Fight the Future (2 page)

Cooles nodded. He turned to the line of waiting firemen and shouted, "Move them all back! Now!"

Then, hurrying to catch up with Bronschweig, he said, "I sent my men down after the boy. The report is that his eyes went black. That's the last I heard—"

Bronschweig ignored him and made a bee-line for the sinkhole. Already the figures were clambering back up the ladder, bearing the limp body of the young boy on the bubble litter. At sight of this Bronschweig finally stopped, star-ing as the rescue crew bore it back toward the chopper. The crew followed, and as the gath-ered crowd watched in silence, the helicopter lifted back into the air, its blades sending bil-lows of red dustlike smoke across the plain. A minute later and it was only a black smudge against the ruddy sky.

"Is that my boy?" a woman's voice asked from the back of the crowd. "Is that my boy?"

Bronschweig walked toward the develop-ment, Captain Cooles close behind. In the near distance a line of unmarked heavy vehi-cles barreled along the highway, turning into the access road leading to the little rows of identical houses. Unmarked cargo vans and squat trucks were driven by blank-faced men in dark uniforms. At the front of this threatening caravan were two huge white tanker trucks, devoid of any logo or advertising, gleaming ominously in the dying sun. Bronschweig stopped, arms crossed on his chest, and watched them with a tense expression.

"What about my men?" Captain Coole's loomed angrily at the doctor's side, his face red. "I sent five men down there—"

Bronschweig turned and walked away with-out a word.

Cooles waved furiously back at the sink-hole. "Goddamnit, did you hear what I said? I sent—"

Seeming not to hear him, Bronschweig walked toward the approaching trucks. A few of them had parked in a line in the cul-de-sac.

Official-looking personnel were already pulling tents and tent poles, satellite dishes, banks of electric lights and monitoring equipment from them. The townspeople stared in bewilderment as the first of a myriad of refrigeration units were yanked from the backs of trucks and mus-cled toward the sinkhole.

Drivers continued maneuvering the huge trucks, efficiently form-ing a barrier blocking the scene of action from the crowd's view.

Bronschweig disappeared into the melee. When he reached the tanker trucks he ducked between them and surreptitiously withdrew a cell phone. His face tight, he punched in a number, waited, and then spoke.

"Sir? The impossible scenario we hadn't planned for?" He listened for a moment, then replied tersely,

"Well, we better come up with a plan."

<>

CHAPTER 2

FEDERAL BUILDING DALLAS, TEXAS

One week later, fifteen agents in dark wind-breakers emblazoned with the letters FBI watched impassively as another helicopter hov-ered above them. They stood in seemingly ran-dom formation on a rooftop, their eyes shielded by reflective sunglasses, faces uniformly expres-sionless. At the sides of a half-dozen of them, leashed Dobermans and German shepherds lolled exhausted, tongues hanging out as they vainly sought relief from the shimmering heat of midday. When the chopper touched down, the dogs flattened their ears against their skulls, but otherwise took no notice. A moment later the helicopter's side door was flung open, and a single man emerged. Hatchet-faced, his eyes narrowing as he took in the men and women waiting on the roof, Special Agent-in-Charge Darius Michaud paused, then walked authorita-tively toward them.

"We've evacuated the building and been through it bottom to top." One of the agents met him, cell phone in hand, and motioned at the sweep of gray roof around them. "No trace of an explosive device, or anything resembling one."

Michaud looked at him, his mouth tight. "Have you taken the dogs through?" The agent nodded.

"Yes, sir."

"Well, take them through again." For an instant the agent stared at him, unable to hide the weariness in his face. Then, "Yes, sir," he replied, and turned back to his charges.

Behind him Michaud turned and scanned the horizon, his hands linked behind his back.

For a minute or two he stood like this, register-ing the familiar silhouette of the Dallas skyline, the flat silvery expanse of cloudless sky beyond and the dull array of ladders and turbines and concrete atop the adjacent skyscraper.

Suddenly he stiffened. Shading his eyes with his hand, he walked slowly to the edge of the roof, leaning against the barrier there. He said nothing, but the line of his mouth grew even tighter as he stared to where a solitary fig' ure emerged from a door on the neighboring roof. Even from this distance, he could see the resolve with which the slender form moved beneath its FBI windbreaker, and the glint of sunlight on her shoulder-length auburn hair. Michaud's hands clenched at the edge of the wall.

On the other rooftop, Special Agent Dana Scully winced as the door slammed shut behind her. Her finger jabbed at her cell phone as she stepped carefully down the stairs and onto the roof, looking around warily.

"Mulder?" she said urgently, the cell phone cool against her cheek as she paused. "It's me."

Mulder's voice echoed tinnily in her ear. "Where are you, Scully?"

"I'm on the roof."

"Did you find anything?"

She brushed a drop of sweat from her nose. "No. I
haven't
."

"What's wrong, Scully?"

Scully drew herself up and shook her head impatiently, as though Mulder stood in front of her and not somewhere on the other end of a cell phone. "I've just climbed twelve floors, I'm hot and thirsty and I'm wondering, to be hon-est, what I'm doing here."

"You're looking for a bomb," Mulder's un-flappable voice replied.

Scully sighed. "I know that. But the threat was called in for the federal building across the street."

"I think they have that covered."

Scully grimaced even more impatiently. She took a deep breath and began, "Mulder, when a terrorist bomb threat is called in, the logical pur-pose of providing this information is to allow us to
find the bomb

. The rational object of terrorism is to provide terror. If you'd study the statistics, you'd find a model behavioral pattern in virtu-ally every case where a threat has turned up an explosive device—"

She paused, and drew the cell phone closer, choosing her words as carefully as though she were explaining something to a rather slow, stolid child. "If we don't act in accordance with that data, Mulder—if you ignore it as we have done—the chances are great that if there actu-ally
is
a bomb, we might not find it. Lives could be lost—"

She paused again for breath, and suddenly realized she'd been the only one talking for the last few minutes. Her voice rose slightly as she said, "Mulder… ?"

"What happened to playing a hunch?"

Scully almost jumped out of her skin: the voice came not from her cell phone but from two feet away.

There, in the shadow of the AC unit, stood Fox Mulder. He raised an eyebrow almost imperceptibly as he cracked a sunflower seed between his teeth, tossing the spent husks to the ground as he clicked off his cell phone and stepped toward her.

"Jesus, Mulder!" Scully moaned, shaking her head.

"There's an element of surprise, Scully," said Mulder evenly. "Random acts of unpre-dictability."

He popped another sunflower seed into his mouth as he went on, "If we fail to anticipate the unforeseen or expect the unexpected in a universe of unforeseen possibilities, we find ourselves at the mercy of anyone or anything that cannot be programmed, categorized, or easily referenced…"

As he spoke he walked toward the edge of the building. At the wall he leaned over, sail-ing his sunflower seeds off into the air and then dusting his hands off. For a moment he paused, staring thoughtfully, almost wistfully, into the nether distance, then turned to Scully and said, "What are we doing up here? It's hotter than hell."

And before Scully could make an exasper-ated reply he was off again, striding gracefully toward the stairs where Scully had emerged a few minutes before. She stood and watched him, then stuffed her cell phone into a pocket. Hiding a grin, she followed him, grabbing his arm and steering him up the steps.

"I know you're bored in this assignment," she said. Any faint vestige of humor leaked from her face.

"But unconventional thinking is only going to get you into trouble now."

Mulder looked at her impassively. "How's that?"

"You've got to quit looking for what isn't there. They've closed the X-Files, Mulder. There's procedure to be followed here.
Protocol
," she added, giving the word a threatening emphasis.

Mulder nodded as though weighing her advice. Then, "What do you say we call in a bomb threat for Houston," he suggested, tilting his head to one side. "I think it's free beer night at the Astrodome."

Scully set her mouth and gave him a look, but it was no use. Sighing, she hurried past him up the stairs, took the last few steps until she stood at the top, and grabbed the doorknob. She twisted it, once, twice, futilely; and looked back at Mulder.

"Now what?" she demanded, her face grim.

Mulder's impish expression vanished. "It's locked?" he asked edgily.

Scully looked at him and wiggled the knob again. "So much for anticipating the unfore-seen…"

She squinted up at the sun, then gazed at Mulder. Before she could say anything else, he lunged past her, yanking her hand from the knob. He turned it, and the door opened eas-ily.

"Had you." Scully smirked, leaning against the wall.

Mulder shook his head. "No you didn't."

"Oh, yeah. Had you big time."

"No, you
didn't—
"

She slid past him into the stairwell, ignor' ing his protests as she headed for the freight elevator. She punched a button and waited for the welcoming
ping
as the doors opened.

"Sure did," she said smoothly, still grinning as Mulder shouldered into the elevator before her. "I saw your face, Mulder. There was a moment of panic."

Mulder stood with forced dignity as the ele-vator dropped. "Panic?" he said, and shook his head.

"Have you ever seen me panic, Scully?"

The elevator drew to a halt. Refreshingly chill air pooled around them as the doors opened on to a busy lobby: suits with brief-cases and sheaves of paper, deliverymen, uni-formed couriers, and a bored-looking security guard.

"1 just did," Scully said triumphantly as she sailed into the lobby. Before her a group of schoolchildren parted, heads turning excitedly at sight of her FBI jacket.

"When I panic, I make this face," said Mulder, staring at her completely deadpan.

Scully glanced at him. "Yeah, that's the face you made. You're buying."

Mulder followed her, heedless of the teacher now trying futilely to herd her charges into an adjoining elevator. "All right," he said reluctantly.

Scully stood with her arms crossed and stared pointedly at a door crowned by a sign that read SNACKS/BEVERAGES. Mulder dug in his pocket, fishing for change as he asked, "What'll it be?

Coke, Pepsi? A saline IV?"

"Something sweet." She flashed a victory smile. Mulder rolled his eyes and headed for the lounge. He walked slowly, sorting through a handful of change, as someone else elbowed by him on his way out of the room. A tall man in a blue vendor's uniform, hair close-cropped. His gaze passed briefly and casually over Mulder. Mulder glanced back, then hurried inside to catch the door before it closed.

Inside the windowless room he bypassed the ranks of snack and candy machines for a large, brightly lit monstrosity displaying soft drinks. He counted out the correct change and one by one plunked the coins through the slot, waiting for the reassuring
chunk
as each one hit bottom. Then he hit a button, leaned back on his heels, and—

Nothing.

"Oh, come
on
," groaned Mulder. He beat his fist against the front of the machine—still nothing—and finally rummaged through his pocket for more change. Slid it into the machine, stabbed the button—nothing.

"Damn it."

He stared at the cheerfully glowing display of cans, then pounded it with both fists; after a moment he gave one last jab at a button.

Nothing.

Swearing under his breath, Mulder stepped away from it, glared, then moved around to the back of the machine. There was perhaps a hand's-span of space between it and the wall. He crouched and peered there, frowning.

On the floor snaked a heavy black electri-cal cord. The plug lay a few inches from Mulder.

The machine
wasn't
plugged in
.

He picked up the plug, stared at it with growing comprehension. Then, very quickly and very carefully he set it back onto the floor, and lightly stepped once more to the front of the machine he had just been pounding at. He opened the front panel and stared inside in hor-ror. He grimaced at the memory of slamming his fist against the brightly lit surface, then turned and hurried to the door. He grabbed the knob, turned it—and met resistance.

"Shit," he murmured. He jiggled the knob, pulled on it, twisted it back and forth… but there was no longer a shred of doubt in his mind. He was locked in.

Frantically, he pulled out his cell phone and punched in a number, pressed the phone tight against his ear as he stared at the soda machine. A moment later Scully's voice fil-tered through the receiver.

"Scully."

Mulder took a deep breath. "Scully, 1 found the bomb."

Outside the vending room, Scully paced the lobby and rolled her eyes. "Where are you, Mulder?"

"I'm in the vending room."

She nodded to herself, glanced down a short corridor, and headed down it. When she heard faint pounding she turned and found herself facing a door.

snacks/refreshments

"Is that you pounding?" she questioned, and tentatively turned the knob.

On the other side, Mulder cupped the phone against his chin and pounded even harder. "Scully, get someone to open this door."

Scully shook her head. "Nice try, Mulder."