Instinct (2010) (26 page)

With Carter’s help, Garrett pulled the bookcase away from the wall.

‘OK, everyone, make like you’re small,’ she said, priming the explosives. As she did so, the others turned
Bishop’s desk over and shifted it to the side of the bookcase to create a barrier.

‘The timer’s set to thirty seconds,’ said Garrett, climbing into what was left of the space behind the desk. ‘Fingers in ears, people.’

Laura covered Andrew, while the others arranged their limbs and bodies to minimize their exposure to the blast. Everyone tensed, as if waiting for a dentist’s rusty drill.

The air in the room changed for a fraction of a fraction of a second before they heard the bang.

It tore through their eardrums, the pitch and volume expanding hard and fast before ebbing away and settling down to a fading echo.

It was as if all their senses had collapsed simultaneously. Deafness, blindness and an overall disorientation left them wondering if any of it was permanent. Gradually, however, the sounds seeped back into their ears, and they saw that the blindness was nothing but a thick cloud of dust that had everyone coughing.

Beyond it they also now saw the door, framed in broken concrete, daring them to enter.

No one had noticed that the sound of the wasps had stopped. Not that it would have made any difference; nobody was getting out that way. The corridor was the only path ahead. They got to their feet and moved slowly towards the door, taking a tentative look at where they were heading.

Laura gripped her son’s hand and turned him to face her. ‘Whatever happens – what
ever
happens – you stick with me, OK?’

‘There’s no need for that,’ said Webster, raising his voice. ‘We’re all going to stick together. But if we do get split up, Garrett, Carter and Wainhouse: make sure one of you has George, Mike, Susan, Takeshi and Lisa. Group up now, and look out for one another. And don’t make that face, Garrett, you may end up needing Lisa even more than she needs you. I will take Dr Trent, Andrew and Bishop. But I stress: this is emergency procedure only. We do not know what we are going to find.’

The quiet thudding began again.

Webster continued. ‘But seeing as those bastards are still keen to join us in here, let’s go.’

‘He’s not going to open up.’

Mills was lying on the grass outside MEROS helpfully explaining to Jacobs that her efforts to make contact with Taj were an exercise in futility.

Jacobs ignored him and tried again.

‘It’s been at least ten minutes,’ he said in a sing-song voice. ‘He’s probably not even there.’

‘Mills, the guy has just listened to a grenade go off in his ears. His hearing may not be 100 per cent.’

‘Bollocks. He’s just sulking.’

Jacobs shook her head and banged on the door again.

‘Taj! Taj! Open up! Come on, we know you’re in there. Just tell us what’s going on.’

As she stepped back to ponder her next move, a tiny noise trickled through the door. She turned round and knocked again, with greater urgency.

‘Taj? Is that you? Taj!’

Mills sprang up to join her.

They waited, listening closely to see if Jacobs had really heard anything.

Mills was again about to suggest giving up when the intercom barked into life.

‘And what y’all want? Wanna gas me again? Wanna finish me off?’

Jacobs put her hand up to Mills. Their reply was critical and could not be fucked up.

‘Taj, we had to get out of there, and we know you take your job real serious, so you wouldn’t have let us out loaded with weapons.’

‘You damn right, Jacobs.’

‘Me and Mills didn’t want to do it but Garrett, she said it had to happen. We still told her no and thought she’d agreed, but it turned out she decided to do things her way.’

‘Oh yeah? So why you wearing your hazchem suits and masks? On the off-chance?’

‘Nope. The plan was to keep anonymous, pretend there was a leak down there and that we were Webster and Carter needing to head out to the storage unit up here for supplies. Then we were going to get Madison to fly us out. Swear to God, casualties were not a part of the plan.’

A pause to avoid looking gullible, then: ‘So what you want now?’

‘The others have been gone a long time. We want to know they’re not dead.’

A longer pause.

‘Taj?’

‘Yeah?’

‘So, are they dead?’

‘Nope. Got readings for them all on my motion sensor. Looks like they all in Bishop’s office, but none dead, ’less you count Harry Merchant. He bought it in Lab 7 a half-hour ago.’

‘So why don’t you call down to Bishop?’

‘Lost contact twenty minutes back. The Inshield came down, they needed to bring it back up to get the guys out of the elevator. Sounds like things got messed up.’

‘With the new wasps?’

‘Yeah, something like that.’

‘Shit,’ said Mills.

‘So what we gonna do?’ asked Jacobs through the door.

‘We gonna wait, and you gonna do your waiting outside.’

‘Fair enough.’

Jacobs and Mills took a walk back to the plane to decide on their next move.

‘You know, I say we get the hell out of here.’

‘It’s not going to happen, Mills,’ replied Jacobs.

They climbed up the ramp of the plane to find Madison’s mouth covered in a dark red crust.

‘Oh, you’re back then,’ he garbled through blood and missing teeth.

‘Looks like it,’ said Jacobs.

‘You know, whatever shit you pull on me, I ain’t taking
him
anywhere.’

‘Forget it, Madison. We got bigger turds on our plate than your PMS,’ Mills replied.

‘What? You lost your buddies in a wasp accident?’

‘Hey, Madison, your face looks a little swollen on the right side. Do you want me to even it up on the left or do you want to shut the fuck up?’

‘Hey, Mills, untie me and we’ll see who evens things up.’

‘How about I don’t and we see what you look like with your airplane rammed up your arse?’

Mills gripped Madison’s jaw, inflicting obvious pain. Madison responded by spitting a phlegmy gob of blood over Mills’ nose.

Wiping it off and taking a repulsed look at it, Mills drew back his fist, only to find Jacobs holding his arm with surprising strength.

‘Chill the
fuck
out,’ she hissed into Mills’ ear. ‘What possible situation can you think of where we will not need this man?’

Trying to maintain some dignity in the face of being humiliated by a woman and a tied-up man, Mills loosed himself from Jacobs’ grip and stomped back down the ramp, repeatedly kicking Madison’s plane on the way.

‘Fucking asshole,’ said Madison.

Jacobs exhaled slowly, shut her eyes and took a seat across the aisle from Madison. They sat in silence for a while, deliberately ignoring each other, until it felt pointless.

‘So … are they really fucked down there?’

‘Could be,’ she replied quietly.

‘If MEROS is screwed, I need to know. If there’s any doubt, then I’m not going anywhere. Whether I’m airlifting corpses, survivors or the whole damn team …’

‘Just shut up, Madison,’ said Jacobs wearily.

‘Hmmph, you and shitwipe down there go to the same charm school, huh?’

‘Look, Taj says they’ve brought the Inshield down. That means things have gone very wrong. He’s heard nothing for twenty minutes. That means things have gone even worse than that. My friends are down there, and there’s nothing I can do to help them, so excuse me if I’m not minding my Ps and Qs. I’m in a bad place, and I need to work out how to leave it.’

Jacobs walked out into the clearing and looked at the grass beneath her feet. Somewhere down there, the people she was closest to were scared. Maybe they were trapped somewhere with no way out. They could be in pain. Some of them could be dead. She tried to imagine what it would be like if she were down there with them, if she were fighting for her life, or the lives of the people around her.

She looked back at Madison, bruised, pissed off and none too bright. Then she turned to Mills, who had gone back to lying on the grass. His tall, blond British arrogance crept right under her skin. The big gap between his talents and his opinion of himself made him halfway between a help and a hindrance. Then there was Taj. He was fine behind a desk, but if things had to get physical, 250 lbs of lazy fat was not what she wanted by her side.

She made up her mind: whatever the people underground needed to get them out of there, it would be up to her, and she was not going to let them down.

His fingers wrapped around the door handle, Webster peered through the window panel. The corridor was pitch black, offering no clues to what lay ahead. He looked back to Bishop, who gave his final nod of assent, and pushed the handle down.

As soon as the metal bar moved, a violent blast of machine-gun fire rang out through the door. Webster dropped to the ground, while the first bullets passed an inch from his hand.

The others dropped on to their fronts, doing their best to evade something they could not see.

Sound shot through them, filling the small room with cracking explosions of gunpowder and smaller but closer crunches of bullets on wood.

Nerves that were already burning were now stretched as tense as piano wire. The fear that came from being under attack was multiplied by not knowing where that attack was coming from.

Was someone firing at them from behind the door? Who? And why would whoever it was want them dead?

Then it stopped, just as suddenly as it had begun.

Everyone was still forcing themselves into a tight ball or flat against the ground. Surely they weren’t safe already?

It took a few moments for Webster to trust the silence.

‘Is everyone OK?’ he asked, easing himself off the floor. The others had been away to the side, giving Webster room, so no one was hurt. They opened their eyes and looked up again.

‘Sorry,’ he said, getting to his feet. ‘I forgot we mounted motion-sensor guns in the corridor in case any of them got that far. Turning the handle must have set them off. I guess we need to do something to run the bullets down. Everybody back.’ He pointed to the furthest corner from the door and the others obediently squashed up into it. ‘And brace yourself for some more loud noises.’

Satisfied that they were out of harm’s way, Webster grabbed the handle one more time, pulled the door open and ducked. Another blast of fire came and went.

He knew there was still more ammunition, so he sat on the floor throwing protocol manuals into the corridor until the guns stopped shredding them to confetti.

After three increasingly hard throws got no response, he risked a very careful look through the doorway. Nothing.

‘OK, people, I think we’re good to go.’

Webster moved into the doorway with extreme caution. The guns had definitely stopped firing, so he beckoned the others out of their refuge and sent Carter ahead.

The corridor smelled stale, but only faintly. It was as if the molecules of death and horror were sleeping
but not absent. The light from the office sent a gradually darkening illumination halfway down, enough to show that the space was clean and featureless but giving no indication of where it led. It was utterly silent, until it gave the softest of echoes from the noise of the boots that now inched across its steel floor.

Carter’s left hand held a heavy-duty torch, which sent a wide wash of soft light across the span of the corridor ahead. His right hand was wrapped tightly around the stippled grip of his 9mm semi-automatic Glock 17, which had all three safety mechanisms disengaged and a full 19-round magazine locked and loaded. He stepped forward gradually, his senses on red alert, searching the inconsistencies of the torchlight for anything that might require his attention.

As he passed the spent guns, he stopped sharp and pointed his weapon dead ahead. In the darkness of the hatch window, he could just make out the milky glint of two eyeballs staring back at him.

He stood tensed, waiting for whatever it was to make a move. The eyes remained static and, in the shadows that surrounded them, he could not make out what they were attached to.

Taking another step, he blinked, and finally realized he was pointing his gun at a reflection of himself. With a little smile of relief, he lowered his pistol and covered the last few feet of the empty corridor.

He got to the far door, switched off his torch and peered through to the Abdomen. It was too dark to discern anything except for several hazy pools of faint
blue light. He watched for a minute to see if there was any movement, but the vast blackness was perfectly still. He flicked the drop safety on his Glock and headed back to get the others.

He called to them as early as possible, just to make sure they didn’t think his footsteps were anything to be afraid of.

‘Hey, guys. Only me. Just Carter,’ he said, emerging into the light of Bishop’s office.

‘Nothing to report. Not in the corridor, anyway. I had a look through to the Abdomen, but there were just some faint blue lights. Nothing moving.’

‘If the blue lights are on, then the generator is still working,’ said Bishop.

‘What generator would still be working after ten years?’ asked George.

‘It’s self-sustaining. Perpetual electricity. It’s a version of the Elsasser model with a 24k gold conductor. It worked perfectly until we had to abandon, but I had no idea it would still be operating now.’

‘Is that good?’ asked Garrett.

‘Could go either way.’

‘Anyway, if that’s where we’re heading, it looks about as safe as it’s going to look,’ Carter said.

‘OK, people,’ said Webster, ‘we need to take whatever weapons we can carry and get going.’

Garrett went in first, leading a line of eleven people through the corridor. When she got to the end, she looked back at Webster, the light from the office casting everyone into silhouettes.

‘Whenever you’re ready, Major.’

Stomachs writhed like bags of snakes and legs weakened as Webster shut the door behind them.

‘OK, Garrett. Open it up.’

There was a central wheel on the door, which she took in both hands. Expecting resistance, she used her full strength to power through the grinding dryness. After some effort, the bolt slid aside. They were now just one hard pull away from entry.