John Sandford - The Devil's Code

At nine o'clock, LuEllen checked us into the Eighty-Eight Motel in Denton. We got online, and took a look in the dump box. Corbeil had been online in the morning, before we'd even gotten upno rest for the wickedbut hadn't used the computer since then. "Maybe they're fixing up his apartment and he's staying someplace else while they do it," LuEllen suggested.

"I hope not. I'd like to be sure that he's in his apartment, and done for the day, before I sign on with his codes," I said. "If we were on, and he tried to get on, he might see the conflict."

LuEllen called Lane on the cell phone, and told her where we were. We didn't want any calls on the room phone going out to a number that could be connected with any of us, and figured to throw the cell phone away in the next day or two. Lane and Green showed up ten minutes later, having walked over from the Radisson

I told them about the dump box, and how we were using it as a cut-out, and why I didn't want to go online immediately. "Makes sense," Lane said. "I'd like to look at those files you got."

She spent the next two hours flipping through the administrative files, stopping every fifteen minutes or so to look at the dump box. Green, LuEllen, and I chatted for a while, then LuEllen ordered a pay-TV movie, a hyperviolent science-fiction flick that had all the depth of a comic book. The production values, on the other hand, were great.

Ten minutes after the movie ended, Lane went online to check the dump box, and found that Corbeil was working. The sign-on protocols and codes were the same as the night before. He sent a couple of short memos, one of them berating a guy named John McNeal about a production problem on CDs carrying what apparently were commercial code products. Then he signed off. We waited another half-hour, Lane with increasing impatience, to make sure he wouldn't sign on again, then went out to the AmMath computer.

We looked for anything that involved satellites, photographs, Middle Eastern nations, the NSA, the CIA, the National Reconnaissance Office; tried all of those things as keywords in a variety of searches, and even threw in oddball stuff"orbit," "surveillance," "resolution."

After half an hour, I suggested that we shut down. "We need to do more research into what we're looking for," I said. "Maybe just go to the library and get business stuff about AmMath. Trying to flog our way through the computer is like trying to find a two-inch article in ten years' worth of newspapers."

Lane wanted to continue: "Fifteen more minutes," she said. "Twenty minutes. We're in, who knows whether they'll change all the protocols or something?"

LuEllen wasn't doing anything, and bored, said, "I'm going down the street to that Randy's place and get coffee and a doughnut. Anybody want anything3"

"I'll walk along," I said. To Lane. "Fifteen minutes."

"Yeah, yeah."

Randy's was a combination greasy spoon and greasy bakery. We bought doughnuts and coffee and a Diet Coke, and talked about not much at all; two people carrying a couple of white bakery sacks along the highway. We were a hundred yards from the motel when we saw the flashes. LuEllen said, "Did you see that?"

I was already trotting toward the motel. Night-time gun flashes are hard to mistake, and even with the background noise of the highway we could now hear the rapid pop-pop-pop of gunfire.

We got closer and saw two men break away from the motel, from the end where our room was. Another couple, young kids, college kids, maybe, both carrying book bags, stopped to look at them as they crossed the parking lot to a waiting car. The shorter of the two men was hobbling. One of the kids broke away from the other, running toward the motel. Then the other one followed, and I ditched the white bags behind a car and the car with the two guys screeched out of the parking lot, fishtailed once in the street and disappeared into traffic.

We turned the corner of the motel and saw an older guy, white-haired in a burgundy windbreaker, walking toward our room, the college kids just coming up. I was ten steps back now, LuEllen a few steps further behind and the college kid, a boy, went inside and then popped back out and started screaming, "Call an ambulance call an ambulance."

I pushed past his white face to the door and saw Lane on the bed. She was dead, her face gone. Couldn't see Green; the bathroom door was mostly closed and shot to pieces. I stepped over to the door and knuckled it open. Green was in the bathtub, looking up at me, a gun in one hand.

"Got an ambulance coming," I said. "Are you hurt bad?"

"Hit twice," he groaned. "What about Lane?"

"Gone."

"Get out of here," he said.

I went back out into the main room. The college girl was inside with LuEllen and I shouted at her, "Go out to the street, wave the ambulance in."

"What?"

"I dunno, I dunno," I shouted at her. She stepped back, frightened of me, and turned and ran toward the street. "Flag the ambulance," I shouted after her. To the old guy in the burgundy windbreaker I yelled, "Two people shot. Run down to the office and make sure that kid's called an ambulance."

He turned and ran. The minute he was gone, I stepped past the bed, not looking at Lane, ripped the phone wire out of the telephone, bundled up the laptop, which had fallen on the floor, and stuck it in the back of my waistband, under my jacket.

LuEllen had stopped to take a close look at LaneLane had been hit at least twice in the side of the head, and laid sprawled faceup, eyes open just a crack, on the yellow bedspread. LuEllen shook her head. Lane's purse was lying on the floor. LuEllen rolled it with her foot, took the pistol out, and slid it into her jacket pocket. Without another word, we were out of the room. Two motel people were running toward us, and I waved at them: "In here, in here. hurry, hurry, get an ambulance."

More people came running, and LuEllen and I eased to the outside of the group, and then turned, and then were around the corner, and in the car. We went out the back of the parking lot, slowly, onto a service road, down a block, and were out of sight when the first cop car arrived.

"She had no chance," LuEllen said grimly. "Executed."

"Green's alive, but he was hit a couple of times," I said. "He was in the tub. He was still thinking. He said to get out, so he'll cover us."

"Fingerprints?"

"Not from me," I said.

"The only hard surface I touched was the TV remote, and Green was using it after I did, so I should be okay."

"You used the bathroom."

"I was careful. You used the telephone."

"Just plugged into the side, never picked up the receiver. I don't think I touched anything with my fingertips."

"Guys from AmMath," she said.

"Gotta be."

"What is it with them?"

"I don't know; but they must have spotted me coming online last night, and set up to back-trace our entry tonight. Took them an hour to do it and get here. Christ, Lane and Green probably thought that was us at the door, coming back with coffee."

LuEllen and I had been in jams before. I don't know whether it was simply experience, or some essential defect in our personalities, that allowed us to carry on as efficiently as we did. To get the laptop, to get out. To do it without talking about it or hesitating.

If I've ever been seriously attached to any one person in my adult life, it was LuEllen. But if she'd been in that motel room, and if I'd walked back to find her dead on the yellow bedspread, then, God help me, I believe I would have reacted the same way. And if I'd been dead, and she'd looked in, it would have been the same. No rage, no horror or fear or even sorrow. Efficiency. Get the laptop. Get the gun. Get out. Assess the damage.

The rage and sorrow comes later.