“We don’t,” Adam said, watching her cautiously. “You do. You take the canister to Dr. Kane and have him run the tests.”
“Me?” Surprise streaked up her back.
“You have to do it, Tracy,” Adam insisted. “I’m dead, remember?”
“Almost.” A man’s voice sounded off Adam’s left shoulder.
Swallowing a gasp, Tracy looked up and saw not one man, but four soldiers. They weren’t military; none wore any rank. But they all were dressed in traditional BDU fatigues. They all had black-grease-smutted faces.
And they, all stood legs spread apart with M-16s leaveled on Tracy and Adam.
Chapter 24.
Tracy looked to Adam for direction. Maybe he had been . this position often, but she had only looked down a gun barrel in –during training a select few times in her life -and she’d never had one, much less four, aimed at her. What did she do?
Adam lifted his hands. She mimicked him, noticing his gloves. Why was he sliding his foot? I’ve gear. The gunmen They were wearing protect weren’t. The area was contaminated. Adam wanted her to stall. Whatever chemical had triggered the alarm wouldn’t affect them, but it would affect the gunmen. Yet it had been a lowleavel warning. Did that mean the chemical was lethal? Debilitating? oh, how she hoped it meant debilitating. Otherwise she would have to battle with her conscience about whether to tell the men about the exposure.
That, she decided, was going to be a battle anyway. They pointed guns at her, but that didn’t absolve her from doing what was right. She wouldn’t be responsible-or held accountable-for their actions. Just for her own.
That Was scary enough. had gray hair The eldest of the four men, about forty, and the coldest eyes she’d ever had the misfortune to see. The others deferred to him. One had called him Lieutenant.
“Let’s go,” Reuger said. He motioned with his weapon, swinging the tip of its barrel deeper into Area Fourteen.
Adam began moving, slightly dragging his right foot. Leaving a trail he could easily follow out of here, she suspected. Walking beside him, she deliberately dragged hers, as well, and considered bumping into the bushes. No. No, she couldn’t. The branches could prick her gear and render it useless.
Reuger led the way. Tracy walked sandwiched between him and Adam, and Reuger’s men brought up the rear. What kind of heartless animal would put men in a contaminated area unprotected?
The same heartless animal who had sacrificed Adam’s men?
Fifteen minutes elapsed. Then ten more. Tracy’s nerves threatened to shatter. Who were they? Where were they taking them? And what were they going to do with them once they got them there?
Obviously they were interested in more than just the canister or they would have shot and killed her and Adam where they’d found them. And just as obviously, lowleavel exposure didn’t kill quickly or the men would already be dead.
“Slow down,” Adam silently mouthed.
Seeing a fallen branch, Tracy deliberately stumbled over it. She fell to the ground, clasped her leg, and cried out. “Oh, God, my ‘ knee. Adam, I think it’s broken.”
Reuger slid her a frosty glare, then leaveled Adam with an icy one. “Carry her.”
Adam helped Tracy to her feet and then lifted her in his arms. Wrapping her arms around his gear-clad neck, she looked through the mask and saw his approval shining in his eyes. Worry filled her own. How were they going to get out of this?
“Pick up the pace, Captain Burke,” Reuger ordered.
Ironic, Tracy thought, as they moved deeper and deeper into Area Fourteen. She had refused to call Adam by his title, yet a.gunman probably.intending to kill them afforded Adam the respect she had denied him. God, but she regretted that.
“I can’t go any faster,” Adam said. “She’s no light weight.” Snidely preferring “no lightweight” to “fluff,” Tracy looked at him through her frog-eyed mask, and saw the twinkle in his eye. Even terror-stricken, if she hadn’t known it before, she would have realized at that moment she had fallen in love with him.
Adam stopped. “I have to tie my boot.”
Reuger retained his unflappable calm, but his men lacked his discipline and grumbled. “Quit stalling, Burke.” had The others murmured their agreement, and Adam the impudence to look affronted. “Who are you?” from us?” asked Reuger. “What do you wan Reuger didn’t deign to answer either question. “Tie your booistring, Captain. We have a lot of ground to cover before dark-”
Adam must have realized he wouldn’t get answers to any questions because he didn’t ask any more. He again lifted Tracy in his arms. She felt almost guilty now that she hadn’t been more inventive with her injury. They evidently had a long way to go, and Adam had to carry her. Fine for her, but taxing on him. He didn’t seem winded or taxed, but the man was human. He had to be feeling the strain.
Adam squeezed her, warning her to look at him. She met his gaze and he blinked rapidly. What was he telling her?
He elbowed the alarm at his belt. He had silenced it before they had been intercepted, so it hadn’t beeped … His intent hit her. The alarm-chemical exposure. The blinking-mitosis.
She glanced over Adam’s shoulder at the middle one of Reuger’s men, walking five feet behind them. His pupils were dilated.
So were the other two’s.
Mitosis.
And they were sweating. Tracy and Adam were, too, but they were wearing the hot gear. These men were suffering the effects of the chemicals. And they held M-16s on her and Adam. Should they warn the men?
Her logic told her no. The men would kill them. They were on the wrong side of this conspiracy, and they had to be stopped. But her conscience rebelled ‘ No matter who they were or what they were doing, they had lives, families, people who loved them, and that part of them regardless of the wrongs they had done, or had yet to do-deserved to know that they were about to die. But would it be kinder to let them die unaware? Or to give them the opportunity to come to terms with death, to settle things in their minds?
“Adam,” she whispered’. “We’ve got to warn them.”
“They’ll kill us.”
“What’s all the conversation about?” Reuger stopped under the shade of a wild magnolia, turned back, and glared at them.
She let Adam see the pleading in her eyes. The mask encumbered, but it didn’t hide the truth. The chaplain’s voice rippled through her mind. No truth escapes … You’re Adam’s sun. “Please, Adam. We have to live with this. We’ll do no better, be no better than them.”
Adam stopped on the path and set Tracy down to the ground. The men stumbled to a halt behind them, and Reuger swiveled the M-16, aiming at Adam. Tracy’s heart rocketed and fear oozed from her pores. God, please don’t let this be a mistake. Please!
“It’s about chemical warfare,” Adam told Reuger. “You’ve been exposed.”
Reuger grunted and rolled his gaze. “The area’s been swept. It’s safe.”
“It’s not safe,” Tracy insisted. “Look at your men, for God’s sake. Don’t you see their pupils? Don’t you see their sweat?”
“We’re all sweating, Captain Keener. It’s extremely warm out here.”
“They’re staggering, and you’re swaying on your feet.” He was. “A dilation and fixation of the pupils of the eyes is called mitosis. That, the sweating, the dizziness-all of those things are the tightness in your chest symptoms of chemical poisoning. It was a lowleavel exposure, or you would already be dead.”’
Reuger bolted his gun, loading its chamber. “Are you telling me that my men and I are going to die, Captain Keener?”
She stiffened, terrified to admit the truth, but even more terrified of living the rest of her life knowing she’d lied to a dying man. She couldn’t control their actions, but she could control her own-provided she had the courage to do it. “I’m afraid so, yes.”
Adam stepped between her and the gunman. Reuger slumped back, against the magnolia’s trunk, shaking its leaves. He fingered the trigger of his weapon, glared at them, his fury turning to shards of ice in his eyes. “He lied.”
The first of Reuger’s men collapsed on the ground. Within moments, the other two fell beside him. A heartbeat from hysteria, Tracy bent over them and looked up at Adam. “Is there anything I can do? Anything?”
“I’m sorry.” Regret shone in Adam’s eyes. “There’s nothing.”
A moan crawled up her throat.
“Give me your gear.” Reuger jabbed the barrel of his weapon against Adam’s ribs.
“It won’t do you any good. You’ve already been exposed. The chemical is inside you and nothing will help. You’ll only be taking me with you.”
Reuger dropped to his knees. Red sand splattered, spraying their gear-clad shins, and his weapon dropped to the ground with a dull thud. “He lied. The son of a bitch lied.”
Tracy swallowed hard. “No authorized entity, or any One in their right mind, would send you out here without protective gear.”
“He said it was safe. It’d been swept and was safe.”
Adam looked at Reuger. “He was wrong. Maybe someone lied to him. Or maybe he wanted you and your men dead.”
“Who is your boss, Reuger?” Tracy moved next to Adam.
But Reuger couldn’t answer. None Of the men could answer. Clutching at their chests, they writhed in the dirt, convulsing.
Unable to bear watching this, she looked at Adam. The horror she felt was mirrored in his eyes.
His men had died this death. Men who had pledged themselves to duty. Who had taken their oaths of honor, loyalty, and protection into their hearts.
Men who had been betrayed by their own.
The chemical didn’t differentiate between good and bad, between evil and honor, it just killed. Those good men had died. And so too did these men. Reuger stared up at the sun through unseeing eyes. Her heart in her throat, Tracy swept a gloved hand over his face, lowering his eyelids.
Adam said something; she heard him, and yet her emotions blocked her comprehension of his words. He wrapped an arm around her shoulder and pulled her close to his side, turning her away from the bodies. “Come on, Tracy. Let’s go.” Tears bluffed her eyes, but she stumbled alongside him, down the path back to the car. “Why couldn’t Reuger have redeemed himself, told us who he’d worked for?” she asked herself more so than Adam. ““Why couldn’t we Stop this before more people died?”
“Some people can’t be redeemed.” Adam lifted her over the trunk of the fallen pine, then set her back on the ground. “Some have no use for redemption.”
“How could anyone have no regret?” She stopped under the shade of a huge oak and stared at the sun-dappled ground. “They’d have to lack a soul.”
“Or to believe they’re doing what’s right.”
Like Reuger. She walked on, retracing their trail, her steps even heavier now than when they’d created it. “And when they learn they’re not doing what’s right, then they suffer regret,” she said softly. “They suffer knowing, “He lied.
Tracy stared at the black bag containing the canister, her mind reeling from witnessing firsthand the horrible deaths the men had suffered, from knowing Adam’s men had died that same death during an exercise. An exercise, for God’s sake. A supposedly safe and protected strategic study.
She hugged her chest with her arms, resentful and grateful for the gloves, the chemical gear. Without both” she and Adam too would now be dead.
“We’re ready, honey.”
She stumbled into the car, her rioting emotions making her heart race. “Do we have to keep on this gear?”
Adam slid her a worried look and fastened her seat belt. Her hands didn’t seem to want to work inside the gloves. Nerves. It was nerves.
“Yes, we do,” Adam said, as the car’s engine puffed to life. He drove out of the woods, back to the dirt road. “We can’t take it off until we decontaminate.”
She didn’t even want to think about that. Trust him, he’d said. So she had, and she would. He knew what to do from here. She’d just go along for the ride and do her best to pull herself back together. Men had died, and seeing it rattled her to the core. Shook her so deeply she couldn’t tell where all the turmoil started or stopped, only that it filled her.
The steady, cold blast from the air conditioner helped settle her down, and it made wearing the gear tolerable physically. Emotionally, Tracy couldn’t wait to get the damn stuff away from her skin and out of her sight.
She stewed for’ half an hour, but recognizing Freedom Way, the road to Laurel Air Force Base with the rain swollen ditch that almost had become her watery grave, she panicked. “Adam, where are we going?”
He looked over at her, his inner turmoil as evident as her own in the flat slash of his mouth. “To a safe place.”
“On base?” Fear scattered up her spine. “Are you crazy? You’re dead and I’m AWOL. We’ll get arrested at the gate.
“Trust me, Tracy.” Trust him? Trust him? Her life had become a living hell since he had been insinuated into it. She was in love with him, though she wasn’t crazy about the idea, but that didn’t make her stupid. “This is a mistake. A big mistake. There’s no place on base that’s safe for us.”
His jaw went tight and he flicked a wrist, switching the recirculating air up a notch. “We’re going to the gaschamber simulator. We can encapsulate the canister there, before we expose half the county, and dispose of the contaminated chemical gear. The bag holding it now is only safe for twenty-four hours.”
“You are crazy,” she said before she could stop herself. “Adam, for God’s sake, be reasonable. We can’t just walk into the simulator.”
“We don’t have any choice. If we don’t encapsulate the canister, then we contaminate the general populace. Do you want them to die like the men in Area Fourteen?
Like my men died?”
“No, of course I don’t.” Shuddering at the thought, she stared at the ceiling of the car, not knowing what to do. “But walking into the simulator? We’ll be recognized.
“We aren’t going. I am. And I won’t be recognized.”
He would. God help her, he would. And then he would be killed, or put back in the facility, and then Hackett would know Adam wasn’t going to quietly disappear. Another accident would happen, only this time Adam wouldn’t escape. “Why the simulator?”
Adam braked at the traffic light, then looked over at her. “Because we can’t just throw that gear in the trash. It’s contaminated, Tracy. Our disposal choices are limited. The simulator has facilities appropriate for handling biohazardous equipment.”