Fast

by Shane M Brown

  The terrorists were already fitting cutting charge over the barrier separating H-lab from Vanessa and Coleman.

  Behind Coleman, Vanessa directed a flashlight beam through the plexiglass into C-lab.

  ‘Still looks clear in there,’ she reported. ‘No creatures.’

  She raised the plexiglass, but didn’t go through. She banged her flashlight on the wall, hovering her hand over the controls. If any creature in the next lab responded to the vibrations, she would drop the plexiglass again.

  Smart, thought Coleman.

  He checked his skirmish maps.

  ‘Okay, gentlemen,’ he radioed to his trapped Marines. ‘Listen very carefully. In about twelve seconds both of our labs are going to be compromised. It looks like Cairns packed enough DEMEX to cut through this entire level. Vanessa and I have about three more labs we can retreat through, but you’re in a dead end. There’s an underlab hatch in there with you. You’ll have to swim out. You need to swim in a big semicircle through the next two labs to your east, under the main lab to D-lab, and then do one last dive back to the saturation chamber. You won’t be able to come up for a breath in the main lab. You can only come up to breathe in labs F, D and E.’

  Coleman motioned Vanessa to open the corresponding underlab hatches in those labs.

  ‘That’s a long swim, sir,’ radioed King.

  Coleman saw the terrorists evacuating to H-lab. They were about to blow both barriers.

  ‘I know, but you can make it. Go now.’

  The radio signal died as the Marines dove into the water. At the same time, Coleman turned and ran for C- lab. An ear-piercing CRACK sounded behind him. Plexiglass clattered to the main lab floor.

  Coleman lowered the C-lab barrier behind him, saying to Vanessa, ‘Open the underlab hatches in all the east labs. Marlin and King are swimming a long circuit back to the saturation chamber.’

  ‘Already done,’ she said. ‘But the hatch to the saturation chamber can only be opened by me. Marlin and King will be trapped outside the chamber. They’ll drown if we don’t get there, and right now we’re moving further away.’

  ‘I know,’ admitted Coleman, looking back into the main lab. The terrorists rushed over to the template storage chest. ‘I’m working on it. Just do exactly what I say, exactly when I tell you. Clear?’

  ‘Crystal clear.’

  Coleman shouldered his assault rifle and drew his colt. Now he had the colt in one hand and the templates in the other. He stood right at the barrier, holding the templates in clear view of the gunmen in the main lab.

  A terrorist approached the barrier and fired at Coleman. From near point-blank range, the terrorist unloaded his entire ammunition clip straight into the plexiglass.

  Coleman didn’t even blink. He just watched the pattern of bullet-damage blossom over the barrier before him. The plexiglass was just stopping the 5.7 mm submachine gun rounds.

  Coleman expected this.

  He lifted his colt, holding the weapon sideways so that he was looking over his knuckles down the barrel of the big pistol.

  The terrorist raised one eyebrow and shrugged.

  Coleman smiled back.

  Because Coleman loved physics.

  He knew that bullets were at their utmost speed the moment they left a weapon’s barrel. If the 5.7 mm rounds were only just being stopped by the barrier, then there existed a very good chance that the hard-hitting 10mm round of the colt would punch through a section of damaged plexiglass.

  Coleman pressed his colt to the plexiglass and fired.

  The ten millimeter slug hit the terrorist right in the forehead. The back of the man’s head exploded like someone had dropped a hand grenade in a can of red paint. Coleman saw the spray of blood carry all the way back to the pool.

  The impact knocked the man clean off his feet. His boot toes cracked into the plexiglass. His body crashed backwards. He hit the floor and didn’t move.

  Five other terrorists all stared at the body. For a moment they couldn’t understand how their companion had been killed through the plexiglass.

  As one, they scattered away from Coleman’s direct line of fire.

  ‘That will buy us a little time,’ Coleman said grimly. When he turned around, Vanessa was staring slack-jawed at the dead terrorist.

  Coleman clicked his fingers under her nose. ‘Vanessa, you’re going to see much worse. You need to stay focused.’

  ‘Alright,’ she mumbled, her eyes on the terrorist’s corpse ‘But now we’re trapped. Soon they’ll be able to come at us from both sides.’

  Coleman knew what she meant. He remembered the layout from his skirmish map. He and Vanessa had just sealed themselves in C-lab, the third in a series of sub-labs that interconnected clockwise like the points of a diamond with the main lab at its base. B-lab was the top of the diamond, while A and C labs were left and right. The only other room on this side of the gunmen was a very small chamber branching off the back of A-lab.

  Following Vanessa into B-lab, Coleman lowered another plexiglass barrier behind them. That just left them with access to A-lab and its small rear chamber. He checked his watch.

  ‘Okay, Vanessa. Open all the plexiglass barriers and pool hatches. Everything except what’s keeping the gunmen out of here.’

  Vanessa rushed to the nearest computer. Her fingers flew over the keyboard. ‘Done. They’re all opening.’

  ‘Now get into this pool and swim back to the saturation chamber.’

  She snapped up her head. ‘I can’t swim that far underwater. No one could. I’ll black out and drown.’

  Coleman grabbed her roughly and pulled her towards the pool. ‘You’ll have to take a breath from the main lab. It’ll be full of gunmen, but I’m going to distract them. After you steal a breath, you have two more dives before you reach the saturation chamber. You need to leave this second to meet Marlin and King there at the same time so all three of you can escape. You need to leave RIGHT NOW!’

  Coleman knew it would take about thirty seconds for Vanessa to reach the pool in the main lab. When that happened, he needed to be distracting the terrorists so she could emerge in their midst to steal a breath.

  Vanessa recoiled as another barrier was blasted away two labs back. The terrorists were now just one lab behind them, in C-lab. They were already unfurling the next sheet of cutting charge in plain sight of Coleman and Vanessa.

  ‘You’ll be trapped in here,’ she stated.

  ‘GO!’ Coleman yelled. ‘Go for David.’

  She dove into the pool and swam down. In a moment, Coleman couldn’t see her.

  He was alone.

  #

  Cairns was livid.

  He surveyed the bedlam in the main lab.

  Somehow the Marines beat him to the templates. Right now those same Marines - no doubt the team Bora should have eliminated - were playing a game of cat and mouse with his men through the northern sub-labs. Cairns heard the loud CRACK! of another barrier being cut away as his men tightened their net around the pair with the templates.

  He stopped where a gunman lay with his brains spread all over the floor. The man’s blood had sprayed all the way back to the pool.

  Four more of Cairns’s team had gone down in the last three minutes.

  This was not how he’d envisaged the operation progressing.

  Fortunately it was just a matter of time before he was back on schedule. The Marine and the civilian with the templates were now backed into a corner. Cairns would have them in the next two minutes.

  This isn’t too much of a delay, he reassured himself. It’s just a few minutes.

  Then he heard something unexpected. He spun on the spot and tried to pinpoint the source of the new noise.

  What the hell’s going on?

  It was the sound of almost every plexiglass barrier on the entire level simultaneously opening.

  #

  Coleman turned his back on the terrorist placing the cutting charge. He walked into A-lab, lowering the plexiglass behi
nd him.

  Sealed in A-lab, he glanced into the rear chamber, a small medical bay.

  Only one barrier separated Coleman and the main lab again.

  He stood deliberately at that barrier.

  Cameron Cairns was in the main lab, kneeling beside the pool.

  Cairns’s authority filled the lab like a hand on every man’s shoulder. Close set eyes stared down his hooked nose into the pool. His hair was cropped short. Two-day-old grey stubble covered his severely angled jaw. He exuded an aura of undeniable malevolence. You could never feel safe around a man like Cairns. Even behind ten inches of concrete, his presence would seep through the pores.

  Coleman felt that way now.

  Eight other gunmen occupied the main lab.

  Cairns stared into the underlab pool where Vanessa was about to emerge. A spent bullet cartridge turned slowly, thoughtfully, in his fingers as he peered into the water.

  Coleman knocked on the plexiglass.

  Leisurely, Cairns looked up, his eyes half lidded like a dozing reptile. A reptile conserving strength for some imminent explosion of activity. His gaze drifted to the templates, lingered there, then returned to Coleman’s face.

  Rising smoothly, he dropped the spent cartridge into the pool and crossed to the plexiglass. He stopped with an arm’s length separating them. Coleman and Cairns stood face-to-face.

  Coleman’s mind raced.

  He needed Vanessa, Marlin and King to all reach the saturation chamber together. Marlin and King had four legs to swim. They would be starting their second-last dive now. Vanessa had three sections to her swim. She would emerge in the main lab for a breath any second. Eight gunmen stood around the pool where she was about to appear.

  Coleman gambled everything on his ability to coordinate the movements of several bodies in motion.

  Strange as seemed, it was a reasonable gamble.

  Coleman had a talent for deciphering patterns. The first sign of his talent came at age seven. A school aptitude test. The assessor checked her stopwatch and raised an eyebrow.

  Coleman had finished the ‘draw the line through the maze’ test unerringly in four seconds. The average student took thirty. The assessor slapped down another maze test, then another, each more complicated, and each as easy to solve for young Alexander. Then it was counting tests, memory tests, square roots, steel rings, wooden blocks.

  ‘Patterns,’ the assessor had explained to the school principal and Coleman’s uncle. ‘He has an affinity for deciphering patterns. Nothing else.’

  Not a natural savant, nothing like that, but certainly worth a few raised eyebrows. High school offered little practical application for his skill. He was as good as anyone at parroting textbook facts. Marine Corps basic training, and then while working through the advanced courses, offered Coleman the first true application for his talent. Lines of fire, troop movement, field resources, deployment points – they were all patterns.

  Coleman wasn’t sure how he did it, but in high stress situations his mind entered cognitive overdrive.

  Standing at the plexiglass eye-to-eye with Cameron Cairns, this was exactly what Coleman was experiencing.

  Some patterns were all about the timing of bodies in motion.

  Coleman taped on the glass and pointed over Cairns’s shoulder as his diversion arrived.

  #

  Behind Cairns, the creature crashed into his gunmen.

  Most of Cairns’s team scattered, but three moved too slow. The creature drew those three into a thorny death roll.

  Within the space of three heartbeats, the main lab transformed into the most ghastly wrestling arena in the world. One unlucky gunman found a tentacle looped right around his head. The limb muffled his screams as it tore off his face. The other two gunmen compensated with their own terrified shrieks.

  The creature thrashed their bodies across the lab floor, tearing away ragged strips of flesh and cartilage. Dragged halfway over the pool edge, the nearly faceless gunman began kicking up foam in a truly ungodly swimming lesson.

  The five free gunmen sidestepped desperately around the debacle, searching for a clean shot.

  Coleman saw Vanessa’s head appear in the pool. She peered around, was nearly booted in the face by the kicking gunman, then dove down again.

  She was the least of the terrorists’ concerns.

  Coleman felt a wave of relief as Vanessa stole a breath and disappeared underwater. He hadn’t known what to expect when Vanessa raised all the barriers. He did know, however, there was another creature on this level. That, and the main lab was full of gunmen making a lot of vibrations.

  It seemed like a winning combination.

  Coleman studied Cairns though the plexiglass. How do you like the taste of your own medicine?

  Cairns observed the futile efforts of his gunmen a moment longer. When the issue wasn’t resolved, he strode straight into the bloody bedlam. Snatching the nearest submachine gun, without a moment’s hesitation he hosed the entire ammunition clip through the messy struggle.

  Seven seconds of ear-piercing gunfire transformed the combatants into a human-creature cocktail. Cairns tossed the expended submachine gun back to its stunned owner.

  Coleman was disgusted. Cairns had calmly slaughtered three of his own team. In that second, Coleman knew Cairns was capable of anything. He would stop at nothing to secure the templates.

  Distraction suppressed, Cairns strode back to the plexiglass, his face a mask of impatient resolve. He ignored Coleman and withdrew a small grey block from his fatigues pocket. He pressed the grey block to the plexiglass at Coleman’s eye level.

  Coleman recognized the plastic explosive.

  This was PE4.

  This wasn’t like cutting charge. This would turn the plexiglass into a million pieces of high-velocity shrapnel.

  Cairns pressed a timer into the brick and ran for cover.

  Coleman dashed for the small rear chamber. He had no idea how long the timer was set to detonate. He dove into the smaller room as the plastic explosives blew. Plexiglass shrapnel filled the air inside A-lab. Hundreds of pieces flew through the doorway and embedded into the chamber’s rear wall

  Crouching beside the doorway, sheltered from the projectiles’ trajectory, Coleman reached up and lowered the very last plexiglass barrier on the level.

  They had him.

  #

  Cairns stepped through the shredded remains of A-lab.

  The Marine had predictably sheltered in the rear chamber. In fact, Cairns had set the timer to allow the Marine enough time to reach the chamber and keep the templates safe. He’d hoped the Marine would lower the plexiglass before the PE4 exploded. The air pressure in A-lab would have torn the second barrier from the wall.

  This is a clever one. He knew to lower the hatch after the explosion.

  Now Cairns was fresh out of DEMEX cutting charge. He couldn’t risk using his second block of PE4 so close to the templates.

  He approached the barrier and studied the man inside. Soaking wet, the Marine held the genetic material in his left hand and an old colt pistol in his right. His fatigues clung to his strong body. He looked the type that did five hundred push-ups before breakfast. Defiant and determined. The American Special Forces were full of men who never knew when to quit.

  ‘Where to now, little soldier man?’ Cairns taunted loud enough to be heard through the barrier.

  The Marine lifted the templates. ‘I’ll destroy them if you don’t back off.’

  Cairns laughed. Maybe the Marine isn’t that smart after all. Maybe he’s just been lucky. ‘Of course you won’t. If destroying the templates was an option, you’d have done it already.’

  The Marine spat his answer back. ‘Push me and find out. I’ll do it.’

  Cairns stared at the Marine for a full eight seconds. He took a deep breath and then exhaled slowly. The condensation from his breath fogged the plexiglass. Predictable.

  He drew a shape with his fingertip in the condensation. A circle with a c
ross inside, the shape of a weapon site lining up perfectly with the Marine’s head.

  With a bored sigh, Cairns waved at the blowtorch trolley. ‘Cut him out.’

  #

  Coleman saw gunmen ignite the blowtorch.

  The powerful blowtorch began melting the plexiglass like butter.

  He spun and searched the small chamber, some kind of a first-aid station. Glass cabinets filled with medical equipment lined the walls. An open pool hatch occupying half the floor offered the only exit. Coleman couldn’t make the long swim to the saturation chamber on one breath. He was on the opposite side of the level, and gunmen covered every pool hatch.

  Cairns wasn’t taking chances.

  King’s voice crackled over Coleman’s headset. ‘We’re back in the saturation chamber, Captain. We’ve got Vanessa.’

  That’s some good news at least.

  Coleman responded while he frantically searched the room. ‘Protect Vanessa at all costs. She might be about to become the most valuable person alive.’

  Coleman knew what his Marines were thinking, so he put he thought right out of their minds. ‘Don’t try to come back in here. They’re covering every pool with submachine guns. You wouldn’t even make it out of the water. Ask Vanessa if there’s another exit from the first-aid room.’

  A moment’s silence passed while King asked. ‘She says no. No way out except through Cairns.’

  That’s what I thought.

  ‘Copy that,’ replied Coleman. ‘You have your orders.’

  Coleman left his radio on so Third Unit could hear everything. If he was killed, they needed to know so they could move fast with Vanessa.

  Something lying in the back of a cabinet caught Coleman’s eye. Shrapnel had smashed the glass doors, half burying the item.

  Coleman reached into the cabinet. He glanced back to see how much time he had.

  Only seconds….

  The terrorist with the blowtorch kicked the plexiglass.

  Coleman filled his pockets with his work of a few seconds and dove from the cabinet. The plexiglass fell away as he flew through the air. Holding the genetic templates high, he splashed down into the pool.