The Extinction Files Box Set

by A. G. Riddle

  Peyton exhaled heavily. Her hands and eyes were steady, betraying no hint that she was nervous, but Desmond could sense her fear. It was as though he knew her well—could read the emotions she kept hidden, the feelings strangers couldn’t see. Desmond wished he could take the weight off Peyton’s shoulders, but he could only watch. Her next actions could save Hannah or end her life. If she brought Hannah out of sedation too quickly, it could be deadly.

  Peyton pulled out drawers, read labels on vials, and tossed them back one by one until she found what she needed. She loaded up a syringe and stuck it into the IV. Slowly, she depressed the plunger, watching Hannah. She kept one hand on the young woman’s wrist, monitoring her pulse.

  Beyond the door, boots echoed in the corridor.

  Avery froze.

  Desmond turned.

  Hannah stirred, sucked in a breath, and let out a low moan.

  The footsteps stopped.

  Avery moved to the corner of the room, behind the door, and motioned for Desmond to join her. Peyton ducked down behind the bed.

  Desmond heard men’s voices in the corridor, speaking German. Something about gathering the samples.

  Hannah’s eyes opened. They went wide at the sight of Desmond and Avery, dressed like her captors, guns at the ready.

  She opened her mouth to scream, but Peyton sprang up like a jack-in-the-box and covered the younger physician’s mouth with her hand. Peyton held her other index finger to her own lips.

  The beeping of the pulse monitor was the only sound in the room. As the beeps got faster, Desmond felt his hands start to sweat.

  The footsteps outside resumed. They were moving away—except for a single set, which moved toward them.

  Avery motioned for Hannah to get off the bed. Peyton reached up, disconnected the IV, and pulled Hannah down beside her.

  Avery let her rifle slide out of her hands so that it hung by the shoulder strap. What’s she doing? Desmond wondered.

  At that moment, the leads connected to the monitor slipped off Hannah. The beeping machine changed to a droning flat line just as the door creaked wider and a semi-automatic rifle peeked through.

  Avery drew a fixed-blade black combat knife from a sheath on her leg. It was about eight inches long with a rubber handle. As soon as the man’s face cleared the door, she sprang up and stabbed the blade into the man’s neck.

  He gurgled as she guided him to the floor, his eyes wide in disbelief. Avery had severed his windpipe and spine in one lethal, extremely precise blow.

  Desmond stood in awe of her skill and poise. With barely a sound, she pulled the man clear of the door and readied her rifle.

  The other footsteps continued moving away, their echo growing fainter by the second.

  Avery withdrew the blade from the man’s neck with a sickening sucking sound, wiped it on his chest, and re-sheathed it. Still crouched, she moved deeper into the room and whispered to Peyton and Hannah.

  “Let’s move.” To Desmond she said, “I’ll lead. They follow, you bring up the rear. Keep them moving.”

  Avery was through the door a second later. Peyton wrapped Hannah’s good arm over her shoulder and pulled her up. Both women stared, mouths open at the sight of the dead man, but kept moving.

  Desmond stood guard while they raced down the corridor, following Avery to the stairwell, which was lit with emergency lights similar to those in the medical section.

  Avery stopped on the landing, listening.

  Voices echoed above and below, bouncing off the metal walls. Desmond didn’t know if he was hearing twenty or a hundred voices, only that there were too many for them to slip past, and certainly too many for them to fight.

  Avery set down her backpack, drew out a gas mask, and handed it to Desmond.

  “Put this on. Stay here, then follow my lead.”

  She raced up the stairs. But no gas came. No shots were fired. He heard Avery’s voice ring out, echoing through the stairwell with strength and authority.

  “Corporal. I have the prisoners in my custody. I need your help securing them.”

  Chapter 61

  Peyton’s expression said what Desmond feared: She’s betrayed us. He had harbored that fear ever since Avery had freed him from the cell. Whom did she work for? What was her agenda? Why had she freed them?

  More discussion above. Avery was arguing with another man now.

  “These are McClain’s orders. It’s your funeral, gentlemen. Just stay out of the way.”

  More arguing, then Avery leaned over the rail and yelled down, “Johnson, bring ’em up.”

  She walked down a few stairs. “Johnson, get your ass up here with those women. We’re ready.”

  Desmond finally understood her plan—her very brilliant plan. The look on Peyton’s face told him that she did, too.

  Still wearing the gas mask, he motioned for the two physicians to go ahead.

  In the patient room, Desmond had been quite worried about whether Hannah could make the trek up the stairs. He was now relieved to see her keeping pace with Peyton. Her legs seemed to get steadier with each step, the sedation wearing off perhaps.

  At the landing above, two young soldiers wearing uniforms similar to Avery’s and Desmond’s stood waiting.

  “Where’s Hughes?” one asked.

  “Hughes is dead,” Avery said flatly.

  Their eyes went wide.

  “Get going, or we will be too.”

  The two men took off up the stairs.

  Avery went after them, then the two women, and once more Desmond brought up the rear.

  One of the two soldiers was waiting for them at the next landing, pushing other soldiers and two civilians back to make a hole for them to pass.

  “Stay back—McClain’s orders,” he barked.

  The moment they cleared the landing, he took off up the stairs again, running past them.

  The second guard was standing on the next landing, running similar interference.

  It was working. They were going to make it out.

  The next flight of stairs passed without event. And the next. The crowds were growing thicker though. The stairwell was clogged with people, civilians mostly, trying to get to the upper deck.

  Avery was increasing her pace. Desmond had to urge Peyton and Hannah on. They trudged up the stairs, gripping the metal rails tightly, both women panting now. The bandage on Hannah’s shoulder oozed blood. Tears streamed down her cheeks as she tried but failed to pull in a deep breath that Desmond knew must have been agonizing.

  As they approached the next landing, a tall man entering the stairwell yelled, “Avery! Stop where you are.”

  She pointed at him and shouted back. “Traitor! Mutineer!”

  The uniformed guards around him looked confused for a moment. The man raised his gun, but Avery was quicker. Her shot caught him center mass, right in the chest, propelling him back into the crowd, which scattered. People shouted and ran out into the corridor or up the stairs—except for four soldiers, who must have been with the fallen man.

  They raised their rifles, ready to fire on Avery. But the corporal she had enlisted stood in front of her, his own rifle raised at the four soldiers.

  “Weapons down, right now,” the corporal said.

  “She’s lying to you,” one of the other soldiers said. “She’s breaking them out.”

  The corporal hesitated, glanced back at Avery. It was a lethal mistake. One of the men shot him in his chest. He staggered back, went over the rail, and spun as he fell to the landing below.

  Avery’s rifle erupted.

  Two soldiers dropped, then a third. The last man retreated out of the stairwell.

  Avery moved even faster now, pumping her legs.

  As she passed the bodies of the four fallen soldiers, she yelled up the stairs, “Cover us, Sergeant!”

  The sergeant peered over the railing from above. He looked hesitant, but nodded.

  The four of them barreled up the stairs, which were now empty. They were e
xposed.

  He quickened his pace.

  Avery reached the landing first. Sunlight poured through the open hatch. Freedom lay beyond the hatch. Or death, Desmond thought. They all hugged the wall, careful not to give anyone outside a shot at them.

  “Good work, Sergeant,” Avery said. “Take up position one flight down and cover our backs.”

  The man departed without a word. When he was out of sight, Avery unslung the backpack and drew out a round mirror with a long handle. She extended it into the hatchway just far enough to survey the scene outside.

  Whatever she saw, she didn’t like.

  She pulled the mirror back and drew three grenades and two oblong objects from her pack.

  “The helo’s sitting on a pad at ten o’clock. It’s well guarded. They’re loading the tender and lifeboats on the other side of the ship.” She paused, then looked at Desmond. “This is going to get messy. I’m going to need your help.”

  Desmond knew what she was asking of him. When he spoke, his voice sounded more confident than he felt. “I understand.”

  She tossed two of the grenades out, then the two oblong objects. Explosions vibrated through the deck and sent a wave of heat through the cracked hatch.

  “Let’s go,” Avery said, rushing out into the cloud of smoke. Peyton and Hannah followed close behind her, and Desmond brought up the rear.

  A firefight erupted instantly. Desmond could hear Avery firing, but he could see only her back, not her targets. The wind was whipping the smoke around, like a twister on the prairie, unsure which way to go.

  A bullet whizzed past Desmond’s head. He tried to follow the sound but failed. It was chaos around him. Through breaks in the smoke, he saw throngs of people screaming, running to the tender and lifeboats, most wearing life vests.

  The wind swept the smoke aside for a moment, like a curtain being drawn, and Desmond saw the helicopter dead ahead. Avery had pulled away from Hannah and Peyton, who were moving as fast as they could. The last two guards beside the chopper fell as Avery fired. She climbed into the cockpit, and a few seconds later Peyton hopped in and helped Hannah up.

  Desmond spun around, his back to the helicopter, covering them while the engines started. After what felt like an eternity, the rotors spun to life, their wind whipping at his back, dispersing the smoke, revealing carnage: wounded and dead soldiers.

  Desmond swallowed, knowing what might come next. The rifle’s stock rested against his shoulder, his finger around the trigger.

  He desperately wanted Avery to yell for him to get on.

  A figure burst through the hatchway from the stairwell. Desmond had a half second to scan him. Black body armor. Rifle held at the ready. The man was blinded momentarily by the sunlight.

  Desmond squeezed the trigger.

  His first shot went wide. His second caught the man in the shoulder. His third killed him.

  Desmond waited, wondering, expecting a feeling that never came. He felt only cold focus as he held the weapon.

  Over the roar of the rotors, he heard Avery’s call for him.

  The moment his foot hit the helicopter’s rail, it lifted off.

  Peyton extended a hand, pulled him in. From the open door, he watched the sinking, smoking cargo ship as they flew away.

  Quickly, he took stock of Peyton. She was okay. He couldn’t say the same for the younger woman. The exertion and increase in blood pressure had been disastrous for Hannah. Her wound oozed dark blood. Sweat drenched her. She was pale. Too pale.

  Peyton leaned close to him. Her lips brushed his ear as she spoke, just loud enough for him to hear over the rotors.

  “Help me find a med kit. Hurry. She’s bleeding out.”

  Chapter 62

  From a tender floating in the Indian Ocean, Conner watched the Kentaro Maru sink. With each second, the sea swallowed more of the smoking heap. Unlike the Beagle, it would never be found. He was sure of that.

  “Hughes had help,” the captain said.

  “Brilliant deduction,” Conner muttered.

  “Should we—”

  “I’ll handle it. I have this well in hand.”

  Desmond had helped as best he could while Peyton sewed Hannah’s shoulder wound closed. She had operated with focus and poise, not a single second wasted.

  Desmond had no doubt that she had just saved the young woman’s life. Hannah was extremely pale now, her face gaunt. Blood covered the floor of the helicopter. Gauze and boxes of medical supplies lay strewn about like volcanic islands rising from a blood-red sea.

  Peyton sank back to her haunches. She exhaled deeply, and every bit of energy seemed to flow out of her. Desmond half-expected her to pass out herself. It must have been incredibly stressful, holding a friend and colleague’s life in her hands, knowing every move she made could end the woman’s life.

  She looked at Desmond with what he thought was skepticism. Then she leaned close to him, her lips inches from his ear, her words impossible for Avery to hear in the pilot’s seat. “What’s going on here, Des?”

  The tone was different from her words on the ship. It was somehow more… tender, familiar.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Why are you acting like you don’t know me?”

  His eyes went wide. It was true. They did know each other. Quickly, he told her about waking up in Berlin with no memory of how he’d gotten there.

  “We need to talk,” she said. “There’s something you need to know. But first…” She glanced around, found the headset hanging from the ceiling, and pulled it on.

  Desmond grabbed another headset.

  “Avery.” Peyton’s voice was once again firm, commanding almost. “Hannah needs a hospital. She’s lost too much blood.”

  Avery glanced back at her.

  Desmond sensed another Peyton-Avery argument coming on. Hoping to avoid it, he asked Avery where they were.

  “Off the coast of Kenya, near the border with Tanzania.”

  “What’s the plan?”

  “Call for help,” she said simply. Desmond sensed that she didn’t want to elaborate—perhaps because her most recent plans had been so thoroughly questioned and amended by her passengers.

  “Where’re we headed?” Peyton asked.

  “Mombasa.”

  Peyton squinted. “There’s no American embassy in Mombasa. Or even a consulate. It was in my CDC briefing. In fact, no Western nations have embassies or consulates in the city. It’s too dangerous; they all pulled out years ago.”

  A pause, then Avery said, “At the bus depot, there’s a locker with a field kit in it.”

  “How does that help us?” Desmond asked.

  “There’s a satphone inside. I’ll call my handler. He’ll arrange exfil.”

  Her handler? Desmond thought.

  On Peyton’s face, he saw scrutiny. She didn’t trust the other woman.

  “You didn’t bring a satphone with you?” Peyton asked.

  “I couldn’t get my hands on one,” Avery said. “We were under a comm blackout on the ship.” She motioned to Desmond. “You saw the high security around even using a cell phone—they were under lock and key. Plus, they could have tracked any satphone I took off the ship.”

  “So assuming we get to the locker and make contact, how do we get out of Mombasa?” Desmond asked.

  “There’s a Kenyan naval base and a large airport.”

  “There are also several good hospitals,” Peyton said. “The Aga Khan Hospital would be my first choice.”

  Avery shook her head. “Look, I disabled the Kentaro Maru’s other helo, but Conner McClain is very smart, and he knows we have an injured person on board. By now, he’ll have hired every crooked cop, mercenary, and bounty hunter in Mombasa, and every other coastal town, to try to find us. And the first places they’ll stake out will be the hospitals and airports.”

  Peyton was about to launch her rebuttal when smoke on the horizon caught their attention.

  Mombasa was burning.

  Chap
ter 63

  The smoke cloud over Mombasa was so thick, they couldn’t see the city. But after a few minutes of debate, Desmond, Peyton, and Avery agreed that it was still their best hope of reaching help and getting out of Kenya.

  Desmond sat back against the helicopter’s rear wall and closed his eyes. The sight of the city on the coast reminded him of another place, what seemed like another life to him. And somehow, it also reminded him of Peyton, though the memory of her was just a feeling. He sensed that seeing her—touching her on the helicopter and during the escape—had been a sort of key to unlocking another memory.

  The night Desmond disposed of Dale Epply’s body outside Slaughterville, Oklahoma, he thought hard about where he would go. He considered three places: Seattle, New York, and Silicon Valley. Thanks to countless IRC chat sessions, he had met people like himself from around the country and the world, but they were mostly concentrated in Silicon Valley, in cities like Menlo Park, Palo Alto, Mountain View, and Sunnyvale. He couldn’t wait to get there and start over.

  He drove all day and camped every night. He obeyed the speed limit and avoided hotels—he didn’t want to leave a paper trail in case anyone from Oklahoma came looking for him. Thanks to the bounty he’d found in Orville’s safe, money wasn’t a problem.

  It was morning when he drove past Fremont and Newark, onto the Dumbarton Bridge and over the San Francisco Bay, arriving in East Palo Alto.

  He found a small RV park off Bayshore Freeway, where he asked around to see if there was anything for sale. A few hours later, he was haggling over a well-used Airstream trailer with a bearded old man who was chewing tobacco and listening to talk radio. The man claimed he was in poor health and was headed, in his words, to the glue factory pretty soon.

  “You’d rob a man on his deathbed?”

  When Desmond finally got the price down to the high side of fair, he placed the hundred-dollar bills into the man’s hand—slowly, one at a time, at the man’s request, so he could count them out loud. The old man wished him luck and told him to take good care of the trailer. Then he walked across the street and moved in with another resident—a woman who Desmond later learned the old man was romantically involved with.