T. Bunn - Drummer in the Dark

Colin took it easy climbing down the ladder, not wishing to draw attention his way. He handed his tools to the other techie and said as calmly as he could manage, “Clear this up, will you. I’ve got something else to see to.”

He strolled down the back aisle, taking it slow, ignoring the gradually re-amping noise from the floor. Eric did not look up at his approach. Colin used his body to block his motion from the balcony, as he jammed his thumb hard into Eric’s side.

“Hey!” The guy turned around, to all the world just another trader whose world had narrowed down to four screens and three telephones. But the welt was still there on his forehead, the lip still bruised, the shadow ghosts still in his gaze. “What the-”

“Run,” Colin said, notching his head a fraction toward the balcony. “Now.”

Colin strolled over to the back door, then turned and shouted a silent scourge upon all the day. Eric still sat at his desk. The young trader stared dumbly at Colin. Colin glanced up and saw that the balcony was empty. He said to Eric and the enveloping chaos, “Worse and very much worse still.”

Then he flew.

Had he more time to think things over, perhaps he would have done nothing at all. Just let Eric be trapped and flayed and tied to the sacrificial altar. But there was no time for anything then except action.

Colin raced back to his cubicle. He flipped open his box of auxilliary gear and set up an emergency firewall. Two rotating electronic eyes the size of matchboxes were perched on the cubicle’s walls, angled so they monitored the aisles, the back passage, and the door to the trading floor. On his four monitors he threw up patterns designed for this very purpose, numbers and code in haphazard scrambles that would appear to the unknowing eye as work-in-progress.

Colin yanked out the fastest computer from beneath his desk and plugged in the latest of his acquisitions, a gift from a contact on the hardware side. The salesman had passed over top-of-the-line experimental gear in hopes that Colin would put in a good word when they next upgraded the floor. The new heads-up display looked like the bug-eyed sunglasses worn by the San Francisco deadhead. The heads-up was made for 3-D gaming. But the eye-level monitors were so finely calibrated he could read script. He coded in the entry pattern for slipping inside the company’s maintenance computer. Then he overrode the security camera system and spied in on the trading floor. He cursed softly when the first thing he saw was Dale Crawford and another security guy entering the trading floor with Jim Burke.

Colin observed helplessly as they came at Eric from two sides, cutting off his escape. Eric watched their approach in helpless horror. Only when the security chief gripped him by the shoulder did he start screaming. The camera caught the open mouth, the terror-stricken eyes, the way Eric clutched at his chair, the desk, his neighbor. They ripped his hands away and dragged him across the floor. Burke shouted something, the words lost to Colin’s silent vision. The other traders remained static, inert.

An idea did not take shape so much as explode into his brain. Colin flipped from the camera viewing the frozen-tundra display of the trading room floor to the one monitoring the reception area. He saw Eric’s silent shouts and futile scramblings as Crawford and the other security goon held him and waited for the elevator. Colin worked at a blinding pace, keying in commands, finally finding a logical reason for all the hours spent wandering about the company’s various systems.

He was there and ready when the elevator doors opened. His timing was exact, the seconds pared into careful instants packed with hundreds of heartbeats and dozens of breaths, as though he was amped to Eric’s level. Not out there screaming and dragging his heels across the granite-tiled floor. But there just the same.

Dale Crawford stepped inside the elevator, trying to drag Eric with him. But Eric had managed to lock one arm around the reception desk’s nearest stanchion. While the other guard sought to pry his fingers loose, Burke stepped into the elevator and pulled on one of Eric’s legs, adding his muscle to Crawford’s, trying to wrench Eric free.

Colin slammed the elevator doors shut. Hard.

Alarm bells went off in the distance. The doors opened back up at his command. Crawford had lost his grip and was leaning, stunned, against the elevator’s back wall. But the Unabomber, who had also just been semimashed by the elevator doors, still had his hands locked around Eric’s leg. So Colin ordered the doors shut again. Harder still.

The pretty Hayek receptionist, known for her icy demeanor and unflappable calm, was in full panic mode. She was up behind her chair, hair out at all angles, screaming silently. The elevator doors opened again, but only far enough for Burke to drop in a limp, defeated huddle. Colin swiftly reshut the door before the security chief could emerge, and sent the machine to the basement. And watched.

The single remaining guard was no match for a hyperamped Eric. The frantic young trader released his grip on the stanchion only to grab the brass trash can. He hammered the guard’s blond fuzz. Then he did his best to rearrange the guy’s upper mandible and nose and right temple. On the third blow the guard staggered back a step. Eric hurled the can at him and fled through the front doors.

Just in time. Burke and the security chief came racing up the stairs and were swiftly joined by two other guards. Burke was limping. He used the reception desk for support as they shouted at the guard who sprawled in the corner, too stunned from Eric’s onslaught to respond. Then they turned to the terror-stricken receptionist, who pointed one trembling hand toward the front doors.

But Colin was ready for them. The doors were locked.

He watched them try to batter their way futilely through the bulletproof glass, then turn and shout and point behind. Which gave Colin the instant required to strip off the display, pocket the tiny cameras, clear the screens, and join all the others standing at the entrances to their cubicles and watching openmouthed as the Unabomber and the muscle came roaring by. They crashed through the back doors and careened out of sight.

Colin did not join in the subsequent chatter, however. He was under no illusions. Sooner or later they would track him down. Just like Eric. He returned to his desk and pretended to work. No question. He was toast. It was just a matter of time.

Tuesday

Kay caught Wynn just as he and Carter were about to enter the committee room. “You heard anything from our Florida friend?”

“Not since last night.” He refrained from adding that he had tried to call Jackie twice that morning. He had gotten nothing but a busy signal on her landline, and no connection on the cellphone. He was missing her mightily. “Why?”

“Just grabbing at straws. We’re losing.”

“But there’s still time for a turnaround, right?”

“Time is not the issue here. We need a miracle, and we need it yesterday. Things are coming apart.”

A voice called from behind them, “Kay, just a minute please.”

The senator’s expression hardened further. “This was not what I want right now.”

Jackson Taylor was not a handsome man. Normally he affected enough polish to hide his natural state, which was that of a man who had bullied and blustered and fought so many corporate scraps they were stamped upon his features like pox. Today’s rage made tatters of his facade, and lay bare the simian bulge to his cheeks and jaw. “You don’t feel it’s necessary to return calls from your own party chairman?”

“I apologize, Jackson. But we have been incredibly busy, as you well know.”