Spartan Gold

“It shows. Bet you’re hell in a horseshoe pit.”

“Hope I didn’t kill him. Oh, God, I didn’t kill him, did I?”

Sam walked over, knelt down, and rolled the man onto his back. Protruding from his forehead was a purple egg-shaped lump. Sam checked for a pulse. “He’s just down for a long nap. He’ll have a headache for a few days but nothing else.”

Remi was standing before the monitor displaying the symbol grid. “You think it’s the bottle from Rum Cay?” she asked.

“I sure hope so. If not, that means Bondaruk’s got more than one bottle. Look around, see if it’s here.”

They checked the humidity-control cabinets, the refrigerators, and the drawers beneath the worktable, but found no sign of either the bottle or the label.

“It’s probably a digital image,” Remi said, studying the monitor. “See the edge there, on the left? It looks color enhanced.”

“As much as I’d like to get the bottle away from Bondaruk, this might be all we need. See if you can print—” Sam stopped talking and cocked his head. “You hear that . . . ? Oh, crap.” He pointed.

In the corner, partially hidden from view by a cabinet, was a wall-mounted video camera. It stopped pa

“Company’s coming,” Remi said.

“Quick, check the keyboard, see if you can print us a screen capture of the label!”

As Remi started tapping on the keyboard, Sam sprinted to the corner, grabbed the feed wire beneath the camera, and jerked it loose. Next he ran to the door, flipped off the lights, and returned to Remi, who said, “Got it!” and tapped a key. The laser printer’s lights blinked green and it hummed to life.

From the control room they heard a door bang open, then shut, then open again. Footsteps clicked on linoleum, then went silent.

“Down,” Sam whispered, then dropped onto his belly and pulled Remi with him. “Stay here and grab that printout.” He crawled down the short side of the table and peeked his head out.

At the door, the knob was slowly turning. He extended the Glock and took aim.

The laser printer started rhythmically humming.

“Printing,” Remi whispered.

The door burst open, revealing a figure silhouetted by the control room’s LCD monitors. Sam fired once. The bullet struck the man in the calf just below the knee. He screamed and toppled forward. His weapon—a compact Heckler & Koch MP5 submachine gun—bounced across the rubber floor and landed a few feet from Sam. In the control room he heard a hushed voice bark something—a curse, Sam assumed from the tone—in Russian. The man Sam shot was whimpering and crawling back toward the door.

“Got it!” Remi called. “Detail’s perfect. We can use it.”

“Come around,” Sam whispered. She crawled around the corner and tapped his ankle. “Here.” Sam turned, handed her the Glock, and said, “When I say go, fire three shots through the door. Aim for the glass wall.”

“Okay.”

Sam got to his knees, took a breath. “Go!”

Remi popped up and started firing. Glass began shattering. Sam somersaulted out from behind the table, veered left, grabbed the MP5, then scuttled back to cover.

“What’re they waiting for?” Remi asked.

“Reinforcements or better weaponry would be my guess. We need to get out of here before either arrives.”

As if on cue, a hand appeared around the edge of the door and hurled something. The object bounced off the side of the table, hit the rubber floor, then came to a spi

“Down, Remi!” Sam shouted.

Moving on instinct and on the faith that he’d correctly identified the thrown object, Sam stood up, took a bounding leap, and soccer-kicked the object back toward the door. As it reached the threshold it exploded. Blinding white light and a deafening boom filled the lab. Sam stumbled backward and collapsed behind the table.

“What in God’s name was that?” Remi said, shaking her head to clear it.

“Flash-bang grenade. Special forces and SWAT teams use them to distract the bad guys. A lot of sound and light, but no shrapnel.”

“How did you know?”

“Discovery Cha

“How about a little distraction of our own?” Remi said, pointing with the Glock.

Sam looked. On the wall opposite the panic button was a paperback-sized Plexiglas box housing a yellow mushroom bearing a pictograph of a water droplet. “That’ll do.”

“Two shots, if you will.”

“Ready.”

“Go.”

Remi popped up and opened fire. Sam charged to the wall and slammed the butt of the MP5 sideways into the Plexiglas box, ripping it from the wall. He jerked the lever down. From unseen loudspeakers a computer-generated female voice made an a

“Warning. Fire suppression system activated. Evacuate area

immediately. Warning. Fire suppression system activated.”

Sam rushed back behind the table. “Rain’s coming, Remi. Protect that printout!”

“Already tucked away.”

“Cleavage?”

“Safer. Found a ziplock Baggie.”

To the right, in the corner of his eye, Sam saw movement in the doorway. He spun, let loose a quick three-round burst. A monitor in the control room exploded in a shower of sparks, then started smoking. He dove behind the table again.

With a whir, silver nozzles descended from the ceiling. There was a one-second delay followed by a pop-hiss. The nozzles exploded into cones of water.

Sam peeked his head around the corner of the table in time to see a figure run through the alcove and disappear through the door.

“Let’s go before the cavalry arrives,” Sam rasped over the rush of water.

“Wait, I’m checking my ammunition. . . . I’ve got nine shots left. Ready when you are.”

“When I go, put three more shots through the doorway, then follow me. Stay directly behind me, got it?”

“Yep.”

“Go!”

Sam got up and charged. As he passed the end of the table, he reached out with his right hand and snagged one of the rolling stools. Ten feet from the door, he pushed it ahead of him, then gave it a kick. At that moment a figure appeared in the doorway. The stool, already tipping over and spi

Sam picked up the fallen man’s MP5 and handed it to Remi.

“What now?” she asked, flipping her sopping hair away from her face.

“Nothing complicated. We run for our lives.”

They went through the first door, into the alcove, then through the card-reader door and into the corridor beyond, where the trapped water had risen to ankle depth. The overhead fluorescent lights had gone dark.

Remi asked, “You have a plan, right?”

“Wouldn’t call it a plan. A sketch, maybe.”

“Good enough for me.”

He turned to her and took her free hand in his own. “Are you ready for this? You may have to do something you don’t want to do.”

Remi smiled. Water ran down her cheeks and over her lips in rivulets. “Like shoot someone? No worries; they started it.”

“That’s my girl. Okay, we go on three. Stay low and head left for cover. If it moves, shoot it.”

“Gladly.”

Sam grabbed the knob. “One . . . two . . .”

CHAPTER 41

. . . Three!”

Crouched down, Sam threw open the door.

Except for moonlight filtering through the ceiling, the conservatory was dark and, separated as it was from the lab area, not raining. Water from the corridor gushed out and began spreading across the floor.