“Do you think I don’t realize that? Unfortunately, I’ve been pulled into something else I need to deal with, so my time has become limited. I assume you put together notes?”
“Yes, sir,” Courser said.
“Then I suggest you highlight anything you were planning to point out, and send them to me. I’ll go over the notes before the meeting.”
Neither of his people looked happy with that solution, but Bernstein said, “If that’s what you’d like.”
“It is not what I’d like,” Wicks said. “What I would have liked was to take the full time for this prep meeting, and not be yanked around by those who have nothing better to do.”
“Of course,” Courser said.
“Right. No problem,” Bernstein threw in.
“Good. Then get to it.”
As soon as they were out of his office, Wicks shut the door and locked it.
Back at his desk, he opened the package Matt had given him. The devices were rectangular boxes made of some kind of plastic material. They were about three inches long by two wide, and another half inch thick.
Whatever their purpose, he knew it couldn’t be good, and the sooner he got rid of them, the better. He pulled his laptop bag out of the cabinet behind his desk, emptied out the pens and papers inside, and carefully transferred the devices into the wide center section.
When he finished, he took a deep breath, pushed himself up from his desk, and headed out.
Matt knew if things went wrong, he couldn’t be found with the piece of paper Wicks had given him. If that happened, the Project might be able to trace it back to Wicks and eliminate any possibility of the message finding its way to the Resistance. So he spent several minutes memorizing the three words it contained, and then crumpled the paper so he could easily get rid of it.
Having kept a second set of devices like those he’d given Wicks, Matt headed down to the conference room where the meeting was supposed to be held and placed two of the small boxes in there. One would have been more than enough, but he didn’t want to risk failure.
Using his rusty knowledge of the facility’s layout, he made his way as close as he dared to the NB219 director’s suite, which he assumed had been taken over by Principal Director Perez, and hid half a dozen devices along the corridor.
As he made his way back, he placed all but one of the remaining devices where he could, and returned to his office hideout. There, he removed three more items from the duffel bag. The first was a mobile phone with a single, remote-control application on it. The second was a set of five one-pound bricks of an extremely powerful plastic explosive that had been strapped together. And the third, a detonator.
After slipping the phone into his pocket, he inserted the business end of the detonator into the explosives, and put the whole thing back into the bag. As an afterthought, he reached into the bag, wedged Wicks’s message between two of the bricks, and left the office again, headed for the center of the complex.
Matt’s group had not been at the school. Nor had they been at the business park a few miles west. Nor in the lot of the Big Kmart near the interstate.
Thinking it unlikely his friend would have wanted his group stationed to the north, closer to the Project Eden base, Ash had directed Sorrento to go south on a road that paralleled the I-25.
“Looks like a big shopping center coming up,” Sorrento said.
It appeared to be an indoor mall, with a wide parking lot already blanketed with a thin layer of snow. The portion of the lot they could see was empty.
“Take us in and around,” Ash said.
Sorrento drove their truck into the lot and headed to the south end. As they made the turn around the mall, they were lit up by four sets of headlights.
“Hold on!” Sorrento yelled as he slammed on the brakes.
“Get out of your vehicle right now!” someone yelled from beyond the lights.
Ash whipped his hand up to shield his eyes from the glare.
“Get out now!” the voice ordered.
“I think those are Humvees,” Chloe said.
Ash squinted his eyes and could just make out the shapes of two of the vehicles. Chloe was right. He also spotted something else. Behind them and off to the side was the shadow of another vehicle. Not a Humvee. A cargo truck.
He reached for his door.
“What are you doing?” Chloe asked.
“It’s them,” he said.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
He pushed out the door and stood in the opening, still on the truck. “Matt? Matt, it’s Ash!”
Hushed voices on the other side, then the lights cut out.
Ash squeezed his eyes shut, trying to readjust to the sudden darkness. When he opened them again, he could see someone stepping out from between the trucks.
“Captain Ash?”
Recognizing the voice, he said, “Hiller?”
“Yes, sir.”
Hiller took a few more steps forward and Ash could make out his face.
“We thought you were going to Nevada, sir,” Hiller said.
“Change of plans. ” Ash hopped to the ground. “I need to see Matt.”
“Um, Mr. Hamilton’s not here.”
“Please do not tell me he went to the base.”
“He did.”
“Alone?”
“I tried to get him to take one of us with him, but he wouldn’t go for it.”
Ash swore under his breath as he looked out into the storm.
“Where is he?” Chloe said, getting out of the truck.
“We’re too late,” Ash said. “He’s gone.”
“That son of a bitch. What does he think he’s doing? How the hell is he going to handle this on his own?”
Ash looked back at Hiller. “Do you know what he had planned?”
“No, sir. He just told us to wait here, and if he didn’t call in by nine p.m., we were to head for Nevada.”
“Tell me he took a gun with him, at least,” Chloe said.
“I don’t know. The only thing he had was a duffel bag.”
“What was inside?” Ash asked.
“No idea.”
Ash rubbed a hand across his chin. With a frown he said, “As much as I wish we could go blazing in and pull him out of there, it’s not an option. But sitting around here and waiting isn’t, either.” He looked at Chloe. “You and I are going to move in close. Hiller, I need two of your best men to come with us.”
“That would be me and Lin,” Hiller said.
It didn’t surprise Ash that Hiller would want to come along. “Okay, the two of you pull together some weapons and whatever gear you think we might need. Chloe and I will appropriate one of those cars over there.” He nodded toward the part of the lot where a handful of cars were scattered. Any of them would be stealthier than using one of the Humvees.
“What’s the plan?” Chloe asked.
“We watch. If there’s any way to tell if Matt’s in trouble, we go in. Worse case, we’ll be a hell of a lot closer if he does call for help.”
“So?” Tamara asked.
“Another second. I’ve almost got it,” Bobby told her.
“FYI, not the first time you’ve said that.”
“If you’d stop talking to me, maybe I could…there! I think that’s it.” He pulled out from the rack where his head and arms had been buried. “Let’s give it a try. Get in front of the camera.”
The camera was aimed so that the rows of workstations would be seen in the background. It wasn’t as dramatic a backdrop as the White House, but Tamara felt it would do.
She moved into position. “All set.”
Bobby typed a few commands into the computer he’d been using, and Tamara’s image filled the giant wall screen.