"Nice," he said.
"We'll arm up once we're on the ground," Lynn said. "Buckle up."
She entered coordinates into one of the virtual dash panels of the drone and it took off smoothly, rising straight up like an elevator car.
"Smooth ride," Oscar commented. "How far out are we?"
"Twelve point three miles. It'll take us about twenty minutes to get there. Nice and slow. No reason to go faster, on the off chance that we catch the attention of the air traffic commission."
Oscar chuckled. Nice and slow. Just sixty miles an hour, which was ten faster than the top speed of his own little drone.
"How do you feel about our chances?" he asked by way of small talk. Otherwise, the tension that grew over the next ten minutes could ruin them psychologically, set them up for failure and inevitable death before they ever got inside the complex.
"Not good," Lynn said calmly. "Greyson has no shortage of resources or guys he's blackmailed into dying for him. We'll be fighting an army. I can almost guarantee that. Our only saving grace is that we'll be fighting in hallways. Chokepoints. That is, after we cross the grounds."
"How big?"
"A hundred acres of nothing much other than mown grass. Spotlights up near the buildings. Patrolling guards. It'll be like trying to get into any top-secret facility without being spotted, except when we get caught, we won't be slapped on the wrist and stuck in a holding cell for a few days… Have you infiltrated many top-secret research facilities in your life, Oscar?"
He laughed darkly, recalling the myriad of parallels between the full scope of the work he used to do and the present task at hand. “Once or twice,” he finally lied, not seeing a reason to point out that it had actually been many more times than that.
The talk faded after that and so too did the city lights as the drone carried them into the darker outskirts. They rose between two meandering wisps of cloud, hiding against the backdrop of the night sky. Beneath them, the land rolled up into sage covered hills. The lights of the buildings were increasingly sparse, but the traffic on the roads was still heavy. Like beads of dew on the strands of a spider's web, the streets radiating outward from the city center were always full of cars.
Then they seemed to pass some barrier, into a corner of land where no one had any cause for traveling. The road beneath them turned to dirt. Far below, Oscar thought he saw a fence, a barricade across the road and hidden further up behind some bushes, a rather high tech looking guard hut.
"We're almost there," Lynn warned. "If we got shot down now, that would be a real treat."
"We won't," Oscar said confidently.
She didn't look so sure. A moment later, she began gentle evasive maneuvers, treating the sky like a slalom course. The brightly lit compound was now visible just ahead. They left behind the wild brush and arced over a manmade reservoir filled with water. That was Lynn's cue to bring them down. She initiated the drone's landing sequence. Oscar found himself tensing up, pushing against his seat, as the vehicle fell rapidly toward the ground.
Its descent decelerated at the last moment and they touched down gently. The doors popped open, letting in a cool night breeze. Lynn immediately unfastened her belt and whipped around, squeezing between the seats to reach the back compartment. Oscar followed, ducking his head to avoid the ceiling.
"Let's make this quick," Lynn said, pulling open a locker and withdrawing a sword— a katana from the looks of the curved sheath and the intimidating glowing red diamond patterned that lined the exquisitely crafted hilt.
CHAPTER 15
◆◆◆
A few minutes later, they were running through shadows. They headed away from the lake and into a narrow stretch of no man's land, where a drainage ditch stood clogged with trash and stagnant water that reeked to high heaven. It was narrow enough to jump across. At least for Lynn. With her sword sheathed at her waist, she hopped deftly to the other side, then held onto the trunk of a stunted tree and leaned over the gap, extending her other hand toward Oscar.
With a running leap, he sailed over the rancid trench. He felt the toe of his right boot land on the lip of the ditch, slip on a bit of dirt, then bite into the grit of the concrete. He grabbed Lynn's forearm and hauled himself to safety.
"Good teamwork," he said. "Let's keep that up. I know this isn’t my first rodeo, but I can’t help but feel you’ll have to pick up a lot of slack for me..."
She shook her head. "You're Oscar Graves. And you're pissed off. If I was Greyson, I'd be pissing myself right now."
That made Oscar feel a lot better.
This side of the drainage ditch was filled with thick growths of dry, gnarled trees. They had to pick their way through slowly and tediously, getting more frustrated all the while. Through the trees ahead of them, they saw the distant flood lights of the compound. Shining brilliantly and in dense arrays. How the hell were they going to get past that?
Finally they tore their way through the trees. Suddenly they were in the open, exposed, standing on a ragged and weedy margin that separated the compound's vast lots from the relative wilderness around it. Following Lynn's lead, Oscar sprinted through the dark toward a chain link fence. Lynn climbed almost to the top of it and, reaching up with a pair of snips, she quickly dismantled a stretch of razor wire and let it fall to the grass inside the fence.
No words were spoken. Lynn dropped down to the other side and, by the time she looked back, Oscar was already hauling himself over. The fence rattled and jangled under his weight and he looked around, biting his lip. There were no guards in sight just yet.
"If you narrow your eyes," Lynn whispered, "you can make out a gap between two floodlights that is wider than any other. Do you see it?"
Oscar squinted. The goggles helped, clearing his vision, and he noticed the gap she was talking about. It was a good six feet wider than the space between any other pair of lights.
"I see it," he said.
"That's where all the utilities come in," Lynn said. "That's our point of entrance."
He didn't ask her to explain it further. There was no time. They were already pushing the envelope just by standing here. He would just have to trust her, follow her lead.
They ran. They ran as fast as Oscar could manage. He was in good shape... for his age, but they both knew that he was nowhere near as fast as Lynn’s potential top speed. She could have made it to the building in less than half the time, but then she'd have to face the inside of the building alone. Instead, Lynn throttled her speed and strode alongside her organic counterpart, a fact that Oscar was thankful for.
The grass brightened bit by bit as they came closer to the building. Soon enough they were running through the blinding glow of the floodlights. Right in the open, plain as day for anyone to see. Looking right, Oscar saw the guard booth on the road in the distance but no guard. Looking left, he saw someone just as they walked around the corner of the building, headed away. Other than that, there was no one inside. So far, their luck was holding out.
Oscar thought about dropping some weight to reach the building sooner. The lights made him feel horribly vulnerable. The guns were weighing him down, slapping him in the ribs and making plenty of noise as they swung on their straps. Still he held tough, sprinting on and trying not to wheeze like an old man. Once they were inside, he might need every bit of firepower he could carry, and then some.
By some miracle, they reached the edge of the building without incident. No one called out in alarm, no sirens blared, no dogs were loosed to tear Oscar's balls off. He touched the concrete wall of the building, patting it appreciatively.
"Over here," Lynn whispered.
They climbed over a low railing and entered a maze of ducts and industrial sized pipes that snaked in and out of the ground and walls. Some of them ran all the way to the roof. There was an access ladder, closed off behind a padlocked cage.
"We're going down," Lynn said. Oscar assumed she was making all this up as she went along, but he had seen enough to trust h
er judgment and it didn’t hurt that he agreed with her play.
They found a set of stairs leading down to a lonely steel door with a dim yellow light glowing above it. The door was festooned with all sorts of warnings and notices. It was locked, and there was a number pad beside it for entering a code. Lynn was prepared; she pulled a decryption device from her belt and slid its needle-like cable into a tiny hole on the top of the key pad. In a few moments, she had the code.
They stepped through the door into a dimly lit and noisy cavern. Huge machines loomed everywhere, filling the air with the din of turbines and condensers. Lynn shut the door and they were able to take a moment to breathe. Even if there were any guards down here, the sound of their entrance would be masked by all the noise.
Lynn checked her tracking map again.
"The Unit is on the top level, it looks like," she said.
"And Greyson is there too?"
"I'm not a hundred percent sure, but chances are he's sticking close to his bodyguard. She hasn't let him down so far."
Oscar smiled. "Then let's go fuck up her winning streak."
They found their way through the basement thanks to a bunch of color-coded lines on the floor. Finally, they spotted an exit sign up ahead. Just behind it was a set of stairs, leading up. Ducking behind a dormant generator, they waited and watched the stairs for any signs of movement. Oscar took a deep breath to push back the nausea and fear. He tried to pretend that he was on an ordinary stakeout, following some guy who may or may not be cheating on his wife. He looked over at Lynn. She seemed completely calm and cool, except that she kept tapping her foot at the speed of a heavy metal bass drummer.
No one came down. It seemed the basement was not a high priority. Oscar and Lynn left their hiding places and climbed the steps two at a time. The door at the top had a window in it. Lynn stuck her face up against it and strained to get a good view of the hall beyond.
“Looks clear," she said. "Let's go. Quickly. The door straight across the hall."
Oscar nodded. She opened the door, quickly but quietly, and they darted to the door directly across from them. No one cried out this time either, and they soon entered a brightly lit stairwell. There were more stairs going down, to a different sub-level Oscar assumed. At the landing above them, a big number 2 was attached to the wall.
"We're in it now," Oscar grunted. "Let's hope the people who work here are lazy and decide to use the elevator instead."
Lynn reached beneath her gown’s sleek skirt and slid a pistol from a thigh holster and threaded a long suppressor onto its barrel. Oscar withdrew his own suppressor and did the same.
"Going up?" Lynn said with a nervous chuckle.
"Going up," Oscar confirmed.
They ran up the stairs, landing on their toes to avoid the loud slap of boot heels on concrete. Past level 2, past level 3. As they approached the landing of level 4, Oscar was feeling tired. His legs burned, but he turned his mind to thoughts of Catalea. Thoughts of what he wanted to do to the man that may have killed her. A surge of strength came to him, and he charged ahead of Lynn toward the landing.
Just then, the door opened and a thin old man in a lab coat walked into the stairwell. He froze stiff, staring at the two armed and masked figures who were approaching him. The door slowly shut and latched behind the man.
"Don't make a goddamn sound," Oscar hissed.
The man was shaking. His Adam's apple bobbed up and down and his tongue twitched as he tried to think of what to say.
"Don't hurt me," he finally managed.
"I said no sound!" Oscar whispered sharply.
He saw that the guy's hand was slipping into the pocket of his lab coat. Without thinking, Oscar slammed the butt of his handgun into the old man's temple and sent him crumpling to the floor, unconscious.
"Shit," he said. "I wonder if—"
He was interrupted by the sudden screaming of a siren that echoed through the building, nearly splitting his ears as it filled the stairwell. He ducked his head reflexively as the lights went from bright to blinding, and then faded toward blackness before suddenly surging back to the fury of the sun. A slow but dramatic strobe, probably meant to disorient any intruders. It was working well. Oscar's depth perception was screwed as he clawed at where he thought the handle of the door was but hit nothing but air.
Lynn came to his rescue, pulling the door open and pushing him through. He heard the sharp snick of her silenced pistol as she put a round into the old man on the floor.
Oscar looked both ways down the fourth level corridor. He didn't see anyone, but he thought he heard them. Shouting voices, hammering feet. Stumbling like a man who was both drunk and blind, his senses overloaded by the screaming siren and the drastic changes in light, he fought his way toward a random room and entered it. He suddenly smacked face first into a wall and fell onto his ass.
Lynn joined him, shutting the door behind her and smashing the light fixture overhead with the handle of a broom. They were in a custodian's storage closet, a space no bigger than the bathroom at Oscar's apartment.
"Nice dead end you've led us into," Lynn said. "At least the door doesn't have a window. If we're lucky, they might assume we continued up the stairs. Let's just wait here a bit."
Oscar groaned. "The light..."
Lynn reached over and flipped a switch on his goggles.
"There," she said. "They'll compensate for changes in brightness now. You should see a fairly steady image. I thought you knew how to use these things?"
"It’s been a while… Sit down or something, you're making me nervous."
She sat down, perching atop a sealed bucket of spackling. She used the moment of rest to check her equipment, make sure everything was still accounted for. Finally, she pulled out the EMP grenade and turned it over in her hands. Oscar wished he could see the expression on her face right now. It was hard enough to tell what the dame was thinking even without a mask on her.
Over the next few minutes, they heard a dozen or so people marching past the door. About half of them seemed to split away and enter the stairwell. The remainder continued down the hall. Silence followed. The screaming siren cut out. Oscar couldn't tell, but he was willing to bet the strobing had stopped as well.
"What do you think?" Lynn asked.
"I reckon they found the dead guy by now," Oscar replied. "They know someone's in the building who means business. They aren't calling off the search yet, not by a long shot. They just want us to feel like it's safe to move around."
"So, what should we do?"
"I say we move around,” Oscar said with a grin, as he thumbed the hammer of his pistol back.
They stood, and Lynn cautiously opened the door and peeked through.
"Clear," she said.
Unfortunately, there was little choice but to use the stairwell. The elevators were probably shut down by now. The stairs themselves would be guarded. The only other way to reach the top level would be to find a window and try to climb, but then they would just get picked off the wall like dumb insects by perimeter guards posted outside.
So they hit the stairwell door running, Oscar aiming down toward level 3 and Lynn aiming up toward 5.
There was no one below. Oscar turned his gun to back Lynn up. There was no one at level 5 either. They lowered their weapons and glanced at each other. Obviously there was some trick being played here, and it did not feel very good at all.
"Going up?" Lynn asked again.
They climbed toward 5 cautiously, checking all their angles, keeping their trigger fingers limber. No one appeared. Oscar realized belatedly that even the dead guy on the landing below them was gone. Only a blood stain remained. Someone would have to get in here with a pressure hose to blast it away.
"Six is the top level," Lynn said. "That's where the Unit is, and that's where Greyson would be. We just have to make it one more level..."
Oscar felt his heart thump as they turned the corner and looked up toward the top. He fully expected a last seco
nd ambush, a half dozen guys with rifles lying silently in wait. But the landing of level 6 was just as empty as the others.
"This doesn't make any sense," he said.
"I won't complain," Lynn replied. "Just as long as Greyson doesn't see tomorrow, I'll be okay with whatever happens to me."
Oscar wanted to say "amen," but all he could think about was Catalea. It would almost be better if he knew for a fact that she was dead. He could go into this cold, without a fear or a worry for himself. But now he was a mess, his anxiety spiking higher with each level he climbed.
"They definitely have some plan here," Lynn said, approaching the door to the level 6 corridor. "We just haven't seen it yet."
She twisted the handle. It didn't move. She tried again, with the same result.
"It's locked," she said.
"I don't like this," Oscar said.
"Neither do I. Let's go back down to five. Maybe we can find another way up."
They retreated to the next level down. Lynn tried the door, and it popped right open. They hopped through, each of them covering a branch of the hallway. Oscar saw nothing but an empty corridor.
"Look at this," Lynn whispered.
He looked and saw a wall of furniture and lab tables blocking one entire end of the hallway.
"It looks like we're being funneled," Lynn continued.
"Like rats in a maze,” Oscar agreed.
"But this may be a good thing."
"How's that?" Oscar grunted.
"It must mean Greyson doesn't have as many guards on staff as he'd like," Lynn went on. "He's trying to make the most of them. Gathering them all close to him. He doesn't have enough to patrol the whole building, so he's just having them all surround the most important asset; him."
"Sounds like something he would do," Oscar said.
At the same time, without a word, they switched their silenced pistols out for something meatier. And then they hurried along the hall to await whatever fate Greyson had set out for them.
Grave Makers (Darkside Dreams - Series 1 Book 2) Page 9
