by Sean Black
The gate at the far end swung back on its hinges. Tentatively they started towards it.
One of the men said something and some of the others laughed. Placebo guy raised cuffed hands to his face and hushed them.
Lock brought up the rear as they walked towards the open gate. As he passed through it, the gate closed behind him. The men at the rear started as it clanked shut. At the far end of the corridor the door clicked open. They pushed through it and out into the darkness.
All twelve of them were still cuffed, and made for a surreal sight as they shuffled forward in the moonlight, a chain gang on evening manoeuvres. Placebo guy seemed to be assuming some kind of leadership role. He hissed at them to spread out, directing them to back into the shadows.
Lock picked his moment and filtered away from the group. He had as much idea about what was going on as they did – none. But he knew that with the amount of firepower in the vicinity, being out in open ground was about the worst idea possible.
Placebo guy waved at two of the men to go ahead on point. They did so, creeping forward to the edge of the building. Then they stopped, suddenly.
Lock could hear the guard coming round the corner, not because of footfall, but because he was on his radio letting the control room know that he’d cleared one sector and was about to move into the next. Standard procedure for non-static security. Clear and confirm. Clear and confirm. Repeat till dead. Almost certainly literally in the case of this poor chump.
‘Base from Leech. Yellow clear, moving to red.’
There was a pause.
‘Base? Can you acknowledge?’
It made sense that the guard wasn’t getting a reply. The cells had been remotely opened, and the only way to do that was from the control room.
There were twelve of them here. Which left only one person unaccounted for.
Sixty-eight
The room was empty when Lock got there. There were some books, some of the boy’s clothes, but no Josh. The thought that the escapees had already reached him first flitted briefly through his mind, although there was no blood or sign of a struggle.
He picked up one of the boy’s sweaters and stood there for a second. Then he walked back out, and straight down the barrel of an M-16 wielded by a white-faced Hizzard.
‘Get down on your hands and knees.’
‘Hizzard, we don’t have time for this bullshit.’
Fear seemed to have defaulted Hizzard to auto-pilot. ‘How did you escape the accom block?’
‘I teleported.’
Hizzard jabbed the gun at him. ‘Get down on the ground.’
Lock waved a hand in front of his face. ‘Hizzard, it’s me, Lock. Remember?’
‘You’re a detainee. I’m tasked with apprehending and returning all detainees to the accom block.’
‘Well, good luck with that. You’ve got twelve pissed-off Chechens, or Iraqis, or Pakistanis, or whatever the hell they are, on the loose right now, and we don’t have much time to contain them.’
A burst of small-arms fire neatly punctuated Lock’s condensed rundown.
‘How do I know you ain’t lying?’
‘Who gives a damn if I’m lying or not? Didn’t you understand what I just said? This is a level four bio-research facility which is in the process of being taken over by terrorists. We act now or we all die.’
Hizzard reached for his radio.
‘That’s not going to do you much good either. I’m guessing the ops room’s been breached. You won’t get any sense from anyone up there.’
Doubt flickered in Hizzard’s eyes. ‘Base from Hizzard.’
The response was the empty crackle of static, then a voice, female, with an accent. ‘Hizzard from Base. Go outside and lay your weapon on the ground.’
Under other circumstances, Lock might have allowed himself a smile as he watched the oh shit expression seep across Hizzard’s face. Instead he grabbed the M-16 from him.
‘You have a sidearm?’
Hizzard lifted the flap of his jacket. ‘Glock.’
‘Better than nothing, I guess,’ Lock said, setting the M-16 to single shot and heading back outside, Hizzard trailing reluctantly in his wake. ‘How many guards you guys have on duty?’
‘Round about a dozen.’
‘Round about?’
‘I think.’
A classic Brand-run operation, thought Lock. ‘And what about weapons? M-16s and Glocks?’
‘There’s other stuff in the armoury.’
‘Whoa there, soldier, what armoury?’ Lock asked, looking around for the door back to his own universe.
‘That building over there.’
Hizzard pointed through the gloom to a small squat building about four hundred yards away placed between two other blocks. Lock had assumed it was some kind of boiler room or back-up generator facility.
‘You have access to it?’
Hizzard reached down to his belt. ‘Sure, got the key right here.’
‘Terrific.’
‘What?’
‘Well, if you have the key I’m assuming the other “dozen or so” guards have one as well.’
‘I dunno.’
‘Come on then, Einstein, let’s go take a look.’
The main door was wide open when they got there, reinforced steel rendered useless by a profusion of keys. Amateur didn’t even begin to describe the place. Lock let Hizzard step through first, then followed him inside.
A few boxes of assorted shells lay scattered on the ground, but judging by the empty shelves and gun racks, the place looked to have been pretty much picked clean.
The distorted lid of a large grey metal chest stuck up at forty-five degrees. Hizzard yanked it open and peered inside. ‘Oh shit.’
‘What was in there? Rocket launchers?’ Lock asked.
‘No, that was where Brand kept the plastic explosives.’
Sixty-nine
Lock and Hizzard inched their way out of the armoury. Bursts of small-arms fire punctuated the silence.
They rounded a corner, Lock wheeling wide in case the escapees were right there, Hizzard providing cover, the Glock extending from his right hand.
‘Clear,’ whispered Lock, a second before one of the detainees shuffled into view.
Lock started to raise his requisitioned M-16. But too late. The detainee already had Lock sighted. Time slowed for Lock. Hizzard spun round, but he was going to be too late.
Then, as the detainee offered a broken-toothed smile and his finger began the millimetre-by-millimetre journey on the trigger, a round smacked into the middle of his forehead. He slumped forward, his round catching dirt rather than Lock, as Ty stepped from cover to their left. ‘One down, eleven to go,’ he said, moving towards the detainee.
Lock stared across at his second-in-command. ‘You were standing there the whole time, weren’t you?’
Ty grinned. ‘Yup.’
‘You’re a big-timing asshole sometimes, Tyrone, you know that?’
‘What can I tell you, man? I learned from the best.’ He turned towards Hizzard, who still had his Glock trained on the dead detainee. ‘How you holding up there, Hizzard?’
Lock answered for him. ‘Bottle of Jack, tube of Anusol, and homeboy’ll be good to go.’
Ty turned the detainee over with his boot. ‘Yup. Very dead.’ He let the man slump back, face down, and gave Hizzard a playful punch on the shoulder. ‘In’t this fun?’
In the distance they could hear distant sirens, and some more small-arms fire from contact near the perimeter. They continued towards their goal, the control room, the entrance to which lay five hundred feet ahead of them.
The final approach to the doorway was over open ground. Lock couldn’t see any escapees, or guards for that matter. Presumably the escapees were at the edge of the complex engaged in contact, while Brand’s guards were hunkered down somewhere trying to figure out just what had gone so badly wrong, so fast.
Lock left Ty and Hizzard to lay down cover and readied himself to
make the dash. Like stepping off a high board, he knew not to dwell on it. The secret, like most things in life, was to put one foot in front of the other. In this case, as quickly as possible.
Go. He took off towards the entrance, aware only of his own breathing and his feet jolting against the ground. The M-16 he held in both hands. He waited to hear covering fire from Hizzard and Ty but none came.
He made it to the door, stopped to suck air into his lungs in three big draughts, knelt down and levelled the M-16, sighting to a point in the middle of the nearest building. He signalled for the other two to make their dash.
Watching Ty run over was worse than doing it himself. He kept waiting for the fizz of tracers or crack of a single shot. None came.
Ty and Hizzard bumped fists, Death at their heels making for instant esprit de corps.
Inside, all was quiet. A sporadic trail of blood splashes marked the path to the ops room. Lock and Ty followed it all the way, leaving Hizzard to secure the entrance.
The control room was reinforced glass on three sides. Mareta barely acknowledged them as they approached. Lock could also see Richard. Josh was cradled in his arms, asleep.
He had a clear shot at Mareta. He doubted the first round would penetrate, but a second might, or a third. But she remained unperturbed. Then she got to her feet. Ty lowered his gun. As she turned to face them, Lock saw why. Around her chest was a hastily assembled explosives belt. Strips of C4 with what looked like nails all wrapped in gaffer tape and web-linked at one-inch intervals, a detonator clipped at waist level.
Lock had seen suicide belts before, but this one differed from the common-or-garden variety in one chilling respect. Explosive, especially something like C4, was hard to come by, and was therefore used as sparingly as possible. What did the damage was the packing material buffered around the charges – ball bearings, nails, screws, bolts. What made this device different was the amount of explosive. Easily four or five pounds. Mareta wouldn’t just explode, she’d evaporate into a fine mist. And so, most likely, would everyone else in the room.
Seventy
Frisk stood fifty yards back from the perimeter of the compound and watched as, on the other side of the wall, dark shapes flitted between the buildings. He looked around at the groups of law enforcement clustered in small huddles. FBI. ATF. SWAT. They were all here, and they all had a different plan as to how to proceed. Although the Joint Terrorism Task Force of which he was a part had been designed to establish clear chain of command, old habits were dying hard.
Frisk glanced up to see a lone figure stepping into a patch of light thrown by floodlights erected by the SWAT team at the main gate. The figure held up his hands in a gesture of surrender. He strained his eyes to get a better look.
The figure was soon close enough for Frisk to identify him. ‘Son of a bitch.’ He should have guessed.
A couple of SWAT officers in bio-suits dashed towards Ty, ballistic shields held up in front of them, handguns wedged around the sides. ‘Get down on the ground!’ one of them shouted.
Ty waved them away. ‘Listen, I wasn’t exposed. But I need to speak to someone, like right now.’
‘Get down on the ground now or you will be shot!’ the SWAT officer warned, gesturing with his gun.
Frisk watched as Ty assumed the position, and cuffs were snapped around his wrist. They shuffled him back to the perimeter. Men and women who’d spent a lifetime facing down the worst the human race had to offer backed away.
Frisk followed as Ty was led to a white Winnebago. Three steps and he was inside. It was kitted out as a mobile lab. Two more people in bio-suits greeted him.
‘I told you, I’m clear.’
‘We need to make sure.’
Ty offered his arm. ‘How long will this take?’
‘Thirty minutes.’
One of the bio-suits took a blood sample. ‘This will tell us if you have one of the ten main viral haemorrhagic diseases.’
‘And what if I do?’
‘You’ll be quarantined and treated.’
‘You can treat this stuff?’
‘Most of it. Apart from the Ebola variant. We don’t have a vaccine for that yet.’
Ten minutes later, Frisk stepped into the trailer, also in a bio-suit.
Ty greeted him with a nod of the head. ‘Pretty fly for a white guy,’ he said, ‘although you might want to think about getting the pants taken up an inch or two.’
‘Might have known you and Lock would be in the middle of this. What the hell’s going on in there?’
‘Short version or long version?’
‘Short.’
Ty told him. With each new piece of information, Frisk grew paler. All he’d known was that a major firefight had broken out at a Level 4 Bio Facility.
‘So why’d they send you out?’ he asked Ty.
‘Messenger boy.’
‘And what’s the message? What do they want?’
‘A signed undertaking from the President guaranteeing their status as prisoners of war under the Geneva Convention, along with an undertaking that they won’t be deported. Oh yeah, and a signed picture of Will Smith.’
‘That all, huh?’ Frisk asked.
‘The last part’s negotiable. I think they’d settle for Eddie Murphy at a pinch.’
‘Nice to see you find this all so amusing, but I’m about six levels down from being able to start offering signed executive undertakings.’
‘Then you’d better start moving it up the chain.’
‘Even if we get agreement, they’ll all be going to jail for the rest of their natural lives.’
‘They know that.’
‘OK, I’ll pass it on,’ said Frisk, stepping back out of the Winnebago. ‘But that’s it, right? There’s nothing else.’
‘That’s it.’
Ty watched Frisk exit the trailer. He uncrossed his fingers and let out a sigh. Mareta had had one other demand but Lock had told him not to mention it, although Ty hadn’t needed telling. Soon as he had the all clear, Ty was going to take care of it himself. In fact, he was looking forward to it.
Seventy-one
Ty found Carrie among the lines of news trucks which had been pushed to the very edge of a service road. The good news was he was clear of any infection. The bad news was that he was going to have to convince her to assist in something that could see them both spend the rest of their lives behind bars.
As soon as she spotted him, she rushed over. ‘Where’s Ryan? What’s going on in there?’
‘You’re slipping, girl. Aren’t you supposed to reverse the order of those questions? With you being a member of the press ’n’ all.’
‘Just tell me.’
‘He’s inside. I wouldn’t say he’s safe exactly, but he’s in fair shape considering.’
‘Considering what?’
Ty pulled her to the rear of the truck. ‘He needs our help.’
Carrie took a breath and centred herself. ‘OK. What kind of help?’
Ty had already decided to feed it to her piece by piece. ‘You have a car here?’
‘No.’
He produced a set of keys. ‘Damn, have to use Lock’s then.’
‘Ty, what’s going on?’
‘Where’s the dumb dog he left you with?’
‘In the truck, asleep.’
‘We’ll need to take her with us.’
‘Where? Where are we going?’ She glanced back at the news truck. ‘I’m on duty here. I can’t just pick up and leave.’
‘Ryan needs you to do this.’
‘You still haven’t told me what it is he wants me to do. And I’m not going anywhere until you do.’
Ty rested his hand against the spare tyre on the back of the news station’s RV. ‘Second thoughts, we can use this too. Kill two birds with one stone. You can get your story while I make my pick-up.’
‘Are you deaf? I’m not going anywhere until someone tells me why.’
‘Then a lot of people are gonna get killed.�
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‘Fine, but you at least have to tell me where we’re going.’
Ty waved over Carrie’s camera guy. ‘Saddle up.’ Then he turned back to Carrie. ‘We’re going to enforce some corporate accountability.’
Seventy-two
Mareta watched the dark shapes flitting periodically across the wall of monitors with about as much interest as a retired cop relegated to the graveyard shift at an out-of-town mall. She palmed some painkillers, checked the time-code running at the bottom left of the nearest screen, swivelled on her chair, and shot the guard nearest to her in the face.
Josh stirred in his sleep as Richard handed him to Lock and rushed towards the dying man. A spurt of blood covered Richard’s face – unfair reward for an act of compassion.
Lock put his hand behind Josh’s head and pressed the little boy’s face tight to his chest. Even with children’s seemingly endless capacity for absorption, there were some things better left unseen.
Lock could feel Josh’s arms and legs stiffening as he watched Richard tend to the dying guard. He stretched out as best he could, catching Richard’s eye as he did so.
‘Let the kid go, Mareta. He’s been used enough already.’
‘I won’t harm the boy.’ Mareta paused. ‘So long as my demands are met.’
‘This country doesn’t negotiate with terrorists.’
‘Correction. It’s not seen to. There’s a difference.’
‘Look, you have me, you have him,’ said Lock, indicating Richard.
She swivelled round on the chair, the suddenness of the movement leaving Lock’s heart in his mouth. ‘This situation is not of my making,’ she said.
There was movement outside the control room. One of the detainees, a young Pakistani the others called Khalid, led in three of Meditech’s guards at gunpoint. Their uniforms were torn, and one of the men’s eyes were closing from the beating he’d taken. Mareta buzzed the door open and they were pushed inside, forced to sit on the floor.
‘OK, I make you a deal,’ Mareta said. ‘Once your friend delivers his cargo to us, the boy can leave. But in the meantime, for every hour that passes, one of these men will die.’
