FUSED: iSEAL OMNIBUS EDITION (A Military Technothriller)

by Jude Hardin

  Which was doubtful.

  Nika laughed at the absurdity of it all, at how much the odds were stacked against her and Mike making it out of this alive. It wasn’t funny, but she couldn’t help but laugh.

  23

  Mike locked the chain around Oberwand’s neck, held onto him like a dog on a leash.

  He aimed the pistol at Oberwand’s face.

  “Start walking,” Mike said.

  “And if I refuse?”

  “I’ll splatter your brains all over this—”

  Before Mike could finish his sentence, a siren started wailing and the overhead light started blinking on and off.

  “Go ahead and shoot me,” Oberwand said. “We’ll both be dead soon anyway.”

  “What’s going on?”

  “Zero one two, Mike. That’s what’s going on. It’s the code to initiate the self-destruct sequence. In less than five minutes, this whole complex will crumble down on top of us. My life’s work, reduced to rubble, and it’s all your fault.”

  At first Mike thought Oberwand might have been bluffing, but the MK-2’s onboard polygraph indicated otherwise. Either Oberwand was the best liar in the world, or he was telling the truth.

  “Tell them to shut it down,” Mike said.

  “I can do that, but you’re going to have to do something for me first. Take the chain off my neck, and give me the gun. Then I’ll call my men and issue the code to stop the sequence.”

  “Then what?”

  Oberwand laughed. “You’re hardly in a position to be asking questions right now. I figure we have about two more minutes until the ceiling starts cracking and bits of debris start falling. That’s only an estimate, of course. It might be only one minute.”

  Mike decided to comply with Oberwand’s demands. No choice. He didn’t know how to get out of the complex, and Oberwand obviously wasn’t going to help him.

  Anyway, Oberwand still needed the passwords for the MK-2, so maybe he would keep Mike alive for a while. Maybe he would try hypnosis again. And as long as Mike was still breathing, there was still a chance that he could escape.

  Mike pulled the key out of his pocket and reached to unlock the chain. As he did, Nika Dunning darted into the room and stabbed Oberwand in the back with a very long screwdriver.

  “No!” Mike shouted.

  But it was too late. The blade of the screwdriver had entered just below Oberwand’s ribcage, and it had exited through his abdomen. Mike figured it had pierced the right kidney and the liver. Oberwand’s eyes bulged and he arched his back and clenched his teeth in a posture of extreme agony.

  Nika yanked the tool from his body, and bright red blood started gushing from both ends.

  “I’m dying,” Oberwand said.

  He seemed shocked, as if he couldn’t believe such a thing was actually possible. He slumped to the floor, and Mike knelt down beside him.

  “Zero one two,” Mike said. “How do I stop it?”

  Oberwand opened his mouth, but all that came out was a gurgling fountain of blood. He toppled to the side and stared out at nothing. He was gone.

  Nika put her arms around Mike and held him tight. He felt the warmth of her tears seeping through his t-shirt.

  “I did it,” she said. “I killed him. He was a monster, and—”

  The floor started shaking with a growling rumble. Mike knew they didn’t have much time, maybe only seconds.

  “We have to get out of here,” he said.

  She looked up at him questioningly, but he didn’t have time to explain. Knowing he could move much faster than she could, he jammed the pistol into his pocket, picked her up and started toward the door.

  “I’m okay,” Nika said. “I can run on my own.”

  “It’ll be quicker this way. Tell me how to get out of here.”

  “Go left,” she said.

  Mike raced down a long corridor, passing a glassed-in laboratory of some sort, the countertops crowded with microscopes and digital scales and specimen racks and a variety of machines and electronic devices. The hallway doglegged to the right, and as soon as Mike made the turn he saw an elevator with an UP button, and a door marked STAIRS at the other end of the hall.

  The floor was shaking now, and some of the drywall on the ceiling had started to bulge and crack.

  “What do you think?” Mike said.

  “I wouldn’t trust the elevator.”

  Mike nodded, ran to the end of the hall and opened the door to the stairway. He took the steps two at a time, made it to the top in about three seconds.

  “This door leads to the cave?” he said.

  “Yes. And there’s a coded lock on the other side, preventing reentry if you let it close behind you.”

  “Don’t worry,” Mike said. “We won’t be coming back.”

  He opened the door, switched on his night vision and stepped into the tunnel, wondering how Nika had gotten through the locked entryway and down to the lower level.

  Then he saw.

  The three men who’d been in Mike’s cell earlier, the ones who’d initiated the self-destruct sequence, were lying on the floor of the cave with a variety of wounds sustained from falling rocks. Nika must have gone in when they came out.

  Two of them were dead, their skulls split open and their brains oozing out onto the rubble, and the third lay helpless with compound fractures to both legs.

  “Help me,” he said.

  The ground shook violently, and pebbles rained from the ceiling. Mike knew that the cavern wasn’t going to last much longer. He wanted to get some information from the man, but there simply wasn’t time to stop for an interrogation.

  “I’m going to put you down for a second,” Mike said to Nika. “Then I want you to jump on and ride piggyback.”

  “Okay,” Nika said, her voice trembling with fear and confusion.

  Mike set her down, noticed that her clothes were way too large for her.

  “Are those my sneakers?” he said.

  “All this stuff was in the barn. Here, take them.”

  Nika pulled the shoes and socks off. Mike sat down and hurried into them, and then he stood and leaned over so Nika could climb onto his back. He lifted the man with the broken legs and continued running toward the end of the tunnel. The ceiling was less than five feet high, so Mike had to lower his head and bend his knees at the same time. It slowed him down considerably, along with the extra weight he was carrying, about three hundred pounds with Nika and the man combined.

  The man’s lower legs dangled at impossible angles, held together tentatively by muscles and tendons, the tibia bones splintered and poking through the skin. The man was still conscious, but he was obviously in excruciating pain.

  “How much further?” Mike said.

  “There’s a stop sign up ahead somewhere. From there it’s not far to the opening.”

  The cave was completely dark, and the infrared only allowed Mike to see about ten feet in front of him. Beyond that, nothing but a swirling green fog—yet another reason Mike couldn’t move as fast as he would have liked to.

  Worried that he was going to ram himself and his passengers into a pile of fallen rocks, he slowed to a walking gait and proceeded with caution.

  Sweating, panting, the air thick with limestone dust and apprehension.

  Then, finally, there it was. The stop sign Nika had told him about. As he hurried toward it, there was a massive rumble followed by some sort of explosion in the distance.

  With Nika on his back and the man with the broken legs in his arms, Mike turned around and saw a bright orange ball of fire coming straight at them from the other end of the tunnel.

  24

  Nika screamed.

  Mike started sprinting, giving it his all, but according to the lightning-fast calculations fed directly to his brain by the MK-2, there was no way they were going to make it out of the cave alive.

  Not all three of them.

  With all the extra weight, Mike just couldn’t move fast enough.

/>   The decision was almost instantaneous. Mike didn’t even have time to tell the man with the broken legs that he was sorry. He set the man down and bolted toward the opening.

  “No!” the man shouted.

  Mike didn’t look back. He felt the heat coming on fast as he raced through the curtain of plastic foliage covering the mouth of the cave, felt the flames licking his heels as he bounded outside and tumbled into the dirt.

  Nika lost her grip, rolled away from Mike, came to a stop at the edge of a rocky cliff.

  She teetered, and then slipped over the side.

  Mike ran to the drop-off, saw that she was hanging on by her fingertips. He grabbed her by the wrists, hoisted her up and into his arms. She held on for dear life, sobbing openly, telling him over and over that she loved him.

  “I love you too,” Mike said.

  A final blast sounded from somewhere deep inside the mountain, rocking the earth like a giant wrecking ball. Mike and Nika staggered sideways, and then they turned in unison toward the mouth of the cave and witnessed hundreds of boulders filling the void in a violent earsplitting storm of stone and dust.

  And then, almost as if someone had flipped a switch, there was silence.

  “We made it out just in time,” Nika said.

  Mike smiled. “It wasn’t that close. We still had a few seconds to spare.”

  Nika was breathing hard, her voice raspy and her hair matted and her cheeks smudged with dirt. Still, she was the most beautiful woman Mike had ever seen.

  “There’s a trail over this way,” she said, pointing to her left. “It leads to the bottom of the mountain, and I parked a golf cart over there in the woods. We can ride down, but I’m afraid there might be an electric fence or something down there, and—”

  “There is,” Mike said, pulling the pistol from his pocket and checking the magazine. “There’s an electric fence, and a bunch of Oberwand’s guys are down there waiting. He put them there to capture you, so it was a good thing you didn’t go any further down than you did.”

  “Once I saw your clothes, once I knew you were here, there was no way I was leaving without you.”

  “Thanks. It worked out. You did good. I can’t believe you ran in there and stabbed Oberwand with a screwdriver. That was incredibly brave.”

  “If you only knew what he did to me while—”

  “I have a pretty good idea,” Mike said. “I saw his lab on the way to the elevator. I’m pretty sure I know what he was up to.”

  “Think you could fill me in?”

  “Later. Right now we need to get past a high voltage barricade and a dozen or so guys with guns. Come on. Show me where you put the golf cart.”

  Nika led him into the woods, to the spot where she had parked. Mike looked the vehicle over, saw right away that the battery was almost dead.

  “We’ll be going downhill the whole way,” Nika said. “So it doesn’t matter. It’ll still get us there. You want to drive, or you want me to?”

  “You need to stay here,” Mike said. “I’ll come back for you.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “It’s going to be dark soon. They have guns. I’m afraid you’ll get hurt. Or killed. I just don’t see—”

  “You just don’t see how I could possibly be of any help to you at this point? Is that it? Let me tell you something, Mike. I escaped from that maniac, and I survived out here in the woods by myself all night with no clothes, no food, nothing but a ratty old blanket, and then I made it back to the cave and inside the complex, and I was the one who killed him, if you’ll remember correctly, and if you think for one minute that I’m going to stay here and play the role of the helpless female, then you’ve lost your mind.”

  “Is this going to be our first fight?” Mike said.

  “If you want it to be.”

  “You don’t even have shoes.”

  “I’ll manage. Get in. I’m driving.”

  Mike shook his head, but he didn’t argue the point any further. He climbed into the passenger’s side and started checking his gun again.

  Nika backed the cart onto the path, and then they started down the hill.

  25

  The sun had set by the time Mike spotted the fence. It was still over a quarter of a mile away, but he didn’t want to get too close. He figured a few of Oberwand’s men would be posted near the gate, and the golf cart would make an easy target for them.

  “Stop here,” he said. “We need to get off this path.”

  Nika veered into the woods a few feet, and then she hit the brakes.

  “What’s the plan?” she said.

  “We’ll wait here until it gets dark, and then I’ll walk down and scout out the fence line. If the coast is clear, I’ll figure out a way to get us to the other side.”

  “Do you think Oberwand’s men might have abandoned their posts?”

  “It’s possible. They might have heard the rumbling from the mountain, and the men who were still in the complex might have communicated with them before initiating the self-destruct sequence. Then again, they might still be out there waiting for orders.”

  “How are we going to get past the fence?”

  “I’m not sure yet.”

  Jumping it was out of the question. In that scenario, Nika would have to hold onto Mike somehow, and there were just too many things that could go wrong. And Mike doubted that he could clear the barrier with the extra weight anyway.

  Nika raked her fingers through her hair, tried to untangle some of the mats.

  “Sorry I yelled at you back there,” she said. “I just didn’t want to be left alone.”

  “It’s all right,” Mike said. “We’ll get through this together.”

  “I wish I had your confidence.”

  “I’m much better equipped to battle these people than you are, Nika. That’s just the way it is. I have this thing in my brain that allows me to do some pretty amazing things. So if it ever sounds like I’m barking orders or whatever, don’t take it personally. It’s just because I know the best way to handle the situation, the best way to get us out of this alive.”

  “I understand,” Nika said.

  It was twilight, and in fifteen minutes it would be completely dark. Maybe Oberwand’s guys had night vision goggles, maybe they didn’t. If they were even still around. Regardless, Mike figured nighttime would be the best time for Nika and him to make a move.

  “How did you know that those were my clothes?” Mike said.

  “I found a piece of paper in your shoe, the note you’d written to yourself about the payphone at Third and Biscayne.”

  “Ah. I’d forgotten about that. Good thing I wrote the note. At the time, I was hoping this would all be over by Friday night when you were supposed to call.”

  “Didn’t quite turn out that way,” Nika said.

  “Yeah.”

  “So tell me something. If we make it off the mountain alive, what’s going to happen then? Where do we go from here?”

  “That’s a good question,” Mike said. “I still need to find out who I am, and I still need to have the MK-2 surgically removed from my brain. Unfortunately, all that’s going to be nearly impossible with the CIA chasing me.”

  “And me. They were supposed to come to my house for a follow-up regarding the non-disclosure agreement. I’m sure they’re just a wee bit perturbed that I disappeared, and I’m sure they’ve probably figured out by now that I disappeared with you.”

  “I’m sorry. I never should have allowed you to—”

  “I got involved because I wanted to, Mike. I couldn’t have lived the rest of my life knowing about the cover-up, knowing that a United States government agency would do something like that. It would have eaten at me every minute of every day.”

  “It’s not really the CIA itself,” Mike said. “They do good work. It’s probably a single individual, someone in the upper echelon who panicked and went rogue. By the way, were you able to do the research on the admiral who brought me to Ce
reCirc that first night?”

  “Yes. His name is William B. Lacy. Currently, he’s the Chief of—”

  “That’s what I was afraid of,” Mike said. “I heard his name on the news. He’s dead. I saw his plane go down, and I’m pretty sure it wasn’t an accident.”

  “He’s dead?”

  “Yes. And that means I’ll probably never learn my true identity.”

  Nika put her hand on Mike’s shoulder. “I have some money saved up,” she said. “It’s not a lot, but it’s enough to get us started somewhere.”

  “Is that what you want? Fake credentials and a plane ticket to another continent?”

  “It might be our only option at this point.”

  Mike nodded. “It’s something to consider. But first we have to get over that fence and away from this mountain. You ready to do this thing?”

  “I’m ready,” Nika said.

  Mike climbed out of the golf cart, checked out the supplies Nika had loaded into in the rear compartment. He opened the tool box, pulled out a utility knife and a claw hammer and a pair of wire cutters with rubber-coated handles.

  “I’m going to leave the gun here with you,” he said. “If you see anyone, shoot to kill.”

  He handed her the pistol.

  “Just aim and pull the trigger?”

  “Yes. Eleven rounds in the magazine, one in the chamber. I’ll be back shortly.”

  “Be careful,” Nika said.

  “I will.”

  Mike leaned over and kissed her on the lips, and then he started down the hill.

  26

  Mike crept toward the fence. The path was about thirty feet to his left, and on the other side of it, inside the fence line, there was a small wooden guard shack surrounded by a cluster of evergreens. Mike hadn’t seen it until now. No windows, no voices, no light bleeding through anywhere. It appeared to be abandoned, but Mike needed to know for sure.

  Hammer in hand, he got down on his belly and did a military-style leopard crawl across the path, using his knees and elbows to propel himself forward. When he got to the woods on the other side, he stood and ran to the shack, crouching and keeping as low as possible.