ELEVEN

The tall, husky Almohad mountain man in the Moroccan army uniform barred the doorway to the laboratory. He wore a thick, black beard and earrings in his ears. His shoulders and chest stretched his uniform. His neck was as thick as some men’s waists. He looked down about an inch into my eyes, with what could only be described as arrogant hostility. Above his head over the closed door were painted several warning signs in English and Arabic. DEPARTMENT “A” RESEARCH. Entry Strictly Forbidden. Violators Will Be Punished.

“What do you want?” the big Moroccan asked in strongly accented English.

“Is Dr. Zeno inside?”

“He is.”

“I must deliver this file,” I said, showing him the file under my arm.

“Do you have Class One clearance?”

“I was sent by Li Yuen,” I explained.

“You must have a Class One clearance card,” he insisted. “If you do not, I will deliver the file.”

I shrugged “All right.” I handed the precious file over to him. As soon as both his hands were on it, I went for Wilhelmina.

But he was sharp. He saw the movement, dropped the papers and grabbed at my wrist as it came out of my lab coat. I struggled to turn the gun toward him, but he was too strong for me. He twisted hard on my wrist and the Luger fell from my grasp. I thought for a moment he had broken a bone. He grabbed me with both hands and smashed me against the wall beside the door. My teeth rattled, and I couldn’t focus my eyes for a minute. The big hands closed around my throat. His strength was so great that I knew he’d crush my windpipe before he suffocated me. I freed my arms briefly and brought them down hard onto his forearms, loosening his grip. I kicked at where I thought his left kneecap would be, connected and heard bone snap.

The Almohad yelled a dull yell and fell away from me. I chopped hard at his head with my right hand. He did not go down. I hit the same place again, and he fell to the floor.

But in a second he was going for the pistol on his belt, and he moved very fast for a big man. I landed on him just as the gun was clearing the holster. Hugo slipped into my hand as I hit him. As he fell onto his back and saw the flash of the knife, he brought an arm up to block it, but I knocked his arm aside long enough to make one quick plunge, driving the stiletto into his head, just under the left ear. There was a hiss from his open mouth, a violent shudder of his massive body, and he was dead.

I looked up, and the corridor was still empty. I walked a few steps and opened a door to a small office. Nobody was there. I went back to the guard, dragged him into the small room, and closed the door. Then I straightened my white coat, replaced my weapons, and gathered up the file. I pushed open the door to the lab and walked in as if I owned the place.

It was a large room, crowded with tables and equipment. On the tables were rows upon rows of small glass tanks, in which, I guessed, Omega was being grown. A large electronic machine of some kind stood at one end of the room, and an attend-ant bent over it. There were three other lab men in addition to Dr. Z himself, who was busy scribbling notes at a stand-up desk.

To my left was a tall cabinet constructed of metal and wood. The doors on this cabinet were reinforced glass, so that its contents were visible. There were hundreds of glass cylinders with labels affixed to them. Inside the containers were a greenish gray substance, which, I concluded, was the cultured Omega Mutation.

Dr. Z had moved over to a counter near the desk and was studying a beaker on top of a low flame. As I knew from the previous brief meeting and from AXE photographs, he was a tall, chalky-faced man with stooped shoulders. His hair was thick and iron gray. The nose was thin but prominent, and his mouth was wide, with a full underlip. Unlike most of the other men in the room, Z was without spectacles, and the dark gray eyes held a cold, brilliant intensity.

I remembered Hawk’s advice. Bring Zeno back if I could. Kill him if I could not. The choice was Zeno’s.

Nobody in the room had seen me, or if they had, they were paying no attention. I moved quickly over to Zeno, and as I approached him, I placed the Omega file on a table where it would be out of my way. I walked up beside him, putting myself between him and the other white-coated men in the room, so that they could not see what was going on. Then I pulled Wilhelmina. Zeno looked up just then, regarded the gun impassively for a moment, then stared at me with those hard, bright eyes.

“What is this?” he said coldly to me, in a strong, resonant voice. “What are you doing in here?”

“I’ll give you a small hint,” I said in a low hard voice. “I’m not with L5.”

His dark eyes narrowed slightly as he looked me over, and understanding came to his face. “So that’s it.” He tried to mask his fear. “You’re a fool. You’ll never get out of the laboratory alive.”

“Getting out alive is not part of my assignment,” I said to him slowly and deliberately. I let that sink in a moment. I saw his eyes dart to the other men behind me. “Don’t do it. Not unless you don’t mind having a slug punch a baseball-size hole through your chest.”

He looked down at the gun, and then back into my eyes. “What do you want?” he asked.

I pushed the Luger up against his ribs. “Tell the others to leave,” I said quietly. “Tell them Li Yuen wishes to meet privately with you here. Tell them anything, but get them out for a while. And make them believe it.”

Damon Zeno glared at the gun and then at me. “I can’t do that. These men….”

“I’ll squeeze this trigger if you don’t.”

Zeno struggled to keep his growing anger under control. But his fear was stronger. “It’s Li Yuen’s fault that this has happened,” he muttered bitterly to himself. When he glanced into my eyes, he saw that I meant what I said, and he turned slowly to the other men in the laboratory.

“Gentlemen, your attention, please.” He waited while they all turned to him. “The director has requested an emergency meeting with me here in ten minutes. I’m afraid I’ll have to ask that you absent yourselves from your work for a short time. Why don’t you all take a coffee break and I’ll join you shortly?”

There was some muttering, but they filed out of the place. I hid the gun until they were gone. Then I turned back to Dr. Z.

“Where are your recent findings and notes?” I asked. “The ones that supplement those in Li Yuen’s file.”

Zeno’s eyes flicked involuntarily toward a locked metal cabinet on a nearby wall. “You must be mad,” he said softly. “Do you actually think I would deliver Omega to you on a silver platter? At any rate, the notes would mean nothing to you or anyone else in American intelligence.”

“I bet the notes are in that cabinet,” I said, watching his reaction. “And that the cultured Mutation is behind the glass on that wall.”

Zeno’s face was dark with frustration and rage. “Get out of here while you can,” he said thickly. “Or Li Yuen will cut you into little pieces.”

I grunted. “Li Yuen is dead.”

I watched the expressions flit across his face. Disbelief, then shock, anger, and finally, renewed fear.

“So is General Djenina,” I said. “You’re pretty much alone now, Zeno, even if they kill me.”

Zeno’s pallid face was fighting for control. “If Li Yuen is dead, he is expendable. It is Omega that counts, not Li.”

“Exactly,” I said. “That’s why it must go. And you too if you’re stubborn. God knows why, but I have orders to bring you back with me if you want to come.” My voice revealed my contempt. “I’m giving you your option right now.”

He glanced again at the Luger. “And you will destroy Omega?”

“That’s right.” I moved over to the cabinet, picked up a microscope, smashed it against the lock, and broke it open. I threw the damaged instrument onto the floor, took the lock off, and opened the cabinet door.

Inside was a manila folder and some other pa-pers. I gathered them up and glanced at Zeno. The strained expression on his face told me I had hit the jackpot. I laid everything on top of the file I had taken from Li Yuen’s safe and glanced through the material quickly. It looked like the right stuff.

“I’ll take you in on the project,” Zeno said in a low voice, a voice tinged with desperation. “The Chinese don’t have to have it all. Do you know, do you have any idea, how powerful Omega can make a man?”

“I had a nightmare about it,” I admitted, closing the file. I stuffed the Luger into a pocket, carried the mass of loose papers over to the Bunsen burner, and stuck them into the flame.

“No!” he said loudly.

The papers were burning. I started back toward the files with them, and Zeno made his decision. He lunged at me, and I went down under his weight, smashing against a long table of cultures and test tubes, knocking the whole thing to the floor.

The flaming sheaf of papers flew out of my hand and hit the floor the same time as the crashing glass and liquids. The test tubes must have contained some tiling flammable, because they burst into roaring flame between us and the long wall cabinet where the cultured Omega Mutation was located. The fire reached the big wood cabinet in minutes and it caught fire instantly.

“My God!” Zeno cried out We struggled to our feet separately, neither concerned with the other at the moment. I watched the fire lick at the wall cabinet for a moment and spread to the long tables where the cultures were developing. Zeno had saved me some work.

“Damn you!” Zeno shouted above the crackling flame. “Damn you!”

I ignored him. I moved back to the table where the files still lay, picked them up and hurled them into the growing inferno. Zeno saw what I was doing and made a small move as if to step me, then hesitated. In the next moment, he was running toward an alarm box on the opposite wall.

I pulled Wilhelmina out and aimed at Dr. Z’s head as he reached the alarm. Then I heard the doors slam open behind me.

Whirling away from Zeno, I faced two guards, who had come storming into the room. One had a gun out and was leveling it at me. I crouched to one knee as he fired, and the shot tore past my head and smashed culture containers behind me. The other guard was moving in a circle toward me, in a flanking movement, but I had to ignore him. I returned fire at the first guard and hit him in the chest. He crashed back onto a table and knocked it over. He was dead by the time he hit the floor.

As I turned to the other guard, he came flying at me in a headlong plunge. He knocked me off balance before I could bring the Luger into play, and we hit a table, crashing more glass. The fire was roaring near us. In the back of my head somewhere, I could hear the alarm that Zeno had set off clanging in the corridor outside the door.

The big man slugged me hard across the face, and I hit the floor on my back. Out of the corner of my eye I could see Zeno unsuccessfully slapping at the flames with his lab coat. The guard slugged me again and grabbed at the Luger. I began twisting it toward him as he strained against me. Slowly my hand came around toward his face, and I could see the sweat pop out on his forehead and upper lip as we struggled for control of the muzzle. I had the leverage. Inch by inch I forced the gun toward him until it reached a point just over his left eye. I squeezed the trigger and blew the side of his head off.

I slumped back exhausted, pushing the bloody body off me. I strained to see Zeno through the flames and smoke, and then I saw him running toward the door. I aimed the Luger after him and fired, but I just missed, and he got away.

I struggled to my feet. I tore the ripped lab coat off to give myself more freedom of movement. Somehow I found a way through the flames and got to the door. Zeno was nowhere in sight in the corridor. I turned back briefly to the lab and saw the flames destroying Zeno’s monster bug and his records. Already the fire had spread from the lab into the corridor through a door about five feet away, and I suspected it had eaten through the walls to other rooms. It seemed like the whole facility was going to go up in flames.

I ran choking down the hall. People and fire-fighting equipment moved past me toward the lab, but it was too late for that. There was absolute chaos in the facility, as the corridors filled with smoke and employees ran for exits. The alarm was still clanging, and there was a lot of hysterical shouting in the building as I moved to a rear exit behind two choking people.

I was outside in a rear parking lot. The fire had already burst through the roof in places and was licking high into the air, black smoke curling sky-ward. The area outside the building was quickly filling with choking, gasping people. A few were trying to get fire hoses hooked up. I moved around the side of the building and saw a small van start up and screech wildly toward the main gate. Damon Zeno was driving it. He stopped abruptly at the gate and yelled something to the guards. Then he took off.

I ran to a Land Rover nearby, looked at the dash and found keys there. I hopped in and started the vehicle; the wheels spun and grabbed at the hard dirt of the compound, and the Land Rover lurched forward.

I had gone only a few yards when two guards near the main gate spotted me driving toward them. Zeno had apparently told them I was to be stopped. They both had their guns out, and one of them fired and shattered the windshield near my head. I ducked away from flying glass as an explosion ripped a building close by and flames shot out behind me. One of the guards was hit by flying embers and caught fire, screaming.

I slammed on the brakes, ripped the gears into reverse, spun the vehicle around in a cloud of dust, and roared off around the back of the building to try the gate from the other side. As I rounded the comer of the building, flames shot out and singed the hair on my left arm. I felt raw heat on my face. There was a wall of fire ahead of me, between the main building and a service building at the rear. I didn’t even hit the brakes, since I had little choice. I jammed harder on the accelerator and, crouching low in the open vehicle, roared into the flames.

For a moment it was all bright yellow heat and choking smoke, and it felt like the inside of a blast-furnace. Then I burst through and headed around the other corner toward the main gate again.

A guard jumped out of the way just in time to avoid being run down. Another guard spotted me and stood squarely between the Land Rover and the gate. He aimed and fired, and the slug sang off the metal frame of the windshield, then he dived headlong to the dirt, away from the vehicle. In another moment I drove through the gate of the facility and headed down the road after Damon Zeno.

As I rounded the curve where the patrol had surprised Gabrielle and me earlier, I slowed the vehicle for a minute and looked over my shoulder at the lab. The scene was utter chaos. The fire raged out of control, and black smoke billowed high above it. No one was going to come after me. They were too busy trying to save the building complex.

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