Dalton could hear Hammond coughing. He felt lightheaded and very calm. He knew both were a bad sign. The lack of anxiety meant his mind was starting to shut down from the exhaust poisoning.
Reholstering his pistol, Dalton edged his feet over and lowered himself until he came in contact with one of the blades of the fan. He tested his weight-it held. Of course, he had no idea how the drop was below the fan.
Slide.
“Come on,” Dalton called to Hammond. He reached up. “Give me your hand.”
He searched in the darkness and then finally felt her flesh. He gripped it and pulled her toward him, despite her screech of protest. He held her weight in his arms. “We have to slide between the blades.”
“ ‘Slide’?” Hammond coughed. “Are you crazy? It’s a straight drop, God knows how far.”
“We’ll be safe. I know.”
There was no answer. Dalton shook Hammond and she stirred, muttering something. He lowered her between the blades and let go. Then he followed.
He dropped straight for about ten feet, then hit the side of the tube. As he slid he realized it was curving back to the horizontal. He put his arms and legs out, trying to slow down, afraid of slamming into Hammond whenever the tube reached the end.
Despite his efforts, he hit her hard, slamming her up against a grate. He felt fresh, cold air on his face.
Raisor had wanted to go back to his body before they left Bright Gate, but Valika denied him that option. She had seen the two Blackhawks leaving as they arrived and was sure some sort of alert had already been broadcast and reinforcements were most likely on their way. She had her mercenaries racing about, unhooking Sybyl and moving the two designated isolation tubes to the landing grate.
“What about the others?” she asked Raisor, indicating the tubes containing the rest of the other three teams.
“According to the computer, the only one who is still technically alive is him.” Raisor pointed at Kirtley’s tube.
“Do we need him?” Valika asked.
“No. And he’ll be lost as soon as you finish unhooking the computer.”
She tucked the stock of the MP- 5 in her shoulder and aimed at the tube. She fired a sustained burst, shattering the tube and freeing the freezing liquid. An alarm went off and a yellow warning light began flashing. One of the ancillary computer monitors flickered and came on. A man’s face appeared.
“Dr. Hammond.” Kirtley’s voice came out of the computer’s speakers, his face appearing on the screen.
Raisor and Valika went to the screen.
“If you are seeing this,” the man on the screen continued, “something has gone wrong and I am dead. I warned you not to do anything. You should have taken me more seriously.”
Valika looked from the screen to the body half-hanging out of the tube she had just shot. “It’s him,” she said, pointing. She had a very bad feeling about this, which was immediately confirmed as the man on the screen continued talking.
“If this program is activated, it means that life signs from my isolation tube have flat-lined-that you’ve killed me. So in keeping with my warning, I will now kill you and everyone else in the facility.” The face on the screen smiled and his right hand appeared, holding a watch. “Sixty seconds. How does it feel to know you only have a minute of life left?”
Valika didn’t wait to see any more. “Bomb! Evacuate!” she screamed at the mercenaries as she raced toward the exit. They dropped what they were doing and followed her.
Raisor didn’t run. The tube containing his body was on a cart near the door to the corridor abandoned. Along with the Aura generator that was giving him what little power he had. He looked at the screen.
“Fifty seconds,” Kirtley said. “I have to assume, though, that is more time than you gave me when you did whatever it is you did to me.”
Raisor reached out and flowed into the computer. Perhaps whatever Kirtley had planned was being run by the computer and he could stop it. He raced along electronic pathways, searching.
“Forty seconds. I was recruited by the Priory. Do you know that?” Kirtley’s voice echoed in the now empty control room, but inside the computer Raisor could still hear the words. He found the location of the recording, then followed the thread of data to a link with Sybyl’s monitoring program. Wrong way, Raisor realized with alarm-this was the direction the alert had come to start the destruct program. He reversed direction.
“Thirty seconds.”
On the grate, Valika jumped on board the Huey, grabbing a headset. “Lift,” she ordered the pilot. “Now!” she added with emphasis.
The helicopter shuddered as the pilot increased power. The blades began turning faster, but they were still on the grate. Valika knew it took time to gain enough blade speed to take off. She smacked the firewall in frustration at the blades turning overhead, willing them to go faster.
Raisor was back through the computer that Kirtley had used to display his message, passing along a data line to the computer that ran Bright Gate’s environmental system.
“Twenty seconds.”
Then Raisor “saw” it. Plastic explosive wired to each of the tanks holding the fuel for the generators. The detonator switch on each wasn’t electric-which he could have manipulated-but rather an acid drip over which he had no control.
“Ten seconds.”
The Huey’s skids lifted.
“Get us away from here as quickly as possible,” Valika told the pilot.
He responded by nosing over and dropping altitude along the slope of the mountain to gain speed. Valika turned and looked back, waiting.
The acid ate through, activating the detonators.
Raisor’s essence was right next to the first of the fuel tanks. He would have laughed if he had had a mouth to issue the sound.
All four tanks exploded, ripping through the levels of Bright Gate.
Dalton staggered.
“What the hell was that?” Hammond cried out as she fell to her knees.
The entire mountain trembled. Dalton could see the night sky on the other side of the grate. His fingers scrambled around, trying to find a latch. He could hear something coming from behind them, like a freight train out of control.
He gave up looking for a latch and threw his shoulder into it, feeling the pain of his recent wound reopening. The grate didn’t give. He yelled and threw himself against it once more, holding nothing back, feeling the shock of hitting the metal through every cell of his being, but it gave way and he tumbled out, half expecting to go sliding down the mountain out of control, but instead landing on a ledge. He scrambled to his feet. The sound was getting closer. He grabbed Hammond, pulled her to his chest, then pressed against the side of the mountain, to the right of the opening.
A tongue of flame exploded out of the opening and into the night sky.
18
Searchlights highlighted the shuttle Columbia against the night sky at Vandenburg Air Force Base. The countdown was proceeding on schedule for a dawn launch. The shuttle was mated with the two solid rocket boosters and external fuel tank, putting the tip of the external tank 184.2 feet above the ground, while the base of the two external rockets reached the ground. The entire system weighed over four and a half million pounds.
“T minus six hours zero zero minutes. Next planned hold is at T minus three hours. Tower crew perform ETand TPS ice, frost and debris evaluation. ET is ready for LOX and LH2 loading. Verify orbiter ready for LOX and LH2 loading.”
The reason Vandenburg was the launch site instead of the more traditional Cape was the need to put the last MIL STAR satellite in a polar orbit. The Cape was used when a shuttle was to be put in an equatorial orbit, Vandenburg for polar insertions. The trajectory for Columbia was planned to be within twelve degrees of due north. The first mission once reaching orbit was to deploy the CS-MILSTAR satellite, thus making the system-and HAARP-operational worldwide.