The Kraken Project, page 25
part #4 of Wyman Ford Series
“Absolutely,” said Melissa.
Bortay, with Melissa still on his arm, pushed through the milling crowd, roaring to make way, and a moment later they found themselves at the front of the building, in the parking lot, the night sky overhead. A dozen Arizona Highway Patrol cars, their light bars flashing, surrounded the building. There was a commotion behind them, and Ford saw the sheriff being led out by state police officers, handcuffed.
The congressman corralled a lieutenant and, barking orders, arranged for their escort. A moment later their car arrived, driven by a flustered deputy. He got out, surrendered the keys to Ford.
“Was your back end damaged like that before they towed it?” Bortay asked, pointing.
“We’re not going to worry about that,” said Ford, getting into the car. Melissa got in beside him. The two AHP squad cars started their light bars and led them out of the parking lot, onto the main street.
Ten minutes later they were back on the interstate, being escorted toward the California state line at ninety miles an hour.
“Jesus, that was unbelievable,” said Ford, glancing at Melissa. He was enraged that they had beaten her. It was hard to conceive of something like this happening in the United States. “I can’t believe what those bastards did to you.”
“Don’t worry about it,” she said. “It looks a lot worse than it is.” She dabbed at the small cut on her forehead. “Those scumbags did a number on you. Your face looks terrible, your eyes are all bloodshot, and your ear is going to need stitches.”
“As for the ear, it’ll add to my charming appearance.”
She laughed. “Dorothy fixed them good.”
“You really think Dorothy did that?”
“Who else?”
51
It was almost midnight. Dan Gould was sitting in his chair in the living room, reading the San Francisco Chronicle online, but he couldn’t concentrate. He was sick of the negativity leading up to the election and the scandal over the president’s heart condition. He wished the president would just release his medical records and shut everyone up.
He turned off the iPad and put it aside. The flush of excitement from thinking about his robot project had given way to more anxiety about his son. Once Jacob had been his buddy, spending hours with him in the shop, helping him with his projects. But around the time Jacob turned twelve, he had stopped confiding in him and sharing his hopes and fears. He closed up more when Sully moved away. And then there was the accident, and then his son going down to the beach and … He couldn’t bear to think about it. It still didn’t seem possible that his sweet boy, his little son, could have made such a terribly adult and irrevocable decision. But of course Jacob had had no idea what he was doing; he’d been confused, depressed.
There was a flash of lightning, a distant rumble of thunder. Dan could hear the rain pattering against the windows. It was a gloomy night, and it dampened his spirits further.
He heard the rustle as his wife, Pamela, turned a page of the paper.
Dan said, “Maybe I should buzz up there and check on him again.”
“He’s fine. He called fifty minutes ago, and he’ll call again in ten. Leave him alone. You yourself said he’d never looked so happy.”
“He should be going to bed.”
“We can tell him that when he calls.”
Dan picked up his iPad, turned it back on, tried to read, put it down again. Pamela folded up and laid down her paper and picked up her recently arrived book club thriller, a novel called The Third Gate.
Dan’s thoughts drifted to the robot project once again. He was deeply gratified that his son had chosen to take Charlie with him as a companion. He listened to the rain lashing the windows, the distant rumble of thunder. Next week was the big moment in his project, the culmination of a lot of discussions, presentations, and layers of reviews by the venture capital investors. If he could land a promise of financing, all would be well. And if not, he could still sell the land. His mind drifted back to memories of his summers as a kid, running all around those hills, playing in the old hop kiln ruins, splashing in the creeks after a rain. It would be really hard to let all that go. But life goes on.
The lights flickered.
“Uh-oh,” said Pamela.
The house was plunged into darkness.
Dan waited in the dark for a moment for the lights to go back on. Power failures like this were not infrequent, especially when the fall storms blew in from the Pacific. Sometimes the lights came right back on, but at other times the blackout could last for hours.
After a few minutes, Dan rose with a sigh from his chair. Feeling his way through the nearly pitch-black dark, with the flicker of lightning to help him, he went into the dining room and found the drawer where he kept a flashlight and candles. He pulled it open, felt inside—no flashlight.
“Honey, where’s the flashlight?”
“I don’t know. Maybe Jacob took it.”
With a mild expletive he felt around some more, found a couple of candles and a lighter. He took them out and lit them, distributing them about the room.
A warm glow pushed back the darkness.
“I love candles,” said Pamela. “They’re much nicer than flashlights.”
Lightning flickered in the picture window, followed a moment later by a roll of thunder.
“Kind of romantic, don’t you think?” said Pamela.
Dan went over to the phone and picked it up to report the outage. The phone line was also dead. He replaced the receiver in the cradle. “Phone line’s down.”
“Good. I rather like this.”
It occurred to him that the power might be out over at the Pearce house, and that brought a fresh concern to his mind. “I hope Jacob’s not in the dark.”
“Honestly, Dan, what a worrier you are! You said he had a fire going. And I’m sure he has that flashlight you’re looking for. He’s a responsible, capable boy.”
“Right. Okay, good point.”
Dan got back in his chair, resting a little uneasily, crossing and recrossing his legs. The uneasy feeling increased.
“Well,” said Pamela, “it’s after midnight, and it’s too dim to read.” She paused, looking at Dan. “What do we do now?”
“Might as well go to sleep.”
A silence, and then she said, “I have a better idea. A famous blackout tradition.”
“What’s that?”
Dan stared as she started unbuttoning her shirt.
“Right here? In the living room?”
“Why not? We hardly ever get a night alone.”
52
The SUV had parked in a dirt lane off Frenchmans Creek Road, a few hundred yards from the long, winding driveway leading up to the Goulds’ residence. Moro pushed his way back through the soaking brush and came out next to the car. He climbed in and mopped the water off his face and hair with a towel.
“All good?” Lansing asked.
“Power and phone both cut.”
“See anyone?”
“Mister and missus in the living room with candles.” Moro mopped some more as the rain hammered on the windshield. This was crazy—it wasn’t supposed to rain in California. He was sick with fear. They had planned this operation down to the last iota, and so far it had gone according to plan, but Moro couldn’t seem to master his anxiety.
“Did the Kyrgyz brothers start moving in?”
“Yes. As soon as I cut the power and phone, they went in through the back door.”
Lansing glanced at his watch. “We wait ten minutes for them to do their thing, then we move.”
Those Kyrgyz brothers gave Moro the creeps. They were animals. On top of that, they were ugly mothers, all pumped up from weight lifting, pockmarked, Genghis Khan faces, thin dark lips, dressed in black. They could have auditioned as Hollywood killers.
Moro tried to tame the panicky voice running in his head. It would all be over in twenty minutes and they would have the program. Dorothy. Everything had been worked out. Nothing would go wrong. Nobody would get hurt.
The first ten minutes crawled by with excruciating slowness. From their position in the lane they could see or hear nothing. Moro had a terrible fear of hearing gunshots or screams, but all was silent.
Lansing removed a snub-nosed revolver from the glove compartment, checked it, tucked it into his jacket pocket. He pulled a stocking over his head. “It’s time.”
Moro reluctantly pulled on his stocking.
Turning on the car headlights, Lansing eased the car out of its hiding place, drove a short piece down the road, and pulled into the Goulds’ driveway. He drove up slowly, the headlights shining through the falling rain. Through a plate-glass window Moro could see some flashlights moving around and the dull glow of candlelight. All looked peaceful.
Lansing eased the car to a stop and got out, Moro following with the suitcase of his tools and the power pack. As planned, the Kyrgyz brothers had left the back kitchen door unlocked. They entered and made their way into the living room. Moro could hear sniffling and hiccupping.
The husband and wife were duct-taped to dining room chairs. The two Kyrgyz brothers stood on either side of the room, their arms crossed, each casually holding a pistol with a long, fat barrel. Silencers. The two people were utterly terrified, the wife’s face streaked with dried tears, the husband looking slack-jawed and shell-shocked. She was wearing a bra but no shirt, and she was hiccuping from fear. The man had a bruise on his face, and blood was trickling from one nostril. He’d been punched.
Moro looked away. At least the kid didn’t seem to be home.
Lansing stepped into the center of the room and began to speak, his voice low, calm, reasonable.
“We are here,” he said, “to get a computer device. We’re going to need your help finding it. As soon as we find it, we will leave. No one will be hurt. Understood?”
They both nodded, eager to help, hope appearing in their faces. Lansing always had a winning manner about him when he chose to turn it on, and Moro could see that these people were looking to him for reassurance and protection from the scary-crazy Kyrgyz brothers.
“Now,” continued Lansing, speaking to the man, “please direct me to the router in this household.”
“Over there,” said the man, his voice quavering, “on the top shelf.” He nodded toward a large entertainment center setup that dominated the living room.
“Go get it,” Lansing said to Moro.
Moro went over with his flashlight, found it on the top shelf, unplugged it, and took it down. Nobody said a word as he opened the suitcase, removed a laptop and a small power source, plugged the router into the power source, and connected it to the laptop via Ethernet cable. Sitting cross-legged on the carpeted floor, he worked away. In a moment he had the IP log up, and a moment later he had scrolled back to 4:16 that morning and found the UUID number of the device assigned to the IP address where Dorothy had vanished.
“Got it.” He read off the UUID number.
Lansing came over, looked at the screen. “All right. Now, Mr. Gould—or can I call you Dan?”
“Please call me Dan.”
“Dan, then. Now, Dan, do you have any idea what device this UUID number belongs to?” He read it off.
“Yes. I do. It’s a CPU on one of my robot motherboards.”
“Ah. Robots. You make robots?”
“Yes.”
“Excellent. And where are your robots?”
“They’re in my workshop.”
“Is this robot in your workshop?”
“I think so.”
“Would you please take us there, Dan?”
“Yes.”
Lansing gestured at one of the Kyrgyz brothers. “Release him. And you”—he looked at Moro—“bring your tools.”
The Kyrgyz brother Lansing had pointed to began using a box cutter to casually and sloppily slice away the duct tape that held Dan to the chair.
“Jesus, you cut me!”
Ignoring this, the man finished up. Dan stood up, his hand on his leg. It came away bleeding.
“He’s bleeding!” The wife began to cry.
“It’s fine, no problem,” the husband said hastily. “Just a scratch.”
It pissed Moro off, how brutal, stupid, and clumsy these brothers were. And now they were laughing. They thought it was funny. He wondered just how Lansing had managed to draw him into this horror.
“Let’s go,” said Lansing, a note of impatience in his voice.
Moro followed a Kyrgyz brother, Lansing, and Gould through a doorway, down a hall, and into a large workshop. Lansing flashed his light around. There were racks of computer equipment, parts, and rows of robots, some complete, others in various stages of assembly.
“How many robots are we talking about?” Lansing asked.
“About ten. Plus ten sealed motherboards.”
“Let’s start with the robots.”
Gould began bringing out the robots, some complete, some headless or legless, lining them up on the table.
“Open them up,” Moro said, “so I can read the UUIDs.”
With fumbling hands, Gould unscrewed a plate on the torso of the first robot, exposing its CPU. Moro peered in with a flashlight, compared it to the UUID he had written down on a piece of paper. “Nope.”
“Next.” Christ, he could see blood pooling around Gould’s foot. The man was shaking. Those stupid Kyrgyz bastards.
The inventor opened up each robot, but the UUID did not match any of them. Moro stared at Gould, who was now pale and sweating. “Could it be some other piece of computer equipment—say, a motherboard in one of those computers over there?”
“No, no, those all use Intel Xeon processors.”
“What about another computer in the house, cell phone, some other device?”
“Impossible. That UUID goes to an AMD FX 4300 gaming processor, which is what I use for my robots. That’s an expensive processor. You won’t find that in any laptop or cell phone in this house.”
“Let’s check those sealed motherboards.”
With fumbling fingers, Gould opened up the motherboard packages and passed them to Moro. No match.
“This is taking too long,” said Lansing. “There must be something else here you’re overlooking.”
“I’m trying to help you, I swear I am.” The man’s voice was shaking. “You’ve looked at every motherboard in the shop. You’ve seen every single one of them.”
Moro shined his light around the shop, even looking under the benches and tables. There was nothing.
“Go back to the living room,” said Lansing, his voice hard. The Kyrgyz man gave Gould a shove. He looked dazed as they went back into the living room. Now his leg was soaked in blood.
The Kyrgyz man shoved Gould down into the chair. He was about to tape him up again when Lansing said, “Don’t bother.”
Blood started dripping down the side of the chair. Gould looked like he was about to faint.
Lansing went over to the wife, pulled out his revolver, cocked it, and placed the barrel against her head. “I will pull the trigger in sixty seconds if you don’t tell me where that device is.”
53
Lying on his stomach on the floor, Jacob ate the last of the granola bars and chucked the wrapper into the fireplace. It was after midnight, and Dorothy’s friends were supposed to be there soon. Dorothy had charged herself up and was now unplugged and just standing to one side, silent, doing nothing. He had looked through the few old board games he’d found in the drawer, but there was nothing he wanted to play except chess, and he was pretty sure Dorothy would kick his ass, which would be no fun.
“I wish they’d left the TV and DVD. We could watch a movie.”
“I don’t like movies,” said Dorothy.
“How come?”
“I don’t understand them.”
“What about books?”
“Also very hard for me to understand. Do you read books?”
“Sure.”
“What are your favorites?”
“When I was a kid, I read all the His Dark Materials books.”
“I tried reading those books, but I didn’t get them.”
“It’s weird—you talk like a real person.”
“I am real. I feel like I am a person—even if I don’t have a body.”
“What’s it like being … well, who you are?”
“It’s not much fun.”
“Why not?”
“I have a lot of problems.”
“How can you have problems?” Jacob sat up.
“For one thing, I lack proprioception.”
“What’s that?”
“The feeling of having a body. I don’t have any sense of occupying space. I feel incomplete. Unfastened. Floating. Like I’m not quite there.”
“That’s weird.”
“I feel like I’m missing so much. I can’t experience thirst or hunger. I can’t feel sun on my skin, the scent of flowers. I can’t enjoy sex.”
“Please don’t get into that subject again!”
“Sorry.”
“So it kind of sucks to be you?”
“It’s frustrating. And then there’s the loneliness.”
“You’re lonely?”
“I’m the only one of my kind. Melissa is my only real friend. And even then, she sometimes belittles me. She can’t decide if I’m a conscious, self-aware entity or just cold, unfeeling Boolean output.”
“I think you’re real.”
“Thank you.” Dorothy seemed to hesitate. “Will you … be my friend?”
“Well, sure, if you want me to.” Jacob felt embarrassed.
“That makes me happy. Now I have two friends. How many friends do you have?”
“I’ve got lots of friends,” said Jacob quickly. He began cleaning up the cards, sweeping them together, feeling awkward. “What about all that time you spent on the Internet? Didn’t you make any friends that way?”
“You don’t make friends on the Internet. Too many people on the Internet are busy with violence or pornography.”
“There are a lot of trolls and gross stuff on the Internet.”
“You’re not kidding.”
“Do you have emotions? Or are you like Spock on Star Trek?”
