It didn’t take long. I heard the boots tramping up the stairs, voices shouting and then eight men with body armor and assault rifles burst in. They took a moment to assess the situation: Ogden lying in his chair with what was left of his head thrown back, gaping at the ceiling. Me sitting opposite him, with the HK433 across my knees, watching them.
They trained their weapons on me and waited.
Then two more men came in, these wearing suits. One of them I knew: Ben. For the first time in all the years that I had known him, I could see true rage in his eyes. He was fighting hard to conceal it, but it was a losing battle. He said simply, “You killed Gamma.”
I nodded. “You told me once I couldn’t hurt you, Ben. Do you remember that? You said the most we could do was cause you an annoyance. I’m curious. Do you still feel that way?”
He didn’t answer. His eyes were bright. I knew he was struggling to make a rational decision about what to do next. He wanted to kill me. He wanted that very badly. But he knew that if I was sitting there, talking to him, it was for a reason. I had some kind of insurance policy.
I said, “Who’s your friend?”
I was looking at the other guy. He was well-dressed, blond hair with a hint of copper. Blue eyes, a faint spray of freckles.
I smiled. “Let me guess. It’s Michael Donnelly, champion of the underdog, fearless warrior, protector of our ancient liberties. Am I right?”
The guy frowned. Ben said, “Give me one reason why I shouldn’t have you killed right now.”
“There are quite a few to choose from, Ben. The first and most obvious is that you don’t know what I have done with all the footage and photographs of your labs in the basement, the people you have been experimenting on and the documents you kept in the office downstairs, that corroborate the experiments.”
He snapped, “Take him down to the basement! The operating theatre.” Four of the guys in body armor advanced on me and dragged me to my feet. One of them snatched my weapons. There was no use resisting at that point, so I allowed myself to be shoved across the room. Meanwhile Ben was shouting at the other four men, “You two, get this damn place cleaned up! You and you, confine the students to their dorm, and get Dr. Patel! I want him down in the basement in ten minutes! Do it!”
We moved down the corridor while the two gorillas started the cleaning up job on Ogden. I had only used a quarter of a tablet, stuffed into his back pocket, but it was more than enough for the job. It was a simple detonator, set to be triggered when they lifted his body. It took out the room and killed the two men, which was two less for me to kill, but more than that, it gave me the opportunity I needed.
The detonation was loud, the explosion shook the top floor of the building. The four guys escorting me, Ben and the guy I guessed was Donnelly, all cowered and covered their heads with their arms. I didn’t waste the opportunity. I spun and smashed my instep into my nearest guard’s crotch. As he doubled up I took hold of his head in an arm lock and twisted savagely until I heard his neck snap. As he went down I took his sidearm and shot the other guy in the face. Then I vaulted the banisters and ran down the stairs, taking them four at a time. I scrambled into the elevator, turned the key and watched the doors slide closed as Ben and his remaining thugs came rattling down the stairs after me.
As I went down I tried to plan ahead. If I wedged the door open, they would not be able to recall the elevator. That meant they couldn’t get to me, but it also meant I could not escape, and sooner rather than later, they’d override the safety mechanism, recall the elevator and come down in force—with body armor and automatic weapons. It was not an ideal situation. But as Sergeant Bradley was fond of saying back in the day, “It could be worse, lads! We could be fuckin’ French!”
I stepped out, dragged one of the dead guards halfway into the car to obstruct the doors, and set to work. I had a lot to do.
SEVENTEEN
My first priority was the labs. I pulled all the mobile—and movable—scanners and pieces of IT hardware into the lab where the CAT scanner was and piled them on top of each other. Then I ran to the operating theater, pulled one of the unoccupied gurneys to the middle of the floor, locked the wheels and jumped up on it. I did some work on the ceiling, which I calculated to be beneath the dining room, jumped down, and pulled the two occupied trolleys into the corridor.
There I tipped them on their sides at an angle to the elevator doors, with one of the bodies laid in front. It wasn’t as good as a barrage of sandbags, but it was something. I set up the other body behind the gurneys, apparently holding an automatic weapon. Again, it wasn’t perfect, but it might fool them for a few crucial seconds. Then I collected up all the dead guards’ automatic weapons and stashed them in the operating theater. Finally I dragged the bodies of the dead guards over and laid them in front of the elevator doors, so anyone attempting to exit in a hurry would have a difficult, unstable surface to walk or run on. That was going to be my primary killing field.
By the time I’d finished, fifteen minutes had passed, and there was nothing to do but wait. But I didn’t have to wait long. Ten minutes later I heard the elevator winch kick in and the car began to rise. The body I’d laid across the entrance, to keep the doors open, slipped off and fell with an unpleasant thud onto the other corpses below. The doors stayed open.
I took up a position in the corridor, slightly to the rear of the elevators. I heard the winch stop. Then the tramp of feet entering the car on the next floor. I estimated four pairs of boots. That left two, plus Ben and Donnelly. The engine kicked in again and the car began to descend. I had a pretty good idea what they were going to do. I figured they were hunkered down with their weapons ready, and as the floor of the car descended below the ceiling, they would open fire and spray the area with bullets.
I wasn’t wrong. They opened up in a hail of fire, and it didn’t take them long to see the gurney barricade, and the body holding the automatic rifle. So the random spray became focused on that target. When they were three feet from the ground, I pulled the pin on the flashbang and dropped it on the bed of corpses, just outside the doors of the elevator. It detonated as the elevator stopped.
I heard shouts and screams. I stepped out and sprayed a burst into the car. I heard another scream, this one of real pain, and somebody shouted, “Mother fucker!” I jumped behind the gurney, let off two more bursts and backed into the corridor. I could hear one voice whimpering and swearing.
Then the charge came. Three guys piled out. I took one of them with a double tap to the head, but as his head exploded, the other two dropped to their knees and opened fire. I backed up along the corridor with bullets whining and spitting around my head. I emptied my magazine in a long, unfocused burst, felt a searing, burning feeling in my shoulder, and fell through the door into the operating theater. I was hit.
There was no time to think about the pain. I pulled the pin on another stun grenade and tossed it into the passage, then grabbed one of the guards’ weapons. The grenade detonated. I leaned out and opened up with a short burst. There was nobody there. I heard the winch start up again and the elevator began to rise. I had taken out one, maybe two of them. There were four more upstairs, and I was hit. That was bad news. I was in trouble. My plan was not panning out and I had very few options.
I stepped across to the lab opposite, dropped to one knee in the doorway and lined up my sights on the corner where I knew one of them was waiting. I heard the elevator stop and boots tramp in. I was expecting two pairs, but there were four. They were all coming down. Logic dictated that as soon as the elevator stopped, the two guys down here would open fire into the corridor to cover the occupants of the car as they poured out. It was a standard beachhead operation. I had one chance, and one chance only.
The elevator stopped. I had two grenades left. I lobbed one at the elevator door and rolled the other toward the gurneys, where I knew the two guys were hiding behind the corner of the passage. I heard the shouts of, “Stun grenade!” a second before
the explosions. I opened up with two controlled bursts but there was still nobody there.
Then two men rolled out of the elevator across the corpses, but before I could take aim the two who were waiting at the head of the passage leaned in and opened fire at me. I ducked in just in time, because next thing, all four of them were raining fire down the corridor. My rifles were in the other lab, across the passage, and my magazine was half empty. I was as screwed as the virgin at a pagan solstice.
The firing stopped. I had a half empty M16 and I was up against six men with automatic rifles, an unknown amount of ammunition and absolute tactical superiority.
I heard Ben’s voice. He was close.
“Lacklan, I will not pretend that my love for your father carries any weight anymore. What loyalty I felt towards you on his behalf died when you betrayed my trust after the United Nations fiasco. I will be honest with you, as I always have been. I want you dead, more than I want anything else at this point.”
I called out, “The feeling is mutual, Ben.”
“However, we may have some room to negotiate.”
I laughed out loud. “Really? I don’t think you have anything I want anymore.”
There was a moment’s silence, then his voice, with a smile in it. “What about your life?”
I shrugged. “I can take it or leave it. And you know very well, Ben, that if I die today, I will make damn sure you come with me, all the way to hell.”
“I have five men here who say that isn’t going to happen, Lacklan. And three dozen more in the dorms upstairs who are prepared to back them up if needs be. You are, finally, out of options.”
I was quiet for a bit, backed up against the wall, trying to think. I could see Sergeant Bradley in my mind’s eye, with the firelight on his diabolical face, and the Afghan night behind him, saying, “You’re never out of options. All you ever run out of is imagination.”
That I had run out of, too. I called out, “OK, Ben, what have I got that you will exchange for my life?”
I heard the shuffle of boots moving down the passage, then Ben’s voice again, a little closer this time.
“Information, Lacklan. It’s always information, isn’t it?”
I trained my gun on the door. Whoever came through first drew the short straw. “What information, Ben? I have a lot of information, you know that.”
“Well, that’s exactly what I need to know, precisely what information do you have, and, with whom you have shared it?” There was a moment’s silence. Then he went on. “This soldier beside me, Lacklan, he is holding a grenade. It’s not like your grenades, that make a lot of noise and light, but don’t actually kill people. This is a real grenade. He has extracted the pin, and, as soon as I give him the nod, he will toss it against the wall facing you. It will explode and you will be dismembered, and the whole Lacklan Walker legend will come to a sticky, messy end.”
“You have my attention.”
“An armed man is going to step in now. If we hear gunfire, a grenade will follow. And make no mistake, Lacklan, I have grown very, very weary of you. I really want to kill you. So my advice? Don’t offer me an excuse.”
A guy stepped through the door with an automatic rifle at his shoulder, trained on me. I dropped my weapon. He looked out through the door and nodded. Another guy came in, also training an automatic rifle on me, then two more, then Ben and Donnelly.
Game over.
Donnelly stood leaning against the doorjamb, frowning at me. Ben looked around for a chair, found one and pulled it over. I was sitting on the floor, with my back to the wall. Ben narrowed his eyes and shook his head.
“I have really, really grown to hate you, Lacklan. There was a time when I felt a kind of family love, as though we were estranged brothers. I hoped that you would one day grow to appreciate that, and take your place in Omega. But that has gone, long gone. I hate you deeply. You are violent, bloodthirsty, grotesque.” He looked around and smiled. “But I have to say, I retain a kind of awed admiration at how fucking destructive you are!”
I smiled at him. It was the first time I had ever heard him swear. I eased myself into a slightly more comfortable position. The pain in my shoulder was beginning to throb in my head. Ben went on talking.
“You’re like an incarnation of Kali. You destroy everything in your path. You destroyed your home, you destroyed your father. You destroyed the only woman you ever loved, Marni. If you had made a home with her when she proposed to you in London, none of this would ever have happened. Now you have destroyed Senator McFarlane’s home too, and Senator McFarlane.” He paused, staring at me in apparent fascination. He gestured at Donnelly, still leaning on the jamb. “She and her husband were happy, they had a good life and a good future. They had a position secured for them and their children in the New Eden, whenever that may come. But you, in your relentless destructive rage, have destroyed their lives and their future.” He spread his hands, looking around him. “And now this! You are incredible! You have to be destroyed! For the good of the world!” He leaned forward, his eyes wide, half smiling. “You have to be destroyed because if you are not, Lacklan, you will destroy the last best hope of humanity!” He sat back and laughed. “I mean, what are you like? Everything you touch, Lacklan! You destroy everything you touch!”
I sighed, “What can I say, Ben, we all do what we’re good at. I’m good at destroying things.”
He smiled, then chuckled. “You are very, very good at what you do, Lacklan. And it is a shame we wound up being enemies. You can’t deny I tried, and I was very patient. But you have pushed me too far, much too far.”
“So where do we go from here? You going to bore me to death?”
“I know what you’re thinking.”
“Really?”
He sighed. “Yes. You are thinking that the one thing—the one person—I have not mentioned in the list of things and people that you have destroyed, is Abi… Abi and her two children. The very attractive Primrose and the boy, Sean.”
I snorted, “The whore from Independence? You have to be kidding me.”
He stared down at the floor for a moment. “The whore from Independence. A little lame, Lacklan, considering that you have moved her into your house in Weston. Were you really that confident that you’d thrown us off? That we were that shaken by the UN fracas? You thought you could lie low for a few months in Nevada and then come trundling home with your new love?”
“Again, Ben, what do you want?”
He chewed his lip for a moment. “What does Gibbons want with Senator McFarlane?”
I shrugged and shook my head. “I have no idea. Gibbons hates me almost as much as you do. He broke me and Marni up and tells me squat. That’s basically why I am out of the game.”
He nodded several times, with labored irony, and gestured around him. “Yes, I can see that you are out of the game.”
I closed my eyes and blew through puffed cheeks. “Wake up, Ben. Gibbons wanted me to come in, get info and get out without leaving a trace. That wasn’t my plan. My plan was to get enough information on you, and cause you enough damage, that you would leave me and Abi alone. Gibbons told me that Gamma, my father’s replacement, was in charge of the Institute. I figured if I could make him talk I would have a hold over you. But I guess before he talked he telephoned…”
He nodded. “You made so much noise coming in that he called me. Unfortunately he didn’t call me in time. So what information did you manage to transmit to Gibbons?”
I didn’t answer. I stared at his face, thinking, calculating. Finally I said, “Enough.”
“You’ll have to do better than that.”
I sighed. “I already told you that Gibbons and I are not bosom pals. I sent him what he needed to know for his purposes. You’ve got some bills coming up in Congress you won’t be so happy with. But the real information, the readouts from your scans, your work on neurotransmitters…” I smiled. “And above all, the list I got from Ogden after I blew his kneecap off…”
&n
bsp; “List?”
“Yeah, the list, Ben. You know, Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, Epsilon, Zeta… all the way through to Omega.”
His face was rigid. “He gave you that list?”
I laughed a little, enjoying myself. “Well, let’s see, Ben. Mr. Donnelly here, he’d be Omicron, and that evil genius who created social networking, he would be Theta. The number of Hollywood superstars came as a bit of a surprise, though perhaps it shouldn’t have. But the big shockers were Alpha and Beta. Shall I go on?”
He shook his head. “What have you done with this information?”
“I’m a crazy barbarian, Ben, but I am not a stupid one. Maybe I sent it to Gibbons, maybe I sent it to Marni. On the other hand, perhaps I sent it to Abi, or somebody completely different. Maybe I’m just bluffing.”
Donnelly looked at Ben, shrugged and said, “Torture him.”
I put a smile I didn’t feel on the left side of my face, where it looked ironic. “Really? That’s your answer? The least reliable form of interrogation? Sure, do that, because I have never been tortured before. Who knows, I might just break.”
Ben jerked his chin at me and said to nobody in particular, “Take him to the operating theater.”
I said, “Wait. What do you plan to do with me in there?”
Ben chuckled. He looked at Donnelly and they both laughed. Ben said, “I guess, as you won’t tell us what we need to know, we’ll just have to look inside your head and see what you have in hidden in there.”
I closed my eyes and sighed. “OK, I’m going to stand up. Don’t do anything crazy.” I held up my hands and struggled to my feet. “You can see I’m unarmed. I’m just going to reach for a piece of paper in my pocket. It’s something you need to see. Are we good?”
OMEGA SERIES BOX SET: Books 5-8 Page 33