Runaway Heart (49 page)

     
"I don't see any more of them," Susan said.

     
Jack didn't either. "I counted five. We got two. That
means the first
squad is down to three. We're down to four, if you're still with us,
Digby."

     
"I'll try," the big Indian groaned.

     
Jack paused. "I'm really sorry about Horsekiller. That wasn't
supposed to happen." They all nodded and Izzy crossed himself.

     
"So let's go get some payback," Jack said. "Let's
try to take the stables. Keep your weapons cocked and try not to shoot the guy
out front. . . who's gonna be me." Jack crept around the Airstream in the
general direction of the barn, then took off running, staying low, hugging the
terrain.

     
As they approached the stables he dropped on his stomach, and led
the others toward the structure executing the painful Academy elbow crawl. In
the moonlight he felt open and exposed. Slowly, they all worked their way up
next to the structure. Miraculously, nobody fired a ray-gun at them.

     
They stood and flattened out against the wood walls of the
weathered stable. Jack reached around and tried the door. Unlocked. He pushed
it open a crack, took a deep breath, and ducked quickly inside.

     
At first the barn appeared empty. They quickly fanned out inside
checking for Chimeras or DARPA commandos. Then Susan tripped over something,
looked down and shrieked. "Oh my God!"

     
At her feet was a human arm ripped from its socket and still
encased in a black suit sleeve. The hay near where it lay was sticky with
blood.

     
"Son of a bitch," Izzy said softly.

     
"Look for the body," Jack instructed.

     
They found the corpse of Dave Silver in one of the stalls. He had
bled to death but still had both his arms.

     
"Nobody else," Izzy said, looking around. "Except
for the arm and this one dead guy, it's empty."

     
"Can't be empty," Susan countered.

     
"But it is," Izzy argued, sounding like he wanted to get
back to Bel Air.

     
Susan persisted. "We saw them all come out of here.

     
There's gotta be a way down to the lab from inside this
barn."

     
"She's right," Jack agreed. He looked at the front
windows facing west. "Digby, can you keep a lookout? Cover us?"

     
"Left-handed. . . can't shoot," the huge man said.

     
"You could prop your pistol on that windowsill, and if any of
those furry bastards come back this way, light 'em up," Jack suggested.

     
"I'll try," Digby said, but he didn't look too sure of
himself.

     
Susan was prowling around the stable checking the floor and the
walls, but she couldn't find a hidden opening.

     
"What's that doing here?" Izzy asked, pointing at an
Indian blanket hanging on the stable wall.

     
"It's a horse blanket, you moron," his cousin Carlos
sneered.

     
"It's a Navaho blanket. We're Ten-Eyck," Izzy said,
moving closer.

     
"It is?" Jack said. "How can you tell?" They
all stood looking at the blanket until Susan finally took the initiative and
removed it from the wall. Underneath was a large electrical box and a big, red
button.

     
"Don't touch it," Jack said quickly. "What if it's
an alarm or an entrance bell?"

     
"It's not an alarm or a bell," Susan said and pushed it.

     
Immediately they heard solenoids clicking, then a hydraulic engine
whirred and the floor they were standing on started to rise. They yelped and
jumped aside as five square feet of floorboards, hay, and horseshit rose up
revealing a lighted staircase and a ten-foot-wide conveyor belt. They were
looking down into harsh xenon lights.

     
"I think I saw this movie," Izzy said.

     
"Let's go down," Susan ordered, proving, Jack thought,
that she had the most guts.

     
They followed a blood trail down the staircase until they reached
the bottom of the first flight, where a door stood slightly ajar. Jack decided
that as a certified alpha-male and
former Playboy Club member he should probably suck it up
and go in first. Reluctantly, he stepped around Susan and pushed the door open.

     
They entered a large room dominated by ten television monitors, a
sophisticated audio mixing panel, and the dead, bloodless, one-armed body of
Vincent Valdez.

     
"Vinnie. You came apart on me," Jack said softly.

     
The monitor screens showed surveillance views of the reservation
barely visible in the moonlight. They could also see the drainage pipe and two
intense orange dots. None of them understood that the larger glowing dot was
the heat-resonance image of the burning pile of ashes that had once been Robert
Horsekiller.

     
Susan pulled a small digital camera out of her bag and
photographed the room along with Vincent Valdez's corpse before they moved on.

     
The top floor was labeled B-l and contained the command center and
a garage with three vehicles—two Jeeps and a small truck that apparently could
be driven onto the conveyor belt and up into the barn. Jack located the
elevator and brought it up.

     
"Carlos, stay here. Cover this exit," Jack said.

     
"Good deal," Carlos said, glad to stay behind.

     
They found the sleeping quarters on B-2. The bedding on the cots
was dime-tight. Personal equipment was packed in spotless footlockers—but no
soldiers and no chimeras. The floor was deserted.

     
B-3 was also empty and housed some storage rooms and the mess
hall.

     
They found the empty chimera nests on B-4. It was a little less
pristine down here. Jack saw some animal dung on the floor.

     
Since B-4 was also empty, they got back on the elevator and
continued down.

     
All hell broke loose on B-5.

G
eneral Buzz Turpin was watching them on
the monitor at DARPA headquarters in Virginia. The security cameras on each
floor of the Ten-Eyck lab were fed to Arlington via a phone hookup that
displayed the video lead in his command center. Now that the Ten-Eyck facility
had been breached it had to be destroyed. He watched as three men and a woman
moved down the stairs from the barn into the lab.

     
"Where are our people?" Turpin snarled at Paul Talbot,
who was seated in the command chair next to him watching the screen.

     
"I don't know. Down on five, I think, but I can't pick 'em up
on the corner cameras."

     
Turpin had already notified DARPA Control Center to arm the small
nuclear devices located under the lab. The arming procedure, with its secure
locking codes, took almost five minutes to accomplish. Time ticked by
ominously. Turpin watched the intruders as they descended further. Anger
flashed inside him. This project had been designed to free American children
from the horrors of war. The DARPA chimera program could have guaranteed that not
one more American soldier would ever have to die in a ground war. Now it was
ruined. He watched as the intruders got into the elevator and took it down to
the basement floor, B-5.

     
He could see that five DARPA commandos, three remaining chimeras,
and several frightened genetic scientists
had taken up new positions and were now visible on the
B-5-level cameras.

     
Suddenly the elevator door opened. Two men and a woman stepped out
into the laboratory.

     
Two DARPA soldiers opened fire immediately in violation of their
orders, using the high-powered particle-beam weapons that had been designed for
outdoor use only. In the steel-walled enclosure of the genetics lab, the beams
broke up and ricocheted around the room uncontrollably.

     
"No, you assholes!" Turpin shouted into his
communications console.

     
Streams of particle-beam laser light streaked across the lab like
Star
Wars
special effects, hitting steel walls and lighting up everything they
hit with high-energy voltage. After bouncing off metal walls they kept going,
arcing back and forth, breaking up into energy particles and flying all around
the lab like deadly fireflies.

     
Jack screamed out in fear and threw himself behind a metal
cabinet.

     
Not exactly ideal alpha-male behavior, but it took him by
surprise.

     
He finally pulled it together and tried without success to return
fire, pulling the trigger on his already-jammed Beretta. Jack watched in horror
as a second DARPA commando swung his particle-beam weapon toward him.

  
   
Izzy came to his rescue, firing twice
with his square-barreled Glock 9, hitting both DARPA commandos and blowing them
backward.

     
Izzy bought them ten precious seconds. Jack jumped up and ran on
stringy legs across the lab, dove under a table, then grabbed up one of the
fallen laser weapons.

     
Payback.

     
Another commando fired . . . more red death arced around the lab,
ricocheting and filling the air with deadly particles. Computers exploded
behind Jack. The room was filling with smoke and charged air. Everyone's hair
was standing up from static electricity.

     
Jack turned the complicated laser gun over and studied
it, then flipped
a switch, hoping to turn it on.

     
He rolled right, put the weapon to his shoulder, and pulled the
trigger. Nothing.

     
The chimeras were just standing there watching the fight. One was
jumping up and down, but made no move to enter the fray. They had been trained
to act only on command, and nobody had given an attack order.

     
While Jack tried a few more buttons on the laser gun, Izzy and
Susan dove for cover behind a metal counter. Izzy was holding his Glock
sideways, blasting away like a rock-video gangster. Jack rolled, punched some
more buttons and tried the laser gun again. Still nothing. "How d'ya turn
this damned thing on?" he shouted. Nobody seemed inclined to help.

     
The panicked DARPA commandos finally realized their mistake
shooting the laser guns in a metal-walled room and pulled out pistols. They
were now chopping up the lab with conventional ordnance.

     
Jack made a run for the cover of a metal counter. Suddenly he felt
searing pain in his shoulder and went down.

     
Alarms started ringing.

     
While Jack didn't like the sound of the whooping alarms, on the
plus side he, Susan, and Izzy somehow gained the tactically superior position
close to the elevators.

     
"Let's go . . . pull out," Jack shouted, and they all
started running like hookers in a vice raid. Jack sprinted to the nearest
elevator and pushed Izzy inside. The DARPA commandos broke cover and swarmed
the room. Susan unexpectedly looped back and was gathering something up off the
counter. "Let's go!" Jack screamed while Izzy fired four more shots
pinning down the swarming DARPA soldiers.

     
One of them finally shouted an order: "Gree! Attack!"
Instantly, three chimeras leaped toward the elevator exposing themselves to
Izzy's fire. Two of them went down. Susan was running toward the elevator
carrying half a dozen glass vials in a holder. She slipped inside just before
the last chimera reached her. Jack kicked the animal back with a karate move
that shot a jolt of pain up his tortured
spine to his wounded shoulder. The door closed before the
chimera could regain its balance. Seconds later they were humming up amidst a
horrible symphony of braying floor alarms.

     
The door opened on B-l and they ran out of the elevator.

     
"What's with the siren?" Carlos asked.

     
"I think this place is about to blow," Jack said as he
started flipping more switches on the laser weapon. . . a weapon so simple that
even a monkey could operate it; but Jack Wirta, academy-trained firearms
expert, was totally baffled. In frustration, he banged it against his palm, and
must have accidentally hit something, because suddenly it started humming. Jack
turned and fired a streak of red-hot particles into the elevator. They arced
around like electricity in Frankenstein's lab, then the elevator whined,
growled, and went dark. "Finally," he grunted.