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Continuing to make meaningful comments about the weather, Chin followed Westbrook into his office while Elliot and Lorimer took positions on their cots, leaning back against the wall in a relaxed, braced manner, suggesting dead tiredness to anyone watching on video. Neither one moved a muscle. As soon as Chin and Westbrook were completely inside the OD’s office and monitored only by the other command center, Chin dropped his attaché case onto a chair, triggered a pulse from a small transmitter connected to its spring latches, and removed a plasti-sealed handkerchief from the case. Westbrook was heading to the coffee maker. Chin delayed a few moments until he saw, on the OD’s cross monitor to Command Shack Gamma, that the other officers were swooning from the knockout gas Donizetti and his men were introducing there. Then, breaking the seal with one hand, Chin silently edged up on the OD’s back and grabbed him with the other hand, pressing Alongside Night

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the chloroform-soaked handkerchief against Westbrook’s mouth and nose. The OD struggled, trying to shout, but Chin outclassed him. After some seconds, Westbrook, unconscious, stopped struggling. Beta was secured.

Donizetti showed his head in the command monitor a halfminute later and gave Chin a thumbs-up; Chin returned the thumb signal with an “Okay” sign. Gamma was neutralized, also. Donizetti and his commandos would now head down to the lake to guide Friendly Sky in.

The most critical stage of Bastille Day had been completed. 218

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Chapter 23


There were two rooms in the OD’s suite: a front office and a rear one.

The first contained the OD’s monitors—both the cross-monitor to the remote Command Shack and the slave monitors that would reproduce whatever the Alpha monitors were looking at. There was still another monitor that would allow the OD to look in on the Alpha guards themselves.

The second office contained a large freezer and a semiautomatic microwave food-processing system, and was sometimes used by officers and monitor guards as a break room when off shift. Chin dragged Westbrook to this later office, positioned him on a couch, and carefully injected a sleeping serum into his arm. Westbrook would be out of action for at least the next twelve hours and would have a considerable amount of explaining to do, as would his counterparts, when he awakened.

Chin returned to the front office.

On the Alpha-room monitor, Chin could see two men seated in a small booth, themselves facing several rows of video screens. These were the two guards whom Chin soon had to knock out; not only did they control the Sequence Prime destruct mechanism—which they were under orders to implement as soon as prison security was irrevocably threatened—

but they also controlled knockout gas, concussion grenades, and remote-control machine guns at frequent points inside and outside the compound. But at the moment, they were out of Chin’s reach, sealed into their booth separated from the vestibule by the vaultlike door. The only way into the prisoner compound was through a similar door, also in the guard booth. On the other monitors, Chin could see views of the prisoner 220

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compound, Elliot and Lorimer’s cell, the vestibule, and various points outside. By their nature as repeaters, Chin knew that the guards were not watching the OD’s office. It was obvious that juniors were not invited—except in an emergency—

to oversee the actions of their senior. Even in areas of security, rank had its privileges. The guards, however, were not Chin’s immediate concern. Placing his attaché case on the OD’s desk, Chin removed his computer, tools to strip shielded cable, a set of his own cables with alligator clips at one end and receptor plugs at the other, a pair of goggles, and a hand laser torch. Plugging the laser into a wall socket and putting on the goggles, Chin began work cutting into the wall below the monitors. Five minutes later he had exposed what he had expected to find: shielded cables to the video circuits. Putting the laser aside, Chin placed his computer on a chair next to the wall, stripped cables inside the wall, and attached alligator clips to the cables, plugging the receptors into his computer. He checked the Alpha monitor: one guard lit a cigarette while the other played solitaire. Nothing happened on any of their screens. Chin could see Elliot and Lorimer, still motionless in their cell. Typing a short program into the computer, Chin started its disc into motion, as he did, there was a brief flicker on several of the screens. The guards did not notice. Chin sighed. This was the only visible signal that might have given him away. The computer would now, automatically, decode the digital information taken from the video system, record two minutes from each camera, then replay that signal to the guards’ monitors infinitely with three areas excepted: from those cameras monitoring the prison compound, the inactive camera in the OD’s office, and cameras monitoring the roadside front gate. Chin was now free to operate throughout the vestibule and outside its door, but this was not the only video trick he had to Alongside Night