Page 76 of Heart of Danger
“You can all stand down,” she said quietly. “You know deep in your hearts that I have to come with you. If we have any hope of saving your leader, you need me. I know the laboratory inside out. I know their security system, I know the layout. Above all, you’re going to need me when we find Nine. He is hooked up to machines and it will be a very delicate task to detach him from the machines without killing him. None of you have a hope of doing that. Only I can free him from the machinery he is tethered to, and only then can you can rescue him.”
There was utter silence in the room if you could ignore teeth grinding. Well, they were going to grind even harder.
“And I have something else to say. I am not trained as the three of you are. I promise that I will obey you absolutely. Tell me to duck and I duck. I will be your shadow and will follow your instructions. I know full well I am a potential liability and trust me, I don’t want to be, so count on me to do exactly as you say. But—” She held up her hand when Mac opened his mouth. “The instant we are inside the facility you obey me, all three of you. Instantly. Unless we are actually being fired upon, at which point your training trumps mine, you do exactly as I say. There can be no other way.”
She looked at each one again. “So. You can all stop scowling now and man up. Nick, Jon, go get your gear like Mac said, get something for me, and we’ll reconvene here in ten minutes. I’ll prepare the briefing on the lab.”
For such determined men, they looked strangely uncertain. She knew that having her along went against every instinct they had. Not only because she wasn’t trained but mostly because each man, quietly and deeply, couldn’t endanger a woman. All three of them had a furious protective streak in them that wouldn’t allow them to contemplate putting her in danger.
Catherine made a show of checking her watch. “You’ve used up a full minute. A minute that might make the difference between life and death for your colonel. Mac?”
She looked up at him, appreciating his struggle, knowing he hated this, knowing he understood how necessary it was. He stood immobilized by warring factions inside his heart and reason won out. By a hair.
“Get going,” he said tightly, then pulled her into his arms the instant Nick and Jon left the room. “God,” he said into her hair. “I hate this.”
“I know.” She did. She could feel his heartbeat against her cheek. In bed, it had been the steady beat of an athlete’s heart but now it beat fast and furious and wild, as if he were running. He was, in a way. He was conducting a running battle inside himself, an internal war. Keep her here and have already slim changes whittled down to nothing, or take her along, worry dogging his every step.
No good choices.
Mac didn’t worry when he was in mission mode. She’d read that in him. Anxiety wasn’t part of his mental makeup. She understood that he prepared as hard as a man could—and she’d felt that most of his life was training—and then he just went ahead without any fear.
She also knew he was fully prepared to die at any time. That kind of thing simply could not be hidden.
But now fear all but oozed out of his pores. It wasn’t fear for himself but for her.
“Mac.” She kissed his chest over his heart and pulled away. His face was cold and hard but his nostrils were pinched white with stress. “It has to be this way. What I told Nick and Jon is true for us, as well. Every second I spend trying to reassure you, give you strength, is a second lost and drains my strength.”
His hands dropped with surprise. She’d done it deliberately, pretending she was infusing him with strength when the opposite was true. She gained strength and courage just from being near him. But the thought that he might be endangering her with his fear shocked him.
She nodded. “Okay. Let me set up to brief them on the facility. I’ll need to use one of your computers.”
“Over there,” he growled. “Tell me what I can do.” Unexpectedly, he looked awkward, big hands held clumsily to his side, opening and closing futilely, when at all times he was the epitome of male grace.
“There’s not much you can do until I get some information together,” she said gently.
“Can I get you coffee at least?”
He needed to do something for her. She understood that. Her stomach was roiling and the last thing she needed was caffeine but…”Sure, that would be helpful.”
He pressed a button and spoke quietly.
Millon had the blueprints of the facility, plus security regulations and lab safety rules in a file given to all employees. She pulled it up, ran it through a program that created a hologram and enlarged it. He had just finished printing out the security and safety rules when Jon and Nick came back together with a Haven citizen rolling in a cart.
Stella again, bless her.
The cart had coffee and tea, bless her again. On the cart were plates piled high with mini panini, mini donuts and apple slices with a sprinkling of fresh cinnamon. Mac, Nick and Jon fell on the coffee and panini and donuts while she savored the tea, and ate the apple slices. She felt energized by the instant injection of fructose.
“Okay, settle down men.” The three men exchanged glances, but obeyed without grumbling. Catherine paced back and forth as she briefed them. A comforting, familiar feeling. She’d taught undergrad classes for several years in Boston and though these three tough, fierce men were totally unlike the soft baby nerds she was used to, she couldn’t complain about their attention. They were focused on her, taking in every single word.
“Let’s go over this again. This is the main facility. There are ancillary structures but this is where the work is carried out and this is where the Colonel is held.” The holo was slightly tilted, giving an indication of its shape. Size in meters was given in white letters at the top. “It is an L-shaped facility, one long wing and one shorter wing. The shorter wing is only labs and the other wing has what some of my creepier colleagues call ‘meatware’—the human patients and test animals.” She indicated both wings with a pen, touching air. Mac’s computer system was top of the line. The holo was so realistic it was like having a copy to scale of the facility in front of her. When she tapped the air to indicate each wing, she kept having a tiny jolt of surprise that her pen met air and not steel and glass. This place had way more crunch power than even Millon. “There are three above ground levels and three below ground levels. The bottom level is given over to production of test batches. It is a production facility and has separate entrances. My security pass covers the six levels but that will of course have been cancelled. Jon, do you think you could make me a duplicate in the name of a colleague I know is out of state?”
“No problem,” Jon answered.
“Great. So, before I go through the building floor by floor, I need to brief you on what I know of security arrangements. Arka has to turn a family-friendly face to the world so it is not surrounded by a visible wall but an invisible one. There is a microwave beam circling the building, strong enough to cook anything mammalian, certainly including humans. The beams lose focus after about ten yards so these very expensive designer vases rimming the periphery are actually microwave emitters.”
She zoomed in on the line of huge gray and tan ceramic vases, man-high, that circled the company, containing pencil thin Italian cypresses imported at vast expense from Tuscany. There were over three thousand of them. It was visually stunning and had featured in a number of design magazines.
“The system is turned off at 4 am and an army of sweepers rushes in to sweep away the dead animals, insects and leaves burnt to a crisp, and the microwaves are turned back on again at 4:15.”
