Crazy, only because she knew that she had not been struck. That she retained the wherewithal to sort that out was proof enough. Nevertheless, the flash and thunderclap could have come only from a catastrophic electrical discharge.
The darkness became a greenish haze. Nothing bore any resemblance to the world that had existed only a few seconds before. A soft whimper reached her ear through the silence.
Silence? Yes. Her hearing was returning, but the noise of the transmitter and the staccato bursts of gunfire were gone. Her first thought was that the explosion had knocked out the transmitter, but as her awareness returned she realized the exact opposite was true. The transmitter, or rather its power supply, had caused the devastation that now surrounded her. In all likelihood, a stray bullet had penetrated the door to the high voltage room and struck some critical component — the tall yellow pillar was probably a capacitor, storing massive amounts of voltage for use by the radio transmitter. The result had been an artificially produced lightning bolt, as destructive and unpredictable as the real thing.
She was still clutching Mercy’s hand. In the dimness she could distinguish Mercy’s sprawled form, but not much else. “Mercy? Are you okay?”
Another whimper. Jenna took that as a positive sign. Her vision continued to improve, but what she saw was not encouraging. Black smoke poured in from where there had once been a door marked with a high voltage sign. “Mercy, we have to get out of here.”
As Jenna rose to her feet, unsteady, she saw the man who had been about to shoot her, reduced to a charred, vaguely human form. By the look of it, he had been the focal point of the discharge. Another unmoving form was visible at the entrance to the room — the other shooter, stunned, but alive. He had been much further from the discharge than she, and it was a wonder that he hadn’t already recovered. Jenna doubted she could make it past him, and even if she did, there would be others lying in wait. If she and Mercy were going to escape, it would have to be through the roll-up door, as Cray had intended.
Cray! She looked around and found him, sitting with his back against the wall beside the big door. His shirt was saturated with blood, but he didn’t appear to be in any pain. He just sat there, gazing at her with unblinking eyes. It took her a moment to realize that he wasn’t looking at her. He wasn’t looking at anything. Cray was dead.
“Wake up. We’ve got to get moving.” She tugged on Mercy’s hand again until the woman stirred. Mercy mumbled something but Jenna shushed her. “We’ve got to get out of here. Come on.”
She pulled away from Mercy. Every second was critical. Mercy would have to recover on her own while Jenna blazed their escape route. She half-crawled to where Cray had fallen, and she found his pistol still gripped in one dead hand. Something looked strange about it. The end of the barrel protruded a full half-inch from the body of the weapon.
It’s empty, she realized. Cray had fired off his last round.
Steeling herself, she drew back his blood-soaked windbreaker to uncover the shoulder holster tucked beneath his left arm — empty like the pistol — then she checked the other side. There, she discovered two small pouches. Each contained a full magazine. She deftly liberated both, and then returned her attention to the handgun.
It was the same design as the pistol Mercy had given her to use during their futile escape attempt on the Overseas Highway, although it was slightly larger.
Mercy was alert now, staring aghast at Cray’s motionless form. Jenna hurried back to her and offered the weapon. “Here,” she said, hoping that a meaningful task would break Mercy from her daze. “You know what to do, right?”
Mercy tore her gaze from the dead man and nodded. With practiced efficiency, she ejected the empty magazine and slotted a replacement into the pistol grip, released the slide, and then racked it once to advance a round into the firing chamber.
Jenna returned to the door and took hold of the dangling chain. “They might be waiting out there,” she warned, and then without further comment, she started pulling.
The door rose slowly, revealing rain-spattered pavement. Mercy ducked down, training the pistol on the widening stripe of revealed daylight, but did not fire. Jenna raised the door just a couple feet and stopped. She dropped down and peered through the opening.
The half-expected ambush did not occur, but Jenna saw too many places where a gunman might be concealed — parked cars, two small modular buildings that looked like trailers and the terrain itself.
“We have to make a run for it.” She did not add that she had no idea where they would go next. Mercy nodded her readiness.
Jenna wriggled under the door and scrambled toward the nearest car, Mercy right behind her. Still no sign of the assault team — no sign of Noah. An ominous quiet had descended over the area. The transmitter was dead, and the gun battle had ended.
She swept the panorama, looking for a route to freedom. Directly ahead lay the road, and somewhere beyond that, the visitor’s center Soter had mentioned. They might be able to lose themselves in the crowd, or find someone to help them…
No. These men wouldn’t let innocent lives stand in the way of completing their mission, and there was no longer anyone left to help them.
Noah?
The thought stung. Just when she had been ready to believe his declaration of love, his promise to help, the jaws of the trap had snapped shut. Looking to Noah for help was worse than letting the shooters run them down.
“We have to go where they won’t think to look for us,” she told Mercy. “Follow me.”
Staying low, she skirted the parking area toward the corner of the transmitter building. After verifying that the coast was clear, she darted into the lee shadow of the structure. From this new vantage, she saw the bundled cables overhead, snaking from the nearest tower to the suspended antenna assembly far out over the dish.
She considered climbing onto the cable and making her way out to the array. It was definitely the last place anyone would think to look, but it was also a dead end. Even if they could make the precarious journey unnoticed, they would be trapped four hundred feet above the ground.
But the dish was another story. From the control room, it had looked like an enormous empty swimming pool excavated from the surrounding landscape, but Soter had revealed that it was actually made up of aluminum panels, built above the ground. The edge of the dish was only a hundred yards away. If they could make it under the reflector panels, they’d have far more options.
She told Mercy her plan, leaving no room for argument. There was none. Mercy just nodded, looking a little shell-shocked. When Jenna started forward, creeping along the perimeter of the building, Mercy stayed right behind her. They stopped again at the next corner. The dish was visible below, a massive spherical bowl. A narrow tree-lined road ran down to its edge. The slope and slick pavement would make keeping their footing a little tricky, but Jenna estimated that a sprint of no more than thirty seconds would bring them to their goal. She checked the surrounding area for any sign of hostile forces, and then gripped Mercy’s hand again.
“Ready?”
“Not really,” Mercy admitted. “But let’s do this.”
Jenna nodded, and then because she could not think of a better way to coordinate their mad dash, gave the classic track and field prompt: “Ready, set, go!”
As they ran, Jenna expected to hear gunshots or feel the impact of a bullet, but what happened was much worse. Two-thirds of the way to her goal a shout reached her, an all too familiar voice, rolling down the slope, echoing from the surrounding limestone formations.