Fight the Future (3 page)

Mulder twisted away from the door and started pulling at the front of the soda machine. "Scully, listen to me." A desperate edge crept into his voice as the hinged front of the machine swung open. "It's in the Coke machine. You've got about fourteen minutes to get this building evacuated.

Scully shook her head. She tried the door again—still locked. Losing patience, she said, "C'mon.

Open the door."

Her response met with even more hard pounding. For the first time, Scully felt a spark of fear.

"Mulder?" she breathed into the cell phone. "Tell me this is a joke."

Mulder's voice echoed in her ear. "Thirteen fifty-nine, thirteen fifty-eight, thirteen fifty-seven…" As he intoned, Scully bent to exam-ine the keyhole beneath the door's metal knob.

It had been soldered over. She pressed her thumb against it, felt the faintest warmth and pressure—-recent work.

"… thirteen fifty-six… Do you see a pat-tern emerging here, Scully?"

"Hang on," said Scully. "I'm gonna get you out of there."

Inside the vending room, Mulder's phone went dead. He snapped it closed and shoved it back into his pocket, then squatted in front of the soda machine. Inside was a battery of cir-cuit boards and snaking wires, digital readouts and row after row of clear plastic canisters filled with fluid hooked up to what had to be bricks of plastique. In the middle of all this a blinking LED display registered the countdown. Mulder stared at it, fighting dread, and thought,
It's gonna take an expert a lot longer
than thirteen
min-utes to
figure out where to even
start
on this
…

• 0 a

In the building lobby, Scully strode up to the security desk, barking orders as she swept her arm out to indicate the oblivious crowd of office workers.

"I need this building evacuated and cleared out in ten minutes!" She stabbed at the air in front of the security chief and yelled, "I need you to get on the phone and tell the fire department to block off the city center in a one mile radius around the building."

The security chief gaped. "In
ten minutes
!"

"DON'T THINK!" shouted Scully. "JUST PICK UP THE PHONE AND MAKE IT HAPPEN!"

But people in the lobby were already run-ning out and she was gone before he could protest or command an explanation, already dialing another number on her phone.

"This is Special Agent Dana Scully. I need to speak to S.A.C. Michaud. He's got the wrong building—"

She stopped beside the front revolving doors and stared out to where anonymous vans and cars were suddenly screeching up to the curb. Agents in FBI windbreakers ran from the unmarked vehi-cles, Darius Michaud among them.

"Where is it?" he demanded as he rushed into the lobby to meet Scully. Around them workers streamed out of the building, their voices high-pitched with anxiety. The school-teacher shouted as she hurried her class past, the children crying out excitedly when the saw the mob of FBI agents. Scully paused and stared out the huge glass wall, to where fire engines roared up alongside the unmarked vans, fol-lowed by a phalanx of city buses. Everything suddenly had the feel of a situation that was verging out of control.

She caught herself before she could give in to that desperate line of thought and turned to face Michaud. "Mulder found it in a vending machine. He's locked in with it."

Michaud looked over his shoulder and yelled at an agent directing people through the doors. "Get Kesey with the torch! It's in the vending room."

He looked back at Scully. "Take me there," he commanded.

"This way—"

• • •

The windowless room felt like a cell to Mulder, as he crouched in front of the soda machine and stared glassy-eyed at the array of explosives there, the shifting pattern of red numerals on the LED

display.

7:00

He wiped a bead of sweat from his chin, hurriedly punched at his cell phone as it began to chime. He jumped, then switched the phone on with relief.

"Scully? You know that face I was mak-ing—I'm making it now."

"Mulder." Scully's voice was muffled by a keening sound in the hallway. "Move away from the door.

We're coming through it."

He backed away, even as the brilliant blue-white flame of a gas plasma torch began to roughly trace the outline of the metal door. Gray smoke sifted inside as the stench of scorched metal filled the room.

The hinges glowed, then turned black. The torch finished its circuit of the doorway, so that a somewhat smaller rectangle momentarily appeared within it. Mulder heard a series of thumps and a faint voice yelling "
Go
!" Then, with a muted crash, the door fell inward and crashed to the floor.

"Mulder…" Scully began, but was silenced as Michaud shoved past her, handing off the plasma torch to another agent and grabbing a hefty tool kit. She followed him inside, along with three other agents—bomb techs. They headed for where Mulder stood gazing at the soda machine's digital readout.

4:07

Mulder shook his head. "Tell me that's just soda pop in those canisters."

Michaud gingerly set the tool.kit on the floor and stooped in front of the machine. "No. It's what it looks like. A big I.E.D.—ten gallons of astrolite."

He pursed his lips, studying the bomb, and without looking up, commanded, "Okay. Get everybody out of here and clear the building."

Mulder frowned. "Somebody's got to stay here with you."

"I gave you an order," Michaud snapped, still not looking up. "Now get the hell out of here and evacuate the area."

Scully sidled up behind him. "Can you defuse it?"

"I think so." Michaud snapped the tool kit open and withdrew a pair of wire clippers. The other agents nodded at each other and quickly left the room.

Michaud pushed up the sleeves of his wind-breaker and flexed the wire clippers. Mulder watched him dubiously.

"You've got about four minutes to find out if you're wrong."

Without warning Michaud turned on him. "Did you hear what I said?" His voice shook slightly, and there was a febrile intensity to his gaze.

"Let's go, Mulder," Scully murmured. "Come on."

She started out the door. Mulder remained for a moment longer, staring at Michaud.

But the other man's attention was focused solely on the bomb. Seconds passed, until finally Mulder turned and followed Scully into the corridor. In the room behind him Michaud set the wire clippers carefully on his knee but did nothing else; only crouched staring at the bomb. Just staring.

Outside, the last of the building's occu-pants had been evacuated. The horde of schoolchildren raced up the steps of one of the city buses, while other buses pulled away from the curb in clouds of exhaust.

People ran pell-mell across the plaza, headed for the relative safety of the far side of the street, where police barricades had been hastily erected, and where uniformed men frantically directed the last stragglers to flee.

"Go,
now
!" bullhorns howled, and their echo rang out above the cries and shouting of the panicking mob.

The plaza in front of the building was all but empty now. As the last buses roared off, the fire engines did the same, and the police cars, until only a single police car and one anony-mous sedan remained, engines running, at curbside. The revolving doors
whooshed
as Scully and Mulder raced out, heading across the plaza to the waiting cars. Abruptly Mulder slowed, then stopped. He shaded his eyes and stared back at the building.

"What are you doing?" Scully had gone on ahead, but suddenly noticed his hesitation. "Mulder?"

A solitary figure in FBI windbreaker burst from the revolving door: the last man out.

"All clear!" he shouted, his footsteps echo-ing as he ran toward the idling cop car. Mulder ignored him and remained staring as though entranced by the building.

"Something's wrong…"

Scully hurried to his side. "
Mulder
?"

The cop car zoomed away. In the sole remaining vehicle, an FBI agent gazed in disbe-lief at Mulder, then yelled, "What's he doing?!"

"Something's not right," Mulder said, as though to himself. Scully shook her head and grabbed his arm.

"Mulder! Get in the car!" In the waiting vehicle the agent motioned at them furiously. "There's no time, Mulder!"

She pulled him after her, heading for the car. Mulder twisted to stare over his shoulder.

"Michaud…" he said.

In the vending room, Michaud had replaced the wire clippers and shut his tool chest. Now he was sitting on it, his eyes fixed on the LED display.

¦30

He watched as the seconds disappeared, yet still did nothing. Finally he let his head drop forward against his chest, not so much in despair as resignation, a devoted Bureau man to the last.

Outside the sun beat heedlessly upon the nearly empty plaza.

"Mulder!" Scully shouted, and at last he relented, hurrying alongside her to the car.

"For chrissakes, get in," urged the agent standing in the open door of the driver's side. "It's going to go at any second—"

Mulder slid into the backseat, Scully into the front, and the car peeled off. They turned to gaze out the rear window, watching as the building receded—ten yards, twenty, not quickly enough.

And suddenly it exploded, the entire edi-fice consumed by a immense ball of flame that ripped up from the bottom floor, expanding until it seemed to devour everything in sight. Smoke surged outward along with buckling steel girders and rippling waves of broken glass, and the air thundered deafeningly.

Scully cried out but her voice was swallowed by that terri-ble roar, her arm bashed against the car door as the bomb's impact traveled through the air and sent the car caroming across the plaza, slam-ming against the back of a car parked on the street. It lifted up in the back and then slammed back down; all around them other cars did the same. There was a sharp
crack
, and the rear window collapsed into granular parti-cles of safety glass, showering the two of them.

"You okay?" bellowed the agent from the front seat.

"I-I think so," Scully gasped.

Outside shards of glass were everywhere. The air seethed with blackened debris, ash and metal and burning plastic. As Mulder and Scully watched, horrified, the entire side of the building emerged from the smoke, so that they could see inside to where flames raced along abandoned corridors and through the ravaged remains of cubicles and offices. From ground floor to rooftop fires raged, and in the distance the first sirens began to wail.

In the backseat Mulder shook his head, dis-persing glittering bits of safety glass. Slowly he leaned out the broken side window to open the door. He got out while Scully exited the front, the two of them shaken and breathless as they looked up at the burning building, broken glass, and fluttering bits of flaming paper cas-cading everywhere.

"Next time,
you're
buying," he said darkly.

CHAPTER 3

FBI HEADQUARTERS

J. EDGAR HOOVER BUILDING

WASHINGTON. D.C.

ONE DAY LATER

The sign on the door read OFFICE OF PROFES-SIONAL REVIEW. Inside Scully shifted ner-vously in her chair, far too conscious that the one beside her was empty, and tried to focus on what was being said.

"In light of Waco, and Ruby Ridge…" Scully bit her lip. This review was impor-tant, far too important for Mulder to be late; but Scully herself had barely made it here on time, exhausted as she was by the night-owl from Dallas back to D.C. In front of her, six assistant directors were arranged at a long table, shuffling papers and clearing their throats self-importantly. At the center of the conference table Assistant Director Jana Cassidy was declaiming, with the air of someone who held the fate of the world in her strong, impeccably manicured hands.

"… for the catastrophic destruction of pub-lic property and the loss of life due to terrorist activities…"

Next to Cassidy, Assistant Director Walter Skinner cast Scully a level look, letting his gaze linger for just a moment upon Mulder's conspicu-ously empty chair. Over the years Skinner had spent a lot of time in this room. Scully and Mulder reported directly to him, and had since they'd been working together.

When he could get away with it, he'd acted as something of a champion for Mulder and Scully. That would be difficult this morning, though, with Mulder absent. Scully crossed and uncrossed her legs, and tried not to glance over her shoulder again at the door.

"Many details are still unclear," said Cassidy. Her cool blue eyes regarded Scully from above a sheaf of papers as she went on point-edly. "Some agents' reports have not been filed, or have come in sketchy, without a satisfactory accounting of the events that led to the destruc-tion in Dallas. But we're under some pressure to give an accurate picture of what happened to the Attorney General, so she can issue a public statement."

And then Scully heard what she'd been waiting for: the muted creak of the door finally opening and a familiar footstep. She turned to see Mulder, his freshly pressed suit jacket doing a poor job of hiding the fact that he wore the same shirt he'd had on yesterday, his face creased with the slightly chagrined expression of a man who knows he's late for his own funeral. Scully didn't dare smile, but she felt her heart lift as Mulder pulled out the chair beside her. He said nothing, acknowledging her with a glance before turning his attention to Cassidy. The keen-eyed lawyer turned and glared sternly at the two of them, and continued before Mulder could sit.

"We know now that five people died in the explosion. Special Agent-in-Charge Darius Mich-aud, who was trying to defuse the bomb that had been hidden inside a vending machine. Three firemen from Dallas, and a young boy."

Mulder's hand froze on the chair in front of him. He looked quickly at Scully, who's raised eyebrow confirmed that this was news to her, too.

"Excuse me—" Mulder shook his head, try-ing to keep his voice even as he questioned Cassidy. "The firemen and the boy—they were in the building?"