Butterfly Stomp Waltz

Chapter 9

9

I can disarm a bomb. Radio detonator? No problem. You study the wiring for a couple minutes and pull the correct wire. It only takes a little bit of brains.

Well, okay, a lot of brains. An understanding of electronics. And explosives. You’ve got to reverse-engineer the wiring from first principles.

But still. I can do it.

But the flunky had said device sixteen. Implying that there were fifteen more like it. At least.

This was a blow-out job.

If all sixteen bombs were the same size as what I’d seen, they might take the top ten floors of the tower with them.

Time to run. Grab my backpack and get the hell out.

I waver for a moment.

Go up against Rob?

It’s not like our goals were incompatible. He was here to blow the joint. I was here to steal two labeled hard drives from the computer room. I could do the theft and clear out, leaving him plenty of time.

But he’d never go for it. A blowout meant taking everything with it, including any hard drives and any witnesses.

I (we!) would never go for it either. Against the spirit of the deal. And when you charge our—my rates, you keep the spirit of the deal.

Smart thing to do was run.

But I couldn’t make myself do it.

After Newcastle, after everything that had gone so horribly wrong that one horrible day last week, I need a win. I need to strike a blow for liberty and hope and life and joy.

Somebody has to pay for Deke, and I’ll never find the people responsible.

So I scuttle along the top of the ceiling as fast as I dared.

The computer room is easy to find from above. All the network cables converge on that one area. I turn off the infra-red, slide a tile out, see nobody, and drop to the white linoleum floor below.

Four rows of glass-fronted computer cabinets run from one beige gypsum board wall to the other, like library shelves. And it is a library, sort of. The computers humming inside these cabinets hold more information than the whole Library of Congress. Bundles of thick blue cables rise from each cabinet into the ceiling, running into special rings cut into the fiberglass panels right next to the brilliant banks of fluorescent lights. A dedicated air conditioner wheezes in the corner. In the back, a set of double doors lead to the lobby, for moving cabinets and heavy machines into this room. They’re rather fancy dark wood, in case they have to be open when an important bastard comes swaggering in from the elevator. A single, much plainer metal door on the side leads to the computer operations staff area. The smell of floor wax is so thick it paints my tongue, and the machines hum and growl loud enough that I’d have to raise my voice to talk.

The whole room’s just… sterile.

I know that there’s a lot of geeks like me that like to play with computers—no, I take that back. I like to play with the information in computers, I like the number-crunching and the experimenting that they empower. I know there’s a lot of innocent geeks who like fiddling with the machines and how they hook together, but they’re just mechanics. They’re like the guys who rebuilt car engines in the 1950s. Tinkerers, with less grease and more carbs.

I couldn’t imagine spending my life servicing the lifeless life in this room, rather than playing with everything they empowered.

No time.

The rows are lettered. Each cabinet is numbered. I find row C, then scuttle down to cabinet 8, one from the far end. Green and red LEDs glow behind brown-frosted glass. I didn’t bring the Lock-Release, but I learned to pick better locks than these when I was eight. Blindfolded.

Hey, locks were the toughest puzzle I could find back then.

But cabinet C8 is already unlocked.

The door is barely latched.

My stomach twitches with nausea and just a hint of fear.

The whole cabinet is dedicated to shelves of hard drives, mounted vertically in little plastic cases, snug up against each other. I skim down the cabinet, and—yep.

The drives labeled C8-115 and C8-116 are missing, plastic case and all.

Rob’s got them.

Steal the data. Torch the building. Claim the insurance, shut down. Claim more federal funds under another name. Lather, rinse, repeat.

I stand up and shut the door, frustrated anger churning in my guts.

There’s no way I can get the drives now.

I’ve failed.

All I can do now is escape before the blowout.

Outside the door, something dings. An elevator.

A high, threadbare voice outside the double doors shouts “Security!”

I freeze.

There’s the pop of a handgun.

One shot.

Silence.

A man’s voice right beyond the door says “Dammit.”

Footsteps.

My guts plunge.

He wants to move the body.

The doorknob rattles.

Turns.