Trial Run (31 page)

S
hane followed the script to the letter. Holding to a tranquil tone had never been easier. The room was filled with a serenity so strong she could smell it, like walking through a field of desert blossoms, their petals open after the first rainfall in centuries. Shane's senses felt utterly open, wholly awake. The intensity carried an alien edge, as though she was party to something that was intimately not her own. And yet she was welcome. She counted the silent woman on the bed back up and felt certain she had found a new and dear friend.

Then it happened.

As Gabriella took a first long breath, the room's atmosphere shifted. The wildflowers were replaced by a stench of death.

“What was
that
?”

Gabriella reached over and gripped her with frantic talons. “You have to count me back.”

Shane would have bolted from the room except for the grip the
woman kept on her arm. She could not have shifted those claws without a wrench and a Taser. “That
scared
me!”

“
Listen to me
. Charlie is in danger. I have to go back
now
.”

Gabriella lay back down. Resettled the headphones. Took a pair of long breaths. Said, “Restart the controls and read the sheet just like the last time. Do it now.”

The scent of sulfur left Shane fighting nausea. Terror dripped from the walls. But Shane did as she was told. “I'm starting the count.”

Charlie drifted in a no man's land. He felt as though he had been ripped away, not just from the room, but from life. He remained aware, but barely. His perception was flooded by a shattering tide of rage and hurt. He searched for something that would keep him intact. But he knew it was a losing battle.

He sensed that the two attackers were readying another assault. Another bomb was incoming, and Charlie knew he would not survive.

Then Gabriella was there again. Filling him with her love. Reconnecting him with the goodness and strength that was hers to give.

Charlie absorbed her might as he would an elixir. He filled and filled and refashioned her love as his shield.

The attackers moved in. Thanks to Gabriella's presence, Charlie was able to look beyond the psychic pain and realize that the attackers had shaped the charge from a wasted life, with the same deliberate care as a human bomb maker. He watched it sweep toward them and, in that timeless awareness, knew precisely who was behind it all.

Charlie found himself developing battle-honed tactics at this new level. But where his warrior's senses had required years, this new advance took no time at all.

His awareness stretched time. He had experienced this before, when the adrenaline rush amped his senses to an impossible degree. Only now there was no outlaw rush, no flood of terror and rage. Charlie extended a shield of impossible potency. He deflected the incoming attack.

The two wraiths were confused but reacted swiftly, preparing yet another attack.

Charlie moved forward as he had for the other lost ones. He extended himself as he had to protect Gabriella and Shane. And enveloped both the attacker and the one who hovered on the perimeter. At the instant of contact, he had the sense of confronting a sniper and his spotter.

He felt them struggle against his hold. His own returning strength and Gabriella's love were strong enough to keep them in place, at least for a moment. He extended a message crammed with a love-filled wrath.

Come with me.

Charlie held them fast and extended himself to a new destination. He turned them about and revealed what lay just beyond their field of vision. For now.

The maelstrom's fury had never seemed fiercer. The sucking draw of remorse and guilt reached forward and tried to haul them away.

Charlie's grip remained strong enough to hold them there. He extended another message.
This is waiting to swallow you.

He realized the spotter was a female. She fought him with genuine terror. The other was a warrior, trained and battle-hardened, and his own panic was more contained. As though he could search beyond the fear and the vortex, seeking to understand who Charlie was. Charlie recognized both the tactic and the attitude. A sniper's first duty was to determine who was the foe, the threat. Charlie held them in place until he was certain this second attacker had the chance to rethink his destiny.

Then Charlie drew them away and offered a final message, one shouted against the vortex's silent fury.
There is a different way to use your talent.

As soon as Charlie released his grip, the female spotter fled in a wild panic. The warrior lingered a moment, checking him out. Still coming to terms with the shift in his world.

When the second attacker departed, Charlie followed close behind. He saw the room where they ascended. He knew they called it the transit room. He left them there and moved out. Saw the entire Departures Lounge. The empty electronically controlled lobby area. The position within the building. The group that clustered around Elene down in the atrium. He saw it all.

Charlie drew himself away and back to where he lay in the motel room on the airport's other side. He rose from the bed. Went into the bathroom. Washed his face. Stared at his reflection. Told himself to lock and load.

Nothing had changed. He had known from the outset he was going to have to go in there and end this thing. Only now his reason was far stronger.

He was going to stop Reese Clawson once and for all.

R
eese was waiting with Jeff for the duty officer to unlock the building's front door when Kevin hurried up. He wore a raincoat over jeans and a candy-striped pajama top. Kevin said, “I didn't even know this opened.”

The main security station stood where a normal building would have a receptionist. The curved desk was rimmed by blank screens.

Reese said, “This can't be good.”

“It's typical, is what it is.” Jeff did not even bother to glance over. “They could have hired an army for what this system cost. These techies ought to be lined up against the wall.”

They entered the atrium to find her team clustered around a table. Elene sat at the head. Everyone but Joss looked over as the trio entered. Their expressions were grave. Consuela looked terrified. Joss held one of her hands, his gaze locked on some grim and distant horizon.

Elene Belote showed neither surprise nor real interest in their arrival. “Hello, Reese.”

Reese struggled to fashion a response. She needed to be sharp, but her brain simply would not function. Something was seriously wrong with the picture. Five o'clock in the morning, and all of her team were awake and gathered. And focused. Not on Reese. On Elene. Who should not have been here at all.

Kevin asked, “Where's Riffkind?”

Then pandemonium erupted.

Wails filled the atrium. The vast chamber echoed with the sound of very real human anguish. Screams and howls and moans, a chorus of bedlam.

The male nurse came flying through the clinic's entrance, his eyes round, his face bleached white. “You got to get in here!”

Before they could recover, the patients stumbled out. All of them. They shrieked like ghouls, waved their arms, tore at their hair, their clothes, shouted nonsense words. And headed straight for where Reese stood.

Reese and Kevin spotted Trent Major at the same moment. He walked out of Kevin's lab. Trent showed no surprise at the commotion. Just stood looking at Kevin. Who gaped in reply.

Reese shouted for security to grab him. But she could not make herself heard.

C
harlie?”

“Thank you for coming back, Gabriella. I couldn't have made it without you.”

“What just happened?”

Charlie shut the motel room door and walked along the outside passage toward the stairs. “Reese is forming attack teams.”

The news almost broke Gabriella. “She is using my own work to destroy everything I stood for.”

Charlie unlocked the car and slipped behind the wheel and started the motor. “That's not going to happen, Gabriella.”

“What are you going to do?”

The answer was, what he had aimed on doing all along. Only now there was an added urgency to his work.

He burned rubber out of the parking lot. “What I do best.”

Charlie left the car across the street from the compound. Any frontline warrior would say the best time to hit a protected site was the hour just before sunrise. The darkest hour of night had passed, and with it the soldiers' concentration. The world rested. The night beasts were in their burrows, the day creatures not yet up and moving around. The streets held an almost breathless quality.

The compound was typical for a top-secret operation. At first glance, the fence was a decorative affair, with black metal posts forming a pattern around the compound's periphery. Charlie knew the razor edges continued down to chest height, making it impossible to scale or attach any sort of line. The spacing allowed the internal security to observe any approach. The security lighting was intense and illuminated an utterly bare lawn. The only adornment was a blank granite block waiting for some company's name. The ground was laced with unseen sensors. The place was a hidden fortress. The guards would be numerous and armed and highly skilled.

And Charlie was going in alone.

He could feel his strength already sapped by the attack during his ascent. He wanted to crawl under these bushes and sack out.

Two cars were parked to either side of the perimeter gate. The gate opened into a concrete strip that ended at the loading platform. The presence of those cars was both good and bad. Good, because it confirmed that the perimeter gate operated on its own backup power, which could be accessed even when the security system was down. Bad, because it meant the security team had been reinforced. He reminded himself that he was a combat vet and a highly trained security specialist. This was just another assignment. He would tough it out.

Charlie slipped behind the shrubbery at the sound of a lone engine. He raised his head a fraction and saw a delivery truck trundle down the street. The vehicle was just as Elene had described from her ascent. Charlie gripped the black duffel bag. The contents clinked softly as he tensed for the leap.

As soon as Elene had described her escape from the compound, Charlie had known it would come down to this.

Elene's images had been vividly clear. She had seen herself lead a group drawn from Reese Clawson's team out of the building. They emerged together. Unchallenged. And they made their escape in a white grocery truck that was drawn up to the loading platform.

Simple. Except for one thing.

Trent Major had already cut the security system. Elene had described that as well. And as any operative knew all too well, when the system went down, the exterior entries instantly locked. It was an automatic response. Each portal carried its own emergency battery pack. Even an instant's interruption to the energy supply resulted in the place turning into a fortress. The security chief would hold a key. His duty officer would have another. The only access was via a dual unlocking system. It could be done from inside or out. But both keys had to access the same door, and only one door worked. Charlie assumed it was the front portal. Which meant the loading bay was sealed for the duration.

This left him with just one option. Because refusing this challenge was not in the cards. He was going in. And they were coming out. The fact that they came out unchallenged meant he must have stayed to duke it out. And did not escape with them.

Charlie ran at a crouch, using the shrubs to shield his acceleration. The truck slowed and halted before the compound gates. He waited until the driver reached out his window to tab the security panel, then opened the passenger door. The driver was alone.

Charlie held his revolver up where the lone driver could see and asked, “Do you speak English?”

“
Sí
—yes.”

“Good. Now tell me you want to live.”