“How long before you can pull Kirtley?”
“Three minutes.”
“Set the controls to refreeze. We have to leave him,” Dalton said. “We don’t have three minutes.”
“We can’t-”
“Do it,” Dalton cut Hammond off. “It’s his only chance.”
Hammond quickly entered the commands, having Sybyl reverse the process.
“Where are your technicians?” Dalton asked.
“In their billets along the main corridor. I always clear the control room once people go over. Standard procedure, since I can run everything through Sybyl.”
“How many?”
“Eight people.”
Dalton saw it was too late for Hammond ’s support team. The main corridor was already half overrun. As he watched on the monitor, one of Hammond ’s white-coated techs stepped out of a door to be instantly cut down with a burst of automatic weapon fire.
Dalton turned to Hammond. “There has to be a main air shaft for this place. Something that comes out on the mountain other than the main entrance.”
“I don’t know,” Hammond said.
Dalton knew they didn’t have time to stand around and think. One of the tenets he’d learned early in his military career was that action, even the wrong one, was better than standing around in the kill zone, which is what he figured the control room was going to become in about a minute.
“Come on.” He ran toward the service elevator. Hammond pulled a CD-ROM disk out of the mainframe before following.
The door slowly slid open when he hit the button.
“Sergeant Major and Dr. Hammond.”
Dalton spun about in surprise at the familiar voice. Raisor’s image was floating in the air behind them. Dalton didn’t hesitate, pressing the Down button. The doors slid shut.
Raisor appeared inside. “Can’t get rid of me that easily. You both should know that.” He considered Hammond. “You cut me off.”
“I ordered her to,” Dalton cut in. “You disregarded the mission.” He was watching the numbers click as the elevator descended.
“No, I was doing my mission. You have no idea what’s going on here, do you?”
“I don’t think you do either,” Dalton answered. The elevator came to a halt. The doors opened. The cavern that had housed Sybyl III was in front of them. The generators still hummed, providing power to Sybyl IV. “You know who betrayed your sister, don’t you?”
“McFairn,” Raisor said.
Dalton laughed at the image floating in front of him, while his eyes darted about, searching. “Who’s McFairn?”
“Deputy Director of the NSA.”
The generators were diesel. There had to be an air duct bringing in fresh air for them and removing the exhaust. “McFairn is just a puppet. Your sister discovered something about HAARP. About the Priory. That’s your real enemy. And my enemy too. Do you trust these people you are with? Do you know who they are? Who they work for?” Dalton asked as he walked toward the generators, Hammond close by his side.
“I don’t have to trust them. They’re giving me back my body. I know for sure I don’t trust you,” he added.
“Fine. I recommend you go back then and make sure everything’s all right, because I left charges on all the tubes.” He checked his watch. “Set to go off in two minutes. That will guarantee you never get back to your body, because it will be in a thousand pieces.”
Raisor’s image disappeared.
“Come on,” Dalton was ripping off a panel on a large tube that ran behind the rows of generators, connected to each by several rubber hoses. He was greeted with the stench of diesel exhaust. The tube was three feet in diameter. A tight fit.
“Cut off the generators,” he told Hammond.
She threw the master switch and a sudden silence filled the cavern. Then there was a hum as the rows of backup batteries kicked in power. Dalton stuck his head in. Utter darkness. “Let’s go.”
Raisor appeared in the room holding his sister’s team and his own tube. Valika and her mercenaries were searching the operations center. He heard another burst of automatic weapons firing as he searched for the charges. Nothing.
The Russian poked her head through the door and saw him. “What do we need to take with us?”
Dalton had lied about the charges, he knew that now. Raisor would have laughed if he were capable of it. He had what he had come for. He pointed. “My sister’s tube. And mine. And the master computer. I’ll show you. And there are two people trying to escape in the generator room. You might want to go down there and stop them.”
Valika ran toward the freight elevator, calling for several of the mercenaries to come with her. She ordered others to work with Raisor, who was now behind the command console.
“The power’s been cut off,” Raisor said. “We’re running on backup batteries. You need to restart the generators.”
Valika acknowledged that as the elevator doors shut.
She rode down to the lowest level. As soon as the door began opening, she jumped through, weapon at the ready. “Search,” she ordered as she slowly made her way to the generators, weapon sweeping back and forth. She saw that the master switch was off. She flipped it back up and the room filled with the roar of the diesel engines.
“Here!” one of the merks yelled from behind the generators.
Valika ran around to where he was pointing. She coughed at the foul fumes that were pouring out of the removed panel. She knew exactly where the two Raisor had mentioned had gone. “Put the panel back on.”
Dalton heard the sound of the generators starting. “Go!” he shoved Hammond not too gently on her derriere. He had no idea how far it was to the outlet. They were scrambling as quickly as they could, but it was difficult in the narrow tube.
He bumped into Hammond ’s rear as she suddenly halted.
“What’s wrong?”
“Do you hear it?”
“Hear what?”
“There’s something just ahead of us. Something running.”
Dalton tried to hear over the roar of the generators reverberating up the tube. He caught the first whiff of exhaust fumes. She was right. A rhythmic sound ahead.
“A fan,” Hammond said. “There’s got to be a fan pulling the exhaust out. Jesus, I could have run right into it.”
“We can’t stay here.”
“I don’t know where the fan is,” Hammond said. “I can’t see a damn thing.”
“We need to go forward.” Dalton squeezed up against Hammond, trying to get by. Their bodies pressed tight together and he inched past her. Once past, he began moving. “Come on.” He focused all his senses forward, keying on the sound of the fan, hearing it get closer, feeling the air moving on his cheeks getting stronger. As was the smell of the diesel exhaust.
Soon he knew they were close to the fan. The sound of it turning was louder than the generators, filling the tube. He could feel the backwash from it. A dozen feet away. Maybe more. He edged forward.
Stop.
For a second Dalton thought it was Hammond who had spoken.
Now.
He knew that voice better than any other, but it was inside his head. Marie. Dalton stopped.
A drop.
He reached forward with his hand. The floor of the tube abruptly ended less than a foot in front of him. Feeling about, Dalton realized the tube made a ninety-degree turn down. If he had continued, he’d have fallen in, to meet the fan, which he could now hear clearly just below.
Dalton pulled his pistol out and pointed it downward, hoping he was aiming for the center. He fired, shifting aim slightly each time he pulled the trigger. He heard several of the rounds hit metal. The seventh one did the trick, hitting the motor in the center of the fan. It stuttered to a halt.