The Breach - Ghost Country - Deep Sky

pads, Travis had no doubt, were real. He had the sense that even a hard step on this floor would trigger them.
    Downstairs, the gunfire went on endlessly. He could see it eating into Paige like acid. She narrowed her eyes, seeming to force her mind to stay in this room where it could accomplish something. She turned, surveyed the cavernous space.
    “Okay, so where the hell is the weapon Pilgrim’s people told us about?” she said. “What was he going to activate, three hours from the time we stopped him that day?” She nodded toward the Ares. “Not this goddamned thing. What good would that have done him? And the steel boxes downstairs are only there to serve this system, so forget those, too. There has to be something else. I mean, why the hell would he turn the whole building into a defense system that doesn’t defend anything but itself? That’s recursive. It’s like one of those joke signs someone hangs in a doorway that says, ‘Caution, don’t hit your head on this sign.’ ”
    Travis supposed that fad had come and gone while he was in prison.
    He turned and surveyed the room with her, letting his eyes move slowly over every detail. A few wires hanging here and there, spilling from holes in the walls or snaking out of floor-level ductwork. Green circuit boards lying or hanging among them, LEDs blinking furiously, as they had ever since the amplifier had kicked on. But mostly there was nothing. Bare floor space. Bare stretches of wall. Outlets with nothing plugged into them.
    “All the wiring is for the amplifier,” Travis said. “In here, and in the rest of the building. And that’s what took him most of the ten years, right? All the detailed work involved.”
    Paige nodded, waiting for the rest.
    “So that makes the least sense of all,” he said. “Why spend all that time on just the defense system, and why build that part first? If this place has some other purpose, some main purpose, it seems like he could’ve had that finished years earlier.”
    She could only stare. She could make no sense of it either.
    Outside, an engine raced, and then the muffled concussion of a gasoline explosion put an end to it. The cars from E41 were starting to arrive.
    Travis’s eyes picked up something twenty feet behind Paige. A jumble of wire against the wall. There was something concealed beneath it. He’d taken only a few steps toward it when he saw what it was. More of the scratch writing, dug into the floor. He reached it, studied the wires to be sure they weren’t bound by pressure pads, and eased them aside.
    “What does it say?” Paige said.
    “Names,” Travis said. “It’s a list of names.”
    Thirty-seven in all. People of varied nationalities. A few sounded Japanese, a few others Russian, German, Spanish, French. They weren’t famous; Travis had never heard of any of them. He read a few of them to Paige and saw no recognition in her eyes, either.
    She took out her cell and dialed. Border Town picked up. She set it to speakerphone so Travis could relay the names directly. The man on the phone identified himself as Crawford, and as Travis began giving him the names, someone began typing in the background. By the time Travis read the last name, the techs on the other end had pulled up info on the first ten.
    All had been extremely wealthy. All had been politically connected, to some degree. All had committed suicide since 1995.
    As those in the background at Border Town continued parsing the list, Travis looked at Paige.
    “These people were threats to Pilgrim’s plan, in some way,” he said. “Find out why, and you’ll have real information to work with.”
    Suddenly there was commotion on the other end of the line. Someone calling out to others, and then a few surprised sounds.
    “What’s going on there?” Paige said.
    Crawford spoke up again. “The last name on the list. Ellis Cook. Suicide by gunshot to the head. Two days ago on Grand Cayman.”
    Paige looked at Travis and mouthed, Two days?
    “This is all wrong,” Travis said, the thought coming to him even as he voiced it. “Pilgrim was never planning to trigger anything in this place four years ago, when you guys thought you stopped him. Whatever his plan is, he’s launching it tonight. It was always going to be tonight.”
    Before Paige could respond to that, Crawford spoke again.
    “Second-to-last name on the list. Rudolph Hagen. Jumped to his death from a hotel balcony, twenty-eighth floor. Three months ago. He was