Chapter 67

 

 

DAY 12

 

 

THREE MINUTES BEFORE DAWN

Nash’s eyes shot open. The blast of an explosion shattered throughout the cell, jerking him forward. He plummeted off the little bed, his head hammering the floor. His eyes drifted to the front of the cell.

Jack stood glimpsing through the grill.

“That’s not a manufacturing mishap. Someone has detonated an explosive. It sounded like a grenade, an impact one,” Nash said.

Calla jerked herself off the bed and joined them by the wrought iron. The explosion had woken them and as Nash peered through the gate, his eye caught sight of pieces of metal from the outer casing of the grenade that had sailed outward at immense speed. Someone had embedded the grenade in the wall opposite them.

Whoever it was had to be close and had possibly missed his target.

Us.

Soon sirens overwhelmed the complex. Thundering footsteps signaled that the place was being evacuated. Nash swore under his breath. They were barred in a cell none would remember to evacuate.

He raised his hands looking for grip and located an iron bar, part of the piping that ran above the cell. He set his hands on it and hoisted himself up, setting his boots against rigidness of the metal grate. In one heave, he bent his knees, drove off, and slammed the grate with a loud thud.

The steel bars rattled and dust broke away from the hinges.

Jack did likewise, placing his hands next to Nash’s on the piping. Both men booted the rail several times in accord, until the left casting cracked the door’s hinges.

“We’re on our way,” Jack said a beaming grin forming on his lips.

They raised their hands again, bracing themselves for another thwack, when Jack peered to the far right. Calla had joined them.

She got a grip of the pipe and pulled herself up. Together they slammed the iron gate to the ground. They scuttled out into the cemented corridor. A screaming alarm blared and gray smoke slinked through the passageways, challenging visibility. Workers charged from their quarters, some armed some not.

Jack raised his satellite phone up and shook it several times until he latched on to a signal.

It disappeared.

He tore open the back casing of the phone and rewired the circuit board–and the conversion chips that translated the incoming signal. “Huh, she’s up.” He showed it to Nash. “Got those long and latitude coordinates? How far do you think it is to that US base from here?”

“There’s a US base here?” Calla asked.

Nash smirked. “There’s always a US base.”

He seized the phone and fingered in the coordinates. “It’s about twenty miles from here. Let’s see whether we can grab a Jeep.”

They trio turned the corner at the end of the passage spurting past masked soldiers, who paid them no regard.

Startling motion drew Nash’s eye. That face.

The barrel of a sniper’s gun was aimed at their faces. He was attired in sand-colored, desert camouflage, combat pants, below a body cover vest. Behind him, three other men caught up, in similar attire.

“Looks like we got here in time,” said the man grinning at Nash.

He remembered that grin. Frankly, he would’ve rather ran into Mason Laskfell.

“How’s that house of yours?” the sniper said. The same marksman who’d carbonized his house in Colorado.

 

 

 

0619 hrs.

 

Mason shot through the rubble. He’d fallen out of his bed.

He checked is watch. It was time.

He peered out the small box window before stepping into the hallway outside his quarters. The energy base had transformed into an uncontrollable evacuation, with damaged solar panels, drills, and office equipment littering most passageways.

Bugger! His detonator set at Stan’s manor had been damaged in the explosion. He stared at the unresponsive cell phone. There was no way he could now barter for information about Nicole.

He heard the sirens and the shouts of escapees as their boots thundered in every direction.

Sage burst into his path and tossed him a bulletproof vest, a hardhat and some keys. “It’s time. Let’s go.”

He set the bulletproof vest over his head. “Is everything ready?”

“Yes, the Jeep to the airstrip is outside. This place will be torched to the ground in exactly ten minutes.”

He moved with sudden speed toward the fire exit.

Sage scuttled after him.

“Anything from Cress?” he asked.

“They’ve gone, the cell is empty.”

He would have to find Nicole another way. Her trail was widening. Pure and guileless. Giving Cress that ultimatum, meant she’d not try anything foolish.

Cress could not choose. He’d predicted her intentions and was right. He was always right. He had made the rules and now he was going to break them. That’s the way to keep in control of signals intelligence. The world needed minds like his to sustain it. If this worked, he’d soon reunite with that fool, so blinded by jealousy he’d go this far.

It wasn’t his headache.