"Dale, you okay?" he heard another man whisper in the darkness.
"Yeah," Cris whispered, to disguise his voice. He placed two fingers on the carotid artery of the man beneath him. He could feel nothing.
Cris shook his head, then put the murderous act behind him. It was the way he'd been taught to do it in Special Forces Recon.
He moved away from the body with the newly acquired Uzi in his hand. The grip plate on the barrel was still warm with the heat from the dead man's hand. Cris estimated a spot forty-five degrees from the center point of the original line of fire. If guards were in either a V or W formation, that should be where the man who had just whispered would be hiding. Cris moved closer
"That you, Dale?" the man called out from almost the exact place in the bushes Cris had targeted.
"Please… oh God, oh God, don't stick that in me," Dexter pleaded. He was down to his underwear and shirt, seated in a chair in the lab, as Fannon plugged his homemade lie detector into a wall socket. Kincaid then adjusted the rheostat.
"Zero," he said, matter-of-factly. "Gotta start at zero, or it won't go in." Then he moved to Dexter DeMille. "Get 'em off, bub." Fannon pointed to DeMille's boxer shorts.
"Please, please, I'll do anything," Dexter whined.
Then there was a short burst of machine-gun fire outside, followed by another burst, which had a distinctly different pitch.
"Two weapons," Fannon said, reading the gun reports accurately. "Get everything loaded. We're pulling out," he ordered.
Randall Rader gathered up the three Prion vials, stuffed them into the foam-rubber carrying case, then jammed it into his backpack and headed to the door of the lab. "Get yer pants on," Fannon yelled.
Dexter jumped up and tried to get into his trousers. He was hopping around on one foot. He'd been saved the horrible experience of the prostate-cooking polygraph, but now with machine-gun fire outside he didn't know which to fear more.
"Let's go!" Fannon shouted.
Dexter got his pants on and was carrying his shoes as they pulled him out of the lab, running into the hall.
Outside the corridor, the three guards, including R. V. and the Texas Madman, were locked and loaded. They led the way. Fannon and Dexter followed, with Randall Rader bringing up the rear. They opened the door into the staircase and thundered up the metal stairs. None of them saw Stacy hiding down below.
Fannon held Dexter by the back of his shirt on the landing just inside the building. With his automatic pistol pressed against the scientist's shoulder blades, he whispered coarsely, "You go where I push, or I'm gonna drop yer sorry ass and move right over ya."
"Okay," Dexter squeaked.
Fannon pushed him out into the night, running behind him, using Dexter for a shield.
They ran across the grass to the right side of the building. Suddenly, a jeep came roaring up the street and turned into the yard. Inside the vehicle were two Torn Victor commandos.
Randall Rader and the Texas Madman opened up as soon as the jeep turned. Their deadly barrage of nine-millimeter automatic-weapon fire tore the commandos right out of their seats. The men flew backward, dead as they hit the ground. The last rounds sparked loudly against the jeep's metal, ricocheting with a rich whining tone as bullets tore off pieces of the still-moving vehicle.
The empty jeep, its headlights boring holes into the darkness, rattled on for almost twenty yards before it crashed into the monument sign announcing Science Building 1666, USAMRIID.
"Take the jeep!" Fannon screamed.
They all ran toward the vehicle. Then another machine gun ripped the darkness. Flame was shooting out of its barrel from about forty yards away.
It was Cris Cunningham, lying prone behind a low wall. He hit one member of the Christian Choir, who went down where he stood. The Texas Madman took the second burst. He stumbled as ten rounds blew his stomach wide open. He took two more uncertain steps, then fell into the back seat of the jeep. Robert Vail jumped in, and after one look, threw the Madman out onto the ground. Fannon got behind the wheel, dragging Dexter along with him and pushing him into the back seat with R. V. Randall Rader turned to where Cris was lying behind the wall and laid down a barrage of withering fireBullets chipped off the low concrete-and-brick; masonry dust made a fan of unseen debris in the darkness.
Then the jeep was going, moving fast, the wheels throwing huge chunks of wet grass out behind it. Cris stood up and fired as it roared away. Fannon turned off the headlights, and then Cris was shooting only at the retreating sound. He didn't hear any of his rounds hit metal.
Stacy heard the gunfire and prayed that Cris was all right. She was moving up the one flight of stairs from the lower basement into the basement hallway. She found the lab where they had been working. The light was still on, the door open. She moved into the lab just as the sound of gunfire outside stopped. She glanced quickly around and saw the workbench. She moved over to it and looked down at the papers that Dexter had left behind. They were DNA charts, but she didn't have time to read them. Then she saw something that froze her heart. It was right in front of her on the glass beakers that contained the acids and bases used to alter pH factors. She reached out and picked up one of the beakers. The label was in Max's neat handwriting. It read: "A. C. I2-i6:C." She looked at the other beakers and saw that his handwriting was on all of them.
Max had worked in this lab. Worked on DNA samples, using acidosis to do what? Was Max helping Dexter target these Prions? she wondered. It was impossible for her to believe he had been working here in the basement of the Devil's Workshop.
Then she heard shouting out front, and more machine-gun fire. She ran up the stairs and out of the building.
She was standing outside in the moonless night wondering which way to run. She heard a jeep pull down the road and make a sharp turn, its tortured tires squealing on the pavement.
Cris had turned and gone back to where he had left Stacy. When he arrived, she wasn't there. "Stacy!" he called out.
"Here," she yelled from across the quad.
"Let's go!" he shouted.
Then the two of them started running out the way they'd come in, heading back toward the field and the narrow trail in the woods.
"What happened?" She was panting as she ran.
"Don't talk." And he moved even faster.
She could barely keep up with him. They were heading across the open field toward the hills when the moon suddenly reappeared, lighting their escape.
A siren went off behind them at the Fort. Then a bank of lights lit up the common area near Building 1666, but they were almost into the hills unseen and running for all they were worth.
They finally got to the temporary safety of the woods. Cris turned and looked back. Now they could see the headlights of twenty or so vehicles roaring on the campus streets a half mile away, converging on Building 1666.
"What happened? I was afraid you'd been shot," she said.
"I told you to stay put," he said, out of breath and angry.
"I heard shooting," she repeated.
He shook his head in dismay, then turned his attention to their escape route. "We can't stay here," he said. "In a few minutes they're going to find the guys I killed."
"You killed people?"
"Yeah, I think so," he croaked bitterly. "We've gotta get moving. This isn't safe. If those Fort commandos went to the same ground-ops school I did, they'll pick up our footprints in the wet grass. They'll make us in no time."