The waterfront of Olympia wasn’t just deserted. It was dark, too, with signs posted up all around warning that it was a monitored area and that non-military personnel should keep out. No fence blocked it off, however, and no guards patrolled the area.

Tim saw why almost at once. There were no boats. Waves slapped endlessly, noisily at the empty slips, chewed at by a light rain. Once this had been a busy little marina where pleasure boats and water taxis came in and out all day. Now it was just the place where the land ended and the dark water began.

“Did Horne remove all the boats?” Tim asked. “So nobody could try to get away?”

Buzzard grunted a negative. “He didn’t need to. The boats all left during the evacuation. Loaded ‘em up with people until they were sagging down in the water and steamed out north toward the ocean. I don’t know where they all headed but they didn’t come back.” He tapped Tim on the shoulder and pointed at a radar mast that loomed over the deserted docks, half obscured by the rain. “That looks new.”

Tim trained his binoculars on the mast and said, “Yeah. That’s got to be the scanner.” The mast was corroded with rust and flaking paint, but a square housing had been mounted near its top quite recently. A power cable wrapped around the mast and lead through a broken window into the abandoned harbormaster’s office. There were no blinking lights or auto-focusing camera lenses to give it away but the freshness of its paint was damning enough. “I’d say that’s about a hundred feet from us right now. It won’t detect us until we halve that distance.”

“And what if your genius idea doesn’t work? What if it does see us?”

“Only one way to find out.” Tim put his binoculars away and started walking directly toward the mast. His forearm was wrapped in several thicknesses of tin foil, secured with masking tape. He was certain he was right and that he would be invisible to the scanner. He had been the one who installed the RFID systems at the library. Many of his coworkers had fought the new technology, thinking that it invaded the privacy of their patrons. He’d had to educate himself about the abilities and shortcomings of RFID so he could counter their arguments.

Seventy-five feet away. Knowing the specifications of a technology was one thing, he decided. Actually testing it with his own personal safety was another. He admitted to himself that he was a little scared.

“Doing great there, champ,” Buzzard called from behind him. The reporter had tin foil around his own arm but clearly wanted Tim to go first and be the guinea pig.

Fifty feet away. The rain leaked down Tim’s forehead and got in his eyes. Thirty. Finally he walked up to the radar mast and touched it, like touching base in a game of tag. For all he knew alarms were ringing all over Fort Lewis. For all he knew a helicopter was being scrambled to come intercept him. What would Horne do if he was caught at the waterfront? If he was taken to the stockade, locked up with the droolers, he would never get a chance at Phil Nero. He would never be able to avenge his family.

It was a risk he had to take. He stood there trying not to breathe too heavily. When ten minutes had passed he waved at Buzzard and the reporter came jogging over to join him. “It’s got to be safe by now,” Tim said. “We would have seen something, some response.”

“Either that or they’re lying in wait, watching us to see what we’ll do next,” Buzzard suggested, but he had committed himself by coming so close to the detector. “I guess I’m screwed if that’s the case. So now we get to wait for a while. I put in a call to my friends and they sounded intrigued. They’re gonna send a boat for us.”

Tim hugged himself with his arms. It was a little chilly down by the water and his clothes were soaking through. “Did they say what they wanted in return?”

“That’s up to you. I hope you got something good in that bag,” Buzzard said.

Tim hoped so too. He had a few ideas on what the looters might want but he had no way of knowing if his offerings would be well received. He stared out at the water of the inlet, glinting in the starlight. “Do you trust them not to just kill us, take what we’ve got, and dump us in the Sound?” he asked.

Buzzard snorted. “Buddy, I don’t trust you not to do that.” He looked around himself, then nodded at the deep shadows cast by the harbormaster’s office. “If it’s alright by you I might wait over there.”

Tim nodded and the too of them sat down on the rain-slicked wooden dock where not even stray beams of light from Olympia could reach them. Neither of them said much while they waited. Tim could feel Buzzard’s tension in the air and knew it had to match his own. He thought of all the people he was defying just by being there and knew how much more trouble he was going to make for himself if the plan actually worked.

It didn’t matter. Karen and Jake mattered. Their memories mattered.