by Nick Thacker
Colson felt himself falling backwards, blown away by the impossibly loud bang that filled the glass room. He hit the ground in a sitting position, landing hard on his rear end. Glass shattered at the far end of the room as the bullet sailed through and continued on to the far wall of the level.
Shards of glass sank to the floor, sprinkling down around Colson’s feet as he watched on in horror.
Angela stood motionless for what seemed like an hour, the life fading from her eyes too slowly. She crumpled inward and down, eventually falling into a broken heap of blood on top of the glass.
Colson moved his mouth to no avail. No physical exertion he forced himself to make caused any noise to come out, and he stared, stunned, at the rest of the room and at the body of his former boss as the two groups erupted into action above.
CHAPTER THIRTY-one
Reggie noticed Colson falling down almost at the same time the glass exploded to his left, and he reacted on instinct.
He charged forward, hoping to catch at least one of the guards by surprise. He needed at least two of the others to react in kind for the rash plan to work, or he would be quickly overwhelmed by the armed guards and the man holding the smoking pistol.
Instead, all of the group, save for Colson, reacted. Ryan Kyle, Hendricks, and Joshua all charged the guard closest to them, while Ben, Julie, and Mrs. E rushed for the man who had just murdered Stokes. He saw Ben lunge over both Colson’s sitting body and the large conference room table, hitting the man square in the chest with his forehead.
Reggie felt a tiny portion of himself start to pity the man who would soon be absolutely crushed beneath the weight of a pissed-off Harvey Bennett, but he quickly replaced the pity with pure, untamed rage. He had been able to control his emotions for a long time, trained by the best military psychologists money could buy, a skill he had been required to master after certain events led him down a path he never wanted to travel again.
But the same old anger he had long ago forced away returned with a vengeance, and there was nothing he could do to stop it. All the work he had done to remained balanced, calm, and collected disappeared. The smile he usually wore as a reminder and warning to himself left his face.
Reggie, or ‘Gareth Red,’ as he used to be called, decided in an instant that it was time to change the structure of leadership in this room.
The poor soul in his sights was second-in-command to the security guard that had led them to this level. A moment ago he had been aiming at the group, ready for his leader’s signal to begin unleashing hell on the group standing in front of him.
But he was young, and Reggie had assessed him in an instant. He knew the man wouldn’t have seen much combat, just judging from his age, and Reggie intended to use that to his advantage. When the guard was momentarily stunned by the sound of the gunfire erupting in the tight quarters, Reggie was already in motion.
He aimed for the man’s neck, pulling out the only weapon he had on his person — his watch, which he had removed a few minutes earlier and placed in his pocket as soon as his other weapons were taken from him.
It was military-issue, a favorite he’d had for years, but he didn’t care about the specific features at this moment. Instead, he gripped the very end of the watch, holding the sharp stub of the tiny buckle between his thumb and forefingers. It was an incredibly small, blunt instrument, one that would bend easily and be useless against anything heftier than a toothpick, but he only needed it to work once.
Gunshots exploded behind him, but the part of his brain that alerted him to pain and danger remained quiet. He didn’t turn from his attack, focusing solely on taking out the threat directly in front of him.
The man’s neck, Reggie knew, was the softest part of what was exposed of the man’s skin, and he aimed his left hand for the underside of his chin, opting for an uppercut to ensure he got enough force behind the attack. He swung upward, a sort of odd-looking overly enthusiastic fist pump, and plunged the tip of the half-inch makeshift blade into the man’s skin. His hand continued upward, providing an effective second surprise to the guard’s head, and just after the man’s skull cracked against the glass behind him Reggie pulled the watch buckle sideways and down.
He tried to keep the pressure against the man’s neck, but with such a quick motion any specific intricate movement was impossible to control. Still, the attack worked, and the man’s neck split open as he fell forward. The wound alone wouldn’t kill him, but Reggie had already smashed the rifle up and out of his hands using the butt of his palm, and he now grappled for full control of the weapon.
The man tried wrestling the gun back out of Reggie’s grip, but he was bleeding and in enough pain to ignore the fight for a split second and reach for his neck. Reggie took the opportunity to place both his hands on the gun, smash his forehead forward in a perfectly executed head butt, and destroy the young guard’s nose with the skull-crushing blow.
It was gruesome, but it worked. The man blacked out, falling to the floor, and Reggie turned the rifle and aimed around the room.
He screamed, a yell of rage that echoed around the room and seemed to drown out any and all noise he may have been hearing. The other security guard — the leader — was standing in front of him, fighting with Joshua or Ryan Kyle. Rather than risk hitting one of them with a stray bullet or one that would certainly travel through the guard’s body, Reggie opted for a different approach.
He flipped the gun around and held it like a bat, then took a step backwards and swung it as hard as he could at the guard’s ear. It landed with a sickening crack, and the man’s head fell sideways.
It stayed sideways, and the man flew to the ground, his already damaged head hitting the glass wall of the room on the way down.
Reggie’s nostrils flared as his adrenaline kicked into overdrive, and he lifted the weapon again to attack. He felt resistance, and looked up to see a thick arm holding the gun in place over his head.
“Reggie,” Ben’s voice said. “Reggie…”
Reggie stayed frozen in place for a moment, still trying to piece together what had just happened. He slowly lowered the gun to his side and looked around the room. Both guards at his feet were dead, and the two outside the glass walls had been shot and were bleeding on the floor. The man who had killed Stokes was nowhere in sight.
Ryan Kyle was staring through him, but Reggie noticed his hand resting purposefully on his gun. He’s ready to take me out if I go ballistic.
Joshua and Ben were wide-eyed, but otherwise unaffected. Julie had her hand over her mouth, but Mrs. E had the beginnings of a grin on her face. Colson hadn’t moved, and was sitting stone-faced on the floor staring straight ahead. Hendricks, the only man in the room taller than Reggie, was looking slightly downward at him with a small frown on his face.
“You okay? Come on down, son,” Hendricks said.
Reggie squeezed his eyes shut for a moment, pushing back the remainder of the emotions that had welled up inside. He hadn’t felt this way in a long time, and it caused him to remember far too much in far too short a time.
It caused him to think of her.
His ex-wife, the woman of his dreams, whom he had known for almost twenty years.
She was out of the picture now, but she still had a permanent home in his mind. He had never completely understood why this sort of anger caused him to think of her, but then again just about anything he thought of could remind him of her.
He hadn’t seen her in years, but it didn’t matter. As soon as Stokes had been shot, he felt the surge of rage hit him like a truck, and she was there. She was watching him, urging him, and he fought. He reacted on instinct, a trained killer who was finally allowed out of his cage.
Now two soldiers were dead, their blood pooling around Reggie’s boots, and the rest of the group looked just as terrified as the guard had right before he died.
“Red, it’s over,” Hendricks said. Reggie felt the man’s hand on his shoulder. “Good work, but let’s keep things toned down just bit from
here on out, got it? We need you functioning like a normal human, not Rambo.”
Reggie nodded. “Sorry about that. It’s…” he didn’t know what to say. It’s what, exactly?
“No need to explain, Red,” Hendricks said. “Your psych eval was clear about your past anger problems. ‘…Capable of extreme aggression, though rare. Patient has proven able to balance emotional response with logical reasoning.’”
Reggie whirled around to look at Hendricks. “You read my psych evaluation?”
“‘Course I did, son,” Hendricks said. “I read all of yours. You think I’m going to lock myself in an icebox with a bunch of crazies? This isn’t a pirate ship. There are no mutinies, and no voting for captains. I hate surprises.”
“What do you mean, everyone else’s? I’m not military,” Ben said. “And neither is Julie.”
Hendricks nodded. “That doesn’t mean we didn’t compile one to the best of our ability. After the Amazon incident you were all debriefed by a team of professionals. Do you remember that? Made up of some military brass and a few others who were ‘interested’ in your little jungle foray? Those were psychologists, Bennett.”
Ben looked at Joshua. He shrugged. “I’m not surprised,” Joshua said. “The company does the same thing after missions, even with non-military personnel. It’s MO, and probably a bit of CYA, too.”
“As I said,” Hendricks said, “I hate surprises. I want to know who I’m working with. You all checked out, so feel flattered.”
Reggie felt anything but flattered. He felt betrayed, and tricked. He remembered the little spat between Hendricks and Joshua, and how Joshua had reluctantly agreed to playing second fiddle to Hendricks’ leadership. Reggie wondered now if there was something more this man, something he wasn’t telling them all.
What’s the play? He thought through the options, but only two scenarios made any sense. They could either confront Hendricks now and try to get him to confess and show his cards, but they’d have to get through Ryan Kyle and Mrs. E first. And even then, Hendricks wouldn’t just surrender the information he had without a fight, and possibly not even after he lost.
Or they could wait it out. So far Hendricks had proven that he was on their team, even if he was a little gruff. They didn’t see eye-to-eye on everything, but Reggie didn’t have the feeling that Hendricks was a bad guy. If they kept the status quo, they could see this mission through and deliver whatever it was Mrs. E’s husband needed, and then confront Hendricks.
The latter seemed like a much safer strategy, even though Reggie hated to ever leave anything unsaid. He thrived in confrontation, and sometimes sought it out just for the sheer fun of it, but something told him Hendricks wouldn’t be sucked into any petty games. Hendricks was here for a reason — they all were — and right now, in this moment, Reggie knew they were on the same side.
So he decided to play it safe. Reggie would do his part to keep them all alive, but he would keep an eye on Hendricks all the same. This man had proven that he was resourceful, kept his cards held close to his chest, and didn’t care whether the rest of his team liked him or not. He could be an asset, but he could just as easily be leading them all into a trap.
“Where’s the guy who killed your boss?” Reggie asked Colson.
Colson took a few seconds to shift his focus off of the far wall and on to Reggie, but he just shook his head once. “He… got away.”
“He ran out the back of the room. The glass panel behind him is actually a door,” Kyle said. Reggie noticed a few spiderweb cracks on the glass, but also two nearly invisible hinges at the edge of the pane. “The glass is strong, too. I couldn’t get a shot through before the other guard tried to come at me.”
“Nothing we can do now but figure out what to do next,” Hendricks said. “We —“
“We know what to do next,” Reggie said. He stared out the pockmarked glass into the hallway surrounding them. “We need to find that man.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-two
“Monsieur Valére, the chinese — to the compound. — Must not — at all costs.”
Valére sipped a bottle of water and leaned back as far as he could against the hard, metal wall. He was strapped into the most uncomfortable chair, nothing more than a flat bench with a few cargo straps. He felt like a forgotten package, forever in transport to a faraway destination.
“— You read me? Valére?”
Francis Valére couldn’t stand the phone cutting in and out. He appreciated technology, and specifically improvements in that technology. His company had been responsible for some amazing advances in computing, yet he was constantly disappointed in the lack of reliable telecommunications equipment he found himself using.
He shook the phone, and tapped it on his leg. I don’t care if you’re a thousand miles away under a thousand feet of ice, he thought. Figure out how to make this connection work.
“I cannot understand you,” he said. “Please repeat that last sentence.”
“…Chinese must not find the array. We have to protect it at all —“
“Yes, that is the mission,” Valére said. “So what is the problem?”
“Sir, they are inside the — Angela Stokes is dead, and there is — group.”
“I am sorry, did you say there is another group?”
“Yes, sir. I recognized Joshua Jefferson from the company files.”
Valére physically shook, both from his medication as well as the sentence that had just been uttered, loud and clear, by the voice on the other end of the phone.
Joshua Jefferson. The man that had caused him so much trouble, and so much money. Valére had maneuvered well to take over the vast majority of the company’s operations, and the acquisition of new biological technology a company in Brazil had created was the final step in a long chain of events he had put into motion years ago. He was nearing the end of this journey, and Joshua Jefferson was the man who would deliver the research to him.
Instead, Jefferson betrayed him. He had completely abandoned his men to die in the jungle, killed his own brother, and done his best to ensure the company would never find the research it was looking for.
Thankfully Valére had other resources deployed at the time, and his team in Antarctica was able to piece together most of the fragmented data he had retrieved from the company. It was incomplete, but his scientists had enough creativity to fill in the gaps. The array they were working on benefited greatly from the research and new technology, and it was only a matter of time before they were up and running with a prototype.
Now, Valére was on his way to Antarctica himself, to participate in the final testing phase. He had called for a full deactivation and evacuation of the station, leaving only the security teams in place. He had been aware that there was a Chinese contingent nearby, and that they had marched on the station, but he had every expectation that it would be dealt with before he landed. He had been beyond furious when he had learned that the Chinese had intercepted his communications and discovered the station, but that was a problem that could not be dealt with now. They were here, and they were attempting to gain access to his creation. He hoped the security teams he had ordered to the base were capable.
His own team was sparse — three men he had personally vetted and worked with before, men he knew he could trust to keep him safe. He was a pacifist by nature, but Valére knew full well the downside of being a pacifist in a war-loving society. He needed protection, if only to be able to finish his job.
He readjusted the phone and placed it back on his ear. “Understood. Thank you. Please ensure that the threat is nullified by the time of my arrival.”
The man on the other end tried to argue something trivial, but Valére had already moved to hang up. He glanced at the leader of the three men he had brought with, forced a quick smile, and nodded. The man was no idiot. He knew Valére was not happy, but he also knew not to ask about it. He would do his job, even if it led to his death.
Valére was almost positive it would, and he
felt slightly comforted in the thought that he would be joining the man there.
CHAPTER THIRTY-three
“Okay, so we get down to that server level,” Julie said. Ben noticed the calm, cool way Juliette was handling the situation, and he tried to borrow her strength. Inside, however, he felt anything but calm. He wanted nothing more than to lash out like Reggie had, aiming his wrath at one of the numerous guards or Chinese soldiers in the station.
A reaction like that wouldn’t be helpful now, though. Reggie had reacted at a time when just such a reaction was what they needed to survive — and he had succeeded. The four guards were dead, and they were all alive. The man who had shot Colson’s boss had escaped, but considering they had sustained no losses during the scuffle, Ben was satisfied. They needed to find him, but they had more pressing matters at the moment.
“No,” Ben said. He waited until everyone else in the room was looking at him before continuing. “No, we can’t just run after him. For all we know, he’s a pawn. Just a low-level manager in the company. Joshua, did you recognize him?”
Joshua shook his head. “No, I didn’t. But that doesn’t mean much. I was employed as a contractor, to help with their ‘plausible deniability’ if the case arose. But that meant I was pretty removed from the day-to-day operations of the company. My father… he would likely have known who that man was.”
Joshua Jefferson paused at his own mention of his father, but he didn’t let it stop him. He continued explaining to Ben what he knew of the structure of the company they were after. “He worked remotely, but traveled a lot and had an office in Canada, with some of the other higher-ups. That was the last I heard from him — probably about the time you and Julie were at Yellowstone.”
Hendricks cut in. “What does this have to do with where we are now, son?”
Joshua shot him a glance, but quickly turned back to address the rest of the group. “He alluded to building a station out here on the continent. He never actually said, ‘Antarctica,’ but I gathered that he was going someplace cold. And off the grid.”