Encrypted: An Action-Packed Techno-Thriller

by Carolyn McCray

  “But the police—”

  “Now.”

  * * *

  Probably best not to piss off the crazed religious lunatic, Quirk thought but didn’t bother to voice, because, well, the crazed religious lunatic was already pissed off.

  The metal shone blue under the assailant’s torch. They didn’t even have to make a very big hole. Just enough for a gun barrel, and then it would be like shooting…well, shooting four idiots in a gallery. Zach had tipped over the benches to act as a cover, but really, how long was that going to hold off the semiautomatic weapons?

  Ronnie suddenly turned to Zach. “Burn them.”

  “What?”

  But, Ronnie being Ronnie, she picked up the acetylene torch and set fire to The Wave. The beautifully stylized crest of a foamy ocean wave warped and bubbled.

  Quirk grabbed her wrist. “You are going to set off the fire alarms!”

  Ronnie glanced at Lino’s man who had nearly made a muzzle-sized hole in the mesh gate. “Exactly.”

  Quirk followed her gaze to the ceiling. “Got it!”

  Zach still looked confused, so Quirk shoved the burning painting at him while Ronnie moved onto the next. “Use this to light the others on fire.”

  Quirk had to give it to the FBI agent. He looked completely perplexed, but did exactly what was asked of him, setting a Manet aflame. What was once a delicate reverential moment was now a fire frenzy. Francois used the other torch to light even more masterpieces. Quirk got his camera out, recording the swirling symbols. So many and who knew in what order, but at the least they were capturing them.

  Then, as the flames licked up the wall, the automated fire suppression system kicked in. The first step, the glorious first step, was for a heavy, bulletproof acrylic shield to lower in front of the metal mesh. The plastic guard was necessary to block the doorway so when sprinklers overhead shot out their FE-13 mist, the fire suppression gas would be contained to this room—and only this room.

  Lino shoved his gun through the hole in the mesh and fired, point-blank, yet the shield held. A white, heavy mist filled the room. Zach gulped in a big breath and hunkered to the ground. Quirk snickered.

  “Dude, that’s so 1996.”

  Quirk took in a deep breath. Modern halogenated compounds were perfectly safe to inhale. Zach looked only moderately embarrassed as he continued setting paintings on fire.

  The symbols glittered, dancing amongst the fog like characters in a fairy tale. So many. Maybe too many for his boss to interpret in real time. The mist loved these crackling symbols, though, as the white particles were drawn to the magnesium fire.

  The scene would all have been so very beautiful if it wasn’t for the little facts that Lino was trying to shoot his way in, the police were about to descend on the building, and the Black Death was on a rampage.

  * * *

  Zach set the last painting on fire. The mist made the act seem almost magical—as if they hadn’t just destroyed a huge swath of the world’s greatest paintings. What would his mother call it? Wanton destruction? His only small comfort was that the painters, the originators of these exquisite works of art, had always intended, when the worst came, for them to be set alight. But it felt a small comfort that the only remains left of over a dozen masterpieces were scorched frames.

  Suddenly, the gunfire stopped. Zach turned to see Lino step back from the mesh. Was he backing away in defeat? He should have been walking away in defeat. After all, the police and fire sirens were right outside the front door. Instead, the cocky bastard just smiled that cool, insidious smile.

  “As I stated,” Lino said. “Trapped.”

  With that, the prick nodded to his man. An explosion rocked the building, sending soot and ash into the air as the lights cut out. Just as the emergency lighting bloomed to life, a second explosion sounded from downstairs, plunging the room into complete darkness. The only illumination in the gallery was from Ronnie’s screens.

  In the eerie, wan light, Lino’s teeth glistened in a fierce smile before he turned and charged down the hallway to the exit.

  Ronnie was already at work trying to get the gates to lift, but Zach could tell by the set of her jaw that it wasn’t going well.

  “Talk to me.”

  “We’ve lost the hydraulic lifts to get the gates up.”

  Zach raced to the front of the room and put his shoulder into it. With a grunt, he pushed up on the acrylic shield. It rose a quarter of an inch, and then slammed back down. Even with all four of them, he doubted that they could raise it the foot they needed to crawl out.

  “Tell me you’ve got a Plan ‘H.’ ”

  * * *

  Okay, it was more like Plan L, for ludicrous. She hoped that everyone in the room remembered that when they packed to break Zach out of the CIA safe house that they had not expected to assault the Metropolitan Museum of Art, let along escape an airtight room, with the police breathing down their necks to boot.

  “Helo,” Ronnie said. Zach looked confused, but Quirk brightened.

  “Oh, my God!” Quirk exclaimed. “Brilliant!”

  He immediately swiped his screen, dismissing the security feed, which was now nothing more than a blank blue screen, and booted up Helo’s command sequence.

  “Do I even want to know what he’s doing?” Zach asked.

  “Probably not.”

  From the other side of the gate, one of their equipment bags shook and lifted a few inches from the ground. Then the bag burst open, and their small, perfectly-to-model helicopter hovered above the ground.

  “Meet Helo.”

  Quirk’s smile could not be contained. “I always knew I liked aviation.”

  With a few deft moves of his wrist, her assistant got Helo up and zipping down the hallway, when the craft suddenly lost altitude and circled lazily to the left.

  “Quirk?”

  “I don’t know,” he said, rapidly trying to compensate. Then his palmtop sparked. Quirk’s pupils dilated as he turned to her. “Oh, no. The FE-13.”

  She was way ahead of him, wiping off her screen, shaking off any remnants of the substance. While it was safe to inhale, if not a little stinky, the one major drawback of the fire retardant was its penchant to fritz electronic devices. Especially high-end electronic devices. Which of course, all of theirs were.

  “Pass the controls to me,” Ronnie ordered, but Quirk stalled.

  “No, it’s okay. I’ve got—”

  Then his entire screen went blue, then fuchsia, and then a glaring yellow.

  Poor Helo ducked and swerved without guidance. Ronnie keyed in the code, taking control, steadying out the mini-helicopter’s flight.

  “I’ll take it from here,” Quirk said, reaching for her palmtop.

  “Hey, you might have built it, but who tested out the controls?”

  Before Quirk could argue, Zach stepped between them. Physically. “No matter who is driving, I don’t get how this toy—” Even Zach stopped at Quirk’s sharp glare. “I mean, incredible feat of engineering, is going to get us out of this room, especially since it is flying away from us.”

  She loved how cute Zach looked when he was trying to go all logical on her. His was a linear mind. God love it, so linear. She and Quirk didn’t just think outside the box—they lived outside it.

  Many people would ask why you would need a perfectly functioning mini-helicopter rigged with a directional blast payload. Those people were not Ronnie and Quirk. Of course, they thought they were going to use Helo during the break-in of the vault at Lloyd’s of London, but hey, they at least knew that they might need it for something important.

  “Just watch and learn,” she teased.

  * * *

  Lino squinted. Was that a sliver of light up ahead? The emergency exit could not be far. Which was a most fortunate thing, since the yells of the police were in the building. They had enough firepower to subdue any attempt to contain them, but Lino would rather that they make their escape without notice. So, fewer witnesses to dispos
e of.

  “What’s that?” the brother next to him asked.

  Slowing, Lino cocked his head. A tinny, oscillating buzz filled the air. He raised his gun. What could still be functioning after the complete blackout?

  A spotlight came around the corner, blinding him for an instant. He shot reflexively, knowing that he missed the mark. Once his eyes adjusted, a strangely small helicopter flew directly for them. Ducking, the vehicle streaked over their heads, and then made the turn to go up the steps.

  They fired, rocking the helicopter to and fro, but the damnable thing disappeared out of sight.

  That witch and her mechanical familiars.

  They did not have the time to dispose of the witch and her companions. At the eleventh hour, did it really matter? He’d seen enough of the angelic script to know where they headed next.

  To the heart of the Hidden Hand.

  There, they would meet God’s final fury.

  * * *

  Zach watched the screen as the helicopter bobbed and weaved. It had taken several hits during its encounter with Lino. Would it make it to wherever Ronnie needed it to go? He’d guessed somewhere above them, but since he’d never been to the Met, one of those things that his mother kept bugging him about, he wasn’t sure where.

  “No, you’ve got stabilize its flight path by compensating to the right,” Quirk whined over Ronnie’s shoulder. Backseat drivers were bad enough. Mini-helicopter backseat drivers Zach imagined were the worst.

  “I’ve got it,” Ronnie emphasized although the chopper did seem to be veering to the left a lot.

  Finally, the craft burst from the staircase and coursed into the second level, shining its bright light on the American Wing. Instead of the typical blocked, square galleries on this floor and just about every other museum in the world this new wing was built in what Zach could only describe as “fish eye” bubbles. Each room’s front came out in a circular manner, resembling that a fish eye.

  This concentric pattern was reflected everywhere in the architecture of the wing. The burnished hardwood floors must have been meticulously cut and shaped into sweeping half circles. Even the glass roof above was held together by curved metal.

  No wonder his mom had been pestering him to take her.

  “You’re losing too much, well, not altitude, but height!”

  Quirk was right. The helicopter listed to the left until it finally hit a curved wall, bounced and landed on its rotors, which ground against the beautiful hardwood floor.

  “I take it that wasn’t supposed to happen?” Zach asked.

  Ronnie looked away, frowning. Clearly not.

  Zach cocked an ear. He could hear Helo’s motor whine. It must have “landed” somewhere above them. He was about to ask why they couldn’t just blow the thing then remembered the whole directional thing. They needed the blast directed down, not up.

  “Give it to me!” Quirk implored. “We have a connection.”

  Ronnie didn’t seem too convinced.

  “Fine, then you try to crab-walk Helo over.”

  Despite her lack of conviction that Quirk could accomplish the task, clearly Ronnie didn’t want to try. She handed Quirk the controls. With the tip of his tongue sticking out, Quirk rocked the palmtop back and forth, his own body swaying almost like he was soothing a baby.

  “Come on,” Quirk whispered to the screen. “You can do it,” He urged as the view tipped this way then that. “You don’t want the other über-blinged-out mini-helicopters to call you turtle, do you?”

  Whether it was Quirk’s finesse with the controls or the coaching, the chopper tilted over, skittered on its side, and then righted itself. A bit of wobbling, but it hovered over the floor.

  “That’s my boy!” Quirk announced as he guided Helo to land. He indicated the stone benches. “I’d suggest we take cover…”

  Zach pretty much knew why, but felt forced to ask. “Because we aren’t sure how big the blast is going to be?” Ronnie looking down at her toes confirmed the fact. “Because you guys haven’t beta-tested it yet?”

  Quirk waved him off. “Tomatoes. Toe-mah-toes.”

  No matter, they had to get to cover. Zach urged Ronnie down as Quirk scrambled under the other bench with Francois.

  “Five. Four. Three,” Quirk counted down. “Three and a half.”

  “Quirk…”

  “Fine. Two. One.”

  The ceiling shook as the overhead explosion shook the infrastructure. It, however, did not collapse. Ronnie went to crawl out from the bench, but Zach noted the hairline fractures running through the paint directly above them. Cracks the converged on the base of the chandelier. Cracks that were growing wider by the moment.

  He put his hand on the back of her head and pulled her close just before the crystals in the chandelier tinkled and then came crashing toward them. Glass shattered everywhere as huge chunks of the ceiling slammed down, hitting the bench and bouncing off.

  Zach tucked Ronnie’s head under his shoulder, using his back to deflect any debris. Finally, the avalanche of ceiling stopped, leaving a strange calm in the air. He looked out from the bench, the air choked with dust.

  Ronnie untucked her head. Little specks of plaster coated her eyelashes. Zach brushed them gently with his fingertips, and then dusted off her nose. Their eyes locked. Even before he could lean in, Ronnie put her finger on his lips.

  He got it.

  Not here.

  * * *

  “I think I’ve—” Amanda started but then stopped when she realized that she was the only one awake. Jennifer was conked out beside her. Henderson had fallen asleep leaning back in his chair, and the rest of the scientists were well…gone.

  Amanda hated to use that euphemism, but she honestly couldn’t even think of the harsh truth.

  And where was Devlin, still contacting his superiors? Like she really cared.

  Despite the fact that the numbers were becoming a blur, Amanda had narrowed over twenty thousand possible loci down to only a few hundred. Which still sucked. But what was a Chicken Little to do but forge on, believing there could be a way to hold the sky up?

  A cough sounded behind her. She turned to find Anderson Cooper on the television screen. His presence had become almost natural. As if the reporter was in the room with them, living, and dying, through the plague with them.

  Once his coughing fit was over, he looked back at the camera. “I don’t know how much longer I can stay on…” Another cough interrupted him. He must have the pneumatic strain of the plague. So he was right. Probably not much longer.

  “I just wanted to tell you personally that it has been a privilege to be with you here, at the end. They didn’t want me to report this, but I feel like we have been through so much together, that I must be honest…”

  His body wracked with a pneumatic cough, Anderson had to grip the chair to keep from falling over. After a few heaving breaths, he continued. “We have run out of antibiotics. Not just New York or the tristate area, but across the country. Across the world.”

  He gulped hard, and then chuckled. “To be honest, they weren’t doing a whole hell of a lot of good anyway.” But then he sobered. “So please, be with the ones you love… and pray. That is all that is left to us.”

  The screen went static as tears streamed down Amanda’s cheeks. She leaned over Jennifer and wrapped her arms around her friend. The woman wasn’t even coughing now. A sure sign that the body was giving in to the plague. It didn’t even have the energy to repulse the bacterium.

  Amanda sent a swift prayer to the heavens, but then went back to her computer. She was possibly the only person in the world who had something other than prayer to offer. She had the cure.

  If she could just find the damn thing.

  CHAPTER 26

  Metropolitan Museum of Art

  11:18 a.m., EST

  Quirk watched Francois’ feet disappear through the hole in the ceiling. They had left Quirk for last, since he was the slightest. See? Not going to the gym
could be a positive thing.

  He teetered on the edge of the bench that was turned on its end. Zach’s hand emerged from the hole.

  “Grab hold.”

  Then an exactly opposite order came from the other side of the gates. “Freeze!”

  Three cops. No, four. Make it five—were at the gate. “Police! Get down!”

  Get down? Did they not realize everything they had just done was to get up?

  Quirk grabbed hold of Zach’s hand. Thank goodness the FBI agent did go to the gym as he lifted him through the breach in the ceiling. The poor late-to-the-party police fired and fired away, but the acrylic guard held.

  Once on the second floor, Quirk gained his feet.

  “This way!” Ronnie yelled, running toward the stairs that led to the roof garden café.

  As he hurried to catch up, Quirk noticed a painting. Sargent’s infamous Madame X. The subject’s porcelain skin nearly glowed against the warm brown backdrop. Her hand pressed against the mahogany table.

  “Give me that,” he urged Zach. The FBI agent raised an eyebrow, but he must have learned not to bother questioning Quirk’s evil genius. Zach handed over the torch, and then headed after Ronnie.

  Quirk turned the torch on the ever-elegant Madame X. She always seemed to hold a secret, but now she revealed it in the form of a glittering, gold symbol.

  Francois was already carving it into his arm when the shouts carried from the stairwell. Time to haul ass. Putting the injured Frenchman’s arm around his neck, Quirk urged Francois up the stairs.

  They hit the door at a run and stumbled out onto the roof garden. From the darkened museum, the early-morning sun seemed surreal. Everything seemed so pristine up here. The striking sculptures. The lovely garden. The refined café. Almost as if the brutality of the world had not yet made its presence known up here.