The Blue Nowhere

tactical troopers. The CCU team got ready to roll. Bishop and Shelton checked their pistols. Gillette, his laptop. Tony Mott, of course, did both.
    Patricia Nolan would remain here in case the team needed to access the CCU computer.
    As they were leaving, the phone rang and Bishop took the call. He was quiet for a moment then glanced at Gillette and, with raised eyebrows, handed the receiver to him.
    Frowning, the hacker lifted the receiver to his ear. “Hello?”
    Silence for a moment. Then Elana Papandolos said, “It’s me.”
    “Well, hi.”
    Gillette watched Bishop shepherd everyone out the door. “I didn’t think you’d call.”
    “I didn’t either,” she said.
    “Why did you?”
    “Because I thought I owed it to you.”
    “Owed what to me?”
    “To tell you that I’m still going to New York tomorrow.”
    “With Ed?”
    “Yes.”
    The words struck him harder than Phate’s knuckles had not long before. He’d hoped that she’d delay her departure.
    “Don’t.”
    Another cumbersome silence followed. “Wyatt . . .”
    “I love you. I don’t want you to go.”
    “Well, we are going.”
    Gillette said, “Just do me one favor. Let me see you before you go.”
    “Why? What good will it do?”
    “Please. Just for ten minutes.”
    “You can’t change my mind.”
    He thought, Oh, yes, I can.
    She said, “I have to go. Goodbye, Wyatt. I wish you luck whatever you do in life.”
    “No!”
    Ellie hung up without saying anything else.
    Gillette stared at the silent phone.
    “Wyatt,” Bishop called.
    He closed his eyes.
    “Wyatt,” the detective repeated. “We have to go.”
    The hacker looked up and dropped the receiver in the cradle. Numb, he followed the cop down the corridor.
    The detective muttered something to him.
    Gillette looked at him vacantly. Then he asked what Bishop had just said.
    “I said it’s like what you and Patricia were saying before. About this being one of those MUD games.”
    “What about it?”
    “I think we just hit the expert level.”
    E l Monte Road connects El Camino Real to the parallel backbone of Silicon Valley, the 280 freeway, a few miles away.
    As you make the trip south toward the freeway the view from El Monte changes from retail stores to the classic California ranch homes of the 1950s and 1960s and finally to newer residential developments, intended to harvest some of the abundant dot-com money being strewn throughout the neighborhood.
    Not far from one of these developments, Stonecrest, were parked sixteen police cars and two California State Police Tactical Services vans. They were in the parking lot of the First Baptist Church of Los Altos, hidden from El Monte Road by a high stockade fence, which is why Bishop had chosen the lot beside this house of God as a staging area.
    Wyatt Gillette was in the passenger seat of the Crown Victoria, beside Bishop. Shelton sat silently in the back, staring at a palm tree waving in the wet breeze. In the car beside them were Linda Sanchez and Tony Mott. Bishop seemed to have given up trying to rein in the aspiring Eliot Ness, and Mott now hurried from the car to join a cluster oftactical and uniformed police who were suiting up in body armor. The head of the tactical team, Alonso Johnson, was back again. He stood by himself, head down, nodding as he listened to his radio.
    Department of Defense agent Arthur Backle had trailed Bishop’s car here and he was now standing beside it, under an umbrella, leaning against the car, picking at the bandage on his head.
    Nearby, Stonecrest was being scoured by a number of troopers—the social engineered fund-raisers, brandishing yellow buckets and flashing pictures of Jon Holloway.
    The moments passed, however, and no one reported any success. Doubts crept in: Maybe Phate was in a different development. Maybe Mobile America’s analysis of the phone numbers was wrong. Maybe the numbers had been his but after the run-in with Gillette he’d fled the state.
    Then Bishop’s cell phone buzzed and he answered. He nodded and smiled, then said to Shelton and Gillette, “Positive ID. A neighbor recognized him. He’s at 34004 Alta Vista Drive.”
    “Yes!” Shelton said, making a joyous fist with his hand. He climbed out of the car. “I’ll tell Alonso.” The burly cop disappeared into the crowd of troopers.
    Bishop called Garvy Hobbes and gave him the address. In his Jeep the security man had a Cellscope hooked up—a combination computer and radio direction finder.