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[Chapter 18, continued...]
“I thought the boss set us up out here in the middle of nowhere to avoid big city crime like this?”
“Cities aren't the only place in this country where people can break in.”
The two Basilikon guards gradually worked their way room by room down another hallway, doors left hanging open in their wake.
“Even in small Midwestern nowhere towns like this? Everything's practically dead here.”
“Practically?”
Scientists gathered in small knots around water coolers, whispered among themselves, and watched as the guards checked their area.
“Nothing here.”
The two guards moved on to the next hallway and more offices after radioing their “All Clear” back to Security Central. All this tactical gear they had to drag around was slowing them down.
“Aren't we in the Great Plains, here? Technically, I'm not sure we're in the Midwest.”
“Doesn't get more 'Mid' than Iowa...”
The one guard, K-9, sang to himself, “How far west could the Midwest go if the Midwest could go west, man?”
The other one, K-8, presuming he was the numerically superior, stopped and threatened him. “Shut up, Dog! I swear I'm going to shoot you. It's the Midwest because it's west of the East Coast.”
They kept going, unperturbed, despite all this body armor being way too heavy. “Right, and it's in the middle of the country, so, what, everything between New York and Los Angeles is the Midwest?”
They cleared another hallway, then took the steps up to the second floor.
“What're we looking for, anyway, with this intruder?” K-9 threw open another set of doors. “Anybody know what he looks like?”
“Some old guy, I dunno, with white hair and a beard. No one but L-3 got a good look at him.”
“Look,” K-9 continued, checking each office as they went, “so what do Californians call this area, then, if it's halfway between the West Coast and the East Coast – the Mideast? I don't think so...”
They ran into another guard, K-12, headed toward them. “Roger, nothin' down there.”
K-9 started singing. “We three guards in Orient are...”
“That's it – when you least expect it, C-4 right up the butt...”
“My guess is probably some kid from Orient High.”
“With white hair and a beard?”
“Jeez, a disguise...?”
They moved on.
K-12 was saying, “Have you ever noticed how many of the scientists who work here have white hair and a beard?” They called him School but doubted he'd ever made it to 12th Grade. Yet every now and then he came out with something surprising that left the others speechless, in a manner of speaking.
“Shit, should we be checking every white-haired, bearded guy for his ID badge?” K-8 was annoyed. “Nobody'd said anything about that.”
“Nobody told me anything beyond 'search the premises for an intruder',” K-9 said.
“Sniff him out, Dog, just like that. Jeez... Don't you guys ever take the initiative?” School didn't sound terribly impressed. “Think!”
Of anyone in K-Squad, School was the least likely to be caught thinking.
“The whole point of being in Security is you follow orders.”
“The whole point of Security is catching the bad guys!”
No one said the so-called “Incursion” was over; no report came down from Security Central to say he'd been apprehended, either. The guys in K-Squad were going around checking their zones for an intruder. K-8 wondered what would happen to discipline if everybody started going off on their own “initiative”? The Center would not hold.
School had already cleared Hallway 2-C, checking older men's IDs, and found nothing unusual. He suggested they re-check Hallway 1-B's IDs.
K-8 definitely didn't like taking orders from an underling, especially someone like School.
The guys in L-Squad were out checking the perimeters, those outlying hallways that skirted the various centralized labs like the ones where Piltdown, Krahang, and Dawson developed their respective programs, as well as Háradov. L-8 and L-9 checked each security camera's software, troubleshooting from the main arena, but couldn't identify the source of the disruption. Fanning out to check all the hallways had lead back to the lone emergency exit which came out at the old warehouses, long unused, and no one had found any signs of any tampering.
L-2 was annoyed they've spent so much time trying to figure out how the intruder got in rather than tracking his location to find out where he was now: they can do that later. Shango and al-Zebani only caught the briefest glimpse of the man L-3 found but what if he wasn't the only one?
L-7 agreed, struggling with his new helmet which didn't fit him as snuggly as the old one had. “What about that?” He's being charged a bundle to replace it, like it was his fault. It still bothered him, how it could disappear like that, in his locker one day, and then – poof! – gone the next.
“Hey,” he told his partner, L-6, “what if someone stole my helmet to disguise himself in order to infiltrate the place?”
“Like, someone broke in to steal your helmet? You're watching too much TV.”
“Yeah,” L-7 argued, “but this old guy, right? Maybe somebody disguised as a security guard wearing my helmet let him in?”
“A little far-fetched, no? You seen any Basilikon guard wearing just a helmet?”
L-2, listening in on the telecom, wondered if other uniform parts were missing. He couldn't shake this idea of some insider.
After he suggested L-8 check the security accesses to the entrances – had anyone come and gone at a time that would correspond to this intruder's appearance? – they discovered someone had, coincidentally, done just that.
L-8 asked, “Hadn't that been the hallway where the intruder was initially apprehended?”
“Maybe check what time that report was filed.”
Odd, though: that access had only been made a few minutes ago, several minutes after the alarm had been sounded, but it wasn't unusual for that agent to be in that area. “Check, anyway.”
Piltdown and the young lab assistant she kept calling Abattoir – he'd given up correcting her – checked through each of the four interconnected labs, hers, Krahang's, Dawson's, even Harádov's, especially all the closets and cabinets. They remained silent, the better to hear any suspicious sounds like the breaking of glass or the shutting of a door. Once members of the L-Squad arrived on the scene, they divided into pairs and checked each lab, circling around from one to another, going over each others' work which struck Piltdown as ridiculously redundant.
“We could keep this up all day,” she snorted, then suggested she and Abattoir should let the guards do the reconnaissance – after all, they were armed: no one really knew if the intruder was. She tried to imagine that old man “armed and dangerous”; he seemed such an unlikely threat – unless it was a disguise.
Abathur suggested they just stand in the hallway or go to the lounge for coffee and wait for the “All Clear,” somewhere safe he thought they're not likely to get caught in any cross-fire. The important thing was to let Security do their job, now that they've shown up, and keep out of their way.
The L-Squad guards had said nothing to them about what was going on: nothing about how the intruder – or maybe intruders? – had gotten in or why he didn't show up on any security cameras?
And that reminded her as she stopped, stood up to her full height and looked around. “Where's Krahang?” Abathur didn't know. They'd been so busy checking potential hiding places, they hadn't noticed Krahang's absence. Where had he gone after the alarm sounded? Presumably, he'd gotten dressed, but in the excitement had she seen him again? About to stride into the men's decontamination room, she thought, as long as Abattoir was there, maybe he'd better check it. He smiled and nodded, pleased to be given some responsibility by a superior.
There was no one in the locker room, but he checked the showers, even opened all of the lockers. The only thing he found was Krahang's iPad, left out on one of the benches. “That was sloppy: any intruder could've stolen it. At least, it's password protected.” He returned to the lab, shrugging his shoulders.
Maybe, Piltdown thought, as she and Abattoir passed on into that long, empty hallway again, it wasn't actually a technical glitch, not that that wasn't likely, given the precarious state-of-the-art of their security system. Whoever designed the renovation, the joke going around was Osiris didn't want to blow the budget on flashy gadgets like that. She'd overheard other scientists in their down time laughing about stickers found on some of the cameras, bought second-hand through E-Bay. If it were true, it was unlikely these security cameras had extended warranties.
It was also possible, as she and Abattoir strolled uneasily toward the lounge, one of the most dismal rooms on the planet, they never really installed cameras in that hallway, only said they had. Was it the result of cost-cutting moves or did somebody in Basilikon's inner circle line their pockets skimming off the difference?
But, her mind continued, any conversation with Abattoir beyond boring, what if it hadn't been a glitch, or a self-induced one? What if someone had tampered with the system, enough to make it crash? What if this whole thing – the security glitch, the appearance of a mysterious intruder – had all been managed by an insider?
Krahang hadn't been surprised by that old man's unexpected appearance in the hallway to raise an alarm (neither had she, though). And she didn't believe that stuff about his Dance Club membership card, either.
But Krahang was surprised he'd seen that intruder in the hallway (“why would they send an old man?). Not like this was the best time, either, too early by at least a few days. Even if this intruder wasn't “real” – (had somebody from town just wandered in through some unlocked door?) – he'd have to act. He couldn't very well say, “wait, you're ahead of schedule” (by several days, in fact), “Time Out, I'm not ready yet!” And if he failed to act, he'd likely risked his life for nothing. Whatever's going on, his only option was, basically, to improvise his ass off, so if there's some new wrinkle to the plan, he hoped they'd brought enough back-up behind it to make it work. The point was, and he knew this implicitly, he was ready but there were things he wanted to think through better.
Rudyard Kipling losing his head came to mind, whether the others, apparently losing theirs, would ever blame it all on him (besides, what would Kipling do?). “Keep calm,” he told himself, “take deep breaths.” If, he considered, they did this, then he must do that, respond accordingly. It was a dance; dancers needed to breathe. He needed to take full advantage of the mayhem this break-in has created, fan the pandemonium, ratchet everything up a notch. The important thing was to make these clichés seem planned, every bit intentional.
“More time,” he'd've argued, going over everything point by point (watch the sequence), “everybody wants more time, another rehearsal, additional proofreading, let's try a different fingering there (less awkward), maybe switch these two passages...?” He hadn't gotten the full security guard outfit yet, either, with the one helmet that fit him back in his apartment. He needed to hijack a gurney, grab Ripa's body from the morgue (wait, had Agent Xolotl already started on the autopsy?). He needed a disguise to look like this intruder (wasn't there a mop...?).
Since he couldn't circumvent the access readers, he'd pilfered Piltdown's ID badge and copied it only last night (phew!). Now he'd logged into his iPad and launched the code bringing down the security cams.
“Okay, everything's in place.” He thrust his shoulders back, hunched over, muttered a prayer and dashed off toward the morgue.
“Showtime!”
What if he ran into someone: wouldn't his attempt to disguise himself as The Old Intruder draw them to pursue him rather than just say “Oh, there's Agent Krahang, he's searching for the guy”? Wouldn't the likelihood there were more guards and other agents running around looking for him be greater than on normal days? Even though the cameras were down (again) – which meant no one in Security was able to see him anyway – he still wanted them to think whatever's being done here was done by that intruder.
Ripa's body was just where he'd left it earlier, on a gurney not yet prepped for his autopsy, the final indignation. With Xolotl nowhere in sight, he pushed the gurney into the hall, out through the “secret tunnel” to the old warehouses where they'd dump Ripa in a construction trench off the lab's northwest corner.
No guards in sight. He avoided looking at the cameras, just in case, made it into the warehouse, but rather than head left to the construction site, he turned right down a slight incline. There were police cars already nearby – excellent. He dumped the body, glinting the sun off the gurney to get their attention.
Good, they'd seen him. He made a quick call and someone picked up. “Icarus! Everything's in place!” Then he hung up.
He missed the other voice's surprised reply. “Wait, what? No, you're too early!”
There was no time to lose. He only hoped someone noticed him, thought it odd, and decided to go investigate. Who knows how long it would take for someone outside to find the body? He wiped the white powder off his face and stowed the mop-head and left the empty gurney in the abandoned warehouse. If he ran into anyone coming to check the back exit, he needed to be Agent Krahang without benefit of disguise, but he hadn't brought his own ID since they could still track him.
Hiding Piltdown's fake ID in a pocket lining after accessing his way back into the building, he broke into a brisk trot just to make it look realistic in case he'd run into anyone. After his mad dash, he hurried into the locker room, reactivated the security cameras and changed into his own lab coat.
Once out in the hallway, Krahang nearly collided with another security guard who, according to his ID tag, was Agent L-5, his only identifiable feature a trim auburn beard barely noticeable beneath the mask. Krahang, still breathing heavily after his run, had no problem pretending he'd been out searching for the intruder: “Not in there.”
L-5 scanned Krahang's ID while nodding his helmet. “Actually, Agent Krahang, I'm looking for Agent Nephil. Maybe you have seen her?”
“Dr. Piltdown? Why?” Krahang, nodding back, pretended to be confused and hesitated slightly.
When the guard didn't respond, Krahang remembered, “Why, yes – just as the alarm sounded. She ran into the lab with Abathur.” Then he decided to add, “have you checked security footage on the cams?”
L-5 grumbled the cameras had once again failed, probably hacked by the intruder.
“I just came through the lab – nobody's there.”
After the cameras had gone back on-line, Krahang checked the lab to see if the system's green lights had come on. They had, and he noticed no sign of Piltdown, Abathur, or anyone else.
“And in the meantime,” L-5 asked, “where were you, if I may ask?”
Krahang quickly responded, waving his hands around, “oh, here, there, and everywhere, I suspect, like everybody else, looking for that intruder.” First, he'd checked the back exit but saw no sign of forced entry.
“You didn't see Agent Nephil?”
“Should I have?”
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©2022 by Dick Strawser for Thoughts on a Train
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