Дэвид Балдаччи - Hell's Corner

Next, his gaze went to the cage that normally hung from the ceiling but now was on the floor. The cage had fallen due entirely to Stone’s marksmanship when he’d last been here and an enemy who had been trying to kill him had died when the two-ton cage had fallen on him.

But Stone had another recollection of that cage. When he’d been training here all those years ago he and three men had been placed in the cage together. A flame had been ignited under the cage and every ten seconds was increased so that it grew nearer and nearer the metal. The goal was for the men to get out before the heat became unbearable. Added to the problem was that Stone and his colleagues had seen the other team that had come before them. They had failed the test. And two men had suffered crippling burns.

While the other men in his group had started to panic as the metal grew too hot to touch, Stone had focused all his energies. Why four men in the cage at the same time? Why not three or five, or six? Four men. Four sides to the cage.

He’d barked out his orders. Each man was to take off his shirt, wrap it around his hands and simultaneously apply pressure against his side of the cage. They did so. The cage door had sprung open. His leadership actions had earned Stone the praise of his instructors. At the same time he had wanted to kill them.

But this recollection stayed with Stone for only a moment. He could hardly believe what he was seeing.

“Annabelle?”

She was inside the cage, gagged and tied up.

He moved forward, checking the room again for threats but seeing none.

The cage door wasn’t locked. Stone swung it open. Annabelle’s eyes were closed, and for one terrible moment Stone wasn’t sure if she was alive or not. But you didn’t gag and tie up a dead person. Annabelle had a pulse, and with Stone’s touch against her neck she slowly came around.

He untied her, took off the gag and helped her out of the cage.

“God, is it good to see you,” she said drunkenly.

“They drugged you?”

“I think so. But it’s wearing off.”

“Can you walk?”

“I’ll crawl if it means we can get out of here.”

He smiled as her feistiness returned.

“Are you alone?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“Any sign of Caleb?”

“Not yet. Have you seen Marisa Friedman?”

Annabelle shook her head.

“Let’s keep moving,” said Stone.

“Oliver!” cried out Annabelle as the buzz of fluorescent lights came on.

Stone ripped off his goggles, turned, but was too late.

The Russian was by the door leading out of the lab. Somehow Stone had not seen him hiding. His gun was aimed right at Stone’s head. Stone pushed Annabelle to the floor and pulled his weapon. The shot rang out, catching the surprised Russian in the forehead, tattooing his skin with a small black dot.

He dropped. The lights went out.

Stone looked down at his weapon. His unfired weapon. Where the hell had that shot come from? He grabbed Annabelle’s arm and pulled her along beside him. They hopped over the dead man and through the door.

Four dead Russians. Two to go. Plus Friedman.

Stone and Annabelle reached the end of the cylinder.

The holding cells.

If Caleb wasn’t in one of them Stone would have to start over from the other side. And he would have to bring Annabelle with him.

The first thing he saw brought astonishment and then relief. Knox and Finn and Caleb were waiting for them. Weak light allowed everyone to see the others.

“How did you get in here?” Stone asked as they huddled in one corner and Annabelle hugged Caleb despite his foul clothes and smell.

“Chapman’s doing,” said Knox as he filled Stone in on what had happened to them so far. “She told us how to get through the maze too. Said she researched it.”

Stone looked behind him. “So she went to the left?”

“That’s right. Any idea where she is?”

“Somewhere behind me. And she just saved my life.”

“We got one Russian at the front entrance. At least Chapman got him.”

“So there’s only one left.”

“And now there are none,” said a voice.

Chapman stepped into the light.

“Guy tried to jump me as I came through to start my first section,” she explained. “He either wasn’t very good, or I’m better than I think I am.”

When she finished speaking, Stone looked around, a curious expression on his features.

Finn said to Chapman, “Any sign of Friedman?”

“No.”

“I say we get the hell out of here as fast as we can,” said Knox. “We’ve got what we came for. Friedman can keep.”

He looked at Stone, who seemed frozen to the spot.

“Oliver, are you okay?”

“Russians.”

“What?” said Finn.

“Russians,” Stone said again.

“Right. And we killed them all.”

“Not very good Russians,” said Stone. “You would have thought they would have been better.”

They all looked at him.

He stared back. “We went through them very easily. Too easily. They weren’t very good. And I think that was intentional.”

“Why would Friedman hire not very good security?”

“Because she didn’t need the A-team. The B-team was good enough.”

“Good enough for what?” asked Chapman.

“To draw us here. To get us to this spot, in fact. They were expendable. She didn’t care if they died or not. No, I take that back. She wanted them to die.”

Knox said, “But if we killed them, that means they didn’t kill us. How does that get her anywhere?”

“She’s trying to redeem herself to Carlos Montoya. She failed the first time around. But now she’s going again with her backup plan.”

“Backup plan?” exclaimed Knox.

Stone nodded. “You always have a backup plan. And I walked right into it.”

“Into what exactly?” asked Chapman nervously.

“They’re going to find us all here with a pack of Russians.” Stone paused. “And there’s a laboratory back there loaded with new equipment. And I think I know what that new equipment is supposed to represent.”

Chapman was the first to see what he was getting at.

“Not nanobots?”

He nodded. “Yes, nanobots.”

“But the Russians aren’t behind it. I think we clearly established that.”

“But when they find us here with all these dead Russians and a lab full of nanobot research that was probably shipped in from Montoya’s facilities, what do you think the world will think?”

Caleb said nervously, “What exactly do you mean by ‘when they find us here’?”

Finn answered, “We were set up. We were meant to get in here, plow through the Russians and get to this point.”

“Why?” asked Annabelle.

The explosion sounded above them.

It was so powerful it shook the floor. Bits of concrete and a plate of steel fell nearby, making them all jump.

“What the hell was that?” yelled Chapman.

“That,” said Stone, “was the front door being sealed off.”

He grabbed Annabelle’s hand. “Come on.”

They all followed his lead as he guided them back to the main hall and then toward the way he had come in.

“Should we at least see if we can get out the front way?” called out Knox.

His answer came in the form of another explosion that dropped part of the mountain twenty feet behind them, effectively cutting off any access to the front entrance.

They all ran harder.

The mountain was trembling now, as one precision explosion after another detonated.

“The whole mountain is going to come down on us,” screamed Annabelle.

“No it won’t,” said Stone as they raced along. “Just enough to kill us. But she has to allow them to be able to get in and find the pieces of evidence she wants to be found.”