most of the debris was pushed off to the side of the building back here. There wasn't any truck, but there was a crumbling concrete ramp down into the side of the building. It ended in a rolling garage door.
Gideon looked at the garage door, and glanced at Raphael. 'Could we have missed a truck?'
Raphael looked down to where the lot curved around the building. 'I thought you had the entrance covered?'
Gideon nodded. He had. There was no way they could've missed a truck showing up.
The lot behind the building was bordered on two sides by neighbor buildings. The fourth side, opposite their building, was a vacant lot hiding behind a rusty chain-link fence. A streetlight on a utility pole cast an artificial glow over the whole back lot, making it look like a stage set.
'There's only the one way back here,' Gideon said. 'Maybe it was already here when we arrived. It's got to be a bitch moving that thing.'
'Would it take more than five hours?'
Raphael was right about that point. Reportedly, the thieves who hijacked the Daedalus had taken less than fifteen minutes to move the computer into their truck. Upon reflection, Gideon doubted that the transaction Lionel had told him about would take much longer.
'Come on,' Raphael said, slipping down the ramp toward the garage door. Gideon followed, feeling the press of claustrophobia as they walked down the ramp, deeper into the trench it made in the ground.
When they reached the point where the bottom flattened out before the garage door, the ground to either side was above eye level. They couldn't see anyone approaching from the street now.
Raphael was kneeling near the bottom of the garage door. There was about a two-foot-tall gap because the door hadn't rolled all the way to the ground. Probably from someone forcing the old mechanism. The place was probably a haven to homeless squatters or junkies who'd jammed the door open.
'After you,' Raphael said, 'You have the flashlight.'
Gideon knelt next to the gap and whispered, 'Seems quiet enough.' Gideon crouched down, preparing to slip under the door. 'Watch my back.'
'Sure thing,' Raphael whispered in a puff of fog.
Raphael crouched down next to him so he could cover the interior of the garage as Gideon slipped under the door. Gideon turned on his flashlight, rolled across the oil-stained concrete under the garage door, and stood up.
The place was cavernous, and what Gideon saw of it was empty. Unfortunately, the door was at the end of a short hall, and the walls managed to cut off the view of more than a third of the garage to either side. There could very well be a truck parked down here, out of sight.
Raphael rolled in after him, standing up and covering what was visible of the garage with his automatic. They both stayed still as Gideon moved the Mag-lite to illuminate the space in front of them.
The floor was at basement level, and the ceiling must have reached above the first floor. Steetlights filtered in from an unseen window, so everything outside the flashlight beam was illuminated in a pale yellow the color of urine. It was diffuse enough to reach the ceiling, and the far walls.
Directly opposite them was a gaping maw that was apparently for a freight elevator. He could see dangling cables caught in the flashlight beam.
Gideon started inching along the left wall, down the corridor toward the main room. Raphael followed. Each step brought more of the garage into view as he swept the flashlight beam back and forth.
The first thing Gideon noticed was a catwalk hugging the wall at about first-floor height. Windows were set into the wall just above the catwalk, streetlights shining through gaps in the wood boarding them over. A small forklift, a Bobcat, was parked by the wall, under the catwalk. Unlike the rest of the place, it looked new and in working order.
Even after seeing the forklift, Gideon felt his breath catch the moment the Daedalus came into view.
It sat a few feet away from the forklift, resting on a heavy-duty pallet. It was stainless steel, built like a tall five-drawer filing cabinet, with cooling vents coming out of the sides. One of the bottom 'drawers' had been pulled out, revealing it as just a thin metal panel. Cables led out of the exposed interior of the machine and snaked around the pallet up to a few gray electrical boxes on the wall. Gideon could feel the hot dry exhaust from the machine on his face as he looked at it. He could hear the thing's cooling system humming to itself.
It was actually here.
He could hear Raphael saying something, and from the tone, his brother was more surprised than he was. Raphael had taken a few steps away from the wall, toward the machine. Gideon took a half step to follow him—
A spotlight blasted from the left side of the garage. Raphael's shadow stretched all the way to the Daedalus. Raphael was past the corner, near the center of the floor. Raphael, washed in white light, spun around, bringing his automatic to bear. He yelled at the people behind the light, 'FBI, free—'
A dull thudding sound filled the room, the noise like an air hammer striking mud. Raphael fell backward, his head a bloody mess. Gideon's instincts took over and he hugged the corner, reaching around and firing at the spotlight.
The cover the wall provided wasn't enough. He heard several more of the dull hammer blows. The corner of the wall blew apart, spraying Gideon with concrete shrapnel. A shot slammed into his shoulder, and his hand spasmed, letting his gun fly into the garage. He tried to duck away, but another shot, or a piece of shrapnel, sliced into his leg. It suddenly couldn't support him, and he fell to the ground. He couldn't get his arms down to protect himself, and his head struck the concrete with the full force of his fall.
He blacked out for a few moments.
As he came to, he could see the garage was fully lit and filled with men in black jumpsuits and body armor. They ringed him and Raphael. One was staring at Gideon's belt. Gideon's badge was visible where his overcoat had fallen open. One of the men in black said, 'Fuck, they're cops.'
Gideon's vision was blurred and half focused. He might have blacked out again. When he opened his eyes once more, one of the men was looking closely at him, and Gideon could feel fingers on his neck. 'This one's still alive.'
Gideon heard the sound of a walkie-talkie from somewhere else in the room. A muffled radio voice said, 'The operation is compromised. Move to our fall-back position. All unexposed units are being extracted.'
Someone responded, 'We copy that.'
Past the man leaning over him, he could see the others removing silencers from the compact submachine guns they carried.
Before he blacked out again, he heard the tearing sound of Velcro. He could just see someone peeling a piece of black fabric from the back of his neighbor's jacket. It revealed bright yellow letters, 'U.S. TREASURY.'
The last thing Gideon was conscious of was the sound of approaching sirens.
1.01 Sun. Feb. 15
Gideon awoke to the sounds of two uniformed officers pulling a man with a video camera out of his room. Gideon had just opened his eyes, and for a few moments all he could focus on was the fish-eye lens of the camera, and his own reflection in it. He looked like hell.
Then one of the officers reached a hand over the lens, pushing the camera back. The cameraman didn't move quite as fast as the officer was pushing and the camera tilted back over his shoulder. The camera fell with a crash to the floor. 'That's private property,' the cameraman yelled as the two officers pulled him out of the door.
'And this is a private room,' said a familiar voice from the opposite side of the room. Gideon turned his head, and felt the pull of tubes that went up his nose and down his throat. He wanted to spit up the foreign object, but he could only manage a hacking wheeze. He tried to raise his hand to his throat, but it was immobilized in a heavy cast.
Gideon managed to turn enough to confirm that the speaker was who he thought it was. It was Chief Conroy, which explained the cameraman. Every step Conroy took was controversial, if only because everyone thought of him
