Cosega Sphere (The Cosega Sequence Book 4) (13 page)

Rip was certain that a firefight between AX and Foundation forces, within the tight confines of the narrow hospital corridors and the tiny paneled off room where his precious daughter lay unconscious, would result in her death. However, there was no way to move her. Nothing could be done except to trust the one person who had done more to upend his life than any other, the Crying Man.

“Tell AX to stand down,” Rip said to Booker.

“Rip, they’ll find her,” the trillionaire shot back.

“Damn it, Booker, there’s nothing in that hospital that belongs to you. Nothing that warrants your authority. Cira is
my
daughter. This is
my
call.”

“Are you sure?” Booker asked. “When they find her, they’ll move her, and the risks to her eyes—”

“Doing it this way is the best hope I’ve got to keep her alive.”

Booker gave the command to the waiting AX team. “Stand down.”

“Bradley,” Harmer began after listening to the exchange in her ear, calling Rip by his alias, “do you want me to defend this room?”

“No. If they discover the room, I want you to surrender.” Rip knew it was a tough request. For Harmer, who had been trained to protect, to fight, surrendering to the Foundation meant that even if she survived the encounter, she’d be imprisoned and tortured until Gaines was found. Harmer could wind up locked away for years. Rip met her eyes through the INU.

Harmer nodded. She understood that giving up might be the only chance that Cira had. The room couldn’t be defended indefinitely against so many.

“Okay,” she said quietly. “Maybe they won’t find us.”

Rip, Booker, and Harmer all turned their attention to the feeds from the hospital security cameras. Four men were working the floor where Cira’s secret room was located. They came from opposite ends of the building. It looked like they had less than five minutes before one of them got to the “supply closet.”

Rip looked back at the Eysen-Sphere, hoping Crying Man would appear. He wondered where Gale was, and wanted to ask Booker, but decided to wait until . . . until whatever was about to happen, happened.

“Are you going to surrender?” the orderly asked Harmer, watching the armed men scour the hospital.

“If they find us.”

“Wouldn’t it be safer to just give up now?” the orderly asked.

“Not while there’s still a chance they won’t find us,” Harmer said without turning around. “Look, I get that this is scary for you. Why don’t you just lie on the floor and it’ll all be over soon.”

The orderly stayed where he was and kept watching as the men drew closer. Harmer reached again for a cigarette, looked up at the ceiling, eyes darting to the walls, the tiled floor, and back to the ceiling. The men from the north end of the building looked like they would reach them first. The air in their room felt smothering; a stale mix of antiseptic, newly cut sheetrock, sweat, and fear.

Rip and Booker also counted the men’s steps. How long until they reached Cira’s room? All Rip wanted to do was scoop his daughter out of that bed and run to safety. Had he known, back in Virginia, that one day he’d be a father to that sweet little girl, he never would have run with the artifacts. But how different the world would be based on everything that had happened. Everyone else on the dig was dead. He and Gale were the only survivors, but for how much longer?

Two armed men entered the supply closet. There was no camera in there, but Harmer could hear them easily as they moved and shuffled through the supplies. It gave her the same feeling as hearing a rat scratching inside a wall. She tensed, waiting for them to find the secret door, to burst through, guns blaring. Then, they left. Harmer had been holding her breath and exhaled quietly. Even the orderly smiled.

Rip cheered loud enough that he startled a bird on the roof of the skyroom. It flew to another part of El Perdido Island as Rip continued his brief celebration.

Then he saw the team coming from the other direction. They waited outside the room next to Cira’s.

The first team came out and went to the next room that the second team had already checked. The second team went into Cira’s neighbor’s room. They were double-checking! Harmer saw the same thing. So did Booker.

“Everyone sit tight,” Booker said. “We’ve got one more pass.”

“We have another coming,” Harmer whispered.

The orderly, who’d been about to hug the nurse, let out a whimper as though he’d been kicked. Harmer held up her hand.

The new team left the room next door and entered the supply closest. They made less noise than the first team, but spent more time. Harmer imagined them looking for trap doors, hidden panels, moving boxes and five-gallon buckets.

How could they be in there this long and not find our entrance?

Then, suddenly, they went back into the hall.

Everyone relaxed. Rip closed his eyes and whispered, “Thank you.”

Harmer turned briefly to the nurse and orderly, allowing a slight smile. They had done it!

Booker didn’t move, never took his eyes off the feed. He had a bad feeling. He knew how professional soldiers and mercenaries thought. He had thousands working for him. Something about the eyes of one of the men bothered him. Too serious, too intent, too thorough.

Then that man swung his automatic rifle around and turned back to look at the supply closet’s door. He looked at the room number on the wall next to the door, then went back to the neighbor’s room and looked at hers.

“What?” his comrade asked.

“Something . . . ” the man said, jogging slowly down the hall in the direction they had come. At the far end he stopped and looked at another door. He went into that room. It was a supply closet. A real one. A half-second later he came out, speaking into his wrist, and ran back to the door near Cira’s.

“Damn,” Harmer said so faintly that not even the orderly could hear. She quietly laid down her gun and tiptoed to the opposite side of the small room from where Cira was. She watched in the INU while eight armed men congregated outside the closet. One of them entered with a high-powered light.

The Foundation soldier had been in the closet for only a few seconds when suddenly from behind Harmer the orderly yelled, “Help!”

The nurse gasped.

Harmer shook her head and looked at her gun on the floor across the room. She wouldn’t have really shot the orderly. The guy had just been scared. It didn’t matter anyway. They’d already been discovered.

Harmer could see from the hall camera in the INU that one of the Foundation forces had entered the closet with a black canister. They were going to gas them. A second later a soldier located the hidden panel and kicked it in.

“We’re unarmed! We surrender!” Harmer yelled. “We have an injured child in here.”

“You’re welcome to come out,” a gruff voice shouted from the other side of the wall.

“No tricks,” Harmer yelled. “We’re coming out . . . unarmed. Civilian hospital staff first.” Harmer motioned to the orderly. “You first.”

“No way,” he said.

“I’ve got a hospital orderly in here. He’s scared you’re going to hurt him,” Harmer yelled out.

“We don’t want to hurt anyone,” the voice replied. “Come out. You’ll be safe.”

Harmer nodded again to the orderly. He didn’t budge. The nurse stepped slowly toward the opening.

“Nurse coming out first,” Harmer yelled. “Unarmed.”

Once the nurse was safely out, the orderly followed.

Harmer took a deep breath and looked at Cira. Just the two of them left. One final moment to decide to fight, or give up. Rip could almost feel Harmer struggling against her training and instincts.

“You next,” came the voice.

“I can’t leave the girl,” Harmer said. “My weapon is on the floor.”

“You have to come out or we’ll come in and take you out.”

“I’ve got an INU in here. Give me an address and I’ll link its camera to you. I’ll show you the whole room.”

After a few moments of silence there came an, “Okay.” A minute later they told her the address. She programmed it into the INU and at the same time signed off to Booker and Rip.

“I’ll take care of her,” Harmer promised as the connection went dark.

—O—

Rip and Booker remained connected to each other. Booker had already “back-filled” Harmer’s INU so that nothing useful and no traces of AX data could be found in it.

From a place of hellish agony, and in a barely recognizable raspy voice, Rip asked Booker, “Where’s Gale?”

“She’s landing in Hawaii soon, and then on to El Perdido,” he reported. “With any luck she’ll be in your arms in about six hours.”

“And when will she find out that Cira is a prisoner of the Foundation?” Rip asked in a painful moan.

“When you tell her.”

It took longer for Gale to regain consciousness and recover from the effects of the narcotics than Kruse had anticipated. With less than sixty minutes until Hawaii, he worried she might not wake up in time. Twenty-one minutes from landing though, she finally came to. Gale looked at him for a long time before speaking. He could almost see the brain cells clicking back into place, and along with them, her seething anger.

“You bastard,” she said coolly. “Where are we?”

“We’re about to land in Hawaii.”

“When we get to El Per-rison, I want you off that island before I sleep. In fact, I prefer you don’t even get off the plane. Understood?”

“Yes.”

She shook her head as if expecting an argument, as if wanting one. “I don’t believe you. I am not . . . ” Gale didn’t finish. “Is there any news on Cira?”

“I just spoke with Booker. They’re still safely tucked in the hidden room. Cira is doing fine.”

“As if I can believe anything either of you say . . . but I want so badly to believe that.” Her voice trembled.

Kruse just nodded, maintaining eye contact. “There are some things we have to do before you can get rid of me.”

“Hawaii?”

“Yes. The transfer should be easy. We’re on a commercial flight and need to get onto Booker’s plane. We’ll be gating close to where his is waiting, but . . . the CIA, NSA, FBI, and probably the Foundation are
all
in Hawaii.”

“They found out about our work at the university?” she asked calmly, used to being hunted.

“Yes.”

“That should keep them busy.”

“We hope so. There’s no reason to believe they know we’re anywhere near Hawaii, so it should be just a quick off and on, then straight to El Perdido. Rip is waiting.”

Gale looked around the cramped crew quarters. She didn’t know how Booker had managed to get them hidden on the plane. Perhaps he owned the airline, or maybe he’d paid off the entire crew, but that seemed unlikely. Something about the arrangement made her extra nervous. It felt as if she was about to be arrested, or the plane was going to crash. An eerie intuition.

What if it was Cira? What if something bad had happened to her?

“Are you sure Cira is okay?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“Can’t I talk to Harmer, or see inside the room?”

“Not safe now. Maybe on the flight to El Perdido.”

“How did Booker manage to get us on this plane?”

“I don’t know exactly, but—”

“It seems risky,” Gale interrupted. “Too many people know we’re here.”

“Just the crew, and they don’t know who you are. I believe the story is that you’re in the witness protection program.”

Gale nodded, but she didn’t feel any better, and because she no longer trusted Kruse, the reasons for her unrest were not clear.

When she wasn’t thinking about Cira, the Sphere filled her mind. It was always difficult whenever Rip took it away. She’d become as much of a researcher as he had over the years, often referring to it as “the other world,” because although it was a portal into the world in which they lived, its limitless coverage of the history of the universe meant that the period of time they recognized within the Sphere was as significant as a split second.

After a few weeks of jumping across billions of years recorded by the Sphere, Gale had understood what Booker meant when he said “time’s a funny thing.”
Time
is something we made up to allow us to cope with the enormity of existence,
she thought.
We know nothing about what time really is. Time away from Cira is different though.

Gale realized she was shaking, thinking of her daughter all alone in a strange hospital room, hunted by the most dangerous people in the world.

She forced herself to focus. The Sphere, the thing they’d been counting on to save the world, she’d be back to it and Rip very soon. Together, the two of them could figure out how to use it to help Cira. One of the many anomalies of the Sphere was how it functioned from some type of intelligence. It seemed incredibly intuitive, and it could actually answer questions. The Eysen-Sphere, just like the Eysen-INUs modeled after it, grew smarter and evolved as its users did.

The scientists described the Sphere as the most advanced Artificial Intelligence program they’d ever seen, way beyond what many of them had warned could one day circumvent humans. A coalition of top minds had been warning the world since the beginning of the century that AI could, in the future, cause the end of humanity. But now Gale, Rip, and Booker’s UQP scientists knew it would be something else. Either one, or all of the Death Divinations, or the Phoenix Initiative.

AI might cause a problem in the middle of all that though. It was a scary thing to imagine machines outthinking humans and being in control of our fate, yet the Eysen-Sphere’s AI operated almost as a benevolent entity, and Gale often had to remind herself that it was mechanical and not some kind of god.

Still, here she was, praying to the Eysen as if it were divine.

—O—

The plane touched down at Honolulu International Airport without incident. It taxied to gate thirty-four and readied to disembark the one hundred seventy-seven passengers. Then there was a delay.

“What’s going on?” Gale asked after a few minutes of unusual stillness.

Kruse listened carefully at the door, but just raised his eyebrows and slowly shook his head.

The minutes crawled by as if they were insects burrowing down Gale’s throat, invading her gut with determined fury.

“Ladies and gentleman,” the captain finally said over the intercom. “We apologize for this brief delay. After a quick inspection, we’ll be ready to go.”

“Inspection? What the hell is that?” Gale whispered sharply.

Kruse opened the narrow door less than an inch and peered out. He closed it quietly after less than a second. His eyes closed for a moment.

“What?” Gale asked.

“There are two federal agents checking the plane!” he snapped in a hushed tone.

“They know we’re on board,” Gale said, trying to push through a wash of despair. Would she ever see Cira again?

“No, no way. If they knew we were here, it would be a dozen agents. We’d still be in the middle of the runway,” Kruse said. “No, they’re probably just checking any flights coming from Australia, New Zealand, Fiji, anywhere we might have gone.”

“That hardly helps us. They’re bound to check in here.”

Kruse pulled one of the curtains that separated the sleeping areas and handed it to Gale. “If the agents get this far, try to pull this over their heads.”

“What will you be doing?” Gale asked.

Kruse took the fire extinguisher off the wall and stood behind the door. They waited in the narrow space, suddenly stuffy and warm, bracing for a final, desperate fight.

I can’t believe seven years of running and hiding has come down to this,
Gale thought.
Cira blind in a hospital, Rip alone on El Perdido, and me, shanghaied onto a passenger jet and arrested at the gate.

The rumbling of voices permeated through the thin door. It wouldn’t be long before the first agent reached them. Kruse held the fire extinguisher above his head and concentrated. If he got the angle right, he could kill the first one with the initial blow and then swing the blunt object into the next one’s face. Either way, he’d have to get the first agent’s gun. When he’d seen the agent, his gun was still holstered, but hopefully he’d have it drawn by the time he opened the door.

“What’s in there?” they heard the muffled voice of the agent on the other side of the door ask.

“Crew quarters,” a female flight attendant responded.

“Anyone in there?” the gruff voice asked.

“No,” she replied, a little too stilted. Unbeknownst to Kruse, while the flight attendant answered “no,” she was nodding her head “yes.” In the moments that followed, Kruse could detect an awkward silence and some shuffling. He guessed the other agent was joining his partner.

Kruse knew the door was locked, and could almost picture the flight attendant holding up her hands indicating the numbers of the four-digit code. A second later, he heard each button being pushed as if in slow motion.

One. He looked at Gale. She was ready.

Two. He took a deep breath and steadied the extinguisher above his head.

Three. He felt the adrenaline surge.

Four. Click. The door opened.

Kruse brought the extinguisher down, hitting only the agent’s arm, but it was enough. His gun crashed to the floor. All in an instant, against the sound of screams from passengers, the agent tried to push his way in as the second agent called for backup. Wedged between the wall and the door, Kruse had leverage on his side and pushed back. Gale dropped the curtain and went for the gun.

She couldn’t quite get it, as it had slid into a small space under the lower bunk. Kruse suddenly won the battle and the door slammed shut. His face met hers and they were both shocked to be closed in again, alone and alive.

“The gun,” she said, pointing.

He reached down and could just touch it with his fingertips. “Stay down,” he said. “They’re probably evacuating the plane and may start shooting through the door as soon as the area’s clear.” He maneuvered and stretched. “Got it!” he exclaimed triumphantly.

“Kruse!” a man’s voice shouted from the other side of the door. Kruse, startled, looked at Gale.

“No one out there could know my name.”

“AX-0317.”

Kruse looked at Gale for a split second and then pulled the door open.