Finally, Leigh Austen let out a full-throated scream.
No sooner had she done this than her ears vibrated with the creak of the outside pressure door opening. She redoubled her struggle and managed to turn her head as two new sets of hardsuit lights cast an incandescent glow through the supply room’s door.
Helen Lelache’s face swam into view. The woman looked half-furious, half stunned with fear as she was pushed into the room by the pistol at her back. Just behind her, Austen made out Navarro’s stern visage.
“Leigh!” he shouted. “Hold on!”
Navarro shoved Lelache to one side. The woman’s eyes glared at him hatefully, but she didn’t move. Nick didn’t hesitate. He shoved the pistol into an open section of his pack. Then he pulled a trio of emergency flares out of his pack and twisted the ends to set them alight.
The potassium nitrate lit up with a paff! of reddish flame.
He stepped forward, hurling the flares deep into the pile of debris. They sailed across the room, landing with a sizzle of bacon on a hot plate. The Nostocales colony shrank away for a moment before it surged back, dousing the flares under a wave of cytoplasm.
It was a momentary respite, but the surge carried away the bulk of the organism from Austen. She let out a wheezing gasp as the thing slid back down to her waist. A tug, and she was able to release her trapped wrist.
An oily smoke began to fill the room. Even through his suit’s air filter, Navarro could make out the foul stench of burning swamp muck. He ignored it as he took out an entire string of flares, used one to light the rest, then tossed the string even further into the pile.
The colony reacted even more violently, stabbing at the loop of flaming cylinders with tendrils which instantly burnt to a crisp. It pulled away from Austen’s hardsuited feet, leaving one sole with a moist-sounding schlorp.
“This bar!” Austen called. “I can’t get free!”
The big man grasped the end of the crowbar. Instead of pulling, he twisted the tool around so that the slanted tip faced upwards. Then he shifted his grip, set a suited boot against the wall, and pulled with all his might.
The embedded tool finally came loose, landing on the floor with a clang. It was followed by a hiss as the colony tried and failed to smother another of the burning flares. Instead, the chemical cylinder burned brighter for a few moments.
“Mon Dieu!” Lelache breathed. “You’ve killed us all!”
With that, she turned and ran.
“Dammit, get back here!” Navarro cursed. Yet he didn’t waste time chasing her down. Instead, he helped Austen to her feet, eying the crack in her faceplate. “You okay? Can you walk?”
“Yeah, I can,” she breathed. “And no, my suit wasn’t compromised.”
“Good. Then why did Lelache…” Navarro’s voice dropped off as he looked over to the mass of thrown flares. The entire string was surrounded by angry, writhing tendrils. But half of it had landed in an open box stamped with a single word in Cyrillic.
Specifically, the word for EXPLOSIVES.
“Come on!” he shouted, urging her on. “We’ve got to get out of here!”
Austen didn’t need any urging. Her feet felt weightless now that they’d been freed from the bioslime. Navarro paused only to slam the submarine-style pressure door behind them and give it a single turn. Then he lumbered along in Austen’s wake. They blinked against the afternoon light as they reached the floor of the mine, just outside the mouth of the tunnel.
A deep mechanical whirring reached their ears. Navarro recognized it as the sound of the heavy motors that powered the elevator. Austen pointed to the cabin as it ascended skyward above them. A single figure stood inside the metal cage. The figure looked down and gave them a wave in adieu.
“This isn’t goodbye!” Austen shouted, though there was no chance her voice could’ve reached that far. “This isn’t over, you bitch!”
Suddenly, a strange white flicker of light came from deep within the tunnel. Navarro saw it out of the corner of his eye. He knew what came next.
“Oh, Christ on a…” he whispered, before instinctively throwing himself atop Austen. They landed in a clatter of hardsuit plates.
The sound finally reached them.
A massive KATHOOM echoed from the depths, vibrating their eardrums and threatening to burst them. A shower of rocks erupted from the tunnel, carrying a cloud of sulfur-yellow dust that blotted the two tiny figures from view.
Chapter Forty-Five
Torrents of sweat ran down October’s face as he made his way back to the C&C. His pace could at best be generously considered a jog. Ian Blaine lay draped over one shoulder, fading in and out of consciousness.
October preferred it when Blaine was unconscious. That way, the injured man didn’t keep going on about how much pain he was in.
As for pain, the big Russian felt as if someone were punching him in the ribs. With a lit blowtorch. He ignored it as best he could.
Until the buzzing in his ear began. He hadn’t seen so much as a gnat anywhere within the base camp of the Karakul before. He brought his hand up to swat at it before realizing that someone was saying his name.
He halted, leaning his Blaine-free shoulder against a nearby wall. Grabbing his long-forgotten earpiece from where it dangled, he stuck it back in his ear canal. Redhawk’s voice came in clearly.
“…I say again, you’ve got an enemy squad approaching on your left.” October glanced skyward and saw the drone that Redhawk called ‘Awful’ hovering sixty feet overhead.
“Understood,” October said quietly. “How many?”
“Looks like a four-person squad, all riflemen. They’re moving along an alleyway parallel to your road.”
“How far away?”
“Twenty, maybe thirty yards. Behind the half-crumbled wall that looks like it’s made of rotting gingerbread.”
October craned his neck. He nodded. “Da, I see it.”
“They’re sticking close to ground. They know my drone’s watching out for them.” Redhawk spoke more urgently. “If you pick up the pace, you might be able to outrun them.”
“No. Is stupid, all this running.” He knelt and let Blaine slip to the ground. The man winced and let out a soft moan. “Is better to finish this now.”
“Are you crazy? You’re looking at four to one–”
“Quiet. I am working.”
October let the earpiece fall from its perch as he crept around a mound of rubble created by the Ozrabek mortar strikes. He had a clear view of the dirty brown wall, not more than twenty meters ahead. Setting his assault rifle aside, he took out his last three grenades and set them on a low concrete shelf before him. October rotated his arm, getting the kinks out and readying the muscles.
He ripped the pin from a grenade and sent it on its way with a high overhand toss. He followed it up with identical movement for the second and third grenades, lobbing them to land at two-meter intervals.
A single cry of surprise and pain accompanied the trio of explosions that ripped through the distant alley. October snatched up his rifle and fired off two long bursts at any movement until his gun clicked empty.
He watched for a few seconds before letting out a satisfied grunt. Turning, he returned to where he’d left Blaine. Hefting the man back atop his shoulder he continued his slow walk-jog.
Back at the C&C, Redhawk pounded the desktop and doled out a few choice swear words in Apache before lapsing back into English.
“I said, put your damned earpiece back in! There’s still movement!”
A single remaining rifleman emerged from the dust cloud created by October’s grenades. He stuck his head up over the wall to spot the lumbering Russian and his burden. Setting his weapon atop the wall, he began to sight in on the slow-moving target.
“Bad choice, friend,” Redhawk said, speaking to the Ozrabek soldier.
His fingers danced over the keyboard. With a final click, he locked in both the MAXIMUM SPEED and the SELF-GUIDING portions of the drone’s
program.
The drone’s camera lens made a last deadly shift, fixing its cyclopean eye on its final destination sixty feet below. Awful’s multiple propellers shrieked as they bit into the air.
Then it dropped like a stone.
The Ozrabek rifleman had just curled his finger around the trigger when he heard the oncoming whine. He looked up in shock as the sound of an angry wasp’s nest came barreling towards him.
With a jangle of broken glass and carbon fiber plate, the drone hit with the force of a bowling ball dropped from the roof of a twelve-story building. October looked around as he heard a plorp! like the pulping of a watermelon. He missed the fresh spray of gore that painted the wall to his rear and simply continued on his way.
He finally made it, gasping, to the remains of the C&C. Blaine let out a yelp of pain as October half-collapsed on the floor. Preble hobbled over as quickly as he could, helping to shift Blaine to a swept-out section of the floor.
“That was…hellish,” Blaine complained weakly, as he moved to rest his black attaché case atop his chest.
“You are welcome,” October panted. He sat back for a moment as Redhawk came over and handed him a canteen of water. The big man opened it and started guzzling the contents.
“These burns can’t be making you feel chipper,” Preble said, as he set out an emergency medical kit. “But they cauterized your leg stump well enough.”
Blaine groaned. “Lucky me.”
“Easy on the painkillers,” Redhawk advised. “We still don’t know if we’re going to have to move out in a hurry. Your patient might still need to be conscious.”
“The morphine’s out then,” he said, making Blaine groan again. “You’re in luck, though. We’ve got a whole barrel of tramadol syrettes to choose from.”
October paused only to wipe the sweat from his face. Then he tossed the empty canteen to one side and got up. His face was lined with dust, sweat, and fatigue.
But he looked as determined as ever.
“Why is Navarro not back?” he growled. “Where is he?”
Just then, the entire trailer rocked with the force of a not-so-distant explosion. A section of ceiling tile fell from one corner with a clatter. Redhawk dove behind his monitor and sent one of his last two drones to check.
“Tipsy’s got it,” he announced. He drew back, stunned. “That came from the mine!”
October came around to look at the monitor. A new cloud of dust rose from the shaft to spiral up the ever-present updraft. The drone zoomed in on a new movement emerging from the cloud.
“The elevator’s on its way up,” Redhawk said flatly. “I see only one person on board.”
“Who is it?” Preble called over.
A pause as he zoomed on the person’s faceplate with Tipsy’s jiggly camera.
Redhawk made a disgusted sound. “Helen Lelache.”
“Khorosho,” October grunted. He cracked his knuckles ominously. “I will make her take me to him.”
“The hell? How are you going to–”
October made a massive shrug. “I make it up as I go. Is not hard.”
With that, he stalked through Modules A through D, angrily kicking any debris he came across out of the way. He pulled the largest Tyvek suit he could find from the lockers in D. The ungainly thing made him look like the mascot for a tire company.
Once in Module F, October discovered that Navarro had been right: He couldn’t fit into any of the hardsuits. So he grabbed one of the helmets, switched on the internal radio unit, and managed to cram his head inside. Then he lumbered on towards where the massive housing for the mine’s freight elevator sat at the top of the mine shaft.
The elevator car reached the top with a clank. Lelache’s eyes went wide as she beheld what looked like an upright bear wearing a floppy Tyvek suit topped with a purple helmet. The face behind the helmet was filled with a murderous rage.
“Pas encore!” she said, exasperated. “Again? Why must life be so difficult?”
Lelache dove for the car controls. She had at most two seconds before the inch-thick steel bars that made up the elevator’s cage began to roll up.
She didn’t care to think what would happen after that.
Chapter Forty-Six
At the very bottom of the Karakul’s mile-deep shaft, a purple-armored hand shoved its way out of a pile loose sand and gravel. It groped for purchase, found a nearby rock wall, and grabbed on. The rest of an arm emerged, followed by the dirt-encrusted form of a man.
Navarro’s air supply had filtered out most of the rock dust, but he still let out a cough as he spoke.
“Never thought I’d say this, but thank God for the Chiron hardsuit.” He turned to the second suited person, who lay half-buried underneath him. “You okay, Leigh?”
“Nothing new hurts,” she replied, with a groan. “I can’t get up, though.”
“Gimme a minute.” Navarro knelt and began shoving away the masses of loose gravel that covered Austen’s legs and torso.
He shook his head as he did so. Suddenly, the man’s shoulders quaked as he stifled a deep chuckle. Austen looked up at him, puzzled.
“It’s hardly the time to be laughing,” she complained, as he worked.
“Sorry. Just thinking of something my Dad once told me. He said, ‘Son, if you ever find yourself in a hole, the first thing to do is stop diggin’.’ Well, here we are at the bottom of the deepest hole for thousands of miles…”
“And the last thing you need to do is stop digging.” Austen rolled her eyes. “Well, true or not, I owe you one.”
Navarro hid a smile behind his faceplate. “Didn’t know we were keeping count.”
“How did you know where to find me? And what the hell is going on topside?” Austen inhaled sharply. “The bodies I saw down there…they were the soldiers from this base. They were executed and their uniforms taken…”
“I know…” Navarro’s smile vanished and his voice took on a grim cast as he continued to dig. “While we were at one of the burned-out villages, Chelovik murdered Votorov. And Zhou.”
Austen looked away, her eyes wet. “Bastards.”
“October and I got away, but the Colonel got back here before us and ordered a general attack. All my men save Redhawk and October are KIA. So is Ian Blaine. He had plans to make billions off the sale of Nostocales. He tried getting out of here in the Falcon, but Chelovik shot him down before he could take off.”
Austen’s mind raced. She thought of what Lelache had said: Men are hard to tame sometimes. And the ones I needed just weren’t reliable enough, either of them.
Either of them.
“Here, grip my arm,” Navarro said. She did so, and with a heave, he managed to pull her free. “Come on, we need to get out of here.”
“Lelache has been playing us,” Austen said, as they crunched their way towards the base of the elevator shaft. “All of us. She somehow got hooked in with Chelovik, and she’s been the one experimenting with the pathogen on the nearby villages.”
“That’s a war crime, among other things.”
“She doesn’t care, Nick! All she wants is to preserve this species’ uniqueness, or something. But she realized that she didn’t have two things to isolate a strain of Nostocales that she could weaponize.”
“The lab equipment would be one thing. That’s where the WHO and CDC came in.”
“Yes, and speed would be the other. Otherwise, Chelovik might have moved before she had what she wanted,” she insisted. “Don’t you see? Bureaucracies like the WHO just don’t turn on a dime. They don’t have the funds. That’s where private industry comes in.”
He turned to look at her, frowning. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying that Lelache was talking with Colonel Chelovik and Ian Blaine. That’s why we got that lab up and running so quickly. How we ended up with a corporate trijet, all of it!”
“That just leaves one more,” Navarro muttered.
“One more what?”
“Just
before I left on that trip to the villages, Redhawk told me that he’d picked up transmissions from inside our portion of the Karakul compound. Microbursts piggybacking off our satellite transmitter. From what you’re telling me, Lelache and Blaine had to have been two of those sources. But then who’s the third and final one? Do we have a third snake in the grass with us, ready to strike?”
“I wish I knew. What did DiCaprio say? Nothing is as it seems?”
“That’s for damned sure,” he agreed, as they reached the base of the elevator. The car was so far above them it was hard to make out. “And if we can’t figure out what that gibberish meant about the ‘Tower’ and the ‘Storm’, we’re in for a world of hurt–”
A buzz filled their ears. Something part static and part roar.
“What’s that?” Austen asked, as she put her hand to the side of her badly dented helmet. “Did someone go poke a bear in its cave?”
“I think they did!” Navarro exclaimed, as he craned his neck to stare up the length of the shaft. “That’s October, and it sounds like someone just pissed in his corn flakes.”
Even as he spoke, the transmissions continued, a string of curses in both broken English and fluent Russian.
The source was roughly a mile directly overhead, and it was an animated one.
October pounded his fists against the inch-thick steel bars that made up the elevator’s cage. He snarled at the woman inside. She remained crouched warily in the corner next to the control button’s heavy metal panel.
“Schas po ebalu poluchish, suka, blyad!” he shouted. “Open, open!”
In actuality, October was as angry at himself as with Lelache. He’d left the C&C so quickly that he’d forgotten to pick up a sidearm. If he left to go get one, the woman would have plenty of time to vanish.
It only got worse from there. When he called Redhawk on the helmet’s communicator, he only got static. His earpiece lay useless on his shoulder under the Tyvek suit, and he wasn’t at all sure if he’d be exposed to something if he unzipped it.
So he went back to pounding the badly rusted steel bars like an alcoholic on a bender. One of the them bent inwards with a creak. He redoubled his efforts, pushing and pulling the bar until it broke away with a high-pitched ching!
The Devil’s Noose Page 20