Mason felt the warmth of his own blood in his palm, the pressure grinding his knuckles. He jerked his left hand away the second he was clear. The plunger made a snapping sound, then the resounding bang of the .22 blank. The bolt fired with enough force to nearly punch through the neck crush as it started to fall.
Alejandra barely ducked out from beneath it in time. The guillotine slammed down on her hair, halting her momentum and causing her to cry out.
He reached over the top, pulled the chain, and raised the crush just far enough for her to pull her hair free. Again, he was surprised by how much strength it would have required to hold it for so long.
The trap was ingenious. She could have been either shot in the head or decapitated. Likely both. Were it not for her almost superhuman desire to survive, the trap would surely have done just that, and right before his very eyes. But other than to demonstrate the Hoyl’s cruelty, what possible purpose could it—?
It slowed him down.
The Hoyl had used it as a distraction to buy himself time to escape, but he couldn’t have gotten far.
“Which way did he go?” Mason whispered.
Alejandra peeled the flashlight from the chair and directed the beam between two of the recent victims and onto the swinging doors that separated them from the maze of bodies.
“Where’s Gunnar?”
“I do not—” She sputtered blood. She closed her hand over her mouth and shook her head. Had she been forced to hold that cord any longer, her teeth would probably have been ripped right out of her gums.
He tapped the microphone several times to make sure he heard the echo of an open line.
Nothing.
The connection had been severed.
Mason handed his Sigma to Alejandra, turned the Infinity’s beam on the doors, and jumped down from the platform.
It was time to finish this.
He kicked the doors and stepped inside. One of the bodies at the edge of his light’s reach was still swaying, ever so slightly. He passed through the human corridor. Stepped over the bodies on the floor. Rounded the corner and blew through the packaging room. His footsteps made a splashing sound. Some sort of chemical was leaking from the conveyor belt leading up to the office. He shouldered open the door to the loading dock. Swung his beam across the interior in one broad stroke.
The Hoyl could have been hiding in any number of places. Behind the ruins of the staircase or the heaps of construction supplies. Up on the ledge supporting the elevated office. Behind the piles of construction supplies. But Mason didn’t see him as the hiding kind.
He was finally beginning to understand how the Hoyl worked.
He was the kind of monster who lured helpless victims into his lair and took perverse pleasure in torturing them. As his father had before him. And his, as well. It was all he knew. His life was the perpetuation of an illusion, the fulfillment of the sick destiny those who came before him had spent their entire lives imagining. Planning. Executing.
If the Hoyl had Gunnar, then he intended to use him as a shield to cover his escape or as a token to buy his freedom. And if he managed to escape, Gunnar was dead.
Mason led Alejandra down the stairs from the loading dock.
And stopped dead in his tracks.
The chemical smell was stronger in here. Unmistakable now that it was no longer competing with the stench of the corpses.
A sound. So soft, he’d almost missed it.
Fluid. Dripping from some unknown height. Like rain flowing over the lip of a gutter.
Mason recalled the fluid running down the conveyor on the other side of the wall.
He turned and raised his light toward the elevated platform. Ribbons of liquid spiraled down the support posts. Rivulets drained from the ledge. He lowered his light to the ground and a rainbow formed in the reflection on the fluid.
“No,” Mason whispered.
He whirled, grabbed Alejandra by the wrist, and sprinted toward the hatch.
The sound of fluid splashing onto the concrete became louder. The entire supervisory office was probably rigged to explode. If it fell, it would bring the rest of the building down with it.
There was no handle on the hatch. Only a notch where a crowbar could be inserted to raise the front edge from the floor.
He caught a spark of light from the corner of his eye.
They weren’t going to make it.
A whooshing sound behind him. The light grew brighter. Searing heat on his neck.
Mason dashed back across the room and underneath the suspended landing. Liquid fire rained down all around him. He grabbed a metal railing from the fallen staircase and hurried back to the hatch.
Suddenly, it was as bright as day. Acrid chemical smoke swirled around them. The air rushed past them to feed the insatiable flames.
He stabbed the leading edge of the rail down into the notch in the hatch.
A wall of flames rose at his back. A crashing sound as a section of the roof fell, throwing off a cloud of glowing cinders. A roiling cloud of smoke overtook them as Mason leveraged the hatch up as high as he could.
“Go!”
Alejandra crawled through the gap. Once she was inside, she turned around and braced the hatch on her shoulders. She was coughing so hard that she wouldn’t be able to hold it for very long.
A deafening crash. A churning mass of embers enveloped him.
Mason took a step back and dove headfirst beneath the hatch.
The air turned to fire around him as he tumbled down into the earth.
PART VI
The individual is handicapped by coming face-to-face with a conspiracy so monstrous he cannot believe it exists. The American mind simply has not come to a realization of the evil which has been introduced into our midst. It rejects even the assumption that human creatures could espouse a philosophy which must ultimately destroy all that is good and decent.
—J. Edgar Hoover, The Elks Magazine (1956)
66
Mason tumbled down the stairs and barely caught himself before he spilled out into the open. He stayed low and against the wall, hoping Alejandra would follow his lead. They weren’t even halfway down when a faint light washed across the landing below them and he heard the hum of an electric motor.
The tram.
He hurdled the stairs three at a time, then jumped to the landing. The moment his feet hit the ground, he rolled to the side and rose with his gun pointed toward the sound. He caught a glimpse of a dim light through the rear window of the tram before it abruptly went dark. Twin scarlet taillights bloomed underneath it.
They couldn’t let it leave without them or it would be miles away by the time they reached the first surface access hatch. The Hoyl could disembark at any stop along the way and they’d never find him again. And if he had Gunnar …
This was Mason’s only shot and he knew it.
The headlights burst from the front car and the tram started to roll.
He holstered his gun and sprinted toward the taillights. The rear of the tram was little more than one large rectangular window with a fifteen-degree slope. If anyone on board decided to look back through it, he’d be impossible to miss.
The tram rapidly gained speed.
Now or never.
He took three long strides and launched himself from his right foot. His chest struck the Plexiglas window. He grabbed for the roof. Caught hold of a narrow rail. Squeezed it as hard as he could. Wedged the toes of his boots into the seam beneath the window.
Alejandra kept pace, but she wouldn’t be able to do so much longer. The intonation of the motor climbed an octave and the whole train lurched forward.
Mason secured his grip with his right hand. Reached behind him with his left.
She lunged before he was ready. Hit the window. Her hands slid right off the rooftop.
One chance.
He grabbed for her with his left hand and caught her by the sleeve of her coat. Her hand tightened around his wrist as the tram accelerated. Sh
e flew out over the open air behind him. It was all he could do to hang on.
The walls of the tunnel rocketed past with a whooshing sound.
The strain on his shoulders was tremendous. He gritted his teeth. Squeezed his eyes shut. Prayed to hang on. The fingers on his right hand started to slip.
Alejandra reached for the tram and missed. She swung almost all the way to the wall and nearly took Mason with her. He shouted in agony. Pulled her toward him with every last ounce of strength he possessed.
She grabbed his waistband. Released his hand. He barely caught the rail on the roof with his left hand before she transferred the entirety of her weight to his back. He wasn’t going to be able to hold on to the tram for very long.
The ferocious wind generated by the train’s passage drowned out the whine of the engine.
Alejandra braced her feet on the window ledge. Wrapped one arm around Mason’s waist. Reached for the roof with the other. Closed her trembling fingers around the thin rail. Pressed her body against the window beside him. Her long hair flared on the slipstream.
The dark mouth of a bypass tunnel appeared to their right with a sudden shift in airflow that nearly pried Mason from his perch. He hadn’t even readjusted his grip before the other end whipped past.
Motion through the window. A diffuse glow. Distant.
The beam of a flashlight took form in the next car up, silhouetting the metal-post frames and chain-link walls of the cages inside. Mason detected the hint of movement through the windows between the cars. If whoever controlled the beam shined it straight back at them, he’d have them dead to rights.
Each of the four cars was self-contained and didn’t allow passengers to move from one to the next like on a train, but with little more than empty cages in between, there’d be nothing to prevent the beam from reaching them. Or a fusillade of bullets, for that matter.
Alejandra recognized the danger and started to climb. She planted one foot in the middle of the glass, then the other, and the next thing Mason knew he was watching her shoes vanish over the crest, with the ceiling hurtling past above her.
The man directed his light from the third car diagonally into the fourth. The light splashed across the tunnel wall to Mason’s left, then to his right.
No time to lose.
He braced one foot against the glass. Hauled himself up and over. The wind buffeted him in the face. Nearly swept him off. He pressed his palms to the flat roof. Pulled himself forward. The beam flashed across the wall below Alejandra, limning her silhouette to his left, then his heels behind him, and finally the wall to his right.
The arched ceiling whipped past mere feet above his back. An access chute announced itself overhead with a howl of wind.
They were heading north-northwest, with the station under downtown Greeley maybe thirteen miles away. The end of the line was seven miles farther, inside the new corporate headquarters of Global Allied Biotechnology and Pharmaceuticals on the secured AgrAmerica lot.
Another bypass tunnel flew past without warning. The shift in air currents caught Mason off guard and he slid backward. Barely caught the rail lining the top of the rear window with his toes. Hugged the roof. The other end of the bypass nearly dislodged him.
Alejandra slid down beside him. He could only imagine how much harder it was for her to hang on with as little as she weighed.
Assuming they were traveling at roughly thirty-five miles an hour, they would hit the station under Greeley in just over twenty minutes. The GABP complex twelve minutes later. They couldn’t still be on the roof when the tram arrived, or they’d be clearly visible from all sides.
Mason scooted closer to Alejandra, whose hair concealed the majority of her face, until his lips touched her ear. Her eyes were closed and her nose was pressed flat to the metal. He had to shout to be heard.
“We can’t be up here when the train stops! We’ll be too easy to see!”
“You cannot be suggesting what I think you are!”
“Like any other vehicle, this thing will go through a standard deceleration progression as the transmission shifts down through the gears! The moment we feel it start to slow, we need to be ready to go!”
“We will be killed!”
“I felt three distinct gears when it was accelerating! We have to jump when we feel it shift down for the second time! If we wait any longer than that, we won’t be able to put enough distance between us and whoever’s waiting for the tram to arrive!”
“Just step off?”
“Bend your knees and tuck your head in your arms! Try to form a ball and roll to dispel your momentum! And stay clear of that rail!”
“We will still be going too fast!”
She was probably right, but now that he finally had the Hoyl in his sights, not even the laws of physics could stand in his way.
67
Mason tried not to think about Gunnar. The Hoyl could be doing horrible things to him right underneath them at this very moment. Or he could already be dead. Mason hoped his old friend had simply lost his signal and was searching in vain for them through the flaming ruins of the slaughterhouse, but his gut told him that wasn’t the case. Gunnar was likely in the first car with the driver or in the third with whoever wielded the flashlight. With a minimum of two hostiles inside the tram and Lord only knew how many waiting for it at its final destination, every possible rescue scenario Mason ran through his head ended with Gunnar in a body bag.
He heard the change in the intonation of the engine a heartbeat before the wall fell away beside him. The tarps covering the building on the southeastern corner of the Greeley station snapped and flagged. The ornate facade of the building below the feed and grain store blew past. Then they were gone, falling rapidly into the darkness.
Mason knew where they were going now. Beyond all doubt.
His heartbeat was already racing. No matter how he envisioned disembarking from the train, he ended up broken and bleeding on the concrete. He had to start thinking beyond the moment of impact and start planning for what he was going to do once he stood up and brushed himself off. There were really only two options: He could backtrack to the access chute that would take him up to the surface outside of the perimeter or he could go forward and face whatever lay in wait for him. Force the confrontation. The element of surprise was just about the only thing he had going for him.
If he failed, the consequences would be catastrophic. He was now the only one standing in the way of the release of a global pandemic and a potential extinction-level event.
He cleared his mind as the walls blurred past. Focused on accepting the fact that one of his best friends was probably dead. Readied himself to potentially take the lives of his wife’s brother and father. Reminded himself that he didn’t currently have his badge, so the law was no longer on his side. There was only black and white. Right and wrong. And live or die, he would do so on the side of the right.
The motor lowered an octave. He felt the slight lurch as it stepped down a gear.
Mason turned and saw Alejandra’s wide eyes staring at him through the scarlet glare. He nodded to her and pushed himself backward until his legs dangled over the open air. Continued to slide until his whole lower half was draped across the rear window. Farther still and he was able to snag the toes of his boots on the ledge.
The walls whipped past at an obscene rate of speed. A glance down at the ground nearly robbed him of his resolve.
Alejandra slid down beside him and closed her eyes.
Another soft jolt as the tram slowed again.
Mason looked over at Alejandra, tried for something resembling a reassuring smile, and let go.
He became weightless. A human projectile flying through the dark tunnel. He caught a flash of the taillights leaving him behind. Wrapped his head in his arms. His heels struck first. He skipped like a stone. Hit the ground hard. Took the brunt of the impact on his left shoulder. Bounced and rolled and finally caromed from the wall of the tunnel and skidded to a halt on his s
ide.
A shadow knifed through his peripheral vision before the taillights faded altogether, sealing him in darkness. He felt like he’d been dragged across a cheese grater while being beaten with baseball bats. But he was thankful for the pain; it proved that he was still alive.
A moan from the darkness across from him confirmed that he wasn’t the only one.
“Are you all right?” he whispered.
He waited. Alejandra didn’t sound entirely certain when she finally replied.
“Yes.”
A distant squeal from far to the north. Brakes. A quarter, maybe half a mile at the most.
Mason drew his Infinity and struggled to his feet.
“Can you walk?”
A shuffling, scraping sound.
“Yes,” she said, again with a tone of uncertainty.
He followed the sound of her voice, stepped over the rail, and felt for her in the pitch-black tunnel. When he eventually found her hand, it was slick with blood. He pressed the butt of the Infinity into her palm and aligned her index finger with the switch on the under-barrel light.
“Head south from here. Go as far as you can before you turn on the light. You’ll come to a ladder. Climb all the way up the chute. You’ll find yourself in a small structure outside the perimeter fence.” Mason removed his cell phone from the inside breast pocket of his jacket and closed it in her other hand. “Can you remember a number?”
“We should stay together. You will need my help.”
“If I don’t make it, someone else has to stop these people. You’ll be the only one left who can do so. Now, tell me you can remember a phone number.”
“Yes,” she whispered, this time with more conviction.
Mason recited Ramses’ cell phone number and made her repeat it back to him. He hoped to God his old friend had really been heading in their direction when he’d last spoken to him.
“Call Ramses and tell him the situation. He’ll help you. I promise. Then find someplace safe to hide. If I don’t call you on this phone in one hour, that means I’m not going to. Ramses will protect you until you can meet with my father, Senator J. R. Mason. Tell him everything. Outside of Gunnar and Ramses, he’s the only other person on the planet I trust. Make sure he knows the FBI is compromised. He’ll know what to do from there.”
The Extinction Agenda Page 35
