‘It’s me,’ Larry intoned into the cell. ‘I’m still at GAO, one hostage. I’ve got the files.’
Rikard stared in disbelief for a moment as Larry listened to the reply on his cell and nodded.
‘It will be done. What about this asshole?’
Larry listened to the response, nodded once, then shut off the cell. He slipped it into his pocket and put the briefcase down.
‘You?’ Rikard uttered.
Larry did not reply. He simply walked toward Rikard without fear, without compromise, without hesitation. No weapon, and yet Rikard somehow knew without a doubt that Larry, if that was even his real name, would be able to kill him without using one.
Rikard scrambled to his feet as his back hit the water cooler in the corner of the office. His hand rested on a desk beside him, nudged a thick ballpoint pen. He grabbed at it as Larry came within arm’s reach and swung it wildly toward the small man’s face.
Larry swatted the blow aside with one iron-hard forearm and then smashed his own forehead into Rikard’s mouth. Pain seared his jaw as his teeth crumpled backward in his mouth under the force of the blow. He felt his elbow being pinched hard and his legs and arms jangled and twitched in response as he collapsed onto his back on the desk.
Larry’s elbow slammed into Rikard’s solar plexus, driving the air from his lungs and smearing his vision into a blur of hazy light as he gagged and folded up.
Larry turned, one hand still pinching the nerves in Rikard’s elbow. He reached out and grabbed a Styrofoam cup from the stack alongside the water cooler, filled it with water and promptly poured half of it across Rikard’s chest and half of it across his shoes.
Rikard, blinded and almost entirely helpless, spat a spray of blood as he cried out.
‘What the fuck are you doing?’
Larry did not reply. He grabbed a nearby desk fan, dumped it on the desk and pinned it with one foot before he grasped the power cord and yanked hard. The cord snapped from the fan’s base, two copper wires glinting in the overhead lights.
Rikard’s vision sharpened as his body twitched beneath Larry’s grip. He saw the exposed wires plunge toward his chest.
‘No!’
The last thought that went through Rikard’s mind was that the office used 110-volt electricity. He’d once read that it was not strong enough to kill from a touch, unless it went straight through the chest. Electricity always traveled along the route of least resistance to the ground.
Larry hauled him off the desk and onto his feet as the wires touched Rikard high on his chest, just to the left of center. Rikard felt a tremendous surge of pain sear through his ribcage as the current plunged through him, his limbs trembling as he collapsed to the floor in a quivering mass.
Larry followed him down with the exposed wire, pressing the live copper against his chest until Rikard’s eyes rolled up in their sockets and foamy white saliva spilled from his mouth. Rikard twitched and quivered for several long seconds, and then slumped. Larry pulled the wires away and stared down at Rikard’s motionless corpse for a brief moment.
Then he turned and unplugged the desk fan cord from the socket, rolled it up and put it in his pocket. He grabbed Rikard’s briefcase and then strode from the office without looking back.
68
Ethan dropped the M1le and raised his hands, watching as Kurt advanced a pace alongside Jenkins, who still lay sprawled on the floor, gasping for breath.
‘Start talking,’ Kurt snapped at Ethan. ‘How did you get out of the store room and into the living quarters?’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ Ethan replied. ‘There’s no way out of here other than the mine entrance.’
‘You expect me to believe that?’ Kurt sneered. ‘Where the hell are Duran and Mary?’
Ethan shrugged.
‘Hiding out in the tunnels, maybe,’ he said. ‘Waiting for you and your little bunch of assholes to blow yourself sky-high.’
‘We’re not assholes,’ Jenkins spluttered. ‘We didn’t want this to happen!’
Kurt ignored Jenkins and raised the pistol to point at Ethan’s head.
‘Spill it, Warner, all of it, or I’ll blow your head clean off.’
Ethan glanced down at Jenkins and saw his opportunity. If you can’t defeat the enemy by pure force or guile, then turn your enemy against himself. He let a grim smile curl from his lips.
‘Do that, and you definitely won’t be getting out of here. Probably just a few minutes until that air strike arrives, Kurt, and it looks to me like you and your team are going nowhere.’
‘Don’t waste my time!’ Kurt yelled. ‘Answer me or I’ll shoot you just for the goddamned hell of it!’
‘And doom your own men to death down here?’ Ethan challenged. ‘Seems to me you’ve lost your way, Kurt. You’re supposed to lead your men not bargain their lives away. I’m guessing that you’ve got the data from those computer servers stashed away somewhere safe, out of your men’s reach?’
Jenkins looked up at Kurt, who shook his head.
‘I wish I had,’ he said, ‘but your partner decided to cover her own ass and stole the hard drive from me.’
Ethan glanced down at Jenkins.
‘I’m guessing that this asshole killed Dana Ford?’
Jenkins nodded.
‘He sent Proctor into the tunnel. Those things killed him too.’
‘Divide and conquer,’ Kurt said with a wry, cold grin as he stepped closer to Ethan. ‘You don’t think that you can turn my own men against me, do you?’
Ethan shrugged.
‘Don’t really need to. You’ve been doing a fine job of that yourself.’
Ethan saw Jenkins look over his shoulder. The mine entrance doors behind them started shuddering as the enraged creatures outside began trying to smash their way in with brute force, the blows echoing through the lonely facility.
‘That door’s not going to hold much longer, Kurt,’ Ethan said. ‘You kill me, you’ve achieved nothing and you still can’t get out of here.’
Kurt Agry stared at Ethan for several long moments, his jaw grinding as he suppressed the latent fury seething through his veins. Then, he straightened and made his decision.
‘You’re right, Warner,’ he said. ‘I can’t kill you. But if there’s one thing I learned in Afghanistan, it’s that if you apply the right kind of pressure you can make people tell you anything.’
Kurt lowered his aim and pointed his pistol at Ethan’s right knee.
‘You shoot, Kurt,’ Ethan warned him, ‘and you can be damned sure I’ll let myself die rather than tell any of you how to get out of here.’
Kurt grinned. ‘Thought you said there was no other way out of here?’
‘Not without me there isn’t.’
Kurt sneered at Ethan. ‘Let’s find out.’
He squeezed the pistol’s trigger.
The shot crashed out, but it flew wide as Jenkins reached up and smashed Kurt’s pistol to one side. Behind the sergeant, Klein rushed up and grabbed his shoulders and arms and together they dragged the kicking, screaming man to the ground.
Jenkins hurled his weight onto Kurt’s body, then looked at Ethan in desperation.
‘How do we get out of here?!’
Ethan made a decision of his own without conscious thought.
‘The crematorium,’ he said.
Before any of them could reply he turned and sprinted back down the corridor. He dashed into the living quarters and slammed the door behind him, then dragged two of the beds across the room and pinned the door shut from the inside.