the big guy waved them off. The agent’s features tightened, even though he tried not to show a thing. “Yes, ma’am. I do understand. And I’m sorry for your loss.”
Sydney wrapped her fingers around the weapon as she stared ahead, seeing Corporal Tanner with a hole in his chest and breathing his last. She looked at the 9mm pistol, blood prints over metal black. And for the first time in her life, she wanted to watch someone die for that.
Deliciously slow. Yeah, that worked for her.
“You want to give me that, ma’am?”
She met his gaze. “No, I don’t.”
“You’re safe here, Dr. Hale.”
“I was supposed to be safe in the Cradle too, Agent…?”
“Combs, ma’am.”
She didn’t think that was his real name, but it would do. “But now my team is probably dead, a Marine guard is dead and I’m here, under house arrest.”
“Protection, Dr. Hale. For your own safety.”
Sydney wanted to hit him just for the emotionless chill in his words. But she accepted that she wasn’t getting a thing out of him and he likely didn’t know any more than she did. NSA agents had taken her away within minutes of her phone call and left the disaster of the Cradle behind them.
“There are bedrooms that way.” Combs nodded to the hall. “With clothes in the closets and drawers.” He sized her up and looked doubtful. “You might find something to fit.”
Sydney flipped the safety on the gun, but kept it. “I’ll be in the shower.” She took a few steps to the hall, then stopped and turned. He hadn’t moved, but now the others were staring at her. “You aren’t asking any questions, Agent Combs. Why is that?”
“Following my orders, ma’am.”
And not letting one hand see what the other’s doing, she thought. NSA field agents, a necessary evil. “Let me know when they change.”
Luray Caverns 8:58 A.M.
The pilot started his descent. Pebbles and dry leaves spun upward like a twister, then were beaten back down by the slowing pound of the blades. Infrared painted the area clean, which wasn’t a plus on their side. Cisco didn’t doubt that if there was a “they” out there, they were long gone. He had to assume they’d made off with the gas vials. It was the only thing of value down there aside from the research. But until he received the satellite shots in increments, he wouldn’t know a thing. Infrared was wading in official channels.
The building came into sight below. Mother, a cheezy acronym for Mechanized Operation Tether/Habitat Environmental Regulator was a fireproof building that housed the air filtration, sewage, computer, surveillance and electricity systems—and just about anything else the Cradle needed to operate. Cisco didn’t know who had come up with the cute names, but at least they were easy to remember. Mother was self-contained, designed to not need a keeper. There were only eleven people in the underground facility, including armed sentries and there was no way now of telling if anyone was alive.
Without a list handy, Cisco knew the name of only one person—Dr. Sydney Hale—on shift. Average height, better than average-looking. Reddish brown hair, brown eyes, with a smart mouth and a brain like a vault. She was the reason this facility was in operation and as much as he’d trained himself not to feel a thing, the thought of her dead pissed him off.
Cisco shoved open the helicopter door, hopped down. Field agents were combing the ground in a line up the mountain like black bears scouring for honey. He headed toward the flat-roofed building surrounded by an electric fence. Fishing in his pocket, he tossed his keys at the fence. Nothing. Damn. He punched a code and still nothing.
Lock-out. Cisco popped open the keypad and jimmied a wire. If it were that easy, he thought, anyone could get in. It took another ten minutes for the explosive experts to set the charges and blow the gate. It took prima cord, and a considerable C-4 to get through the eight-inch-thick doors.
A flood of men and women followed him inside the yard. He hadn’t had time to brief them, and wouldn’t now. The closer he played this to the vest, the better. He opened the steel door and stepped inside Mother. He motioned to Marcuso.
“Get in there.”
The technologist opened the back of a tall box that looked like a freezer. “It’s probably fried.”
“Of course it is. Find out how. This pumps air below and as far as we know there are a dozen people down there.”
People scrambled.
“Don’t turn on the generators till I give the word.”
They frowned collectively. He didn’t give them a reason. Aside from the scientists and technicians working in the Cradle and NSC, less than five people knew what was really six hundred feet below the surface. He was one of them. If the cold room had been breached, and the vials damaged, he didn’t want Sarin gas sucked up the air vents and into this building. He almost hoped that the attackers had left with the vials. Better it killed them than Cisco’s team.
“Wickum’s here, sir.”
Cisco glanced at the door as Pete Wickum rushed inside with a silver case. He reached for it. “You get a speeding ticket?”
Wickum smirked and shook his head. “Stellar evasive maneuvers.”
“Cocky little bastard.” Cisco kept an ear tuned to the radios, sliding the silver case on top of a steel gray utility box. Opening it, he slipped on a set of thin headphones and flipped a switch. A pulse beat across the screen without sound. Around him, agents tried to get the sensors up and running. Cisco listened to the sonar pulse.
If confirmed the Cradle’s tunnels were under rubble, yet as far as he could tell, the main body of the facility was intact—which wasn’t much. Nor was he certain if anyone was still alive down there. Thermal imaging wouldn’t pass through that much stone. “Wickum, get excavation equipment up here.” He closed the case, taking it with him as he moved to the door.
“That’ll scare the tourists.”
“It’s a gas leak,” he reminded them, then swept out like a black wind.
An agent watched him. “When I grow up, I wanna be just like him.”
A few chuckled, and Wickum glanced back from the door. “Trust me. You don’t,” he said and followed his boss.
Jack was about two seconds away from killing a park ranger. Which would damage the hell out of his military career, but what the hell. He was pretty much on the edge right now.
“What do you mean you can’t go get them? They’re up there on the mountain and they’ll be raccoon fodder if you don’t.”
“There’s a gas leak. We’ve been restricted until it’s contained.”
“Where? They’re caverns, for crisssake!”
The ranger, patient, huge and Jack counted, dumb as a bag of hammers, said, “The area has lodges, the tower, gift shops.”
Not
