Altar of Eden (17 page)

Lorna crouched low in her office. She clutched the rifle to her chest. Since the explosion, it was getting more difficult to breathe. Smoke rolled under the door and continued to fill the small space. Terror kept her breathing sharp and shallow. She fought back tears, not all of them due to the sting in the air.

She pictured Jack caught in the blast. She had no way of knowing if he was alive or dead. Either way, she was on her own. She had only two choices left to her: stay and suffocate or move and risk being caught.

It was really no choice.

But where to go?

She wasn’t about to head out into the main hall. Any attempt to reach her brother and her colleagues in the pathology lab would mean crossing paths with the intruders. The others should be safe down there for the moment if they kept quiet. The walk-in cooler was the size of a double-car garage and steel-reinforced. It should withstand any smoke and fire for a while.

But that didn’t apply to her.

She glanced over a shoulder. A second door at the back of her office led to her adjoining lab, where she spent most of her workday. From there, she could sneak her way, lab by lab, away from the flames.

But she knew she had to do one thing first.

Igor and the others were still up in the genetics lab, a floor above hers. She could not let them burn. There was a small service stair that led from this floor up to the next. She could reach it if she crossed her lab.

Still, a part of her only wanted to hide, to let someone rescue her. She fought against it, knowing it was born of shock, that such panic hadn’t served her in the past, and it wouldn’t now.

Move . . .

She slowly rose from her crouch, drawing some strength from the weapon in her hands. She wasn’t totally defenseless.

Keeping a watch on the main office door, she retreated to the other. Once she was moving, the terror abated somewhat. She placed a palm against the lab door to make sure it wasn’t hot. Satisfied, she eased it open and searched the lab.

Tables, benches, and biogenic equipment—microscopes, catheters, micropipettes, incubators, cell fusion units—filled the space, along with books and piled lab reports. One entire wall was filled by a double-door refrigeration unit, along with a bench holding a long bank of stainless-steel Dewar’s bottles containing cryotubes of frozen embryos, sperm, and eggs of endangered species. It was her life’s work: the facility’s frozen zoo.

Despite her terror, a part of her feared the loss of all her hard work. It could be duplicated eventually, but it would take many years and not all of it would be recovered. She could only hope the fires didn’t spread here and that the liquid nitrogen would keep the embryos frozen long enough for a fire-response team to arrive.

Unable to do anything else, she crossed the dark space and headed toward the service stair that led to the second floor. She strained to listen for any sign of the intruders. The pounding rush of blood in her ears made it hard to hear. She stepped carefully, one hand holding her rifle, the other reaching out as she moved through her lab. Luckily, she knew the place well enough that she could have crossed it blindfolded.

She reached the door that led up to the next level. Again she tested it. It was warmer than the one into her office, but still not hot. She was headed toward the fires, but it should take her only a few moments to rush up, grab the animals, and head back down and away.

She edged the door open, found the stairwell empty, and hurried up the narrow flight to the second floor. The genetics suite encompassed most of this level. The door into the lab was only a step away. Holding her breath and steeling herself, she rushed across and through the door. Once inside, she leaned back against the closed door.

She did it.

Across the dark and quiet lab, a soft questioning chirp called to her.
Igor.

The parrot knew she was here. She pictured eyes staring toward her out of the darkness. A slight chill danced over her skin. She remembered the strange intelligence the bird had demonstrated earlier.

She stepped away from the wall and shook away the chill. These were innocent creatures, cruelly used. And at heart they were still animals—only more so.

She crept cautiously down the length of the suite. Being on the top floor, the genetics lab was equipped with a few skylights, which lessened the gloom a bit.

She found Igor still in his cage in the conference room off the main lab. The cub and twin capuchins had been temporarily housed in transport cages, not much different from plastic airline carriers. The cages were used to temporarily hold and move various subjects undergoing testing.

Reaching them, she realized a dilemma. How was she going to carry them all? In their carriers, the cub and monkeys were no problem. But she’d need a third arm for Igor’s cage.

Slipping into the conference room, she crouched by Igor’s cage. “Now be quiet,” she whispered, lifting a finger to her lip. “Shh . . .”

He seemed to understand and matched her tone, uttering under his breath, “Igor . . . help, Igor . . .”

That’s the plan, little fella.

He must smell the smoke.

She unlatched the small door. She couldn’t haul the cage, but she could carry the bird. Igor hopped up on the inside of the door, cocking his head back and forth. As she pulled the door open the parrot came with it, as if he knew her intent.

He climbed to a wobbly perch atop the thin door. She held out her arm. Without any prompting, he hopped from the door to her arm and scrambled up it, using his beak on her sleeve to tug up onto her shoulder. He quickly sidled next to her head.

She felt the tremble in his body. The explosion and smoke surely had him spooked. He plainly trusted her to get him out of here—and she intended to do just that.

With Igor balanced on one shoulder, she slung her rifle over the other. Out in the lab, she collected the two carriers. Bagheera had slunk to the back of her cage and silently hissed at her, mouth open, tongue curled, baring immature fangs. The two capuchins clung to the front of the cage, each with one arm. Small masked faces pinched out at her.

Her charges in hand, she headed back across the lab to the service stair. The carriers made her ungainly, especially with the rifle, but she had to manage at least as far as the main floor. Even if it meant setting them all loose out a window, she would. They stood a better chance out there than in here.

As proof, the smoke in the stairwell was already thicker, the air hotter. It was like climbing down a chimney.

She hurried, trying to move as quietly as possible. The animals also remained silent, as if sensing the danger. The only sound was a deep rumble in Igor’s chest, almost like a moan. She only heard it because he was squashed up against her ear. She worried about toxins in the smoke. Birds were almost all lungs and air sacs and thus more susceptible to poisons.

She was happy to leave the stair and return to her lab. The room was cooler, likely due to the thawing frozen zoo. She noted a disturbing condensation in the air. She knew the cause. The liquid nitrogen used to keep her samples frozen was constantly evaporating, shedding gas. Normally this was ventilated out of the room. But with the power off, it was building up in here. Left unventilated, nitrogen would eventually displace the oxygen and become deadly.

Worried, she crossed to the lone window in her lab. She set the carriers down and cranked the window open. A river breeze blew in. Igor shivered. Claws dug into her shoulder.

“It’s okay,” she shushed as she finished. “We’re going.”

She intended to head through Dr. Chang’s biometrics lab, which neighbored hers, then to the veterinary suite at the back of the facility. She wanted to get as far from the flames as possible, then find a place to hole up and hide.

But that was not to be.

“STOP!”

The sudden shout made her jump. It came from behind her. Igor lost his grip and slid halfway down her shirtfront before catching hold with his beak. She reacted instinctively and grabbed Igor with both hands and tossed him out the window.

He fell like a frozen turkey. Without feathers, he couldn’t fly. But it was only a short drop to the grass. Though she didn’t see him land, she heard a tiny squawk of protest. She prayed it wasn’t heard.

“TURNAROUND SLOWLY!”
A shadowy shape stepped from the doorway to her office. Too distracted by the worrisome condensation, she hadn’t noticed the open door.
“DROP THE WEAPON OR I’LL SHOOT!”

It took her a moment to realize he meant the tranquilizing rifle. She hurriedly shrugged it off her shoulder, let it clatter to the floor, and lifted her palms in the air.

She was trapped.

Jack crouched behind a broadleaf bush. It had taken longer than he’d hoped to reach the parking lot. Sticking to cover at all times, he’d had to circle through the fringe forest to get here without being spotted. He dared not risk discovery until he was armed with more than his bare hands.

From his hiding spot, he stared toward his truck. It lay only thirty yards away—across open ground. There was no cover. He’d be totally exposing himself. To make matters worse, the parking lot was gravel. Without care, his boots would crunch loud enough to be heard across the Mississippi.

He had no choice.

Rising up on his toes, he shoved out between two bushes like a flushed rabbit and sprinted toward the truck. He expected to hear the crack of rifle with every step. But the night stayed quiet. With attentions focused on the facility, no one must be looking out here.

Reaching the edge of the lot, he skidded in the wet grass, then carefully stepped flat-footed across the gravel as quietly as possible. He crossed to the back of the agency truck and dropped out of sight.

He crouched, one hand on the ground behind the truck bed, and took a moment to collect himself. The truck was a Ford F-150 Raptor with a crew cab and custom-built shell in back. The weapons lockbox was in the rear compartment.

Before he could move, something wet and cold touched his exposed wrist. He jerked back with a noisy crush of gravel. A dark shape shimmied out from under the truck. It was a dog—a black-and-tan hound. A tail whipped back and forth behind it. It took him an extra moment before recognition struck him—followed by shock.

“Burt,” he whispered.

How could that be?

He struggled to make sense of it. He’d left the dog with his brother back at the station house. Then he remembered the phone call. Randy had said he was going to head over here rather than wait at the station. ACRES lay on the way back home.

So where was Randy?

Jack turned to the levee and searched along the private entry road that led from the river to the parking lot. He saw no sign of his brother’s truck, and that beat-up Chevy was hard to miss. As he looked, hoping for some other possible explanation, Jack pictured Randy stumbling upon the assault team, blindly waltzing his ass into a firestorm.

Jack sank to a knee. His vision darkened at the edges as he recognized the truth. Burt wouldn’t have left Randy unless he had no choice. The dog must have caught Jack’s scent and retreated to the truck.

He covered his eyes as if that would shut out the truth.

God, no . . .

A part of him wanted to run out toward the road, calling his brother’s name. But that would only get him killed, too. Burt slunk next to him, belly to the ground, his tail’s tip tentatively wagging, a submissive posture, asking for forgiveness, for reassurance.

Jack reached a hand and rested it on Burt’s flank. “Good boy,” he mouthed quietly.

He had to get moving now—or he never would.

With his heart weighted like a stone, he climbed to his feet and used a key to open the security shell in back. There was no overhead lamp to alert anyone equipped with night vision. He climbed into the back, reached the weapons locker, and fumbled in the dark with another key to unlatch and pull the lid open.

Inside, the lockbox held his service weapon, a Heckler & Koch P2000 double-action pistol, along with his Remington 870 shotgun. He strapped on the pistol but ignored the shotgun. Instead, he reached for the third weapon inside. He’d confiscated it from Garland Chase: an AA-12 combat auto-assault shotgun. Set on auto, shooting three hundred shells per minute, it could shred his truck to shrapnel.

As his brother would describe it, it was
one mean-ass motherfucker.

Jack remembered the explosion. He grabbed the weapon. The bastard running this assault might be ruthless, but he never met a Cajun with his blood up. Jack would teach the bastard what it meant to be hunted.

He hopped out of the truck, careful of the gravel, and patted his thigh, a silent command for Burt to follow. Out in the fields and bayous, he and Burt had always made a mean-ass team—and now they had the proper firepower to match.

“C’mon, boy. Let’s go hunting . . .”

With her hands in the air, Lorna faced the gunman as he came forward. He wore a heavy set of goggles over his eyes, obscuring most of his face. The lack of human features made him all the more menacing. Even more than the assault rifle pointed at her chest.

He waved her to the side with the tip of his weapon. “Get back from the window!”

She obeyed and retreated to the side, bumping against a bench. He kept his weapon pointed at her and lowered himself to one knee beside the two plastic crates on the floor. He quickly peered into each one, then stood up.

He touched two fingers to his throat and spoke in a clipped, military cadence. “Alpha One. I’ve secured one of the scientists. A woman. She has the animals. Two of them. She tossed another out a window on the west side.”

Lorna silently cursed. So he’d witnessed that.

There was a pause, then he spoke again. “The bird. That’s right. I’ll check.”

He flipped up his goggles and touched a switch on his helmet. A lamp flared above his forehead. The brightness blinded her. With the rifle still pointed at her chest, he ducked his head out the window and quickly scanned the lawn and bushes outside the window.

Lorna held her breath.

He pulled his head back and stared back at her. With his goggles off, he looked no more human. Under the helmet lamp, his face was all shadows and stubble, but his eyes shone at her, cold and merciless. She kept perfectly still under that predatory gaze.

But he ignored her and continued his radio communication. “No sign of the parrot.” Another pause as he listened to orders. “Yes, sir. Decapitate the specimens here. Collect the heads. Understood.”

Lorna went cold as he dropped his free hand to his belt and unsheathed a vicious-looking steel dagger. He lowered to a knee, but he kept those dead eyes on her.

He continued to speak into the radio. “I’ll wait for Takeo before moving the woman.”

The soldier—and there was no doubt he was a mercenary commando of some sort—ducked and pointed his helmet lamp into one of the crates. His dagger flashed menacingly in the sharp light.

As if sensing the threat, a frightened chitter rose from the capuchins.

Even past the thunder of her heart, a maternal surge of fury flooded Lorna. She rode that wave and burst forward. In her hands was a steel thermos. When the soldier had searched out the window, she had grabbed the bottle from the bench at her elbow and twisted the cap off one-handed behind her back.

She hurled the contents into the face of the soldier. Caught by surprise, he widened his eyes. The splash of liquid nitrogen struck him across the bridge of his nose. She twisted to the side as his gun reflexively fired. A flurry of rounds blasted past her. Glass shattered from shelves; plaster exploded.

Then gun and dagger toppled from his fingers. Both hands flew to his face. His corneas had been flash-frozen on contact. His eyeballs burst and wept down his face. Blind and in agony, he fell to his back, a scream strangled in his throat. She watched him gasp out a mist of condensation. He must have inhaled some of the liquid nitrogen as it splashed, sucked it into his nose and mouth and down into his throat and lungs.

He writhed and clawed at his face and neck, struggling against the pain, fighting to breathe with frozen lungs.

Lorna held back her own stunned horror before it paralyzed her. She’d never killed a person before—and though the soldier still fought, she knew he was a dead man, a living corpse.

She stumbled on numbed legs past his agonized form and reached the two crates. She knew she didn’t have much time. Others were on their way. She lifted one crate to the window, opened the gate, and upended the carrier. The two capuchins clung inside, scared and confused. She shook the cage, trying to dislodge them. One lost its grip and pulled its conjoined twin with it. The stunned pair tumbled into the dark.

Sorry, little ones.

She hated to abandon them, but their best chance of survival was away from here. She returned to the second crate and hauled it to the open window. Spooked by the gunfire, the frightened cub leaped out as soon as the gate was open.

She dropped the crate and retrieved her rifle. She considered going for the assault rifle, but the soldier writhed on top of it. She couldn’t get any closer—both guilt and terror kept her back.

But there was one thing she still wanted. During his violent struggles, the soldier had knocked the goggles off his helmet. She picked them up off the floor and pulled them over her eyes. The dark room suddenly snapped into a green-phosphorus clarity.

Able to see in the dark, she considered hopping out the same window, fleeing after the animals, but she’d be exposed out in the open. The intruders were well equipped and likely had the grounds under surveillance. The small animals might escape that net. She would not. Her best chance of survival still lay inside, to keep hidden for as long as possible. With the animals free, her only responsibility was to herself—and the others still trapped below.

She fled her lab and headed toward the rear of the facility. Now able to see, she moved swiftly, with more confidence. She needed to reach the veterinary clinic, her domain.

If she could reach there, she had a plan.

OUT FRONT, DUNCAN
listened to the garbled moans die over the radio. He had no idea what had happened to his man, the one who had found the woman and the animals, but he’d clearly been incapacitated in some manner.

Another of Korey’s team came on the radio. His voice was raspy with static, but the anger came through clear. “Fielding is down. Dead. No sign of the woman. Crates are empty.”

Duncan touched his throat mike. “Find her.”

He closed his eyes for a moment and sucked on a lime-flavored Life Savers. If the crates were empty, she must have tossed the others out with the bird. The specimens were loose on the grounds.

Opening his eyes, he turned to his second-in-command, Connor Reed. He knew the man had been listening to the radio chatter. Connor’s face was a hard mask. He ran a hand over the stubble of his red hair. The younger man had been with Duncan’s unit going back to boot camp. He’d been the one who led the charge and blew away the mutated chimp that had mauled him in Baghdad.

“Who’s on the west exit?” Duncan asked.

“Gerard is at the tree line with a sniper scope.”

“Go join him. Search for those specimens. Shoot anything that moves out there.”

“Yes, sir,” he said and ran off.

Duncan knew Connor would not fail him. The man was as brutal and unrelenting as a machine. Once let loose, he would lay down a swath of destruction. Two years ago, Connor had wiped out an entire Somalian rebel village—men, women, children, even the stray dogs—all to avenge a comrade who’d lost a leg to a roadside bomb. He’d get the job done here with the same ruthless efficiency.

As Connor disappeared around the corner Duncan’s radio crackled to life again. “Alpha One, Korey here. Reporting from the morgue.”

“Go ahead,” Duncan said. “Have you secured the carcasses of the two cats?”

“Yes, sir. Their heads are on the way up. But we believe we’ve also discovered where the other targets—the scientists—are holed up. Found some sort of big meat locker down here. It’s locked tight, but I thought I heard movement inside.”

Duncan brightened at the news.

“Permission to blow the doors, sir. Though I can’t guarantee there won’t be target casualties.”

Duncan understood the man’s caution. They needed at least one of them alive. He weighed the risk of killing everyone inside and decided it was worth it. He knew there was at least one person still running loose. The woman. That was good enough.

“Do it,” he ordered.

“Yes, sir.”

Duncan returned his attention to the smoking ruin of the front of the facility. Fires burned deeper inside, glowing through the pall. No one was coming out this way, and Duncan had a man posted at the entry road.

It was time to end this.

He pulled out his sidearm. The heft of the Sig Sauer pistol helped weight and center his determination. He headed toward the least smoky window. There was a woman loose in there. Scared. On the run. Likely armed.

He smiled—or at least half his face did.

He didn’t want her killed. At least not until he was done with her. Got answers from her. And maybe a little more besides.

With his scarred face, few women would give him a second glance, except in horror. And even fewer would ever satisfy him. Unless paid or at the point of a gun.

He headed for the building, determined to find this woman. The hunting would make the prize all that much sweeter. Afterward he would get all he could out of this woman.

Then put a bullet in her skull.