What the hell, he told himself. Sometimes you have to take the bull by the horns. Steeling himself, Bolan charged into the open corridor. He watched both walls, looking for the first sign of movement.
He sprayed a burst the length of the hall. No one returned fire. Charging ahead, he reached the body of the dead man. His weapon was gone. Ahead on the left, a door yawned open.
Inside, he answered one of his questions. The other two lay dead. Somebody had nailed them already. From behind. Bolan pushed on to the next office. Three empty clips lay just inside the door. But the room was vacant. No Eli. And no Rachel.
Adam's security card, what was left of it, dangled from the mangled lock. It was useless. And Bolan doubted the outside mechanism would function. He rushed back to the main control access. Stevens was nowhere to be seen. Another of Stevens's men, Donny Grissom, lay dead on the floor. Approaching cautiously, he peered through the master window, just in time to see Glinkov vanish through the opposite door. A klaxon somewhere deep in the plant began a mournful uproar.
Stevens was just inside the first door. He had been wounded. Blood soaked his right sleeve. He was still struggling with the second lock.
"What happened, Matt?" Bolan demanded.
"I don't know. Somebody besides us. They killed Donny, but he was between them and me. I got the door open just in time."
"Did you see Eli?"
"No. Why?"
"He's missing. So is Rachel."
"Adam? Is he okay?"
Bolan said nothing.
Stevens collapsed to the floor. "Those bastards."
"We'll get them, Matt."
Stevens grabbed the bloody sleeve of the anticontamination suit and ripped it loose at the shoulder. "Help me wrap this."
Bolan bound the ugly wound in Stevens's upper arm. The security chief turned back to the lock.
He punched in the combination code, pressed the release and the door hummed open. Inside, the sound of the klaxon was insistent.
There was no one in the control room. Bolan ran to the backup control room door. The lock was destroyed. He stepped back and planted a sharp kick just above the damaged lock. The door swung back with a crash. The room was empty except for two dead men lying against one wall. Bolan looked at the security man. "Do you know anything about this reactor? Can you work the controls?"
"Nothing. No, nothing."
Two more flashing lights joined the carnival array high on the board. They felt the rumble before they heard it. It grew slowly and sounded as if it would never stop.
The deserted control room echoed with the sound of alarms. Blinking lights were everywhere. Bolan stared at the flickering monitors. The images were randomly selected. As he watched, a group of shadows zipped past on one screen. As he moved in closer, the image changed.
"Matt, is there any way to select the cameras for these things?"
"Sure. What do you want to see?"
"I don't know. I thought I saw Rachel and Eli. But there were three figures. They were gone before I could get a fix on it."
"Okay, I'll run through the cameras one at a time. Keep an eye on the top left-hand screen. If you see something, holler."
Stevens sat at the security console. One by one, he scrolled through the cameras. Bolan watched intently. He was beginning to doubt that he had seen anything. Image after image of the gloomy depths of the plant flew by corridors, storage rooms, work areas dominated by huge conduits and rumbling machinery.
"Hold a minute. Go back." Bolan shouted in his excitement. "No, one more. There."
The three figures he had seen were back. It was too dimly lit to be sure who they were, but despite their suits, he knew one of them was a woman. Their backs were to the camera, and they were stooped over, moving cautiously.
"Can you move in closer, Matt?"
"Hang on." Stevens looked for the right button. When he found it, the image on the screen grew larger. The figures were still dark, but there was no question. He had found Eli and Rachel. But who was the third person?
He had to know.
"What's that location?"
"It's on Level 4. The southwest quadrant."
"Matt, you stay here. Don't let anyone you don't know in here."
"Where the hell are you going?" But Bolan was already gone.
28
The elevator was interminably slow. When it finally arrived, Bolan rushed in. He hit the button and waited for the doors to close. The ride down took forever. It seemed as if he had done nothing but ride up and down the damned elevator.
On the lowest level of the plant once again, he rushed through the elevator doors before they had fully opened. The corridor was even darker than it had been. He paused to get his bearings, then ran to the corner of the hall. The long concrete passage stretched dimly ahead. He heard and saw nothing.
Wherever Eli and Rachel had been going, they were in a hurry. That could mean only one thing. They knew where the hostages had been moved. Bolan was running at top speed. The concrete echoed with his heavy steps. The corridor seemed endless. Suddenly he was in the open. The right-hand wall ended, and he found himself in a wilderness of throbbing machinery. Huge conduits ran in seemingly endless banks overhead.
It was a steel jungle. The hum of the machines was off-key somehow. He knew the reactor was overheating. Something was getting ready to blow.
Unwilling to run into opposition at full tilt, he had to slow his pace. Listening for anything that didn't belong, he worked his way among the towering structures.
A huge generator loomed just ahead. He was at the heart of the plant. Beyond was another jungle, a mirror image of the one he had just passed through. He paused again. The area looked familiar. He was certain it was the area through which he had seen Rachel and Eli pass. Bolan dropped to the floor, peering into the murk, trying to see under the tangled pipes and bunched cables. Visibility was limited.
He saw nothing.
Getting to his feet, he moved around the generator. He had to be getting close. But where the hell was everybody? Bolan fingered the trigger on his SMG. The wilderness stretched ahead of him, vanishing in the dark. The generator was behind him now, groaning like a wounded beast. If he didn't find them soon, he might have to continue in total darkness.
There must be an emergency system. He wished he had thought to tell Matt Stevens to kick it in.
Too late now.
Bolan thought he was approaching the bottom of the containment building. There was a double-locked access.
If Glinkov planned to herd the hostages into it, it would have to be done from nearby.
The first burst of fire caught him by surprise.
He hit the deck, straining to place the point of origin. A second burst was louder. The thunder seemed to echo through the bowels of the plant as if it, too, wanted to get out. This time he got a fix on it. Regaining his feet, he bent low and moved toward the sound. He couldn't tell whether the fire had been returned. It might have been somebody on edge.
Nerves were bound to give way in the eerie half-light. Behind him Bolan heard the sound of the generator. It was rising and falling. Then it died altogether. It was pitch-dark. Bolan froze in his tracks. For a long moment he heard nothing, then shouts were followed by more automatic weapon fire. It was close. He couldn't afford to use a flashlight. Any moving light would be an easy target.
Another burst of gunfire cast ghostly shadows that vanished immediately. He moved closer. Like dawn breaking, a dim light began to appear. Stevens must have kicked in the emergency generator. The light wasn't bright, but it was better than nothing.
Just ahead, he saw a figure crouched behind a huge, dead machine. The outline was too vague for him to tell who it was. He circled around behind the machine, keeping his eye on the hiding figure. As he got closer, the figure left its cover and moved forward. There were two others off to its left.