JAIPUR, INDIA
6:01 PM IST
KUSUM JERKED AWAKE.
“Sorry,” Darshana said. “I did not want to disturb you, but…”
She was standing beside Kusum, holding the satellite phone.
Kusum looked around, momentarily confused, and then realized she had fallen asleep in the chair next to Sanjay’s bed.
“What time is it?” she asked.
“Almost time for dinner.” Darshana held out the phone. “It’s the Americans.”
Kusum took it from her. “Hello?”
“Kusum, it’s Rachel Hamilton. How’s Sanjay doing?”
Kusum touched her husband’s brow. “He still has a fever but he’s resting.”
“Help should be there soon,” Rachel said. “He’ll be okay.”
“I hope you are right.”
A pause. “Kusum, I hope you can do something for me while you’re waiting.”
__________
DIRECTOR MAHAJAN WAS starting to believe it would have been better if he’d been left in the car. The room that was serving as his cell was just as hot, and though the toilets had probably not been used in weeks, they reeked of human waste. It didn’t help his disposition that his hands were tied to a pipe above his head, forcing him to sit uncomfortably against the wall.
The woman who had tied him up had checked on him three times but never once offered him any water or food. He had begged her the last time—actually begged—but she had left without a word.
For a while, he had assumed that NB551’s strike team would find his kidnappers and free him, but as the hours passed his confidence had wavered.
In his life as part of the directorate and one of the Project’s elite, he had thrived. He’d be the first to tell anyone he was a born leader and decision maker. But in situations he had no control over, he was not a strong man.
So when he heard the door open again, he couldn’t help pushing back against the wall, almost hoping the concrete would swallow him up. He thought his visitor was the same girl who’d tied him up, but as his eyes adjusted to the change in light, he realized it was the other one. The one who, with the man who’d been shot, had kidnapped him from the base.
She stopped a few feet away and squatted down in front of him. “I have a few things I would like you to tell me.”
“Water, please,” he said, his throat feeling as if it were coated in dust.
“You will answer my questions.”
“I am so thirsty. Please, I need water.”
She stared at him for a moment before rising and walking out of the room. When she returned, she had a bottle of water in her hand. She crouched back down in the same spot and set the bottle beside her.
“Shall we begin?”
His gaze flicked to the bottle and then to her. “A drink?”
“If you cooperate, we can talk about this.” She rested a hand on the bottle. “If not…”
A long, sharp knife slid across the floor from somewhere beyond the door and stopped a few inches from the woman’s feet. She picked it up. “You are a fleshy man, Mr. Mahajan. Plenty of you to work with.”
Lip trembling, he said, “What do you want to know? I’ll tell you whatever I can.”
She smiled, but instead of asking him anything, she raised the phone he hadn’t realized she was holding in her other hand.
Into it she said, “He’s ready.” She listened for several seconds before moving the phone a few inches away and locking eyes with him. “Director Mahajan, tell me everything you know about NB016.”
24
RUTLAND, VERMONT
8:45 AM EST
INCLUDING ASH AND Chloe, there were ten on the team. Six were Powell’s men—Omar Gamin, Sealy, Ramirez, Langenberg, Yates, and Washington. Wicks and Bobby made up the final two.
Tamara had protested Bobby’s inclusion. While he had said he was fine, she had argued that he hadn’t recovered from the blow to his head. Whatever his true condition, Ash needed Bobby’s expertise, so he’d made it clear to Tamara that her partner was going.
While Omar and Sealy headed out first to get things ready, the rest gathered equipment from Dream Sky’s stores, piled into two SUVs, and raced the twenty miles back to the airport outside Rutland where they’d left the helicopter. By the time they arrived, Omar and Sealy had already refueled the aircraft and begun warming up the engine.
Ash was sure Vintner and his men had arrived via helicopter, too. It would have been a nice bonus to take theirs, but he was afraid they’d waste valuable time looking for it.
On board the aircraft, he donned one of the intercom headsets.
“How we looking?” he asked.
“A couple more minutes and we can be wheels up,” Omar said.
“And the flight?”
“I checked the weather. There’s a storm moving in over the city, but no precipitation yet. It’ll probably be snowing before the end of the day. Right now, the ride should be fairly smooth. About sixty-five minutes, give or take.” He paused before adding, “We could use the clouds to our advantage and get in a little closer than you’ve planned.”
“We could, but I’d rather walk a little farther than tip them off.”
“Copy that.”
As promised, Omar lifted the helicopter into the air two minutes later and put them on a south-southwest course toward New York City.
NB016
“TRY HIM AGAIN,” Celeste said.
“Yes, ma’am,” Dalton replied. A moment later, she shook her head. “Still not going through.”
“Dammit!”
Celeste rubbed the bridge of her nose. Her headache was worse than ever, but thanks to some pills from the dispensary, at least she no longer felt like she was about to fall asleep.
“Keep trying,” she said.
They’d been attempting to reach Vintner for over an hour but kept getting an out-of-range message.
He had said it might take him a couple hours to rid the base of the intruders, so he was likely busy. Realizing that didn’t make the wait any easier, though.
A part of Celeste had begun to wish she’d never let Perez appoint her to the directorate. If she had known the full extent of the underlining chaos caused by the deaths of the original directorate and Perez’s subsequent disastrous reign, she would have run the other way. But no, she’d jumped in, and had even begun to maneuver things so that she’d be sole principal director when all was said and done.
She had no choice now but to ride it out and hope that by the end assaults, she could begin putting the pieces back together and steer the Project onto a stronger course.
“Anything?” she asked a few minutes later.
“Not yet, ma’am.”
NEW YORK CITY
9:47 AM EST
THEY APPROACHED NEW York City from the west, staying out of radar range and keeping Manhattan’s high rises between them and Brooklyn, where NB016 was located. As they reached the island, Omar flew the helicopter a hundred feet above Canal Street, following it deep into the city before working his way over to Grand Street and then to FDR Drive.
“We could make it to the other side,” Omar said over the comm, pointing across the East River when they reached the beginning of the Williamsburg Bridge.
“Let’s not chance it,” Ash said.
“Yes, sir.”
As planned, Omar set the helicopter down in front of the bridge.
While the others geared up, Ash and Chloe walked out over the water.
“Here,” Ash said, handing her Vintner’s phone.
She turned it on, pressed the number for NB016, and put the phone to her ear, angling it so that Ash could listen in.
One ring, then, “Commander Vintner. Good to hear from you. Please hold.”
The woman who answered immediately clicked off. The dead air lasted only seconds before there was another click.
“Vintner?” Another woman’s voice, older, sterner.
“No,” Chloe said. “This is Reni Bar
ton.”
“Who? Where’s Vintner?”
“I’m with Dream Sky security, ma’am. Commander Vintner’s in the base assessing the damage. I volunteered to call in for him. He said to ask for Director Johnson. Is that you?”
“Yes, it’s me. What the hell’s going on there?”
“We’ve been clearing the base, ma’am.”
“And? For the love of God, tell me you succeeded.”
“Yes, ma’am. Dream Sky is back under Project Eden control.”
When the director spoke again, much of the tension that had been in her voice was gone. “And why couldn’t Vintner tell me this?”
“The intruders damaged the base’s communications system so he got some people working on fixing it, then he said he had to talk to the medical director to make sure the, um, protectees weren’t disturbed. But he knew you’d be anxious for news and that’s why he sent me topside.”
“Do we know who these people were?”
“They appear to be scavengers. Most were killed in the fighting, but there are a few who were only injured. I believe the commander is planning on questioning them as soon as they come to. Hold on, ma’am.” Chloe pulled the phone away, noisily covering it with her hand. In a loud voice she said, “Okay…uh-huh…yes, I’ll be right there.” She put the phone back to her ear. “I apologize, ma’am. They need me back inside.”
“I want Vintner to call me as soon as he can.”
“I’ll let him know, Director.”
Chloe disconnected the call and turned off the phone.
“Good job,” Ash said.
NB016
CELESTE SLUMPED IN her chair.
Thank God!
The call from Barton had provided the first good news since all this crap had begun. If Dream Sky was safe, then the Project was safe.
Without even realizing it, she closed her eyes and began to drift off to sleep. She was able to catch herself before she went too deep, however, and pushed out of her chair, blinking. Apparently those pills weren’t working as well as she’d thought.
She didn’t want to sleep yet. Not until she talked to Vintner. Only then would she allow herself to lie down.
She grabbed the bottle of pills off the desk, poured one out, hesitated, and then dumped out a second.
BROOKLYN
THE CLOUDS GREW darker with every block they passed, making it look like snow was going to come a few hours early.
“That’s got to be it,” Wicks said, pointing at a high rise several blocks away.
The building rose twenty-two stories into the sky, and sported floor-to-ceiling windows framed in metal painted to look like it had a green patina finish. It was an exact fit of the description Kusum had gotten out of Mahajan, which gave Ash hope that the other information the kidnapped director had provided was good, too.
“Bobby, get everything from now on,” Ash said.
Bobby nodded. “Already rolling.” He had been given the task of recording the mission and had one GoPro camera mounted to the bicycle helmet he was wearing, with another attached to the front of his jacket.
They zigzagged down several streets until they reached a row of three-story brownstones one block away from the high rise.
“Fourteen twenty-one,” Chloe said, looking at a brownstone just ahead. “That’s it.”
The structure was the middle building in a series of seven.
Every Project Eden base had at least one secret entrance for use in emergencies. The one that ended inside the basement of 1421 was another little tidbit Mahajan had divulged. With this information, Caleb—back at Ward Mountain—was using their access to the Project Eden computer system to find a way of disabling the brownstone’s monitoring system so those in NB016 would be unaware of the Resistance team’s presence.
Before approaching the building, Ash got Caleb on the line. “What’s the word on the alarm system?”
“Pain in the ass,” Caleb said. “Well, I guess that’s more of a phrase.”
“Did you get it down?”
“Not exactly. I need more time. Give me thirty minutes.”
“We’re here.”
“At the brownstone?”
“Yeah.”
“Crap.”
“Caleb, we need this disabled now. We can’t just wait around here.”
“Okay, so, yes, I can disable it…”
“Great.”
“But I can’t disable it for very long.”
“What do you consider very long?”
“The most I’ve gotten so far is ninety seconds. You’d have to get into the house, open the passageway door, get everyone into it, and close the door before time’s up.”
“If that’s what we’ve got, then we’ll have to make that work.”
“Hold on. The thing is, I can’t promise you ninety seconds. The most I’ll guarantee is a minute, but even that makes me nervous.”
“Then we’ll do it in a minute.”
“Can’t you just give me a little more time?”
“Now, Caleb.”
“Fine,” Caleb said. “I need a couple minutes to set things up. I can have that, right?”
“Stop talking to me and get working.”
Ash gathered the group. “We need to do this fast. I’ll take point. Omar, you bring up the rear.”
“Yes, sir,” Omar said.
Ash scanned the street until he spotted what he wanted.
“Nova, give me a hand.” Ash jogged to the metal trashcan on the opposite sidewalk. He dumped the contents, and then he and Nova each grabbed an end and carried it back.
Caleb called two minutes later. “I guess we can give it a shot. You guys ready?”
“As we’ll ever be.”
“Okay. How do you want to do this? Ready-set-go? One-two-three?”
“I don’t care.”
“All right. Then I guess we’ll, um, go on three. Okay?”
“Fine.”
“One-two-three. Alarm off.”
With a nod from Ash, Nova and Sealy sent the garbage can crashing through the window next to the door. Ash followed right behind it, silently counting off seconds as he knocked bits of glass out of the way.
His feet hit the hardwood floor inside at the five-second mark.
He was in an unfurnished living room. To his right was an entryway and then the dining room. Somewhere on this floor would be the access to the basement. Near the kitchen, probably. And the kitchen would most likely be connected to the dining room.
As the others entered the house, he sprinted to the right. The kitchen was where he expected it to be but there was no door to the basement.
Ten seconds.
“Spread out! We need to find the way down!”
Footsteps pounded through the first floor as everyone searched, but seconds continued to pile on with no shouts of discovery.
Twenty.
Time was running out.
“I think I found it!” Bobby shouted from near the front of the house.
Ash ran through the central hallway and found Bobby kneeling inside the walk-in closet near the front door.
Thirty.
“I don’t see a door,” Ash said.
“I think this back wall moves,” Bobby said. “I can feel a draft at the seam but I can’t find the latch.”
“Let me check,” Ash said as he pushed past Bobby.
He ran his hand over the wall, feeling for a hidden button or lever.
Where are you, dammit?
He grabbed the coatrack rod and twisted it. He felt a solid click but nothing happened.
Forty.
He thought for a moment and then looked back. “Everyone in, quick!”
There was more than enough room inside for all of them, giving Ash confidence his hunch was right.
Chloe entered last.
“Close the door,” he told her.
Fifty.
As she shut it, the closet plunged into darkness. Ash turned the rod again. This time, when it clicked in
to place, the back wall slid to the side, revealing a stairway.
“Down, down, down,” he yelled as he sprinted toward the basement.
The door to the auxiliary tunnel stood at the other end of the empty room. As Ash ran up to it, he knew their promised minute had passed and hoped Caleb had been able to extend the time.
He punched the code Mahajan had provided into the pad next to the door. There was a slight pause when he finished before the lock disengaged and the door swung open.
He let the others in first, then entered, and pulled the door shut.
He called Caleb. “Well?”
“Kicked us out at eighty-two.”
That was dangerously close to the time Ash had counted. “Was it enough?”
“With six seconds to spare.”
NB016
WAS IT POSSIBLE? Celeste wondered. Were things finally calming down?
She was reluctant to let herself believe that, but several bases were reporting they were no longer under attack. Granted, some facilities had not checked in yet, but she was unwilling to add them to the lost list at this point.
And, of course, the best news was that Dream Sky appeared to be intact and in the Project’s hands again.
Perhaps they had weathered the storm.
Her hand began to shake. She moved it onto her lap and held it down with the other. Her system was just a bit out of whack, that’s all. She’d be fine once things were fully back to normal and she could get some rest.
Which, she told herself, would be anytime now.
__________
THE TUNNEL LED to a subbasement below the high rise housing NB016.
It was a ten-foot-square concrete box with only two ways in or out—the tunnel they had just used and the elevator on the opposite wall. Before entering, Ash and those who had an electronic disrupter turned it on, disabling any cameras.
The Project, Mahajan had said, controlled the top seven floors of the twenty-two-story building. The most important floor was at the very top. It was not only the nerve center of the base but also of the Project itself, and was where Ash and his team would find Director Johnson. By design, though, the elevator in front of them would take them only up to sixteen, the Project’s lowest level.
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