Page 57 of Jacob

There were security cameras everywhere but they didn’t look turned on.

Tekno was in the middle of a concrete plot with little to no plants to soften the look. Along one side was a hedge of some plant that had not only lost its leaves to the winter but the branches looked gray and dead. Clearly Teknolab’s budget didn’t run to gardening services.

The building was isolated, with no way to approach stealthily. Jacob and Nick were crouched behind a low wall some fifty meters away and studied the terrain. There wasn’t much to study—it was barren, stark, exposed.

They looked at each other and communicated in hand gestures.Do we make a run for it?

If there’s someone in the security office we’re fucked.

It was Saturday. Maybe the company wasn’t open on weekends. There were no cars parked in the vast parking lot. No lights on. No signs of life.

They looked at each other again.

Jacob was torn. Rushing a building with no cover at all was insane. But they didn’t have many leads and there was always something to learn, even if you paid for it. This was where bioengineering equipment had been delivered, and if the trucks making it to Zalny were any indicator, that equipment had been delivered to a rogue lab. Teknolab could give them intel on what to expect at Zalny. There would be documents. Nick could read them and they could send scans to the Queens who would use AI to translate them.

There were risks, of course.

If the signs of abandonment were a ruse, they’d be caught. Interrogated, probably. The element of surprise would be lost. Neither of them had any identifying marks on them or their clothes. Jacob would shut up and Nick would do the talking. His Russian was excellent, he could pass for Russian. They would draw out the interrogation. It would give them some time to notify their team, who knew where they were. The team would come.

The risks were great. The risk of not doing anything, not learning anything, was greater.

Nick was looking to him for instructions. Jacob was team leader. He was the one to decide. Go/no go?

Go—it could be an ambush. They could be killed.

No go—they’d be left with no intel, which might be available inside.

Go/no go?

Go.

He pointed with his fingers forward and Nick nodded. Jacob knew that if it turned out to be a bad call, Nick would never blame him. You made the call. You went with the intel you had. They had none and needed some.

Nothing was ever easy.

They looked at each other and Jacob nodded—go.

They sprinted across the concrete apron to a side door. They took up stations against the side door, weapons up, Jacob to the right, Nick to the left.

Jacob brought out his IR scanner and pointed it to the wall. The screen showed no heat spots. Not even a mouse. Certainly not a human. He stood back, aiming his gun at the lock when Nick held up a finger. Kneeling, Nick took out his lockpick kit and in a few moments the door was open.

Lockpick? He mouthed and Nick shrugged. Jacob hadn’t carried a lockpick in ten years. And how crazy that the door to a pharmaceutical lab only had a regular lock? He hadn’t seen one of those in ten years, either.

The door swung open to a dark, cavernous space. They both put on a set of night vision goggles, only they looked like glasses. Not the unwieldy goggles attached to helmets that most soldiers still used, but an experimental set that could pass for normal glasses in public.

The room was milky, not green, in the enhanced light from the doorway. It was the lobby of a company. A curved reception desk, old fashioned phones, benches around the perimeter. Nothing fancy, nothing that stood out.

Walking quietly, ready for anything, they walked the perimeter of the lobby area, which was bland and old fashioned. There was a set of double doors in the back wall and they doubled up again. Used the scanner again. Nothing, again.

It wasn’t locked. The doors opened onto a long corridor with doors either side, clearly the heart of the building.

Nick was studying the signs next to the doors. “Admin, accounting, human resources, public relations… ah, here we are. Doesn’t even need translating. Labs. So I guess this leads to the wing where the labs are.”

They opened the door and walked in. This far into the building there were no sources of light. Nick placed on the ground a special light source invisible to the naked eye, but which lit up the space as if it were noon on a sunny summer day when seen through the goggles.

It was a series of interconnected rooms, spacious, empty. They passed from room to room and saw nothing but empty space with machinery. Nothing on the walls, not even a duty roster or sheet of paper.

“Okay,” Jacob said, “time to call in the expert.” He pulled out his cell and called the cell he’d given to Alex. When he heard her voice, calm and low, something in him, something that had been tight ever since he’d left her back at the hotel, relaxed. She was safe.

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