Out of Time r5-2

by Cliff Ryder

  “Be safe, then,” Liang said, holding out a meaty hand.

  Alex thought about not shaking it. The slight tremor shook his fingers, and he wasn’t sure what would happen if he applied full pressure. Then he met Liang’s gaze, and he shook. The hand was fine, though the grip left a light tingle.

  “Take care of Soo Lin,” he said.

  Without another word he rolled up the window, put the sedan in Reverse and backed out of the garage. He knew the route back to the parking lot and the MRIS complex, but he drove slowly. They had started very early that morning, and he didn’t want to arrive uncharacteristically early for Boswell. The most important thing was to act absolutely calm. If he passed the guard at the gate and got parked, he knew he’d make it at least as far as the building. It wasn’t until he got inside that it was likely to get interesting.

  He knew the security checkpoints, unless they’d changed in the past week. He knew that each squad had six interior and six exterior components. What he didn’t know, exactly, was the routine of the interior guard. He knew standard military and para-military procedure, and he could extrapolate somewhat from the patterns of the exterior guard, but there was more guesswork involved than he cared for. He also had the problem of trying to evade those directly involved with Boswell. Even with his careful disguise, his men might be fooled for a few minutes, but any prolonged involvement or contact would lead to his being exposed, and if that happened he might not even have time to set off his charges in one place and score an indirect hit.

  As he drove, he reviewed the plans to the complex in his mind. He used the concentration to distract him from his right leg, which had begun to tremble.

  The muscles of his thigh felt as if they were contract-ing, pulling in on themselves painfully. When he tried to relax them, they fluttered and pulled tighter still, and the tension this brought tightened the limb further. He gritted his teeth and pictured diagrams of the security checkpoints in his mind.

  He knew where the main stairwells were located, as well as the maintenance stairs, elevators and even a dumbwaiter that led down to the cafeteria. The complex was self-sustained. Once workers arrived for their shift, they remained within the confines of the building until it was time for their relief to arrive. There were services built in to facilitate this, break rooms, the cafeteria and even a small laundry. He tried to picture where the break in security to a secondary level would appear. Power and water had to break the plane of any such enclosure. The same types of maintenance that existed on the upper level would be required to support the lower, so the maintenance stairs were a good bet. The dumbwaiter shaft might actually extend downward, as well. It was even possible, he mused, that since everyone was aware of the heightened security, and everyone was apparently aware that there were too many cars in the lot, that there was no attempt at extra security.

  If the latter was true, he might not have the same level of problems ahead of him. If the entrance to the lower level was open and secured electroni-cally, he might be able to get in. If it was coded to access badges, he only needed to get one with a high enough level to get him through, if Boswell’s proved inadequate.

  At precisely 7:30 he rolled into sight of the parking lot. He was still slightly early, but he hoped he was correct in assuming that supervisors generally arrived first. That was the case in most military organizations he’d had contact with, and he assumed it would not raise an eyebrow here, even if it wasn’t a requirement. He needed to be a little ahead of his “men” because he intended to be inside and on the move downward before they arrived. The timing was crucial. If he arrived too soon they might hold him or question him. For all he knew it was forbidden to be on site when you weren’t on duty. It was equally important that he arrive first for his shift. Again, more luck was involved than he was generally comfortable trusting.

  He put on the olive drab cap they’d taken from the dead man, and slipped the man’s shades on to cover his eyes. It might look a little odd, but the sun was still out, and fairly bright, and it was possible he could just have forgotten to take them off. Anything that could remove a chance at detection was important. He could remove the glasses when he reached the building, possibly as an excuse to avert his gaze from someone inside.

  He took a deep breath as he followed the circular drive to the main gate. He rolled to a stop beside the guard’s shack. He handed Boswell’s badge to the man in the guard shack and waited for all hell to break loose. If he’d made a mistake, or they had some way of knowing that there was a problem with Boswell, then he was finished before he began.

  The guard glanced at the ID, glanced back up at Alex, who nodded, and then back to the ID.

  “Go,” the man said, nodding curtly into the compound. Alex took his badge back, affixed it carefully to the front of the dead man’s shirt and drove forward into the lot, scanning for open spaces.

  Another thing he didn’t know was whether particular areas of the parking lot were assigned to particular groups, or individuals. Instead of making this an issue, he drove on to the rear of the lot and found the space where Boswell had parked the night before. There were places closer in, but somehow it felt right to put the sedan back where he’d originally found it. Again, it was a calculated risk, but it was a lower risk than taking an incorrect spot. He killed the engine and worked fast.

  The false floorboard lifted easily and he slipped his hand under. Inside was the biggest risk he would take. He had to enter the compound with the explosives in hand. He’d left them secured as he entered in case there was any sort of routine search, but now he pulled out the utility belt, strung with black pouches filled with enough high explosive to remove the upper level of the building from the map. He snapped it around his waist, taking pains to move quickly and efficiently and to show none of the fear of motion the belt brought him.

  As he’d done in the garage earlier, he closed his eyes and slipped back to the small snippets of Boswell that he’d recorded in his memory. He pictured the man crossing this very parking lot and then, without hesitation, he opened the door, stepped out, closed and locked the sedan and started off across the pavement.

  At first he saw no one. He measured his breath by the paces, remembering each time he moved that he was not Alex Tempest, but Roy Boswell.

  He wasn’t breaking into a secret biomedical laboratory to try and save the world, he was a regular guy with a job to do, a few men to supervise and another shift to get through. He slowed his pace just slightly when the day shift guards rounded the corner of the maintenance shed and came into sight. They paid no attention to him, and when he hesitated to let the last of them pass, their captain nodded to him in recognition. Roy returned the nod, passed on by and headed for the main entrance of the complex.

  No one gave him a second glance. He stepped through an arched, stainless-steel entrance and stood before a chrome-framed door of very thick glass. To the left of the door hung a magnetic-strip-card reader. He slipped the badge in and swiped it down. Two small green lights appeared, one below and one above the lock. There was a hum and a heavy click. He grabbed the door, pulled it open and stepped inside.

  Almost miraculously, the foyer was empty. It was tiled with smooth, reflective stone. Doorways led to the right, left and straight ahead. In the angles between two of the hallways were the main elevators. He walked to the one on the left, swiped his card again and waited. There was a hum deep in the guts of the building and lights came on, illuminating the upward-pointing arrow. Moments later there was another heavy clunking sound, then the door slid open. A tall, thin man stepped out, glanced at Alex with a harried, irritated expression, then turned and headed off down one of the hallways, a sheaf of papers half-crumpled in his grip.

  The plans he’d memorized showed a main floor, a basement level, a maintenance level below that and three floors above the ground level. All of these were indicated by numbered buttons. There were also four buttons off to the side of the panel. They were not numbered, but each was emblazoned with a
symbol in bold Chinese script, along with its counterpart in English, for which Alex was thankful.

  Sometimes, it was better to be lucky than good, he thought.

  He pressed the lowest of the numbered buttons, and the elevator came to life with a loud hum. The car began its descent, and he closed his eyes. He leaned on the wall of the elevator car to remove some of the pressure from his aching legs, and he brought up a mental image of the lower floor he was about to reach. He had to move quickly and avoid contact and, if discovered, he had to act without hesitation. He thought suddenly of Brin.

  How many of those who were about to die would be like her? People coming to work every day, believing they were doing work that would help to improve the lives of those around them?

  How many innocents would be destroyed in the interest of saving millions more? When he was done here, if he succeeded, would they send him—

  or someone like him—to the MRIS office where Brin worked? Was the knowledge she possessed a danger to mankind—enough so that she’d become a liability? If she was considered a liability, he needed to find all of the evidence that might point to her and destroy it. He wasn’t about to let a loose asset or piece of research destroy his wife and his family.

  He shook the thoughts from his mind and growled out loud, just as the elevator door slid open. Luckily no one was there to hear.

  The break room on the lowest level had a small doorway leading to the laundry access. Alex slipped past vending machines, pots of tea and coffee and into the darker room beyond. He had managed to enter the break room without being seen, but he knew his time was limited. He would be late for Boswell’s shift in only a few moments, and someone was bound to report seeing him when he entered the main building. They would be looking for him, and before that happened, to give himself half a chance at escape, he had to get where he was going, set his charges and get out.

  He walked straight to the dumbwaiter and opened the access panel. It was a simple device, as he’d hoped. It consisted of a single solid platform that rose and fell by the control of a pair of buttons that dangled from a cable attached to a basketlike frame. Luck was still with him—the car was at his level, and when he leaned in to peer downward, he saw that the shaft ran much farther down than where he currently stood. He reasoned no one would take it lower—why should they? It was probably not guarded, and he doubted there was even an alarm.

  He glanced over his shoulder to be certain the break room was still clear, and then swung up onto the little platform, regretting instantly putting so much of his weight on the grip of a single arm. His hand cramped and he almost cried out. He felt the dumbwaiter bounce under his weight and grabbed the control in his other hand. He pressed a button, and the platform lurched upward. He cursed softly, regained his balance and pressed the other button.

  The dumbwaiter descended slowly, dropping him through a shaft of utter darkness toward whatever lay below.

  He listened carefully for voices, or for any sort of alarm that might have sounded, but he heard nothing. He rode down for what seemed an inor-dinately long time, but at last he saw the dim outline of an access panel rising to meet him. He timed his descent roughly and stopped a couple of inches below the panel. He reached out and slid it open a crack. No one moved or made a sound.

  Alex reached down to the holster on his belt and pulled out his porcelain-framed 9 mm Glock pistol. It was a special piece of weaponry, equipped with a laser sight, a silencer and loaded with Glaser rounds. Very carefully he pulled the panel open the rest of the way and stepped out into a dark room.

  It took a moment to orient himself, but when his eyesight adjusted slightly he found he was in a large chamber with a low ceiling. Pipes and ductwork ran in all directions, and it was warmer than it had been on the upper floors. He moved away from the dumbwaiter access carefully and began a circuit of the wall. He found power panels, circuit breakers with huge snaking ropes of cable stretching up through the ceiling above him, and eventually he came to what he assumed was the central furnace of the building.

  He tried to estimate how far down he’d come and cursed himself for not preparing well enough to have had string or rope—anything to measure that distance more accurately. He was nearly certain that there was another floor above him, and if the chamber he stood in was a measure of it, that hidden floor ran the entire length of the building.

  Alex followed the cables quickly. It didn’t take him long to pinpoint where a large number of data cables extended into the ceiling, and he started there, planting the first of his charges. He placed another on the ventilation tubing he believed was intended for environmental control. If the floor above was comprised of computer banks and laboratories, as he expected, then the two largest re-positories of data and danger would be the labs themselves, and the computers.

  He was assuming that computers on the main floors were isolated from the hidden banks below.

  The very paranoia that hid the labs in the first place would drive the separation. If he was careful enough setting his charges, and if he managed to get back to the floor where he’d entered the dumbwaiter shaft and plant what remained, the point would be moot. The foundations of the building would be vaporized. Anything and anyone on the floors above would be wiped clean, and whatever secrets MRIS was keeping would be gone forever.

  He planted a third charge at the base of the main furnace and took off at a run for the exit to the main hall. There was no reason to haul himself up using the dumbwaiter from here; he knew where the elevators would be located. The numbered floors would still be numbered, and since he was already on the lower floor, he knew where his next arrival point would be.

  He saw no one in the hallway, but that didn’t surprise him. This was a maintenance level, and though there were probably a few people with access, that would likely be when something needed to be adjusted, tested or repaired. He found the corner where the elevator shafts were located.

  There was no way to know if he had any time left at all. He opened a pouch on his belt and pulled out a small kit. He pressed the button to call the elevator.

  While he waited he took a small moistened pad and modified the makeup he’d applied to his face and made minute adjustments to the musculature and shape of it. He worked quickly, and by the time the door to the elevator opened, he wore a thick mustache and his eyebrows had been darkened. He still wore the guard’s uniform and had his ID tag, but he no longer looked like Roy Boswell. He no longer stood or held himself like Boswell. He stepped into the elevator and hit the button for the lower of the main floors.

  “Going up,” he breathed.

  As he rode upward, noting that he’d been correct in assuming he would pass another floor, he unsnapped the flap on his holster and rested his hand on the butt of the 9 mm Glock. He had no way to know what to expect when the doors opened, and he didn’t want to be taken by surprise.

  He had to be sure he gave the charges below enough time. They were set for three hours. He fully intended to be long gone by the time they went off, but if something went wrong, he needed to keep security focused on himself. The primary target was now below him, and if he was really lucky, what he’d already done would not only take that out, but would also collapse the upper floors.

  It was also possible the explosion would funnel up the heating vents. It could be spectacular.

  The elevator halted and the door slid open. Alex stepped out into the hall and turned immediately to his right. He swept the hall as he turned, seeing no one on his left. Then he heard scuffling feet. A voice rose over the hiss of the elevator’s door sliding closed behind him.

  “Secure the elevators. He’s on this floor.”

  The footsteps were approaching fast, and he saw a turn in the passageway ahead. Alex stepped slowly back toward the elevator, but he was too late. They rounded the corner. He knew he’d been spotted, but he didn’t panic. They were looking for Boswell, or someone who looked like Boswell.

  He was a slightly taller man with a mustach
e. He wore the same uniform they wore.

  Now was the time for one of those acceptable risks. There was a chance they would simply act if given a clue.

  He stepped forward and called out, “The door just closed. I think he’s headed up.”

  The two men who’d rounded the corner stopped. They stared at him for just a moment, then the guard in front nodded.

  “Take the stairs,” he ordered. Alex nodded. He turned and started back down the hall. He’d only gone a few steps when he heard the squawk of a radio, and he’d just rounded the corner toward the main stairwell when he heard the cry behind him and knew his cover was blown.

  To either side of the main stairs were long corridors. He flipped through the memorized diagrams in his mind and veered to the right. The labs were on the left, but the computer mainframes were on the right. If the data had been copied, backed up or stored, it would reside in the drive arrays on those systems, so if he could take out only one more wing, that was the logical target.

  Boots pounded on the stairs and he moved more quickly. He heard voices behind him and he ran for a large double door on his right.

  “You!” someone called from behind him.

  “Stop!”

  Alex ignored the command and lunged for the door. A shot fired suddenly and he moved instinctively, ducking left and reaching for the door to the computer lab. He twisted the handle and dived forward, shouldering through. He rolled, just as another shot ricocheted over his head. Then he was inside and moving. The computer banks were large. The room was air-conditioned, and fans hummed loudly. Banks of optical backup drives lined one wall. A glass-enclosed area housed more servers. As on the maintenance level, he saw no one standing or wandering around. Most of the computer management and would be handled from remote consoles. The machines themselves were kept in an environmentally controlled void. Alex scanned the room quickly and chose his spot.