The Breach

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

Climbing down the shaft ladder with the suit on was tricky. There was a difficulty to grabbing rungs with hands he couldn't see. He only had to go down two stories. From there he used an override switch to open the B2 elevator doors, and stepped out of the shaft into the hallway. He'd asked Keene for the locations of Defense Control, Security Control, and the Primary Lab. The places where Pilgrim and his men were clustered. Defense Control was on B4. He entered the stairwell and made his way down. Through the window in the door he saw four men, all in their twenties, watching a bank of high-definition monitors as if each were showing the last play of the Super Bowl. In fact they were showing the empty desert around the facility. It appeared to be a single large room. No internal hallways leading off out of sight. No blind corners. There was a bathroom, but its door hung open and Travis could see that it was empty. No one else in the room except the head-shot bodies of its original occupants: the woman Travis had heard over the speakerphone earlier, and five men.

Along the wall opposite the monitors, the drywall had been blown out by an explosion, and even the structural steel columns were warped and charred. Between two of the uprights, a spiderweb of delicate wiring and various computer cables-hundreds of each kind-had been attached to the damaged wiring with clamps and adapters. This was the half hour's work that'd brought Border Town's defenses back online.

Travis had the rifle slung on his shoulder. The only visible thing about him. He could go in and shoot these four guys in a matter of seconds, even without the suit; not one of them had a weapon within reach. But directly below this room was Security Control, where more of Pilgrim's people were probably stationed. The sound of shooting would carry at least that far, so these four kills would have to be quiet. Pretty quiet, anyway.

He unslung the rifle and leaned it against the wall next to the door. Then, keeping his eyes on the men through the glass, he turned the knob slowly and eased the door open. A moment later he eased it shut again, from the inside. All heads were still aimed at the monitors.

How to do this? There were options. Strewn across the floor below the repaired wiring were various tools, some with blades on them, though not especially large ones. There were screwdrivers that might serve as decent stabbing weapons, including an eight-inch Phillips head. Last, but not even close to least, was a tool that appealed to Travis's lack of subtlety. A two-foot-long crowbar. Travis picked it up with both hands, to prevent it from scraping on the tile and giving him away. He turned to the four men, their backs to him, and gripped the weapon like a baseball bat. He looked at the executed bodies on the floor, their open eyes still registering the panic in which they'd died.

He didn't feel at all bad for what he was about to do.

The four men were seated only feet apart from one another. A nice easy row of targets. Travis decided to start on the right end and work his way left, to give his swing plenty of room.

The first impact sounded like a wet branch breaking. Travis caught the man just above the ear and crushed the sidewall of his skull inward by at least an inch. The body pitched sideways into the second man, who turned his head just in time to take his own hit straight to the forehead. His eyes snapped shut and he fell from his chair also. The third man had another second to react. He had no idea what the hell was happening, but his arms had enough sense to cross in front of his face as he screamed. Not a useful strategy. Travis stepped toward him and brought the crowbar down on top of his scalp the way he would sink an axe into a log. The result was much the same.

Only the fourth man fully grasped what was happening. He threw himself from his chair, landed on his ass and skittered backward, ending up with his back in the corner and his arms up defensively. He watched the crowbar bob toward him.

"Wait, wait!" the guy said. He looked about twenty-five. Still had some acne left over from his teens. Had to be wondering who the fuck was wearing his boss's old transparency suit. He seemed to be working out what he might say, here and now, to save his ass. In a way, it was fun to watch. Because nothing in the English language would suffice.

"You can just tie me up," he said at last.

Travis thought that sounded like an especially lame effort. He kept the crowbar up high, commanding the guy's attention, and kicked him just below the ribs as hard as he could. The guy's lungs collapsed from the blow and he caved into a sitting fetal position, crying. Travis brought the crowbar down on the back of his head, full force, and the crying stopped.

Silence in the room. These four were definitely dead. Travis gave each man another two solid bashes to be sure. Then he took a pair of wire cutters from the floor, pocketed them, and returned to the corridor.

He took the rifle from where he'd leaned it, but kept the crowbar. Went to the stairwell and descended one floor to B5. Security Control. Pilgrim's nearest people, after this floor, should be five levels down in the conference room, watching Paige and the others. Still too close to risk gunshots. Sound might carry that far through the vents.

Security Control had the same kind of door as Defense Control. Same room layout too. But only one of Pilgrim's men was on duty.

Travis went in and beat him to death. In a way, the past half hour had been worse than the time Paige had spent under torture in Alaska. If not physically, then in every other sense.

All that she had devoted her life to was about to end. Worse: it would be inverted to its malicious opposite. What Tangent had watched over and shepherded with the best interests of the world in mind, Pilgrim would sic on humanity to serve himself. Or if the Whisper's own plan really did take precedence, maybe something worse was coming. Something beyond the limits of what she could dread.

She'd spent these thirty minutes thinking of the most dangerous things locked up in the steel catacombs below her, and the harm they could sow.

Then there was Travis's corpse. Still lying right in front of her. She'd woken up naked in his arms forty-five minutes ago, about as happy as she'd ever been since restricting her life to Border Town. Now he was gone. Because of what she'd asked him to do. It didn't help to remind herself there'd been no other option. Nothing helped.

She looked at the guards. Three of them now. All of them watching, not even glancing away. No chance to make any move. Except to make them kill her.

Which wasn't entirely crazy.

She knew what it felt like to wish for death as an escape. Whatever the hell Pilgrim was keeping her and the others alive for, it was likely to put her back in those straits. Very likely.

Fuck it, then.

The nearest guard was five feet away from her. Offering no warning about her intentions, she pitched her body forward into a somersault-tricky with her hands bound behind her-and came upright again with her right leg drawn against her chest, a foot away from the man. He drew back reflexively, one leg going back, the other staying in place, the knee locking straight. Beautiful.

Paige pistoned her foot into his knee as hard as she could. Heard it crack. Saw the leg bend exactly backward from the way nature had designed it to. He screamed and collapsed, keeping hold of his rifle, and centering it on her face now.

She closed her eyes, and a second later the room exploded with automatic rifle fire.

Whatever dying was supposed to feel like, this wasn't it. She heard bodies falling. Wondered how the hell she was capable of hearing anything. Or even thinking, given that her head should have been shattered by now.

The shooting stopped.

She opened her eyes.

The three guards were dead. And there was a rifle floating in the air.