Midnight Empire (20 page)

The place was mostly in shadow. Daniel moved to the light of a vending machine and pulled some coins from his wallet, ready as an excuse. He watched the door of the room. The white flicker of a television set came on inside.

Now what?

The lion's den. The place looked very cheap. The lot was less than a quarter full, its surface badly cracked. It was anything but holiday accommodation. There was a sense of reality to it. Of disrepair and of the resented and resentful just-lives of the underclass in America.

He walked towards the room. He tried to do it quietly. He was nervous but he was also managing to believe himself remote from this, somewhere else.

Room 19. The curtains were thick and the light showed only at their hem. He stopped one door further along to tie his shoe and listened to the noise of the TV. It seemed particularly loud.

Encouraged, he went to the end of the parking lot to a series of rooms with no cars outside, rooms that were obviously unoccupied. He ran his hand over a door and tried its handle. It felt light, almost flimsy. He tapped a knuckle quietly on the wood and the sound was cheap. He felt that he'd be able to break through it. That would be the way to proceed. Wait for the man to leave then break into his room. But how to be sure he'd leave behind the laptop and the stick?

Daniel thought for a while, standing in the darkness. He went back to his car and found its tyre change kit. The tyre iron was heavy in his hand. It would do, later, for prising the door. Replacing it, he picked up a screwdriver and walked towards room 19. There were no security cameras. The red sedan was a hire car, the Desert Springs Agency. He stood at the driver's door and swiftly inserted the screwdriver into the lock. He gave a sharp push with all his weight and there was the quick sound of metal giving. He walked fast out of the car park and drove away. You wouldn't keep anything in there now, would you? Once you saw that, you'd lock anything valuable in your room or you'd carry it with you. When he returned tomorrow evening, Daniel figured he'd have a fifty-fifty chance.

The next day at Creech, he tried to write code. It was almost impossible. He felt something walling in his chest and the dis-tractedness of no sleep.

It was just after lunch when the news broke: a pilot struck by a car that morning, a hit-and-run somewhere in Spring Valley. Daniel heard this in the mess. He ran into Peach outside on the path.

‘You've heard?' Peach said.

‘Just now.'

‘You know it's Moore?'

‘What?'

‘It's Moore. They've hit him with a truck.'

‘Is he hurt?'

‘He's dead.'

Jesus.

‘Someone heard a tyre squeal and the thump', said Peach.

‘Came out to see the truck take off. He was jogging.'

‘I can't believe it.'

‘We flew together in Iraq.'

Peach was visibly upset. Daniel looked at him and it didn't quite register, Moore dead, it didn't seem possible.

‘Three kids, man. Three kids and a wife and they were happy and all.'

‘He was a great guy.'

‘Jogging. Just jogging out on the street.'

‘What are they saying?'

Peach waved his arm dismissively at the FBI office. ‘Gray says they've found a cluster specialist, a mathematician who usually deals with cancers. He's telling them that a third death puts the chances of deliberate targeting above ninety-five per cent. But they're in there now asking was it
violent
.' Peach shook his head. ‘Because this one could be an accident, it doesn't fit the profile, it's not straight murder. But of course it's just
them
being clever, isn't it? Creating uncertainty. This is psychological war and it's a smart riff, the everyday falling as terrorist event.'

A helicopter was landing at the far end of the base, a Blackhawk, its lights bleeding even in the daylight. In the direction of the car park, beyond the administration buildings, were further lights, the flashing blue and red of a police car or an ambulance.

Peach suddenly said that he wasn't kidding. In a situation like this, doubt was the beginning of all mistakes, and that was what they were aiming for, the enemy, they were attempting to induce errors and the way to overcome that was a very aggressive and highly unlikely move, a sudden, heart-stopping raise that would cold-light the fundamentals of whatever was going on.

‘What are you doing to do?' Daniel asked.

Peach looked into the distance. ‘I don't know. Find that truck maybe. We owe Moore to do something. We can't just sit here waiting for them to pick us off.'

Together, they walked across the base. Wolfe and Gray were standing outside the briefing hut, Ellis and O'Grady beside them. Ellis wanted to say something about Moore, a first-class pilot, the first man you wanted next to you if you were going into battle. They listened. Then Peach wanted to speak. He said Moore had been courageous. He'd known the dangers yet he'd still taken the fight to the enemy, and they'd honour him by following his example.

‘Amen,' said O'Grady.

They held a minute's silence. Daniel looked down into the gravel in front of him. Moore killed. It had to be a terrorist cell, there was no other way.

Their silence concluded when a siren rang out. A fast wail, it repeated every few seconds, channelled through the address system of the base. They looked in the direction of the main buildings to see what was happening. All they saw were others looking the same way.

Eventually a voice came on. It announced itself as Creech AFB and said that the base was in lockdown. Until further notice, all personnel were confined.

‘Which means what?' said Wolfe.

‘We can't leave,' said Ellis.

‘I mean what as in
why
.'

‘I'll go and find out,' said Gray.

He walked off. The sirens sounded for a half-minute longer. Then the group watched as men with M16s began to gather over by the parade ground. At first they formed a line. Then they split up to walk in various directions, some climbing into a Humvee.

Two men came towards the briefing hut, rifles held in front at alert carry, helmets on their heads—they looked to be wearing armour. They passed the group silently and went to the fence line, stood at the cyclone mesh past which was nothing, clear desert.

‘Securing the perimeter.'

Daniel spoke the words hardly realising that he was saying them. He went to join Ellis, now seated on a fold-out chair.

Gray came back and told them what he'd learned: the terrorist cell was real. The FBI had discovered the number plate of the truck that had hit Moore. It was a 1992 GMC Suburban, observed speeding on a traffic camera after the act. The truck was registered to a Los Angeles electrician who'd sold it months ago to a Pakistani–American. This man's credit card had been used to pay the airfares of two Pakistani nationals who'd entered the United States twelve weeks ago through LAX. The FBI were now searching for them at every hotel in the city.

‘Do we know them?' asked Wolfe.

‘Langley believes they're cleanskins, otherwise they wouldn't have got in. One is apparently an accountant, British trained.'

‘This is about drones.'

‘We knew that already.'

‘Pakistani nationals. Probably Pashtun.'

‘Humiliation. A foreign empire doing what it wants in their lands.'

‘Do we believe this?'

‘The explanation fits. An amateur squad would explain why they are using guns and not bombs.'

‘The ISI?'

‘I don't think they'd back this. It'd be a declaration of war. I think we'll find out that the motivation is revenge.'

They looked at the soldiers by the fence, green and jacketed, oddly iconic. Daniel wondered whether they'd still go ahead with today's flights. Then he thought about the motel room that he had to get back to.

‘This lockdown,' he said. ‘How long will it last?'

‘An old-fashioned manhunt,' said Gray. ‘Sounds as if the FBI's bringing in every special agent on the west coast. My guess is we'll be here until the group is found. We could be looking at days.'

After a period of only hours, however, base command realised they were facing a mutiny. An armourer who was also the base offensive tackle stood in front of a row of military policemen at the front gate and announced that he would wrestle his way out—that or he'd walk straight through, whichever they wanted, this was some serious, Berlin-wall shit.

Calls were made. Eventually, the lockdown was off. Personnel with locally resident families were granted six hours to get them out. In the meantime, skeleton crews would be built from the childless, the single and those whose families were out of town.

Daniel breathed out. He'd be able to get away after the evening's flights. He watched the screens and the landscape was long and wide, an immensity that was a form of liberation, lines of river and hard mountain, foothills and the flat sweep of valleys between. He could almost conjure the whip-rush of the wind.

There were things you could never imagine yourself doing, things that others did that transformed them into enigmas. There were simple explanations—greed, anger, jealousy—but they were never up to task. What was the something else, the extra inch, the separation of mind?

It was 2.58 a.m. when he parked outside the Riviera Inn, dim light in the sky above. He walked into the motel's car park and the hire car was not there. There were no lights on anywhere. He switched on the netbook and waited for it to boot. He felt himself tense, his hands all nerves. A few minutes passed and his laptop still had not shown on the netbook's scan. It wasn't there. The man must have taken it with him.

Well. He'd just have to wait here and challenge the man when he got home. He'd be alright. It would be just like the mugging in the circuit only this time the initiative would be his.

He looked up at the second-floor balcony and thought that that might be the place to stand. Then something occurred to him: what if the battery in the laptop had simply run flat? It could have been on for twenty-four hours or more. There was every chance that it was dead. It could still be in that room, along with the USB stick.

He went to the back of the car for what he needed. He approached the door to room 19, felt the gap between it and the jamb with the tip of his finger. He put the sharp end of the tyre iron into the gap. Looking once around the lot, he pulled. He felt a surge of resistance and nothing gave.

He moved the iron a little lower, closer to the lock. He pulled again and now there was a strain and creak and he did not stop, he drew his hands close to his chest. There was no sound of anything breaking but something slid and the door came suddenly open as if it had been gently kicked.

He was in.

He stepped inside, closed the door behind him and stood for a moment at the curtains, peering out. There was no sign that anyone had heard him.

He found the light switch. It was the type that required the room key to stay on but would give a minute or so of light without. The room was like any motel room: a double bed and a single one, a television, brown wallpaper, an air conditioner, a bedside table with a phone. On the single bed was a suitcase. Shirts and pants hung over the chairs and also sat in piles on the floor. There was the malignant smell of cigarettes; cans of Bud Light and tissues in the trash.

In the bathroom he saw familiar clothing on the benchtop. It was Ania's green blouse and one of her bras. The man had obviously stolen them, was doing with these things who knew what. For a moment he thought to reach out and take them but first he needed to find the memory stick.

He checked the suitcase, looked under the beds. He searched the cupboards beneath the television and the closet, the back of the room's only chair.

The light went out. Moving to the switch in the dark, he turned it on again.

He looked to see whether anything had been taped to the underside of the benchtop, or perhaps hidden in the roll space below the drawers or in the gap behind the toilet. He checked above the air conditioning unit and inside the small fridge then below it and between the mattresses of both beds. He tried the pillows and peered into a ventilation grille.

He tipped the contents of the bin onto the floor. He pulled the extra bedding from the cupboard and shook it out. He took the drawer in the telephone stand all the way out of its moorings, but there was nothing under or behind it. He lifted the bedside lamp and then the TV. He checked the seams of the carpet to see whether any had been pulled.

He was almost out of options when the noise came. It was the gravelly sweep of a car into a spot outside, the drag of its tyres on the bitumen. It did not sound as if it was the spot in front of room 19 and so he did not panic. He waited. He expected to hear voices: a couple in late-night conversation. But there was nothing. Dry silence. As the quiet wore on, he became afraid. He stood by the door to the bathroom. The light went out.

He felt for the handle of the air weight.

Perhaps a minute passed in which he heard only his own breath. Then the front door creaked. It was off its latch and the creak was slight enough to have been the wind. He stood completely still.

It's nothing. It's nothing.

But it wasn't nothing. The door began to voice a slow, complete opening and the dimness in the room grew less.

Act now, he thought. Bloody act. He took a step forward. The figure in the doorway seemed enormous in the backlight, filling the frame. Daniel wasn't sure at all what to say but he wanted to take the initiative, he wanted to speak first.

The figure shifted.

‘No closer,' Daniel said. His voice came out malformed, beginning hoarsely as a whisper.

The return voice took time. ‘No clow-sa,' it said, and Daniel realised he was being mocked. Then, booming: ‘Who the fuck are you?'

Daniel almost jumped. Did he hear in the voice the slip of intoxication?