In a few seconds Gragg's pistol was empty. As he stood there, his gun still aimed at Boerner, the SS officer took out a lighter and lit a cigarette at the end of a long black filter. The orange glow lit up his hawkish, Aryan face for a moment.

The Oberstleutnant's dark eyes turned to Gragg's avatar. "You haf played long. Haf you no job?"

Gragg's jaded eyes widened in amazement.

Who the hell created this map?

Boerner continued to smoke calmly. On a lark, Gragg hit a hotkey for game taunts. His avatar shouted at Boerner: "I think the Germans are out of real men!"

Boerner frowned. "Stop zat nonsense."

At his computer, Gragg stood up, kicked his chair back and gripped his head in mute amazement. His eyes quickly returned to the screen.

Boerner took another drag on his cigarette. "Are you a brain-dead punk"-he motioned to the text centered in the sunlight on the wall-"or do you haf useful knowledge, yes? If you do, use your key, and ve vill meet again." He clenched his teeth on the cigarette filter, smiled darkly, then turned and walked away-laughing his (literally) trademark evil laugh. It echoed in the halls.

Gragg watched him go, then turned to face the writing on the wall again. He hit a key combination for the in-game camera to snap a screen capture.

The moment he did so, he was ejected from the game. The Houston Monte Cassino server never appeared in the public listings again.

Chapter 10:// In the Air

Ross leaned against Sebeck's unmarked police cruiser. It was parked on the shoulder of Potrero Road. "Do you need directions to Woodland Hills, Sergeant?"

"Just a brief detour."

"What is this, the first murder scene?"

"Down that dirt road." Sebeck pointed back at the closed steel gate. He stood in front of the steel winch box. A police warning tag hung from the winch housing.

Sebeck noticed that the steel cable was coiled on the ground beyond the chain-link fence, stretching out of sight downhill. The county probably lowered it to avoid any additional accidents. "Hang on a sec." Sebeck keyed a handheld radio. "Unit 992, this is D-19, over." Sebeck looked to Ross again. "We have a patrol unit guarding the murder scene down below."

A voice crackled over the radio, "Unit 992, over."

"I'm at your 20. I need to raise this cable. Is the area clear down there? Over."

"Ten- four. Area clear, D-19. Over."

"Stand by. Out."

Sebeck clipped the radio onto his belt under his sports coat. He produced a ziplock bag from his pocket and unrolled it. It contained keys and a remote control. He removed the keys and flipped through them. He used one to unlock the winch housing. He flipped open the door, then searched for the key to the winch. He inserted the key and turned it in the lock.

The winch motor kicked to life, grinding like a powerful can opener. Sebeck leaned around the side of the winch housing to check the progress of the cable. It wasn't budging.

Ross looked on from his position at the car. "You turning it the right way?"

Sebeck stopped it. He pointed to the arrows next to the lock. "It says 'In.' I'm turning it to 'In.' This is 'Out.'"

He cranked it the other way. The winch paid out a small bit of cable before clicking to a stop. "See? That's 'Out.'"

Sebeck cranked it the other way again. The motor ran, but it didn't even retrieve the small amount he had just paid out. The winch mechanism would not engage even though the motor was running. He stopped it and pulled the key out.

"That's strange. Although, now that I think about it, the handyman said the cable didn't come out of the ground when he ran the winch."

Ross looked puzzled. "The cable was in the ground?"

"Yeah. It was buried in the ground, and the handyman got a faked e-mail from the management company to come over and run the winch."

Ross came up alongside and studied the winch housing. "If running the winch doesn't do anything, why bother to send a spoofed e-mail to have someone run it?"

"It is strange. The FBI lab will probably take it apart." Sebeck pulled out a pad and pen. He started writing down brand, model, and serial numbers for the winch. "Any writing on that side?"

Ross shook his head.

In a moment they were done, and Sebeck put his pad away. "I want to take another look at the murder scene while I'm here. It'll only be a few minutes." They returned to the cruiser. Before getting back into the car, Sebeck pulled the remote control from the ziplock bag and pointed it at the gate. He clicked it.

The gate squeaked once, then started swinging open. Another, familiar sound came to Sebeck's ears, and he cocked his head to listen closely. Ross's hand slapped across his chest, startling him. He glared at Ross, who was pointing. Sebeck followed his finger.

The winch was running, pulling the steel cable taut.

It took the final clang of the gate stopping to rouse them from their stunned silence. The cable was as taut as a piano wire.

Sebeck looked at Ross.

Ross pointed at the remote. "Whose remote is that?"

Sebeck looked down at it. Then nodded appreciatively. "It belonged to Joseph Pavlos. The victim."

Ross nodded back. "That's about right. Otherwise, the cable might be discovered too early, and the murder attempt would fail."

Sebeck pondered it. "But then why send someone out here to run the winch if the key didn't do anything? Like you said: why fake the work order?"

They both thought about it for a few moments.

Ross turned to Sebeck again. "What was the first thing you did after finding out the handyman ran the winch?"

"We detained him and requested a search warrant for the property management office."

"And how much time did you spend waiting for the warrant and searching the office?"

Sebeck grimaced. "Long enough for the second victim to die."

"So maybe it was a distraction to give him time to kill the second programmer."

"Then the bigger question is: why was it so important to kill these programmers?"

Ross frowned.

Sebeck watched him closely. "What?"

Ross hesitated. "The Egyptian pharaohs slew the workers who built their pyramids-"

"The programmers knew too much."

"Maybe. Maybe Sobol had some help to code this thing. He was dying of cancer, after all."

"But why on earth would they help him? Pavlos rode his dirt bike out here all the time. He'd have to notice this was designed to kill him."

Ross leaned back against the hood of the car. "I'm guessing they didn't design this part. Sobol probably did that. They probably coded other parts. Maybe parts we haven't seen yet."

They stood there a moment in silence, weighing the significance of this.

Ross was the first to break the silence. "It's interesting that this Singh guy died trying to get into a server farm."

"Why's that interesting?"

"Well, a server farm is basically a big data storage vault. Racks and racks of servers."

"Yeah, so?"

"So, if I were a programmer trying to get to a secret cache of data-or to physically stop some machine from running-perhaps I'd head for that server farm."

Sebeck leaned onto the car hood next to Ross.

"Okay, so Singh, who probably works closely with Pavlos, hears about Pavlos's death and makes a beeline for the server farm. Sobol anticipated this and kills him when he tries to enter. So you think there's something in the server farm?"

"Probably not anymore. It sounds like Sobol found whatever Singh put there. So what was Singh working on at CyberStorm? Do you know?"

Sebeck strained to remember the name of Singh's project. "Singh was lead programmer for a game called… Gate?"

"The Gate?"

"Yeah, The Gate."

Ross let out a pained groan.