“He surely heard our explosion,” Michaels said, pointing to the crater.
“If he is down there, I’d say he did,” Howard said. “That was unavoidable, which is why we had the decoy timed to go off at the exact same moment. The question is, did it work?”
“I guess we’ll find out soon enough.”
Ames watched the truck burn for a while, but there weren’t any more explosions, and he lost interest after a few minutes. He decided to get something to eat and go back to bed. One cup of coffee wouldn’t keep him from sleeping.
He loaded a fresh set of tapes into his recording devices, though. He’d check them in the morning, see how long it took the state patrol to arrive, and what they did while they were there. He also wanted to be sure they all left when they were finished. He didn’t want any stragglers anywhere on his property.
“We’re through, sir,” Reaves said.
Behind Reaves, Holder kept one augmented hand locked onto the trooper’s suit, preventing him from falling into the hole he’d just dug.
Howard nodded. “Lieutenant, the rope ladder.”
Julio came forward, unrolling the nylon and cross-slat device.
“It looks like it’s a good twenty feet to the landing, sir,” Fernandez said. “We’re going to be dangling.”
“No problem,” Howard said.
Michaels said, “Good. Let’s go find this guy, shall we?”
“Yes, sir, Commander. My thoughts exactly.”
Ames sat in the kitchen, eating a duck-egg omelet and black rye toast with marionberry jam. He paused, a bite halfway to his mouth.
What was that?
He listened carefully.
Nothing but the hum of the refrigerators. He waited a few seconds but heard nothing else.
One of the problems with a place this big and old was that it was full of creaky, groany things. Even this far under the surface, some of the heat must seep down enough to cause expansion and contraction. Unless there were resident ghosts, nobody was here but him. He was safer here than in a bank vault — nobody had a combination to his doors.
He finished his snack, washed and dried the dishes, and headed back to the bedroom. You didn’t want to go off and leave food caked on a plate when you might not be back for six or eight months. He hadn’t seen any ants, and they weren’t supposed to be able to get in here. On the other hand, they had found a roach on one of the space stations a couple years back, so why tempt fate?
He sat on the bed and started to pull his shoes off when he heard another noise.
One of his sensors had gone off.
The weird thing was, it wasn’t one of his perimeter alarms. Instead, it was a flashing red light that indicated a clogged air filter in one of the ventilator shafts.
What made it weird was that he had the filters cleaned and checked regularly. Out here in the desert, he had to. The only way that filter could be clogged this soon was if he’d left the door open behind him.
He stopped, felt a chill frost him.
Or if someone else had found another way in.
Michaels looked at General Howard.
Howard was studying a map on his flatscreen. After a moment he gestured down a hallway. “If Ames is still here, he should be over in that direction. The bedroom closest to the sensor room is only a hundred meters or so that way. That’s where I’d be staying, anyway.”
Michaels nodded.
Howard and his men carried 9mm subguns, along with their sidearms. Michaels had a pistol, one of the issue H&K tacticals, with instructions not to shoot unless somebody was in his face shooting at him. If Howard, Julio, and the two troopers all got outshot by one lawyer, the pistol probably wasn’t going to do him all that much good anyhow.
“Spread out,” Howard ordered. “And be quiet. Hand signals from now on.”
Ames held his pistol pointed at the floor, his finger outside the trigger guard, and moved carefully down the hall. He had to be imagining this, right?
Maybe. But something isn’t right. First a truck pulls up, then explodes like a big bomb, then you get a clogged filter warning light. Maybe those two things are connected?
He didn’t like coincidences.
Assume for the moment a worst-case scenario: Somebody was in here. If that was true, then it was bad news, very bad news. Because that would mean they had come specifically for him. That they were organized, well-informed, and extremely resourceful, not only to have found him, but to have mounted an assault and gotten inside undetected.
No. That shouldn’t be possible. They shouldn’t have been able to bypass his sensors, and couldn’t have gotten in if they had. No way.
Maybe there’s a secret entrance you don’t know about?
No. He had seen the plans. He had explored every foot of the place. There were no secret doors he didn’t know about.
He stopped and listened.
Nothing.
He tried to reassure himself. The filter was wonky, or the warning system was. It had to be. It certainly made much more sense.
Maybe. But he was not going to start taking chances now. He’d check everything out, carefully, and if there was any sign at all that he wasn’t alone, he’d run. Simple as that.
He felt better.
Then he turned a corner and saw the soldier with the submachine gun coming toward him—
“Target!” Julio said.
No sooner was that word out of his mouth than the target opened up with a weapon. Howard couldn’t see either the man or the gun, and the helmet’s sound suppressors damped the noise, but it sounded like a handgun. Three quick shots—bam-bam-bam! — fired almost as one.
Instinctively, Howard moved to the wall, seeking cover.
Julio, four meters ahead on point, returned fire with his subgun, a pair of three-round bursts.
Behind Howard, Michaels hit the floor and went prone. Reaves and Holder crouched, weapons seeking targets.
“He’s gone!” Julio yelled.
“You hit?”
“Negative, sir.”
“You hit him?”
“I don’t think so. He boogied awful fast.”
They moved up, but the corridor was indeed empty. There wasn’t any blood on the floor.
“Okay, he knows we’re here. Move in. Crank up that heat sensor, see if we can spot him that way. Commander, you bring up the rear.”
Michaels didn’t argue. He was smart enough to know what he didn’t know.
The five of them moved, Julio clearing the way, waving a little handheld device that should be able to pick up a man’s body heat.
Ames was not immediately evident.
“Easy does it, Lieutenant.”
“Always, General Howard, sir.”
Ames clutched his pistol, his hands sweaty on the wood and steel. He had some kind of assault team, military guys, right here with him! What was he going to do?
Who were they?
He didn’t even have a spare magazine for his gun. How many rounds had he fired? Two? Three?
Panic flowed in him.
The voice of reason tried to rise through the surge: What are you doing, fool?! Put the gun down and raise your hands! Let them arrest you! You’re a brilliant attorney, for God’s sake! They can’t have anything on you that will hold up in court! And once in court, you’ll have them outnumbered and outgunned.
Ames forced himself to take a deep breath. Yes. That was true. But — What if they hadn’t come to arrest him? What if this was some kind of black op deal? What if they were assassins?
They sure weren’t ordinary cops. Nobody had yelled, “Police, freeze!” or anything like that. Yes, he had shot at them, but they shot back in a hurry, and nobody had said a thing.