Fires of Midnight

by Jon Land

  “So you can kill more selectively than you’ve done so far,” Susan broke in. “Not the kind of track record that inspires any faith. Where would you test CLAIR out first, Colonel? Where would you botch things next time?”

  Fuchs finally looked at her. “I would suggest you are no one to speak. A woman who took her maternal instincts too far. You interfered, Dr. Lyle. I trusted you and you abused my trust.”

  “You set me up from the beginning.”

  “A safety net, nothing more.”

  “You knew I’d help the boy escape. You knew I couldn’t let you have him.”

  In that instant Josh realized all eyes in the room were on Susan. Before any stares turned back on him, he reached forward and snatched the vial of clear liquid, bringing it into his lap before stuffing it into his pocket.

  “Because you are unfalteringly predictable. Of course, the methodology of your and the boy’s plan was obvious. All we had to do was wait for you to commit yourselves.”

  “I was right to try. This proves it.”

  “And tell me what it’s gained you. Do you feel better, more motherly, for the effort? Do you think you have somehow beaten back the dreaded cancer that is probably just beginning to show itself as microscopic cellular abnormalities no one can detect in your system? You can’t save yourself, Doctor, and you cannot save Joshua Wolfe. There are bigger things than both of you.”

  “You, for instance.”

  “Me? No. Group Six, yes. To pursue what this country needs to survive, there is no rule that can’t be broken, no step I will not take.” Fuchs nodded to himself and turned back to Joshua Wolfe. “The formula for CLAIR. Now, please.”

  Josh shook his head in stiff defiance. “I won’t give it to you. I won’t give you anything.”

  “Please reconsider.”

  He shook his head again.

  Fuchs sighed in genuine regret and nodded to the two broad-shouldered security men. As Josh watched, they grabbed Susan, hoisted her from her chair and dragged her to another chair set away from the table. One plunked her down into it while the other tied her arms behind her.

  “What are you doing?” Josh demanded. “Let her go!”

  “I will, young man,” Fuchs assured him. “All you have to do is cooperate.”

  “Let her go!”

  Krill stepped forward and pulled an odd-looking object, like a singlebarreled gun with a button instead of a trigger, from his pocket. A foot long maybe, its exterior shining in the room’s dull light.

  “You know what that is, of course,” Fuchs prodded.

  “No,” said Josh, “I don’t.”

  “Dr. Haslanger, if you don’t mind …”

  The old man moved slightly forward. “You are familiar with the Taser electric shocking device, I assume. This is a variation we have developed here, equipped with variable voltage settings instead of a single one. The barrel shoots out a pair of prods at a distance we have raised to thirty feet, capable of delivering shock ranging from incapacitating to fatal.”

  “Ten settings,” Fuchs picked up. “We’ll start at five.”

  Krill switched the shock gun to the proper level.

  “There is no need to feign bravery at this point, Dr. Lyle,” Fuchs told her. “You are among friends.”

  Krill stood ten feet in front of Susan, optimum distance.

  “Now, Dr. Lyle, I suggest you advise your young friend to give us what we want. I suggest you advise him to tell us where the fax machine chip containing the formula for CLAIR can be found.”

  “Go to hell,” she said, trying hard not to look at Krill.

  “Young man,” followed Fuchs, turning his attention to Josh, “I suggest you show some maturity where Dr. Lyle is clearly not prepared to. Your brother Krill is even less patient than I am. Please give us what we want.”

  Trembling, Josh looked at Susan for guidance. Her rigid expression told him what he had to do.

  “I’m not giving you anything.” He swept a hand through his hair and found it was shaking badly.

  “Krill,” Fuchs signaled.

  The giant steadied the shock gun.

  “Wait!” Josh shouted, leaning forward without leaving his chair.

  “Have you changed your mind, young man?”

  “I, I …”

  “Fire.”

  Krill pressed the button.

  McCracken pinned his shoulders at the break in the corridor leading to the room Susan Lyle and Joshua Wolfe had been ushered into and studied the guards posted on either side of the door twenty feet from him. Twenty feet was too much to cover in a single dash. Blaine was considering his options when he heard the scream. A woman’s scream, a high-pitched wail elevated by awful pain.

  Susan Lyle …

  The realization reduced his options to one.

  McCracken hurled himself into the hall, both his gun and his eyes aimed away from the guards, pretending to be one of them, approaching as if panicked.

  “Is the colonel inside?” he yelled, not quite turning.

  The two men gazed at each other, hands near their guns, clearly unsure of how to react.

  “Is the colonel—”

  That was all McCracken needed to add to bring him close enough to dispose of them. He slammed the barrel of his pistol into the jaw of the closest and then lurched toward the second man, who had just drawn his gun. Blaine rammed his tightly curled knuckles straight into his windpipe, shattering it and sending the man’s hands clawing for his throat as he slumped, eyes bulging. The first man managed to turn on him, face a mess of torn flesh and dripping blood, and McCracken slashed his SIG butt-first into the bridge of his nose. Blaine felt the bone crack and recede. The man crumpled.

  McCracken turned instantly and pulled from his pocket a prewired pack of C-4 plastic explosives. He peeled the protective coating off the detonator and wedged it against the door near the frame. Then he popped the detonator outward. Its trigger had a twenty-second delay, which gave him plenty of time to poise himself against the wall a safe distance away, pistol ready and ears plugged.

  The shock gun hadn’t so much as moved in the giant’s hand. He activated the retracting mechanism and the barrel swallowed up the miniature electric prods once more. Susan was writhing in the chair now, spasms racking her body. A trickle of blood slid from her mouth where the convulsions had forced her teeth into her tongue. Finally she slumped as low as her bonds would allow.

  Fifteen feet away, Josh’s eyes tried to find life in her cloudy gaze. “Stop,” he mouthed, then said out loud, “Stop it.”

  “We want the formula, young man,” Fuchs told him. “Give it to us.”

  Josh looked at Susan, back at Fuchs.

  “Krill,” the colonel said, “turn the setting up to seven.” Eyes back on Josh. “I’d speak now if I were you, young man.”

  Josh watched the giant steadying the shock gun on Susan once more. “It’s here,” he said, words racing ahead of his thoughts.

  Fuchs looked at Haslanger briefly. “What do you mean it’s here?”

  “The fax chip. It’s in my room. I brought it here from Florida.”

  “You were searched thoroughly in the hotel. Sinclair assured me of that.”

  “Not thoroughly enough. I stuck the chip in the center of a piece of gum and stuck the gum inside my mouth. I took it out in the bathroom on the plane.”

  “Where in your room, young man?”

  Josh swallowed hard. “She needs a doctor. I want you to get her a doctor first.”

  Fuchs turned toward the giant. “Krill.”

  Josh sprung from his chair. “Candy jar. One of the pieces near the top. Inside the wrapper.”

  Fuchs smiled. “That’s better.”

  “Now get her a doctor!”

  Fuchs’s smile disappeared, a vile and toothless sneer taking its place. “No need. You must be taught a lesson. You must learn what happens from this point on if you disobey me.”

  “No!”

  “Raise the setting to ten,” F
uchs ordered Krill. “Then kill her.”

  Josh stood there, suspended between thoughts, ready to give it all up.

  “There’s another vial! Of CLAIR!”

  “Did you say …”

  Josh watched Krill steadying the shock gun, huge elongated finger going for the fire button, and threw himself into motion forward, intending to crash into Susan and take her from the deadly path of the prods.

  He had just reached her when he heard a soft popping sound at the same time the Taser’s prods lodged against him. It was like grazing up against something hot and not being able to pull away. Everything seemed to lock up and stiffen as he was caught between breaths. Even his eyes locked open, watching the door when it exploded inward.

  The force of the blast tumbled Susan’s chair over and took Josh with it. McCracken vaguely recorded that sight as he followed the remnants of the door into the room. The fall had separated Susan Lyle from the chair. He stripped the rope from her wrists and yanked her to her feet at the same time he recognized the still form of Joshua Wolfe lying spread across the tile floor. He shoved Susan behind him, covering her with his body as he opened fire on the pair of big men the explosion had hurled against a glass wall.

  They had managed to free their guns when his bullets found them, slamming them back into the glass with enough force to crack it. Meanwhile, he turned his focus on a pair of figures forced to the floor by the exploding door and scampering for cover.

  “Watch out!”

  Susan Lyle’s scream alerted him to motion to his right just as he was angling to steady his gun on who could only be Fuchs and Haslanger. The monster he recognized all too well from the New York Public Library was steadying something with a barrel on him. He dove as the monster fired and felt a pair of sizzling electrodes shoot over his head. He opened fire on the monster with the rest of the SIG’s clip while still in his dive, his bullets off the mark but close enough to force the monster to lunge behind a toppled table. Blaine used the opportunity to jam a fresh clip into his pistol and open fire on the thick table to keep the monster pinned behind it, giving him time to hoist the limp form of Joshua Wolfe up in one arm.

  “Go! Now!” Blaine ordered Susan, who, though unsteady on her feet, managed to stumble into the hallway.

  Once he joined her, McCracken shifted Josh to his left shoulder, leaving his right hand totally free to use the SIG, just as a half-dozen security guards rushed forward with pistols drawn.

  “Down!” Blaine screamed at Susan and drained the rest of his second clip.

  The men dropped in eerie precision before him and McCracken hardly had to break stride to speed by their bodies, the boy he recognized from Harry’s picture bouncing upon his shoulder.

  “Take a left here!” Blaine told Susan. “Second stairwell on the right. Then straight back to the garage.”

  He sensed her stiffen at the mention of their destination and didn’t bother explaining his reasons for the instruction. They had just reached the stairwell in question when the emergency alarm began to wail throughout Group Six.

  Johnny Wareagle was waiting for them in the garage next to a six-wheel RV-type vehicle made of solid black steel. The top hatch was open, the engine warming, and the nose angled straight for an open garage bay.

  “Best I could find, Blainey,” Wareagle said, taking Joshua Wolfe from him.

  “Get the boy inside! Her too!”

  “You drive, Blainey.”

  “We’ll have to get through those lasers, Indian.”

  “That is why you must drive.”

  “Hurry!” Susan pleaded desperately. “I don’t think he’s breathing!” Blaine noticed Joshua Wolfe’s lips were turning blue as Johnny lowered him into the RV. Spittle was running from the corners of his mouth and he seemed to be convulsing.

  Susan had climbed into the armored RV cabin first and helped Johnny ease the boy across one of the seats. His body was utterly still now.

  “No,” she moaned. “No …”

  “Go, Blainey!” Johnny urged when McCracken was barely settled behind the wheel.

  The RV’s huge tires spun and screamed as McCracken shoved it into gear. Wareagle ducked down and reached for a riflelike weapon with what appeared to be a shower head at the end of its barrel. He also shouldered a pair of packs containing what looked at first glance to be field radios but were something else altogether. Blaine recalled they were among the items Wareagle had recovered from the storage chamber and packed away. Clearly, he had figured out their purpose and operation.

  Susan’s pumping adrenaline enabled her to shake off the tingly, numbing effects of her own shock and she began compressing Joshua Wolfe’s chest in the familiar motions of CPR. Then she tilted his head back and forced breath down his throat.

  “Come on! Come on! Don’t quit on me!” Heaving for breath herself as she went back to chest compressions, pushing the blood through his body.

  McCracken drove through the bay and up the steep ramp that led back to ground level.

  “Uh-oh,” he muttered as the climb neared its end at a twin door Johnny had obviously not manage to get open. “Hold on!”

  Blaine drove the RV straight into the door, accelerating all the while. It didn’t break or shatter but snapped off its hinges and flew to the side as McCracken tore off across the grassy field.

  Susan held Josh steady through it but his body still bobbed limply, limbs spraying in all directions like a puppet with its strings cut. In the rearview mirror Blaine watched her alternate again between chest compressions and forced breaths, while Johnny prepared for the next stage of their escape.

  “They’re out!” Sinclair reported from the garage.

  An out-of-breath Colonel Lester Fuchs had just reached the command center, handkerchief pressed against his head to stanch the flow of blood from a wound suffered from flying glass.

  “Do not pursue!” he heaved. “Repeat, do not pursue! We’ll let the lasers disable them.”

  “Security systems all functional,” Larsen reported from his station. “All lights are green.”

  “Confirm automated mode.”

  “Automated mode confirmed, sir.”

  Fuchs steadied himself against the back of a chair and turned back to the security monitors before him as the first of the perimeter’s cameras picked up the RV speeding forward.

  Johnny Wareagle had popped opened the RV’s top-mounted hatch and squeezed himself halfway through, his face and torso braced in the warm night air.

  “Lasers, Indian,” Blaine called back to him. “Coming up!”

  Wareagle flipped a switch on the first of his unidentified packs and hurled it outward, ahead of them to the left. He did the same with the second and tossed it far away and to the right. He ducked back down quickly into the RV and closed the hatch behind him.

  No explosions followed, just a brief ear-rattling whine that chilled the spine like fingernails down a chalkboard. Blaine felt the RV buckle, waver, and nearly stall. The instruments on the dashboard were going crazy. The clock went out altogether.

  “I’ll be damned,” he said as they surged farther into the night.

  The monitor screens containing shots of Group Six’s front perimeter all died at once; at the same time the complex’s lights blinked once and then came back on, slightly dimmer.

  “What happened?” Fuchs demanded of Larsen. “What’s wrong?”

  “They must have used the NEPPs,” said Haslanger, who had just appeared in the command center. He leaned against the wall, his face a mass of small cuts and lacerations.

  “The what?”

  “Nonnuclear electromagnetic pulse packs. Setting them off has effectively shut down the motion and infrared sensors in the field, as well as our monitoring systems.”

  “What about the lasers?”

  “They’re powered from here,” Larsen answered. “Should still be functional.”

  “Then use them!” he ordered, forgetting about the gash in his skull and letting the blood trickle down his c
ollar to the back of his uniform. “Switch to manual!”

  “We’ll be firing blind, sir.”

  “I don’t care! Just fire! Fire at anything, fire at everything! Now! Do you hear me? Now! …”

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  Susan had stopped her CPR long enough to lower an ear to Joshua Wolfe’s chest.

  “He’s breathing! He’s breathing!”

  Suddenly the boy began to convulse again, body twitching and writhing as if trying to tear from her determined grasp. Susan pulled Josh against her own body and held him tight as his damaged nerve endings tried to shake the life from him again.

  In front of them Johnny Wareagle, his head and shoulders again squeezed through the RVs ceiling hatch, brought the strange-looking rifle up to his shoulder like any normal gun. It was equipped with an infrared zoom sight that functioned like the close-up lens of a camera. Group Six personnel would be firing the lasers on manual now without benefit of their sophisticated sensors. That evened the odds enough so that, along with the power and strength of the RV’s hull, this weapon of Johnny’s would hopefully safeguard their escape from the Group Six complex.

  It delivered a powerful stream of aerosol through its showerheadlike muzzle, an aerosol that turned metal brittle on contact, rendering it useless. The laser firing devices that looked like underground sprinklers were made of metal.

  The aerosol contents were held under pressure in a thick, canlike magazine just in front of the trigger guard. Johnny had wedged three additional clips in his belt for easy access. He swept the area with his naked eye, aerosol gun ready, when a series of lasers to the RV’s right began firing wildly in all directions. A pair of beams sliced across the RV’s fender and rear quarter panel, leaving blackened metal in their wake. Johnny swung the gun toward the position of the mushrooms, sighted and fired.

  A narrow stream of the instantly corrosive aerosol shot outward. It took only a short burst to render the lasers inoperative and Johnny quickly settled into a rhythm. Since the gun had no kick whatsoever, aiming it along the sight and then firing was really all he had to do. The stream went where he was looking.