Encrypted (65 page)

“So you aren’t going to hit me over the head with a phone once I untie you?”

“No,” Devlin said. “Definitely not.”

“Amanda,” Dr. Henderson said as he entered the conference room. “What are you doing?”

She stood
,
feeling silly
,
guilty
,
and downright stupid. “Devlin gained his immunity naturally. He wasn’t vaccinated.”

“I know,” Henderson replied as he pulled a gun
on them
. “Because
I
am.”

* * *

Ronnie paused as Zach opened the door to the Hidden Hand’s dining hall. They had made it across the courtyard without incident. As she had hoped,
Lino
had put the bulk of his men on the wall and the courtyard. A show of force. A force that was now unconscious.

The three rushed inside as Zach closed and barred the door behind them. Ronnie wished she could make the sound of her footfalls disappear. In the cavernous hall, each step echoed off the high
,
stone walls. Even after seeing the massive dining hall on the 3
-
D image, nothing could prepare her for the actual room. It truly did seem right out of the fourteen hundreds.

Row after row of thick
,
wooden tables and benches stretched on for what seemed forever. Thick
,
woven tapestries covered the wa
lls. Each one depicted
a scene from the
B
ible. Clearly not the part of the
B
ible that talked about turning the other cheek. No, these wall hangings were the
hell
fire
-
and
-
brimstone kind. Demons ate the heart out of nonbeliever
s,
and God
was
portrayed as um, kind of a jerk.

Above their heads flew banner
s
with angelic coat
s
of arms for each table.

Ronnie drew in a slow breath, trying not to let the stillness overwhelm her. She’d almost rather be fighting off an army rather than walking through this dining hall, seeing the hard-core preparations the Hidden Hand had made. This wasn’t just some “hey
,
let’s destroy the world” plot. These people had thought this through. They had seating arrangements already figured out for their new world order.

She typed a command into the air, switching her focus back to her cracked lens. The screen was fuzzy and
fritzed
every two seconds, but gave her enough information to know that the entire castle’s surveillance was down. Which on one hand was great. The enemy couldn’t see them. On the other
hand
, they couldn’t see what in the hell
Lino
was up to.

Sure
,
they had knocked out over thirty men in the courtyard. That still left well over two dozen guards
who
could be lurking around every corner. Ronnie didn’t realize how nervous she was until Zach’s hand found hers. He gave it a squeeze. Which was helpful
,
since they just walked past a full suit of armor. Each time they passed one of them, Ronnie held her breath, half expecting it to jump out at her.

Quirk
,
on the other hand
,
would have been admiring the
Game of Thrones
vibe of the dining hall. More than likely
,
he would have talked the pilot into trying on one of the suits of armor. But Quirk wasn’t here. And who knew
w
hat happened to the pilot
?
They had planned on radio silence until the vaccine chamber was breached. So as long as her
K
e
K
e
-G
glasses were interfaced with her laptop, she held onto hope. It could be a false hope, but it was a hope
,
nonetheless.

“Is
n’t
it strange that we have gotten this far unmolested?” Francois asked.

Zach looked
at
her as well.

Ugh. Didn’t they know you didn’t jinx something like this? There were times during a cyber breach that you just strolled along. Of course
,
that usually meant
that
they had something nasty waiting for you on the other side.

“My guess?” she said. “They never expected their shell to be penetrated. Which is why I angled us toward the more social areas of the castle. Away from their security hub.”

Zach frowned. “Really? That’s what you are going with? That the Hidden Hand didn’t want to get the dining hall messy with our blood?”

Damn Zach and his intuition.

“Or…” Ronnie said as they neared the large, thick wooden door that led out of the dining hall.

“Or?”

Even Francois seemed interested in her answer. Great time for him to tune in.

“Well… or there are twenty men on the other side of that door armed with automatic machine guns
?
”

Cocking his head to the side, Zach asked, “And which one do you think is more likely?”

“Oh, the twenty armed gunmen. Totally,” Ronnie replied.

* * *

Zach gripped his weapon. One gun against twenty? Francois
had
picked up a spear and still had on Ronnie’s super special bulletproof vest, but still. Neither of them would last ten seconds once the door was opened.

Ronnie had to have
a
plan, didn’t she?

“Hon?” he asked as she slid her gloved fingers over a statue set in an alcove. It was hard to pay attention to what she was doing
,
given the fact that Zach could practically see the gunmen on the other side of the stout door. Waiting for him to throw the crossbar up and step into the kill zone that was the hallway. He had a few flashbang grenades
.
H
owever
,
he was hoping to keep hold of those for an emergency.

It truly was sad when twenty armed gunmen just didn’t quite seem like the emergency like it used to. That was
,
of course
,
until the door opened.

“Babe?”

“Got it,” Ronnie said pulling the statue of a monk off its pedestal. Beneath the wood
carving sat a very sophisticated
-
looking keypad.

That was the Hidden Hand. All medieval on the outside
,
and all techie on the inside.

“And that opens…?”

“Give me a second
,
and I’ll show you,” she said as she typed into thin air. Zach knew that the keys were motion activated
,
and she could see the results of her efforts in her glasses, but it was still a little freaky to watch.

Francois went to open his mouth
,
then closed it again, eyeing beneath the door
,
where shadows definitely moved. It seemed the natives were getting restless. He glanced to Ronnie who was busy biting her lip. Zach didn’t bother to ask the ETA on her project. She would be done when she was done.

He backed up, putting the automatic weapon to his shoulder. The Frenchman too retreated from the door. Soon
,
the option to toss a flashbang
would
be gone.

Lightning flashed, illuminating the grand dining hall as if a thousand candles blazed. Thunder rumbled, shaking the stained glass windows in their frame. Even the weather seemed impatient with their progress.

Zach flexed and
unflexed
his fingers. A loud
clunk
sounded. Zach braced, ready for the horde to come through that door.

“Well?” Ronnie asked. “Did you want to get out of here
,
or what?”

He checked over his shoulder
.
S
ure enough
,
a passage had opened
behind
them. “How?”

Ronnie shrugged. “They tried to hide it, but you know, I’m
me
.”

From anyone else
,
that would have been pure arrogance. From Ronnie? Just the facts, ma’am.

“They’re opening it,” Francois said, pointing to the metal spike
peeking
through the crack in the dining hall door, lifting the crossbar.

“Then let’s not be here,” Zach suggested.

Zach made sure that Francois and Ronnie were through the door before he entered the narrow passageway. The hidden door smoothly and silently closed behind them.

“Could you smash that?” Ronnie asked as she pointed to the control panel.

Zach was more than happy to use the butt of his assault rifle to demolish the circuitry. A loud crash came from the dining hall
, and
then the unmistakable clatter of gunfire.

“This way,” Ronnie urged him to the staircase…leading up.

“But I thought we needed to get
down
to the vault.”

Ronnie indicated
the door. “Be my guest to try and get down that extremely well
-
protected stairwell. For me
,
though, I’m going
to
go up to see what the hell they spent so much tech to hide, then follow the secret passage up and over the dining hall and come down behind all those armed men.”

Good thing he knew
that
she’d say no to a kiss right about now
;
otherwise
,
he would have planted one on her right this second.

* * *

Amanda felt her strength seep
away as she stared at Dr. Henderson
,
the director of the Plum Island zoonotic disease research facility. Make that the Hidden Hand’s mole.

“How
?
” she choked out.

The elderly man smiled like the gentleman he was not as he picked at one of his boils. Only it wasn’t a boil
—
it was a fake. He lifted up the boil, revealing perfectly normal skin beneath it. Henderson took in a deep breath with a single rattle.

“That is how you fake the plague,” he remarked
,
seeming surprisingly chipper. Why shouldn’t he
,
though? He’d just won. “And I already warned our Northern
m
ost Province of your friends’ arrival. They were more than ready for them.”

Amanda’s heart rate accelerated. As much of a lying bastard as Henderson was, he still gave away some truth. So Quirk and Ronnie had made it to a vaccine stronghold. And since Henderson only implied
that
they were dead, Amanda believed very much
that
they were still alive.

Which meant there was hope. Which meant she needed to find a way to stay out of that gun’s way.

Unfortunately
,
Henderson leveled the weapon at her. “It truly was amazing watching you work, Amanda. I should have shut you down long ago, but you were just so brilliant. I suppose you won’t join us?”

As much as she wanted to lie, Amanda knew he would never believe her. Better to go out with her conscious intact.

“No,” she answered.

“Too bad,” Henderson said as he cocked the gun.

Amanda flinched, waiting for the shot
,
when Devlin hurled himself over in his chair, knocking into Henderson.

“Run!” the CIA liaison screamed.

She bolted to the side, angling for the door. Henderson righted himself and shot at Devlin. Blood gushed from the side of his head.

Without prompting, her feet got moving, streaking past the director and out into the hall. Shots zinged past her as she made for the stairs. Head pounding, lungs burning, and her muscles complaining, Amanda ran for her life.

* * *

As the trio
went
up the staircase, the noise of the calamity below subsided. The gunmen in the dining hall must not have known about the passage they now fled. Which only inflamed Francois’ curiosity. What could the Hidden Hand hold so dear they did not tell their own men about it?

Francois’ foot stumbled on one of the steps. The near dark conditions
were
not very helpful to aged eyes. The FBI agent grabbed his elbow, stead
y
ing him.