Exit 9 pe-2

by Brett Battles

  “Where is Bluebird?” Ash asked the man again.

  For a second it looked like the intruder was going to deny any knowledge of the Project’s base again, but then he smirked and said, “You really expect me to tell you?”

  “It would be better for you if you did.”

  The man laughed. “You’re all going to die, you know that? All of you. There’s nothing you can do!”

  Without warning, he lashed out to the side, knocking Solomon backward, then ran for the door. Ash and Browne sprinted after him. The intruder reached the mudroom five seconds before the others. He raced to the main door and threw it open.

  Neither Ash nor Browne were dressed for the outside, and would risk serious exposure if they stepped into the Arctic night for more than a few seconds.

  With no choice, Ash returned to the other room, where he threw on heavier pants and a jacket, and yanked on his boots without tying them.

  “Take this,” Pax said. He tossed one of the pistols through the air.

  Ash grabbed it in mid-stride and headed for the main door. Browne was standing just inside, holding the door partially open.

  “Which way did he go?”

  “Left,” Browne said.

  Ash ran out the door.

  The cold was like a wall, slapping him hard and nearly stealing his ability to breathe. He forced himself forward, ignoring the shock, and focused only on finding the man. If the intruder really was part of the Project, they had to stop him before he could report back to his bosses. If that happened, their mission would be compromised, and their minimal chance of success would drop to zero.

  CF Guest Quarters was located at the northern end of Grise Fiord, not far from the landing strip. The bulk of the town-not much to begin with-was to the left on the other side of a short bridge.

  Ash ran as fast as his loose boots let him, his gaze on the road ahead, looking for the man in the darkness. Wind was whipping around him, sending up swirls of ice and snow, and playing tricks with the shadows.

  He had just crossed the bridge when he heard someone running up behind him. He twisted around, thinking maybe he’d somehow passed the man, but the person was too small.

  Chloe, he realized. In her hand was a gun.

  With a nod of acknowledgment, he started off again, his run turning more into a jog as the cold zapped the energy out of him. Even then, within half a minute, he was in the main part of town.

  Here and there, lights shone outside some of the buildings. Each structure was raised above the ground, making them all look like they’d fit better in a mobile home park farther south than this northern bit of barren island. Even the church looked like a shoebox on a wooden stand.

  The road ahead was split, one part continuing straight and paralleling the coast, while the other curled to the left, back to a few other buildings on the eastern side of town. He glanced at Chloe and pointed for her to take the coast road. He then followed the curve.

  Where is this guy, dammit?

  It wasn’t that big of a place. Ash doubted there were even one hundred buildings in the whole area. He was also confident the man couldn’t have gone into any of the buildings unseen.

  Stopping in front of the church, he looked around.

  Nothing. Just night and snow and frigid cold. He was the only one-

  Wait. Something had moved behind a large storage tank to his right.

  He ran toward it, stumbling once but managing to remain on his feet. As he neared the tank, he saw another behind it, and there, outlined against the side of the second tank, was the intruder.

  Breathing hard, the best Ash could muster was a quick walk, but it was faster than the other man, who could do no better than to shuffle around the tank. Soon, Ash could hear the man breathing.

  “Stop!” he yelled when only fifteen feet separated them.

  The intruder looked back, but kept moving.

  Ash raised the gun. “I will shoot you.”

  The threat did nothing to stop the other man.

  On willpower alone, Ash increased his speed until he caught up to the man. He reached out and grabbed the back of the guy’s jacket. The intruder tried to pull away, but Ash held tight.

  In a desperate move, the guy spun around and threw himself at Ash. Ash’s feet slipped on the icy snow, and they both slammed to the ground. The man grabbed the barrel of the gun and twisted the weapon, popping it free. Ash tried to snatch it back, but the man pushed away, creating a few feet of distance between them.

  Ash scrambled to his right, wanting to get behind the cover of the tank, but knowing he wouldn’t make it in time. When the gun went off, he tensed, waiting for the bullet to hit.

  It never did.

  He looked back.

  The man was sprawled on the ground, a hole in his head.

  Chloe was about thirty feet away, her pistol in her hand. “You all right?”

  “Why wouldn’t I be?” Ash huffed, climbing to his feet. “Thanks.”

  She shrugged. “That’s like a dozen you owe me now.”

  “How do you figure that?”

  “I’m rounding up.”

  They hid the two bodies under the CF Guest Quarters. Come summer, if it warmed up enough, the smell of the thawing corpses would signal their location. Hopefully, there would still be someone alive in Grise Fiord to notice.

  27

  “You’ll want to see this,” Jordan said.

  Billy came around the table, and leaned over Jordan’s shoulder so he could look at the computer screen. The two had been holed away in one of the small meeting rooms in the Bunker since Billy’s return to the Ranch from Chicago. Though it was well after midnight, going to bed had not even crossed Billy’s mind.

  “What am I looking at?” he asked. On the screen was what appeared to be a night-vision video of a street.

  “Just watch.”

  Jordan tapped one of the arrows, speeding up the image for several seconds, then hit the space bar. The video ramped down to normal speed.

  On the right side of the frame was the edge of an industrial-type building, and on the left, the road the business was located on. Most of the shot, though, was focused on a chain-link gate fastened to the building. It was an obvious security shot meant to monitor who went in and out. At the moment, the gate was closed and no one was around.

  “Where is this?”

  “Give it a second, okay?”

  Billy watched the screen, unsure of what he was supposed to focus on. He was about to say as much when two headlights appeared in the upper left corner, coming out of a driveway a block down on the other side of the street. When the lights turned onto the road in the direction of the camera, Billy could see that it wasn’t a car, but a semitruck. It continued toward the camera for several seconds, then passed out of sight.

  Jordan stopped the playback, and looked triumphantly at Billy.

  “So what? A truck on a street.”

  Jordan dipped his head in disappointment. He pointed at the screen. “Look again. That’s not just any street. You’ve been there. That’s the one where the Hidde-Kel building is. And this truck…” He backed the video up and paused on the frame right before the semi moved out of view. “Just came out of Hidde-Kel’s lot.”

  Billy studied the picture. “You’re sure?”

  “Positive. It took a little finagling, but I was able to hack into the security system of a company just down the road. They keep two months’ worth of footage on their backup drives. Just had to hunt around until I found this.”

  Billy moved his finger toward the screen, hovering it just over the load on the back of the truck. “And is that…?”

  “Yes. It is.”

  A shipping container. An identical match, as a matter of fact, to the shipping containers in the footage their inside person had sent them.

  __________

  MATT AND RACHEL arrived within seconds of each other, both responding to urgent phone calls from Billy.

  “I need to go back out,” Billy
told them.

  “Why?” Matt said, surprised.

  Billy nodded to Jordan. “Show them.”

  Jordan turned his laptop so the others could see the screen, and hit the space bar. While the video of the truck played, he and Billy took turns filling in the details.

  “But that’s not even the best part,” Billy said as the video finished.

  It sounded pretty damn good to Matt. Knowing the public face of the Project had been an elusive goal to this point, but now, with the discovery of Hidde-Kel, they had a name. It meant they might be able to stop just reacting and go on the offensive. They might not be able to kill the Project’s plan completely, but they might be able to create some big problems.

  “So what’s the best part?”

  Billy smiled. “Jordan was the one who figured it out.”

  Jordan shrugged. “All I did was enhance the video enough to get an ID number off the truck.”

  “And?” Billy urged.

  “Well, from that I found the company who owned it. These days, nearly every truck on the road has a transponder so that its owners can track them. I, um, was able to get the truck’s transponder ID and tap into it.”

  Matt was not surprised. Jordan was a tech expert who routinely hacked into satellites and computer systems for the cause. “I take it you found something.”

  Jordan minimized the video and brought up a static image of a map. Superimposed on it were several bright yellow lines, each overlaying existing roads and creating loops that seemed to always start in Chicago before going somewhere else in a two-state radius.

  “The lines represent routes the truck traveled in a two-week period surrounding the time the video was shot.” He clicked a button and all but one of the loops disappeared. “And this is the trip he started that night.”

  The line went southeast into Indiana, then almost due east across the state and into Ohio, where it terminated in Cleveland. From there it looped back, following basically the same route home.

  Jordan clicked on Cleveland, and the map zoomed in. He didn’t stop until the image area was filled with a roughly four-square-block section of the map. The yellow line stopped right in the middle.

  “This is where they dropped off the container,” Billy explained.

  “Where you guys think they dropped it off,” Rachel corrected him.

  “No. Jordan, show them.”

  Jordan brought up a satellite image.

  “The angle’s a little skewed,” he said. “The closest satellite I could get access to wasn’t directly overhead, but you can still see it.”

  The focus area of the shot appeared to be part of an industrial zone. In the center was a large open lot behind a warehouse-type building. Even from the slightly angled view, it was apparent the lot was not seeing much use. There were several abandoned cars along one fence, and a couple of semitruck trailers in the middle. Sitting right next to the trailers was what looked like a brown shipping container.

  “It’s the same container?” Matt asked.

  “I think so. Yes. Look at it. It’s a match to the one that was on the back of the truck that we now know stopped at this very location. I found a few images of the area from a month ago, and the only thing different is that there’s no container.”

  “Matt,” Billy said. “That lot is only a few blocks from the airport, and a mile or so west of a huge residential area.”

  “So if it is a delivery system, it’s perfectly placed,” Matt said, more to himself than anyone else.

  “Exactly.” Billy paused. “This is a perfect opportunity to find out how these things work. I want to go check it out.”

  “I’m not sure that’s such a great idea,” Rachel said.

  “Look, if I can figure it out, we might be able to dismantle others. Jordan’s already started the process of trying to locate more. Don’t you see? This will save lives.”

  “Do it,” Matt said. “Take whoever you need with you.”

  “Shouldn’t we talk this over?” Rachel asked.

  “We don’t have time. If there’s a way to stop these things, we need to know that now.”

  Rachel frowned but made no further arguments. Matt knew what she was thinking, though. Even if Billy figured out how to dismantle the death box, it would probably be too little too late.

  28

  I.D. MINUS 29 HOURS

  The DOP received his regular morning briefing from Foster, the night watch officer, at six a.m. on the dot in his quarters.

  “There have been no additional problems with the situation in Buenos Aires. We’ve hired some local freelancers to keep an eye on Patricia Mendes in case she tries to stir up anything.”

  The DOP waved a dismissive hand in the air. “We’re too close for anything she might say to matter at this point. You can let her be.”

  “Very well, sir.” Foster provided updates for several other minor incidents, including the small outbreak in Mumbai, India. “It appears to be contained with no further infections.”

  The DOP sensed hesitation. “What is it?”

  “It seems, sir, that the two nurses watching the patients have…left.”

  “What do you mean, left?”

  “When the next shift came on, they weren’t there. It’s believed they fled.”

  “Are they Project members?”

  “Yes, sir. Um, some of their cache of vaccine is missing.”

  The DOP stared at him. “They stole vaccine.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Unbelievable, the DOP thought. “Put their names on a list to be dealt with after everything is over. This kind of lack of loyalty cannot be tolerated.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Has there been any information leak on the outbreak?”

  “None.”

  “Good.” An outbreak associated with the people working on the “malaria problem” could have caused some serious questions to be raised, and jeopardized their operations not only in Mumbai but other places where they were using the method.

  “What’s next?”

  “Have not heard back yet from the team at Grise Fiord,” Foster said.

  The men at Grise Fiord had reported the arrival of a science group the previous evening, and were going to check them out, but it wasn’t unusual for them to take up to twenty-four hours to learn anything useful.

  “All right,” the DOP said, glad that these types of issues were not something he’d have to think about for much longer.

  “Our lookout in Savissivik reports that the Danish cultural committee is leaving as scheduled this morning for the south,” Foster said.

  Savissivik on the northwestern coast of Greenland and Grise Fiord in Canada were the two closest manned locations to Yanok Island, so it had always been a priority to keep an eye on them.

  “Anything else?”

  “Yes. There’s a storm heading our way.”

  “When?”

  Foster smiled. “Just in time for Implementation Day.”

  The DOP chuckled. He liked the idea of that.

  The briefing finished, Foster headed off to bed while the DOP got dressed. He then went to the cafeteria for a leisurely breakfast before joining Major Ross in the Cradle.

  They were approaching twenty-four hours from activation, the moment he’d been working toward for so many years. The anticipation was intoxicating. He wanted to make sure he savored every last second of it.

  29

  Billy arrived in Cleveland just after seven a.m. via a chartered jet. He’d brought only one other person with him, a woman named Karen Pruitt. She had a degree in electrical engineering, and was one of the people who kept the Ranch’s equipment running.

  After obtaining a rental car, it took them only a few minutes to get to the container’s location, just as the early winter sun was coming up. Live and in person, the lot looked even more abandoned than it had from above. There was a rusty chain-link fence, topped by three strands of barbed wire, surrounding the entire lot, and another, slightly newer fence p
artially cutting the lot in half. The row of neglected vehicles was a mix of cars and a couple of old tow trucks. None looked like it’d been on the road for years.

  Billy pulled the rental into one of the spaces at the west end of the lot, and got out. Though he could hear a low rumble coming from the freeway several blocks away, the area itself was quiet. At this early hour of the morning, he and Karen were probably the only ones around.

  After exiting the car, Karen went to the trunk and removed the case containing the specialized tools and equipment they thought they might need. That was one of benefits of chartering a plane from a company the Ranch had worked with before-they didn’t have to worry about a security check. She joined Billy at the misaligned gate in the fence, only about twenty feet from where they’d parked.

  Though the gate looked like it had been there for decades, the chain and lock holding the two halves together were new. Karen selected a couple tools from the case, set to work on the lock, and opened it in seconds.

  From the sidewalk, the brown shipping container was out of view, blocked by one of the aging trailers, but as soon as they walked on the lot, they could see it. Billy’s first impression was that it was a normal container, just like the countless others he’d seen over the years in ports or on the backs of trucks and trains. Then he noticed the top edge. At the point where the side panel met the roof, there seemed to be a hinge. That was definitely not normal.

  He pointed it out to Karen. “Goes all the way along the edge.”

  She frowned, and disappeared on the other side. “Same over here, too,” she called out, then came back around to where he was. “I think the roof splits in the middle.”

  Billy located the number at the top back corner of the box, and checked it against the one Jordan had seen on the container in the security footage. “Numbers match,” he said. “It’s definitely the same one.”

  When they stepped around the far end, they found another surprise. While the doors for loading and unloading the container were right where they should be, the locking mechanism keeping them closed was decidedly not standard, and seemed to be attached to something within the box itself.