He sucked in a deep breath and shook his head to clear it.
“You okay?” Jayla asked, worry filling her clear blue eyes as Buck met her gaze.
“I’ll be okay. We need to go. Sorry about your hand.”
“You owe me,” Noah said.
Jayla hugged him, then stepped back. “Go find Melinda. She’ll fix you.”
10
Melinda didn’t think she could save Buck.
She’d worked for ten hours straight after he left, the clock like a vulture hanging over her shoulder reminding her how little time she had.
She’d found help from a couple of other scientists she’d recruited—Eun-Ji Rhee, a chemist Melinda found lurking upstairs in the living quarters. She’d been locked up downstairs, but she spoke both English and Russian, and Melinda needed her chemistry skills. Dr. Rhee was happy to have something useful to do, especially if it meant undoing some of the ugly work of the facility. The other scientist was Kjerstin Persdottir, a Swedish epidemiologist, who spoke English with a heavy accent.
When they’d all started making stupid mistakes, they’d conceded they needed sleep so they could work with a clear head.
Eun-Ji had found Melinda an empty bed in the scientists’ quarters and Melinda had stared at the ceiling worrying about Buck before finally falling asleep from sheer exhaustion.
She’d managed a whopping two hours of sleep before waking from a nightmare where Buck’s heart exploded from his chest like the famous scene in Alien.
She’d been in the lab ever since.
“This is pointless without being able to test it,” Eun-Ji said. “We’ve worked up several different possible solutions. How do we know if they work?”
“We have subjects downstairs,” Kjerstin said.
“Absolutely not,” Melinda said. “I refuse to experiment on human beings.”
“Then we’ll never find an antidote for the drug, or a way to fix it so it doesn’t have side effects in the future,” Kjerstin said. She stood back and crossed her arms in defiance.
In the few hours they’d been working together, Melinda had decided that despite being brilliant, Kjerstin was the model of tall, blonde, Swedish coldness. She approached every problem with clinical detachment. Part of Melinda was jealous—the part that had turned into a quivering jelly of panic and worry—because she needed that objectivity. But another part knew how important compassion was in their work.
“Our first priority is the antidote” Melinda said. “We’ll worry later about fixing it to eliminate the side effects.”
She didn’t tell them she planned to destroy everything before they got to that point. Her sole goal was to save Buck, Ice, Dozer, and Wolf. She had no intention of continuing research on Amaranthine. But she didn’t know Eun-Ji or Kjerstin, or trust their allegiances enough, to share that information.
Kjerstin pushed off the counter she’d been leaning on and straightened her lab coat. “I had a feeling you’d say something like that, so while you slept I injected five of the men downstairs with the drug. They should be nicely affected by now, so we have subjects to test the antidote on.”
Eun-Ji’s jaw dropped open in shock.
Melinda clenched her fists. “You had no right to do that.”
Kjerstin waved a dismissive hand. “Someone had to do it. If we left it up to you we’d just—what do you call it? Twiddle our thumbs?—and never accomplish anything.”
Melinda ground her teeth together in frustration. Kjerstin had broken the most important rule of ethics in drug research, and yet in a clinical sense, she was right. Without someone to test their work on, they’d never know if it was effective.
Kjerstin drew up a syringe of their most recent solution, and collected a clipboard. “Are you coming with me?”
Melinda and Eun-Ji trudged along behind Kjerstin down to the holding cells, like the naughty kids heading to detention.
Two of Mikhail’s men stood guard, one at the stairwell, one patrolling near the office. Kjerstin retrieved the key from the office guard and went to a cell with five men in it.
“How will we know if it’s worked?” Eun-Ji asked.
“Blood work,” Kjerstin said. “But subjective evidence should also be monitored. For instance, tell them to do something extreme and if they don’t do it, the antidote worked.”
“That’s not very scientific,” Melinda said.
Kjerstin shrugged. “I suppose the ultimate test will be waiting out the forty-eight hour window and if they don’t die, it worked.”
“I’ll stick with blood work,” Melinda said. “Did Petrov do any brain scans of patients under the influence of the drug?”
“He did,” Kjerstin said.
“Before you inject anyone with the antidote, we need pre-antidote blood work and brain scans,” Melinda said.
Kjerstin selected one of the men and he followed her out into the hallway, waiting while she locked the other four men back into the cell.
“This is Patient One. We’ll take him up to the imaging suite, draw blood, and do a brain scan before we inject him,” Kjerstin said. She made notes on the clipboard before heading to the stairwell.
Melinda didn’t follow. She turned to the man. “What’s your name?”
Eun-Ji translated. The man’s haunted eyes focused on Melinda.
“Vasily,” he said.
“I’m sorry you’re in this situation, Vasily. We’re doing everything we can to help you.”
His brows came together in an angry scowl as he let loose a string of Russian. Eun-Ji blushed, but she said, “He said he wouldn’t be in this situation if people like us hadn’t put him here.”
“Well, he’s not wrong,” Melinda said. “Let’s see if we can fix it.”
They took him upstairs, drew blood, and got a baseline brain scan, then Kjerstin injected him with what they were calling Antidote, version 1.0.
Melinda checked the clock on the wall. It had been seventeen hours since Buck had been injected, easily within the fatal window, assuming whatever mission Mikhail had taken them on didn’t kill them first. She tried to push the awful images of his brain exploding inside his skull out of her head, but worry buzzed in her blood making her a twitchy, nervous mess.
If this antidote worked, would Buck and the others get back in time?
The clock had become her enemy, but she watched it like a hawk as the minutes ticked by far too fast.
“Let’s give him an hour, then retest,” Kjerstin said.
“How long ago did you inject these men?” Eun-Ji asked.
“About four hours.”
“So we have a minimum of eight hours to test Vasily and work on another version of the antidote if this one doesn’t work, before the other men are inside the fatal window,” Melinda said.
“Back to the lab,” Eun-Ji said. “We don’t have to wait. We can keep working.”
They took Vasily with them and he followed Kjerstin’s directions to sit on a stool in the lab. He watched them work, his accusatory gaze heavy on Melinda’s shoulders.
An hour later Kjerstin drew another tube of blood from him, then she and Eun-Ji took him back to the imaging room while Melinda continued to work.
Melinda yawned and stretched when Eun-Ji returned.
“Where’d Kjerstin and Vasily go?” Melinda asked.
“There was no change in the brain scan, so she took him back downstairs. I’ll check the blood work, but it probably won’t look any different.” Eun-Ji looked dejected.
“It’s just the first test,” Melinda said. “I’ll have another version ready shortly.”
She sounded more confident than she felt. ‘Just the first test’ meant they’d wasted precious time on something that didn’t work. She had to find her patience. Science was a process. Of course they wouldn’t hit on the solution the first try. But she didn’t have the luxury of theoretical science at the moment. She had a concrete problem to solve, and time was the enemy.
Dmitri, the thug Mikhail had left in charg
e, stopped in to check on them a while later. Eun-Ji translated for him.
“He wants to know how we’re doing,” she said.
“Hungry,” Kjerstin said. “Tell him to bring us something to eat. My stomach is rumbling.”
Eun-Ji told Dmitri and he made a disgusted grunt, as if he couldn’t be bothered with serving a bunch of women scientists. Eun-Ji bickered back and forth with him, finally giving him a shooing gesture and chattering after him.
“You know that last bit was in Korean, right?” Kjerstin said.
“When I get angry I resort to Korean. It’s best for expressing those feelings.”
“Thank you,” Melinda said. “I didn’t realize I was hungry until Kjerstin said something.”
Kjerstin stretched her neck back and forth, then stood and walked around the room, her knees and shoulders cracking as she worked out the kinks. Eun-Ji went to the sink and splashed water on her face.
Melinda went back to work.
“You created the original version of this drug, right?” Kjerstin asked.
“Yes,” Melinda said.
“These Russian dragged me out here to work on weaponizing viruses,” she said. “I’ve been stuck here for six months. A few weeks ago they reassigned me to help Dr. Petrov on this drug. I couldn’t believe anyone would create something this vile.”
Melinda looked up from the computer. “I’ve spent my whole career working toward a cure for Alzheimer’s, in memory of my father and everyone else who suffers from it. Amaranthine was an accident. Somehow word leaked about it and I guess everyone wanted it. I didn’t create this awful version of it. That was Petrov. Did you help him with that?”
Kjerstin held up her hands. “That was all Petrov. They pulled me in to try to get rid of side effects. Basically what we’re doing now.”
“Well, I wish I’d destroyed it to begin with. We wouldn’t be in this mess if I had,” Melinda said.
“It’s not too late,” Eun-Ji said.
“What?” Kjerstin said.
“I’m just saying we can still destroy it,” Eun-Ji said.
Hope bloomed in Melinda’s chest. Could she maybe count on these two as allies? She still didn’t know them well enough to trust them, but it was a possibility and that helped.
Another Russian thug showed up with some food on a tray. He dropped it on one of the counters, then turned around and left.
Eun-Ji distributed the sandwiches and bottled water. While they ate, they each sat with their own quiet thoughts.
Melinda’s thoughts had to do with version 2.0 of the antidote. It was ready, or as ready as she could make it. Her rush against the clock and worry about the men downstairs, and Buck and the others, had her short-cutting her usual scientific precision. It tore her apart to be so sloppy, but she had to have something ready when Buck got back.
God, please bring him back safe.
“The next version is ready to test,” she said, cringing again that ethics went out the window when real lives were on the line.
“Excellent,” Kjerstin said. “Let’s do it.”
***
Buck watched out the window as Ice landed Pleshenko’s private jet on the landing strip back at the Siberian facility.
They’d been in the air for a little over seven hours, flying all the fucking way across Russia, all of them on edge waiting to die from the damn drug.
Egor and Maksim had been more than happy to make the arrangements to use Pleshenko’s jet since he wouldn’t need it anymore.
Back on the ground, Buck threw off his seatbelt and went for the door. He hoped like hell Mindy had been working this whole time and found a cure for them. He wanted this shit out of him before Mikhail caught up and started ordering them around again.
He had no doubt Mikhail was close on their heels. Once he found out what went down at the bar and that Buck and the guys had disappeared, he’d know they were headed back here. Not only would Buck want the cure, but he’d never leave without Mindy or the rest of the SEALs, so Mikhail would be hot on their tail.
“I don’t feel so great,” Dozer said, holding a hand to his chest.
Ice and Wolf had left the cockpit, but they froze at Dozer’s comment, staring at him like he was a grenade about to blow.
“C’mon, guys. Let’s get him into the facility,” Buck said.
Buck grabbed one of Dozer’s arms and slung it over his shoulder. Ice took the other so Dozer hung between them. Wolf threw the door open and they all hopped to the ground, maneuvering Dozer along with them.
The relentless cold beat down on them, turning the beads of sweat on Buck’s forehead to ice pellets as they hurried from the airstrip to the lab building.
Dozer moaned. The toes of his boots dragged ruts into the snow and his head hung forward.
One of Mikhail’s men met them at the front door. He said something to them in Russian, which they all ignored. The guy tried to block their way, but Wolf pulled his weapon and pointed it at the guy’s face.
The guy got the message and backed down.
“Dozer, man, you’re a heavy asshole,” Buck said.
Buck’s heart thundered with panic, and then when he realized his heart rate had skyrocketed he panicked that maybe his heart was about to explode.
“Fuck you,” Dozer mumbled.
They rounded the corner toward the lab Mindy had been working in when they left.
“Mindy,” Buck hollered from the hall as they neared the door.
“Buck?”
A couple of Mikhail’s guys guarded the door. Wolf tried to enter first, but the guards blocked him.
“This man is dying. Get the hell out of the way,” he said.
They ignored him, but Mindy showed up at the door and gave them a fussy shove. With Wolf they reacted like they would to any other male threat—by digging in and refusing to budge. But Mindy threw them off their game. She didn’t care about their size or guns or machismo. She dismissed them as nuisance and in the time they hesitated, not knowing how to react, she’d established her dominance and they backed away.
“Move,” she said, shoving them aside.
When they did, she stepped out of the way so and Buck and Ice could haul Dozer into the lab.
“Put him on the table over there,” Mindy said, pointing to an empty lab table.
“Who’s this?” a tall blond woman in a lab coat asked.
“These are my SEALs,” Mindy said. “The ones Mikhail injected.”
Buck and Ice hoisted Dozer’s hide up onto the table.
“He doesn’t look so great,” another woman said.
Buck recognized Dr. Rhee from the cell downstairs. She cleaned up well and looked like a full-fledged scientist now, rather than a street waif.
“Can you get all that gear off him?” Mindy asked. “I can’t examine him with all that stuff on him.”
Buck didn’t need a medical degree to know Dozer didn’t have long. He looked like shit. But he and Ice stripped Dozer of his gear down to his undershirt.
When he and Ice stepped back, the women went to work.
“We need to get him to an exam room,” the blond said. “We need heart monitors, BP cuff, a stethoscope for God’s sake.”
“Okay, let’s move him,” Mindy said.
“I think it’s too late for that,” Dr. Rhee said.
Everyone’s attention shot to the table where Dozer’s body had gone rigid, arced like a bow strung tight. His eyes rolled back in his head and the sound he made—half scream half moan—had the hair on the back of Buck’s neck standing on end.
The women ran to him as his body collapsed, motionless, onto the table.
Mindy put her head to Dozer’s chest to listen, but she stayed there way too long for Buck’s comfort. If she had to try that hard to hear his heartbeat, he probably didn’t have one.
Finally, she turned her head and rested her forehead on Dozer’s chest, a gesture of defeat if Buck had ever seen one. His mouth went desert dry knowing he could be next.
&
nbsp; Mindy stood straight and cleared her throat before turning to him and saying, “I’m sorry. He’s gone. I don’t know exactly how he died, but we can do an autopsy.”
Buck waved away the suggestion. “It was either a heart attack or brain aneurysm, right?”
He closed the distance to the table. Dozer’s eyes were still wide open, the pupils huge and black against not white but bright red, like his eyes had filled with blood.
Jesus. Buck didn’t want to go like that. He didn’t want to go at all.
“Please tell me you have a cure,” Buck said, his gaze still fixed on Dozer.
“We have a second version,” the blond said.
“I don’t know if it’ll work, Kjerstin,” Mindy said.
“How will you know if it works?” Buck asked.
“We have to give it to someone who’s infected,” Kjerstin said.
“I’ll take it,” Ice said.
It didn’t escape Buck’s attention that Ice held a hand to his chest. Buck’s head throbbed like his brain was too big to fit inside his skull. His heart stuttered, too. He wondered which would go first.
“Me too,” Buck said, watching a rivulet of blood spill from Dozer’s eye down his cheek.
“Let’s get them to the imaging room,” Kjerstin said. “We can draw blood and get brain scans, then inject them in there.”
“Is all that necessary?” Buck asked. “Can’t you just give us the shot?”
“We need to be able to verify it worked,” Kjerstin said. “We can’t do that without pre- and post-injection lab work.”
“Then let’s get it done,” Ice said. “I don’t feel so great.”
“I’ll draw up the syringes and be right there,” Mindy said.
11
Melinda’s hands trembled as she drew up the syringes. She had to stop twice to shake her hands and take a deep, steadying breath.
Dozer’s death had her rattled.
As they’d worked on antidotes, they’d made sure to create more than one dose. That way, if the solution worked, they wouldn’t have to waste time creating more. If it didn’t work, they’d just dispose of it and start over.
Special Forces: Operation Alpha: Buck the System (Kindle Worlds Novella) (Sealed With A Kiss Book 2) Page 10
