“That’s your cue,” I whispered. “They will be going through the basement entrance.”
Jolie stepped to the edge of the wall. She dropped and glided down, silent as an owl.
She landed on the grass between the hotel and the annex, where the guards couldn’t see her.
The cart rumbled toward the access ramp. As they turned to drive down the ramp, Jolie bolted around the corner and jumped into the cart behind the guards.
The cart disappeared from view. The door rattled open, then rattled again to close. Jolie was inside. My turn.
The annex roof had two lattice microwave antennas, five dishes pointed upward, and half a dozen whips arranged around a circular dish mounted flush with the roof. This dish sat right over the pedestal in the floor below. What was the purpose of this dish? It didn’t look like a hatch. Was it an antenna? Did it have something to do with the cylinders inside?
I spotted a large square hatch. From its position along the center of the northern wall I knew it lay over the freight elevator that connected the lab to the lower floors. This was my way inside.
I flexed my legs and leaped for the annex. I spun my arms to keep the momentum. As I approached the roof, I summoned my powers of levitation so that I landed on the roof as softly as a pair of women’s silk panties falling against a carpet.
I continued to levitate, and my feet barely touched the roof as I walked to the hatch.
It was made of steel, with two big hinges and a simple handle. No lock was visible. The hatch must be secured from the inside and rigged to the alarm. I knew the moment I pried the hatch open the circus would start.
Voices carried across the hotel roof. A guard called out: “Tom? Jerry? Why aren’t you guys answering the radio?”
Tom and Jerry? Who else was up there? Woody Woodpecker?
From this angle I couldn’t see the guard, but I could hear his boots creep across the roof.
I grasped the handle of the hatch.
He whispered, “Uh-oh.” Then he shouted, “Command Group, two guards down on the roof. Code 116.”
An electronic horn sounded and red lights flashed throughout the compound.
They know we’re here.
I gave the hatch a mighty tug. The handle bent. I pulled again. Something inside snapped and the hatch swung open.
A red light flashed in my face. The alarm shrieked. The hatch opened to a shaft that dropped to the basement four stories below. A wire dangled from inside the hatch. The guards would know I had come through here.
I floated down the shaft and landed on the edge of the elevator door to the third floor, to plan my next move.
I looked across the shaft and stared into the lens of a video camera. The elevator doors opened behind me. A hand emerged and dropped a grenade.
Chapter
49
Nice move, if I were human. I swatted the grenade back through the door and slid it closed.
The voices on the other side yelped in terror.
Anticipating the explosion, I braced myself against the jamb of the door and rode out the blast.
The plan had been to get Clayborn first and then come back to this floor and free Carmen from the cylinder. But the guards knew about me and that I was after Carmen. I had to see if she was okay.
I slid the door open and sprang inside. Acrid smoke from the explosion billowed around me. Peltier and Krandall stumbled about, their faces ashen, and dust settled on their black SWAT garb. Surprise and pain rippled through their auras.
I snatched Krandall’s submachine gun from his hands. I squeezed a burst into his neck and torso. He flopped onto his back. I fired two shots into Peltier and she fell. Krandall had no psychic cloud around his supine body. Peltier’s aura quivered like the flame of a pilot light struggling to stay lit. These two got off lucky, compared to what I could’ve done vampire-style.
A third man wearing SWAT gear stumbled backward from me. He clutched his throat and coughed. I knew the man.
Goodman. He was as good as dead.
The overhead lights flickered, then went dim. The sudden darkness worked in my favor. I had the advantage of night vision, and the loss of power would have also disabled the security system. A couple of seconds later, an electronic hum reverberated through the annex and the lights flicked on again. A generator must have switched on. So much for that advantage.
The humming stopped and the lights went out again. Excellent. Jolie had disabled the annex’s power.
The emergency lights above the door flickered on. I aimed the submachine gun and blasted the lights. Let’s keep it dark.
Goodman stumbled like a drunk. His aura sizzled with confusion and pain. Blood dotted his face. He crashed against a desk and knocked a stack of notebooks to the floor.
Peltier’s aura brightened as she rallied against her wounds. She fumbled for the submachine gun that lay by her side. She lifted her head toward me and struggled to aim the weapon. The laser pointer illuminated and the thin red light slashed through the smoke.
Stubborn, murdering bitch. Taunt the bull and expect the horns. I leveled my submachine gun and squeezed the trigger. The bullets tore the fabric of Peltier’s chest armor and then chewed her pretty face apart.
Goodman’s head jerked from left to right in confusion. Blood clotted his eyes.
The magazine empty, I tossed the submachine gun aside. “In case you’re wondering, your matched set of killers is dead.”
His expression darkened when he recognized my voice. He snatched a Glock pistol from his thigh holster. “You again.”
“Expecting someone else?”
His aura signaled surprise but not fear. Goodman remained cold as steel.
He panned the Glock in my direction.
“Don’t bother,” I said.
Goodman fired anyway. Blinded, he was only wasting ammunition. The bullet punched into the wall.
I crept toward him, moving as silently as a shadow.
Goodman’s breath escaped from his mouth in ragged gasps. His pistol trembled. He wiped the blood from his eyes and squinted at where I’d been.
I smiled at the futility of his efforts. “I’m right here.”
Goodman swung the pistol at me, fired, and missed again.
I slapped the Glock from his hand. My talons sliced his fingers, and the pistol clattered across the floor.
Goodman retracted his wounded hand, cradling it against his chest, and slid against the desk away from me.
I stared into his eyes, the irises gray and dull, the whites bloodshot. They registered nothing.
Blinded, Goodman posed no threat. I would finish him later. My priority was to rescue Carmen from the cylinder.
The computer monitors presented their blank faces. Without power, the machines lay dormant.
The twenty capsules were still here, sixteen on the floor and four on the pedestal. But I didn’t see any auras. My kundalini noir stiffened in alarm. I rushed to the closest capsule and looked inside. The padding showed the form where a human would be. It was empty.
I dashed down the rows. All were empty. I bounded onto the pedestal and checked out the rest of the cylinders. They were all empty. I pressed my face to the glass and looked up and down, as if there was another place in the capsule to hide a body.
Despairing and then enraged, I grabbed the sides of the capsule. It remained fixed in place. I might as well have tried shaking a mountain.
I turned toward Goodman and shouted: “Where is she?”
Goodman’s aura brightened with defiance. “You mean your friend, the other freak?”
“Where is she?” I grabbed a desk and flung it at Goodman. The desk whirled through the air, the drawers opening and spilling pens and papers. The desk crashed against the wall beside Goodman.
His aura flashed with fright. He jumped, lost his balance on the floor debris, and staggered back to his feet. His aura dimmed to a fearful glow. Good, the bastard needed to be afraid of me.