The Unknown

by Brett Battles

  They needed to keep moving, but returning to the corridor at the moment was out of the question. Fortunately, they didn’t have to.

  “Follow me,” she said to Brunner.

  She turned toward a door at the side of the room.

  “Where are you going?” He pointed at the door they’d entered. “That’s the way out.”

  “We are taking a shortcut.”

  “Shortcut?” he said, not understanding the phrase.

  “A different path that will get us where we want to go without being seen.” In her head, she added hopefully. No sense in worrying Brunner more.

  She guided him to the entrance of the bathroom between the two dorm rooms and motioned for him to wait outside. She checked the toilet and shower area, then proceeded to the doorway at the other end.

  The room beyond was the occupied one she had sneaked through. She peered inside.

  No one there now. They had all probably responded to the alarm.

  She retrieved the doctor and escorted him through the bathroom and across the dorm to the door on the other side.

  “Krylov has just passed you,” Danara said.

  “Copy.” Hopefully, Krylov would think Jar and Brunner had gone down one of the branch corridors. “We’re taking the interior route.”

  “There are no cameras in the rooms. I can’t watch out for you.”

  “There are no people in here, either. Keep an eye on the hallway.”

  “All right,” Danara said, not sounding happy.

  Jar had a lot of questions she wanted to ask Brunner when they had some time. High on that list was how he was able to give Danara such a wide variety of emotions.

  Jar eased the door open, confirmed the next room was empty, and led Brunner inside.

  “They could be anywhere, sir,” Dobrynin said into the phone. “They have some sort of masking technology.”

  “Masking what?” The man on the other end was Dobrynin’s boss, Captain Mustafina.

  “Something that keeps the cameras from picking them up. The only reason we saw them is probably because their devices glitched.”

  “I don’t care what devices they’re using. Find them! Check every hallway, every room. Everywhere.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Dobrynin left the monitoring room and rushed down to communications, two doors away.

  “I need the intercom.”

  One of the men at the station handed him the microphone. The other flipped a switch and pointed at the lieutenant.

  Outside the room Nate and Quinn were hiding in, the alarm cut off and another announcement filled the corridor. When it was finished, the alarm came back on, but at a reduced level.

  “That’s not good,” Nate said

  “What’s not good?” Quinn asked.

  “They’re doing a full base check. Rooms and all. Everyone’s been ordered to search the area they’re in before moving on.”

  Quinn grimaced. The plan had been to get as many of the base personnel as possible heading toward him and Nate, freeing the way for Jar. It seemed, however, that the confusion caused by their sudden disappearance was working against them.

  “Danara,” Quinn said, “how close are we to one of the patrols?”

  “There is a patrol one hundred and nine meters away, and another one hundred and thirty-two.”

  “Moving toward us or away?”

  “Away and toward you, in that order.”

  “Which direction is the second group?”

  Private Astana hung at the back of the pack, annoyed.

  He’d been sound asleep when the alarm had ripped him from his dream. It had been a good one, too. Not that he could remember it, but the contentment he’d felt had lingered for a few seconds, teasing him with what he was missing.

  And all for what was probably a drill anyway.

  Intruders? Really?

  The only way to reach Lonely Rock was to fly in. And if someone did that, the person would have never made it past the runway.

  “Gorev, Amirov, take that one,” Corporal Senkin said, pointing at a door ahead. He then motioned to another door. “Rusanov, Putyatin, over there. Astana, we’ll take this one.” He headed for the door nearest the squad.

  Great, Astana thought. Stuck with Mr. By the Book again.

  He made a show of acting interested, but he was sure Senkin could see right through him. The corporal didn’t say anything, however. He just signaled for Astana to stand against the wall next to the door, and reached for the handle.

  Bang-bang-bang-bang-bang.

  Bullets flew through the hallway, passing less than half a meter above Astana and the others’ heads, before hitting the curving wall of the corridor farther down.

  Astana dropped to the floor, his hands over his head. When the shooting stopped, he peeked to see if the corporal had been hit. Senkin was crouched next to the door he’d been about to open, whipping his radio up to his mouth.

  “This is patrol seventeen,” he said. “Shots fired. Shots fired.”

  “Seventeen, this is control. Are you still under fire?”

  “Not at the moment. I…I’m not sure where they went.”

  “What’s your location?”

  “Sector twenty-seven, ring hallway three.”

  A beat later, the same voice came over the base intercom. “Intruders spotted in sector twenty-seven, ring hallway three. All patrols, close in on that area. Be aware, intruders are armed.”

  “Let’s go,” Senkin said to Astana.

  “Let’s go where?”

  “We’re going to take these assholes down.”

  “Are you crazy?”

  Senkin narrowed his eyes. “On your feet, private!”

  Astana glanced down the hallway. Whoever had shot at them was either just around the bend or had taken off. Reluctantly, he pushed himself off the ground.

  After firing over the heads of the soldiers, Quinn and Nate had ducked down another hallway, then slipped into a utility closet to avoid a second patrol.

  Outside a voice came over the intercom at the same time the men ran by the door, toward where the gunfire had come from.

  “Did it work?” Quinn asked.

  “I think so,” Nate said. “That was an order for everyone to move in on the location we were just at.”

  “Then probably a good idea for us to get out of here. Danara?”

  “In eleven seconds, you will have a thirty-seven-second window to relocate,” Danara said. “I will guide you to your next hiding spot.”

  “Tell us when,” Quinn said.

  Seconds later, Danara said, “When.”

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Jar and Brunner moved through the last dorm room and into an L-shaped storage room filled with metal boxes. At the next door, Jar listened for any noise.

  When she heard nothing, she said to Danara, “Entering the next storage room.”

  “There are some soldiers in the corridor near you.”

  “We’ll be quiet.”

  Jar eased the door open and led the scientist inside.

  As the door slid back into its frame, Danara said, “Hide. Wherever you can. Now!”

  Jar remembered the room from her first time through, and knew there was no hiding place that would keep them completely out of view. So she grabbed Brunner’s arm and pulled him between two of the shelving units. As they made their way to where the offshoot met the wall, a door opened across the room and the lights came on.

  She crouched as low as she could, yanking Brunner down beside her, and slunk the rest of the way to the wall. She put Brunner behind her and faced the way they’d come, her gun pointed at the central aisle Booted steps and the rustle of clothing. Two…no, three people walking through the room.

  She glanced back at the scientist and held a finger to her mouth.

  He nodded, his eyes wide with fear.

  The three who had entered had each gone in a different direction. One was heading the opposite way from Jar and Brunner. Another was m
eandering somewhere in the middle of the room, while the third was in the central aisle, walking toward the end of the small aisle they were hiding in.

  She aimed the gun at the edge of the shelving unit.

  As the steps grew nearer, Jar sighted down the barrel.

  A shout of surprise from the other end of the room, then the thup-thup-thup of gunfire through a suppressor.

  Jar heard three thuds on the floor.

  Silence.

  “Jar?”

  Jar slipped her finger off the trigger and stood up. “Over here.”

  Orlando appeared in the central aisle, at the end of the shelves. She, too, was holding a gun, but pointed at the ground.

  “You guys all right?” she asked.

  “Yes, we are fine,” Jar said.

  She helped Brunner to his feet and they walked down to join Orlando.

  “Nice to meet you, Dr. Brunner,” Orlando said.

  Instead of looking relieved that reinforcements had arrived, his brow was wrinkled in worry. “Are all of you women?”

  “Would that be a problem?” Orlando asked.

  “No, I just…it is…” His gaze shifted to something behind Orlando.

  Jar glanced over her shoulder and saw the body of the man who had been closest to them, lying in a puddle of blood. Farther down the aisle were his two friends.

  “It is fine,” he said. “I am tired. Forget I said anything.”

  “Forgotten. Now if it’s all right by you, I think we should get out of here.”

  “Yes. Of course. An excellent idea.”

  “You know this area best,” Orlando said to Jar. “You should take lead.”

  Grigory had lost Brunner.

  Sometime after the alarm had started blaring, the scientist must have taken a turn Grigory had missed.

  Grigory would have turned around then and there, if not for the fact he was sure Tiana was somewhere behind him.

  He turned down the next hallway, hoping that would throw her off, and did quick checks of the rooms he went by to make sure the doctor wasn’t hiding in one of them.

  Perhaps he should let it go and get the hell out of there, but Brunner represented a once-in-a-lifetime chance to substantially enrich Grigory’s future. If the man was even half as important as the general had thought he was, the ransom Grigory could extract would be enormous. He was not about to let that opportunity pass by.

  Given how long the scientist had avoided recapture, Grigory had decided the intruders were helping Brunner. If they were Tiana’s people, the scientist would have been taken somewhere by now to be guarded by squads of security personnel.

  So the intruders were helping him, and their goal now would be to get Brunner out of Lonely Rock. The easiest place to do that was the main exit. It wouldn’t matter if it was guarded or not. The intruders surely had the firepower to take the entrance by force.

  If that was the way they were going, that was the way Grigory would go.

  Onward he went, throwing open doors, scanning rooms, and moving on to the next.

  One of the rooms he checked was a storage room full of old metal boxes. He’d seen others like it, and knew the boxes contained old Soviet records from the 1950s and 60s. He also knew there were small aisles inside where the doctor could hide.

  He hesitated in the doorway. If the doctor wasn’t here, Grigory would be giving Brunner time to put more distance between them. But if he was…

  Dammit.

  He moved inside, flicked on the light, and jogged down the main aisle, checking on both sides each row he passed.

  He was surprised when the center aisle made a sharp turn to the right and continued on. He’d never seen any rooms at the base like this. He kept checking, but the scientist was not here.

  At the end of the central aisle was a door that led to the next room. Like many of the interior doors at the base, it had a narrow vertical window through which he could see that the lights in the next room were on.

  He opened it and cursed out loud.

  It was another storage room, but unlike the one he’d just come through, there was a trio of bodies lying in the aisle, all three wearing the uniform of base soldiers.

  He jogged up to the first one. No need to check the guy’s pulse. His bloodstained shirt and the dark pool under his body told the story.

  The other two were just as dead.

  Was this the work of the intruders on their way to find Brunner? Or had this been done later, to aid Brunner’s escape?

  He sniffed the air. Gunpowder.

  Whatever had happened here had occurred only a few minutes before. But why would they be bringing Brunner through this room?

  The corridor outside would not take them to the main exit. If he was not mistaken, it led to the unused southern end of the base.

  Though that section had plenty of good places to hide, the smarter move would be to get as far away from Lonely Rock as fast as possible. And if the intruders were the ones from Slovakia, they had the brains to know that.

  That meant they were taking Brunner down that way for another reason entirely.

  His eyes widened as a flash from his meeting with Tiana came back to him, the part where she pushed the wall out of the way to reveal the secret tunnel to the surface.

  Could there be an emergency exit in the southern end he didn’t know about?

  Of course. If the base had one hidden tunnel, why not two?

  He ran to the door at the other end and into the next room. Empty.

  The room after that was also deserted, so he reentered the corridor.

  The overhead lights continued in full force for about another hundred meters. After that, only every third or fourth one was lit, marking the end of the territory Nesterov’s organization used.

  Grigory stared down the corridor, hoping to see some movement, but the reduced illumination made it impossible.

  He was beginning to wonder if he should even chance heading down the hall when the alarm stopped, and a voice came over the speaker announcing something about the intruders.

  Grigory barely registered what was said, because in the few seconds’ pause between the alarm shutting off and the voice starting to speak, he’d heard a noise.

  Soft. Distant. And most definitely footsteps, moving quickly down the otherwise unused corridor.

  “Got you,” he whispered.

  Tiana stopped and looked in both directions.

  She’d been following Grigory, at first by catching glimpses of him ahead, and then, when the volume of the alarm decreased, by the sound of his movements. But he’d gone silent moments before, right about where she now stood.

  “Where the hell are you?” she whispered.

  With no clear answer, she continued onward, but walking instead of running. She passed through an intersection with a wide corridor that led back to the center of the base in one direction, and to the unused southern sectors in the other. She scanned both sides but didn’t see him, so she moved on.

  Thirty meters past the junction, a door opened somewhere behind her.

  She spun around, thinking Grigory was attempting to ambush her, but no one was there. The sound must have come from down the corridor she’d just passed.

  She crept back toward the intersection. Before she reached the corner, someone in control announced over the intercom that the intruders had been seen. She eased up to the junction and peered around the corner, toward the heart of Lonely Rock.

  Deserted.

  She hadn’t imagined it. There had been the sound of a door opening. She’d swear to— Movement behind her.

  She looked over her shoulder.

  Running away from her, toward the unoccupied part of the base, was Grigory.

  She would not let him get away this time.

  Jar glanced over her shoulder again.

  According to Danara, somewhere down the corridor, way beyond Orlando and Brunner who were right behind her, Krylov and Snetkov were following them.

  The previous times sh
e’d checked, Jar had seen no signs of the kidnappers. This time, however, she spotted a tiny shadow flickering across one of the lit areas, maybe two hundred and fifty or three hundred meters back.

  It appeared to be moving faster than she and the others were, but not by much. Still, it would be a close call to get into the vent before the pursuer caught up to them. And if the kidnappers were armed, which she assumed they were, the shadow would only need to get in range to keep Jar, Orlando, and Brunner from escaping.

  “Faster,” she said. “We are almost there.”

  Brunner looked as if he had no more to give, but he nodded and increased his pace.

  “I assume there’s a way to get up to the vent,” Orlando said.

  “I have stacked some boxes beneath it so we will climb up.”

  “What?” Brunner said. “Climb? Vent?”

  “It’s the only way you’re getting out of here,” Orlando said.

  “I-I-I am not very athletic.”

  “Don’t worry. We’ll help you.”

  Her words didn’t seem to ease his concern much.

  “There it is,” Jar said thirty seconds later.

  A hundred and fifty meters ahead, half lit at the edge of one of the working lights, was the junk-pile ladder she’d built.

  “We’re not going to have a lot of time,” Orlando said. “You go first, then Brunner.”

  “I can go last,” Jar said.

  “You’ve been through the vents already once,” Orlando said. “You go first.”

  Jar had only been logical. She was wearing the harness. It made sense for her to go last so she could tie the end of the rope to it. But perhaps she had been overthinking. Now that the base personnel knew they were here, it wouldn’t matter if they left the rope behind or not.

  She nodded. “I go first.”

  With Danara’s help, Quinn and Nate negotiated their way across the base to the room with the escape tunnel where Daeng and Kincaid waited. The hardest part had been at the start, when all the patrols were heading in their general direction. After a few well-timed stops in unoccupied rooms, all the soldiers were soon behind them.