The Blue Nowhere-SA (26 page)

"You must be Tony Mott."

"Right."

The county cop admired the Fisher. "I heard that you cycle like a son of a bitch."

"Only when I'm going downhill," Mott said, smiling modestly, even though the truth was that, yes, he did cycle like a son of a bitch, whether it was downhill, uphill or on the flats. Pittman laughed too. "I don't get half the exercise I should. Especially when we're after some perp like this computer guy."

Funny - Mott hadn't heard anything about somebody from the county working the case. "You going inside?" Mott pulled off his helmet.

"I was just in there. Frank was briefing me. This is one crazy case."

"I hear that," Mott agreed, stuffing the shooting gloves that doubled as biking gloves in the waistband of his spandex shorts.

"That guy that Frank's been using - that consultant? The young guy?"

"You mean Wyatt Gillette?"

"Yeah, that's his name. He really knows his stuff, doesn't he?"

"The man is a wizard," Mott said.

"How long's he going to be helping you out?"

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"Till we catch this asshole, I guess."

Pittman looked at his watch. "I better run. I'll check in later." Tony Mott nodded as Pittman walked away, pulling out his cell phone and placing a call. The county cop walked all the way through the CCU parking lot and into the one next door. Mott noticed this and thought momentarily that it was odd he'd parked that far away when there were plenty of spaces right in front of CCU. But then he started toward the office, thinking of nothing except the case and how, one way or another, he was going to finagle a spot on the dynamic entry team when they kicked in the door to collar Jon Patrick Holloway.

"Ani, Ani, Animorphs," the little girl said.

"What?" Phate asked absently. They were driving in an Acura Legend, which had been recently stolen but was duly registered to one of his identities, en route to the basement of his house in Los Altos, where duct tape, the Ka-bar knife and a digital camera awaited little Samantha Wingate's arrival.

"Ani, Ani, Animorphs. Hey, Uncle Irv, you like Animorphs?" No, not one fucking little bit, thought Phate. But Uncle Irv said, "You bet I do."

"Why was Mrs. Gitting upset?" Sammie Wingate asked.

"Who?"

"The lady at the front desk."

"I don't know."

"Like, are Mom and Dad in Napa already?"

"That's right."

Phate didn't have a clue where they were. But wherever it was he knew they'd be enjoying the last moments of peace before the storm of horror descended. It was only a matter of minutes before somebody from the Junipero Serra School started calling the Wingates' friends and family and would learn that there'd been no accident.

Phate wondered who'd feel the greatest level of panic: the parents of the missing child or the principal and teachers who'd released her to a killer?

"Ani, Ani, Ani, Ani, Animorphs. Who's your favorite?"

"Favorite what?" Phate asked.

"What do you think?" little Samantha asked - a bit disrespectfully, thought both Phate and Uncle Irv. The girl said, "Favorite Animorph. I think Rachel's my favorite. She turns into a lion. I made up this story about her. And it was totally cool. What happened was--"

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Phate listened to the inane story as the girl continued to drone on and on. The little brat kept up the prattle without the least encouragement from old Uncle Irv, whose only comfort at the moment was the razor-sharp knife at home and the anticipation of Donald Wingate's reaction when the businessman received the plastic bag containing a rather gruesome present later that day. In accordance with the point system in the Access game, Phate himself would be the UPS deliveryman who dropped off the package and got the signature of D. Wingate on the receipt. This would earn him 25 points, the highest for any particular murder.

He reflected on his social engineering at the school. Now that had been a good hack. Challenging yet clean (even though uncooperative Uncle Irv apparently had shaved off his mustache after his last driver's license photo).

The girl bounced obnoxiously on her seat. "You think we can ride that pony Dad got me? Man, that is so neat.

Billy Tomkins was talking all about this stupid dog he got, like, who doesn't have a dog? I mean, everybody has a dog. But I've got a pony."

Phate glanced at the girl. Her perfectly done hair. The expensive watch whose leather band she'd defaced with indecipherable pictures drawn in ink. The shoes polished by someone else. The cheesy breath.

He decided that Sammie wasn't like Jamie Turner, whom he'd been reluctant to kill because he reminded him so much of himself. No, this kid was like all the other little shits who'd made young Jon Patrick Holloway's life at school pure hell.

Taking some pictures of little Samantha before the trip to the basement and little Samantha after - now, that would give him a great deal of satisfaction.

"You want to ride on Charizard, Uncle Irv?"

"Who?" Phate asked.

"Duh, my pony. The one Dad got me for my birthday. You were, like, there."

"Right. I forgot."

"Dad and me go riding sometimes. Charizard's pretty cool. He knows his way back to the barn all by himself. Or, I know, you could take Dad's horse and we could go around the lake together. If you can keep up."

Phate wondered if he could wait long enough to get the girl into the basement. Suddenly a loud beeping filled the car and, as the girl continued to prattle on about morphing dogs or lions or whatever, Phate pulled the pager off his belt and scrolled through the display. His reaction was an audible gasp.

The gist of Shawn's message was that Wyatt Gillette was at CCU headquarters. Phate felt the shock as if he'd touched a live wire. He had to pull off the road.
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Jesus in Heaven Gillette - Valleyman - was helping the cops! That's why they'd learned so much about him and were so close on his trail. Instantly hundreds of memories from the Knights of Access days came back to him. The incredible hacks. The hours and hours of mad conversations, typing as fast as they could out of fear that an idea might escape. The paranoia. The risks. The exhilaration of going places online where nobody else could go.

And just yesterday he'd been thinking about that article Gillette had written. He remembered the last line: Once you've spent time in the Blue Nowhere, you can never completely return to the Real World. Valleyman - whose childlike curiosity and dogged nature didn't let him rest until he'd understood everything there was to know about something new to him.

Valleyman - whose brilliance in writing code approached and sometimes surpassed Phate's own. Valleyman - whose betrayal had destroyed Holloway's life and shattered the Great Social Engineering. And who was alive now only because Phate hadn't yet focused on killing him.

"Uncle Irv, um, how come we're stopped here? I mean, is there something wrong with the car?" He glanced at the girl. Then looked around the deserted road.

"Well, Sammie, you know what - I think there may be. How 'bout you take a look?"

"Um, me?"

"Yeah."

"I'm not sure what to do."

"Just see if the tire's flat," kindly Uncle Irv said. "Could you do that?"

"I guess. Like, which tire?"

"Right rear."

The girl looked left.

Phate pointed the other way.

"Um, okay, that one. What should I look for?"

"Well, what would the Animorphs look for?"

"I don't know. Maybe if there was a nail in it or something."

"That's good. Why don't you look and see if there's a nail."

"Okay."

Phate unhooked the girl's seat belt.

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Then he reached across Sammie for the door handle.

"I can do it myself," she said defiantly. "You don't have to."

"Okay." Phate sat back and watched the girl fumble with the latch then push the door open. Sammie got out and walked to the back of the car. "It looks okay to me," she called.

"Good," Phate called. And gunned the engine, racing forward. The door slammed shut and the tires sprayed Sammie with dust and gravel. She started to scream, "Wait, Uncle Irv" Phate skidded onto the highway.

The sobbing girl ran after the car but she was soon obscured by a huge cloud of dust from the spinning wheels. Phate, for his part, had stopped thinking about little Samantha Wingate the moment the door slammed.

Renegade334: Triple-X, it's me again. I want to talk to you. NBS.

"The acronym means No bullshit," Patricia Nolan explained to Frank Bishop as they gazed at the computer screen in front of Wyatt Gillette.

Nolan had arrived from her hotel a few minutes before, as Gillette was hurrying to a nearby workstation. She'd hovered near him as if she was about to hug him good morning. But she seemed to sense his complete concentration and chose not to. She pulled up a chair and sat close to the monitor. Tony Mott too sat nearby. Bob Shelton had called and told Bishop that his wife was sick and that he'd be in late. Gillette typed another message and hit RETURN.

Renegade334: Are you there? I want to talk.

"Come on," Gillette encouraged in a whisper. "Come on Talk to me." Finally an ICQ window opened and Triple-X responded.

Triple-X: You're keying a lot fucking better now. Grammar and spelling too. BTW, I'm launching from an anonymous platform in Europe. You can't trace me.

Renegade334: We're not trying to. I'm sorry about before. About trying to trick you. We're desperate. We need your help. I'm asking for your help.

Triple-X: Who the fuck are you?

Renegade334: You ever hear of Knights of Access?

Triple-X: EVERYBODY'S heard of KOA. You're saying you were in it?

Renegade334: I'm Valleyman. Triple-X: You're Valleyman? NFW.

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"No fucking way," Tony Mott translated this one for Bishop. The door to CCU opened and Stephen Miller and Linda Sanchez arrived. Bishop briefed them about what was going on. Renegade334: I am. Really.

Triple-X: If you are then tell me what you cracked six years ago - the big one/ you know what I mean.

"He's testing me," Gillette said. "He probably heard about a KOA hack from Phate and wants to see if I know it." He typed:

Renegade334: Fort Meade.

Fort Meade, Maryland, was home of the National Security Agency and had more supercomputers than anywhere in the world. It also had the tightest security of any government installation.

"Jesus Christ," Mott whispered. "You cracked Meade?" Gillette shrugged. "Just the Internet connection. Not the black boxes."

"But still, Jesus"

Triple-X: So how did you get through their firewalls?

Renegade334: We heard NSA was installing a new system. We got in through the sendmail flaw in Unix. We had three minutes after they installed the machine before they loaded the patch to fix it. That's when we got in.

The famous sendmail flaw was a bug in an early version of Unix, later fixed, that let someone send a certain type of e-mail to the root user - the systems administrator - that would sometimes let the sender seize control of the computer.

Triple-X: Man, you're a wizard. Everybody's heard about you. I thought you were in jail. Renegade334: I am. I'm in custody. But don't worry - they're not after you. Mott whispered, "Please Don't run for the hills." Triple-X: What do you want?

Renegade334: We're trying to find Phate -Jon Holloway.

Triple-X: Why do you want him? Gillette looked at Bishop, who nodded his okay to tell all. Renegade334: He's killing people.

Another pause. Gillette typed invisible messages in the air for thirty seconds before Triple-X replied. Triple-X: I heard rumors. He's using that program of his, Trapdoor to go after people, right?

Renegade334: That's right.

Triple-X: I KNEW he'd use it to hurt people. That man is one sick MF. No translation necessary for those initials, Gillette concluded.

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Triple-X: What do you want from me? Renegade334: Help finding him. Triple-X: IDTS. Bishop tried, "I don't think so."

Linda Sanchez laughed. "That's it, boss. You're learning the lingo." Gillette noticed that Bishop had finally earned the title, "boss," which Sanchez had apparently reserved for Andy Anderson. Renegade334: We need help.

Triple-X: You have no clue how dangerous that fucker is. He's psycho. He'll come after me. Renegade334: You can change your username and system address.

Triple-X: LTW.

Nolan said to Bishop, "Like, that'd work. Sarcastic." Triple-X: He'd find me in ten minutes. Renegade334: Then stay offline till we get him.

Triple-X: And when you were hacking was there a single day you weren't online?

Now Gillette paused. Finally he typed: Renegade334: No.

Triple-X: And you want me to risk my life and stay off the Net because you can't find this asshole?

Renegade334: He's KILLING civilians.

Triple-X: He could be watching us now. Trapdoor could be in your machine right now. Or mine. He could be watching everything we're writing.

Renegade334: No, he's not. I could feel him if he was. And you could feel him too. You've got the touch, right?

Triple-X: True.

Renegade334: We know he likes snuff pics and crime scene photos. Do you have anything he's sent you?

Triple-X: No, I wiped everything. I didn't want any connection with him. Renegade334: Do you know Shawn?

Triple-X: He hangs with Phate is all I know. Word is Phate couldn't hack Trapdoor together by himself and Shawn helped him.

Renegade334: He a wizard too?

Triple-X: That's what I hear. And that HE'S fucking scary too.