Footsteps grew louder. Slower, as if thoughts got in the way of someone’s pace. A hesitant approach to the door.
The sound, the person, her potential enemy, had stopped. A ray of light shone into the room under the door. A flashlight. She instinctively edged closer to her wall, backing up against it, careful not to touch paint can to brick. Careful not to breathe so loudly. Careful.
The light disappeared.
Everything went dark and quiet, and it stayed that way for so long that Fiona began to wonder if her visitor was still there. But an invisible blast confirmed the unfriendly presence, an explosion of metal splinters and rushing air, the door swinging out and slamming against Fiona—her nose taking most of it—and squeezing her into the wall briefly before bouncing back off her and clamoring to the ground.
Her face stung horribly and it felt like her nose was missing. It felt wet. And then she stopped thinking and feeling anything, instead hearing someone’s feet step onto the fallen door with two deep clunking sounds. The light flicked on again, its beam dragging across the far wall with the countertop and the cupboards, and then around the corner and onto Fiona’s wall. As it swept closer to her corner, she made her decision.
Swing!
It started with Fiona’s back foot, her planting it firmly against the corner of the floor and wall, an energy propelling out through her leg and into her hip, swinging back with the windup of her arm, the paint can reaching back and then hurtling forward through the darkness. The can swung out from the handle at full extension, the weight of it all moving at full velocity with hardly a sound until it came to a dead stop—and a sickeningly meaty thud, a wet sound, a sound of bone. And then a man’s scream as the can bounced back, as Fiona pulled it back behind her, preparing for another mighty swing. Midway back, just as she was about to come forward with yet another blow onto whatever body part she could hit, she was blinded by the searing ray of her attacker’s flashlight.
And then the horrifying thought occurred to her that it hadn’t been an attacker, but a rescuer. Jasper, whom she had called out and wished for. He had come busting down the door as she hoped, and received a paint can to the head for his trouble.
She felt his hands on her, harder and stronger than before, grabbing her like a mixed-martial artist would grapple his opponent. The hands ran down to her wrists, squeezing there and pushing her arm back against the wall, squeezing the soft tendons with such a painful grip that her fingers instantly released the paint can. It came crashing down at her feet, spilling its slow wetness all over her feet. Now she was clawing for him, for any piece of his face, punching madly with a hateful, open-handed ferocity. A few swats landed, but they were onto the meat of his shoulder, her blows landing in quiet, futile thuds. His arms, meanwhile, wrapped around her neck, his forearms tightening like some great python, coiling up around her windpipe, choking, and then dragging her through the room. Her legs kicked wildly as she fought for grip on the ground, as she tried to leverage any kind of footing, any kind of resistance to his dragging.
Through the struggle, her throat tightened in his grip, the air passing through more loudly and laboriously now as he lifted her trifling weight off the ground, leaning her body over his so that she had nothing but him to grab on to. Nothing but this strong, silent mass, this animal working on the lowest of instincts. No words, just flexed muscle working against her, lifting her, dragging, squeezing her away.
He stepped over the door, his feet fumbling over it for a few steps, and then they were out in the hallway, the sound of her struggles echoing differently against the narrow brick. She tried to grab hold of what she thought was a door frame, but his free arm, swinging like a club, knocked it away. Now, out in the hall, there was nothing to grab on to.
One consolation was that she was out of the morgue, a goal she’d had for what seemed like an eternity. She was away from the disgusting floor drain and the operating table. The hallway was still dark, but a light had turned on, a headlamp fixed atop her attacker’s face. So at least she could see again, watching the details of the hallway’s cracked-paint brick, the bare shiny concrete below where they’d removed the floor tiles. And the set of scuffed-metal double doors they were approaching.
A new sense of panic set in as he steered her toward the double doors, grunting and panting in the warm, stuffy air. She could feel his sweat, his forearm becoming slippery as he dragged her closer and closer to the doors. It reminded her of a set of doors she’d seen in her childhood, at her father’s old downtown butcher shop, the scuffed doors of the meat cooler. She could see her dad, in his blood-stained apron, carrying various cuts of meat in and out of the swinging doors. Now it was she who was the piece of meat, a carcass being dragged in for storage.
Storage.
The thought made her kick even harder, screaming as she tried her best to dig her heels into any soft part of his body. She aimed for his crotch, kicking backward, squirming hard against his body, writhing like a snake in sets of violent, whip-like kicks. But his grip was hard and tight, swinging her body around to face the door, and then slamming her into it, using her like a ram to split open the heavy doors.
She thought the air in the old morgue was stale enough, but inside this new room it was even worse. Like a tomb that had been sealed up for a few millenniums. And despite the caustic odors of bleach and industrial cleaners, there was still that sweet, disgusting hint of death. Fiona only hoped she wouldn’t soon add to it.
Still scrambling against his body, her hands were back at his face. She tried clawing at the lit headlamp, preferring darkness over whatever she’d have to see next. But he kept batting her hand away, and before long she was looking at the light’s harsh reflection against the stainless-steel doors of the morgue’s freezers. She screamed hysterically, but it was simultaneously choked off by his arm and muffled by his hand. She tried biting that hand. She tried kicking again, this time landing a solid blow to his crotch, which puffed the wind out of him. He muttered a string of curse words as he readjusted his grip, holding her firmer, walking faster, and then hunching over to open one of the drawers.
“No!” Fiona howled, kicking, thrashing against him.
He’d turned her around, away from the cooler, but she could hear a loud, horrifying squealing sound of one of its drawers being pulled out. And as he bent her horizontally, she fought one last time, one last spasm to try to break free. And then one last breath, as he stuffed her body into one of the cool metal drawers.
29
Jasper
They had switched to encrypted CB radio. The power outages, and surges, and what the DARC Ops crew thought was a signal jammer, had made communications over regular phone networks tenuous at best. Jasper, distracted by the chaos unfolding on his earbud, almost wished he had no communications at all.
“Go ahead, Jackson,” he barked into his mic as his legs pumped down the steps like pistons firing away in the engine of a sports car.
“Stop what you’re doing,” said Jackson. “We need you up here in surgery.”
“What? You told me to check downstairs.”
“We need you in surgery. Some of the doctors are trying to leave. They’re trying to evacuate as many people as they can.”
When Jasper came to a dead stop at the flat portion of the stairway, and after the echo of his steps faded away, he could finally hear the faint sound of an alarm.
“I was right about the bombs?” he asked. But he didn’t have to wait for Jackson’s response to know the answer. A muffled concussive blast rippled through the building and through his body. The lights surged and then almost died away as the backup generators struggled to meet their energy demands.
And now he heard something louder: an alarm, the stairwell itself erupting in a digitized scream.
Something had gone seriously wrong.
“How far along are they?” Jasper was looking up and down the stairs, trying to decide which direction he’d take.
“Eighty percent.”
; “I’m on my way.”
There was no time to debate it, or even think at all about the decision. Something catastrophic must have happened for such an alarm to be sounding, and for Jackson to need him in the operating room. Vic’s bombs must have been placed, at least a portion of them, near or right on top of the main generator.
But then a sudden calm swept over him. And a direction took hold, an idea. Something deep inside compelled him to continue down one more flight of stairs and take the door to the old morgue. He was already so close. What was another extra minute?
The old morgue floor was completely dark. Jasper quickly fished out a headlamp from his pants and then continued down the narrow corridor, holding his handgun in front of him and aiming it into every empty room as he walked by. He was heading toward the room in question, the source of the login fails, and even before he could read the placard, he knew which door it was. The door that was lying on the ground surrounded by a pile of debris. He frowned as his foot hit something tacky. And covered in half-wet paint.
He ducked his head through the doorway, aiming his gun and his light at each of the danger spots before entering. Cleared, he checked the sectors in order of their danger priority. First under the operating table, then the two corners on either side of the doorway, the back corner, the computer station . . .
He moved immediately toward the computer, staring at the keyboard. It had been recently moved, leaving tracks in a thick layer of dust. And then handprints on either side over the edge of the countertop. Smallish hands with thin, artistic fingers. Soft, delicate features for his hacker. The computer screen was asleep, and with a slight touch of the mouse and a few blind smacks of the keyboard, the screen came to life, flashing its soft bluish light into the room. Jasper dimmed his headlamp as he read the screen, a text-only interface for what looked like temperature controls. There was a login box opened, and a cursor blinking at the end of the words.
HELPME.
The cursor seemed to make a sound with each blink, matching the sudden pounding of his heart beat. Beating fast, but at regular intervals, unlike his royal patient upstairs. Jasper looked away, back through the darkened doorway. He then turned his head so that his ear facing out heard a distant knocking sound. He knew it wasn’t gunshots, or more explosives. It was closer. Softer. It reminded him of the sound his brother once made, the frantic tapping after he’d locked him inside Dad’s old empty refrigerator.
The sounds grew louder as Jasper retreated back out into the hall. His heart was pounding now, quickening and throbbing with anxiety as he neared the source of the noise.
But then there was something much louder.
A new, much stronger thud of the heart. His heart. And the frightening sensation of raw, kinetic energy blasting into it, over his chest plate and radiating out through his rib cage, the energy knocking him back on clunky, unsteady feet. His knees buckled and he collapsed against the wall, his chest on fire with pain. His ears were ringing loudly.
Everything hurt. His old war injuries. His most recent battle scars from his part in a Dumpster sandwich. And now, a new addition, the white-hot agony of his chest. His neck even hurt when he craned it up to check down the hall, looking toward the source of the loud pop and the flicker of light. His own light, his headlamp, lit up the back of a pair of running shoes as they scampered away and around a corner. He noticed, before they had disappeared, the shoe company’s logo, gleaming against the beams of his LED headlamp.
He patted his chest, expecting to feel a ripped shirt and growing pool of blood. It had to have been an armor-piercing round, his chest hurt so damn bad. But the only thing that was ripped was his pocket. He slid his finger through a small hole and felt the destroyed back panel of his phone.
Fucking thing saved his life.
He’d heard of soldiers getting saved by random bits of their gear. Drink flasks. Ammo clips. But never some piece of commercial crap made in China.
As he got back to his feet, he slid it out of his pocket, the half-exploded device falling and shattering to even more pieces on the ground. He was sore. His chest and ribs were likely bruised to hell and back. But he was alive.
He grabbed his gun off the ground and began to carefully follow the tracks of the gunman, creeping around a corner in the hall while calling in to Jackson. He skipped the hysterics. “Are you in front of a computer?”
“What do you think?”
“Can you tell me where the service elevator is headed?”
“Who’s on it?”
“The guy who just opened fire on me.”
“Oh,” said Jackson. “Must not be a very good shot.”
Underneath the nonchalant banter, Jasper could hear him typing, working frantically. His breathing was audible. Jasper imaged all the invisible steps that were currently being taken, all the precautions, the warnings, the plans set into motion. Everything had a contingency, including a freak occurrence of active shooters and how to track down and neutralize them.
“He’s in basement two,” said Jackson, the message coming across Jasper’s comms as he bolted up the stairwell, running, taking two steps at a time in long hard strides. “I’m waiting to see if he used his access key for any . . . Wait. Someone just entered room A12.”
“What’s A12?”
“A12 is . . . air conditioning. It’s an air-pump room.”
What kind of trouble could someone cause in there—someone who’d been manufacturing bombs, and someone who’d just shot at him—what kind of interesting scheme they could come up with in regards to the hospital’s air system?
“Jasper?”
“Go ahead.” He climbed to the basement’s second level and then barreled out the stairwell door.
“We’re getting more reports of gunfire, in multiple sectors. I don’t think I can send anyone your way.”
“That’s fine.”
“So you need to hold off on A12. Do you read? Do not enter A12.”
“That’s a negative,” Jasper was thinking again of the ventilation system.
“Excuse me?”
“Jackson, I think this guy’s a chemist. I found bomb-making supplies all over his office. And you already know what else he’s been up to.”
Jackson was quiet for a moment, just long enough for Jasper to reach the door, when he heard over the radio, “Hold your position. I’m sending Matthias down.”
Jasper’s response was to wave his badge over the door’s reader until the door’s lock popped open with a quiet clunk. It was loud enough for whomever was inside to be ready. So he entered gun first and ready to fire. He wanted to be first this time.
The room’s setup was more elaborate than he’d hoped. Instead of a nice open space, it was filled with boxes of loud spinning fans and coils of various pipes, a whole maze of heating and cooling instruments in the way. The only good news was that the lights were still on.
He crept into the room, his head rotating around, eyes scanning all angles of the room, all possible hiding spots. The droning noise of the machinery hid his almost silent steps, but it also masked any other sound. He had nothing to go on but cold, hard instinct, and the military rudiments of entering and clearing close-quarters situations. And bravery, which was perhaps just masked stupidity.
The room was also narrower than he’d assumed. And more twisty, adding plenty of hiding spots for his cornered attacker—if he was still inside. When he passed by a row of computer interfaces, he noticed one of the screens was still on and perhaps just recently in use. The rest of the screens were dark, in power-save mode. It was the first definite clue that he was not alone. The second clue, after rounding another corner, was those black running shoes. He saw them, and a pair of black-panted legs peeking out from under an opened cabinet door. Above the door was the top of someone’s head, moving, working, then ducking down and out of view.
The easy move would be to just shoot through the thin metal cabinet door. No questions asked. No warning. Hardly an aim since it was so close.
But despite everything he’d witnessed in the last six hours, and despite what his gut said, he couldn’t make himself to take the risk. He’d rather be dead than shoot a friendly.
Certainly, there was no set protocol, no rules of engagement for attempting to stop a possible bio-weapon terrorist in the hospital’s ventilation room. It would be a no-brainer if he could identify his target with certainty. That would be the easy part: point and shoot, bag and tag.
He waited there, his weapon trained steadily on the door and the torso beyond it. He waited for a moment longer, keeping track of his breathing, his nerves, keeping an eye on the target. What were his options, any other possible action over blinding shooting and killing a possible friendly?
Should he say something? Make a cop-like command, like “Freeze!” or “Put your hands up!”?
But that might give the person behind the door time to react. He didn’t want his opponent to have any invisible reaction.
It would be best to wait.
But what if the attacker was just about to launch his chemical assault on the hospital? What if he were only a few button presses away from releasing some poisonous gas?
Before Jasper could decide, the door swung shut.
And there, staring back at him, was the frozen face of Vic Demidov. Eyes squinting. Mouth curling up into a grimace.
Jasper didn’t know how or why, but out of his mouth came the word, “Freeze!”
“What?” said Vic, his eyes widening as they fixed on the barrel of the gun. “What!” he cried, a wavering of fear rippling through his voice.
“Don’t move,” said Jasper. “Just relax.”
Vic stumbled back, his shoulder bumping into the closed door. “What? Relax?”
“What are you doing?”
“How the fuck can I relax?” he started muttering something in Russian. Jasper knew a few languages, but Russian wasn’t one of them.
DARC Ops: The Complete Series Page 63