"We're on it," Dodge said.

"Why don't we scramble the data?" Sam suggested. "In case they manage to retrieve it. In case we've missed something important that we don't want loose in the world."

"What are you suggesting?" Jaggard asked.

"Let me crack the files," Sam said. "Change a few pluses to minuses. A few 'dos' to 'don'ts.' Switch some diagrams around. Randomize it. Whatever. Just enough to make the data worthless if it does slip out, and destroy any ciphers that could be embedded in the text."

"Can you do it without them knowing?" Jaggard asked.

"The kid can fart rainbows," Dodge said, giving Sam a grin.

"Then do it. Don't get spotted or you'll scare them off." Jaggard paused for a moment, thinking. "And get me the name of the insider."

"No problem," Dodge said. "I'll access the security camera footage for the plant."

"Do it. I'll alert Tactical. We'll hold off as long as possible to try to reel in the receivers, but I don't want him out there any longer than necessary."

"Tactical?" Sam asked when Jaggard disappeared.

"Tactical Response Team," Dodge said. "The guys with the dark suits and the big guns."

The main door to the control center opened, and in walked the strange woman he had seen the previous day in the corridor. She crabbed sideways across the room, muttering to herself. As she pa.s.sed Sam's desk, she suddenly turned her head as if she had detected his thoughts and knew he was looking at her. She caught his eyes with that piercing gaze that made Sam feel as though the contents of his brain's hard disk had just been scanned and a.n.a.lyzed. She didn't stop but disappeared into the octagonal office in the center.

Dodge saw Sam looking.

"Swamp Witch," he said.

Tactical was deployed at 5:45 that morning and reached Peach Bottom just before noon. They set up a perimeter around an old clapboard house on the main street of Delta, a small borough just west of the plant site and home to many of the workers.

It was the residence of Harrison Ellis, an inspector in the Health and Safety office of the plant.

"Wanna watch?" Dodge asked at about twelve-fifteen.

The scrambled data package had been picked up from the Cleveland server about three hours earlier, and they were busy tracing the recipient.

"We can watch?" Sam asked, surprised.

"Let's see what we got." Dodge worked at his keyboard for a moment. "Satellite footage, of course, but that's always extreme zoom. I got an ATM camera in a block of shops down the street, but...No, here's the best view. The house directly opposite has a security cam covering their front yard. It's Internet-enabled, so I'll just crack the security...."

On his screen, a picture appeared of a small-town front yard, overgrown with weeds, a trash can waiting to be collected next to a low wooden fence with missing palings.

"And we'll just shift the view angle a bit."

The camera rose and focused on a house on the other side of the street. It zoomed in a little, and even as it did so, there was a small puff of smoke from the front window. From nowhere, black-suited figures appeared, swarming into the house.

Not long afterward, a man dressed in just shorts and an undershirt was led out of the house in handcuffs.

"Got the dirty geezer," Dodge said. "Now let's get back to tracing his buyer. Then we can all get some sleep."

Half an hour later, though, Dodge sat back with a worried expression, and Jaggard appeared behind them.

"What is it, Dodge?"

"Got the source," Dodge said. "It's a dead end."

"They get wind of you?" Jaggard asked, looking at Sam.

"Nah, that's not it," Dodge said. "The package got shifted around in a big circle, one server to another, various parts of the world, and ended up back on the server in Cleveland. Then the whole cycle started all over again. Also, Sam hacked into the files, and we had a gander at them. It's nothing. Power-generation stats for a couple of years, and a bunch of data from their original reactor, which closed down in the 1970s. No use to n.o.body. No hidden codes neither."

"What do you make of it, then?" Jaggard asked.

"I think they were chucking stones at a wasps' nest," Dodge said. "I think they didn't really want the data at all. They just wanted to see how we reacted and how fast."

16

VIENNA

The excitement of Sam's first days quickly turned to boredom. It wasn't every day, it seemed, that cyberterrorists tried to infiltrate nuclear power plants-if, in fact, that was what they had been doing.

Rather, the average day at the office was one of patrols. Skirting around the battlements of the electronic castles, keeping an eye out for approaching enemies.

As it was for those soldiers in the olden days, Sam thought, the average day was basically very boring. He imagined them trudging back and forth on the walls of the castle, trying to stay alert and vigilant, while hours turned into days, and days turned into weeks. Wearing out boot leather on a well-trodden path, hoping for some excitement to break the monotony and hoping at the same time that the attack would never come.

Life in the luxurious suite at the Crowne Plaza, if also a little boring, could not have been easier. Every meal was provided, with twenty-four-hour room service if he wanted it.

His mother e-mailed nearly every day, still convinced that he was imprisoned in some horrible concrete cell, being beaten up by the other inmates.

Sam replied to each e-mail, sitting in the plush leather chair at the expensive writing desk by the picture window that gave a spectacular view out over the city, and said nothing to dispel her concerns.

Now and then, just for fun, he went flying.

With some of the new real-time world-mapping Web sites, you could position yourself above any major city and move around, in any direction. Up and down, forward and backward, left and right.

Do that with a neuro-headset on and the only way to describe the sensation was like flying, soaring above buildings, swooping through parks, making like a bird without ever leaving your chair.

By October, the threat level had been lowered, and the need to be transported across the street in the anonymous gray vans was removed. The team was still holed up in the hotel, but the powers that watched over the CDD team members were at last relaxed enough to let them cross the street by themselves.

On November 3, as Sam waited for the elevator, he realized that he was halfway through his probation. Had he done enough? He had felt confident that first week, but since then, the endless patrolling had given him few opportunities to prove his value. How could they judge his performance based on routine patrols?

Still, he reasoned, he hadn't done anything to warrant them throwing him out. He hadn't done anything wrong, or illegal, or stupid.

The elevator doors opened, and Vienna was inside. Sam nodded h.e.l.lo to her without speaking and stepped in. Speaking to Vienna was a waste of time, he had come to realize.

The doors opened on the ground floor, and she stepped forward first, striding toward the hotel entrance without a glance at him. Kiwi, her wingman, was waiting by the entrance, and they left the hotel together, discussing the merits of neuro-headsets versus keyboards and mice. Vienna apparently was opposed to the new technology, preferring the hands-on feel of the old-fashioned method.

Sam stared after them for a moment without moving; then, just as the elevator doors began to shut in front of him, he put a hand out to stop them and raced after the pair.

He caught up with them a few yards along the street.

"Hey, Vienna," he said.

She ignored him.

The street was lined with trees, and the fall leaves made a soft carpet underfoot. A VW Beetle was parked on the side road ahead of them and had almost disappeared under the leaves. Sunlight glared through the nearly bare branches of the trees. There was a sudden wind gust, and for a moment they were immersed in an orange and yellow fluttering cloud.

Sam walked alongside her and sniffed at his armpits. "What is it? Did I forget to shower today?" He grinned. "Do I have a big toe growing out of the middle of my forehead?"

Kiwi grinned and nodded, putting his thumb to his forehead to ill.u.s.trate.

"You're an egg. I don't talk to eggs," Vienna said. "Only one in four last the three months. Everyone else might think you're the next big thing, but I think you just got lucky."

Kiwi looked at Sam and shrugged sympathetically, earning a narrowed glance from Vienna for his troubles.

They crossed the road and headed down the ramp to the underground parking area and secure entrance to the CDD building.

"I'm just trying-" Sam began, but Vienna cut him off.

"Right now, you're all that Dodge has to watch his back. If you crash and burn, he's going to get taken down, and if that happens, and the bad guys get past the barricades, then we're all in a deep pile of c.r.a.p. You'd better stay lucky."

Vienna walked up to the security door and swiped her keycard through the lock.

The outer door opened, and they entered the holding area. Vienna waited for the first door to shut before swiping her card at the inner security door.

The doors were linked. The inner one would not open while the outer door was still open, creating a kind of air lock to prevent unauthorized access to the building.

The inner door slid silently open, and Vienna headed toward the elevators. Kiwi stopped at a coffee machine and pressed b.u.t.tons for a hot chocolate.

"So that's why she doesn't like me," Sam said, stopping with him.

The machine whirred and ground its teeth. A paper cup with a pullout handle dropped down and began to fill.

Kiwi shook his head. "That's not it. Not really. When you got past the defenses at Telecomerica, we were watching you the whole time. You were never supposed to get as far as you did. You beat us, big-time."

"So?" Sam asked.

"Who d'you think was on your case?"

17

FARGAS

The hospital corridor seemed to stretch out forever. Sam hurried along it, a slightly crumpled box of Hershey's Miniatures clutched tightly in his hand.

The corridor was almost deserted except for an old man in pajamas who was inching his way toward Sam using a chrome walking frame. Sam pa.s.sed him without acknowledgment.

The room was nearly at the end of the corridor. The door was open, but an apricot-colored curtain covered the entrance. Sam stopped and checked the number on the door before entering. He pushed back the curtain slowly and peered through to double-check that he was in the right place.

The room was large enough for two people, with a central curtain to separate the two beds, although only one was occupied. The walls were white and shiny, except for some stainless-steel panels. Various bits of high-tech medical machinery jutted out from the walls. The room smelled strongly of soap and antiseptic.

Fargas lay on the second bed, closer to the window, with a plastic tube embedded in his arm. The other end of the tube ran up to a plastic bag filled with a clear fluid. He looked gaunt in the sharp light from the window. His head was shaved, although not recently, his long hair replaced by a fuzzy mat of regrowth. He had dark rings around his eyes and bruises in a circular pattern around his head.

"Where'd they drag you up from?" Fargas asked, grinning as Sam entered.

"Mom e-mailed me," Sam said, trying not to show on his face the shock he was feeling. "I just flew in."

He neglected to mention that it had been on a government-owned Learjet.

He held out the chocolates, and Fargas took them with a hand that twitched constantly.

"Thanks," he said. "They gave you a get-out-of-jail pa.s.s, huh?"

"Something like that." Sam smiled briefly.

"It's good to see you, dude. What you been doing?"

"What have you you been doing, man? What the c.r.a.p is all this?" been doing, man? What the c.r.a.p is all this?"

"It's nothing, man. Just being stupid. You know." Fargas avoided his eyes. "Have a seat. How's the job?"

Sam sat on a metal-framed chair with blue vinyl padding that was against the wall by the window. Sunlight hit the back of his head like a blast furnace.

"It's..." Sam paused, then asked a little too quickly, "Job?"

"You can fool your mother with that bull about prison, but you can't fool your best friend. So, what are you, some kind of government spy now?"

"Why do you say that?" Sam asked.

"You're not the only one who knows how to use a computer," Fargas said. "When you disappeared, I started prowling around the Internet. To see if I could track you down. Next thing, two heavies in black suits turn up on my doorstep telling me to cease and desist."

"What did you do?" Sam asked with sudden concern.

"I ceased," Fargas said. "Then I desisted. But I'm not buying into any story about prison."