The Prometheus Deception (71 page)

Don't let it move,
he thought.
Don't let it move, don't let anyone call it. Not now, not at this moment
.

Reaching the top of the cab, he rested there for a moment, unfastening the grippers, jamming them back into the pockets of his vest. Then he swung over, grabbed the interlock at the top inside of the doors, and slid it to the left.

The doors opened.

And if someone's on the other side?

He hoped not. But he was prepared for that, too.

He was looking down at a dimly lit, elegantly furnished lobby in what seemed to be the main part of the house. He looked down, saw no one in the vicinity, then grabbed hold of the steel beam inside the doorframe and swung himself down, landing on a burnished marble floor.

The lights went on, subdued lighting from several sconces along the wall, probably activated by the security guard's badge.

He was in.

*   *   *

The two men in the Security Control room went through the tedious laundry list, the regular security check they performed countless times throughout the day.

“Camera one?”

“Clear.”

“Camera two?”

“Clear.”

“Camera three?”

“Cl—wait, yeah, it's clear.”

“What's the problem?”

“I thought I saw some movement through the big picture windows, but it was just rain.”

“Camera four?”

“Charlie, hold on a second. Jesus, it's really coming down out there—just like yesterday. And it was beautiful, really sunny, when my shift started. Fucking Seattle weather. You mind if I take a quick break?”

“A
break?
”

“Yeah, I brought the Mustang convertible and I left it open.”

“You didn't park in the underground lot?”

“Got here sort of late,” the guard admitted sheepishly. “So I used the front outside lot. I just want to run out there and put up the top before the leather gets ruined.”

Charles Ramsey, head of security, sighed with irritation. “Christ, Bain, if you'd get here on time … all right, take a break, but make it fast.”

*   *   *

Heart pounding from the exertion and from the tension, Bryson sprang to his feet and turned back to the gaping elevator shaft. He approached, reaching carefully up for the interlock to close the doors, aware of the depth of the dark shaft. A fall would be fatal. Strangely, only now that he was out of the shaft did he fully appreciate that.

The movement was almost imperceptible, a quick flickering of lights in his peripheral vision. Bryson pivoted, saw the guard almost on top of him, about to tackle Bryson to the floor. When Bryson slammed the guard with all his weight, the guard threw a lunging punch, which Bryson blocked, grabbing the guard's right forearm while, at the same time, kicking the back of his knee with a steel-toed boot. The guard groaned, sagged for only an instant, then immediately regained his balance as he reached for his gun, struggling with the waist holster.

A mistake not to have the gun at the ready, Bryson thought. A mistake we both made. He took advantage of the man's momentary lapse and delivered a hard kick to the guard's groin. The guard bellowed, knocked backward maybe a foot or two from the open elevator shaft. Still, he somehow managed to get his pistol out, aimed, and prepared to fire. Bryson lunged to the left, confusing the guard's aim, and then spun back toward his enemy, kicking at the gun and sending it flying out of his hand.

“Goddamned bastard,” the guard shouted as he leaped backward, arms extended, in an attempt to retrieve the gun; there was a look of almost indignant surprise on his face as he realized that there was no floor beneath him, nothing to break his fall as he threw himself backward, his feet up in the air, higher than his head. The expression of surprise immediately became terror: arms flailing in the air in a vain attempt to clutch on to something, anything, his feet scrambling; he let out an enormous scream of horror, which echoed metallically in the air shaft as he plunged quickly out of sight. The scream was long and sustained, gradually diminishing in volume as he fell away, ever more distant, then stopping abruptly as the body hit bottom.

*   *   *

The security guard, a sandy-haired young man, exited the house through the service entrance, emerging outside not far from the outdoor parking lot. He looked around, bewildered. Just minutes ago it was pouring rain—torrential rain, same as yesterday—and now it was a totally clear night, warm, with not a trace of precipitation anywhere.

Not a trace of rain.

No puddles on the ground, not even wet leaves on the trees.

Ten minutes ago he had seen rain coming down like some biblical flood; now it was a dry, warm night with no evidence that it had ever rained today.

“What the holy hell…?” he exclaimed, taking out his handheld radio and calling Ramsey back in Control.

Ramsey exploded, as he knew the guy would. A string of profanities ensued, but when Ramsey finally got a grip on himself, he began issuing orders all around. “We got a perimeter breach,” he said. “They're checking back at corporate, so now we got to follow the fiber-optic line from right outside the gates, see if there's a break.”

*   *   *

Sweat poured down Bryson's face; his black Nomex suit itched. He took several deep breaths, then stepped forward toward the shaft, reached up to the interlock, flicked it closed. The steel doors closed silently.

Now he needed to orient himself, to determine which direction to move in order to find the security control room. That was the first order of business. It would tell him what he needed to know, where everything was. It was also the eyes of the enemy, and therefore it needed to be shut down.

He pressed the talk button on the communicator. “I'm at the main level,” he said softly.

“Thank God,” came Elena's voice. Bryson smiled: she was unlike any field backup he had ever worked with. Instead of being briskly, coldly professional, she was emotional, caring, concerned.

“Now which way to Control?”

“If you're facing the elevator, it's left. There's a long corridor running to either side…?”

“Check.” She was working off an array of video surveillance images, going by sight rather than by blueprint.

“Take the one to your left. When it ends, left again. There it widens out into a sort of long portrait gallery. That looks like the most direct route.”

“Okay, roger. How are the eyes?”

“Shuttered.”

“Great. Thanks.”

He turned to the left and ran down the hall. Fiber-optic cables were threaded through the walls and foundations of this house, Bryson was certain. Miles and miles of the stuff, connected to miniature lenses whose pinhole apertures probably dotted the walls and ceilings. Unlike visible security cameras of old, these could not be detected, so they could not be spray-painted or duct-taped over. Were it not for Elena's ability to replace the actual feeds with yesterday's, Bryson would have been observed everywhere he went, with nothing to do about it. Now at least he could move freely, unseen. The security pass he had taken from the guard in the underground garage had so far done him no good at all. It hadn't admitted him to the elevator, though it had switched on the lights once he entered the house. It seemed to be more for keeping track of its wearer than for penetrating security; it had to go. He unclipped it and placed it on the floor of the corridor, against the wall, as if it had been lost by the person to whom it had been issued.

*   *   *

Elena put down the two-way communicator when she heard the crunch of footsteps right outside the truck. It was going too smoothly, she thought. The forest patrol is going to ask questions, and she would have to be persuasive in her answers.

She slid open the back of the van and let out a scream when she saw the muzzle of the pistol pointed at her eyes.

“Let's go!” shouted the man in the blue blazer.

“I'm with the U.S. Geological Survey!” she protested.

“Tapping into our security line? I don't think so. Hands down at your side, and no fucking around! We've got some questions to ask you.”

*   *   *

Bryson had reached the long, rectangular room that Elena had called the portrait gallery. It was a peculiar-looking chamber, lined with ornate gilded frames like a room in the Louvre, except that each frame was empty. Or, rather, each frame held a flat grayish monitor, which probably turned into a high-resolution reproduction of a classic oil portrait, the picture changing according to the tastes of the person passing through, as broadcast by the electronic badge.

Bryson was about to step into the gallery when he noticed a line of tiny black beads running up the wall in a vertical line between frames. Every four feet or so another line of these minuscule black dots ran up one wall of the gallery. It almost looked ornamental, like part of the décor, except that it was ever so slightly discordant with the flocked wallpaper, the French Renaissance style. Bryson stood at the entrance of the gallery without entering. The black dots began about eighteen inches from the floor and ended about six feet up. He was fairly sure he knew what they were, but in order to make certain, he took out the night-vision monocular and put it to one eye.

Now he could see row upon row of thin filaments strung across the width of the long room every few feet, starting a few feet from the floor. What looked like glowing green strings were, he knew, laser beams in the infrared frequency: point-to-point sensors with columnated beams of light, invisible to the naked eye. But when the beams were broken by someone passing through—someone unauthorized—an alarm would be set off. They started eighteen inches off the floor, Bryson figured, so that they would not be triggered by any house pets.

The only way to traverse the room was by moving along the floor, staying below eighteen inches at all times so as not to break the lowest infrared-laser beam. And there was no clean and easy way to do it, either. He fastened the monocular on to the head-mounting apparatus; then, when it was securely in place, he dropped to the floor and began sliding on his back, pushing off with his boots. The whole while he was looking up, making sure he did not cross the beam. The Nomex suit was slick enough to allow rapid, smooth movement. Although the cameras had been digitally blinded, the rest of the systems were live; the slightest misstep would trigger an alarm. Yet the greatest threat came not from technology at all but from human beings: the possibility of a guard coming upon him during rounds, as had already happened twice.

He slid under a third, a fourth, a fifth infrared-laser beam. No beam was broken, no alarms triggered, not here.

Finally he slipped under the last light beam. He paused, still on his back, and peered closely around to make sure there were no others. Satisfied, he sat up, then got carefully to his feet. Now he was not far from the security control room; Elena would guide him in the right direction.

He depressed the talk button. “Passage successful,” he whispered. “Where to now?”

No answer, so he spoke again, a bit louder.

Again, no response, just staticky dead air.

“Elena, come in.”

Nothing.

“Elena, come in. I need guidance.”

Silence.

“Which way, damn it?”

Christ, no! Were the communicators malfunctioning? He spoke again and received no response. Was there some jamming technology in place here, keeping her from receiving his signal, him from receiving hers?

But his people had to communicate! There was no way to jam all possible radio frequencies but the one you wanted to use yourself. That was an impossibility.

Then where was she?

He radioed her again, and again. No answer, no answer, nothing.

She was gone.

Had something happened to her? That was a possibility he had not seriously considered.

He felt a cold dread come over him.

But he could not stop, he could not expend any time figuring out where she was or what had happened to their communications. He had to move.

Bryson didn't need radioed instructions to tell him where the caterer's kitchen was. He could smell it down the hall, the enticing aroma of the hot hors d'oeuvres. A door slid open at the far end of the hall and a caterer came through, dressed in black pants and a long-sleeved white shirt, with a large, empty silver tray at his side. Bryson ducked back into the gallery, though not so far as to set off an alarm. There was enough room here, sufficiently removed from infrared beams, for him to change clothes. He quickly removed the tactical vest, then stripped off the black body suit. Taking a neatly folded set of black dress pants and a white shirt from a plastic-sealed package in the tac vest, he got into them at once, then changed his combat boots for rubber-soled black dress shoes.

Sticking his head into the hall that led to the kitchen, he heard laughter, bantering conversation, the metallic clink of pans and utensils. He stepped back into the gallery, waited until he heard the sound of the kitchen's double-doors swing open, then emerged stealthily. The same waiter who had come in five or so minutes earlier was now holding aloft a large tray loaded with appetizers.

Treading silently along the hallway, Bryson stole up behind the waiter. He knew the man would be an easy mark, yet he could not afford noise, could not afford to attract attention. When he was just a few feet behind the caterer, Bryson lunged, clapping one hand over his mouth, crooking his elbow around the neck, forcing the man to the floor while, at the same time, grabbing the tray of food. The waiter tried to scream, his cry muffled behind Bryson's hand. Bryson set the tray down carefully and, with his free hand, squeezed hard at the nerve bundle under the man's jaw. The waiter slumped to the floor, unconscious.

Quickly dragging the body back into the gallery, he pushed the waiter into a seated position, hands folded, head down, as if grabbing a quick catnap. Then he ran back down the hall and grabbed the tray of food.