Randi’s hand appeared over the fence and grabbed Zellerbach by the collar as Smith vaulted over next to him. He tucked the Sig Sauer in the back of his pants and started immediately in the direction of the siren.
A swirling red-and-blue light became visible as they angled through an empty lot and ran out into the center of the road, waving desperately in the illumination of the cruiser’s headlights.
It skidded to a stop and the driver threw open his door, ducking behind it for cover.
“They’re shooting!” Randi yelled in a panicked voice. “Someone back there’s shooting at people!”
Smith confirmed that the cop didn’t have a partner in the car and followed her around to the side of it.
“Calm down, ma’am,” the man said. “How many are—”
He fell silent when Smith put a gun to the side of his head and Randi deftly relieved him of his weapon.
“Marty, get in the passenger seat,” Smith ordered as Randi forced the cop into the back and slid in next to him.
Zellerbach did as he was told but squealed in pain from his injured butt when Smith floored the car up the dark street.
“Are you crazy!” the policeman said while his cruiser crept up to eighty in a twenty-five-mile-an-hour zone. “You’re never—”
“Shut up,” Randi said. “We just saved your ass. If you’d come up against that shooter he’d have killed you. And now, instead of making your wife a widow, he’s just going to disappear back into the woodwork.”
“I’m dying, Jon,” Zellerbach said. “I don’t have much more time. I want you to know how much our friendship has meant—”
“You’re not dying, Marty.”
“This is your fault,” he said, his mild schizophrenia flipping the switch from melodrama to anger. “Every time we get together something like this happens.”
“You’re exaggerating.”
“I never want to see you again.”
“Who the hell are you people?” the cop interjected.
Smith ignored him and dialed Klein again.
“Jon! Are you all right? What happened?”
“We’ve got problems and need a little of your magic.
“What kind of problems?”
“The good major sent people after us at Marty’s house. We’ve got a lot of shots fired and a police response. Two bodies in the house, one man unconscious in the tunnel below the bathroom, and at least two men still fully operational.”
“Understood. Are the three of you all right?”
“We’ll live. But we’re headed west out of DC in a stolen police cruiser.”
“What happened to the cop?”
“That’s a whole other problem. He’s in the backseat with Randi.”
67
The dark computer monitor turned gray and then a hazy white as Christian Dresner moved hesitantly closer.
“Lieutenant!” he shouted, though he knew the man’s Merge would automatically adjust the volume to a conversational level. “Wake up!”
Through Deuce Brennan’s feed, he’d seen his orders carried out and Whitfield executed. But then the situation had devolved into chaos as Randi Russell attempted to attack and then collapsed for no apparent reason. Smith had fallen a moment later, followed by Brennan’s feed losing cohesiveness and then going black despite a strong network connection.
There was little doubt that Zellerbach was responsible. He’d backed away in panic, as could be expected, but then picked up something. The playback wasn’t entirely clear, but it looked like a television remote control.
Brennan’s tooth mike was active again but the sounds coming through it were badly distorted. The audio slowly sharpened, and after a few seconds was clear enough to decipher. Gunshots. And approaching sirens.
“Lieutenant!” Dresner shouted again. “Get up!”
The image on the monitor came into focus and then moved unsteadily from the blank white of the ceiling to Zellerbach’s Cray, and finally the door leading to the hallway.
“Lieutenant!”
Finally, there was a response. “I’m here. What happened?”
“It doesn’t matter. You need—”
“It was that goddamn computer geek and his half-assed security wasn’t it? He must have had gas. Where are they?”
“Where do you think they are? They’re gone!”
Brennan connected to the men outside. “Report. What’s your situation?”
“Deuce!” a voice on the other end said. “We thought we’d lost you. The targets escaped in a police cruiser and we’ve got more cops on the way. The closest are less than a minute out. The three of you need to get the hell out of there.”
“Whitfield and Eric are down.”
There was a long pause as the man processed the news of his commanding officer’s death. “There’s nothing we can do for you, Deuce. I’m not shooting a cop. Now get your ass out of there.”
“Understood.”
The image shifted again as Brennan stood and began lurching toward the front door.
“They can’t have gotten far,” Dresner said as the dim image of Zellerbach’s front yard appeared on screen. “You can still track them.”
“I can’t do anything unless I get out of here first,” he responded, barely avoiding a powerful jet of water from the property’s automated defenses.
Dresner slammed a fist into the wall next to the monitor and turned away, activating an icon in his peripheral vision that displayed the current status of Merges worldwide. Eight hours to peak usage, with just over four million people online. Twenty-four percent of those people—972,000—had been marked for elimination by LayerCake.
He pulled up the “Security Breach” tab and activated the “US Military” subheading. Immediately a massive flow chart of interconnected names came to life in front of him. Overall U.S. military usage was within expected parameters, as was usage by the military’s hierarchy. He switched to a tab labeled “Intel.” Again, everything was within normal parameters. Utilization by the general intelligence complex was nominal and the directors of the CIA, NSA, and FBI were all connected through their personal Merges. Below their individual names was a family tree confirming that their close relatives were also using at normal levels. The “Political” tab showed a similar result. Congress was within normal ranges and while Castilla still hadn’t adopted the technology, his wife was online with a headset, as was one of his children.
The data behind the “Networks” icon were equally reassuring. Internet service providers, cable companies, and phone companies showed no unusual outages.
Of course, there was no real purpose to looking at any of these numbers beyond the emotional reassurance he derived from seeing them. The moment any of the categories diverged from expected parameters, LayerCake would immediately notify him.
So either Smith hadn’t yet notified his superiors of what he’d found or he had and they were still in the process of acting on that information. Either way, Dresner could no longer deny that he was losing control of the situation. Nine hundred and seventy-two thousand people. Would it be enough?
68
The sun was finally up and the crush of people heading to their jobs in DC had started in the oncoming lane. Westbound, though, traffic was light and Smith kept the police cruiser moving smoothly up the road. Constant glances in the rearview mirror provided no evidence of a tail, but did that really mean anything anymore? Using an actual car to track someone suddenly seemed so archaic.