Mirrored Man: The Rob Tyler Chronicles Book 1 (40 page)

The three men exited the large building as
Bill continued to grumble. They walked about one hundred fifty
yards to a small ten-by-ten brick building, really more of a shed,
near the perimeter fence at the extreme eastern end of the
base.

Bill turned to face them. “I been workin'
here for twenty-two years and I don't think these pumps have ever
been used. We use the building mainly for storage.” When he turned
back to open the door, he didn’t notice Rigby reaching into his
jacket. The door opened with a
creak.
Inside was an
assortment of gardening equipment on one side and bags of
fertilizer, pine bark chips, and mulch piled on the other. A metal
rake fell over and hit the concrete floor noisily.

Bill sighed. “Let me get some of this—”

The sentence went unfinished as Rigby
leveled his pistol at the back of the unsuspecting man’s head and
squeezed off a round. The attached silencer muffled the weapon’s
report. Before Bill’s body could fall, Covington shoved it inside
as they entered. Rigby put two more rounds into Bill's heart and
closed the door behind him as Covington stepped over to the control
panel on the back wall of the enclosure.

But he didn’t stop there.

He whirled about and dove for the floor just
as Rigby pointed his semi automatic at his back. Covington had his
own weapon, or rather Jo Turner’s Sig Sauer, out and he began
firing, not taking the time to aim. In the enclosed space, the
sound was deafening as he unloaded the pistol into the near
darkness. He immediately dropped the empty magazine to the ground
and inserted another. There was no sound except for the ringing in
Covington's ears as he allowed his eyes to adjust to the low
light.

Rigby wasn't by the door any more. There
were, however, three narrow streams of sunlight coming through the
metal where he had been standing. Covington couldn't see Rigby at
all from where he landed behind the bags of gardening supplies.
Allowing himself to breathe again, he rose to his knees. Peering
over the stacks of mulch and fertilizer, he saw a dark form
crumpled on the floor. He walked slowly around, keeping the Sig
trained on the center of the motionless form. He felt around for a
light switch and flipped it on. Rigby’s eyes were wide in death as
his lifeless hand still clutched the pistol. Covington smirked at
his would-be assassin. “Enjoy your trip.”

The rush of adrenaline quickly wore off, and
he felt the bite of pain in his shoulder. As he reached up and
massaged the wound, there was the wetness of blood under his
clothes again. He checked himself for additional wounds and was
relieved to find none.

How in the world had Rigby missed?
He
shook his head at the man's still form.

Sighing heavily, he went back to the panel
on the wall.

It had four rows of twenty control boxes
stretching from wall to wall, each having two buttons, one red and
one green. Next to them on the extreme left was a panel where there
were three lights, one red, one white, and one green. Above them
was a large frame with a heavy gauge switch in the OFF position. It
was labeled “Master ON/OFF.” He pushed the lever to the ON
position. The white lights on the smaller boxes below lit up.

JIMMY WAS AWKWARDLY
tinkering with
the door controls to his office for several minutes, wincing
occasionally from the pain in his wounded appendage, when Colonel
Jim Talbot said, “We need to leave.
Now
.”

Ignoring the colonel, Eddie asked, “What
about it, Jimmy?”

“There's no power getting to the controls.”
He shook his head. “I can't release the magnetic lock. I'm telling
you, it won't open until I programmed it to … in about seventeen
hours.”

Eddie glanced at Talbot. “Well, that's just
great!”

Talbot sighed. “I gave you ten minutes and
it's been fifteen. This has just been a waste of time. Let's go,
gentlemen.
Now.
”

As Jimmy rose, he gave Eddie a knowing look.
“I'll be able to access my computer from the outside in under an
hour.” He shot a suspicious look at the colonel. “And even if my
hard drives get stolen, it won't make any difference. I've backed
them up off site. I won’t lose a thing.”

Talbot scoffed at the obvious implication,
but chose not to comment. He had his suspicions about what was
going on and who might be behind it, and those suspicions were very
similar to those of Eddie. He hadn’t even finished the thought when
he heard an unfamiliar sound in the distance. A sound like
something out of a World War II submarine movie.

Ahhwooogahhh!

It blared out over and over again, and then
they heard something else. A male voice was speaking in a slow,
calculated cadence, but they couldn't make out what he was
saying.

“What the—?” Ghazini began.

“I have no idea,” Talbot said, looking as
confused as they all felt.

The men started moving toward the sounds
with Jimmy bringing up the rear. It wasn't long before they all
realized that the din was leading them directly to the garage.

“That's outside the labs,” Eddie remarked,
picking up his pace.

Ahhwooogahhh!

As they passed through the dressing room and
into the garage, the automated voice's message was counting down
every fifteen seconds. “Flood controls activated. Flooding will
commence in six minutes.”

“Flooding?” Jimmy was wide eyed. “They're
gonna flood the tunnel!”

Eddie shot an angry look at Talbot.

“Don't look at me,” he said innocently. “I'm
down here too.”

“It was your general who ordered everyone
out, wasn't it.” It wasn’t a question.

Talbot gave Eddie an angry look. “And if I
had insisted that we leave when I
got
that order, we
wouldn't
be
here right now.”

Eddie scoffed and started to respond, but
Ghazini interrupted him. “Who cares whose fault it is? What do we
do?”

“We don't have enough time to get to the
generator room. It takes fifteen minutes to get through the
tunnel,” Eddie lamented.

“We're gonna be trapped down here?” Jimmy
asked.

“Aw, c'mon,” Ghazini said. “This is too
much, man!”

“Will the blast door close?” Jimmy eyed the
still-open tunnel on the far side of the room.

“It's been disabled,” Talbot told him. “But
I don't know if that's good news or bad.”

“Why?” Jimmy asked.

“Because if it doesn’t close it could flood
the entire complex,” Ghazini said.

“That's it,” Eddie said calmly. “They want
to destroy any evidence that's left down here.”

“Well, they must be in here with us because
the place was designed to be flooded from the inside,” Jimmy
said.

“No, no,” Talbot piped up. “They tested the
system once back in the fifties to make sure everything worked
properly before they ever assigned any personnel for the inside.
There's a control board somewhere over at the water treatment
plant.”

Ghazini gave him a questioning look.

“Would you wanna be down here the first time
they flooded it, not knowing if you were gonna get out or not?”
Talbot said in answer to the unasked question.

“What difference does that make?” Eddie
moaned. “We can't get half way out in six minutes!”

An image flashed in Jimmy's mind. “There may
be a way! C'mon!” He was off like a shot across the large room.

Ghazini was fast on his heels with Eddie and
Talbot in tow, all more than willing to entertain any plan that
might get them out.

“I saw Tyler and some of the guards working
on this while we were monitoring the cloning process,” Jimmy
shouted as he ran. When he reached the far corner of the cavernous
room, he painfully grabbed at the plastic that was loosely covering
the tanker truck that had been stored there so many years before.
Seeing where Jimmy was going, Ghazini grabbed the plastic, threw it
back over the cab, shoved Jimmy through the driver’s door and
climbed in behind him. Talbot and Eddie watched as they started
frantically searching around the inside.

“Jimmy, what are you thinking?” Eddie
yelled. “This truck hasn't run in decades!”

“Flood controls activated. Flooding will
commence in five minutes,” they heard the voice announce over the
intercom as the antiquated horn continuing to sound its
warning.

“I hope that's four, fifty-nine,
fifty-nine!” Talbot said.

“I can't find them! I can't find them!”
Jimmy screamed as he looked at the other men, “Help me! I can't
find them!
”
A wild look was in his eyes.

“Can't find what?” Eddie said as he jumped
in the passenger’s side.

“The keys!” Jimmy shouted desperately. “We
need the keys! I know it runs! I saw them move it!”

“Calm down!” Eddie thought for a moment.
“Gotta be.” He reached up and flipped the visor down.

A single key fell into Ghazini's lap.
Grabbing it, he slid it into the ignition and prayed. Talbot was
standing beside the truck, shaking his head doubtfully as the
automated warning blared in their ears in deafening succession. But
they were all stunned when the old tanker's engine came to life on
the first try. Ghazini smiled and pushed the gearshift into first,
then let off of the clutch too fast and the engine stalled.

Talbot jumped in, pushing Eddie on top of
Jimmy as the three gave their driver an alarmed look. “Malik!” they
said in unison. Their plea was barely audible above the siren's
wail, but Ghazini didn't need any more motivation. He pushed the
clutch in once more and turned the key. This time the engine turned
over but didn't start.

“Oh, God help us!” Talbot said, crossing
himself.

“Don't flood it, M!” Eddie instructed,
trying unsuccessfully to keep his voice calm.

“What?” Ghazini didn’t understand the term.
Since the advent of fuel injectors, flooding a vehicle’s engine was
unheard of. Ghazini had never driven a vehicle with a
carburetor.

“Get your foot off the gas!” Eddie
shouted.

Ghazini complied and turned the key again.
The engine turned over twice more without success and then, on his
third attempt, it roared to life again.

“Let off the clutch slow,” Eddie said.

“I know how to drive!” Ghazini drew looks of
astonishment from the other three at his unproven claim.

The truck lurched and nearly stalled again,
jerking back and forth. Jimmy howled in pain as Eddie’s body
crushed his sprained wrist. Slowly, they began to roll more
smoothly as Ghazini turned the oversized wheel. Not having power
steering, it seemed to Ghazini as if the truck was fighting him.
“Jeez, this thing is hard to turn.”

“Let me drive!” Eddie shouted, grabbing the
wheel.

“I got this!” Ghazini protested as the truck
began to pick up speed. It rolled to the left in a wide arc and
they all held their breath as the long front end narrowly missed
clipping the corner of the wall of the tunnel. Ghazini hit the gas
and the engine sputtered, coughed and backfired as they started
down the three-plus mile tunnel to the generator room.

They heard the voice on the intercom fading
behind them as they went. “Flood controls activated. Flooding will
commence in four minutes.”

“Go! Go! Go!” Jimmy shouted as he tried to
squeeze out from under Eddie.

The heavy truck's acceleration was
agonizingly slow, but they were picking up speed as they proceeded
down the slope of the tunnel.

“C'mon you lard ace!” Jimmy yelled as
Ghazini shifted into second gear.

Eddie looked at the speedometer as it
crossed the twenty-five-mile-per-hour mark. “We're not gonna make
it.”

“Give it more gas!” Talbot shouted.

“It's on the floor,” Ghazini shot back.

“Just drive, M,” Eddie stated calmly with a
steadying hand on the dashboard, knowing that their fate was in
God's hands.

“I can't breathe!” Jimmy protested.

Eddie rolled his eyes. “If you can talk, you
can breath.”

“Easy for you to say. You don't have a
two-hundred-and-fifty-pound dead weight sittin' on ya.”

“Seriously?” Talbot said incredulously. “You
wanna make jokes
now
?

Eddie couldn’t contain his smile as he
stared into the distance at the pitch black ahead. “Turn on the
headlights,” he said, keeping his voice even.

Ghazini's eyes danced around the steering
column. “Where are they?”

“On the front of the truck,” Jimmy
quipped.

Eddie threw his weight back on to the young
Canadian. “I thought you couldn't breathe.”

“Yer gonna break my arm again,” Jimmy said
in genuine distress.

Talbot couldn't help a chuckle. “That
ought'ta shut him up for a while.”

“It's a knob on the dash to your left.
There's a button on the floorboard by the clutch for the high
beams.”

Ghazini found the black knob and pulled it,
illuminating at least some of the darkness. The truck was picking
up speed, and Jimmy decided to keep any further comments to
himself. He did, however, make a mental note to remind the others
later that he was the one who saved them by remembering the truck.
Assuming they made it out at all.

The needle on the speedometer continued to
steadily climb. Forty. Forty-five. Fifty. Fifty-five …

“That's it, that's it,” Talbot said.

The man's voice on the intercom had faded
into the distance behind them, but the horn continued to blast as
they accelerated ahead. They were all thankful that the tunnel,
which looked a good deal smaller from inside the large truck, was a
straight shot.

“Just keep your foot on the floor, M,” Eddie
said evenly.

Talbot began counting off sections as they
passed the yellow stripes. After the tenth section, he started to
eye the openings near the ceiling warily. “We're at a thousand
yards.”

“How many to go?” Eddie checked his
watch.