“What are you doing here?” Jasper asked again.
“Testing.”
“Testing what?”
“The air,” he said, swallowing as he talked, so that it came out in a pitiful little choking sound. “The air quality.”
“We’re evacuating this whole place,” said Jasper, taking a quick glance around him, behind him. “There’s no need for any tests.” He focused back at his target—who was most certainly not a friendly. Something about the way his face moved, the way he tried to feign normalcy, or fear. There was some deep-seated turmoil inside his eyes. More than just simple confusion at being surprised in the ventilation room and having a gun pointed at him while he performed some routine air-quality test.
“Well,” said Vic, “I was just . . .”
Jasper started backing up, making room. “Can you come with me?”
Vic remained in his little corner, looking down at his feet, muttering something else in Russian.
“Come on, let’s go.”
Vic looked up at Jasper, and then past him, over his shoulders, his lips still quietly muttering in his native language.
The idea occurred to Jasper to turn around.
But it came too late.
Some kind of cold leather strap roped over his head and pulled up hard against Jasper’s throat, knocking him off balance while Vic rushed in to wrestle for his gun. In the back of Jasper’s mind, the jingling metal sound of a belt buckle registered. He was being strangled with someone’s belt. In the back of his mind, also, was the idea that he would very soon—especially now that the gun had been stripped from his hand—be returning to a morgue. And this time staying there a little longer than his last visit.
Whoever held the belt was now dragging Jasper backward, his back scraping against the tiled floor as he moved deeper into the fan-and-pipe maze of the ventilation room. Vic occasionally popped into view, following behind, holding and pointing Jasper’s gun at its original owner. He was eventually dragged over and slumped headfirst into a set of metal pipes, where Vic helped string a rope around him and the pipes, locking his arms together at the wrists and then tying that in place around the metal. The other man finally tightened the belt, so that his neck was tied up to the pipe, the metal of the buckle clinking against it.
His earbud had been knocked out and it was lying next to him but just out of reach. His gun was gone. And his last contact with the outside world, his phone, was lying somewhere in the morgue with a bullet hole through it.
But even if he could talk to someone, it would come out muffled and garbled through a strip of duct tape placed over his mouth. He tried anyway, cursing loudly through the tape. He kept yelling until Vic bent over and slapped him hard on the side of his face.
“You make noise, you get slapped.”
“Fuck you,” Jasper said, the words muffling back into his mouth and making him feel dizzy, like holding in a sneeze.
“We don’t want to hurt you,” said Vic. “You’re too important to us.”
Another futile fuck you. It went unheard, but Jasper was sure they knew what he’d meant, the sentiment conveyed through a growl. And through his eyes.
“You’ll stop screaming if we take off the tape?” asked Vic.
Jasper nodded until Vic reached over and ripped off, the pain of it making him fight the urge to yell again.
One of the men had carried over a large plastic jug, a bleach container, and parked it next to one of the open flaps in one of the pipes. He reached into the pipe and pulled out a dust-covered filter. But then Vic started barking something at him. He suddenly stopped what he was doing looked at Jasper once, and then ran out of the room.
“Talk to me, Vic,” Jasper said. “What’s going on?”
He laughed. “What’s going on?”
“Yeah,” said Jasper, flexing his arms apart, twisting his wrists, doing everything he could to test the knot. But it was tight. Well constructed.
“I think you know what’s going on,” said Vic. “That’s the problem.”
“Right. You’re doing air-quality tests. Why don’t you tell me about your findings?”
Vic laughed.
“I’m a man of science, too, you know.”
“You want to hear my findings?” Vic asked, walking away to an opened laptop.
Jasper kept working the rope, stretching it against the metal. “Yes. Of course.” He felt the knot loosen slightly. “I’d love to hear your findings.”
“Well, the air, right now . . .” He was typing something. “Is good. Is safe.”
More pulling on the rope. He tried not to make so much noise, the belt buckle clanking against the pipe as he worked.
“But,” said Vic, “pretty soon it will be different. Not so safe for the prince.”
“Won’t that affect everyone? Not just the prince? Won’t you be harming thousands of innocent people?”
“Collateral damage,” he said with a shrug. “But most of them left already, so it won’t be so bad. You should have left, too.”
“I tried,” said Jasper.
“No, you were nosy.”
“Listen, uh, Vic . . .” More pulling, more loosening. “Was that you downstairs?”
Vic laughed as Jasper finally made enough room to slip a single hand out of the knot.
“Was that you, shooting at me like that?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“It was a good shot. And I knew you thought so, too.” Jasper very slowly and silently slipped his hand free. But he was still careful to keep it by the other hand, as if it were still tied. “You were so surprised to see me alive, weren’t you?”
Vic shrugged while he walked over to Jasper.
“Why didn’t you finish the job up here?”
“Too many pipes,” said Vic as he reached for Jasper’s earbud and put it in his own ear. He listened for a moment, and then said, “They’re trying to refire the main generator.” Vic laughed uncontrollably before putting a hand to his mouth, blocking the sound.
“What’s so funny about that?”
“Your little nurse friend.”
“What about her?” Jasper’s mind began to panic. She’d left right, gone home? The last time he’d seen her she was safely—
“She might be a little uncomfortable, if your men turn the power back on.” Vic took out the earbud and threw it at him, the small device pinging off the floor. “Why don’t you do her a favor and tell them to stop?”
The prince, in surgery, needed the power for his life support while he was under. And so did any other patient who was still in the hospital and depended on electronic devices to survive. The generators couldn’t last forever. “Why would I tell them to stop?”
“You don’t have to,” said Vic, returning to his computer. “You’ll have to make a choice.”
Jasper felt nauseous even considering it.
“So what’s in it for you?” asked Vic, still typing away. “Money? Are you getting paid for this?”
Jasper quickly brought his hand out from behind and reached it into his pocket. “I’m just doing my duty.”
“For Saudi Arabia.”
Jasper pulled out the syringe from the lab, still capped in his back pocket, and hid it behind his back.
“Why your two countries are so in love, I’ll never understand. Especially with how they fund terrorists and play your enemies against you. Let alone all the human-rights atrocities. If your country was smart, the people, they would ditch your globalist puppet leaders and finally join up with Russia. Defeat the real terrorism.”
“I think I’m looking at some real terrorism right now.”
“You think this is terrorism?” said Vic. “It’s just an assassination. Just business. The simple effect of the Oil War. It’s nothing personal.”
“Tell that to the innocent bystanders you’re about to kill off.” Jasper brought out the syringe and jammed it into the plastic bleach bottle. Using the fingers on his free hand, he pulled up o
n the plunger and extracted its brown contents. “What are you using, by the way? Is it chemical or biological?” With the syringe fully loaded, he aimed at the back of Vic’s leg.
“What do you care?”
“Because I want to know how fast you’ll die.”
The needle plunged deep into Vic’s calf muscle at the same time as Jasper’s thumb depressed the deadly contents into his body. It had an immediate effect, the puncture wound itself, the metal forcing Vic to yelp like a dog, jumping away from the needle and away from Jasper, falling to the ground with his hand clutching the back of his leg. He swore madly, kicking and screaming, his voice growing impossibly higher in pitch and intensity.
Jasper wasted no time, tugging and pulling at the rope still wrapped around his other wrist. Vic, meanwhile, had quieted down considerably. A look of deep sadness washed over his face, plus a green pallor—either from the substance, or from the shock of it all, the knowledge that something especially unpleasant was lying in store for him.
The rope began to loosen and then gave way with a satisfying sound as it rasped over the fabric of his shirt and fell to the floor. But the sounds that were now coming from Vic were anything but satisfying. Jasper had wanted to incapacitate him, to knock away his smugness. But what he was forced to listen to now was worse than what he’d expected. A grown man crying. And then hyperventilating, with bubbles and yellowish foam appearing from his mouth, his eyes opened impossibly wide. And then the shaking began, his body convulsing hard and slapping against the ground as Jasper freed his other hand from the rope.
30
Fiona
She gave up a long time ago. Kicking, screaming, trying to escape, everything seemed a wasted effort in her cold, dark coffin. All the struggling and crying, and all of its noise, had given her a splitting headache. The sound of every moment was amplified and echoed and redirected through her skull. Even her own beating heart, which had finally begun to slow down, echoed through her head like someone beating on a large tribal drum. Only she was trapped inside the drum, its booming concussive effect knocking into her at every turn.
There were no other sounds. No other explosions or gunshots or footsteps. Nothing from the outside world, just the sad, desperate soundtrack of her predicament. Not even the voice of her sister was there to console her anymore. Back in the autopsy room, she could have sworn she’d heard her voice, instructing her. But here there were no instructions.
Fiona called out, first to her sister, and then to God. And then to herself, whispering now. “You’re okay, you’re fine. You’re alive.” She repeated it until it almost made her feel better. Almost. She swapped to imagining her escape, someone coming along and opening the drawer, freeing her from the musty stench and the frightening blackness. How satisfying that first breath would be. That first glimmer of light after the door unlocked and before it swung open.
She tried not to imagine her drawer’s last tenant.
She did everything in her power to forget that she lay in the exact same spot as so many other unlucky individuals.
A shiver ran through her spine. A chill, like the icy touch of death, her insides feeling almost as cold as . . .
There was a sudden ticking noise from within the metal drawers, somewhere beneath her. Perhaps in the drawer below. Something crawling around.
Please, God. Don’t let it be a rat.
Trapped in a box with a rat was not how she’d like to spend her last hours alive.
She was relieved when the ticking grew louder. But relief turned into terror when the whole unit shook, like the engine block of an old car on a cool morning startup, the metal around her shaking and vibrating for a few seconds before a loud droning noise filled the whole unit. And then she felt air, not the fresh air of outside, but a stale, chemical smell, almost like the freon of an air-conditioning unit. A cool autumn breeze, blowing the through the darkness over her feet and up her leg, blowing gently through the strands of her hair.
31
Jasper
“What the hell’s going on down there?”
It was Jackson’s voice, an agitated buzzing that first came through Jasper’s earpiece.
“One of the threats has been neutralized,” he said, waiting impatiently in the service elevator as it lowered to the morgue level. “In A12.”
“Care to elaborate?”
“He’s dead. I was able to stop one of the operatives right before he released some kind of poison into the air supply. You need to immediately turn off power to all air-conditioning devices, to all vent rooms.”
Jasper also thought of Vic’s warning about Fiona. How, for some reason, it would be in her best interest if the power was still off. But he didn’t quite know how to explain that to Jackson.
“Jasper, we can’t do that. We need to keep the power on.”
“Everywhere?”
“Yes. I’m afraid it’s all or nothing right now. I’m getting reports from Eric that something with the power grid functions has been compromised. There’s no selectivity. And the prince is in surgery.”
“What the hell happened?”
“I don’t know. I thought you would tell me.”
“I was just tied up with a fucking rope.”
“Are you free now?”
“Yes, I’m fucking free.”
“Are you okay?”
“Yes.”
“So can you come help with the surgery? They’re extremely shorthanded.”
The elevator suddenly slowed, its little digital chime sending a rush of adrenaline through Jasper.
He still had one unscheduled stop. One he wasn’t going to let a madman with a gun distract him from again.
32
Fiona
There was a burning sensation across her body, especially the exposed portions. The metal that surrounded her, too, was painfully cold. How soon, she wondered, would she not be able to feel her bare skin? How soon would she be frozen against the metal slab?
Would she really freeze to death? It felt frighteningly possible.
The idea that she wasn’t in a refrigerator, but a freezer, made her feel even dizzier. And the dizzier she felt, the harder she tried to breathe slowly, and deeply, and usefully. But what little oxygen there was floated away. She was sinking under water, deeper and further away from oxygen and life. Drowning.
She was gasping now. Her little black coffin felt like it was moving, spinning around in an increasingly fast and tight circle. The movement was all inside her head—some part of her knew that, but that didn’t make it stop. The swaying began gently, like a sailboat rocking in morning waters. But now, twirling, it felt like the centrifugal force could obliterate her, collapsing her lungs and imploding her body like she was some leftover meal in vacuum-sealed plastic. A flattened sardine, lifeless and frozen.
She prepared her goodbyes, her last words to what remaining friends she could think of, to whomever would outlive her on the planet, running through the names and faces as fast as she could remember. And then the apologies, one last attempt while still alive to make amends for a lifetime of mistakes. Through her inner ramblings, her pleadings, her prayers, the pain of her lungs grew to an extent that made death preferable to even just another second of this frozen, suffocating torment. The pain grew so much that she preferred abandoning the apologies, and even her latest struggling breath.
She was okay with it now, with dying. She was prepared. Ready. Willing. Hoping for the salvation.
He’s coming . . .
It was hard to tell, in the delirium of her dying moments, whose voice it was. But there was an unmistakable hint, a familiar tone which brought back memories of childhood, of family, of her sister.
He’s coming!
What was that supposed to mean? Was her attacker coming back? And at this point, what difference would that make? She was tired and just wanted to go to sleep.
She tried going to sleep.
But there were several loud clanging sounds, metal, shaking. And then a suc
king sound, a release, the breaking of a pressure seal that immediately made the air fuller, thicker. Breathable. Light began to seep into her coffin, slowly at first, a speck. A sliver. And then, like a supernova, the whole of her prison chamber searing with blinding light. And air. Fresh air! Life!
She could breathe again.
She could see.
The numbness, the suffocating cloud of death, the terror, all faded at the single sight of Jasper’s face.
Jasper!
Fiona struggled to sit up, lifting her back off the slab, barely, and leaning unsteadily on her elbows, squinting into the brightness of the room and of her savior’s face. Thank fucking God it was Jasper. He reached down to her, gripping her arms and pulling her up off the slab and onto him, over his shoulder like she’d been rescued by a firefighter. But she had no time to delve into what would normally be one of her sexual fantasies. Her priority was to simply breathe, to oxygenate herself out of the fog of death.
Her second priority was to warm herself, which Jasper made possible by wrapping his warm body around hers as they huddled together in the corner of the room. He was panting and sweating as if he’d just run somewhere, the heat he’d created to find her now a means to warm her half-frozen body. She sat in his lap, clinging to his chest like a child, burying her head into it, collapsing into his warmth as he rocked her slowly. Back and forth. She could hear his sweet voice, his words not yet making any sense, but calming her, warming her back to the living world.
She could finally stand—without his help—and she could see without squinting. The feeling came back in her fingers and toes, and her nose, after it brushed against Jasper’s when their faces came together, when he kissed her after she smiled for the first time in what felt like an eternity. Their last kiss felt like an eternity ago, as did everything else that came before being locked away in the terrifying dark drawer.
DARC Ops: The Complete Series Page 64