Runaway Heart

FIFTY-ONE

General Buzz Turpin was watching them on the monitor at DARPA headquarters in Virginia. The security cameras on each floor of the Ten-Eyck lab were fed to Arlington via a phone hookup that displayed the video lead in his command center. Now that the Ten-Eyck facility had been breached it had to be destroyed. He watched as three men and a woman moved down the stairs from the barn into the lab.

"Where are our people?" Turpin snarled at Paul Talbot, who was seated in the command chair next to him watching the screen.

"I don't know. Down on five, I think, but I can't pick 'em up on the corner cameras."

Turpin had already notified DARPA Control Center to arm the small nuclear devices located under the lab. The arming procedure, with its secure locking codes, took almost five minutes to accomplish. Time ticked by ominously. Turpin watched the intruders as they descended further. Anger flashed inside him. This project had been designed to free American children from the horrors of war. The DARPA chimera program could have guaranteed that not one more American soldier would ever have to die in a ground war. Now it was ruined. He watched as the intruders got into the elevator and took it down to the basement floor, B-5.

He could see that five DARPA commandos, three remaining chimeras, and several frightened genetic scientists had taken up new positions and were now visible on the B-5-level cameras.

Suddenly the elevator door opened. Two men and a woman stepped out into the laboratory.

Two DARPA soldiers opened fire immediately in violation of their orders, using the high-powered particle-beam weapons that had been designed for outdoor use only. In the steel-walled enclosure of the genetics lab, the beams broke up and ricocheted around the room uncontrollably.

"No, you assholes!" Turpin shouted into his communications console.

Streams of particle-beam laser light streaked across the lab like Star Wars special effects, hitting steel walls and lighting up everything they hit with high-energy voltage. After bouncing off metal walls they kept going, arcing back and forth, breaking up into energy particles and flying all around the lab like deadly fireflies.

Jack screamed out in fear and threw himself behind a metal cabinet.

Not exactly ideal alpha-male behavior, but it took him by surprise.

He finally pulled it together and tried without success to return fire, pulling the trigger on his already-jammed Beretta. Jack watched in horror as a second DARPA commando swung his particle-beam weapon toward him.

Izzy came to his rescue, firing twice with his square-barreled Glock 9, hitting both DARPA commandos and blowing them backward.

Izzy bought them ten precious seconds. Jack jumped up and ran on stringy legs across the lab, dove under a table, then grabbed up one of the fallen laser weapons.

Payback.

Another commando fired… more red death arced around the lab, ricocheting and filling the air with deadly particles. Computers exploded behind Jack. The room was filling with smoke and charged air. Everyone's hair was standing up from static electricity.

Jack turned the complicated laser gun over and studied it, then flipped a switch, hoping to turn it on.

He rolled right, put the weapon to his shoulder, and pulled the trigger. Nothing.

The chimeras were just standing there watching the fight. One was jumping up and down, but made no move to enter the fray. They had been trained to act only on command, and nobody had given an attack order.

While Jack tried a few more buttons on the laser gun, Izzy and Susan dove for cover behind a metal counter. Izzy was holding his Glock sideways, blasting away like a rock-video gangster. Jack rolled, punched some more buttons and tried the laser gun again. Still nothing. "How d'ya turn this damned thing on?" he shouted. Nobody seemed inclined to help.

The panicked DARPA commandos finally realized their mistake shooting the laser guns in a metal-walled room and pulled out pistols. They were now chopping up the lab with conventional ordnance.

Jack made a run for the cover of a metal counter. Suddenly he felt searing pain in his shoulder and went down.

Alarms started ringing.

While Jack didn't like the sound of the whooping alarms, on the plus side he, Susan, and Izzy somehow gained the tactically superior position close to the elevators.

"Let's go… pull out," Jack shouted, and they all started running like hookers in a vice raid. Jack sprinted to the nearest elevator and pushed Izzy inside. The DARPA commandos broke cover and swarmed the room. Susan unexpectedly looped back and was gathering something up off the counter. "Let's go!" Jack screamed while Izzy fired four more shots pinning down the swarming DARPA soldiers.

One of them finally shouted an order: "Gree! Attack!" Instantly, three chimeras leaped toward the elevator exposing themselves to Izzy's fire. Two of them went down. Susan was running toward the elevator carrying half a dozen glass vials in a holder. She slipped inside just before the last chimera reached her. Jack kicked the animal back with a karate move that shot a jolt of pain up his tortured spine to his wounded shoulder. The door closed before the chimera could regain its balance. Seconds later they were humming up amidst a horrible symphony of braying floor alarms.

The door opened on B-l and they ran out of the elevator.

"What's with the siren?" Carlos asked.

"I think this place is about to blow," Jack said as he started flipping more switches on the laser weapon… a weapon so simple that even a monkey could operate it; but Jack Wirta, academy-trained firearms expert, was totally baffled. In frustration, he banged it against his palm, and must have accidentally hit something, because suddenly it started humming. Jack turned and fired a streak of red-hot particles into the elevator. They arced around like electricity in Frankenstein's lab, then the elevator whined, growled, and went dark. "Finally," he grunted.

The war party ran up the stairs. Jack felt wetness on his back where his blood-wet shirt was sticking to him. He lost his balance and accidentally dropped the laser gun. It rattled back down the stairs. "Shit." Jack started back down for it, but Susan stopped him.

"Leave it," she instructed as they heard heavy footsteps pounding up the enclosed staircase.

They picked up Digby in the barn and ran outside. Now the whooping alarm was joined by the distant sound of arriving fire trucks and squad cars. "Here come my guys," Jack said. "City services to the rescue." In seconds, the red lights from two fire units were ping-ponging on the stable walls. Four sheriff's squad cars barrelled in behind.

"It's gonna blow!" Jack yelled as the firefighters got out of the trucks dressed in their red helmets and yellow slickers and started toward him.

"Get back! It's gonna blow!" he yelled again. Jack literally pushed one of the firefighters back into the truck.

Izzy was doing more or less the same at the second truck as Jack jumped onto the engine nearest him, then pulled Susan aboard.

"Get it outta here!" Jack yelled. "Go! Go! Go! This place is gonna explode!" In all truth, he wasn't absolutely sure it was going to explode, but the alarms had him in an adrenaline panic.

The cops and the firefighters finally got the idea and backed the vehicles out fast. They were about two hundred yards away when the driver of Jack and Susan's truck stopped and set the brake.

"No! Get back further!" Jack yelled as the second truck with Izzy, Carlos, and Digby aboard pulled up beside them.

"There's supposed to be a fire out here. Where's the fuckin' fire?" the truck captain yelled at them.

Just then they felt the earth tremble. The ground around the barn began to explode upwards into the air. It blew mighty chunks of dirt and sand hundreds of feet into the night sky, one huge eruption after another. Boulders, rocks, and jagged pieces of the underground lab swirled around, then began raining down on them. The last charge erupted somewhere near the middle of the barn, blowing the walls and roof apart. More huge pieces of the metal-walled lab shot up into the sky, whirling around like deadly confetti, then spiraled dangerously down to earth.

Jack dove under the truck, pulling Susan with him. Several firefighters followed.

Somebody's footlocker landed ten feet from the truck, blazing merrily.

Finally the explosions stopped and what was left of the lab was either flying around in the air or burning in little piles all over the desert.

"Fire's right there," Jack said to the cowering fire captain who moments before had been wondering where it was.

"Thanks. I see it now," the man replied sarcastically.

After the rest of the fiery debris landed, they crawled out from under the truck and watched it all burn. Jack and Susan hugged each other, just glad to be alive.

Izzy was standing next to them, his handsome features scrunched up into a frown. "I told you it was no fun out here," he finally said. "This place always sucked."