Sean Black - Lockdown

‘Terrific.’

‘What?’

‘Well, if you have the key I’m assuming the other “dozen or so” guards have one as well.’

‘I dunno.’

‘Come on then, Einstein, let’s go take a look.’

The main door was wide open when they got there, reinforced steel rendered useless by a profusion of keys. Amateur didn’t even begin to describe the place. Lock let Hizzard step through first, then followed him inside.

A few boxes of assorted shells lay scattered on the ground, but judging by the empty shelves and gun racks, the place looked to have been pretty much picked clean.

The distorted lid of a large grey metal chest stuck up at forty-five degrees. Hizzard yanked it open and peered inside. ‘Oh shit.’

‘What was in there? Rocket launchers?’ Lock asked.

‘No, that was where Brand kept the plastic explosives.’

Lock and Hizzard inched their way out of the armoury. Bursts of small-arms fire punctuated the silence.

They rounded a corner, Lock wheeling wide in case the escapees were right there, Hizzard providing cover, the Glock extending from his right hand.

‘Clear,’ whispered Lock, a second before one of the detainees shuffled into view.

Lock started to raise his requisitioned M-16. But too late. The detainee already had Lock sighted. Time slowed for Lock. Hizzard spun round, but he was going to be too late.

Then, as the detainee offered a broken-toothed smile and his finger began the millimetre-by-millimetre journey on the trigger, a round smacked into the middle of his forehead. He slumped forward, his round catching dirt rather than Lock, as Ty stepped from cover to their left. ‘One down, eleven to go,’ he said, moving towards the detainee.

Lock stared across at his second-in-command. ‘You were standing there the whole time, weren’t you?’

Ty grinned. ‘Yup.’

‘You’re a big-timing asshole sometimes, Tyrone, you know that?’

‘What can I tell you, man? I learned from the best.’ He turned towards Hizzard, who still had his Glock trained on the dead detainee. ‘How you holding up there, Hizzard?’

Lock answered for him. ‘Bottle of Jack, tube of Anusol, and homeboy’ll be good to go.’

Ty turned the detainee over with his boot. ‘Yup. Very dead.’ He let the man slump back, face down, and gave Hizzard a playful punch on the shoulder. ‘In’t this fun?’

In the distance they could hear distant sirens, and some more small-arms fire from contact near the perimeter. They continued towards their goal, the control room, the entrance to which lay five hundred feet ahead of them.

The final approach to the doorway was over open ground. Lock couldn’t see any escapees, or guards for that matter. Presumably the escapees were at the edge of the complex engaged in contact, while Brand’s guards were hunkered down somewhere trying to figure out just what had gone so badly wrong, so fast.

Lock left Ty and Hizzard to lay down cover and readied himself to make the dash. Like stepping off a high board, he knew not to dwell on it. The secret, like most things in life, was to put one foot in front of the other. In this case, as quickly as possible.

Go . He took off towards the entrance, aware only of his own breathing and his feet jolting against the ground. The M-16 he held in both hands. He waited to hear covering fire from Hizzard and Ty but none came.

He made it to the door, stopped to suck air into his lungs in three big draughts, knelt down and levelled the M-16, sighting to a point in the middle of the nearest building. He signalled for the other two to make their dash.

Watching Ty run over was worse than doing it himself. He kept waiting for the fizz of tracers or crack of a single shot. None came.

Ty and Hizzard bumped fists, Death at their heels making for instant esprit de corps.

Inside, all was quiet. A sporadic trail of blood splashes marked the path to the ops room. Lock and Ty followed it all the way, leaving Hizzard to secure the entrance.

The control room was reinforced glass on three sides. Mareta barely acknowledged them as they approached. Lock could also see Richard. Josh was cradled in his arms, asleep.

He had a clear shot at Mareta. He doubted the first round would penetrate, but a second might, or a third. But she remained unperturbed. Then she got to her feet. Ty lowered his gun. As she turned to face them, Lock saw why. Around her chest was a hastily assembled explosives belt. Strips of C4 with what looked like nails all wrapped in gaffer tape and web-linked at one-inch intervals, a detonator clipped at waist level.

Lock had seen suicide belts before, but this one differed from the common-or-garden variety in one chilling respect. Explosive, especially something like C4, was hard to come by, and was therefore used as sparingly as possible. What did the damage was the packing material buffered around the charges — ball bearings, nails, screws, bolts. What made this device different was the amount of explosive. Easily four or five pounds. Mareta wouldn’t just explode, she’d evaporate into a fine mist. And so, most likely, would everyone else in the room.

Frisk stood fifty yards back from the perimeter of the compound and watched as, on the other side of the wall, dark shapes flitted between the buildings. He looked around at the groups of law enforcement clustered in small huddles. FBI. ATF. SWAT. They were all here, and they all had a different plan as to how to proceed. Although the Joint Terrorism Task Force of which he was a part had been designed to establish clear chain of command, old habits were dying hard.

Frisk glanced up to see a lone figure stepping into a patch of light thrown by floodlights erected by the SWAT team at the main gate. The figure held up his hands in a gesture of surrender. He strained his eyes to get a better look.

The figure was soon close enough for Frisk to identify him. ‘Son of a bitch.’ He should have guessed.

A couple of SWAT officers in bio-suits dashed towards Ty, ballistic shields held up in front of them, handguns wedged around the sides. ‘Get down on the ground!’ one of them shouted.

Ty waved them away. ‘Listen, I wasn’t exposed. But I need to speak to someone, like right now.’

‘Get down on the ground now or you will be shot!’ the SWAT officer warned, gesturing with his gun.

Frisk watched as Ty assumed the position, and cuffs were snapped around his wrist. They shuffled him back to the perimeter. Men and women who’d spent a lifetime facing down the worst the human race had to offer backed away.

Frisk followed as Ty was led to a white Winnebago. Three steps and he was inside. It was kitted out as a mobile lab. Two more people in bio-suits greeted him.

‘I told you, I’m clear.’

‘We need to make sure.’

Ty offered his arm. ‘How long will this take?’

‘Thirty minutes.’

One of the bio-suits took a blood sample. ‘This will tell us if you have one of the ten main viral haemorrhagic diseases.’

‘And what if I do?’

‘You’ll be quarantined and treated.’

‘You can treat this stuff?’

‘Most of it. Apart from the Ebola variant. We don’t have a vaccine for that yet.’

Ten minutes later, Frisk stepped into the trailer, also in a bio-suit.

Ty greeted him with a nod of the head. ‘Pretty fly for a white guy,’ he said, ‘although you might want to think about getting the pants taken up an inch or two.’

‘Might have known you and Lock would be in the middle of this. What the hell’s going on in there?’

‘Short version or long version?’

‘Short.’

Ty told him. With each new piece of information, Frisk grew paler. All he’d known was that a major firefight had broken out at a Level 4 Bio Facility.