Fortuin pursed his lips, and Marie-Elise gave him a reassuring nod.
“Try your best, you two,” she added, including Adenauer. He had worked diligently by Gary’s side, not stepping away for even a minute.
“We will, we are,” Gary replied, a frown creasing his brow.
There was significant risk involved in what they were trying to do. They would be in the same space with the Russians when the aerosol was going to be released. They needed to stay lucid, with their motor functions and judgment sharp and quick, and two of those anesthetics didn’t even have an antidote known to science.
“It will work,” Adenauer said resolutely. ”It has to. I’ve measured and calculated everything carefully. I even took into account their average weight and their obviously increased metabolic rate, and the high likelihood that they’re steroid users. I’ve considered our group’s average weight, age, and metabolic rates in formulating the antidote. It will work, I promise you.”
He sounded so sure of himself, so authoritative. Gary envied that composure, that grip the scientist had on the facts, the data, and his own emotions. The man was a rock. An arrogant, slightly unnerving one, yet a rock, and a real asset to any scientific team, especially one in distress.
“How about the antidote?” Marie-Elise continued to probe. “What will we take?”
“Well, considering what we had to work with,” Gary disclaimed before enumerating, “we’re going to use naloxone as an opioid antagonist, methylphenidate, better known to us all as Ritalin, to give us the equivalent of an adrenalin shot to the brain, and caffeine. With this mix, I am hoping we’ll survive the anesthetic gas cloud bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.”
Silence fell heavy for a minute or so.
“There is nothing in that mix to counteract the desflurane, is there?” Jane asked.
“There is nothing known to man to counteract desflurane,” Adenauer announced pedantically.
“Then why do we want to use it? It also happens to stink like a motherfucker,” Jane continued, her choice of language bringing disapproval in both Adenauer and Fortuin’s eyes.
“Desflurane is the only anesthetic with proven aerosol delivery effectiveness that we happen to have in this joint,” Gary replied. “We have no idea how effective fentanyl and thiopental will be if inhaled; I don’t think it was documented anywhere, and we can’t really browse the Internet and do research right now. Both can be lethal if injected in high doses, but I have never seen them used in aerosolized form, without a mask. So pardon me if I wanted some reassurance that they’re gonna hit the deck face down and quickly,” he clarified, gesturing vaguely in King Cobra’s direction.
No one argued with that logic; there was little that could be said.
“I do think I have a way to minimize our exposure to desflurane,” Gary added, “but it’s tricky.”
Adenauer lifted his eyes from the micro-scale’s screen.
“Let’s play through this, all right?” Gary started explaining. “Let’s assume Teng goes out there and persuades them to come in here by the hordes. Five, six, who knows how many? They can only enter through there, right?”
He pointed at the huge, rusty door, the only access point to their makeshift lab, and continued. “Then they’d climb down those few steps and, at least for a moment, stop there, around that first table. I’m thinking we could move these other two tables to cut their direct access to the back of the lab, and sort of keep them near that first table. See my point? They’d stay together, waiting on Bogdanov’s direction, for at least ten, maybe twenty seconds. If we release the aerosol right there and then, we’d have a better chance to floor them quickly. As for us, we could huddle toward the far end of those tables. Let’s say we move the lab rats back over there and run a test, give us an excuse to be huddled over there. Declan can stay on his cot; he’s far enough as it is.”
“What’s the catch?” Jane asked, reading the hesitation in Gary’s voice correctly.
“Well, we need someone to volunteer to deliver the aerosolized mix at the precise moment they come through that door. We can’t control the time they’d burst in through there, so we have to have someone manually start the release.”
“I’ll do it,” Adenauer offered. “I’m the most massive of the entire group. My body mass will work in my favor.”
“I was offering to do that,” Gary objected. ”I’m younger; I can hold my breath for longer, and I should be able to recover easily after I stop breathing it in.”
“Nonsense,” Adenauer pushed back. “You’re one of our very few combatants. You need to be able to shoot those guns. I can’t do that; I’ve never fired a weapon in my life. It’s decided. I’ll release the gas.”
Gary shoved his hands in his jeans pockets. Stubborn, arrogant, old fool… there was no point in arguing with him.
“All right, then, let’s move that table over there, just say we need to have more space for another centrifuge. As soon as the gas mix is ready and pressurized, we’ll tuck the canister between the two centrifuges and the chromatograph. They won’t see it.” He stared at Adenauer with concerned eyes. “You release, and you step back toward where we’ll be, understood? The compound is very strong. Don’t take any stupid risks, Theo. You could die.” He bit his lip, then explained further. “We were willing to err on the side of speed rather than caution, so the anesthetic mix is a bit strong,” he added apologetically.
“I know precisely just how strong it is,” Adenauer replied. “I’ll be fine.”
“OK, then, we’re set. Let’s test the compound on the rodents first.”
Jane fed one rodent a capsule, returned it to the cage, and let it sit a few seconds to take effect. Then she released a small burst of gas through the tube leading to the transparent case. Within seconds, the two other rats fell to the ground, apparently lifeless. The third rat still stood, fidgeting and sniffing around, doing fine, even if a little agitated.
“A bit strong,” Jane said, while extending a high five to Gary.
“Let the fuckers bite the dust,” Gary replied, this time his profanity elicited a smile instead of an eye roll from Dr. Adenauer.
The rusty door was shoved open with a startling noise, and Bogdanov approached their group with big steps.
“What’s going on?” he asked, looking at the cage.
“Just another failed test,” Gary replied impassively. “Only the antidote rodent survived the test.”
“Blyad! You’re a lame bunch of incompetent idiots! You have one hour, then I will start killing one of you bastards every hour until you give me what I need.”
…54
Myatlev had given up going out for lunch; his appetite had vanished, swallowed by the wave of paranoid thoughts taking over his mind, replacing his typical logical thinking with anxiety-driven, nonsensical thoughts.
He didn’t feel hungry anymore, but there was a persistent, annoying pain in the pit of his stomach, gnawing at him, spewing hissing jets of acid, making him miserable. With a long, frustrated sigh, he called his admin and asked for a cup of chamomile tea, making her raise an eyebrow and ask whether he liked anything stronger added to the tea. That was unprecedented; he never drank tea, but he hoped the warm, soothing liquid would dilute the burning acid in his stomach and take away the pain nested in there.