He punched in his access code at the front interior airlock door. It opened and he stepped into the chamber. He closed the door and waited five seconds while the pressure equalized. A beep from the door let him know the cycle had finished.
“Gun, this is Brady, exiting now.”
“Roger that,” Gunther’s voice said in his ear.
Beretta in hand, Brady opened the heavy latch to the outside door and stepped out into the cold night air. The compound’s lights lit up the grounds. From the door, he could see the back of the satellite dish. Nothing moving. He double-timed it across the snow, the icy wind pulling at him as he ran. It could blow all it wanted, because Brady was prepared. Maybe a little more than just prepared, as proven by the sweat that already trickled down his armpits despite the subzero temperatures.
He kept a sharp watch as he cut a wide circle around the satellite dish. Nothing really happened at the isolated facility. Even something as trivial as this hardware failure brought welcome excitement, gave him a chance to practice good soldiering.
The fifteen-foot-wide satellite array pointed out to the stars, away from Brady. His circle brought him around to the front, where he could see the receiver held up by metal arms that pointed in and up from the concave dish. As he moved, he steadily swept his vision from left to right, then right to left.
Gunther’s voice piped into his headset. “You there yet?”
“I’m twenty feet away and you know that,” Brady said. “You’re watching on infrared, aren’t you?”
Gunther’s laugh sounded tinny through the small headset. “Yeah, I love this thing. Never get to use it. Nothing moving out there but you, big fella.”
Brady came around the front of the satellite dish. Seeing no movement, he closed in until he could examine the receiver. He stared at the gadget for a full three seconds, not really believing what he saw.
Baffin Island wasn’t boring anymore.
THE VID-PHONE AGAIN let out its shrill digital blare. Colding groaned and rolled over and looked at the phone—3:22 A.M. Jian again? Jesus, couldn’t a guy just get some fucking sleep around here? Colding clicked the connect button.
“What’s up, Gun?”
“We have a situation,” Gunther said in a rush. “The satellite array has been damaged.”
Colding instantly came fully awake. “Define damaged.”
“Let me patch in Brady,” Gunther said. “Brady, Colding’s on, tell him what you see.”
Gunther’s face stayed on the screen, but Brady’s girlish voice came from the speakers. “Someone whacked the fuck out of the satellite array. The dish is fine, but the receiver-transmitter unit has been smashed up pretty bad. Looks like marks from an axe.”
An axe. There were twelve fire axes spread through the small facility’s interior. Whoever sabotaged the satellite dish had come from inside the building.
“Gunther,” Colding said, “activate all the apartment cameras and give me a head count, right now.”
“No problem, boss.” Gunther’s eyes looked away from the screen, back to another unseen monitor.
“Let’s see… Jian is awake and in the bioinformatics lab, typing away. Rhumkorrf is in his bed, looks asleep. Andy disconnected his room camera, but I can hear him snoring over the vid-phone. Hoel is buried in her blankets. Brady is at the dish, I’m here, you’re there, and… hey… Tim’s not in his room.”
Colding stood up. “Not in his room? Where is he? Do an infrared body count of the whole building.”
Gunther’s droopy eyes narrowed in concentration. “Um… infrared confirms all visuals. Everyone accounted for except for Brady and Tim. And I just checked the access and egress logs. No one has coded in or out for the past two hours.”
“But I just went out,” Brady said. “Walked right out the front.”
“Not showing up,” Gunther said. “Someone shut off the tracking. And it looks like the hallway cameras are fixed on a loop. I… I can’t tell how long it’s been since they’ve shown live video.”
Colding started pulling on his clothes. “Call up access to the admin log. Whose code turned off those systems?”
“Uh…” Colding heard Gunther’s fingers tapping away. “I’m looking.”
“Move it, Gun! You’re supposed to know how to do this shit!”
“I know, I know! Hold on… here it is. Access code was 6969.”
Tim’s code. But why? Why would Tim do such a thing after all this time? Why… unless…
“Brady,” Colding said, “I want Tim found. He’s sabotaging us.”
“Yes sir.”
“And keep your eyes open. He’s got that axe at least, if not other weapons.”
“Yes sir,” Brady said. “Should I take him out?”
“No, for fuck’s sake, don’t kill anybody,” Colding said, shocked at how quickly Brady considered lethal force against a friend. But Brady was thinking like a soldier. Colding needed to think like that as well. If Tim really had taken a payoff from another biotech company, or far worse, he was working with Longworth’s special threats biotech task force, there was no telling what the guy might do.
“Protect yourself,” Colding said. “But do whatever you can to avoid shooting him, okay?”
“Yes sir,” Brady said, his voice crawling up another pitch in the excitement.
“Gunther,” Colding said, “get Andy up and tell him to guard the rear airlock. If Tim’s outside, I don’t want him getting back in. And get the internal cameras working.”
“Fuck, man, I don’t know how to do that.”
“You told me you’d studied up on the system, goddamit!”
“I know, I know! My bad, but I can’t fix it now. You want me to go outside and search as well?”
Colding punched his leg in frustration. Gunther was too busy writing his fucking vampire romance novels to do the homework that was expected of him. Colding’s own fault, really, for taking Gunther’s word for it instead of riding shotgun. “Just stay in the control room and get it fixed.”
“Yes sir.” Gunther’s face disappeared from the screen.
Colding jammed his feet into his boots, then reached into his nightstand, pulled out his Beretta and popped out the magazine—full. He made sure the safety was on before he shrugged on his parka. He quietly opened his door and cautiously checked the hallway. Seeing no movement, he headed for the main airlock.
THE ADMIN SCREEN listed five errors.
BACKUP FAILURE
SATELLITE HARDWARE FAILURE
DOOR ACCESS TRACKING SYSTEM FAILURE
CAMERA SYSTEM FAILURE
HANGAR TEMPERATURE LEVEL DANGEROUSLY LOW
Jian’s fingers danced across the keyboard, calling up menu after menu, or trying to—most of them were blocked. Her access code had been erased. She had to move fast. Whoever was doing this wanted to wipe out the research. Something had taken out the satellite uplink, so she couldn’t even do an emergency data-dump to Genada headquarters in Manitoba. On top of that, the hacker had already erased the off-site backup drive. Erased it. The only remaining active data set was in the main drive, located right under her desk in the bioinformatics lab. Jian had caught the attack on that drive, intercepted it in midstream and countered it. If she had been sleeping they would have lost everything the God Machine had produced since Bobby Valentine brought the latest samples.