The Atlantis Trilogy Box Set- The Complete Series

by A. G. Riddle

  53

  Barnaby looked as scared as Kate felt. Somehow it made her feel more confident, being the leader of the conspiracy.

  Her newfound confidence waned slightly when she saw the skinny Asian guard reading a comic book outside the double doors to the residential wing. When he saw them, he tossed the thin staple of pages on the table and watched them approach the card reader on the wall.

  Kate scanned her card. Green.

  She pushed the door open and took a step inside. Barnaby followed, close on her heels.

  “No! You—you scan too!” The guard pointed at Barnaby, whose eyes grew wide as he stepped back, like he was about to be shot.

  “You scan.” The man pointed at the scanner.

  Barnaby clutched his card to his chest, then swiped it. Red.

  The guard rose. “ID.” He reached toward Barnaby.

  The blonde scientist backed into the wall, dropping his ID. “She made me do it. She’s crazy!”

  Kate stepped between them. “It’s okay, Barnaby.” She picked up the ID and handed it to him. “I wanted him to walk me to work, but it’s okay.” She put a hand on the small of his back and pushed him away. “It’s okay. See you later, Barnaby.” She turned back to the guard, held up her ID and swiped it again. “See—green.” She punched through the door and waited for a second.

  The doors stayed closed; maybe she was safe. Kate wandered farther into the wing. Every twenty feet or so was a large door, apparently a corridor to some other area. As far as the eye could see: it was the same, doors and symmetrical corridors. And it was quiet, an unnerving kind of quiet.

  She swiped her card at the nearest door and ventured inside. It was some sort of barracks or… a college dorm—that was what came to mind. She was standing in a large common room that led to six smaller rooms, each with bunk beds. No, they weren’t quite like dorm rooms… they were too sparse, more like cells in a prison. And they were empty. Abandoned, apparently. The cells were disheveled: blankets and clothes littered the floors, personal belongings were strewn across the small sinks beside the bunk beds. It looked as if the occupants had left in a hurry.

  Kate retreated from the room and resumed walking in the main corridor for a while. Her tennis shoes made a squeaking sound with every step she took. In the distance, she heard talking. She had to go toward it, but some part of her resisted. It was safe here in the empty rooms, with no people.

  She turned at the next “crossroads” and walked toward the talking. She could see it now, something like a nurse’s station in a hospital: a high-top bar with files laying on it and two or three women behind it.

  There was another sound, from another direction—the loud rhythmic clop of boots echoing in the empty corridor. They were getting close. She inched closer to the nurses. She heard their voices: “They want them all now.”—“I know”—“That’s what I said”—“Nothing they ever do makes sense”—“They aren’t even treating—”

  Kate jerked around—the boots, behind her. Six men, guards. They were running toward her, guns drawn. “Stop where you are!”

  She could run and maybe make it to the nurses’ station. The guards were closing fast now, twenty feet away. She took a step, then another, but they were already there, pointing their guns at her.

  Kate held up her hands.

  54

  David raised his hands.

  The guard leveled the gun at him and moved closer. “You’re not Conner Anderson.”

  “No kidding,” David said under his breath. “Now put the gun away and shut up; they could be listening.”

  The guard stopped moving. He looked down, confused. “What?”

  “He told me I had to come in for him.”

  “What?”

  “Look, we had a wild night. He said he would get sacked if I didn’t come in,” David insisted.

  “Who are you?”

  “His friend. You must be his really smart friend at work.”

  “What?”

  “Is that all you can say? Look, put the gun up and act natural.”

  “Conner isn’t scheduled today.”

  “Yeah, I gathered that, genius. Yet another half-drunk brain fart on his part. I’m going to kill him, if you idiots don’t kill me first.” David tipped his hands forward and nodded, silently saying, Well are you or aren’t you? The guard said nothing. “Dude, shoot me, or let me go.”

  The man reluctantly holstered his gun, still looking thoroughly unsatisfied. “Where are you going?”

  David walked toward him. “I’m getting out of here; what’s the quickest way?”

  The man turned and pointed but didn’t get a word out. David knocked him out cold with a sharp blow to the base of his skull.

  He had to move fast now. He ran deeper into the facility. There was another problem, one he’d pushed to the back of his mind, given the more pressing survival issues. But now he had to think about how to cut the power. His best idea was not to attack the nuclear reactors directly; they would be insulated and well-protected, assuming he could even get close to them. And there were three of them. The power lines were his best guess. If he blew the lines, it would cut the power to the entire facility permanently, including any power they may have stored up from the reactor. But he was out of his element. What if the lines were buried under the facility or otherwise out of reach? Or routed through a heavily guarded building outside the reactor facility? Would he even know them when he saw them? There were a lot of what-ifs…

  David found another schematic on the wall and scanned through the areas. Reactor 1, Reactor 2, Reactor 3, Turbine, Control Room, Primary Circuit Room… Circuit Room—that could work. It was positioned opposite the reactors, and it looked like lines from every reactor flowed into the room.

  He turned from the schematic just as two guards rounded the corner and marched toward him. He nodded and made his way to the circuit room. As he approached it, he could hear the low drone of machines and the buzz of high-voltage power. It seemed to come through the walls and up through the floor. The floor didn’t vibrate, but as he scanned his badge and entered the room, his body began to shake from the pulse of the massive machines.

  Inside, the room was huge—and cramped. Pipes and metal conduits seemed to snake in every direction, buzzing and popping periodically. He felt like he had been shrunk and beamed inside a circuit board on a computer.

  David climbed deeper into the room and placed charges on the larger conduits at the points where they entered the room. There were several metal “closets,” for lack of a better word. He placed charges on them as well. He only had a few explosives left. Would they be enough? How much time? He set the detonator for five minutes and hid it at the base of the closet. Where to put the last charges?

  He heard another noise over the din of the lines. Or maybe he didn’t. He took a charge out and shoved it between two smaller lines. He held it there for a second, withdrawing his hand slowly to make sure it would stay.

  Out of the corner of his eye he saw them—three guards, in the room, closing fast. He couldn’t talk his way out of this one.

  55

  The six guards surrounded Kate.

  One man said into a radio, “We have her. She was wandering around in Corridor Two.”

  “What are you doing?” Kate protested.

  “Come with us,” the man with the radio said.

  Two of the guards took her by the arms and began leading her away from the voices at the nurses’ station.

  “Stop!”

  Kate turned to see a woman jogging up behind them. She was young, maybe in her twenties. She was dressed so… wrong, so provocatively, like some sort of Playboy bunny. She looked very out of place.

  “I’ll take her,” she said to the men.

  “Who are you?”

  “Naomi. I work for Mr. Sloane.”

  “Never heard of him.” The guard who was clearly in charge motioned to another man. “We’ll take her in too.”

  “You’ll be sorry if you d
o,” Naomi said. “Call it in. I’ll wait. Ask your boss to call Mr. Sloane.”

  The guards looked at each other.

  Naomi grabbed one of their radios. “I’ll do it myself.” She clicked the button. “This is Naomi, I need to speak with Mr. Sloane.”

  “Stand by.”

  “Sloane.”

  “It’s Naomi. I’m bringing a girl to you, but there’s a pack of guards harassing us.”

  “Hold on.” Then, Sloane’s voice said to someone in the background, “Tell your buffoons to quit harassing my people.”

  Another voice came on the line. “This is Captain Zhào. Who is this?”

  Naomi tried to hand the radio back to the man, but he stepped back, dodging it like a plague blanket. Naomi tossed it to the man who had spoken. “Good luck.” She grabbed Kate by the arm and said under her breath, “Be quiet and follow me.”

  Naomi led Kate away from the guards, who were desperately trying to apologize to the man on the radio.

  They took a right, then a left, down another deserted corridor. Naomi asked Kate for her badge at a set of double doors.

  “Who are you?” Kate said.

  “It’s not important. I’m here to help you get the children out.”

  “Who sent you?”

  “The same person who sent you the IDs.”

  “Thank you,” was all Kate could think to say.

  The woman nodded. She opened a door, and Kate heard Adi and Surya talking inside. Her heart stopped. The door swung open and there they were, sitting at a table in a white-walled room. Kate ran in, knelt down to hug them, and without a word they ran to her and jumped into her arms, bowling her over. They were alive. She could do it. She could save them. Kate felt a firm hand pull her up.

  “I’m sorry, but we don’t have time. We have to hurry,” Naomi said.

  56

  The security chief handed the radio back to Dorian. “They won’t give your girl any more trouble. I apologize for that, Mr. Sloane. It’s all the new faces, we don’t do well—”

  “Spare me.” Dorian turned to the nuclear scientist, Dr. Chase. “Continue.”

  “The shipments we received from the north—I’m not sure we can use them.”

  “Why not?”

  “The nukes from Belarus have been tampered with. If we had the time, we could probably disassemble them and sort them.”

  “What does that leave?” Dorian said.

  “The Ukrainian and Russian devices look okay, they’re just old. And the shipment from China was pristine, very recent builds. How did you—?”

  “Never mind that. Numbers?”

  “Let’s see.” He scanned a printout. “One hundred twenty-six total warheads. And most are extremely high-yield. It would be helpful to know the target, outside of that I can’t say—”

  “What about the portable nukes?”

  “Ah, yes, we have them ready.” Dr. Chase motioned to an assistant across the room. The young man left the room and returned carrying an oversized silver egg, slightly smaller than a shopping cart. The man could barely get his arms around the slippery egg, so he carried it like a load of firewood, leaning back to make sure it didn’t roll out of his cupped arms. When he reached the table, he set the egg down and stepped away, but the egg wobbled awkwardly, then drifted toward the edge. The assistant lurched forward and steadied it with a hand.

  Dr. Chase put his hands in his pockets, nodded once to Dorian, and smiled expectantly.

  Dorian glared at the egg, then again at Dr. Chase. “What the hell is that?”

  The scientist slid his hands from his pockets and took a step toward the egg, pointing at it. “It’s the… portable device you requested. It’s seven point four kilos, or about sixteen pounds.” He shook his head. “We simply couldn’t reduce it any more; well, we could with time.”

  Dorian leaned back in the chair, looking from the egg to the scientist.

  The scientist walked closer to the egg, scrutinizing it. “Is there something wrong with it? We have the other one—”

  “Portable. I need two portable nukes.”

  “Oh and indeed it is. You saw Harvey carrying it. Granted it’s a bit bulky, but—”

  “Over distance and in a backpack, not some magic egg an ogre could skip across a loch. How long to make it smaller—like something that could actually fit in, key word here Doctor, a suitcase?”

  “Umm, well… you never said…” The man glanced at the egg.

  “How long?” Dorian pressed.

  “A couple of days, if—”

  “Mr. Sloane, we have an issue in the power plant. You need to see this.”

  Dorian wheeled his chair over to the tablet the security chief held. Behind him, he heard the scientist pacing and complaining to Harvey. “It’s not like in the movies where you just ‘clip the green wire’ and shove it in a rucksack and take off for a hike up Everest, I mean we have to…” Dorian blocked the scientist out and focused on the video on the tablet: a man moving through some mechanical room.

  “Where is this?”

  “The main circuit room outside the reactors. There’s more.” The security chief rewound the video.

  Dorian watched the man plant a series of charges. There was something else. Dorian tapped the tablet, paused the video, zoomed in on the face. It couldn’t be.

  “Do you recognize him, sir?”

  Dorian studied the face and thought back to a mountainside village in northern Pakistan, the flames rising from every hut, the women and children running, the men lying in front of the burning homes… and a man shooting back at him. He remembered shooting him, he didn’t know how many times. And finishing the job. “Yes, I know him. His name is Andrew Reed. He’s a former CIA field operative. You’ll need a lot more men to contain him.”

  “Shoot to kill?”

  Dorian glanced away absently. In the background, he heard the radio crackle and the security man barking orders. Reed was here, trying to kill the power. He wouldn’t be alone. Where had he been for the last four years—if he wasn’t dead? Why the power?

  The security chief leaned over. “We have the charges and timer. We’re taking them out of the building. We’ve reviewed the security footage since he entered—they’re the only threat. We’re surrounding him. Do you want us to—”

  “Don’t shoot him. Where is he now?” Dorian said.

  The chief held up the tablet, pointing to a place on the map.

  Dorian tapped another location on the map. “What is this room?”

  “One of the reactor halls, just a passageway between Reactors One and Two.”

  Dorian pointed at two large doors on opposite sides. “These are the only two entrances and exits?”

  “Yes. And the room has ten-feet-thick concrete walls on all sides.”

  “Perfect. Drive him in there and close the door,” Dorian said. What was he missing? He waited while the security chief worked the radio. The children. “What’s the status of the children?”

  The chief looked confused at the question. “In their holding cell.”

  “Show me.”

  The chief jabbed the tablet. Then looked up in surprise.

  “Find them,” Dorian said.

  The chief yelled into his radio. They waited a few moments, the radio squawked a few times, and the chief typed something into the tablet, handing it to Dorian just as another video came to life: Naomi, and with her, Kate Warner and the children. Was it the worst news ever or the best news ever?

  The chief was yelling into his radio with the other hand.

  Dorian thought. Could it be just the two of them?

  “We’ll have them momentarily, sir. I don’t know how—”

  Dorian held a hand up, not looking at the man. “Stop talking.”

  What to do? Clearly there was still a security breach, a serious one. And there were only a few suspects. Dorian motioned to one of the staffers he’d brought with him. “Logan, send a memo to the Immari Council: ‘China facility under attack. We ar
e attempting to secure, but anticipate all research capabilities will be destroyed. As such, proceeding with Toba Protocol with all haste. Will post further updates as events develop.’ Include the videos of the man in the power plant and the two girls trying to extract the children. I want to know the minute anyone responds.”

  The chief rocked back on his heels. “We have them, sir.”

  “Great work, truly,” Dorian said derisively.

  The chief swallowed and said with less confidence, “Should we…”

  “Take the two girls to the Bell, put them in with all the other subjects that are ready, but make sure they get in. I want them at the front of the line. Then throw the switch as soon as possible—tell Chang no excuses.” Dorian paused. Kate Warner, in the Bell room, it was such sweet, sweet justice. And there was nothing Martin could do. Soon, there would be nothing anyone could do. It was actually working out better than he could have planned. Dorian motioned to Dr. Chase. “Are all the nukes on train cars?”

  “Yes, except for the Belarus devices and… the portable—”

  “Good.” Dorian turned back to the chief. “Put the kids on the train car with the nukes and move it out of here right now.” He swiveled on Dr. Chase. “I expect you to be on that train as well, and by the time it reaches the coast, either those eggs will fit in a backpack or you will. You understand?”

  Dr. Chase nodded and looked away.

  The chief listened, then dropped the radio to his side. “The saboteur is locked in Reactor Hall Two.”

  “All right. Make sure none of the remaining train cars leave. We need them to move something else.” Dorian walked over to Dmitry Kozlov, second-in-command of Dorian’s personal Immari Security unit.

  “When the Bell is finished, load the bodies on those train cars and move them out,” Dorian said. “We need to set up a loading zone, probably northern India, somewhere with access to airports.”

  “What about the rest of the staff here?”