The Chimera Secret

52

While Kurt’s men escorted everybody from the laboratory into the adjoining chambers and secured them there, he connected the computer server’s power cable to a battery pack specially designed for the purpose of the mission. When his men returned, he gathered them together in front of the server.

‘Okay, this is how we’re going to do it.’

On the main table they had unloaded the entire contents of their weapons arsenal, a metallic mountain of assault rifles, pistols, ammunition magazines and explosive charges.

‘We can’t clear that creature out of the tunnel using explosives otherwise we might collapse it ourselves and block our escape, so we’re reduced to small-arms fire until we’re clear: then we blow the charges. Archer, you get the easy job. Stay here and cover the mine exit in case that thing tries to break in.’

Kurt turned to his other two men as Archer moved off.

‘Klein, Milner, you’re with me. We’ll place the charges throughout the facility and set the timers.’

They nodded and gripped their rifles tighter.

‘Once we’re done,’ Kurt went on, ‘we’re out of here. Check watches.’

Kurt called out the time and they synchronized together. He then flicked a switch on the battery pack and was rewarded with a loud beep from the servers and an array of lights flickering into life.

‘Get the flash drives ready,’ he ordered Jenkins. ‘Let’s get this over with and then get the hell out of here.’

Jenkins obeyed without question, unpacking from his bergen a glossy black portable hard drive the size of a large diary. He handed the drive to Kurt, who plugged it into the computer server’s main panel.

Klein and Milner stared at Kurt. ‘We can’t send any data you pull from there. All of our communications gear was destroyed.’

‘We’re not sending anything,’ Kurt replied.

It only took a moment for them to realize what he was doing.

‘You think that Warner’s right,’ Milner said.

Jenkins and Klein stopped what they were doing and looked at Kurt. He checked the downloading data was being picked up by the portable hard drive, then turned and looked at them.

‘You want to take the chance that he’s wrong?’

‘So what are we going to do then?’ Jenkins asked.

Kurt gestured to the corridor that led to the control center and the mine entrance.

‘We get this stuff downloaded and then we set the charges to blow the facility. We get the hell out of here and use copies of this data as insurance.’

Klein shook his head.

‘Jesus, Kurt, we head back to our unit we’ll be dead men.’

‘They can’t touch us as long as we’ve got this,’ Kurt replied, tapping the hard drive.

‘That’s probably what Randy MacCarthy thought,’ Milner pointed out. ‘We all knew it was wrong to string up a civilian. Now look where it’s got us.’

‘Those were our orders!’ Kurt growled. ‘That’s what you all signed up for. You got a problem with that now, that’s too bad.’

Jenkins stood for a moment as though uncertain of whether to challenge his sergeant. The rest of the men watched him, waiting to see what he would do. When he spoke there was an edge of defiance in his tone.

‘And what about the civvies, and Warner and Lopez?’

Kurt glanced down at the hard drive, checking its progress.

‘They’re a liability we can’t afford. They walk out of here we compromise ourselves even further. They know enough about this place to expose it even if it’s buried under rubble.’

‘They’re civilians,’ Jenkins protested. ‘We were assigned to protect them.’

‘We were assigned to protect this facility!’ Kurt shouted. ‘We were compromised the moment Lieutenant Watson went soft on them! You’d listened to me, they’d have never made it up here and wouldn’t be an issue now!’

‘I didn’t listen to you because you weren’t in command,’ Jenkins shot back. ‘Since the lieutenant died we’ve gone from being an escort team to becoming an execution squad!’

‘Randy MacCarthy died when Lieutenant Watson was still in command,’ Kurt pointed out, dropping his voice to a reasonable volume. ‘The mission is the priority, and our mission is to extract data from this facility and then blow it back into the Stone Age. It’s also our best means of proving to the top brass that we’re worth keeping alive. We got burned but we stuck to the mission regardless. If we run, if we break, then we’ll be targets for the rest of our lives.’ He stared Jenkins down. ‘Question is, are you in or are you out? Because if you’re out you won’t last a day alone.’

Jenkins fumed on the spot, and glanced at Milner and Klein. Neither of them moved. The corporal rubbed his hand across his face.

‘We can’t shoot our way out of here,’ he said finally. ‘Duran Wilkes said our rounds won’t stop that thing out there.’

Kurt winced and waved dismissively.

‘We’ve got four M-16s. It’s an animal, not a fucking tank. It’ll go down just like anything else.’

‘I agree,’ Jenkins said. ‘But it won’t go down quick enough to stop it from breaching that door the moment we open it. Some wild animals survive for minutes, despite taking shots to the heart. They just keep on going, driven by the pain or whatever, like crazy folk. We can’t just start shooting and hope we drop it. We want to get out of here, we need a clean shot, straight through the brain. We don’t stall it, Kurt. We kill it.’

Kurt regarded the corporal for a moment. Give him some slack and he’ll start toeing the line.

‘You got any ideas?’

Jenkins took a breath and looked out toward the control center.

‘The corridors from the medical center and the living quarters open out on the control center. So does the southern corridor. We could shut down the majority of the lights, set up in each of the three corridors and catch the thing in a crossfire. The breeze from the tunnel entrance will put us downwind of it so it won’t smell us. It won’t know we’re there.’

Kurt nodded and looked at the other men.

‘There’s only one thing missing,’ he said.

‘What’s that?’ Milner asked.

Kurt turned and strode toward the store chamber.

‘Bait.’