“Satan’s flaming taint! Why do I get all the fun?”
Just then the balcony erupted in sparks as bullets ricocheted off the rail, and Rook realized the shots were coming from behind him. He was pinned.
THIRTY-NINE
Knight shoved Queen and Bishop out of the way, hurling a grenade at the door to the security suite, and another toward the damaged wet wall. Then he pulled the door closed all the way. The grenades exploded seconds later, and the door’s automatic bio-hazard seals inflated, then quickly deflated. Knight guessed they had been punctured by a grenade fragment.
Luckily, the locking mechanism didn’t engage, even though the seal had. He swung the door all the way open and loosed a burst of MP-5 fire around the room. No one had made it into the suite, but the previously damaged deathtrap wall was now a gaping hole into the adjacent bathroom, with pipes and spitting electrical wires having been cleared by the grenade blast. Knight leapt through the opening, his weapon up and ready to fire in the direction of the parallel corridor. Then he ran for the hall before Queen or Bishop had entered the bathroom.
Knight whipped the bathroom door open and prepared to blast any mercenaries in the long corridor, but all he saw to his right was a long pile of black-clad bodies, stretching back to the loading dock doors and beyond to the stairwell at that end. The other end of the hallway was clear except for some stone rubble near the end. Knight sprinted in that direction.
He found a storage room on his left. Ran past. Just as bullets pinged down the hallway near his feet, he dove through the next door, into a lounge. He quickly scanned the space. Sofas, a table. Nothing he could use. Beyond the lounge was an open double doorway filled with debris. He crossed to the doorway and looked in on what appeared to be a natural cave formation, but the room was filled with mechanical wreckage and the rubble of the collapsed ceiling. Above him, a few wooden cabinets and part of a tilted refrigerator hung out of the ruined ceiling. A kitchen, he thought.
He heard gunfire down the corridor. An AK-47. Queen and Bishop answered with a barrage of their own, spurring his climb up the rubble and wreckage, heading to the next level. Most of the kitchen floor was gone, but Knight managed to scramble into and out of the second floor kitchen. He pulled himself to a tottering standing position by the horizontal door handle. As soon as Knight stood, the handle of the door jiggled. The door opened inward. With nowhere to go but backward and down, he quickly leaned forward, straightening one arm above the door handle and leaning his weight against the shoulder. There was a tiny one-inch-square plastic catch at the bottom of the door designed to grab the stopper pin on the wall, so the door could be kept open. Knight placed the toe of one of his boots on the plastic box, and stepped up.
The door swung in abruptly, and Knight rode the back of the door as it swept him toward the wall. Two men rushed into the room only to find no floor on which to stand. They plummeted ten feet to the unexpected rubble below them. One man’s leg shattered on impact, and Knight could hear the sickening crunch of bones as he impacted a large piece of misshapen rock. Knight swung his MP-5 out in his left hand, firing two quick and deadly accurate three-round bursts before swinging around faster than most men can blink and firing twice more. The two men in the hall fell to the floor wearing matching surprised expressions frozen on their faces. One of them managed to squeeze off a single shot before he died, but Knight felt nothing. The quick spin and lingering effects of the gas stole Knight’s balance. He dropped the submachine gun knowing its strap would hold it in place. With his hand free, he reached out and snagged the front handle of the door, which was swinging closed. With a yank, he was upright again. Without people shooting at him, he slipped around the door and into the hall.
The two dead men dressed in black BDUs lay sprawled on the floor. One had a swarthy mustache, and the other man had tattoos of jigsaw pieces over one half of his face. Jigsaw man was still breathing, but unconscious.
There was no backup in sight. He looked right. The hallway ended at a T junction. He looked left. The hallway looked identical, but a woman suddenly appeared. He called to her. “Pawn!”
Asya ran up to him. “Are you alone?” He nodded and raised his MP-5, only to discover the weapon was ruined. The single shot fired by the merc had struck the MP-5’s barrel. The dent was small, but any imperfection could result in the weapon blowing up in his face.
He unlooped the submachine gun’s strap and dropped the weapon to the floor before drawing his Browning 9mm sidearm and pointing it down the long hallway.
“Everyone still alive?” he asked.
She nodded. “Queen and Bishop?”
“For now,” he said.
“Which way?” Asya asked.
“Your way. Up. Looking for a communications scrambler. Probably in Ridley’s office.” Knight said. He climbed to his feet, keeping a wary eye down the hallway.
“Just came from there. Nothing like that. Maybe in the labs upstairs?”
“Worth a try.”
He followed her around the corner to the stairwell. Distant bursts of automatic weapons fire echoed up from below. Asya opened the door to the stairwell and glanced down. No one in sight. She motioned for him to follow. Knight stepped into the landing and looked up. Finding no sentry, he raced up the concrete steps to the next level’s door, clearly marked Sub Level 1 in black letters. He peered through the chicken wire-reinforced glass window and found an empty hallway. He said a silent prayer for small favors and slipped into the hall. Asya was right behind him.
“Been in there,” Knight said, passing the initial lab doors through which he and the others had entered the facility. He started walking past the doors and down the hall.
“What about this one?” Asya asked. She pointed to a set of doors across from the Microbiology Lab. The sign next to the doors read Cold Lab. Beside that was a small stylized icon of a seven-headed dragon.
“They have tissue samples of the hydra in there,” Knight said, and he kept walking, quickening his pace. The hydra had been reawakened after its long, petrified sleep in a Manifold lab, just like this, while he traded bullets with Manifold’s security force. He wasn’t eager for a repeat.
“Are you sure?” Asya asked, joining him in his long strides down the hallway.
“Pretty sure.”
Asya smiled. “Last Crusade. Love that movie.”
“Indy never had to face a multi-headed regenerating nightmare. I would have taken the snakes.”
Further down the long hallway, they came to two more sets of doors on opposite sides. The room on the left was labeled Data Lab, the room on the right, Sequencing Lab.
Knight popped his head into the Data Lab. The room was dark, but the acoustics inside told him it was large. He found the light switch on the wall, and flicked it with an audible snap. Long rows of overhead lights flickered to life, revealing desk after desk of computer stations, reminding Knight of Hollywood versions of NASA or NORAD headquarters. At the far end of the room was a radio station with a long, thick rubber-coated black antenna. Although all the other computers in the huge lab had been turned off, this station was alive with green and red LED lights.
“Is that—” Asya began.
Knight raised his pistol and fired off three shots, shattering the equipment in the corner and throwing a shower of sparks into the air.