Kilo-29 (Damned of the 2/19th, Book 15)

Part 40

Site Kilo-29
Winter-1993
Day Four-Early Morning

Killain's arms dropped to her sides and her shirts just fell off, leaving her bare above the waist. The welts I'd left with the rubber surgical tubing weren't really visible, and her skin had the weird tint that human flesh gets when the person is dead. In the two seconds I stared, even though she spoke, her chest didn't rise or fall. Her smile got wider, the skin of her cheeks splitting at the corners of her mouth, tearing silently, extending her smile all the way to just in front of her ears, her teeth exposed by the torn flesh.

She took a step forward, then another, still smiling. Her gums were receding and blackening, making her teeth seem longer, the shadows making her teeth seem gray.

Oakes and Kebble were giggling, I could hear them, and the temperature was still dropping fast. The tip of my nose went numb and my balls started to ache. It was cold enough that our breath didn't steam that far out, the air freezing our breath before it got that far. Each breath was like a knife into my chest.

Donaldson's mouth was gaped open and his eyes were wide and startled. His M-16 was held loosely, almost ready to fall on the ground and out of nerveless fingers. I was staring forward, unsure if what I was seeing was actually real or another psychotic episode with full blown hallucinations. I'd seen the guy with the axe, seen Tandy take people that had been dead for years, seen waking nightmares. With Oakes, Kebble, and Killain's voices echoing through the egg, with K-Bar and Dee able to hear them, I figured it was either real or a very intricate hallucination.

Both Donaldson and me were next to worthless, out of position, without a clear shot, and staring in shock at Agent Killain.

Kincaid didn't hesitate, didn't even bother waiting for orders or even asking for them. He glanced down through the grate, up through the grate, at the same time as he turned at the waist and let his reflexes do the talking.

He triggered the flamethrower, the bar of flame rushing out and hitting Agent Killain in the chest. He ran the bar up and down her body, the sticky oxygenated diesel fuel, impregnated with magnesium and thermite, adhering to Killain's body, spattering on and falling through the grated floor, white hot droplets and gobbets spattering on the consoles around Killain's body.

The heat backwash should have washed over us, should have instantly coated us with sweat. The fire suppression system should have kicked on, making it rain or coating us in ice.

Impossibly it got colder.

Oakes and Kebble howled in rage, the sound shimmering in the cold.

"Burn, whore, burn!" K-Bar yelled over the sounds of the dead women screaming in rage, stepping forward and playing the white cored bar of fire across the body yet again. He held it for an extra second on her face when he took a second step.

She was completely engulfed in flame, her clothing gone, her hair vaporized, but Agent Killain took a single step forward and Kincaid swung the flaming bar down and focused on her knee.

Despite his efforts I expected the flame to just gutter out like it did on Tandy, to leave her wholly untouched. I expected to her to be completely naked, and for a split second I saw her naked, pink, and completely whole.

The bar of fire, which I'd been told burned in the thousands of degrees Fahrenheit, ate through her knee like hot water through ice and the burning leg dropped to the ground. Oakes and Kebble's screams of rage doubled and redoubled, echoing off of the walls of the egg, Killain's screams joining them. With the screaming and the echoes I couldn't tell if it came from outside the room or from the flame wreathed form that had been Agent Killain.

I'd managed to get my pistol out, but couldn't get a clear shot past Kincaid, I didn't want to risk a ricochet hitting him, and I wasn't about to dive in with my knife and end up engulfed in flame. Donaldson had his rifle up, panning across the room, checking the ceiling, and turning in place to check behind us.

"That's right, that's right!" Kincaid howled out, yanking the bar straight back up to Killain's mid-section.

Agent Killain's body held, seeming like the bar was doing nothing, even as she began to list to one side. Unlike someone living she didn't windmill her arms, didn't twist to try to keep her balance, but just seemed to list slightly and keep upright.

The screams suddenly stopped.

The white cored bar burst from her back, and Kincaid howled in victory as he started jiggling the bar up and down, tearing through her, widening the hole he was making. Bloody steam burst from her as her intestines exploded, and she collapsed just like the creatures had.

Liquid laughter snaked through the room and the lights cut off, leaving the egg only illuminated by the bar of solid fire from Kincaid's weapon and the steady green glow from the circles of monitors. It came from nowhere, and everywhere.

I moved up behind him, covering his back, moving quickly to the stairs that led down to the next level. Heat strobed against my exposed skin as Kincaid stepped forward again to keep the fire on Agent Killain's body.

There was a whisper, barely on the edge of hearing, that was separate and distinct from the hissing, crackling whoosh of Kincaid's baby, that begun to tease the hearing. It almost urged you to listen, urged you to pay attention. It demanded attention, not with volume or words, but with the sounds that were almost words, that your brain insisted that if you just listened a little closer you'd know what was being said.

"Burn 'em all!" I shouted out to make sure he could hear me even in the suit, despite the whispers, over the hissing of the tanks on his back, and through the adrenaline.

"Finish searching them first!" Donaldson yelled before Kincaid could turn to the next body. He rushed up the stairs that went up the terraced middle layer of the egg, past the circle of terminals that handled varying degrees of facility monitoring, and up to the upper level that mainly seemed to cover communication with other facilities that had all been reading "error" since we'd arrived. He crouched down next to Agent Grandoln, pulling open his jacket as well as turning his pockets inside out.

Another whisper intruded, at first separate, then mingling with the first whisper, making it even harder to ignore, harder to push away.

Kincaid had moved back from what was left of Agent Killain, the steel grate glowing red around the edges and white around the body of the charred and smoking clump of what was left of the woman.

A third whisper joined the first two, the words becoming clearer, closer to being understood. The whispers intertwining so that each formed part of the word by adding sounds, each adding a small noise, the words almost complete, teasingly complete. Part of it sounded like my name, it could be my name, could be something important.

All I had to do was pay closer attention and I could understand them.

Kincaid quickly searched Agent Fellman's pockets, standing up and playing the flamethrower over the body. The metal grate turned red almost immediately, the glow quickly reaching out to the dulling glow surrounding Agent Killain's body, making it glow brighter again.

"Done." Donaldson duck-walked over to the blonde haired agent, going through his pockets, inside his jacket, his trousers, as quick as possible. Ice crackled on the man's black jacket and trousers and Donaldson quickly searched every pocket, turning most of them inside out. When I'd patted them down, I'd been looking for weapons more than anything, and had been focused on the little question and answer session. Donaldson was pulling out papers, even what looked like receipts, and jamming them in his thigh cargo pocket.

"Done!" He jumped back and Kincaid let off the trigger, turning around as Donaldson and I got the hell out of the way. The flame hit them and the smell of burnt pork got worse in the room. Even with the freezing cold it coated the inside of my mouth and nose, mixing with the coppery taste already there and making me want to throw up.

"You'll pay for that, Samuel." Agent Killain's voice separated from the whispering chorus, cold and angry, echoing through the egg.

"Eat me, bitch." Kincaid snarled, finishing with blondie and moving to the other one.

The whispering got stronger, a lot closer to actual words.

"Do we get out of here?" Donaldson asked, shivering and rubbing his upper arms.

"No, not yet." I said, sitting back down at one of the terminal for internal controls.

"What are you doing?" Kincaid asked, turning and facing the door. "Door's starting to ice up. You helping out Shads?"

I nodded, looking at the menus and starting to hit the proper keys.

The system was soooo slow compared to my hot shit brand new Intel Pentium CPU. It had cost me a small fortune, but having Windows for Workgroups 3.11 boot up that fast was well worth it.

Plus it made it so that turns on Civilization didn't take the computer 10 minutes to figure out late in the game with max civilzations.

"What are you doing, Sergeant?" Donaldson asked me, spreading out the map without being told to and looking up the numbers he'd jotted down in the notebook. I knew without him telling me that he was trying to figure out where Shads and the others were. "Found Shads. Level below us. Narrowing it down now."

"Locking everything down. I'm going to do contamination seals on the hallways, and set the system for immanent near impact, which should drop the heavy duty emergency blast doors." I told them. "I'm going to buy Shads additional time by putting the security delay on the doors. It'll force Shads and the other to wait ninety seconds and put in the codegroup a second time."

Normally you wouldn't do it, because it turned getting around into a royal bitch, but a contamination seal and the heavy blast doors would cut through the vent, completely sealing the place up. Even where natural tunnels had been there would be heavy steel blockades to make the entire thing seal up. It would isolate corridors and rooms, divide up sections, and I was pretty sure would seal off the shafts by blocking the corridors a short distance to either side of the elevators and the stairwell. The security double-check was supposed to be used when the site had been compromised by either outside forces or the civilians trying to take control.

"What's that gonna do?" Donaldson asked. Behind us Kincaid triggered the flamethrower. I glanced back and saw he'd put a small burst of flame on the door, letting it leak down the formerly ice covered steel panel.

"How's your ice now, fucker?" Kincaid asked, and I could hear the grin in his voice.

"SSsssssamuel." Kebble's voice.

"Donaldson, look up Master Systems Control on that map." I told him, going through the emergency procedures to lock it down for both. One of the steps in the checklist was turning over control of the whole site to a single central location.

"Lemme check the index pages." Donaldson said, pulling out a sheaf of papers and starting to thumb through them.

"Yeah, don't like this, do you, bitch?" K-Bar asked, putting a quick squeeze of fire on the door again.

"Samuel... we just want to love you, Samuel. Love you like your Mommy didn't, like your Daddy didn't." Oakes said softly. "Don't you want someone to finally love you, Samuel?"

"Not really." K-Bar answered, triggering another short burst at the door.

I turned off the audio alarms, even though it asked me for confirmation three times. The last thing I wanted was taped messages warning everyone what I was going to be up to. I couldn't override the verbal alarms in Military Operations Control or Master Systems Control, and I didn't disarm the lights and audio warning of shutting emergency doors. Might kill someone that way when a door came crashing down.

I set one warning to a loop down where Shads and the others probably were.

According to the warnings if I ran it as a test it wouldn't override the codes I'd already gotten from the system, but if it was a real world situation then codes to reaccess the site and systems could be gotten from the offices of the three highest ranking military personnel.

Which meant we'd be fucked.

"Found it." Donaldson said, breaking into my concentration. The whispering was still going on, and judging from the way Kincaid was stomping around it was starting to get on his nerves.

"Got any more smokes, Sergeant?" Kincaid asked, stopping on the opposite side of the egg from where he'd burnt the four corpses.

The whispers were coming across stronger now, but the Fates had started yowling in my ears, drowning out the whispers with their own hatreds. For some reason the Fates made the individual voices in that twisting winding whisper stand out. I could identify Oakes, Kebble, and Agent Killain in there, and while I refused to try to find out what they were saying I knew instinctively that it was a variation of what the Fates were whispering to me.

My goddamn head still hurt and it was getting worse.

"Inside the left hand outside pocket of my ruck I've got a few packs left. Don't smoke 'em all." I told him, getting up to look at where Donaldson was pointing on the map.

Great. Level seven, dead center, inside a cluster of eggs. The problem was, level seven could only be accessed through two locations. One in military, the way we'd accessed it before, one in civilian, and both of them had annotations that didn't appear in the map key or the directory.

Level seven looked like it had its own environmental controls, at least two armories, an NBC locker, living quarters that were broken into fifty suites and three bay-style barracks, and the rest dedicated to command and control. There were three locations marked as record storage. There were also a total of twelve guard posts, two guard/security sections, and three control rooms, one labeled Master Control, one labeled Civilian Master Control, and the last labeled Military Master Control.

"I don't like the looks of that." Donaldson said, tapping at the fact it was only accessible from the upper levels through one elevator and shaft per section, but the level had access to the lockers through two separate areas.

"You don't recognize it?" I asked him, watching Kincaid packing one of my packs of cigarettes.

"No." Donaldson said, rubbing at his eyes.

"Recognize what?" Kincaid asked.

"Your mom's ass." Donaldson snapped back, and Kincaid laughed as he stripped the cellophane off of the top of the pack and shoved it in a pocket.

"That's where those fucking vaults were. Apparently I can dump control to the areas down there." I was frowning, looking at the map.

"What's wrong, Sergeant?" Donaldson asked me, shivering again and rubbing his arms.

"I've never seen this before. Everything seems to be able to be controlled from down there." I jotted down the door ID codes, then started hammering on the keyboard again, pausing to wait for the lightning speeds of the system. It was a little slow, but the first run of Pentiums had hit earlier in the year and I still could remember how slow the old stuff that was now in my garage was.

"And that's new, and new is bad." Donaldson quoted. I nodded, looking up just in time to see Kincaid try to light the cigarette with the ignition flame of the flamethrower. It burnt over half of it to ash almost instantly and Kincaid had a disappointed look on his face when he looked at what was left of the cigarette.

I laughed.

"It's getting really cold, Sergeant." Donaldson said. "I know where Shads is probably going."

I nodded, folding up the maps after marking them real quick, circling door ID numbers and control group codes. I'd used a few of the tricks that the Air Force tech guys had shown me, and everything was ready.

"Let's move out." I said, nodding at the door out of the egg we hadn't used yet.

"What if Bishop is on the other side of the door?" Donaldson asked while Kincaid pulled his hood back over his head and started sealing it up.

"We close the fucking door, what do you think?" Donaldson told him. I grinned.

"It won't matter, Brett, we'll still find you, find that little brown haired sister of yours, and you can sleep in the dark and cold with us." Oakes said.

"Oh for fuck's sake, shut up." Kincaid snarled.

"You can try cooking him again." I suggested, ignoring Oakes and moving up to the door so I could punch in the codegroup.

"Samuel, open the door for us." Oakes whispered. "Debra forgives you, and will show you just how much if you just open the door."

"Waste of my baby's fuel." Kincaid's voice was muffled again. He ignored the whispers from Oakes. I threw the bar and the door started clunking, slowly raising up.

"Wish Shads was here." Kincaid said.

"He'll be OK." I told him, squatting down and looking under the door. Another steel corridor, this one jinking slightly, a blast deflection and defense corridor.

"I know how you smell, Samuel. You stink of fear and lust." Kebble laughed. "You'll never escape us."

"You stabbed them, didn't you?" It was a statement more than a question, Kincaid's voice sounding amused. "You stabbed them just so they'd shut up, didn't you?"

...Goodbye, Kebble...

"Not exactly." I admitted, "A flapping mouth might get a fist in it, but you don't stab someone just because they've got a big mouth."

Donaldson nodded, his eyes far away, as the door rose up past the halfway point. We were silent as the door kept rising, Kebble and Oakes whispering at us, but none of us answering or even talking about what they said. Donaldson took deep breaths, consciously relaxing as Oakes started whispering about what she would do to Dee's little sister in the dark and cold.

Once the door locked in I led them through then shut it behind us, the three women's voices sealed in a room that contained nothing but coals that had been people at one time and computers ready to fight a war that would thankfully never happen.

I had the map folded to show the area we were in, following the path I'd outlined. We moved quickly, the amphetamine and adrenaline still giving Kincaid the energy to keep pushing through the exhaustion of wearing that heavy ass suit.

There were still nine of them. That my guess. I thought it was interesting that Agent Fellman had told me one number, blondie another, and the count had been a third. I was going off the count, but it kept nagging at me that the count was off.

Who were the extra two?

It didn't matter, though. Whoever they were, I'd just kill their asses too. They had pretended to be SF to get us to let their guard down, but they'd also gotten sloppy.

Behind us I could hear footsteps, and Donaldson glanced behind us.

"Don't bother." I told him. "The site is playing tricks on us."

"How is Bishop doing this?" Donaldson asked.

"Old dark places attract old dark things." I told him, pausing to punch in the codes on another door. "Stir in what the CIA did here, all the misery, suffering, death, and pain, and you have someplace just begging for something like Tandy."

The door opened and stale air rolled over us. It had an odd smell to it, one that I'd smelled in a few long term storage areas. A non-volatile gas, non-corrosive, that was pumped in to help offset the oxygen. Oxygen was extremely corrosive, causing all kinds of damage to things in long term storage, but adding in one of several different inert gasses would offset the oxygen, keep it from eating away whatever was stored in the area.

"Hold up." I told them, staring at the hallway, holding up a closed fist. The other two men stopped immediately.

The footsteps behind us took four or five more steps before stopping.

Once again the logo for the missile command unit showed up on the walls, huge pictures of men standing in formation, posing beside tracking control stations, and I could see one picture of a bunch of men in OD green uniforms standing by the huge cap of an underground silo.

"What's up?" Donaldson asked.

I sniffed again, and glanced around, expecting to see Bomber and Nancy, but none of them were visible. Something felt off, felt wrong, and I felt a cool trickle of adrenaline down my spine.

"Not sure, something feels wrong though." I told them.

"Can we go around?" Donaldson asked.

"Yeah, but we'd have to cut through two or three areas that I'm pretty sure are comprised, but we need the elevators and stairwells here." I told them. "We need to get to that stairwell to get ahead of Shads and the others."

"So what's wrong?" Kincaid asked, snapping the igniter again a few times in rapid succession.

"Not sure." I repeated. "Just... something off." I reached down, my hand seeking out the chemical detector, but I came up empty. My brain tossed up the image of the detector sitting next to the microwave on the kitchen counter of the suite we'd abandoned.

"Any idea?" Donaldson said, "Maybe..."

The overpressure in the section was rolling the air over us, still smelling strange. Some of the sites used argon, which was odorless and colourless as well as...

"We'll need to be careful, I think this part was still in controlled storage." I told him, checking the map again. "Plus it's listed on the maps as as a dining facility, and this sure as shit doesn't feel like a dining facility to me."

"Feels like... secrets." Kincaid said, turning at the waist to look at us. "I don't know how to explain it."

I nodded, agreeing with him, but still unable to shake the feeling that something was seriously wrong, seriously off.

"Let's go, move carefully." I told them, and Kincaid nodded, clomping forward. He hit the ignitor and left it on, his finger resting on the trigger. I followed, my pistol in my hand, glancing at the pictures as we passed them.

The footsteps started as soon as we started moving.

...echoes of 2/19th...

"You think we can take them without Shads or the others getting wasted?" Donaldson asked as we moved by a door marked 'Secondary Telemetry Control'.

"I don't know." I told him honestly. "If these guys are the kind of assholes I think they are, they'll kill Shads and the others just to spite us."

"Any way to keep them from doing that?" Donaldson asked, then held up his hand. "Hang on, give me a few seconds." Kincaid stopped, and we stood there while Donaldson leaned against the wall, rubbing his chest. He smiled at me. "Hurts. Not hard to breathe, but it aches and that rib is killing me." I nodded, reaching in my pocket for my cigarettes and coming up empty.

I'd left the pack on the console next to the computer.

"If it wasn't for the others we could just have K-Bar cook 'em all." I said.

"Flamethrower, fuck yeah." Kincaid tossed in.

I continued. "The problem is there's nine of them left. K-Bar could take out some of them, you could shoot a few others, and I could take some of the rest, but the guys we didn't put down fast would kill the others."

"So what's the plan?" Kincaid asked.

"I'll figure it out when we get ahead of them." I admitted. "I don't know what the conditions are where they are. If it's heavy snow in the corridors that works in our favor. We'll go all Rambo on their asses. If there isn't, we'll have to shadow them, wait for a good time to strike."

Donaldson nodded, still leaning against the wall. He yawned, then pushed himself upright. "Ready."

We moved in silence, the weird smell still setting my nerves on edge. When I saw the door marked 'Launch Control and Primary Targeting Operations' I held up my hand again, staring at the door.

"Donaldson, give me the map." I told him.

"I gave it to you." Donaldson told me. I flushed slightly and pulled it out from where I'd tucked it in between my LBE and my top. I set them one by one on the floor, looking at them, this time paying attention to the peripheral areas rather than the core areas.

"What are you looking for?" Kincaid asked.

"A rumor." I told him, crouching down and looking at a small area the size of a dollar bill. I leaned forward, tracing the pathways, and noting that the area codes are started with CL1. I kept searching and found two more areas of the same design, both of them with the beginning of their area codes matching the first one I'd found.

"Oh, shit." I said, pulling the paper toward me and refolding it.

"What?" Kincaid asked.

"We might have a serious problem." I told them.

"Well fuck, now what?" Kincaid bitched. "Worse than killer mutants, rogue CIA agents, and a team leader in the middle of a psychotic break?"

Nancy laughed behind me.

"Much, much worse." I told him. "We need to rescue the others and get to that Master Operations Control area as soon as possible." I stood up, pushing the maps back between my LBE and top. "Doubletime it, troops."

"What?" Kincaid asked, huffing as he picked up the pace. "What is it?"

The landlines had been cut out, the site wasn't able to contact NORAD or anything else in over 72 hours.

"Something really really bad." I told him, picking up the pace when we rounded a slight corner and I saw the elevators up ahead.

"What?" Donaldson asked. "Something else that might kill us and the Major's men?"

The system had been acting weird the entire time, acting like it knew something we didn't.

"Worse." I told them. I paused to check the knob on an office marked "Strategic Planning, 548th Strategic Missile Command (MILCOM)" on it. The door was locked, and I snarled, leaning back and putting my boot into the middle of the door, right next to the doorknob.

I fell over backwards an my helmet bonked on the floor, sparks shooting across my vision and everything going dark for a split second. I rolled over, trying to get up, and retched, bringing up a thin stream of bile.

"Sergeant?" Donaldson asked, squatting down and putting his hand on my back while I kept dry heaving.

I was hurt bad.

"Still good." I told him, once I was done heaving.

"Sergeant, you're eyepatch is soaked through." Donaldson told me when I looked at him. "And you've blood or something running down the side of your head."

"What do you mean 'something', Dee?" I asked, slowly climbing to my feet. The corridor swung around and tilted and I almost fell over, but Donaldson grabbed my arm.

He reached out and swiped under my ear, his finger coming back and glinting with something pale, pink and wet. "It doesn't feel like blood." He said, looking at it with an odd expression.

"It's fluid from my inner ear." I lied. "The mine going off or the pistol shot must have damaged my ear drum."

Donaldson nodded, looking relieved.

"I'll be fine." I told him, looking at the door. There was no keypad, just a physical deadbolt lock, and from the way it had felt when I kicked it, the door was solid steel. "Dammit, we need to get in there."

"I can get it open." Donaldson said, dropping his ruck on the floor. "Relax for a couple minutes, Sergeant." I nodded and sat down, leaning back so my ruck acted like the back of a chair. He pulled out one of the bricks of C-4, the little plastic box that looked like it should hold dental floss but held blasting caps, a roll of wire, and a clacker. He shaded the little window, took the clacker off of safe, and snapped it a couple of times before nodding and setting it to the side.

Kincaid came over and squatted down next to me. When I looked through the clear plate on the hood his eyes were closed, and then he got a relieved look on his face, smiled, and opened his eyes.

"Sorry, had to piss." he told me. "Putting the dick-wire made my cock burn the first couple of times I had to piss, but now it doesn't hurt."

"Good." I said, closing my eyes for a moment. "How you holding up?"

"Feel shaky and weird. Like I can do anything I want to." He told me. "I almost started laughing when I burnt up Killain."

"You were laughing." I told him, and he grunted. I glanced at Donaldson, who was using his Leatherman to slice off strips of the C-4 before rolling them between his hands. "No big deal, you held it together."

"Does Bishop do that a lot?" Kincaid asked. I saw him duck forward, grabbing the small tube in his teeth. His cheeks hollowed as he sucked on the tube, taking a drink of water, then he swallowed and let go of the tube. "Use dead bodies, I mean."

"Sometimes." I told him. My head was pounding. "The sex talk though, that was new."

He nodded, giving me a wry look. "New people, new place, new tricks?"

"Probably." I said, closing my eyes and reaching behind my glasses to pinch the bridge of my nose.

It didn't help.

"OK, ready." Donaldson said, standing up. I glanced at the door. He had six little worms of C-4 set, with det cord embedded in each of them, moving out from a central glob about the size of a silver dollar. Looked like a standard door breaching setup and I nodded in approval, struggling to my feet.

I almost puked just from that.

We moved down the hallway about twenty paces, Kincaid spooling out the wire.

"Fire in the hole." He said, squeezing the clacker three times.

There was a loud bang, with smaller snaps right on its heels, and then a clattering noised as the door vanished into the room. The middle charge caused the door to flex inward, to bow it, and the secondary ones blew it out of the frame.

When we looked back in, there were row upon row of computers sitting there silently, their screens full of silently scrolling data. We went into the door and I checked the computer real fast before lifting up the edge of the desk and dumping it on the floor.

It was trying to connect with systems that were listed by network addresses.

And failing at all five of them.

shit

We drug three desks into the hallway and down to the elevator before pushing the elevator button. The cables groaned and made loud shuddering noises, painfully loud even through the steel doors. Each time they vibrated I retched, trying to hold down whatever might be in my stomach, my head resonating sympathetically.

When the door finally opened Kincaid stood in front of them, his flamethrower at the ready, but there was no need.

The inside of the elevator was clean, well lit, and even had carpet on the floor.

We pushed the desks inside and Donaldson held onto the back of my LBE as I leaned around the corner and pressed the number for the level below us.

Unlike the rest of the elevators, this one had buttons for three levels above us, levels we hadn't even known existed until we'd looked at the map.

The doors closed and we waited for the noises to stop again. I counted to twenty, then hit the call button again. While the elevator climbed back up to us I pried off the cover of the call button and popped the mechanism free so that anyone who wanted to use the elevator would have to hotwire it.

Kurt Russel plan time.

Donaldson and I silently pulled the desks out, Kincaid watching our six.

The lights at the far ends of the hallway dimmed, came back on, then dimmed again.

"We're wearing out welcome, Sergeant." K-Bar told us.

"Let's go." I went into the elevator, looking at the buttons. They didn't correspond to any of the buttons I'd seen before, nor did they correspond with any of the levels shown on the maps.

I hit the button for the level below us, and while we waited for the doors to close I pulled out my Leatherman and started taking the panel off.

"What are you doing?" Donaldson asked.

"Setting the elevator to stop at every floor on a continuous cycle." I told him. "The sound should mask the fact that we used it, and I'm hoping the agents will think the elevator is malfunctioning."

"What's to keep them from using it instead of Shads leading them to the stairs?" Kincaid asked.

"Turn around, Dee." I told him. The other man did so, and I grabbed the Claymore out of the top of his ruck before turning back to the panel. The switch bank was right there, complete with instructions to how to set the elevator to do what I wanted. I used my Leatherman to scrape away the instructions after I set it, then pushed the Claymore into the wires, pulling wires in front of it to hold it in place.

"Hand me the wire." I said, holding out my hand. Donaldson slapped the roll of wire into my hand, and I cut about a foot off of it, pushing it into the fuze well then feeding the wire into the gap, making it look like the mine was wired into the elevator's wiring system somehow.

The elevator slowed to stop, doing the little up/down bobble that nearly every elevator did before the doors opened up with a vibrating metallic groan.

The hallway was full of blowing snow, the wind sweeping through the hallway. Visibility dropped to only a few feet, and the temperature was colder than it had been in the egg.

"Shit, he's hunting them too, isn't he?" Kincaid asked. It wasn't really a question.

"Warning! Level two security procedures in effect! All section leaders take headcount and report to to command! All non-essential personnel report to staging areas! Civilian pacification teams report to team leaders!" the woman was saying. When we moved into the corridor the message started to repeat itself.

"They're about four doors away, that direction." Donaldson said, pointing down the corridor to our left."

A little brown hare sped down the hallway, away from the direction that Shads and the others were, snow flying up behind it as it shot by us and vanished into the snow.

My stomach rumbled, then cramped, and I retched again, clenching my plastic teeth. My lower plate shifted, meaning the paste was starting to wear out. If I wasn't careful I'd puke out my dentures.

"You going to be all right, Sergeant?" Kincaid asked while I was wiping off my mouth.

"He's concussed." Donaldson said.

"He's fucking dying is what he's doing." Nancy snapped. "And the stupid asshole won't tell you."

"Shut up, Nancy." I growled at her.

The woman repeated the message.

"What's she saying?" Donaldson asked, turning and facing me. He looked at me, then turned his head, following my line of vision for a feet and staring at empty snow.

"That fluid from his ears?" Nancy said, stepping forward so she was right in Donaldson's view. "It's cerebral fluid. His brain is swelling, so his body is letting the cerebral fluid leak from the natural shunts in his ear and sinus cavity. Probably into his eye sockets too."

"She isn't saying anything." I told him, wiping my nose self-consciously.

It came away smeared with blood.

"You're lying, Sergeant. I can't tell how, but I know you are." Kincaid said softly. "What's she saying?"

"We don't have time for this shit, we need to get somewhere so we can help Shads and the others." I said, starting to walk forward.

Donaldson grabbed my arm, stopping me. When I looked at him, he looked angry. "Sergeant, if I slap the top of your helmet, what will happen?"

"He'll collapse and either throw up, pass out, go blind, or fucking die." Nancy said. "Probably all of the above."

"We have to hurry, Corporal." I told him, yanking my arm free. "It's more than Shads and the others, if I'm right." I started double-timing into the snow, forcing them to either hurry up and follow me or get left behind.

"The Major and his men?" Donaldson repeated his question.

"Worse." I told them, stopping at the door. I used the master code, which caused the door to start raising without the security wait and code re-enter.

The woman's warning was louder, and both Kincaid and Donaldson were silent till she was done bellowing at us.

"What's worse than all of them being killed?" Kincaid asked as the door slid smoothly up and we stepped through.

"Those idiot CIA dumbasses cut all the communication lines from the site, including the sat-link." I told them, throwing the bar. The door hissed downward, and right before it slid closed a little white rabbit shot through gap, between my feet, and vanished into the snow.

"Right, so we can't call someone to come pull us out, right?" Donaldson said as we turned and kept walking into the wind.

"How the fuck is it so windy in here? The doors are all shut." Kincaid said.

"It's just the site fucking with us." I told them. We passed a section of wall painted with "EVERYONE'S GONE, DO WE WILL REALLY HAVE ANYTHING TO LIVE FOR?" on it with yellow paint. Below it, someone had written "YOUR WIFES ASS" in white paint.

The message repeated, and I noticed a slight slur in the woman's voice. The tape was stretching.

"Right, Donaldson. That's why they did it." I told him. The lights flashed and began to dim. The emergency lights kicked on, turning the world red around us. "They cut off all of the site's communications, and that might be a problem." It told them.

We were approaching the elevator banks that the shit had hit the fan at so long ago. One floor above us we'd been attacked, two kids had been mauled, and I'd been damn near killed when the Major had distracted us and those things had taken the opportunity to jump us.

I held up my hand and the other two men stopped while I pried the rubber grommet off the trigger plug. Donaldson handed me the clacker, and I plugged it in.

"Warning! Level two security procedures in effect! All section leaders take headcount and report to to command!" The woman started to say. The was a loud click and the red emergency lights dimmed.

"Hello, agents." Oakes said softly over the intercom. "Agent Thomas, your wife is, at this moment, sweating and moaning as Special Agent Luther Johnson is sliding his big black cock in and out of her pussy in your bed." I heard Kebble giggle, a girlish sound with an edge of maliciousness. "Right now his big black balls are slapping against her asshole. Your wife doesn't seem to have a problem with, how did you put it to your friends, oh, now I remember, a 'big buck nigger', does she?"

I looked at Kincaid and Donaldson. Neither one of them were grinning.

The intercom snapped again, and we heard the sounds of a woman moaning, crying out in ecstasy. She was chanting out 'fuck me harder, Luther, harder' as she moaned, and I could hear the sound of flesh slapping against flesh.

"So, are they helping us now?" Kincaid asked, looking confused.

"No. Tandy's trying to provoke a fucking massacre." I told both of them.

"All non-essential personnel report to staging areas! Civilian pacification teams report to team leaders!" the normal woman's voice finished.

I snapped the clacker three times, not bothering to say anything else, and the steel panel slowly fell outward and hit the opposite wall. We all rushed down to it as the intercom clicked again.

"Hello, Agent Zuckerman." Kebble, barely smothering a giggle after she said the name. "Did you know that right now your father is eating out your wife's pussy? Her legs are over his shoulders, she's pulling his hair, and she's about to cum. Would you like to hear her?" There was another giggle.

Donaldson climbed over the plate to the other side.

"I think he should." Oakes.

"He really should." Agent Killain. There was whispering over the intercom, and Agent Killain laughed. "That's such a good idea, Oakes. We'll let him hear that."

There was another pop over the intercom and a man's voice could be heard as Donaldson and I both heaved on the plate, lifting it up from the wall.

"You smell nice." The man said. "Come here, baby. I don't see why he won't touch you, you're soooo pretty."

We stagger stepped it to in front of the elevators and dropped it, blocking the elevator doors at the bottom with the steel plate.

"He prefers prepubescent Taiwanese boys." A woman's voice said. "That's why I'm on the pill, Dan, I don't want to have a son for him to replace me with."

The man and the woman kept talking as I pulled the flashbang grenade out of Donaldson's ruck along with the 100 MPH tape and some wire. Kincaid kept watch as they talked about how under-endowed Zuckerman was, and oral sex was agreed upon and I wired up the flashbang after using my Leatherman to crimp down the retaining pin so it'd slide smoothly out of the retaining hole.

The red light was slowly dimming out as Donaldson and I put on our masks and I pulled two CS grenades, almost the last of them, I had out of my ruck. That was the beauty of the large infantry rucks, enough room to put pretty much everything you needed in them.

The snow was at least six inches deep when I tossed the two CS grenades down the hallway and we pulled back into the stairwell.

The CIA boys didn't have gas masks on them, something I didn't really understand. Was it cockiness, or was it they couldn't be bothered to wear something that hot and uncomfortable, or did they actually think that there wasn't any kind of chemical danger?

Of course the three agents who'd accompanied us didn't have gas masks either.

We moved into the stairwell and Kincaid and I stopped dead.

It wasn't the fact that there was a steady snowfall of fat snowflakes in the stairwell shaft, or that ice coated the walls, or even the wrist thick icicles hanging from the underside of the winding staircase and the vent ducting. It wasn't the way the air was still and cold.

In front of us one of the creatures was illuminated by my flashlight, caught in the act of scampering down the stairs. It looked at Kincaid and me and began backing away slowly, putting its hands behind its back. It was dressed in rags, with bits of wire hanging from where they had pierced the lips, and its hair was in spots, leaving red weeping skin in between each patch.

"Let it go." I said loud enough to be heard over Kebble telling one of the other agents that she knew about him stealing drugs and money he was supposed to be using as bribes and keeping it all. Kebble even read off his Swiss bank account numbers to where over two million dollars had been hidden.

As it backed down, out of sight, the screams of a man being tortured to death rang out over the speakers. As soon as it got out of direct sight, still able to be seen through the grating, it dropped on all fours and scampered down into the darkness. I took off my ruck while I watched it and dug out another CS grenade.

"Move down so you're right under the plate on this landing." I told Donaldson and Kincaid. They nodded and I took the steps two at a time up to the next landing. When I got there I squatted down, pulling the pin on the CS grenade, and then letting the lever fly free as I squatted down and set it upright on the steel diamond plate the floor was made out of.

By the time I got down to where Kincaid and Donaldson were Donaldson had on his mask, and I took off my glasses, put them away, and put my mask on. The ring style glasses inserts were a hell of a lot better than the old triple spike model. I'd seen two people stab those fucking tines into their eyes during training.

"Now we wait." I said.

The other two nodded, Donaldson quietly checking his M-16A1 and Kincaid letting the pilot flame go out, moving his hand away from the triggering mechanism so he didn't pop it out of habit.

Donaldson and I turned off our flashlights, and we waited in the stairwell shaft.

In the hallway Agent Killain was telling the CIA agents that she knew all about how one of them liked to pay money to have prostitutes strangle him and that he couldn't get up unless she laid in a bath of ice beforehand.

We waited, silently, in the snow, dark and the cold.

There was killing to be done.