Alton motioned at Mallory to hold his cellphone in place. She did so, casting the screen’s feeble light into the three keyholes. Alton lowered himself to his knees and got to work. The mechanisms proved exceptionally difficult to disengage, but at last the third deadbolt slid back into the door.
Alton wiped the sweat from his brow and stood. After spending several minutes motionless, a dull, throbbing pain pounded through his bad leg. Ignoring the sensation, he pushed open the door, revealing an empty room with the dimensions of a standard walk-in closet. It might have indeed passed as a janitor’s closet if the appropriate supplies had been present.
Built into the opposite wall of the room was another door. This steel monstrosity made no attempt to hide its true purpose. Enormous rivets secured steel plates onto a massive slab of metal, itself mounted onto a frame of equally gigantic proportions. A rocket-propelled grenade might not open this thing.
Alton motioned everyone into the ‘closet’ and closed the wooden door.
David shook his head. “There’s no way we can blast through that thing.”
“How about the acid?” asked Mallory. “Would that work?”
Alton squatted to examine the locking mechanism. Unlike the typical vault electronic keypad, this door contained an opening for a magnetic security card. “I think there’s room for me to squirt it in there. That’s probably our best bet.” He brought up the building’s blueprint on his phone and studied the floorplan for the central storage room. This mammoth door was its only entrance. “Let me give it a shot.”
Alton removed the container of hydrofluoric acid from his rucksack and detached a two-inch tube from its side. After screwing the extension to the top of the container, his angled its tip to the entrance of the slot. He dribbled the acid onto the opening, enlarging it just a bit. That finished, he inserted the tube a little further into the mechanism, not stopping until it rested on top of a huge deadbolt pin.
Alton squeezed the bottle. At first, he couldn’t be sure the acid had flowed. Then he heard a hissing noise, the sound of corrosive acid working its way through steel. But how long would this process take? Or would it even succeed at all?
“Ug, it stinks,” said Silva.
“You should smell some of the stuff coming out of my lab,” said Gilbert. The man must have loosened up a bit to make a crack like that.
“Gilbert, could those fumes make us sick?” asked Alton.
“Yeah. You can get what’s called ‘metal fume fever.’ But you’d normally need more exposure than we’re getting.”
“I’d rather not take any chances,” said Alton. “Let’s stand back. The last thing we want is one of us passing out in the middle of this maze.”
They backed up to the wooden door while the acid and steel continued to react. Periodically, Alton would stick the blade of his knife into the slot and poke the deadbolt. It had more play but held fast. He applied another dose of acid to the steel cylinder and retreated to the opposite wall.
Ten minutes later, Alton checked the deadbolt’s strength yet again.
“How is it?” asked Mallory.
“It’s definitely looser, but it’s not going anywhere. I’m afraid to put any more acid on it. We might get sick if it we breathe in any more of these fumes.”
“Did you bring some of the rope that explodes?” asked Mastana.
“The det cord,” said Alton. “Yeah, I brought it.” He stopped a moment to consider this option. “It’s quieter than the shaped charges, but it’s still plenty loud enough for someone to hear if they’re nearby.”
“If there’s anyone nearby,” said David. “We haven’t seen a soul. They might have all gone home for the night.”
Alton nodded. “We may not have a choice. You guys wait in the hall. I’ll join you as soon as it’s set to blow.”
The rest of the team filed back into the alcove, while Alton returned to the vault door. He removed a two-foot length of det cord and slipped it into the irregular opening. With the precision of a surgeon, he wrapped the cord around the jagged remains of the deadbolt. He pulled the cord tight and slipped a blasting cap onto the exposed length protruding from the hole. Setting the timer on the blasting cap, he retreated back into the hallway and motioned to his team to move back.
Despite their foreknowledge, half the team jumped when a blast rocked the closet. The eruption proved to be as brief as it was abrupt.
The team stood motionless, listening for sounds of alarm. Hearing none, they filed back into the closet.
Alton approached the steel vault. On the door’s metallic surface, sooty blast marks extended outwards from the now-widened hole. White smoke wisped from the gap, rendering a close examination impossible. Alton grasped a large, gray handle and pulled.
With a groan, the door swung open, revealing an impenetrable black space.
“Silva,” said Alton, “stand guard back in the alcove. I think we’d know by now if someone heard our noise, but let’s play it safe.” He turned to the rest of the team with a mischievous grin. “Let’s go see what’s in there.”
CHAPTER 26
David took a step into the black space. “Where’s the lights?”
Mastana removed a penlight from her pocket and switched it on. Casting the beam to the right of the door, she found and activated an array of switches, bathing the room in light.
Stark incandescent bulbs shrouded in metallic shades hung from the ceiling, illuminating the spacious vault. Inside the room’s walls of reinforced steel, row upon row of cardboard boxes had been placed into stacks over six feet tall. The boxes had been grouped into sections, some containing one row of boxes, others subsisting of dozens. A post with a label written in Pashto stood at the head of each section.
Alton turned to Mastana. “What do the signs say?”
Her eyes darted to several posts. “They tell what is in the boxes.”
“Good. That should help us find what we need. Read them out.”
Mastana strolled up the first of two corridors running between the rows of boxes. “Purchasing…Payroll…Department of Ministry Affairs.” She stopped before a section containing a vast field of boxes with a single post.
“I hope what we’re looking for isn’t in there,” said David. “Trying to find something in that pile would make looking for a needle in a haystack seem like child’s play.”
Alton raised an eyebrow in Mastana’s direction. “So?”
“It says ‘Accounting’.”
Alton exhaled. “Thank God. Let’s keep going.”
“We could always come back here if we don’t find anything else,” said Mallory. “If something fishy is going on, more often than not, a money trail leads right to it.”
Mastana reached the end of the first corridor and rounded the last section of boxes. She began making her way back down the second corridor, resuming her translation of the signs. “Security…Legal Affairs…”
She had walked past a tiny, perpendicular corridor when Mallory spoke up. “Wait. We haven’t seen any other paths branching off to the side like this. Let’s see what’s down there.”
The five team members proceeded down the opening, at times turning their shoulders sideways to squeeze through stacks of boxes pressing in on both sides. They reached a locked cage constructed of thick, interlaced strands of steel. On the front, a metallic sign had been affixed to the cage with flexible wire. Inside the cage, two boxes constructed of heavy-duty cardboard and bound with yellow packing tape rested against the far wall.
Alton turned to Mastana. “What does the sign say?”
“‘Restricted: Research and Development’.”
“Bingo,” said Alton. “Those are the ones we want. If there’s any incriminating information about Pasha Tech projects, it should be in there.”
“How do you know?” asked David.
Alton swept a hand in the direction of the two boxes. “This can’t be all of their R&D records. Why would they separate out just a few boxes and put them in a restric
ted, locked area?”
“Because they have something to hide,” said David, nodding.
Gilbert looked into the cage with a dubious face. “Are we gonna carry those boxes all the way back to our vehicles? Or are we going to sift through them in here?”
Silva’s voice sounded through their earpieces. “Better make it fast in there. We may have company.”
Alton glanced back at Gilbert. “I guess we’ll be packing them out.”
CHAPTER 27
Alton turned to David. “See if you can use the bolt cutters to get through the padlock on that door.”
“That shouldn’t be a problem,” said David, readying the tool.
“Good. Gilbert, stay here and help him carry the boxes out once he’s through. Mastana, let’s check out the rest of the section labels so we’ll know if we need to return. Mallory, why don’t you come with us?”
Mastana raced up the tiny path, back onto the main corridor. She strode down the rest of the corridor, calling out the labels of the remaining sections as she went. “Manufacturing Operations…Inventory Management…Human Resources…Information Technology.” She stopped. “That’s all there is.”
Alton turned to Mallory. “I think we focus on the two R&D boxes, don’t you?”
“Yes, assuming we get out of here at all.”
Silva’s voice came over the earpieces again. “We have to roll—now!”
David and Gilbert appeared on the main corridor, each lugging a box.
“Let’s move,” said Alton. “Head for the exit!”
As the team scrambled to the enormous door, Alton turned to Mastana and Mallory. “David and Gilbert are carrying boxes. They won’t be able to defend themselves, so it’ll be up to us and Silva to punch our way out.”
The team burst through the door and met Silva in the ‘janitorial closet.’
“What’s the status?” asked Alton in a half-whisper.
“Someone switched on the lights in the main hallway,” replied Silva. “I could hear them heading towards us.”
“Number?”
“I couldn’t tell. More than two.”
“David and Gilbert,” said Alton. “Hang back until we’ve cleared a path. Once the path is open, though, don’t hesitate. Everyone else, unholster your Tasers.”
“I’m keeping my pistol ready, too…just in case,” said Silva.
Alton entered the alcove and nearly collided with a new arrival. The young man’s starched, blue shirt, matching pants, and armament consisting of only a baton identified him as a security guard, not a soldier.
The guard stepped back but regained his composure. He yelled something in Pashto and withdrew his baton from a side holster.
Alton jammed his Taser into the man’s ribs and pulled the trigger. As the crackle of electricity echoed through the space, the guard toppled backwards with a high-pitched squeal.
The noise attracted three other guards, who poured into the alcove. Mallory tasered the first one. The second guard performed a kind of dance with Mastana, trying to stay outside the range of her stun gun.
The final guard, a tall, lanky specimen, rushed around Mastana and tackled Gilbert. The box and both men landed with a crash and slid in different directions across the hard, tiled floor.
Gilbert rolled onto his left side and snatched out his Taser. He rolled back to the right, towards the lanky guard. His adversary had begun to rise, but Gilbert lunged over and swiped the man’s calf with his activated stun gun.
The guard screamed and flopped back onto the floor. Gilbert pressed the weapon to the man’s side and discharged it again. The guard arched his back and lay back with an open mouth.
By now, all four guards lay incapacitated on the floor, panting and groaning.
“Use these zip ties,” said Alton, removing a bundle from one of his pants’ cargo pockets. “Bind them up. And gag them.”
Three minutes later, the guards sat on the floor with their backs against the alcove’s far wall. Zip ties bound their hands and feet, and their mouths were stuffed with their own shirts and covered with masking tape scrounged from the storage room.
“Now what?” asked Mallory.
All eyes turned to Alton.
“Grab the R&D boxes. We’ll return to our vehicles. I’ll use my app to make sure we don’t get turned around getting out of this building.”
Alton fired up his nav app. Its blinking arrow pulsed to the left. He led the way down the corridor.
Alton turned to Mastana as he walked. “When we were fighting the guards, did any of them call for help?”
Mastana took a moment to think before answering. “They called to each other. And they told us to put down our weapons. But I didn’t hear them call someone else. Did they have a cellphone?”
“I didn’t see phones, but each of them had a radio. If any one of them put out a distress call, we may not have seen our last Pasha Tech employee this evening.”
CHAPTER 28
Alton had led the team into the third hallway when a distant clatter erupted and the lights of a perpendicular passage fifty feet ahead winked on.
“This night just keeps getting better,” said Alton. He touched the “alt route” button in his navigation app. An arrow began flashing to the left, indicating a smaller hallway about ten feet ahead. Alton led his team into the corridor and hoped they would soon turn again. Otherwise, the new arrivals—more guards, presumably—would be able to see them as soon as they passed this corridor.
The arrow pulsed straight ahead, and the noises of the guards grew louder. After a seeming eternity, the nav app indicated a right turn. The group swept around the corner seconds before the guards reached their previous hallway.
Alton examined his team. David had no trouble carrying his box, but Gilbert had begun to struggle. He huffed as he walked, and sweat trickled down his brow.
Alton leaned towards the toxicologist and spoke in a whisper. “You take the nav app for a few minutes, and I’ll hold the box.”
Gilbert eyed Alton’s leg. “I’ll be honest, I’d welcome a break, but I don’t think that’s fair to you.”
“It’s just for a minute…to let you catch your breath. We’ll make better time if none of us are exhausted.”
They swapped, and Gilbert led the group. Following the app’s instructions, he wound his way through the maze of hallways and foyers, arriving back at the side door through which they had entered the building.
“We closed this when we left,” said Mallory, “but now it’s open. I guess the guards used the same route we did.”
Alton glanced through the doorway into the dark night. In the distance, the engine of some unseen vehicle roared to life, and an evening breeze carried the anxious shouts of more guards.
“Let me give this back to you now,” said Alton, handing the R&D box over to Gilbert. “I’m going to need to stay focused on getting us out of here.”
“How are we getting out?” asked Silva.
“Same way we came in. We already have the hole in the fence.”
The sound of vehicles grew louder.
“Let’s go. Stick to the shadows on the side of the building as long as you can. There’s not much moonlight, but there’s no point in taking a risk.”
The group traveled in a single-file line, at one point snaking around an electrical box abutting the building’s wall.
Alton’s leg pounded, and sweat began trickling down the back of his shirt as the intensity of the pain mounted. They couldn’t stop to rest, though. Not if they hoped to escape before even more guards arrived.
The team reached the end of the building. From there, the fence lay directly west, across an open space of about fifty yards. Once they darted across, they’d have to travel another seventy yards or so to the south to reach the hole in the fence.
A heavy diesel truck trundled into the open space, headlights glaring. A dozen men—soldiers, not rent-a-cops—poured from the vehicle’s canvas-covered bed and began to spread out.
; Gilbert gasped, and Mastana turned frightened eyes in Alton’s direction.
“Does your nav app give an alternative route for leaving this compound?” asked David.
Alton shook his head. “No, but we don’t need it. I have an idea for getting us out of here.”
CHAPTER 29
Three of the soldiers headed in the NSA team’s direction.
“Go back down the side of the building,” said Alton, “behind the electrical box.”
The team scurried in silence along the wall. They crouched behind the waist-high electrical box, a squat, green affair covered with sheet metal. While lowering himself, Alton’s leg pain flared, and he lost his balance. He fell backwards into a rattling, wooden door.
He turned to investigate. The building’s blueprints hadn’t shown a hallway this close to the end of the building.
“This may be some kind of storage closet,” he murmured to the team. “Let’s go in.”
“I thought we were trying to get out of here,” said Silva.
“Yes, but we’re cut off. Getting out of sight will buy us time to put together a plan B.” Alton began to work on the door’s simple padlock with his locksmith kit.
“The longer we wait, the more soldiers are going to show up.”
The lock snapped open in Alton’s hands. “Agreed. Whatever our plan B is, we’ll need to make it quick.”
The team scurried into the claustrophobic space and pulled the door shut. Alton activated his phone’s flashlight app and played the light around the storage closet. Shovels with traces of sand and dirt clods hung from hooks on the wall. A variety of painting and maintenance tools in dire need of maintenance themselves rested on minimalist aluminum shelving.
“We can’t try to wait this one out,” said Silva. “They’ll find the bound-up guards if they haven’t already. Once that happens, the soldiers will know for a fact we’re here and will keep bringing in reinforcements ‘til they find us.”
David nodded in agreement.
“I suggest a diversion,” said Alton. “I have the shaped charges in my rucksack. If a few of us can sneak to a different section of fence and set them off, the forces here will think we’re trying to blast our way out. While they’re converging on the decoy explosion, we’ll sneak through our original hole and get back to the vehicles.”
Tears of God (The Blackwell Files Book 7) Page 10