An instant later, both Garrett’s and Beauchamp’s projections flickered out.
Samuel Kruger turned to his companions. A long, deep silence filled the control room as they stared at each other. Their two escorts likewise exchanged glances, and Kruger saw in them the sudden realization that they were on their own now and that only three people could possibly survive what was coming.
Kruger reached into his jacket and whipped out a pistol even as the two escorts moved to fire upon their employers. Kruger fired first, hitting one of the escorts square in the chest as he then ducked down to avoid the gunfire from the second, the shots clanging loudly off computer monitors nearby as the escort screamed and fired wildly into the men around him.
Kruger saw his fellow members of Majestic Twelve pile into the gunman and topple him to the floor as they fought for the gun. The screams and cries and growls of men fighting to the death soared in primal chorus through the room as Kruger staggered backward from his hiding place and looked about the room.
He saw a mask almost immediately, hanging from a post on the wall on the opposite side of the control room. He dashed across to it and hauled it onto his face, the mask smelling of plastic and dust as he tightened the straps around the back of his head.
The screams and grunts and strangled cries became more furious and several gunshots shattered the air around Kruger as one of his companions picked up the dead guard’s pistol and began firing into the backs of his fellow MJ–12 members.
In the confusion and disarray, Kruger hunkered down behind a control console as he saw his former colleagues turn into a screaming frenzy of murderous apes. Some scratched at the faces of others as they fought over the remaining two masks, both of which were sitting in plain sight on a counter across the control room. Others kicked and punched, pulled hair and scrambled over each other in a desperate race to reach the masks.
One of the older members reached the counter and grabbed one of the masks, pulling it over his face. But then a younger man grabbed the mask and ripped it from him, drove his knee deep into the older man’s groin and collapsing him in agony as he turned to pull the mask on.
A gunshot and the younger man stumbled sideways and fell, the mask falling from his hand and clattering onto the floor as the gunman stepped over his body and picked up the mask. He pulled it into his face, tightening it as he stepped back from his former friends, the gun pointing at them.
‘Don’t even think about it,’ he growled.
Kruger gradually stood up, saw that a third member of MJ–12 had put on the final remaining mask and was wielding a fire axe he had lifted from the wall. Kruger looked around and realized that there was another axe hanging from the wall nearby, ostensibly for health and safety reasons but most likely put there by Garrett for his entertainment.
The unmasked members of MJ–12 looked at the axe, Kruger’s pistol, and he saw them make their decision.
Kruger moved quickly as several of the unmasked MJ–12 members made a dash for the remaining axe. He fired once, dropping the nearest of his former comrades, and then whirled and made for the axe. Kruger ran on legs weak with fear and loathing, heard the scramble behind him as he reached up for the axe, footfalls bearing down on his position from behind as he lifted the axe from the wall and spun on his heel, swung the weapon as hard as he could.
The heavy steel blade sliced through the air and smacked into the temple of a Baltimore real estate mogul with a dull crunch that split his skull just above his ear. The steel swept through his brain as though it were of no more substance than butter before finally lodging half way into his skull, the man’s left eyeball slithering from its shattered socket to dangle on glistening tendrils as he collapsed sideways into the wall and slid to the ground with the axe still embedded in his skull.
Kruger fired his pistol straight into the face of the next man, a shipping magnate from Buenos Aires. The bullet passed directly through the man’s face and blasted out through the back of his skull in a cloud of crimson blood that splashed across the face of another, who promptly doubled over and vomited at the sight of the carnage before him.
Kruger stepped back, aiming the pistol at the four men remaining without masks in the control room. In seconds, they had killed three of their own with incomparable brutality, the fearsome rage of survival coursing through their bodies. Kruger felt weak and nauseous, blood thick on the sleeves of his expensive jacket, on his hands, the visor of his mask. He saw the faces of the four unprotected men staring at him in horror.
‘We’re going to die here,’ one of them gasped, his face smeared with blood from the gunshot victim.
Then, Kruger realized, the blood wasn’t splatter from another victim. The man coughed and a splash of blood spilled from his lips and stained the floor at his feet. The man stared in horror at the marks, and then his breath began to rattle in his chest as he looked up at Kruger with sheer terror in his voice.
‘Help me!’
A slither of hair spilled from his scalp as the flesh on his face began to slide as though he were suffering from some kind of stroke. By his side, the other three men began to cough blood as their bodies began to disintegrate before their very eyes.
***
XLI
‘What’s the Extinction Code?’ Lopez asked Mitchell, her eyes fixed upon the barrel of the assault rifle he held pointing at them.
Ethan could see that Mitchell had positioned himself to block their only escape route, and there was nothing in the corridors to either side that would allow them to escape before Mitchell pulled the trigger and perforated them both. At a range of less than ten feet, Mitchell could not possibly miss. The assassin looked at Ethan expectantly.
‘I think it’s what Garrett’s had in mind all along,’ Ethan replied to her. ‘His plan isn’t to make humanity extinct, just Majestic Twelve.’
‘Very good,’ Mitchell said. ‘You know, for a pain in the ass you’re a good detective, Warner. It’s a shame that it’s gotta end like this, with us all stuck down here.’
Ethan felt a pinch of alarm twist his guts.
‘We can make it out,’ he said. ‘All of us.’
Mitchell smiled and shook his head. ‘I doubt that, and even if it were possible I wouldn’t let it happen, Ethan.’
It was the first time Ethan could recall Mitchell ever using his given name, as though somehow, now, in this final confrontation, Mitchell had finally recognized that Ethan was as much a victim of their war against Majestic Twelve as he had been. In the strangest of twists, they now stood on the same side of the war, and yet remained as opposed to each other as they had always been.
‘We can’t make them face justice if they’re dead,’ Ethan said to Mitchell. ‘Majestic Twelve must be made to pay for all that they’ve done.’
‘Pay?’ Mitchell uttered, all pretence of friendliness gone again. ‘Men like those don’t pay for their crimes even when they’re found guilty. How many senators and congressmen can you think of who have been found guilty of the most awful crimes and yet served meagre sentences before being released? Yet you or I, under the same charges, would spend half of our lives rotting in a prison cell?’
Ethan bit his lip. He knew that Mitchell was right, that the justice meted out to those in power was far less harsh than that delivered to the ordinary man in the street. That it should be so was an injustice in itself and yet few thought to cry out against it, to speak as one in their millions and demand the justice denied to those who possessed the money to avoid it.
‘Killing MJ–12 won’t get justice for anybody else,’ Lopez said. ‘They’ll simply be replaced by more of their kind. They need to be tried, exposed, have their faces across every newspaper in the world showing people what they really are, who really controls what happens in our governments. You say that the people won’t stand up to these kinds of injustices? How the hell can they if it’s all swept under the rug out here and nobody learns of what they’ve done?’
Mitchell remained silent, but Etha
n could see his mind working. It was true that MJ–12 would probably never suffer the indignities that other people would for the crimes that they had committed, but it was also equally true that an anonymous death out here would also be an insufficient punishment in Mitchell’s eyes, that he wanted to see them suffer.
The sound of agonized cries broke the silence, and Ethan turned to peer into the observation windows. What he saw there chilled him to the bone. Dead bodies littered the floor of the control room. Three men were wearing masks, while four more were clawing at their faces and screaming in agony, the flesh falling from their skulls and their hair spilling from their scalps. Ethan saw their hands starting to come apart as whatever hellish infection Garrett had created tore through their bodies.
‘They need to suffer,’ Ethan pressed his point, ‘but for a long time. Nothing else will do. This is a horrendous but short pain, and then nothing.’
Mitchell kept his rifle aimed at them, his finger on the trigger and conflict warring in his expression.
‘You’re defending the people you came here to kill,’ Mitchell growled. ‘You’re defending Majestic Twelve!’
‘I’m defending my right to see them locked up for decades,’ Ethan shot back. ‘To wake up every morning for the rest of my life knowing that their money is gone, their power is gone and that they’re rotting in a federal prison someplace. Don’t you want that?’
Mitchell hesitated a moment longer, and then slowly the rifle barrel fell and his big shoulders sagged.
‘I don’t like this,’ he rumbled.
‘We don’t like it either,’ Lopez replied. ‘But this is the right thing to do, Mitchell. Isn’t that what separates us from men like Majestic Twelve? The ability to do the right thing?’
‘It’s also what gets us killed more often,’ Mitchell pointed out.
Ethan turned to the door mechanism and reached down for the release handles as Lopez grabbed a pair of breathing masks from hooks on the walls and tossed one to Mitchell and another to Ethan.
‘We’ve gotta do this fast,’ she said as she pulled a third mask over her head.
Ethan turned to Mitchell. ‘You got enough explosives on you to blow the control room and vaporize whatever’s in there?’
Mitchell slung his rifle over his shoulder and opened his bag to reveal a dense cluster of C4 explosives, all of them packaged for force rather than precision cutting. The assassin pulled his mask on and prepared to toss the explosives directly into the control room as Ethan grabbed the release handles once more.
‘Remember, we let the masked ones out, okay? Then we throw in the charges.’
Mitchell nodded once in silence, and Ethan turned and then heaved the pressure release latches over and spun the pressure wheel. Ethan figured that Garrett had created a low pressure environment inside the control room once the doors had been closed so that if the doors were opened again, air would initially only flow into the room and not out, keeping the infection inside. The massive doors hissed as Lopez stepped back, her pistol ready in her grip as the doors rattled as the internal locks opened and then they swung open as Kruger and the surviving masked members of MJ–12 tumbled out of the control room.
Mitchell stepped to one side and tossed a handful of charges into the room as Lopez heaved against the door and it slammed shut. Ethan rammed the locks back into place and heard the seals hiss as the door sealed itself once again and the terrible keening cries of agony were shut off. A deep burst of explosives shuddered against the doors, muffled as Mitchell’s charges detonated within.
Mitchell reached for his rifle once again and as Ethan turned he saw Kruger move suddenly toward the assassin.
‘Gun!’
Ethan shouted the warning as Kruger aimed a small, black pistol at Mitchell. The assassin’s rifle swung around, too slow, imprinted on Ethan’s mind as moving in slow motion even as he saw the pistol’s muzzle flare with bright flame and smoke, heard the gunshot echo through the corridor.
The bullet hit Mitchell high in the centre of his chest. The big man staggered backwards, the whites of his eyes stark against his ebony skin as he toppled over and slammed down onto his back in the corridor. The assault rifle fell from his grasp and clattered onto the ground beside him as his eyes closed.
Ethan hurled himself at Kruger as the tall, gaunt man stepped forward and aimed to put another bullet into Mitchell’s skull. He slammed into Kruger’s side and the two of them sprawled onto the ground as he heard Lopez scream from behind him and a gunshot shatter the air once more.
Kruger growled and spat as Ethan wrestled the pistol from the cabal member’s grip, twisted it viciously against his wrist until the older man cried out in pain and released the weapon. Ethan jumped up and away from Kruger as he whirled to see Lopez on her knees on the ground, one masked man pointing a pistol at her as the other recovered Lopez’s weapon from her grip.
‘Don’t even think about it,’ one of them snarled at Ethan.
Ethan looked down at Kruger, who hauled himself to his feet and glared with malevolent delight at Ethan.
‘We just got you out of there,’ Ethan uttered in disbelief.
‘Worst thing you could have done,’ Kruger shot back as he held out his hand.
‘Don’t give it to him,’ Lopez shouted at Ethan. ‘Kill him!’
Ethan looked at the two masked MJ–12 survivors, and the one with the pistol took aim at Lopez more carefully. Ethan turned to Kruger and handed him the pistol. The gaunt man took it from him and smiled, his black hawkish eyes glittering with malice.
‘Did you really think that I or my companions would bend to the will of little people like you?’ he asked. ‘You’re nothing, Warner, you and your pitiful little band will be eradicated from existence, starting here. We will annihilate you all along with Garrett and everybody else connected to you.’
Lopez shook her head. ‘Go to hell, Kruger, it’s where you’re headed anyway!’
Kruger looked at her and grinned. ‘Let her live,’ he said to his companions.
In an unspoken gesture of deference they stepped back from Lopez and joined Kruger. The gaunt man surveyed their two captives, the heavy steel doors and the faint screams of terrible pain coming from within as the few members of MJ–12 who had survived the explosive charges died in horrific spasms inside.
‘I think this a most fitting end to your project, don’t you?’ Kruger asked Ethan. ‘Buried here, alone and with only this horrendous disease for company. You do know that the filters in these masks will only last a few hours, right, and that sooner or later those door seals will fail once we cut the power to this facility? If there is the slightest trace of the virus remaining…’
Ethan said nothing, not willing to dignify Kruger with a response.
‘Come,’ Kruger said to his companions as he turned away. ‘We’ll seal this place and leave them to die down here alone.’
The two other surviving members of MJ–12 turned with Kruger and moved away from the vault doors, careful to not allow Ethan the chance to pursue them. Moments later, they were hurrying away out of sight toward the main entrance.
***
XLII
Ethan whirled and dashed to Mitchell’s side, looked down at the big man’s shirt. The bullet had punched high in his chest, but then he reached down and ripped the shirt open to reveal a bullet proof vest, the silvery shell buried deep in the Kevlar.
Mitchell coughed and jerked awake, almost took a swing at Ethan on instinct. Ethan blocked the impulsive blow with his forearm and pinned it in place as Mitchell winced at a sudden pain ripping across his chest.
‘The vest caught it,’ Ethan said.
Mitchell glanced down at his vest, and then his brain re–engaged itself and he hauled himself to his feet.
‘Where’s Kruger?!’ he demanded.
‘They’re gone,’ Lopez replied, ‘and we need to find a way out of here.’
‘No way in or out except for the main entrance,’ Mitchell growled as he reached down a
nd yanked a small pistol from a holster buried in the small of his back.
Ethan saw the weapon and grinned. ‘Shall we?’
Mitchell turned and lumbered along the corridor as Lopez and Ethan followed him away from the vault toward the entrance. Ethan could see movement ahead, bright light from outside flaring briefly in the darkness, and then the light vanished and he heard a loud crash as the door was slammed shut.
Ethan sprinted to the door controls and sought a way to open them as Lopez made for the side entrance. Instantly he could see that the wiring was fried, the smell of burning cables in the air and a faint haze of smoke lingering.
‘Garrett must have triggered the circuitry to blow after he got MJ–12 inside the facility,’ he said. ‘There’s no way we can open the main doors.’
He turned to Lopez, saw her try the door even as he heard a vehicle engine from outside and then a crash against the side door. Lopez jumped backwards in shock at the impact, and Mitchell pushed past her and tried to open the door with brute force. After a few attempts he gave up.
‘They must have backed up one of the jeeps against it,’ he roared in fury and kicked at the door.
Ethan turned to the control office and saw a series of screens inside. He hurried in and saw CCTV feeds showing him the outside of the compound. There, he could see Kruger and his two companions back away from the facility and pull the masks from their faces. They threw them down onto the dusty ground, and then Kruger looked up at the camera and waved.
The Extinction Code Page 28