Cliff Ryder - Out of Time

“Better?” Liang asked.

“Yes,” he said.

“We have to get moving,” Liang said. “We haven’t got much of a window to get out of here safely.”

“I’m not going,” Alex replied. He continued to check his belt, and smiled as he found two particular compartments he’d packed carefully. One held a final explosive pack, small but very powerful.

The other was his ace in the hole.

“What do you mean you’re not going?” Liang snapped. “Why the hell did I risk my ass to save you if you aren’t going?”

“I’m still alive,” Alex replied, “and I still have a mission to complete.”

“I’ll be damned,” Liang said. “They said you were crazy—they just didn’t say how crazy.”

“You go on,” Alex said, thinking of Soo Lin.

“Your wife will be waiting for you, and by the time they figure out how I escaped, you and your friends can be long gone. I can’t leave this undone.

Too much is at stake.”

“That’s not how it works, and you know it,”

Liang replied. “I was told to bring you out of here.

If I can’t do that until you’re done here, then I’ll stay and help. What do you have in mind?”

Alex was already thinking about that. The odds were that the charges he’d set were long since disarmed but still in the building. If the blast was close enough, it could set them off. If not, an electronic signal from his minitransmitter could rearm them and he could blow them from a distance. Either way, he had one good charge left, and he knew where it needed to be planted.

“What level are we on?” he asked quickly.

“The level just below the main complex,” Liang replied. “Lots of labs, and a big computer room, clean and climate controlled.”

“We need to get to those computers,” Alex said.

“I know a way up if we can pull it off.”

Liang touched his arm in the dark, then poked him with something hard. It was a 9 mm pistol, similar to the one that Dayne’s men had taken from him.

“I think you’re probably going to need that,” he said. “Don’t waste shots—there are no more clips.

When it’s empty, drop it and go. It won’t trace to anything that would do them any good if they manage to get their hands on it.”

Alex took the gun and tucked it into his empty holster, leaving the flap loose.

“Thanks. I have one charge left—they didn’t find it. If we can attach it to the main server banks in that computer room, we should be able to take out their data. After that—if luck is with us—the blast will detonate the other charges. Otherwise, I’ll blow them separately once we’re out of the blast radius. Something tells me they haven’t removed anything, or this belt wouldn’t still be here.

“How will you blow them if they’re already disarmed?”

“Minitransmitter device,” Alex said. “Either way, with a bit of luck, where this building is, there’ll be a hole a city block wide and just as deep.” He took a steadying breath, then said, “And I hope like hell that bastard Dayne is standing in the middle of it when it happens.”

They slipped into the darkness. After they’d passed through the outer room and down a short hall, stepping over the fallen guard, they entered a dimly lit hall. It led to another door, and beyond that Alex saw the first real light he’d seen since the one Dayne shone in his face. Liang glanced both ways, then stepped into the hall. Gritting his teeth against a thousand pains, Alex followed.

Pain or not, MS or not, he would complete his mission and kill anyone who stood in his way.

They encountered no one on the short walk to the computer lab. Liang moved ahead, and Alex covered him, trying to focus through the pain and miss nothing. It was difficult to be stealthy with his legs and arms cramped and the pounding in his temple. His shoulder was swollen and nearly numb, so he had only one good arm. In a pinch he thought he could use the injured limb, and he knew that before things got better, the pinch was in-evitable, but he didn’t push it.

The computer lab door was securely locked, but a small window revealed two technicians working in the room. The door opened outward, so Liang gestured and Alex knelt on the floor next to the door. Liang tapped lightly on the door, ducking down to ensure that the technicians wouldn’t see him through the window.

Alex could hear their voices, but not make out the words. Liang’s simple tap had aroused their curiosity. One of the techs opened the door and popped his head out to look. The empty hallway was the last sight he ever beheld as Alex rose from his crouch and pushed his Glock to the man’s temple, squeez-ing the trigger. The silenced round barely made a sound, but it was enough for the other tech to look up from his work. Alex didn’t hesitate. He spun and put two rounds in the other technician’s chest. The man fell against a bank of computers, looking surprised, then slumped to the ground dead.

Alex continued into the room, with Liang close behind, his hand on the butt of his own gun but not yet drawing it.

“Drag them out of sight,” Alex told Liang, “just in case someone decides to take a look inside.”

Liang went work, while Alex scanned the room quickly. His first visit had given him a very general idea of the layout, but now it was more critical that he understand where things were located. He located two large racks filled with blinking drives.

A cursory glance around the room showed no other drive arrays, so he knew the majority of stored data would be located on the drives before him.

Beside the racks he saw banks of optical drives he assumed were the backup system.

He moved in between the two racks and set to work. It was difficult to be precise with one hand, and it took a bit longer than he’d planned, but he set the charge so he believed it would take out both the data drives and the backups, even if his theory of the missing charges still being nearby proved false. Liang, meanwhile, had dragged the two dead technicians away, hiding their bodies behind a row of computer desks. For a fleeting moment Alex thought of the cold-blooded way he’d killed them.

It was likely they knew at least a little of what was going on, and may have even known that he was being tortured nearby only a few short hours ago.

He felt no sympathy for their deaths—it was an emotion he couldn’t afford.

“Ready?” Liang asked, backing away from the prone bodies and stepping to the door to check the passageway beyond.

“Just about,” Alex replied. He scanned the room quickly. On a desk he found folders and papers next to a high-speed laser printer. He glanced through them and stopped on the third folder down. He dropped the others and opened it.

“What are you doing?” Liang urged. “We have to get the hell out of here.”

Alex ignored him and read. What had caught his eye was a scribbled note in English on the side of a folder. It read “Prototype transfer to U.S.

facility.”

He read as quickly as he could, and as he did the pain melted away to pure, adrenaline-fueled anger.

A prototype of the nanoagent technology had been packaged and delivered to the MRIS offices states-side. To Brin’s boss—Hershel Rand. Was Brin somehow involved in this? Did she know what she had? Had she been in on it from the start? Alex’s heart pounded.

“What is it?” Liang asked, stepping closer.

“Vance, we’ve got to go. ”

Alex slapped the folder shut, folded it, and tucked it into a long pocket in his pants.

“Let’s go,” he said.

Liang checked the hall, then slipped out. Alex followed. When the big man headed for the elevators, Alex called to him.

“No, this way.” He led Liang to the break room and through to the chute in back. As he’d expected, there was an access panel in the wall. When he’d made his descent, he hadn’t seen this one, so there was no way to be certain it existed. It was sealed, and the only way to open it was from the outside.