The Aegis Solution (14 page)

Concerned that someone might hear the sound or notice the sudden change in air pressure, he
scrambled through the opening and, using all of his body weight, pushed the hatch closed. The wind
was so forceful that it nearly caused him to lose his balance and fall onto one of the thousands of solar
panels mounted to the roof.

Keeping his feet well apart to help him maintain an upright posture, Elias, in the dimming light of
the evening, searched around the bases of the solar panels until he found a weatherproof electrical
outlet. The outlets had been placed regularly around the roof system for the use of tradesmen during
the construction of Aegis and also to be used by anyone who might perform repairs. Since no outside
contractors would ever be allowed inside or on the roof once Aegis opened, Elias guessed that the
assumption made by the designers of the building had been that eventually a qualified tradesman would
check in and might need to plug in his tools.

Shaking his head at yet another of the idiocies of Aegis, he pulled the device from his pocket and
plugged it in, careful to orient the top of it away from his eyes. Now came the hard part. He had to find
a way to secure the relatively light base so that the wind would not blow it over. Setting it down, he
searched the adjacent area, quickly finding that the contractor who had installed the solar panels had left
several pieces of steel angle behind. It was a gauge heavy enough to serve as a lintel in masonry work;
obviously, they had been concerned about the sometimes violent desert wind, when designing the
support structures. He hefted two of the six-foot-long pieces and carried them back to the spot where
he had left the device.

Shivering from the cold, Elias first placed the plastic base in the small open area next to the outlet.
He set one of the two angles next to it so that it rested upon the power cord, further securing it. Then
he positioned the second piece of steel on the other side of the base in order to wedge it firmly between
the two.

Stepping back, he checked out the installation, satisfied that it was probably the best he could do
with the materials at hand. After taking one last, long look around the vast flat roof, Elias lifted the
hatch, more carefully this time so that the wind would not rip it from his grip, and climbed down the
ladder, struggling to pull the lid closed behind himself. He locked it and continued down, grateful for
the warmth.

The air turbulence, caused by the opening of the roof hatch, had stirred up the dust, and Elias
coughed several times, his throat and lungs stung by the acrid powder. He sat on the floor next to the
suitcase and pulled out the smartphone and, with his thumb, slid out the mini-keyboard. Quickly, he
typed his first message to Faulk, which would be compressed and transmitted automatically in about two
hours. His descriptions of Madison, Walden, and the members of the group who resided in ZooCity
were brief, but he supplied more lengthy details about the blurred intervention. He also reported that
there was, as yet, no sign of Rudy Kreitzmann. After informing Faulk that the beacon was in place on
the roof, Elias read the message once over for errors, saved it, and closed the phone.

Leaning back against the wall, he removed two PayDays and a can of Ensure from the suitcase and
ate his dinner. Although he was certain there was something else he could yet do this evening, Elias did
not move, closed his eyes, and allowed himself to relax. Within minutes, he was asleep.

Whoever it was who had followed him during his journey through the raceway maze was a very
patient person. At no point did the stranger get close enough to be heard or seen. Now, as the stuttering
sounds of Elias' snores echoed through the concrete passageways, the figure waited. Fifteen minutes,
thirty minutes, an hour, and finally two hours passed before the stranger very slowly and carefully
moved forward, not making even the slightest sound – until this wraith stood over Elias, taking in all
of the details of his face and the visible contents of his suitcase, paying special attention to the automatic
rifle leaning against the wall next to his sleeping figure.

Having learned all that could be learned from this visit, the figure receded into the passageway
without making a sound. Because the phone was programmed to perform its function silently and
without the screen lighting, the watcher had been completely unaware that Elias' message was sent and
a message downloaded during the fleeting observation.



The stealth helicopter, using the laser homing beacon generated by the base Elias had set up on the
roof, hovered above Aegis. On command, the sergeant activated the winch and lowered the package
toward the clear area adjacent to the roof hatch. He maintained a running stream of instructions to the
pilot, who did a masterful job of flying in the buffeting winds and compensating for the wild swinging
of the package at the end of the line. Deciding that gently placing it on the roof in these conditions
would be impossible, the sergeant stopped the winch from unspooling when the package swung only
a few feet above the nearby solar panels, and waited. After feeling that he had a good sense of the timing
of the swings, he hit the clutch on the winch, abruptly dropping the load. He grinned to himself at his
accuracy as he saw that it landed squarely where he intended, less than three feet from the laser beacon.

Triggering the line release, he spoke into his headset mouthpiece. "It's down. Let's go."

The pilot wasted no time increasing the elevation of the craft, and they canted forward and sped
away.



Erin Stephenson glanced at the Caller ID on her phone, and seeing who was calling her direct line,
quickly lifted the handset. "Hello, Rusty."

"Erin, how are you?"

"Busy, overworked, behind schedule, and ready to strangle Len for allowing his wife to have her
baby now, instead of on his day off. I'm doing my own shows and his today. What's up?"

The meteorologist-on-duty chuckled. "That's the life of a big TV star. Quit complaining."

"Yeah, right."

"Anyway, I checked out the anemometers. Even sent a tech out to make sure. They're fine."

This was the last answer Erin expected. "Can't be, Rusty. You've seen the surface ob."

There was a brief pause. When he spoke, all of the former levity was missing from his voice. "I
have. I know."

"Then what's the explanation?"

She listened to another pause, visualizing Rusty sitting at his console, staring at the map. Finally,
he admitted, "Erin, I don't know."

She turned on her swivel chair and, using her free hand, clicked on the surface observation map
fed to her computer from the National Weather Service. She had to zoom out from the default location
of the Tucson area, select the desert region to the west, and zoom in. As she read the numbers, she
gasped. "It's worse."

"Yep. It sure is."

"Rusty…."
 

"I know, Erin. I know."

"It's…what I'm looking at, from everything I learned…."

His voice was flat as he finished her sentence – "Impossible."

CHAPTER FIVE

Elias had awakened at around 3:00 a.m., his neck and back stiff from his sleeping position against
the wall. Shaking it off as much as he could, he climbed the ladder and found the delivery. The materials
sent had been specifically packed into a box which would fit through the hatch. A twenty-foot length
of rope had been left attached, which he used to lower the parcel through the opening and down to the
floor, fighting the winds through the entire process.

Now equipped with the surveillance gear he needed, as well as other materials dictated by the
assignment, Elias spent the next three hours roaming the raceways of Aegis, completing various
installations, and positioning microscopic cameras and microphones in what he had designated from
his brief visits as key areas in Walden and Madison. The electrical raceways and conduits had provided
an ideal environment for this work, taking him directly above any room in the complex and providing
him with several penetrations where he could piggyback his devices. He had also found the section of
Aegis used as a home by the ZooCity dwellers and had positioned monitoring equipment there,
choosing the spots as best he could from the available vantage points.

Elias then returned to his base and set up the laptop provided in the drop. Since all radio
frequencies were jammed at Aegis, his method for monitoring all of the surveillance devices was
elegantly simple and utilized the miles of interconnected conduit in the raceways. The devices sent their
data via an FM signal which was transmitted through the conduits themselves. He screwed a conductive
clamp to one of the pipes closest to the laptop. The clamp had a wire soldered to it with a converter and
a USB plug at the end of the wire. He plugged it into the port of the laptop and opened the monitoring
program. After a minute or two of searching and identifying all of the feeds, the program displayed a
menu with each microphone or camera listed by number. Elias reached into his pocket, pulled out the
sheet of paper he had used to jot down the locations of all of the devices, and edited the feed menu so
that it displayed each microphone or camera by location.

Clicking on one of the ZooCity feeds, he heard nothing but silence. The camera associated with
this location showed an empty room. He continued clicking from location to location until his ears were
rewarded with the sounds of several excited voices shouting at once. Checking the video, he saw one
of the young men put his fingers to his mouth and whistle loudly. They all stopped talking. Once silence
was established, the whistler, who seemed to be the leader, contended, "We don't have no choice."

One of the others spoke up, his voice confrontational. "I don't like it, BQ. Those dudes are bad."

"You're right. They're bad. Okay. But we hook up with 'em or we die. Which one you want?"

There was no answer.

After a brief pause, as all of the group fell silent, the punk who had expressed his dislike for the
situation asked, "So what they want us to do?"

The one they called BQ answered, "It ain't nothin'. They want us to do the same thing we been
doin'. They want us to grab newbies right when they come in. Except instead of doin' what we used to
do, they want us to deliver 'em to them."

"And what do we get out of it?" one of the others asked.

It was difficult to tell from the wide-angle view on the laptop but it looked to Elias as if BQ smiled
and said, "Mostly, we get to live. There be some other good things, too. They be makin' some crystal
and some blow over there. We get some of that. We get some booty. You know, the ones they don't
want."

"This ain't right! I like it the way it's been. We had our own game. Now we gotta play theirs?"

It appeared from the video feed that BQ glared at the talker. "We play their game or we be dead."

The talker did not look as if he agreed, but failed to respond.

Elias listened to the entire discussion, trying to glean additional insights. Other than what he
learned at the beginning, very little came out of what he heard. As the group broke up and scattered, he
rocked back on his heels and thought about this new information. His guess was that it was Kreitzmann,
or one of his people, who had contacted this group with the intent of putting them to work for him.
That was obvious. What was not obvious was why he needed the ZooCity culprits. The other point
mentioned which disturbed Elias was the offering of a supply of methamphetamines and cocaine. The
effect of distributing deadly drugs of that nature in an environment like this one, already stressed due
to the pre-existing mental state of the entrants and the bizarre nature of the institution itself, would have
wildly unpredictable results. The obvious question was how Kreitzmann was able to produce drugs
while having no access to an outside supply of the materials needed.

The one other fact Elias took away from listening to the discussion was the abject fear visible even
in the grainy image of their faces and audible in their voices. This was a group, whose whole social
structure was based upon their bravado and generally macho attitude, talking about their own demise
as an inevitable consequence of noncooperation. At least from the moment he began to monitor them,
there was not even a hint of their opposing or resisting the overture, not a hint of defiance. In Elias'
mind, that could only mean one thing. Whoever had proffered the deal to the gangsters in ZooCity, and
he assumed it must have been Kreitzmann, must be the same party connected to the deadly show he
witnessed upon his arrival: the blur.

He clicked on the configuration menu of the monitoring program and set it up so that the laptop
would record the video and audio feeds from all of the sources on a voice- or motion-activated basis,
for his periodic review. Next, using another USB cable, he connected the smartphone to the laptop and
downloaded the message which was received at the same time his message was uploaded in the flash
transmission.

Within moments, the text message from Faulk's office was displayed. Since this message was
transmitted to him essentially at the same time as his went out, there was nothing in it referencing his
comments or questions. That would have to come tomorrow. All it contained was a list of the drop
shipment, a statement telling Elias that they did not yet have any luck identifying the two men who had
accompanied Kreitzmann into the facility, and a comment from Faulk that he was glad Elias had made
it inside and was able to check in on schedule.