The Blue Nowhere

his hands to the keyboard, feeling the unparalleled excitement he always did just before he started a journey into an uncharted part—an illicit part—of the Blue Nowhere.
    He started to key.
    “Gillette!” a man’s voice shouted as the front door of the CCU crashed open.
    The hacker turned to see someone striding into the dinosaur pen. Gillette gasped. It was Shawn—the man who’d pretended to be Charles Pittman.
    “Jesus,” Shelton called, startled.
    Tony Mott moved fast, reaching for his large silver pistol. But Shawn had his own weapon out of his holster and, before Mott could even draw, Shawn’s was cocked and aimed at the young cop’s head. Mott lifted his hands slowly. Shawn motioned Sanchez and Miller back and continued on toward Gillette, pointing the gun at him.
    The hacker stood and stumbled backward, his arms up.
    There was nowhere to run.
    But, wait. . . . What was going on?
    Frank Bishop, grim-faced, walked through the front door. He was flanked by two large men in suits.
    So, he wasn’t Shawn.
    An ID appeared in the man’s hand. “I’m Arthur Backle, with the Department of Defense Criminal Investigation Division.” He nodded at his two partners. “These’re Agents Luis Martinez and Jim Cable.”
    “You’re CID? What’s going on here?” Shelton barked.
    Gillette said to Bishop, “We’re linked to Phate’s machine. But we’ve only got a few minutes. I’ve got to go in now!”
    Bishop started to speak but Backle said to one of his partners, “Cuff him.”
    The man stepped forward and ratcheted handcuffs on Gillette. “No!”
    Mott said, “You told me you were Pittman.”
    Backle shrugged. “I was working undercover. I had reason to suspect you might not cooperate if I identified myself.”
    “Fucking right we wouldn’t’ve cooperated,” Bob Shelton said.
    Backle said to Gillette, “We’re here to escort you back to the San Jose Correctional Facility.”
    “You can’t!”
    Bishop said, “I talked to the Pentagon, Wyatt. It’s legit. We got busted.” He shook his head.
    Mott said, “But the director approved his release.”
    “Dave Chambers is out,” the detective explained. “Peter Kenyon’s acting director of CID. He rescinded the release order.”
    Kenyon, Gillette recalled, was the man who’d overseen the creation of the Standard 12 encryption program. The man who was the most likely to end up embarrassed—if not unemployed—if it was cracked. “What happened to Chambers?”
    “Financial impropriety,” narrow-faced Backle said prissily. “Insider trading, off-shore corporations. I don’t know and I don’t care.” Backlethen said to Gillette, “We have an order to look through all the files you’ve had access to and see if there’s evidence related to your improper accessing of Department of Defense encryption software.”
    Tony Mott said desperately to Bishop, “We’re online with Phate, Frank. Right now!”
    Bishop stared at the screen. He said to Backle, “Please! We have a chance to find out where this suspect is. Wyatt’s the only one who can help us.”
    “Let him go online? In your dreams.”
    Shelton snapped, “You need a warrant if—”
    The blue-backed paper appeared in the hands of one of Backle’s partners. Bishop read it quickly and nodded sourly. “They can take him back and confiscate all his disks and any computers he’s used.”
    Backle looked around, saw an empty office and told his partners to lock Gillette inside while they searched for the files.
    “Don’t let them do it, Frank!” Gillette called. “I was just about to seize root of his machine. This is his real machine, not a hot one. It could have addresses in it. It could have Shawn’s real name. It could have the address of his next victim!”
    “Shut up, Gillette,” Backle snapped.
    “No!” the hacker protested, struggling against the agents, who easily dragged him toward the office. “Get your fucking hands off me! We—”
    They pitched him inside and closed the door.
    “C an you get inside Phate’s machine?” Bishop asked Stephen Miller.
    The big man looked at the screen of the workstation uneasily. “I don’t know. Maybe. It’s just . . . If you hit one key wrong Phate’ll know we’re inside.”
    Bishop was in agony. This was their first real break and it was being stolen away from them because of pointless infighting and government bureaucracy. This was their only chance to look inside the electronic mind of the