Stylish Tim Morgan, today in a double-breasted forest-green suit, whose cut was ruined by a bulletproof vest, noticed Bishop and Shelton and ran up to the car. Bent down to the window.

Catching his breath, he said, "Guy fitting Holloway's description checked in two hours ago under the name Fred Lawson. Paid cash. He filled out the car information on the motel registration card but there's no match in the lot. The tag number was fake. He's in room one-eighteen. The blinds're down but he's still on the phone."

Bishop glanced at Gillette. "He still online?"

Gillette looked at his laptop screen. "Yep."

Bishop, Shelton and Gillette climbed from the car. Sanchez and Mott joined them.

"Al," Bishop called to a well-built black trooper. Alonso Johnson was head of the state police's tactical team in San Jose. Bishop liked him because he was as calm and methodical as an inexperienced officer like, say, Tony Mott, was dangerously gung ho. "What's the scenario?" Bishop asked.

The tactical cop opened a diagram of the motel. "We've got troopers here, here, here." He tapped various places around the grounds and in the first-floor corridor. "We don't have much leeway. It'll be a typical motel room takedown. We'll secure the rooms on either side and above his. We've got the passkey and a chain cutter. We'll just go in through the front door and take him. If he tries to get out the patio door there'll be the second team outside. Snipers're ready – just in case he's got a weapon."

Bishop glanced up and saw Tony Mott strapping on body armor. He picked up a short black automatic shotgun and studied it lovingly. With his wraparound sunglasses and biker shorts he looked like a character in a bad science-fiction film. Bishop motioned the young man over. He asked Mott, "What're you doing with that?" Gesturing at the gun.

"I just thought I ought to have some better firepower."

"You ever fire a scattergun before, Officer?"

"Anybody can-"

"Have you ever fired a shotgun?" Bishop repeated patiently.

"Sure."

"Since firearms training at the academy?"

"Not exactly. But-"

Bishop said, "Put it back."

"And, Officer?" Alonso Johnson muttered. "Lose the sunglasses." He rolled his eyes toward Bishop.

Mott stalked off and handed the gun to a tactical officer.

Linda Sanchez, on her cell phone – undoubtedly with her extremely pregnant daughter – hung back well to the rear. She, for one, didn't need reminding that tactical operations weren't her expertise.

Then Johnson cocked his head as he received a transmission. He nodded slightly and then looked up. "We're ready."

Bishop said, "Go ahead," as casually as if he were politely letting someone precede him into an elevator.

The SWAT commander nodded and spoke into the tiny microphone. Then he motioned a half dozen other tactical officers after him and they ran through a line of bushes toward the motel. Tony Mott followed, keeping to the rear as he'd been ordered.

Bishop walked back to the car and tuned the radio to the tactical operations frequency.

It all comes down to this…

From the radio headset he heard Johnson suddenly call, "Go, go, go!"

Bishop tensed, leaning forward. Was Phate waiting for them with a gun? Bishop wondered. Would he be completely surprised? What would happen?

But the answer was: nothing.

A staticky transmission cut through the air on his radio. Alonso Johnson said, "Frank, the room's empty. He's not here."

"Not there?" Bishop asked doubtfully. Wondering if there was a mix-up about which room Phate was in.

Johnson came back on the radio a moment later. "He's gone."

Bishop turned to Wyatt Gillette, who glanced at the computer in the Crown Victoria. Phate was still online and Trapdoor was still trying to crack the personnel file folder. Gillette pointed to the screen and shrugged.

The detective radioed to Johnson, "We can see him transmitting from the motel. He has to be there."

"Negative, Frank," was Johnson's response. "Room's empty, except for a computer here – hooked up to the phone line. A couple of empty cans of Mountain Dew. A half-dozen boxes of computer disks. That's it. No suitcase, no clothes."

Bishop said, "Okay, Al, we're coming in to take a look."

Inside the hot, close motel room a half-dozen troopers opened drawers and checked out closets. Tony Mott stood in the corner, searching as diligently as the rest. The soldier's Kevlar headgear looked a lot less natural on him than his biker's helmet, Gillette concluded.

Bishop motioned Gillette toward the computer, which sat on the cheap desk. On the screen he saw the decryption program. He typed a few commands then frowned. "Hell, it's fake. The software's decrypting the same paragraph over and over again."

"So," Bishop considered, "he tricked us into thinking he was here… But why?"

They debated this for a few minutes but no one could come to any solid conclusion – until Wyatt Gillette happened to open the lid of a large plastic disk-storage box and glance inside. He saw an olive-drab metal box, stenciled with these words:

U.S. ARMY ANTIPERSONNEL CHARGE

HIGH EXPLOSIVE

THIS SIDE TOWARD ENEMY

It was attached to a small black box, on which a single red eye began to blink rapidly.

Phate did happen to be in a motel at the moment. That motel was in Fremont, California. And he was in front of a laptop computer.

However, the motel was a Ramada Inn two miles away from the Bay View, where Gillette – the Judas traitor Valleyman – and the cops were undoubtedly fleeing the room at the moment, escaping from the antipersonnel bomb they were certain would detonate at any minute.

It wouldn't; the box was filled with sand and the only thing the device was capable of doing was scaring the shit out of anyone who was standing close enough to it to see the made-for-TV blinking light on the supposed detonator.

Phate, of course, would never kill his adversaries in such an inelegant way. That would've been far too gauche a tactic for someone whose goal was, like a player of the MUD game Access, to get close enough to his victims to feel their quaking hearts as he slipped a blade into them. Besides, killing a dozen cops would have brought in the feds in a big way and he'd have been forced to give up on the game here in Silicon Valley. No, he was content to keep Gillette and the cops from the CCU busy for an hour or so at the Bay View while the bomb squad got the mean-looking device out of the room – and giving Phate a chance to do what he'd planned all along: Use the Computer Crime Unit's machine to crack into ISLEnet. He needed to log on through CCU because ISLEnet would recognize him as a root user and give him unlimited access to the network.

Phate had played plenty of MUD games with Valleyman and knew that Gillette anticipated Phate would break into CCU's machine and would try to trace him when he did.

So, after Trapdoor had broken into CCU's computer Phate had driven from the Bay View Motel to this place, where his second laptop was warmed up and waiting for him, online via a virtually untraceable cell phone connection through a South Carolina Internet provider, linked to an anonymizing Net launch pad in Prague.

Phate now looked at some of the files he'd copied when he'd first cracked into CCU's system. These files had been erased but not wiped – that is, permanently obliterated -and he now restored them easily with Restores, a powerful undelete program. He found the CCU's computer identification number and then, after a bit more searching, the following data: