Nick Carter - The Omega Terror

“I’ll take you in on the project,” Zeno said in a low voice, a voice tinged with desperation. “The Chinese don’t have to have it all. Do you know, do you have any idea, how powerful Omega can make a man?”

“I had a nightmare about it,” I admitted, closing the file. I stuffed the Luger into a pocket, carried the mass of loose papers over to the Bunsen burner, and stuck them into the flame.

“No!” he said loudly.

The papers were burning. I started back toward the files with them, and Zeno made his decision. He lunged at me, and I went down under his weight, smashing against a long table of cultures and test tubes, knocking the whole thing to the floor.

The flaming sheaf of papers flew out of my hand and hit the floor the same time as the crashing glass and liquids. The test tubes must have contained some tiling flammable, because they burst into roaring flame between us and the long wall cabinet where the cultured Omega Mutation was located. The fire reached the big wood cabinet in minutes and it caught fire instantly.

“My God!” Zeno cried out We struggled to our feet separately, neither concerned with the other at the moment. I watched the fire lick at the wall cabinet for a moment and spread to the long tables where the cultures were developing. Zeno had saved me some work.

“Damn you!” Zeno shouted above the crackling flame. “Damn you!”

I ignored him. I moved back to the table where the files still lay, picked them up and hurled them into the growing inferno. Zeno saw what I was doing and made a small move as if to step me, then hesitated. In the next moment, he was running toward an alarm box on the opposite wall.

I pulled Wilhelmina out and aimed at Dr. Z’s head as he reached the alarm. Then I heard the doors slam open behind me.

Whirling away from Zeno, I faced two guards, who had come storming into the room. One had a gun out and was leveling it at me. I crouched to one knee as he fired, and the shot tore past my head and smashed culture containers behind me. The other guard was moving in a circle toward me, in a flanking movement, but I had to ignore him. I returned fire at the first guard and hit him in the chest. He crashed back onto a table and knocked it over. He was dead by the time he hit the floor.

As I turned to the other guard, he came flying at me in a headlong plunge. He knocked me off balance before I could bring the Luger into play, and we hit a table, crashing more glass. The fire was roaring near us. In the back of my head somewhere, I could hear the alarm that Zeno had set off clanging in the corridor outside the door.

The big man slugged me hard across the face, and I hit the floor on my back. Out of the corner of my eye I could see Zeno unsuccessfully slapping at the flames with his lab coat. The guard slugged me again and grabbed at the Luger. I began twisting it toward him as he strained against me. Slowly my hand came around toward his face, and I could see the sweat pop out on his forehead and upper lip as we struggled for control of the muzzle. I had the leverage. Inch by inch I forced the gun toward him until it reached a point just over his left eye. I squeezed the trigger and blew the side of his head off.

I slumped back exhausted, pushing the bloody body off me. I strained to see Zeno through the flames and smoke, and then I saw him running toward the door. I aimed the Luger after him and fired, but I just missed, and he got away.

I struggled to my feet. I tore the ripped lab coat off to give myself more freedom of movement. Somehow I found a way through the flames and got to the door. Zeno was nowhere in sight in the corridor. I turned back briefly to the lab and saw the flames destroying Zeno’s monster bug and his records. Already the fire had spread from the lab into the corridor through a door about five feet away, and I suspected it had eaten through the walls to other rooms. It seemed like the whole facility was going to go up in flames.

I ran choking down the hall. People and fire-fighting equipment moved past me toward the lab, but it was too late for that. There was absolute chaos in the facility, as the corridors filled with smoke and employees ran for exits. The alarm was still clanging, and there was a lot of hysterical shouting in the building as I moved to a rear exit behind two choking people.

I was outside in a rear parking lot. The fire had already burst through the roof in places and was licking high into the air, black smoke curling sky-ward. The area outside the building was quickly filling with choking, gasping people. A few were trying to get fire hoses hooked up. I moved around the side of the building and saw a small van start up and screech wildly toward the main gate. Damon Zeno was driving it. He stopped abruptly at the gate and yelled something to the guards. Then he took off.

I ran to a Land Rover nearby, looked at the dash and found keys there. I hopped in and started the vehicle; the wheels spun and grabbed at the hard dirt of the compound, and the Land Rover lurched forward.

I had gone only a few yards when two guards near the main gate spotted me driving toward them. Zeno had apparently told them I was to be stopped. They both had their guns out, and one of them fired and shattered the windshield near my head. I ducked away from flying glass as an explosion ripped a building close by and flames shot out behind me. One of the guards was hit by flying embers and caught fire, screaming.

I slammed on the brakes, ripped the gears into reverse, spun the vehicle around in a cloud of dust, and roared off around the back of the building to try the gate from the other side. As I rounded the comer of the building, flames shot out and singed the hair on my left arm. I felt raw heat on my face. There was a wall of fire ahead of me, between the main building and a service building at the rear. I didn’t even hit the brakes, since I had little choice. I jammed harder on the accelerator and, crouching low in the open vehicle, roared into the flames.

For a moment it was all bright yellow heat and choking smoke, and it felt like the inside of a blast-furnace. Then I burst through and headed around the other corner toward the main gate again.

A guard jumped out of the way just in time to avoid being run down. Another guard spotted me and stood squarely between the Land Rover and the gate. He aimed and fired, and the slug sang off the metal frame of the windshield, then he dived headlong to the dirt, away from the vehicle. In another moment I drove through the gate of the facility and headed down the road after Damon Zeno.

As I rounded the curve where the patrol had surprised Gabrielle and me earlier, I slowed the vehicle for a minute and looked over my shoulder at the lab. The scene was utter chaos. The fire raged out of control, and black smoke billowed high above it. No one was going to come after me. They were too busy trying to save the building complex.

For the first hour there was no sight of the van Zeno had been driving. There were only the fresh tire tracks he left behind. Zeno was heading southeast from Mhamid, into the desert.

Sometime during the second hour I got a glimpse of the van, raking up a great cloud of dust behind it. After that glimpse, I lost the van again for over a half hour, but I suddenly came upon it sitting in the middle of a broad, parched area of sand and scrub brush, just beside a head-high rock outcropping. One tire was fiat. I stopped the Land Hover, cut the engine, and climbed out. I squinted at the van, wondering where Zeno might be. Drawing Wilhelmina, I moved to the van and looked inside. Zeno was nowhere about. The keys were still in the ignition. I looked at the ground around the van and saw the tracks leading straight ahead, in the direction he’d been driving. Zeno had to be pretty desperate to start walking in this country. I leaned into the van again to remove the keys from the ignition. As I was leaning down, I heard a sound behind me and felt the blow along the back of my head and neck. Pain exploded inside my head and then a black coolness swept over me as I hit the ground.