Hold Enough—Part 2

Jan and Donna Garrick rolled up beside us and asked where we wanted them to check. We sent them to cruise up and down the waterfront. That was where Seattle was most vulnerable and was the furthest out that I could imagine they could have gone by now. Jordan has said Patterson’s yacht was anchored out in the Sound, so the Marina was a logical place for him to head. Sara Gates and Sandy Halstead were then sent south. Of all our friends, the two musicians would be most familiar and comfortable with Pioneer Square. Andi took over deploying our friends as I started reviewing images flashing on my screen from various cameras.

He’d done it again. He disappeared into the tunnel entrance, but never showed up on the security cameras once inside. Andi turned up University and I jumped out of the car and headed for the tunnel entrance. Watching a live feed of the University Street tunnel and the CCS security camera, I entered and headed to the escalator. I saw myself disappear from the CCS feed just after I left the street. I watched the tunnel cameras as I emerged into the tunnel at the bottom of the escalator. I didn’t come on camera until I was ten feet into the tunnel. In that ten feet, there was an access door to the maintenance shafts. I felt my stomach tie in knots as I tested the locked door. I sent a message to the police ground team and was joined in the tunnel five minutes later by two uniformed officers and a Metro maintenance worker. I was ordered to stay out of the tunnel as they unlocked the door and went in. I ran back up the escalator. All busses and trains were being stopped at the tunnel stations and searched.

Andi brought the van around on Third to the entrance and was anxiously awaiting me when I came out. I slid into the seat next to her and gave her a hug. “We’ll find her,” I said with more confidence than I felt. “I swear we’ll find her.” She nodded. I could see her jaw clenching. Her hands both gripped the steering wheel so tightly her knuckles were blue.

I looked at the game status. Eighty more players had joined in the past ten minutes. Word had gone out that we were chasing down John Patterson. The gaming community was out for blood. When one of their own became a pariah, there was no tolerance. I scanned the video feeds that were continuing to come in from around the city. It was just too much data for my tiny screen. I reached for my cell phone and dialed Jen.

“This isn’t what I intended to spring on you tonight.”

“I didn’t think so, but you never know.”

“Look, I’ve got too much information flowing in to handle it all. I need a filter.”

“You want us to watch first and feed you what we think is pertinent.”

“Is the whole team there?”

“Yes. Even Arnie and Darlene are set up.”

“I’ll transfer all the video feeds into the company and you can sort them out. I’m betting he headed north, but it wasn’t on a bus. There could be an access to his fricking office down there or a garage or a tunnel all the way to the Marina. But his yacht is anchored off Shilshole Bay. I’m betting he’s headed that way.”

“Route the feed to Supurnurd,” she said. “That’s Ford. He’ll distribute to the rest of the team.” I thanked her and hit the switch to distribute my info feed to Ford. I recognized the name. He was one of my six pursuers in the game a few nights ago. Well, if they were that good, then I definitely wanted them on my team. I could imagine the feed suddenly lighting up the eight foot wide screens in the various conference rooms around our office where a dozen windows could be opened on-screen and observed at the same time. I contemplated the maps of Seattle that now took over my screen.

Paula and Dick Wagner pulled up beside the van and handed coffee through the window to us. They had loaded their vehicle with urns of coffee and were handing out cups to everyone engaged in the search. Their coffee shop was in Pioneer Square and the name played off the most popular tourist attraction in the area: wUnder Grounds. I stared at the cup, thinking.

After the Great Seattle Fire of 1897 when more than 30 blocks of wooden buildings in downtown Seattle were destroyed, the city started rebuilding according to a new code—all buildings had to be made of stone, steel, and masonry. The new buildings went up almost as fast as they’d burned down. But in order to stabilize the constantly sinking and flooded streets, the city built retaining walls on either side of First Avenue that were ten to thirty feet high. They filled the street with sand and gravel and then repaved it. The new shops and buildings found they needed entrances on the second and third floors in order to let people in from the street and new sidewalks bridged the gap above the underground city.

A civic activist in the middle of the 20th century known for his wit and for founding the popular tourist attraction once quipped that he could walk from King Street Station to Pike Place Market and never see the light of day. People joked that he would make the trip at night. But gazing into the pit that begins any reconstruction project in Seattle will quickly show that as much of a building on the western slope of the city will be underground as above ground. I was wondering if Patterson would ever emerge from beneath the city of Seattle.

My computer flashed with new video feeds and a message on the game boards. There was video of a couple emerging from the east side of First Avenue and crossing to enter an abandoned building on the west side near the Art Museum. Just 15 minutes ago. I motioned Andi into action as she drove down the hill to First and began to circle the block. That’s an impossible thing to do. First rises away from the water as it approaches the market and for eight blocks there are no streets that connect to Western and the Waterfront.

“Where are eyes on that area?” I demanded, even as I was routing the new images to the police. From the Harbor Steps to the Market, no one had brought a camera online on the West side of First Avenue.

“Everything in that quadrant has just gone dark,” Ford responded. “We’re working on a solution.”

The gameboard chimed and I dove into the alternate reality that my players were experiencing.

“We’re under attack! Every time a player moves, he’s knocked off the board. He’s pulling the plug on every camera in the area as fast as we can bring them online.”

“Philanthropia is chaos. Automated defense systems are activating across every street. We’re digging tunnels to get from one area to another.”

“Wherever he is, he’s got more computer power in his hands than we have combined.”

The reports from the game board showed people pulling out, reporting viral attacks, and crashes. Patterson knew we were searching in both physical space and cyberspace and he was hiding in both. But if he was launching attacks in cyberspace, I had to believe he was capable of launching them in the real world as well.

“We need to cordon off the waterfront so he can’t move west of Alaskan Way. If he gets out into the Sound, we won’t have a chance of finding him,” I told Andi. She pulled off of Spring onto Western and stopped to send text messages to the Faculty. They had called in friends as well and by now there were at least thirty cars prowling the area. Police were at the doors of the building on First and were going in.

My cell phone rang and Jen barked at me.

“We’re going mobile,” she said. “You’ll get the first live video feeds within two minutes. I’m already positioned at the south end of the Market looking over the back toward the Waterfront. Ford is managing the feeds from the office.” By the time she finished speaking, my computer was lighting up with feeds as my team lined up on foot down the Harbor Steps and along Western. Andi and I continued to move north on Western as I scanned the screen and she scanned the street.

My tablet and my phone alerted me at the same time. I flipped open the phone as I scanned the new images I was receiving from the video feed.

“Hamar.”

“Dag, it’s not good. Coast Guard has just taken charge of the yacht and our police boat is headed in. The guy’s a maniac. The girl is dead. So is all his crew. He’s way off the deep end.”

“We’ve got a reading of body signatures going into a warehouse between Western and Alaskan Way. I’m following. We’ve got to stop him before he hurts Cali.”

“What do you mean, body signatures?”

“Part of my team is filling holes in the video with infrared lenses.”

“Someday you’ll have to tell me how you get access to so many toys. I’m on my way.”

I looked at the message at the bottom of the video feed coming in to me with the infrared images. “IGotUrBak.”

“And I’ve got your ass,” I whispered. “But that’s for tomorrow.”

***

I tried to get Andi to wait with the car, but there was grim determination in her face as we moved toward the warehouse. Her only words were a whispered, “She’s my baby.” She clutched my hand as we found the entrance and went in. I could hear sirens wailing in from the south, but they’d been going on and off all night. The security chain on the door had been broken and we pushed the door open. There was no light, but I used an LED on my keychain to cast a ghostly blue light out ahead of us—just enough not to stumble and fall over anything in our path.

At this part of Western, the street was higher than Alaskan Way, so we were two stories above the back of the building with another two above us. I bet on his moving down toward the back with a planned escape out toward the Marina. We signaled everyone to close in on the west side of the building. He was being surrounded. I got a triumphant cheer from the gamers as the entire area lit up with video feeds again. They’d neutralized him in cyberspace. In my mind, that doubled the danger in real life.

The building codes might have required masonry and steel construction, but once inside the warehouse, huge wooden pillars supported wooden floors on which were stacked crates and crates of unknown merchandise for an import/export company. We made our way down a stairway flashing the weak beam left and right and listening intently. I was surprised to find that once we’d reached the ground floor on the west side of the building, the stairs continued downward. This building was built below sea level. We’d seen and heard nothing since entering the building and both of us were sweating, our palms slippery where we held each other.

The scream from below us almost knocked us off our feet. We hit the last flight of stairs running and slid to a halt, faced with a sudden wall of fire. Across the warehouse floor, Cali was tied to one of the massive wooden pillars. I automatically hit 911 on my cell as we skirted the flames and ran to her.

Her face was bruised and her hands and ankles were duct taped to the pillar. I pulled out my pen knife and began sawing through the sticky mess while Andi comforted her daughter and checked for other injuries. Cali was in shock, staring fixedly at the fire as it progressed toward us while I stripped tape off her arms leaving huge red welts where it had stuck to her. The smoke was getting dense and I could barely see the stairs across the warehouse. When she was finally free of the pillar, she slumped to the floor.

The fire was spreading fast through the dry wooden crates and packing material that acted like kindling. Boxes were exploding from the inside as the heat outside increased. There was no time to waste. I scooped the girl up in my arms and we ran for the stairs. We were only two flights up to the lower ground level and we rushed across the floor, already feeling the wood heating up beneath our feet. We were running through a tinderbox. But the doors on this side of the building were all chained shut.

Damn! This had to be illegal. There has to be an emergency exit. But every access we found was padlocked and chained. We had no tools to break them. We sprinted to the stairs again, seeing flames shooting up the freight elevator next to them. Something exploded to our right and suddenly this floor was engulfed in flame. Andi pushed me from behind as I carried Cali up the stairs. We’d made the first landing and I turned to launch myself up the next flight when another explosion ripped the stairs from beneath my feet. As I fell forward, I pushed—no… threw—Cali to the landing in front of me as the stairs gave way. I heard a scream behind me and dragged my body up to the landing with my hands. I turned to see Andi, still on the landing—trapped against the wall, the steps between us collapsed.

We locked eyes for a terrified moment. I reached out to her, but the gap was just too wide to touch. I had only the wagging stair railing to hang on to as I leaned over the inferno. Then she screamed at me.

“Save my baby! Please Dag. Save Cali!”

I was choking on the smoke and my own tears as I mouthed to her “I love you.” I saw her return the motion as I threw Cali over my shoulder and charged up the remaining two flights to the Western Avenue floor and crashed through the doors.

A fire truck had just pulled up and I rushed a firefighter in full gear and dropped Cali into his arms. Before he could react, I picked up his axe, turned, and dove back into the burning building.