Plague Ship

“Got it!” Murph cried, then looked around guiltily for speaking so loudly. “Sorry. I’m into their system.

Piece of cake.”

Juan strode across the room. “Can you find which room is Kyle’s?”

“They have everything cross-referenced. He’s in building C, which is the newest one right near where Eddie and Linc climbed the wall. Kyle Hanley’s room is number one-seventeen, but he’s not alone. He’s got a roommate named, let’s see, Jeff Ponsetto.”

“Well done,” Cabrillo said, and relayed the information to Eddie and Linc. “Start to download what you can off their computer.”

Linda Ross came over the tactical net: “Chairman, check your view screen. You’ve got company coming.”

Juan glanced at his sleeve. Two men dressed in maintenance workers’ overalls were crossing the compound. They carried toolboxes, and appeared to be heading toward the main building, where he and Murph were. Had there been some sort of emergency call to the engineering staff, surely they would have heard voices. Whatever was going on, Cabrillo didn’t like it.

“Murph, forget the download. Let’s go!”

As Juan went toward the door, he tucked an electronic bug under the desk lamp. He knew it would be found quickly, once the break-in was detected, but it would transmit the first critical moments of whatever took place in Gil Martell’s office. He paused at the window and checked the view screen once again. The maintenance workers were approaching the building’s front door, which gave him and Mark the time they needed to get clear.

He slowly opened the shade and eased himself over the window sash. His Glock was in his hand, though he had no conscious memory of drawing it.

Keeping low and following their carefully laid map to avoid the cameras, they moved toward building C.

The grass was dry under their shoes and crackled with each step. Like the others in the Responsivist compound, building C was one-storied, with whitewashed walls and a barrel-tile roof.

Linc and Eddie were pressed to the wall next to a door, out of view of the camera mounted above it. A security keypad was to the right, and its faceplate had been removed and left dangling by a bunch of wires. Linc had already installed his bypass. Despite having such large hands, the former Navy SEAL was the best lockpick the Corporation had, and he worked his tools with the delicate touch of a brain surgeon. With a pick and torsion rod in place, he gave the lock a jerk to the left, and the door snicked open.

“Fourteen seconds,” Eddie whispered.

“The maestro strikes again,” Linc smirked, and stepped into a long hallway ru

The hall was lined with dozens of identical doors and was illuminated by shaded fluorescent fixtures hanging from the ceiling. The carpeting was an institutional gray, not much softer than the concrete slab on which the building was constructed. The four men started down, peering into a large kitchen to their left and a room lined with a dozen commercial washing machines to their right. Juan didn’t see any clothes dryers, and assumed they had drying lines behind the building. Part of Responsivism was to reduce one’s impact on the natural world, so not having dryers fit their beliefs, as did the solar panels they’d spied on the roof of one of the buildings.

They quickly found room one-seventeen. Linc reached up to remove the cover over the closest light fixture and pulled the fluorescent tubes from their brackets. The four do

Eddie pulled a small plastic case from the thigh pocket of his fatigue pants. Inside were four hypodermic needles. The narcotic cocktail inside the barrels would incapacitate a grown man in under twenty seconds. Because Kyle had willingly joined the cult, he would surely resist their efforts to get him out.

The deprogrammer, Adam Je

Eddie gave a needle to Cabrillo and approached one of the beds. The man was sleeping on his stomach, his face turned to the wall. In a fluid movement, Seng clamped his hand around the man’s mouth and slid the needle into his neck, his thumb coming down on the plunger with even pressure. Across the room, Juan did the same thing. His victim came instantly awake and bucked against Juan’s arm, his eyes wide with panic. Juan held him down easily, even when the man’s legs began to thrash.

Juan counted down from twenty in his head. When he reached ten, the man’s gyrations were slowing, and when he hit three the guy was totally still. Juan flashed his penlight into the man’s face. Although Kyle Hanley took after his mother, Juan saw enough of Max in the boy to know it was him.

“Got him.”

As a precaution, Linc whipped FlexiCuffs around Kyle’s ankles and wrists before tossing him over his shoulder.

“All set, big man?” Juan asked.

Linc gri

Cabrillo checked the e-paper screen on his sleeve. Everything looked quiet, but he radioed Linda for confirmation.

“The janitors are still in the main building. A light came on across the compound from where you are but went out again a minute eight seconds later.”

“Pit stop.”

“My guess, too. You’re clear for extraction.”

“Roger.” He turned to his team. “We’re good to go.”

A bell began shrieking just as they started back down the corridor. It sounded like a fire alarm, a shrill, piercing sound that pounded on their eardrums like daggers. There was no way to communicate over the din, but the men were seasoned professionals and knew what was expected of them.

Eddie was in the lead, followed closely by Linc and Mark. All three men accelerated down the hallway, any attempt at stealth forgotten. This was no longer a snatch and grab but a race to the perimeter wall, where, if Linc and Eddie had done as ordered, a limpet mine was in place to blast through the blocks.

Linda Ross was near enough to hear the Klaxon and would be on the radio instructing George Adams to bring the Robinson in for a fast extraction. He’d land directly on the road and would have the team aboard before any guards knew what had happened.

A door to one side of Juan flew open, and a sleepy-eyed man wearing pajama bottoms stepped into the corridor. Cabrillo slammed his elbow into the man’s jaw, spiraling him to the carpet in a rubbery heap.

Ahead, another man poked his head out of his dormitory room. Even with the deadweight of Kyle Hanley on his shoulder, Linc juked sideways and stiff-armed the Responsivist. The man’s head hit the metal doorframe, and, as Juan raced past, the man’s eyes rolled into his head until only the whites shone.

He collapsed backward like a felled tree.

Eddie instinctively paused when they reached the exterior door. Juan checked the video feed on his sleeve, but Linda must have been occupied with Adams because the circling drone’s camera showed nothing but the ocean just north of them. He could hear her girlish voice in his radio’s earbud, but the alarm was too loud to make out her words. All he caught was her strident tone.

He shrugged at the lack of intel and opened the door, leading with his Glock. With the exception of alarms sounding across the compound, everything looked as tranquil as before. There were no rushing guards, or any movement at all. It didn’t even appear that additional lights had come on.