by Cliff Ryder
“Brin?” The word appeared on the screen and floated unanswered for a long moment, and she stared at it. Finally, whoever it was continued typing.
“I don’t know what Alex told you when he left—this time, or any other time. I assume he told you he was going to the Middle East and you are angry with him for lying. Let me tell you a few things very quickly that I do know about your husband that are important, and we’ll see where it leaves us.”
Brin slid no closer to the screen, but she watched.
“Alex Tempest is one of the good guys. He’s trained to a level that I suspect even you don’t understand, and the work he does is the sort that actually makes a difference in the world. I can’t tell you what that work is because there are overarch-ing issues involved that I can’t ignore. There are jobs that overshadow the men and women who accomplish them. What Alex has done, he has done because it was necessary to protect you from the danger he faces on a regular basis.
“I’m sure he’ll be home to you soon. I imagine at that point the two of you will have a lot to talk about. Right now, I’d say he needs you in ways he never has before, and I’d hate to see that clouded over by actions he meant as protection.”
Tears rolled down Brin’s cheeks, and she shook her head angrily. She knew this person, whoever he was, had to be right. If he was not, then the things that did matter, the love she and Alex shared, their life and dreams together, their time with Savannah—all of it would be a lie. She knew in her heart it was not, and so she had to find a way to get through this anger. She had to find and fight for her husband.
She slid back to the computer.
“Whoever you are—whatever you are—I know my husband is a good man. Right now, I want only one thing from you. You sent him out there, somewhere far from home. You sent him out there, and he isn’t back. You wouldn’t be contacting me if you thought everything was okay. He’s sick and I want you to get out there and bring him home to me. Am I clear?”
“We are doing all that we can. I’m going to ask you again not to come back to this room. If you access the system again, I’ll be forced to lock out Alex’s account, and if he can’t access it, he can’t get in touch with us. Believe me, I’m really hoping he’ll be back and logging in personally soon. I also hope he contacts you, Mrs. Tempest, and I hope that he’s home soon.”
Brin reached for the keyboard, ready to pound out an angry reply, but the window closed and she was returned to the outer chat room, filled with her own message repeated over and over. She closed the program and sat back, lost in thought.
Oddly, her mind returned to the lab and the work she’d been immersed in. Something was tugging at her mind, and she couldn’t quite locate it. Then it hit her. The Far East. The research had come from the MRIS complex near Beijing. It was a long shot, but if Hershel Rand had connections in the Beijing office, and if she could think of a way to ask for his help without giving away anything important—not too much of a stretch since she had no idea where Alex was or what he was doing—she might be able to enlist his help in finding Alex. At least it was a starting point.
Maybe she could even request a business visit to China to consult with the original research team.
She suddenly felt worlds better. She was thinking and planning, and she knew that, whether or not they were useful in the end, there were things she could be doing. At least she’d be geo-graphically closer to him than she was now. Alex had always said that if she had a plan and an open road, she could do anything.
Alex opened his eyes and his first thought was that that bastard Dayne had cut out both of his eyes. He couldn’t see. Then he blinked, and felt no pain, and calmed slightly. He did his best not to move. It was very hard to concentrate through the pain. Every twitch brought a new spasm to his thighs and his hands. He was so cramped he wasn’t certain he could move at all, should he decide to do so.
Then there were the more natural pains. His shoulder ached. It was numb, but the pain had begun to spread down his arm and back. It didn’t feel infected, not yet, but he was certain no care had been taken in applying his dressing. His head throbbed, as well, sending a ringing through his ears when he coughed drily.
He took stock of his body, bit by bit. He had no way to know how much more “fun” Dayne might have had with him after he passed out. For his body, unconsciousness was a simple escape mechanism. He’d hoped that they would believe he’d lost too much blood from the gunshot wounds and just passed out. They didn’t know much about him, so they wouldn’t be surprised to see him display a sign of weakness. Apparently, his ruse had worked.
Moving first one foot and then the other, he tested his legs, which, while sore and cramped, seemed to be functional for the moment. He had no specific pain in his back or sides. As he worked his way up his body, checking for new damage and assessing the impact of the old, he listened. He heard the distant hum of machinery. The sound echoed, as if down a metal-decked passage, but there was nothing else. He heard no footsteps, no murmur of voices. Wherever they’d taken him, they’d left him alone.
Still, he tried not to move noticeably. If they were watching him, waiting for him to regain consciousness, he didn’t want to tip them off by any sudden movement. He needed time to regroup. He slowly tried to move his hands, and realized that they were bound together with a length of plastic cording, but not tied to anything else. The floor was cool, metallic, he thought, and he assumed he was on one of the two lower levels. It wasn’t a deck plate, so he wouldn’t be sliding out through any cable troughs, but if he could find a way to get free, he was still in the portion of the complex most crucial to his mission.
At this thought, he nearly laughed, and had to bite back the sudden rush of emotion.
“At any cost,” he mumbled.
He had never felt as much pain as he did at that moment. He felt a bit short of breath, but every time he took more than a tiny gulp of air into his lungs, a wave of nausea shot through his gut, and he bit it off. Slowly he moved his left leg, bending it at the knee and drawing it up. He tested the joints, found everything intact, returned it to its original position and did the same with his right leg. He listened for a while, heard nothing and began the same process with his arms. His joints ached like fire, but they moved, and he was able to bend and straighten both arms, then press himself gently up off the floor a few inches. He did this several times, using the simple push-up as a test of strength and agility. Despite his injuries, and the rush of blood to the wound in his temple every time he exerted himself, he was able to function.
It was enough.
Finally, there was nothing to do but wait. He wanted to be certain that his motion hadn’t been enough to trigger some alarm or bring the guards back down on him. Alex half expected Dayne to step out of a dark corner, cradling his blade, that sinister smile welcoming him back to the world of the conscious with more fun and games. But it didn’t happen. For whatever reason, they’d stashed him and left him alone, and that meant he had a window, albeit a very small window, to put together a plan, if that was possible.
Alex sat up slowly, crossed his legs, despite the pain this brought him, and worked to relax. He needed to think. As he sat, he stretched, trying to bring his stiff muscles to life and get himself to whatever level of readiness was possible. He had no real way to assess his wounds, no way to know how haphazard the Chinese doctor’s treatment had been and no idea when, or for what purpose, they might return to retrieve him.
He heard a sound in the distance and froze. He thought about returning to his prone position and feigning unconsciousness, but if they were coming for him now, it probably meant he’d been right and they knew he was awake. Prone on the floor would just put him in a more vulnerable position. He closed his eyes and waited, then opened them again, trying to get the proper pupil dilation to pierce the darkness. There was simply nothing to see. He might be in a tiny cell, or a huge, open room. He needed to know.
Even more slowly than he’d moved when sitting up, Alex got
to his feet. He nearly toppled as vertigo hit, a combination of the utter darkness, the pounding pulse in his head and nausea. He wavered, then managed to crouch and balance, and began moving away from where he stood. He found a wall within three feet on his left, and began to follow this to the right. Then he stopped, bracing his hands against the wall for balance.
He’d heard another sound. The scrape of a shoe?
Something dropped, but there was no curse, and there were no voices. Alex rested against the wall, thinking hard about his next move. If he attacked too quickly, or failed, he would surely be beaten, and then dragged back to whatever torture Dayne still had planned. If he waited too long, they’d notice he had moved, be on their guard and, in his weakened state, they’d probably get him without much of a struggle. He silently cursed the lack of light and began moving again, slowly, searching the floor by brushing his foot ahead of him, hoping he’d come across something he could use as a weapon.
The sounds drew closer together and nearer to Alex. He heard breathing and soft footsteps.
Whoever it was wasn’t in a hurry to reveal his or her presence. Alex wondered what that meant.
Could it be Dayne? Might he be hoping to come back in private and finish up what he’d started?
He pressed against the wall as the steps drew nearer. He tried to gauge from the sound where the door might be, and he worked his way along one wall toward it. He came to a corner, and, after a quick shuffle along this second wall, his fingers brushed the frame of a doorway. It was a standard door frame, but when he reached around it, he found that the door itself was formed of a frame-work of welded metal bars.
A voice hissed through the darkness.
“Vance?”
He froze. The voice was familiar.
“Vance, where are you?”
Alex stepped to the barred door and peered out.
A second later he detected motion in the utter darkness, heard a snap of sound, and a small lighter was lit. When his eyes recovered from the slash of light and adjusted, he saw Liang grinning at him in the small, flickering pool of light.
“Liang?” he said stupidly.
“Who else?” Liang asked.
“What the hell are you doing here?”
“Seems pretty obvious to me,” Liang said, pulling a tool from his belt. “I’m here to save your sorry American ass. I was ordered to come and get you out.”
“But how did you get in?” Alex asked.
“The back door.” Liang chuckled. “I managed to get hold of the uniform of one of the maintenance support staff, and came in through the loading-bay doors.”
“Can you get this door open?”
“I think so,” Liang replied. “When I took out the guard, I got his keys.”
The big man stepped forward and fumbled with the keys.
“Give me the lighter,” Alex said. “I’ll hold it while you find the key.”
Liang passed the lighter through to him. It took three tries, but Alex managed to get it lit. Because Alex’s hand was shaking the light flickered more than was normal. If Liang noticed, he made no mention of it. The third key fit the lock, and the door opened. Alex started forward immediately and lost his balance as his legs failed to react. He fell into Liang, who caught him easily.
“No time for resting,” Liang said. He pulled a knife from a sheath at his belt and cut away the plastic ties that bound Alex’s wrists together. “That guard is going to be missed. We have to get you up and out of here before they notice.”
“Water,” Alex said. “I need some water or I’ll never make it.”
Liang took back the lighter and started moving around the outer room quickly. There was a thud and a grunt as he fell across a desk. Then a quick laugh of satisfaction.
“Well, what do you know,” he said.
A moment later he stepped up close to Alex again, holding something out. Alex reached for it, felt it and managed a weak grin of his own. It was a utility belt. After a moment he realized it was the one they’d taken from him when he was captured.
He clumsily slung it around his waist and buckled it in place. The weight felt good. He searched it quickly. His Glock was gone, but most of the tools were still in place. He opened a pocket on the left and found the small canteen he’d brought with him. He opened the top and guzzled the contents greedily.
“Better?” Liang asked.
“Yes,” he said.
“We have to get moving,” Liang said. “We haven’t got much of a window to get out of here safely.”
“I’m not going,” Alex replied. He continued to check his belt, and smiled as he found two particular compartments he’d packed carefully. One held a final explosive pack, small but very powerful.
The other was his ace in the hole.
“What do you mean you’re not going?” Liang snapped. “Why the hell did I risk my ass to save you if you aren’t going?”
“I’m still alive,” Alex replied, “and I still have a mission to complete.”
“I’ll be damned,” Liang said. “They said you were crazy—they just didn’t say how crazy.”
“You go on,” Alex said, thinking of Soo Lin.
“Your wife will be waiting for you, and by the time they figure out how I escaped, you and your friends can be long gone. I can’t leave this undone.
Too much is at stake.”
“That’s not how it works, and you know it,”
Liang replied. “I was told to bring you out of here.
If I can’t do that until you’re done here, then I’ll stay and help. What do you have in mind?”
Alex was already thinking about that. The odds were that the charges he’d set were long since disarmed but still in the building. If the blast was close enough, it could set them off. If not, an electronic signal from his minitransmitter could rearm them and he could blow them from a distance. Either way, he had one good charge left, and he knew where it needed to be planted.
“What level are we on?” he asked quickly.
“The level just below the main complex,” Liang replied. “Lots of labs, and a big computer room, clean and climate controlled.”
“We need to get to those computers,” Alex said.
“I know a way up if we can pull it off.”
Liang touched his arm in the dark, then poked him with something hard. It was a 9 mm pistol, similar to the one that Dayne’s men had taken from him.
“I think you’re probably going to need that,” he said. “Don’t waste shots—there are no more clips.
When it’s empty, drop it and go. It won’t trace to anything that would do them any good if they manage to get their hands on it.”
Alex took the gun and tucked it into his empty holster, leaving the flap loose.
“Thanks. I have one charge left—they didn’t find it. If we can attach it to the main server banks in that computer room, we should be able to take out their data. After that—if luck is with us—the blast will detonate the other charges. Otherwise, I’ll blow them separately once we’re out of the blast radius. Something tells me they haven’t removed anything, or this belt wouldn’t still be here.
“How will you blow them if they’re already disarmed?”
“Minitransmitter device,” Alex said. “Either way, with a bit of luck, where this building is, there’ll be a hole a city block wide and just as deep.” He took a steadying breath, then said, “And I hope like hell that bastard Dayne is standing in the middle of it when it happens.”
They slipped into the darkness. After they’d passed through the outer room and down a short hall, stepping over the fallen guard, they entered a dimly lit hall. It led to another door, and beyond that Alex saw the first real light he’d seen since the one Dayne shone in his face. Liang glanced both ways, then stepped into the hall. Gritting his teeth against a thousand pains, Alex followed.
Pain or not, MS or not, he would complete his mission and kill anyone who stood in his way.
They encountered no one on the
short walk to the computer lab. Liang moved ahead, and Alex covered him, trying to focus through the pain and miss nothing. It was difficult to be stealthy with his legs and arms cramped and the pounding in his temple. His shoulder was swollen and nearly numb, so he had only one good arm. In a pinch he thought he could use the injured limb, and he knew that before things got better, the pinch was in-evitable, but he didn’t push it.
The computer lab door was securely locked, but a small window revealed two technicians working in the room. The door opened outward, so Liang gestured and Alex knelt on the floor next to the door. Liang tapped lightly on the door, ducking down to ensure that the technicians wouldn’t see him through the window.
Alex could hear their voices, but not make out the words. Liang’s simple tap had aroused their curiosity. One of the techs opened the door and popped his head out to look. The empty hallway was the last sight he ever beheld as Alex rose from his crouch and pushed his Glock to the man’s temple, squeez-ing the trigger. The silenced round barely made a sound, but it was enough for the other tech to look up from his work. Alex didn’t hesitate. He spun and put two rounds in the other technician’s chest. The man fell against a bank of computers, looking surprised, then slumped to the ground dead.
Alex continued into the room, with Liang close behind, his hand on the butt of his own gun but not yet drawing it.
“Drag them out of sight,” Alex told Liang, “just in case someone decides to take a look inside.”
Liang went work, while Alex scanned the room quickly. His first visit had given him a very general idea of the layout, but now it was more critical that he understand where things were located. He located two large racks filled with blinking drives.
A cursory glance around the room showed no other drive arrays, so he knew the majority of stored data would be located on the drives before him.
Beside the racks he saw banks of optical drives he assumed were the backup system.
He moved in between the two racks and set to work. It was difficult to be precise with one hand, and it took a bit longer than he’d planned, but he set the charge so he believed it would take out both the data drives and the backups, even if his theory of the missing charges still being nearby proved false. Liang, meanwhile, had dragged the two dead technicians away, hiding their bodies behind a row of computer desks. For a fleeting moment Alex thought of the cold-blooded way he’d killed them.
