Walker looked back to Paul, who was holding Monica and talking softly to her to keep her awake. They both saw the expression on Walker’s face and knew, without even looking around, what had transpired.
Walker said, “I have to—”
“Go,” Monica said. “Go. Get him.”
“I’ve got this,” Paul replied. He squeezed Monica’s hand. “We’ve got this.”
Walker gave Paul a landline phone from a desk and then he ran.
•
“We’ve got San Francisco SWAT and EMTs rolling into Ames now,” Somerville said.
On cue the television news feed went from the talking heads discussing their shock over Jasper’s involvement to a live feed from a news chopper above NASA’s Ames Research Center. The entire area around Ames was blacked out, but the campus itself had a few building lights on, generated by its back-up power.
“What’s that?” McCorkell said, pointing to the east. “Fires?”
Somerville looked closer at the screen. A few blocks out from Ames were residential streets. Then the helo tracked its cameras at the SWAT and EMT vans rolling through the streets toward the super-computing lab. The EMT vehicles stopped. The SWAT van rolled closer and stopped and then its members fanned out. Another helicopter came into view and landed—a ghost in the night, painted black and visible only for its navigation lights. An eight-man team dressed in combat fatigues.
“That’s HRT,” Somerville said. “They’ll go in first.”
McCorkell nodded, watching the FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team move quickly toward the super-computing lab, the members splitting up and heading for two entry points, while the Palo Alto SWAT unit set up fire positions outside.
The news helicopter did a wide circuit, and the cameras were now pointed away from the Ames Research Center, toward the glowing fires a mile out.
The images showed the National Guard at their checkpoints, a three-mile diameter bubble around Ames, and beyond the Guard troops and their big bright lights was the darkness of a city with no power. But that darkness was punctuated, near the Guard units, by fires. First one, then a few, then several, and now more than a dozen, glowing and burning hot and bright. Some fires were cars, others were Molotov cocktails burning against the ground.
“People are rioting,” Somerville said. “The power being out, all cell phones being out—they’re losing it.”
“Wait until they get the power on and find out what kind of guy Jasper Brokaw really is.”
•
Jasper ran. His prosthetic leg below his knee was loose but he ignored it, ignored the pain and the way that it was wobbling and slowing him down. He kept checking over his shoulder, the Glock in his hand, trying to think how many rounds he had left, if it came to it.
He was in the sub-basement level. He had studied the schematics for the building and he knew that this was part of an emergency escape network twenty feet beneath the base, with concrete tunnels and ductwork and piping overhead, weaving all over a couple of square miles, with egress points dotted all about the base and beyond. Blue stripes and green stripes were painted on the floor. He knew that the tunnels with blue stripes led to exit points on the base, and that those with green stripes led to points outside of the NASA compound.
He followed green.
There would be cops at the exit, he figured.
Emerge, plead for help, they’ll give it—shoot them, ditch the jumpsuit and keep moving. Blend into the crowd—
“Jasper!” A voice cut through the tunnel. Walker. “Jasper! I’m coming for you!”