Rage of the Assassin: (Assassin Series #6)

by Russell Blake

  Cruz had spoken with Atkinson and affirmed that Briones was in the States for inspection tours, and that had gotten them an appointment at eleven a.m. Atkinson smiled at them again, and El Rey was reminded of a raptor, the man’s eerily white teeth seeming to be too numerous for his mouth.

  “I’m glad you decided to give Bloomington a chance, Lieutenant. We’re not the largest in our field, but I daresay we’re the best,” Atkinson said, and El Rey nodded.

  “Yes, well, the final evaluation will be based on the product and the terms,” Hunt cut in. “The lieutenant here is evaluating security. It’s mandatory for any company awarded these sorts of contracts in Mexico. It’s how they keep their contractors honest.”

  “I think it was your President Reagan who said, ‘Trust, but verify,’ was it not?” El Rey asked.

  Atkinson grinned again. “Very well, follow me. I’ll give you a quick orientation and then you can hit me with anything I left out.”

  The tour lasted forty minutes, and by the end of it both Hunt’s and El Rey’s eyes were glazing over. It was obvious that the plant security was adequate, if not stellar, mostly standard procedures that had been put in place by an outside consulting firm. Atkinson bristled at Hunt’s question about whether there had ever been a security breach and dodged it artfully, convincing her that something indeed must have happened after her brief stint with the company.

  They wound up in the receiving area, where Atkinson regaled them with a long list of protocols that vendors had to follow when delivering supplies. Hunt moved a hand to her stomach as she flattened her blouse, and made a face. “Carl, I need to use the little girl’s room. Did we pass one in the hall?”

  “Yes, of course. I’ll show you.”

  “No, we’re on a tight schedule. You finish up with the lieutenant – don’t let me interrupt. I’ll be right back.”

  El Rey moved close to a pallet stacked with chemical containers. “You mentioned that if power was interrupted, you have backup generators that will kick in? What about if there’s a natural disaster that cuts power for days or weeks? Like a super storm?”

  “Well, first off, we rarely see storms like that,” Atkinson began, nodding at Hunt as she made her way to the double doors that led to the corridor. “But if we do, we’re covered. We have double backups that are natural gas powered, which can keep all systems operating round the clock for a week.”

  “Is the gas stored in tanks here at the facility, or are you reliant on it being piped in?”

  “Good question. We opted for storage tanks that are fed by the utility company pipes, so that if there’s an interruption in the supply, we go to the stored gas.”

  “Ah. And your alarm systems. You mentioned you have contacts on all the windows and doors. What about motion detectors? Pressure sensors? Infrared?”

  Atkinson waved a hand, dismissing the question. “I can assure you that our systems are state of the art. There’s no need for all that. We’ve got procedures that are industry standard and have been vetted by quite a few government agencies. For the types of products we manufacture, they’re more than sufficient.”

  El Rey frowned. “I’m afraid I’ll have to be the judge of that.”

  Minutes ticked by as the assassin peppered the American with detailed questions about the internal security of the various vaults, which amounted to locked doors and a few keypads he could easily bypass. He’d made careful note of the room where all the electrical panels were housed, and his practiced eye had seen several promising areas that might suit his purposes. Now it all depended on Hunt locating the antidote. But he was confident that getting into any of the vaults could be done.

  After ten minutes had gone by, Atkinson glanced at the time and led the assassin back toward the corridor. El Rey tried his best to stall with another round of questions, which Atkinson pleasantly but firmly answered as he continued moving to the doors. They were footsteps away from the corridor when Hunt burst through, looking sheepish.

  “I’m sorry, gentlemen. I hope you managed without me?” she asked.

  “Absolutely, Dr. Hunt. I was just going to show the lieutenant our closed-circuit surveillance room, and then we were headed to my office.”

  El Rey caught the look in Hunt’s eye. “I’m afraid we’ve stayed longer than I’d planned. Perhaps just the surveillance, and then we can be on our way?”

  Atkinson seemed relieved to be so easily rid of them after fielding hardball questions for almost an hour. It was obvious that he was more of a salesman than an operations man, and many of his answers smacked of guesswork to El Rey’s ear. Which was fine – he’d seen enough to know how to get past the cameras and the guards.

  The security hub was impressive, with a bank of screens and a broad console loaded with comm gear, but El Rey was only marginally interested. He exhaled a sigh of relief when they passed through the gates and returned to the car, and leaned into Hunt as they neared it.

  “So?”

  “I got into the system. I’m pretty sure I know which chamber it’s in.”

  “Pretty sure?”

  “I’m extrapolating based on what I found. But yes, I believe I know what the agent’s called, and where the antidote is being stored. So the question is whether you can get back inside without being spotted, and make your way into the vault without triggering any alarms.”

  El Rey gave a small shrug. “That should be the easy part. Now tell me what you discovered.”

  Chapter 43

  Flashes of dry lightning pulsed in a line of thunderheads brooding over a ridge of rolling hills, illuminating the night sky before fading back into the gloom. Muffled explosions followed from the distance, the clouds moving west, away from Charlottesville.

  El Rey listened attentively, his car window halfway down, Hunt sitting beside him in the passenger seat. Earlier in the day she’d drawn a primitive layout of the plant from memory and marked the vault where the antidote was stored.

  “It’s in a climate-controlled room with other agents, but they’ll have all the bins clearly marked. Yours will be TB2016LANG02. According to the system, there are ten vials – and you’ll only need a quarter of one,” she’d said. “Although…”

  “What?”

  “Well, in some of the animal tests, certain subjects required more than six shots. I recall that about nine percent required a seventh to return to an asymptomatic state.”

  “So I should take more than I need for this shot?”

  She nodded. “It would be prudent.”

  “How long will it hold for?”

  “I have no idea, but as long as the answer’s at least six months and one day, that’s good enough.” She hesitated. “You probably won’t even need it. But it would be silly to have access to it and not take more.”

  “How do I need to store it?”

  “Room’s at sixty-five degrees Fahrenheit, so just reasonably cool. Get a small wine refrigerator with a digital thermostat. That should do the trick. In the meantime, keep it in a thermos. That will protect it for a day or three. You just don’t want any extremes – hot or cold.”

  “It’s funny, because my first shot was in the tropics, and it was probably coffee temperature by the time I took it.”

  She nodded. “Which is fine, short term. But not if you’re storing it for use six months later.”

  The plan was to use a syringe and drain several of the vials a few millimeters. If he drew it all from a single source, it might be noticed, but spread across a half dozen, the likelihood of anyone tripping to the theft was slim.

  He’d given her a partial description of how he intended to bypass the elaborate security system and she’d made a face. “God, that sounds horrible.”

  “I’ve done it before. You may never get used to it, but you can get good at it.”

  “What about me?”

  “You’ll stay in the car. Once I’m done, I’ll release you, and then you’re free to go back to your daughter.”

  Hunt had seemed grudging
ly satisfied with that answer, although clearly not happy, and she’d badgered him about her daughter at least every hour until he’d told her to stop – he had no updates, given that he was with her.

  The day had passed slowly, and they’d busied themselves shopping for the supplies he would need to carry out his operation. Most of the equipment he’d located at a dive shop in a marginal neighborhood, where the owner hadn’t shown the slightest interest in his specialized purchases. The rebreather wasn’t absolutely necessary, but would make the unpleasant slightly more bearable. The rest was mandatory –fishing waders, night vision goggles, an array of tools with a neoprene satchel to carry them in, electrical connectors, batteries, and wire.

  The final purchase had been two unopened syringes from a street dealer who threw them in with El Rey’s hundred-dollar purchase of Mexican brown heroin. El Rey tossed the drugs into a dumpster before returning to the car, where Hunt sat, disgruntled at being bound while he scored.

  “This really isn’t necessary, you know,” she complained.

  “Perhaps. But it allows me to concentrate without worrying about whether you’ve had second thoughts.”

  “I did my part.”

  “Which I appreciate, and once I’m satisfied you told me the truth, and didn’t invent the location of the antidote so I’d release you prematurely, I’ll drive you to your daughter myself.”

  “You can tell me where she is.”

  “I will. Right before I go in tonight.” He gazed off into the distance. “Just in case something goes wrong. A deal’s a deal, and if I get myself shot, well, you’ve still done your part.”

  They ate Chinese food at a restaurant in town and then, seated in the car a quarter mile away, waited as the plum sky faded to black, the plant’s lights glowing in the otherwise dark wooded area.

  When the shift changed at ten p.m., they watched a line of cars retreat from the facility, and then El Rey had moved to the trunk and begun suiting up. Hunt watched nervously as he donned the waders and strapped on the rebreather, and then he approached her with a length of yellow nylon cord.

  “Time for the final binding, Dr. Hunt.”

  “To think that some women dream of this,” she observed as he went to work on her wrists.

  “I can assure you that nothing in our brief time together has been pleasurable for me, other than your scintillating company. Soon you and your daughter will be free, and I’ll be out of your lives.”

  “I just hope she isn’t scarred for life.”

  “She wasn’t abused, if that’s what you’re implying. I told you – she hasn’t been harmed.”

  “Other than being tied up by a stranger and imprisoned with no food and water, you mean.”

  “Again, an exaggeration. I left her with two liters of water and some food. Her wrists are bound like yours, and I used chain for her ankles so she couldn’t get far, but she’ll be fine. Children recover quickly. She’ll be frightened, but that couldn’t be helped. As you know.”

  “I’m not saying it could have been. But I also can’t ever forgive you.”

  He nodded. “Nor do I expect you to. What you’ll do is free her, comfort her, perhaps go on a long vacation somewhere nice, and put this behind you. I’m confident you won’t do anything foolish like contact the authorities – I would hate to see you spend the rest of your life behind bars for aiding and abetting. You strike me as smarter than that.”

  Once he had secured her, he pocketed the car keys, left the windows rolled down a few inches, and gave her a small nod of his head. “I disabled the horn, so no point in trying that.”

  “You promised me you’d tell me where Courtney is.”

  “So I did. She’s still at your condo. Chained to the bathroom pipes, well hydrated and fed, as I mentioned. I put cushions from your sofa in with her so she’s comfortable.”

  “And…she’s alone?”

  “Yes. I didn’t leave her with someone who would rape her. She’s unharmed, probably scared, but will be relieved when it’s over. As will we all, I assure you.”

  “Good luck,” Hunt said as he closed the passenger door.

  “Luck won’t come into play.”

  Ten minutes later he was crawling along the inside of a sewer pipe in over a foot of noxious fluid, making his way the four hundred yards to where waste water emptied from the plant. That whoever had set up the security had ignored the possibility of an intruder using the sewer system didn’t surprise him. It was an approach most wouldn’t attempt, and one he’d been happy to see would get him past the perimeter fortifications that served as ninety percent of the facility’s security. It was his good fortune that the designer of the defenses hadn’t considered the threat of someone penetrating beyond the alarms, sensors, and fencing seriously – the internal safeguards were manageable, if not easily defeated. The building was much like an egg: all the protection built into the shell, leaving the contents vulnerable.

  The surroundings glowed a familiar neon green in the night vision goggles as he worked his way to the iron grid that protected the plant’s master evacuation pipe. At the grid, he studied the locked shackle and spotted a single cable that armed a contact sensor mounted to the barrier. He removed a long wire with a metal clip on each end from his bag, and after attaching one end to each side of the sensor, used a pair of bolt cutters to snip off the rusty padlock hasp.

  El Rey cracked the grid open wide enough to crawl through and inched into the gap, careful not to dislodge the clips that maintained the connection for the alarm. He left them in place, mindful that he’d be returning the same way, and continued forward, scanning above him for motion detectors. Confident there were none, he continued until he arrived at the base of a vertical shaft with a metal ladder leading upward into nothingness.

  Once inside the pump room, he quickly stripped off the rebreather, the fishing waders, and the heavy rubber gloves, his nose wrinkling at their stench. A pair of metal doors stood at the opposite end of the vault. He ignored the din of the machinery and made his way to the entrance, relieved to see that there was no deadbolt on the doors.

  He removed a coil of yellow nylon cord from his kit and tied it to one of the two lever handles, leaving the other end hanging loose. His preparations complete, he stood motionless with his ear pressed to the metal barrier, listening for any sign of guards patrolling the hallway beyond.

  Three minutes later he’d located the chamber where Hunt believed the antidote was stored and was studying the keypad beside the door. As he’d noted on their tour with Atkinson, the units were of a commercially available variety favored by budget-conscious contractors – and one that fortunately was relatively simple to work around.

  More clips and wires, and after prying the cover off, he dismantled the keypad within seconds and short-circuited the mechanism to instruct the lock to open. A click sounded from the bolt and he nodded to himself. If only all his problems were so easily overcome.

  Inside the chamber he moved quickly along the alphabetized racks of agents. He found the bin he was after and eyed the handful of vials. After such lengths, the tiny containers were almost anticlimactic.

  He checked the labels and noted that all bore the same expiration date – fourteen months in the future.

  The assassin selected a vial and drained a tiny amount of the precious honey-tinted fluid into a syringe. He replaced it and repeated the process with the others until both syringes were full, the levels of the vials down no more than a few millimeters. After sliding one of the syringes into his bag, he unbuttoned his shirt and pulled one shoulder off, exposing bare skin. His face didn’t change when he drove the tiny needle into his vein, nor when he emptied the contents of the syringe into his system.

  El Rey waited, and when he didn’t convulse or black out, shifted the bin containing the antidote vials back into position. He was edging back through the door when he heard the pounding of running boots from around the corner.

  The assassin took off at a dead run, any need for sub
terfuge gone. Something had triggered the alarm – it could have been the lock or an undisclosed sensor in the room that had notified a slow-to-react security team of an intruder.

  A klaxon wail sounded when he was halfway down the corridor, and he poured on the steam as he sprinted for the stairwell that led to the maintenance levels. Footsteps echoed behind him, and then a man’s voice screamed at him, “Stop, or I’ll shoot!”

  He ignored the warning and ducked through the stairwell door, figuring they wouldn’t fire unless they were complete idiots, given the danger of a ricochet, and took the stairs three at a time, putting as much distance as he could between himself and the guards. At the lower level hall he bolted to the pump room door, hoping his pursuers would be slowed some by having to search the rooms closer to the stairwell first – they couldn’t know behind which door he’d disappeared.

  He slipped into the room and secured the cord, which would further delay the guards – at least until they could cut it. Seconds counted in making his escape, and if the simple knot bought him twice the time it took to tie it, it was a good investment.

  He pulled on his gear and returned to the sewer, moving as fast as he could in the confined space. Now it would be a race against the guards’ competence. There was slim chance employees getting paid low wages would follow him into the pipes without breathing gear, so that left them with locating a blueprint of the system and isolating the points where he could exit. If they were on the ball, he’d be the loser. If they didn’t have the relevant schematic at their fingertips, he stood a better than fair chance.

  Near the road, there was no sign of a welcoming committee when he emerged from the manhole he’d left open, the metal cover invisible in the darkness. He shrugged off all his gear except his night vision goggles, ignoring the glare from the emergency lights that blazed at the nearby plant, and ran for the clearing where he’d left the car.

  When he arrived he got his second surprise of the night – Dr. Hunt had managed to work loose from her bindings and escape. He peered into the surrounding trees and made an easy decision: he’d have to leave her. He could be on a plane jetting south long before she could make it to civilization, assuming she decided to chance reporting him, which he didn’t think she’d risk.