James Rollins - The 6th Extinction

Hanging by one hand, he pulled the latch to release those doors, then lunged out as soon as they parted. He landed and skidded on his knees across the floor, his body twisted to face the neighboring stairwell door. As he had suspected, a lone gunman stood guard, holding the way open with one foot, keeping an eye on the stairs.

Gray already had his stolen pistol out, still outfitted with a silencer. He shot the man in the head, the suppressed gunshot little more than a harsh cough. He quickly swung his gun toward the data center down the hall.

Shadows moved in there, along with hushed, angry voices.

“Maybe they were never here,” he heard one assailant call out sharply. “That dead guy could’ve lied about someone being down here.”

Gray let out a breath. So Monk and Jason hadn’t been found. Maybe they’d already made it upstairs. But he had to be certain, especially after hearing a voice, full of command, bark out.

“We’re out of bloody time!”

Another voice: “Done! Got the worm delivered into the servers. It’ll delete all files here and any redundant backups elsewhere.”

“Then get those last charges set and move out!”

With the fire alarm still ringing, Gray moved down the hallway to the data center’s open door. He took a fast glance inside before ducking back out of sight.

Four men .

They were all staring through the window to the rows of mainframes in the neighboring room.

Must be more men in there, setting the final charges .

Their mission was clearly to compromise those servers. He pictured Lucius Raffee upstairs. He imagined the handful of security guards in the building had suffered a similar fate. Had the director simply been at the wrong time and place, or was his execution another goal of this assault team? An hour ago, he had heard from Painter about the attempt to eliminate the only witness to events in California. Was this attack a part of that, an attempt to erase all trails that led back to that base?

He had no way of knowing — except the one in command sounded like he had a British accent. He recalled Jason’s discovery of the connection between Dr. Hess’s work and a research team out of England.

Could just be a coincidence, but maybe not .

“All set!” a voice called from the server farm.

“Clear out,” the leader said. “Double-time before we’re pinned down here.”

Gray kept to the side of the doorway, half hidden behind a trash can. He was still mostly in the open, but he hoped that in their mad rush to flee, they’d dash right past him.

As expected, men burst out of the control room and pounded down the hallway toward the stairwell — where the guard’s body still lay in shadows.

Gray didn’t have much time to act.

As soon as the last man barreled out, Gray rolled across the threshold and into the data center. He kicked the door closed behind him, swiping his black Sigma card to lock it from the inside.

A shout burst from the hallway outside.

Gray stood, staring through the bulletproof window in the door.

A flashlight clicked on down the corridor, revealing a cluster of men around their fallen teammate. The tallest of the lot — burly-chested, with chiseled aristocratic features — turned and stared back at Gray.

They made eye contact across the distance, the other glowering in fury.

A teammate touched the man’s shoulder and pointed to his watch. They plainly had no time to force Gray out of the locked room, not with law enforcement closing a noose around the area and the charges about to blow.

With a silent growl fixed to his lips, the leader waved the others up the stairs, then fled with them.

Gray turned and opened the door that led into the server farm. A half flight of metal stairs led down to the air-conditioned, insulated space. From his perch, he searched the rows of tall black mainframes. He noted packages of C-4 affixed to the closest racks, their timers glowing, all counting down from 90 seconds.

He bellowed into the space. “Monk! Jason!”

Along the back row, a door to one of the towering refrigerator-sized mainframes swung open. Monk and Jason fell out, untangling their limbs.

Thank God…

Gray waved. “Move your asses!”

They came running, dodging down the rows of servers. The pair bounded up the metal stairs to reach the data center room.

Gray unlocked the door to the hallway with a swipe of his card.

Monk slapped Jason on the back. “Quick thinking, kid.”

Jason got knocked a step forward but collected himself. “It’s common for server farms to be overbuilt,” he explained, “to leave empty racks for future expansion. Figured DARPA would do the same.”

Gray led them out and sprinted for the stairs. “This way.”

Reaching the stairwell door, he found no body, only a pool of blood.

“See you had some trouble reaching us,” Monk said, noting the stain.

“More men were upstairs, too. They executed Dr. Raffee.”

Monk swore as they rushed upward, sprinting from landing to landing. “Any idea who they were?”

“They took the body below, but there are four more on the seventh floor. We might be able to ID them.”

That’s if there’s a building still standing after all of this .

They burst out onto the ground floor and ran across the lobby. Gray spotted the slack form of one of the building’s security guards collapsed behind his desk. Anger fired through him anew. He pictured the face of the assault team leader, and silently promised to even the score.

But that would have to wait.

Gray shoved out the front doors and raced across the apron of patios with the others. As they reached the sidewalk along North Randolph Street, a low rumble shook the ground, accompanied by a deep boom. Several of the building’s lower windows shattered outward. Moments later, black smoke began to roll out into the night.

In the distance, a chorus of sirens echoed, descending toward their location.

Monk sighed heavily. “So much for DARPA’s big move.”

Gray herded the others away, leaving the cleanup to the approaching emergency crews. He wanted to get back to Sigma command, but more important, he wanted answers.

Who the hell sent that team… and why?

I hope I’m doing this right…

Jenna stood in the staging tent at the rally point outside of the hot zone. Through the translucent walls, the sunrise was a muffled brightness to the east. The air inside the tent smelled of a slurry of acidic chemicals and body odor.

Something must have shown on her face because Dr. Cummings— Lisa , she reminded herself to call her — came over to her side. Both of them were already in their one-piece disposable Tyvek suits, which were said to be impermeable to most chemicals.

At least I certainly hope so .

As an additional safeguard, they were instructed to duct tape the ends of their gloves to the sleeves of their suits.

“Looks good,” Lisa said, checking her over. “I’ll help you into the next layer.”

“Thanks.”

They crossed to a row of bright red encapsulation suits that hung from a rolling rack. The second layer would cover them from head to toe, completely sealing them from the outside atmosphere. They would breathe inside via air masks and shoulder-harnessed oxygen tanks.

Together the two women helped each other into the respective suits. Jenna felt a claustrophobic moment of panic as the final seal was secured, gasping within her mask. Trying to hide it, she stood up and took a few steps, as if testing the weight of the tanks.