Fast (8 page)

            He raised his hand. ‘No. Wait –’

            All six gunmen opened fire.

            Stevens was minced where he stood. Bullets tore through his body armor like cardboard. His flesh exploded outwards from every entry wound. Cheng and Goldsmith didn’t even fire a shot. Chunks of their flesh tore away as though bitten off by a giant invisible mouth. Cheng’s body twisted on the spot and thumped the wall. He slid down the wall and left a fat red stain.

            Goldsmith’s head disintegrated. His body dropped instantly. His helmet and headset radio slid along the floor towards the gunmen.

#

The lead gunman stopped the sliding helmet under his heavy grey boot.

            Pulling down his mask, Bora revealed a face that looked like its strong, eastern European features had been traced on a balloon, and then the balloon over-inflated so that everything seemed slightly out of proportion, but perfectly suited to his big hands, muscular arms and brutish physique.

            He lifted the helmet and shook out the remains of the Marine’s skull. After listening to the headset radio for a few seconds, he tossed the helmet back towards the dead Marines.

            Behind Bora stood a gunman with a rifle unlike any of the others. The weapon was longer than their FN P190 submachine guns. Its fat, tubular design had no obvious magazine. The gunman carried it with a lot more care.

            Bora spoke to the man with the strange rifle, pointing to the Marines’ mangled remains.

            ‘Did you get all that?’

            ‘Yes, sir.’

            The man came forward and aimed the rifle one at a time at the dead bodies. Then he aimed at the pieces of flesh stuck to the walls.

            ‘Got it all now,’ reported the man. ‘Are these the bodies we’re using?’

            Bora nodded distractedly. He knelt to place his left palm on the floor. His eyes slowly unfocused. The gunmen froze. Bora reached out his right hand and splayed his fingertips against the wall. The gunmen could have been statues. They weren’t even breathing. Their eyes locked on Bora like he was a voodoo priest predicting their future.

            Which, in a way, he was.

            Bora snapped his fingers and stood up, triggering the gunmen to breathe again. ‘You know what to do with them. Go now. Exactly as I explained. We have about forty seconds.’

            Four gunmen rushed forward and gathered the Marines’ equipment. They dragged the bodies away by the heels.

            The articulate voice of Cameron Cairns came over Bora’s headset. By now Cairns should have complete control of the administration hub, and soon the entire Complex.

            ‘Bora,’ radioed Cairns. ‘The last Special Forces team is heading to the pool room. Make sure they never leave it.’

            ‘Yes, sir. We’re on our way.’

#

Cameron Cairns lowered his radio with a satisfied smirk.

He stood in the communications room in the eastern wing of the admin hub. The comms-room measured the size of four of its surrounding offices joined together. Two parallel workstations crowded with comm-tech coordination hardware divided the room.

This was his center of operations, secured because of the equipment it contained, chiefly of which, suspended from the ceiling, hung a six-meter-wide digital display screen.

            Connected to the screen and packed wall-to-wall in the surprisingly compact room was enough hardware to track every radio signal in the Complex. Whenever the Special Forces spoke into their radios, Cairns heard the message and saw their location appear as a red blip on the large screen. The screen also displayed their average speed and direction of travel.

For the last eight minutes, he’d listened and tracked with growing satisfaction the radio messages from the Marines dying all over the Complex. It was a symphony of slaughter.

            It was the most beautiful thing he’d ever heard.

            In another time, in the basement of an abandoned textiles factory, a young Cameron Cairns had trained as an underground code catcher, listening for the ticks and clicks of the enemy’s radio messages. The work had seemed a waste of his talents at the time, but he had nonetheless applied himself to the task with the alacrity of a man who knew that life’s best investments were of the mind. The experience taught Cairns the value of intercepting radio communications.

            But Cairns had chosen this particular room for an additional reason.

            During an emergency evacuation, the control of all mechanical services in the Complex defaulted to this comms-room. Ordinarily, the last evacuating staff member would transfer all system controls to the Evacuation Center, but Cairns intervened in the process. Two dead bodies slumped over their workstations sported matching bullet wounds to the backs of their heads.

            With the comms-room secured, Cairns directed Francis Gould in the control of almost every system in the Complex. Sitting across the room, reluctantly working an arm’s length from one of the dead staff, Gould toiled right now in that process.

            Gould’s insipid presence irked Cairns. For the moment it was necessary.  The only expert authority on the creatures, Gould had taken pains to ensure he remained indispensable, doling information grudgingly and insisting in personally overseeing the mechanical operations inside the Complex. He was a tight-lipped little runt, but when the time came, Cairns had been fantasizing about how he would dispose of Gould. He would start with heat….

            ‘I’ve activated the last pump station,’ reported Gould. Perhaps sensing the direction of Cairns’s thoughts, he shifted uncomfortably at his workstation. ‘I’m not sure this is a wise idea. It might not be enough time to get in and out. Maybe we should stagger the pumps. And we should have more men guarding this door. Two isn’t enough. You’ve seen what the creatures can do.’

            Cairns ignored the whiney runt and keyed his radio. ‘Bora, the diversions are operating, you are free to move at speed.’

            ‘Copy that,’ responded Bora a second later.

            Now Cairns turned and locked his withering gaze on Gould.

The little worm was a bundle of nervous ticks and involuntary habits. Even on the rare occasion when the scientist was completely still, he looked to be twitching on the inside.

He’s pitiful
.

            Cairns spoke quietly. ‘Two men like
you
wouldn’t be enough. Don’t judge
my
men by your own standard. If you do your job properly, we won’t need
any
men guarding this door. Let’s call it professional incentive.’

            Gould rolled his eyes and focused on his computer terminal.

            Resisting the strong urge to scalp Gould slowly with a ball-point pen, Cairns turned back to the overhead screen.
Later. You’ll get what’s coming to you, Gould. I’m going to relish every second of it.

            Right now, Bora hunted the last Special Forces team. Unlike with Gould, Cairns had no doubts about Bora. Before his skills were noticed by the right people, Krisko ‘Bora’ Borivoj ranked a Lieutenant in the Czech Special Forces. It showed. In combat, Bora was as savage as a wild dog; at other times, however, from an observant comment or a half-hidden reaction, Cairns recognized a complex depth behind Bora’s brutish exterior. Most men at the top of their game kept a rein on their emotions, but Bora operated with an entirely different mental model. Animal instincts guided his decisions equally.

            Plus, Bora possessed other skills qualifying him for this operation.

            It all depended on what they found on level three.

            Cairns moved to a keyboard and raised the digital floor plan of level three. Even from this comms-room, the only available data constituted a schematic outline of the laboratory’s floor plan. The computerized mapping software offered no other information. In fact, no information could be purchased anywhere in the world about the security arrangements on level three.

            But Cairns knew that every system had a weak spot. No system was impenetrable.

            He keyed his radio again. ‘Basement team, the diversions are operating. Transfer your equipment to level three.’

            He allowed himself the luxury of a self-indulgent smile. With the Special Forces almost wiped-out, his preliminary work neared completion.

Now it was time to
really
get this mission started.

#

Marlin jerked his head around the corner and stole a snapshot view of the corridor ahead.

            ‘All clear,’ he reported.

            Coleman hated these tight corridors. The confined spaces made him feel vulnerable and edgy. He was also worried about Fifth Unit.

            He’d heard Stevens yell
‘No wait!’
over the radio
,
followed by the sound of gunfire. It wasn’t the familiar sound of a CMAR-17 firing. The caseless ammunition of the CMAR-17 produced a higher-pitched percussion wave that Coleman would instantly recognize over the radio. This sounded more like submachine gun fire. The submachine gun was the assault rifles’ nasty cousin, the perfect weapon in such a confined environment.

            Now Fifth Unit wasn’t responding to Coleman’s request for a position update. It could very well be the jamming hardware interfering with their radios, but Coleman had graver suspicions. Impossible as it seemed, things had gotten worse. Vanessa and David unaccounted for, marauding creatures, Special Forces units obliterated, massive civilian casualties….

            And now potentially
another
unidentified hostile force in the Complex attacking the Marines.

I need to contact the Evacuation Center. If David and Vanessa have evacuated safely, things would be so much better.

            ‘This is it,’ Marlin said, drawing Coleman’s attention to a door-sized vent in the corridor wall. The vent was locked, hinged on one side, and dark beyond. ‘This service passage joins the pool room. I have to cut the lock.’

            ‘Do it,’ Coleman said. ‘These corridors are making me nervous. I want to find the nearest intercom and contact the evac center.’

            Marlin knelt and pressed cutting charge around the simple lock.

            ‘Clear,’ he warned, and they turned their eyes from the short, bright –
crack
! – of the cutting charge slicing through the metal. Marlin yanked open the vent and systematically swept every surface with flashlight light.

            Coleman side-stepped into the service corridor after Marlin. The short corridor ended at another door-sized vent. Halfway along the corridor, a single intersection branched left. Marlin darted across the intersection and crouched at the second vent.

Coleman peered down the intersection. Beyond operated a massive ventilation plant room. Life underground offered no external windows, so the massive air-conditioning plant provided every breath of ventilation for the entire Complex. The oversized ventilation shafts radiated from the main plant like spokes on a bicycle tire. The boxy silver tunnels disappeared into the walls.

            Coleman felt the fans’ vibrations through his boots. He couldn’t see a phone or intercom on any of the walls.
There might be one in the pool room.