Code of Blood

by George C. Chesbro

  Now Chant waited, a weapon pointed in each direction. He could hear the continuing scream of sirens outside the building Then there was the dull thud of two more explosions, spaced a few seconds apart—automatic weapons fire and pistol shots. The ex-convicts had been true to their word, Chant thought; the two who had come with him had sacrificed their lives, and the three left outside were certainly creating a diversion—he could only hope they would survive amidst the deadly chaos they had wrought.

  Suddenly, his keen hearing picked up the sounds of running, booted feet. Still, he waited; the sound moved off in another direction. When twenty seconds passed and no more guards appeared, Chant pushed off the wall and darted to the end of the corridor, where he stopped and peered around the corner, to his right. Twenty-five yards away, two guards burst through the swinging doors Uwe von Deck had mentioned, came running up the corridor. Chant waited, listening to the sound of their approaching footsteps, until they were almost to the corner, then stepped out in front of them and brought the Colt and Skorpion crashing into the sides of their heads. Unconscious while still on their feet, the two guards wobbled forward until they bumped into a wall, crumpled to the floor Chant tossed the Colt away, ejected the empty clip from his Skorpion, reloaded with a fresh clip from the belt of one of the guards, picked up the second machine pistol.

  Again he waited, crouching with Skorpions in both hands, as he looked down both corridors, listening. There were no sounds except the sirens and continuing explosions outside, and the corridors remained empty Chant slowly straightened up and allowed himself a thin smile as it occurred to him that R.E.B Pharmaceuticals had probably run out of guards, at least in this area of the research section, whoever was left would be out fighting fires, hunting saboteurs, guarding other entrances.

  He turned to his right and, keeping close to the wall, moved silently down the corridor to the swinging doors. He opened one of the doors a crack with the barrel of one machine pistol, saw that the chairs behind the desk that served as a guard post were empty. He pushed through the doors, slipped into the first room on his right.

  He found himself in a kind of small amphitheater, which looked like a screening room. There was a large screen covering the front wall, and twin film projectors sat on an elevated platform at the rear. Racks against the wall opposite him were filled with metal canisters, which Chant assumed contained film and videotape of various target subjects—past, present, and possibly future. Just inside the door, to his left, a large, white cabinet was stocked with hundreds of green capsules nestled in individual styrofoam pockets Also against the near wall were racks of hypodermic needles, television monitors, and an array of medical paraphernalia. There were straight-backed chairs near all the walls, and four anchored leather recliners placed in a square in the center of the floor, facing the screen, each of the recliners was equipped with built-in leather restraining straps.

  Jan, unconscious and with fluids from two different suspended bottles dripping through rubber tubes into veins in her arms, lay strapped into one of the recliners, which was laid out at full extension. Her flesh was deathly pale against the rich brown of the leather, and her white hospital gown was soaked with sweat. A white plastic cap covered her hair. Her mouth hung open, and when Chant pulled back her lids he found her eyeballs rolled back into her head If it were not for Jan’s rapid, labored breathing, Chant would have thought her dead.

  The chair directly behind her was also occupied, strapped into it was the man Chant assumed had caused the executive-and-security furor of the past few days. The man’s thinning hair was sweat-pasted to his forehead, and he was straining against the straps, gaping at Chant in wide-eyed disbelief.

  “Jesus Christ, I was right,” Duane Insolers gasped hoarsely. “John Sinclair.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  “They overdosed her,” Insolers said, straining against his straps and craning his neck in order to watch Chant as he quickly undid the straps around Jan’s chest, stomach, wrists and arms, ankles “It happened just a while ago. They’d been working on her all night trying to get her to say who she was working with. She’s a tough lady, that one; even drugged to the gills, she resisted. Finally, they just gave her too much shit.”

  “You’re lucky you’re otherwise occupied right now,” Chant said evenly as he carefully removed the needles from Jan’s veins. “If you weren’t, I’d kill you.”

  “I’m not in any way responsible for her being here, Sinclair. And I’m not responsible for, or involved in, this aspect of the program, I just found out about it myself a couple of days ago. Look, for Christ’s sake; I’m strapped down too!”

  “But not doped up. You somehow got yourself in trouble with your boss, and now they’re getting ready to do a number on you. Considering the job Tommy Wing did on Montsero and Tank Olsen, I’m perfectly willing to leave you to his tender mercies.”

  “I don’t work for Blake.”

  “You’re full of shit,” Chant replied easily as he checked Jan’s pulse, then massaged her arms and legs in an effort to improve circulation. She was very close to death, he thought, his mind already grappling with the problem of what story to tell when he took her to the nearest hospital emergency room.

  “I’m telling you the truth, Sinclair I really do work for the Central Intelligence Agency. It’s true I was running a game on you when we first met, but that was standard procedure with all the subjects coming into the program—as I’m sure you figured out when you ran your own game on Tank Olsen. But I am a CIA operative. The reason they haven’t really worked me over is because there’s nothing I know that they don’t already know. They want me undamaged for use as a possible bargaining chip.”

  “Bargaining chip for what?”

  “The project was Company-sponsored—but never this aspect of it. Thanks to you, Sinclair, I finally found out what they’ve been doing here. The people at Langley are going to go apeshit if and when they find out what Blake’s been up to. That’s why I’m strapped in this chair; they’re keeping me on ice until Blake decides what he wants to do with me.”

  “I still say you’re full of shit.”

  “Let me loose, Sinclair,” Insolers said as Chant lifted Jan in his arms and headed toward the door. “For Christ’s sake, you can’t get out of here by yourself; you can’t even fire those guns accurately while you’re holding the woman in your arms I know the best way out—right through this section to the loading docks adjacent to the highway. I can show you the way. You’ll never make it without me.”

  “I’ll take my chances,” Chant replied over his shoulder.

  “Sinclair! Cooked Goose!”

  Chant abruptly stopped at the door, slowly turned. His eyes searched Insolers’s thin, rodentlike face. “What does it mean?” he asked softly, after a pause.

  “I don’t know,” Insolers answered quickly. “Probably less than a half dozen men in the Company do know—but whatever Operation Cooked Goose was all about, it was the CIA operation that caused you to walk away from the war in Southeast Asia. You’re the only person outside the top echelon of the Company who knows what Cooked Goose was all about—which is why they want you dead. That I know. They wanted you dead from the beginning, but even more so now. You’ve become a kind of legend; the more that legend grows, the more Langley worries you’re going to be captured and wind up in a prison cell writing your memoirs. They’ll never stop coming at you. I wouldn’t know the little I do about you and Operation Cooked Goose if I weren’t CIA, Sinclair. Right now you need me if the two of you are going to have any chance of getting out of here alive, so undo these straps.”

  “Where did you see or hear those words in the first place?”

  “I saw them in a file on you; it just mentioned the operation’s code name, not what it was about. Come on, Sinclair, you’re wasting time. And you’ll also be wasting time if you take her to a hospital; the woman could be dead by the time you finish explaining and filling out papers” Insolers paused, nodded in the direction of t
he white cabinet with its cargo of hundreds of green capsules. “She needs a Company doctor if she’s to survive with her mind intact. I can get you to a Company safe house and have doctors there in the time it would take you to get her admitted to a hopsital—where, I don’t have to tell you, you’re going to attract a lot of attention. I’m offering you a truce, Sinclair. Accept it, and save the woman’s life—and maybe your own.”

  Whatever else he was, Chant thought, Duane Insolers had to be CIA; it was the only way he could know as much as he did about Cooked Goose. That being the case, it was true that he probably offered the best chance to save Jan’s life—if he could be trusted.

  Chant went back into the room, eased Jan down onto one of the recliners, quickly freed Insolers.

  “Give me one of the guns!” Insolers snapped as he leaped from the chair “I’ll take the point; just follow me.”

  Chant tossed Insolers one of the machine pistols. Insolers grabbed the Skorpion out of the air, quickly and expertly checked the magazine, then bounded to the door, where he glanced up and down the corridor.

  “Let’s go, Sinclair,” Insolers continued “Right now, it looks like everybody’s busy outside.”

  As Insolers stepped out into the corridor, Chant quickly reached into the cabinet, grabbed a handful of the green capsules, and slipped them into his pocket Then he again lifted Jan in his arms and, gripping the machine pistol in his right hand, hurried after Insolers.

  Insolers, who had paused ten yards down the corridor to the right to wait for Chant, now led the way through a second set of swinging doors, out an exit and through a small, open courtyard, then into another building on the opposite side. They moved through a labyrinth of narrow corridors, past empty offices and laboratories, into the heart of the research section. Insolers stopped before a set of steel doors, held up his hand. Chant came up beside him, stopped.

  “The transportation pool and garage,” Insolers said, his eyes constantly darting back and forth, looking for guards. “No matter what’s happening in the rest of the complex, there are going to be some guards in there But if we can make it out of the garage, there’s only one gate to crash to get to the highway When I kick the door open, you go through and run down the catwalk to your right; I’ll try to give you plenty of cover fire There are cars at the end of the garage, and they leave the keys in them Get in the back of the blue Buick. I’ll be right behind you, and I’ll drive.”

  “Why that particular car, Insolers?” Chant asked curtly.

  “It has a car telephone.”

  “Having you able to talk into a telephone doesn’t sound like a good idea to me.”

  “Come on, Sinclair,” Insolers said impatiently. “I don’t care if the rumors about you being a universe-class ninja are true or not; right now, you’ve literally got your hands full, and if I wanted a quick promotion of about three grades I’d have blown off your head with this machine pistol the moment you stepped out of the prep room. I need a telephone to call ahead so the people in the safe house can make preparations. It will take about forty minutes to get there—about as long as it will take Company doctors to get there and set up whatever they need to flush the shit out of the woman’s system. You want to waste forty minutes? I told you we have a truce; I’m not going to try to turn you in or trap you. You have no choice but to trust me. The agency has no idea that you’re with me, and there won’t be any other field operatives in the house; no one there will recognize you, and they probably don’t know any more about John Sinclair but what they read in the newspapers Once we get out of here, I’ll drop you off at the first corner, before I make the call. If that’s what you want.”

  “You know damn well I’m not going to leave the woman,” Chant said evenly “Hit the door.”

  Insolers kicked open the steel door to the left, immediately knelt down in firing position. Chant cut past the man’s right shoulder through the door, found himself looking out over a cavernous garage. The multiple doors at the far end were all open, and through them Chant could see a wide driveway blocked by a double gate; beyond the double gate was a highway Three security guards at the opposite end of the garage had spun around at the sound of the door crashing open. They raised their Skorpions, simultaneously opened fire with Insolers.

  Chant, his body twisted slightly to one side to shield Jan as much as possible, sprinted to his right along a narrow, concrete catwalk six feet or so above the floor of the garage. At the far end six cars were parked next to each other, facing the garage entrance. The blue Buick was the last car. Ignoring the stairs at the end of the catwalk, Chant leaped nimbly from the catwalk onto the roof of the Buick, down onto the trunk, and finally to the floor He jerked open the rear door, carefully laid Jan down on the backseat.

  He backed out of the car and, using the car frame as a shield, fired off a burst from his machine pistol that tore through the neck of one of the guards. Now Insolers, keeping low and firing as he ran, came sprinting down the catwalk as chunks of concrete flew from the wall behind and above him. When the two remaining guards started to run to their left to gain better firing position, Chant pulled the trigger on his Skorpion and cut them down. Insolers reached the car, jerked open the front door, and slid behind the wheel as Chant dived into the back.

  Insolers turned the key in the ignition, and the powerful engine roared to life He slammed the car into gear, and the Buick leaped forward, tires screaming along with the engine The car shot out through one of the doors Insolers kept accelerating as they headed up the driveway through the gates, and just before the Buick tore through both metal shields Chant lay down on top of Jan, shielding her body with his. The impact of the car with the second gate turned the car completely around, but Insolers straightened it out, and the car kept going despite the fact that vision through the cracked front windshield was now partially obscured by the twisted hood At the end of the driveway Insolers twisted the wheel hard, and they careened onto the highway. To Chant’s amazement, the car continued to run.

  “Let’s just hope the car keeps running,” Insolers shouted back over his shoulder as he eased off on the accelerator and brought their speed down to a steady fifty-five, “and that the state police don’t stop us, I hate to think of what this car looks like from the outside.”

  “Show them your CIA credentials.”

  “Blake’s people took them away.”

  Insolers reached down for the phone in the padded console between the front seats, picked up the receiver, grunted with satisfaction when he found it working. He tensed slightly when he felt the bore of Chant’s machine pistol touch the back of his neck, but he didn’t hesitate in using the phone. He gave numbers that Chant recognized as a coded call sign There was a short pause filled with static, which Chant could hear from the backseat, then three soft clicks. Insolers gave a code word, then his name. After another pause, more static, and three more soft clicks, he began speaking.

  Chant listened carefully, but he could detect nothing in Insolers’s voice or words that would indicate more code usage, and—most important—he did not hear his name mentioned Insolers quickly explained that he had a sick woman with him who would need immediate treatment upon their arrival. He mentioned that she was suffering from GTN poisoning, then hung up the telephone.

  “There’ll be a medical team, with all the necessary equipment and supplies, at the house when we get there,” Insolers said. He reached down, picked up the machine pistol on the seat beside him by its barrel, handed it back to Chant. “Here, this may make you feel better.”

  “Not necessary,” Chant said easily as he took the machine pistol from Insolers and placed it on the floor of the car. “I only need one bullet in one gun to kill you if I don’t like what happens next, Insolers. You may get John Sinclair in a trap he can’t escape from, but you’ll be receiving your three-grade promotion posthumously.”

  Insolers’s response was to laugh. Chant smiled wryly, then leaned back in the seat and absently stroked Jan’s hair. He found he liked
the man who smelled like a medicine chest, respected him after seeing how he handled himself under fire. He also found, against all common sense, that he tended to trust Duane Insolers.

  Which didn’t mean that he’d let down his guard.

  Thirty-seven minutes later Insolers drove through an open gate onto a winding dirt road crossing what appeared to be a small ranch. At the end of the road was a sprawling ranch house, and as they approached a large door in an attached garage swung open. Chant lifted up his machine pistol.

  Insolers drove at full speed up the steeply inclined driveway, only braking at the last moment as the car entered what turned out to be a vast garage. The door slammed shut behind them, triggering banks of floodlights all around them. At least a half dozen men and women, one of them pushing a hospital gurney, came running toward the car.

  Chant pressed the bore of the machine pistol against the back of Insolers’s bucket seat as both of the Buick’s back doors were yanked open A heavyset man in a white lab coat reached in from the left and, ignoring the machine pistol, brusquely pushed Chant aside He grabbed Jan under the armpits, pulled her from the car, and lifted her in his arms.

  “I’ve got her on this side!” the man shouted in a firm, commanding voice that boomed in the vast, concrete-lined garage “Bring that gurney around here!”

  Two women in white lab coats rolled the gurney around from the other side of the car, helped the man ease Jan down onto it Jan was strapped down, a needle from a suspended bottle of plasma inserted into a vein.