He nodded, looking relieved. “No, I hear you. I’m trying to make it a habit to at least ask. Nice to hear someone else saying it.”
“You want to wait for backup?”
Carrick shook his head. “I hate waiting.” He paused. “I’m not really crazy about backup, either, but…”
My phone buzzed again with an updated thermal scan, recent enough that it showed our car parked off the road. “There’s seven guards out front plus two in the back,” I said, counting. “Another dozen inside the main building.”
Carrick pointed at one of the two horizontal figures. “This one’s suddenly brighter than the others.”
He was right.
Melissa’s phone buzzed in my pocket and I took it out. Another medication reminder, only this one said, URGENT WARNING: FAILURE TO TAKE TAPAZOLE AS DIRECTED MAY RESULT IN SERIOUS COMPLICATIONS INCLUDING DEATH.
“Jesus,” Carrick said, squinting over at the Xenexgen complex, as if he were trying to see if they were in there.
I called Dr. Rudy Sanchez, chief medical officer at DMS and my best friend.
“Hey, Joe—”
I cut him off. “Sorry, Rudy. Urgent medical question: What are the symptoms if someone taking Tapazole misses a couple of doses?”
“Um…” He thought for a second. “Let’s see, that’s hyperthyroidism, very dangerous. There’s a high fever—”
“Great. Thanks. Gotta go.” I ended the call and pointed at the bright figure on the thermal scan. “That’s Melissa Brand,” I told Carrick. “She’s lighting up because of a fever. She’s in danger and we need to get her out.”
He nodded. “Let’s go.”
We checked our weapons, then got out and slipped through the woods.
From the tree line, the glass façade lay to our right, across forty yards of rolling lawn. To our left was a sprawl of industrial buildings, warehouses, and cargo containers. As we watched, a door at the rear of the main building opened and two guards with rifles emerged. They walked around to the front while the heavy, reinforced door closed slowly behind them. It took forever, especially the last six inches.
When it finally clicked shut, Carrick said, “Nine seconds.”
“Are you fast?” I asked him.
He shrugged. “If I’m motivated. You’re thinking next time we try to catch it before it closes?”
“Without getting shot, yeah.”
“Right. Without getting shot.” He eyed the door, then the two guards disappearing around the front of the complex. “Yeah, I’m fast.”
We hunkered down, waiting.
Thirty seconds later, Carrick tapped my arm and pointed to two guards approaching from the left.
We watched as they opened the door and slipped inside, then we dashed across the grass. I was reaching for the edge of the slowly closing door when it swung out toward us. Two new guards were coming toward us, speaking in Swedish or Norwegian. They had the same saggy skin and drooping eyes as Bortman. I didn’t have time to think about it because they raised their guns and we went in punching. They were bigger up close, but surprisingly fragile. I planted a right on my guy’s chin and he dropped before I could follow up.
Same thing with Carrick — a thunderous right to the other guy’s nose and he was down.
We exchanged a shrug, then dragged them inside, catching our breath as the door slowly closed. The latest scan showed the room next to us empty. We dragged the guards inside, cuffed them to a radiator, and took their ID cards and rifles.
As we headed to the stairway thirty feet away, we heard voices approaching, that same lilting Norswitzdenavian or whatever. We slipped through the door and into the stairwell, hugging the wall behind the door, in case they were headed our way.
They were. The door swung open and two huge Norswitzdenavians came through, looking just like the others. They raised their rifles, but we were already on them: one to shut them up, one to knock them back, then they were crumpled on the floor, leaving us with that weird feeling that we should still be fighting.
A flicker of doubt ran through my mind. They had big guns and they were quick to point them, but maybe they were glorified suburban office park security staff instead of paramilitary goons. Maybe Moose and Melissa weren’t here and nothing nefarious was going on.
That’s what was going through my mind as we rounded the steps and another one entered the stairwell.
“Police!” I said, holding up my DMS badge.
For an instant we all froze, Carrick behind me, the guard six steps up from us, staring down with a blank expression. In a flash, he raised his rifle in an arc headed right up my middle.
I heard two explosions, almost simultaneous, one behind me and one in front, excruciatingly loud in the cinder-block stairway.
Firing around my head, Carrick managed to clip the guard’s shoulder. The rifle went off as he fell, peppering us with hot concrete chips as the bullet slammed into the steps.
I grabbed the rifle before he hit the ground and Carrick patted him down for other weapons, then he stopped and put a hand on the guard’s neck. He looked up at me, bewildered. “He’s dead.…”
I felt the guy’s wrist. Nothing.
It didn’t make sense. Not in the “killing is senseless” way, although maybe that was true. But shooting around me, Carrick had barely tagged the guy. He should be rolling around in pain and calling us assholes.
Carrick shook his head. “He shouldn’t be dead.”
He was right. But we didn’t have time to discuss it. I clapped my hand on Carrick’s shoulder. “Maybe he hit his head or had a heart attack. Who knows? But he was pointing that thing at me, so thanks. Now, we’ve got to get Moose and Melinda and get out of here.”
He nodded and we continued up the steps, pausing at the top while I peered through the door. The scan showed Moose and Melissa — if that’s who it was — in a room with two guards down the corridor to the left of the one I was looking out onto.
As we crept toward the next corridor, Carrick tapped my elbow and motioned that he would go low. I nodded, and took out my badge and held it with my gun. Carrick counted down with his fingers — three, two, one — then I stepped out from behind the wall as Carrick slid across the floor with his gun two-handed in front of him.
“Police!” I said. “Don’t move!”
For an awkward moment, they didn’t. There were two of them in front of the door, staring at us out of faces remarkably similar to the others. I felt bad for Carrick, down on the floor, ready for action that it seemed wasn’t going to happen.
Then, without a word or a glance at each other, they raised their guns at us. “Don’t Move!” I thundered, but they did. And we shot them.
When someone’s ready to shoot a clearly identified cop, you don’t mess around.
Carrick rolled to his feet and we approached them fast but cautious. They were already dead.
“What the hell?” Carrick asked. “Are they even human?”
I was thinking the same thing. It gave me the creeps, but there wasn’t time to discuss it.
The door was unlocked. We burst through it, Carrick first, me covering, ready to shoot the first easy-to-kill whatever-they-were that made a move. But the room was empty except for two sofas, Melissa on one, Moose on the other, just waking up.
Moose looked disoriented but otherwise fine. Melissa was flushed red and shivering, her hair plastered to her face with sweat.
“Joe…?” she said. “What’s going on?”
“Doyle?” Moose said. “What the hell?”
They seemed relieved to see us, but increasingly alarmed, especially when they saw our weapons.
“We’re not sure,” I told them. “Are you okay?”
“Where are we?” Melissa asked. She seemed about to swoon, then her eyes went wide and she hugged herself. “What time is it?”