Brainrush 03 - Beyond Judgment

by Bard, Richard

Both guards spun to face the threat. By the time they saw the boulder rolling across the floor, it was too late for them to react to the true danger.

  An engine whined.

  Tony leaped to one side when the Volkswagen rental car crashed through the foyer’s bay window. Glass, wood, and drywall exploded inward. The guards dove for cover. The vehicle careened into the fountain. Cherubs toppled, water sprayed, and the car lurched to a stop. Air bags filled the cab, and a fog of debris filled the air.

  The guards rose to their feet. Pit Bull’s growl was ferocious. He rushed to the driver’s-side window. The air bags had collapsed. Lacey’s face was bloodied and bruised. She spit at him. He raised his shotgun.

  Tony dove for the P90. He whipped it around and strafed over the top of the VW. A line of bullet holes stitched Pit Bull from shoulder to shoulder. His body flew backward. Tony swiveled the weapon and loosed the last of the magazine into the startled second guard. His body jerked and danced with each impact.

  Moving quickly to the other side of the car, Tony slammed home a new fifty-round mag and stood over Pit Bull. The man’s breathing was ragged. His eyes were at half-mast. He sat with his back to the wall, his feet splayed out before him. He had a one-handed grip around the shotgun in his lap.

  “No more mistakes, eh?” the German muttered. There was a gurgle in his voice.

  Tony answered with a short burst into Pit Bull’s heart. He turned his back and buried any further thoughts of the man.

  For now.

  He rushed to the car.

  Lacey was conscious but shaken. One side of her face was swollen. A trail of blood snaked from a cut on her forehead. In spite of it all, she managed a wink. He tried the door. It was jammed. He startled when Timmy appeared in the front doorway. The young scientist held a pistol in a shaky double-handed grip. He still wore his headset.

  “Try the other side,” Tony ordered.

  Timmy hurried over and opened the front passenger door. “Marshall’s trying to reach you on the comm,” he said.

  Tony met the words with a sigh of relief. His friend was alive.

  “He needs help,” Timmy added. “Hurry. The fire brigade will be here any minute!”

  “I’m okay,” Lacey said, unclipping her seat belt and crawling across the seat. “Get up there!”

  Tony sprinted up the stairs. He checked the corner with a quick out-and-back glance. A guard lay sprawled in the hallway. The doorway to his right was open. Tony held the P90 in ready position as he stepped over the body and into the room. What he saw shocked him.

  “Tony,” Francesca said. Her voice was weak. Her face was drawn and haggard. She looked broken. The sight of her hopeless expression widened the hole in his gut.

  He moved quickly even as his mind reeled over the scene. The glass doors leading from the balcony had been shattered inward. Marshall’s P90 hung loose from its shoulder sling. He hovered over Francesca and her father. Mario’s head was in her lap. He had been shot in the chest. A video camera and tripod lay on the floor.

  Where the hell was Jake?

  “I—it’s my fault,” Marshall said. “I wasn’t fast enough. The guard got off a shot…” His voice trailed off.

  Tony inspected Mario’s wound. It was bad. “We can’t move him.” His mind raced through options. Mario needed a hospital, but the rest of them couldn’t risk being taken by the authorities. The sirens grew louder. A horn blared outside.

  “I sensed my children nearby,” Francesca said dully. “But that can’t be. Because they’re dead. I felt Jake, too.”

  She’s obviously in shock, Tony thought. Delirious. But her words still made his skin ripple. He lifted Mario’s head from her lap. She didn’t resist. Her mind was miles away.

  “Let me take him for a moment,” he said.

  She scooted back.

  “Pillow,” Tony said to Marshall, motioning to the bed. Marshall grabbed one and Tony lowered Mario’s head onto it. The old man groaned, but his eyes remained fierce. He grabbed Tony’s wrist. His weathered grip was strong.

  “You must protect my daughter,” he whispered.

  “With my life.”

  Marshall’s hand went to the earpiece of his headset. “We’ve got thirty seconds.”

  Mario turned to Francesca. “You must leave, child. I will be okay.” His voice was calm and soothing—despite his pain. Tony felt a flush of admiration for the gondolier.

  “Yes, Father,” she said. Her manner was childlike.

  The car horn grew more insistent.

  Tony took Francesca’s hand and guided her to her feet. She hesitated as they moved toward the door. She looked back at her father, and Tony saw a flicker of realization grow in her eyes. Her legs wobbled. Tony reached around, picked her up, and moved quickly down the hallway. “The ambulance will be here any second,” he said. “The emergency teams will take good care of him.” He prayed they’d get Mario to the hospital in time.

  They raced out of the house. Smoke billowed from the garage. Flames roared upward from the side window. The sirens were loud, and Tony saw emergency lights flashing through the distant trees. The confiscated black SUV was pulled up to the entrance. The rear doors were open. Timmy was at the wheel. Lacey sat beside him. Their eyes widened at the sight of Francesca.

  Marshall sprinted around to the other side. He carried a hefty laptop and backup drive under one arm. Wires dangled beneath them. Tony set Francesca on the seat. He jumped in, slammed the door, and shouted, “Go!”

  Timmy floored it, and the BMW X5 leaped forward. It jumped the curb surrounding the circular drive and made tracks through the patchy snow-covered lawn. They spun around the backside of the house and headed uphill. By the time they made the tree line, the first of the fire trucks was arriving on scene. Tony caught a glimpse of a black SUV among them. It was an exact match to the one they’d just hijacked. Timmy wove the vehicle through a hundred meters of forest before reaching the road. No one followed.

  They were halfway to the safe house when amber lines of light suddenly crisscrossed the sky all the way to the horizon.

  “What the hell?” Lacey said, leaning forward in her seat to look skyward.

  Traffic pulled over on both sides of the streets. Timmy did the same. He thumbed a switch overhead to open the panel covering the moonroof. They all gazed upward at the unearthly sight.

  It was Francesca who spoke first. “It was Jake,” she said. “He did a very bad thing.”

  Chapter 50

  Geneva, Switzerland

  VICTOR CHIDED HIMSELF for the incessant twitch in his leg. Less than five minutes had passed since he’d escaped the room. He sat in the backseat of the limo. It was parked outside the rear exit of the palace.

  Hans leaned in the open rear door. “Strauss and the others are dead. The American is unconscious. But we have him.”

  “And the chair?”

  “It’s intact. The men are bringing it out now.”

  Victor nodded. There was no question that the American had been able to link with the pyramids using the device. The death of the woman had turned the experiment on its end, but that didn’t mean something couldn’t be salvaged the next time around. They may have lost their leverage over the man, but there were other methods. Either way, he would leave neither the chair nor the American behind.

  Hans said, “You must go, Mein Herr. The men and I will follow in a couple minutes.” He closed the car door.

  As the limo drove away, Victor had to fight to hold his anger in check. The loss of Dr. Strauss and the men inside was regrettable. But the news he’d just received that the American’s friends had apparently survived the avalanche—and his suspicion that it was they who had raided his residence—was infuriating. It wasn’t a common emotion for Victor. Unforeseen events—and the extreme emotions they can sometimes spark—were a rare occurrence in his structured life. He allowed a part of his mind to embrace the rage. He clicked on his tablet, activated the front-facing camera, and examined his features. He saw the mi
crotwitch at the corner of his right eye. It was his tell. His weakness. He despised it.

  Then he glanced at the clock in the top corner of the display, and he realized that none of the things that had happened would have any impact on the trigger that was about to be activated.

  In less than fifteen minutes, 90 percent of the people in attendance at the Palace of Nations would be dead.

  The twitch in his eye vanished, and Victor watched the corners of his lips lift in a smile.

  Chapter 51

  Palais des Nations

  Geneva, Switzerland

  A SUDDEN PAIN on the side of his skull woke Jake up. He felt cold linoleum against his cheek. Two sets of boots filled his vision.

  A muffled voice in German. “Careful!”

  “A lump or two on the head won’t kill him. Besides, he’s not our first priority.”

  They were in a hallway. Two men had dropped him on the floor. There was an urgent command from up ahead. “Quickly. You can return for him in a moment.”

  Jake recognized Hans’s voice. The realization sent a wave of adrenaline through his system. But he remained still. They thought he was unconscious.

  The memory of what he’d done in the chair rushed back to him, and the sudden wave of guilt threatened to pull him under.

  He wouldn’t allow it. His children were alive. They needed him. He pushed his guilt aside.

  The two men who’d been carrying him ran ahead. Jake followed their movements through slit eyes. They rushed toward a heavy-looking exit door that opened to an exterior stairwell. A wedge of sunlight sliced across the landing, suggesting the hallway was situated less than one floor from street level. Hans propped the door open with his foot. He held a compact submachine gun with a suppressor screwed onto the barrel. A part of Jake’s brain cataloged the weapon as an IWI Micro Tavor (MTAR-21) assault rifle, considered one of the most compact 5.56mm weapons around. At least that was the case six years ago, when his eidetic memory captured the stats of just about every weapon on the market. The memory flash confirmed that his faculties were back.

  He’d need every one of them.

  A thin trail of smoke snaked from the tip of the weapon. The bodies of two security guards lay slumped nearby on the hallway floor. One of their legs twitched in the final throes of death. It supported Jake’s suspicion that only a few minutes had passed since he’d fallen unconscious. Shadows interrupted the wedge of sunlight, and he heard grunts in the stairwell. It sounded as if men were lugging something up the steps.

  It had to be the chair, Jake thought. And the mini with it.

  Hans motioned up the stairs. “Help them.” The two men moved past him and disappeared from view. Hans stared at Jake’s limp form, cocking his head as if it might give him a better view. But from ten paces away he wouldn’t be able to tell that Jake’s eyes peeked at him from behind a curtain of lashes.

  Ten paces, he thought. With his superspeed, he could cover the distance in less than two seconds. He waited for his chance.

  An angry shout in the stairwell drew Hans’s attention upward. It sounded as if the men were struggling at their task.

  Jake tensed in anticipation.

  “Dummkopf!” Hans said to someone above. He kept one hand on the outward-swinging door as he lowered the weapon and leaned up the stairwell.

  Jake sprang to his feet and sprinted toward him.

  It took only two steps to realize he’d not regained his enhanced reflexes. But by then he was committed. He poured everything he had into the mad dash. Fear brought the sequence of events into clear focus. His body wasn’t superfast, but his brain was.

  Measure distance against speed.

  At six paces, Hans’s torso began to lean back into the doorway.

  Analyze angles.

  At four paces, the German turned his head.

  Deduce reaction.

  At two paces, Hans was raising the weapon.

  Jake launched himself into the air feetfirst. The silenced weapon was already spitting as the barrel rose. The rounds passed beneath him as Jake’s stiffened legs torpedoed into the German’s solar plexus. Hans was propelled against the back wall of the stairwell while Jake broke his own fall with his hands. He scrambled into the hallway on hands and knees, yanking the door closed behind him. The electronic lock engaged. There was a loud thud against the door, and Jake could imagine Hans’s foot kicking it in frustration. But the German and his men had accessed the rear exit to the facility once before, so Jake knew it would be only seconds before they entered the code again. He jumped up and ran like hell toward the door at the opposite end of the hallway.

  He was halfway there when ear-piercing Klaxons sounded throughout the facility.

  Door locks engaged up and down the hallway. He passed an elevator, noting that the push-button lights flashed on and off in concert with the sirens. The facility was on lockdown.

  Jake spun around at the sound of a sudden jackhammer staccato at the exit door behind him. It sounded as if Hans had loosed his weapon on the door lock. That meant his entry codes no longer worked. A second weapon opened up, and Jake saw a pencil-thin beam of sunlight peek through a hole in the door. The multiple projectiles were working their way through like termites on a two-by-four. They’d break the lock any moment.

  Jake made it to the far door. It was thick, it was steel, and it was locked. He pounded on it. It felt as sturdy as a bank vault’s. There was an entry keypad and a retinal scanner beside it.

  And a camera above it.

  “Open up! I need help!” he shouted, jumping up and down and waving his arms at the camera. There was no response. The hammering at the other end of the hall got louder. He risked a quick look over his shoulder. Several beams of sunlight poked through the door. He was out of time.

  He focused his thoughts on the keypad, imagined its inner workings in his mind, compared the wiring against the vast database of information he’d memorized years ago. He needed to bypass the entry code. He imagined shorting wires in the same way that he’d scrambled Strauss’s brains. But the instant he tried it, he realized it was no use. Those abilities were lost to him.

  Perhaps forever.

  Jake pounded on the door. “You’ve got armed terrorists at the back door! They’re about to break thr—”

  There was a loud crash behind him. Jake spun to see two of Hans’s men rushing toward him. They carried assault rifles. Hans was silhouetted in the doorway behind them. He had a finger to one ear.

  Jake was out of options, but he wasn’t going down alone. They hadn’t fired on him, which meant they wanted him alive. That was going to cost them. He lowered a shoulder and charged. The distance closed. Suddenly, the two men went wild-eyed. They skidded to a stop and raised their weapons.

  “Kill him!” Hans shouted.

  “Down!” someone ordered from behind Jake.

  Jake dropped to the floor as automatic weapons opened fire from both directions. Bullets ricocheted all around him. Victor’s men were thrown backward from a hail of rounds. Hans ducked from view. Several uniformed security guards leaped over Jake from behind and ran toward the exit. Then a knee dug into his lower back and he felt the hot muzzle of a weapon at the nape of his neck.

  “Don’t move,” a man’s voice commanded.

  There was a squeal of tires outside, and Jake knew Hans was gone.

  “Hands behind your back,” the voice said.

  Jake complied. He sensed other men standing nearby. Strong hands held his wrists together and cinched plastic cuffs around them. He was jerked to his feet and escorted toward the open interior door.

  “Thanks for—”

  “Shut the hell up,” the man walking in front of him said in English, holstering his weapon beneath a sport coat. He had a tight haircut and a curlicue earpiece. “You’re lucky as shit that somebody recognized you. Save the talk for him. Now get a move on!”

  They prodded him forward, winding down two flights of steps. A fire map indicated they were headed toward th
e bunker. The echo of a dozen pairs of boots followed them down the stairwell. The men surrounding him appeared to be hardened combatants. But Jake sensed an elevated level of tension from them that didn’t jive with what had just happened upstairs. The firefight had ended quickly. They’d won. So what the hell else was going on?

  The Klaxon still sounded.

  Chapter 52

  Geneva, Switzerland

  THE FIFTEEN-MINUTE DRIVE from the Palace of Nations to Geneva International Airport passed through a manicured scattering of high-end apartments and condominium complexes, separated by vast stretches of forested greenbelts. Victor rolled down his window to enjoy the pleasant view.

  They were seven minutes into the trip when the driver suddenly pulled to the shoulder. The privacy screen behind him was halfway down even before the car came to a stop. The driver turned around, his face drained of color. “Mein Herr. Something terrible has happened!”

  Victor checked his watch. The attack wasn’t supposed to commence for another six minutes.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked.

  “I-it’s happening all over the world, sir,” the driver said in a panic. “I heard it on the radio.”

  “What’s happening, man?” Victor asked, switching on the television monitor embedded above the liquor cabinet. “What are you talking—”

  The scene on the TV stopped him cold. The wide-eyed reporter stared dumbfounded at a video window that was inset on the screen beside her. It revealed a glowing object of some sort rocketing into the sky. The window became smaller in order to make room for three more insets, showing similar missiles launching from different locations. Captions on each read TOKYO, NEW YORK, LONDON, and BEIJING. He turned up the volume.

  “…the objects appear to have been launched simultaneously from points all over the globe…”

  Victor was taken aback by the images. His mind reeled with the implications.

  “…burst forth from hidden locations beneath the earth, causing widespread damage.”

  Could it be? Victor wondered.