The Ares Decision (32 page)

S
ARIE VAN KEUREN SAT
in front of Zarin’s terminal listening to the endless drone of the monkeys and watching the clock march inevitably forward. She’d hoped he would come back—that she wouldn’t be left to do this alone. But she respected his desire for solitude.

It was hard to recognize herself in the reflection on the sleeping computer screen. The drawn features, dark-rimmed eyes, and dead expression seemed to belong to someone else. Someone who had wandered too far from home.

She wiped away a tear and touched the keyboard, bringing the monitor back to life. A few clicks of the mouse brought up the emergency lockdown button, and she hovered the cursor over it, thinking of Zarin and the family he was leaving behind. Of the family she would never have.

An insignificant twitch of her finger activated the alarm, overpowering the screams of the monkeys. She held her breath, resisting the urge to run. Better for it to be over quick.

But nothing happened.

Sarie turned in her chair and examined the closed door leading to the hallway. It should have automatically opened and the deadbolt should have extended. Confused, she clicked the button again. The alarm kept droning, but the door stayed closed and the monkeys remained safely in their cages.

The screen flickered and went blank for a moment, finally reverting to the log-in page. She typed in Zarin’s password and was trying to access the facility’s schematic when the door behind her finally opened.

The computer wasn’t responsible, though, and she jumped to her feet as three men with machine guns burst in. Omidi followed a moment later, dragging Yousef Zarin along behind him. The academic’s right leg was broken and it gave way when Omidi let go, leaving him bleeding and confused on the tile floor.

“Do you think I wasn’t watching you?” Omidi screamed. “Do you think I didn’t read the report Zarin wrote about this place?”

“I…,” Sarie stammered. “I thought one of the cage locks was defective. That—”

The Iranian rushed her, slamming an open hand into the side of her face hard enough to knock her to the ground. “We have people monitoring the computers! We saw him rewriting the security subroutines. Now tell me what
you’ve
done!”

Sarie shook her head violently, trying to clear it. Zarin hadn’t talked. He’d managed to hold out despite the torture he’d endured.

“I…I infected the rest of the lab animals,” she said, sticking to the obvious. “We—”

“I know that,” Omidi said, aiming his pistol at Zarin. “You’ve been working day and night with the parasite. Tell me what you’ve done to it!”

“Nothing!”

Omidi pressed the barrel of his gun into the back of the injured scientist’s head. “Tell me or he dies!”

“That’s what I did—nothing!” Sarie said, being careful not to give away anything his believers couldn’t easily figure out on their own. “I haven’t really sped up the time to full symptoms; I’ve just been infecting the animals with larger and larger loads.”

“The great Sarie van Keuren could think of nothing better than that?” he said, curling a finger around the pistol’s trigger. “Give me the truth! Now!”

It was over. One last diversion that might save a tiny handful of lives was all that she had left. “Okay! Don’t hurt him. I was selecting for parasites that attack the corneas to add blindness to the symptomatology.”

She jerked at the sound of the gun, raising a hand to shield her eyes from the blood and brain matter splashing across her.

“You will show our scientist
exactly
how you have sabotaged the parasite and how to repair the damage,” Omidi said, redirecting his aim to her.

Sarie stared down at the scientist’s body, no longer feeling fear. No longer feeling anything. Finally, she just raised her hand and extended her middle finger.

T
HE TRUCK FISHTAILED IN
a bog of deep sand, causing the canvas at the back to flutter open. Through it, Peter Howell could see a similar vehicle close behind, straining to keep up. It’d be a miracle if it made it. Or, perhaps more accurately, it would be a miracle if any of them made it.

He pulled the canvas closed again and scanned the faces of the men crammed in among the sandbags used to make the truck heavier. The stoicism and laser-like focus he’d found so comforting in the SAS were completely absent. Every expression told a different story: hatred—for him, for the British in general, for the Iranian government. Fear. Self-doubt.

A rousing pep talk was probably in order, but since only a few of the men spoke English, it probably wouldn’t have much impact. Instead, he peered out a small hole cut in the canopy, squinting into the sun at the approaching guard towers. There was one on either side of the entry gate, each armed with a well-placed machine gun and manned by soldiers he suspected were far more seasoned than any of his boys—many of whom were now enjoying what would be the last few minutes of their short lives.

Their driver, a rock-solid former special ops man named Hakim, began to brake. They’d done no fewer than fifty live-fire simulations, and Howell was pleased to see the young men around him begin to check their rifles as they’d been taught.

When the truck bumped up onto the concrete bridge, he returned to the peephole. One of the two soldiers in the guardhouse cautiously approached the driver’s door while the other made his way to the back. Howell had no idea what Hakim was saying, but the bored irritation in his voice sounded spot-on over the grinding gears of the truck rolling up behind.

Howell pulled out a silenced .22 pistol, frowning down at it as he listened to the approaching footsteps of the guard. A knife would have been more appropriate for the situation, but Smith, who was in the other truck with Farrokh, had been concerned that it could end up being messy enough to spook their green troops.

The canvas rustled as the guard untied it, and Howell carefully raised the pistol. No need to rush—it would take a moment for the man’s eyes to adjust, and if Hakim was as convincing as he sounded, there would be no reason for anyone to expect trouble.

Howell waited until the flap was fully thrown back, reaching out casually with one hand while using the other to put a round neatly through the man’s eye.

The low-caliber and elaborate silencer combined to produce almost no sound at all, and Howell guided the limp body over the gate. After an inexcusable second-and-a-half pause, two of his men pulled the corpse inside.

The driver of the second vehicle gave a subtle nod through the windshield to indicate that no one yet realized what was happening. The trade-off to putting the machine-gun towers in an ideal position to create a cross fire on the bridge was that their line of sight was blocked by the trucks’ canopies.

Howell wiped a streak of blood from the gate and helped one of his men to the ground. They’d taken photos of the soldiers in the guard shack and had reasonably convincing doubles for both of them, right down to uniforms hand-sewn by the women in Farrokh’s training camp.

The young man did himself proud, walking casually to the window of the driver behind them as Howell climbed out and unloaded a few more of his people. Smith would be doing the same, getting his team into position by the rear wheels.

Howell gave the frightened men next to him the thumbs-up, then calmly stepped out into the open and began firing on the west machine-gun placement. The surviving guard clawed for his sidearm, but Hakim dropped him with a pistol shot before slamming the accelerator to the floor and leaving Howell and his men completely exposed.

As expected, the first volley from the tower guns went wide as the soldiers manning them tried to make the adjustment from boredom to combat. It was obviously not the first time they’d been under fire, though, and it didn’t take them long to realize what Howell already knew: the design and construction of the towers made them completely impervious to the small arms that Farrokh’s fledgling army had access to.

In his peripheral vision he saw Smith and his team concentrating their fire on the other tower and Hakim ramming the gate. The truck managed to get through but then went up on two wheels and teetered for a few moments before tipping on its side. The Iranian tried to crawl through the window but made it only halfway before a sniper from a tower along the facility’s western perimeter blew most of his neck away.

The young man a few feet to Howell’s right was caught in the side by a round from the machine gun, and the Brit dove toward the truck still stopped on the bridge, a loud grinding coming from the transmission as the driver tried to force it into gear.

The gunners in the towers were gaining confidence, and with it came accuracy. Another man went down, and Howell saw Smith running, barely staying ahead of a steady stream of bullets knocking loose chunks of concrete behind his heels.

Inside the shattered gate, men were pouring out of the back of the capsized truck, ducking behind it to stay out of the sniper’s sights but leaving them defenseless if the tower gunners should decide to turn on them.

The sound of the truck behind him going into gear rose above the drone of the machine guns, and he rolled out of the way as it started forward, taking heavy fire.

“Blow the bridge, you bloody idiots!” Howell said to himself as he fell in behind the vehicle.

As if they’d heard him, a sudden, searing blast knocked him to the still-intact concrete.

Dazed, he did his best to focus on the east tower, watching it sway for a moment before tipping toward the one on the other side of the bridge.

“Hakim, you beautiful bastard,” Howell said when the structures collided and the machine guns went silent.

During their reconnaissance, they’d moved the charges meant to take out the bridge to the base of the tower. Hakim had spent most of his career attached to an elite demolition unit and personally guaranteed that the tower would fall exactly like it had. Of course, Howell hadn’t believed it. How often did things actually go to plan once the shooting started?

The second truck was inside the perimeter now, picking up speed as it closed on an enormous steel door set into a rock outcropping. Howell ran to the east edge of the bridge and fell into a prone position above Smith, who was dug in at the lip of the protective moat.

The vehicle was up to at least forty when it hit, the impact setting off charges hidden beneath the floorboards. It was impossible to tell if the door had been breached, but Howell silently saluted the dead driver’s courage as he flipped the lens cover off his scope.

“What am I looking for?” he shouted.

“Towers at nine o’clock and three o’clock are active,” Smith yelled back. “There are men coming in from the north trying to get an angle on our guys in the overturned truck.”

Howell peered through the scope, finally catching a glimpse of movement along the west fence line. He squeezed off a round and winged the first of six men running for the cover of a boulder about 150 yards away.

“Oh, and Peter?” he heard Smith say as he searched for another viable target. “It’s good to see you still breathing.”

S
ARIE VAN KEUREN STRUCK
uselessly at the man dragging her down the corridor, losing her footing and nearly falling as the deafening alarm finally went silent.

She had no idea what was going on, but there was no way to miss the change in her captors’ demeanor when the sound of a muffled explosion had drifted down to them a few minutes before. Omidi’s casual superiority and smug smile immediately disintegrated, and he’d run ahead, barking orders at the frightened people occupying the offices and labs lining the hallway.

She swung another pointless fist into the side of the man holding her as they passed through a set of blast doors she’d never seen open. Inside, the scientists who had slowly been going missing—Omidi’s believers—were scurrying around with arms full of files, samples, and computer drives.

The guard released her, jabbing a finger in her direction and saying something that clearly meant that she wasn’t to move.

He ran off to help the others pile everything that wasn’t bolted down into a chute that led to the incinerator, while she turned her attention to the glass wall to her left. There were three infected men imprisoned behind it, pounding their broken and bleeding hands against the barrier as the chaos in the lab continued to intensify. They didn’t display any animosity toward each other—or even seem aware of the others’ presence. Were they not infected with her latest version of the parasite? Were her modifications not effective in humans? Perhaps the alterations weren’t yet powerful enough. It was possible that they still had a strong preference for uninfected victims and wouldn’t turn on each other unless they were isolated from that temptation.

Mehrak Omidi was desperately punching commands into a computer terminal as he looked at two monitors near the ceiling. She took a few hesitant steps toward them, squinting at the tiny images of the exterior of the facility.

Sarie felt a wave of elation at the sight of men with guns engaging the guards but then felt some of it fade when she saw that it wasn’t the Americans. They appeared to be Iranians, and even she could pick out their lack of cohesiveness. Some didn’t even seem to be looking in the direction they were shooting.

Omidi was on the move again, running to a refrigerated safe and entering a lengthy code into the keypad on the front. It opened with a puff of frosty air, and he retrieved a rack of glass vials, carefully transferring them to a foam-lined briefcase.

Less and less attention was being paid to her, and she edged over to a desk a few meters away. She felt around behind her for the scissors lying on it and was in the process of slipping them down the back of her pants when Omidi closed the briefcase and ran at her with three guards in tow.

He grabbed her arm and pulled her toward the hall, pausing in the doorway to shout a few last orders at the two remaining security men in the room. They slid the guns from their shoulders and she watched in horror as they opened up on the scientists still working to destroy the evidence of their work.

It was over in a few brief seconds. Smoke hung in the room and the stench of gunpowder filled her nostrils as she looked down at the dead researchers, at the men who had murdered them, and at the three parasite victims still trying to get through the glass.

When Omidi began pulling again, she no longer had any strength to resist.

They came to the end of the corridor amid the echo of continuing gunfire behind them. One of Omidi’s men punched a code into a pad mounted to the wall, and a steel door slid open to reveal an enormous cave hung with lights and reinforced with concrete pillars. She was shoved into the cab of a military truck, followed by Omidi, who was cradling his briefcase as though it contained the cure for cancer.

He noticed her staring at it and smiled humorlessly. “My people have kept the parasite alive outside the body for almost forty-eight hours. Plenty of time to get it to Mexico and smuggle it over the U.S. border.”

One of the guards slipped into the driver’s seat carrying a laptop that she recognized as belonging to Yousef Zarin. Omidi started the computer as another of his men jumped into the back of the vehicle to take control of a machine gun mounted to the bed.

“Ironic, isn’t it?” Omidi said. “That the program you created to destroy us will be the thing that saves us?”

The engine started and a moment later they were reversing out of the parking space. There was no more time. She had to do something.

The scissors were still in her waistband and she grabbed them, swinging the blade into the driver’s ribs with one hand while using the other to take hold of the wheel. He shouted in surprise and pain, but the scissors penetrated only a few millimeters and left him with the strength to slam on the brakes.

They were thrown forward, and she instinctively reached for the handle of Omidi’s door. It flew open and she pushed off, sending them both through it. They hit the ground hard, but she’d been ready for it and managed to tuck into a roll, while Omidi landed square on his back.

The impact knocked the briefcase from his grip and sent it skittering across the dirt. She made a grab for it, catching the handle and letting her momentum carry her back to her feet.

There was no point in looking back, and instead she sprinted toward the door they’d come through. Shouts rose behind her, followed by the static of the gun mounted on the bed of the truck, but the rounds went wide.

It didn’t take as long as she had hoped for the guard to swing the gun into position, and she was forced to dive behind a support pillar as he zeroed in. The powerful rounds hammered it for a few moments, tearing away enough concrete to expose the rebar inside. Then suddenly everything went quiet.

“Dr. van Keuren,” Omidi called, breaking the silence. “Listen to me. There’s nowhere for you to go. Come out and I will guarantee your safety. Do you hear me?”

She poked her head from behind the column and then pulled it immediately back. The man she’d stabbed was working his way right with a pistol in his hand and a bloodstain spreading across his shirt. Omidi was on the ground typing on the laptop, which apparently hadn’t been smashed into the million pieces she’d counted on.

His offer of safety was complete bull—he’d called off his gunner only because he was afraid of damaging the briefcase. Given the chance, Omidi would either kill her and unleash the parasite on America or take her prisoner again and set her back to weaponizing it. Neither was a particularly attractive scenario.

She heard a creak behind her and saw the door leading back into the facility begin to close. He was running Zarin’s program—trying to seal in the force attacking them and set the infected animals loose.

With no other choice, she ran for the closing door, gripping the briefcase tightly to her chest as she broke into the open. She ignored the sound of gunshots behind her, focusing entirely on getting to the door before the gap became too small to pass through.

A searing pain flared in her leg and she went down, sliding uncontrollably forward as the briefcase flew from her hand. She came to a stop halfway across the threshold and made a move back toward the case but was forced to stop when a bullet exploded against the rock wall next to her.

The door hit her in the shoulder and she shoved uselessly back against the powerful motor closing it. The man she’d stabbed was running hard in her direction, and the barrel of the mounted machine gun was aimed directly at her. There was nothing she could do. They were going to get the briefcase. But hell if they were going to get her.

She dragged herself the rest of the way through the door, barely managing to clear her feet before it sealed, and then just lay there trying to get control of her breathing.

The wound in her leg was only a graze, and she tore off one of her sleeves to use as a bandage. There was no way to know who was attacking the facility, but whoever they were, they were her best—only—hope.

Sarie pushed herself to her knees and was trying to get to her feet when she froze, straining to decipher a faint buzz just beginning to rise above the ringing in her ears.

It was the monkeys. They were free.