by Blake Banner
“How secure?”
“As secure as is possible in this day and age. Very secure.”
“Who will be viewing it?”
“Me, a senior FBI agent, a District Attorney and a judge who shall remain anonymous.”
“You’re going to cramp my style. I may have to kill somebody.”
He shook his head. “The idea is to get in and out without being detected. However, if the worst comes to the worst, you can always switch it off if you need to. But, I do want to stress, the object is to get in and out without leaving any trace of your having been there. It would also be very useful to have a constant, uninterrupted stream of data, so that there is no question of our having tampered with it.”
“I hear you, but if I need to I will use lethal force.”
He handed me the camera and pulled out what looked like a small cell phone. “In addition I want you to take this high resolution digital camera. It has a vast memory and will obviously take both photographs and video. It is very simple to use. You set it to your thumb print, switch it on by placing your thumb on the ‘on’ button…”
“I get it.”
“So, what do I want you to photograph? The ground floor, what you would call the first floor, you are already familiar with. It houses only the dining room, the recreation room, a couple of classrooms, the pharmacy and the nurses’ room.”
“There is also the director’s office.”
“No, that’s been moved upstairs to the first floor. What you Americans would call the second floor. I need you to break into that office and systematically go through all the papers you can find there. We are looking for anything, anything at all, that proves that they are conducting illegal experiments on behalf of Omega, or that corroborates evidence to that effect. Photograph the documents and get out without leaving a trace. The rest of that floor is taken up with classrooms. The next floor up, the top floor, is the director’s residence and the dormitories for the live-in students…”
“Live-in students will be the students who have been inducted into the program. People who are complicit.”
“We must assume so.”
“And the director’s quarters… So Ogden lives there.”
“Yes. It is imperative you do not go to the upper floor. We do not under any circumstances want to raise the alarm.”
“Is Ogden one of the Omega elite? Has he got a letter?”
“We believe he is the new Gamma. He takes over your father’s position. My sources tell me he was appointed shortly after the UN fracas.”
“So Ben finally gave up on me.”
“It would seem so. Now, before you go to the office and photograph the documents, we want you to take the lift—that is the elevator—down to the basement…”
I shook my head. “Without even looking at it I can tell you that if they are conducting illegal experiments there, that floor will be locked. I’ll need a special key to get down there.”
He reached in his case and pulled out a weird-looking key with a bulbous head.
“Insert this, it will override the security system and take you down. We have no idea what you will find down there, but if past experience of Omega is anything to go by, they will be conducting advanced experiments in the manipulation of consciousness. Whatever you film or photograph down there will be of crucial importance. And once you have logged and recorded what is there, then you will go and look for documents in the office upstairs, to corroborate what you have filmed in the basement. Does that make sense?”
“Of course.”
He nodded and sighed. “Lacklan, it is really of the utmost importance that you do not kill anyone, break anybody’s bones or blow anything up. Just go in like a ninja, gather information, and leave without leaving a trace. Marni assures me you can do that.”
“Yes, I can do that. Philip, tell me something, do you know who Alpha, Beta and the others are?”
He shook his head. “Only Alpha, Beta and Gamma know who Alpha and Beta are. Gamma is their mouthpiece. Some of the others are known, but not many.”
“What about Cyndi’s husband, Michael Donnelly? Is he in the club?”
He thought about it. “He might be. It is difficult information to get hold of. If you can find it there, that would be very useful. A comprehensive list of the 24 members of Omega could give us an edge. Who knows? We might be able to turn some of them.”
I nodded. “OK, noted. Have you a particular day when you want me to go in?”
“No, not really. The sooner the better, obviously, and no later than the next seven days.”
I thought for a moment. “I need a day to make some preparations, so I’ll go in tomorrow night. Have you got a friendly pilot?”
He studied me a moment. He looked surprised. “Yes. You’re going to drop in by parachute?”
“They’ve got about four hundred acres of wild land up there. Dropping in at night is the best way to avoid detection. What about the alarm system? You any intel on that?”
He nodded. “Right, we can help you a little bit here. This…” He pulled out a black metal box about the size of an A4 piece of paper, four inches deep. It had on it two buttons, one red, one green, and a folded antenna. “This is an EMP device. It is remarkably powerful. You raise the antenna, press the red button, and it will disable the alarm system, and all other electronics, in the whole building.”
“That’s useful.”
“Indeed. However, it is obviously advisable to go in as late as possible, preferably in the small hours, when there is no risk of people using televisions or computers. Their sudden, collective failure could arouse suspicion. When you set it off, remember to keep your cameras protected. Once you are in, switch it off before putting on your camera.”
“What about guards? They didn’t have any when I was there last, but they may have corrected that error. If they have guards I’ll have to take them out.”
He gave a small laugh. “Believe it or not, there are no guards at the institute. We believe the material there is so sensitive that the guards themselves would pose a security risk. They rely exclusively on the alarm system and the secure lock in the lift—elevator. Plus the scientists themselves are on site, on the top floor.”
I shook my head. “No, that’s wrong, Gibbons. I don’t believe that. This is their most valuable research, I have seriously damaged it twice, and I broke out of that facility. I don’t buy that they have no security.”
“That is the intelligence I have.”
I thought about it a moment, then shook my head again. “Then you have flawed intelligence. Be prepared. I can get in there and I can probably get out with the material you want. But I guarantee you that at some point I am going to have to take out some guards.”
He spread his hands. “So be it. Ideally you get in and out without being detected. But if you have to take out some guards, well, that is a good second best, as long as the intelligence, and the evidence, is intact.”
“Good, understood. OK, now, what about your pilot?”
He stood, pulled his cell from his pocket and opened my French doors. He stepped outside, closed the doors behind him and made a call. I watched him walk up and down a few times, talking in his abrupt, peremptory manner, then hang up and step back inside.
“He’ll meet you tomorrow night at one AM. There is a small airfield near here, Stow…”
“I know it.”
“He’ll meet you there. Apparently there is a café, Nancy’s Café. Obviously at that time of night it will be closed. It is doubtful there will be anyone there at all. However, the airfield is operational twenty four hours a day, and he will meet you at the door of Nancy’s Café, at one AM. I will not tell you his name, but you can call him John. If he speaks to you, he will call you Mr. Smith.”
“How much will he know?”
“Nothing. Just his flight plan and that you will jump. I know him well and I trust him as much as I trust anybody.”
We discussed a few more minor details and after
half an hour he left, got in his car and drove away. When he’d gone I called Kenny, and after a few minutes he knocked and opened the door.
“Sir?”
“You have the key to the wine cellar?”
A cloud seemed to pass over his face. “Yes, sir, of course.”
He took a bunch of keys from his pocket and selected one. He took it off the ring and handed it over. I took it and looked him in the eye.
“This is the last one, Kenny. After this, we lock the room and we don’t open it again unless we are under direct threat.”
“Very good, sir.”
The door down to the wine cellar was in the hall. It was always unlocked. I went through and closed it behind me. The steps were granite and lit by a single fifty watt bulb. I followed them down to a stone-flagged room, probably forty to fifty feet across in both directions. Wine was one of those things my father loved, and there were many racks and several hundred bottles stored down there. There was also another door, a bullet-proof metal one, that required a key and a code punched into a pad to open it.
I slipped in the key, punched in the code, turned the key and the handle simultaneously, and the door swung open. It was the gun room. It was my gun room, and, according to my instructions, Kenny had kept it well stocked, with a lot more than guns. There was a cabinet with half a dozen assault rifles, another with a good selection of sniper rifles. There were small machine pistols, like the 9 mm Uzi, the Mauser C96 and the Pistolula Dracula, and others. There were also RPGs, a selection of bazookas and four ground to air rocket launchers. There were other weapons too, bows, crossbows, axes, knives and swords. It was a testament, a memorial, to a life devoted to killing.
Kenny had a table and a couple of chairs there. I could see from the cloths and the stains that he spent time down in that room, cleaning and oiling the weapons, keeping them in good working order for me.
I sat and looked around, thinking about what I would need. Gibbons wanted me to insert and extract without being detected, without killing anybody. He was dreaming. I knew that was going to be impossible and I wasn’t even going to try. I was going to go in, I was going to collect all the evidence he needed and I was going to get the information that I wanted. Then I was going to kill everybody I had decided to kill; and after that, when I was done, I was going to come home.
Home.
FIFTEEN
The Cessna 182 was small and noisy. We had been flying southwest for almost an hour, and had left the lights of Springfield behind us about half an hour ago. The windows were dark. There was nothing to be seen, except for a ghostly half moon and a couple of flickering pinpricks of light in a formless ocean of black. According to the instruments we were over the Catskills, one and a half miles north of Black Dome Mountain. I felt a small, hot twist in my belly. We were coming up on the target.
Kenny had driven me to the airfield in the Zombie. I had put on a black ski mask in the car, and the pilot and I had exchanged no words. Now he pointed to the door. I slid it open. He looked at me and held one finger, two, a third, then he gave me the thumbs up. I jumped into the void, counted slowly to ten and pulled the cord. A jerk and a thud, and I was floating.
The darkness below was almost impenetrable. It was a bad night for an aerial insertion, but we didn’t have the luxury of choice. My calculations had been minutely detailed, and theory had it I was descending toward a clearing in the forest, seven hundred yards east of the Institute. But when you’re suspended in midair from a delicate piece of silk, in the darkness of night, theory is just that: theory.
Slowly, as I descended, the ground beneath me began to take shape by the tenuous light of the moon. I was slightly due south of the clearing, dropping toward dense pinewoods. I adjusted my trajectory and descended easily into the broad, grassy clearing, as close to the tree line as I could get without impaling myself.
I gathered up the chute, ran into the forest and buried it in a shallow hole, beneath leaves and pine needles. I then took two minutes to fit my night vision goggles and check my equipment. I had my Sig Sauer p226, but I had also brought a Maxim 9, because it has a built-in suppressor, it’s quiet and fits snugly into a holster. I also had the new HK 433, four flashbangs, my knife and three pounds of C4 with a selection of detonators; because you never know when you’re going to need to blow something up. I smiled briefly at the thought of Gibbons’s face if he could see me now.
I’m not a ninja. I’m a barbarian.
I moved quickly through the forest and soon came to the edge of the woods. There I lay flat on my belly and scanned the area. I could see the institute up ahead, thirty yards away: an ugly, concrete, rectangular dog-leg, slightly luminous in the failing moonlight, with three rows of dead, black windows. There was a tree-lined drive up to a large porch that led away to the main road, about a mile distant.
The first sign I had that I was right and things were wrong was when my suspicions were confirmed and a figure came out from behind the building, walking at a steady pace, carrying an automatic rifle. Gibbons had received bad information, as I had suspected from the start. There were guards. Which meant Omega had some idea at least, either that we were coming, or we might be planning to come. So I now had a completely unknown quantity to deal with: how much did they know? Did they know I was coming that night? Or were they just being careful? How many guards did they have? How many on the outside and how many on the inside?
They were all questions I needed answered if I was going to pull this off the way Gibbons wanted. They were also questions I had no way of answering. So Gibbons could go to hell.
I lay motionless for twenty minutes in the shadow of the trees. What I saw answered two of my questions. During those twenty minutes, two guards patrolled past, twice. Which meant that each side of the building was left unguarded for about five minutes at a time. That, in turn, meant that though they were being careful, they had not been alerted to the fact that somebody was coming that night—and they didn’t know it was me. If they had known either of those two facts, the place would have been swarming with guards armed to their teeth.
I watched the guard disappear under the porch, headed for the far end of the building, and sprinted across the sward to the corner where I knew the next guard would appear in five minutes. There was no cover. He was going to see me before he died. So it had to be quick, precise and silent.
I counted off the seconds. Two hundred and fifty. He came around the corner and found me on one knee. He needed three full seconds to process what he’d seen, but by the end of the first he was already dead. The Maxim 9 spat and at eight feet I put the round right through the center of his throat. It shattered the vertebrae in his neck and whatever his brain wanted his hands, feet or lungs to do, they never got the message. He did manage to frown. Then he folded. I pulled him out of sight and waited another five minutes for his pal. It was the same story.
I sprinted to the main entrance. At a distance of seven feet from the plate glass doors, I dropped and lay flat in the shadows, looking in. There was one, dim ceiling light burning. I knew there would be at least one guard. What I needed to find out was whether there was more than one, and, if so, what their rounds were.
After another twenty minutes I knew it was only one guy, and he did the rounds of the first floor every six minutes. I waited for him to pass and disappear down the passage toward the pharmacy, then I fired the EMP and killed the alarm system. Gibbons had believed I would then use some cunning ninja technique to open the door. I smiled, removed my night vision goggles, took the Maxim 9 and put a round through the lock. That was my ninja technique.
I brought the EMP inside, switched it off and sprinted toward the passage where the guard had disappeared. He was running back toward me. He’d heard the impact of the slug on the lock and was coming to see what it was. He burst into the lobby and took both rounds of a double tap, one in the mouth and the other in his throat. It was ugly but it was effective.
I was in no doubt by now that there would be
heavily armed guards in the basement, protecting their experiments. I had to expect at least four of them, possibly more. I had only one form of ingress, the elevator, and the noise would give them advance warning of my arrival. I had a problem.
But it wasn’t insoluble.
The elevator was on the first floor. I opened it and measured it. The entrance was four feet across. On either side of the door I had about thirty-six inches of space. It was enough. I stepped in, inserted the override key and turned. The doors slid closed. I knew by the time I got down they would be ranged across the entrance, seven to eight feet back, probably kneeling, with their weapons trained on the door. I took a flashbang, hunkered down against the left wall, below the panel of buttons, and waited for the elevator to come to a halt. It stopped and the doors started to hiss open. When I had a six-inch gap I tossed out the flashbang and flattened myself against the wall.
The detonation in the confined space was massive, but I was protected by the elevator. I stepped out, with the HK at my shoulder. There were six of them. They were too stunned to react and at eight feet it was impossible to miss. They were all headshots, but with their ears ringing, they didn’t hear any of them.
So far the operation had gone smoothly, not according to Gibbons’s wishes, but according to mine. But my gut told me it had gone too smoothly. My brain told me Ogden, the director, had been expecting something, but he didn’t know precisely what. So he’d had guards, but the nature of the installation—ostensibly an educational establishment—had precluded the use of heavy, military style security. That made sense as far as it went, but it didn’t satisfy my gut. My gut was still worried.
I took a couple of seconds to assimilate my surroundings. It was pretty much the same layout as the first floor. I was in a kind of lobby, maybe thirty feet square. On the right there was a passage with doors on either side. Behind me, running back from the elevator, there was another passage, also with doors facing each other. So the basement followed the same basic dog-leg pattern as the building above ground.
