He didn’t hesitate. He sat down, forced his toes through the mesh of wires, and lowered himself down.
The door banged and the chair slipped again.
Dart kicked at the pressboard panel beneath him, broke it in pieces, and could see through to a desktop in the office below. He let go his purchase and fell through the dead space and down into the office below, landing awkwardly on the desk, driving a sharp pain into his injured ankle.
He heard the chair explode above him. They were inside.
Dart jumped off the desk, ignoring his pain, and ran for the door. A moment later he was running quickly toward the fire stairs, hoping he had enough of a lead.
“That sounded ugly,” the voice said in his left ear.
“Patch me through to Ginny,” Dart said. “I’ve lost the phone.” Like it or not, Proctor’s people would now hear every word.
On Ginny’s instructions, Dart headed for the bottom of the stairs. As Dart ran, she talked nonstop.
Ginny’s detected raid on the Roxin server had triggered the mainframe to adopt a defensive position, eliminating an outsider’s ability to access the machine through modem and pulling the system temporarily off-line. The situation could be reversed, but only from the SYSOP terminal inside Roxin’s data processing center, which Ginny guessed was likely to be located on the facility’s basement level.
“How can you possibly be sure about this?” Dart questioned on the run.
“There are three different systems they could be using, and I know every one of them. They all share the ability to take modem communications off-line. By definition, they cannot be put back on-line using software; they require someone to throw a physical switch—a button. It’s what keeps them secure. The front panels are all basically the same: some system indicators and either one or two buttons. I know the way this works, Joe. This is my area of expertise,” Ginny reminded. “You’re going to have to trust me. And listen, Joe, once we’re back on-line, I need a couple minutes, minimum.”
“What am I looking for?” He asked.
“It will be a plain vanilla box—maybe a stack of them, depending how many incoming lines there are. If there’s more than one, you’ll have to trip each master. The front panel will show a series of seven small lights across it, red probably; in all likelihood, only the farthest right-hand light will be lit. On the far right-hand side of the box itself will be a vertical stack of red lights—one for each incoming line—these are actually buttons, not lights.
Below
these lights,” she emphasized, “there is another button off by itself.” Then, editing herself, she said, “On two of the machines it is below. On the Black Box model it is above. But it will either read ‘Master,’ or ‘Group On-line,’ or ‘All.’”
“Master, Group On-line, or All,” he repeated.
“Yes. And that is the one you want. One or more of those masters is going to be red. When you push it, it will change to green or amber. At that point we’re back on-line.” She asked, “Is that enough of a description?”
“Sounds good.”
“You can describe things to me and ask, once you’re there.”
“I missed that last bit,” Dart said, finally arriving at the bottom of the stairs. Ginny repeated herself. “Okay,” Dart said, cowering from the time pressure. “I’m on the basement level. What room am I looking for?”
“Data Processing,” Ginny replied.
Dart reevaluated his situation. There were, at the very minimum, three guards after him. Proctor, and anyone accompanying him, had to be thrown into the mix. That made four or more after him. They had lost track of him. With Proctor running things, Dart felt certain they would do the smart thing: conduct a floor-by-floor search. At the same time, at least one guard would watch the computer, monitoring the system to see if Dart attempted to use a security card to gain access anywhere. This person would guide the search team.
The voice of the lookout scratched into Dart’s ear like fingernails down a blackboard. “They’re taking their time, but they’re working their way down. I’m showing them at the second floor.”
By going to the basement level he had, in all likelihood, trapped himself.
He ran down the hall where, instead of the cryptic color system, the doors actually carried titles. Several were marked
SERVICE PERSONNEL ONLY
. Another read
FOOD SERVICES
. He passed two bathrooms. Something marked
HIGH VOLTAGE DO NOT ENTER
.
Dart turned right down a long corridor. The basement was a rabbit warren. He passed a door marked
TECHNICAL SERVICES
.
“Ginny?” he said into the air.
“Right here.” She spoke into his ear.
“I’m looking at Technical Services. Haven’t seen anything like Data Processing.”
“Basement level?”
“Right.”
“Security?”
“You bet,” Dart confirmed, wondering how he could get inside.
“Check the crack below the door,” Ginny advised. “The gap at the bottom of the door. Cold air sinks,” he said. “The computer room will be real cold.”
Dart dropped to his knees and poked his fingers through. “You got it. Real cold.”
“Let’s give it a try,” she said.
Dart stood back up, his knees killing him. He stared at the door in confusion. It was a heavy steel door, and it was locked. He pulled his gun out of his holster. It was all he could think of.
“Whatever you do,” Ginny said, as if standing there, “don’t break that door down.”
“I
have
to,” Dart replied.
“You can’t. Same reason we can’t have your bad boys breaking in,” she said, referring to the ERT team. “That kind of illegal access will cause the mainframe to suspend. The
only
person able to undo that is the SYSOP himself.”
“Shit,” Dart replied. He glanced up: acoustic panels. “Hold on,” Dart said.
“You need a security card,” Ginny advised. “It’s the only way. Trust me.”
“Maybe not,” Dart corrected, heading back down the hallway toward the bathrooms that he had passed.
The lookout interrupted and said, “They’re descending fire stairs, north and south, approaching level one.”
Dart pushed into the mens room and flicked on the light. He glanced up: acoustical panels hung in a suspended frame. He ran back into the hallway, down to the intersection of the other corridor and made a mental note of distance and angle. He returned to the bathroom, pulled himself up onto the sink’s countertop, and pushed up on the panel. It moved out of his way.
“I’m going for it,” Dart announced.
“Going for
what?
”
“We’ll see.”
Securing a hand-hold on a pipe within the area above the suspended ceiling, Dart hooked a foot over the stall partition and pulled himself up and through. The dead space occupied an area about four feet high—above Dart was the support structure for the first floor; below, the suspended ceiling through which he had just entered. The area was claustrophobic and vast; hallway ceiling fixtures threw enough light around for Dart to see a series of black plastic plumbing pipes and heavy steel sprinkler pipes that were suspended from the overhead I-beams. He took the time to replace the acoustic panel he had come through to hide the way he had come. He hoped the security team would pass up the men’s room and continue their search elsewhere on another level.
The flimsy false ceiling, supported by strands of twisted wire, was not strong enough to hold him. Dart, flat on his stomach, distributed his weight between a plumbing pipe, where he hooked his left leg, and a fire sprinkler holding his right, his fingers groping for purchase on the overhead I-beams. If he slipped and fell, he would crash down into whatever room and unseen hazards lay below.
The parallel pipes were his only support, and he had to stay with them despite the fact that they appeared to follow the direction of the hallway—east, west—rather than the angle that Dart had projected to reach the computer room. He crawled carefully, all the while attempting to maintain his bearings. The pipes and conduit were suspended by metal plumber’s “tape” and lengths of wire, requiring Dart to pause and navigate around them, reaching around each obstruction, taking hold of one pipe and shifting his weight onto the opposing one.
Dart suddenly realized he heard only static in his left ear. Either the radio had gone dead or the combination of the sublevel basement and the abundance of metal was causing interference. If he wasn’t hearing them, then they weren’t hearing him. He had to hurry. If the command van lost track of him for too long they would order the ERT team to hit the building, and according to Ginny such unauthorized entry would shut down the mainframe, rendering it inaccessible, the files lost.
A series of lights came on, immediately to Dart’s left, blinding him. At the same time, he heard the frantic footfalls of people running immediately below him—close enough to touch. Dart remained still as two men stopped directly beneath him, and he recognized the tension-filled voice of Terry Proctor.
“Doesn’t make sense,” Proctor said, out of breath.
“Maybe he can get inside the rooms without the system knowing it,” the man with him suggested.
There was a long pause. Dart could feel Proctor thinking, putting himself in Dart’s position. Proctor said, “We stay with the plan: All rooms that aren’t secure get a thorough search.”
Dart heard the men separate. The guard said to Proctor, “Where are you going? There’s nothing down that way.”
“I need to do something,” Proctor said. “Just do your fucking job,” he chastised.
Rent-a-cops
, Dart thought, with equal disdain.
As far as Joe could tell, the guard headed back down toward the bathrooms while Proctor hurried up the corridor. The noise level in the tight space was amazing; despite their name, the acoustic panels did little to muffle any of the sounds. When the guard entered the men’s room, twenty feet behind Dart, every sound could be heard. The man stopped to urinate, and Dart could hear him work his zipper fly. He banged the stall door open. A moment later he was inspecting the women’s room. Not long after, Dart heard the clatter of brooms and mops and knew the guard was in a custodial closet. The detective used the cover of this noise to continue. With the hallway lights ablaze, he could see throughout the tight crawl space, and he plotted which pairs of pipes might support him en route to the computer room.
“… just guard it,” he heard Proctor say somewhere off ahead of him.
“I’m good at
finding
people,” a deep voice replied. “This is a waste of my talents.”
“Listen, Alverez, if you had any talent, we wouldn’t be here,” Proctor objected.
“You gonna insult me,” the man objected, “and I won’t do the business for you.”
“Do
not
fuck with me. Get in there and stay there. If and when we need your
talents
, I’ll send someone for you.”
“He won’t talk, and he won’t walk,” the other man said. “I owe this fucker.”
Dart felt a chill pass through him. Alverez, the man Zeller had wanted to avoid, was guarding the computer room.
Alverez continued. “Make it look like he took a tumble down some stairs. No problem.”
“Down, Rambo,” Proctor said disparagingly. “Just guard the fucking room.”
“Ain’t no problem.”
“And you don’t leave for
any
reason,” Proctor added.
Dart heard a door open and thump shut. It seemed twenty to thirty feet to his right.
The computer room.
He studied the pipes to see how to make it over there, then he plotted a course straight ahead ten feet that connected with a single sprinkler pipe he would use to take him over the room. Minutes later, he crossed over to that single pipe. He put his butt on it, his feet out in front of him, hands overhead on an I-beam and, lying back, scooted himself forward a few inches at a time.
Alverez
, he was thinking, hearing Zeller’s voice: A guy hired to break my knees.
Without thought, Dart automatically reached down to pat the weapon that Haite had issued him, to make sure it was still there. In the process, he lost his balance, his left hand slipping off the I-beam. He reached out instinctively to block his fall and punched his right hand through an acoustical panel as his left hand saved him. He froze, dangling.
“Billy?” he heard a voice call out. “Hey, Billy? That you?”
Footsteps coming toward him.
Dart was looking down onto a set of plastic recycling bins, just on the other side of the wall from the corridor. He gently fingered the broken piece of panel that hung like a flap and drew it back up silently, partially patching his error.
The footsteps went past him. “Billy?” the voice called out again, growing more distant. He heard a walkie-talkie belch as this man complained, “Whoever’s up on one is making too much fucking noise. Keep it down up there.” A second later a heavy door thumped shut and Dart imagined that this man had left the basement.
For good?
Dart wondered.
Or to get some backup?
He pulled himself back up and continued down the pipe, his butt sore, his fingers cramping. Each of the iron clamps and supports that hung the sprinkler system from the I-beams presented Dart with an obstacle around which he had to maneuver. Five minutes later, he was directly over the computer room, the only sounds the scraping shoes of Alverez as he paced, a bulldog confined to his pen.
All at once, the space went dark again—the basement hallway lights had timed out and had turned themselves off. The only light came in cones and shafts as it escaped the computer room below from holes created to carry conduit and computer and telephone cables. Dart allowed time for his eyes to adjust and then edged forward toward the nearest peephole.
The pipe shifted in a way that Dart had not experienced, a subtle movement that he didn’t understand until he heard a regular ticking sound. He sourced that sound and discovered a leak directly beneath him—a pipe joint had failed under his weight. The sprinkler water dripped like the ticking of a clock. In a moment it would seep through the panel and begin dripping into the room where Alverez paced. Dart reached down and ran his hand along the underside of the pipe, smearing the leaking water, and briefly stopping the drip.