Phantom Instinct (9780698157132) (31 page)

A
iden hurried down the ladder, boots clanging against the rungs, and stepped off one story below. Harper edged her way down ahead of Piper, ready to catch the girl if she slipped or, God forbid, passed out. The rungs were cold. With each step, the metal rang and the darkness increased.

Harper dropped to the floor. The ceiling was low. Aiden stood close by. She could feel his chest, rising and falling.

Piper worked her way down, awkwardly, using her good hand. When she got within reach, Aiden pulled her in. Her eyes were shimmering and hot.

She nodded and said, “I can stand by myself.”

Harper aimed the Maglite. They were in an access tunnel for pipes and gas lines. The ceiling was an inch above Harper's head. Aiden was ducking.

He said, “Which way?”

She pointed toward the west end of the building, the side they had entered from, and cinched an arm around Piper's waist again. “Drive it like you stole it.”

“What?” Piper said.

“Balls to the wall.”

Aiden led them along the tunnel. After about ninety yards, he stopped. Harper saw why: Ahead lay an open pit. Below them, under flickering emergency lighting, they saw two gigantic pressure tanks. Twelve-inch pipes ran from them horizontally into the walls, spanning the pit. Nearby were several dozen upright gas storage vessels topped with needle valves. Harper didn't know if they were rusting hulks or filled with combustible vapors. A catwalk bridged the room, leading to a narrow ledge and a hatchlike exit opposite.

Behind them on the ladder came footsteps. Urgently, they stepped onto the catwalk. It dipped and groaned.

“Shit,” Harper said.

“Shit,” Piper said.

Aiden said, “Too much weight. You two first.”

Holding Piper, Harper took tender steps out above the pit. The metal quivered beneath her feet. Rust from the railing came off on her hand. Ahead, the bolts that held the catwalk to the wall vibrated with their steps. Crumbling bits of dust and concrete spilled from the wall. She had a wicked fear that the whole thing was seconds from shaking itself loose. The drop to the thicket of tanks was at least twenty feet, the spill to the concrete floor so far that it was all but invisible.

They reached the far side and stepped onto the ledge. The second they stepped off the catwalk, Aiden ran onto it. His feet rang on the metal. The catwalk's bolts creaked and shimmied—they were working their way out of the wall. He was halfway across when she realized why he was going all out.

Black-clad gunmen appeared in the entrance on the far side. Aiden came on, nodding her to move, move, move
now.

She maneuvered Piper through the hatch into the passageway beyond. Aiden thundered across the catwalk. The gunmen fired at him.

Piper screamed. Aiden leaped off the catwalk and dropped and rolled.

The gunmen rushed together onto the catwalk. They were heavy men in body armor. Harper sat down on the ledge and raised her foot and kicked at the bolts holding the catwalk to the wall.

One of the hostiles shouted. He raised his weapon, but Aiden fired at him. The shot hit the man in the chest. He fell backward, grunting—winded but alive, the round buried in his vest. Harper kicked again, harder. Aiden fired another shot and grabbed the railing on the opposite side from Harper. She yelled, “One, two—”

He pulled and she kicked. With a squeal and a snapping sound, the bolts broke free.

The catwalk screeched and the near end swung down hard. The men turned and tried to run back, but the ancient metal, thin and corroded, twisted and snapped. Shouting wildly, the men flipped over the railing and plunged into the tank forest below. A scream ended abruptly as one of them hit the stack of compressed gas cylinders topped with needle-nosed valves. He lay like a fish embedded on a rack of straight pins.

The other man hit the top of one of the big tanks. He landed on his back and held on to his gun. Then the catwalk crashed on top of him. It slapped down across his chest like the blade of a paper cutter. The sound reverberated. He lay motionless, until the echoes died, and with them his last moans.

Aiden and Harper looked down, Harper on her knees, head hanging low. She was shaking.

He put a hand on her back. It felt more than reassuring. It was telling her: Get up.

Piper edged forward. “Jesus.” She stared, her bright-quarter eyes even wider than before. “Did you kill them?”

Harper struggled to her feet. Her hair was hanging in her face, stuck to her forehead with sweat.

“Are they dead?” Piper said.

Aiden raised a hand to nudge Piper back. “They aren't coming after you anymore.”

She shrank from him and protected her sliced wrist. “Jesus.”

He raised his hands, giving her space, and turned again to the pit. “One minute.”

Stuffing the pistol in the small of his back, he lowered himself over the ledge. With apparent pain, he edged down until he was hanging by his fingertips.

“What are you doing?” Harper said.

He looked down. It was about a ten-foot drop to the wrecked portion of the catwalk, another fifteen to the floor below. He kicked out from the wall without a word and dropped noisily to the twisted bridge. He crouched quickly to grab hold.

Harper leaned out, her nerves thrumming.

Lowering himself cautiously from the catwalk, he dropped to the top of the big storage tank. Harper watched anxiously. Behind her Piper stood half-shadowed in the hatch exit, breathing rapidly.

Aiden worked his way to the man who had crashed onto the tank and been crushed by the broken section of the catwalk. The man lay staring sightlessly into the recesses of the ceiling. Aiden pried the pistol from the man's hand and took his earpiece and radio transmitter. A few feet from the body, he picked up a shotgun. Then he scrambled across the top of the tank into the shadows. A moment later, Harper saw him climbing on a stacked set of cylinders, packed tightly in a shipping crate. He groaned but pulled himself up, leaped and pulled himself back onto the ledge.

He limped up, carrying the hostile's shotgun. He twisted the man's earpiece into position and tucked the radio into his shirt pocket.

“Anything?” Harper asked.

“Chatter. Not in English.”

Piper's face was blank, apparently with shock.

Harper said, “Probably Russian. Let me have the earpiece.” He handed it to her and she put it in. She squeezed Piper's shoulder. “We've gotcha. Ready?”

Piper's voice was surprisingly hard. “Yeah.”

She had stopped shivering. Harper didn't know whether that was good or bad.

Harper looked at Aiden. He didn't even have an expression on his face.

“What's wrong?” she said.

“Those cylinders down there?” He nodded at the pit. “They're leaking. I don't know what's in them, but it's high-pressure gas and we don't want to hang around.”

Holding Piper tight, Harper started down the tunnel.

Side by side, flanking Piper, Harper and Aiden rushed down the access tunnel. Aiden ducked beneath its low ceiling, gripping the shotgun, the weapon held low. Piper dragged under Harper's arm, moaning every time Harper tried to lug her tighter. The light was almost nonexistent, but she could see Aiden's face in gray scale, a worn and determined outline against the tunnel walls. Behind them came a hissing from the damaged gas cylinders.

Sixty yards along the tunnel, they came to another access ladder, this one ascending. Harper stared up into gloom, listening. Heard nothing.

Aiden said, “Me first.”

He climbed to the opening in the floor above, peered out, and waved them up. Piper climbed without complaint, hooking her injured elbow over the rungs of the ladder to stabilize herself. Halfway up, Harper pressed a hand to the radio earpiece.

“Chatter,” she whispered. “Somebody's trying to contact those two hostiles we left back in the tank room.”

Aiden pulled himself through the opening onto the floor above. “ID? Names? Maybe I could respond in English and make them think it's one of those men?”

He reached down for Piper. “Come on, let me help you.”

She flinched. “I'm okay.” She climbed awkwardly out and slumped to the floor.

Harper scrambled out behind them into an office hallway lit with fading emergency lights. She recognized the fallen ceiling tiles and torn-up carpet.

“Aiden—we're just around the corner from the hallway where we came into the building.”

She pointed. He rushed to the corner, checked, and waved for them to follow.

Cinching her hand around Piper's waist again, Harper headed for the corner. The girl was wheezing now, and stumbling over her own feet. Aiden saw her struggling and put an arm around Piper as well.

In the earpiece, Harper heard static, then a man's voice in Russian.

“Echo One, come in.” The voice was muffled and tinny. “Echo One, come in. Zhurov, respond.”

Aiden was limping more severely. He pulled them around the corner, into the hallway they'd entered not long before with Erika. The door was directly ahead of them.

“We're almost there,” Harper whispered. “Come on, come on.”

Aiden pulled them all toward the door. Five feet from it, he stopped.

The tape he'd placed over the lock had been removed.

The door was securely shut again. A lock had been flipped: a Yale dead bolt. To open it took a key.

They were trapped.

From the earpiece, a voice fuzzed. “Echo One is not responding. Check the back exit.”

H
arper's legs felt all at once like loose string. Her vision went fuzzy. “They're coming this way. We have to find another way out.”

They started back down the hallway, fast.

“Has to be an exit out the front, across the factory floor,” Aiden said.

Piper's feet tangled again. Her head lolled to one side.

“No, girl,” Harper said. “Walk. You have to.”

They rushed down the hall with everything they had, but Harper could tell they were moving more slowly than they had even five minutes earlier.

In the earpiece, she heard Zero's voice. “Found Zhurov and Rodchenko. Dead.”

“Fuck,” Travis answered.

Aiden kept going. “Don't slow down.”

A second later, the hallway emerged onto the factory floor. It was spooky with moonlight. There was a large set of double doors on the far side.

Harper said, “Those doors have to lead to the exit to the front gate. If we can get through them, I can run for it. The MINI's there. I can drive it back and pick you two up.”

Aiden nodded.

They rushed onto the factory floor. They were five feet from the double doors when the first shouts echoed behind them.

She looked back. At the far end of the factory floor stood a dark figure in a hoodie. Every hair on her head stood to cold attention.

Piper turned her head.

“Don't look,” Harper said.

They shoved through the double doors, into a hallway that led to the front entrance. Aiden found a metal broom handle and jammed it through the door handles. It was better than nothing but wouldn't stop them for long.

Twenty yards ahead was the rolling garage door that led to the driveway, the gate, and the road. It was open. Outside was the chilly desert night, and freedom. Piper gasped, almost a cry of desperate joy.

Behind them, the doors Aiden had jammed shut rattled. They hurried toward the rolling door. On the wall beside it, a red warning light began to flash. The door started to roll down.

Behind them came sounds of battering, something heavy smashing against the jammed doors. Ahead, now just ten yards away, the rolling door creaked down. There was room for them to get under, but it was diminishing fast.

Piper slid in Harper's arms like a sack of rice. Aiden rushed to Harper's side and started to pick her up.

“No.” Harper said. “You stop anybody coming at us. I can carry her.”

She crouched. With Aiden's help, she got her shoulder under Piper's midriff and slung her over her shoulder in a fireman's carry. Groaning, she stood up. Her legs were shaking.

She hunkered toward the rolling door. Piper's arms hung limp, hitting her in the back. The door rolled lower, creaking and clattering.

She let out a manic gasp and hugged tight to Piper's legs. Together with Aiden, she bent low and ran beneath the door as it fell. They stumbled out into the cold darkness and Harper fell hard to her knees.

Piper crashed off her shoulders to the concrete. “Jesus.”

Harper said, “We're out. We have to keep going.”

The rolling door groaned down and hit the floor and stopped. The silence outside was all at once vast and welcome and terrifying.

Harper said, “Arm over my shoulder. Let's go.”

Moaning, Piper sat up. With an effort that seemed like she was moving through molasses, Harper got to her knees, bearing Piper's weight. She groaned to her feet.

They heard more smashing sounds deep in the building, Zero trying to get through the doors. Aiden turned to the wall beside the garage door, where there was a large switch. With his HK, he fired at the mechanism. Twice. Sparks ejected and smoke curled out, sizzling.

Harper had never felt so relieved and scared all at once. Aiden backed away from the door. Harper turned toward the gate and the run to freedom.

The MINI was gone.

She stared blankly at the desert, and the darkness beyond the gate, and a part of her thought:
It's there. I just don't see it. It has to be there. Why am I not seeing it?

She heard a sound she took too long to understand was her own half sobs. The car was gone.

Behind them, an engine buzzed to life again and the rolling door began to crank open. Aiden's shots hadn't fried the interior circuitry. Zero and Travis were coming.

“Oh, my God.” Harper's breathing stuttered, until she said, “We have to run.”

Piper whimpered. “I can't. I can't walk. I can't go any farther.”

Harper tightened an arm around Piper's waist, but the girl sagged and resisted. “I can't.”

Aiden said, “Sorenstam's car.”

Harper said, “I'll go.”

Piper grabbed Harper's shirt. “No. Don't leave me. Don't go, please.”

Aiden said, “Take shelter.” He looked around at the factory complex. “I'll find a way around the outside and get the unmarked car. I'll be back.”

He looked at Harper. She was trying not to cry. He took off.

Harper said, “Piper.”

She turned and knelt and told the girl to climb on her back.

Without a sound, Piper threw an arm around Harper's neck and leaned her weight on Harper's back. Harper wrestled Piper's knees up against her elbows. Leaning forward for balance, carrying Piper piggyback, she tried to continue. The gate loomed but didn't seem to get any closer.

Piper said, “Wait.”

Harper didn't slow down. If she slowed down, she would never get back up to speed. If she slowed down, they were dead.

“To the left,” Piper said. “There's a storage yard behind an interior fence. Look—the fence has a break in it.”

She weakly lifted a hand and pointed. A section of the fence leading to the storage yard had been torn open. Arms burning with the strain, Harper veered left and squeezed through.

The light was nearly nonexistent here, the ground dusty. Harper looked for a place to hide. Behind a clutch of fifty-five-gallon drums and a six-foot stack of rotting wooden pallets, she sagged and went down on all fours.

Piper slid off her back to the ground. Harper tried to rise, but her legs wouldn't straighten. She crawled back to the fence and shoved the torn section closed, awkwardly.

They were out. Outside, alone, unseen, as far as she could determine. No security lights came on. Moonlight whitened the walls of the factory. She peered around for telltale cameras but saw none.

She crawled back to Piper's side, fell to her butt, and pulled Piper against her in a hug.

“Almost home. We just have a little farther to go.”

Piper nodded. They leaned back against the pallets. Harper caught her breath and listened for the sound of a big block engine.

Instead, she heard a clinking chain.

From the shadows near the building, the dog appeared.