Alex ducked under the weights as they slammed against the wall. The man with the knife lashed out in a blind fury. Neither seemed to be well-trained fighters. But it didn’t take a trained warrior to kill someone with weapons like that. Especially in such close quarters, where each strike was only millimeters from slicing an artery or caving in Alex’s skull.
There was no room for mistakes. No room for hesitation.
He swung the hammer, hard, into the stomach of the man with the weights, then followed up with a blow that shattered his jaw. The man went down in a quivering heap.
Behind Alex, he could still hear the hiss of the blowtorch, along with the grunts and yells as Arnon took on her own set of attackers.
When Alex swung his hammer at the knife wielder, the man dodged and jabbed the blade straight into Alex’s wrist. It was only a glancing blow, but the man followed up by slamming his knee into Alex’s stomach. Then he threw his weight against Alex, and they both crashed to the floor.
Alex did his best to hold the man back. But this guy was built like a gorilla. Looked to be nearly two hundred and fifty pounds of pure muscle.
“Watch out!” Arnon said.
Suddenly, Alex smelled the hiss of burning skin, and the huge man reeled back, screaming. Alex whipped the knife from his hand and stabbed it up under the guy’s chin until he felt the break of bone.
The man’s screaming stopped, and Alex shoved him to the side.
Arnon was standing over the dead man with the blowtorch. The white light cast her grinning, scarred face into a terrible mask for just a moment. Then she switched off the torch and set it down.
“I thought I told you to stay alive until the mission is over,” she said, offering him a hand.
Alex gripped it and got to his feet. “Thanks for the assist.”
A few pained groans escaped the men who had survived their injuries. They writhed on the floor, clutching their wounds. None looked like they could put up a fight anymore, much less call for help.
“We need to find a map,” Arnon said, moving toward the computers. She tapped on the keyboard, beginning her search. As she studied the screen, she traced her finger across what looked to be a map of the various decks of the facility. “Where could they be…”
Alex heard a creaking sound behind them. The mechanical wheel locking the decompression chamber across the room whirled. A diver must have been inside, waiting for this moment. He slid out now, risking the sudden decompression of nitrogen bubbles in his blood.
The diver cocked his hand, ready to fling a dive knife at Arnon’s back. She was just starting to turn, but she wouldn’t be fast enough.
Alex had no choice.
He whipped his rifle up and fired, more by instinct than aim.
Bullets seared through the chamber and punched into the man’s shoulder and torso, knocking him backward. But not all struck him.
At least two, maybe three, errant shots slammed into the oxygen tanks. The tanks shook in their restraints, oxygen exploding through the punctures with a violent gasp.
The diver had dropped in a pool of blood nearby. But he wasn’t dead.
He reached for the welding torch that Arnon had discarded.
He yanked on the Mossad agent’s arm, pulling them both back out the door, into the stormy night. Darkness and cold rain swallowed them as Alex scrambled to his feet, putting as much space between himself and the dive center as he could.
Would it be enough?
Through the doorway, he saw the spark from the torch take hold. Everything unfolded as though in slow motion. A gruesome conflagration burned through the oxygen mixing with the hydrogen in the air. An unrestrained chemical reaction billowing into certain disaster.
The gates to hell opened, swallowing the oxygen tanks and then the decompression chamber, along with all the poor souls still grasping for life in there.
Then the wall of flames came for Alex and Arnon.
Skylar felt thunder shake the oil platform. It sounded like an explosion.
Damn, she almost wished that it was an explosion. A fiery death was better than a life where she was Ballard’s slave. She would be more than happy to see this whole place go up.
One of the guards near the entrance to the lab marched over to Ballard and whispered in his ear. Ballard nodded, his eyebrows arching almost imperceptibly. Enough that Skylar knew he was worried.
The Archon mercs picked up on it too. They started muttering among themselves. The underlings were looking from their boss to Hamid’s bloody, broken corpse, a mixture of concern, confusion, and fear on their faces.
That’s right, idiots, Skylar thought. If Vahid would do that to him, he would do it to you too.
Maybe that last lightning strike had screwed something up. She half-expected the power to fizzle out.
“What’s going on?” Vahid asked, turning his attention away from the scene of violence at his feet. The pool of blood around Friedman and Hamid continued to spread.
“Quite a storm,” Ballard remarked. “It seems to have set off some of our sensitive alarms deeper in the complex. Nothing to worry about.”
Ballard waved the guard off on some errand then returned to the gruesome scene. “Let’s get back to business.” He gestured to indicate the dozens of live experimental subjects chained around the room. “All of these people, as you can see by the ring in their brains, have been infected.”
“These are the ones you told me are controlled from radio signals,” Vahid said.
“That’s right. Would you like to see another mass demonstration up close and personal instead of from a hotel room in Beirut?”
A grin spread over Vahid’s face like he was some horny creep who had just been granted a lifetime membership to the local strip joint.
Ballard indicated the control device that Vahid still held. “Just tap that button.”
Vahid did.
A twinge of pain at the back of Skylar’s skull. It was a reminder of the few particles that hadn’t yet degraded and filtered out of her system.
At least she still had control over herself. Unlike the prisoners.
At once, all the room filled with demonic voices. The experimental subjects lashed out against their rattling chains, reaching for each other, fingers scraping at the air. Others tore at the stanchions connecting to the deck in a desperate—and, Skylar hoped futile—attempt to free themselves.
The two prisoners nearest Skylar reached out at her. Saliva sprayed from their open mouths. They bit and snapped, fighting dogs waiting to be unleashed for blood sport. Most frightening of all was the look in their bulging eyes. One of pure hatred and violent rage.
There seemed to be no humanity left in them.
Skylar knew that these were unwitting test subjects, people whose lives had been horribly mutilated by Ballard and his company’s terrifying weapon.
But all the same, she could not help thinking they would all be better off dead than tortured like this, forced to act like monsters at the whims of a madman.
One of the prisoners, a big man whose form was still muscular despite his captivity, roared and yanked on his chain. The shackles around his ankles groaned, and for a moment, Skylar feared they would break. She tried to back away, but she was at the end of her own chains.
The big man’s eyes pulsated as the blood vessels in his sclera brightened with a crimson fire. He fought against the chains on his ankle until he fell face-first to the floor. His nose smashed against the deck. A gout of fresh blood streamed from his face.
It didn’t stop him.
The man was so tall that, on his belly, his fingers could just reach Skylar’s chain. She tried to escape his grasp. But his thick fingers wrapped around the chain. With a heaving tug, he pulled her off her feet.
Pain radiated up Skylar’s hip. The man drew her toward him. She kicked out, but he easily grabbed her legs, pressing a meaty palm to keep her ankles on the floor. The man drew up his other hand to deliver a blow that would very likely devastate her r
emaining kneecap.
But right before the fist came down, he went still.
The screaming stopped.
All around the room, the test subjects had gone sullen and frozen again. Blood wept from a few who had injured themselves trying to escape their restraints. A few had been so desperate that they had torn into their own legs. Their clothes were ripped away, skin peeled into ribbons.
The Archon men were gawking, mouths open. One of them was muttering in Arabic about the devil himself inviting them down to hell.
Probably wasn’t far from the truth.
Skylar pushed herself to her knees, watching Ballard. He took his remote back from Vahid.
“Amazing, isn’t it?” he asked.
Vahid seemed barely able to nod. “It is one thing to watch this from far away. To see it up close…”
“In the blink of an eye, we can turn a violent mob, an entire battlefield into this.” He waved his hand over the room. “Peace at the push of a button.”
“How far is the range of this control?” Vahid asked.
“Effectively two hundred meters,” Ballard said.
“That’s not very far.”
“We’re working to improve it, I assure you. That’s why I had to be so close to the scene in Beirut, unfortunately.”
“Can we test the limits of the device?” Vahid said. “Can I try controlling these people at least from the helipad?”
Ballard shook his head. “We built this facility to shield against external RF signals, for reasons that should be obvious. However, you can travel all the way to the top floor to our operations center and still have control over these people down here.”
“And how long do the nanoparticles stay in the brain?” Vahid asked.
“The subjects you see here were infected earlier today, for your benefit. The particles’ effects vary by dosage, but the protesters today would likely be controllable for twelve hours, after which the effects diminish exponentially. Once the biomolecules used to glue these particles begin to degrade, they will simply be cleared from the body through the bloodstream. All evidence of the Ring of Solomon would be completely gone in a matter of days.”
“Very good,” the Iranian said. Then he frowned and pointed at Skylar. “Why didn’t she react?”
“She hasn’t been infected yet,” Ballard said.
Skylar didn’t let any reaction show on her face. Ballard must not know she already had plenty of experience with the particle. And the last thing she wanted was more.
“I would like to see it. One more demonstration.”
“We can arrange that,” Ballard said. Then he turned to Elad. He snapped his fingers, and two guards rushed over to release his shackles. “Since you’ve expressed your interest in rejoining the company, why don’t you prove it?”
Elad nodded, avoiding Skylar’s eyes. Still, she glared at him, hoping he could feel the heat of her gaze.
-35-
Black smoke billowed from the wreckage of the dive center. Torrents of falling rain helped fight back the inferno, but underneath the cover of the facility’s roof, the flames grew. Alex watched as people scrambled out from the base of the oil derrick toward the fire, desperate to put it out.
“At least it looks like nothing more than a tragic accident,” Arnon said. “The fire will buy us some time.”
“Then we need to be fast.” Alex strained to be heard over the roar of the flames and the constant drumming of rain.
They took a set of metal stairs to a hatch left open by one of the crews responding to the fire, ducking inside to get out of the storm. It was quieter here, giving them a moment to work out a plan. But Alex was all too aware that even a moment could be the difference between success and failure.
Between life and death for Skylar.
“Do you know where to go?”
“Kind of,” she said.
“We need better than ‘kind of.’”
“There are two areas I’m most interested in,” she said. “The operations center is on the top floor.” She pointed up. “And the research quarters are on the bottom deck.”
“Anywhere they might be keeping Skylar and Friedman?”
She shook her head. “I saw bunks, offices, messes, and a large manufacturing room, but no prisons.”
“Where’s the manufacturing room?”
“Directly adjacent to the research quarters. They share equal portions of the bottom deck.”
That would be where they’d find the heart of Gadriel’s Ring of Solomon program. Alex was sure of it.
“Where to first?” Arnon asked.
Alex considered the question. Even with some knowledge of the facility’s layout, there was still a tremendous amount of ground to cover. They didn’t have time to search everywhere.
“We need to split up,” he said.
He didn’t like the idea. After all, splitting up with Skylar was what had led to this mess in the first place. It was a lesson he wouldn’t forget. But he saw no other choice. Not if he wanted to rectify that past mistake.
“I’ll go for the laboratories,” Alex said. “You go to the operations center. If you can take whoever’s in charge of this place hostage, all the better. I’ll go in quiet, see what I can see. And I’ll take this place down if that’s what it comes to.”
He patted the section of his vest stuffed with C-4 and charges. They each had a small stock of explosives and a couple flash-bang grenades.
Someone had brought out a fire hose below. Most of the fire seemed to have been beaten back. They’d find the charcoaled bodies soon and realize that it was no accident.
“We need to move,” he said. “Now!”
Arnon cleared the doorway into the facility then started up the stairs. Alex went down, following her directions.
“Do you still read?” he asked over the comms.
“Yes,” she said. “Going radio silent.”
Alex took the stairs two at a time. He balanced speed with stealth, listening for the telltale stomp of footsteps headed his direction. It seemed most of the guards and workers had rushed out to tend to the fire. He delved deeper into the bowels of the research facility, sneaking into doorways and hiding in the shadows. Progress was agonizingly slow.
Then he heard the clatter of boots. Buzzing radios and angry voices.
He ducked into what appeared to be a storage closet, keeping the door open a crack to watch the people pass.
“I’m on my way,” he heard a deep voice say.
He peered through the crack in the hatch. Five men stomped by, carrying rifles.
“It’s not just a fire. It looks like arson,” a voice called over one of their radios. “And…. bullet holes?”
Then there was another deafening rumble that shook through the bulkhead. The tremor shook through Alex and the shelves around him. One shelving unit started to tip. Boxes and plastic bottles tumbled over him. Several slammed on the floor, breaking open. The overbearing odor of ammonia and bleach filled the small place.
Alex’s stomach tightened. Those two cleaning chemicals formed chlorine gas when mixed. Poison.
He fought to hold his breath, not daring to inhale the deadly mixture. Hoping the damn guards would move so he could escape to fresh air.
Move, move, move, Alex thought.
“There’s been another explosion!” another higher-pitched voice called over the radios. “The oxygen tanks are going up!”
“Keep that fire under control,” a fierce voice cut through the radio. “Ballard will have our asses if we screw this up.”
“He’s still in the research lab with those Archon guys,” one of the guards called back. “He’s showing off the Ring. But it won’t be long before they’re done.”
Alex gritted his teeth, his lungs screaming for oxygen. So that’s what this was about. A sales pitch. A demo. That jived with what Kasim had told them about Archon’s presence.
But even more important, if the research lab was where they had prisoners, then Skylar would be the
re too. So long as she was still alive.
Just a little longer, Skylar. I’ll be there soon.
“You smell that?” one of the guards said.
“Chemicals. Shit. A leak?”
“It’s coming from the closet,” one of them said. “Ballard’s not going to like that either. Send someone up to clean it.”
Yes, send someone else up. You all get the hell out of here.
Alex’s eyes watered. He was beginning to feel light-headed. If he didn’t get out of here soon, he was going to pass out.
Then the door swung open.
One of the guards stared back at Alex, weapon in hand. “Who the fuck are you?”
Elad approached Skylar with a vial that one of the lab technicians had given him. His breath came in hisses through the gas mask that the lab techs had made him put on. This time, the Archon representatives, Ballard, and the rest of the Gadriel staff were wearing masks as well. Ballard had insisted, “Just in case our slippery friend gets any ideas.”
He stopped in front of Skylar, looking at her bruised, weary face through his mask. The rest of his world faded away. Before him stood a woman who had helped save his life in Aqaba, who had trusted him—albeit reluctantly—for the short time they had known each other.
She had been on a mission to stop the sale and distribution of the very weapon he held between his fingers. And now he was going to infect her with it.
Those nanoparticles would penetrate her nose and eyes, rocketing through her bloodstream with every involuntary pump of her heart. They would spear into her brain like homing missiles gunning for her neural tissue and form a ring there, just like the ones he saw now in the exposed brains of the other test subjects.
He knew what it was like to be affected by those particles. First, there was the horror of losing all sense of self, the permanent erasure of his memories. Then, even when the particles seemed to have lost their effect, the fiery agony each time someone pursuing him had activated that signal.
Demon Mind (Vector Book 2) Page 31
