“I know that, Ben.” For a moment the General relaxed, looked almost human. Tired. Then the mask dropped back into place. “You’re dismissed.”
“Is there any point in my asking what your involvement is in this matter?”
“No.” The General made himself an easy man to hate. “Report now to Agent Dave Manias. He heads the FBI sweep team.”
“Right. I’ll let you know what they have found out.”
Manias was in his shirt sleeves and sweating generously despite the cool of the air-conditioning, fueled by some furious inner fire as he punched rapidly into his hand computer. He looked up as Benicoff approached, wiped his palm on his trouser leg and shook his hand firmly and quickly.
“Glad you’re here. Told to hold my report until you showed.”
“What have you found out?”
“This is a preliminary report, okay? Just what we have so far. Data still coming in.” Benicoff nodded agreement and the FBI agent stabbed at his keyboard. “Starting right here in this room. We’re still analyzing all the prints we’ve found. But the odds are ninety-nine to one there’ll be no aliens. Just employees. Pros wear gloves. Now look there. Plenty of scratches, grooves in the lino. Hand truck wheel marks. Rough guess from the records what was taken. At least a ton and a half of stuff. Five, six men could easily move all that out in well under an hour.”
“Where did you get that one hour figure from?”
“Records. The front door here was opened by Toth and Beckworth. With private codes. From that time until everything blew was one hour twelve minutes and eleven seconds. Let’s go outside.”
Manias led the way through the front door and pointed to black marks on the white concrete outside. “Tire marks. A truck. You can see where it went over into the grass a little bit, left a groove.”
“Can you identify it?”
“Negative. But we’re still working on it. And the recorder on the main gate says it opened and closed twice.”
Benicoff looked around, then back at the building. “Let me see if I can put together what we know. Just after the visitors entered the building, security was compromised for over an hour. They were blind and deaf inside Security Central, watching and listening to piped pictures and Muzak. During this period all security ceased — so we can assume that all of the guards were part of the operation. Or are dead.”
“Agree…” His computer bleeped and he looked down at the screen. “An ID just in on a drop of blood found in a crack on the floor. The lab did a rush DNA match and the identification is positive. J. J. Beckworth.”
“He was a good friend,” Benicoff said quietly after a moment’s silence. “Now let’s find his killers. Who we now know were let into this building by one or more accomplices already inside. They entered the lab, and if Brian’s condition is any clue they shot everyone there — and carried out everything they found that related to AI. Loaded the truck and drove away. To where?”
“Nowhere.” Manias wiped perspiration from his face with a sodden handkerchief and moved his finger in a quick circle. “Other than the guards there is no one normally here after dark. There is empty desert on all sides with no homes or farms close by. No witnesses. Also, there are only four roads out of this valley. All sealed by the police when the alarm blew. Nothing. Copters searched out beyond the roadblocks. Stopped a lot of campers, fruit trucks. Nothing more. We’ve been searching a hundred mile radius since dawn. Negative results so far.”
Benicoff kept his cool — but there was a sharp edge of anger to his voice. “Are you telling me that a large truck loaded with heavy files, and at least five men in it as well, just vanished? Right out of a flat, empty valley with desert on one end and a first-gear grade on the other.”
“That’s right, sir. If we do find out anything more, you’ll be the first to know.”
“Thanks—” His phone bleeped and he unhooked it from his belt. “Benicoff. Tell me.”
“I have a message for you, sir, from Dr. Snaresbrook—”
“Put her on the line.”
“I’m sorry, sir, but she disconnected. Message says meet me soonest San Diego Central Hospital.”
Benicoff looked back at the lab building as he folded the phone away. “I want copies of everything that you find — and that means everything. I want your evaluation — but I also want to see every bit of evidence as well.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Fastest way to San Diego Central Hospital?”
“Police chopper. I’ll get one now.”
It was waiting on the pad when he reached it, rose up with a roar of blades as soon as he had buckled in. “How long to San Diego?” he asked.
“About fifteen minutes.”
“Do a circle around Borrego Springs before we go. Show me the roads out.”
“Sure thing. If you look over there, going straight east down the valley, past the badlands, you’ll see the road to the Salton Sea and Brawley. If you look that way, in the foothills to the north, that’s the Salton Seaway. Goes east too. Forty miles to the Salton Sea. Now, going south is that one, the SW5, with plenty of grades and switchbacks all the way up to Alpine. Pretty slow. So most folks use the Montezuma Grade there. We’ll go west now, right over the top of it.”
Below them the desert ended abruptly at the wall of surrounding mountains. A two-lane road had been scratched up from the valley rising and twisting higher and higher until it reached the wooded plateau above. Benicoff looked back as they climbed — and shook his head. There was just no way out of the valley that the truck could have taken that was not watched, blocked.
Yet it was gone. He put the mystery from his mind, filed it away and thought instead about the wounded scientist. He took out the medical reports and read through them again. It was grim and depressing — and from the severity of the injuries Brian was probably dead by now.
The copter bounced as they hit the thermals over the rocky valleys at the top of the grade. The plateau beyond was flat, grazing lands and forests, with the white band of a major road far beyond. Towns, cities — and the freeway in the distance. A perfect escape for the truck. Except for the fact that it would probably still be grinding up the twelve miles of eight-degree grade. Forget it! Think about Brian.
Benicoff found Dr. Snaresbrook in her office. Her only concession to age was her iron-gray hair. She was a strong and alert woman, perhaps in her fifties, who radiated a feeling of confidence; she frowned slightly as she looked at the multicolored 3-D image before her. Her hands were inserted in the DataGloves of the machine to rotate and move the display — even peel away layers to see what was inside. She must have just come from the operating room because she was wearing a blue scrub suit and blue booties. When Snaresbrook turned around, Benicoff could see that the fabric of the sleeves and front was spattered and stained with blood.
“Erin Snaresbrook,” she said as they shook hands. “We haven’t met before — but I’ve heard about you. Alfred J. Benicoff. You’re the one who beat down the opposition to the use of human embryonic tissue grafts. That’s one of the things that made my work here possible.”
“Thank you — but that was a long time ago. I’m in government now, which means that I spend most of my time looking at other people’s research.”
“A waste of talent.”
“Would you prefer a lawyer in the job?”
“God forbid. Your point taken. Now let me tell you about Brian. I have very little time. His skull is open and he is on life support. I’m waiting for the next V.I. records.”
“V.I.?”
“Volume Investigation. Infinitely better than looking at X rays or any other single type of image. It combines the results of every available type of scan — including the old tomograms and NMRs as well as the latest octopolar antibody fluorescence images. These are all churned up together in an ICAR-5367 spatial signal processing computer. This can display not only images from the patient’s data, but can also highlight or exaggerate the differences between that patient and the typical person, or changes since earlier scans of the same patient. So when the new V.I. data is ready I will have to go. Up until now it has been emergency procedures just to save Brian’s life. First total body hypothermia, then brain cooling to slow oxygen intake and all the other metabolic processes. I used anti-hemorrhage drugs, mainly RSCH, as well as anti-inflammatory hormones. With the first surgery I cleaned the wound and removed necrotic tissue and bone fragments. In order to restore the anatomy of the ventricles I was forced to sever part of the corpus callosum.”