"Twenty," Bunny announced. As in seconds.
He ignored her as he secured the bomb in place. Even if they had to evac, that didn't mean they couldn't help Brandt. He'd set the charges with a remote trigger that he could blow up to five miles away.
"Ten," Bunny counted down. "Nine. Eight."
"We aren't really going to leave are we?" Rebecca asked as Bunny's tone became more and more ominous.
"Five. Four. Three. Two," she said, frowning. "One."
Everyone looked to Lopez. The question clear on their faces. Was he going to obey Brandt or go against a direct order?
"What?" the corporal asked.
"Well?" Rebecca pressed. "Are we going?"
"Going where?" Lopez asked.
"Brandt ordered us to leave if he didn't come out of there in three hundred seconds," Davidson reminded the corporal.
"Oh that," Lopez said. "I haven't even started counting yet."
Rebecca flew from the backseat and wrapped her arms around Lopez's neck and gave him a kiss on the cheek. "Sometimes you're alright, Ricky."
"Just alright?" Lopez said, starting the car again. "I'm like all awesomeness, all the time."
Davidson couldn't help but grin despite the fact it sent a sharp pain up the side of his face only to settle as a throb in his temple. He looked to Bunny, who didn't seem quite as pleased. Reaching out, Davidson took her hand.
"This'll be over soon," he tried to reassure her.
"That's what I'm afraid of," Bunny answered.
There was no arguing with that.
You know how people said they were digging a tunnel to China? Yeah, the Jordanians took them literally. They'd long passed the drop-dead time to get back to the car. Lopez should be speeding away by now. Which was just as well. The damned elevator rattled and whined, coming to a near stop and then sputtering again.
Perhaps the GID thought they could make any enemy frustrated enough before they got to the actual underground base they could get the jump on them. Finally the elevator bounced to a stop, a final stop. Harvish opened the lattice door and headed out into a short hallway that ended at a staircase.
Who the fuck builds a staircase at the base of an elevator? Apparently King Abdullah the First. They trotted down the steps and then passed into a long hallway.
They were about halfway down it when Harvish brought his hand up into a fist. Brandt and Talli stopped in their tracks. Was that a pool of light up ahead? Had they reached the actual outpost? The point man brought his two fingers to his eyes and then swept them past Brandt's line of sight. Harvish then counted off on his fingers. Four. So there were four men up ahead.
Four wasn't too bad a number. Better than the thirty that could have been there. He'd take four. With a nod Brandt gave the order to enter. They charged ahead, right on each other's sixes. Four chairs circled a small table.
In Arabic, Talli shouted for the men to get their hands up yet none complied. It didn't take a brainiac to realize why as Brandt turned one of the chairs around. The men were dead. Way dead. Maybe not as dead as St. Basil, but still pretty damned dead. Not even bodies in the desert would be this mummified in two weeks, so they weren't victims of Amed.
They were victims of someone though since each had taken several shots to the chest.
"Whoa," Harvish announced as he looked to the decrepit equipment in the corner. "World War II is calling. It wants its tech back."
Brandt would have glared at the point man, but he wasn't wrong. The stuff was Cold War issue at best.
"Might was well try to fire it up," Brandt said to Talli. The man complied, and shockingly the computer booted up...to display a black screen and a bright green cursor. "Is that DOS?"
Talli tilted his head. "I think it might be its precursor, QDOS," he said as he typed in a few basic commands. Error upon error message sprang up. Well, if they couldn't count on the tech, perhaps this antiquated workstation held an actual paper trail.
Brandt tossed the drawers, flipping through file after file as Talli struggled with the computer. Harvish checked the two doors that led from the small office.
"Each leads to a hallway. Each looks like they branch."
Which was what Brandt was afraid of. Seldom did one build a small underground complex. In his experience, they were usually sprawling. How many acres did this thing stretch? Each and every nook and cranny could hide the Rinderpest.
"I'm pretty sure it's down that hallway," Talli stated, pointing to the nearest door.
Brandt glanced to the screen, but it was still filled with blinking green error messages. "And you got that from...?"
Talli indicated to low on the wall where a chunk had been taken out. A line was gouged out of the hall too. And unlike the dead men, that damage had been done recently.
"Looks like someone was in a hurry," Harvish stated as he touched his finger to a small pool of oil. He rubbed the liquid between his fingers. "I'd say they hit the wall with a hydraulic lift of some sort."
Could they really be that close to the Rinderpest?
If the pit in his stomach was any indicator, it had better be because his gut was telling him they didn't have much time left.
And damned if his gut was never wrong.
CHAPTER 21.
GID Outpost, Jordan 10:56 p.m. GMT "Over there!" Bunny yelled, pointing across the SUV to a small glow of light.
Rebecca grabbed hold of the armrest as Lopez gunned them across the desert to the grate in question. She leaned out of the window to peer down at the metal grate. Sure enough, light was coming from deep underground.
"Can I?" Davidson asked as he squeezed in next to her.
They'd already rigged each of the grates with C-4, so what was Davidson up to? Carefully he wrapped string around a lipstick camera. "This is so Mickey Moused, but we might be able to pick something up."
"We should have brought the endoscope," Lopez grumbled.
To have a high-tech, flexible, cablelike camera would have been great, however who knew back in London they would be trying to spy beneath the Jordanian desert? Instead, they were just going to have to be content to lower the equivalent of a nanny cam on a string.
Lopez turned on a small palmtop tablet. The image was blurry and showed metal wall after metal wall. The picture jarred only to stabilize. The camera seemed pointed down a horizontal vent.
"Can't we get some kind of visual?" Bunny asked.
Davidson indicated to the strings in his hand. "I can't force it to go forward to another opening. The best we can do is track their light signature." Then Davidson frowned. That was the look of a man about to come up with a great idea. "Let me try to turn it," Davidson said as he looped the string over his finger and worked the lipstick camera like a puppet and he the master.
Wobbly at first and then with more precision, Davidson gave them a full spin of the vent. It looked like they were at the intersection of four ducts. "I think," Davidson said, readjusting the camera, "that the light is coming from that direction."
Which turned out to be straight ahead.
"Then what are you waiting for?" Lopez asked. Davidson promptly reeled the camera back up.
They moved north to the next grate that did not show any light. At least not yet. Davidson lowered the camera, repeating the maneuver.
"Nothing," Lopez sighed. "Maybe they turned off-"
Then the screen bloomed with light. They still couldn't actually see anything, but someone was moving down there. And given the swiftness and surety, it was Brandt.
And if he was moving, he was alive.
That thought had to get her through the next three hundred seconds.
Brandt trotted to keep up with Harvish. They'd lost the trail on the marred the wall, but the farther they went the more obvious the wheel marks of the hydraulic lift were in the dust. They'd only stopped to check side rooms. Except for the occasional dead body, they were clear.
Whatever the Jordanians were doing here, their job had been done decades ago. Had they given up looking for the tablets? Or had that never been their purpose here? This close to the Israeli border, maybe this really was just a GID outpost.
And strangely the hallways seemed to angle back up toward the surface. Who spent all the time and money to build a deep underground structure and then have it rise back to the surface? But not a lot about this complex made a whole bunch of sense.
As long as they found the damned Rinderpest intact, Brandt wouldn't care.
Harvish made a left, sweeping his light over the floor, following the relatively fresh wheel marks. Guess Amed didn't expect anyone to track him this far. And with good reason. They'd had to traipse all over London, Russia, Slovenia, and Jordan to find it.
Suddenly Harvish shut off his light and pulled to a full stop. Brandt and Talli followed suit. As soon as their lights were doused it became obvious why Harvish had halted them.
A dim light streamed out of the room ahead. Brandt cocked his head trying to hear anything beyond his breath but came up empty. He put his hand on Talli's shoulder and gave it a squeeze. Talli then put his hand on Harvish's shoulder.
They were in attack formation.
Now to attack.
"Where did they go?" Rebecca asked in Davidson's ear. "Why did they turn off their lights?"
He didn't know the exact answer to either question, but Davidson could bet it wasn't good. Brandt would only have turned on their lights if he felt they were alone and safe. Which meant Brandt no longer felt they were alone or safe down there.
Not good. Not good at all.
"We've got to figure out how to help them," Rebecca said, clearly already walking her own questions forward.
How though? He was twirling that lipstick camera around like a ballerina from a jewelry box and had squat.
"Turn it off," Bunny hissed beside Lopez.
The corporal switched the device off, plunging them back into darkness. The moon was covered by clouds, cutting off their only source of illumination. They all sat still for a few breaths. But no reason for Bunny's panic showed itself.
"Bunny, what-"
"There," she hissed, pointing toward the sky.
Davidson had to squint to make out a plane, flying without it running lights, swooping in low over the desert. The rear bay door opened and half a dozen or more figures parachuted out. At such low altitude, it had to be the Disciples, and it looked like they'd gained some fresh recruits. Again.
One of the chutes seemed to be carrying two people. At such low altitude that was extremely dangerous, but then again these were the people who created directional avalanches, so Davidson wouldn't put anything past them.
The only advantage his team had was that the plane had come in from the east. They might not have seen the SUV since it was partially blocked by the outbuildings. Parachutes floated on the wind as the assailants landed swiftly near the front door of the outpost. Weird. It was as if they knew exactly where they were going.
"Look," Bunny said, pointing to the south. The headlights of several vehicles raced in their direction. No wonder the parachutists didn't both to check the compound-they had backup right behind them.
"We've got to warn Brandt," Rebecca whispered.
"Anything we do," Lopez explained, "is going to leave us vulnerable."
"Ricky, we've got to try," Rebecca insisted.
The corporal frowned. "Brandt would so not want us to get killed saving his butt."
How could they warn the sergeant without giving away their position? They had so little equipment. And even if they had a gad of tech, what would it help? They needed to get a message to Brandt and only Brandt.
"What?" Rebecca asked Davidson. He hadn't even realized an awkward smile had spread across his lips until she called him on it.
"Sometimes low-tech is just what you need."
Rebecca's eyebrow arched at him, but he didn't answer her. Instead he just worked those strings of his.
Brandt swept his gun from left to right and then back, seeking, searching for enemies, however this new room was just as barren as the rest. Well, with the exception of a body. A fresh-ish body. A body that had died within the last ten days. Given that the corpse was dressed in street clothes, more than likely one of Amed's men.
More proof that the Rinderpest was here. Actually here. Not theoretically here. Not hopefully here, but Amed's boots had walked across this ground.
The stark, bare-bulbed work light however did not shed where that might be. Then Harvish pulled back a piece of sheet metal to reveal a ragged hole blown in the wall.
Gotcha, fucker.
Amed must have stashed the Rinderpest and then killed his accomplice.
"Did you hear that?" Talli asked.