Digital Fortess, стр. 68

SUBJECT: DAVID BECKER?TERMINATED

Strathmore hung his head. His dream was over.

CHAPTER 104

SUBJECT: DAVID BECKER?TERMINATED

As if in a dream, she moved toward Crypto’s main exit. Greg Hale’s voice echoed in her mind: Susan, Strathmore’s going to kill me! Susan, the commander’s in love with you!

Susan reached the enormous circular portal and began stabbing desperately at the keypad. The door did not move. She tried again, but the enormous slab refused to rotate. Susan let out a muted scream?apparently the power outage had deleted the exit codes. She was still trapped.

Without warning, two arms closed around her from behind, grasping her half?numb body. The touch was familiar yet repulsive. It lacked the brute strength of Greg Hale, but there was a desperate roughness to it, an inner determination like steel.

Susan turned. The man restraining her was desolate, frightened. It was a face she had never seen.

“Susan,” Strathmore begged, holding her. “I can explain.”

She tried to pull away.

The commander held fast.

Susan tried to scream, but she had no voice. She tried to run, but strong hands restrained her, pulling her backward.

“I love you,” the voice was whispering. “I’ve loved you forever.”

Susan’s stomach turned over and over.

“Stay with me.”

Susan’s mind whirled with grisly images?David’s bright?green eyes, slowly closing for the last time; Greg Hale’s corpse seeping blood onto the carpet; Phil Chartrukian’s burned and broken on the generators.

“The pain will pass,” the voice said. “You’ll love again.”

Susan heard nothing.

“Stay with me,” the voice pleaded. “I’ll heal your wounds.”

She struggled, helpless.

“I did it for us. We’re made for each other. Susan, I love you.” The words flowed as if he had waited a decade to speak them. “I love you! I love you!”

In that instant, thirty yards away, as if rebutting Strathmore’s vile confession, TRANSLTR let out a savage, pitiless hiss. The sound was an entirely new one?a distant, ominous sizzling that seemed to grow like a serpent in the depths of the silo. The freon, it appeared, had not reached its mark in time.

The commander let go of Susan and turned toward the $2 billion computer. His eyes went wide with dread. “No!” He grabbed his head. “No!”

The six?story rocket began to tremble. Strathmore staggered a faltering step toward the thundering hull. Then he fell to his knees, a sinner before an angry god. It was no use. At the base of the silo, TRANSLTR’s titanium?strontium processors had just ignited.

CHAPTER 105

A fireball racing upward through three million silicon chips makes a unique sound. The crackling of a forest fire, the howling of a tornado, the steaming gush of a geyser . . . all trapped within a reverberant hull. It was the devil’s breath, pouring through a sealed cavern, looking for escape. Strathmore knelt transfixed by the horrific noise rising toward them. The world’s most expensive computer was about to become an eight?story inferno.

* * *

In slow motion, Strathmore turned back toward Susan. She stood paralyzed beside the Crypto door. Strathmore stared at her tear?streaked face. She seemed to shimmer in the fluorescent light. She’s an angel, he thought. He searched her eyes for heaven, but all he could see was death. It was the death of trust. Love and honor were gone. The fantasy that had kept him going all these years was dead. He would never have Susan Fletcher. Never. The sudden emptiness that gripped him was overwhelming.

Susan gazed vaguely toward TRANSLTR. She knew that trapped within the ceramic shell, a fireball was racing toward them. She sensed it rising faster and faster, feeding on the oxygen released by the burning chips. In moments the Crypto dome would be a blazing inferno.

Susan’s mind told her to run, but David’s dead weight pressed down all around her. She thought she heard his voice calling to her, telling her to escape, but there was nowhere to go. Crypto was a sealed tomb. It didn’t matter; the thought of death did not frighten her. Death would stop the pain. She would be with David.

The Crypto floor began to tremble, as if below it an angry sea monster were rising out of the depths. David’s voice seemed to be calling. Run, Susan! Run!

Strathmore was moving toward her now, his face a distant memory. His cool gray eyes were lifeless. The patriot who had lived in her mind a hero had died?a murderer. His arms were suddenly around her again, clutching desperately. He kissed her cheeks. “Forgive me,” he begged. Susan tried to pull away, but Strathmore held on.

TRANSLTR began vibrating like a missile preparing to launch. The Crypto floor began to shake. Strathmore held tighter. “Hold me, Susan. I need you.”

A violent surge of fury filled Susan’s limbs. David’s voice called out again. I love you! Escape! In a sudden burst of energy, Susan tore free. The roar from TRANSLTR became deafening. The fire was at the silo’s peak. TRANSLTR groaned, straining at its seams.

David’s voice seemed to lift Susan, guide her. She dashed across the Crypto floor and started up Strathmore’s catwalk stairs. Behind her, TRANSLTR let out a deafening roar.

As the last of the silicon chips disintegrated, a tremendous updraft of heat tore through the upper casing of the silo and sent shards of ceramic thirty feet into the air. Instantly the oxygen?rich air of Crypto rushed in to fill the enormous vacuum.

Susan reached the upper landing and grabbed the banister when the tremendous rush of wind ripped at her body. It spun her around in time to see the deputy director of operations, far below, staring up at her from beside TRANSLTR. There was a storm raging all around him, and yet there was peace in his eyes. His lips parted, and he mouthed his final word. “Susan.”

The air rushing into TRANSLTR ignited on contact. In a brilliant flash of light, Commander Trevor Strathmore passed from man, to silhouette, to legend.

When the blast hit Susan, it blew her back fifteen feet into Strathmore’s office. All she remembered was a searing heat.

CHAPTER 106

In the window of the Director’s conference room, high above the Crypto dome, three faces appeared, breathless. The explosion had shaken the entire NSA complex. Leland Fontaine, Chad Brinkerhoff, and Midge Milken all stared out in silent horror.

Seventy feet below, the Crypto dome was blazing. The polycarbonate roof was still intact, but beneath the transparent shell, a fire raged. Black smoke swirled like fog inside the dome.

The three stared down without a word. The spectacle had an eerie grandeur to it.

Fontaine stood a long moment. He finally spoke, his voice faint but unwavering. “Midge, get a crew down there . . . now.”

Across the suite, Fontaine’s phone began to ring.

It was Jabba.