Gragg selected HD Video Multiplexer from the drop-down menu. A new browser window appeared containing a selection of six thumbnail images. They appeared to be streaming video feeds. Gragg saw an image of a car in one thumbnail, and he double-clicked on it—as anyone his age would do. It expanded to fill the window. It was a live image of his car. He waved his hand, and his hand appeared waving on the video feed. Gragg noticed a superimposed red bracket around his license plate. A call-out label showed the software’s interpretation of the tag number. It was correct. So Sobol was employing an optical license plate reader. Gragg knew it was commercially available software—used all the time on interstates and downtown roads. But Sobol needed access to DMV records to determine who owned the car. He must have cracked a DMV database in order to get his registration information. Gragg considered the hourly rate of the average DMV worker and realized that gaining access wasn’t a problem for Sobol.
In the background of the video, there was a similar bracket around the VW Vanagon’s license plate. Gragg couldn’t help but wonder what was up with that. The van was smashed all to hell.
He closed that dialog box and checked out the other video feeds. There were cameras placed all around the cinderblock building, guarding it from every direction. Every time the wind blew, the swaying branches were outlined by vectored lines trying to resolve into something recognized by the software. Gragg found himself watching the red lines appear and disappear like a lava lamp. Motion-capture software? This was sophisticated stuff. No one would ever suspect that this isolated blockhouse held so much processing power.
Gragg closed the video feeds and moved around to the other visible features of the diagram. He noticed that a garage-like protrusion extended from the rear of the building. He pointed his mouse at it, and the words “H1 Alpha” materialized beneath his pointer. That explained the damage to the Vanagon. There was an automated Hummer here—just like at Sobol’s mansion. Gragg smiled. It was Sobol. He was walking in the footsteps of a genius. To his dismay, there was no more information visible for the Hummer, so he clicked on one of the nodes around the base of the building. The label “Seismic Sensors” appeared. Probably for detection of approaching vehicles and people.
As Gragg scrolled around the base of the building illustration, a rollover displayed the red, glowing outline of a door in the front wall. He looked up at the real wall some twenty feet ahead of him. He couldn’t see any indication that there was a door in the plain cinder blocks. He hovered his mouse cursor back over the section of wall in the diagram, and a drop-down menu appeared. It had two selections: “Open” and “Close.” Gragg clicked “Open.”
In front of his car, he saw a section of the cinderblock wall move inward and then slide sideways—revealing a dark doorway about five feet wide. Gragg half expected roiling steam to emanate from the opening. It was outlined with a soft red glow.
Was this it? Was he supposed to enter? He looked around warily. That would require getting out of his car.
The spotlight from the building still shined down on the area, revealing what a horrendous morass of mud he’d driven into. He had no idea how he’d get the car out without a tow truck. He couldn’t stay in here forever.
Gragg shut down his laptop and packed up all his gear. In a few minutes he had everything in his rucksack except for his Glock 9mm—which he kept in his right hand. Gragg opened the Tempo’s driver door with its trademark 1980s-Detroit-crack-squeak sound. He gingerly placed one combat-booted foot into the quagmire and felt it sink up to his knee. He groaned in disgust, but realizing he had no choice, he followed it with his other foot, closing the car door behind him. Pretty soon he was stagger-stepping through the deep mud toward the dark opening in the cinderblock wall.
Gragg stopped and took another look at the smashed VW Vanagon with Louisiana plates and anarchy bumper stickers. Shattered taillight plastic and twisted side moldings littered the area. The left rear wheel of the VW was smashed into immobility, set at an angle to the axle. The passenger door of the Vanagon was slightly open, with deep footprints leading out of the mud and toward the road.
Gragg stood for a moment, deciding whether to check it out. He realized he didn’t want to be walking around out here and continued staggering through the foot-sucking mud toward the building.
Before long he climbed up onto a ledge of solid ground that ringed the building. Gragg examined his legs. They were caked in mud. His feet were sopping wet. He tried to scrape the mud off his boots by dragging them against the ground but gave up and slung his rucksack over his shoulder. Then he chambered a round in the Glock and faced the opening.
Diffuse red light emanated from the edges of the door. It was just enough light to reveal a polished stone floor extending into the blackness beyond. Red. Low-frequency light not visible from any significant distance.
Suddenly a British-accented female voice spoke in midair right alongside Gragg’s head. “Come inside, Mr. Gragg.”
Gragg was so startled he reflexively squeezed off a shot with the Glock. The deafening crack echoed off into the sky. The bullet whined off the cinderblock wall, then howled out into the woods.
The female voice spoke again. It sounded slightly artificial, clipped. “Are you familiar with gunshot detectors? Police departments in major U.S. cities deploy them to identify and triangulate the precise location of gunshots the moment they occur. A gunshot has a distinct acoustic pattern. Even the weapon fired can be identified by its sound pattern. You apparently have a…nine millimeter.” There was a pause. “You won’t need it. You’ve earned the right to enter.”
Gragg looked down at the Glock in his hand. He took a breath. He’d never felt out of his depth technologically, but the disembodied voice was as close to magic as he’d ever experienced. He didn’t like the role of awed primitive. It didn’t suit him. He took another deep breath and tentatively spoke to the voice. “Who are you?”
The voice shot back. “This door will close permanently in ten seconds.”
Gragg’s thoughts scattered, and he hesitated for a moment before rushing through the doorway and into the darkness—feet squishing mud. The moment he did so, the door slid noiselessly closed behind him. The red glow from the door frame faded away as the opening sealed shut. Gragg stood in pitch-black darkness for a moment. It smelled not at all musty. It was super-clean, dry, filtered air. He wasn’t in South Texas anymore….
Suddenly a diffuse white light began to emanate from the walls. It didn’t flicker on, like fluorescent lights, but steadily rose from nothing to a comfortable, even glow. It was confident, effortless light, and completely silent.
Gragg found himself in a room twenty feet square, with a single steel door set in the middle of the wall straight ahead of him. The door had a dappled gunmetal look to its surface, as though it were meant to draw the eye. The walls in here were all glowing white panels—made of some nylon or fiberglass material. The floor was simple polished concrete.
The voice came back suddenly, startling Gragg as it circled around him. Gragg was hearing it, but he was still having difficulty accepting it. In real life a voice couldn’t appear in thin air. It wasn’t possible.