Greg Bear - Quantico

‘Fuck,’ Alice Watson said.

‘Is this idea credible?’ Griff asked.

‘You told Andrews this was the Patriarch’s piece de resistance,’ Schell said, using English not French pronunciation. ‘He’s been making bombs for sixty years. You tell me what’s credible.’

‘Amen,’ Watson said.

Griff gave her a critical squint. ‘Bombers don’t play dice with timers or fuses,’ he said. ‘How would he know it wouldn’t go off while his family was still here?’

‘He might have flipped a switch as soon as you drove up,’ Schell said. ‘Put his fate in God’s hands. And yours, too. Isn’t that his style?’

‘Pull out, Griff,’ Andrews said. His voice was steady but Griff could tell. ‘Let ’em drop a doodlebug.’

‘Divine whim,’ Watson said, dead-pan. ‘God is the timer. Very clever. You boys are scaring me.’ She was facing him from the other side of the trap door.

‘That’s nuts,’ Griff murmured. ‘God doesn’t make lights in the sky. Magnetic fields and particles do that, right?’

‘If you say so,’ Schell said. ‘What would the Patriarch think?’

Death to the Jews. Griff walked around the trap door. He was beginning to have real doubts about there being a little girl anywhere in the barn. But he had to make sure. She might have gone down into the basement to hide. The Patriarch would have certainly taught his children to be afraid of police, of government agents. There might not be enough time to get the big bot in here to move that hatch-certainly not time enough for them to reach minimum safe distance if the hatch was hot.

He wanted us to go deeper, see a little more of what he was up to. The trap door is not rigged.

Twenty years he had worked on the Patriarch’s case. Twenty years of his life, off and on, hunting down an elusive mystery-how and why-until he thought he knew the man without ever having met him. The profiler’s illusion, of course, is that his work is a science. Illusions are like thick layers of fat. They slow you down and eventually they kill you.

‘The wire runs the length of the barn,’ he told Andrews and the boys and girls across the country, on bombnet. ‘It jumps to a board ramp and probably goes all the way down to the floor of the cellar.’

‘Could be double-stranded tape, live current and ground,’ Schell said. Bombnet had appointed him spokesperson. ‘Do you think it’s attached to a charge?’

‘I think it’s a guide tape for some sort of mechanism,’ Watson said, and challenged Griff to contradict her. He did not. Instead, he said,

‘I’ll go down there and find the girl. We won’t need two. Back out of here, Alice.’ He meant that literally. The bomb suits worked best facing a blast.

‘You first,’ Alice said. ‘I’ll hold your mitt.’

‘You really believe this stuff about elf-vane waves?’ Griff called out, louder than necessary. ‘I’m looking at a trap door. I think the girl might be hiding down there.’

Andrews spoke up again. ‘Bombnet wants you out of there. They think Schell’s boys have come up with a credible theory. Some of the guys have pulled out their electrical textbooks and calculators, but their gut says it could be done. Redstone, Eglin, Washington-one and all, Griff. It’s unanimous.’

‘The Patriarch wants to tell me something,’ Griff said. ‘He’ll try to make me pay, but I think it’s going to be interesting.’

‘What the fuck does that mean?’ Schell said, his voice skipping in and out. Satellite communications were suffering-that’s how big the solar storm was, way above them, up in God’s cruel heaven. The aurora was just a sideshow.

The video feed from their helmet cams was probably suffering, as well.

‘Law enforcement officers make irrational decisions if they’ve been through a bout of depression,’ Schell added. ‘Their priorities get all screwed up. They act out resentments…taking risks. Cap Benson tells me…from depression.’

‘Who the hell hasn’t in this business?’ Griff asked. Was it true? Was there a death-wish here? I honestly don’t think so. I’d like to see William graduate from the Academy. I’d like to see him prove his asshole father was wrong. ‘Cap, stop telling tales out of court.’

‘Sorry, Griff. Just get out of there.’

‘There was something big going on down here. Don’t you feel it? I’d like to know what it is, wouldn’t you?’

‘No,’ Andrews said.

‘Screw it, Griff,’ Rebecca said. ‘I’m not seeing anything of interest. Get out. We’ll do everything we can to grab evidence later.’

‘Griff, everyone here-’ Schell was saying.

‘Well, I’d like to find the girl and look around a bit, and then I’ll get out, pronto.’ Silence on bombnet. Griff could imagine Schell stomping and cursing in that faraway room, or just standing there-shaking his head.

‘We’re on our own, Alice,’ Griff said. ‘You feeling depressed?’

‘No, sir,’ Watson said. ‘I want to see what’s down there.’

‘A basement beneath an old barn. I’m sure it’s a wonderland.’

Watson grinned. But then, she was always grinning. Her mishap had left her looking like death’s girlfriend.

He reached the toe of his boot under the trap door and worked to push it aside. It scraped out a hollow groan as it moved. Watson aimed her light. The ramp was a long one. The basement was big.

Griff fought back against the sensation that the suit was clamping down on him. Fear is the mind-killer, he told himself, quoting from a novel he had read as a teenager. Fear is the Little Death.

But another voice was telling him, Fuck that. The Big Sleep is a lot worse than the Little Death.

‘The brain’s a bitch,’ Watson said, ‘you know that?’

Griff chuckled. That’s why he had chosen Watson. When they worked these situations together, she always seemed to know just what he was thinking. The ramp board was wide and thick and felt sturdy. He figured it could hold him and the bomb suit, but not the both of them. ‘I’ll go first,’ he said.

‘By all means,’ Watson said, with a stuffed-sausage kind of curtsey. She steadied his arm as he got up on the board. From that point on it was an awkward little ballet, shuffling sideways, feeling the board bend, wondering if carpenter ants or termites had been busy down there.

Watson watched as the darkness swallowed him. His helmet light plunged off into the gloom like a smudge of white chalk. After an impossibly long time, hours it seemed, he reached a solid floor.

‘All right, I’m down.’

‘Back off the board. I’m coming,’ Watson said.

He turned to his right. The stalls above were echoed by stalls below. He turned left. Just a few feet away, something moved-something he could not make out, that he saw but that his brain could not analyze. The plastic in the face-plate reduced and distorted visual cues. He lifted his head slightly to put the outer glow of helmet light on the object.

Watson seemed to descend in record time. Her light flared across his own.

‘Jesus H. Christ. Hold off,’ he said, raising an arm.

‘What is it?’ she asked.

He began to take a step forward, then stopped. Attractive objects lured you through tripwires. You never reach the object or solve the puzzle. ‘I found our little girl.’

A cardboard cutout of a child with a red wig on top had been mounted on a motorized toy offroad vehicle. The big toy was still faintly whirring and butting against a concrete wall. The vehicle had followed the taped path, carrying the bewigged shape out of an upper stall, through the barn, and down the ramp like a target in a shooting gallery. Simple enough and effective. A small music player had been ducttaped to the back of the toy. It was still making weak little sobbing sounds.