David Morrell - Burnt Sienna

Bellasar’s fury reached a peak. “I’m bringing her out.”

He broke the connection and swung toward Sienna. “Get up!” He dragged her to her feet and shoved her from the room. But instead of heading toward the outside door, he forced her downstairs toward the basement.

And the basement below that one.

Watching the tear gas disperse, seeing guards regroup, Malone fired a burst from the machine guns. Trees and shrubs blew apart. Bodies flew.

“It’s been three minutes! Where is he?”

Strafing the grounds, Malone sped to the landing pad, hovered, turned in a circle, and leveled everything around him. The moment he set down the chopper, Jeb, Dillon, and the others charged out, firing. Although the chopper’s rotors dispersed the tear gas, the men still wore gas masks, hoping to intimidate their opponents by continuing to pretend that the powder they’d dropped was anthrax.

As Malone hooked tear-gas grenades to his belt, Potter yelled, “What about us? Unlock these handcuffs!”

Malone didn’t bother answering, just grabbed an assault rifle, jumped down, and raced toward the Cloister.

Behind him, he heard gunfire, Jeb and his men giving the guards another reason to run from the estate. As a bullet zinged past, Malone ducked to a shattered tree and fired at a guard who showed himself a second too long. Malone’s volley hit him in the chest, knocking him into the swimming pool.

He scanned the wreckage, searching for other targets. Statues had been decapitated. Ruptured fountains gushed water. There! He fired at a guard who rose to aim from behind the rubble of a column. As the man fell, Malone spun, saw no other targets, and raced nearer to the Cloister, only to dive behind another shattered tree as the main door swung open.

“Malone!” Bellasar shouted from inside.

“Where is she?”

“Have you still got your cell phone?” Staying hidden, Bellasar shouted numbers.

What’s he doing? Stomach cramping with apprehension, Malone sank lower behind the shattered tree. He took the phone from his windbreaker and pressed the numbers he’d been given.

“Chase?” Sienna answered immediately, frightened.

“Are you okay? Where are you?”

“In the Cloister’s basement. Locked in a room.”

“ What room?”

“I don’t know! He blindfolded me once he brought me down here!”

Malone tried to keep his voice calm. “Don’t be afraid. I’m coming to get you.”

He pressed the disconnect button and shouted toward the Cloister’s open door, “Bellasar!”

No response.

“Bellasar!”

Silence, except for gunshots in the distance.

Malone pulled a tear-gas grenade from his belt, freed its pin, and hurled it through the open door.

Vapor filled the opening.

He darted toward the side of the Cloister, used the butt of his rifle to smash a basement window, and threw a tear-gas grenade into the opening.

As vapor filled the room below, he raised his gas mask from where it dangled around his neck. He put it on, knocked the remaining shards from the window, and climbed through. At the bottom, he aimed around the haze-filled room, seeing no targets, hearing no coughing. He rushed to the side of an open doorway, tossed his final grenade into a corridor, and followed it, stalking invisibly through the dense gas. He still didn’t hear any coughing. Bellasar couldn’t have anticipated a tear-gas attack. He wasn’t likely to have had a gas mask in easy reach. Was Bellasar using Sienna as a decoy while he ducked out the back of the building?

Bellasar doesn’t matter! I have to find Sienna!

He moved along the corridor, checking each room.

Empty.

He reached stairs that rose toward the gas-filled entrance.

Other stairs led down. Malone followed them.

The temperature cooled. The rocks that formed the walls became larger, the construction cruder, older, as if from a thousand years ago.

He came to the brightly lit bottom, where a shiny metal door blocked his way. Silently praying that it wasn’t locked, he pulled, exhaled when it budged, and stepped carefully to the side as it swung open.

Was Bellasar hiding on the other side, waiting to shoot him?

Malone took off his gas mask, held it at head level, and inched it around the doorjamb as if peering beyond the door. No bullet struck the mask from his hand. He readied himself, lunged through the doorway, and dropped to a crouch, aiming.

No target presented itself.

Instead, he saw the bright corridor of a laboratory. Along each side, windows showed research rooms. He hurried along, not seeing anyone.

“Sienna!”

She didn’t shout back.

“Sienna!”

He came to another steel door. It, too, was unlocked, but this time when he lunged through, aiming, he found the two Russian bioweapons experts, their faces ashen.

As he straightened, they stared from him toward a window, beyond which was another window.

“Sienna!”

She didn’t react. Past the first window, a corridor, and a second window, she sat at a table, looking dismally at her hands. Her face was battered.

“Sienna!”

“She can’t hear you,” said the stoop-shouldered Russian whom Malone had seen arrive by helicopter so long ago. His English was thickly accented, his tone heavy with discouragement. “She can’t see you, either. The glass on her window works only one way.”

Malone rushed toward a door, tugged, but couldn’t budge it. He pulled with all his strength.

“It won’t do any good,” the Russian said. “Even if you had a key. Not for six hours.”

“Six hours?”

Malone pounded the butt of his rifle against the glass. The window trembled. He pounded harder, but the glass wouldn’t yield.

“You’re wasting your time,” the Russian said. “You can’t get through that glass with a sledgehammer or a bullet. To be doubly sure, she’s in a chamber within a chamber. Anything to prevent a leak.”

“Leak?” Malone felt dizzy.

“I never believed he’d do it.” The Russian looked dazed. “Bellasar said he was going to make an example to the man he was negotiating with, but I never dreamed…”

“An example? Jesus, what did he -”

A phone rang in an office behind him.

Malone stared at it. As it rang again, he suddenly knew whose voice he would hear. Rushing in, he answered it. “ You bastard, how do I get her out of there ?”

“You can’t,” Bellasar said. “Not for six hours.”

“Six hours?” Again that time limit. Malone vaguely remembered having been told about its significance. When? Who had told him? “What’s so damned important about -” His skin turned cold when his memory cleared. Laster. At the Virginia safe house.

“What makes the weapon so unique is that Gribanov and Bulganin genetically engineered the smallpox virus so it can’t infect anyone unless it combines with another virus, a benign but rare one,” Laster had said. “You release the benign virus first. As soon as the target population is infected, the lethal virus is then released.” The benign virus had a six-hour life span, Laster had continued. After that, even if you had smallpox, you couldn’t spread it to anyone who hadn’t come in contact with the benign virus within the previous six hours. The time limit was a way of controlling the weapon and keeping it from spreading beyond the target area.

“I promised I’d give her to you,” Bellasar said, “but I didn’t guarantee in what condition.”

“You released both viruses at once?” Malone’s legs felt weak.

“Tell anyone anything you want about me. It won’t make a difference. When my enemies understand what I’m capable of, they’ll be twice as afraid of me.”