HAYWIRE: A Pandemic Thriller (The F.A.S.T. Series Book 2) (45 page)

Coleman bore all of Christov’s weight with his left arm. His arm shook. His strength was flagging. The knifepoint began slowly descending toward his face.

By degrees the point inched closer and closer.

As the knifepoint parted Coleman’s eyelashes, Neve lunged. She thumped her fist into Christov’s leg. She held Coleman’s last electro-dart. The sharp prongs stabbed into Christov’s thigh.

Neve didn’t know what to expect.

The effect was instantaneous.

Christov had been struck by lightning. His back arched. His face grimaced. His eyes rolled back until Neve saw only whites. His arms and legs convulsed violently.

But Coleman was convulsing too!

Oh, my God
, thought Neve desperately.
I’ve electrocuted both of them!

Where the men touched formed a pathway for the electric shock to travel between them.

Neve looked for a way to separate them, but the electric shock did it for her. Christov convulsed right off Coleman.

The instant Coleman came free, his convulsions halted.

Christov wasn’t so lucky.

He continued thrashing on the ice like a fish out of water.

Neve crawled back to her chair and pulled herself back into the seat.

Coleman rolled over and tried to stand. He managed two steps before his legs folded.

‘This way,’ called Neve. ‘Crawl toward my voice!’

He must have heard her, because Coleman began crawling on his hands and knees toward her. She reached down and grabbed his body armor.

‘Pull yourself up my chair. Here. Quickly. Grab the handles. We have to go. Just hold on. Don’t let go.’

Coleman pulled himself slowly up her chair.

Neve heard the dead gunmen’s radios. More men were coming. They sounded close. Coleman couldn’t fight them. He could barely stand.

Neve pushed down on her wheels. Coleman’s weight provided extra traction. She rolled toward the concealed plastic door with Coleman staggering behind her.

Halfway through the door, Coleman fell to one knee.

‘Get up,’ Neve hissed. ‘Hurry. They’re right outside.’

Gripping her wheelchair handles, Coleman pulled himself up again. Neve got them both through the door. The door slapped shut.

They’d barely made it.

She heard gunmen charging into the bar behind them. She prayed they wouldn’t spot the concealed door. As silently as possible, Neve guided Coleman through the staff areas behind the ice bar.

Which way?

She had no idea.

She crossed through a lunch room, a store room, and then down a narrow corridor lined with lockers. At the end she found herself facing a stock elevator.

It wasn’t meant for people. It looked designed for moving inventory between the ship’s store rooms.

We can’t fit in there.

SLAP!

Neve heard the concealed plastic door being kicked open.

They’ve found the door
, she realized.
They’ll find us any second.

‘Hold on tight,’ she warned Coleman. ‘We have to turn around.’

Coleman didn’t answer, but he obeyed as Neve turned her chair around on the spot.

‘Now go backward,’ she whispered. ‘Bend down.’

Even bending, Coleman’s head and shoulders struck the wall above the stock elevator.

Neve heard boots running toward them.

‘Bend your knees,’ she hissed. ‘That’s it. Now go backward.’

She shoved back hard on her wheels, cramming Coleman up against the back wall of the tiny room. Even ducking her head, the ceiling rubbed hard against her scalp.

We’re in!

She’d done it. She’d crammed Coleman, herself and the wheelchair inside the small steel box.

She looked for the controls.

There were none.

Of course. They’re on the outside.

She reached out and groped for the controls. She found them. She pushed one of the buttons.

The doors began slowly closing.

Very, very slowly.

SQUUUEEEEEEK.

She looked down. The door was scraping her foot rests.

Neve hauled back on her wheels.

She just needed an extra inch!

She found it.

The doors closed, sealing just inches from her nose. A moment later she heard people shouting and hitting the buttons, trying to open the door.

Come on. Move!

The elevator obeyed.

The small steel box carried its cramped passengers upward.

Christov came to his senses.

Where the hell am I? It’s freezing in here.

He was lying on the floor, looking at a strange ceiling. The ceiling appeared to be made of ice.

Everything came rushing back.

He remembered how Elizabeth had tricked him.

She’d betrayed him. Stolen from him. Everything he’d worked for was falling apart around him.

What more could I have done?

Christov had designed Pharmafirst’s offshore security system himself.

He’d monitored every computer with key loggers. Real time algorithms analyzed this data continuously for suspicious activity. No computer had outlets for removing data. He’d replaced all the computers’ hard drives with acid drives. The moment the drive was disconnected from the network, internal vials of f
luorosulfuric
super acid ruptured and destroyed the data.

Christov insisted that every shred of data in the facility be stored on acid drives. He also possessed the only tool that allowed an acid drive to survive outside of its computer. Even then, every disconnected drive began a forty-eight hour countdown until it acid-wiped.

No other electronic devices entered the offshore site.

No laptops.

No tablets.

No mobile phones.

Not even a calculator. The staff entered wearing nothing but paper gowns. Pharmafirst provided everything else on Pia Pia Island. They completely transformed the abandoned World War II outpost. They repurposed its overgrown airstrip, empty buildings and elaborate network of concrete bunkers into a world-class medical research center.

Christov’s staff worked on Pia Pia in four month cycles.

Everyone except Elizabeth.

Elizabeth never left.

She took up permanent residence. In hindsight, Christov realized she was searching for a weakness.

She found one.

A psychopathic one.

Christov’s security protocols ensured the security and research staff never made physical contact.

They never mingled.

They couldn’t.

Their working and living areas functioned independently.

They only ever saw each other through glass.

Christov was the only exception.

Elizabeth had determined that Christov himself was his security system’s only weakness. At two in the morning Elizabeth called him urgently from the laboratories. She needed to transfer a computer’s acid drive around a network fault. She couldn’t wait for the morning technicians.

Christov suited up, entered the labs and unlocked the acid drive she needed. He watched her begin fitting the drive into another computer.

He’d left the labs a walking weapon.

Elizabeth had infected them both.

To be sure she’d passed the infection to Christov, she’d contaminated his bio-hazard suit with the unfinished drug.

Like her, his blood group provided immunity from the violent side effects. He wouldn’t feel the infection.

He could only spread it.

When Christov woke the next morning, half his staff was killing the other half.

Fortunately only one half remembered how to use their firearms.

A search found Elizabeth missing. Her research vessel was also gone. In the labs, Christov found all the acid drives wiped. All their research data was destroyed. All the drives were useless.

All but one.

By 7 am, Christov knew the truth.

Elizabeth had sabotaged the labs, stolen a single acid drive and escaped the island on the missing vessel.

By 11 am, Christov found the vessel.

Elizabeth knew he would.

She’d already set herself adrift in the life raft. A life raft was much harder to find.

When she’d set off her distress beacon, she clearly hadn’t expected to be rescued by the
First Lady of the Sea
.

Christov had no idea she’d been conspiring with the U.S. Government. He had no idea what deal she had made. But a deal had been made, and the Marines were here to collect on that deal.

The data stored on the acid drive represented billions of dollars of investment. Without that research, Pharmafirst would be ruined.

Christov was responsible.

And right now he was lying on his back, staring at the icy ceiling in a bar, having been electrocuted to within an inch of his life.

His limbs began to respond.

He checked the countdown on his watch.