The Project Eden Thrillers Box Set 1: Books 1 - 3 (Sick, Exit 9, & Pale Horse)

by Brett Battles

  The hell I won’t!

  Knowing it was now or never, the guard twisted out from the cover of the crate, and brought the barrel of his gun around to point at the spot where he knew the woman would be. His first shot left the chamber before he registered what he was seeing.

  Rather, what he was not seeing. Where the woman should have been standing was…nothing.

  He swung the gun left and right, looking for her, ready to pull the trigger at the slightest movement.

  “Sorry to disappoint,” she said, far closer than he expected.

  Even before he could respond to her voice, something hit him in the chest, and his whole body seized in uncontrollable spasms. His gun flew from his hand as he fell writhing to the floor.

  Finally, the source of the pain stopped.

  A Taser, he realized, his mind able to focus again.

  He lay panting on the floor, every muscle weak and tingling from the massive jolt of electricity. Though his mind was screaming at him to get up, he knew that was impossible.

  He heard movement, then footsteps walking right up to him.

  Clack, clack, clack.

  It was over. His end was coming. He trembled as the woman stopped beside him. She had short blonde hair, and what he would have called an Eastern European face—high cheekbones, slightly Asiatic eyes, and full lips. He had never seen her before.

  “Go ahead. Do it,” he said, his eyes glancing quickly at the gun in her hand.

  She leaned down and touched something near his waist. When she stood again, she was holding his security badge.

  “Good. You have full access.” She smiled at him. “Relax. It’s not time for you to die yet.”

  “SIR, WE’VE RECEIVED a message I wanted to make you aware of.”

  The DOP looked up from this computer. Major Ross had entered the conference room at the back of the Cradle, and was standing just inside the door. “What is it?”

  “An emergency signal from NB328.”

  “What kind of emergency?”

  “A break-in, sir.”

  The DOP frowned. “Verified?”

  “No, sir. It was the automated signal. We haven’t been able to reach the security team there yet.”

  “Where is NB328?” While the DOP was familiar with their storage depot locations, he didn’t even try to remember what each had been designated.

  “Costa Rica. Outside Carrizal.”

  Carrizal. A basic storage depot if he wasn’t mistaken: food, clothing, fuel, some vehicles, and the standard weapons cache. Nothing particularly special about it.

  “How long have they been out of contact?”

  “We just received the message. I came straight here.”

  The DOP considered their options. If they weren’t so close to Implementation Day, he would have automatically said they should just wait for someone at NB328 to check in, but time was one thing they no longer had. “How quickly can you get someone down there to check?”

  “There’s a team in Monterrey, Mexico, but they’d have to fly commercial, so it would be at least four or five hours. There is another option.”

  “Yes?”

  “Perez, in South America. He finished up with the job in Argentina last night, and is flying to Colombia as we speak. He should be landing in thirty minutes. He could refuel and be in Costa Rica in under two hours. The drawback, of course, is that he’s alone.”

  “Send him, and get the Monterrey team moving, too. Perez can scope out the situation, and if it’s more than he can handle on his own, the team will be there soon enough.”

  “Very good, sir.” Ross turned to leave.

  “Major?”

  “Yes?”

  “Keep me in the loop. I want to know everything that’s going on.”

  “Yes, sir.” Ross left.

  The DOP returned his attention to his computer terminal, but instead of continuing what he was doing before, he brought up the specs on NB328. It was just as he recalled—a basic depot.

  Potential raids on the warehouses had always been a possibility. The world was a violent place, and stores of goods were vulnerable. Because of this, the security had been beefed up at all the depots in anticipation of Implementation Day, so he was confident the team at NB328 could deal with whatever the problem was. If they ran into problems and losses were incurred, it would be unfortunate, but negligible when it came to its effect on the Project as a whole.

  He switched back to his previous screen, certain that the matter would be satisfactorily resolved.

  AS WITH ALL the Project’s warehouses, there was a vault on the lowest level, protected not only by the secured entrance to the underground floors, but also by an impenetrable composite door on the vault itself. Impenetrable by force, at least, not if you had the key.

  Karie and Gleason accompanied Olivia and the prisoner in the elevator to NB328’s lowest level. When the door opened, Gleason pushed the man out, and Karie and Olivia followed.

  There was no need for directions. While each of the facilities might vary in size, all were laid out basically the same. This way, if personnel had to be moved between locations, they could jump in immediately without the need of an orientation period.

  Olivia led the way, passing contingency dormitories and the medical wing before turning down the short hallway to the vault. The first door they came to was similar to the others on this level, the only difference being that it needed to be opened via a security code.

  “Enter the code,” Olivia told the guard.

  “No way.”

  She’d expected that response. She looked at Karie and held out her hand. “Radio.”

  The woman handed it to her.

  Raising it to her lips, Olivia said, “We’re outside the vault room entrance. Looks like we’re going to need that information.”

  “Got it right here,” a voice came back, crisp and clean. “You were correct, ma’am. Mr. Heath does have family on the survival roster.”

  The guard tensed.

  “A sister and a teenage niece. They live in Arlington Heights, outside of Chicago. Both have already been administered the vaccine. You want their address?”

  Olivia looked at the guard, an eyebrow raised in question. “Do I need it?”

  “No,” he said, then punched the code into the keypad.

  The room inside was about the size of a small studio apartment. Along the opposite wall was the actual door to the vault. It had a blue-gray sheen and fit flush with the wall. There was a control panel mounted to the left.

  “You know what I want,” Olivia said to the guard. “And you know what we’ll do to your family if you don’t cooperate.”

  “And if I do?” he asked. “You’ll leave them alone?”

  “As long as you do as I ask, yes.”

  He studied her face as if trying to determine if she was telling the truth. She was, but only because it would be a waste of time to bother with his family.

  “Okay,” he said. “I…I’ll do it.”

  He started toward the control panel.

  “Mr. Heath,” Olivia said.

  He looked back.

  “I know there are two different codes you can use to get the door open. If you use the one that will activate the vault self-destruct, your family will die.”

  He shook his head. “I won’t.”

  The control software was set up so that it needed not only the code, but also scans of the authorized person’s eye and left hand. It could detect blood flow in the eye’s capillaries, and the body heat in the hand.

  Olivia watched him as he punched in the code, then scanned his eye and his hand. Once that was done, the code had to be input once more.

  When he finished, there was a second of silence. Then she heard the locks pulling open.

  As the door swung out, Olivia looked at the guard. “Thank you.”

  She nodded at Gleason, who raised his gun and shot the guard in the head.

  THE PRIVATE JET carrying Perez from South America touched down in
San Jose, Costa Rica, at 10:04 a.m. Thirty-seven minutes later, he pulled his car off the road, about half a mile from NB328, and covered the remaining distance on foot.

  Judging by the exterior of the building, nothing looked amiss. That, of course, meant nothing. When he’d checked in with Bluebird upon arrival, they told him they still hadn’t been able to reach anyone inside the facility.

  Staying at least a hundred yards away, he made two complete circuits of the building, but saw nothing unusual. Even the three satellite dishes on the roof that kept NB328 in contact with Bluebird looked untouched.

  About the only thing he could say was that the place seemed to be too quiet. He knew that was his own bias, though, having spent much of the last several weeks in crowded, South American cities. Unless a depot was receiving a shipment, there was no reason for anyone to be outside.

  The main door was in the middle of what was considered the front of the building. Perez watched it for several minutes, but decided not to approach it. If there were hostiles still around, they’d no doubt have someone posted just inside. The better bet was to use the emergency entrance. After all, it had been built for circumstances such as these.

  He headed northeast to a point five hundred feet away from the building. The emergency entrances were all the same, designed to look like an abandoned concrete slab. He found it easily, but someone had released the locks that held it in place, and had slid it to the side, exposing the entrance to the tunnel.

  He slipped his gun out from the holster, and pointed it at the opening. He couldn’t see far. At this angle, the sunlight went down only ten feet. Beyond that was darkness.

  He circled around the hole, checking the ground for footprints. He needed to determine if it had been opened from the inside by people trying to leave, or from the outside by someone trying to get in. If it had been the latter, that would definitely be troubling, because that meant the attackers knew ahead of time about the emergency entrance, and how to open it, which meant they knew about the Project, too.

  Footprints. Leading to the slab.

  So these weren’t just some random thieves.

  Perez looked at his watch. The team flying in from Mexico was not due to arrive for another hour and a half. Under normal circumstances, he would have waited, but nothing was normal anymore. He pulled out the small flashlight he carried in his pocket, and descended the steps.

  “IT’S PEREZ, SIR,” Ross said over the speakerphone.

  The DOP snapped up the receiver. “Transfer him to me.”

  There was a click.

  “Perez?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Where are you?”

  “I’m inside NB328.”

  “And?”

  There was a pause. “Everyone’s dead, sir.”

  The DOP didn’t move for a full second. “Everyone?”

  “Yes, sir. The entire security team.”

  “And the people who did this?”

  “Gone, sir.”

  “What about bodies? Surely a couple of them must have been hit.”

  “If they were, they’re not here now.”

  The DOP was stunned. A whole security team wiped out by a local gang? How in the hell did that happen?

  “Figure out what they took,” he said. “If any of it shows up somewhere, we can trace it back and deal with them.”

  Perez took a moment before he replied. “This wasn’t a random robbery, sir.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “None of the supplies are missing.”

  “That can’t be right.”

  “I could be mistaken. I only did a quick look-through, but…well, sir, whoever it was entered through the emergency entrance using the code.”

  “The what?”

  “It was open when I got here, so I checked the surveillance footage and the sensor logs, knowing there should be a record of the break-in. Whoever they were, apparently they were able to hack into the system before they came in, and turned off all the surveillance.”

  If the DOP wasn’t stunned before, he was now. The emergency entrance? Knowing the code and hacking into the security system? What the hell was going on?

  “And something was taken.”

  “What?”

  “The vault was open. Two of the numbered boxes are missing.”

  The boxes were similar to deposit boxes in a bank. Each contained printed-out, detailed instructions to be used in specific situations. They were the hardcopy backups in case something happened to the computer system after Implementation Day. Another redundancy in the Project’s desire to make sure nothing went off track when they set about rebuilding the world in the way they knew it should be. Every depot had a set of the boxes in its vault.

  That someone had purposely broken into NB328 to get to them was unbelievable. The only people who knew about the boxes or the vaults were members of the Project, or at least that’s what he had thought.

  This was a serious breach. They had to find out who had done this and why.

  “Which boxes were taken?” the DOP asked.

  “J923 and T121.”

  The DOP brought up the vault database and typed both numbers in. J923 contained the list of all the other depots, and T121 a list of all the primary members of the Project. Both were disturbing, the second considerably more than the first.

  “Go over every square inch of that facility,” he ordered. “There has got to be some clue as to who these people are.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And make it quick. I don’t want this becoming a problem.”

  For several seconds, the DOP stared out the windowed wall into the Cradle.

  It’s them, he thought. The ones who had been an annoyance to the Project for years.

  Somehow they had found out about the vaults and the information they contained. He knew they’d been in one of the facilities before—NB7 in eastern Oregon. But every piece of security footage from that night had been reviewed, and neither Captain Ash nor the woman who’d been with him when he rescued his kids had gone anywhere near NB7’s vault.

  He picked up the phone again and called Ross. His first instructions were to assign extra protection to people on the list from box T121, and to put the depot security teams on high alert. Then he said, “Operation Pest Control is a go.”

  There was a pause, then, “Yes, sir. But…”

  “But what, Major?”

  “These added measures are going to stretch us pretty thin. If you want Operation Pest Control to happen right away also, we’ll need to sacrifice in other areas.”

  The DOP closed his eyes and stifled a groan of frustration. “As soon as feasible, then,” he ordered, and slammed the phone down.

  PEREZ HAD BEEN in error. Boxes J923 and T121 were not the only two that had been removed. In fact, the two boxes were of no importance at all to Olivia.

  “These are the two we want to break into,” Olivia had instructed, indicating boxes J923 and T121. They would be the smokescreen, specifically chosen to throw her former employers off and force them to allot manpower away from what she was focused on. She then pointed at a box near the bottom: G306. “This one we use the master key on.”

  Once they had the door to G306 open, Olivia removed the single sheet of paper from inside, slid the box back in place, and shut the door. She carefully folded the paper and put it in her pocket. No one would ever suspect the box had even been opened.

  This was the only reason they had come to NB328.

  Nineteen

  I.D. MINUS 88 HOURS

  ST. LOUIS, MISSOURI

  “THERE’S NOTHING HERE,” Blanton said.

  Corey looked at his friend. “What do you mean, nothing?”

  They were sitting in a booth at Old Tom’s Pub just off campus, Blanton’s laptop on the table. On the screen was the home page for Hidde-Kel Holdings.

  “It’s just a bunch of corporate BS that doesn’t lead anywhere. It’s not tied to their company computer system at all. It’s just sitt
ing on its own server all by itself.”

  “All by itself?”

  Blanton nodded. “Nothing else on that server at all. I’ve triple-checked.”

  Corey wasn’t the computer expert that Blanton was, but like most kids his age, he had a basic understanding of how it all worked. “You can’t get into their internal systems from there?”

  Blanton looked around. “Hey, hold it down. I’d rather not have a lot of people know about this, okay?”

  “Sorry.” It was early evening, and the place was starting to fill up. “So you can’t get through?”

  “Uh-uh. As far as I can tell, there’s no tie between them.”

  “Dammit. I was really hoping you could get in that way.”

  “Well, I can’t.” Blanton paused. “Not this way.”

  Corey cocked his head. “There’s another?”

  A smirk grew on his friend’s face. “This is like a challenge, you know?”

  “Blanton, just tell me. Is there another way you can get me more information about them?”

  “Of course there is.” Blanton began typing. “I was able to locate some of their business filings that had addresses on their main facilities. I should say, facility. Seems they only have one address.”

  “You mean the one in Portland? That’s just a mail drop.”

  “I don’t mean the one in Portland. I mean the one in Chicago.”

  “Chicago? What address in Chicago? I didn’t find anything.”

  “That’s because you’re not me.” Blanton hit one more key. A map of Chicago appeared on the screen with a red dot glowing northwest of downtown, right next to O’Hare Airport.

  “That’s it?”

  Instead of answering, Blanton zoomed in. The dot turned out to be in an industrial area tucked in the southeast corner between I-90 and I-294. The building itself was probably about ten thousand square feet, and, at least when the satellite photo was taken, had a nearly empty parking lot.