Virgil waited, watching the back door of the Surface Research building with his binoculars; he saw no movement at all. Ten minutes after Jenkins left, he was back with a tall, thin man with curly black hair and a large, bony nose. The man got in the back of the Tahoe, and said, “I’m Stu Booker. How’d you find out about this? Do you know what he’s doing in there?”

“We got it from one of our confidential informants, and I can’t disclose the source quite yet,” Virgil said. “Our source says this guy is accessing a computer to get all the information he can about paints that will be used to guide self-driving cars.”

“Sonofabitch! Sonofabitch! I thought that had to be it,” Booker said. “Jesus Christ, if that gets out of the building . . . We gotta stop this.”

“We will. You should know that our source says he’s already been in there several times.”

“Oh my God!”

“Did you bring a key for the back door?”

“Yes.” Booker fumbled in his jacket pocket and produced a key on a horsehair ring. “I go in the back myself sometimes. Listen, the guy must be in the engineering office.”

Booker described a route through the production facility and up into the engineering, design, and administrative offices. “I’ll come with you and point the way.”

“Let’s go,” Virgil said.

They walked along the exterior wall of Aerotop, hidden by the trucks, then behind it, across the street, around another warehouse, and finally across the street again and up to the windowless side of Surface Research. From there, they walked to the corner of the building, a hundred feet or so from the back door.

They paused while Virgil called the Eagan police; the cars, two minutes out, would be rolling in seconds.

“Go,” Virgil said to Jenkins, who had the key. “Quick, now.”

Jenkins was a runner; he sprinted down the back of the building and up the stairs to the door next to the loading dock. Virgil and Booker arrived right behind Jenkins, who had already fit the key in the lock. He twisted it, pulled his pistol, and bumped the door open with his hip.

To an empty hallway.

“Straight ahead,” Booker whispered.

* * *

—

Virgil led, Jenkins trailed, watching either side. Moving quickly, they crossed a pair of hallways that led into the production area of the building. Most of the lights were out, and Virgil could barely make out what looked like racks of machinery and barrels and, in the biggest open area, cone-shaped machines, twenty feet tall and fifteen feet across, like alien invaders from Mars.

He paused to look at them, and Booker, catching up, whispered, “Mixers.”

Halfway through the plant, they crossed another hallway that led to offices to their right and a flight of stairs going up. They had not heard, let alone seen, a single living being.

Booker whispered, “Production offices down here. They’ll be up in engineering. The night guard’s name is Allen Young. He is armed. The stairs are metal, and they’ll make noise if we’re not careful.”

“Eagan cops gonna be here soon,” Jenkins whispered. “We gotta move before we get a parking lot full of flashers.”

They tiptoed up the metal stairs, emerging in a hallway lined with offices. To his left, Virgil could see that the offices on that side looked over the production facility. To the right, they looked over the front parking lot.

They could see a dimly lighted window halfway down the hall in front of them. “Engineering,” Booker whispered.

Virgil said, “Stay right here,” and he and Jenkins walked down the hall toward the office. They were fifteen feet away when a man stepped into the hallway, saw them, shouted, “Hey!” and made a move for his hip.

Virgil shouted, “Police! Freeze!”

Jenkins yelled, “Freeze! Freeze! Put your hands up where we can see them. Hands up! Don’t touch that gun.”

Virgil shouted, “Allen, hands over your head or we will shoot . . .”

The man stopped moving, then slowly lifted his hands. Down the hall, another door burst open, and a man ran through it and away from them, and Virgil said to Jenkins, “Get him.”

Jenkins took off, and Virgil shouted at the guard, “Don’t move, man, or we’ll shoot. We will shoot you.”

Jenkins blew past the guard, and from behind Virgil Booker shouted to Jenkins, “There’s another stairs . . .”

* * *

—

Virgil closed on the guard, his Glock up in the man’s face. “Turn around, put your hands on the wall.”

“I’m the security guard here,” the man said, as he put his hands on the wall above his head.

“We know, Allen. I’m going to take your pistol. Keep your hands on the wall, I’m nervous here, and this trigger is pretty light. Take it easy, and we’ll all be fine.”

* * *

—

Jenkins piled down the second flight of metal stairs, thirty feet behind the runner. The two large men hit the treads hard, making a racket like somebody beating on an oil drum with a ball-peen hammer. At the bottom of the stairs, the runner, who’d been carrying a black bag, dropped it. Jenkins vaulted over the bag and kept closing in on the man and caught him as they got to the back door. He pushed the man hard on the back of the neck and the man lost his balance and fell face forward, nearly colliding head-on with the door. Jenkins knelt on the man’s back, wrenched one of his arms up and back, clicked on a cuff, said, “Gimme the other arm, Boyd. C’mon, don’t make me dislocate your shoulder.”

“How’d you know my name?”

“We know all,” Jenkins said. Nash relaxed his other arm, and Jenkins snapped on the second cuff. “See, that was easy. Let’s go back upstairs, see what’s what.”

On the way back up, Jenkins retrieved Nash’s bag. When they got back to the engineering office, Young, the security guard, was sitting on an office chair, his hands cuffed behind him, while Booker was peering at a computer screen and chanting: “Those fuckers. Those fuckers. Those fuckers . . .”

* * *

—

Red lights flashed off the dim interior walls, and Jenkins said, “One runner, one bag, and the Eagan cops are here.”

Virgil said, “Leave Mr. Nash. Run down there and tell the cops to come on up, we’ll need them to transport these guys.”

Jenkins pushed Nash into another office chair, as Young said, “Listen, I don’t know what this is all about.”