Big Three-Thriller Bundle Box Collection (32 page)

“I already got the evacuation started in town. My boys are sortin’ the marbles. They’re gettin’ all the civilians packed in cars and lined up on the highway out of here. The abductees are on their way here. I have no idea what’s going to happen to them. Maybe Xiang will have a change of heart and take a few of them with him. Otherwise, can’t do much until Xiang leaves. If he finds out about the native folks skidaddling, no tellin’ what he’d come up with to stop ‘em. Even in the best hopes, I can’t see how we can save more than a few dozen.”

“Civilians and abductees?”

“Yeah. You know, the ones from here and the ones they snatched. If one of Xiang’s men radios him about people leaving . . .” He pulled out his walky-talky and frowned at it.

“Here,” I said, “let me fix that for you.”

I felt an electrical pulse from my cranium, and the radio popped. The chief dropped the thing as smoke streamed out and it sizzled.

He smiled. “Damn, boy!”

“I believe that should have taken care of all the radios that were turned on.”

He nodded. “One of these days, you’ll have to show me how you did that.”

“I hope I get a chance.”

He grew serious. “I’ll be expected to leave with Dr. Xiang. I’m not sure how, yet but I’ll try to get away from him at the last minute and get back to help you folks. I’ll get Wu out of here. If he doesn’t get back to Dr. Xiang soon, Xiang will come looking for him with a whole mess of security on his coattails. We don’t want that. I’ll wake up Wu and tell him I found you dead and him unconscious, that this lady, here, was holding a gun. Figured she’d hit him over the head with it, and I shot her. I’ll convince them you’re both dead, and that’s that. You two get the hell out of here. Yumi says you’ve got a chopper waiting, so get it called in and get your asses out. We’ve got less than two hours before the shit really hits the rotor blade. And you’ve got to be long gone before that happens.”

“My son and her husband are still here.”

Dailey frowned. “Robert, you ain’t got no son.”

I didn’t like what the chief had said. I felt the tingling at the base of my neck again. The chief grabbed his head as if he was in pain.

“It’s the truth, boy,” he said, grimacing. “You gotta believe me.”

It took me a moment to calm myself. Sunny had been trying to hint to me that Will wasn’t real for some time. Now the chief, who was apparently on a different side of the fence than Sunny, was telling me the same thing. Dr. Yumi had played it off, wanted me to find things out on my own. That’s why she didn’t simply come right out and say it. Nevertheless, the memories were still there, and I wondered if this was yet another game, another trick they subjected me to.

I felt the tension in my skull ease, and the chief seemed to relax some, still rubbing his temple. “Damn, Robert, you really got a way of puttin’ a hurt locker on a fella.”

“What about you, Chief? Why are you here?”

“You don’t know? I figured they woulda filled you in by now.”

I shook my head as a moaning came from the floor.

“Shit,” Chief Dailey said. “We don’t have time.”

He hustled over to Wu and grabbed him under the arms. I went to the door, cracked it open and peeked out, glancing both ways in the smoky corridor.

As the chief pulled Wu through the doors and headed toward the elevators, he said, “I was a Marine like you. Went to Cambodia for the Mayaguez in ‘75. I missed the chopper gettin’ out, and
they
caught me.”

Chapter 31

Instead of answering any of the myriad questions whirlpooling inside my head, the chief had presented me with a big set of new ones. He said he’d been involved in the Mayaguez incident in ‘75. That “they caught” him. What did that have to do with what was going on now? And now, at least a couple of people were trying to convince me I did not have a son. I doubted what they would have me believe. The paternal instinct was too strong inside of me. Sure, the emotions I should have felt when I thought of Will were somewhat flat, but the world I had awakened in this morning was not exactly conducive to warm and fuzzy feelings. A safety margin of less than two hours remained, but I had to find out the truth about William, and still there was Sunny’s husband to rescue.

Before I started toward the hallway, I looked back at Sunny. She slept peacefully, undisturbed, and I hoped she would remain that way until my return. I carefully posed her as if she were in her finally resting, her arms folded across her chest. I remembered her medallion necklace/panic button, found it in the pocket it had been put in earlier, and placed it in her hand. Then, before I pulled the thin sheet over her face, I hugged her and kissed her on the cheek. She sighed in her sleep.

“I won’t let anything happen to you, Sunny. I promise.” I gazed at her, felt a closeness I couldn’t remember ever feeling before. “I lo — .”

Sunny whispered, “I’m scared,” her interruption surprising me. She seemed to have spoken from her subconscious, her eyes still closed, her body limp, her mouth now slack.

“You’ll be okay,” I said. “I’ll be back for you soon.”

With no time to waste, I turned away, picked up my former captive’s helmet, set it over my head, and found his M-16 on the floor by the door.

After slipping through the door, I considered our nearly defenseless state. More guards could come for us or happen by. I needed a way of slowing them down, interfering with their movements, giving me more time. As I trotted down the hallway, I passed a doorway labeled
Storeroom
, and I stopped. The door was unlocked. Inside were shelves of cleaning and office supplies on one side and foodstuff on the other — the health department wouldn’t have liked that.

Harvey asked,
Remember any old recipes from the Anarchist’s Cookbook?

“Hmm.” I thought of Sunny. I thought of Major Jackson’s search and rescue team. I thought of nonlethal weapons.

I looked about the room and the shelves. Liquid bleach, liquid dish soap, drain cleaner, string and thumb tacks on one side — on the other, gallon cans of honey. In the middle of the floor — four large plastic bags that I guessed were full of trash and garbage.

Hey, Superman,
Harvey said
, you thinking what I’m thinking?

“Uh-huh,” I answered aloud.

*  *  *

Taking less than three minutes to place my
tactical delaying measures
, I took the elevator to the second floor and then jammed its door open. There were sure to be a number of elevators, but this one was the nearest to the morgue — it could buy us a couple of seconds.

I sprinted three hundred feet down the hallway to the children’s ward. I’d remembered this part of the hospital from one of those home movies they’d used to program me. After passing through the large double doors, I inspected each of the wardrooms but found only empty beds in them. After about a hundred feet of corridor, I came to a second set of double doors, and I figured if I wasn’t already deep within the mountain, I soon would be when I passed through. The Biotronics facility was even larger than it appeared from the outside. Much more of its cold hallways and sterile rooms were hidden underneath the protective mountain, much like the unseen portion of an iceberg floating under the waterline.

These doors were labeled, familiarly,
Restricted Area, Authorized Personnel Only.
Underneath the warning were the words,
Residence A
.

Yumi either hadn’t been there or figured I could find a way to get through ordinary locks. The doors were barred and padlocked on my side. The wire-reinforced windows were smoked to the point of being opaque. If there was anyone on the other side of those doors, the only way they could pass through this entryway would be for the doors to be unlocked from this side.

Still curious about what was on the other side, and without keys to enter the doors the more traditional way, I fired a bullet in each of the locks. They were not MasterLocks. Their shanks popped open immediately.

I dropped the bar to the floor and flung the doors open to a long, empty hallway. When I proceeded, I found more rooms on either side. These areas were not empty. The first room was packed with people, probably fifty men, women and children, most Orientals, all huddled, their arms entangled, frightened gazes on their faces as they watched me quickstep by. With no beds or furnishings in the room, I guessed the few blankets on the floor in front of them had been where they had slept. I found the same in each of the next three rooms and figured it would be yet the same for the next six.

I stood in the middle of the hall where as many people could see me as possible through their doorways, and I took off my helmet and sling-armed my rifle over my shoulder. Waving to them, I called out, “Get out. Everyone, get out, now. You have to leave quickly!”

They didn’t move, but only stared at me, appearing as frightened as before.

“Come on, let’s go!” I insisted again. Then I ran down the hallway to the other doors and repeated my urgings.

Still, no one moved. “My God, what’s wrong with you people?”

Then, a small Oriental man stepped forward from the first doorway. He wore white and red striped pajamas and red slippers as did all of the others. He bowed his head briefly.

“Few of us speak English,” he said. “I do, but I cannot ask my people to do as you say. They would be killed.”

“They’ll die if they don’t leave. There’s no one to stop you now. Xiang and the others — they’ve all left.”

“You do not deceive us?”

“No. It’s the truth. But you must leave immediately. There’s a bomb set to go off in less than two hours. It’s a very big bomb that will kill everyone within miles of this place.”

“It is the truth. I see it in your eyes. But where will we go?”

“Do you know of the tunnel?”

“Yes, we were brought into this place through a tunnel. I know where it is.”

“Good.” I recalled remote viewing the back side of the mountain. “At the end of the tunnel, a small foot trail leads between two small mountains. If you can make it on the other side of one of the mountains, put it between you and this place, you should be okay. But don’t stop there. Don’t stop until you’ve found help, the highway, a way to get very far away. There’ll be radioactive fallout, poison in the air that will kill you slowly if you don’t get away from it.” I was reminded of my tactical delaying measures. “Oh, and when you go down the stairwell stay to the outside — go single file all the way to the basement. You’ll see what I’m talking about and understand.” I hoped. “Whatever you do, stay on the stairway until you reach the basement — don’t go through the doors to the first floor.”

He bowed to me again and turned to the nearest doorway. He held his arms out and called to the people in the room in a language I didn’t recognize, but I guessed was one of the many dialects of Chinese. He then scurried to the next room and did the same thing again. Soon the occupants stirred and their voices rose, confused and scared. They began rushing from their rooms, and in a few seconds, hundreds filled the corridor.

Someone familiar ran past me, and I could not control the emotions constricting my throat and damming up in my eyes. It was my son, William.

*  *  *

Xiang had become impatient waiting for Colonel Wu and Chief Dailey. He stood with Dr. Yumi outside his limousine near the entrance of the tunnel that led to the airstrip, after sending a detail of five guards back to the morgue. Their orders were to dispose of Subject 374 and the woman intruder’s bodies. To be sure,
all
of the corpses in the morgue were to be incinerated. Then, they were to bring all of the programmed subjects with them in formation and march them down to the waiting planes. Finally, they would report back to Xiang when both jobs were accomplished. Xiang hadn’t been pleased with the detail’s hesitance with his orders. They knew of the time constraint, and he could sense their fear that they would be left behind to be killed with the others. But they obeyed, sprinting to the stairwell en route to the morgue.

*  *  *

The detail that was headed for the morgue hit the stairwell all out. They feared for their lives, knowing Dr. Xiang would have them killed if they did not follow his every order, yet knowing if they took too long to accomplish their task, they would be left behind and die.

After making the stairway landing between floors, they found a huge mess before them
— trash and garbage completely covering the steps up. Frightened of the consequences of pausing for very long, they did not slow down, but plowed ahead regardless of the clutter.

In a fraction of a second, the five-man detail knew this was no ordinary litter.

In the time it takes a falling body to travel six feet, all five men were prone in the refuse on the steps. They attempted to climb up, slipping back, having to use their hands, finding shredded paper and orange peels stuck to their combat boots and body armor, their weapons covered, their hands now in the gooey mess, pulling up printer paper, used tissues, coffee filters, paper towels, and scraps of cardboard food containers — and thumb tacks — some idiot had scattered thumb tacks! Each man frowned at the muddle they had entered, still pressing farther, progressing slowly, slipping back a step, sometimes two or more, the discarded material sticking to their clothing. Finally, panting and nearly exhausted from battling the quagmire behind them, they made the next floor.

They took a moment to pull some of the garbage and shredded paper from each other’s uniforms and equipment
— and thumb tacks from their gloved hands — and they saw only more of the same litter on the stairs above. Luckily, the morgue was on the floor they were on now.

But after bursting through the stairwell doorway, they found a different sort of trouble
— all slipping face first into a slick pool suddenly before them, too late to notice it was there.

It smelled and looked like liquid dish soap
— and they were not surprised to find more thumb tacks. At first, it was just more bother. Then, the smell changed, and they realized that when rushing through the door, a tripwire — a string — had been pulled, and from each side of the doorway, a container had spilled out onto the floor in front of the dish soap. The smell that came to their noses was only irritating at first — then overwhelming, burning their sinuses.

Sprawled onto the tile, the detail’s leader grimaced as he struggled tediously with another tack, slick with soap, and finally pulled it from his cheekbone. He glanced back at the plastic containers emptying themselves onto the floor. Drain cleaner and bleach. Their spills ran together in the middle of the doorway creating overpowering fumes.

His eyes widened as he realized the noxious odor was deadly chlorine gas.

*  *  *

As they prepared to leave for the airfield in Dr. Xiang’s limo, Dr. Yumi had slipped away, explaining to Xiang that she had forgotten her journal — an essential logbook because it was there that she recorded her daily findings and notes on the progress of the
Brainstorm
project. She told him she would catch up — ride with Chief Dailey and Colonel Wu when the limo returned for them, and she hustled away before Xiang could comment — lucky to have left then.

After the limo drove away into the tunnel with Dr. Xiang aboard, Chief Dailey and a groggy Colonel Wu arrived at sub floor two in the elevator. Yumi ducked behind a large support column without Wu seeing her. She waited for an opportunity to dash to the stairwell twenty feet away.

Wu’s voice was loud, agitated that Subject 374 and the woman intruder had still been alive even though the injections Dr. Yumi had administered to them were supposedly lethal. He was skeptical even with Chief Dailey’s story that, this time, they
were
both dead.

When Wu turned toward the tunnel, Yumi rushed to the stairwell and quietly climbed the steps out of sight. Just past the landing midway to the floor above, she found a strange mess completely covering the steps up
— trash and garbage. She used care in transcending, stepping on the few larger pieces of trash she could find. Soon, she found the going much easier along the outside six inches of each step. She remembered the detail running off before she left and then understood that the quagmire had been created for them. The upturned and gooey litter made it obvious they had passed, very arduously, this way.

In a large, open office space used by the research scientists on the third floor, Yumi found Rajiv Shekhar sitting behind a computer desk. He was the only one there when Dr. Yumi came in. All of the others who were supposed to be working at that time had heard rumors of a “bomb threat” and evacuated. It had been Yumi who put out the word
— thinking at least those who ran would have a slim chance. Without knowing the size or type of the explosive, some sought the apparent safety of their homes in Gold Rush — at least they would die with their loved ones — while those more likely to survive went to gather their families and flee the area. She hoped they would somehow get past Xiang’s guards. None of them knew of the second bomb below the water tower — few would have believed such an incredible story.