by Nick Thacker
“But you don’t think Ben’s going to make it.” Hendricks said.
Julie didn’t move or speak and Colson thought she might break down and cry right there in the center of the room. They had all seen his command prompt’s display window, and they all knew what it meant. Someone had been trying to break their lockout procedure, and they had eventually succeeded.
Hendricks stretched himself up, extending his neck out above the rest of the group. “Listen up,” he said, the air of authority back in his voice. “This doesn’t change the mission parameters. We fight until the end, understood? Those men out there aren’t backing down, and neither are — “
The bullet aimed at Hendricks’ head missed its mark slightly, but it accomplished its goal.
It landed with a sickening thwap just inside his shoulder blade, puncturing his skin just below his neckline. He stuttered a few words, the last one mostly air, his mouth moving helplessly as he tried to process what had just happened.
Ryan Kyle swung his gun up and nailed the assailant with a quick pull of the trigger, dropping the Chinese soldier that had popped into the room and gotten off a lucky shot.
Hendricks’ eyes grew wide, then sank back as he fell. Colson watched him crumple to the floor, his mind immediately racing back to the scene in the glass-enclosed conference room on Level 2 as his boss, Angela Stokes, was killed in a similar fashion.
He began to breathe heavily, not realizing the creeping blackness around the perimeter of his vision rapidly growing.
Colson took two more quick breaths before he passed out.
CHAPTER FORTY-four
Ben never thought he’d be testing the limits of how fast he could slide through an air duct, but the elusive grate at the end of the long, horizontal shaft quickly became the only thing in this world he cared about.
When the heater hummed to life, it began pumping air almost immediately. It wasn’t as hot as he knew it would get, but he knew within a minute it would be on full blast.
He shuffled forward, the toes of his boots struggling to gain purchase. He flicked his feet up and down, trying desperately to find a strategy that would quicken his pace.
He found that by ‘swimming’ through the duct, using his hands and feet at the same time, almost like a flattened-out inchworm ritual, he moved much faster. He optimized this motion, ignoring the searing pain from his over-exerted muscles and hoping they would last long enough to get him out of this deathtrap.
The grate at the end of the line grew larger with every pull forward, but so did the amount of heat pressing against his legs. At least the heat was focused on his rear end instead of his face, the only good news he had realized since entering the shaft.
The backpack was still looped around his right foot, and he hoped the intense heat wouldn’t harm the computer inside.
That’s all I need, he thought. To get down there and realize the computer is fried.
He ignored the depressing thought, choosing instead to continue on the only thing he was currently in control of: getting out of the air duct before the heat from the furnace devoured him. He pulled and pushed in unison, his wrists and feet bulging with the strange workout routine he was forcing them into.
Finally, after a minute and a half, he reached the vent grate. The sweat was falling off of his forehead in streams now, and he was having difficulty breathing. The dry air was slowly suffocating him, and he felt like he was trying to breathe in a sauna that had been turned up too high. His only saving grace was the cool breeze entering the shaft from outside. As this shaft was an intake run, the air was supposed to be sucked into the furnace from this grate, but Ben knew exactly why he wasn’t feeling much of the cold Antarctic air: he was blocking the intake.
His large body was crammed into the narrow duct, causing the amount of intake to be seriously diminished. Some of it was flowing in, but until he broke the grate here and fell out onto the snow, he was causing the shaft to grow even hotter.
He punched as hard as he could on the grate…
And nothing happened.
The skin on his hand had been softened and wrinkled from the heat in the shaft, and it split in two places when he punched the sharp metal grill. Blood began pouring out of one of the small wounds, and he cursed. He reached for the mittens he had long since abandoned and put one on his undamaged hand. He punched again. And again.
The grate was frozen to the ducting, probably unmoved or tampered with since it had been installed. He continued punching at it, his body still growing weaker with the combined heat, dehydration, and exertion from attacking the vent grate.
Finally, after three more punches, he heard a cracking sound. He hit the same spot a few times and saw the metal give in that section. He doubled his efforts and got a corner screw to bust from its casing. With a corner of the metal grill free, he changed his strategy, this time pushing as hard as he could on the entire vent, until two more corners cracked free.
It was enough for him. Ben stuck his head out the almost-cleared rectangular hole and gasped a breath of cold air.
Immediately his throat and lungs constricted with shock. The air was dangerously cold — well below freezing, and it nearly choked him. He spat, forcing liquid back into his mouth, and tried breathing through his nose instead. The juxtaposition of being halfway in a superheated furnace duct and halfway out in minus-ten-degree weather would have been hilarious to him if he wasn’t the one experiencing it. His body seemed to be unable to process what was happening — his head and feet were sending opposite signals to his brain about the pain and discomfort they were registering.
With a final pop, he pushed the grate away and it fell off its mounting screws and tumbled down…
Into the same valley they had entered hours previously, alerting Ben to the next issue he had to content with.
He was hanging headfirst out an air duct on the side of a cliff. His pack with the rope and climbing tools was unreachable, still looped around his foot inside the shaft.
CHAPTER FORTY-five
“Jonathan, wake up,” Julie said. She had been trying to revive Colson for the past minute, while everyone else in the room was fending off the attack from the Chinese. The soldiers outside in the stairwell had grown anxious, but there wasn’t enough room in the narrow doorway to send in more than two men at a time, and Julie’s group had been successful in taking out anyone stupid enough to try it.
There was a growing pile of bodies just inside the door, but Julie knew there were probably enough men outside to continue the onslaught until her group ran out of ammunition.
Which, she realized, was a fantastic plan. There was no other option, really. The grenades they had thrown had proven to be ineffective in such a large room, and any of the Chinese forces who dared throw one in was picked off easily by Reggie’s or Kyle’s gun. Joshua had moved over to check Hendricks, but Julie had heard him make the call shortly after. Their leader here was dead, and Joshua would finally get his chance.
She knew the man was reluctant but capable, and would serve them well. The loss of Hendricks had shaken her, but she turned her attention immediately to waking Colson.
“Colson, can you —“
Colson coughed, then blinked. He seemed confused at first, unsure of where he was. Within seconds the glassiness washed out of his eyes and he sat up.
“What happened?”
Julie didn’t respond, and Colson’s eyes widened as everything came rushing back. He rubbed his eyes and groaned.
“Hendricks?” he asked.
Julie shook her head.
Colson’s face fell. “What a shame. I liked him.” He waited a moment, watching his team easily take on the threat in the hallway, then turned back to Julie. “Have we heard from Ben?”
This time it was Julie’s turn to relive a horrible memory. She shook her head again. “No, but we still need to get down there. If he’s able to at least get to Level 10 through the vent shaft, then up just one set of stairs to 9, we can give him whatever
help he needs. Hopefully they’re focusing their attack on us here, so the stairwells on the lower levels won’t be full of soldiers.”
“And we’re not going to last up here,” Colson muttered.
“Right. The Chinese will wait us out, sending a couple of their men every few minutes to make sure we’re draining our ammunition. Then it’s just a matter of time —“
A lurching squeal sounded throughout the room, and Julie cut herself short. She looked over at the others, trying to figure out what had caused the noise.
“It’s the elevator!” Reggie shouted, aiming his gun at the caged section near the stairs.
Julie saw that the elevator shaft that had up to now remained empty and caged off was humming. The outer cage door rattled as the slowly descending metal box slid down from a higher level. She couldn’t see the car yet, but she had every reason to believe it would be full of men. Reggie began firing at the cage immediately, but there were only sparks from the redirected bullets as they hit the outer cage.
“We won’t be able to get an effective shot through the cage,” he said after a moment.
“No,” Joshua said, “we need to wait for them to get down here. The cage opens bottom to top I think, so we might be able to get a better shot on their feet and legs before they can really defend themselves.”
“But what about this other group?” Ryan Kyle asked. He shouted the question over his left shoulder while still aiming and staring at the stairs.
No one spoke for another few seconds, and Julie felt the tension in the room rise. We aren’t prepared for this, she thought. We’re outmatched, outgunned, and now outmaneuvered. She knew they might be able to hold off the Chinese for some time only if there was a single front they had to fight. But the multi-faceted attack they were now threatened with would quickly diminish their ranks.
All it would take was for another of their team to go down, and the enemy would have the upper hand. From there it would be impossible to keep the forces out. Trying to follow Ben’s path through the vents was a recipe for disaster as well, and would do nothing but line them up and deliver them to the Chinese or the security team.
“I might have an idea,” Colson said.
Julie swung around, frowning.
“It — it’s a long shot, but…”
“Hit me with it, Colson,” Reggie said, impatience in his voice. “Everything we do from here on out is a ‘long shot.’”
“Okay, well, there are two groups of soldiers that are trying to attack us, right?”
No one answered. The elevator was still humming, and Julie wondered how long they had before the car was close enough to see how many passengers were on board.
“And we’re not sure this group on the elevator are the Chinese forces. If they are…”
He didn’t need to finish the thought. If they are, that means we’re screwed. We can’t fend off both sides of the attack, especially with Hendricks and Ben gone.
“But if they’re not,” Colson continued, “that means they’re the other bad guys. And if they come into the room and start looking around, the Chinese might —“
“Yes!” Reggie shouted. “Damn, why didn’t I think of that!”
Colson seemed dismayed to have been interrupted, but simultaneously surprised and encouraged that Reggie bought into his idea. He nodded, but Reggie had already stolen the show.
“What do you think, Jefferson?”
Joshua was nodding along as well. “Love it. Let’s get to the back of the room, see if we can hide behind something.”
Julie followed Colson, Mrs. E, and Reggie as they headed toward the back of the room. Joshua and Ryan Kyle stayed back to cover their retreat. She still wasn’t entirely clear of the plan, but trusted the judgement of their group’s new leadership.
“Right over there,” Reggie said, pointing with his gun. “Get that crap off that table and knock it over.”
Colson stiffened at the description Reggie had given the computer equipment, but he did as he was told and helped Julie clear and tip the table. It was solid, a reinforced metal top with folding legs. It wouldn’t keep them completely safe, but it would at least hide them from the attackers.
Reggie grabbed another table and flipped it, then a third. He started toward a fourth and fifth table nearby. By the time Joshua and Kyle made it over, they had a makeshift fort of flipped tables, complete with scattered computer components and parts acting as a moat.
“It’s far enough from the back wall that they can’t just lob a grenade over us. But these won’t block much if they focus their fire. We’re relying on Colson being right.”
Julie glanced at Colson, but his eyes were on the elevator. She could see that it was in fact full — crammed full. There were probably ten or twelve men in the car, and she could see the tips of their rifles as they slowly lurched downward.
The Chinese soldiers hadn’t entered the room since their last suicide run, and an eery quiet had fallen over the room. Julie’s mind was racing, but the relative calm led her to think of Ben. She wanted to know if he was injured, or stuck. Or…
There was nothing she could do for him now except finish the job. She might see him on Level 9, or she might not.
The elevator reached its destination on Level 7, and the door slid open. The men in the front of the car were ready as soon as the cage door lifted, and they began crouching and stepping out onto the level. Julie ducked her head back down with the others and looked around.
“It’s the security force.”
“That’s the good news,” Joshua said. “The bad news is that there’s about to be a nasty fight, and we’re right in the middle of it.”
CHAPTER FORTY-six
It took him another five minutes of precarious maneuvering to bring the pack up to waist level, where he could reach it with his hand. He’d put on both mittens and the skull cap by now, but he was starting to feel the numbness set in on his face. When the had the pack grasped in the mitten, he slid it as carefully as possible forward and out of the vent.
And it broke free from his grip and tumbled down the cliff face, onto a patch of snow, and out of sight.
He roared in anger, beating his fist against the side of the icy cliff, nearly losing his balance.
The heater was operating on full blast now, but the intake opening was large enough for a decent amount of air to push between his legs and lower body and the roof of the shaft, cooling him enough to stay out of danger. He took the few seconds of respite to decide on his next move.
The team wouldn’t turn off the heater — if they even could anymore — until he opened the laptop and connected to an ethernet port. That meant he was out of luck trying to somehow backpedal through the shaft again.
He could see the end of one of the straps of the backpack poking through the snow, and he wondered what the ground was like. Suddenly realizing where he was, he looked up at the cliff edge far above him, then down at the backpack once more.
We’ve already fallen to the ground from here.
The first time he’d been on this cliff, the Chinese army had forced them over the edge then cut their ropes, causing them to fall hundreds of feet straight down.
Where they’d all landed safely in the massive snow piles.
Just like the backpack.
He knew the laptop had survived the fall, and he knew he would survive as well. The problem for Ben was that he had never, in his entire life, fallen from any height on purpose.
He had made it a point to stay on the ground as much as possible, and aside from a few close calls at Yellowstone and in the Amazon, he had spent the vast majority of his life safely rooted to Earth.
Now he was faced with a purposeful, headfirst fall onto a snowbank that he was mostly sure would support his weight, and mostly sure was deep enough to cushion his landing.
He groaned. This is the worst day of my life.
And then he wiggled forward until his upper body weight pulled his lower body out of the shaft, and he snaked dow
n the side of the cliff for a second until gravity took over.
The fall was even less fun than he had expected, and he screamed in a loud, high-pitched voice he had never known he was capable of making.
He did his best to tuck his head under his chest, both out of sheer terror of the rapidly advancing ground and some subconscious understanding that landing directly on his head might not be the optimal choice. The movement and momentum of the fall pulled his body around so he landed mostly on his back, but the thud of impact still knocked the wind out of him.
Ben knew he was alive, but it took him a minute to decide if that was really the best outcome. He lay motionless in the hard-packed snow, a million tiny cuts from ice crystals scratching the skin on his face. He heat from the shaft had immediately been replaced by the coldest he’d ever felt. He had participated in a park ranger tradition of jumping into ice-cold water every January back at Yellowstone, but it was always for no more than a few seconds, and it was always followed with an extended dip in a hot tub.
God, what I wouldn’t do for a hot tub right now. The picture in his mind of relaxing in a jacuzzi with Julie wearing one of her tiny swimsuits made him hurt even more.
He rolled over, the deja vu of the landing in the snow from before hitting him at the same time as the realization that he had no interest in continuing on into yet another shaft. Still, he wasn’t about to abandon Reggie, Joshua, and Julie, so he scouted the snow bank and found the open vent shaft that led into the lowest of the levels. It was just as they had left it, an empty black rectangle that was only slightly darker than the dimly lit cliff behind it.
Once more he looked up, half expecting to see more Chinese soldiers watching them from above. He retrieved the backpack on his way to the opening, and took out the laptop. He gave it a cursory glance, assuming since there was no damage to the outside that it was still in good working order. He wasn’t a complete dunce when it came to computers, but didn’t want to take the chance at messing something up by opening it preemptively. It was going to work or it wasn’t, and there was nothing he could do about either way out here.