Involuntary Control (Gray Spear Society) (25 page)

Her estimation turned out to be good. The ambulance crashed at the same moment that the handle was blown off the door. Guards were already converging on the ambulance, and none of them looked in her direction.

Smythe yanked open the bent door using his brute strength. He and Marina went inside.

The first thing she noticed was the screams. They were the desperate cries of terrified people. They were the howls of the damned.

"I already have a bad feeling," Smythe said.

They were in a long hallway with metal doors on either side. Each door had a small window, and Marina looked through the first one. She saw an old man standing in a very small, brightly lit cell. He was just staring at the wall. He wore a blue surgical gown, and there was a puddle of urine on the floor beneath him. The palms of his hands showed fresh burns. A bloody bandage covered the back of his neck.

Marina went to the next door. In that cell there was a woman with nylon straps wrapped around her entire body. She wriggled as she tried to free herself even though she could barely move. A black hood covered her head, leaving only her mouth exposed.

The third cell held a teenage boy. He was kneeling on the floor with his hands behind his head. His eyes were closed. He wasn't bound, but he remained perfectly still. His nose flared as he breathed rapidly in and out.

"Keep going." Marina checked her watch. "Twenty-five minutes."

They moved into another section of the building and found a ward full of hospital beds. Men and women in gowns were strapped to their beds. Judging by the smell, many of the sheets needed to be changed. Some of the victims wore leather gags, and some had bandages on their necks. Nurses watched the patients but didn't seem interested in actually providing care.

"Twenty-one minutes," Marina said. "Let's head upstairs."

Smythe nodded.

They found a staircase and ascended to the second floor. They walked past a glass wall, and there was a large, white room on the other side. It contained a bed and a lot of complicated medical equipment.

"A surgical theater," Smythe said. "This could be interesting."

He opened a door and went into the room. Marina followed, but she kept her eyes on the exits.

"See anything?"

"They perform brain surgery in here," he said. "I recognize some of the specialized instruments. But this is new."

She peeked in his direction. He was standing in front of a machine with stainless steel panels. Robotic arms with small manipulators extended from the front, and other arms held tiny cameras and lights. A laptop computer was wired to the machine.

"I think it's some kind of advanced micro-surgery device," Smythe said. "Custom built by the looks of it."

Marina checked her watch. "Eighteen minutes."

A doctor in a white lab coat burst in through the door. "What are you doing in here?"

"Checking for intruders," Marina said calmly.

"There are no intruders here! Did you touch anything? Get out before you contaminate the whole room."

Smythe walked up to the doctor, drew a knife, and stabbed him in the neck. Smythe covered the doctor's mouth until he died.

"Why did you do that?" Marina said.

"I was protecting the medical profession," Smythe said. "Any doctor who works in this place deserves to have his license revoked, permanently."

"I like your style. Sixteen minutes. Move."

They left the surgical theater and continued down the hall.

Emergency sirens began to wail outside the building. Red lights flashed at the ends of the hallways.

"Sounds like they found the unconscious guards," Smythe said.

Marina nodded. "Just keep going. We expected this."

She noticed colored flashing lights leaking through a crack under a door. Silently, she opened the door. A woman was sitting alone in a dark room in front of a giant television screen. A repeating pattern of red, green, and blue geometric shapes flashed rapidly in front of her. She was tied to the chair and her arms were cuffed behind her back, but she wasn't struggling. In fact she wasn't moving at all. She just stared at the pattern with glassy eyes and a slack jaw.

Smythe approached the woman. "Hello?" he said softly. "Can you hear me?"

She didn't respond.

"Come on," Marina said urgently. She checked her watch. "Thirteen minutes left, and we still have things to do. Let's head up to the top floor."

She and Smythe found a staircase and went up another flight.

The third floor seemed to contain offices and conference rooms. Real wood paneling covered the walls, which were softly illuminated by tiny light sources. Their footsteps were silent on plush carpet.

Marina spotted another doctor in a lab coat in one of the offices. His brown hair was neatly cut and combed. He was working on a laptop with a very serious expression.

He'll do nicely,
she thought.

She walked into his office and said, "Sir, excuse me."

Smythe waited in the hall.

The doctor looked up. "What? I'm very busy. And what the hell is going on out there? Those damn sirens are giving me a headache."

"There are intruders, sir. Everybody is searching for them. I'm supposed to get on the roof and observe from up there. Do you know where the access is?"

"You're security. You don't know?"

"No, sir," Marina said. "I'm pretty new here, and so is my partner."

The doctor rolled his eyes and pointed with his finger. "Go all the way down the hall. The stairway at the end goes up to the roof."

"Thank you, sir. One more question. Did you get the brain surgery?"

"Me? No! I'm not one of those zombies."

"I was hoping you'd say that," she said, "but let me just check to be sure."

She walked around his desk.

He rolled away from her on his chair. "What are you doing? Don't touch me."

"I just want to look at your head real quick." She drew her gun from the holster on her hip and pointed it at his face. "Your cooperation would be appreciated."

"Get away. I'll have you fired for this. Worse than fired!"

She smiled and moved closer.

His eyes widened. "You're the intruder!"

"Good guess."

He reached for one of his desk drawers, and she presumed he was going for a weapon. He wasn't nearly fast enough. She jabbed her fingernails into his neck and injected enough venom to keep him asleep for hours. He collapsed to the floor. She checked the back of his head and confirmed he didn't have a scar.
Finally,
she thought,
somebody I can interrogate.

Smythe ran into the office, closed the door, and locked it from the inside.

"Company is coming," he said, "a lot of it, and fast."

Marina nodded. "We have our captive, and I know how to get onto the roof." She checked her watch. "Eight minutes. Right on schedule."

She took two sets of night vision goggles from her satchel, and she tossed one set to him. While she was strapping on the goggles, she heard footsteps in the hallway.

Somebody rattled the door handle and then pounded on the door. "Come out!" a deep male voice yelled. "Or we'll come in after you! You can't escape!"

"We have a hostage," Marina called. "He looks important. If you bust in here, we'll kill him!"
That should give us an extra minute.

She heard muttering on the other side of the door.

She left her HK USP 40 on the desk. It was a nice gun but too loud and slow. She took a pair of Glock 18's from holsters under her shirt. The weapons had short suppressors and could be fired in full auto mode. She confirmed they were loaded and ready. She hung her satchel from a hook on her belt so she could shoot with both hands.

Her heart was pounding. This was the part of the mission she liked best, when the sneaking around was done and the real fighting began. For a moment at least, she didn't have to hide behind a mask of civility. She could truly be herself.

Smythe picked up the man in the lab coat and slung him over a shoulder like a sack of grain. Smythe was already wearing his goggles, and he carried a gun in his free hand.

"Can you fight while carrying that dead weight around?"

"What choice do I have?" he said. "Let's go. We're running out of time."

She went to the door. He stood directly behind her and turned on his night vision goggles.

She found a radio detonator in her satchel. "Three... two... one..." She pressed the button.

The bomb attached to the transformer exploded with enough force to rattle the whole building. She actually felt it through her feet.
Too much C-4,
she thought. All the lights went out instantly.

She was in total blackness until she turned on her goggles. Then she saw the world as ghostly, green sparkles.

She opened the door. Several men stood outside, and they were fumbling around in the darkness. She systematically popped each one in the head with her gun. There wasn't time for a professional double-tap to make sure they were dead, but it didn't really matter. The point was to just get them out of her way.

She moved into the hallway, and Smythe followed. With the extra weight on his back, he couldn't run, so she led him at a fast walk. She came across two more guards, and they died without even knowing she was there.

They found the stairway at the end of the hall, and as promised, it went up. Marina let Smythe labor up the stairs while she watched for trouble. The sirens had stopped, and for that she was grateful.

The door at the top of the stairs had a padlock on it. She didn't want to give away their position by using an explosive, so she took a set of lock picks from her satchel and went to work. The night vision goggles didn't make the task any easier.

She heard a helicopter in the distance.

"Our ride is here," Smythe said.

"Damn. A little early."

A minute later Marina opened the lock, and they walked onto a flat, gravel roof. As soon as Smythe was through, she closed the door again. She took a tube of fast setting epoxy from her satchel and injected it into the crack between the door and the metal frame. It would take just a minute to form a permanent seal.

She lifted her night vision goggles. All the lights were off and it was dark outside, but not as dark as inside the building. The starry sky was beautiful. Living in the city, she rarely had a chance to admire the heavens because street lights always washed them out.

A helicopter was approaching rapidly. A spotlight mounted underneath swept back and forth across surrounding fields and farms.

Smythe put the captive down in the middle of the roof. Marina took a road flare from her satchel, lit it, and shook it over her head. When the sparks started to sting her hand, she tossed it onto the roof.

The helicopter turned in their direction. Both of them jumped up and down and waved their arms until the spotlight was directly on them.

Marina pointed at the unconscious man. The helicopter descended until she could see that it had Illinois State Police markings. The wash from the blades tossed her hair around. She made big motions with her arms in an attempt to draw the helicopter all the way down. It couldn't actually land because the roof wasn't strong enough, but it could hover.

Finally, the helicopter was just three feet above the roof. A side door opened and a policeman with a helmet leaned out.

"We got an emergency call," he yelled over the engine noise. "What's going on?"

"This man is badly injured!" Marina yelled. "If we don't get him to a hospital fast, he'll die!"

"This isn't an ambulance."

"You were the closest helicopter we could find. Help us!"

She and Smythe lifted the man in the lab coat from below. The policeman helped from above, and with everybody working together, they got him onto a rear seat.

Marina heard pounding on the door she had sealed with epoxy.

She abruptly pulled herself into the chopper, which swayed due to the extra weight. The policeman appeared surprised by her arrival.

She put him to sleep before he had time to complain. Smythe also climbed up, but there wasn't enough room for him, so he just hung off the side. The helicopter's small engine strained to maintain enough lift.

The pilot turned his head. "What's going on back there?"

Marina put a gun against his neck. "Fly!"

"No."

"I swear to God, if you don't get us out of here now, I will blow your brains out, shove you out the door, and fly this thing myself."

"You're a pilot?"

"A better one than you." She pulled back the hammer on the gun.

The helicopter went up, slowly. The engine was making a rattling noise.

When they were about two hundred feet up, she saw guards spill out onto the roof below. Somehow they had forced open the door. The guards fired upwards with handguns. The sound of gunfire encouraged the pilot to fly a little higher and faster.