“Wait! What’s that? Go back!”
Radcliff stabbed a shaky index finger at the second monitor, top row. There had been something—someone?—moving on the screen, a sprint from one tree to another, furtive, but the scene had come and gone before he had a chance to focus.
“What? Which one?” asked Lasser, visibly confused.
“That one, you dolt! Go back!”
Two keystrokes, and the camera panned across a wooded glade, no sign of life apparent.
“But I could have sworn…”
“Let’s try a couple of the other cameras,” Lasser said. “Remember, we’ve got interlocking fields of vision.”
Two more clicks, and Lasser froze the camera, focused on a man who stood, peered straight into the lens, then ducked his head and kept on going, out of range.
“Who’s that?” asked Radcliff.
“I don’t have a fucking clue,” said Lasser, reaching for a compact walkie-talkie on the desk in front of him. He brought the handset to his lips and pressed the button to transmit.
“All stations, listen up!” he snapped. “We have a male intruder on the grounds, incoming Sector Five. Proceed to intercept. Detain for questioning, if possible, but terminate if he seems likely to escape. Let’s move it, people. This is not a drill!”
It was perhaps not the best way to go, Remo thought, but he’d created a situation they would have to deal with now. Otherwise, he was concerned that Radcliff’s people would evacuate the so-called orphanage before he had a second chance to look around, and Remo would have lost his last real chance to prove his theory of the Thomas Hardy killer-clones.
They would be waiting for him mow, of course, but waiting was not necessarily the same as ready. Three guns had been waiting for him at Ideal Maternity, as well, but he was still alive and they were not. He could expect a stronger, more determined opposition this time, but they weren’t Masters of Sinanju.
He stayed alert for any sign of sentries or booby traps as he navigated through the woods. There was another camera up ahead, which he could hear whirring on its pivot, but he got around that one by waiting for the lens to turn in one direction while he scampered in the other.
Simple.
Even knowing he was here and roughly where he was, the other side would have to work their asses off to take him down.
Too bad the woods were sparse on this side of the ground, he thought. There was sufficient undergrowth to cover him if things got hairy, but it would have given him a greater edge if he could leave the ground behind, take to the trees and make like Tarzan for a while, avoiding both the cameras and any foot patrols that came along.
Still, he was on the scene, and the security devices told him he was getting closer to the object of his quest. A wiser man than Dr. Radcliff might have had the orphanage evacuated at the same time he was clearing out Ideal Maternity, but Remo gambled on the supposition that events had overtaken Radcliff in a rush, compelling him to face one aspect of the problem at a time.
He hoped so, anyway.
If Radcliff had been smart and swift enough to clear the boys’ home, Remo could be wasting precious time.
And something told him there was little left to spare.
He knew approximately where the major buildings were, from driving past the Fairfield gates on Webster Road, a short mile east of Ekron. Moving on, he had picked out a narrow service road and found a place to hide his car before he started in on foot. Most of the ninety acres would be woodland, and he estimated that the orphanage would be located closer to the nearest road than to the back half of the property.
So far so good, until he saw the camera—and it saw him.
He kept on moving, knew that it would be a grave mistake to hold his ground and wait for trackers to come looking for him. He was conscious of the cameras now, could keep them guessing to a fair degree, but the opposition had to know where he was headed. No one would assume that he was out there for a simple Nature walk.
He saw the orphanage about the same time, that the first patrol experienced their fleeting glimpse of him. A shout confirmed their presence after Remo heard them coming through the trees, away to his left front. Four men, the faces identical, except that two seemed slightly older than the others.
Different generations, Remo thought. Death without end.
He was already ducking, moving, when they opened fire with automatic weapons and the bullets started whispering around him, sizzling through the air.
Chapter 19
“What are they shooting at, for Christ’s sake?” Dr. Radcliff felt a sudden surge of panic. He could hear the sharp reports of gunfire even where he stood, inside the blockhouse, with the heavy door closed. “Don’t you give them silencers or something?”
“Not on automatic rifles,” Lasser told him, almost sneering. “Anyhow, the nearest neighbor is at least a mile away. We’ll have the job cleaned up before they even think about complaining.”
Radcliff flinched as more gunshots erupted from the grounds. In front of him, the monitors were flickering, scenes changing rapidly, as Lasser tried to find the source of gunfire, give them all a view, of what was happening. It took him several tries, and twice the cameras caught a blur of running figures, then he had them. Four of Radcliff’s children, armed with military weapons, closing in a semicircle on a clump of tangled shrubbery that grew between two fair-sized oaks.
“Watch this,” said Lasser, sounding pleased. “They’ve got him now.”
As if on cue, the four clones opened fire in unison, bright muzzle-flashes sparking from their rifles. There was no sound from the monitor, but Radcliff heard the sound of shots outside. Somehow the echo sounded out of sync, retarded, like the poorly dubbed dialogue of a foreign movie.
The concentrated firing only lasted for an instant, then his children closed the ring, prepared to drag a riddled body from the bushes.
“Here he comes,” Lasser announced, grinning like a wolf.
And he was right. No sooner had he spoken than a fifth man joined the others, dropping from above and landing in a crouch behind the nearest of them, with his back turned toward the camera. Even so, there could be no doubt that it was the same man they had glimpsed short moments earlier.
“Look out!” Lasser warned, leaning toward the monitor as if he could protect the children somehow, warn them of their peril.
It was already too late.
As Radcliff watched the shrunken image, horrified, he saw the stranger grab one of his children by the head and twist, the body going limp, collapsing like an empty suit of clothes. Before the others could react to that, he struck out to the right and left with blows so swift the eye could not even follow them. Three down, and when the fourth of Radcliff’s children raised his weapon, squeezing off a burst of automatic fire, the stranger started dodging bullets, closing in to finish off his sweep.
Radcliff could never have explained exactly what he saw—the stranger’s body ducking, weaving, almost slithering, and yet without a seeming break in stride. It took perhaps two seconds for the man to reach the fourth of Radcliff’s children, twist the rifle from his grasp as if it were a toy, and do something one-handed that left the neck lolling at an odd angle.
“He can’t do that!” raged Lasser, grabbing for the walkie-talkie. “All sentries!” he snapped. “We have four men down. The subject has an M-16. Forget about detaining him. Just take him down!”