Deep Down (Sam Stone Book 1)

by Worth, Janean

  Stone began to frog-marched the doctor toward the lift, and Jenny quickly crouched to relieve the doctor’s fallen companion of his mask, oxygen tank, gun and stun baton, then quickly caught up to Stone. At his back, she kept an eye out behind them for any threats.

  The man’s gun, a Kimber .380 Stinger, felt good in her hand even though it was slightly too big for her grip, and she was glad to have some form of protection again, though she’d have preferred her own .38 revolver.

  “Go ahead and put on the mask and tank so you don’t have to carry it. I’ll use the doctor’s oxygen after we make our phone call. If there’s trouble ahead, you’ll need both hands free to fire your weapon,” Stone told her over his shoulder, then slowed his pace a little so that she could comply.

  Jenny quickly slipped the mask on, tossed the hose that it was attached to over her shoulder so that it would be out of the way, then secured the oxygen tank awkwardly by its sling-like strap over her other shoulder. She stuffed the stun baton into her back pocket carefully, then palmed the Kimber.

  “Got it,” Jenny said, her voice muffled by the mask, and followed along as Stone resumed his fast pace toward the lift. The oxygenated air felt wonderful inside her lungs as it replaced the thick, stagnant air of the mines. She breathed a small sigh of relief as the tight asthmatic feeling that she’d borne all evening faded a little.

  In moments, they were rounding the corner near the lift, and Jenny tensed in preparation, all of her muscles ready for a confrontation.

  Stone entered first, pushing the doctor ahead of him, making sure that anyone in front of them would be able to see the gun he held to the man’s head.

  Three black-suited sentries stood near the lift. They turned toward Stone in unison when they caught the movement of the doctor’s forced entrance.

  One of them went for the weapon at his hip, but Stone’s hard voice stopped the man cold, “Do it, and the doctor dies. And so do you.”

  The men all slowly raised their hands in a mutual gesture of surrender.

  “Step away from the phone on the wall and stand together near the lift’s gate. Keep your hands where I can see them at all times. If I even see you twitch, things are going to get ugly, real quick,” Stone’s voice brooked no argument, and the three wisely listened to his instructions, following them to the letter as they shambled slowly toward the lift, keeping their hands in the air.

  “Jenny, pick up the phone and dial this number, 316-875-4332. Ask for Dave,” Stone told her. “And tell me if you hear multiple clicks before you’re connected. That would mean that the CDC has control of the line and is rerouting it.”

  She kept the Kimber pointed at the men with her right hand, then carefully pried open the metal lid of the phone box, lifted the receiver and entered the number into the large keypad, none too proud of the way that her fingers trembled slightly with nerves as she pressed each digit.

  She was relieved when the phone on the other end of the line began to ring right away. No clicks. The first break they’d had all evening.

  Chapter Twenty

  Jenny dialed the phone for the third time, the hand holding the Kimber becoming slick with nervous sweat.

  “C’mon, answer,” she muttered to the ringing line.

  Dave hadn’t answered the first three times that she’d called, so she didn’t know why she thought he might answer the call now on the fourth try, but it would have been nice if he had. Already, she’d noticed that one of the men that Stone held at gunpoint had begun to fidget and look around for a way out of his current predicament. Jenny knew that it was only a matter of time before they tried something.

  Stone obviously realized this too, because when the shrill beep of Dave’s voicemail pierced the air, easily heard through the handset in the dead quiet of the cavern, he signed heavily. Keeping his eyes on the three men, he said, “Just leave a message on his voicemail, Jenny. We’re running out of time. Tell him that we need his help, that we’re trapped here in the Strata museum with unleashed bacteria that has been mutated by an unknown toxic substance and the CDC is willing to let us all suffocate before they do anything. Tell him to contact the EPA and the news outlets. He’ll take it from there. If he gets the message.”

  Jenny nodded, then quickly repeated the message to Dave’s voicemail. In seconds, she was hanging up the phone’s handset.

  “Now, before you make another call, go over and see if you can find any zip ties or handcuffs on these men. They’re getting the jitters,” Stone said, the 1911 still pointed steadily at the three men.

  Jenny reluctantly stuffed the Kimber into the waistband of her pants, though she hated to since she’d always thought that was one of the most dangerous ways to carry a loaded firearm. She had scoffed numerous times when she’d seen the action performed on one TV show or another. Now, she tried not to give it another thought as she made her way over to the three men.

  “Got any zip ties or cuffs?” she asked the first one.

  The man acted as if she wasn’t there, ignoring her completely as he stared hard at Stone.

  Jenny heaved a sigh, “Suit yourself.”

  The man was wearing one of the odd black quarantine suits, which seemed to be one part tactical gear and one part sealed protection from biohazards. The suit looked almost like a diver’s wetsuit, slick and rubbery, but much roomier and less snug, and it had two large pockets attached to the material at each leg, one at thigh level and the other at calf level, plus a more traditional looking set of pockets sewn in at the hips. Kneeling, she started with the bottom pockets, none too keen on putting her hands in the pockets at his hips, which seemed way too personal to her.

  The first pocket she opened contained two extra magazines for his weapon and a telescoping nightstick. Jenny tossed the extra magazines and nightstick onto the saltcrete floor beside her. The metal clattered loudly in the tense silence. The man’s second pocket contained nothing. In the third pocket, Jenny found a curl of thick, black zip ties bundled together.

  “Found some,” she said, turning to look at Stone over her shoulder, holding the ties aloft.

  The man immediately took advantage of the distraction, and chose that exact moment to lift his leg and kick her square in the chest with his booted foot. The impact knocked her backward and forced the air from her lungs at the same time. As she fell backward toward the floor, she saw all three men reaching to draw their weapons.

  Time seemed to slow to a crawl. As her back hit the dusty saltcrete, Stone fired the 1911 and shoved the doctor to the side at the same time, taking a step after the falling physician.

  The man who’d kicked her was hit in the chest by the first round, but as he went down, he managed to sqeeze off a shot at the same time Stone fired again. The man’s bullet went wide of his target, hitting the salt walls and pinging around the space like an angry hornet. Stone’s second shot hit the second man in the shoulder, and the man crumpled, landing almost directly on top of his fallen companion.

  Jenny used her legs to kick out, crawling backward across the dusty saltcrete like a crab that had been upended and beached. She scrabbled backwards for purchase just as the third man brought his weapon to bear on Stone.

  Stone fired again, but the 1911 jammed a millisecond after he pulled the trigger, the hammer making a useless hollow click as it hit empty air inside the chamber.

  Even behind the man’s biohazard mask, Jenny saw his lips turn up in an evil grin.

  Jenny went for the Kimber, but the man’s eyes flicked toward her, a savage expression twisting his features.

  “Don’t do it, or I’ll shoot him,” the man said, stepping over the bodies of his fallen companions toward Stone.

  “You’re good,” he told Stone. “I wasn’t expecting that. If your gun hadn’t jammed, you’d have gotten me too. But, well, it did, and now the tables have turned, haven’t they?”

  Jenny watched the man walk toward Stone until he had the barrel of his Ruger pressed up against Stone’s chest, directly over his heart
. Jenny shuddered, fear chasing its way down her spine as she stared up at the scene from the dusty floor.

  The doctor stood up from where he’d fallen against the wall and began frantically inspecting his suit for tears. Finding none, he walked closer to the man holding Stone at gunpoint.

  “Shoot him,” the doctor said. “He’s nothing but trouble. Then call up top and ask Dennis what should be done with these men that have been shot. Their NBC suits have been breached.”

  Jenny watched in horror as the man nodded, agreeing to murder Stone before her eyes.

  The doctor stepped over to her and bent, offering a hand in assisting her to her feet, the first sign of courtesy that she’d seen him show to anyone.

  “For now, you can live. I have a use for you. Or rather, I have a use for your blood. Despite Dr. Shean’s assurances that his samples of it are large enough to sustain research for both of us, I might need more of it after I begin testing, so I’d prefer to keep you alive a while longer. At least until the clean-up efforts down here begin.”

  The man acted as if he was doing her an enormous favor by allowing her to live a few extra hours, which, to his mind, he probably was. But being used as a lab rat wasn’t Jenny’s idea of a good time.

  Jenny ignored his offered hand and climbed slowly to her feet, giving a theatrical groan as she rose, clutching at her chest where the guard had kicked her only moments ago.

  “I think he might have broken something,” she gasped, just for good measure.

  The doctor seemed unperturbed by the thought of her injury, but his eyes went to her clutching hands as she’d wanted. Taking advantage of his momentary distraction, she stepped to the side, using his bulky white shape to conceal her movements from the man behind him, then went for the Kimber.

  The doctor’s eyes widened behind his face shield and he gasped.

  “Gun,” he shouted just as she brought the weapon up to fire.

  The doctor ducked left and the man in front of Stone moved to turn his gun on her, swinging it away from Stone. And though the barrel of the gun swung rapidly toward her, Jenny didn’t fire. She had no shot. The trajectory was all wrong. Any bullet she fired at the man had the potential to hit Stone too. She stared toward the swinging barrel, seeing her imminent death in the arc.

  Stone reacted faster than she’d imagined possible. He reached forward in a smooth motion with his right hand, grabbing the man’s arm as the gun barrel swung away from his chest. Simultaneously, Stone drew back his left arm, fist balled tightly, and then hammered it into the man’s head as the sentry turned toward Jenny, landing a powerful blow to the man’s temple. The sentry joined his companions on the floor, his gun clattering uselessly against the saltcrete after falling from his slack, unconscious fingers.

  Jenny lowered the Kimber as Stone stepped toward her, relief surging through every nerve in her body. Adrenaline from the close call hammered through her veins on the tail of the relief, leaving her shaking and rubber-legged.

  Stone took the gun from her trembling hand and then enfolded her in a hard embrace, and she accepted this comfort gratefully, feeling as if her knees had turned to jelly.

  “Don’t move, Doctor,” Stone said against her hair, and she felt him raise his arm and level the Kimber in the man’s direction.

  Jenny gasped in a shuddering breath, stiffened her resolve and her knees, and stepped out of his embrace so that he’d be able to concentrate on the doctor’s movements.

  “Pick up that phone and call whoever is in charge up top. Tell them you need the lift sent down immediately,” Stone ordered.

  “They won’t do it,” the doctor said even as he moved toward the phone. “They won’t risk contaminating the surface.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  The doctor made the call, then turned back to Stone, satisfaction written all over his face.

  “They’ve refused to send it back down. And you heard me, I didn’t tell them that I was being held at gunpoint or that anything was out of the ordinary. They just don’t want to risk it, especially knowing that, in a few short hours, it will all be over anyway. What’s more, because of my unscheduled contact, as a matter of security, Mr. Malnon has had this phone line disabled until the next scheduled call, which is in four hours time.”

  Stone heaved a resigned sigh, as if he’d expected the refusal to send the lift, but he’d wanted the doctor to try anyway. And, hearing the doctor’s response, Jenny fervently hoped that her call to Dan had actually gone through. Maybe the reason that Dan hadn’t answered was due to the fact that the CDC had hijacked the call.

  “Jenny, I’m going to need you to cover the doctor while I restrain him,” Stone said.

  Jenny nodded, moving to pick up the bundle of zip ties from where she’d dropped them and then handing them over to Stone. He gave her the Kimber and she took it, pointing it at the doctor, relieved to see that her shaking was now under control and her aim would be true if she needed to use the gun.

  “If he even twitches, shoot him. And don’t bother with center mass, just make sure the bullet breaches his suit. The effect will be the same,” Stone said.

  Jenny nodded in agreement.

  Stone moved over to the doctor, then spun the man around with a hand on his shoulder and used the zip ties to restrain his hands behind his back.

  “Sit,” Stone told the man.

  The doctor sat. His bulky suit and restrained hands made the process awkward, but he managed it after less than a minute of trying.

  Stone bent and used three zip ties, connected together like the links of a chain to bind the man’s ankles together, preventing any lateral movement, effectively making it impossible for the man to rise without assistance.

  Next, Stone moved from man to man across the floor, peeling back the tight black quarantine hoods to check for a pulse in each man’s neck. If they still lived, he used the zip ties to restrain them. If not, he moved on to the next man.

  In moments, three of them were trussed up like turkeys ready for the roasting pan, hands behind their backs, legs bound at the ankles, and the two sets of restraints joined together behind their backs with an additional set of zip ties.

  Stone gathered their fallen weapons, plus the extra magazines that Jenny had dumped on the floor, and moved back to the doctor’s side.

  “If I were you, I would try very hard not to struggle against your bonds. You never know what small fraction of movement might cut your suit and expose you to the bacteria.”

  The doctor’s frightened eyes met Stone’s gaze through the clear plastic of his hood, but he made no reply.

  “How many more men like them were sent down here?” Stone asked the doctor, gesturing toward the black-suited sentries.

  “Six,” the doctor said.

  Stone turned to back to Jenny.

  “We’ve got to hurry if there’s going to be any chance to save the rest of those people in the dining cavern,” Stone told her.

  “I know,” Jenny agreed as she stuffed the Kimber back into her waistband. “Aren’t you going to take the doctor’s suit?”

  Stone glanced over at the doctor, then shook his head. “No. If we can’t find a way to stop the bacteria, or at least treat the symptoms, taking his suit would be the same as murdering him in cold blood.”

  Jenny nodded. She understood. And though she thought that the doctor deserved a whole lot worse than he was getting, particularly because of his lack of even an ounce of human compassion and his failure at attempting to treat the others, she agreed with Stone. The other men had tried to kill them both, and Stone had had no choice but to act. But taking the doctor’s suit would be different. A pre-meditated act. And Stone did not kill the innocent.

  He bent to remove the oxygen canister and mask from the only fallen man who wasn’t wearing restraints, easily detaching the two items since they were separate components that attached to the outside of the black quarantine suits, unlike the interior oxygen supply systems in the bulkier, white quarantine suits such a
s the one the doctor wore. The man wouldn’t be needing it anymore. He was no longer breathing.

  “Let’s go,” Stone said

  Jenny was only too happy to follow him. She turned and was halfway to the entrance to the tunnel before she turned back.

  “Wait,” she told Stone.

  She walked quickly back to the doctor. “In your opinion, what reason could there be that Stone and I are the only people here who have inert bacteria in our blood? What could have caused that?”

  The doctor shook his head, “I can’t say for certain.”

  Jenny glared at the man. “Then guess!”

  “Medical science should not be based on a guess,” the doctor said.

  Jenny felt a sudden urge to kick the man. “A guess is all we’ve got right now. So speak, or, I swear I’ll reconsider and put a hole in your suit right now.”

  “Fine,” the doctor whined. “My best guess is that the effect is caused by the fact that both of you have high levels of Vitamin D and traces of rebaudiana

  in your systems. In a few clinical trials, the laboratory tests have shown that rebaudiana has limited ability to kill some strains of bacteria, such as E. coli. And Vitamin D is widely known to prohibit bacteria from flourishing in host bodies. In winter, as it is now here in Kansas, Vitamin D levels are lower in most humans, due to a lack of sustained exposure to sunshine. In our preliminary tests, everyone down here, with the exception of you two, had lower than normal levels of Vitamin D. And the others had not even a trace of rebaudiana. I’d hypothesize that, at first, the bacteria attacked your cells much as it did in the others, but, the high levels of Vitamin D and rebaudiana in your bodies forced the bacteria into an inert state after limited exposure.”

  “Vitamin D? And stevia? That’s it?” Jenny was horrified. “You’re kidding, right?”

  “No,” the doctor said. “I never joke.”

  “Stevia?” Stone asked. “As in the sweetener that you’re always insisting that we use instead of sugar?”