by Nick Carter
“Getting out alive is not part of my assignment,” I said to him slowly and deliberately. I let that sink in a moment. I saw his eyes dart to the other men behind me. “Don’t do it. Not unless you don’t mind having a slug punch a baseball-size hole through your chest.”
He looked down at the gun, and then back into my eyes. “What do you want?” he asked.
I pushed the Luger up against his ribs. “Tell the others to leave,” I said quietly. “Tell them Li Yuen wishes to meet privately with you here. Tell them anything, but get them out for a while. And make them believe it.”
Damon Zeno glared at the gun and then at me. “I can’t do that. These men . . . .”
“I’ll squeeze this trigger if you don’t.”
Zeno struggled to keep his growing anger under control. But his fear was stronger. “It’s Li Yuen’s fault that this has happened,” he muttered bitterly to himself. When he glanced into my eyes, he saw that I meant what I said, and he turned slowly to the other men in the laboratory.
“Gentlemen, your attention, please.” He waited while they all turned to him. “The director has requested an emergency meeting with me here in ten minutes. I’m afraid I’ll have to ask that you absent yourselves from your work for a short time. Why don’t you all take a coffee break and I’ll join you shortly?”
There was some muttering, but they filed out of the place. I hid the gun until they were gone. Then I turned back to Dr. Z.
“Where are your recent findings and notes?” I asked. “The ones that supplement those in Li Yuen’s file.”
Zeno’s eyes flicked involuntarily toward a locked metal cabinet on a nearby wall. “You must be mad,” he said softly. “Do you actually think I would deliver Omega to you on a silver platter? At any rate, the notes would mean nothing to you or anyone else in American intelligence.”
“I bet the notes are in that cabinet,” I said, watching his reaction. “And that the cultured Mutation is behind the glass on that wall.”
Zeno’s face was dark with frustration and rage. “Get out of here while you can,” he said thickly. “Or Li Yuen will cut you into little pieces.”
I grunted. “Li Yuen is dead.”
I watched the expressions flit across his face. Disbelief, then shock, anger, and finally, renewed fear.
“So is General Djenina,” I said. “You’re pretty much alone now, Zeno, even if they kill me.”
Zeno’s pallid face was fighting for control. “If Li Yuen is dead, he is expendable. It is Omega that counts, not Li.”
“Exactly,” I said. “That’s why it must go. And you too if you’re stubborn. God knows why, but I have orders to bring you back with me if you want to come.” My voice revealed my contempt. “I’m giving you your option right now.”
He glanced again at the Luger. “And you will destroy Omega?”
“That’s right.” I moved over to the cabinet, picked up a microscope, smashed it against the lock, and broke it open. I threw the damaged instrument onto the floor, took the lock off, and opened the cabinet door.
Inside was a manila folder and some other pa-pers. I gathered them up and glanced at Zeno. The strained expression on his face told me I had hit the jackpot. I laid everything on top of the file I had taken from Li Yuen’s safe and glanced through the material quickly. It looked like the right stuff.
“I’ll take you in on the project,” Zeno said in a low voice, a voice tinged with desperation. “The Chinese don’t have to have it all. Do you know, do you have any idea, how powerful Omega can make a man?”
“I had a nightmare about it,” I admitted, closing the file. I stuffed the Luger into a pocket, carried the mass of loose papers over to the Bunsen burner, and stuck them into the flame.
“No!” he said loudly.
The papers were burning. I started back toward the files with them, and Zeno made his decision. He lunged at me, and I went down under his weight, smashing against a long table of cultures and test tubes, knocking the whole thing to the floor.
The flaming sheaf of papers flew out of my hand and hit the floor the same time as the crashing glass and liquids. The test tubes must have contained some tiling flammable, because they burst into roaring flame between us and the long wall cabinet where the cultured Omega Mutation was located. The fire reached the big wood cabinet in minutes and it caught fire instantly.
“My God!” Zeno cried out We struggled to our feet separately, neither concerned with the other at the moment. I watched the fire lick at the wall cabinet for a moment and spread to the long tables where the cultures were developing. Zeno had saved me some work.
“Damn you!” Zeno shouted above the crackling flame. “Damn you!”
I ignored him. I moved back to the table where the files still lay, picked them up and hurled them into the growing inferno. Zeno saw what I was doing and made a small move as if to step me, then hesitated. In the next moment, he was running toward an alarm box on the opposite wall.
I pulled Wilhelmina out and aimed at Dr. Z’s head as he reached the alarm. Then I heard the doors slam open behind me.
Whirling away from Zeno, I faced two guards, who had come storming into the room. One had a gun out and was leveling it at me. I crouched to one knee as he fired, and the shot tore past my head and smashed culture containers behind me. The other guard was moving in a circle toward me, in a flanking movement, but I had to ignore him. I returned fire at the first guard and hit him in the chest. He crashed back onto a table and knocked it over. He was dead by the time he hit the floor.
As I turned to the other guard, he came flying at me in a headlong plunge. He knocked me off balance before I could bring the Luger into play, and we hit a table, crashing more glass. The fire was roaring near us. In the back of my head somewhere, I could hear the alarm that Zeno had set off clanging in the corridor outside the door.
The big man slugged me hard across the face, and I hit the floor on my back. Out of the corner of my eye I could see Zeno unsuccessfully slapping at the flames with his lab coat. The guard slugged me again and grabbed at the Luger. I began twisting it toward him as he strained against me. Slowly my hand came around toward his face, and I could see the sweat pop out on his forehead and upper lip as we struggled for control of the muzzle. I had the leverage. Inch by inch I forced the gun toward him until it reached a point just over his left eye. I squeezed the trigger and blew the side of his head off.
I slumped back exhausted, pushing the bloody body off me. I strained to see Zeno through the flames and smoke, and then I saw him running toward the door. I aimed the Luger after him and fired, but I just missed, and he got away.
I struggled to my feet. I tore the ripped lab coat off to give myself more freedom of movement. Somehow I found a way through the flames and got to the door. Zeno was nowhere in sight in the corridor. I turned back briefly to the lab and saw the flames destroying Zeno’s monster bug and his records. Already the fire had spread from the lab into the corridor through a door about five feet away, and I suspected it had eaten through the walls to other rooms. It seemed like the whole facility was going to go up in flames.
I ran choking down the hall. People and fire-fighting equipment moved past me toward the lab, but it was too late for that. There was absolute chaos in the facility, as the corridors filled with smoke and employees ran for exits. The alarm was still clanging, and there was a lot of hysterical shouting in the building as I moved to a rear exit behind two choking people.
I was outside in a rear parking lot. The fire had already burst through the roof in places and was licking high into the air, black smoke curling sky-ward. The area outside the building was quickly filling with choking, gasping people. A few were trying to get fire hoses hooked up. I moved around the side of the building and saw a small van start up and screech wildly toward the main gate. Damon Zeno was driving it. He stopped abruptly at the gate and yelled something to the guards. Then he took off.
I ran to a Land Rover nearby, looked at the dash and found
keys there. I hopped in and started the vehicle; the wheels spun and grabbed at the hard dirt of the compound, and the Land Rover lurched forward.
I had gone only a few yards when two guards near the main gate spotted me driving toward them. Zeno had apparently told them I was to be stopped. They both had their guns out, and one of them fired and shattered the windshield near my head. I ducked away from flying glass as an explosion ripped a building close by and flames shot out behind me. One of the guards was hit by flying embers and caught fire, screaming.
I slammed on the brakes, ripped the gears into reverse, spun the vehicle around in a cloud of dust, and roared off around the back of the building to try the gate from the other side. As I rounded the comer of the building, flames shot out and singed the hair on my left arm. I felt raw heat on my face. There was a wall of fire ahead of me, between the main building and a service building at the rear. I didn’t even hit the brakes, since I had little choice. I jammed harder on the accelerator and, crouching low in the open vehicle, roared into the flames.
For a moment it was all bright yellow heat and choking smoke, and it felt like the inside of a blast-furnace. Then I burst through and headed around the other corner toward the main gate again.
A guard jumped out of the way just in time to avoid being run down. Another guard spotted me and stood squarely between the Land Rover and the gate. He aimed and fired, and the slug sang off the metal frame of the windshield, then he dived headlong to the dirt, away from the vehicle. In another moment I drove through the gate of the facility and headed down the road after Damon Zeno.
As I rounded the curve where the patrol had surprised Gabrielle and me earlier, I slowed the vehicle for a minute and looked over my shoulder at the lab. The scene was utter chaos. The fire raged out of control, and black smoke billowed high above it. No one was going to come after me. They were too busy trying to save the building complex.
TWELVE
For the first hour there was no sight of the van Zeno had been driving. There were only the fresh tire tracks he left behind. Zeno was heading southeast from Mhamid, into the desert.
Sometime during the second hour I got a glimpse of the van, raking up a great cloud of dust behind it. After that glimpse, I lost the van again for over a half hour, but I suddenly came upon it sitting in the middle of a broad, parched area of sand and scrub brush, just beside a head-high rock outcropping. One tire was fiat. I stopped the Land Hover, cut the engine, and climbed out. I squinted at the van, wondering where Zeno might be. Drawing Wilhelmina, I moved to the van and looked inside. Zeno was nowhere about. The keys were still in the ignition. I looked at the ground around the van and saw the tracks leading straight ahead, in the direction he’d been driving. Zeno had to be pretty desperate to start walking in this country. I leaned into the van again to remove the keys from the ignition. As I was leaning down, I heard a sound behind me and felt the blow along the back of my head and neck. Pain exploded inside my head and then a black coolness swept over me as I hit the ground.
The sun was glaring harshly overhead when my eyelids fluttered open. For a minute I had no idea where I was. Then I looked up with blurry eyes and slowly remembered. I closed my eyes against the hot glare, turned my head slightly, and felt excruciating pain at the base of my skull.
I lay there with my eyes closed, trying to think. Zeno had ambushed me beautifully. He probably thought the blow had killed me. Otherwise he’d have taken my gun and shot me.
I opened my eyes again, and the glare from that white-hot orb was painful. The Land Rover was gone, naturally. I sat up and grunted aloud as the pain clawed through my head and neck. A hammer was pounding at the inside of my skull. I rose agonizingly to my knees and tried to stand but fell against the side of the van and almost went down again. I was seeing two of everything.
I stumbled to the door of the van and looked inside. Despite my poor vision. I could see that Zeno had taken the keys. The hood of the vehicle had been raised. I stumbled clumsily to it, looked under and found that the distributor wires were gone. Zeno hadn’t done any of this for me, since he thought I was dead. He just didn’t want the natives stumbling onto the scene and driving the van into Mhamid, where it would be connected with the laboratory.
I leaned heavily on the fender of the vehicle. Nausea welled up in my gut for a moment and dizziness came over me. I waited, breathing hard, hoping it would pass. Those damned tracks leading away from the van. Zeno had been clever. He had walked in a big circle, come back behind the rock outcropping, and waited there for me with a tire iron or jack. I had been stupid.
The dizziness subsided. I looked in the direction Zeno and I had come from and wondered if I would ever be able to find my way back to the dirt track that served as a road, even if I found the strength to walk that far. But I had to try. I couldn’t stay here.
So I pushed myself from the van and started walking. The thing I wanted most was to lie down in the shade and rest and let the pain in my head and neck subside. Better yet would be a week in a hospital bed, with a pretty nurse. Maybe Gabrielle.
I put those thoughts from my mind and stumbled along unevenly, the pain ripping into me with every step. Sweat began running into my eyes from my forehead, and there was a dry, cotton taste in my mouth. I wondered how far it was to the road. I tried to reconstruct how much time had elapsed while I drove to this remote place after Zeno, but I could not focus my thoughts on anything because of the pain.
Suddenly the dizziness came again, and a blackness crowded around the periphery of my vision. There was a jarring bump against my head and chest, and I knew I had fallen. I groaned at the pain and lay there, making no effort to get up for a moment. It was so much better on the ground than on my feet. I could feel the sun like a fiat-iron on the back of my neck and could smell the sweat from my exhausted body. And I felt sorry for myself. I felt very sorry for myself, and I told myself that I was in no condition to go on, that I had earned a rest here.
But another part of me prodded. “Get up, Carter, damn you! Get up and move or you’ll die here.”
I knew that the voice was right. I listened to it, and I knew that what it said was true. If I could not get back up now, I would not get up at all. That sun would boil my brains in an hour.
Somehow I made it to my feet again. I looked down at the ground for a trace of the vehicle I had been following. There was nothing. I squinted and tried to focus, but could not. I moved ahead a few yards, then made a slow turning circle. Blurred vision or not, there were no car tracks anywhere near me. I had lost them.
I glanced up at the sun, and it was like looking through the open door of a forge oven. It was in a different direction from when I had started walking. Or was it? I couldn’t think. I closed my eyes and squinted. I had to remember. When I started walking, the sun had been on my right. Yes, I was sure of it.
I moved forward again. I wiped the sweat from my eyes, but that made them burn even more. My head was being pummeled from inside. I ran a leathery tongue over parched lips and realized that the desert sun had already dehydrated me more than I liked to think. I saw something moving on the ground and stopped short, almost falling again. It was a shadow. I looked up and saw a vulture up there, high above me, wheeling and turning silently.
I grunted and kept moving. I squinted at the sandy ground as I passed over it, hoping to see the tire tracks again. For a while I made an effort to keep the sun on my right, but then I drifted. I was thinking of Damon Zeno and how I had let him get me. I had destroyed the Omega Mutation, but with Zeno still on the loose he could start all over again somewhere else. That was why David Hawk had said to kill him if he would not come back as my prisoner.
My tongue was becoming thick as if I had a wool blanket in my mouth. The sweating wasn’t so bad, because I was dried out inside. Dust caked on my clothing on top of the dampness and on my face and in my eyes and ears. It clogged my nostrils. And my legs were becoming very rubbery. My mind wandered back to all those rows of cultures destined
for Peking. And I was in that horrible ward, passing down the aisle between those rows of stricken faces.
My side thumped the ground again and brought me around. I had been moving forward on my feet, but in a daze. Now I had fallen once more. For the first time I felt the back of my head where Zeno had struck me, and there was caked blood drying there. I looked around and saw that I was on a hard pan of salt clay that seemed to extend endlessly in every direction. It was a bad place to be. A man would fry like an egg on a griddle here in no time at all. The entire area was parched bone-dry, and inch-wide cracks patterned the clay everywhere. There was no vegetation of any kind on the horizon. I had a fleeting memory of seeing the edge of this area earlier, but then the memory was gone. Another shadow passed overhead, and I looked into the serene inferno that was the sky and saw that there were two vultures up there now.
I tried to regain my feet but could not get past my knees this time. That, and the vultures, really scared me. I stayed on my knees, breathing hard, trying to think which way the road might be. The hard fact of the matter was I could wander around out here all afternoon, moving in circles like a beetle on a string, and end up where I had started. If only I could regain clear vision, that might help.
I began moving over the hot clay on my hands and knees, the clay burning my hands as I moved. The cracks in the clay made an intricate design on the surface of the flats, and the edges of the cracks cut my hands and knees. A short time later the vertigo came back, and the landscape was whirling around me in a giddy circle. I suddenly saw a flash of bright sky where the ground should have been and felt the now familiar shock of hitting the hard clay, this time on my back.
Four vultures. I swallowed and glanced back upward and counted again. Yes, four, their wings whispering on the still, hot air up there. A small shudder passed through me, and the realization slowly dawned. I was immobile for all practical purposes, and the vultures had found that out. They, not the sun, represented the most immediate threat. I slumped down on my back, too weak to hold my body up even slightly. The concussion and the blast-furnace heat had taken their toll.
