Montross was shaking his head. “Should have known nothing’s that easy. My fault too. This was my baby and I wanted it so air-tight.” His expression twisted into a fierce one that Caleb now recognized and hated as it brought back memories. “Jesus, if this Boris is powerful enough to project these images into so many of us, dupe us all…”
“We have to question everything, have to…damn, not even use our powers?” Orlando backed up as he looked to Phoebe, who reached out for his hand.
“So that’s the cause of our immediate problem,” Montross said, “and now I understand why we failed — why instead of taking out public enemy number one we just blew up a refuge full of kids and women of God. But the larger problem now is that they are going to want heads on a platter.”
“Ours?” Caleb let out a thin gasp. “Do they even know? You’ve kept the truth from them, right? Explained our successes as just excellent intelligence gathering?”
Montross’ eyes fell. “I have, but that veil of secrecy has always been paper thin, and now they’re coming at it with flamethrowers. I can’t hold it back, but I’ll do my best to buy us some more time.”
“Time for what?” Caleb started to ask, but then the door burst open. “Alexander?”
His son and Aria rushed inside, breathless. “We have to run!” she yelled.
Alexander pointed behind him. “They’re coming!”
Montross suddenly flinched on the screen. “Oh my god. I didn’t have time, didn’t ask or even try to look — they knew about this, had it all set up. A simultaneous assault.”
“What?” Caleb had rocked to his feet with Phoebe.
“Get out!” Montross shouted as the screen went black.
Phoebe grabbed his arm. The lights all went dark.
And gunshots erupted from outside.
11
Caleb staggered out into a crowd of others already running. Alarms were blazing as the auxiliary lights kicked on and safety measures were released — extra mag locks on the main doors, but by the sounds in the lobby it was too little too late.
They’d gotten in before any warning — something normally impossible at a facility with an exceptional early warning system.
“The twins!” Phoebe yelled, running out into the hall.
Orlando let go of her hand. “You go! I’m going to…”
The doors burst open and four men in black burst in, guns drawn.
They wouldn’t, Caleb thought in horror as the men took aim and fired. Except these weren’t regular rounds.
“Tranqs!” Orlando yelled, seeing four administrators and two security guards fall in place.
At least that’s something. Caleb pushed Phoebe free of Orlando, regretting it at once, but knowing what he had to do, even as he reached for Alexander. “Elevator!” he yelled, “Get the twins, then run for it. Your thumbprints are coded for the emergency access level. Go!”
“What?” Alexander looked up pleadingly, with scared eyes Caleb hadn’t seen since he had to leave the boy in the ruins of the Alexandrian library five years ago.
“We have a thumb scanner, and a secret level?” Orlando ducked as a tranq dart whizzed by his head, then followed the others, running around a corner, where Caleb pushed his son and Phoebe toward a set of double doors.
“Need-to-know basis.”
“And I didn’t need to know?”
“Go!”
Orlando hesitated, meeting Phoebe’s look, then Caleb’s.
“Trust me,” Caleb said to Orlando. “They’ll make it, but only if we buy some time.”
“What’s down there?” Phoebe shouted back, as she ran, leading Aria and the reluctant Alexander.
“You’ll recognize it!”
“Dad—?”
Caleb yelled over his shoulder as he led Orlando in the other direction. “Find your brother! Find Nina!”
Then they were gone and he and Orlando paused at the opposite set of doors until the sound of boots neared the corner of the hall they had just rounded, then he dashed inside with Orlando. The darts flew, thudding into the closing door.
Locking it behind him, Caleb lowered his head and focused.
“What are you doing?”
He raised his hand. “Scouting a way out of this.”
“Ah…” Orlando fidgeted, hearing the boots on the other side, approaching. They were in the training room, a large arena-like space, with dozens of stations for automatic writing and drawing, cubes with multi-lighting options and headphones, gaming stations, a fitness area with treadmills, bikes and other weights all to exhaust the body and free the mind.
“Umm only one door out of here, boss, so I’m thinking we take that and run for it?”
“Hang on, I see it.”
“What?”
“Their patterns. Stormed the lobby, fanned out as expected to administration, taking us down with tranqs.”
“Like we’re dogs.”
“Or mutants, so we don’t use our powers.”
“We’re not X-Men! What, are they worried that we’d pick out the color of their wives’ underwear?”
“Shut up, and go.”
“Yeah, back door, like I said.”
“No. Vent, right there…”
Gunshots behind them, this time real ones. Shooting at the lock, Caleb thought. “They’ll be in soon, move it.”
Orlando didn’t have to be told twice. He raced across the room, moving aside a desk. Knelt by the square vent, his Swiss Army Knife out. Forgoing the screwdriver, he went right for the larger blade. Drove it between the wall and yanked backwards until the vent casing popped from the wall, then he tore it away.
“After you, boss.”
Caleb dove inside, twisting his body around the first bend, just as he heard the door burst open at the back of the room. But Orlando was in, scampering behind him. Another turn and a short drop, and while Orlando waited in the darkness above, Caleb kicked out at the lower vent.
It popped free and he was out — swinging over a ledge and dropping into a maintenance and boiler room. A generator, hot water tank, a wall of storage sheds, and a set of stairs going up.
Orlando landed beside him. “Good call, now…stairs to the lobby?”
“Wait…” Caleb put a hand to his forehead, clenching his eyes.
A glimpse of a trio of SWAT-looking men, guns drawn, waiting beside the door overlooking the lobby entrance. Another flash and another hallway and a dozen soldiers rounding up the unconscious Stargate members.
“Damn. No, there’s a guard contingent outside the door to the first level, and the second. But…”
He opened his eyes, running for the stairs. “The roof! Move quietly up the stairs.”
They ran up and around, again and again, out of breath but still pushing. With every step, Caleb prayed that Alex, Aria and Phoebe and the twins made it to the escape channel, prayed that their enemies didn’t know what they couldn’t know — what only Caleb and Montross had planned in the eventuality of just such an extreme situation.
“Wait,” Orlando said, gripping his arm as they rounded the last bend.
“What? We’re almost there. Get topside on the roof, then with any luck, we can shimmy down the east side where we’re flanked by other buildings and out of sight, and…”
“I don’t know about shimmying, but have you stopped to think that whatever you’re seeing…may be what this Boris guy wants you to see?”
Caleb paused, his hand on the doorknob, after removing the latch to the roof access. He looked back to Orlando. “Damn. You’re right.” He looked back at the door, which he had started to open. “Although I don’t really see as we have a choice.”
“Well we could go back down, hide in the storage units until they’re gone. That, we could scry with some success. I know it’s not the most heroic of escapes, but hell, we escape. Who knows what these a-holes want with us, but I for one don’t want to wind up in a CIA lab, or—”