Templar's Quest

89

Refusing to surrender, Cædmon glared at the numeric keypad, the locked door an unforeseen wrinkle in the plan.

‘If we can’t exit the facility, Finn won’t be able to get out either,’ Kate anxiously informed him. Visibly shaking, her concern had already leapfrogged from moderate to acute.

‘Not to worry. I’ll call for help.’ Cædmon removed his cell phone from his jacket pocket and flipped it open, relieved that Uhlemann’s bald-headed minion had lacked the foresight to confiscate it.

Damn!

Bewildered, he showed Kate the dark screen. ‘It’s completely dead. I don’t understand … the battery was fully charged.’

‘I’m guessing the Vril force emitted an electromagnetic pulse that somehow disabled it.’

He shoved the phone back in his pocket. ‘Do you recall seeing a fire alarm anywhere in the research facility? If so, I could trigger it, alerting the guards in the lobby.’

Kate’s brow furrowed. ‘No, I …’ She shook her head dejectedly. ‘I’m sorry, Cædmon, but I can’t –’

‘It’s not your fault.’ He hesitated, worried that if he shouted for help, an armed interloper might answer the summons.

Bugger it.

Cupping his hands to his mouth, Cædmon stepped away from the door and bellowed, ‘McGuire! Where are you? We need your assistance!’

Ears still ringing from the first three bomb blasts, he cocked his head to one side and listened attentively.

Not so much as a pin. Damn.

He walked back to the exit door. ‘Doctor Uhlemann’s postmortem revenge, I daresay. Not only are we in the stocks, but we’re unable to communicate with the outside world. Only one thing left to do.’ Although his right arm ached and his head throbbed ferociously, Cædmon forcefully beat on the steel door with his balled fist in the hope that someone might be on the other side.

The painful shock waves that pounded his body in the aftermath were for naught. No one replied.

‘Wait!’ Wide-eyed, Kate clutched his forearm. ‘Didn’t Dolf key in a security code to gain entry to the viewing chamber?’

Cædmon replayed the scene in his mind’s eye. ‘He did, but I didn’t take note of the code.’

‘Um … let me think a minute …’ Closing her eyes, Kate raised her right hand. She then took several deep breaths before her fingers moved across an imaginary keypad. An instant later, her eyes popped open. ‘Three, eight, two, five, six, three. Try it.’

He hurriedly keyed in the code.

Hearing the lock click open, Cædmon sagged against the door jamb. Although he wasn’t a church-going man, he offered up a grateful prayer.

‘What a relief,’ Kate murmured. ‘We need to wait here until –’

Just then, a blast detonated on the upper level of the atrium. The force of the explosion blew out an entire bank of frosted glass, strafing the mezzanine with thousands of white shards. A deadly snowfall. A second later, the next blast detonated, hurling a section of railing through the air.

‘Finn! Where are you?!’ Kate screamed over the third and final bomb blast.