Black Order (43 page)

Ischke’s pet.

Skuld.

It had been denied its caged treat before.

But no longer.

2:40
P.M
.

“Help us…
bitte
!” Gunther rushed into the hut, followed by Major Brooks.

Lisa stood up, lowering her stethoscope from Painter’s chest. She had been monitoring a systolic murmur. In just the past half day, it had changed from an early-peaking murmur to a late one, suggesting a rapidly progressing stenosis of the man’s aortic valve. Mild angina had worsened to bouts of syncope, swooning faints if Painter overexerted. She had never seen such a rapid degeneration. She suspected calcification around his heart valve. Such odd mineralized deposits had begun appearing throughout Painter’s body, even in the fluids of his eye.

Lying flat on his back, Painter pushed to his elbows with a wince. “What’s wrong?” he asked Gunther.

Major Brooks answered with a worried southern drawl. “It’s his sister, sir. She’s having some type of fit…a seizure.”

Lisa grabbed the med kit. Painter tried to stand but had to be assisted by Lisa on his second attempt. “Just stay here,” she warned.

“I can manage,” he answered, showing his irritation.

Lisa didn’t have time to argue. She let go of his arm. He teetered. She hurried to Gunther. “Let’s go.”

Brooks waited, unsure whether to follow or lend an arm to Painter.

The major was waved off.

Painter hobbled after them.

Lisa ran out of the hut and crossed to the neighboring one. The day’s heat struck her like stepping into an oven. The air hung motionless, burning, impossible to breathe. The sun blinded. But in a moment, Lisa was ducking into the cooler darkness of the next room.

Anna lay on a grass mat, half on her side, body arched, muscles contracted. Lisa hurried to her. She had already established an intravenous catheter in her forearm. Painter had the same. It was easier to administer drugs and fluids.

Lisa quickly dropped to a knee and grabbed up a syringe premeasured with diazepam. She gave the entire dose in one bolus IV. In seconds, Anna relaxed, dropping back to the floor. Her eyes fluttered open and consciousness returned, groggy but attentive.

Painter arrived. Monk appeared in tow with him.

“How is she?” Painter asked.

“How do you think?” Lisa asked, exasperated.

Gunther helped his sister sit up. Her face was ashen, covered in a sheen of sweat. Painter was destined for the same in the next hour. Though both were exposed, Painter’s larger bulk seemed to be sustaining him a bit more heartily. But their survival was down to hours.

Lisa stared up at the shaft of sunlight spearing into the room from a slit window. Twilight was too far off.

Monk spoke into the worried silence. “I spoke to Khamisi. He reports that every light in the damn mansion just went out.” He wore a tentative grin, as if unsure any good news was welcome. “I’m guessing it’s Gray’s handiwork.”

Painter frowned. It was his only expression lately. “We don’t know that.”

“And we don’t know it isn’t.” Monk wiped a hand across the top of his shaved head. “Sir, I think we need to consider moving up the timetable. Khamisi says—”

“Khamisi is not running this op,” Painter said, coughing harshly.

Monk met Lisa’s eyes. The two of them had held a private discussion twenty minutes ago. It was one of the reasons Monk had made the call to Khamisi. Certain expediencies had to be verified. Monk nodded to her.

She slipped a second syringe from her pocket, stepped to Painter’s side.

“Let me flush your catheter,” Lisa said. “There’s blood in it.”

Painter held up his arm. It trembled.

Lisa supported his wrist and injected her dose. Monk stepped beside Painter and caught him as his legs went out from under him.

“What—?” Painter’s head lolled back.

Monk shouldered him under one arm. “It’s for your own good, sir.”

Painter frowned at Lisa. His other arm swung at her—whether to hit her or express some shock at her betrayal, Lisa doubted he even knew. The sedative swooned him away.

Major Brooks watched, his mouth hanging open.

Monk shrugged at the Air Force man. “Never seen a mutiny before?”

Brooks collected himself. “All I can say, sir…about bloody time.”

Monk nodded. “Khamisi is on his way in with the package. ETA three minutes. He and Dr. Kane will take over ground support here.”

Lisa turned to Gunther. “Can you carry your sister?”

As proof, he scooped her up and stood.

“What are you all doing?” Anna asked weakly.

“You two are not going to last until nightfall,” Lisa said. “We’re going to make a run for the Bell.”

“How…?”

“Don’t worry that pretty little head of yours,” Monk said and hobbled out with Painter, supported by Major Brooks. “We’ve got it covered.”

Monk again met Lisa’s eyes. She read his expression.

It may be too late already.

2:41
P.M
.

Gray led the way up the stairs, pistol in hand. He and Marcia moved as silently as possible. She kept a palm over her flashlight’s lamp, keeping any illumination to a minimum. Just enough to see where they were going. With the elevators incapacitated, he feared running into a stray guard on the stairs.

Though he was disguised as a guard, one leading a researcher out of the darkened basement, he’d still rather avoid any unnecessary encounters.

They crossed past the sixth sublevel, dark like the one below.

Gray continued, increasing his pace, balancing caution against the fear secondary generators would kick in at some point. Climbing around the next landing, a glow appeared ahead.

Holding up a hand, he stopped Marcia behind him.

The light didn’t move. It remained stationary.

Not a wandering guard. Probably an emergency lamp.

Still…

“Stay here,” he whispered to Marcia.

She nodded.

Gray continued ahead, pistol raised and ready. He climbed the steps. At the next landing, light seeped through a half-open doorway. As Gray approached, he heard voices. Farther up the stairs, it remained dark. So why was there light and power here? This level must be on a separate circuit.

Voices echoed down the corridor.

Familiar voices. Isaak and Baldric.

They were out of direct sight, hidden deeper in the room. He glanced below and saw Marcia’s face limned in the light washing down the stairs. He waved her up to his landing.

She had heard the voices, too.

Isaak and Baldric seemed unconcerned about the loss of electricity. With power here, did they even know the rest of the manor was blacked out? Gray held his curiosity in check. He had to warn Washington.

Words reached him. “The Bell will kill all of them,” Baldric said.

Gray paused. Were they talking about Washington? If so, what were their plans? If he knew more…

Gray held up two fingers to Marcia. Two minutes. If he wasn’t back, she was to head up on her own. He had left her his second pistol. If he could see this
Bell
, it might be the difference between saving lives and losing them.

He held up the two fingers again.

Marcia nodded. It would be up to her if Gray was caught.

He squeezed into the opening, not budging the door, afraid a squeak of hinges would alert the two inside. The same gray fluorescent-lit hall stretched ahead. But it ended a short distance away at a double set of steel doors, opposite where the darkened elevator opened on this floor.

One of the double doors stood open.

Gray moved quickly, staying on the balls of his feet. He reached the doors and hugged the wall. He dropped to a knee and peered past the edge of the door.

The chamber beyond was low-roofed but cavernous, encompassing this entire sublevel. Here was the heart of the laboratory. Banks of computers lined one wall. Monitors glowed with scrolling numbers and code. The computers probably warranted the separate circuit, their own power supply.

The room’s occupants, so focused on the task at hand, hadn’t noted the loss of power elsewhere. But surely they would be alerted any minute.

Baldric and Isaak, grandfather and grandson, were bent over a station. A thirty-inch flat-screen monitor on the wall flashed rapidly through a series of runes, one after the other. It was the five from Hugo’s books.

“The code remains unbroken,” Isaak said. “Is it wise to move the Bell program global while we still have this riddle unsolved?”

“It will be solved!” Baldric slammed a fist on the table. “It is only a matter of time. Besides, we are close enough to perfection. Like with you and your sister. You will live long. Fifty years. The deterioration will not weaken you until your last decade. It is time for us to move forward.”

Isaak looked little convinced.

Baldric straightened. He lifted an arm and waved it toward the ceiling. “See what delays have wrought. Our attempt to distract international attention to the Himalayas has backfired.”

“Because we underestimated Anna Sporrenberg.”

“And Sigma,” Baldric added. “But no matter. Governments now breathe down our necks. Gold will buy us only so much protection. We must act now. First Washington, then the world. And in that chaos, there will be plenty of time to break the code. Perfection will be ours.”

“And out of Africa, a new world will arise,” Isaak said in rote, as if it were a prayer drilled into him at a young age, cemented in his genetic code.

“Pure and cleansed of corruption,” Baldric added, ending the litany. But his words were equally dispassionate. It was as if all this were no more than another step in his breeding program, a scientific exercise.

Baldric teetered straighter on his cane. Gray noted how enfeebled the man really appeared, with no audience but his grandson. Gray wondered if the accelerated timetable wasn’t fueled more by Baldric’s own impending mortality than by any true necessity. Were they all unwitting pawns in Baldric’s desire to move forward in his plan? Had Baldric orchestrated this scenario on purpose—consciously or unconsciously—to justify acting now, during his lifetime?

Isaak spoke again. He had shifted over to another workstation. “We’ve green lights across the board. The Bell is powered up and ready for activation. We’ll now be able to cleanse the estate of the escaped prisoners.”

Gray stiffened. What was this all about?

Baldric turned his back on the flashing runic code and focused toward the room’s center. “Prepare for activation.”

Gray shifted to see farther into the room.

In its center rested a massive shell, composed of some type of ceramic or metallic compound. It was shaped like an upended bell and stood as tall as Gray. He doubted he could hug his arms halfway around its circumference.

Motors sounded, chugging and echoing, and an inner metal sleeve lowered from the ceiling, encased in a clockwork of gears. It dropped into the larger outer shell. At the same time, a neighboring yellow tank opened a gasket and a stream of purplish metallic liquid flowed into the heart of the Bell.

Lubricant? Fuel source?

Gray had no idea, but he noted the numbers stamped on the side of the tank: 525. It was the mysterious Xerum.

“Raise the blast shield,” Baldric ordered. He had to yell to be heard above the clanking gears of the motor assembly. He motioned to the floor with his cane.

The level here was covered by the same gray tile, except for a dull black circular section, thirty yards across, surrounding the Bell. A raised border edged it, a foot thick, like the ring in a circus. The ceiling above was a mirror of the floor, except the roof had an indented border.

It was all lead.

Gray realized the outer floor ring must rise on pistons and insert into the ceiling, forming an entire cylinder locked around the Bell.

“What’s wrong?” Baldric yelled again, turning to Isaak at his station.

Isaak toggled a switch back and forth. “We’re getting no power to the blast shield motors!”

Gray glanced to his toes. The motors must be on the level below. The
darkened
level. A phone rang inside the room, chiming stridently, competing with the motors. Gray could guess who was calling. Security had finally discovered where the masters of the house were hidden.

Time to go.

Gray straightened and turned.

A pipe swung down and struck his wrist, knocking the pistol from his hand. The wielder swung at his head. Gray barely ducked in time.

Ischke stalked toward him. Behind her, the doors to the darkened elevator stood open, pried apart. The woman must have been trapped in the elevator when the power went out, then climbed down here. Masked by the noise from the Bell’s motors, Gray had not heard the doors being pried open behind him.

Ischke raised her pipe, plainly skilled in the art of staff fighting.

Gray fixed his eyes on her and retreated into the Bell’s chamber. He refused to glance toward the fire stairs. He prayed Marcia had already left, was en route to reach the shortwave radio and raise the alarm in Washington.

Ischke, her clothes stained with oil, her face smudged, followed Gray inside the Bell chamber.

Baldric spoke behind Gray. “
Wat is dit?
It seems little Ischke has trapped the mouse who has chewed through the wiring.”

Gray turned.

Unarmed. Out of options.

“Generators are coming back online,” Isaak said, his manner bored, unimpressed by the intrusion.

A grind of motors rumbled under Gray’s feet. The blast shield began to rise from the floor.

“Now to exterminate the other rats,” Baldric said.

2:45
P.M
.

Monk yelled to be heard over the helicopter’s rotors. Sand and dust swirled around them in the rotor wash’s whirlwind. “You know how to fly this bird?”

Gunther nodded, grabbing the chopper’s stick.