Ground Zero Page 16

  “Sharon said she thought someone was writing Terry's code for her,” Eileen said. She took a sip. Joe looked up in surprise.

  “She told you that?” Joe said. “I'm -- well, I'm amazed. We've talked about it, you know, because it just seemed like all of a sudden her code got really good, but --”

  “She wanted to help. She knows the little things can be important.”

  Joe looked at the floor again.

  “She told you about Sully, didn't she?” he said in a low voice.

  “Yes,” Eileen said. “Do you want to tell me about her?”

  “No.”

  “Did you kill Terry Guzman, Joe?”.

  “I did not,” he said hotly. “I did not. I hated her, but I wouldn't. I could never.”

  “I just want to know who did,” Eileen said.

  “That all the tapes, Joe?” Art asked from behind Joe. “Can you bring them across for me? I want my turn with the detective, here.”

  “Your turn?” Eileen said. She finished her pop.

  Art handed his tapes to Joe. He took them and left with a brief, anxious glance towards Eileen. Eileen raised the pop can to him in a small salute, then pitched it into the corner wastebasket with perfect accuracy. A small symbolic message for Joe Tanner.

  “Two points,” Art said admiringly, not understanding. That was all right with Eileen; she was sure Joe did understand.

  “So what do you want, Art? You figured out the murderer yet? I have to go in -” Eileen checked her watch, “ -- forty five minutes. Gotta date with the boss.”

  “No, I haven't figured out the murderer,” Art said. “But I thought I would show you the Gaming computer system and how it works before you go. Don't know if it'll help or not.”

  “Worth a try. I'm sick of these damned tapes.”

  Berlin, Germany

  Muallah looked out the small window of the airplane and watched the refueling trucks. He schooled himself to patience. A private jet was out of the question however much it would have made the journey easier. The helicopter that awaited them in Mashaad would satisfy his desire for speed, once they reached the northern Iranian city.

  From there the helicopter would bring them into Turkmenistan, former subject state of the U.S.S.R.

  Muallah had targeted Turkmenistan more than two years ago. He knew there were missile silos somewhere there, and he knew the Turkmenistanis were more Islamic than Russian in their loyalties. Turkmenistan would be a fine place, if he only had the exact location of a missile silo. Turkmenistan bordered Iran, one of the countries where Muallah was held in a certain -- affection. He’d found plenty of help there for what the Iranians believed was a just another terrorist group.

  Muallah smiled, his fingers resting lightly on his copy of the Koran. The Iranians meant to use him. As did the Libyans and the Iraqis. None of the governments were aware that Muallah was using them. When they discovered their mistake, their own people would already be Muallah’s fanatic subjects, loyal to the death to the One of the Prophecies. The one who blew the Trumpet of Doom would topple governments before him like straws in the wind.

  “Allah akhbar,” Muallah murmured, and opened his Koran. He ruthlessly suppressed his excitement. The time was coming, but it was not yet upon him.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Gaming Center, Schriever Air Force Base

  They stood in the Truth Team room. Art showed Eileen a screen full of little windows, each one flashing and clicking.

  “I'm backing up the data from the Cray to the Digital storage devices, basically just a bunch of big machines with tape drives. The Silicon Graphics computers are hooked into the network but it would take too much time to transmit all their data, so we just push it onto tapes and store it. The whole system, the whole Game, is started off from my console, right here.”

  Art touched the mouse key, and brought a window to the front of the others.

  “This window would start a program, which would call other programs on the Silicon Graphics machines. These programs all talk to each other via messages, across the network. So these computer programs are like people on a party phone line, each talking away at each other. Say, you have a battle manager who wants to fire a Brilliant Pebble? He calls up the Environment guy and says 'Hey, what's the weather like?' Or sort of like that.”

  “Okay,” Eileen said.

  “The Crays are our big machines, they run most of the processing to figure out intercepts, the weather, the time of day, everything else you can think of. I'd like to show you one, if you would like.”

  Eileen had heard of Crays. She didn't think the enormous super computer would have anything to do with the murder, but she was curious to see one.

  “Sure,” she said to Art.

  “OK, we have to leave the Center for a few minutes. You want me to lock the door?”

  “Yes, please.” Eileen was immediately suspicious.

  “Don't worry, Jeff changed the combination yesterday. You want to leave for good, right now? I'm not doing this well, am I? I mean, Jeff Blaine has the only combination to this room. Nobody could come in here while we're gone. But in order to get back in, we'll have to have the Major back here.”

  “No, you're not doing this well.” Eileen couldn't help but laugh. Art looked so crestfallen. “But I'll tell you what. I will leave for good, that'll give me a chance to pick up some supper.” She bent and gathered her notes into a pile. “That's all I need.”

  “Okay, then,” Art said cheerfully, good humor restored. “Let's go see the Cray.”

  They walked down the sloped hallway to the door. “Notice the slight slope to the hallway,” Art said.

  “I did notice that. Why is that?”

  “The floors throughout the Gaming Center are raised a little bit, to allow the network communications cables to run underneath the floor,” Art said. “The Cray has enormous cables, and the power cables to each of those Silicon Graphics are also huge. In addition, the space underneath is chilled and vents are put in underneath each SG, to make sure they don't overheat. They --”

  He stopped. Eileen stopped.

  “The floors are raised,” Eileen said. “How do you get underneath the floors?”

  “The floors come up in big metal squares,” Art said. “You can raise the floors everywhere in the Center. The carpets are designed to raise in big flaps, but they’re interlocked so you can’t see how they come apart. But I don’t think there’s room --”

  Eileen turned and ran back into the Gaming Center. Art followed. Eileen stopped at Terry's door, looking at the floor. Streaks of dust lay everywhere. The chalk outline was oddly shaped, drawn around the chair where she'd died. It didn't look like a human, just an irregular blob.

  “The floor,” Eileen said. The carpeting looked solid and plush.

  “The carpet is cut into interlocking squares. If you look at the pattern, you can almost see it. The squares can be lifted up,” Art said. “Then the floor tiles can be raised. But I don’t think you could crawl around down there.”

  “Could you enter this Center from across the hall? From downstairs?”

  “No. The Center is sealed. The vents are only so big,” Art said, holding his hands a few inches apart. “Let me get a suction tool, that's the way to lift up the floor tiles. You want to go underneath the floor? I really don’t think you’ll fit.”

  “Yes I do. But not from Terry's room. I'm going to want prints from underneath that tile.”

  “He left prints on the underside?” Art said doubtfully.

  “Maybe so,” Eileen said grimly. “I want to check out those vents. If no one can get in or out of this Center, then --”

  “Then what?” Art said. He walked back to the television studio and returned with a metal bar with two suction cups attached at either end. “This will bring up the tiles. And here's a flashlight.”

  “Then the person who killed Terry Guzman was one of the Gamers,” Eileen said. Art stopped, and the suction tool drooped in his hand. The color drained fr
om his face.

  “No one else could have done it. Every other person was in sight of the cameras. Unless the film has been tampered with. I won't rule that out entirely.”

  “Whoever it was sitting in their own cube, one of the little rooms in the Center. They lifted their own floor tile, crawled underneath the floor to Terry's room, killed her, and crawled back. Then they pretended great shock and amazement when her body was found. No one else could have done it. It has to be one of the Gamers who were in those rooms.”

  “Oh, no,” Art said softly. “Oh, please, no.”

  “You are still on my suspect list, Mr. Bailey. Although you and Joe would have to be together on this.”

  “We could have done it, but we didn't,” Art said steadily. He held out the suction tool and the flashlight. “But you shouldn't believe me, of course.”

  “I don't,” Eileen said. “I'm going to give Major Blaine a call, then I'll go under the floor. I'd like to have you leave the area before I do this.”

  “I understand,” Art said. Eileen took the metal tool and the flashlight from him. “You pull the lever in the middle and that breaks the suction,” Art explained. “Those tiles are heavy, so be careful.”

  “I'll be careful,” Eileen said grimly.

  Art turned and left the room without another word, and Eileen sighed and scrubbed at her forehead with her free hand. She could see Art in the witness stand, with the same mournful innocent look on his face. She could see Art in the electric chair. Art could be a murderer. But it felt bad to mistrust him, just the same.

  “Major Blaine speaking.”

  “This is Eileen Reed, Jeff. I need you to get the SID people back here. I need you to come up here, too.”

  “What did you find?” Blaine said immediately.

  “I found out how it was done. I need the print people. Get up here.” Eileen hung up the phone, and clicked the locking mechanism on the suction tool.

  “Here we go,” she said to herself.

  The carpet piece came up like a jigsaw puzzle. The sturdy carpet pieces were laid across a metal checkerboard of tiles. The tool sucked up against a metal tile firmly but it took Eileen a couple of tries to get the heavy tile up and out of its metal frame. When the tile moved aside a blast of cold air hit Eileen in the face. The opening was pitch black, and cold.

  Eileen made a little whistling mouth, but didn't whistle. She had never liked dark places very much. The flashlight was powerful and the batteries were fresh. The floor looked like it was a good distance beneath the layer of tiles. Huge gray cables snaked across the floor. Bright red and blue lines twisted through the cables. The gray cables looked like enormous snakes.

  “Snakes, why’d it have to be snakes,” Eileen quoted to herself. She checked her gun and looked around the room. Blaine would figure out where Eileen had gone when he came in. Eileen had pulled up the floor tile directly in front of the Center door. If Blaine didn't look down, he'd fall right into the hole when he walked in.

  Eileen dropped into the darkness. She crouched down and only then thought perhaps the murderer was waiting in the dark for her. That perhaps she should have drawn her gun. She peered around in all directions and felt her body prickle with sudden sweat.

  There was nothing but cables, and thin metal columns that supported the frame that held the tiles. Eileen swept the flashlight around in a circle. She could see to the walls in every direction. The walls were concrete, solid, pierced by cables and vents that were only big enough to let a good sized rabbit through, if that. Eileen swept again, more slowly, looking. There was no dust. The chilled air started to cool the sweat, and Eileen began to feel the cold. There were cables dangling from the metal framework, attached to the Silicon Graphics machines above her. Eileen crawled forward a few paces. The fit was fairly tight, but she could move around. She’d found her murderer’s pathway.

  “Miss Reed,” said a voice, and Eileen backed up. She looked up out of the hole to see Major Blaine. “What are you doing?”

  Eileen stood up.

  “I found out how the murder was done,” she said. “And I found out it had to be one of your Gamers. Unless --” Eileen looked around. “What if the murderer were hiding in the floor? They could have gotten out sometime yesterday, when no one was looking. You said all doors weren't guarded? They were dead bolted?”

  “Wait, wait, what's going on? I don't understand. Explain.”

  Eileen sighed and stepped out of the chilly hole. She clicked off the flashlight.

  “This is how the murder was done. The murderer was either one of your Gamers, or someone already here, hiding underneath the floor. Unless there was someone here before the Game began, it has to be one of the Gamers. They pulled up the floor tile in their cube, dropped underneath the floor, and crawled to Terry's room. They came up through a floor tile behind Terry, stabbed her, and then went back underneath the floor. Get it?”

  “Got it,” Blaine breathed. “I got it.”

  “OK. If the killer was a Gamer, they went back to their room, put on their gear, and pretended everything was OK. If this murderer was another person, when did they leave? Could they have left the room last night, after everyone had gone?”

  “I understand now. But they couldn't have. All the doors except one were dead bolted from the inside. The other one was locked and guarded. They were still all dead bolted this morning when I checked.”

  Eileen stood looking at the hole in the floor. She shut out Major Blaine and thought about the possibilities of what she’d just discovered. She’d had this ability since she was a child. Perhaps it had been born in her. She could turn off all input and stand in a clean white room in her head, arranging puzzle pieces.

  So she stood with a blank face, looking toward the hole in the floor but seeing a white room and a white table. Some of the pieces went together. Terry Guzman’s piece lay neatly surrounded by interlocking Gamers. A pile of white pieces lay off to one side. The Procell file. Now a new puzzle piece appeared. It had a familiar shape.

  Bernie Ames, the best friend of her Air Force days, was killed and classified a “pilot error” death. Bernie would not fly into a mountain. Bernie would not make such a mistake. Eileen tried to get the documents about the A-10 crash. The documents were sealed. Other documents were mysteriously missing. Was Bernie shut up because she knew something? Was the plane crash the result of some scandal, some error, that the Air Force didn't want brought to the light of day?

  The puzzle piece that refused to be solved had existed in Eileen’s white room for seven years. Now it suddenly joined the Gamers that surrounded Terry Guzman. There was another possibility for Terry’s death, the same sort of piece that fit in with Bernie’s unadmitted murder. The piece was titled “Cover up.” It could fit.

  Eileen blinked and looked at Major Blaine, who was speaking to her . Eileen hadn’t heard a word he had been saying.

  “-- one of the Gamers? It must be? Miss Reed?”

  “Or maybe that's what I'm supposed to think, Major,” Eileen said coldly. “Maybe. I want the names of the guards who were at this door last night.”

  “Surely you don't think someone else was here--”

  “I think I'm going to keep my mind open,” Eileen said. “I need the names of those guards. And your OSI crime scene team needs to get prints from this floor.” Eileen glanced at her watch. “I've got to go, I'm going to be late.”

  “Will you be back tomorrow?” Blaine asked, for the first time looking lost.

  “I'll be back,” Eileen said. “I've got some other work I need to do. I'll be back at eight.”

  “I’ll expect you,” Blaine said. “You --”

  But Eileen was already walking away.

  She passed Roberto in the hallway as she headed out. Roberto was coming through the doors with a can of pop in his hand, and he gave Eileen a cautious smile. Eileen lifted a hand to him. Her other arm was full of her notes and the personal files of the Gamers. Along with the notes, she carried the Procell file.
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  Chapter Eighteen

  Colorado Springs Investigations Bureau

  Associated Press

  5-APRILPolice Confirm Death Of Fifth Scientist Under Unusual Circumstances

  LONDON (AP) - Police on Sunday confirmed the death of a metallurgist involved in secret defense work - the fifth such case in the past eight months in which authorities have been unable to establish the cause of death.

  A sixth scientist, a research expert on submarine warfare equipment at the University of Loughborough, vanished in January.

  Eileen took a bite of her third taco and wiped some shreds of lettuce off the file. The file was extremely neat. The newspaper articles were folded and slipped into envelopes, stapled to a photocopy of the article. The name and date of the newspaper had also been included when Doug Procell clipped his articles. There were pictures, too, one of them of a spectacular wreck. One glance and Eileen knew it was a non-survivable wreck. There was nothing which the paramedics called “living space,” the bubble formed of twisted metal and glass that could hold a human being. Sometimes people died when there was a living space in the vehicle, because their seat belts weren't on or they didn't have the ancient animal cunning to hunker down when the accident started to happen. Sometimes, though, nothing would help because the living space was destroyed. The car in the newspaper photograph was one of those. The only thing recognizable was the wheels.

  Harriet Sullivan, 26, was pronounced dead on arrival at Memorial Hospital after this single car rollover on Highway 94.

  Eileen looked at the picture again. Then she turned it over, and read the next article. It was another article from England, but it was a completely different murder.

  Associated Press Fri 10-APRIL 00:41

  Dead Scientists Mystery Baffles Britain