It was actually every light in the Capitol. Kevin couldn’t hack into the voting system, at least not in time, and he’d had to rely on the primitive method of severing a power line. It was surprisingly easy to take out the Capitol. The hard part was not taking out the White House, too, which would have wiped out his wiretap.
Considering the notice he’d been given, it wasn’t a bad job. The main thing was not getting caught. Kevin hadn’t asked what would happen if he did, but he was sure they’d all disavow any knowledge of him.
Kevin hurried back to the manhole. He had a moment of panic when the sewer branched and he couldn’t remember which way he’d come. He consulted his GPS. He’d made a wrong turn. He retraced his steps and got back on track. It seemed like forever, but was really no time at all. He reached the manhole and climbed the ladder.
Kevin tentatively pushed up the manhole cover, and dropped it again as several police officers hurried by in the direction of the Capitol.
He also dropped his flashlight. He could hear it clatter at the bottom of the sewer. He climbed down the ladder and fumbled for it in the dark. He found it, switched it on, and climbed back up the ladder.
This time there was no one there. Kevin shoved his bag of equipment onto the street and crawled out after it. He eased the manhole cover back into place and slipped between two parked cars just as an official-looking vehicle hurtled down the block.
Kevin let the bag of equipment hang down his side as inconspicuously as he could, and strolled along with a nonchalance he didn’t feel.
—
THE CONGRESSMEN were not in the dark for long. The emergency lights came on at once, and the backup generator kicked in a minute later. The generator ran the lights and the air-conditioning units and almost everything else electrical in the Capitol building.
There was one glaring exception.
“It doesn’t work?” Speaker Blaine said.
“No, sir,” the young aide said. “It won’t run off the generator.”
Congressman Blaine felt as if he were losing his mind, as if he were in some bad dream from which he could not wake up. His daughter was going to die unless he managed to complete the roll call vote, and the equipment he needed to take it wasn’t functioning. That wouldn’t matter as long as the kidnappers knew the vote was going forward, that it would be taken and completed this very afternoon. That was all they had asked for, and all he had promised them. And, by God, he was going to deliver.
“Very well,” he said. “The clerk will have to read the roll.”
“Sir?”
“We’ll do it the old-fashioned way. We’ll have a genuine roll call vote. The clerk will read the roll, the congressmen will stand when they hear their name and cast their vote, and the tally will be taken.”
“Can that be done?”
“Of course it can be done. What do you think we did before there were computers?”
The young aide, who had never experienced life without computers, had trouble envisioning such a time, but he hurried off to find someone who knew how to conduct a roll call vote.