by Tarah Benner
Bernie clenched and unclenched her fists. She was grinding her teeth together so forcefully that she thought she might wear down her molars. If they found Simjay’s weapons . . .
Suddenly a dark, desperate thought popped into her head: What if Conrad was setting them up? What if he was still loyal to the government and had lured Simjay there under false pretenses? He had worked for the U.S. government for years, and Simjay had betrayed his trust as Birapaar. Maybe this was Conrad’s way of enacting his revenge.
Bernie’s paranoia quickly ran away with her, but then the door opened again, and Conrad and Simjay reappeared. The woman was speaking, pointing down the tunnel as if she were giving directions.
Conrad turned to nod in appreciation, and he and Simjay started back down the tunnel. Bernie and Portia let out a joint breath of relief.
Bernie could hardly believe it. They’d done the impossible. Not only had they found out where Lark and the others were being held; they’d fooled the best of the best and infiltrated one of the most secure facilities in the world. They were one step closer to finding their friends and securing their freedom. All they had to do was locate the cells and get them out alive.
Conrad and Simjay continued down the tunnel until they reached the first of two twenty-five-ton blast doors that Bernie remembered from the pictures. According to Conrad, at least one of the doors was always left open, except in the event of an emergency.
“Good work, guys,” she said into her mic.
But then she saw something that caused her feelings of triumph to fizzle: The head guard was speaking into a walkie-talkie, staring after Conrad and Simjay. The guards moved forward as if their next actions had been meticulously rehearsed and began to close the airlock door behind them.
Bernie gasped, and she turned to look at Portia. Her expression was just as horrified.
Bernie had been right to think that gaining entry to Cheyenne Mountain had been too easy. They weren’t letting Conrad and Simjay through to perform some routine maintenance on their security system. They hadn’t bought their story at all.
The guards were onto them, and now they were trapped inside the mountain.
twenty-five
Bernie
A sudden chill settled over Bernie. She could no longer see Simjay and Conrad, but there was no way they hadn’t heard the enormous blast door closing behind them.
The guards were still on the other side of the door, the head guy gesticulating wildly as if he were delivering orders to lock down the facility.
“Simjay,” Bernie choked into the mic. “Simjay, run!”
“What?” he hissed.
“They’re onto you,” said Bernie. It was difficult to talk with her heart in her throat. She was caught between the urge to throw up and the urge to cry. “You have to get out of there. Now.”
But before Simjay could reply, Bernie felt a sharp jab in her ribs. Portia had elbowed her out of the way and was desperately punching through the different feeds to get eyes on Conrad and Simjay.
“We’ll split up,” said Simjay. “Find Soren and —”
“No,” said Conrad, his voice low and surprisingly steady.
A second later, Portia located him on screen. He was rummaging in his pants for something, and in an instant, he withdrew a plastic sidearm nearly identical to the one he’d given Simjay.
“You don’t know this facility. It’s a maze. You could wander around for weeks and never find your friend.”
The video feed was grainy and muted, but Bernie swore she saw the color drain from Simjay’s face.
“I need eyes,” said Conrad urgently. “Give me eyes.”
In her jumbled state, Bernie didn’t immediately understand what he was asking, but Portia was already studying the feeds.
“I see men headed your way,” she said. “It looks like they’re at your nine o’clock.”
“Affirmative,” said Conrad, leading the way down the tunnel and turning abruptly down a hallway on their right.
Simjay jogged along with his hands in his pants, trying to extricate his improvised handgun.
Miles of pipes snaked along the ceiling, and the walls on either side of them were lined with identical white doors. Each door was secured with a padlock, and Bernie shuddered at the thought of what might be hidden in those rooms.
The U.S. government wasn’t fucking around. Cheyenne Mountain was Area 51, Los Alamos, and Amchitka — all rolled into one.
“Wait!” cried Bernie, her eyes latching on to one of the feeds. A man was walking purposefully down a hallway that looked eerily similar to the one Conrad and Simjay were in.
Judging by his attire, he wasn’t one of the guards. He was dressed in khaki cargo pants and a tight black T-shirt, but his clothes bore the Department of Homeland Security emblem, and he was armed. He was approaching a T in the corridor, and Conrad and Simjay were coming up on a hallway. Bernie didn’t know why, but she had a bad feeling that they were about to smack right into him.
“Look out!” she cried. “You’ve got another one at three o’clock.”
As she watched, Conrad and Simjay flattened themselves against the wall. Simjay had extricated his 3D-printed gun, which was tucked securely into the waistband of his slacks. But instead of reaching for the gun, he pulled out the long black dagger and waited.
Several seconds passed in tense silence. Bernie and Portia held their breath, eyes glued to the screen.
Then the man rounded the corner, and Simjay grabbed him around the neck. The man froze as the knife flew to his throat, and Conrad stepped around Simjay with his gun pointed at his head.
They forced the man down to the ground, and Simjay stripped him of his gun and key card. Then Conrad gestured to a door behind him, and they forced the man into what looked like a supply closet.
At first Bernie wasn’t sure what Simjay had been thinking, but then she realized that they would need the man’s key card to spring Lark and the others from their cells. Once he was securely locked in the supply closet, Simjay and Conrad took off at a run.
Bernie watched Conrad lead them deeper into the facility while Portia scanned the screen for approaching threats. From the looks of things, the head guard they’d spoken with at the entrance had ordered his men to lock down the facility, but no one seemed to be in much of a hurry. It occurred to Bernie that they had probably rehearsed the button-up drill so many times that it was no big deal to execute.
But after a few minutes, Bernie began to feel that they were playing a game of spy versus spy. Every time they would redirect Conrad and Simjay to a safer route, the guards would change course and appear in another hallway to block their path. Soon they were one step ahead of Bernie and Portia, and Bernie got the feeling that they were edging them deeper and deeper into a maze.
Then Simjay rounded a corner, and Bernie let out a shriek of terror. Four guards were standing at the opposite end of the hallway, and all of them had their guns pointed at Simjay.
“Get out of there!” yelled Portia.
“Go back!” Bernie cried.
But Simjay didn’t move. Conrad dashed around the corner with his homemade firearm. There was a blast of gunfire, and suddenly the feed went dark.
“Shit!” yelled Bernie, pounding on the keys as if she could somehow restore the camera that had just been blown to bits.
She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t think. She yelled for Simjay, but all she got was radio silence. They were staring at a blank screen, unsure if their friends were alive or dead.
Hot, angry tears burned in the back of her throat. She wanted to rip Conrad’s laptop in two and throw it through a window. She wanted to drive the van up to Cheyenne Mountain and go all Terminator on the guards.
“Fuuuuck!” she yelled into her earpiece, ripping off her headset and chucking it against the window.
This was all her fault. It had been she who’d insisted that they break into Cheyenne Mountain Complex in the first place. Well, she and Simjay, but Simjay was crazy. He w
as so excited at the prospect of shooting Conrad’s stupid 3D-printed handgun that he would have gone along with any plan that allowed him to play spy. She never should have let him go.
But then she heard something that sounded like static — a shaky voice coming through the speaker that hadn’t been there before.
Hands trembling, Bernie snatched up her headset and jammed it back over her frizzy hair. “Simjay, do you copy?”
“Easy, firebug,” came Simjay’s voice. He sounded shaken, but he was alive.
“Simjay?” Bernie choked.
“You can stop shouting . . . We’re okay.”
Bernie let out a noise somewhere between a cheer and a sob. “You crazy fucks!” she yelled, nearly losing her mind as she stared into the ominous black screen. “What happened?”
“Conrad shot them. They aren’t dead, but they won’t be chasing down bad guys anytime soon. He’s disarming them now.”
“Get the hell out of there before you get yourselves killed!” Bernie yelled.
“No can do,” said Simjay. “I think we just found where they’ve been keeping our prisoners.”
twenty-six
Soren
The gunfire stopped, but Soren stayed pressed against the wall of his cell. His ears were ringing, his heart was pounding, and he had no idea what was going on.
Slowly, carefully, he inched toward the door. The ringing in his ears was beginning to subside. He could hear voices out in the hallway, but the sound was too muffled to make out what they were saying.
Something was wrong. The Homeland Security agents hadn’t suddenly decided to hold target practice down in the prisoners’ wing. The facility was under attack, but the shots hadn’t sounded like normal gunfire.
Every muscle in Soren’s body twitched as he peered through the tiny safety-glass window. His stomach churned. Four men in tan fatigues were lying in the hallway — three of them unconscious and one clutching his chest in pain.
Soren ducked back against the wall, breathing hard. His mind was racing. Whoever had invaded the facility wasn’t fucking around. It took some serious balls to stage a hostile takeover of a secret government bunker — not to mention a ton of careful planning.
As much as he wanted to escape his six-by-eight concrete box from hell, he didn’t think it was a good idea to be indebted to the group of terrorists or vigilantes that had invaded the facility. Then again, he knew it might be his only chance to get out of there alive.
But before Soren could make up his mind, he heard a loud beep, and his cell door swung open. Soren braced himself for a fight, but half a second later, all thoughts of defending himself flew out of his mind.
Standing on the other side of the door was a face so welcome and familiar that he briefly wondered if he was hallucinating.
“Good to see you, brother.”
Soren’s mouth fell open. It was Simjay.
He was dressed like some hapless corporate drudge who had been caught off guard by a zombie apocalypse. His rumpled shirt was splattered with blood, his face was sweaty, and he was holding an assault rifle in his shaky hands.
“What —” Soren closed his mouth and shook his head stupidly. “What are you doing here?”
“No time to explain,” came a second voice. It belonged to a slight man with graying brown hair and shifty eyes. He too was dressed like an accountant-turned-zombie-slayer and was holding an armful of weapons that he’d stolen from the wounded guards. He had another gun tucked into his waistband — a white plastic number that looked like no gun Soren had ever seen before.
“But —”
“We’re busting you out of here!” said Simjay in a rush. “Let’s go!”
Soren stumbled out of his cell in a daze, squinting under the harsh florescent lights. He still hadn’t quite processed everything that was happening.
His eyes drifted from the men lying on the ground to Simjay darting from one cell to the next.
“We got Soren,” Simjay said to no one in particular. He stopped in front of a cell and broke into a wide grin. “Axel, too,” he added, swiping a key card and unlocking the door. Soren realized that he must be talking to someone through an earpiece.
“Who’s the pussy now?” Simjay chortled, holding the rifle above his head like a trophy.
“What the fuck?” came Axel’s booming voice.
“Good to see you, too,” said Simjay.
“What the fuck?” Axel repeated, storming out into the hallway and raising his arms in a gigantic show of bewilderment.
Axel caught Soren’s eye, but Soren just shook his head.
“Where’s Lark?” asked Simjay, jogging down to the end of the hall looking from one cell to the next. “Are the women in another wing, or —”
“Lark’s gone,” said Soren in a low, scratchy voice.
“What?” called Simjay.
“She’s gone,” Soren repeated. “She made a deal with Homeland Security. She’s . . . She’s not here.”
“Are you shittin’ me?” Axel shouted, drowning out Simjay’s note of surprise.
Saying the words out loud made Soren feel as though everything good had been sucked out of the world. Lark had made a deal with Homeland Security. She’d gone back to San Judas.
“That fucking bitch!” Axel yelled, storming down the hallway as if he was just looking for someone to punch.
“It’s not like that,” said Soren in a low, deadly voice. “She did it for us.”
“Where the fuck did you get that idea?” Axel bellowed, rounding on Soren. “You take your stupid pills this mornin’? I told you that girl was a crazy bitch. But you didn’t listen!”
A jolt of rage flared through Soren. He took several steps toward Axel, ready to deck him the minute he opened his mouth again. “You don’t get it,” he growled.
“No, you don’t get it. She sold us out.”
In that moment, all the suppressed rage Soren had been feeling came bubbling up at once. He lunged toward Axel, but Simjay threw himself between them and stuck out both arms. “Hey, hey, hey!”
“Will you shut up?” Soren yelled at Axel, not caring how loud he was being. “Lark made a deal. They told her we’d all go free if she got them what they needed.” He shook his head. “She went back to prison for us.”
“San Judas?” asked Simjay.
Soren nodded.
Axel’s face scrunched up in confusion. Then a pained, constipated look came over him, and Soren knew he was trying to process Lark’s sacrifice. Either that, or he had lost all control of his facial muscles.
“Then she must be fuckin’ stupid,” Axel concluded.
Soren let out a huff of frustration. He knew that Lark wasn’t stupid, but the decision to get in bed with the Department of Homeland Security certainly hadn’t been her best.
“Shit,” said Simjay. “Hold on.”
Soren looked at him in confusion, but Simjay was clearly conversing with someone on the other end of his earpiece.
“It’s Bernie,” he said. “I can’t tell her —”
Soren studied his friend in bewilderment. Something was going on with Simjay. He wasn’t sure what, but something had definitely changed since the last time they’d seen each other.
“I hate to break this up,” said the man whom Soren still didn’t know, “but we need to get out of here — immediately.”
“I’m with him,” said Axel.
The man handed Soren and Axel two of the fallen guards’ weapons and then threw the others into an empty cell.
“This is Conrad,” said Simjay. “He’s the one that got us in here.”
“Uh, thanks,” said Soren, eyeing one of the injured guards, who was beginning to stir. “They’re still alive?”
“I’m afraid so,” said Conrad, drawing the strange plastic gun from his waistband and examining the barrel. “Nonlethal bullets. They’re effective, but these men will begin to recover soon, so we should make ourselves scarce.”
Soren nodded. Conrad was already giving him
the creeps, but he couldn’t be all bad if he’d been willing to risk his life on their behalf. He wasn’t sure why the man would go to such lengths for people he’d never even met, but a full interrogation wasn’t really on the menu.
“Come on,” said Simjay, grabbing Soren by the front of the shirt and dragging him down the hallway.
Soren didn’t know what else to do. It felt wrong, but he knew he might never get another chance to escape. Once they were out, he would come up with a plan to get Lark out of San Judas. Once they were out —
His thought was cut short by a sudden blast of gunfire. Shots ricocheted off the walls as they rounded the corner, and Soren ducked down on instinct. Simjay leapt forward and fired a few rounds from his bizarre white handgun, and grunts of agony echoed down the hallway.
Axel hadn’t even bothered to take cover. He’d just started shooting the injured guard’s assault rifle. Like Soren, his anger and aggression had been building up for days. He was ready to explode.
“Clear,” muttered Conrad, keeping his weapon up and leading them SWAT team–style down the long underground tunnel. “Save your bullets,” he told Axel. “We’ll need the live ammunition later.”
Axel opened his mouth to retort, but Soren cut him off. “Where are we?” he asked.
“Hmm?” muttered Simjay, only half listening.
Soren instantly felt annoyed, but then he realized that Simjay must have been receiving directions from Bernie.
“Where is this place?” he repeated.
“Cheyenne Mountain. Colorado Springs,” Simjay panted. “We’re about a mile inside and two thousand feet from the top.”
“Seriously?”
Simjay nodded.
“So what’s the plan?”
“Don’t ask me. Conrad’s running the show. He only told me about plan A and plan B.”
“Which was . . .”
“Doesn’t matter,” Simjay muttered. “We’re already on plan D.”
“Great,” said Soren. He hated placing his trust in a man he didn’t even know, but they didn’t have a choice.