Bad Nights

by Rebecca York

  Chapter 30

  Jack, Shane, and Max crept quietly into position behind the militiamen, who had all their attention on the gate. One of them had a walking cast on his leg. He’d apparently gotten hurt, but that didn’t excuse him from duty in an emergency.

  Each of the Rockfort agents held two tranc guns. They held their fire until they were ten feet away—when one of the troops became aware of something behind him and started to turn.

  Jack shot him with a tranquilizer dart, then took down the man next to him. Max and Shane fired at the same time, taking out more troops.

  Six of the defenders went down immediately. Which meant they still had to deal with four armed and dangerous militiamen.

  As their buddies slumped to the ground, two of them looked toward the gate in confusion, trying to figure out what had happened.

  But two of them realized the attack had come from behind. Ducking for cover behind the fallen men, they turned and raised their rifles in firing position.

  The Rockfort men’s only option was to fire the weapons they’d liberated earlier. They dropped the remaining men at the gate, then whirled as they heard the sound of running feet. Three more men were converging on them, shooting as they ran. Jack, Shane, and Max returned fire, cutting down two of them. The third turned and ran.

  “Shit,” Shane growled.

  “It’s Duffy. He may run for the hills. But keep a lookout for him. I’m going to look for Morgan.”

  ***

  Trainer’s expression was murderous as he grabbed the end of the whip and pulled it out of Morgan’s hands. She was close enough to the rack of torture equipment to reach one of the implements on the wall. Her fingers closed around a mace, which she smacked into Trainer’s forehead.

  He kept coming after her until the sound of automatic weapon fire outside made him look toward the door.

  “Shit.”

  Leaving her where she stood, he turned and ran out of the room.

  ***

  Wade ducked out of the building where he had been holding Morgan Rains. Somehow she’d gotten loose. Could she have had help? And from whom? Another traitor in his midst?

  The thought made his skin crawl, but he told himself it couldn’t be true. Somehow she’d freed herself, but now what was happening?

  When he cautiously stuck his head out the door, he was greeted by eerie silence.

  Then he saw three figures crossing the parade grounds. He thought it was three of his troops, and he was about to shout to them. Then he did a double take. It was the three Rockfort men, wearing uniforms that they must have stolen.

  He pressed the button on his comms unit, calling for a report. Every man he tried failed to respond. The only answer he got was from Duffy—who said he was hiding from the attackers after seeing the men at the gate cut down.

  “Go after them,” Trainer screamed, sure Duffy and the medics couldn’t stop the invaders. But maybe they could hold them up.

  Somehow while he’d been occupied with Rains, the Rockfort operatives had gotten the rest of his men. And now they were coming for the woman.

  But Wade wasn’t going to let them leave with her. He’d been cautious, letting his men precede him into danger. Now he was the only one who could stop the Rockfort bastards. At least he could do that.

  He didn’t think about his own death as he ducked around the mess hall and headed for the steel building where he kept his ultimate weapon.

  ***

  Morgan struggled to assess the situation. The gunfire must be from Jack and his friends. And the militia returning fire. But what exactly was happening out there?

  Trainer had left the door open, which gave Morgan the opportunity to step through without worrying about any explosives on the door.

  She found herself in an anteroom that led to another door. It was also open, and she could see morning light pouring through.

  Cautiously she stepped forward, and saw Jack running across an open area. His two friends were right behind him.

  “Jack!”

  He stopped in his tracks, a wealth of emotions crossing his face as he took in her appearance.

  “Are you all right?” he shouted.

  “Yes.”

  “Thank God, but I’ve got to get Trainer,” he answered. “Before he kills us all.”

  From the side of the building, someone started shooting. Morgan ducked down as the Rockfort men returned fire. After a moment, there were no answering shots.

  Shane ran up to her. “It’s not safe for you out here. Get back inside.”

  Her throat clenched as she watched Jack heading for a steel structure with a barrel roof.

  “He’s in danger,” she whispered as he disappeared from sight.

  “He’ll be okay.”

  She gave Shane a fierce look. “You don’t know that. Give me a gun, and let me go with him.”

  “Not a chance.” Shane’s expression was just as fierce as hers. “If something happens to you, Jack…” He stopped and started again, a pleading look in his eyes. “He risked everything to come back here for you. Don’t let it be for nothing.”

  She swallowed hard because it was true. And not just for Jack. His two friends were risking just as much.

  When Shane put a firm hand on her arm, she knew he was only trying to keep her safe. “Come back inside.”

  She did as he asked, her ears tuned for the sound of gunfire, and her skin crawling as she stepped back into the torture chamber where Trainer had held her.

  Shane followed her and stopped short as he took in the room. She watched his eyes go from the metal bed to the rack of implements and back again.

  “Christ. This is where he had you?”

  She nodded. “And it’s probably where they were holding Jack.”

  Shane looked back at her. “You need to get some clothes on.”

  He unbuttoned his own shirt, shrugged out of it, and handed it to her. “Put this on.”

  She did, grateful that she was no longer standing around in her underwear.

  Shane turned and pointed his rifle toward the door. “We’ll stay here until we hear from Jack.”

  She nodded, praying that he would be okay.

  “What happened? I mean, how did you get here?” she asked.

  “We came in on glider planes and mostly used tranquilizer guns to put the militiamen out of commission. We’ll be out of here before they wake up.”

  “Trainer and I were fighting when we both heard gunfire.”

  “You were fighting him? How did you get loose?”

  “I used a screw head on the bed to saw through one of the ropes holding my arms.”

  “Good girl!”

  “Where did Jack go?”

  “Trainer’s got some kind of Doomsday device. Jack and Max have got to stop him from setting it off.”

  She winced. “A bomb? He told me the door to this room was booby-trapped with a bomb.”

  “Oh yeah? Let me just take a look at that,” Shane answered, stepping quickly out of the room again.

  ***

  “He knows he’s defeated, and he’s planning to take us with him,” Jack said as he and Max arrived at the door to the steel building. It was locked.

  “Shit. We’ve got to get inside.”

  Both he and Max raised the weapons they had liberated from the militiamen and started firing at the lock, losing precious seconds before they were able to turn the mechanism to shreds.

  Jack slammed the door open, and they both rushed into a room whose walls were filled with racks of armament. Parked around the floor were various vehicles including a steamroller, a troop carrier, a backhoe, and a front-end loader.

  “I don’t see him,” Max said, starting to search behind the vehicles. “You’re sure he came in here?”

  “I didn’t see him go in, but he was heading this way.” He dragged in a breath and let it out. “From the way he acted, I know there’s something important about this place. It’s not just for equipment storage.” In the dim light, h
e pointed to a smaller flat-roofed building at the end of the long room. “In there.”

  They both ran to the small structure. Again, the door was locked. When Max raised his weapon, Jack shook his head. “No. We could set something off in there.”

  Jack looked wildly around for something he could use to break through the walls. There were grenade and missile launchers, but again he hesitated to use firepower.

  As he searched for another alternative, Jack zeroed in on the front-end loader. The keys were in the ignition, and he climbed into the cab, glad that Trainer had made all the troops work at moving earth around as part of their training.

  “You might want to get out of the building. There’s something deadly in there,” he called to Max as he worked the gears, lurching forward.

  “I’m staying.”

  Jack nodded and jerked the big machine forward, then moved more smoothly as he picked up the rhythm of working with the construction equipment. Lowering the scoop at the front, he rumbled forward and caught the bottom edge of the metal building, rocking it back and forth before slamming it back down.

  He was gratified to hear a curse from inside. Trainer was in there all right. He’d thought he was safe from interference. Now he was finding out he wasn’t quite so secure.

  Jack manipulated the controls, shoving the scoop farther under the little building. Then he raised the mechanism, tipping the cube-shaped structure onto its side, exposing the bottom surface, which looked to be of thinner material than the top portion—probably because Trainer had never considered that the floor would be vulnerable.

  As Jack backed up and moved forward again, he prayed that Trainer hadn’t already unleashed something deadly. And if he had, would it be better to leave him in there with it?

  Maybe, but there was no guarantee that it wouldn’t get out.

  Making a decision to keep going, he bashed at the exposed bottom of the building with the scoop, opening a wedge in the material, then maneuvered the teeth under the flooring and peeled back the skin.

  When he’d made a two-foot opening, he jumped down from the machine, and he and Max moved cautiously forward, rifles at the ready.

  “We’ve got you covered. Surrender,” Jack called out.

  For answer, gunfire erupted from inside, and they both backed away.

  Jack scrambled up on the construction equipment again and hooked the teeth of the scoop under the portion of the floor that he’d peeled back.

  Lifting the cube, he slammed it into the concrete pad of the vaulted building. Then lifted it and did it again, hoping he was turning Trainer to jelly in there. As he kept up the assault, he heard some kind of noise from inside.

  Once again he slammed the cube on the concrete, then climbed down. Still cautious, he and Max approached the cube, and Jack stuck the muzzle of his rifle inside. When Trainer didn’t fire, Jack took a quick look into the cube.

  Trainer was lying beside a long metal table that had tipped on its side. Small drawers from a large cabinet were scattered around the little room.

  Trainer was clasping a metal box, his fingers frantically working at the catch. Jack leaped inside and yanked at the box. Trainer tried to hold on, but his grip finally gave way, and Jack fell backward with the box clutched to his chest.

  Trainer scrambled for the gun that had been lying beside him. Raising the weapon, he took aim at the box. Before he could fire, Max put a bullet in the middle of his forehead, and he went still.

  Jack looked over his shoulder. “Thanks, buddy.”

  “What the hell is in there?”

  Jack gingerly lifted the box and hefted it in his hand.

  “It’s not heavy.” He looked at the cover. “It’s got a stamp from Fort Detrick on the top. You know—the place where they make and test the biological weapons.”

  “Anthrax?”

  “My guess is it’s something worse.”

  “What do we do with it?”

  “Unfortunately, I think we need to take it with us. We don’t want anyone opening this damn thing by mistake.”

  Max handed over his knapsack, and Jack made sure the box was securely latched before shoving it into the bag. He also reached into Trainer’s pocket and found his cell phone, which he put into his own pocket.

  They were just heading for the door of the storage building when they were greeted by the sound of automatic weapons fire.

  ***

  The man who called himself Arthur Cunningham lived on a very nice estate outside Frederick, Maryland. Close enough to D.C. to be near the action and far enough away to be out of the danger zone when Trainer pulled off his attack on the Capitol.

  He was sitting in his comfortable family room, waiting by the phone, expecting to hear that the Rockfort Security problem was taken care of. He’d told them he wanted to stop Trainer. It was just the opposite, of course. He’d be prepared to rat out Jack Brandt at the crucial moment to keep him from stopping the D.C. attack.

  Impatient for news, he slapped his right fist against his left palm. Maybe he never should have hired Rockfort. But he hadn’t been able to stand the idea that he’d have no sure source of information on Trainer. Even though the man was the best there was at what he did, you could never entirely trust anyone.

  He’d learned that the hard way.

  He turned back to his computer and brought up one of his favorite Web sites. He monitored a number of bulletin boards and sites frequented by guys who were dedicated to overthrowing the government of the United States. He’d known most of them didn’t have a chance in hell of carrying out their grand plans. But he’d seen something in Wade Trainer that he hadn’t seen in the others.

  The man had a divine sense of purpose, determination, and the ability to follow through. And he had guts. Don’t forget about guts.

  Arthur had met him at a convention, where they’d started talking. He’d become more and more excited, the more he’d learned about the man. But he took a couple of months before deciding that Trainer was the guy who could put a large infusion of cash to good use.

  And Arthur was willing to use the money he’d inherited to avenge the death of his son. Well, a lot of it. He had to keep enough to live on in the style to which he’d always been accustomed.

  Once he’d been a patriotic American, so proud of his son graduating from West Point. An officer and a gentleman. That was Pete through and through.

  They’d talked about the wars. Both of them had supported the invasion of Iraq. Both of them had been shocked that no weapons of mass destruction had been found.

  In retrospect, it was too bad that Iraq had taken the U.S. focus off of Afghanistan. If the government had done what we should have there, the conflict might have been over before Pete had to go over there.

  When his son got through one tour okay, Arthur had breathed a sigh of relief.

  That second tour had started to change his mind about America’s foreign policy. Pete had only had a couple of weeks to go when his Humvee was hit by an IUD. If the Congress had authorized the proper armor, his son would still be alive. But they’d scrimped on this damn endless war. Because it wasn’t their sons being sent to a godforsaken foreign country to die.

  Nor had they considered how many other people they were hurting. His sweet, loving wife, Louise, hadn’t survived more than a few months after Pete’s death. She’d suffered a massive stroke and mercifully died a few hours later.

  That was on their heads too.

  And very soon they were going to pay the price for the way they played with other people’s lives.

  He’d given Trainer a lot of money. And found a biologist at Fort Detrick who’d been willing to unleash hell on the U.S. Capitol because his own son had suffered the same fate as Arthur’s. Of course, the man was now dead, so he could never reveal what he’d done with that batch of ZR 427 that was never supposed to leave the level four containment lab. Nobody even knew it was missing, because almost nobody had access to the stuff. It was like ricin, only better. A whiff could kil
l in a matter of minutes.

  ***

  Jack and Max both leaped to the door of the storage building and looked out. The two medics and Duffy were circling the building attached to the infirmary, the building where he’d left Morgan and Shane.

  Christ! He’d thought he’d left them in a safe place. As he saw the militiamen closing in on them, his heart leaped into his throat.

  The troops fired toward the structure, and someone inside returned fire. Probably Shane. Or if Shane was down, was Morgan shooting? Oh Lord, no! But the three men were spread out, coming in slowly, making it difficult to go after all of them at once.

  “Over here,” Jack shouted.

  With most of their comrades down, the three men had lost any semblance of military discipline. And now they were caught between Jack and their original target.

  They scattered, but Jack took down Duffy. Max got one of the medics, and the other got off a burst of fire.

  Shane blasted him in the chest, and he went still.

  “We got them,” Jack shouted. “For Christ’s sake, tell me you’re all right in there.”

  “Ready to party. Is that the last of them?”

  “Yeah. Including Trainer.”

  A moment later, a bare-chested Shane Gallagher came out. He was followed by Morgan, who was wearing Shane’s shirt.

  “Thank God,” Jack breathed.

  Before he could caution her, Morgan dashed from behind Shane and crossed the open space between the buildings, landing in Jack’s arms. He caught her and held tight. “Are you all right?” they both said at the same time.

  “Yes,” they both answered.

  He held her for a moment longer, wanting to say so much to her, but he couldn’t do it now.

  “We’re getting the hell out of here,” he said. “But I’ve got a couple more things to do.” Jack turned to Max. “You get one of Trainer’s Land Rovers.” To Shane, he said, “Take Morgan into Trainer’s office, and see if you can find anything useful. You know which building?”

  “Yes,” Shane answered.

  “I’ll clear away the mess at the gate and meet you in the office. If you touch anything, wear gloves.”