by Liliana Hart
Begay’s dark eyes narrowed. “I don’t.” He stopped for a moment. “But I do sense a lot of darkness here.”
“Give the man a gold star. It’s the frickin’ middle of the night,” ribbed their teammate, Javier Ramirez, who joined them. “What did you expect?”
Begay punched Ramirez on the arm, but Alex pondered Shaman’s words. The night did feel dark. That deadly kind of dark where men didn’t return from missions. Winters had felt it before.
“Where’s the rest of the team?” Alex asked suddenly.
Everyone looked around the medical lab, seeing only a few more members.
“Strange. Only half of the men showed up,” Begay noted.
“Not so strange after the last set of vaccinations,” Ramirez said. “Sad to say, but they’re the smart ones not to show up.”
Alex frowned, but Ramirez had nailed it. After the grueling mental and physical endurance tests he and his men had gone through—hell, most applicants didn’t make it through BUD/s training—SEALs didn’t break easily. Certainly not because of a bunch of shots in the arm.
Their reactions to the vaccine had been way out of line. His team had always been rock solid, but if their paranoia and anger continued, he’d have to sideline them.
Too bad that wasn’t the least of his worries. The lab’s staff had blown off his concerns. And now, his commanders had him back here. Didn’t anyone besides him and his men see the problem?
Alex hated risking further difficulties with those guys tonight by giving them more vaccine. Still, his missing men should be here, as ordered. So, where were they?
Begay tapped Alex’s arm. “Commander, check out the doors.”
He scanned the lab exits and didn’t appreciate the view.
Unlike when he and Shaman had arrived, each door now had two armed guards standing at attention on either side. Ten MPs with semi-automatic weapons present for a half a SEAL team, a doctor and a medic? Every Bunsen burner was lit with a flask bubbling away above it, as if the entire medical staff had left in the middle of an experiment. Something was definitely off.
The medic gestured to Alex. “Next.”
Frowning, Alex moved forward in line, then rolled up his sleeve for the medic to swab and jab his arm. Alex felt the customary sting, then suddenly a vicious burn seared through his veins.
“Whoa,” he all but gasped. “What the hell’s in that needle? Battery acid?”
“No clue.” The medic applied a wad of gauze for pressure, and then slapped a bandage on top. “I just inject what they give me.”
Holy crap. That hurt worse than taking a bullet. Alex clenched his fist several times, as if that would dissipate the effect of the serum scorching him from the inside.
“Next.”
Alex shifted to the side to make room for the others receiving their inoculations, but the burn inside him worsened as it spread through his body. His gut spasmed, and it was all he could do not to puke.
Every instinct told him to stop his men, but deeply ingrained training won out. In the military, orders were orders, and he was damned good at following them—and giving them.
Still…this was bad. He swallowed against the bile in his throat, his heart racing.
As he watched, each of his men reacted to the new serum the same way he had. First, an involuntary hiss of pain, followed by a reaction to the increasing burn, then severe nausea.
One of the men staggered to a wastebasket, grabbed it and vomited. Others followed, dashing for sinks or trash bins scattered around the lab.
Screw this.
“Gennaro! Get over here. Fast.”
The doctor approached. “Is there a problem, Commander?”
“Damn right there’s a problem. What’s in this?” Alex demanded, gesturing toward the medic and the vaccine.
The geneticist stiffened. “It’s the new drug that helps soldiers heal on the battlefield. It’s the same one you received the last two times.”
“Like hell it is. This stuff is searing my gut out and my veins are on fire,” Alex insisted.
Dr. Gennaro stepped back, as if sensing the dangerous change. “The command requested we strengthen the concentration this time. You’re headed for some vicious ground fighting and they wanted you prepared.”
“So, what are we going to do to the enemy…puke on them? We certainly can’t fight like this.”
Gennaro gritted his teeth. “The higher dose is designed to stem even massive internal bleeding. It may keep you alive long enough for a medevac transport.”
“It may?” Alex snapped. “So command is using us as frickin’ guinea pigs? Right before a mission? Half my team is in agony and heaving their guts out, while the other half has gone AWOL. How is this helping us survive?”
The room spun wildly, and Alex grabbed the edge of the countertop for balance. Sweat poured off him. “Doc,” Alex said seriously. “This is not the same drug we got last week.”
“I put it out myself.”
Fighting for breath, Winters glared at the geneticist. “Check it again. Last week’s serum was clear. This one’s blue.”
“Blue?” The doctor grabbed the medic’s bottle and held it up to the light. He sniffed the serum and his expression changed. He grabbed the medic’s arm. “Stop the injections. Now.”
The medic hesitated. “They’re all done. Only half the unit showed.”
“Dammit. Get the Cyanokit and some new syringes.” Gennaro rattled off more instructions. “And hurry.”
“Cyano?” Alex repeated. “Like in cyanide?” He struggled to remain standing. His pulse raced, and his breaths came in short gasps.
Gennaro pushed Alex onto a nearby stool. “Symptoms?”
Alex sat. “Nausea. Dizziness. Confusion. Can’t breathe. Body on fire. Sweats increasing.”
The medic ran over with the kit and Gennaro yanked out a vial of amyl nitrate. “Give them all a shot of this first.” He grabbed another bottle. “Then, this second,” he said, rattling off the dosage. “No one else gets the other inoculations, until I say so.”
Winters watched in a daze, his concentration blown to hell and back.
The doctor grabbed the tourniquet and turned to Alex. “This is an intra-muscular injection.”
Instinctively, Alex reared back. “No way are you jabbing me with anything else tonight.”
“It’s an antidote. There’s no time. You have to trust me.”
Two members of the military police pushed between them, aggressively blocking Alex’s access to the geneticist. “Doctor, you’re to come with us.”
Gennaro tried to move around them. “No. A problem has come up that I need to—”
The men grabbed both the doctor’s arms and lifted him. “Sir, your presence is requested elsewhere. Now.”
The MPs forced the doctor down the aisle. Gennaro looked scared. “Give them the damn shots.”
The MPs dragged the doctor out the door.
Alex rose from his seat. He had to get the doc. Before he could take a step, his knees gave out. Colors flashed before his eyes. He clawed at his throat. No air. There was no frickin’ air in this lab….
He clung onto the counter. The last MP turned toward Alex and shot him a mocking salute. Oh, yeah, his team was in trouble.
In quick succession, the other guards backed out the doors. The last guard to exit smiled, then tossed a grenade on the table, its pin already pulled. He slammed the door shut and threw the lock.
“Grenade!” Alex yelled. “Hit the deck.”
Too late.
An explosion ripped through the lab. The lit Bunsen Burners went up, The room erupted into hellish fire. Flames raced along gas lines, exploding at each new source of fuel. Beakers burst into flying splinters of glass. Boiling serums drenched his open wounds and ungodly fire torched the room.
Alex flattened on the floor. Lethal metal projectiles and shattered glass tore into his skin, and gutted him with steel slivers. He had to move or he was dead.
He crawled over the
broken glass toward the doors, only to collapse on the floor in a heap.
Heat scorched his lungs from the inside.
A blast blew apart an outer wall. The fire in the lab flashed over, catching everyone with a roaring wall of flame.
It shouldn’t have ended like this. His fault. His men.
Alex couldn’t even open his eyes. God, let the end come fast.
Above searing flames, the tortured cries of his dying men filled the room and followed Alex into darkness.
Chapter Two
FBI Special Agent Samantha Gennaro shifted in the front seat of the black Escalade. The vehicle plowed through mounds of snow that had drifted onto this excuse for a road. Hadn’t Wyoming ever heard of snow plows? The agents’ original route had closed for the winter. These back roads were a stressor she didn’t need.
“Gennaro,” the driver groused, “you sure about that Intel? We’re way past the boonies. There’s nothing out here but clumps of trees and empty spaces covered with snow and more snow. The GPS doesn’t even know where we are anymore.”
Samantha re-checked the coordinates that had mysteriously appeared two weeks ago on her pre-paid phone. The message had been cryptic. “Find Ice Man, then me. Danger.”
The only “Ice Man” she’d ever heard of had been one of the victims of the same lab explosion that had killed her father three months ago.
A horrible accident. At least, that’s what she’d been told.
But, if it were true, who had sent her the message? No one else knew about this phone, except her father. He’d insisted on a backup plan. Pre-paid phones for each of them. He’d never told her why it was so important she have it, but, in her line of work, throwaway phones were usually used by people wanting to hide something.
Or, from someone.
Was she just looking for hope, thinking her father texted? With him gone, she was truly alone in the world. Maybe it was denial.
Right now, Samantha didn’t know what to believe. She’d been through the official records. Supposedly, the fire had burned so hot, no DNA could be retrieved. No proof her father and the men were dead. No proof they weren’t either.
She’d review the investigations. She’d called around.
No suspicious John Doe patients lurking in a military hospital ward somewhere. No anomalies in the statements. In fact, they were suspiciously similar. All she had was a woefully thin incident report of the explosion and a near empty follow up file.
That’s when she knew something was wrong.
The military loved paperwork.
“Earth to Gennaro,” the driver groused.
“We’re almost there,” Samantha said, dragging herself from the circular thoughts that led nowhere. “We should see something soon.”
“Samantha, how are we supposed to find this guy? There are abandoned properties all over. Most aren’t visible from the road. Between closed military bases and Cold War Missile silos, his hideout could be anywhere. If he’s a Prepper, ready for the end of the world, he’s likely to shoot first and ask questions later.”
“Good thing our Escalade is bullet-proof,” she countered. “Guess you’ll just have to sweet talk him into cooperating with us.”
If he was even alive.
She scanned the coordinates again. “We’re almost at point zero. We’ll start there.”
“Start what?” griped one of the two agents in the backseat. “Hiking around and getting frostbite? No one in their right mind lives out here.”
“Stop complaining. I’m trying to concentrate on the mission.” She shifted the map on her lap and honed in on a large area marked on the paper. The location of an abandoned Atlas missile silo site, coming up soon on this road, matched the coordinates closely. This had to be the place.
She folded the map and peered through the windshield. Nothing out there but snow and some trees. What if the underground site was totally hidden now? If Commander Winters was there, how would they convince him to leave the safety of an impregnable fortress? She wouldn’t trust anyone who showed up on her doorstep, if she were him.
Samantha exhaled in frustration. She’d pulled in every favor she’d earned over the last five years with the Bureau to put this op together, but she hadn’t revealed the whole truth. That she believed her dead father had sent her to find an equally dead Navy SEAL in the middle of this godforsaken, frozen tundra.
They’d have her in a straightjacket before dark.
Samantha caught movement off to the side of the road. “On your left. Watch out.”
A huge man, dressed in a white balaclava and arctic camouflage, stepped out from behind a tree. He swung a rocket launcher onto his shoulder and aimed.
“Shit!” The driver swerved the SUV sharply to the right and spun out on the icy surface.
Hearing a high pitched whine, Samantha grabbed her weapon, opened her door and jumped. Seconds later, the missile hit the driver’s side of the Escalade.
A hot blast sent Samantha flying through the air, metal shrapnel, body parts and burning debris raining down. She slammed face first into the snow, her skull smashing against a hidden boulder with a resounding crack.
Samantha moaned. She needed to move. She couldn’t just wait for another attack. Struggling, she tried to rise, but dizziness and nausea felled her. Ten feet away, the SUV’s driver lay face down in the snow. Or he would have, if he still had a face. Nausea roiled in her stomach, the image of his mangled body shifting to double and back. All signs of concussion.
Blood trickled down her face and neck. She stared in disbelief at the ever-reddening snow around her head. Icy wind whipped freezing clumps of hair across what had to be her shattered skull.
In the far distance, furtive footsteps approached in the snow.
Was Winters the killer? Had he changed so much from the decorated hero she’d researched? She’d have never believed he’d have fired upon the SUV without knowing who was inside.
Unless this was the man who’d tried to kill Winters and his men?
She forced her eyes open again, and clenched her gun tight in her fist.
Whoever it was, she would not go down without a fight.
She tried to focus, tried to be ready to protect herself, but the scene in front of her wavered and the blood spatter and carnage dissolved to black.
Alex Winters had created a cement prison. His only way out was to find the antidote. He peered through the microscope, blinked, then looked again. The test cells looked different this time. Could this be it?
An intruder alerts blared from the speakers.
Now?
Frustrated, he set aside the microscope and walked toward the bank of the surveillance monitor screens ringing his laboratory. After the fire, he’d retreated here to recover from his hideous burns, but more than that he had to find a cure. Not so much for himself, but for everyone who had died on his watch. The men who’d killed his team would learn firsthand that payback was a bitch.
Alex had hoped to have more time. He needed it.
He’d always expected whoever planned that explosion to show up, sooner or later. He flicked a switch to shut down the alarms, then focused on one particular screen.
Yeah, he’d been found. His gut churned.
On a county access road on the outer perimeter of his property, a fire consumed an SUV. Thick black smoked blanketed the area. Bodies littered the ground like broken dolls tossed amid red and white snow.
The road was too close to his hideout to be a coincidence, and the setup had all the markings of a professional hit. SUVs didn’t blow up like that, without help. So then, why? A decoy? Bait? Alex had no way to know.
While he debated whether to leave his hideout, a man in arctic camo sauntered across the snow-covered road toward the mayhem. The white balaclava masking his face and the multiple weapons he wielded in his hands did not bode well for any survivors.
Alex knew he should remain in the lab, but he couldn’t take the chance that the people in the SUV were innocents. Muttering a
string of curses, he threw on a winter jacket over his T-shirt and raced to the elevator.
His hideout could very well be compromised, but he wouldn’t leave an assassin behind to report back to his boss—or frame Alex for the murders.
He didn’t bother with a gun.
The killer may have a deadly weapon or two on him, but ever since the lab explosion, Alex was a lethal weapon. One like the world had never seen before, except in movies.
If this man was sent to kill Alex, he’d regret it.
A crunching sound woke her, but her brain felt fogged, her body unable to respond to her commands. Her eyelashes were welded together and a warm liquid ran over her face. Her very cold face.
Where the heck was she?
No image came but her head throbbed. Frigid wind lanced right into her brain.
Wait. Into her brain? That made no sense.
Her cheeks had numbed. She tried to pick her head up, but the slightest movement sent bile rising in her throat.
Intense shivers wracked her body and her fingers ached. Why was she so cold? She held something in her right hand, but didn’t know what.
She longed to sleep, but the knives jabbing her brain and the stench of something burning made her too sick.
That strange crunching sound came again, working its way through the fog in her mind. Footstep? In the snow? Was she in the snow, too? The sound came closer, maybe twenty or thirty feet away. Her unease grew, but she couldn’t identify her fear.
She forced her sticky eyelids open briefly and gasped.
Body parts, gore and blood, from people she didn’t recognize, covered the snow around her. The sunlight pierced her skull and she squeezed her eyes shut, but even that quick glimpse of her surroundings made her heave.
What had happened? Had she been in an accident?
Why couldn’t she remember? She had to. Something was terribly wrong.
Fighting the urge to throw up, Samantha opened her eyes slightly, staring through the dark tendrils of frozen hair matted to her head and face. Her right cheek and both hands were buried in a snowdrift. Numb all over, she lay face down, wearing just a blouse and skirt. No jacket. She had to get up soon or she’d freeze to death.
