried titles. Several were marked SERVICE PERSONNEL ONLY. Another read FOOD SERVICES. He passed two bathrooms. Something marked HIGH VOLTAGE DO NOT ENTER.
Dart turned right down a long corridor. The basement was a rabbit warren. He passed a door marked TECHNICAL SERVICES.
“Ginny?” he said into the air.
“Right here.” She spoke into his ear.
“I’m looking at Technical Services. Haven’t seen anything like Data Processing.”
“Basement level?”
“Right.”
“Security?”
“You bet,” Dart confirmed, wondering how he could get inside.
“Check the crack below the door,” Ginny advised. “The gap at the bottom of the door. Cold air sinks,” he said. “The computer room will be real cold.”
Dart dropped to his knees and poked his fingers through. “You got it. Real cold.”
“Let’s give it a try,” she said.
Dart stood back up, his knees killing him. He stared at the door in confusion. It was a heavy steel door, and it was locked. He pulled his gun out of his holster. It was all he could think of.
“Whatever you do,” Ginny said, as if standing there, “don’t break that door down.”
“I have to,” Dart replied.
“You can’t. Same reason we can’t have your bad boys breaking in,” she said, referring to the ERT team. “That kind of illegal access will cause the mainframe to suspend. The only person able to undo that is the SYSOP himself.”
“Shit,” Dart replied. He glanced up: acoustic panels. “Hold on,” Dart said.
“You need a security card,” Ginny advised. “It’s the only way. Trust me.”
“Maybe not,” Dart corrected, heading back down the hallway toward the bathrooms that he had passed.
The lookout interrupted and said, “They’re descending fire stairs, north and south, approaching level one.”
Dart pushed into the mens room and flicked on the light. He glanced up: acoustical panels hung in a suspended frame. He ran back into the hallway, down to the intersection of the other corridor and made a mental note of distance and angle. He returned to the bathroom, pulled himself up onto the sink’s countertop, and pushed up on the panel. It moved out of his way.
“I’m going for it,” Dart announced.
“Going for what?”
“We’ll see.”
Securing a hand-hold on a pipe within the area above the suspended ceiling, Dart hooked a foot over the stall partition and pulled himself up and through. The dead space occupied an area about four feet high-above Dart was the support structure for the first floor; below, the suspended ceiling through which he had just entered. The area was claustrophobic and vast; hallway ceiling fixtures threw enough light around for Dart to see a series of black plastic plumbing pipes and heavy steel sprinkler pipes that were suspended from the overhead I-beams. He took the time to replace the acoustic panel he had come through to hide the way he had come. He hoped the security team would pass up the men’s room and continue their search elsewhere on another level.