Silence joined them.
"It's afraid of you, too," she added softly. "That's why it has to kill you. Because it's afraid of you."
Hunter slowly caressed her cheek. "Sleep…"
She pressed herself more firmly, snugly, into his chest and arm and her eyes closed. Her breathing deepened and her face relaxed as she began to surrender.
"Kill it, Hunter," she whispered faintly, "before it kills us all."
It was a long while before Bobbi Jo rolled softly over, curling away from him with the covers tightly around her neck. He rose from bed, staring back to ensure that she was in the grateful sleep of exhaustion. Something in his heart made him content and peaceful that she could sleep so blissfully in his bed. Then he dressed slowly, in silence.
He glanced back at her as he neared the door, mentally assuring himself that he had brought everything required for this dangerous, but necessary, task. At the last minute, as he touched the door, Ghost rose from the floor. Hunter motioned sternly for silence, and pointed at Bobbi Jo. Staring a moment, the wolf padded over and lay obediently beside her side of the bed, acutely alert. Hunter knew the wolf would guard Bobbi Jo until his return. The best bodyguard in the world.
In utter silence he opened and closed the door, ensuring that it had not disturbed her, and stood quietly in the corridor, listening. But nothing was moving close; he could determine that much beyond what he could even see or hear.
He knew the complex would be alive with guards, all of whom he'd have to stealthily evade. And then he'd have to take the most daring risk of all — searching the room of the person he trusted least.
Hunter stared into the hallway, remembering every turn and hallway and corner and alcove. He moved with a plan, but a plan he could change at any moment. Animal cunning awakened, and he let it gain control.
Silence…
With a wolf's strides, he loped down the corridor.
"They must pay," Brick growled as he drove the Lincoln through the predawn light. Already, faintly above the river, the sky was a light yellow, the sun rising into a gathering cool breeze that smelled faintly like rain.
They had made an anonymous call to local police to ensure that they responded to the Institute. It wouldn't take much for them, looking inside, to see the devastation and decide on a forced entry.
It would be quite a scene, for certain, with confused uniform officers and then a full-blown building search with canine units and SWAT. All the bodies would be located and identified as well as possible, and then everyone would be looking for Chaney because his prints were all over the spent cartridge cases. It wouldn't take long for the FBI to close that noose. But by then Chaney would be well on his way to bringing this entire thing to an ending. So whatever interference was thrown up from inside the NSA or even from the Hill would be too damn little and too damn late.
Chaney was in a bad mood, and he let it ferment inside him, building in rage. He would need it when he landed in Alaska at the last research station. He would put the good Dr. Hamilton on ice until he cracked and told him what he wanted to know.
Might be complicated, legally, to get away with, but Chaney knew he was already so far out in the badlands that he couldn't really endanger himself too much more. He just hoped Skull would cover him long enough for the stunt, but there was no guarantee on that, either. He was in the black hills now, but that was all right with him.
"Brick, I'm going to Alaska."
"I'm going with ya."
Shaking his head, Chaney glanced out the side window, searching by reflex for a tag. "Brick, this ain't your fight. We already got dead bodies stretched halfway around the world. You did your time, man. You don't need to go out on the line again."
Brick turned solid. "Let me tell you something, boy. I was a marshal when you was still in junior high school. And you're all by your lonesome, just in case you ain't noticed. You think I'd let you go up against these goombahs without another gun?" He barked a laugh, utterly without humor. "The day I'd let you do that is the day I'd strap a grenade to my head and pull the pin." He shook his head again. "No, sir. We're in it now. Both of us. Up to our necks. You think I spent all those years keeping your butt alive to see you get it wasted by some godless heathens that tried to kill a little girl like that? Yes, sir. We're gonna take it to 'em."
Chaney stared, shaking his head. "Like how, exactly?"
"Well, first, we ain't taking no commercial flights. I got a buddy of mine that can get us on a military flight — no names, we'll just tell 'em we're gofers on another hop — and then we can scramble a chopper around Anchorage. You figured on a chopper, right?"
Smiling, Chaney said, "Yeah, I did."
"Yeah, I know you did," the big man replied. "I heard what you told Gina. Stay on the beacon. Yeah, I ain't forgot." He hung a hard right. "You still know how to dog one of them things?"
"Been awhile," Chaney continued to check for anyone following, but Brick was doing a good job. "They're not using Hueys anymore. Now it's Blackhawks." He thought about it. "I think I can handle it. A chopper is a chopper."
"Good enough, then. So we get back to the house, load up what we can carry, get our gear stowed, and we're airborne by midday. It's a ten-hour flight, so we land, regroup, arm the chopper and we pay this Dr. Frankenstein a visit. I've got my old creds, and you've got the documentation for running an investigation on a federal reservation. We'll get this done before somebody tries to shut us down." He hesitated. "I tell you one thing, though; we'll have to work fast. We won't have more than a day. Maybe two if we're lucky."
"Yeah," Chaney nodded, more tired now by the moment. He could use a few hours of sleep on a flight. "I figured that much."
"But don't you worry, kid." Brick finally turned onto his street. "I'm gonna break out something special from the vault. Yes, sir. I got the cure for what ails 'em."
Hunter was back long before dawn, and awake again, leaving Bobbi Jo sleeping contentedly. Dressing in his freshly cleaned clothes, a black combat shirt procured from the military, he entered the hallway to get some food. He had gotten a good feel for the installation last night.
Where the others had been crudely designed with cement walls and an almost depression-era air of construction, this one had stainless-steel walls, well-lit corridors and an almost antiseptic atmosphere. It was luxurious compared to the substandard building requirements of the others. Its layout, as far as he had learned, was a series of circles with intersecting lines drawn to the center of something he had not seen. But in essence it resembled a large spider web.
He assumed the center of the facility was some sort of laboratory, but he had somehow caught the scent of fresh earth somewhere, and suspected that the heart of the station was underground. Possibly several layers beneath the surface. Every door was a metal he had never seen, but seemed impregnable. The hinges were concealed and protected by stainless-steel walls.
The Ranger contingent was at least seventy men, possibly a hundred. They were exceedingly well armed with heavy weapons — Barretts and single-shot Grizzly .50-caliber rifles — very unusual — and wore a sort of high-tech body armor that Hunter had never seen before. It appeared to be molded plastic, but upon closer observation, even without touching, he could tell it was a space-age blend of ceramic and metal, molded in a unique wraparound protective shell. They wore kneepads and elbow pads and specialized helmets that appeared to have night vision built into a visor that could be lowered, as a pilot lowers a visor on his helmet.
Despite his fatigue, Hunter was impressed; whoever these guys were, they certainly had the best equipment. And he knew something else; they were expecting something big to go down here, and were well prepared for it.