The Scarab (14 page)

Here’s where I got nervous. I
figured that even if the goons did get free upstairs, I had about three minutes
to rescue my damsel. I didn’t worry about disrupting the game with this false
alarm because all the serious players would ignore it until the power failed or
some fireman dragged them away kicking and screaming. I just didn’t want to
kill anybody. However, if he had Mary’s gun, and I didn’t hit hard enough to
knock him out, he might shoot me. With my condition, any bullet wound could be
fatal, wherever it hit. I decided to aim for the right shoulder. I could
incapacitate the arm without worrying about head injury.

When the man walked by, I didn’t
see the face I had been expecting, Fontenelle. I did, however, see the gun. I
had seen him before, and trying to goad my memory for the exact place almost
caused me to delay too long. With one fluid motion, I stood up and smashed his
collar bone with the extinguisher. He gave a brief grunt of pain which was
silenced when his jaw bounced off the corner of the desk. I grabbed his
crumpled form in a wrestling hold almost immediately. The gun had fallen on the
carpet from his limp hand. I duct-taped his mouth, not bothering to rip off the
end. I left the roll dangling down his back. I was worried that someone had
heard the attack, but evidently the loud alarm had covered the noise. Next, I
cuffed his hands together around the cross brace that ran along the front of
the metal desk. With a fevered glance at the computer room door, I searched the
old executive type for some identification and the keys to Mare’s prison.

I noticed, with relief, that the
villain was still breathing. On the down side, something in his mouth was
bleeding, and I now had red stains on my hands and borrowed suit jacket. I
dropped Mare’s gun into the bag, ruining the evidence even more. The
gold-rimmed buttons on his shirt reminded me where I had seen this guy before—Fontenelle’s
table at the restaurant. The question was, who had been visiting whom?

The man in cuffs had a New Mexico driver’s license in the name of Jacob Kreiger, and an Eastern European passport
under the name of Yackoff Kirchenkov. The only competitor from that part of the
world had been TSM, but they were all dead. Besides, they didn’t have the
resources to run this kind of operation. I pocketed his ID and pass card for
later.

Before the last black hats could
react, I ran to the computer room door and started tying the thick cords from
my bag around the door knob. As I heard a roller chair moving inside, I
figure-eighted the cord rapidly between the knob and the pass card reader. I
cinched it tight just as the last villain tried to pull the door open. That
should hold them!

I raced over to air-conditioning
room B and unlatched the brace holding the door shut. On the third key, the
reader light turned green. I opened the door into a large room with about four
monstrous cooling units. It was currently lit by a single bare bulb. Mare was
drawn-and-quartered between two pipes. The bonds around her hand and feet
anchored her to the cement floor. She had no gag, but was blindfolded.

“Mare, you okay?” I said to let her
know I was coming over.

“Ethan?” she said with the sweetest
welcome in her voice. Her eyes sparkled when I removed the blindfold.

God, she was stunning. I cut her
hands free with my utility knife. Her wrists were chafed and her hands
reddish-purple. “It’ll hurt when you get back your circulation, but we’re going
to have to move fast once I free your legs. What did you do to get these guys
so pissed at you?”

“Nearly escaped twice.” I massaged
her wrists a little.

“Did they do anything else...?”

Tight-lipped, she shook her head
no. I was relieved.

“We’ll get you some ice from the
break room and put it on your hands.” I started cutting loose her feet. They
weren’t as tightly wrapped as her wrists, but I noticed a deep blue-black
bruise on the top of her left foot. It looked like it had been made by someone
with winter boots. “Who did that to you?”

“I don’t know. They blindfolded me,
remember?”

Once she was free, we hugged and I
caught her up to date on what was happening. “Help from the FBI is on the way.”

“You came up here alone?” I could
see the concern in her eyes, and admired the way the light picked up subtle red
highlights in her hair.

“Two goons are trapped upstairs. Mark
is taking care of them. I think their lead programmer is trapped in the
computer room, and the guy who had your gun is handcuffed to the desk in the
hallway.”

“My gun? Ethan Woodrow Hayes! What
were you planning on rescuing me with? These people are serious. They could
have killed you! You shouldn’t have rushed in like a crazy fool. You should
have waited for the professionals.” She was pissed, poking me in the chest with
her finger. All my new-found pride vanished. Someone finally killed the bloody
fire alarm. I hadn’t noticed how much my ears and throat hurt.

“If I’d waited for the police, they
might not have found you alive. Then my life wouldn’t have mattered. I never
want to be separated from you again.”

That made her quiet. She rubbed her
swollen wrists.

I dropped my bag, and handed her
both the gun and my phone. “Give the front desk a call and let everyone know
you’re okay. We’re going leaving as soon as I get back.”

My one thought, admittedly stupid, was, “I know where I can
get some ice just a few steps from here.” Mary was hurt and my nature is to
solve problems. It would only take a few seconds.

I ran to the break room, bringing
the screwdriver with me. The tool would be helpful as a weapon or if I had to
chip chunks of ice out. Fortunately, the freezer had a large plastic bin
brimming with ice cubes. Since nobody else was likely to need it in the near
future, I took the whole thing.

While walking back to Mare, I
noticed the open fire door. I remembered closing that door behind me when
entering this level. Investigating, I crept into the darkened entry hall. The
mirror to the computer room was leaking a little light. I could make out vague
outlines of furniture, but no people. How the hell had they escaped the
computer room? I still had it tied shut. How could they get out? “The computer
room had a back door through the manager’s office,” I answered aloud. By way of
witness, the door to the manager’s office also stood ajar.

I rushed into the stairwell to see
if I could catch the programmer. Below me, on the stairs, I heard the sounds of
a struggle. Rounding the corner in three leaps, I saw Mark Waters wrestling
with a man carrying a switch blade. He was busy holding onto the black hat’s
knife arm with both hands. They were both smashing into the walls and railing a
lot. The bad guy used his free hand to punch Mark every chance he got, with no
apparent affect.

The villain had his back to me as I
crept down, so I was simply going to smack him in the head with the ice bucket.
Then I saw his boots. They were heavy hiking boots about the same size and
pattern as the mark on Mare’s foot. That’s when everything went white with
rage. I don’t remember much of what happened in the next few seconds.

Mark told the police I stabbed the
programmer in the back of the right knee with my screwdriver so hard it poked
out the other side. According to the witness statements, people on the floor
below heard him scream. The rest of the damage was caused when the man fell
down the flight of stairs and collided with the metal railing. The FBI couldn’t
question the perp for three days due to the pain medication he required.

The only part of the whole episode
I can recall is Mark holding me back, shouting, “Stop it. He’s out.”

I felt like a race horse that had
just run the Kentucky Derby. When my breathing calmed, Mark let go. I mumbled, “He
looks like he needs an ambulance. Do you want me to pull that screwdriver out?”

Mark just stared at me like I had
two heads and said, “Just give me my jacket. I can use it for direct pressure.”

Feeling awkward, I handed the
borrowed clothing back. “Sorry about all the blood stains. I’ll buy you
another. Let me just get...” When I reached in the pocket where I had placed
the evidence disc, it was gone!

My heart started beating normally
again when I remembered putting it in my own jacket. My jacket was still safe
in our suite.

Once Mark tied a sleeve around the
perp’s thigh to slow the bleeding, he called for an emergency crew to haul the
guy out with a neck brace.

Returning to my initial mission, I
filled my T-shirt with scattered ice and I jogged back upstairs. When I reached
the entry hall, a ringing came from the computer room. It could be an
accomplice calling! I rushed through the open door into the manager’s office.
Inside the office, there was little in the way of paperwork or business
activity. But there were several cables strung along the wall between the
second door to the computer room and the hotel phone switch. From here, I could
still hear the ringing coming from the next room. I rushed in to the computer
room and the door automatically swung shut behind me.

The computer room was packed with
electronic equipment. The door was flanked with rack of processing units tied
into the incoming phone lines. That explained the communication delay I’d
experienced several times during the game. Along the mirror wall was a table
containing two large monitors, one roller chair, and several meter-high disk
silos. The silos each had a large bowl-like indentation on top with a silver
bump in the center the size of my fist.

The remainder of that wall was
taken up by a fax/copier, a deluxe shedder with a very full bin, and a bank of
phones. I picked up the one that was ringing. An electronically distorted voice
answered. “Have you read your mail?”

The monitors displayed a map of the
SimCon course through Europe, probably from the judges’ interface. Smaller,
pop-up maps indicated that these fellows were cheating by reporting or
modifying the contest. That would explain the power-line fiasco for North
Ameri-Car. Several regions like the last avalanche area were highlighted in
red, the kill zones. One screen was filled with crypto-babble similar to what I
had seen in the Exotech black box transmission buffers. I saw a table of room
phone numbers and passwords featured prominently. The interface had recently
sent the mail message “Scarab, you’re dead. Kali.”

Wonderful. Kali, the Goddess of
Destruction, had taken an interest in me.

I stalled as I scanned the area for
more clues. “I’ve been a little busy.”

Behind me, in the corner, was a
similar two-monitor, one-chair arrangement. Those terminals looked like a
mixture between airline arrival/departures and the daily stock report. I didn’t
put it together as a betting terminal until I saw the race on TVs mounted on
the ceiling. This looked like an indication of point shaving, insider
information violating the ten minute media delay, or worse.

The distorted voice continued. “On
the one hand, I don’t have to split the money three ways. But on the other, you’ve
caused me considerable inconvenience, Scarab.”

“You’re not going to get away with
this, Kali,” I said, feeding her the obligatory Batman line which would induce
her to confess.

“You’d be right if I planned to
stay, but I’ve taken care to funnel some of my ill gotten gain into Cuban
real-estate. I’ve laundered the rest through so many layers of dummy
corporations and off-shore banks you’ll never find my real name.” She was a
hired gun for the computer work, probably a specialist in subverting systems.
Despite her name, Kali had avoided overt violence. I hoped to use that to my
advantage.

“Or what, you’ll throw me off the
building? I don’t see any windows nearby,” I said mainly for Mary Ann to hear
and to keep the villain talking. If the dog is still barking, it’s not biting.

“The incident with the FCC agent
was regrettable, an accident. He realized the magnitude of what we were doing
and premature exposure would have cut our profits to nothing. One more day of
secrecy was all we needed to live like royalty. I don’t want any more deaths on
my conscience when I retire to my plantation, but there are a lot of unpleasant
things I can do to you short of killing.” I heard a magnetic lock trip shut on
the door to the manager’s office. I was trapped unless I could break the giant
security mirror.

She preempted me with the warning. “That
glass is bullet-proof. So we’re both going to be civilized professionals, and
you’re going to begin by answering some questions.” She was stalling. Something
else was happening, something that needed time. In the other room? A program to
finish their plan? A data transfer?

“You haven’t asked about the
evidence disc yet. How did you find it?”

She laughed. “I came down to search
your room myself right after your call. I found it here in your bedroom in
plain sight.” Mark must have thrown it there after I left. If she worked for
his new employer, maybe he just gave it to her. I might never know for certain.
At least, I knew where she was.

“I’m warning you, that’s private
property. Don’t you dare access that drive from a game interface.”

“Poor fellow, always a step behind.
You’re in no position to dictate terms. Out of curiosity, what do you really do
for a living? You haven’t told your woman a thing. It must be hard living a
lie.” My Sansui interface whirred in the background. Please don’t throw me in
the briar patch. Maybe I didn’t need to rely on the disc for evidence. My workstation
had a ton of memory and if she didn’t pull the boards out, some vestige should
be recoverable.

She decided to toy with me as she
waited. “We are not that un-alike. I have a scar, too, over my left ribs. If
the man hadn’t been knocked backward from the round I fired, the knife might
have gone in all the way. How did you get your scar?”

I got my scar messing around with
fireworks in a glass jar just after my first year of high school. Since I didn’t
think I could convince the lady of that, I replied simply, “Explosives.”

I heard the removable drive being
inserted and the open Icon being selected “Ahh. We are kindred spirits. That’s
probably why you annoy me so easily.” She liked explosives? That worried me. “Very
cute, you have the data protected by a password.”

I smiled. I was back in the game. “Actually,
it’s the fail-safe on a nasty virus package. You have about thirty seconds.”

“Tell me!” she shrieked, still
distorted.

“Why should I?” It was my turn to
play for time. Mare or the FBI would find me soon enough.

“Because if you do, I’ll give you a
fighting chance. The disk drives behind you are army cryptographic units loaded
with white phosphorous to avoid capture. Give me the password or they go off
now.” I didn’t know much, but white phosphorous could melt metal at close
range, and flesh at a few feet. Anywhere in this room was too close. Water
wouldn’t put it out and, once lit, it stayed lit for the duration.

“Pandora.”

She chuckled. “Of course, I should
have thought of that.”

There was the sound of typing over
the phone. I flipped over the table next to the mirror, ignoring the computer
equipment shattering under its own weight. I propped the metal-topped table
against the explosive silos so that I’d have a little shielding.

“Stop it. Whatever you’re doing.
You’ve always played by the rules, don’t cheat on me now. I’ve decided on a
fair deal. Examine the screen and you’ll notice that your vehicle is
approaching an ambush point. Take control, and for as long as your vehicle
survives, you survive. Leave the phone off the hook. If I hear you do anything
out of the ordinary, I trigger the melt-down. Agreed?”

She expected me to believe that she’d
be there for longer than it took to totally trash my interface and get away, but
I didn’t have a choice right this second. I started hitting windows on the
interface containing the passwords and phone numbers. The current window,
entitled “the Net of Indra” after the mystic force that connects all things,
reduced itself and I looked at my other options. The most interesting were
icons entitled “Minos” after the judge/king of mythology, and “Charon” after
the boatman that ferries the dead into the underworld. I selected “Minos” and
my suspicions were confirmed. It was a judge’s superuser session. Good God,
these people had connections. There was something already happening on the “Minos”
session, but I interrupted it and used it to log in to the game the same way I
would have with Mare’s portable unit. I toyed with the set up until my cockpit
view came up on one screen and my remote pilot interface on the other. Out of
paranoia, I hit the save configuration button in case I had to change programs
later and I wanted to get back here in a hurry.

Kali was right. Both LAS and I were
heading right smack into an ambush, led down the primrose path by the North
Korean tank. Evidently he wasn’t as damaged as we had been led to believe. We
had been drawn off the main roads down a tree-lined, one-lane, dirt road. From
the overhead view, I saw the Korean tank lying in a shallow ditch and shielded
by thicket. If the ambush weren’t already dangerous enough, I saw red spots in
the road indicating an active mine field. I couldn’t radio from the
remote-control interface, so I did the next best thing. I swerved right and
fired my main machine gun around the Elite at the first row of mines. The first
row triggered spectacularly, spraying dirt everywhere, and fogging everyone’s
view. My plan worked in that the Elite employed some kind of emergency
deceleration device, which set off the second row of mines, and incidentally
fragged the Elite’s underside and front with shrapnel. Unfortunately, I didn’t
have an emergency stop button. Unless I wanted to croquet-ball the Elite into
the rest of the mines and finish both of us, I had to think fast.

The trees were evergreens. It would
work, I decided, steering further to the right, and slamming on the brakes
again. As expected, I popped straight up to almost the tops of the trees. My
last second vector change scraped my vehicle’s bottom along the tree tops, and
slowed my velocity to the point where it would be manageable. This caused two
more problems. The first was that as I got slower, the Ghedra sank lower, and
the tree trunks got thicker. I was taking progressively more damage. The second
was that I still couldn’t stop before I crossed the Korean’s line of fire.
Hellfire, if I was going to take a hit, I was going to make it count.

I did some quick billiards geometry
in my head, banking the prototype first left and then a hard right into the
tree trunks. I careened off, loosing the handle-bars and windscreen off one of
the twins strapped to the upper hull. It would continue to provide lift, but I
could probably never again steer it as an independent vehicle. It was worth the
sacrifice because I had landed precisely where I wanted, between the Korean
tank and the Elite in the mine-free zone.

About this time the dust was
clearing and the schmuck never knew what hit him. I ground to a halt barely two
meters from his muzzle. When he fired, the shell bounce off my main bubble,
cracking the nearly invulnerable barrier. Biohazard symbols appeared on both
screens. Some sort of flesh-eating nerve-melting horror had been released, and
both of us were in the cloud. Estimates said I had sixty seconds to inject the
antidote before death. I didn’t have to worry about that because there was no
pilot to be in danger. However, if I didn’t stop him, the tank had enough
conventional rounds to put an end to both the Elite and Ghedra. I did the only
thing I could to neutralize him at this range, I punched speed-dial one, and
pumped the North Korean full of Skippy the super virus. My power gauges all
dipped, but I could almost see the St. Elmo’s fire playing on his electronics
already, the dose was so strong. He wouldn’t be targeting anyone electronically,
and he wouldn’t dare stick his head outside to sight manually because of the
nerve gas.