Page 81 of Heart of Danger
“Roger that.” Nick was readying something he called the Anthill, checking his handheld, making adjustments. “As soon as we’re past the microwave barrier I’ll unleash the Antz. If we get past the front door we should be able to get to the Colonel undetected. I don’t think there’s more than ten men on duty inside the facility.”
“Antz?”
“I’ll explain later, honey. Let’s get going.” Again, Mac marveled at Catherine, at his woman. She simply nodded, readjusted her light backpack and started forward when they did. No questions, no fuss. She wasn’t trained, but she was a teammate down to her bones.
A wave of love shot through him. If they survived this, he was going to marry her the instant they were back and never let her out of his sight again.
They moved forward smoothly, at an even pace. Catherine kept up, carefully staying exactly in the center of their security triangle. The outer perimeter of security was behind them and they were coming up on the microwave barrier.
Their night vision included IR and the area between the huge vases showed up faintly red. The tablets showed no guards within a 100 meter radius. Nonetheless, Mac kept to hand signals. He signaled for Catherine to stay by his side.
At the barrier, Nick, Catherine and Jon were each behind a vase. Mac was behind Catherine. At his signal, they all climbed the six foot high vases, Nick and Jon flowing easily up and over. Mac gave Catherine a boost and Jon was on the other side, helping her down. Mac went over and they huddled in a crouch.
Mac pointed to the small cannon in Nick’s hands and gave the order.
Nick lifted it to the sky, made some adjustments, then pulled the trigger. A bolus lifted in the air, disappeared from sight. They bent over Nick’s handheld, watching the screen.
A thousand tiny drones, small as ants, colored white and nearly invisible, scrambled fast into the entrance of the main facility. A special program put together the jumbled images so the screen showed a clear image of what was in front of them. There were a few blank spots on the screen but a filler program interpolated. What they were seeing on the screen was about 98% correct. More than enough. In the upper right hand was the blueprint of the facility showing the position of the drones.
Catherine smiled. “Ants,” she said. “I get it. Mini drones. Smart.”
Nick was calling the scene. “Two guards at the entrance. Armed with?” He glanced at Catherine.
She shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m not familiar with weaponry. I know that some of the guards have weapons in their holsters with a particularly thick, heavy handle.”
Mac’s jaws clenched. “Stunners. Fuck. They can deliver anything from an incapacitating up to a fatal dose of electric energy. Can stop a man’s heart at a hundred meters. Experimental.”
“Not good,” Jon murmured.
“Not good,” Mac agreed.
“Direct them there.” Catherine pointed to the end of a hallway on the short end of the L.
Nick made some adjustments and the image moved in a blur down corridors. At one point, a tech rounded a corner and the image tilted, turned upside down, the floor sliding by fast as a river in spate.
“They scrambled to the ceiling to avoid detection,” Nick said.
They waited, following the grouping of tiny red dots as it made its way across to the corridor Catherine wanted.
“Can you split them up?”
“Sure,” Nick said. “What do you want?”
“Check these four rooms.” Her finger landed on four boxes.
The images became slightly less clear as the drones separated into the four rooms. Three empty. One with a figure lying on a white cot, tubes going in and out of him. His head lolled to one side, mouth slackly open, eyes closed.
“Fuck,” Nick breathed. “The Colonel. Is he dead?”
“Tilt the drones so I can see the monitors,” Catherine ordered. “And get all the drones into this room.”
The image tilted, became clearer. “No, he’s not dead. But his heart rate is very low. EEG shows only baseline function. He’s essentially in a coma. Nick, show me what’s on his IV bag.”
The image tilted again, focused on the clear bag hanging from the tree.
“They’re pumping him full of SL-59!” Catherine sounded angry. “Damn them! That’s a highly experimental drug. We haven’t even completed animal testing yet. It’s viscous and extremely painful. I felt his pain. I can’t believe they are doing that. They’re pumping him full of the drug and then they’ll dissect the brain soon and see the effects.”
“How can they do that?” Jon asked. “Isn’t it illegal?”
