Douglas Preston - Mount Dragon

“If we leave X-FLU in the hands of these nuts, we won’t survive even if we do escape. You saw what happened to Vanderwagon, what was happening to Harper. All it takes is one person to walk out with a vial of X-FLU, and you can kiss your ass good-bye.”

“We sure as hell can’t take them with us.”

“No, but listen. I know how we can destroy X-FLU and escape at the same time.”

Carson saw dark figures running across the compound, guards holding ugly-looking assault weapons. He pulled de Vaca farther into the shadows.

“We have to enter the Fever Tank to do it,” de Vaca continued.

“The hell with that. We’ll be trapped like rats.”

“Listen, Carson, that’s the last place they’ll be looking for us.”

Carson thought for a moment. “You’re probably right,” he said. “Even a madman wouldn’t go back in there right now.”

“Trust me.” De Vaca grabbed his hand and pulled him around the far side of the incinerator.

“Wait, Susana—”

“Move your ass, cabrón .”

Carson followed her across a dark courtyard to the inner perimeter. They dropped into the shadows of the operations building, breathing heavily.

Suddenly a shot rang out, cracking across the desert night. Several others followed in rapid succession.

“They’re shooting at shadows,” Carson said.

“Or perhaps each other,” came the reply. “Who knows how far gone some of them are?”

A klieg light was making a slow arc toward them, and they ducked into the darkened operations building. After a hurried reconnoiter, they ran down the deserted hall and into the elevator that led to the BSL-5 entrance.

“I think you’d better tell me your plan,” said Carson as they descended.

She. looked at him, violet eyes wild. “Listen carefully. Remember old Pavel, who fixed my CD player? I’ve been meeting him in the canteen for backgammon. He likes to talk, probably more than he should. He told me that, back when the military funded this site, they insisted on the installation of a fail-safe device. Something to safeguard against a catastrophic release of a hot agent within the Fever Tank. It was taken off-line after Mount Dragon went private, but the mechanisms were never actually dismantled. Pavel even explained how easily it could be reactivated.”

“Susana, how could—”

“Shut up and listen. We’re gonna blow this whole chingadera up. The fail-safe device was called a stage-zero alert. It reversed the laminar airflow of the air incinerator, flooding the Fever Tank with thousand-degree air, sterilizing everything. Only a few of the old-timers, like Singer and Nye, know about it.” She smirked in the dim light of the elevator. “When that superheated air hits all the combustibles in there, it should make a nice explosion.”

“Yeah, right. And fry us, too.”

“No. It’ll take several minutes for the airflow to reverse. All we have to do is set the alert, get out, and wait for the explosion. Then we can snag a Hummer in the uproar.”

The elevator door whispered open on a shadowy corridor. They moved quickly to the gray metal door leading into the Fever Tank. Carson spoke his name into the voice-recognition box and the door clicked open.

“You know, they could be watching us right now,” he said as he struggled into his bluesuit.

“They could,” de Vaca said. “But considering all the hell that’s breaking loose up there, I think they have more important cameras to monitor.”

They checked each other’s suits for safety, then stepped into decontam. As Carson stood in the sheets of poisonous liquid, staring at the dim alien figure of de Vaca standing beside him, a sense of unreality began to creep over him. There are people looking for us. Shooting at us. And we’re walking into the Fever Tank . He felt the creeping claustrophobic fear settling around his chest once again, squeezing him like a vise. They’ll find us . We’ll be trapped like rats , and ... He sucked at his air hose, filling his lungs with panicked gasps.

“You all right, Carson?” The calm voice of de Vaca over the private intercom channel shamed him into rationality. He nodded, stepping into the antechamber that housed the drying mechanism.

Two minutes later, they entered the Fever Tank. The global alarm droned quietly in the empty corridors, and the distant drumming of the chimps sounded like a muffled riot. Carson looked up at the white walls, searching for a clock: almost twelve-thirty. The corridor lights were on low, and would stay that way until the decontamination crew entered at 2 A.M. Only this time—with a little luck—there wouldn’t be anything left to decontaminate.

“We have to access the security substation,” came de Vaca’s voice. “You know where it is, right?”

“Yeah.” Carson knew only too well. The Level-5 security substation was located on the lowest level of the Fever Tank. Directly below the quarantine area.

They moved quickly through the corridors to the central core. Carson let de Vaca descend first, then grabbed the handrails and went down the tube himself. Above his head he could see the huge uptake manifold that, in a few minutes, might be spewing superheated air throughout the facility.

The substation was a cramped circular room with several swivel chairs and a low ceiling. Five-inch terminal screens marched in orderly rows around the curve of the walls, showing a hundred views of the empty Fever Tank. Beneath them, a command console jutted into the room.

De Vaca took a seat in front of the console and began typing, slowly at first, then more rapidly.

“Now what the hell do we do?” Carson asked, thrusting a fresh air hose into the valve of his suit.

“Hold your water, cabrón ,” de Vaca said, lifting one gloved hand to press her communications button. “It’s just like Pavel said it would be. All the safeguards here are to prevent a breach from occurring. They never thought to install safeguards against someone deliberately triggering a false alarm. Why should they? I’m going to bring the stage-zero crisis parameters back on-line, and then initiate the alert!”

“And then we’ll have how long to get out?”

“Plenty of time, believe me.”

“How long is that, exactly?”

“Stop bothering me, Carson. Can’t you see I’m busy? Just a few more commands, and we’re in business.”

Carson watched her type. Then he spoke again, more quietly. “Susana, let’s think about this a moment. Is this really what we want to do? Destroy the entire Level-5 facility? The chimps? Everything we’ve worked for?”

De Vaca stopped typing and turned to face him. “What other choice do we have? The chimps are goners anyway, they’re all exposed to X-FLU. We’ll be doing them a favor.”

“I know that. But a lot of good has come out of this facility. It would take years to reproduce the work that’s been done in here. We know what’s wrong with X-FLU now, we can correct the process.”

“If we get our asses shot off, who’s going to fix X-FLU?” came de Vaca’s angry voice in his headset. “And if some nut gets his hands on the stuff, who’s going to care about the damage we do to GeneDyne’s bottom line? I’m going to—”

“Carson,” came the severe tone of Nye. “De Vaca. Listen to me carefully. Effective immediately, your employment at GeneDyne is terminated. You are now trespassers on GeneDyne property, and your presence in the Level-5 facility must be assumed a hostile act. If you decide to surrender, I can guarantee your safety. If not, you will be hunted down and dealt with. There is no possibility of escape.”

“So much for the video cameras,” de Vaca muttered.