Home Invasion - J. A. Johnstone [25]
With the skill of experienced agents, the two men made it out of the hotel, retrieving their SUV from the parking garage, and driving away just before the police arrived in response to the dozens of 911 calls about a shooting and a man falling from a sixth-floor balcony.
Parker was at the wheel. He drove over the towering Nueces Bay bridge and then over Indian Point Bridge into neighboring Portland. He pulled into a nondescript chain motel where he and Ford had rented a room the day before.
Once they were in the room, Ford set the small laptop on the table and opened it. It was already on and in sleep mode. Ford woke it and pointed at the pornographic desktop that appeared.
“What a sleaze.”
“Never mind that,” Parker said as he leaned over the chair where Ford sat. “How much power is left?”
“Lemme see … fifty-four percent.”
“Hang on, I think I’ve got an AC power cord that’ll fit it.”
Parker fetched the cord from one of his bags and plugged the computer into a wall outlet.
“Now we won’t run out of juice,” Ford said as he started to work. His big, blunt fingers weren’t particularly well-suited for the small keyboard, so he was careful not to push anything he didn’t mean to.
He started exploring the files, taking a quick glance through the directory, then opening the e-mail client. The in-box was almost empty.
“Nothing here but spam,” Ford muttered. “He must save all his important e-mail on a flash drive and then delete it from the computer.”
“It might still be recoverable,” Parker said.
“Yeah, but not by me. We ought to send it back to Langley.”
“Poke around in there some more first.”
“That goes without saying.”
Ford went back to exploring the various files. After a few minutes, he muttered, “Looks like this guy didn’t use the computer for anything except downloading music and porn and games.”
“What’s in that folder?” Parker asked. “The one named CDD?”
“Let’s see.” Ford clicked on it, only to have a dialogue box pop up. “Password protected. You got any idea what his password might be?”
“I don’t even know who he is,” Parker said. He shook his head in disgust. “I’m sure the tech guys can crack it, but I was hoping we could get some clue to what’s going on.”
“Yeah, me—” Ford began, then stopped short as the lights in the motel room and the screen on the computer suddenly lit up brighter than usual, then abruptly went dark. The overhead lights came back on after a second. The laptop’s screen flickered a couple of times, but otherwise remained dark. “Damn!”
“What happened?”
“Power surge.” Ford pulled the AC cord loose and flipped the laptop over. His finger pushed the battery release, popping it loose. He held the battery in his hand as seconds dragged by. “Sometimes this works.”
The two men waited grimly for about a minute. Then Ford reinserted the battery, hooked up the power cord, and tried to turn the computer on. The lights indicating that it had power going to it came on, but that was all.
“Damn it,” Ford said again. “I’d be willing to bet that it’s totally fried in there.”
“Maybe the data retrieval guys can take it in the clean room and reconstruct what was on the hard drive.”
“Maybe, but it’ll take a while, and meantime we’re still in the dark, with no clue where to start looking for our target.”
“Yeah …”
Parker wheeled around and ran to the door, throwing it open and hurrying out into the motel parking lot. Ford ran after him. He didn’t know what had occurred to his partner, but he trusted Parker’s instincts.
Parker looked at the power lines leading into the hotel, then followed them with his eyes down the street to a pole with a transformer on it.
“Look,” he said.
An electric company truck was parked beside the pole. The lift on the back of the truck had just descended, and a man in coveralls was climbing out of it.
“Come on,” Parker said. He took off at a run toward the truck, reaching to the small of his back for his gun as he did so.
The coverall-clad man saw him coming, reached into one of the garment’s baggy pockets, and brought out a gun of his own. Parker darted to the side