by Ed Kovacs
“You need another one?”
“Okay. Twice is better than once,” she said, smiling.
Simms had to swallow. He was thinking, trying to calculate how he should handle this. This girl might be in play.
Unless this was some kind of trick—another Red Team drill, this one using a smoking-hot woman. “Excuse me one second.” Simms backtracked toward the windows in the roll-up door.
“Too bad we have to fly back to Washington tomorrow. I wouldn’t mind going out and having some fun.”
Simms shot a fast glance into the clean room. It was such a quick look, Bennings could have been playing air guitar nude and Simms wouldn’t have noticed.
“Which hotel are you staying at, Elfi?” said Simms as he crossed back toward her.
“The Hilton, but the bar there is boring.” She smiled the big smile, and Simms fell in love.
* * *
As soon as Simms left the window, Kit chanced making the switch. Any security officers watching the cameras were probably right now watching Yulana in the air lock, but still, he was careful to keep his movements screened from camera view.
He strained to lift the bomb up about eight inches above the cart; Bennings could do hundred-pound barbell curls with no problem, but he strained, because the position was awkward. He eased the unit into his toolbox and then used the towels as packing materials. He quickly loaded the lead pipes into the weapons crate and closed the lid. The switch took just under ten seconds.
He secured the toolbox. Kit gritted as he used both hands to manhandle his toolbox, which now contained the bomb, onto the hand dolly. He placed Yulana’s toolbox on top of his, then tilted the dolly and wheeled it over to the roll-up door. He then returned and quickly pulled the trolley with the weapons crate over to the door. He hit the button, and the interior roll-up door began to rise.
* * *
In the security office, three men crowded in close around one particular monitor.
“Come on, zoom it in farther.”
The guy with the joystick did exactly that, and Yulana’s figure filled the screen.
“Damn, Sarge! Get the hell away from my future ex-wife!” joked one of the men.
“This babe is CIA? I work for the wrong company.”
“Can we detain her? I’ll do the pat down.”
“Pat down? I’m thinking a body cavity search.”
Kit needn’t have worried; he could have emptied out the entire clean room and no one would have noticed.
* * *
With the hand dolly and trolley now in the air lock, Kit closed the interior roll-up door. He and Yulana discarded their clean-room garb into a plastic bin.
Simms looked like a salesman who’d been interrupted before he could close a big sale.
“Sergeant, appreciate all of your help.” Kit pressed the button to open the exterior roll-up door and heard the sudden footsteps of men outside. Was there a problem? Or were the men outside merely startled by the door opening?
“I need to check the weapon, sir.”
Kit sighed and looked at his watch. “Don’t tell me you opened this crate in the storage facility to ‘check it’ before you brought it here.”
“Well, no, sir.” Simms shifted on his feet. Yulana moved away from the soldier.
“Because this weapons crate can only be opened in a clean-room environment, which this air lock is not. Now I am well aware of how your unit was decertified in 2010 for its sloppy practices. They wouldn’t let you people handle nukes anymore, isn’t that right? Because of bad practices. That was a big scandal, wasn’t it?”
“Umm, yes, sir.”
“Well, I’m not here to get you decertified again. But don’t be opening the weapons crate unless you’re in a clean room, understood?”
“I’m not aware of any regulation that we have to open the crate in a clean room, Doctor.” It wasn’t a direct challenge, but Simms stared at Bennings, waiting for a response.
“The regs were amended for the RT-Sevens about a month ago. You can confirm that with your CO.” Kit said it casually enough so it didn’t sound like he was parrying the sergeant’s remark. It was pure bluff on his part, but being in the military himself, he knew how difficult it was to keep up with the minutiae of constantly changing regulations. And he knew the chances of the CO being awake, much less on duty, at this hour were slim at best.
Still, Bennings was sweating under his clothes. A quick glance at the overhead camera reminded him they were being monitored—a certainty considering Yulana’s presence. Simms had become the unanticipated monkey wrench in his plan. He now calculated that he might have to subdue the sergeant, overcome the troops outside, and just make a run for it. Kit could feel the odds of success rapidly slipping away from him.
The exterior roll-up door was all the way open now. The soldiers outside were readying the jigs to reload the bomb crate onto the truck. Yulana took another step toward the open door. Kit crossed to the hand dolly that held his toolbox that, unbeknownst to the soldiers, contained the RT-Seven EMP bomb. He didn’t want to move the toolbox until he had to, since it weighed a hundred pounds. If they saw how heavy the box was, it would raise suspicion, although suspicion seemed to have crept in all by itself.
“No disrespect, sir, but if we ever have to use one of these weapons, we won’t be opening the crate in a clean room.”
Damn, Simms wasn’t going to let this go. “That’s different, soldier. Now get this thing out of here. I want to go home,” snapped Bennings. Intimidation was the only play Kit had left, short of getting physical.
“Home? I thought you two were at a hotel.”
“First we go to the hotel, Sergeant, then we get to fly home. To Langley,” Kit said, working hard to sound exasperated.
“Sir, I have to check the weapon. I don’t want my unit to be decertified again, and for all I know, you are testing me right now in some kind of Red Team drill.”
No doubt about it now, this was going to be a race to get off the base. Kit’s SIG rested snugly tucked into an inside-the-pants holster, and it suddenly felt heavy.
“We’re heading back to the hotel,” said Kit, pretending to lose his patience and speaking loudly enough so all of the other soldiers could hear. “You’ve been watching the device for almost an hour. You haven’t taken your eyes off it. But if you have to check it, then close the exterior door, put on some clean-room garb, open the interior door, take the weapon inside, close the interior door, and then you can check it. Understood? Otherwise, I’m going to write your ass up and have a talk with your CO! Now good night.”
What happened in the next few moments would determine just how ugly this was going to get.
Simms stared hard and looked like a man trying to make a decision. If he shouted an order for his troops to stop them, Kit would put the bomb down and come up with his gun. No way he would shoot innocents, not even to save Staci’s life, but he could surely bluff if he had to.
But the soldiers had weapons, too, and might not be shy about using them. He doubted they’d shoot Yulana, but he had no doubt they’d send lead downrange in his direction.
Yulana moved out first and had the tailgate open as Kit tilted the hand dolly and wheeled it over the the SUV.
Yulana turned to face Simms, and took a stop toward him as she removed a cigarette from her blouse pocket. “Sorry for the trouble, Sergeant. Can I got a light?”
Thank God she was creating another distraction. Bennings quickly slid her toolbox into the SUV. As Simms gave her a light, Kit turned his back to Simms and the soldiers so they couldn’t see him strain as he lifted his bomb-laden toolbox into the vehicle. The soldiers watched closely, not because they were suspicious, but because they couldn’t get enough of Yulana.
And Simms didn’t say a word.
Bennings hoisted the dolly inside, closed the hatchback, and then he and Petkova got in without speaking. As they drove off in the Pathfinder, Kit checked the rearview mirror. It looked as if Simms advised his men to s
tand by, and he closed the exterior roll-up door, remaining in the air lock alone.
CHAPTER 30
Sandia wasn’t a huge facility, but it would take at least a couple of minutes to get to the Eubank Boulevard gate. Kit clutched the two-way radio, put an earbud in his ear, and turned the volume up.
“If he follows procedure, we should have just enough time to get off base. But if he pops the lid to the crate right there in the air lock, we’re screwed.”
“Either way, as American people say, we are in deep doo-doo now,” said Yulana, looking worried.
“Yes, we are.” Kit tromped on the accelerator, driving dangerously fast toward the gate as he continued to listen for Simms to call in an alarm to dispatch. His face muscles tightened. Did Simms follow his orders or not?
At the time he was standing in the air lock with Simms, he thought the mention of the 898th’s decertification was a good idea to put the sergeant on the defensive, but it instead made him pricklier, more of a stickler for procedure … as long as Bennings was standing there. But as soon as Kit and Yulana drove away, what would Simms really do? Then Bennings asked himself what he would do.
“The sergeant hasn’t radioed in a problem, and the gate is around the corner. But, damn it, if it was me, I’d just pop the sucker open.”
“Maybe he didn’t use the radio.”
Kit slammed on the brakes and they skidded to a stop just short of rounding the corner, so they were still out of sight from the gate guards, but just barely. “You’re right. He’d use a landline. You don’t want to put out on the radio a big screwup unless you have to.”
He threw the vehicle into reverse and spun a 180-degree turnaround.
Kit pressed the TALK button on the radio. “Dispatch, this is unit——” He hit the squelch button, causing feedback to cover up the fact that he didn’t have a radio handle to use. “Three, repeat, three drones now landing inside the base on the west side of Building sixty-seven. They are all painted black. Some kind of electrical interference——” Kit hit squelch again and then turned the radio off.
“Diversions,” said Kit as he looked at Yulana. “I forgot to set up any diversions in case we had to make a run for it.”
* * *
Having been alerted by Sgt. Simms to secure the gates and stop the couple in the Pathfinder, the guards at every gate that wasn’t already closed had raised up the pneumatic posts from the ground that comprised impenetrable vehicle blockades.
All gate guards at Sandia placed loaded magazines into their M4s, as frantic radio traffic squawked about intruders with a stolen bomb and drones and mobile units being dispatched to Building 67.
* * *
The perimeters of most sensitive facilities are not as formidable as one might think; they are designed to keep the honest people out, not the bad guys in. So Kit raced the Pathfinder off-road across an expanse of brown grass and slammed through eight-foot-high chain-link fencing topped with concertina wire.
He fishtailed onto Eubank Boulevard and floored it heading north. Just as he looked into the rearview mirror, the headlights of a vehicle came on and it pulled onto the road behind him, accelerating fast.
“Who the hell is that?”
Yulana looked back. “Police?”
“If it’s the police, where are the flashing lights?”
Kit made a screeching right turn onto Southern Boulevard, and the vehicle following did likewise. He saw that it was a dark SUV with tinted windows.
“It can’t be.”
“Can’t be what?” asked Kit.
“Popov,” she said, making the word sound like a curse.
Kit’s mouth opened, but no words came out.
“It’s the Feds, it has to be FBI, or … maybe plainclothes Sandia security.”
But as he thought about it, why couldn’t it be Popov? The Russians had to suspect he might come to Sandia to steal the weapon, and Sandia wasn’t that big. But, surely …
Kit wrenched the wheel at the thought and veered up Elizabeth Street to Central Avenue, where he hung another wide right, glancing off an old Ford, which then spun out.
The dark SUV relentlessly followed and closed ground.
Did Yulana borrow the sergeant’s phone while she was out of my sight and call someone? Someone who was standing by in the vicinity, just waiting to pounce? The thought almost made him physically sick.
An oncoming sedan suddenly veered across the double yellow lines of Central right at them. More of Popov’s men. Kit careened left into oncoming lanes and then tried to correct, but he was traveling too fast. He lost control, and the Pathfinder skidded sideways and exploded through the storefront of a large indoor flea market.
Shattering glass and splintering wood rained like a downpour in monsoon season, as the Pathfinder tore a new path through antique furniture, old appliances, and funky jewelry displays. Miraculously, the vehicle didn’t flip.
Bullets pinged into the driver’s compartment. Definitely not the Feds or security. Yulana threw open her door and rolled out onto the concrete floor of the flea market. Kit reached into the backseat for his backpack and the Kel-Tec subgun. He felt a burning sensation in his upper arm; he’d been shot.
The incoming grew more intense, so he kicked his door open, scrambled out, and found cover behind an old Kenmore fridge.
As he put on his backpack, he quickly counted eight different muzzle flashes closing in from the darkness. Eight killers. He had to backpedal now! Just as he began to lay grazing fire, he saw movement to his left. He wheeled and was about to fire, when Yulana, wild-eyed with fear, crawled toward him.
“What do we do? We can’t leave the device!” As soon as she got the words out, a fusillade of lead tore in all around them.
“It’s too late. If we stay, we die. Come on!” He pulled on her arm and they retreated.
Had Yulana betrayed him? He wanted to give the woman whose hand he now held as they ran in the darkness the benefit of the doubt; he couldn’t assume she’d been nothing but a spy after all they’d been through. But as they crouched low and moved deeper into the market, a different thought consumed him. How could a scientist operate as slickly as she did? Was she working for Popov after all?
He pulled up next to some old stoves and laid down covering fire. The bolt locking back on his weapon told him he was out of ammo. Sounds of killers bumping into furniture on both sides of them meant they were being flanked. He had only seconds to decide: make a break for it alone, or bring her with him?
He looked into her eyes. Could she possibly fake the kind of fright on her face right now? No, he decided, and so he pulled her along, running flat out in the dark.
They crashed out of a rear door to the flea market. Moonlight revealed old refrigerators next to the door, so Kit heaved and pushed one onto its side, blocking the door from opening. Almost instantly he heard voices from inside the building as men tried to open the door. Kit pulled Yulana along, threading through piles of rusty stoves, broken tables, and clunky office furniture stacked into towering piles.
Voices closed in, looking for them. At the six-foot-high rear wall, he boosted her up, and she climbed over easily. But when he tried to follow, searing pain from where he’d been shot stabbed through his arm and into his shoulder as he struggled to pull himself up. Gritting his teeth as he grimaced, he finally got a leg onto the ledge and spilled over the top of the wall.
He landed on the arm where he’d been shot and winced in pain. Yulana sprang to her feet like a cat, then helped him stand up.
They’d dropped into a mobile-home park. A big Hispanic guy, alerted by the sound of gunfire, had just come out of his trailer holding his car keys, keys to a faded blue 1965 Chevy sitting in the driveway. Kit and Yulana stumbled out of the darkness toward the man.
“Keys,” said Kit, pointing the gun into the man’s face. The gun was empty, but the Hispanic man didn’t know that.
The man looked at the gun, looked at Yulana, then looked at Kit and his bloody arm. He didn’t
appear to be either frightened or impressed. He finally tossed him the keys and said, “Try not to wreck it. And don’t get blood on my upholstery! It’s custom tuck-and-roll.”
“If they don’t kill me, I’ll return it with a cash bonus,” said Kit, dead serious.
“Who’s they?”
“Russian Mafia. There’s a whole bunch of them on the other side of your wall.” Kit’s eyes dropped for just a moment to the man’s waist. A chrome-plated .357 Magnum revolver was tucked into the front of his pants. As Bennings’s eyes met the Hispanic man’s, Kit’s demeanor morphed into pure bloodlust killer mode. His eyes now looked … deranged? Psychotic? He bore them into the man as a warning not to go for his pistol.
Perhaps the Hispanic man had spent time in jail, or perhaps he’d just rubbed elbows with the criminally insane, but he seemed to recognize the power behind Kit’s gaze.
“The Russians are some bad mothers,” said the man. He wasn’t afraid, and he looked hard at Kit, sizing him up. He then gestured with his head, “Better get your asses out of here.”
Kit and Yulana piled into the car, and when Kit turned the key, it rumbled to life with the kind of sounds that made street racers all warm and fuzzy. So what if it didn’t look like much? It was a four-on-the-floor and ran like a lizard.
Ran, in fact, all the way to the outskirts of Albuquerque, using mostly side streets.
They stopped at an all-night convenience store for snacks and simple medical supplies. Back in the Chevy, in the backseat, Yulana bandaged his arm as he ravenously consumed ready-made sandwiches and energy drinks.
“The bleeding is not so bad,” she said, finishing.
“Your turn.”
She looked confused.
“The cut on your back from when Buzz took out the chip,” said Kit.
She turned her back to him and lowered her blouse. He rubbed antibiotic ointment into the nasty gash where Buzz had used his pocketknife to cut out the tracking chip. He then gently applied bandages.
“Okay, you’re golden. Until we can get you stitched up proper so you won’t have a big-ass scar.”
