John Krygelski - The Aegis Solution

Kreitzmann was still sprawled on the floor in a stupor when they entered, with Tillie arriving last.

“Who is that?” Leah asked.

“You aren’t going to believe this,” Elias explained as he took position next to the door jamb. “Rudy Kreitzmann.”

“Kreitzmann! Man, after we get out of this, you’ve really got to fill me in.”

Tillie left her spot by the doorway and walked over to Leah, sticking out her hand. “I’m Tillie.”

Leah gave her a broad smile and shook her hand. “Leah. Pleasure to meet you. I understand you’re the one who popped Eric for me.”

Tillie shook her head. “Wow! You and your husband are going to give me a complex about that. Look, I’m sorry I didn’t figure out a way to save him for both of you.”

Leah glanced over at Elias. “Sensitive type?”

“No, not at all. Leah, the gentleman to your left is John Wilson Chapman.”

She turned and looked at Wilson with surprise on her face. “Chapman. You’re the….”

He held up his hands. “I’m just a friend of Tillie’s.”

Exasperated, Leah turned back to her husband. “Yep. We’re going to have a lot to talk about.”

Elias nodded. “Maybe later. Right now, we need to get ready for those guys. Tillie, break out more of the fume masks, goggles, and earplugs.”

Tillie gave him a mock salute and hurried to the storage shelves. Elias, keeping his head close to the frame, peeked out and saw that two of the agents were beginning to round the corner, moving toward them. Flipping his rifle back to full automatic, he loosed a quick spray toward the agents, brushing them back.

“What’s the plan?” Leah asked, checking the AK-47.

“Plan? I don’t have a plan. You’re the field agent. I’m just the desk guy.”

Making a rude sound to show her disgust, she pressed him, “Okay, Mr. Desk Guy, can you at least fill me in on our situation?”

Elias, keeping his head tilted slightly outside the door to watch the hallway, answered, “Happy to. We are currently inside Aegis, which is basically a huge prison. We are trapped in a utility room. This door is the only way out of it. There are at least three trained agents plus Faulk blocking the end of the corridor. That open door out there and to the left, the one packed with several tons of twisted steel and shattered solar panels, was the only exit from Aegis. They probably have tear gas and concussion grenades. We have welder’s goggles, painter’s respirators, and foam earplugs. Tillie has a shotgun. You have an AK-47. I have my Beretta and this.”

Leah shrugged. “Not as bad as I thought. You forgot to mention that Faulk has a second team on-site and they are on their way.”

Tillie returned and handed Leah the protective gear, which she quickly donned, as did the rest of them, with Wilson putting the items on the semi-conscious Kreitzmann.

“What about the bombs?” Tillie inquired hopefully.

“Bombs?” Leah’s voice was almost flat.

Elias glanced at his wife, fighting back his amusement at how she was receiving what must seem like an endless stream of outrageous facts, and explained, “The two that Faulk is looking for. After he sent me in here, he stocked me with Incendergel devices, enough to take out all of Aegis.”

“Why?”

“Not now. But I did bring a couple of them with me, including the primary. I really don’t see how we can use them in this situation.”

Immediately, Tillie snapped, “Why not?”

“Well, they have timers on them, not fuses. The timers don’t even have the option for seconds, just minutes with a minimum duration programmed to give the person setting the charge enough time to get away. Besides, with the size of the charge, even if I could roll one down the hall at them, like a bowling ball, and it detonated at the exact moment it reached them, we’d have another problem. The fireball would probably take out this end of the hall at the same time, and us with it, or it would consume all of the available oxygen and we would suffocate.”

“All right, so that won’t work.”

Faulk had positioned himself several feet back from the corner and was planning the next move with his team, when his cell phone rang. He pulled it out and looked at the display, seeing that the call was from Sheldon Kennerley at the lab.

Punching the button, he barked into the phone, “What is it?”

“Director Faulk, we’ve had a breach at the lab.”

Faulk hesitated for a moment before deciding that a breach at this point was not a serious issue. “How bad?”

“We’re not sure yet. We’re putting together a team to go in. They’re suiting up now, sir.”

Feeling the muscles in his neck suddenly tighten, Faulk asked, “Why do they need suits?”

Kennerley’s nervousness was apparent in his voice. “Well, sir, one of the lab techs is dead.”

“Dead? How is that possible? Was it a heart attack? A coincidence?”

There was a long pause on the connection before Kennerley explained, “That’s why we’re sending in the team, to make sure. But from the video feed, it looks as though she died from massive hemorrhaging.”

He could not believe what he was hearing; there must have been another explanation. “But she was vaccinated. All of you were.”

“I know, sir. It could be some anomaly. She might have received a defective vaccine. Perhaps it doesn’t work on a small percentage of the population. We simply don’t know until we can check her out.”

“That doesn’t make any sense! The vaccine worked on one hundred percent of the test groups.” Taking a minute to digest the information and forcing himself to calm down, Faulk continued, “You said she was in the lab, right?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And the air lock hasn’t been opened yet?”

“That’s correct, sir.” Kennerley, hearing the direction of Faulk’s questions, began to gain a little confidence.

“So even if there is a problem with the vaccine, the bug is contained, right?”

“Yes, sir. We haven’t broken the seal yet.”

“Then don’t.”

“But we need to examine her. We need to identify why she was vulnerable.”

“Not yet, you don’t. First I want you to retest the vaccine in the exposure chamber. You still have some subjects, correct?”

“Yes, sir.”

“If there is a problem with it, I don’t want that lab opened. Do you understand?”

“Yes, sir. I do.”

“Handle it.”

Faulk ended the connection as the second team arrived. He noticed that Boehn had been listening and wore a concerned expression. Looking at the men around him, Faulk declared, “We need to end this — now.”

“What form do you think their attack will take?” asked Wilson, who was standing right behind Leah and Elias near the doorway.

“They’ve got us trapped,” Leah answered. “We’re boxed in with no way out. We’re outnumbered. They can’t just come around their corners in a frontal assault without taking some losses, and we can’t move on them without being cut to pieces. I guess it depends on how badly Faulk still wants me alive. But I would guess they are going to go the tear-gas route.”

“They tried that before,” Tillie chimed in. “Between our painter’s masks and lobbing the canisters back out the door, it wasn’t all that effective.”

Leah shrugged. “Wish I knew what they had at their disposal.”

A sudden blast of automatic fire came from the end of the hall, peppering the door jamb with bullets. Elias dropped to the floor, in a prone position directly inside the frame. He did not dare extend himself farther out for fear of making his head a target. The string of shots had come from the corner along the same wall as their doorway, which was now a blind spot for Elias.