If neither of them felt secure, the place would be wired from ceiling to floor. That was highly unlikely, considering the remote probability of the cave being found. If Douglas hadn’t summoned her and then disappeared, this compound never would have been found. That scared her, and she prayed for their sakes that Kunz hadn’t been this clever with all his GRID compounds.
She stepped into the light and moved to the steps. They were scraped, the edges rounded, as if heavy items had been dragged over them repeatedly, and the smell of salt burned so strong it nearly knocked her to her knees.
Leaving the water, she listened for warning sounds that she’d tripped some alarm. But there weren’t any sounds of that or of anyone approaching, and no one was in sight. Actually, there was no activity whatsoever. Was that normal?
Having no way of knowing, she quickly removed her oxygen tank, fins and headgear and placed them near the end of the tank rack, hidden. Then, keeping an eye on the door, she moved over to the line of tanks and opened the valves on most of them, emptying out the oxygen.
If she got lucky enough to find Nathan and Douglas, and then got lucky enough to escape with them, they would all need air to get out of here. If she were really lucky and found any of the detainees inside, they would need more air. Otherwise, she would have emptied all of tanks in the
rack to eliminate GRID’s ability to give chase. Not knowing, she couldn’t risk emptying any more. She quickly moved the full tanks to the end of the racks, placing them in front so there’d be no confusion.
Heading toward the door, she paused. An oddity on the floor caught her eye. It looked like part of a wooden plank.
She walked over to give it a closer look. It was part of a wooden plank—a cracked sliver of oak. Two slight indentions marred it about ten inches in toward the center from either end. She tested the depth of the indention with her thumb. These were the kinds of marks that came from metal bands being cinched tightly around wood. What could Kunz be doing with…?
Gouges.
Salt tang.
Scraped steps.
Oak with metal band indentions.
All of the pieces slid into place and Kate gasped.
Suddenly the truth was as clear as the water off the coast and she knew
exactly
how Kunz was getting the weapons into the compound. And because he was, he then had to be trucking the weapons over land to his end buyers.
She had to give the devil his due. It was, simply put, a brilliant plan.
Damn him.
Voices from the tunnel carried to her over the water. Several voices, and the people attached to them were heading her way and just beyond the last bend. She’d be in full view!
She rushed through the major exit and then down the dimly lit hallway. It was narrow and white-walled. This area had to be above ground—it had Sheetrock walls.
Water had no mercy on Sheetrock, and there were no signs of any damage. Neither were there any damn doors, offering her somewhere to hide.
The men had ditched their gear and were coming closer. She couldn’t turn back. She had no choice but to move forward.
Running to the fork in the hallway, she paused and scanned left, then right. Nathan’s voice sounded. She jerked back to the left. He was somewhere down there. Somewhere close.
“I don’t know, I said,” Nathan shouted. “I can’t tell you what I don’t know. What part of that don’t you understand?”
He didn’t sound hurt, he sounded angry. Glad to hear it, she took the left fork, dart gun in hand, moving with caution, wary of being discovered, certain if she were, it would be an automatic death sentence for all of them.
Six doors down, a guard entered the hallway.
Oh, spit.
Her heart nearly stopped. She darted her gaze, looking for somewhere to go. The guard was turning toward her—she had no choice. Ducking into the first open door, she slammed her back against the wall, her breathing hard and heavy.
The room was empty. Bare walls and floor. In a cold sweat she waited, praying this guy wasn’t on his way to this room for some untold reason.
Finally, shuffling footsteps cleared her doorway and then faded beyond the hallway fork. The guard stopped there to speak to someone. Their words sounded muffled from inside the room, but the tone of their conversation seemed cordial not frantic. They clearly considered everything to be normal.
When she no longer heard voices, she peeked out and checked the hallway. Empty. She listened intently, hoping to again hear Nathan’s voice. Moving door to door, she paused to listen. But at each step, she heard only silence.
Outside the sixth door—the one to the room the guard had come out of—she heard someone talking. A man. She stopped, hopeful, but it wasn’t Nathan.
“You can spare us both this distasteful ordeal, Major,” the man said.
He wasn’t Nathan, but he could be talking to him. Him or another major held captive. There were several.
Her heart beat faster and she willed it to slow, resisting the urge to rush into the room.
“Simply answer my questions and I promise you’ll have a painless death.”
Kate had no idea who the interrogator was, but he definitely wasn’t Kunz. He didn’t sound like Sandross, either, offering mercy. Silently grateful to be spared a direct confrontation with either of them, she eased the door open a few inches and peered inside.
Nathan was the victim.
Across the wide room, he sat naked, strapped to a metal chair, his arms and legs restrained with leather bindings. He was wired to the rafters. Monitors were stacked up along the wall, and wires from the machines had been attached to various parts of his body: his heart, his temple, a clip on his fingertip, monitoring his pulse. His cheeks had inch-long slices over his cheekbones and nodes had been inserted into the cuts.
Electrico-shock therapy.
Pain. Severe pain.
Anger burst from deep inside her and it was all she could do to keep from barreling in and ripping out the interrogator’s heart.
The man keyed in something on a keyboard attached to the machine nearest Nathan.
His face contorted in agony, his body jerked tight against the restraints, and Nathan screamed.
K
ate nearly hit the floor. Nathan’s scream chilled her to the bone, fueling fear that filled her every cell.
His body stretched tight as a wire and then, just as suddenly, went lax. He slumped from the waist and didn’t straighten.
Kate could barely breathe, barely focus on anything other than Nathan being in pain.
Think, damn it. You can’t help him if you don’t think!
She forced her mind to function. The man standing over him was about forty. He wore a white lab coat and he’d spoken with an indistinct accent. Maybe Russian; she couldn’t be sure. But she didn’t recognize him from the S.A.S.S. watch list.
“Refusing to answer will only delay the inevitable and cause you more pain, Major Forester. You will tell us what we want to know. I suggest you make it easy on yourself. Now, where is Captain Kane?”
No answer.
“What is Captain Kane doing here?”
No answer.
“Does Captain Kane know what is happening here?”
No answer.
“Who did Captain Kane tell about this compound?”
No answer.
Kate eased the door shut behind her and lurked behind a white privacy curtain hanging from the ceiling.
Nathan sensed her there, but he didn’t look over. How she knew that, she had no idea, but she was as certain of it as she was about her own name.
The interrogator sighed, weary of this one-sided conversation. “You must answer or you leave me no choice but to increase the pain, Major Forester. I am not a proponent of torture. I am a man of science. But Mr. Sandross insists you answer these questions. Unless you do so now, you leave me no choice—”
“Bullshit.” Nathan spat the word out, furious and somewhat recovered. “Everyone makes choices. Good or bad, and they own them. Don’t peddle your trash to me. I’m not buying.”
“Very well, Major Forester.”
Kate’s stomach clutched. Her temper rising, she eased her knife out of the sheath and watched the man move from in front of Nathan back to the machine he used to inflict the torture. When he reached for the keyboard, Kate rushed across the room. Her knife arced to strike, she warned him, “Touch him again and you’ll die slowly.”
Shocked at her being there, the man turned toward her. Kate sliced the air and he walked right into her swing. The knife caught him midthroat.
He collapsed, dead before he hit the floor. Bright red
blood spilled from his neck and pooled on the floor at her feet. She stepped over his body to get to Nathan.
“I thought you’d never get here.” Nathan shivered and pushed against the straps banding his arms. “Get me out of this damn thing.”
“Sorry I took so long.” Kate loosened the leather straps at his arms and then his legs, freeing him. She deliberately avoided checking out his body, though she was tempted. But under the circumstances, it felt like a violation, and he’d been violated enough. “Are you okay?”
“Hell, yes.” He pulled the nodes out of his face, off his chest. She grabbed two sterile strips from her fanny pack and bandaged his face. “Better than all right. I’m freaking phenomenal.”
Impossible. “Nathan, did they do something to your head?”
“No,” he said, clasping her arms and giving them a shake. “Douglas and at least two other Americans are here. I was with them, Kate. Come on.” He rushed to a coatrack near the door, stole a lab coat and tugged it on. “This way.”
They ran through the corridor, took the first right through a second one, and then entered yet another hallway. “They’re down here,” Nathan said without looking back. “Sandross won’t consider you dead without a body. He instructed the men that if you tried to get into the compound, to let you. But not to let you leave it.”
Kate stayed close on Nathan’s heels. “What about Gaston?” She still couldn’t believe he had turned traitor. Yes, it happened, but she had expected better from him. “Is he with us or GRID?”
“Damned if I know. I see it both ways, and that rattles the hell out of my confidence in him.”
“That’s how you’re supposed to see him. In his job, that’s an asset.”
“Maybe.” Clearly grasping Gaston’s status as a double agent, Nathan added, “But maybe not.”
“What about Kunz? Have you seen him?”
“No. But I heard him on the radio with Marcus Sandross. Gaston was right about that man. He’s one mean son of a bitch, Kate.”
“Is Kunz not here, or is he in another part of the compound?”
“Sorry. No idea.” At an intersecting corridor, Nathan slowed and then stopped, looked up and then down the cross hall. “But Sandross is heavily armed. The compound’s a veritable fortress.”
“Where are the weapons?” She stopped beside him and ran her own visual check of the cross hallway.
“There in two rooms the size of warehouses,” he said, breathless and weary from the torture. “To the right. Four guards posted outside—two of them on each door. The weapons are stacked ceiling-to-floor, Kate. Row after row of them. It’s the biggest cache I’ve seen in my career, including ours.”
What the hell was Kunz planning? To overthrow the governments of a couple of countries? She wished she had more of her own arsenal with her. “Did you get a look? Are any of them tagged?” Bio and chemical warheads were tagged with a yellow band—a visual warning to anyone who came into contact with them that special handling was required.
Nathan’s expression turned grim, the sterile strips crinkling over his skin. “All of them.”
Shock stole her breath. Her voice came out as a ragged whisper and acid roiled in her stomach. “
All
of them?”
T
he compound was a maze of corridors and Kate followed Nathan down yet another one. So far, they hadn’t seen a soul.
When Nathan paused, Kate motioned with a shrug. “Where is everyone?”
“Scattered. It’s a huge place.”
“Did you see Sandross personally?”
He nodded. “He had the doc rig me up and told him what Kunz wanted to know.”
Which was all about her. “I’m sorry, Nathan. I heard the questions…”
“No, it wasn’t your fault. Don’t even go there.”
“Where?” It was her fault. Kunz wanted information on her.
“Guilt.” He shook his head. “Forget it, Kate. Kunz and Sandross—all of GRID owns it.”
True, but when she was the object, dismissing it just wasn’t that easy.
Nathan pointed to a few doors down and swung his finger right. “Cell block. Douglas and the others are in it.”
She nodded and stepped in front of him to take the corner and get a look. Midway down, two guards stood near a vacant desk. Shooting them where they stood would be effortless but, without a sound suppressor, the gunfire would alert the entire compound. Better to try to keep it stealth. She held two fingers up to Nathan, pointed to her chest and then right. He could take the one on the left. When he nodded, she passed him her dart gun and three darts, then mouthed, “Poison tips.”
Giving her a thumbs-up, he loaded the dart gun.
Ready to move, she unsheathed her knife, then unsnapped the strap holding her gun place in case she had no choice but to use it. The desk backed into an alcove, leaving her staring at the back of one of the guards. At any moment, he could turn, and her intention to stay stealth would be obsolete.
Hoping to hell he was right-handed, she hugged the right wall where, if turning, he’d see her only at the last second. Nathan fell in behind her and motioned with two fingers to move slowly. Kate disagreed. They needed to rush them. That gave them better odds of the guards not having time to sound an alarm.
Kate signaled back and then counted down, her arm at her side, her fingers where Nathan too could see them, then she took the corner in a dead run. Hearing Nathan behind her, she pushed, rammed into the closest guard and knocked him off his feet.
The second man hurled himself across the desk.
Nathan fired.
The dart stuck square in the man’s chest.
The guy on the ground threw a right cross that landed square on Kate’s jaw. Her head jerked back, her jaw throbbed. She dropped her knee on his throat, crushing it, then turned her attention to Nathan. He was retrieving the cell keys from the dead body of the guard. The dart still stuck into him, midchest.
Kate didn’t recognize either of the men. Not from personal experience going against GRID, and not from the S.A.S.S. watch list. That had her stomach curling. They were insidious, like rodents. Take one down, and two more appear.
Nathan tried to unlock the cell door. “Damn it. Kate, none of the keys work.”
Unzipping her fanny pack, she pulled out a minibrick of plastics and spoke to the three men inside the cell. “Back up and turn around. Don’t move until I tell you to. Got it?”
The three were pretty beaten up, but one sure looked like Douglas. Wondering if he was, she wired the cell door with C-4. “It’s going to explode. It’ll be loud, but you’ll be safe. Nathan,” she added, without pausing or glancing his way, “get to the desk and see if there are any audio sensors you can knock out.”
“Don’t you have anything quiet in there?” Nathan waved toward her fanny pack. “They’ll be all over us in minutes.”
“Quiet explosives?” she asked, busily working. “Nathan, does that sound remotely logical to you?”
“Okay.” He grimaced, went to the desk and examined the panels. “Found it, Kate.” Something clicked. “Go for it.”
“Just do what I told you,” she said to the men through the bars. Glancing back, she saw Nathan, standing two steps off her right shoulder. “Back off.”
He moved away.
“Three, two, one…”
The plastics exploded. The cell door rocked off its hinges.
“Hey, not bad. I thought you’d take the place down.”
“I know what you thought,” Kate said, a little affronted. Not too loud, her ears weren’t even ringing. “I’m a pro. You forgot that.”
“Yeah, I guess I did,” Nathan admitted, his eyes gleaming male appreciation. “I was thinking…”
“Later, Romeo.” She thumped his chest. “Your timing sucks. But don’t lose the thought.”
Haggard and weary, Douglas started out of the cell.
Kate blocked his exit with a hand to his chest. “What have you mailed lately?”
“Figures, Kane. You’re a pain in the ass, but I like having you around when I get in trouble.” He smiled at her through cheeks split like Nathan’s. “Sand.”
Kate smiled her relief. He was Douglas. The real Douglas. “Story of my life. When their asses are in a sling, men love me. When they’re not, I’m forgotten.” She nodded toward the other two men in the cell. “Who are they?”
“Field Intelligence officers,” Douglas said, pointing. “Andrews and Mathis.”
Andrews was bruised up, half his lean face was purple with hints of green. New and old wounds. “You ambulatory, Andrews?”
“Damn right, I am.”
His voice sounded strong; his will, stronger. He’d be fine. She rolled her gaze to Mathis. The poor guy’s nose was splattered halfway across his face and the tattered rag that was left of his shirt showed cuts all over his back.
Sorry bastards were into mutilation, too.
Her stomach
kicked, rebelling. Before she could ask how he was, he told her.
“I’m mobile, ma’am. My leg’s screwed up, but I can move.”
Admiration for him swelled in her chest. “Then let’s get the hell out of here.” She stepped back from the cell door.
Douglas swung an arm around Mathis. “Come on, buddy.”
“Nathan.”
He stepped her way. “Get them to the tunnel. Use the oxygen tanks on the ground at the end of the rack. The ones in the rack are empty.”
Andrews stopped, looking shocked. “What about the women? You can’t just leave them here.”
Surprised, Kate rounded on him. “What women?”
“The two women with JAG. I haven’t seen them, but I heard the guards talking about them.”
“Do you know where they are?” Nathan asked.
“About ten cells down,” Mathis said. “I was with the guards when they brought them back to the cell after their session.”
“What session?” Kate asked.
“That’s what they call their interrogations.” Anger burned deep in Mathis’s eyes. “They look like the rest of us.”
“Nathan, Douglas. Get the women and then get to the tunnel. Douglas, you get the others out of the cave. You’ll have to share oxygen tanks.” She turned to look at Nathan. “You’ll need to wait for me or I won’t have a tank to get out.”
Torn between worry and surprise, he didn’t bother to mask either, but nodded agreement. “Where are you going to be?”
“We won’t go undiscovered much longer.” She rigged a charge for the women’s cell door and handed it to him. “You can handle this, right?”
“Yes,” he said, then put a hand on her forearm. “But where will you be?”
She lifted her gaze to meet his. “I’ve got to get a look at the weapons.”
“No, Kate.” He took the charge from her. “We leave here together.”
“We will,” she assured him. “Send them with Douglas, you wait for me, and then we’ll leave together.” She turned and headed down the hall.
“Damn it, Kate.” He shouted after her. “I don’t like this.”
He didn’t like it? She was walking into the inner sanctum of Kunz’s lair. She
hated
it. “Me, either.” Truer words had never been spoken.
Kate followed Nathan’s directions and located the corridor with the weapons rooms. That she and their group remained undetected amazed and concerned her. It seemed impossible, and yet with the location and security measures in place, it was entirely within the realm of reason that they wouldn’t be detected. Still, Kate didn’t trust it.
She passed an open door in the hallway and looked inside. Four desks in the wide room, all neat and pristine with nothing seemingly out of place. Computers, data-gathering and transmitting. And a wall full of monitors. Images feeding in from various locations within the compound. None of which currently had images of Nathan, Douglas or the group.
This was a minioperations center, she realized, stepping inside around a cartful of files.
A plan bloomed and she moved to the main computer, sat and took a look at the incoming data on the screen. “Holy cow, it’s the mother lode!”
She scrolled down the screen, seeing file after file of U.S. government employees who had been substituted by GRID operatives. Unwilling to risk losing the information—a disk successfully surviving the dive was questionable at best—she checked for Internet access and found it. She could transmit all this to Home Base, to Darcy. Of course, if she did transmit, Kate would never get out of here alive.
Her muscles clenched and the decision weighed on her. If it had been just her life, she wouldn’t have been eager, but she’d made that call a ridiculous number of times before. But this time, it wasn’t just her life being decided. It included Nathan and Douglas, Andrews and Mathis and the two women with the JAG corps. They would all die with her. And making that call was a bitch of a decision.
What decision? Do you really have a choice?
Kate wanted to groan. Now was not the time for her conscience to butt in. She was having enough problems with this because of Nathan.
Think, Kate. Two warehouses full of weapons. All of them banded or marked with the emblem that they’re bio or chemical.
She loved Nathan Forester. He didn’t know it. Hell, she’d just realized it herself. She was willing to forfeit her own life, but his?
Bio or chemical, Kate. We’re talking mass murder on a scale the likes of which have never been seen. Hundreds of thousands murdered at once—and somebody loves every one of them. Can you live with that?
She couldn’t. Kate squeezed her eyes shut, prayed she
was doing the right thing, and typed in the code to upload the data files to S.A.S.S. systems Darcy would be monitoring. She’d be on this like glue. In less than two minutes, Colonel Drake would activate and elevate GRID to Code One status, and all the honchos would know who the GRID operatives were inside the government.
“Nathan, all of you—forgive me.” A tear filled her eye, blurring her vision. Signing their death warrants, she hit the button to send.
Kate’s heart felt too big for her chest; part homesteaded in her throat. Too antsy to move, she forced herself to stay put in the squeaky chair until she saw that the files were actually transmitting.
The icon appeared, then the bar, and as soon as it started filling with blue, clicking off seconds left to finish and percentages of the file processed, she hit the floor running, snagging a white lab coat from a rack and the cartful of files.
Her plan was brazen, likely stupid, but it was her best shot of getting a look inside the weapons room. And if she was lucky—very, very lucky—she would get to transmit her findings back to S.A.S.S., as well, before they killed her.
Two guards stood outside the weapons room door; one on either side, just as Nathan had said. They were both the size of mountains and looked about as approachable as Mount Everest was climbable in the dead of winter.
Kate steeled her nerves, rolled the cart up the corridor, trying her damnedest to look as if this was standard operating procedure and she was bored half out of her mind.
Between the two men, she turned to enter the first weapons room.
Neither spoke nor moved to stop her.
She didn’t acknowledge them or look directly into their eyes, just walked between them into the room, scanning frantically to see if there were files anywhere. If there weren’t, she would die in this room.
But there, across the concrete floor and against the far right wall, stood a line twenty feet long of open shelves, all crammed full of file folders.
Eureka!
She turned toward them. God, the information would be invaluable to S.A.S.S. It was all just stacked here, six rows deep, waiting for her. If only she had a way to get it out of here!
Pushing the cart into position, she stopped at the closest end of the shelves, grabbed a file from the cart and thumbed through it. She glanced at it—a dossier on an FBI agent in New Mexico—then skimmed the shelf, as if looking for the proper place to file it. But her focus was on the weapons filling the room.
Nathan had accurately described the place. Ceiling to floor, metal warehouse shelves, all carefully labeled and all bearing bands or emblems.
There was no way in hell all of these weapons could be laced with bio or chemical agents. Kunz had to have a system to identify those purported to be WMD and those that actually were WMD fortified. She rolled the cart down a few steps and took another look. Shoulder-held rocket launchers.
The guard on the left of the door stuck his head inside to see where she was. Locating her at the files, he ducked back out.
She watched him from the corner of her eye and when he returned to his post, she scooted further along the file shelf. She wanted to take a serious look at those launchers.
They were banded and had the emblem—and, damn it, they were bio or chemical capable. She slipped around to the next shelf of weapons and did a quick examination. The warheads were neutral. They, too, had bands and emblems, but they also had the initials T.K. engraved on the casing.
T.K. for Thomas Kunz, of course. Kate grimaced. The sadist was apparently also an egomaniac who relished the perverse pleasure of knowing that regardless of who launched the weapon system against America, his signature was on it. Every system bearing his initials was his personal gift to the U.S., a country he hated.
Kate returned to the files, checked the guard, who was still blissfully ignorant that she’d moved to look at the weapons. Quickly, she had made a supposition about the meaning of the initials on the casings. Did they signal that the warheads were laced with WMD agents, or that they were not?