“Not yet…fourth floor. Once we finish, we’ll…down.”
“Say again?”
“On four,” Powell said, the signal strengthening as Ash and Sealy entered the elevator. “We’ll work our way down.”
“Copy. Any word from Chloe?”
“None.”
“All right. Keep moving. We’ll go to the bottom and work up. Meet you in the middle.”
“Copy that.”
Ash pushed the button for the very bottom level. Not only did this make sense search-wise, but according to the map, it was also where the auxiliary tunnel Chloe’s team was using connected to the base.
When the elevator approached level five, it unexpectedly slowed. Ash and Sealy moved so their backs were against their rear wall, their hands hovering near their guns. When the door opened, a solitary, middle-aged woman stepped on board. She gave them a nod as she pressed the button for level eight.
Once they were underway again, the woman made just enough effort to turn her head a few inches but didn’t actually look back at them. “Don’t you love the night shift?”
Ash wasn’t keen on having a conversation, but he didn’t want to arouse any suspicion. “Not particularly.”
“Me, neither,” she said.
After what seemed like forever, the elevator stopped on level eight. As the woman exited, she said, “Don’t work too hard, gentlemen.”
Since she kept walking, she didn’t seem interested in a response, so Ash said nothing.
Two more levels and they reached the bottom of Dream Sky.
__________
ROBERT, ESTELLA, AND two others secured the man and woman who had been enjoying some personal time in the storage room when the tunnel door opened.
“Knock them out?” he asked Chloe.
She was standing about twenty feet away, staring at what, he couldn’t tell.
When she didn’t respond, he said, “Chloe? Knock them out?”
She blinked and looked over. “Um, yes. Do it.”
Robert removed two syringes from his bundle before saying to the new prisoners, “You’re going to go to sleep for a while. Don’t worry, you shouldn’t feel much of anything.”
“Why are you doing this?” the woman asked.
Estella, in a voice nowhere near as kind as Robert’s, said, “Why do you think?”
Robert administered the shots, repacked his kit, and rose to his feet. He half expected the rest of the team to be gathering near the exit but Chloe was still standing where she was before.
He walked over. “Are you okay?”
“What? Uh, I’m fine.”
He regarded her for a moment, thinking he should press the issue, but he didn’t know her well enough to do so. “All right. Should I get everyone together so you can tell us what you want us to do next?”
She was quiet for so long he thought she wasn’t going to answer, but then she said, “A small scout group, no more than three, does a check around. Everyone else stays here.”
He waited to see if there’d be more but apparently she was done. “Sure,” he said. “I’ll make that happen.”
A beat. “I’m one of the three.”
“Oookay. How about Estella and me going with you?”
For the first time since he’d walked over, Chloe looked at him. “Whatever works.”
__________
WHY DO I know this place? Chloe wondered.
The smooth concrete that covered everything, the curved intersections between the roof and the top of the walls, the hue of the lights, and then, of course, the blue scrubs worn by the couple she discovered in the room.
She did know it. She had no doubt about that.
She knew that when she and her companions exited the room they would come upon a hallway that curved off in either direction, eventually rejoining itself and completing a giant circle. She knew exactly where each door was, and in some cases what was on the other side. She knew where the elevators were, and that the two floors above this—levels nine and eight—were the “wards,” and that on level seven she’d find greenhouses and refrigerated food storage lockers. Six, five, and four contained more wards. Three was administration and security. Two and one—supplies, general living quarters, cafeteria, and training rooms.
How do I know all this?
“Chloe? Knock them out?”
The words were distant, meaningless at first. She had to concentrate hard to process what she’d heard.
“Um, yes,” she told Robert, after working out what he meant. “Do it.”
Barely a second seemed to pass before he was standing next to her, asking her what they should do and if she was all right.
Focus, goddammit.
As she issued her instructions, it felt like she was outside herself, watching her lips move but not really controlling them.
“Sure. I’ll make that happen,” he said.
She realized she hadn’t been as clear as she’d thought. “I’m one of the three.”
Walking up to the doorway that led into the base wasn’t difficult, but stepping through it felt like the hardest thing she’d ever done. She forced herself to keep going, worried that if she stopped, she’d never move again.
__________
RENI WAS TOO late to catch the men as they left McHenry’s quarters. She peeked into the room only long enough to see that her boss and the two med techs from the hallway were restrained and unconscious like her colleagues back in the barracks.
Racing down the corridor and keeping as quiet as she could, she listened for them, finally hearing them off to the left, down the outer loop—the corridor that ran in a circle around the perimeter of each floor. The new direction took her to the east elevator lobby, where she arrived just as the doors closed on the car the men had entered.
The elevator indicator showed the car stopping on five, eight, and finally ten. But which level had they exited?
She tried to put herself in their minds. As far as the men knew, they had neutralized the base’s security force and now had free run of the facility.
Okay, fine. But that still doesn’t tell me where they got off.
If they had come for something specific, they could be on any level. If they were here to destroy Dream Sky, the elevator stop at the bottom made the most sense. With serious opposition out of the way, they could start there and work their way up, clearing floor by floor.
Level ten, then.
She poked the recall button over and over.
“Come on, come on, come on.”
After what seemed like forever but was really no more than half a minute, the car that had been on level one descended and the doors opened. She rushed inside and punched 10.
The elevator headed down, passing four, five, and six, but then slowed before seven.
“Dammit!”
The doors slid open and a trio of technicians started to step on.
“No!” Reni said, motioning them back with the butt of her rifle. “Security emergency. Get the next one.”
She pressed the CLOSE DOOR button and left the technicians staring at her.
The car didn’t slow again until it reached the bottom of the base. When the doors opened, she surveyed the small lobby area, making sure it was clear before she stepped off.
She looked both ways along the outer loop, listening for the men, but hearing only the dull hum of the air recycling system.
Turning back to the left, she caught sight of one of the small orange boxes that were scattered throughout the base. It was mounted chest high on the wall, and inside was a button that would sound the general alarm. Pushing it would be the safe move, but at the moment, her only advantage over those she was following was that they had no idea she was trailing them. Setting off the alarm would definitely change that.
She needed to find them again first, and preferably subdue them without creating the base-wide panic the alarm would trigger. At the very least, she could learn as much as she could about them before she hit the button.<
br />
Right or left?
Eenie-meenie-miney-moe.
Left it was.
10
JAIPUR, INDIA
12:52 PM IST
THE BULLET HAD passed straight through Sanjay, creating both entry and exit wounds a couple inches above his hip, forcing Kusum to use both hands to press the makeshift bandage against him. The material was already soaked with blood, but she didn’t want to let go for fear that letting up pressure would be worse.
“He needs a doctor,” she said.
Darshana slowed the car enough to take a turn, then increased the speed again. “I know, but where?” She paused before tentatively saying, “We could take him back to the base.”
Kusum knew the Project Eden base would have doctors. But she highly doubted they would treat Sanjay after what the three of them had done. Still, she could think of no other choice.
“No,” Sanjay grunted, looking up at her. “We cannot go…back.”
“But you will die,” she said. “You need medical attention.”
“Then you…and…Darshana will give it to me.”
She stared at him. “We are not doctors.”
“You will have…to be.”
His eyes closed.
“I will find a hospital,” Darshana said. “There should at least be supplies.”
As much as Kusum wanted to tell Darshana to turn around and head back to the base, doing so would erase the sacrifice Sanjay had made to capture Mahajan. But she wasn’t about to let her husband die, either.
“Do you have the satellite phone up there?” she asked.
Darshana looked at the seat next to her, then back at the road. “Yes. Do you want it?”
“I cannot let go of him,” Kusum said. “So you will have to make the call.”
WARD MOUNTAIN NORTH
11:25 PM PST
JANUARY 7th
“RACHEL?” CRYSTAL SAID.
Rachel looked over from her desk. “Yes?”
“I have Darshana, one of Sanjay’s people, on the line. She says they need help.”
“I’ll talk to her.”
As Rachel donned her headset, a box appeared on her computer screen, letting her know she had a transferred call waiting. She clicked CONNECT.
“Darshana?” she said. “What’s going—”
“Please, you must help us. Sanjay’s hurt and—”
“Hold on, hold on. Tell me exactly what’s going on.”
She could hear Darshana but her voice was muffled and not directed at Rachel. Another voice spoke up, followed moments later by a click. The sound coming over the line took on the familiar echo of a speakerphone.
“This is Kusum, Sanjay’s wife. Who am I speaking to?”
“Rachel Hamilton. Your friend said Sanjay’s hurt? How can I help you?”
“He has been shot and is losing a lot of blood.”
Before she could stop herself, Rachel said, “How did that happen?” Sanjay and his people were only supposed to observe the Project Eden base in Jaipur and try to confirm whether or not one of the Project’s directorate, a man named Mahajan, was there. “Never mind. That’s not important right now. Hold on.” She covered her mic and yelled, “Someone get Dr. Gardiner in here immediately!”
Crystal jumped up from her desk and raced from the room.
“We’re getting someone who will know what to do,” Rachel said to Kusum. “Just hang in there.”
“Thank you,” Kusum said, sounding relieved.
“However we can help, we will.”
“There is one more thing I need to ask.”
“Yes?”
“What do you want us to do with Director Mahajan?”
“Excuse me?”
“The director. What should we do with him?”
“You have Mahajan?”
“Yes, yes. He’s in our trunk.”
JAIPUR, INDIA
DARSHANA FOUND A hospital toward the edge of the city.
The streets around it were stuffed with abandoned cars, so she had to stop about half a block away. While Kusum remained with Sanjay, Darshana searched the nearby cars until she found some cloth they could use as fresh bandages for Sanjay’s wounds. Once they were set, she and Kusum carried the unconscious Sanjay the rest of the way to the hospital.
The waiting area was littered with the rotted corpses of Sage Flu victims. Watching where they stepped, they carried Sanjay across the room and into a corridor. Against the wall was an old gurney, and on the floor beside it another body. Either the woman had rolled off before she died or someone had dumped her.
Darshana nodded at the bed. “We can use that.”
Grunting, they lifted Sanjay high enough so they could lay him on it.
“Stay here,” she told Kusum. “Let me see if I can find a room we can use.”
“Hurry,” Kusum told her.
The first several places Darshana found were stuffed with more victims, many wearing the uniforms of doctors and nurses. Thankfully, the smell of decay in the air wasn’t as overpowering as it probably had been a week earlier. Or perhaps she was just used to it now.
She found one room that stored linen and another jammed full of wheelchairs, but it wasn’t until she moved deeper into the hospital that she finally found something useful—a room full of medical supplies: plastic trays, syringes, bandages, wraps, slings, and more.
She left the door open so that she’d remember which one it was, then continued the search for someplace where they could work on Sanjay.
She threw open doors and peeked inside just long enough to know if the spaces beyond would work or not. She found one room that was empty but cramped. In a pinch, it would do, but she hoped for better.
Then she saw a sign on the wall saying SURGICAL PROCEDURES with an arrow pointing farther down the hall. Following it, she found three operating rooms, all unoccupied. Even better, just outside the rooms was a generator, with power cables running from it into three sets of lights in the center room.
She checked the petrol level and saw the tank was half full. It took four yanks of the cord but when the generator turned over, the lights in the operating room glowed to life.
Darshana raced back to Kusum and Sanjay.
“This way,” she said as she released the lock holding the gurney’s wheels in place.
They rolled him down the halls and into the center operating room. Then Darshana returned to the medical supply room, filled up a cart, and ran to the linen closet and grabbed several towels before hustling back to her friends.
“Here,” she said, holding a couple towels out to Kusum.
While Kusum replaced the now soaked cloth with the towels, Darshana pulled the sat phone out of her bag and called the Americans.
“Kusum?” the woman named Crystal said through the speaker.
“Yes, I am here,” Kusum replied.
“Hold on.”
A second passed, then, “Kusum, it’s Dr. Gardiner. Are you somewhere you can work now?”
“Yes. Darshana found a hospital.”
“Okay. First let’s get some vitals. How is his pulse?”
Kusum, her hands once more occupied, looked at Darshana.
“One moment,” Darshana said. She grabbed Sanjay’s wrist and hunted around until she felt the beat of his heart. “It’s very weak.”
“All right, we need to patch up those wounds and then get some blood into him.”
“Maybe there is still some stored here,” Darshana suggested.
“Unless the hospital’s electricity is working, whatever you find wouldn’t be any good.”
“The whole country is without power,” Kusum said.
“Don’t worry,” the doctor said. “We can get the blood from one of you. Do you know your blood types?”
“I have no idea,” Kusum said.
“Me, neither,” Darshana replied.
“What about Sanjay’s?” the doctor asked.
“Same,” Kusum told him.
“All right.
That’s not a problem. They should have blood-type testing kits there somewhere. Darshana, maybe you can look for that, and in the meantime, I’ll talk Kusum through dealing with the wounds.”
“What does it look like?” Darshana asked.
Gardiner described the test kits he was familiar with but warned they might look a little different there. He also told her about the equipment needed to perform a person-to-person transfusion.
She found most of the gear in the supply room. The test kit, however, she ended up finding in a drawer at a nurses’ station.
Sanjay turned out to be type O positive.
Darshana tested Kusum next.
“She is A negative,” Darshana said.
“All right, you next,” the doctor said, concern in his voice.
She changed the disposable portion of the kit and then placed it against the tip of her index finger. When she pushed the button, a needle pricked her skin and blood blobbed onto the test strip. She watched the display.
“I am also O,” she said. “Negative.”
“Ah, good.” There was no hiding his relief. “Then you’re the lucky one who gets to donate.”
Kusum had a little bit of a problem getting the needle into Darshana’s vein, but otherwise the transfusion went off without a hitch.
“What if he has injuries inside?” Kusum asked the doctor as she removed the gear from Sanjay’s arm.
“Don’t worry about that right now. For the moment, we’re just focusing on stabilizing him.”
“But when he is…stabilized, are you expecting us to cut inside him?”
A click.
“Kusum? It’s Rachel. You’re not going to have to cut into anyone. We have a team already on its way to you. They should be there before morning. There’s a doctor with them who will take care of Sanjay. By this time tomorrow, the three of you and your hostage will be far away from Jaipur.”
Darshana’s eyes widened at the mention of the hostage. Mahajan was still in the trunk of their car. In their rush to help Sanjay, they had totally forgotten about him.
While Kusum kept an eye on her husband, Darshana headed back outside to the car. She removed the keys from the ignition and moved around back.
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