Behold Darkness (Wolves of the Apocalypse Book 1)

by LC Champlin

For the second time that day Birk slammed into metal. Nathan rammed his left forearm against the fucker’s throat, leaning in while yanking the shirt up with his right hand. Gunmetal glinted. Ignoring the struggles and gurgles, Nathan disarmed the weasel.

  With a last shove, Nathan stepped back, a Taurus Ultralite .38 held muzzle up. “What’s this?” He waved it under Birk’s nose as the murderer, doubled over, choked for breath.

  Albin materialized on Nathan’s right, Josephine on his left.

  “Why do you have a gun?” Investigative Reporter Tone from Behrmann.

  “I don’t always have a gun. I just felt unsafe lately.”

  “The question, Ms. Behrmann,” Albin drawled, “is why he didn’t deign to draw it earlier, such as when we were ambushed by gunmen to assist Officers Rodriguez and Jordan.”

  “Or us,” Josephine added.

  Birk milked the strangulation effects, rubbing his throat and shaking his head to avoid answering. “I . . . I really don’t even know how to use it.”

  Nathan turned the revolver back and forth, giving the others a clear view. “Of all days to have a weapon, you chose today. You should play the lottery with that kind of luck.”

  “We’ve got a gun now,” Josephine announced the obvious. “It’s not a machine gun, but—”

  After flicking the Ultralite’s cylinder out, Nathan hit the ejector rod. Three rounds and two spent casings dropped into his hand. The scent of gun smoke wafted from the weapon. Recently fired.

  “There, look.” Birk pointed to the rounds and adopted a condescending smile that must have rated as a personal best. “You want to charge in guns blazing? Go ahead. Three bullets are more than enough to face a troop of heavily armed and armored men bent on our murder. That’s why I didn’t draw the gun earlier.” This he aimed at Albin, who deflected it with the Raised Brow of Doubt.

  Josephine grabbed Nathan’s shoulder. “We can’t just sit here. Those poor people out there might be bleeding to death, or the gunmen might be torturing them. Take the attackers by surprise—”

  Before Nathan could comment about the utter insanity of her idea, Birk broke in: “Oh shut up, Katie! Use your brain, not your idealism.”

  Nathan glanced up at the nickname. Katie, from the famous ABC newscaster. He shoved the brass into a pocket. Kate. He reached his lifetime quota for rescues when he delivered her to the ambulance.

  “Well, Doctor, you seem to have figured out how to fire it,” he mused, reloading the Taurus.

  “Well, yes. I shot at the terrorists.” The truth, probably.

  “What do you say?” Snapping the cylinder back into place with a flick of his wrist, Nathan maintained a mask of superiority. After this much work, and a pistol showing up on Birk like a gift from God, he would wring the last drop of use from the confusion. “Should I tell everyone now, or keep the suspense while you get the files?”

  This bounced the news hound’s mind from its suicide-by-terrorist track. “Tell us what?”

  What indeed.

  “Wait a minute.” Birk raised his hands. “Wait. Are you accusing me of shooting someone? I mean, someone who wasn’t a terrorist? Who? Wait. My coworker?” Incredulity shone in his face. “I was wrong. You’re not crazy, you’re raving nuts!”

  Murder? Locking on neutral expression, Nathan rubbed the Ultralite frame with his thumb.

  Josephine shook a strand of hair from her face. “Why would he shoot her? The gunman already wounded her.”

  “Ask him.” Nod to Birk. “He’s the one who mentioned shooting his coworker.” I was only interested in the data theft.

  In the face of opposition, Birk leaned back against the door, hands falling to his sides. “I swear I only came back for my files.” His spine stiffened then, and he met Nathan’s gaze. “You need me. You want the data. You want to get out, too.”

  “Mm.” Shrug. “I might have changed my mind about the files. I’m also fairly certain we can find our own way out.” Smiling again, Nathan cocked his head. “We know where the terrorists are. They’re right outside.”

  “Really, Doctor,” Albin added, imitating his employer’s smile, “I believe you need us.”

  “He’s not the only one who needs us,” Josephine murmured, turning to give a look of longing at the exit.

  “Ms. Behrmann,” Albin began with brows raised, “you appear to be volunteering yourself. You did say us, after all.”

  “I’m sure they’d do the same for you.”

  Birk forced a laugh. “That’s rather a moot point, considering they have bulletproof vests and machine guns.”

  For once, the researcher made sense. E lights glinted along the Taurus’s barrel. What heroes called courage, people in command of their wits called suicide.

  Nathan looked up. Behind Birk glowed the circle of red from a camera. Wait. Cameras in the lab. “You said the terrorists couldn’t breach the camera control room, yes?” Perhaps the terrorists’ ambush a moment ago occurred by accident, or . . .

  Birk rubbed his bruised cheek. “Why?”

  “We need to move. Now.”

  Chapter 53

  Never Split the Party

  Warrant – Foster the People

  “Obviously, but it’s a little too deadly out there for my taste.” Birk smacked his lips.

  “The cameras in this lab”—Albin nodded to the nearest HAL impersonator—“see us perfectly. If they possess access to the control room, their colleagues will be here soon to collect us. Even if the terrorists do not see us, they will deduce our location soon.”

  “Maybe they won’t be able to get in here.” But doubt laced Josephine’s tone.

  “This again?” Birk slouched onto a nearby stool with a sigh.

  Nathan took a step closer to the researcher, Ultralite aimed just north of his skull. “Where’s the camera control room on the ground floor?”

  “Why—”

  “Where?”

  “Take a left after the stairs and it’s the fourth hall on the left. It says Security on the placard.”

  “Turn around.” Grabbing the researcher by the shoulder in mid eye roll, Nathan spun him around, fished in the twit’s back pocket.

  “Hey! What the—”

  “Ah.” The keycard.

  He shoved Birk back into the vault door, turned and started toward the nearest cabinet. Inside lay printer paper. “Look for anything useful. Improvised weapons, supplies.” Cabinets and drawers behind him slammed as Albin joined the hunt.

  Nathan straightened from rummaging through a drawer to find Birk and Josephine regarding him with skepticism. “That means you two. Think of it as saving your own lives.” The two moved to opposite sides of the counter and began pawing through drawers.

  Ah, shears. Now, where . . . There, between the counter and a metal instrument the size of a refrigerator. He jammed an arm of the shears in the gap and pulled. Snap.

  “Albin.”

  He slid half the scissors down the counter to his friend, who caught it and tucked it under his belt. The other improvised knife found a home in a mag slot in the plate carrier.

  Nathan started toward the exit. “Albin, collect the data. Allow me five minutes lead time and keep the radio on.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You’re actually going out there?” Josephine popped up like a prairie dog.

  “This is our only option.”

  “Are you going after the others? You can’t go by yourself,” she announced, starting after him.

  He half turned, hand up to halt her. “I’m going scouting. Alone.” One minute she wanted him to start single-player hero mode at veteran difficulty level. The next minute she wanted to co-op.

  Albin stepped to his side. “Is this wise, sir? Three rounds and scant knowledge of the floor plan do not offer a promising chance for success.”

  A fire extinguisher resided in a bracket near the door. Dry chemical, Monnex agent. Not the best, but it would do. “I don’t like it
either.” He paused to remove the extinguisher from its moorings and pull the pin. “But I’d rather attempt to escape than wait here like a deer in the headlights. I don’t plan on engaging any hostiles unless they’re in the camera control room. We need intel and invisibility.” Next he drew the Surefire flashlight, thumbed it on. “If I can access the camera monitors, we’ll have both.”

  Albin glanced at his Omega. “Five minutes.”

  Nathan slapped the adviser’s shoulder. “You know what to do.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Nathan readied his weapon in his right hand while the left held the ten-pound extinguisher. Ring and little finger squeezed the light. One, two, three, four. Hold. Crack the door.

  ++++++++++++

  The lab door locked with a click loud enough to alert the entire building of its activation. Stress and adrenaline sharpened one’s senses and made everything noticeable to a painful degree.

  “I can’t believe he’s actually going out there.”

  That voice was growing more painful than the researcher’s whine.

  “Ms. Behrmann,” Albin began as he slipped the backpack to the floor and unzipped the radio’s compartment, “kindly make yourself of use by continuing to search for supplies.” Clipping the walkie talkie to his belt, he strode back to the troublemakers. “Our survival may depend on what we acquire here.” The average citizen really possessed no idea how to face a crisis with efficiency.

  “Dr. Birk, the data.” He caught the man by the shoulder in passing and directed him in the correct heading.

  “What? Oh, right.”

  “You’re just letting your boss go out there?” Behrmann persisted, throwing herself across their path, arms akimbo and spine stiff.

  “Katie,” Dr. Birk addressed her as he dodged by, “if he wants to get himself killed, that’s his choice. And what happened to you wanting him to run out and rescue people?”

  Albin tried to brush past her, but she caught his arm, forcing him to extricate himself while simultaneously fixing Dr. Birk with a glare to wither opposition. “Close your mouth and resume unlocking the files, Doctor.” Whether Birk killed his coworker or not remained uncertain, but he certainly did have questionable designs on the files.

  “My name is Josephine Behrmann, Doctor, not Katie. Mr. Conrad, do you really think he can reach the camera control room?” Concern overwhelmed the doubt in her voice and shone into her wide eyes. “He’s obviously good, but the gunmen—”

  “I don’t know,” Birk interjected from his position at the vault’s retina scanner, “he seems to think he’s pretty co—”

  “Competent. Yes.” Albin halted beside the researcher, well into the personal space radius. “He did not escape downtown San Francisco by being an incompetent victim like yourself, Doctor.”

  Birk turned, mouth open to reply. The impudent git closed it after he met Albin’s glare.

  Red lights around the vault door glowed as the barrier hissed outward ten centimeters. Birk nudged it, and the steel barrier slid left to reveal a chamber two and a half meters wide and one deep. Banks of servers, their status lights dark from the power outage, comprised the back wall.

  “There.” He nodded to a keyboard and screen set into the wall on the far right, to which he moved. Albin joined him

  “This is a two-man job,” the researcher related as he entered his username and password at the prompt. “Each of us has to enter our name and password at relatively the same time.” A fingerprint scanner right of the keyboard glowed red; he pressed his thumb on the target area. The biometric device blinked green. “First things first, the backup power.” More login fields appeared and he navigated them with deft keystrokes. Processors hummed to life as lights blinked from the servers. Several overhead lights in the lab flicked on to dispel the lion’s share of darkness. “I have to reset the fingerprint to yours for this user.”

  Albin’s left brow climbed.

  “You have someone else’s password?” Ms. Behrmann inquired from her position at a nearby cabinet. Suspicion flowed beneath the calm waters of her tone as she voiced Albin’s thought.

  “I’m not guessing at it, love.”

  “No, you’re just borrowing it. Right, love?”

  Information-technology and security departments sent hundreds of memos each year to employees, stressing the importance of never sharing one’s access codes and of logging off before leaving a workstation. Employees regularly disregarded these warnings. Thus, Birk could conceivably have obtained a coworker’s access information.

  However . . . “You have privileges to change biometric settings?”

  “Put whatever digit you like there.” Birk tapped the scanner. “And be quiet back there, Jo; this next bit takes concentration.”

  Five minutes to retrieve the data, of which—Albin glanced at his watch—three remained.

  Chapter 54

  Predator/Prey

  Seize the Night – Wolf

  If Nathan remembered correctly from the sprint for safety a few minutes ago, at least one camera watched the hall. After draping the towel over his head and shoulders, he glanced around the corner. No gunmen. No gunshots.

  Right, toward the T. The iris of red watched him from the end of the hall. “Need a light?” The P2X’s beam locked into the lens, which should blind the camera. Its night vision would amplify the light and turn the feed to white. In theory. Damn, he’d meant to test it out on the homestead’s cameras, but he hadn’t gotten to it.

  Slice the pie around the corner. Empty hall stretched before him. At the intersection, spent brass littering the floor shone in the dim light. At the far end, another HAL imitation received the light treatment. If he could secure the control room, he could use the views to find the others and guide his group clear of the terrorists.

  One, two, three—

  Knees bent, CG low, he hustled down the passage. The flashlight and towel hardly equaled an invisibility cloak, but they should increase his odds.

  Ahead lay a four-way intersection. Right or left? Choosing incorrectly could cost him his life.

  Listen . . . Silence. Wait . . . Voices, muffled and distant, came from the right.

  Back to the wall, he sidled to the intersection. A quick glance to the right around the corner showed nothing. Left? Deserted.

  Investigating the voices could lead him to Rodriguez and the others—or to the gunmen. No, stay on task: the stairs, then the cameras.

  Taurus close to his chest, extinguisher and flashlight ready in his left hand, he trotted to the fire door. After a glance over his shoulder, he cracked the door. Clear.

  He slowed his descent from the pounding, controlled-fall speed his legs ached for. No cameras watched the stairs.

  In a moment he reached the ground floor. The pissant had said take a left after the stairs and then the fourth hall on the left.

  Opening the door half an inch, he squinted through the gap. Four halls down? Shit, he might’ve said four miles. At least the area seemed clear.

  Movement from the left: a pair of dark-skinned men in coyote-tan fatigues and holding AKs sauntered from the first hall and across the concourse.

  Shitshit! Needles prickled along Nathan’s extremities as his heart choked for a beat. One, two, three. Breathing filled his ears, deep like the panting of a wolf. Time to hunt.

  Arabic or a similar language filtered through. The gunmen didn’t bother keeping their voices low. “Victor Birk,” then, “Badir” in the middle of the Arabic flow.

  They knew Birk by name.

  Then badir, Hindi for idiot. Badal Shukla, Arete Tech’s chief software engineer, joked that his parents named him Badir, but during the move from Delhi, Immigrations smudged his birth certificate.

  The bastards disappeared down the hall on their patrol. Why the fuck didn’t they just call the mission a loss and leave? The longer they stayed, the more they risked discovery by the authorities.

  Nathan poked the extinguisher noz
zle out the door. The Taurus rested atop the upper assembly. On the bright side, a pistol and a fire extinguisher trumped his starting weapon at the St. Regis.

  Aiming the P2X at the camera at the other end of the building, he jogged to the first hall a football field away. Each footstep echoed down the passage; the destination seemed to grow farther away the more he strove for it. Squinting—Squinting? As if decreasing his field of vision would camouflage him from the prey.

  Reaching the four-way intersection, he leaned out, looked left and right.

  Halfway there at the next T. The Surefire’s beam blazed into the camera as he headed toward the third intersection.

  Voices from behind. They were coming from the first hall. Back or ahead? Fuck. Keep going. Invigoration from the hunt surged in his chest. He sprinted for the hall ahead, skidded around the corner, then pressed his back against the wall.

  One, two, three, four. To his left, at the far end of the hall, glared a red circle of surveillance above a blind-blocked window. If a terrorist was watching the CCTV and warned the bastards in the hall, the element of surprise would evaporate. The next few moments would show who manned the cameras.

  A sharp edge dug into the back of Nathan’s scalp. What the—? A placard that read Restrooms projected from the wall.

  Five sprint-strides brought him to the doors that bore the familiar male and female stick figures. The doors sat back from the hall in the customary bathroom antechamber.

  To hell with it: he squeezed a burst of Monnex powder toward the camera while spotting the lens in the P2X beam. Pivoting on his heel, he jumped back and threw himself into the women’s side. Damn, he really needed to stop needing bathrooms for cover.

  ++++++++++++

  A red light under Albin’s thumb turned green. SUCCESS flashed on the screen.

  The researcher extricated his wallet from his back pocket and withdrew a scrap of paper. “Here.” He handed it to Albin. “Username and password at the other panel.”