Hell's Corner

CHAPTER 100

Stone and Annabelle reached the end of the cylinder.

The holding cells.

If Caleb wasn’t in one of them Stone would have to start over from the other side. And he would have to bring Annabelle with him.

The first thing he saw brought astonishment and then relief. Knox and Finn and Caleb were waiting for them. Weak light allowed everyone to see the others.

“How did you get in here?” Stone asked as they huddled in one corner and Annabelle hugged Caleb despite his foul clothes and smell.

“Chapman’s doing,” said Knox as he filled Stone in on what had happened to them so far. “She told us how to get through the maze too. Said she researched it.”

Stone looked behind him. “So she went to the left?”

“That’s right. Any idea where she is?”

“Somewhere behind me. And she just saved my life.”

“We got one Russian at the front entrance. At least Chapman got him.”

“So there’s only one left.”

“And now there are none,” said a voice.

Chapman stepped into the light.

“Guy tried to jump me as I came through to start my first section,” she explained. “He either wasn’t very good, or I’m better than I think I am.”

When she finished speaking, Stone looked around, a curious expression on his features.

Finn said to Chapman, “Any sign of Friedman?”

“No.”

“I say we get the hell out of here as fast as we can,” said Knox. “We’ve got what we came for. Friedman can keep.”

He looked at Stone, who seemed frozen to the spot.

“Oliver, are you okay?”

“Russians.”

“What?” said Finn.

“Russians,” Stone said again.

“Right. And we killed them all.”

“Not very good Russians,” said Stone. “You would have thought they would have been better.”

They all looked at him.

He stared back. “We went through them very easily. Too easily. They weren’t very good. And I think that was intentional.”

“Why would Friedman hire not very good security?”

“Because she didn’t need the A-team. The B-team was good enough.”

“Good enough for what?” asked Chapman.

“To draw us here. To get us to this spot, in fact. They were expendable. She didn’t care if they died or not. No, I take that back. She wanted them to die.”

Knox said, “But if we killed them, that means they didn’t kill us. How does that get her anywhere?”

“She’s trying to redeem herself to Carlos Montoya. She failed the first time around. But now she’s going again with her backup plan.”

“Backup plan?” exclaimed Knox.

Stone nodded. “You always have a backup plan. And I walked right into it.”

“Into what exactly?” asked Chapman nervously.

“They’re going to find us all here with a pack of Russians.” Stone paused. “And there’s a laboratory back there loaded with new equipment. And I think I know what that new equipment is supposed to represent.”

Chapman was the first to see what he was getting at.

“Not nanobots?”

He nodded. “Yes, nanobots.”

“But the Russians aren’t behind it. I think we clearly established that.”

“But when they find us here with all these dead Russians and a lab full of nanobot research that was probably shipped in from Montoya’s facilities, what do you think the world will think?”

Caleb said nervously, “What exactly do you mean by ‘when they find us here’?”

Finn answered, “We were set up. We were meant to get in here, plow through the Russians and get to this point.”

“Why?” asked Annabelle.

The explosion sounded above them.

It was so powerful it shook the floor. Bits of concrete and a plate of steel fell nearby, making them all jump.

“What the hell was that?” yelled Chapman.

“That,” said Stone, “was the front door being sealed off.”

He grabbed Annabelle’s hand. “Come on.”

They all followed his lead as he guided them back to the main hall and then toward the way he had come in.

“Should we at least see if we can get out the front way?” called out Knox.

His answer came in the form of another explosion that dropped part of the mountain twenty feet behind them, effectively cutting off any access to the front entrance.

They all ran harder.

The mountain was trembling now, as one precision explosion after another detonated.

“The whole mountain is going to come down on us,” screamed Annabelle.

“No it won’t,” said Stone as they raced along. “Just enough to kill us. But she has to allow them to be able to get in and find the pieces of evidence she wants to be found.”

“That bitch!” screamed Chapman as another bomb detonated in front of them, causing Stone to veer off to the left with the others right behind.

“Oliver, what about the way you came in?” called out Finn. “She might not know about that.”

“She does know about it but we’ve got no choice,” Stone replied.

A section of wall toppled over, nearly crushing Caleb. However, Finn and Knox pulled him to safety with a second to spare. But Caleb moaned and clutched his shoulder where a chunk of rock had struck.

Finn pulled open his shirt and shone a light on him. “Collarbone’s cracked. But you’re okay. Collarbone’s the fail-safe. It breaks so another more important part doesn’t.”

“Makes me feel so much better,” groaned Caleb.

When Stone reached the kitchen area he stopped and stared helplessly at what was in front of him. Friedman had been ahead of him on this too. She’d collapsed the entrance to the back of the kitchen with a thick wall of debris that had cascaded down from a charge no doubt having been placed in a perfect spot to accomplish this. And even if they dug through that, Stone knew they would just confront another, even thicker wall of rubble. Friedman would have seen to that.

She did her homework.

He briefly wondered how long ago she had had Murder Mountain ready to go. And was she somewhere nearby, detonating these charges? Was she somehow watching them, knowing exactly when to set off each one? And then he had no more time to wonder, as everyone looked at him.

“What now?” said Chapman breathlessly, her face, like all the others’, caked with grime from the dust and smoke.

Stone looked upward as another charge detonated, though not nearby. But more of the facility collapsed and the mountain gave another shudder.

Then the lights went completely out, plunging them into darkness.

Stone, Finn and Knox immediately powered up their NV goggles. Stone took Annabelle’s hand, Knox took Caleb’s and Finn clamped his hand around Chapman’s wrist.

“Follow me,” said Stone.

There was one more way out of here. And as far as Stone knew, he was the only person who had ever discovered it. This was their last chance.

He was very conscious of the fact that he had no idea where the next charge Friedman had placed would detonate. She had no reason to allow them to leave here alive, where they could tell people the truth. Each step they took could truly be their—

Annabelle screamed.