The Ark: A Novel (36 page)

Grant and Turner, who'd heard the blast through the earpiece, rushed through the outer door. Locke hadn't been able to tell them about his improvisation, so they came through the door with their guns at the ready. When they saw Locke was the only one standing, they lowered their weapons.

"Looks like you've got things under control," Grant said.

"He tried to take me down by himself," Locke said.

"Big mistake."

"Where's Knoll?"

"He's keeping watch outside."

"We'd better hurry."

Turner removed a packet of plastic restraining ties from his pocket. He threw a couple to Locke, who used them to bind the guard's hands and feet behind his back. Grant did the same with the groaning Deal while Turner radioed his sergeant.

"Ares Leader to Ares One," he said.

"Ares One here."

"We're through the front door. We've still got five minutes before those guards are supposed to check in. Maintain your position. I'll alert you when we've secured the barriers. Make no move before then unless you get confirmation from me."

"Roger that."

Locke checked the hallway leading from the guard station, where it reached an intersection. To the right and left were long corridors that ended in doors. Locke turned and saw two elevators with only one call button. Down. Across from the elevators was another door, a triple-thick heavy-duty metal slab that could probably take a direct hit by an RPG. Locke eased it open.

It was the interior of the hangar, a huge chamber. About fifty feet away, Locke could see the open hangar door and next to it, a large service elevator. Two guards stood at the elevator, observing the movement of equipment. Apparently, the thick door had muffled the flash bang well enough for it to go unnoticed amid the noise the guards were making.

The hangar contained only one thing, but there was a hell of a lot of it. Dirt. Massive piles of it stretching to the ceiling and filling every corner of the hangar, leaving only a wide path to reach the service elevator. All of it had been bored out of the earth below him and stacked here so that no one would see dump trucks leaving the facility. They could put up the buildings without much permitting, but digging out thousands of tons of dirt and rock would have invited unwanted questions about what was being built. The other hangars must have been filled to the brim as well.

Locke closed the door without the guards seeing him. They were too focused on the other side of the hangar. He walked down one end of the long corridor past the elevator and opened the door to see a wide stairway leading down.

At the first landing, there was the horizontal concrete barrier that was recessed into the wall. At the press of a button at the central security station, the barrier would come out of the wall over the landing and nestle into the opposite wall, covering the entire stairwell. It would take far more explosives than Locke had in his bag of tricks to blast through it.

He couldn't hear anyone in the stairwell and closed the door. Locke jogged back to the guard station and saw the computer monitor sitting on the guard's desk. If they could log into the system, they might be able to get a schematic for the underground facility.

"I'm going to check..."

Those were the only words Locke got out. He heard a shot outside the building. The outside door crashed open, and Knoll's lifeless body tumbled inside. A guard rushed in and jumped over Knoll. He stopped in his tracks when he saw the residual smoke and the three men standing in the guard's chamber.

The guard raised his weapon to fire, and Locke lunged for the button controlling the security door. He slammed his hand down on it as bullets from the guard's machine gun thudded into the wall behind the open door. Grant ducked under them, and the security door slammed shut. The guard put another round into the glass, but it was, indeed, bulletproof, and the rounds simply smacked into it.

The guard whipped the radio to his lips, and Locke realized that he, Grant, and Turner had only seconds to get down the stairs because the guard was radioing that security had been breached. Oasis was going to be locked down.

"Come on!" Locke yelled and ran toward the east stairs.

Grant was behind him, and Turner followed, yelling into his radio.

"Ares One! This is Ares Leader! We've been made! Start your attack!"

"Roger, Ares Leader!"

Locke plunged through the door and took the stairs down two at a time. A klaxon sounded. He was just past the landing when the barrier began to emerge from the wall and slide across the stairwell. The concrete slab must have weighed tons, but it was closing quickly. It was already halfway to the opposite wall as Grant hopped over it and down the stairs.

Turner dove over the railing and into the opposite wall. He tucked himself in and rolled down the stairs, just squeezing through before the barrier slammed with a clunk into the wall.

The klaxon reduced to a quarter volume, and a female voice said, "Intruder alert. Stay in your rooms." The message repeated ten seconds later. Locke assumed the message was aimed at the facility's civilian occupants.

He helped Turner up. "You all right?"

"I'll be fine," Turner said, massaging his shoulder.

"Try your radio."

Turner called for the sergeant three times. No answer except static.

"The barrier's too thick," Turner said.

"And if we can't raise them, we can't radio the bomber."

"Then our first objective after we find the bioweapon is to get the barrier open again."

Locke simply nodded. They all knew what they were up against. There were seven levels to explore, at least twenty guards still inside, hundreds of unarmed civilians, including Dilara Kenner, to worry about, and if they didn't secure the bioweapon and reconnect with their team in the next 30 minutes, the most powerful non-nuclear bomb in the military's arsenal would turn the entire complex into a sinkhole.

Grant cleared his throat.

"Well," he said, "this should be a challenge."

Dilara Kenner was vaguely aware of a banging noise, and it sounded like a voice was yelling at her. Her eyes fluttered open. Her head lolled to the side and felt like it was mired in quicksand. For a moment, she had no idea where she was. Then she saw two men at the other end of a room. One man, dressed all in black, was talking into a radio. The other man, who was in a white lab coat, was looking at him intently. Then she recognized them and the chair she had been strapped into, and her adrenaline kicked in.

She didn't know how she had gotten to the table. Whatever they had drugged her with made her lightheaded, but the horn that still blared in the background had awakened her, and the adrenaline surging through her body was overcoming the effects of the pharmaceuticals.

The words coming from the speakers became clear.

Intruder alert. Stay in your rooms.

Someone was assaulting the complex. And if rescuers were inside, her best chance was to find them herself.

The fuzziness in her brain was clearing. She closed her eyes and willed herself to concentrate. If they knew she was awake again, they'd strap her back down or put her back in the bedroom.

The guard's deeper voice said, "Stay here and watch her. I'm going to find out what's going on. Lock this door and don't open it. I'll come back and unlock it when we have the all-clear."

The door opened and closed. She was alone with the doctor.

She silently flexed her hands and legs. They were working, but she couldn't tell how much strength she still had. She'd have to chance it.

She let out a soft moan and rocked her head back and forth slightly as if she were just coming out of her stupor.

The doctor came to the side of the bed as she thought he would. She fluttered her eyes open and closed. He was standing next to her, probably figuring out what he should do. His crotch was level with the top of the table. Perfect.

She turned over on her side facing the doctor and moaned even louder. The doctor reached out with his hand to steady her, never seeing her knee lash out at him.

She hit him squarely in the groin, and the skinny man doubled over with a squeak. He fell to his knees, sucking in air.

Dilara jumped off the table too quickly. She got a severe head rush and leaned against the table to steady herself.

The doctor wobbled, trying to get to his feet. Dilara fell back on her defensive training. When she knew she'd be spending a lot of time excavating digs in dangerous locations, she'd taken hand-to-hand defense and weapons training, just in case. Now she was glad she did. And the first thing she had learned was that the elbow was one of the strongest points on the body. You could use it for maximum damage with the least amount of danger of injuring yourself.

The doctor's head was now even with her elbow.

With what strength she had, she threw her elbow backward, slamming the doctor in the side of the head. His opposite ear smacked into the counter top. Dilara's arm rang with pain from the impact, but she'd accomplished what she wanted. The doctor fell to the floor, out cold.

She wasn't strong enough to heave him into the chair and strap him down. Besides, there wasn't enough time. They'd find out she was gone soon anyway. She had to try to rendezvous with the intruders. All she was sure of was that whoever was attacking the facility was her friend.

She looked around the room for anything that could be used as a weapon. She had no intention of leaving unarmed.

* * *

Garrett and Cutter had been in the fifth level's scientific laboratories when Cutter got the call from the guard that the entranceway had been breached. They had been supervising the last stage of readying the prion devices for shipment. As soon as the call came in, Cutter had ordered the entire facility locked down.

Soon after that, he got reports from his team still outside that they were being attacked by hostile forces, probably Army special ops. Cutter went to a monitor and called up the sentry camera's digital playback. It showed a guard with David Deal coming through the security door, and then a flash and smoke. After that, the camera went dead. Cutter played it back again and recognized the man dressed as a guard.

"Locke!" Garrett shouted. "That news story was a phony! Did we get the barriers closed in time?"

"My guard can't get to the stairs," Cutter said, "but he thinks they might have made it in. Only three of them. He saw them go towards the east stairwell."

"Dilara Kenner. We can use her as a hostage. Have the guard bring her here. I don't care if she's awake or not."

Cutter called the guard he'd left with the doctor.

"Is the woman conscious yet?" Cutter asked.

"I don't know," the guard replied.

"What do you mean you don't know?"

"I'm on my way down to the control room," the guard said.

"What? Get back to the exam room now and get Kenner. Bring her to the lab level. Carry her if you have to. Use the west stairwell."

"Yes, sir."

"If Locke has only two other people with him," Garrett said, "what could they do?"

"It sounds like they have Army reinforcements outside, so they'll try to open the barriers. If they succeed, the soldiers outside may be able to launch a full-scale assault of Oasis and wipe us out."

"The control room then. Go. I'll finish up here. When we have Kenner, patch me into the loudspeakers. I don't think Locke will let her die a slow death. When the devices are ready, I'll destroy the remaining samples. We can't let our research get into the Army's hands."

The control room, located deep down on level seven, was the central nervous system of the Oasis complex. Guards posted there could watch any room in the facility via the cameras mounted throughout the structure. The control room was the only place from which the barriers could be opened.

"Where's Locke now?" Cutter said into his mouthpiece as he drew his pistol and sprinted for the north stairwell. If he could circle around and sneak up on them from behind, he might be able to end it quickly.

"They're still at the top of the east stairwell. Shit!"

"What happened?"

"They just took out the camera."

Security for Oasis had been designed to keep intruders out. The design never assumed they could make it past the fence and sentry posts, so the internal cameras were meant for observing the inhabitants in order to control them, not to track intruders. A good smack from a rifle butt could take one out.

"Tell no one to use the east stairs. Use the north or west stairs. We'll lure them down and then get them from above. Prepare for an assault. I'm on my way."

Cutter eased the north stairwell door open. No shots. No one there. He ran down the stairs.

* * *

Locke opened the door to the first level. He saw a long hallway that was bisected by a T-intersection at its halfway point before it got to what looked like another stairwell door at the other end. No guards. The civilian occupants were heeding the warning to stay in their rooms. Finding Dilara would be a tedious task, Locke realized with dismay, that they didn't have time for.

Turner kept an eye on the stairwell. Grant had busted the camera, but that didn't give them much protection. They'd have to destroy cameras as they went.

"How do we get those barriers open?" Turner asked.

"There's a control room on the bottom level," Locke said. "It'll be a hardened facility."

"And the hazmat lab?"

"Fourth or fifth level. It'll be the only other one that's secure. They won't want nonessential personnel wandering in there."

"So what's our plan?"

"Lab first?" Grant said.

Locke nodded. "Less heavily protected. Plus, if the bioweapon isn't secure, we might as well just wait there for the bomb to fall."

"Then let's go," Turner said. "Keep an eye on the doors as we go. I'll be ready with grenades if we hear someone below."

"But first, a little surprise." Locke dug around in his pack.

"Something else in your bag of tricks?"

"We don't want someone coming from behind us unannounced," Grant said, knowing what Locke was planning. "Makes his back prickly."