ABORT RUN
Her finger hovered momentarily over the ENTER key.
“Susan!” a voice barked from the doorway. Susan wheeled scared, fearing it was Hale. But it was not, it was Strathmore. He stood, pale and eerie in the electronic glow, his chest heaving. “What the hell’s going on!”
“Com . . . mander!” Susan gasped. “Hale’s in Node 3! He just attacked me!”
“What? Impossible! Hale’s locked down in—”
“No, he’s not! He’s loose! We need security inhere now! I’m aborting TRANSLTR!” Susan reached for the keypad.
“DON’T TOUCH THAT!” Strathmore lunged for the terminal and pulled Susan’s hands away.
Susan recoiled, stunned. She stared at the commander and for the second time that day did not recognize him. Susan felt suddenly alone.
* * *
Strathmore saw the blood on Susan’s shirt and immediately regretted his outburst. “Jesus, Susan. Are you okay?”
She didn’t respond.
He wished he hadn’t jumped on her unnecessarily. His nerves were frayed. He was juggling too much. There were things on his mind‑things Susan Fletcher did not know about‑things he had not told her and prayed he’d never have to.
“I’m sorry,” he said softly. “Tell me what happened.”
She turned away. “It doesn’t matter. The blood’s not mine. Just get me out of here.”
“Are you hurt?” Strathmore put a hand on her shoulder. Susan recoiled. He dropped his hand and looked away. When he looked back at Susan’s face, she seemed to be staring over his shoulder at something on the wall.
There, in the darkness, a small keypad glowed full force. Strathmore followed her gaze and frowned. He’d hoped Susan wouldn’t notice the glowing control panel. The illuminated keypad controlled his private elevator. Strathmore and his high‑powered guests used it to come and go from Crypto without advertising the fact to the rest of the staff. The personal lift dropped down fifty feet below the Crypto dome and then moved laterally 109 yards through a reinforced underground tunnel to the sublevels of the main NSA complex. The elevator connecting Crypto to the NSA was powered from the main complex; it was on‑line despite Crypto’s power outage.
Strathmore had known all along it was on‑line, but even as Susan had been pounding on the main exit downstairs, he hadn’t mentioned it. He could not afford to let Susan out‑not yet. He wondered how much he’d have to tell her to make her want to stay.
Susan pushed past Strathmore and raced to the back wall. She jabbed furiously at the illuminated buttons.
“Please,” she begged. But the door did not open.
“Susan,” Strathmore said quietly. “The lift takes a password.”
“A password?” she repeated angrily. She glared at the controls. Below the main keypad was a second keypad‑a smaller one, with tiny buttons. Each button was marked with a letter of the alphabet. Susan wheeled to him. “What is the password!” she demanded.
Strathmore thought a moment and sighed heavily. “Susan, have a seat.”
Susan looked as if she could hardly believe her ears.
“Have a seat,” the commander repeated, his voice firm.
“Let me out!” Susan shot an uneasy glance toward the commander’s open office door.
Strathmore eyed the panicked Susan Fletcher. Calmly he moved to his office door. He stepped out onto the landing and peered into the darkness. Hale was nowhere to be seen. The commander stepped back inside and pulled the door shut. Then he propped a chair in front to keep it closed, went to his desk, and removed something from a drawer. In the pale glow of the monitors Susan saw what he was holding. Her face went pale. It was a gun.
Strathmore pulled two chairs into the middle of the room. He rotated them to face the closed office door. Then he sat. He lifted the glittering Beretta semi‑automatic and aimed steadily at the slightly open door. After a moment he laid the gun back in his lap.
He spoke solemnly. “Susan, we’re safe here. We need to talk. If Greg Hale comes through that door . . .” He let it hang.
Susan was speechless.
Strathmore gazed at her in the dim light of his office. He patted the seat beside him. “Susan, sit. I have something to tell you.” She did not move. “When I’m done, “he said, “I’ll give you the password to the elevator. You can decide whether to leave or not.”
There was a long silence. In a daze, Susan moved across the office and sat next to Strathmore.
“Susan,” he began, “I haven’t been entirely honest with you.”
CHAPTER 73
David Becker felt as if his face had been doused in turpentine and ignited. He rolled over on the floor and squinted through bleary tunnel vision at the girl halfway to the revolving doors. She was running in short, terrified bursts, dragging her duffel behind her across the tile. Becker tried to pull himself to his feet, but he could not. He was blinded by red‑hot fire. She can’t get away!
He tried to call out, but there was no air in his lungs, only a sickening pain. “No!” He coughed. The sound barely left his lips.
Becker knew the second she went through the door, she would disappear forever. He tried to call out again, but his throat was searing.
The girl had almost reached the revolving door. Becker staggered to his feet, gasping for breath. He stumbled after her. The girl dashed into the first compartment of the revolving door, dragging her duffel behind her. Twenty yards back, Becker was staggering blindly toward the door.
“Wait!” He gasped. “Wait!”
The girl pushed furiously on the inside of the door. The door began to rotate, but then it jammed. The blonde wheeled in terror and saw her duffel snagged in the opening. She knelt and pulled furiously to free it.
Becker fixed his bleary vision on the fabric protruding through the door. As he dove, the red corner of nylon protruding from the crack was all he could see. He flew toward it, arms outstretched.
As David Becker fell toward the door, his hands only inches away, the fabric slipped into the crack and disappeared. His fingers clutched empty air as the door lurched into motion. The girl and the duffel tumbled into the street outside.
“Megan!” Becker wailed as hit the floor. White‑hot needles shot through the back of his eye sockets. His vision tunneled to nothing, and a new wave of nausea rolled in. His own voice echoed in the blackness. Megan!
* * *
David Becker wasn’t sure how long he’d been lying there before he became aware of the hum of fluorescent bulbs overhead. Everything else was still. Through the silence came a voice. Someone was calling. He tried to lift his head off the floor. The world was cockeyed, watery. Again the voice. He squinted down the concourse and saw a figure twenty yards away.
“Mister?”
Becker recognized the voice. It was the girl. She was standing at another entrance farther down the concourse, clutching her duffel to her chest. She looked more frightened now than she had before.
“Mister?” she asked, her voice trembling. “I never told you my name. How come you know my name?”
CHAPTER 74
Director Leland Fontaine was a mountain of a man, sixty‑three years old, with a close‑cropped military haircut and a rigid demeanor. His jet‑black eyes were like coal when he was irritated, which was almost always. He’d risen through the ranks of the NSA through hard work, good planning, and the well‑earned respect of his predecessors. He was the first African American director of the National Security Agency, but nobody ever mentioned the distinction; Fontaine’s politics were decidedly color‑blind, and his staff wisely followed suit.
Fontaine had kept Midge and Brinkerhoff standing as he went through the silent ritual of making himself a mug of Guatemalan java. Then he’d settled at his desk, left them standing, and questioned them like schoolchildren in the principal’s office.