Guns. At least half a dozen. And not the kind that might be needed in the unlikely event they ran into a wild animal. These were handguns.
Why would a group of scientists need pistols? Only one answer came to mind: because they weren’t scientists.
He turned to get his partner’s attention.
__________
WHEN THE MAN finished looking in the bag, Chloe was two feet behind him, her arm drawn back.
He paused for a second, undoubtedly working through what he’d just found. Then, as she knew he would, he turned.
The base of her palm rammed into the side of his jaw before he even registered her presence. The blow sent him reeling backward. His feet caught on one of the bags, and he fell across them, his head slapping loudly against the wall.
Chloe whirled around and sprinted across the room toward the other man. He was staring at her, surprised. His hand suddenly shot to the pocket of his jacket, where it began fumbling with the opening, going for a weapon, no doubt. But by that point, he was too late.
Chloe all but leaped the final few feet, hitting him in the chest and sending both of them to the floor. She tried to pin him down, but he had a size advantage on her, and easily shoved her off to the side.
“I could use a little help!” she yelled.
The intruder pushed himself back up, but was on his feet for only a second before Chloe grabbed his ankles and yanked his legs out from under him.
“What’s going on?” a sleepy voice called out.
The man jerked Chloe toward him by her hair, and threw his arm around her neck, choking her from behind. She slammed her elbow repeatedly into his ribs, but he held on tight. Gray started to invade the edge of her vision as the blood flow to her brain decreased. Desperate, she brought her leg up into the air, bending it at the knee, and slammed her foot down into his groin.
Air rushed out of his lungs as his grip around her throat loosened.
Chloe twisted free, hopped to her feet, and looked back toward the other guy. He was still on the floor in the same place she’d left him.
Suddenly, the lights came on.
__________
ASH WAS FIRST to jump up. He ran across the room to the light switch and flipped it on.
Chloe was standing in the middle of the room, her fists hovering ready at her waist. She was looking back and forth between two figures on the ground. The one nearest her was rocking in obvious pain. The other one lay unmoving only a few feet away from where Ash stood.
The rest of Ash’s team were throwing off their blankets and hopping out of their cots, ready if another fight broke out.
Ash jogged over to Chloe. “Are you all right?”
“Yeah. Why wouldn’t I be?”
There was a patch of red on her neck, but otherwise she looked fine.
“What happened?”
“These two assholes were taking a look through our stuff.”
“Who are they?”
She frowned at Ash. “I didn’t stop to ask.”
The one who’d been rocking had recovered enough to put his hands on the ground and try to stand.
“Uh-uh,” Chloe said, shoving him back down with her foot.
Ash pointed at the unconscious one. “Pax, check him.” He then knelt next to the nearer guy. “What the hell are you doing here?”
“Nothing, okay?” the guy said defiantly.
“Not okay. Why were you going through our stuff?”
The man remained silent for a few seconds, then shrugged. “Looking for something we could sell. That’s all. You got us, okay?”
“Sell? Here in Grise Fiord? I’m guessing there’s not much of a black market.”
“You’d be surprised.”
“You got that right.”
Chloe moved up next to Ash, and put her foot on the man’s neck. “Who the hell are you?”
“Stop!” the man croaked.
“I think you should probably answer her question,” Ash said.
“Just a couple of guys, all right? Trying to entertain ourselves.”
Chloe pushed down on his throat.
“Come on…stop…it.” His voice was even more strained.
Pax walked up behind them. “Ash, a moment if you don’t mind.” Once they were several feet away, he whispered, “The other guy’s dead. I’d say he cracked his head against the wall.”
“Dammit,” Ash said. That was a mess they didn’t need.
“I wouldn’t worry too much. I don’t think these guys were just burglars.”
“Why not?”
Pax held up his hand. In it was a small notebook. He opened it to a page near the back, and showed it to Ash. There was a date, a number, and the words: 7 MEN 1 WOMEN, PLUS 2 MAN FLIGHT CREW. Pax pointed at the second item. “That’s the tail number of our jet.”
“You’re sure?”
“I’ve flown in the thing nearly a hundred times. Yeah, I’m sure. Now take a look at this.” He flipped back to earlier pages in the book. It was a log with more dates, both arrival and departing; plane numbers; and passenger descriptions. “He’s been tracking visitors. I’ll bet this is everyone who’s set foot in this town since he’s been here.” He paused, and locked eyes with Ash. “I think they’re with the Project.”
Ash looked at the book, and pointed at several dots that were printed at the end of each entry. “What are these?”
“I’m not sure. But if I had to guess, I’d say those were times they reported in.”
Ash flipped to the last entry. Theirs. At the end was a blue dot.
With a nod, he walked back over to their captive. He motioned for Chloe to remove her foot, then crouched down beside the intruder, making sure the man could see the notebook in his hand.
“I have a very simple question for you. Where is Bluebird?”
“Bluebird? What’s that?” The response was automatic, too quick.
Ash opened the notebook to the page containing the team’s information. He tapped the blue dot. “What did you tell them?”
The guy snorted and shook his head, but kept his lips sealed this time.
Ash stood up and looked over at Browne and Solomon. “Search him.”
They pulled the intruder to his feet and checked him over, but the only items they found were a pistol, a flashlight, and a key ring with four keys on it.
“Where is Bluebird?” Ash asked the man again.
For a second it looked like the intruder was going to deny any knowledge of the Project’s base again, but then he smirked and said, “You really expect me to tell you?”
“It would be better for you if you did.”
The man laughed. “You’re all going to die, you know that? All of you. There’s nothing you can do!”
Without warning, he lashed out to the side, knocking Solomon backward, then ran for the door. Ash and Browne sprinted after him. The intruder reached the mudroom five seconds before the others. He raced to the main door and threw it open.
Neither Ash nor Browne were dressed for the outside, and would risk serious exposure if they stepped into the Arctic night for more than a few seconds.
With no choice, Ash returned to the other room, where he threw on heavier pants and a jacket, and yanked on his boots without tying them.
“Take this,” Pax said. He tossed one of the pistols through the air.
Ash grabbed it in mid-stride and headed for the main door. Browne was standing just inside, holding the door partially open.
“Which way did he go?”
“Left,” Browne said.
Ash ran out the door.
The cold was like a wall, slapping him hard and nearly stealing his ability to breathe. He forced himself forward, ignoring the shock, and focused only on finding the man. If the intruder really was part of the Project, they had to stop him before he could report back to his bosses. If that happened, their mission would be compromised, and their minimal chance of success would drop to zero.
CF Guest Quarters was located at the no
rthern end of Grise Fiord, not far from the landing strip. The bulk of the town—not much to begin with—was to the left on the other side of a short bridge.
Ash ran as fast as his loose boots let him, his gaze on the road ahead, looking for the man in the darkness. Wind was whipping around him, sending up swirls of ice and snow, and playing tricks with the shadows.
He had just crossed the bridge when he heard someone running up behind him. He twisted around, thinking maybe he’d somehow passed the man, but the person was too small.
Chloe, he realized. In her hand was a gun.
With a nod of acknowledgment, he started off again, his run turning more into a jog as the cold zapped the energy out of him. Even then, within half a minute, he was in the main part of town.
Here and there, lights shone outside some of the buildings. Each structure was raised above the ground, making them all look like they’d fit better in a mobile home park farther south than this northern bit of barren island. Even the church looked like a shoebox on a wooden stand.
The road ahead was split, one part continuing straight and paralleling the coast, while the other curled to the left, back to a few other buildings on the eastern side of town. He glanced at Chloe and pointed for her to take the coast road. He then followed the curve.
Where is this guy, dammit?
It wasn’t that big of a place. Ash doubted there were even one hundred buildings in the whole area. He was also confident the man couldn’t have gone into any of the buildings unseen.
Stopping in front of the church, he looked around.
Nothing. Just night and snow and frigid cold. He was the only one—
Wait. Something had moved behind a large storage tank to his right.
He ran toward it, stumbling once but managing to remain on his feet. As he neared the tank, he saw another behind it, and there, outlined against the side of the second tank, was the intruder.
Breathing hard, the best Ash could muster was a quick walk, but it was faster than the other man, who could do no better than to shuffle around the tank. Soon, Ash could hear the man breathing.
“Stop!” he yelled when only fifteen feet separated them.
The intruder looked back, but kept moving.
Ash raised the gun. “I will shoot you.”
The threat did nothing to stop the other man.
On willpower alone, Ash increased his speed until he caught up to the man. He reached out and grabbed the back of the guy’s jacket. The intruder tried to pull away, but Ash held tight.
In a desperate move, the guy spun around and threw himself at Ash. Ash’s feet slipped on the icy snow, and they both slammed to the ground. The man grabbed the barrel of the gun and twisted the weapon, popping it free. Ash tried to snatch it back, but the man pushed away, creating a few feet of distance between them.
Ash scrambled to his right, wanting to get behind the cover of the tank, but knowing he wouldn’t make it in time. When the gun went off, he tensed, waiting for the bullet to hit.
It never did.
He looked back.
The man was sprawled on the ground, a hole in his head.
Chloe was about thirty feet away, her pistol in her hand. “You all right?”
“Why wouldn’t I be?” Ash huffed, climbing to his feet. “Thanks.”
She shrugged. “That’s like a dozen you owe me now.”
“How do you figure that?”
“I’m rounding up.”
__________
THEY HID THE two bodies under the CF Guest Quarters. Come summer, if it warmed up enough, the smell of the thawing corpses would signal their location. Hopefully, there would still be someone alive in Grise Fiord to notice.
27
“YOU’LL WANT TO see this,” Jordan said.
Billy came around the table, and leaned over Jordan’s shoulder so he could look at the computer screen. The two had been holed away in one of the small meeting rooms in the Bunker since Billy’s return to the Ranch from Chicago. Though it was well after midnight, going to bed had not even crossed Billy’s mind.
“What am I looking at?” he asked. On the screen was what appeared to be a night-vision video of a street.
“Just watch.”
Jordan tapped one of the arrows, speeding up the image for several seconds, then hit the space bar. The video ramped down to normal speed.
On the right side of the frame was the edge of an industrial-type building, and on the left, the road the business was located on. Most of the shot, though, was focused on a chain-link gate fastened to the building. It was an obvious security shot meant to monitor who went in and out. At the moment, the gate was closed and no one was around.
“Where is this?”
“Give it a second, okay?”
Billy watched the screen, unsure of what he was supposed to focus on. He was about to say as much when two headlights appeared in the upper left corner, coming out of a driveway a block down on the other side of the street. When the lights turned onto the road in the direction of the camera, Billy could see that it wasn’t a car, but a semitruck. It continued toward the camera for several seconds, then passed out of sight.
Jordan stopped the playback, and looked triumphantly at Billy.
“So what? A truck on a street.”
Jordan dipped his head in disappointment. He pointed at the screen. “Look again. That’s not just any street. You’ve been there. That’s the one where the Hidde-Kel building is. And this truck…” He backed the video up and paused on the frame right before the semi moved out of view. “Just came out of Hidde-Kel’s lot.”
Billy studied the picture. “You’re sure?”
“Positive. It took a little finagling, but I was able to hack into the security system of a company just down the road. They keep two months’ worth of footage on their backup drives. Just had to hunt around until I found this.”
Billy moved his finger toward the screen, hovering it just over the load on the back of the truck. “And is that…?”
“Yes. It is.”
A shipping container. An identical match, as a matter of fact, to the shipping containers in the footage their inside person had sent them.
__________
MATT AND RACHEL arrived within seconds of each other, both responding to urgent phone calls from Billy.
“I need to go back out,” Billy told them.
“Why?” Matt said, surprised.
Billy nodded to Jordan. “Show them.”
Jordan turned his laptop so the others could see the screen, and hit the space bar. While the video of the truck played, he and Billy took turns filling in the details.
“But that’s not even the best part,” Billy said as the video finished.
It sounded pretty damn good to Matt. Knowing the public face of the Project had been an elusive goal to this point, but now, with the discovery of Hidde-Kel, they had a name. It meant they might be able to stop just reacting and go on the offensive. They might not be able to kill the Project’s plan completely, but they might be able to create some big problems.
“So what’s the best part?”
Billy smiled. “Jordan was the one who figured it out.”
Jordan shrugged. “All I did was enhance the video enough to get an ID number off the truck.”
“And?” Billy urged.
“Well, from that I found the company who owned it. These days, nearly every truck on the road has a transponder so that its owners can track them. I, um, was able to get the truck’s transponder ID and tap into it.”
Matt was not surprised. Jordan was a tech expert who routinely hacked into satellites and computer systems for the cause. “I take it you found something.”
Jordan minimized the video and brought up a static image of a map. Superimposed on it were several bright yellow lines, each overlaying existing roads and creating loops that seemed to always start in Chicago before going somewhere else in a two-state radius.
“The lines represent routes the truck tra
veled in a two-week period surrounding the time the video was shot.” He clicked a button and all but one of the loops disappeared. “And this is the trip he started that night.”
The line went southeast into Indiana, then almost due east across the state and into Ohio, where it terminated in Cleveland. From there it looped back, following basically the same route home.
Jordan clicked on Cleveland, and the map zoomed in. He didn’t stop until the image area was filled with a roughly four-square-block section of the map. The yellow line stopped right in the middle.
“This is where they dropped off the container,” Billy explained.
“Where you guys think they dropped it off,” Rachel corrected him.
“No. Jordan, show them.”
Jordan brought up a satellite image.
“The angle’s a little skewed,” he said. “The closest satellite I could get access to wasn’t directly overhead, but you can still see it.”
The focus area of the shot appeared to be part of an industrial zone. In the center was a large open lot behind a warehouse-type building. Even from the slightly angled view, it was apparent the lot was not seeing much use. There were several abandoned cars along one fence, and a couple of semitruck trailers in the middle. Sitting right next to the trailers was what looked like a brown shipping container.
“It’s the same container?” Matt asked.
“I think so. Yes. Look at it. It’s a match to the one that was on the back of the truck that we now know stopped at this very location. I found a few images of the area from a month ago, and the only thing different is that there’s no container.”
“Matt,” Billy said. “That lot is only a few blocks from the airport, and a mile or so west of a huge residential area.”
“So if it is a delivery system, it’s perfectly placed,” Matt said, more to himself than anyone else.
“Exactly.” Billy paused. “This is a perfect opportunity to find out how these things work. I want to go check it out.”
“I’m not sure that’s such a great idea,” Rachel said.
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