He could have done so many things differently, small things that would have rippled out and brought about entirely different results. He could see that so clearly now. But there was no going back. There were no do-overs, no second tries. The billions who lay at his feet would always be there.
When he heard a motor in the distance, he climbed out of the car, removed from the back seat the duffel bag containing the special presents he’d brought for the principal director, and walked over to the parking lot entrance.
The car approached, lights off. Nearing the entrance, it slowed, and then stopped entirely as the driver caught sight of Matt. For several moments the two men stared at each other across the dimly lit space between them—the presumed dead, former Project Eden member and his friend who had stayed, both older now but neither as wise as they wished they had been.
Curtis Wicks made a U-turn. As soon as he stopped at the curb, Matt opened the door and climbed in.
“Hello, Curtis,” Matt said.
“I…I don’t know what to call you,” Wicks said.
“I’ve been Matt for so long, I don’t think I could answer to anything else.”
Wicks held out his hand. “Good to see you, Matt.”
Matt shook it. “You, too, my friend. You, too.”
“WHAT ABOUT THERE?” Sorrento asked.
The Humvee had just entered the Las Cruces city limits.
Ash looked through the light snowfall at the set of interconnected buildings Sorrento was pointing at. It appeared to be a school with several large parking areas. Perfect place for a convoy to hide.
“Yeah. Let’s take a look.”
THE PASSING HOURS hadn’t made Hiller like the situation any more than he had when Mr. Hamilton told him what was going to happen. Sure, Mr. Hamilton was the boss, but going off on his own? That was crazy. What could he possibly accomplish by himself? He should have, at the very least, taken one of the men with him.
But Hiller had been trained to follow orders, and Mr. Hamilton’s orders were to wait thirty minutes after he left Alamogordo, then proceed to the Las Cruces shopping center where they now were, and wait.
“Be ready,” Mr. Hamilton had said. “If I need you, I’ll call, but if nine p.m. comes and I haven’t, don’t hang around. Get to Ward Mountain as quickly as possible.”
Hiller checked his watch. There was less than an hour to the deadline.
No, he didn’t like this one bit.
NB219
8:16 PM MST
MATT FELT HIS chest constrict as they pulled to a stop near the warehouse that sat above NB219. It had been a long time since he’d been so close to a Project Eden facility, and even longer since he’d been near this one, back when it was still under construction.
“We have to hurry,” Wicks said. “I have to be in my office in ten minutes. And it won’t look good if I’m late.”
He led Matt to the auxiliary entrance, located one hundred feet from the side of the warehouse. Meant primarily for emergencies, it was below ground, the door situated in a cutout that had been made to look like part of an arroyo. To open it, Wicks placed an ID card against a reader attached to the frame, and they were in.
A tunnel sloped gently upward, taking them all the way to the warehouse level. Another door, another reader. After the lock clicked open, Wicks held up a hand, telling Matt to stay put while he slipped through the doorway.
Matt was beginning to feel his friend had been gone too long when the door opened and Wicks waved him inside.
“We’re all clear,” Wicks whispered. “Here, put these on.” He was holding out a dark gray jumpsuit and matching baseball cap. “It’s what security wears.”
Matt put the duffel on the ground and donned the suit. After he zipped it up, he pulled on the hat, wearing it low so the bill would shade his eyes.
“Okay,” he said, picking up the duffel.
Wicks led him through the packed warehouse, and made Matt wait again in one of the aisles while he summoned the elevator. As soon as the doors opened, Matt walked as briskly as his bad leg would allow, from his hiding place and into the car with Wicks.
“When we get out, follow me,” Wicks instructed. “But not too close. Don’t make it look like we’re together.”
As Matt followed Wicks off the elevator two minutes later, he had another overwhelming moment of dread. He was actually here, in the belly of the beast. Suddenly the plan he’d made seemed ridiculous, impossible. There was no way it was going to work.
Stop it! he told himself. Take things one step at a time.
While the warehouse level had seemed deserted, down in the heart of NB219 plenty of people were passing from one hallway to another through the elevator lobby. Matt almost forgot to check for the panel but caught himself in time. It was there, all right, a few feet to the left of elevator car number one. Exactly where he remembered it.
Though he was increasing his physical discomfort, he did everything he could to minimize his limp as he followed Wicks down the hallway. Unfortunately, this required him to walk at an even slower pace than usual, so he fell farther and farther behind. When Wicks finally noticed, he was almost out of sight, and had to slow his own pace considerably until a more comfortable distance between them had been restored.
Matt was fairly sure no one had noticed him, but he was more than a little relieved when Wicks led him into an empty office and shut the door.
“Take this,” Wicks said, handing him the ID card he’d used to get them into the warehouse and to call the elevator. “It’ll open any door except to the principal director’s suite.”
“How am I supposed to get to him, then?” Matt asked.
“You don’t have to get into his suite. There’s a planning meeting at eleven p.m. in the conference room two doors down from here. No one’s using this office so you can stay in it right until the meeting starts.”
“You’re sure he’s going to be there.”
“He’s the one who initiated it. Wants to know where things are on the preparations for the recovery phase.”
“All right. Good.”
Wicks looked at his watch. “I need to leave.”
“Curtis, wait a second,” Matt said.
He set the duffel on the desk, unzipped it, and pulled out a plastic-wrapped package.
“You’ll find sixteen devices inside. Place them wherever you can, out of sight. The wider dispersion the better. There’s a sticky side, remove the plastic, and they’ll stay where you put them.”
Wicks hesitated a moment before taking the package. “Do I really need to do this?”
“Yes,” Matt said. “You do.”
WICKS TOOK A deep breath. “Right. I’m sorry. Of course, I’ll do it.” He took the package from his old friend.
Before heading for the door, he remembered the envelope in his pocket. He pulled it out and removed the piece of paper inside.
“Here,” he said, setting it on the desk.
Matt picked it up. “What is it?”
“Something you asked me to look into a long time ago.”
Matt unfolded the paper, read the words printed on it, and then looked at Wicks. “Is this—?”
“Yes.”
“But you said it didn’t exist.”
“I lied. I was scared and I lied. I’m sorry.”
He turned to leave.
“Hold on,” Matt said.
Wicks wanted to keep walking, but forced himself to look back at his friend.
“When the time comes,” Matt said, “you’ll want to be miles away from here.”
Thirty
WICKS ARRIVED AT his office just in time for his meeting with two of his team members—Adrian Bernstein and Evelyn Courser. Predictably, they were already waiting outside his door.
“Did you take care of the western Africa problem?” he asked Bernstein as he led them inside.
“Yes, sir,” Bernstein said. “It’s all done. Again, I’m sorry that—”
“It’s done,” Wicks sai
d curtly. “That’s all I care about.”
“Yes, sir.”
As Wicks moved around his desk, Bernstein and Courser started to sit down in the guest chairs.
“Don’t,” he said. “This needs to be quick.”
“Quick, sir?” Bernstein said. “But, uh, we’re supposed to be prepping you for the eleven o’clock meeting.”
“Do you think I don’t realize that? Unfortunately, I’ve been pulled into something else I need to deal with, so my time has become limited. I assume you put together notes?”
“Yes, sir,” Courser said.
“Then I suggest you highlight anything you were planning to point out, and send them to me. I’ll go over the notes before the meeting.”
Neither of his people looked happy with that solution, but Bernstein said, “If that’s what you’d like.”
“It is not what I’d like,” Wicks said. “What I would have liked was to take the full time for this prep meeting, and not be yanked around by those who have nothing better to do.”
“Of course,” Courser said.
“Right. No problem,” Bernstein threw in.
“Good. Then get to it.”
As soon as they were out of his office, Wicks shut the door and locked it.
Back at his desk, he opened the package Matt had given him. The devices were rectangular boxes made of some kind of plastic material. They were about three inches long by two wide, and another half inch thick.
Whatever their purpose, he knew it couldn’t be good, and the sooner he got rid of them, the better. He pulled his laptop bag out of the cabinet behind his desk, emptied out the pens and papers inside, and carefully transferred the devices into the wide center section.
When he finished, he took a deep breath, pushed himself up from his desk, and headed out.
MATT KNEW IF things went wrong, he couldn’t be found with the piece of paper Wicks had given him. If that happened, the Project might be able to trace it back to Wicks and eliminate any possibility of the message finding its way to the Resistance. So he spent several minutes memorizing the three words it contained, and then crumpled the paper so he could easily get rid of it.
Having kept a second set of devices like those he’d given Wicks, Matt headed down to the conference room where the meeting was supposed to be held and placed two of the small boxes in there. One would have been more than enough, but he didn’t want to risk failure.
Using his rusty knowledge of the facility’s layout, he made his way as close as he dared to the NB219 director’s suite, which he assumed had been taken over by Principal Director Perez, and hid half a dozen devices along the corridor.
As he made his way back, he placed all but one of the remaining devices where he could, and returned to his office hideout. There, he removed three more items from the duffel bag. The first was a mobile phone with a single, remote-control application on it. The second was a set of five one-pound bricks of an extremely powerful plastic explosive that had been strapped together. And the third, a detonator.
After slipping the phone into his pocket, he inserted the business end of the detonator into the explosives, and put the whole thing back into the bag. As an afterthought, he reached into the bag, wedged Wicks’s message between two of the bricks, and left the office again, headed for the center of the complex.
LAS CRUCES
MATT’S GROUP HAD not been at the school. Nor had they been at the business park a few miles west. Nor in the lot of the Big Kmart near the interstate.
Thinking it unlikely his friend would have wanted his group stationed to the north, closer to the Project Eden base, Ash had directed Sorrento to go south on a road that paralleled the I-25.
“Looks like a big shopping center coming up,” Sorrento said.
It appeared to be an indoor mall, with a wide parking lot already blanketed with a thin layer of snow. The portion of the lot they could see was empty.
“Take us in and around,” Ash said.
Sorrento drove their truck into the lot and headed to the south end. As they made the turn around the mall, they were lit up by four sets of headlights.
“Hold on!” Sorrento yelled as he slammed on the brakes.
“Get out of your vehicle right now!” someone yelled from beyond the lights.
Ash whipped his hand up to shield his eyes from the glare.
“Get out now!” the voice ordered.
“I think those are Humvees,” Chloe said.
Ash squinted his eyes and could just make out the shapes of two of the vehicles. Chloe was right. He also spotted something else. Behind them and off to the side was the shadow of another vehicle. Not a Humvee. A cargo truck.
He reached for his door.
“What are you doing?” Chloe asked.
“It’s them,” he said.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
He pushed out the door and stood in the opening, still on the truck. “Matt? Matt, it’s Ash!”
Hushed voices on the other side, then the lights cut out.
Ash squeezed his eyes shut, trying to readjust to the sudden darkness. When he opened them again, he could see someone stepping out from between the trucks.
“Captain Ash?”
Recognizing the voice, he said, “Hiller?”
“Yes, sir.”
Hiller took a few more steps forward and Ash could make out his face.
“We thought you were going to Nevada, sir,” Hiller said.
“Change of plans. ” Ash hopped to the ground. “I need to see Matt.”
“Um, Mr. Hamilton’s not here.”
“Please do not tell me he went to the base.”
“He did.”
“Alone?”
“I tried to get him to take one of us with him, but he wouldn’t go for it.”
Ash swore under his breath as he looked out into the storm.
“Where is he?” Chloe said, getting out of the truck.
“We’re too late,” Ash said. “He’s gone.”
“That son of a bitch. What does he think he’s doing? How the hell is he going to handle this on his own?”
Ash looked back at Hiller. “Do you know what he had planned?”
“No, sir. He just told us to wait here, and if he didn’t call in by nine p.m., we were to head for Nevada.”
“Tell me he took a gun with him, at least,” Chloe said.
“I don’t know. The only thing he had was a duffel bag.”
“What was inside?” Ash asked.
“No idea.”
Ash rubbed a hand across his chin. With a frown he said, “As much as I wish we could go blazing in and pull him out of there, it’s not an option. But sitting around here and waiting isn’t, either.” He looked at Chloe. “You and I are going to move in close. Hiller, I need two of your best men to come with us.”
“That would be me and Lin,” Hiller said.
It didn’t surprise Ash that Hiller would want to come along. “Okay, the two of you pull together some weapons and whatever gear you think we might need. Chloe and I will appropriate one of those cars over there.” He nodded toward the part of the lot where a handful of cars were scattered. Any of them would be stealthier than using one of the Humvees.
“What’s the plan?” Chloe asked.
“We watch. If there’s any way to tell if Matt’s in trouble, we go in. Worse case, we’ll be a hell of a lot closer if he does call for help.”
NEAR FORT MEADE, MARYLAND
10:34 PM EST
“SO?” TAMARA ASKED.
“Another second. I’ve almost got it,” Bobby told her.
“FYI, not the first time you’ve said that.”
“If you’d stop talking to me, maybe I could…there! I think that’s it.” He pulled out from the rack where his head and arms had been buried. “Let’s give it a try. Get in front of the camera.”
The camera was aimed so that the rows of workstations would be seen in the background. It wasn’t as dramatic
a backdrop as the White House, but Tamara felt it would do.
She moved into position. “All set.”
Bobby typed a few commands into the computer he’d been using, and Tamara’s image filled the giant wall screen.
“Are we going out?” she said surprised. “Is this it?”
“Not yet,” he said. “Only an internal test. But it means it works.”
“So we can do it?”
“Yeah. Whenever you want.”
“Now,” she said. “Let’s do it now.”
Grinning, Bobby turned back to the computer. “I’ll point at you when you’re live, but give it a couple of seconds before you start. You know, for everyone to realize that jerk isn’t on the air anymore.”
He input the string of commands he’d worked out earlier. In theory, they would override the Project Eden signal and replace it with their broadcast, but since this was the first time he was trying them out, he couldn’t help but feel he should be crossing his fingers. As he typed in the last few characters, he muttered, “Please work,” and punched the ENTER key.
His gaze shifted to the four small monitors he’d hooked up on the neighboring desk. Each had a piece of white tape stuck in the bottom corner, with letters written on them—NA for the North American feed, SA for the South American, E for the European, and A for the Asian. Until that moment, all four monitors had been playing the message from the faux secretary general of the UN.
Now, one by one, Tamara’s image began replacing Di Sarsina’s. When she appeared in the last monitor—the one for North America—Bobby pointed at her.
She waited a few beats, and then began.
“My name is Tamara Costello. Some of you might remember me as a reporter at PCN. This is not a PCN broadcast. They do not exist anymore. None of the networks do. My purpose for speaking to you is to expose a lie you have all been told. Gustavo Di Sarsina is not the secretary general of the United Nations. I am not sure Gustavo Di Sarsina is even his real name. I do know that the United Nations no longer exists, and therefore it could have not initiated a worldwide effort to save those of us who are still alive.” She paused. “The survival stations Mr. Di Sarsina talked about have nothing to do with survival. Mr. Di Sarsina and the people who are running these stations are the very same people who are responsible for releasing the Sage Flu on the world. The only purpose of these stations is to finish the job. To be clear, what I mean is that if you go to one of these ‘survival stations,’ you will die. Do not trust these people. Do not go anywhere near them. Do not let them know where you are. If you are someplace where English is not spoken but you understand what I’m saying, please, I beg you, translate my words so others will know, too. We need to stay alive. We need to survive.” She paused again. “My name is Tamara Costello. You might remember me as a reporter at PCN. This isn’t a…”
The Project Eden Thrillers Box Set 2: Books 4 - 6 (Ashes, Eden Rising, & Dream Sky) Page 51
