The car stopped. The spotlight wavered, then settled on him. "I'm Colonel Joe Mackenzie, out of Nellis," he said. His deep voice carried that unmistakable note of command. "I need to get back to the base as soon as possible."
The state trooper switched off the spot and got out of the car, "We've been searching for you, sir," he said in a respectful tone. Military personnel or not, there was something about Joe Mackenzie that elicited that response. "Are you all right, injured in any way? A van was found-"
"We know about the van. We were in it," Joe said dryly.
"We were ordered by the governor to give every assistance to the military in finding you. A statewide search was started this morning."
Joe put his arm around Caroline and ushered her into the back seat; then he went around and took a seat up front. Caroline found herself staring at the back of his head through steel mesh.
"Hey," she said indignantly.
Joe glanced back and began to laugh. "Finally," he said, "I've found a way to control you."
"The sensor alarms went wild," Captain Hodge said. "Once when Ms. Evans entered the work area after she was already recorded as being inside, and again when you entered without your ID tag, Colonel. The first guard was there within two minutes, but the building was empty. They must have dragged both of you out immediately and then panicked. They loaded you in Mr. Gilchrist's van and bolted.
"Ms. Evans' quarters were checked and she was discovered missing. Amazing. I didn't know anyone could get out a window that small," he said, glancing at her.
"I'm not very thick," she replied coolly.
He cleared his throat at the look in her eyes. "I tried to notify you, Colonel, and found that you were missing, too, though there was no record of you leaving the base. Nor had Ms. Evans attempted to leave. There was a record, however, of Mr. Gilchrist leaving immediately after the alarm had sounded."
"The other guy must have been hidden in back with us," Joe said.
"Who was he?" she asked. "He looked familiar, but at the same time I didn't know him."
Hodge looked at his ever-present clipboard. "His name was Carl Mabry. You'd probably seen him in the control room. He was a civilian working with the radar."
"How did Gilchrist get involved with him?" Joe asked. "And there are others. Have you found out anything about them?"
They were sitting in his office. Both he and Caroline had been checked over by the medics and declared basically sound. Somewhere along the line, Caroline's clothes had vanished and the well-meaning nurses had tried to stuff her into one of the too-revealing backless, shapeless gowns that were standard for every hospital. Caroline's sense of style had been outraged, but the green surgicals had appealed to her. She was wearing a set now and somehow looked dashing in them.
"Evidently, Gilchrist was recruited after he began work here," Hodge said. "Mabry belonged to a radical group that opposed defense spending. You know the type. They want the money for humanitarian purposes, even if they have to kill to get it."
"Then just how," Caroline asked in an awful tone, "did he get security clearance?"
Hodge winced. "I-uh, we're still checking on that. But he didn't have clearance into the laser building."
"So how did he get in without triggering the alarms?" Joe asked impatiently.
Caroline snorted. "The program has a major weakness. The alarm is set off by a body entering or leaving without a card-but not a card entering or leaving without a body."
Hodge's hair was too short to pull, so he ran both hands over his crew-cut head. "What?" he almost yelled.
"Well, it's obvious. I certainly didn't go into the building with Cal when he was supposedly searching for my tag, but the computer said that I did, which means he must have had the tag with him and flashed it so the sensors would pick it up, thereby destroying any record that he had entered the building alone and discrediting my story of having misplaced my tag. There wasn't anything Cal didn't know about computers. He probably figured it out not long after he started work on base, testing it by swinging the tag through me doorway on a string, or something like that. If he'd been caught, he wasn't doing anything he would be arrested for, just playing with the computers like any hacker would. Evidently he picked up my tag when I lost it, but left at the same time I did that day so the sensors weren't set off. He carried it off base and had it duplicated, then returned the original to me the next morning so there wouldn't be a report on it The night we caught them-" She paused, looking confused. "When was it? Just last night?"
"Seems longer, doesn't it?" Joe commented, grinning at her.
"Anyway, he would have entered with the duplicate tag, then tossed it through the doorway to Mabry, who would also have used it to enter. If you check the logs, you'll probably find entry, exit, then reentry with just a few seconds between. If you had been on your toes, Captain Hodge, you would have made certain my code had been immediately deleted from the computer instead of waiting until morning, thinking you had me safely under guard."
Hodge was crimson with embarrassment. "Yes, ma'am," he mumbled.
"Likewise, instead of assuming you had the problem contained, the entire laser team should have been restricted to base until you were certain."
"Yes, ma'am."
"The sensor program needs to be rewritten. It's humiliating to think of a sophisticated security system being bypassed by two people tossing ID tags through a doorway like kids playing catch."