Hard News (Rune 3)

"I just did check. Five minutes ago."

"Check again, check again!" No laughing, no lumbering bears, no amoebae. Adrenaline had wakened her completely.

Morrie shrugged and made a call. He held his hand over the mouthpiece and said to her, "Zip."

"How did it happen?"

"The way it usually happens is the producer doesn't get the tape in on time."

"But I got it in." She ran through her vague memory. She didn't think she'd screwed up. It was too major a mistake even for her. It was like the pilot forgetting to lower the airplane's wheels before landing.

Anyway, there were other tapes. She had a dupe of the final cut. This was an inconvenience, not a tragedy.

Her hands were shaking. Morrie listened into the phone again. He looked up and said to her, "All right, your butt is safe so far. Charlie says he remembers you delivering it. He put it in the computer but somehow it's vanished. You have a dupe?"

"Sure."

He said into the phone, "We'll get another one up to you in five minutes." He hung up. "This's never happened before. Thank you, dear Lord, for dupes."

The gratitude was premature. The dupe was missing too. Rune's voice was shrill in panic. "I put it there. On my desk." She pointed frantically to an empty corner.

"Oh, man."

"I put it right there."

He stared skeptically at the bald spot.

She said, "I'm not making this up."

"Rough cuts?" Morrie was looking at his watch. "Shit, we don't have time. But we maybe--"

She opened a drawer. "Oh, no," she muttered breathlessly.

He said, "They're gone too?"

Rune was nodding. She couldn't speak.

"Oh, boy. Oh, shit. Eleven minutes of blank air. This's never happened before. This's never happened."

Then she thought of something else and ripped open her credenza.

The original tape she'd done of Bennett Frost, the new witness, and the dupe of that were also gone. All that remained of the story about Randy Boggs were scripts and notes and background interview tapes.

"We've been robbed," Rune whispered. She looked around in panic, feeling a terrible sense of violation. "Who was it?" She looked at Morrie. "Who'd you see on the set today?"

"Who'd I see?" he echoed shrilly. "A dozen reporters, a hundred staffers. That intern kid with the blond hair who was helping you with the story. Piper was here, Jim Eustice, Dan Semple.... I mean, half the Network walked through here today." Morrie's eyes strayed uneasily toward the phone and she knew what he was thinking: Somebody had to call Piper Sutton. The large quartz wall clock--timed, for all Rune knew, to the pulse of the universe--showed that they had forty-four minutes until Current Events was going to air. Forty-four minutes until it became the first prime-time television program in history to air eleven minutes and fourteen seconds of blank space.

THE ONLY THING THAT KEPT PIPER SUTTON FROM EXploding through the double doors into the newsroom was the live broadcast of Nighttime News With Jim Eustice, the Network's flagship world news show, now on-air thirty feet behind Rune.

But still she stormed ferociously toward Rune's desk. During the broadcast the veteran anchorman was so damn reassuring and smooth that even the crew enjoyed watching him. Tonight, though, only the head engineer and the producer kept their eyes on his craggy, square face. Everyone else in the huge studio gazed at Sutton and Maisel, as they hurried toward the Current Events desks like surgeons answering a code blue.

"What the fuck happened?" Sutton asked in a shrill whisper.

"I don't know." Rune felt the tears start. She dug her short nails into her palms furiously; with the pain the urge to cry lessened. "Somebody robbed me. They took everything."

Maisel looked at the clock above the control booth. "We don't have anything? Nothing at all?"

"I don't know what happened. I turned the tape in--"