The Second Ship Read online

  Glancing from the open doorway to the computer on Mrs. O’Reilly’s desk, Heather shook her head. There were just too many people passing in front of the office to make it possible for Jennifer to hack her way into the secretary's computer. Closing the door wasn’t an option. That door was never closed during school hours.

  Heather glanced at the door beside Mrs. O’Reilly’s desk, the door into Principal Zumwalt’s office. It stood open awaiting his return. As Jennifer watched, wide-eyed, Heather walked over to the office and peered inside. There on the corner of the principal’s massive oak desk sat his computer keyboard and monitor, the screen saver showing an aquarium of colorful swimming fish, which seemed to peer out at her suspiciously.

  With a deep breath, Heather walked back to check the hallway door once more. It was all clear, at least for the moment.

  “Jen, can you hack into the principal’s computer?”

  “Are you insane?” Jennifer looked as if she were debating making a run for it.

  “Probably. But we’re out of time. Can you do it?”

  Jennifer shook her head. “If I had enough time, but they could return at any second.”

  “I’ll watch the door to the hall. You get in there and try. I’ll signal if someone comes.”

  Jennifer’s hands began to shake.

  Heather placed a hand on Jennifer’s shoulder. “Jen, I can’t do it. I need you. Mark needs you.”

  At the mention of her brother’s name, Jennifer’s back straightened and the muscles in her jaw clenched.

  “Okay. I’ll try.”

  Seeing her gentle friend push her glasses higher on her nose and boldly stride into the office of the principal almost brought tears to Heather’s eyes. But she didn’t have time to cry now. With one more glance toward Jennifer, Heather moved to the hallway door and peeked out.

  The minutes dragged by. Each time someone rounded the corner or came out a doorway and walked toward the office, Heather held her breath, moving back to her seat until they had passed.

  A sudden exclamation from the principal’s office caused her to glance inside.

  “I’m in,” Jennifer exclaimed. “I just need a couple more minutes to access the CTV and activate it.”

  “Thank God,” Heather gasped, then, realizing that she was no longer watching the hall, moved back over to that doorway.

  Just a little luck now, she thought. Just give us a little luck. Those thoughts splattered against the pavement of her mind as Ms. Gorsky rounded the corner of the hall fifty feet away, shaking a plump finger pointedly at Principal Zumwalt, who walked beside her.

  Out of time. Heather’s knees nearly buckled as she lunged forward, racing down the hallway, crashing directly into Ms. Gorsky, then ricocheting off to stumble sprawled out on the floor.

  “What in the name of all that is holy?” Ms. Gorsky gasped, having almost fallen herself. A look of stunned surprise quickly changed to one of fury as she rushed toward where Heather lay grasping her ankle.

  As the large teacher reached her hand toward Heather, Principal Zumwalt stopped her.

  “What?” Ms. Gorsky almost screamed.

  Principal Zumwalt turned his stern face toward her, his stare silencing the outburst, although Ms. Gorsky’s face looked like an oil well that was about to blow.

  As he turned back toward Heather, his eyes locked her own, robbing her of her voice.

  “What is the meaning of this, Ms. McFarland?”

  Heather gulped. “Ow. I’m sorry, Principal Zumwalt. I was running for the bathroom. I held it so long I didn’t think I could make it.”

  The desperation in her face was more real than either Principal Zumwalt or Ms. Gorsky could imagine, even though the reason behind it hardly matched her excuse. Heather let go of her bladder, a wet spot spreading rapidly across the floor beneath her.

  She began to sob, something that took no effort whatsoever. “I’m so sorry. And I think I hurt my ankle too. I’m so sorry.”

  For once both Principal Zumwalt and Ms. Gorsky were rendered momentarily speechless.

  Principal Zumwalt was the first to recover. “Ms. Gorsky, go get the school nurse. Quickly now.”

  As Ms. Gorsky sped off back down the hallway, the principal leaned down.

  “Heather, look at me a second. Can you move your ankle?”

  Heather wiggled it. “Ow. It hurts, but I don’t think it’s broken. I’m so sorry about peeing on your floor.” She began sobbing again.

  The principal smiled down at her tenderly. “It happens to all of us at some time or other. I can see why you were running. Can you stand up now if I help you?”

  Heather stood, gingerly testing her right ankle before putting weight on it. Her jeans were soaked from crotch to knees, and now she had pee on her tennis shoes. With a hand on Principal Zumwalt’s shoulder, she took a couple of hopping steps away from the puddle, her face a bright beet red.

  Just then Ms. Gorsky arrived with Mrs. Harold. The nurse took one look at the scene and then bent to examine Heather’s ankle. After several seconds of moving it around, drawing small gasps of fake pain from Heather, she stood once again.

  “It’s Heather, isn’t it?” she asked.

  “Yes, ma’am,” said Heather.

  “Well, Heather, it’s definitely not broken. I think you may have a slight sprain, though. Here. Take my arm and I’ll help you down to my office so I can wrap that ankle. We’ll retrieve your gym clothes while we run your wet things through the washer and dryer.”

  “Thank you so much,” Heather said.

  As Heather glanced back, she saw Jennifer peer briefly out of the waiting room, giving her a quick thumbs-up before disappearing back inside.

  As Heather limped down the hall, the custodian walked past her pushing a mop bucket. As he reached the spot of the accident, the school bell rang, immediately filling the halls with young humanity.

  “Stay clear of the pee spot on the floor! Stay clear of the pee!”

  The custodian’s bellow, accompanied by the stares as students began to notice her soaked pants, brought a new shade of red to Heather’s cheeks before she could duck inside the nurse’s office.

  As Mrs. Harold began wrapping the ace bandage around her foot, Heather moaned again. And this time the moan was for real. She knew she should feel lucky that Jennifer had been successful. But somehow, sitting there in soaking-wet pants, stinking of pee, her level of appreciation for her good luck failed to reach the appropriate level.

  34

  “So, Dave, what have you got for me?” Riles looked over Kurtz’s right shoulder at the banks of computer monitors.

  David Kurtz turned toward his boss and shrugged. “A whole lot of nothing as far as I can tell.”

  “What do you mean? I thought the search was narrowing in on something.”

  Kurtz nodded vigorously enough that if the floor had not been a static-free raised platform, Riles would have expected to see bolts of electricity arcing between the wild strands of his hair.

  “Oh, we narrowed in all right. Right to a computer in the Russian Ministry of Transportation. This one is physically located in Terminal Two of the Sheremetyevo International Airport.”

  “Moscow?”

  “You’ve got it, sir.”

  “One of the secure systems?” asked Riles.

  “No—at least, not in any sophisticated sense of the word. This is just one of the standard tourist information terminals.”

  “That could make it a little tough to lay our hands on.”

  “More like impossible. The system was just taken off-line by Russian customs authorities. They received an anonymous tip that it was being used by foreign agents as an encrypted message server.”

  “Were we able to trace the tip? Where did it originate?”

  “Actually, we saw it get generated. You’re not going to like the answer to your question, though.”

  “Look, I can’t dislike it any more than I’m disliking how long you’re taking to get to the point, Dr. Kurtz
.”

  “The e-mail tip was generated from that same airport computer.”

  “And the tip was in Russian?”

  “Flawless Russian, according to the boys downstairs,” said Kurtz.

  “Shit! I don’t believe this.”

  Kurtz grinned. “I didn’t either. No one is that good or that lucky. That’s why I started a complete analysis of the New Year’s Day Virus pattern from early-stage infection until the trace program was completed. When that analysis run finished, we spotted a very interesting anomaly in the data. Everything was consistent until about an hour before we identified the source computer in the Moscow terminal. Then it changed.”

  Riles' gaze narrowed. “How so?”

  “The agent programs left behind by the virus got cleaned from the net, leaving almost no traces. We barely managed to identify the trail back to Moscow. It looked like a really effective antivirus program swept the net.”

  “Did you recheck the routing tables on all the Internet routers?”

  “That’s how we found Moscow.”

  Riles paused, rubbing his chin. “The tip was in flawless Russian you say? Maybe too good, as in textbook? I think someone is playing a little game with us.

  “I want you to go back several hours before the trace completed. Figure out the key routers in the network pattern you were following and compare the most recent routing tables with those saved off on tape backup from the previous night.”

  Kurtz nodded. “I’ll get right on it. We are going to need some subpoenas to get those records, unless you want Gregory's team involved again.”

  “No, go through normal channels this time. Since we’ve hit a dead end, we have plenty of time to backtrack. Besides, I have other plans for Jack.”

  Jonathan Riles turned and strode out of David Kurtz’s lab softly whistling the theme song to The Titanic.

  35

  Heather rolled over in bed and opened her eyes, surprised to see her own arms stretching high into the air. It was Saturday, and she was still alive and not in a federal penitentiary. Considering the horrible nature of her dreams, this waking was a major improvement. Jesus. She had been so busy just trying to survive the week that she hadn’t really had a chance to notice much about the arrival of the New Year. But here it was, already six days in.

  Heather rolled out of bed and slipped into her long, flannel robe and her fur-lined, moccasin-style slippers, then made her way quietly down to the kitchen. By the time the teakettle started whistling, she already had the chamomile tea bag situated in her cup, switched on the television, and begun channel surfing for any news that might indicate some other disaster was on its way to annihilate them.

  The smell of the tea wafted up to her nostrils as she began pouring the hot water over the bag, and then paused to add a little Splenda.

  At first she barely registered the scratching at the kitchen window, so softly did it intrude into her consciousness. When she did look up, there was nothing there, just a large section where the condensation had left a cloud on the pane. Only as she started to turn away did she see it, crude letters in the condensation where a finger had traced them on the outside of the glass.

  “I know what you are.”

  Heather set down her tea and walked across to the windowsill. On closer inspection, it was a thin layer of frost, not steam or condensation, that had been scratched away.

  She shifted her gaze to the tree line at the back edge of their yard. There, standing in the snow beneath the pines, stood the Rag Man, his long, greasy, blond hair and the mouthful of bad teeth in his grinning face immediately recognizable. His eyes, though. Where were his eyes?

  For a brief moment Heather considered calling her dad, but her fury wouldn’t let the man escape yet again. Grabbing a long butcher knife from the block on the countertop, Heather opened the sliding glass door and stepped out into the predawn darkness, the garden dimly illuminated by the light from their back porch. As she stepped out, the Rag Man slid back into the trees.

  Heather lunged after him, almost slipping on the ice coating the deck’s lower step, but she managed to right herself as she plunged into the snow-covered grass beyond. She reached the tree where she had last seen him, whirling to make sure he did not jump out of the darkness behind her.

  There in the snow beneath the tree, a clear set of footprints led into the woods just beyond her backyard. Heather sucked in a deep breath, then moved, head bent to keep the trail in sight as she made her way forward. In seconds the trees behind her masked her house from view, bringing down a deeper darkness that would have been absolute, except for the light of the three-quarter moon that filtered through the branches high above.

  Those tracks in the snow pulled her onward, her hand clutched so tightly around the handle of the big knife that it seemed the skin would peel away from her knuckles at any moment. She felt like screaming after the Rag Man: Who are you? What do you want from me? Stay the hell away from my family!

  “I know what you are.”

  The voice behind her was so close she could feel the hot breath puff against the back of her neck, could smell the rot in those decaying teeth. Suddenly all the anger and strength leached out of her body, replaced by an icy terror that left her frozen in place, unable to move. Unable even to turn her face to look into those vacant eye sockets.

  “I know what you are becoming.”

  Heather tried to scream, but somehow could not manage to get the sound out of her throat. Only when she heard the soft thud of something heavy hitting the snow at her feet did she realize she’d dropped the butcher knife.

  “Becoming…”

  The feel of the hand on her shoulder was more than she could bear, rousing her to twist and lurch away.

  “…going to becoming?”

  The weight of the blanket dragged her down, and she lifted her head, struggling toward the light.

  “Heather, wake up. Are you going to be coming down to breakfast?”

  Heather sat straight up in bed and found herself staring into her father’s face.

  “Wow. That must have been some dream you were having. It’s after eight o’clock.”

  Heather suddenly remembered that she could breathe. The shock of transition from the vivid dream to wakefulness left her dazed.

  “Heather?”

  “Sorry, Dad,” Heather said, wiping at her face with both hands. “I must have really been out. What was it you were asking me?”

  He laughed. “Maybe I should let you go back to sleep. The Smythes are going to be here in forty-five minutes for brunch.”

  “Oh. Thanks. I definitely want to shower and get cleaned up first.”

  “Okay. We’ll see you in a few minutes then.”

  As the door closed, Heather sank back into bed, amazed that her father hadn’t heard the pounding in her head. She had never been subject to migraines, but this one was a real skull cracker of a headache. If she hadn’t just told her dad that she was going to come down for breakfast, she would have taken a couple of aspirins and crawled back into bed. Recalling the dream, Heather decided she didn’t really want to sleep again anyway.

  By the time she had drained the hot water heater and stepped out into the steam-filled bathroom, Heather was feeling a little better. The headache was still there, but the rest of her seemed to be ready to greet the land of the wakeful. She glanced up at the mirror, half expecting to see finger-printed words in the condensation. No words. Thank the Lord.

  Heather was several minutes late getting downstairs, but she had still somehow managed to beat the Smythes. That surprised her, considering the Smythe family’s notorious punctuality.

  “Hi, sleepy head,” her mother said as she pulled a pan of hot biscuits from the oven and applied butter.

  “Hi, Mom.”

  Her father looked up from his paper. “Glad to see you looking perkier. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you that deep into the land of nod.”

  “It’s their exhausting study schedule this week,” said her m
other as she set a large red-and-yellow plate in the middle of the table, biscuits piled high atop it. “It’s too much, coming right out of the holidays. I’ve a good mind to complain to the principal.”

  “Mom, please don’t,” said Heather quickly.

  Her mother snorted. “It was just a thought.”

  Just then the door opened, and the Smythes poured in to happy greetings all around.

  “Sorry we’re late,” Fred Smythe began. “We had a tough time getting these two kids roused this morning. You would have thought they were dead.”

  Heather’s head popped up. Sure enough, both Mark and Jennifer looked like they needed to go directly back to bed.

  As the parents chattered in the background, Mark leaned over to whisper in Heather’s ear. “It’s the weirdest thing. Both Doc and I had exactly the same dream last night.”

  A cold shiver crept up Heather’s spine. “The same dream?”

  Jennifer nodded. “Exactly the same. It was all about you chasing a weird man into the woods with a knife.”

  Mark leaned closer. “Yeah. Really creepy.”

  A loud clatter caused everyone to look around at Heather, who stood by the table staring down at the butcher knife she had just dropped on the kitchen floor.

  36

  Jack Gregory stepped down from the small private jet, carrying his two small black bags. Glancing back, he saw the lithe, muscular form of Janet Price exit the aircraft carrying a slightly larger, soft-leather duffel.

  Without waiting for Harold Stevens, Jack made his way over to the Executive Aviation office, the late-afternoon Albuquerque sun providing plenty of light but little heat on this cold January day. By the time he had retrieved the keys to the two cars that awaited their arrival and had made arrangements for the refueling and the parking of the jet, Harold Stevens had joined Janet in the waiting area.

  Jack tossed him a set of keys and then stepped outside to find his own car, a bloodred Audi Quattro. Popping open the spacious trunk, he lifted his and Janet’s bags inside. As he opened the driver’s-side door and slid into the leather seat, Janet distracted him by gliding into the passenger seat, her legs as shapely and defined as a professional dancer’s, the little black skirt not quite reaching her knees.