The Ark tl-1

by Boyd Morrison

  She examined the gun. Heckler & Koch MP-5. She’d fired one once during her training. Nice, light weapon. Just what she needed.

  She stuffed his Sig Sauer pistol into her waistband and went in search of the stairs.

  * * *

  At the second level, Locke repeated the precautions he’d taken on the first level. They disabled each camera and then placed a claymore against the door. With the cameras out, whoever came through first would have no idea how unhappy he was going to be for the 30 milliseconds he had to live.

  Grant broke the third level camera, and Locke knelt near the door. He placed the mine and was about to set the striker when he heard footsteps squeak lightly on the tile in the hallway beyond the door. Someone was coming.

  Locke hadn’t finished setting up the claymore, so he shoved the mine and striker aside and backed away on the landing, aiming his gun at the door. Grant and Turner were on the stairs below him, the weapons trained on the door. It opened, and when Locke saw the face peer through, he eased up on the trigger.

  “Hold your fire!” he yelled.

  It was Dilara, and she was armed to the teeth.

  “Tyler!” she said. “You’re alive!” She threw herself into his arms, and Locke hugged her tightly. After a few seconds, he let her go and gave a sheepish grin to Turner, who looked nonplussed.

  “Are you okay?” Locke said to Dilara.

  “Garrett drugged me, but I’ll be all right.” Her voice was a little thick, as if she were eating sticky peanut butter.

  Locke pointed to the MP-5 she was carrying. “You sure you’re up to handling that right now?”

  “When I came through that door, I almost shot you.”

  “I’ll take that as a yes.”

  “They said you were dead.”

  “Good. That’s what I wanted them to think.”

  “We have to stop them,” Dilara said. “They’re planning to release some kind of prion in New York, LA, and London. They’re shipping the stuff out tonight.”

  “That’s why we’re here. And we’ve got about twenty minutes to find it.”

  “Why twenty minutes?”

  He told her about the bomber circling overhead.

  “Is it just the three of you?”

  Locke nodded. “The rest of our team is locked out on the surface. We’ve lost communications with them.”

  “Then what do we do?”

  “After we secure the prions, we have to figure out a way to get into their control room.”

  “Maybe a guard would be able to give us a way in,” Dilara said.

  “Even if we find one,” Locke said, “these guys aren’t the talkative types. It would take too long to get anything out of them.”

  “I know one who might talk.”

  “Why would he do that?”

  “Because I just pumped him full of truth serum.”

  FIFTY-TWO

  Sebastian Garrett watched his scientists load the last of the Arkon-C into the dispersion devices. In a few minutes, they would be ready for deployment. The assault had been a great inconvenience, but nothing more than that if he could get these scientists finished.

  “Hurry up,” he said into the microphone. “This is taking too long.”

  The transfer of the Arkon-C was taking place, as it always did, inside the chamber he’d used only a few days ago to make his point about traitors. All of the Arkon that existed in the world, except the one sample still on Noah’s Ark, was in that chamber. And once the transfer was complete, he would destroy the surplus.

  The computer files had already been destroyed. He kept the only remaining copy of the files in a USB drive in his pocket. It held all of the plans for modifying Arkon-A, the raw form on Noah’s Ark, into Arkon-C. He didn’t want to take the one-in-a-million chance that the government would get their hands on the process and engineer some kind of antidote.

  The men inside the closed chamber were wearing biohazard suits, just in case containment was compromised during the job. The other labs had already been sterilized with salt water, a process that took longer than using heat, but was just as effective. It was the reason Noah had been able to eventually emerge from the Ark and repopulate the world, the Arkon having been destroyed after it wiped out the animals and flowed into the salty seas.

  In the observation room were the three men who would deliver the devices. Each of them assumed they would come back to Oasis once their jobs were complete, but there was a slight risk that they’d be infected during their missions. When they returned, they would get as far as the entranceway and be terminated there by guards waiting in hazmat suits. Garrett regretted losing believers, but it was necessary to ensure the safety of Oasis.

  The only other people in the observation room with Garrett were the chamber operator and Svetlana Petrova. Dilara Kenner should have been here by now.

  He spoke into his radio.

  “Cutter, where is Dilara Kenner? I can’t bargain with somebody I don’t have. He’ll want to hear her voice.”

  “She got away, sir,” Cutter said.

  Garrett’s hand clenched on the walkie-talkie. “What? How?”

  “I don’t know. But we just saw her run into the third level stairwell, right about where Locke should be.”

  “So they’re together now?”

  “I don’t know. The stairwell camera is out at that level.”

  “Well then, what do you know?”

  “None of the hallway cameras has picked them up, which means they’re all in the stairwell, and we’re about to start our attack.”

  “Fine, then. I obviously don’t need Dr. Kenner any more. Kill them all.”

  * * *

  Cutter watched the camera on level four. It was still intact and didn’t show any movement, which meant that Locke and the others must still be at the third level landing.

  Perfect.

  Cutter planned a three-pronged attack. Four men would come up the east stairwell below them and serve as the decoy. Another four men, who must have just missed Kenner running into the stairwell, were stationed halfway down the third level corridor, ready to ambush Locke when he came out the door. They would remain hidden until Cutter signaled that Locke and his companions had entered the range of the third level hallway cameras. Then his men would pop out and mow them down.

  Cutter’s confidence in the plan came from the third prong. Once the attack had started below, the last four men, who had used the west stairwell to get up to the first level, would move into the east stairwell from above and close in a pincer movement. If they could sneak up on Locke, they could end it right there, but if not, Locke would be driven right into the ambush in the hallway.

  Cutter wanted to be leading the battle himself, especially because he had seen Grant Westfield with them, but he could help the team best by directing the attack from the control room. At least he’d get to watch Westfield die on his monitor.

  “Teams check in,” he said.

  “Team One ready.” The bottom level team.

  “Team Two ready.” The team on level one.

  “Team Three ready.” The ambushers in the hallway on level three.

  “Teams two and three, wait for my signal. Team One, go.”

  Team One burst through the seventh level door and charged up the stairs. By now, Locke and his group would hear the footsteps below and be aiming for them, focusing their attention away from the upper levels. Team One’s directive was to start firing before they got to the third level, both as a distraction and to cover the sound of Team Two coming down from the first level. It might even drive Locke upstairs into the arms of Team Two.

  He heard Team One begin firing. He didn’t hear any return fire. Locke must be figuring out what to do. Now was the time.

  “Team Two go!”

  Cutter saw the Team Two leader in the hallway of level one kick the door open.

  The door exploded.

  The two men who were right in front of the door were blown to pieces. The other two men, who
had been covering them, went down holding their faces. Cutter gritted his teeth. The door had been booby-trapped.

  Cutter called for Team One to pull back. Too late.

  He heard an explosion before the Team One leader could respond.

  “Team One leader is gone!” Cutter heard from another man. “They’re dropping grenades down the stairs!”

  Cutter was losing his men fast. “Team One, get out now! Use the closest door! Team Three, hold position and wait for my command.” Maybe Locke would still come out through the third level door, and he could salvage this debacle.

  He waited and saw nothing from the third level hallway camera. Thirty seconds passed. Nothing.

  “Switch to the level two hallway camera,” he said.

  The monitor showed Dilara Kenner behind Locke and another soldier holding Grant Westfield up to the camera. All looked uninjured. Westfield’s face took up almost the whole image. His arms were extended past the camera behind it. Why didn’t he just break it? What was he…

  Dammit!

  “Shut down that camera!” Cutter yelled. “Hurry!”

  The operator wasn’t fast enough. With a flash, all of the video feeds blinked out.

  FIFTY-THREE

  When the attack had started, Turner had ordered them to retreat into the third level hallway. Locke had been about to open the door, but Grant stopped him. His history with Cutter made him think that’s exactly what Cutter wanted. He also predicted the attack from above. Grant’s instinct was good enough for Locke. When they heard the explosion from the first level, confirming Grant’s suspicions, Turner agreed. They dropped a couple of grenades down the stairs and did what Cutter wouldn’t expect. They went up.

  Grant saw the remains of the camera on the level two landing and told Locke he had a way to take out the cameras, which were becoming a real nuisance. Even if they shut down each camera as they went, doing so would eat into time they didn’t have, and Cutter could track them by the sequence of outages. Locke wasn’t an electrical engineer, so he had overlooked something that grabbed Grant’s attention.

  The cameras were all on the same circuit and weren’t shielded. If Grant could find a high voltage wire and tie it directly into a camera’s video feed, he could overload the whole system.

  In the second level hallway, Grant balanced on Locke and Turner’s shoulders to reach. Sparks flew when he spliced the wires together, and Locke heard a pop from another camera down the hall.

  Grant jumped down. “We should be good to go. That’ll teach them for giving the construction contract to someone without my amazing skills.”

  The klaxon shut off. A few doors opened. Civilians lured out by the voices. They must be on a residential level.

  “Everyone stay in your rooms,” Locke yelled, and the doors slammed shut.

  He led them to the stairway at the west end of the hallway. Turner followed without a word. Since Locke knew the basic layout better than anyone else, Turner had deferred the point position to him.

  Only fifteen minutes were left, and they all felt the pressure to move quickly, but they couldn’t risk attacking head-on a fortified position they had little intel about. Anything the guard doped up on truth serum might be able to tell them would be worth the time.

  They went cautiously into the stairwell and saw no one. They were halfway down when the door from the third level opened. Turner had the angle and fired two quick bursts, taking down two guards before they could react. The bodies kept the door from closing, and Locke could see another two guards retreat down the hallway.

  This must have been the ambush team that Grant assumed would be waiting for them. Now Locke had the advantage of numbers. He ran into the hall firing shots at the running guards, who were going for the east stairwell. Just like Locke wanted.

  He could see one of the guards halt before opening the door as if the man were listening to someone in his earpiece. But the other soldier barreled past him and launched himself at the door. The first guard tried to hold him back, but the door was already swinging open and hit the striker of the claymore that Locke had reset there.

  The blast threw them backwards, and the guards came to rest face down, their bodies a mess of blood and dust.

  “Which room?” Locke asked Dilara.

  She led them to a room around the corner. Grant covered them while Locke opened the door. They found the doctor and the drugged guard still on the floor.

  Grant and Turner picked up the guard and put him in the chair, clasping the restraints over his wrists.

  “What’s your name?” Locke asked the guard while Turner wrapped the doctor’s wrists and ankles with plastic cuffs.

  The guard’s eyes were completely dilated, unable to fix on who was speaking to him.

  “Connelly.” He voice was slurred, like he’d chugged a twelve-pack.

  “How many guards are there, Connelly?”

  “Guards?”

  “Your men. How many?”

  “Thirty-two total security forces.”

  “Looks like this stuff is working,” Grant said.

  “How many inside?” Locke asked.

  Connelly paused, confused. The math was too much for him. Locke had to make it less complicated.

  “How many men are usually posted outside, Connelly?”

  “Standard operations is 12.”

  With the four in the hangar that meant 16 outside when the barriers came down. Cutter started with 16 inside, and now less than that. If Locke was lucky, Cutter had fewer than 10 men left. With that few, it would be risky for him to try another assault and lose more men.

  Cutter would pull his men back to the control room and make a stand there. He would make it a battle of attrition, but Locke had to worry about the time. Ten minutes until the bomb dropped.

  “What about the civilians, Connelly?” Locke asked. “Are they armed?”

  Connelly shook his head lazily. “Garrett doesn’t want them to have weapons. Only us.”

  That would feed into Garrett’s plan for dominating the group once he had wiped out everyone outside Oasis. He wanted a bunch of sheep he could command in his New World. Cutter wouldn’t be getting help from anyone else, just his security forces.

  “Where is the bio lab?’

  “Fifth level,” Connelly said.

  “How do we get in?”

  “Can’t. Palm scanner.”

  “What about the control room? Where is it?”

  “Seventh level.”

  “Palm scanner?”

  Connelly nodded. “If it isn’t locked manually from the inside.”

  “Which they would probably do,” Turner said.

  “Connelly, if you were attacking the control room, how would you do it?”

  “East stairwell. Direct shot at the door. RPG.” Rocket propelled grenade.

  “Two problems with that,” Grant said. “We don’t have an RPG, and it might blow the whole room apart. We need it functional to open those barriers.”

  Locke shook Connelly. “How else? How do we get in?”

  “Can’t. Have to wait until they come out.”

  Get them to come out. That was it. And how do you get them to come out? Panic.

  “Connelly,” Locke said, “does your palm print give you access to the bio lab?”

  Connelly nodded.

  Locke turned to Grant. “Help me pick him up. We’re taking him with us.”

  They had their way in.

  FIFTY-FOUR

  On the fifth level landing of the west stairwell, Turner and Grant watched up and down the stairs while Locke pressed Connelly’s hand against the palm scanner leading into the bio lab. The screen changed into a keypad and said, “Enter pass code.”

  “What’s the pass code?” Locke asked.

  “78924,” Connelly responded robotically.

  Locke entered the number. The door buzzed, and the bolt disengaged. Now that the klaxon had been shut off, the buzz sounded like an air horn in the empty stairwell.

  Loc
ke opened the door and shoved Connelly through it. No gunfire. Locke went in and saw another white hallway. Turner, Grant, and Dilara followed him in, their weapons held high.

  “Where are they?” Locke said as he wrapped plastic ties around Connelly’s wrists. He didn’t need the guard any more. “Where’s Garrett?”

  “Observation chamber.”

  “Where’s that?”

  “Right at the elevator. Halfway down.”

  “What are they doing there?”

  “Preparing the dispersion cases. Burning everything else.”

  “Dispersion cases?” Locke stood and faced the others. “Must be like the one I found on the Genesis Dawn. That’s why my father wanted the bomber as backup.”

  “So what’s the plan?” Turner said.

  “Not much time left,” Locke said. His watch showed 9:53. Seven minutes. “We need to go in full throttle.”

  Leaving Connelly on the floor, Locke jogged down to the elevator and peeked around the corner toward the north stairwell. Empty. Garrett must assume that they wouldn’t be able to get into the fifth level without blowing a door open, which would ruin any chance of being taken by surprise. Of course, Garrett didn’t know they had the helpful Connelly with them.

  Locke waved at the others. They crept down the hall toward the observation room door. They were a quarter of the way down the hall when a door opened at the other end 70 feet away. A woman in a biohazard suit walked out and stopped in her tracks when she saw the four of them.

  She shrieked and ran back into the room. That was all it took.

  A guard with a weapon stepped out of the observation room, and Turner took him down with a three-shot burst. Locke ran down the hall and slid on his back past the door on the slick tile. For a moment, he caught a glimpse of Garrett and Svetlana Petrova going out a door on the opposite side of the room as he sailed past. A hail of bullets dotted the wall above Locke. He took a shot in that direction and thought he hit someone.

  Turner leapt over the fallen guard and into the room. He took a hit in the shoulder and fell to the ground, but it was enough of a distraction for Grant, who followed him in and shot the last guard. Locke went in next.