She put each in a different pocket of her jeans, memorizing which was which so she wouldn’t have to do it under pressure.
“Anyone have a handkerchief or something?” asked O’Neal. “Anything she can hold to her nose.”
Shepard took off his flannel shirt and tossed it to Alex.
“Hold your breath as long as you can,” her father said. “Take shallow breaths if you have to. We’re counting on you.”
Alex took a flashlight, pressed the shirt to her nose—it smelled of sweat and Old Spice—and ran.
Her footsteps on the metallic steps echoed in the War Room. She took her last deep breath about halfway down. When she hit ground level, the smell of rotten eggs assaulted her. She had to be careful now. Conserve her breath. Breathing in too much of this air could asphyxiate her. If she lost consciousness, it would be certain death for them all.
She ran across the War Room and into the main hallway of Zeta headquarters, following Shepard’s directions to a narrow door just outside the gym.
She pulled out the key from her back pocket—and dropped it. The world swam before her eyes. She couldn’t lose consciousness. Not now.
Alex slammed the flashlight against her thigh, still injured from when she’d cut herself out of her cast. Invigorating pain flooded her and brought her back to a keen awareness.
Okay, let’s do this. She shone the light on the floor. She bent down, picked up the key, and inserted it into the slot. It slid in. She unlocked the door and opened it.
The maintenance closet did not deserve the name. It was shallow—maybe twenty inches deep, with two thick pipes running from top to bottom.
She shifted the light up. The closet extended upward some forty, fifty feet. She couldn’t help noticing that there wasn’t a ladder.
Only one way to do this.
Alex put the flashlight, on and facing up, into her right pocket, so that it lit the passage above. It was a snug fit, but that meant it would stay in place. She ran her left hand over the two keys that were still in her pockets. Then she laid her hand on the pipe on the right—and drew it back. It was hot—more like scalding. This pipe brought down the steam that had been overheating the Zeta Division air.
No choice. You do this or everyone dies.
She grabbed the left pipe with her left hand. It was warm, thanks to its proximity to the heating pipe, but was tolerable to touch.
She kicked off the ground and began her climb, pulling herself up by the pipes. The heat burned her right hand with every second of contact, and she resisted the impulse to draw it away.
Her legs weren’t in top shape, but her upper arms were a whole other story. They had carried her up a full eight feet before she knew it. Here, the closet became a narrow vertical tunnel into which she wedged herself. Once in, she braced her back against one wall and her feet against another.
Judging it safe, she took a deep breath. Hardly any smell of gas. She stopped to catch her breath until the heat against her skin became so intense that it impelled her to keep moving.
At first, the burn had felt like nothing more than a bad sunburn. Now it was like holding her hand over a burning match.
Still she climbed.
She couldn’t rest. Every second that passed was a second closer to the whole facility blowing up.
She didn’t know how long it took to make it to the top. She climbed with such single-mindedness that she only noticed she had reached the top when her left hand, reaching up for the pipe, hit a hard surface above.
The trapdoor to the garage was held shut by a padlock. She braced her feet against the far wall, back against the wall. It held up her weight, and her hands were free to work. Alex reached her left hand into her pocket and pulled out the second key. She transferred it to her right hand.
She had underestimated the extent of her burns. Touching the warm metal was like holding a firebrand. Startled by the pain, she fumbled the key.
It dropped straight down the shaft, hitting the ground below with a faint ding.
Oh. Crap.
Thoughts raced through her head. How long would it take her to climb down then back up again? Too long. It would run over the ten minutes she had been allotted by at least two. Plus, she didn’t know how long she could clutch this pipe before her skin would start to peel from her hand.
There was one other option.
She ran her fingers through her hair and found what she was looking for.
A bobby pin. One single pin. She’d have one shot at this, just as her father had taught her. Everyone was counting on her. Her father’s life depended on it.
She stared at the pin by the indirect light shining from her pocket. Bending it back and forth, she broke it in two, right down the middle. She put one-half in her mouth, holding it between her teeth. The other she inserted about a quarter of an inch into the lock and bent it ninety degrees. That half would be her tension wrench. The other would be her pick. Holding the tension wrench in her mouth, she pushed the pick about a sixteenth of an inch in and bent the tip, just a smidge.
Then she got to work, setting the tension wrench in place first, pulling it to the side. Next she inserted the pick. And a new problem: the only sensation she felt on her right hand was burning. She’d have to do this left-handed.
Push, push, click. One pin in place. Two.
Her right hand trembled and the tension wrench fell—onto her abdomen, held by a fold of her shirt. Focusing on keeping her hand steady, she picked it up and reinserted it into the keyhole.
Focus, damn you.
One. Two. Three. Four. She pulled the tension wrench until the padlock clicked open.
Success!
She maneuvered it out of the hole, letting it drop down the shaft, and pushed the trap door open. Cool air! She pulled herself out and flopped onto the floor of the edge of the parking garage. She laid her right palm down, letting the cold concrete soothe the burn as she panted.
Get up, Morgan. You’re not done.
She willed herself to stand and ran toward the door to Zeta Division, on the opposite wall some sixty feet away. She found the tubular slot and inserted the third key in. The lock was tough, but she forced it to turn until she felt the dead bolt slide. She pushed the door open and walked in. Beyond the elevators were winding stairs. She ran down—the descent was much easier than going up—until she came upon another door. She inserted the tubular key into the lock and opened it.
The smell of gas was overpowering.
“Come on!” she shouted into the dark passage, coughing. She drew the flashlight from her pocket and waved it, hoping they would see. “It’s open!”
She wasn’t about to wait to see if they had heard. She plunged inside, coming face-to-face with the others, led by Peter Conley, at the far end.
“Go!” her father, bringing up the rear, yelled to her, wasting precious oxygen. “Run!”
She did, taking the lead up the stairs, the rest of the group following.
She emerged out into the garage. “Keep running,” her father called out behind her. “Clear the area!”
She ran without looking back.
As she dashed up the ramp to the street, the floor shook so hard she stumbled to her knees. The rumble grew louder and a fireball exploded from the Zeta entrance, broken metal and wood flying in every direction.
The others were behind her. Most had stumbled, like her. She counted heads. Ten, with her. Everyone had made it out alive.
“Everyone okay?” she yelled out. She scanned people for injuries. Her father first—no bleeding. Bloch was fine, too, as was Smith, Lily, Conley, and—
Shepard. Everyone else stood, but he stayed on the ground. Alive, but . . .
“I’m going to need a little help getting up,” he said, grunting. His left calf was bleeding, caught by a piece of flying debris. Peter Conley lifted him to his feet and helped him walk.
Her father put his hand on her shoulder. “You did good. I’ll just say one thing.”
“What?”
“I really hope we were up-to-date on our insurance for that place.”
Chapter 96
Frieze dialed Conley as she drove, honking her horn against the afternoon rush-hour gridlock. Straight to voice mail.
She had run out of the FBI office as soon as Gus told her about the explosion. She was supposed to have stayed. She had duties in the office that needed her attention during a crisis. She didn’t care.
She made the call again and again as she sped her way through downtown traffic, getting voice mail each time. She found a parking spot several blocks away from the Hampton Building and ran the rest of the way, flashing her badge to get past the police cordon. As she approached, she saw that smoke was coming out of the garage.
No. Please.
She ran inside the garage and saw a team of firemen standing around a truck, occupying the parking area that led into Zeta. The wall around the door inside was black with soot.
“Did you find anyone?” she called out to no one in particular.
“No bodies yet,” said a fireman, taking his helmet off. “But it’s huge down there. I wonder what that was supposed to be.”
Tentative relief washed over her. “Any idea of the cause?”
“From the patterns I’d say it was some flammable gas. Probably a natural gas leak.”
Frieze wandered around the garage, looking for cameras that could tell the tale of what had happened. There were none, because of course they’d never allow that.
Her phone rang. Peter? No. Gus.
“Where the hell did you go? We have some suspects wanted in connection with the Legion attack on Acevedo. Chambers told me to forward you the profiles, so I’m sending them to your phone.”
Frieze pinched the root of her nose. “Sure. I’ll take a look in a minute.” She moved toward the door to Zeta.
“Hey!” said the fireman she’d been talking to. “That’s off-limits until we’ve cleared it.”
“FBI,” she said, flashing her badge.
“I don’t care if you’re the Pope. There are noxious gases down there, and I don’t want to deal with the paperwork of a Fed croaking in my fire. So stay right where you are.”
Frieze bristled but complied. She wasn’t about to die searching through the ruins for Peter Conley’s body.
The mental image made her tear up.
She needed to compose herself, get her mind off this for a while, until the firemen had a chance to search inside and give her definite answers.
Frieze found a low concrete wall in the garage where she could sit. She pulled her phone out of her pocket and looked through the files Gus had sent her.
“Oh my God.”
She ran back outside as fast as her legs would take her.
Chapter 97
Reclining in the front passenger seat of the noisy 1970 Ford Econoline, Alex poked at her burned hand—second degree, pocked with blisters. She ran a finger over the red skin. It blazed with pain. She took stock of her injuries—the cuts on her legs, the abrasions on her wrists, and now this. But her leg was mended. Silver linings, Morgan.
The van was a recent acquisition, Alex found out, in response to the Legion’s ability to make any car’s electronics go poof. Strickland and Smith, along with Kirby, disappeared to do whatever business occupied their time.
Her father was driving and hadn’t noticed the burn, which Alex was happy enough about. He didn’t need the extra worry, especially not given that his arms were bandaged from hand to shoulder. She’d just grit her teeth and bear the pain, like he did.
“So what are we going to do?” she asked him. “How are we going to strike back?”
“You aren’t going to do anything. First chance I get, I’m going to send you with your mother, out of harm’s way.”
“You heard what he said. Mom’s not out of harm’s way. None of us is.”
“It’s going to be more dangerous wherever I am.”
Anger rose inside Alex. “I just saved everyone,” she said, raising her voice. “Where do you get off talking to me like I’m a kid?”
She braced for his rejoinder, but it never came. Whether it was because everyone in the back had just heard her, or because something had really changed in him, he just said, “You’re right. I’m sorry.”
Twenty minutes later, the van pulled into the garage of a trim brick suburban home in Quincy, south of Boston. Once the garage was closed—reinforced steel, Alex noted, dressed up to look like a regular wooden garage door—they all got out. Conley opened the electronic lock on the door and let them through.
It was a weirdly normal house, even if the furniture was a bit cheesy. Alex flopped onto an armchair, laying her burned hand flat against the armrest, basking in the coolness of the upholstery.
Lying on the couch, leg bleeding, Shepard gave O’Neal directions to open a hidden compartment where he had stashed a pile of preconfigured laptop computers. O’Neal set them on the table with an oof and then drew the charger cables, packed in tight figure-eight loops.
“How do we get them online?” she asked. Shepard didn’t answer. He had an odd blank expression.
“We can’t do it,” he said. “I can’t fight them on my own on the digital front. They’re beyond me.” For the confident-to-the-point-of-arrogance Shepard to admit this must have been wrenching.
O’Neal crouched next to him. There was something intimate in the gesture, and Alex remembered walking in on them back at Zeta. She averted her eyes but perked up her head to eavesdrop.
“Hey,” Karen said. “Look at me. You are a goddamn badass. You were doing this hacktivism crap when you were in high school. You’ve graduated past this. So shut up with this self-pity bullshit. You’re my freaking hero, man.”
“I let them through, and they destroyed it. Zeta’s gone, Kar.”
“It’s always easier to destroy. But we’re trying to protect. We’re trying to make something, Linc. It’s an uphill battle for us. But we’re going to beat them. Because we’re better than they are.”
His face brightened. “Damn right we are.”
They kissed. Alex nearly squealed.
“Shepard!” Bloch called to him. “We need to set these up. Morgan, Randall, Conley. Over here. Let’s powwow.”
Alex was left out once more.
Something drew her attention in the corner of her eye—one computer left in the hidden compartment. Karen had drawn out only as many as they needed. Alex stood up, trying to play it like she wanted to go to the bathroom, and bent down to pick it up as she passed.
Once she was locked in the guest restroom, she booted up the computer and logged on to her deep web client, following the procedure Simon had taught her. She opened the messaging service.
There was one new message from Simon. All it said was:
Alex, I’m scared. Please help.
The words wrenched at her heart. Simon. Her imagination exploded with scenarios of what he might be facing, each more horrible than the last. Her breath grew quick and shallow and she grabbed handfuls of her hair as guilty thoughts assaulted her, thoughts of Simon, dead, going to prison, killing people.
Alex gritted her teeth and balled her hands into fists, forcing her breathing to return to normal. She wasn’t going to lose it to despair. She grabbed the computer and walked out of the bathroom. They would rescue Simon, and he’d be their key to finding Praetorian.
In her resolve Alex nearly bumped into Karen. “I was looking for that,” she said, pointing at the computer with a suspicious glint in her eye.
Alex’s stammers of explanation were cut short by someone knocking on the front door of the house. Banging, more like it. Everyone turned to look. Her father reached for his gun and Lily took her position flat against the wall by the entrance.
“Conley!” came a muffled woman’s voice. “Conley, open the door! Damn it, please be in here. Conley!”
Peter Conley, looking perplexed, walked to the front door, unlocked it, and opened it.
Lisa Frieze.
“Are you safe?” she said, barging inside. “Is everyone okay?”
“We’re fine,” Conley said. “There was—”
“An explosion at your headquarters. I know.” She was talking a mile a minute. “Listen. You have to get out of here. They’re coming for you.”
“What?”
“The police are coming for you all. They tracked you to this location, I don’t know how. They’ll be arriving in minutes.”
Everyone looked to Bloch for leadership.
“Get moving,” she said. “We need materials. Pack up the computers. Get the guns out of the armory.”
Police sirens sang in the distance, growing closer. Lily drew the curtains on the windows closed. Bloch crouched to open a cabinet under the kitchen counter. Inside was a safe with an electronic keypad. She entered a combination.
“There’s a tunnel in the basement,” she said, opening the door to the safe. “It’s well-hidden and leads to the house behind this one. There’s a car in the garage. Don’t call attention to yourselves and you’ll make it out.”
She pulled out a bag of money—Alex figured it was at least one hundred grand. Her father opened a cabinet in the living room and unlocked a similar safe, this one much taller. Inside were guns—black handguns and semiautomatics on racks, boxes of ammo stacked on the bottom. Conley brought a briefcase and helped her father load the handguns and ammo.
Police cars converged on the house, tires screeching. Lily looked out through a gap in the curtains. “They’re here,” she said.
Frieze addressed Bloch. “They know there are people in here. If everyone goes, they’ll find us. I suggest some people stay behind. But it’s your call.”
Shepard was first to speak. “I can’t go. I’ll just slow you down.”
“We need someone who knows how to work with computers.”
Arch Enemy Page 33
