Instead, I focused on the screen as most of those standing clustered around to watch as well. "All I see is tunnel, Big George."

"I've got heat readings. I'm following them. They were extremely faint before, but are slowly getting stronger, so whatever's giving off the heat is getting closer to our sensors."

"We don't have sensors throughout the tunnels?"

"No. NASA's been generous, but we're talking thousands of miles of tunnels, limited personnel, and somewhat limited budget. Chuck's been extremely careful about who goes down there, let alone who knows about this in the first place. We have cameras and security sensors all along what we call the Embassy Tunnel. We have security sensors along the tunnels we've finished mapping, but cameras are only placed intermittently, mostly near the dead zones."

I saw a long, dark hallway. The camera was moving. "How is the camera moving?"

"It's on a tread."

"Wow."

"It's hardly amazing, Kitty. We've had things like this since the moon landing, if not before. It's how we patrol the sections that don't have stationary cameras set up."

"You aren't going to tell me the moon landing was faked are you?"

"No, that's Omega Red's thing. I know it was real."

"Okey-dokey. You can share your pet conspiracy theory with me later."

"You'll want me to. I've proven that the world governments create boy bands in order to subliminally control the citizenry."

"Yeah, I'll wait until we've saved the world to get into that one."

"Fine. You like rock anyway."

I chose to refrain from mentioning that I also had a nostalgic fondness for *NSYNC and the Backstreet Boys. I didn't listen to them all that often, though, so I was probably safe from the musical mind control.

Studied the picture on screen as the camera rolled along. Big George had said this was part of the D.C. tunnels, meaning it was connected to "our" tunnel and the Embassy.

Based on the use of a roving camera, knew it wasn't near the Secret Lab, where they'd been creating Gaultier's Zombie Army of Hot Guys. Even without the roving camera clue, we'd blown that up, and though A-C fail-safes meant the lab had exploded in on itself, there had still been rubble. And I saw no rubble.

However, dark halls with murky-to-no lighting didn't offer a lot of landmarks to compare against, and I'd only been down in our part of the tunnel system once.

Decided to stop keeping my questions to myself. "Big George, where is this, in the schematic of the underground tunnels?"

He tapped something onto his keyboard and another screen tossed up the D.C. area underground map. "It's heading for the last dead zone, the one we're not done mapping, but it's not there yet. The sensors react and interfere with our mapping equipment, so we have very few sensors in this area."

Because Big George had put up the map for this one underground area only, I could actually make out some of the words. "From the map, that dead zone looks to be near Langley."

"It is."

"But it's also near Arlington, in that sense, and D.C.," Stryker said. "It's under the Washington Golf and Country Club."

"Seriously?" Armstrong sounded concerned. "The President's a member there. I'm a member there."

"Everyone who's anyone is a member there or good friends with a member there," Franklin said. "It's a perfect place to have a secret underground tunnel and room, too, because even if you're not a member, if you're someone's invited guest, you're 'in' once you're there, and no one's going to bother you."

"If it's really a room." There were many other possibilities, which I chose not to share aloud. Why say "hidden bomb" right now? What good would it do if we couldn't access the dead zones to verify?

"I think Amy's father was a member there," Christopher said quietly to me, as he, White, and William joined us.

"I'm sure he was. And that means LaRue probably still is." I figured Ronald Yates, Antony Marling, and heck, even Madeline Cartwright had been members there. Or been pals with one. It was a safe bet every enemy we had was no more than two degrees of separation from a full-fledged member.

"No wonder your mother and Mister Reynolds have been careful," Armstrong said. "The members of this country club are among the most powerful in the nation."

"You should know, Senator. Are Mimi and Abby done meditating?"

"Yes," Naomi said. "What do you need?"

"You two and Christopher-see if you can get a reading on Jeff or Chuckie." Just because Big George had found some heat signatures, it didn't mean they were emanating from the bodies we were looking for.

Christopher muttered something about every woman he knew bossing him around, but otherwise I could tell the three of them were concentrating.

Tried to be quiet while they were focused. Failed. "How deep are these tunnels?"

"Deep," Big George said.

"There are tunnels under Washington," Stryker added. "These are deeper. You did know that there were tunnels under the city, didn't you?"

"Yes, Eddy. Just like Disneyland, there's a whole lot more underground that the regular folks don't know about."

"Just checking," he grumbled. "Geez, bite a guy's head off."

"Get back to work, Eddy."

"I've got something," Naomi said. She and Abigail were already holding hands, but Naomi grabbed Christopher's hand, too. "Need your help."

"Two people," Christopher said slowly. "The interference is extreme. I can't tell if they're human or A-C, let alone if they're Jeff and Reynolds. I can just get that there's something living in there and they . . . seem personlike."

"Same here," Abigail confirmed. Naomi nodded.

Something was bothering me. Something important. "I have a question."

"Yes?" Big George asked.

"Why is it that three of the most powerful A-Cs on the planet are having more trouble reading what's in that tunnel than a roving camera and some heat sensors?"

CHAPTER 82.

"WHAT DO YOU MEAN?" Abigail asked.

"I mean that you three should be able to see everything about these tunnels, let alone who's in them. Christopher can see people in the Alpha Centauri system, for God's sake. Yet, whatever these tunnels are reinforced with, it's harder for an empath, imageer, or hybrid to see through them. Video feeds are doing better than the three of you, and that should be impossible."

"They knew what they were doing, I guess," Christopher said. "Though I don't know how anyone would be able to predict the powers Naomi and Abigail have."

"Let alone the ones you, Jeff, and Serene got from the Surcenthumain boost." Which bothered me even more. "The other locations where there are dead zones, what are they under or near? I mean, one's close to our Embassy. So where are the others?"

"In this area that we're focused on, the Pentagon, Langley, Camp David, and Norfolk, all of which we've mapped," Henry answered. "The Gaultier America research facility in McLean is mapped, but there's more going on there. The main Gaultier America research facility in upstate New York is also mapped, by the way, and linked to this tunnel system."

"For all we know, all the tunnels are linked," Big George said. "As I told you earlier, we are nowhere close to done with this project."

"Fabulous. But all of these are under our control now?"

"As far as we know, yes," Henry said.

"All of them are mapped, and have sensors installed," Big George corrected. "And none of those other sensors are showing signs of activity."

"So, the only one that's still essentially an unknown is this one under the Country Club of the Political Stars, right?"

"Right." Henry sighed. "As Big George said, there are plenty that we haven't confirmed. We now know what the tunnels and dead zones look like to our scanning equipment, but there's a lot more than we have resources to deal with immediately."

The lack of resources comments were interesting. Centaurion Division had the resources to help search. We had the resources to make the search go infinitely faster, too. But, to my knowledge, Chuckie hadn't asked for help. I wanted to know why, but in order to find out, I also had to get Jeff and Chuckie back alive. But no pressure.

"Where are the tunnel access points? I mean, I know they're accessible via our Embassy, but to my knowledge, Chuckie hasn't been sending teams down through our basement to look at this stuff."

"No," Big George said with a chuckle. "Far from it. Your Embassy is off limits, remember? No, there are access points near the dead zones."

"Easy to find access points?"

"Some yes, some no."

"Fabulous. So, are there any actual guards on the access points?"

"Personnel, no. Sensors only."

"Including by the country club?"

"Yes. Its access point is actually fairly easy to get to."

"How so?"

"It's in some dense, older foliage that's part of the golf course."

"Big trees and bushes and such? Secluded area that's sort of in plain sight but no one really looks at because they're focused on the main attraction?"

"Yes."

A brand new question was begged. "Walt, is someone, presumably Clarence Valentino, still trying to get into our Embassy?"

"Yes, Chief."

"So why is Clarence spending his time trying to get in here, if he wants to get into the tunnels, instead of trotting over to the country club?"

"No idea," Christopher said. "Maybe he wants into the Embassy for a different reason."

"Why?" Buchanan asked. He'd been so quiet I'd almost forgotten he was there. Tried to remember if I'd seen him in the last few minutes. Decided there were more important things going on than my figuring out if he was really Dr. Strange in disguise. "What could he want in the Embassy?"

"He can't need a gate," Christopher said. "He can go to any airport and calibrate one for wherever he needs to go."

"But can he use them to get into the tunnels or the dead zones?"

"Probably not," Christopher said. "But we can't tell without being able to access these dead zones."

"Maybe it's the only access point Clarence knows about," Naomi suggested.

"Maybe. You know, what's 'our' secret lab actually under? It's not all that close to the Embassy."

Big George cleared his throat. "Your dead zone is under the Lincoln Memorial. Its entrance is, like the country club's, within some dense foliage along the side of the Memorial."

"I have Bad Guy Bingo!"

"Then I have Bad Guy Bingo, too, because Clarence wanted Sis and me to follow him into the trees by the Memorial," Abigail said. "I think that means he knew exactly where the entrance was."

"What does that prove, though?" Christopher asked.

"That Clarence cannot be trying to get into the Embassy in order to access the tunnels. Because he could do it from the Lincoln Memorial and be anywhere on Earth, it looks like. Do your sensors show anything in the tunnels from earlier today or this week?"

"I've got the reports, let me check," Henry said. "Interesting. Heat signature triggered the sensors in the tunnel near the Memorial, but it was so quick the program assumed a small foreign body."

"You mean like a little Japanese girl or something?"

Received a slew of "duh" looks from Hacker International and a lot of "really?" looks from everyone else.

"No," Stryker said as he rolled his eyes. "He means like insects."

Henry nodded. "The sensors are very delicately tuned, so they pick up everything. The heat registered so quickly it appears to be nonhuman in nature."

"Oh, it's nonhuman. I'm betting that Clarence was moving so fast he fooled the sensors."

White nodded. "It makes sense, and having seen him running this afternoon, it's very believable."

"So he's been in the tunnels. Henry, check for more 'oh, it's nothing' readings from the sensors. We think Clarence has been back for about a week. Eddy."

"Yes? You want me to add something onto what I'm already doing, don't you?"

"You're still sharp as a knife. Yeah. I need help with the conspiracy theories, and since Chuckie's not here, you're my next go-to guy."

"I'm so honored." His tone didn't say "honored," of course. But I chose to ignore that.

"You have a good understanding of what's going on, so suck it up. First off, we have a massive, deep underground, tunnel system and a whole lot of big, cubelike dead zones, right?"