John Sandford - The Fool's Run

"Ah, no." I glanced at the clock. 3:56. "That, I'm afraid, could be managed. People could be bought, the charges denied, especially if LuEllen and I weren't around to back them up. Somebody might say the whole thing was a fantasy. and even the people who would believe it wouldn't have any way to prove it for sure. Besides, the instigator of the whole thing is a vegetable. You can't put a vegetable on trial."

"So what did you do?" Maggie asked.

I shrugged. "Same old shit you saw in the Washington apartment. A computer blitz. The fact is, if you mess with me or LuEllen, our friends on the computer net will take Anshiser right down the toilet. Right down."

Maggie glanced at the dark man again. He frowned and tipped his head back and stared at me, figuring, and finally said to Maggie, "I don't know."

She thought she did, though. She had decided it was a game, and looked at me with what may have been genuine regret.

"I'm disappointed, Kidd. We thought you'd be better than this. Let me tell you what we've done. We have the best people-the very best, better than you-watching every move that's made on those computers. It has been a major inconvenience, and it cost us a lot of money, but we'll get it back with the Sunfire contract. In any event, we know you're not in there. Just in case, we have backups of all our software, and all the daily work. We can shut down and sterilize our system in half an hour, and be back up with completely clean software. Everybody who does anything on the system is logged in and out, and the input is studied by the security crew. There isn't any way you can reach us. You just don't have the leverage for a deal." She shook her head and stood up. "I think it's time to leave," she said to the dark man.

The clock said 3:59.

"By the way, don't try to use your telephone. It won't work," she said, showing a few teeth. "I couldn't figure why you stayed in an Anshiser Hotel. You must know we could control the place."

"Don't go," I said. "We have more things to talk about."

"I don't think so," she said. A note of triumph had crept into her voice. The clock ticked over to four, and she started toward the door, the dark man standing to follow. The blond opened the door, and she walked away, giving it a little extra effort as she walked. At the door she paused, and seemed about to say something.

Then the lights went out.

Everything else went with them-the clock, the TV, the air conditioning. There was a stuttering, and emergency lights came on in the hallway. Somewhere, a smoke detector screeched, and doors started popping open down the hallway.

I had pulled the blackout drapes over the windows to intensify the effect. I waited for a few seconds, and reached back and pulled the drawstring. Daylight flooded the room, and the blond was standing just inside the door, pointing a small-caliber automatic pistol at my chest. A long, fat silencer was attached to the snout.

"Why don't you come back in and sit down?" I suggested.

Maggie looked shocked, but came back in. "What have you done?"

"I've shut down Anshiser," I said. "Or at least, my friends have."

"What are you talking about, we have the best security, there was no way.

"It's awful good," I agreed. "Too good to penetrate in the time that we had. So we had to do something different."

"What did you do, Kidd?"

"We went into the power company computers. We couldn't get every little dinky Anshiser operation, but we got all the good ones. All the hotels, all the factories, your headquarters back in Chicago. Not a single one of the big operations has power. If you call up your airframe fabrication plant you'll find they don't have a computer problem, they've got a problem with everything. They can't run a fuckin' power drill."

The Tower of Destruction. The lightning bolt. Power plants, of course. And it had been shown in conjunction with the Magician, the computer-freak card. It was all coincidence, but a timely one-I really don't believe in that magic shit.

"This can't last. " Maggie blurted.

"Yes, it can. Believe me: Anshiser is shut down. Unless I tell my people to bring you back up, you'll be down for three or four days before the electric people find the fault. And then the next bomb goes off. If you're really efficient, you might get fifteen or twenty days of work out of your companies in the next year."

She sank down in the chair opposite me, and the dark man said, "Sonofabitch." He looked at the blond and said, "Put it away." People were shuffling through the hall in the dim light, moving toward the stairwell. The smoke alarm, apparently triggered by the power shutdown, was still screeching into the gloom. The blond stepped inside and shut the door.

"How long will it take to get us back up?" Maggie asked.

"Probably two or three hours. We have a lot of them to deal with," I said. "But we don't want to bring them back up too soon. We want to give you a chance to call around. Find out how bad things can get. See if you can fix it yourself."

Maggie looked at the dark man. "What do you think?"

He shook his head. "What I thought in the first place. We cut the deal and walk away. And keep his phone number in case we need his help sometime."

"No chance," I said.

"Don't shut any doors," he said. It didn't sound like a threat. It sounded like advice.

Maggie was still looking for a way out. "We could go after your computer friends."

"No. The National Security Agency has gone looking for Bobby, and came up empty. A bunch of hoods aren't going to find him. And if you come after me or LuEllen, if there's even a hint of it, Bobby'll take Anshiser apart."

"What happens if you're hit by a car?" the dark man asked.

"You better pray I'm not, because you'll be out of luck," I said. He nodded. That was the kind of deal he understood. One that had no options.

"Look," I said to Maggie, "in a couple of years, anything I say about this whole Whitemark deal, or about Dace, will be ancient history. Nobody will pay any attention. It'll be like if you called up the FBI and said you knew who killed Judge Crater. Nobody would give a shit. So if we can make it through a couple of years together, you'll be safe. And there'll be no percentage at all in coming after us. You'll have that whole big company to work with."

"He's right," said the dark man.

"Okay," said Maggie, deciding. She stood up again. "It's a deal. Turn the power on."

I was working on the sandbar below St. Paul. I'd dragged the anchor halfway up the bar and buried it, and the boat swung placidly on its line as the towboats streamed by. It was hot, the first real heat of the coming summer. She crossed the levee, pushed through the willows, and walked out on the bar. She was wearing gym shoes, jeans, and a peek-a-boo blouse. She had a nice tan.

"Neat picture," she said when she came up. She said "pitcher."

"Thanks. How was Mexico?"

"All right. A lot of foreigners." She laughed and I smiled and she said, "Old joke."

"No kidding." I laid in a long vermilion horizon.

LuEllen did a critical pout, cocked her head, and nodded. "Not bad," she said.

"Thanks."

"Seen Maggie lately?"

"Not since I called you-not since Vegas. There's a mutual lack of interest."

"Still think we're safe?"

"I think so. We put ourselves outside the percentages. Have you been back to Duluth?"

"Snuck in and out a week after you called. Moved some money around, and went back." She wandered around, looked in the boat. "I saw that old man Anshiser croaked."

"Yeah. Maggie's running the place. A new guy took her job, Dillon's still number three." I dropped in some very liquid ultramarine and feathered it into the vermilion.

"I could never do that," she said. "Paint, I mean. Like you put in that hill, with purple. Who would think that a hill with green trees is purple? But it kind of is, isn't it?" She looked across the river at the hill.