“Want to show you something.” Murphy was back at his side.
The traitor set an inch-thick, square-zippered case on the desk. Lancer immediately recognized it as the case Murphy kept his personal headphones in, something he’d brought with him every day. Murphy unzipped it, and opened it up. The headphones inside were no mere earbuds. These were state of the art, and probably cost at least a couple hundred dollars. They had foam padding on each side that fit over the ears, and were connected via a horseshoe-shaped band that could extend or contract depending on the size of the user’s head.
What? Was Murphy going to blast Lancer with music?
Then Murphy did something unexpected. He first peeled back the leather covering the padding on one side. Underneath wasn’t padding at all. It looked more like a thin plastic bag that had been rolled so that it would fit snuggly into the space.
“Cute, huh?” Murphy said.
He stretched the plastic out.
Not a bag, a…lightweight mask, with a small circular opening where the mouth would be.
Murphy disassembled the other padded earpiece, this time removing a plastic oval ring, then the speaker itself. He mounted the speaker in the ring, and attached the ring to the opening in the mask, closing it off.
“This is the best part,” he said.
From the headband he removed three thin flat containers. Each seemed to be divided in the middle, with a clear liquid on both sides.
“Can I use this?” he asked, reaching for Lancer’s coffee mug. “Thanks.”
He seemed to glance around, and Lancer heard him dump the remaining coffee on the floor before setting the mug back on the desk. He wiped the interior with a tissue, then poured in the contents from one side of one of the containers.
“I promised you it wouldn’t be long.”
He donned the plastic mask. Lancer immediately saw it for what it was-a gas mask.
No! No! The scream in his head wanted nothing more than to pass his lips, but his vocal cords didn’t even quiver.
Murphy opened the second side-
No!
— and dumped it into the mug.
Olivia Silva lay on the bed of her cell, her eyes closed. She’d been this way for over an hour, and most observers would have thought she was asleep.
They would have been wrong.
She was in a meditative state, one that allowed her to conserve her energy while maintaining complete awareness of her surroundings. She floated on a sea of nothing-recharging and refreshing her mind.
But most of all, preparing.
When the alarm beyond her cell door went off, she opened her eyes.
The gaseous neurotoxin created by the chemicalsMurphy had combined was cloudless, lethal, and, in the enclosed space of the control room, extremely fast-acting. It worked so quickly, in fact, that the two guards who were inside the control room hadn’t even had time to know something was wrong before they fell to the ground, dead.
As pleased as he was with the results, Murphy’s initial concern was that the sudden deaths would be noticed by the guards on the other side of the glass wall, but as his contact had predicted, unless someone had collapsed right next to the wall, the other would never notice. Most of those in the control room were sitting behind larger monitors, and were already hard to see.
Murphy returned to his own station, and accessed the controls to the Bluff’s numerous security systems. He couldn’t take them all off-line. That would trigger the master alarm, and seal everyone inside until reinforcements arrived. What he could do was set up a rolling blackout of the zones across the property, timed to match the progress of the assault team as they approached the house, and make it look like a systems test. He slotted the thumb drive into his terminal and uploaded the program that would trigger the progression.
Once the program was ready to run, he tuned to the radio frequency the assault team was using.
“Control down,” he said. “Beginning blackout sequence on my mark. Mark.” He clicked the switch, starting the program.
He then switched to the terminal in the back row that controlled the detention cells. The woman who’d been manning the station was slumped forward, dead like the others. Murphy pushed her to the floor and took her chair. Removing a second thumb drive, he mounted it in the appropriate port, and used the program it contained to bypass the security alerts and disable the automatic locking feature on the door leading into the detention wing. Though the monitors would still indicate the door was locked, it wouldn’t be.
He brought up a view of cell number eleven. The Silva woman was lying down, apparently asleep.
Not for long.
He triggered the switch that unlocked her door, and accessed the alarm controls, hovering the cursor over the one for the detention wing.
Now it was time for part two.
Chaos.
Taylor had been stationed at the entrance to the detention wing for nearly seven hours. One more and he would be done for the night. So far, besides the guards who had either been starting or finishing duty on the block, no one had gone through the door in the clear Plexiglas wall that separated the arrival area from the detention cells. That wasn’t unusual. There were only twenty cells here, and only five were being used.
These were the most important prisoners taken by the resistance, members of the Project who were deemed both dangerous and potentially useful. Normally, the only time someone passed through the security door would be to question one of the prisoners, or deliver the meals. It was, without a doubt, a boring job, but one he and his fellow guards knew was important.
At the moment, though, his mind wasn’t on the prisoners or the potential death of billions. He was thinking about the beer waiting for him upstairs and the basketball game that was already recording on the receiver in his room.
Bwhap-bwhap-bwhap.
He jerked as the alarm sounded, swiveled to the left, and checked the computer monitor. As it was supposed to do, the detention wing door had locked down. He glanced through the Plexi wall at the guards on the block. They were taking their assigned positions in front of the occupied cells.
Per procedure, he checked his weapon, and repositioned in front of the elevator that led up from the subterranean detention area to the main building of the Bluff. If the doors opened, he and the two guards who would be joining him from the control room would deal with whoever might step out.
Bwhap-bwhap-bwhap.
He guessed it was probably just another false alarm. They’d had them a few times before. Real problems, on the other hand, never occurred at the Bluff.
Bwhap-bwhap-bwhap.
The persistent alarm was loud enough that he didn’t hear the door to the control room open behind him, but even if he did, he would have only thought it was the other guards heading his way.
Unfortunately for Taylor, he would have been wrong.
It was amazing how easy it was. Murphy’s contact had said it would be, had told him the resistance would never suspect the attack to come from within. Under the man’s guidance, Murphy had practiced everything over and over until each move was automatic, natural.
He had watched the guard stationed at the door to the detention area check the status of the door, then head over to the elevators. As soon as the man was in position, Murphy exited the control room.
Holding a second container of the dueling liquids, he walked toward the guard.
Taylor finally heard the footsteps when they were only a few feet away. Since the lights beside the elevator door indicated the car was still at the top, he looked back, but instead of seeing one of the expected guards, it was a member of the monitoring crew.
Murphy? Maybe. It was hard to tell because the guy was wearing something on his face.
“Where are the others?” Taylor asked.
“Not coming.” Murphy’s voice was distorted by the thing over his mouth.
“What are you talking about?”
As he spoke, Taylor began to sense that somethi
ng wasn’t right, but he was already too late. Murphy was flinging something at the floor by Taylor’s feet.
Taylor raised his gun. “Don’t move.”
“No problem,” Murphy replied.
“What was that? What did you…”
Taylor suddenly felt like he was losing his balance, the world around him becoming a blurry, vibrating mess. The next thing he knew, Murphy was holding on to him, gently lowering him to the floor.
“Don’t fight it,” Murphy said. “You’re not going to win.”
Taylor stared at the other man, trying to see him clearly. “What…wha…”
The rest of the question was lost forever as he took his last breath.
The young couple known as Adam and Eve had been joined by six others. The assault group moved in as soon as Murphy radioed. Within ninety seconds, all eight were standing at the front door of the Bluff.
There should be only four more guards in the main house, none currently expecting any trouble. The four who had come looking for them had all been permanently eliminated, as had the three who had been sent out to check the problem with the fence.
“Like we drilled,” the woman-Karie-instructed as they reached the front door.
Gleason unlocked the door with the keys he’d taken from one of the guards, and pushed it open. No gunshots. No feet pounding toward the entrance. No voices shouting at them.
Quietly, they slipped inside. Within three minutes, the four remaining guards were all accounted for and dealt with. The team reassembled in the lobby where Karie, after a quick look at the map of the house’s layout, said, “This way.”
Janice Humphrey had beenasleep in her room upstairs. It was early, but she was suffering from a cold. That was the only reason she was at the Bluff at all. She and her husband, Michael, had been called to the Ranch for a meeting, but Michael had insisted she stay and he would fill her in later.
So, drugged up with cold medicine, she had slept the afternoon away, and was surprised when she finally woke to see that it was starting to get dark outside. She was just grabbing a tissue when her door opened, and Robert Lieber, one of the Bluff’s security officers, ran inside.
“Out the window,” he said quickly.
“What?” she asked, thinking she wasn’t hearing correctly.
“There are hostiles in the house!”
She stumbled off the bed. “How did that happen?”
“I don’t know, but we don’t have time to talk about it. Ma’am, you need to go out the window and hide on the roof. They won’t look for you there.”
Even with a head slowed by a cold, Janice got his message. She ran over to the dormer window and threw it open. A cold blast of air hit her in the face. All she had on were the sweats she’d been sleeping in. They weren’t going to be enough.
Lieber seemed to sense this, too. He ripped the top cover off the bed and shoved it at her. “Take this. Now go, hurry!”
The roof outside Janice and Michael’s room had a gentle slope, but losing her balance was a very real possibility in her condition. If she did, the only thing that would stop her descent was the ground. She held the window frame tightly as she climbed out into the growing twilight.
“Try to get above the window. They won’t look there,” Lieber suggested. “But once you’re settled, don’t move around.”
“Aren’t you coming with me?”
“My job is to try to stop them.” He pushed the rest of the bedspread out the window after her.
“They’ll kill you! It’s not worth it.”
“Please,” he said. “Go.”
Then she understood. It wasn’t the Bluff he was trying to protect. It was her. The bedroom had obviously been occupied. The intruders would have to find someone there.
“Go!” he repeated.
With a sense of helplessness, she did as he told her, working her way above the dormer, then lying against the roof.
Lieber, no doubt to mask the cold air in the room, left the window partially open. Because of this, she could hear the door to her room open, and the gunshots that followed. A moment later, the window opened all the way again. From her vantage point, she could see the back of someone’s head looking out. As much as she hoped it was Leiber, she knew it wasn’t. He would have called to her, let her know it was okay.
After several seconds, the window shut all the way, and the light in her room went out.
BWHAP-BWHAP-BWHAP.
The detention area was the trickiest part. As simple as it would have been to toss the remaining container of toxin through the door, the cells were not airtight, so there was a very good chance the detainees would have been killed, too. Four of them wouldn’t have mattered, but if the fifth had died, it would have defeated the entire purpose of the mission. For that reason, the detention area was going to be up to the strike team.
Murphy glanced through the Plexiglas wall to the other side. Of the five guards, four were standing in front of their assigned cells, their eyes forward. The guard closest to the wall, though, was looking in Murphy’s direction, clearly confused. Murphy’s job now was to sell that this was only a medical emergency, not some forerunner to something more disastrous.
He knelt beside the dead guard, pretending first to take his pulse, then talk to him. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see the lights for the elevator indicate it was moving down. When the car was approximately ten seconds from arriving, Murphy jumped up and ran over to the phone at the guard’s desk near the door. As he’d hoped, the curious guard’s gaze followed him, so the man did not see the elevator doors open.
Murphy, on the other hand, was positioned perfectly, and saw with more than a little relief that it was the strike team, not Bluff security. Three canisters billowing smoke slid into the room. Within seconds, everything on Murphy’s side of the Plexiglas wall was hidden.
Murphy held his position as the others made their way to him. In addition to the gas masks they were all wearing, each had a pair of thermal goggles that allowed them to see heat signatures through the smoke. As he knew she would be, Karie was in the lead.
“Any problems?” she asked.
“None. You?”
“All secured. Door unlocked?”
He nodded.
Karie and four members of her team positioned themselves in the smoke a few feet from the door. A sixth man stood next to the handle.
“Everyone ready?” Karie asked.
The men standing with her raised their guns, each pointing at a different target they could see with their special gear. Karie lifted her own pistol.
“On three. One. Two. Three.”
As she spoke the last word, the man at the door pulled it open, and the five holding guns opened fire.
“Hold,” Karie said three seconds later, but it was unnecessary. None of them had had to take more than two shots. The guards, unable to see the shooters because of the smoke, had no idea they were being targeted.
With Karie still leading, Murphy and the strike team entered the detention area, the last through shutting the door to keep the excess smoke from billowing in.
Karie pulled her goggles off and looked at Murphy. “Which one?”
“Over here. Number eleven.” He led her to the door of cell eleven. “It’s open.”
“Wait here,” she told everyone, and pulled the door open.
Olivia sat on the edge of her bed, watching the cell door. For the longest time it remained closed, but she was patient. She knew these kinds of things took time.
The question running through her mind was who, exactly, was coming. She knew for sure someone was. She’d been left a message telling her that much.
When she heard the guard standing outside her cell slam against the wall and slide to the floor, she allowed herself a smile, but when the door opened a moment later, her face was once more neutral.
The light from the outer area was brighter than it was in the cell, so at first all she could see was the silhouette of a woman. It wasn’t until the doo
r closed again that her visitor’s face emerged from the darkness.
“Hello, Karie,” Olivia said.
“Olivia.” Karie took a few tentative steps into the room, then stopped. “Have…have they treated you well?”
“Three meals, a bed, TV when they’re feeling nice. Well enough, I guess.”
The women silently studied each other.
“So,” Olivia said. “Who sent you? The directorate? Dr. Karp?”
“Dr. Karp is dead.”
Olivia cocked her head. “When?”
“Last spring.”
“NB7?”
Karie’s brow furrowed slightly. “Yes. How did you know?”
Olivia shook her head like it wasn’t important. So the help she gave Ash had worked. It would have been nice if someone had told her. “The directorate sent you, then.”
“I’m…no longer with the Project.” Karie gestured at the door behind her. “None of us are.”
It wasn’t often that Olivia could be surprised, but she was now. “So, you’re here to….”
“Once you were gone, the Project lost its most important voice. We all mourned your death. Some of us more than others. Then, a few months ago, word got around that you were still alive. We thought the directorate would immediately attempt a rescue, but they did nothing. There were several of us who found that unacceptable, and decided to do something on our own.” She held out her hand. “So we’ve come to get you out. After that, whatever you want to do, we’ll follow.”
“You sure about that?”
“One hundred percent.” There was no hesitation.
Olivia took Karie’s hand and pulled herself up. “Then I guess it’s time to go.”
9
Pax was waiting next to an old station wagon at the Ranch’s private airfield when the jet carrying Ash and his kids rolled to a stop and the door opened. Ash zipped up his jacket and scooted his kids toward the exit.
“Hey, Uncle Pax,” Brandon said as he bounded down the stairs. He was starting to grow out of the hugging phase, but allowed Pax to give him a hearty handshake.
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