Heart of Danger

  Outside the door was a brightly lit corridor. As they watched, two people, a man and a woman, both wearing lab coats, came out of a room. Two guards ran around a corner.

  Jon was already pulling a flashbang from his backpack.

  “Turn your back, close your eyes, open your mouth,” Mac said urgently to Catherine. Nick and Jon had already fitted their tiny ear protectors, handed two to Catherine. Mac gently eased the Captain over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry and fitted his own in. He gave Jon a nod.

  “Fire in the hole,” Jon whispered, peered around the corner and lobbed the canister down the corridor.

  Light bloomed around the corner accompanied by a sonic boom that was nearly painful in its intensity even through the muffler buds.

  The jagged image the few Antz who’d followed them showed the two techs falling to the ground, curling up in a fetal position, hands clutching ears. Two sentries ran around the corridor. Nick checked the handheld, stepped out and took them down, one shot each. The screen showed them down, dead.

  “Go go go!” Mac chanted, and they rushed the corridor.

  Catherine ran to the room, looked in, then looked over at him.

  Mac stiffened. Her look was sorrowful, solemn.

  It was bad.

  They rushed to the room and stopped on the threshold.

  It was very bad.

  Romero, Lundquist and Pelton were in three beds. If Mac hadn’t seen the jagged, moving colored lines of the machines next to each bed and heard the soft beeps, he would have been convinced they were dead.

  They looked worse than the Captain. Thinner, more messed up. The surgeries had been more extensive, probably the drugs they’d been subjected to stronger.

  They were very strong, resistant young men. The kind of men sick fucks loved to mess around with. They were comatose, sunken faces already looking like death masks. Dark blue patches showed where IV injections had been used for prolonged periods of time.

  Each man was naked, without even the dignity of a hospital gown, spread-eagled out as if a human sacrifice, which was true since they were sacrifices. To someone’s greed.

  All three men, young and strong and brave—the best in the world—looked like POWs in a particularly savage prison camp. And yet they were here—in Silicon Valley in the good old US of A.

  Mac never went into battle enraged. Rage, anger, revenge—they were all emotions he couldn’t afford. You don’t go into combat with emotions because they blinded you. They were handicaps and they were dangerous. So he made sure he fucking well washed away all emotion before suiting up for an op, and when he went operational he was all cold, clear reasoning and hard calculation.

  That was all swept away right now as pity for his men swamped him. Pity that they’d been brought to this. Clearly tortured, tormented, treated as less than animals by their own countrymen.

  The rage washed over him, a huge uncontrollable wave he was helpless to resist. He knew he was engendering them all, endangering Catherine and the Captain, and there was nothing he could do.

  He stood still for a breath, two. Nick and Jon stood still as statues, too. For all the combat they’d seen, for all the deaths in battle they’d watched, there was something so inherently evil in this scene they were shocked. As if touched by the Devil’s hand.

  Catherine was the first to move. Her hands were swift and sure as she gently, quickly started unhooking the men from the machinery. She was whispering under her breath, and after a moment Mac realized she was running down a checklist, much as he and his men checked gear just before going into battle.

  Finally the men were unhooked, lying there unmoving, like meat on a butcher’s marble slab, barely breathing. Catherine looked at them in pity.

  “Wrap them in sheets, Nick, Jon. I’m going to do something.”

  They nodded, and started wrapping the sheets around their fallen comrades’ naked torsos. They had barely finished and were hoisting them up when another alarm sounded, high-pitched, even more urgent than the other one.

  Catherine ran back into the room.

  “What’s that alarm?” Mac asked.

  “I pulled the fire alarm, and that’s the evacuation signal. All external doors are now open. Let’s go.”

  Lee got out of the limo, thinking he might stop by the recreation room. At this time of night, it would be empty.

  Millon treated its employees well. There was a Nespresso machine which made divine coffee, there were trays of loose-leaf Chinese teas, a large selection of herbal infusions.

  The chairs were comfortable and the staff kept the place very neat and clean. All in all, Lee thought, he deserved a nice cup of tea. Review his notes while he was at it, and perhaps even meditate. He was early.

  He was looking forward to this, in every sense. Patient Nine and his confreres had proven to be most meddlesome. All in all, it was going to be a pleasure harvesting Nine and the others. Though he was a scientist and didn’t believe in something as arbitrary as luck, he did feel that the program would regain its natural rhythm once these men were out of the way and he could test on more ordinary patients.

  Nine and his men were outliers, in every sense of the word.

  He got out of the car and signaled the driver to pull away, watching the red backlights disappear from view.

  Lee knew the grounds were patrolled by security agents, but for the moment it was as if he were alone in the entire facility. In the state of California, even.

  They were close. Lee could feel it. Once his outliers were gone, he was certain he could start bringing the program to a successful conclusion. Another six months of testing—or rather having that moron Flynn test the program—and he’d be ready.

  Why, this time next year he could be in Beijing, undersecretary to the Minister of Science. Or perhaps to the Minister of Defense. An honored member of the high councils of his country, a man who had been instrumental in shaping his country’s future. A man who had been true to his country through a long, lonely and bitter exile.

  Ah, but the taste of triumph would be all the sweeter for having waited. He was a young man still, not even forty yet. He’d handed over the cancer vaccine. Members of the Politburo were given the finest medical care the world could offer.

  He could live to be a vigorous eighty-year-old, even ninety-year-old. Another forty, fifty years of power at the pinnacle of the world’s most powerful country to look forward to.

  He drew in a deep breath and glanced west. He was inland, of course. But thirty miles would take him to the Pacific. He could almost feel his homeland calling to him across the wide body of water. The greatest civilization mankind had ever known, triumphant once more.

  Thanks to him, Charles Lee.

  He smiled and reached for his security pass, frowning. Odd, it wasn’t in his front pants pocket, as it usually was. It wasn’t in any pocket at all, he found as he rummaged. Nor in his briefcase.

  The stress was getting to him and he was very glad the major source of his stress—besides that moron Flynn—was going to be eliminated tonight. He had never forgotten an important document in his life and here he’d forgotten or misplaced his security pass.

  Well, there was a go-around.

  The security staff had prepared for just such a contingency. He and ten others also had a special code assigned them in case they didn’t have their pass or the pass was chipped and had to be replaced. He entered in the code.

  In his head, he was already in the recreation room, calmly preparing his tea, settling his troubled spirit, so at first he didn’t understand what was happening.

  The door didn’t open. Lee punched in the code again and the fire siren sounded from the outside loudspeakers, signaling evacuation, and the door opened. He knew why the door hadn’t opened at first, why the alarm was sounding and who had pulled it. The system had already clocked him in and it hadn’t clocked him out. He was being read as an intruder. Someone else had clocked in using his security pass. And he had a good idea who.

&nb
sp; The same person who called in the fire alarm.

  Catherine Young.

  She was here.

  Christ! Four nearly dead men and three men to carry them. Nick and Jon were already stripping a bed to fashion a travois to be carried by two men, each also carrying a man. It was going to be hard and they were going to be sitting ducks, but there was no question of leaving their teammates behind. They weren’t going to die like rats in a lab.

  Catherine stood for a second with a frown on her face, clearly puzzling something out, and Mac nearly dropped to his knees in a burst of love for her. Any other woman in the world would be screaming in panic or rushing around using up her energy in useless things but not his woman. No, she was thinking.

  “Mac,” she said urgently, “we need to get these men to an exit point. Can the three of you carry these men about five hundred yards?”

  “Sure. Tell us where the exit point is and we’ll make it. Get out fast. We went over the sentry positions in our drills. If you go out the east side you should be okay. We’ll rendezvous at the helo. If we don’t make it, there’s a kit with survival equipment next to the pilot’s seat. It has ten thousand dollars in cash, take it and go—”

  She was shocked, mouth open, eyes wide. Then she looked angry as her eyes narrowed. “What’s wrong with you? We went over this before and you still want me to leave you? I can’t believe you said that. Back home you’re paying for that comment, Thomas McEnroe. Nick, Jon, since neither of you appear to be boneheads, follow me.”

  They headed out as fast as they could, Mac carrying the Captain over his shoulder and holding on to one side of the blanket with Lundquist in it while Jon held on to the other, Romero over on his shoulder. Nick had Pelton over his shoulder and was checking his screen.

  They were following Catherine blindly. After her outburst she hadn’t looked at him. Even her back, beautiful as it was, looked mad.

  “Rule Number One, meathead,” Jon muttered out of the side of his mouth. “Don’t piss off your ladylove.”

  “How the fuck would you know about ladyloves,” Mac answered. “Your record is four nights in a row.”

  He’d make it up to her, if they survived. They weren’t able to go at a dead run and carrying the men meant they couldn’t reduce their profile. The men they were rescuing didn’t have camouflage body armor. They’d be big fat targets out there. And the helo was rated for five people, not eight. She might not lift off.

  They were not making good time. Mac estimated they were a good fifteen minutes out from the helo, not counting the fact that they would have to blast their way through the microwave barrier.

  A lot of shit could happen in fifteen minutes plus. A lot of fatal shit.

  Mac tried to go to that cold place inside himself that was his fortress in battle. He was used to taking himself right out of the equation, as if he were a Cylon, a robot. A mass of flesh and bones, yes, but a compendium of battle strategies, lines of fire, the deadly ballet of battle.

  He couldn’t find that place, however frantically he looked for it. He was team leader, and now not only Nick and Jon depended on his cold-blooded ability to strategize, but also the Captain, Lundquist, Romero and Pelton. Not to mention Catherine. If they were going to get out of this alive, he had to become a soldier, not a man.

  But someone who reminded him every step of the way that he was a man, with a man’s weaknesses, was running ahead of him. Catherine.

  She was messing with his head. She was messing with his ability to distance himself from the situation and think coldly and clearly.

  On a mission, in a fight, Mac did everything he could to protect his men but, always, the mission came first. They were all soldiers, they all knew the price to pay and they all accepted it. Some of them might not make it to home base, but as long as the mission was successful, it was acceptable.

  Losing Catherine was not acceptable. Not an option.

  Fear for her fried his circuits, made him slow. He was operating under a pressure so intense it almost made him crack wide open. Loving Catherine made him a better man but a worse soldier, and she needed the soldier now, not the man.

  “Up ahead!” Catherine turned, gasping, and Mac saw the fear on her face and another huge pulse of love ran through him. She was terrified but she was working through it. Not slowing them down, not at all. Helping them with every fiber of her being, notwithstanding the fear.

  This woman deserved his best. He was going to see her through this because she was the most important mission of his life.

  “What, honey?”

  They were almost at an intersection. Catherine had stopped, small fist raised, and they all stopped, too. She was winded, narrow chest billowing in and out, but she ignored that, turning to Nick. “Anyone in the corridor to the right?” she gasped.

  The ceiling rippled. Nick was turning what was left of his Antz to the right.

  “Not getting a completely clear picture,” he murmured. “But the corridor is empty. Except for a piece of machinery.”

  She grabbed the screen, smiled, and gave a little panting whoop, reached up and kissed Mac on the mouth. Mac smiled back, because he simply couldn’t not smile at Catherine and because he was forgiven.

  “You can’t see that from here but it’s an electric cart. If you’re sure the coast is clear, we can load Ward and the other men on it, and if we time things right, we can make a run to the helo on it.”

  Nick gave a whoop, completely un-Nick-like, leaned over and kissed Catherine. A big, loud smack on the mouth.

  “Hey!” Mac frowned.

  “Just thanking the boss lady, boss.” Nick concentrated on his screen. The image was fuzzy, with sections of static. “We’re good to . . . go!”

  They ran around the corner, down the hallway to the cart. It was used to transport equipment but it could transport people, too. They lay the men down on the back, stacked like firewood. Mac pulled out a small ball of material, opened it up, pulled it fast over the Captain and his teammates. A refractive blanket. It wasn’t perfect but it should shield them from IR imaging.

  “Jon, take the wheel, Nick face the rear,” Mac ordered, and they took up a defensive perimeter. Nick and Mac were back-to-back. Mac faced front, behind Jon and Catherine.

  Jon started the cart up and they rolled down the corridor.

  The alarm changed in pitch again, much higher and more strident. “Second evacuation signal,” Catherine said.

  That was good news. More confusion, legitimate people running around. Security guards would hesitate before firing. Mac and his men wouldn’t. After seeing the Captain and the rest of his teammates, anyone in this facility was fair game and would be shot on sight.

  Another intersection. Catherine leaned to Jon and murmured something. Jon never slowed but turned to the left. In the distance was a long ramp, at the top a set of huge metal double doors.

  “Jon!” Mac called. “Can you make this piece of shit go faster?”

  “Only one way to find out,” Jon said grimly, increasing the speed fractionally. As the cart made the transition from the horizontal corridor to the beginning of the ramp, the doors started to open. They saw the night sky, velvety smooth.

  “Night vision, men,” Mac said, as he switched his on. The enemy would have night vision, too. Didn’t matter. Mac felt his spirits rise as they rode up and out into the night. Trapped in a building they weren’t familiar with, he’d felt cornered, but now they were on equal ground, and however many guards Millon employed and were able to deploy, they were no match for him and his men.

  They could face down a hundred. And with Catherine to defend? A fucking thousand.

  “Nick,” he said quietly. Nick rolled off and began running. Mac turned sideways, covering a 180-degree field of fire, then turned back. Jon was driving with one hand, weapon in the other.

  “Mac?” Catherine turned her face up to his. He didn’t dare look straight at her but he had good peripheral vision and could see her beautiful pale face, looking worried
.

  “Don’t worry, honey. Nick’s going to give us a diversion on the other side of the building. He’ll catch up.”

  “Okay.” Her face cleared and she turned back to face the front.

  She trusted him. She trusted them.

  He wasn’t going to let her down.

  Lights were on all over the facility, bright spotlights lighting parts of the grounds like day, leaving cones of darkness. The lights had been designed by architects, however, for beauty and not for security. If Mac had designed the lighting system he would have made sure the entire place was lit up like a fucking Christmas tree in an emergency.

  He and Jon were ready, but Catherine flinched at the sound of the huge explosion. They couldn’t see the fire and destruction, they only saw the smoke billowing over the rooftops, but from the sound and size of the cloud, Nick had done a good job.

  Jon was driving them at the cart’s maximum power. Not fast but faster than they could have run weighed down with the deadweight of the wounded men. They powered over a hump, landing with a thud. The Captain stirred, eyes flickering open, then closing.

  The night vision showed everything a flat green field but Mac knew the distances, knew the microwave barrier was a hundred meters out. He could see Nick running flat out fifty meters to their right, heading straight for the microwave barrier.

  Men were running in the distance, but running toward the explosion, paying them no attention. Somewhere, a guard was seeing them in his IR field, but so far the intel hadn’t filtered down.

  Mac tapped his earpiece. “Grenade,” he said. “Catherine, cover your head.” She bent forward, arms over her head.

  “Yeah.” Nick didn’t sound winded. They all kept up with conditioning in exile. If anything, they’d stepped up their daily training. Having the entire U.S. government and military hunting you kept you on your toes. “Now.”

  Nick’s arm came up and out, lobbing a grenade precisely where the cart was headed. It detonated on impact, taking out six of the vases, interrupting the transmission of microwave beams.