Reaching a four-way intersection, he heard distant voices down the right hallway, yet saw nothing but a dim hall to the left, sporadically lined with doors. The hallway ahead featured several more doors, as well as a lighted window about a hundred feet away. He’d passed many rooms with windows, yet most had been dark, none occupied. He needed directions, answers, so he moved toward the light.
The window, located adjacent to the door, revealed some sort of computer control room about ten feet wide and twenty feet long lit by recessed fluorescent bulbs. A lone man with dun-colored hair, dressed in civilian clothes, sat with his back to the window at a terminal facing the wall.
Not wasting a second, Max pulled the magnetic card and inserted it into the lock. A green light blinked as the lock clicked open. He barged in, pistol leveled at the man, who turned lazily in his swivel chair. The bored look on his bespectacled face morphed into astonishment and then fear. He swiveled back around and rolled his chair, reaching for what appeared to be a panic button.
Max fired, his silenced shot striking the work table adjacent to the man’s reaching hand. The computer man jumped in his chair before rolling away from the panic button.
“Get on the ground.” Max pointed the pistol at his face. He expected a language barrier, but surprisingly the man complied, dropping to his knees on the floor with hands raised in surrender.
Max glanced toward the window, saw no one in the hallway. He flicked a wall switch; the room went dark save for the one glowing monitor. Grabbing the twidget by his tie, Max dragged him choking and thrashing to the far end of the room. Between the darkness and the location, they could not be seen easily from the hallway.
“English?” Max asked.
“Yes,” he responded in a British accent.
“If you ever want to see daylight again, you’ll answer me truthfully.”
The man gulped, nodded. “I understand.”
“Where does Wilde keep his captives?”
“Ah... I’m really not familiar with—”
Max pistol-whipped him across the temple, knocking him to the floor. He then jerked the bleeding man up by his tie and returned him to his knees. “I don’t wanna hear your bullshit. Just answer the fucking question.”
“Level three, the lowest level.” The man gasped. “They’re held for processing there. However, I... I don’t know what that means! I’m just a data processor!”
“What level is this?”
“Level two.”
“I see. Where is Gideon Wilde?”
“I’m... I’m not familiar with that name.”
“You’re making this awfully difficult.” He raised his pistol, winding up slowly for another blow.
The man reared back in fright, hands raised to fend off the blow. “All right, all right!”
“No warning next time. Now where the fuck is Wilde?”
“He’s also on level three.”
“And Josh Pierce, the geneticist? Where is he?”
The man stuttered briefly and then closed his mouth.
“Don’t do it. I’ll know if you lie.”
“I swear... I-I’ve never heard that name!”
The guy seemed good and cowed by now, so Max decided to accept his answer and move on. “Where are the hunters?”
“They’re restricted to the chateau and the board, forbidden from entering the bunker.”
“Are there any on the island right now?”
“Possibly. Another hunt begins tomorrow.”
“Can you override the security system from here?”
“No. This is data processing only.”
“Is there one stair or elevator that connects all floors?”
“Yes.”
“Directions.”
Continuing in his nervous stutter, it took the man about thirty seconds to direct Max to the elevator.
Max needed to keep moving. “Thanks for the info. You’ve been helpful.”
He put a single bullet between the data processor’s eyes that exited through the rear of his skull. Gore blasted forth and befouled most of the room. Max avoided the slimy red mess as best he could—brain goop on his boot soles might lead to a nasty slip and fall.
Before making his way to the exit, Max took a quick look at what the guy had been working on. All of the entries were in English. He recognized some of the organizations listed on screen, all major players in beneficial medical and genetic research, dedicated to fighting illnesses and increasing human longevity. He had believed them to be benevolent anyway, but all had donated several million dollars or euros to Wilde.
He could be playing them for suckers, taking their cash while pretending to further their causes. He doubted very highly that Wilde was working on a cure for childhood leukemia, for which he’d received a $1.5 million donation.
The entries resembled some old DOS programs. Max considered trying to find a flash drive to download the information yet decided not to. You don’t know what the fuck you’re doing. Let Otto or Heat do it.
He rifled the desk drawers. Expecting to find only office supplies, his eyes lit up when he located a sheet of paper with the floorplans for levels one and two printed on either side, with all locations labeled... in French.
Better than nothing. That moron must have been new around here.
To effectively navigate with the map, he first needed to figure out where the hell he was. He had a good idea which of the two stairwells he’d used to descend to level two, so he started there and tried to mentally replay his movements. This could be it, he thought as his retracing led him to a rectangular chamber designated Données et Enregistrements. Next he noticed a dead-end hallway terminating at a door labeled Ascenseur, which he figured meant elevator, located in the opposite direction from what he’d been told.
Wonder what else he lied about.
With no idea of the French word for confinement or prison, he searched instead for words he might be able to puzzle out. Arsenal, located next to a large room labeled Caserne, proved easy enough to figure out, as did the word Cuisine. This floor is all support and barracks facilities. No wonder it’s crawling with men.
His eyes lit once again on the large room identified as Cuisine, located just down the hallway and around the corner from his estimated present location, adjacent to an even larger chamber labeled Salle á Manger. Yeah, that’s the place to create a diversion.
With map in one hand and pistol in the other, he moved to the door, opened it a crack, and surveyed the empty hallway. He turned right, jogged past the glass double doors of the salle á manger—apparently French for mess hall—and came to a left-right intersection. After checking both ways and seeing no guards, he turned right and then stopped at a pair of heavy steel doors, where he inserted his pass card.
Max entered the white-tiled institutional kitchen. He stepped around two high carts loaded with baking trays and saw a chef in a white coat and paper piss cutter standing before a griddle frying spicy sausages, whistling to himself as he worked. Absorbed in his trade, the cook didn’t notice Max until he stopped right behind him. Max smashed his pistol across the cook’s face as he turned around, then kicked him in the head while he writhed on the floor, knocking him out cold.
He cranked the burner knobs on the griddle up to full blast.
The kitchen had no lack of buckets and containers lying around. Moving to a slop sink, Max filled a five-gallon pail with water. Smoke from the burning sausages hung thick in the air as he hefted the pail and tossed it onto the overheated griddle, which erupted in a shower of steam, charred sausages, and flaming grease droplets that sprayed several feet in every direction. Things immediately caught fire—a roll of butcher paper on the counter, a big box of sausages next to the grill, the unconscious man on the floor. Max beat out a couple of flaming grease drops that found his trousers. The cook’s coat burst into flames, rousin
g him screaming from slumber.
The fire alarm sounded and the overhead sprinklers kicked on.
That’ll keep ’em busy for a while.
Valuable troops would be wasted fighting the fire, giving him a little extra leeway on his journey to level three. At least that was the plan. He exited the kitchen, broke right, and ran. If his understanding of French was remotely correct—he certainly had his doubts—the elevator was down a short hall to the left, two intersections ahead.
Max holstered his pistol as he ran, switching back to his rifle. At the first intersection, which offered options of continuing straight or turning right, he heard shouts coming from the right hallway. Peeking around the corner, he saw several soldiers headed his way on the double, no doubt to fight the kitchen fire.
Five or six at least.
He didn’t have time or ammo to duke it out with that many men, so he tossed a smoke grenade down the hall.
The men jabbered in frantic French. Shots rang down the hall.
Max dropped to his belly and low crawled through the intersection, bullets whizzing over his head and pinging off the wall in a shower of concrete fragments. He stood and sprinted upon reaching safety on the other side.
The next intersection, a four-way, beckoned fifty feet ahead. Max halted when he got there. Behind him several guards entered the previous intersection to scan the hallways.
Shit! And the elevator around the corner would likely be guarded as well.
Max could only predict and react at this point. He pulled a grenade from his vest, jerked the pin, and tossed it down the hall where the elevator hopefully was. His French translation must have been spot on, for panicked shouts greeted the grenade as it clanked on the concrete floor and rolled down the hall.
Without a pause, he spun and opened fire on the guards back at the last intersection, who moved like wraiths through the thickening smoke from the grenade and the kitchen fire. Two fell. Another took a knee and returned fire, while the others jumped back around the corner, two submachine gun barrels appearing an instant later.
As a bullet cracked past his ear and took out a chunk of concrete, Max sighted on the kneeling man and fired, a clean head-shot.
Enough!
He entered the hallway leading to the elevator, saw the doors beckoning a mere fifteen feet away. Two guards awaited: one lying by the elevator in a pool of blood spreading from his lower abdomen, the other functional and on his feet. Max had the quicker trigger finger and put three shots in the man’s torso from point-blank range before the motherfucker even knew what hit him.
The dying man, who could barely raise his weapon, fired wildly at Max, his shots all high.
Max dispatched him with a single bullet to the face, then leapt over him on his way to the elevator. The doors opened the instant he hit the down arrow. He boarded, turned, and fired on two guards between the closing doors as they ran into the intersection, dropping one.
The second guard’s returned fire pinged off the doors as they slid closed.
The elevator began to drop at a leisurely department-store pace. Hurry up. There’s not much time.
Max slammed a fresh magazine into his rifle and checked his grenade launcher to make sure it was loaded. He didn’t see any cameras in the elevator yet knew he was being watched. What he’d encountered upstairs was nothing, he knew. Max expected a raucous and fiery welcome the instant the doors slid open on level three.
He readied another smoke grenade as he waited.
19
As the elevator slowed and then halted on level three, Max donned his combat goggles and waited for the doors to open.
Shoot me if you can, assholes.
The doors began to slide back, inch by inch, exposing a short hallway about ten feet long opening out into a larger room. Two guards partially hid themselves around the corners at the end of the hallway, their submachine guns trained on the elevator. Max rolled a smoke grenade down the hall and dropped face down.
The P90s popped like firecracker strings as the guards blindly opened fire, the bullets tearing into the elevator car.
Max gently tossed a high-explosive grenade into the smoke. He then buried his face in the floor and awaited the explosion, which rocked the hallway and left his ears ringing.
Figuring he could now reach the room, Max jumped to his feet and ran into the smoke. A coughing, shadowy figure appeared before him, hard to distinguish. Too close to get a shot on him, Max slammed his rifle butt into the man’s jaw, heard and felt it shatter.
He emerged from the smoke, took a quick glance around the room to get his bearings. Computer terminals and work tables lined the walls of a chamber about fifty feet long by thirty feet wide, with a center island composed of bulky mainframe computers. From the doorway at the far side of the room, two men opened fire. Max dove for cover behind the island. At a cough behind him, he whirled around and gut shot another guard as the man emerged from the smoke cloud.
The gunfire ceased until commands were shouted in French. After running footsteps, shots resumed.
Max peered around the edge of the island to fire on the advancing men, who poured through the entrance like ants from an uprooted hill. They fell before his leaden onslaught—one man, two, three. Yet still they came. A couple managed to bypass his fire and reach the far side of the computer island. They would try to circle around and flank him.
He had to be ready.
Using his M203, Max launched a grenade toward the doorway that struck a man square in the chest. The guard’s helmeted head separated from his body in a volcanic shower of blood. It flew up and smashed into the ceiling. Four other men went down with him in various states of injury.
Max rolled onto his back, fired upward at a guard atop the island who stood poised to shoot down at him. Shots to the head and neck put an end to that. The guard dropped dead to the floor next to Max, who used his body as a barrier to fire at the men who had successfully flanked him. He shot one guard in the eye and dropped him as the fool crawled around the corner of the island.
Unfortunately, the next guard had the same idea as Max, using his dead buddy for cover as the two men shot at each other from prone positions, mere feet separating them, bullets thudding into their respective corpse barriers. Max finally hit the man’s helmet, his shot penetrating the Kevlar.
As if he’d suffered a fit of narcolepsy, the guard dropped his head on his dead friend and appeared to sleep.
Assault through, it’s the only way.
He tossed his last smoke grenade toward the door, then followed up by lobbing his penultimate HE grenade into the cloud.
The explosion raised more bellows of agony in French.
Go!
Max scrambled toward the door through the smoke, firing blindly as he went. He ran right into a guard, put a bullet through his neck, and moved on.
Something struck him hard in the helmet, and he staggered.
A large man stood next to him in the smoke. Max caught the glint of steel as his knife blade descended. He dodged the knife blow and countered with a butt stroke that missed the guard’s face but hammered his helmet with great force.
The guard barely flinched beneath the blow. Then, with preternatural speed, he jabbed his knife into Max’s gut, right around where his appendix used to be.
The sting of pain hit hard and fast, combining with the sounds of gunfire and shouting to render Max’s existence a discordant nightmare. He tried to shoot the big guard in the face, but he was too close. As he reached for his knife, something slammed the back of his head and knocked him to the ground.
Disorientation became his only orientation. Exhausted and beaten, all he could think was that Flint had been correct: He couldn’t take down two platoons alone.
All of us could have done it.
He was rolled onto his back. Four scowling men with submachine guns and one big ma
n with a bloody knife—who smiled, appearing very pleased with himself—stared down upon him through the dissipating smoke.
“Assez!” commanded a voice accompanied by clacking footsteps. At another command, two of the guards disarmed Max, after which the big one hauled him to his feet.
A man slightly over six feet tall, wearing a white lab coat over a custom-tailored black pinstripe suit, strode forth and entered the circle of armed men surrounding Max. He appeared roughly forty years old, his longish blond hair meticulously styled. Gideon Wilde halted before Max, stared him down over his long nose while amusement twinkled in his unnatural amber eyes.
“Ah, Max Ahlgren, finally we meet face to face after all these years.”
“Yeah, the pleasure is all yours, Wilde.”
Wilde laughed heartily, perhaps the hollowest, phoniest sound Max had ever heard. “Sarcasm in the face of imminent destruction—I expected nothing less from you. And such a valiant effort on your behalf, I must admit. You’ve racked up quite a body count.”
“Put away your toy soldiers, and I’ll add you to the list.”
That haughty laugh again. “You’re everything I expected and then some. I was wise to flee you in Romania. Back then I hadn’t nearly the manpower and security that I now possess.”
Max glanced at the destruction around the control room. “You don’t look very secure to me.”
“Nonsense, dear boy! Fear not, we are still quite prepared to receive your friends. Otto Christian is with you, correct? I look forward to meeting him as well, along with the rest of your pathetic band of mercenaries.”
Overconfident, that’s good. “They’ll kill every last one of you. Look how far I made it on my own.”
Wilde shook his head and smiled. “Dear boy, surely you realize I allowed you to get this far. I won’t play games with the others, nor with you now that you’re mine.” He turned to the large guard who had stabbed Max. “Hellik, take Mr. Ahlgren to the interrogation room. We have a bit of catching up to do.”
Apex Page 20
