Michelle Gagnon - The Gatekeeper

Six

Randall Grant hunched over the steering wheel, drawing deep breaths to steady himself. These past few days had been hell, starting with the frantic, incoherent phone call from Audrey, drunk as usual. He could hear Bree yelling in the background and assumed it was one of their usual fights, that he was being called in to arbitrate. But when he’d finally puzzled out what she meant, her broken voice wailing, “She’s gone!” over and over, a cold ball settled in his stomach. They’d carried through on their threat, snatching the most vulnerable member of his family.

The impotence was the worst part. After hanging up he’d stormed around the apartment in a rage, fantasizing about bursting into rooms and mowing down the people who took his little girl. By midnight he’d come to his senses and sat down to weigh his options. His division answered directly to the Department of Homeland Security, one call to them and the full resources of the U.S. government would have been mustered. The problem was, in that scenario he’d be placed on full lockdown. Every conversation would be monitored, and no movement would go unnoticed. In the grand scheme of things, it was in the DHS’s best interest to protect what he knew. The loss of a teenage girl would be tragic, but not their first priority. He’d be hauled off to a safe location while Madison had a gun to her head. With Syd, at least they had a shot at recovering her, before…

Randall stopped himself from picturing her broken and dead and God knows what else. And it would be his fault, her blood on his hands forever. He could still see Madison ’s stricken expression when he explained that she’d be relocating to New York, and he’d see her when he could. Which hadn’t been as frequently as he’d hoped, not after the promotion. It had been over a month since his last visit, and that one had been disastrous. For a long, awkward weekend they all barely spoke. He’d chosen activities that were far too young for them, he realized belatedly, trips to the Museum of Natural History and the USS Intrepid. He’d lost touch with what teenage girls enjoyed. On Sunday night he’d secretly been relieved to drop them off. Randall cringed at the memory.

He was such an idiot. He should have stuck it out, just a few more years and both girls would have been in college. Then he and Audrey could have gone their separate ways without all this drama. But it was far too late for that.

Randall squared his shoulders and climbed out of the car carrying the travel mug. All his work materials were on-site. After a spying debacle a few years ago, the facility had increased security measures exponentially. Now anyone with access to highly classified material was forced to work in two-man teams. Not only were they supposed to keep an eye on each other’s computers and filing systems, they were actually expected to take a piss together. Fortunately the scientist he was paired with had a prostate problem. After a few awkward weeks at the urinals, Barry asked if Randall would mind ignoring that particular rule. Which made acquiring the first part of what the kidnappers wanted much easier than it should have been. It was probably why they targeted him in the first place.

The lab complex was sprawled across acres, dozens of nondescript buildings painted a muted brown that melded into the barren landscape. It was a desolate section of the East Bay. The town proper had sprung up to service the facility, rows of coffee shops and cafés that closed at nightfall, leaving only a few neon-lit bars blinking desolately in the darkness. Randall had accepted a job here straight out of MIT, back when he and Audrey were newlyweds. The salary had been far above what any university was offering, the work promised to be groundbreaking with nearly limitless funding, and they could afford a house nearby. At the time it had been a no-brainer. Looking back, he wished to God he’d accepted that position at Berkeley, where at worst he’d be responsible for the lives of a few lab rats.

At the entrance to the facility Randall nodded to the guard and held his ID card up to the scanner. After a brief pause it buzzed, and he strode down a long fluorescent hallway. The security became progressively tighter-to get into the inner sanctum, as people jokingly referred to it, he’d have to pass palm and retinal scans. Rumor had it that one of the other departments was working on a blood analysis machine. Randall hoped he wouldn’t still be here when going to work involved a daily needle prick.

Once in his office he relaxed. Barry wasn’t there, but an identical travel mug on his desk issued steam. Which meant he was already taking bathroom break number one, of dozens to come. A guy with prostate problems should cut out the caffeine, Randall thought as he waited for his computer to boot up.

A stream of numbers flew on-screen, coordinates pinpointing the location of loose nuclear fissile material worldwide. He and Barry had spent months cataloging this data as the U.S. government belatedly dealt with the fallout from the collapse of the Soviet Union, as well as the mass amounts of radioactive waste produced by everything from medical equipment to offshore drilling. It was staggering that no one had recognized this potential threat until 9/11 jarred everyone’s consciousness. And now Randall was part of a team that tracked radioactive waste, ensuring that it ended up at the appropriate facility, either to be safely disposed of or reutilized. Which in reality made him a glorified administrator with a Ph.D. in radiation physics.

Randall shook his head, unscrewed the base of the coffee mug, and removed the flash drive. He hit a few buttons to call up the data.

Initially there had been a fuss over the mugs, too. A memo had gone out insisting that everyone consume company coffee from the canteen. Based on the outcry that followed, they might as well have suggested drinking tainted Kool-Aid. Getting between scientists and their espresso was a fatal error, and in the end the brass made a concession: as long as everyone brought in standardized, company-issued mugs, outside coffee was fine. Mugs that apparently had been all too easy for someone to manipulate.

Randall glanced over his shoulder before popping the flash drive in the port. The download would only take a minute, but he was antsy. There had been a close call yesterday, and he got the feeling Barry knew something was up. He’d been struggling to act normal, but it was just that, a struggle. He’d blamed it on lack of sleep due to residual stress from the divorce. A lifelong bachelor like Barry didn’t question that.

An icon popped up. Randall quickly slipped the flash drive out, inserting it into the mug’s base just as the door clicked open.

Barry squinted myopically at him. “Everything okay?” he asked hesitantly. His stringy hair was wet where he’d combed it over his bald spot, and his sweater had a mustard stain near the collar.

“Fine, Barry. Just didn’t sleep well again.”

“Oh. Sorry to hear it.” Barry shuffled to the desk beside his. In a space that small it was like being crammed in a cockpit together. “Did you see they moved up the date of the Texas shipment?”

Randall’s ears pricked up. “I didn’t have time to look at it yet. Any idea why?”

Barry shrugged. “Dunno. Maybe there’s another storm coming.”

“Hurricanes are usually in the late summer and fall, Barry. It’s June.”

“Right, right,” Barry mumbled, staring at his monitor.

Randall had to fight the urge to throttle him: an IQ of 165, and he was useless unless you were discussing primordial radionuclides. Sometimes Randall suspected they were both being punished for some transgression. Initially, he’d taken this assignment as a break from researching, to give himself time to recover from the divorce. They’d given him a big speech, too, about serving his country, blah, blah, blah…