The Aegis Solution (39 page)

"I appreciate it. But you probably didn't have to cut it quite so close."

"Hey! I saved your butt again and you're complaining?"

"No, no, I take it back," Elias backpedaled, holding up his hands defensively. "How did you know?"

She glanced down at the dead Eric Stone one more time. "I'd really be happy to tell you, but I'm
not as inured to this kind of stuff as you are. Could we head back?"

"Sure. Let me grab a couple of things."

He began to walk to the shoulder pack that held the firebombs, when Tillie volunteered, "I'll get
that."

"Still don't trust me, huh?"

"Let's say, you've got enough to carry."

With a shake of his head, Elias returned to the laptop and disconnected all of the feed wires for the
surveillance equipment, packed it in its carrying case, and hooked it over his shoulder. He pocketed the
smartphone and snatched up the canvas pouch filled with rations and a bladder full of water. He
returned to Tillie as she finished wrestling the heavy pack onto her back. Elias bent over and picked up
the 9mm and the AK-47, remembering to grab the firing pin.

"Ready?" she asked.

"Let's go."

As they walked away, she began to explain, "I never trusted him."

"I could tell."

"I don't know why. Maybe I'm psychic or whatever. But I never felt right about him. And then you
asked me how he tested the bomb gel, and I could tell in your eyes that something wasn't right. Besides,
he was way too dumb."

Laughing, Elias replied, "What do you mean?"

"You know, his questions. Always asking all of us questions. He didn't seem to have anything
figured out, and that didn't make sense for someone who is supposedly a hotshot secret agent and who
had more than two months to sit and think."

"Good point. When did he have the time to break down that AK-47 and remove the pin?"

"That's easy. Remember, as soon as we got back from our tour of the storm system, he...."

"That's right," he interrupted. "Eric excused himself and was gone quite a while."

"Too long, considering that he didn't shake off any sand. Later, I got into the bed after he'd been
on it, and it was full of the stuff."

They were almost back to Tillie's den, before Elias remarked, "There was one more thing."

"What's that?"

"After you were lying down and, I guess, pretending to fall asleep, Eric and I talked for a minute
or two. I asked him a question, and his answer has been bothering me ever since."

"What was his answer?"

"Well, that's just it. It wasn't the answer itself; it was the phrase he used. He said, ‘Insufficient data
at this time.'"

"I don't get it."

"That's not a typical phrase. And I've it heard twice since I've come to Aegis."

"Twice?"

"Yes. The last time from Eric. The time before from Wilson."

"I still don't see the big deal. Eric probably heard Wilson say it, and liked it. That is the way the old
man talks, you know."

"I know. And I think you're right. I think Eric did hear Wilson say it, and either he liked it or it
simply stuck unconsciously."

"So…?"

"Wilson used the phrase when he and I were talking alone. It was while you were out looking for
Eric."

Tillie stopped walking and turned to face Elias. "You think they've been listening in on us?"

Elias shrugged. "I don't know. It may be nothing. And now Wilson's shack is only cinders. But I
think we should check out your place."

Tillie turned and took the remaining few steps into her makeshift home, looking around at all of
the ductwork, piping, and junction boxes which filled the walls and ceiling. "Between all of this stuff
and all of my pretties that I've hung everywhere, it would be like finding a needle in a haystack."

Elias stood next to her, surveying the space. "You're right. We'd never find it unless we were
unbelievably lucky."

Hearing them talk, Wilson shook his head to clear it from the slumber and asked, "Look for what?
Where's Eric?"

Tillie held up one finger in front of her lips to silence Wilson as they both took him by the arms
and walked him several yards out into one of the passageways, where they, in whispered tones, filled him
in on the last several minutes. After they finished, Wilson softly said, "That makes much more sense
than the puzzle pieces I was struggling to assemble before."

"We've got a lot to talk about before we make our next move. But my base is out of the question.
Eric and Faulk both knew about it. And now that Eric's been at Tillie's, we can't stay here. Your shack
is gone, Wilson. We need a new place."

"I agree," Wilson concurred. "Tillie, you know Aegis better than anyone. Can you think of a logical
base camp?"

"It needs to be easy to defend," Elias added, "and close to the electrical raceways, mechanical
passageways, and plenums, as well as the main corridors. We may need a variety of options."

The two men watched as her mind reviewed the layout. With a quiet huff of exasperation, she
uttered, "Hell, we're going to need them, anyway."

"Need what?"

Rather than answering Elias' question, she abruptly turned and trotted back into her living area. He
hurried behind her, followed by Wilson. Her first stop was a drawer in the kitchen area, from which she
removed a screwdriver. Closing the drawer, she hurried to the far corner of the space where a green steel
box was bolted to the concrete floor. In red letters, a warning was stenciled – DANGER ~ HIGH
VOLTAGE – immediately adjacent to a yellow sticker of a lightning bolt inside a circle with a diagonal
line through it.

Tillie jammed the screwdriver into the first screw head and began turning. Moving close to her,
Elias whispered, "Do you know what…?"

She paused and held the screwdriver in front of her lips to shush him, before returning to her work.
Soon, all of the screws were neatly lined up on the floor. Placing the screwdriver next to them, she
gripped the sides of the front panel and lifted and pulled. With a THUNK the panel came away. Inside
the box was a transformer of some sort, Elias knew. By the size and the steady hum coming from it, he
guessed that it was fairly high voltage.

Ignoring the gear inside, Tillie turned the front panel around and leaned it against the wall. Fastened
to the inside of the panel was a vertical metal tray, open at the top. She reached inside and pulled out
a several-inch-thick sheaf of large papers, bound on one end by a blue wrapper. Elias recognized the
papers as a set of plans.

Cautiously, she laid the plans out on the floor and rolled them up, whispering to Elias to reattach
the transformer panel. As he did, she found three rubber bands and gently slid all of them onto the roll,
careful not to catch the edge of the top sheet and tear it. This task completed, Tillie hefted the bulky roll,
grabbed some supplies and, with a final glance around, exited the area which she had made her home
for the past several years.



Boehn, hoping his face did not betray the fact that he felt like a kid caught with his hand in the
cookie jar, attempted a casual grin. "Good evening, Doctor Kreitzmann. I must be developing a case
of OCD. I was certain that I had neglected to file my report. I couldn't sleep until I checked."

Kreitzmann's smile was wary as he responded, "I see. Everything's in order, I trust."

"Quite so. Now I can get some sleep."

"Excellent. I'll see you in the morning, then."

"Yes! Bright and early."

Boehn walked off in the direction of his quarters. Kreitzmann stood at the door to the lab, staring
at his associate's retreating back. After the man had turned the corner, Kreitzmann opened the lab door
and entered, walking directly to the terminal Boehn had used minutes before, placing his hand on the
back of the flat-screen monitor, and feeling the residual warmth from it.

To himself, he muttered, "He did tell me that he was using it."

Switching the system on, Kreitzmann waited for the login sequence to complete before he entered
his personal password. Triggered by his top-level access, the monitor displayed a much different
interface from what Boehn had seen minutes earlier. He selected the icon labeled "security admin" and
waited a moment for the new screen. He then clicked on "tracking." Defining the parameters, he chose
"search." In the blink of an eye, the monitor was displaying, in raw form, all of the activity which had
occurred on this station beginning at 6:00 p.m. this evening and ending a minute ago.

The last entry showed that the terminal had been used to access Doctor Bonillas' most recent
reports and lab notes, and that they had been moved to the USB port, an action which would normally
delete them from the system. He was glad that the system was configured to delete nothing. Doctor
Bonillas' work was safely archived onto a separate file system simultaneous to her upload.

While he stared at the screen, Kreitzmann's eyes narrowed and the muscles in his jaw clenched, as
anger began to slowly build within him. The task had been executed under Dr. Bonillas' password, not
Boehn's, and the timestamp on the activity showed that the file transfer had taken place minutes ago,
obviously at the time Boehn was in the lab and Bonillas was not.

He keyed the internal phone system, and a voice answered instantly.

"This is Doctor Kreitzmann. Please meet me in Lab 1C immediately."

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Kenneth Mortenson parked as close as he possibly could to the entrance. The intensity of the wind
was beyond anything he had ever seen in his entire life, despite having grown up in El Paso. Now that
he had parked, his Camry bounced and shook as if it were positioned atop a fun house platform instead
of solid pavement. Making a point of parking his car so that the driver's door was on the leeward side,
he grabbed his backpack from the passenger seat, slid one arm through the canvas loops, and opened
the door.

Despite the car's orientation, the door was instantly jerked from his grip and pivoted violently,
disintegrating the steel stops on the hinges. Mentally preparing himself, Kenneth climbed out and was
almost knocked to the ground. Using the side of the gyrating car for support, he circled around it,
turning directly into the face of the wind.

As he trudged on, leaning far forward, he was barely able to see the turnstile due to the dust
stinging his eyes, his route cluttered with the shattered and twisted remnants of the solar panels which
had ripped from the roof of Aegis. He had to dodge chunks of debris from this wreckage as the
incessant winds caught pieces and rocketed them through the air. Taking fifteen minutes to traverse a
distance which, in normal conditions, would have taken one or two, he discovered that as he reached
the final twenty yards before the entrance, the wind lessened and he was able to walk in a somewhat
more upright position. As this was his first trip to Aegis, he had no idea that he was standing where the
plywood tunnel had been constructed, an earlier casualty of the gale. He stopped at the turnstile and
looked back in the direction of the parking lot and the surrounding desert, surprised to see several more
vehicles, headlights on, braving the tempest.



Marilyn stared out the window, looking at the tailings from the open-pit mining operations south
of Tucson. Her plane was minutes away from landing, and her mind wandered back to the lie she had
told to Faulk this morning. Knowing that her boss controlled the communications to Elias, she could
think of no other way to get a message to him other than personally. Knowing Faulk's propensity for
checking out what people told him, as it had been a task assigned to her many times since he had taken
over the position formerly held by Elias, she kept her story vague about needing to visit an old friend
who was ill.

Uncharacteristically, he had not inquired as to the name of the fictitious old friend, and she
neglected to supply it. In fact, he seemed vaguely distracted as she talked to him, almost as if he did not
care whether she left or not.



Elias, Wilson, and Tillie were huddled around a scarred dining room table in one of the apartments
in ZooCity. They had agreed that this was not to be their new base, but should give them some privacy
for a time while they figured out their next move. The blueprints were spread out on the table before
them.

"When I was preparing to come in, I had a few pages showing the overall layout and the raceways,
but nowhere near what you've got here. How did you get these?" Elias asked.

Tillie told them about her first day at Aegis and the chance meeting and chat with the contractor
who had built it.

"Just as he was leaving, and after the main door had been set, he remembered that he had left his
inspection set of plans inside. At that point the door had been closed, and it was impossible for him to
go back in and retrieve them; it was too late. So, he told me where they were and that I could have them
if I wanted."