"I'm sorry, but we're not allowing any visitors for Mr. Kool."
"Fine. Then let me see Randy Wright."
"He's in the same room,” the woman said. Now she smiled, forced and fake and apologetic. “Doctor's orders, you see."
Kayla reached into her purse, fingers tracing along the inside pockets, gracing over multiple IDs.
"I'm agent Harriet McGuire, FBI,” Kayla said, flipping open her ID badge. “This is a matter of national security. You will take me to that room immediately."
The beehive woman's face turned ashen. Her eyes widened, and this time they stayed that way. She looked at the badge, then back up at Kayla.
"But… but you can't, ma'am."
"Take me to that room, or you'll spend the night in jail, you got it?"
The woman's mouth opened, then closed, then opened again.
"Right now,” Kayla said. “Move it, Alice."
Alice hopped out of her chair, grabbed a key from a pegboard, and moved around the desk. Her fat jiggled with each step. The woman smelled like baby powder and potato chips.
"I assure you, Agent McGuire,” Alice said as she walked quickly down the hall. “I'm only acting on orders from the doctor."
Alice turned down a left-hand hall, looked back once, then inserted the key into a door marked C-2. Just as she turned the handle, Kayla shoved the woman through the opening door. Kayla reached into her purse and drew her Steyr even before Alice hit the flecked linoleum floor with a “whuff” of surprise.
Kayla strode into the room.
Two beds, both empty.
Angus, you little prick.
Kayla looked at Alice. “When?"
"I… I don't know what you mean."
Kayla knelt and reached in the same motion, her left grabbing a handful of beehive and yanking it back. Alice opened her mouth to scream, but froze when the cold barrel of a gun slid past her teeth and rested against the back of her throat.
"Thought you'd make a little extra money, did you, you fat pig?” Kayla said, her voice the soft hiss of a coiled cobra. “Well now it's time to pay the piper. Talk to me."
Kayla slowly pulled the gun from Alice's mouth. A thin strand of saliva swung from the barrel.
"They were only here for a few hours,” Alice said in rapid-fire words. “We admitted them into this room then he told me to shut the door and he offered me ten thousand dollars to play along and told me to go get the doctor and he paid him too and I didn't think I'd get into trouble and—"
"Shut up,” Kayla said. “When did they leave?"
"A couple hours after they arrived,” Alice said. “He did something to the phone."
Kayla walked to the phone, which sat on a small table. There was no cord in the phone's jack. Kayla rolled the little table out, and found the phone cord. It ran into a small metal-and-plastic contraption no bigger than a toaster.
You little prick. You little fucking prick. You routed the calls.
"So am I in trouble?” Alice asked quietly.
"That depends, Alice. All you have to do is help me.” Alice nodded as Kayla wrote down a number on a scratch pad next to the phone. She handed it to Alice.
"If they come back, you call that number."
"That's it?"
Kayla nodded. “That's it."
"But what about…"
"What about the money? Keep it, just call me if they come back.
Alice nodded. She stood and held the scrap of paper with both hands, pressing it to her chest.
Kayla quickly walked out of the room without another word. It was all she could do to keep herself from sprinting to her Land Rover. That little prick Angus was more than she'd bargained for.
The small shovel dug into the stony ground with the sound of metal scraping against unforgiving rock. It took almost five minutes to dig a three-inch hole, barely enough to plant the Kilroy Was Here sign. The digger suppressed a giggle, wishing he could see the look on Connell's face when the sign was discovered.
He'd expected more calls from Connell, but had received only the one. Angus had spent enough money to pull this off, first bribing Cho to put on the fake bandages, then bribing a doctor and that fat nurse to seal off his room. From there it was easy. He'd set up a relay on his hospital room's phone, so that calls were automatically routed to his walkie-talkie. Of course, he was so deep in the tunnels he had no way of knowing if Connell had called in the last day or so.
Angus now knew that he wasn't the first in these tunnels. Some of the tunnels weren't even natural — they had been dug into the stone. There was a crushing disappointment of not being the first in the tunnels, but the mystery was still every bit as intriguing. Who had dug these tunnels? And how could they dig them so far beneath the surface? Angus and Randy had found no evidence of blasting, nor a shred of leftover mining equipment. The artificial tunnels looked like they'd been chipped out, like people had taken a hammer and chisel and dug away. That, of course, was impossible. The amount of time it would take to chip out a tunnel of any size — let alone the dozen or so artificial ones they'd seen thus far — would be enormous, and no one could survive that long in this heat.
The answer, they hoped, lay in the enigmatic robots Randy had dubbed “ALs,” short for “artificial life-form.” The silvery creatures lurked everywhere. The things seemed to be watching, sometimes even tracking Angus and Randy. Angus didn't know what to make of their behavior, but he knew there was only one way to see what made such clearly advanced machines tick.
AL tracks dominated this area of the caves, ubiquitous wherever a patch of dry silt covered stone. The tracks were far thicker here than anywhere else they'd seen so far. It was a veritable AL thoroughfare, which made it a perfect place to catch one.
Actually, Randy was ready to do the catching. Angus was bait. They already established that the four-legged robots reacted mostly to movement and noise, and that they kept at least a fifteen-yard cushion. Randy lay half-buried under dirt and rocks, motionless, about twenty yards down the tunnel. They'd rigged a blanket from the ceiling and hoped to use it as a net.
Angus looked at his handheld monitor. It weighed less than a pound, but gave an excellent readout with its four-inch display. The unit picked up data from the tiny, five-ounce motion sensors they'd placed about thirty yards down the tunnel. They had originally brought the motion sensors to keep tabs on EarthCore personnel. Now, however, the motion detectors proved to be invaluable for gathering observational data on the ALs.
The readout showed a scale map of the tunnels covering a one-hundred-yard diameter area. He stood at the center of that large circle. On the screen, a red dot slowly blinked on and off. Angus banged the shovel against the wall three times, letting Randy know that the AL was on its way. They didn't want to use walkie-talkies until they established the ALs’ method of communication.
Clearly, the ALs were the most advanced robots he'd ever seen. Angus theorized they wandered in a loosely programmed pattern, probably utilizing some form of fuzzy logic to maneuver through the tunnels and collect data, probably for creating detailed maps that showed the expanse of natural tunnels. Once “full,” the creatures likely returned to the surface to pass the info on to their masters.
He watched the red dot. Still blinking slowly on and off, meaning the AL sat still and unmoving. The faster the AL moved, the faster the light blinked. Angus picked up the Kilroy sign and jammed it into the hole, making as much noise as he could.
The light suddenly started flashing faster as the dot moved toward him. He slammed the small shovel against the wall with two quick hits, informing Randy the AL was coming fast. Angus held his breath. The blip moved toward him, then stopped as the light returned to a slow, steady blink.