He took out another pack of C-4 and molded it against the glass.
"All done," Lamont said. "Ready to rock and roll."
Nick took out the radio controller for the detonators. "I'm giving it ten minutes. Mark."
He set the unit down by the containment room. Red numerals on the display began counting down the time.
"Let's get out of here."
He reached up to tug on his scarred left ear. It was beginning to itch. The itching got worse.
Nick's ear was a psychic warning system, a genetic hand me down from his Irish Ancestors. His grandmother had what the old Irish called "the sight." She'd been able to know about things that hadn't happened, bad things, death, accidents, disaster. It had made her unpopular in her small village.
Whatever it was or wherever it had come from, Nick had learned to trust it.
Ronnie saw him pull on his ear. They all knew what it meant.
"Oh, oh," he said.
"Turn off the lights," Nick said.
Selena swept her hand across a bank of switches on the wall next to the door. The room went dark. The only light was the red glow of the timer at the far end, counting down the minutes and seconds until this room would cease to exist.
Nick cracked the door open. The hall outside was empty. His ear began burning.
"Trouble coming," he said. He kept his voice low. "Time to boogie."
They moved to the T where the hall met the longer corridor that led back to the morgue and forward to the front of the building. Nick heard a soft sound toward the front, the barest whisper of something. He signaled with his hand. That way. Someone coming.
He signaled again. Ronnie, with me. Selena, Lamont, cover the way we came in. On three.
Nick held up his hand and counted off with his fingers. One. Two. Three.
He looked around the corner. Eight or nine men in dark blue uniforms, with MP-5s, coming from the front.
The leader saw Nick and shouted. His gun came up. Nick fired first. The leader went down and Nick ducked back as the hall filled with the sharp sounds of the guns and the whisper of bullets passing.
Lamont crouched low and fired around the corner. Selena reached her gun around the wall and fired blindly.
Behind them, the counter ticked down toward the explosion.
Ronnie reached into his bag and pulled out a flash bang.
"This will help them think. Cover up," he said.
He pulled the pin and tossed the grenade into the hall. It went off with a flat, hard sound. The shock wave beat against them in the narrow confines of the hall.
After-images of light danced in front of Nick's eyes. They moved into the main corridor. Blue-clad attackers writhed on the floor, hands clapped over their ears. Two still stood, disoriented. They raised their weapons. Nick and Selena shot them.
"Toward the back," Nick said.
They ran down the hall and into the morgue. Nick pulled open the outer door and was met with a blast of cold air and snow. The weather had turned into a full blown winter storm. Nick looked at his watch.
"Thirty seconds," he said.
They ran through the door, silhouetted by the lights in the room behind. Sudden spurts of flame winked at them from the dark. A heavy blow knocked Nick down into a drift. The others dove for the ground. Ronnie fired at the muzzle blast of the unseen shooter. A cry of pain cut through the muffled sound of the storm and the flashes stopped.
The charges went off.
The night erupted with flame and noise and light that turned the falling snow bright yellow and orange. The roof lifted off the building. The tall chimney toppled and crashed to the ground near where Selena and Lamont lay flat in the snow. Debris fell back to earth, chunks of masonry, bits of metal and glass, unidentifiable pieces. A mangled centrifuge landed next to Nick and lay steaming in the snow.
The light and noise faded. No one was shooting at them. A burning gas line sent a twenty foot column of bluish flame straight into the air from the ruined building behind them.
Nick stood up, holding his side. His vest had taken the round. But it hurt.
"Come on," he said.
"You're all right?" Selena asked.
"Yeah. Let's get out of here."
They made it back to the car without trouble. Selena drove. Nick sat next to her. They looked at the burning building as they passed it.
"They won't be using that for a while," Nick said.
CHAPTER 20
"What? Destroyed?"
Krivi had been called out of a sound sleep to answer the phone. He held it close to his ear and pulled his silk bathrobe around him as he listened to the voice on the other end of the line. The green numerals on the clock by his bedside read 3:21. The voice repeated what it had said. Krivi rubbed his chest and took a deep breath.
"All right. We'll put it out that it was a terrorist attack. That always satisfies everyone's need to know who was behind something. There must be plenty of evidence to support the idea. Look for anything that might tell us who did it. Anything at all."
More noise on the telephone.
"No. Stall the police. Access has to be controlled. Get our people there now. I'll talk to the commissioner and get his cooperation. Call me if there are problems."
He hung up and thought for a moment. It was a secured line, no one would have intercepted the conversation. He picked up the phone and dialed a number known only to six others.
"Yes." Gutenberg's voice was alert, though Krivi knew he'd been asleep. A call on this line at night meant trouble.
"We have a problem."
"Go on."
"Someone raided the lab where we had the Korean samples. It was a professional operation. They eliminated my security team and blew up the building."
"A military op?"
"Possibly. My team was the best. The Russians, perhaps."
"I would have been warned. It couldn't have been them," Gutenberg said.
"Then we'd better find out who it was."
"What about the vaccine? The test?"
"I'm going to talk with Schmidt after we're done here," Krivi said. "He has backups of his research and more samples of the bacteria stored in another location. This is a setback, nothing more. It will delay implementation, but in the end it won't make any difference."
"What about the police?"
"They won't be a problem."
"Let me know if you find anything to tell us who did it."
"Of course."
After a few more words, Krivi broke the connection. He leaned back in his chair and knew he'd never get back to sleep. He was offended that someone would dare to attack him. Eventually he'd discover who had done it and when he found out who they were, they were going to regret the day they were born.
CHAPTER 21
The snow was letting up by the time they got back to the safe house.
"Man, I'm beat," Lamont said. He sat down on a couch.
"You're getting old, Shadow," Ronnie said.
"I wouldn't talk about old if I were you," Lamont said. "You look a little worn out yourself."
Ronnie's face showed the strain of the raid. It hadn't been that long since he'd been lying in a hospital, near death.
"How you feeling, Ronnie?" Nick said.
"I'm fine."
"Get some sleep. Unless the snow closes the airport, we're out of here in the morning."
In their room, Selena helped Nick take off his vest.
"Ow," he said.
He unbuttoned his shirt. Selena helped him take it off, then worked his tee shirt up over his head. His side was a massive blotch of bruised color.
"Rainbow man," Selena said. "Very impressive. Any ribs broken?"
"I don't think so, but it feels like I got hit by a truck. Everything's stiffening up."
"It will feel better in the morning," she said.
"No it won't, but thanks for the thought."