Furious

35

Senior Chief Agent in Charge Foile cursed under his breath. He had not come this far to sit on his hands while fools piled up their mistakes “You,” he said, pointing at the man who styled himself captain. “Take me to the Security Center.”

“You can’t go there. With the alarm given, no one is allowed in.”

Rick Sanchez grabbed the older man by the arm and began moving him with the rest of Foile’s team as they headed back to his car.

“There are machine guns on the grounds. They’ll shoot the shit out of you!” the intrepid captain was almost shouting now.

“Leslie, you drive,” Foile ordered.

The young agent grinned. “You bet, boss.”

Foile took the passenger front seat. Mahomet and Rick settled the rent-a-cop between them in the back. Leslie headed toward the first checkpoint at a sedate but steady speed. The man in the tiny guardhouse made slowing motions, but when it became clear that he could either raise the rail or lose it, he hit the button and it rose barely fast enough to miss the top of Foile’s sedan.

“Smart young man,” Foile observed, as Leslie accelerated through the gate.

“There are machine guns!” the man in the brown uniform repeated in an immoderately high shriek.

“Leslie, is our car’s squawker on?” Foile asked.

“It’s been interrogated three times in the last minute, boss.”

“And it reports us as a Bureau of Investigation vehicle on official business?”

“The very same, sir.”

“They wouldn’t dare fire on us,” Foile muttered.

As the short drive to the next checkpoint proved—they didn’t.

“Do I crash the gate, boss?” Leslie asked. A “yes,” answer if not expected, was clearly hoped for.

“No, Agent. I hope we can avoid any property damage tonight. Property damages or deaths,” Foile added, and the sedan slowed to a stop at the gatehouse.

Foile produced his credentials for the guard. “I am on official bureau business. I require you to admit me.”

The guard, wearing corporal stripes, chewed his lip, clearly confronted with a problem way above his pay grade. He glanced at the captain in the back, who waved his hands in a most ambiguous fashion after Rick nudged him in the ribs.

That seemed enough for the poor corporal. The gate went up.

“There are autocannons covering this road,” the young man shouted helpfully, as they pulled away.

“Are we being checked on?” Foile asked.

“Every five seconds, sir. Do you think there are autocannons covering us?”

Foile glanced at the rent-a-cop in back. “Not unless Alexander Longknife is spending more on weaponry and equipment than he did on personnel and training.”

A few moments later, Leslie braked to a stop in the middle of the round driveway in front of Longknife Tower. They dismounted; the two agents in back had to encourage the brown-uniformed man that, yes, he, too, was going with them.

“They issue machine pistols to the guards in the tower. And they’ll use them,” he told them. Foile wondered if that information would be any more accurate than the idle rumors the captain had provided so far.

As it proved, he was correct about the machine pistols. There was a brown-suited guard at the door to meet them. And he did have a machine pistol slung over his shoulder. However, he was using both hands to unlock the door and admit them as the four of them flashed their bureau IDs.

“Take me to the Security Center,” Foile ordered the armed guard, as they entered.

“You can’t go in there sir,” the guard said as he struggled to relock the door. He was using an old-fashioned metal key. It would be amusing if Foile had time to allow himself humor.

He feared that time was something he had very little of tonight.

He stalked toward the security post in front of the four banks of elevators. There, five guards stood, covering him as casually and diffidently as men with automatic weapons could.

“I am a Senior Chief Agent of the Wardhaven Bureau of Investigations,” Foile snapped at the one who seemed, ever so slightly, to be in charge. “I require admission to the Security Center.”

“No one is admitted while the alarm is active,” the putative senior repeated.

“Why don’t you take me there and let someone in charge decide?”

The nominal superior took off at a trot. Foile and his team followed at a quick walk. He led them past all the elevators and around a corner. In the middle of that wall was a door made apparent mainly by the red-lettered sign that proclaimed NO ADMITTANCE.

There the guard stopped and shrugged.

Foile walked up to the door; there was no sign of a lock or place to swipe an admit. He looked right, then left. A camera made a slight noise as it focused on him.

Again he held up his credentials and identified himself and his business. This time he added. “I am on special assignment from the Prime Minister himself. I require admittance. I strongly suggest that you admit me.”

His other agents joined him, their credentials also held up for inspection. The camera made noise as it changed direction a bit, then adjusted its focus to take in each of the agents. Finally, the door clicked open, and Foile and his team entered.

The scene inside was ordered and cool. Men and women sat at stations going about their business. If the alarm hadn’t continued to buzz and the red light above the door whirl, it might have been an ordinary day. While the worker bees seemed well in order, the same could not be said for what Foile took for the command center. There, four people stood, clad in black uniforms, doing a good imitation of bickering.

As Foile closed on them, it became apparent that they were indeed arguing.

Half wanted to turn off the alarm. The other half weren’t quite ready to.

Foile cleared his throat to get their attention. The indecisive noise of human disagreement rumbled to a halt.

“Your security has been penetrated by Princess Kristine Longknife and two of her associates. My best guess is that she wants to spend some quality time with her grandfather.”

“Our security has not been breached,” the taller woman in black shot back. “We have everything under control.”

Foile took the time to scratch behind his ear. “I really don’t think so.”

“There may be some problem with those damn browns and their paperwork, but we’ve got everything under control in here. No problem at all. Just look at the video take from the loading dock. Nothing at all. Totally normal.”

Out on the work floor, a young woman stood from her workstation. “I think we do have a problem,” she said, clearly uncomfortable to be disagreeing with her superiors. “I just ran a cloning check on the last thirty minutes from that station and it gives a twenty-three-percent chance that this is not original film. No one’s moved during that time.”

“They’re new hires,” the short man in black snapped. “Hanson’s doing his usual heavy-handed thing. Look, he’s just sitting there, reading one of his girly mags.”

“Yes, sir, but I just did a poke at his commlink. It showed him inside the receiving area.”

“So he needed to piss.”

“Inside the receiving area while he’s also sitting at his desk reading, sir?”

That finally broke down the wall of invincible ignorance, saving Foile from having to take a sledgehammer to a couple of cast-iron heads.

“Get a guard out to the receiving area,” the tall woman ordered.

“Have all stations report in,” the shorter woman in the command group ordered. Foile watched as the worker bees broke out of their normal business and made frantic calls to everyone on their watch list.

The young woman who had forced the issue was the first to report. “I have no answer from the receiving dock.” A moment later, she turned back to the command desk with a frown. “I also have no report back from the subbasement support guard.”

“Send us the camera coverage,” the tall woman ordered.

“There is no camera coverage of the subbasement. It was dropped in the cutbacks last summer.” The troublemaker glanced at some empty floor spaces. The marks on the carpet showed evidence that there had been workstations there. Was the much-vaunted Longknife Tower security just a Potemkin village? Foile weighed just how much that might increase the chances of a certain princess getting to see her grandfather without getting anyone killed.

Or not. Foile remembered all the machine pistols he’d seen in the hands of people who looked like they needed a whole lot more training on crisis management as well as time on the shooting range.

Even if Princess Longknife started shooting with her sleepy darts, there was going to be a whole lot of blood on the floor. In this situation, with lots of lead flying addressed ‘To Whom It May Concern,’ you could never bet on who got hit with what.

Once again, the command team was divided and arguing.

“We have no idea where those three are,” the short man said. “We have to release the nano hunters. They’re the only things that can search the areas where we don’t have camera coverage.”

“We only cut back on the cameras because we bought the little twerps,” the short woman added.

“But every time we turn them loose, we lose ten percent of them. Who wants to sign for that cost?”

The tall man in the black uniform usually stayed out of the bickering. Now he spoke. “We don’t need to turn them all loose. Think about it. This Longknife girl is at the bottom of the tower and wants to get to the top of it.” He glanced at one pair of workstations that showed no activity.

“We’ve got the elevators locked down. That leaves her only the stairwells, unless she’s climbing the outside of the building. Has anyone checked there?”

Suddenly, there was mad activity at one desk. Two breaths later, a man reported, “No one on the outside of the building, sir.”

Foile considered the statement and decided he wouldn’t bet against the Longknife princess.

“So turn loose the nanos in the stairwells,” the tall man said. On the work floor, two people moved to obey. For five minutes, things were quiet. Only the hooting and ringing of the alarms disturbed the people hard at work on the flood.

There was also no sign of the three they hunted.

Reports came back from the visual inspection of the receiving dock and subbasement. The guards there were down but unhurt. They retrieved ceramic sleepy darts from both of them, identical to the ones Foile’s team had recently pried out of a wood support beam at a certain mountain cabin.

Leslie grinned. “Princess Kris won’t kill anyone.”

“Anyone?” Mahomet asked.

“Anyone she can avoid killing,” Leslie corrected herself.

For five long minutes, the search went on and turned up nothing. Even Foile found himself wondering if they really were there.

Then the lights went out, and the alarms quit hooting.

A second later, the backup systems kicked in. Dim lights came back on. There was still a buzzing alarm, but a lot softer.

“What the hell?” came from the tall woman.

“She’s killed the main power from the subbasement,” the short man said. “Not to worry, the backup power supply is on the seventy-fifth floor.”

“Get me camera coverage of that floor,” the tall man demanded.

“We can’t, sir,” the short woman answered. “We are operating on local backup for the computers here in this room, but there’s nothing coming in, sir, from the rest of the building. We’re blind.”

“Apparently the princess has made it to the seventy-fifth floor,” Leslie said sardonically.

“We’re not only blind, but dumb and deaf as well,” the tall man growled. “The nanos. They’re supposed to be on their own power. What do they see?”

Someone on the floor, it was hard for Foile to see by the dim light, stood. “The nanos are not catching anything, sir. She must not be in the stairwells.”

“And we have all the elevators locked down,” the tall woman said. “She’s going nowhere.”

“Release the nanos in the elevator wells,” the tall man ordered. “Include the . . . what do you call them . . . blue-collar elevators?”

“Service elevators,” someone answered.

“Turn loose nanos in all of them. She may not be riding one of them, but there are ladders in those shafts. They could be climbing.”

“Nanos released in all the elevator wells,” came back.

Half a minute later, they got their answer. “Sir. It can’t be, but one of the elevators is moving.”

“Turn off its power,” the tall man snapped.

“It is off, sir,” a worker bee said, hitting a button on his desk over and over again. “My board says there is no power to any of the elevators, but the nanos show elevator F-3 moving. It’s a service elevator covering the upper floors, sir.”

“Nelly’s doing, I’ll bet you,” Leslie Chu whispered from beside Foile.

The tall man in the black uniform left the command desk and walked aside for a few steps, signaling Foile to join him.

“She may be brilliant, and her computer may be able to let her walk on water, but that damn princess is going to get herself killed.”

“How?” Foile asked.

“When we lost power, Alexander Longknife lifted off the penthouse in an armed helicopter. He is no longer in the building, so if this young woman wants to talk to him, she came to the wrong place.”

“Oh,” said Foile. So the princess had failed. That still didn’t kill her.

“When he abandoned the penthouse, the third, fourth, and fifth floors below him were flooded with Sarin gas. Is that princess of yours equipped for that?”

“She is not my princess, but, no, I doubt she is.” Foile also wanted to know what exception to the laws of war and civil matters gave Al Longknife access to such gas. That question would have to wait.

“I must talk to the Longknife princess,” Senior Chief Agent in Charge Foile said bluntly.

“Christian, do we have anything like a public-address system left to us?” the tall man asked the tall woman.

“We are supposed to, Karl, but nothing is working according to specs tonight.”

Both of them looked out over the work floor, and their eyes came to rest on the young woman who’d first insisted on their fallibility.

“My board says it’s available. I won’t know for sure until someone uses it.”

Karl handed Foile a mike. “Press the button on the side to talk. If you don’t want everyone in the building to hear what you’re saying, let up on the button.”

“Lets hope a certain determined young woman can hear what I’m saying.”

Foile took a deep breath and punched the button.

“Princess Kristine, I need to talk to you. This is Taylor Foile, I’m with the Wardhaven Bureau of Investigation, and if you and your friends want to be alive five minutes from now, you need to listen to what I have to say.”