Point of Contact

64

Jack killed the lights and slammed on the brakes. The Range Rover came to a splashing halt thirty yards from the Dalfan building, lit up like a Christmas tree in the middle of the blacked-out neighborhood. The Toyota van was parked on the sidewalk near the door.

“Emergency generator,” Lian explained. “We need to keep the power on or else the security locks all fail. We also need the mainframe to keep running — a system crash would be fatal.”

“Mainframe’s on the fourth floor, right?”

“The control station is on the fourth, directly across from the emergency stairwell. It’s the only place now where you can install a USB drive.”

“That’s where they’ll have Paul.”

Jack pointed through the flooded windshield. Between the momentary blink of wiper-blade swipes they could make out two men in the lobby.

“I can use my security pass to enter through an emergency exit in the back,” Lian said. “I’ll make my way—”

“No time.”

Jack slammed the throttle into the floorboard. The Range Rover rocketed forward, leaping the curb. Jack used the parked Toyota van to cover his approach. Lian slapped the airbag switch, killing the safety devices.

The silver SUV came out of the night like a steel shadow. The two men in the lobby saw it at the last second and scattered as the front end smashed through the front glass doors.

Jack popped the brights back on and jerked the wheel hard left, tracking with one of the men running for cover. The left bumper caught him at the hip and slammed him against a concrete pillar, crushing his pelvis. He screamed.

Lian was out the door and firing her weapon, putting four rounds in the other man’s chest as he raised his weapon to fire. He dropped like a rag doll, his pistol clattering to the floor. She turned in time to see Jack put a round in the head of the man crushed against the pillar, somehow pointing his weapon at Jack just before he ate one in the face.

There was no way to know if the men upstairs heard the racket downstairs, and at this point it didn’t matter. They bolted up the emergency stairs two at a time, boots clanging on the metal stairs. Jack’s heart raced with adrenaline and a death-metal soundtrack crashed in his throbbing skull. They reached the fourth-floor landing and stopped at the emergency door. Jack pressed his ear against it.

Screaming.

Paul.

No way to know the tactical situation. Could be twenty guys. Could be two. Jack didn’t care. His friend was in trouble.

Jack hand-signaled a plan — clear the room of tangos, assault the control room — then counted off with the nod of his head.

Three.

Two.

One.

Go!

Jack leaned hard against the locked emergency door so that when Lian swiped her security card it pushed open without a bang. He drove straight across the floor toward the glass-walled control station while Lian cut low and right, using the workstations for cover. Jack assumed if they were guarding the floor they’d expect someone to come in through the front and not the stairwell.

Jack was half right.

Two steps in, Jack saw a Caucasian man startle in front of him. He raised the pistol in his hand toward Jack. Too slow. Jack’s gun was already up. He put a round through the man’s throat. The lead passed clean through and smashed in a bloody spiderweb against the control-room glass, alerting a second killer standing next to a third man in a flat cap towering over Paul, blade in hand.

Two shots rang out on his right, one large-caliber and the other small, followed by the sound of tinkling glass.

Jack didn’t have time to turn around and look — he was drawing a sight on the man charging out of the control room with a gun already pointing at him.

“LIAN!”

“CLEAR!”

Jack fired two rounds into the man’s broad chest, spinning him like a top, but not before he got a round off. Jack swore his upper right arm got hit with a blacksmith’s hammer. It turned him a quarter-step — and it saved his life.

The man with the blade standing over Paul had turned calmly and raised a small-caliber pistol in a confident, one-handed draw. Jack swore there was a smile beneath the man’s thin pencil mustache when he fired. But the hit that turned Jack took him out of the path of the smiling man’s bullet — a headshot. The slug zooped past Jack’s ear like an angry hornet.

Jack returned fire. Two rounds shattered the man’s forehead just beneath his flat cap as a third punched in just below his nose. The man flew backward, crashing into Paul, then tumbled to the ground.

Jack charged forward and kicked the dead man’s pistol out of reach, then secured his own weapon. He saw Lian clearing the weapons and checking the pulses of the two others Jack had shot.

“Paul! Where are you hurt?” Jack instantly regretted the question. Paul’s forearms were duct-taped to the chair, and the tips of the fingers of his left hand oozed blood.

“Jack, I’m sorry—”

“Where’s the USB?”

“It’s loaded!”

Jack glanced at the monitor behind Paul. EXECUTED flashed in red. The virus was launched.

Jack ripped apart the duct tape with his fingers as Paul burbled, red-eyed and snotty. “He made me give him the passcode… I tried… I couldn’t…”

“It’s all right.”

Lian dashed into the room. “All clear.” She saw Paul’s hand. She gasped. “I’ll get the medical kit!” She ran back out of the room.

Jack checked his watch. Two minutes until midnight.

Two minutes until the end of the world.