“You’re saying I’m right?”
“I’m saying,” Stone said, “you might have a point.”
He started forward before Tatiana replied, and she fell in step behind him and slightly to the right as they started across the dirt lot. The building grew in size as they approached.
“Stone, down,” Tatiana hissed.
Stone dropped prone in the soft dirt. Tatiana landed beside him. The lit parking lot meant little as a Jeep with two men aboard approached the edge where the pavement met the dirt. The man in the passenger seat of the Jeep held a spotlight, with which he probed the dirt field.
“Did cutting the fence trigger an alarm?” she said.
Zahra had told him all about the mafia soldiers but nothing about electronic alarms on the perimeter. “You might be right about that trap.”
The Jeep rolled at about ten miles an hour; not too fast, but also not slow enough for troops on the alert and expecting trouble.
Stone tucked the stock of the M933 tightly into his shoulder, rose a little, and fired twice. The suppressed 5.56mm slugs left the muzzle, swiftly closing the distance between Stone and his target. The spotlight winked out, the man holding it letting out a scream and was cut off by the second round punching through his throat.
Stone shifted to the driver, Tatiana firing a string of rounds, Stone following, the suppressors burying the snap cracks of the bullets and only the cycling of the weapons’ machinery making any noise. The front glass cracked, the driver’s head snapping back, his body jerking as more rounds impacted. The passenger clumsily fell from his seat to the ground while the driver remained in place. The Jeep began to slow until it only idled forward.
“Let’s catch a ride,” Stone said. He sprinted for the Jeep, jumping onto the driver’s side skid, unbuckling the driver and letting him fall out. Tatiana swung into the passenger seat ad Stone dropped behind the wheel. Applying some gas, he turned the Jeep in a quick U-turn and headed across the parking lot.
Tatiana held up a white card. “Grabbed the goon’s key card!”
“Good thinking.”
It beat blasting through the lobby doors with a grenade, which had been Stone’s plan.
He pressed the brake pedal and stopped the Jeep directly in front of the lobby doors. The exterior of the building was all glass and steel framework. Tatiana beat Stone to the front doors and the lock snapped when she held the key card in front of a sensor. Stone opened the left-side door and Tatiana moved inside with her HK MP-7 leading the way. Stone followed up with the M933 at shoulder level.
Empty reception desk directly ahead; to the left, a sitting area; across the tiled expanse of the lobby on the opposite wall, a pair of closed doors. No sign of an elevator.
“How do we get to the basement?” Tatiana said.
“Find the elevator.”
The double-doors crashed open and a trio of armed men stormed into the lobby. Stone and Tatiana moved for cover, Stone to the sitting area and Tatiana to the reception desk. She vaulted the desk and landed hard on the other side as the gunmen opened fire.
The trio only carried automatic pistols, their muzzles flashing as they fired single shots. Stone flattened on the tiled floor as the couch he hid behind shook with hits, the fabric tearing with each impact, stuffing flying. He lifted the M933 over the top of the couch and let a blind burst fly, the suppressed 5.56mm tumblers drowned out by the snapping of the pistols.
Pulling the M933 back, he shoved the weapon across his back and grabbed the Beretta Brigadier. The carbine was too large to maneuver around the couch. Stone crawled to the edge, swung the nine-millimeter around, and pulled the trigger.
The blasts of the Brigadier joined the guards’ gunfire. One gunman was already down from either Stone’s burst of a shot from Tatiana. The Brigadier kicked again and again and a second guard went down, his left knee cracking like an egg and smearing the floor with red. The third guard slipped on the blood spill, crashing hard on his rear end. A salvo opened his chest, each impact creating a puckered hole across his torso, more red spray contributing to the mess already on the floor.
Tatiana shouted, “Front door!”
Stone snapped his head around. Two gunmen blasted the lobby door glass, the pieces raining down to spread out in a pool-like pattern as hot slugs screamed into the lobby. Stone rolled over the front of the couch. Tatiana fired from the reception desk, her MP-7 spitting ejected cartridge casings as a rapid pace. More glass shattered. Stone took aim with the Beretta but only saw the backs of the two gunmen as they retreated.
Stone holstered the Brigadier as he snatched the M933 carbine from around his back. Tatiana raced across the lobby, heading for the doors despite the red mess spreading across the tiles. Stone followed. He knew from Zahra’s information that the two outside and the three before them barely scratched the surface of the force they could expect. More would be coming. The two from outside might try and flank them.
They moved around the dead bodies and slipped through the doorway into a long hallway with thin carpeting. Offices on the left, all of which faced the parking lot, with a conference room and kitchen on the right side. At the end of the hall, a right turn to, hopefully, the elevator down to the basement. Stone’s mind raced to grapple with how much opposition they faced as well as Tatiana’s idea that the entire effort was a trap. Was she right?
“Incoming!” Stone shouted. He ducked for and open doorway on his left while Tatiana broke right, following the wall leading to the conference room. More gunners, these ones armed with semi-auto rifles, spread out between the corner and the floor.
Stone triggered a burst, then heard commotion behind him. He looked. The two gunmen who’d shot out the lobby doors raced toward them. He shouted a warning to Tatiana, revering his position to fire at them. The M933 clicked empty. He slapped in a new magazine as the pair reached their dead comrades. Stone fired again. They spread out.
Stone reversed again. He squeezed rounds at the gunmen ahead, reversed, and stitched the walls on either side of the doorway with a burst to either hit the two coming in from outside or drive them further to cover.
Stone let the M933 fall on its sling and grabbed a grenade from his web belt. He shouted a warning to Tatiana as he tossed the pineapple ahead of them. The resulting blast shook the walls but silenced any resistance from the end of the hall.
“Keep going, I’ll cover your back!” Tatiana shouted.
Stone nodded and charged ahead, into the smoke hanging in the air, stepping over pieces of what used to be mafia gunmen as he rounded the corner. More offices lined the left side, but straight ahead was an alcove with a sign above that said Server Room.
Almost like X marks the spot, Stone thought, and raced for the alcove. He pressed the elevator call button. The doors rumbled open. The elevator started down and when the doors opened, Stone paused a moment.
Concrete floor and walls, bright lights, a loud hum.
Stone took two steps forward.
Sudden movement on his right made him turn, only to meet the butt of a shotgun square in the face.
Chapter Twelve
“It was only obvious you’d come down here.”
Stone’s face throbbed in pain; it felt like another planet was growing where the shotgun butt had hit him. He was flat on his belly, the concrete cold against the left side of his face.
He moved his head to see the speaker.
“You look different in the pictures, Lassiter.”
Simon Lassiter, in a squat before Stone, grinned. “We all get older, Mr. Stone.”
Lassiter stood up. He held the shotgun leisurely and more hands grabbed Stone and lifted him up. Two mafia gunners on either side; a third stripped off his web gear and weapons and tossed them in a corner.
“It will take more than a couple of grenades to destroy our servers,” Lassiter said. “A lot more.”
“Never underestimate,” Stone said, “the proper application of high explosives.”
They didn’t searc
h his pockets.
Lassiter made a gesture with his head and the two gunners dragged Stone forward. He managed a glimpse of the server farm that had been his target, a row of long steel cabinets housing processing units with more blinking, colorful lights than a Christmas tree.
“In here.”
Lassiter pushed open a door. The goons held Stone still while the third looped a rope around some pipes. They lifted Stone’s hands above his head and tied them together, then pulled on the rope until Stone’s feet left the ground. The goons secured the rope to another pipe lining the floor and let the Z Section operative dangle.
Stone didn’t try to fight.
Not yet.
“Your friend is probably dead,” Lassiter said.
“Oh?”
“She ran off. But we’ll find her. If we haven’t already.” Lassiter grinned.
“That’s two I owe you.”
“I figured they’d send somebody who knew Monty Stuart,” Lassiter said. “I promise I didn’t think he’d kill himself. My note was just to rub his face in his failure. I thought he’d come after me to make sure the job got done.”
“Well, you figured wrong, and now I’m here to make sure you don’t live to see tomorrow.”
“Oh, I’ll see tomorrow, Mr. Stone.” Lassiter laughed. “And a wrecked America to boot.”
“Why are you here anyway?”
“After your stunt in the penthouse, I figured it as safer to finish my work here at the lab. That’s right, Mr. Stone. My super-worm is finished. All I need to do now is press a button and it will be unleashed, and I shall do that”--he checked his watch--“a little over an hour from now. We’ll talk again when Bryant gets here. He has you and somebody else to kill and he’d rather take care of both of you at the same time.”
Stone frowned as they shut the door, leaving him in darkness.
All right. Maybe Tatiana was a goner. Too bad. If not, maybe she’d find her way to him. A last second rescue never hurt. And he still had the red USB in his right pocket. Lassiter, for all his intelligence, hadn’t thought any further than the length of his nose. He thought somebody like Stone depended only on his guns.
Who was the other person Bryant wanted out of the way?
Zahra?
Probably.
Stone’s face hurt. His whole body strained as he dangled from the pipe.
Zahra Tajik shut her apartment door and froze in the dark entryway.
Somebody else was in the house.
“It’s okay, Zahra. It’s only me.”
Bryant.
She turned on the hall light and stepped into the living room where Bryant stood and Louis Mueller sat on her couch. Mueller rose and took out a pistol.
“We know everything, Zahra,” Bryant said. He had his hands in his pockets as if he were in the middle of a casual dinner party. “We’ve known since the beginning.”
Zahra’s hands shook. She tried to reply but no words escaped her lips.
“This is where the game ends, dear.”
Bryant stared at her while Mueller rose from the couch.
Finally, Zahra screamed.
She turned to run but barely made it two steps before she felt Mueller’s grip on an arm and then something smashed into the side of her head and she fell into darkness that wasn’t part of the poor lighting in the hallway where she should have put a night light but whoever gets around to doing little tasks such as that? There always seems to be a bigger fish to fry at any one moment.
Water rushed through the pipes at regular intervals. Stone’s arms felt numb, and the pipe appeared unaffected by his 240 pound weight. He had hoped maybe the pipe would break and give him a chance to get loose.
No such luck.
He shut his eyes tight as the door swung open and bright light filled the closet.
“We brought you some company,” Lassiter said.
Stone opened his eyes. Earl Bryant stood behind Lassiter as the cyber expert shoved Zahra inside. She stood on wobbly legs, a large red welt on one side of her face. Goons came in to quickly tie her up and dangle her from the pipe same as Stone.
“You’re too repetitive,” Stone said. “Seriously, guys, show some imagination.”
Lassiter came forward and punched Stone in the stomach.
Air left him. He couldn’t breathe. His face turned beet red.
“Enjoy what was probably your last joke, Stone,” Lassiter said.
Bryant finally spoke.
“We have some friends on the way who will take good care of you. In fact, they’ll take such good care of you nobody will ever find your bodies.”
Zahra let out a whimper.
“Meanwhile, Simon and I will be making our speech in, oh, an hour or so, and begin the disintegration of the U.S. economy. Wish us luck.”
Stone finally regained his wind. “Bryant.”
Earl Bryant raised an eyebrow at Stone.
“I’ll kill you first.”
“Sure you will.”
Lassiter exited the closet and the door closed once again.
Darkness all around.
Zahra finally said, “Tell me you have a plan.”
Stone didn’t answer.
“Tell me!”
All Stone managed to muster was: “I’m thinking, Zahra.”
He hoped it was enough to calm her down. It sure didn’t help him. Had Tatiana escaped? Or was she dead?
Bryant and Lassiter climbed into a Lincoln Towncar as Bryant gave final orders to Louis Mueller regarding the prisoners.
“Once your medics show up,” Bryant said, “have one of the torpedoes take care of Stone and the girl.”
“There’s the other woman, too.”
“You haven’t found her yet?”
“She can’t have gotten far.”
“Find her. Kill her.”
Bryant pulled the door shut and drove off.
Mueller watched the Towncar leave the property.
The survivors of the fire fight had gathered the dead and wounded in one area of the lobby, waiting for the medical crew Mueller had called, the local Mafiosi not terribly happy about using the resources but knowing, too, that they’d entered into an agreement with Bryant and this was part of fulfilling that agreement.
The medics arrived in several vans. A doctor treated the wounded while the rest of his crew loaded the dead into the vans.
Once the medics, the dead, and he wounded were transported away, Mueller waved over two of the gunners and told them to get a vehicle and dispose of the two people in the basement. He’d personally show them where they were. “Kill them away from here, no comebacks,” Mueller added.
The gunners nodded and went to collect a vehicle.
“What’s that?” Zahra said. Her voice had hope in it.
Stone’s response did as well.
“Sounds like an explosion.”
“Gunfire?”
“That too.”
The noise was muffled, but undeniable. The crackles of automatic weapons fire and the thunder of exploding--what? Vehicles, probably. Stone allowed himself a smile. Tatiana had not only survived, she’d planned a spectacular last-second rescue.
There were worse ways to end a story, right? And now Stone knew his story would continue. At least for a little while longer.
Another explosion shook the ceiling above Stone. He felt the pipe move, but it didn’t break.
The closet door swung open. Stone squinted against the light. Somebody shouted at him. Mueller? He opened his eyes. Mueller indeed, raising a gun. Then a burst of gunfire and spurts of blood from the back of his neck and head. Mueller fell forward, landing at Stone’s feet. The door opened all the way and Tatiana stood there, casually snapping a new magazine into her MP-7.
“I’m doing all the work and you’re just hanging out?”
“My arms are numb, get us down.”
Tatiana made fast work with a knife, Zahra and Stone taking time to rub feeling back into their arms. Stone grunted as the pins-and-n
eedles effect started.
“Where were you?” he said.
“Out and about,” she said. “Is that your gear in the corner over there?”
Stone left the women and gathered his equipment, checking the loads in the M933 and the Beretta Brigadier.
“Is this the server farm?” Tatiana said.
“One and only. How are we upstairs?”
“Better hurry. The cars I blew up are going to be kinda visible from anywhere.”
Stone pulled the red USB drive from his pocket and approached the servers. Their collective hum grew louder as he stood before the first massive cabinet, looking for a spot into which he could plug the USB drive.
He finally found the slot and jammed in the end of the drive.
Tatiana stood beside him.
“Now what?”
“Just watch.”
The servers appeared to undergo no change, until the flashing green and yellow lights all turned solid red, one after another, like a growing weed pushing up through the ground, the stalk getting stronger as it fed off the nutrients in the ground. The servers still hummed, but once all the lights had gone red, Stone could tell the network was as dead as Mueller on the floor behind them.
He stood quietly. He might as well have dropped a nuclear bomb, but all he did was plug something into a computer and the gee-whiz tech within that USB did all the work.
At least he’d managed to save some grenades.
He turned to the women.
“Let’s get out of here,” he said.
The women didn’t argue.
Bryant faced the Future Dreams crowd. The spotlight gave him a sense of warmth, the edge of success provided a jolt of adrenaline, and the faces staring back at him, full of adulation, made everything right with the world.
“But enough of me talking,” he said, wrapping up his introduction to Lassiter. “Let me introduce to you the man behind it all, the master coder, our company super nova, Simon Lassiter!”
The applause drowned out all thought as Lassiter stepped out onto the stage. He’d cleaned up well, his business casual outfit and combed hair making him look like a college professor. He took the microphone from a grinner Bryant and they exchanged a knowing look.
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