“Damn, Doc. Why you putting me on the spot?” Ted demanded finally.
“You know me, Ted. I would never do it, unless I absolutely had to. They tell me to bring it not tampered with, so I must deliver.”
“Stupid bastards,” Ted grumbled, referring to “them.” He turned to go back to the guard room. “They put you to guard the place, then change their minds and no one sends a word. And who’s on the spot in the end? Ted Boone, of course, who else.”
He slammed the button with the palm of his hand and turned off the scanner with the other. The glass door slid to the side. The men in wrinkled suits hurried through, leaving Ted with a bad taste in his mouth.
Less than a minute later he heard a badly whistled tune from that show on Food Network and cursed. Stauffer came to take over the post.
This was it, Dr. Coughlin thought, unclenching the steering wheel and moving the moisture from his hands onto the sharply ironed khaki slacks he’d worn that morning. They were supposedly waterproof. A quarter of a mile ahead of the nose of his BMW, at the end of a straight thick line of black asphalt, was the gate and the wall, and beyond that, looking even more black against the snow that had submerged the countryside around it in the course of one night, Freedom’s Tomb.
Might be someone else’s tomb before lunch break starts, Dr. Coughlin thought, turning off the heater. Better someone else’s than his. He didn’t know much about the plan, but he knew enough about the planners not to question. Nor to disobey.
And really, even what he’d told Whales was largely true. He might not have seen the two prisoners himself, but he knew they were there. He also told him repeatedly that it was madness to go in. Whales was given every chance not to attempt the rescue. Would he listen? Of course not.
Now Whales lay in the trunk with some kind of a stupid plan of his own, and his friend or friends probably crept through knee-deep snow somewhere nearby, prepared to scale the electrified wall. Maybe they will be lucky enough to fail climbing over it.
Dr. Coughlin considered the thought for a moment. If these friends do turn around and leave… And Whales is captured, or… They will know where to find him. Or worse, they might go public with the story of Dr. Coughlin being the man who helped Whales get access to a certain facility in Long Grove, from which the latter never came out… No, nothing serious would become of that, of course, but he may end up answering questions…
Maybe if I warned them in time about these friends, he thought, extending his hand towards the car-phone’s dial. It froze halfway there. No. They must have some kind of a failsafe against that. Besides, he had been specifically warned against all verbal communications.
All he had been ordered to do was tell the story, take the passenger if there was one and press the speed dial button on approach. Let them care about the rest. He found the button with his finger.
Arm-thick steel bars of the gate gleamed dully less than a hundred yards ahead. A uniformed giant, Tim or Tom or Todd, stepped out of the guardhouse with hands in his pockets as the car rolled to a stop. Dr. Coughlin pressed the button and leaned back in his seat, raising a hand in salute to the guard. He was done.
Out of the third-story window Millard Fillmore watched the crimson BMW crawl ever closer, bright red flame on the black fuse. The thin clear plastic card in his hand made his bicep contract involuntarily from strain, and he switched hands for the twentieth time. In the dead middle of the card the single button was also clear. All of it was clear, his task especially, but that didn’t stop him from being anxious.
Why was he given the detonator? Anyone could have pressed the button. One of them could have pressed the button. So why him? Was it a punishment of some sort? Or was it the opposite, an initiation? He couldn’t honestly say which of the two he would prefer. Actually, he would probably prefer the former.
More so now, since he’d seen the girl that was to be his “prize” when this was over. “Slim, dark hair, just the way you enjoy them,” they’d said. Later he saw the girl and it was the same one he’d talked to that day on the roof. Sure, this one was likely human, but still…
He felt a shudder coming on and switched hands. He looked over his shoulder at the tan-colored telephone on the green desk. Silent. Dead. Maybe Whales decided not to come after all.
Maybe he wouldn’t have to press the button. What if he pressed the button and nothing happened? What then? Suddenly a terrifying idea occurred to him that he would be somehow to blame.
Maybe they expected him to fail. Maybe it was he, Millard Fillmore, and not Whales who was being set up. The car was almost at the gate. Still nothing.
Switching the hand again, he wiped the sweat off his forehead with the sleeve of his coat.
Nonsense. He was losing his mind. Better not to show it around them. He wished the damned thing would ring already and be over with.
In the next instant, it did. He saw a guard, he wasn’t sure who, come out of the guardhouse. The car rolled to a stop at the checkpoint. He froze with his mouth open, then whirled around to stare at the telephone, as it continued to ring. Years seemed to have passed.
He was suddenly certain he was late, that he did fail. He thought about it for so long he’d forgotten what he was supposed to do. Color drained from his face.
“Shit,” he whimpered and squeezed the button and his eyes shut at the same time.
The explosion clove the car into spinning fiery halves, tore the roof off the guardhouse and tossed dishwasher-sized pieces of reinforced concrete wall into the sky above the Tomb. Orange and black flame snapped outward in a chainsaw circle then rose in a bubbly, seemingly liquid sphere. The steel gate, twisted and mute because of the tremendous blast, bounced across the sparingly filled parking lot into the first floor windows.
In an instant it was over, fire turned to smoke and silence reigned in long seconds it took the debris to begin their return to earth.
None of it touched the four Guardians any more than did the fates of the humans in the car and gatehouse. They’ve seen millions of humans die and would see more. A million of dead humans deserved sympathy. Two, or five… meant nothing. Humans died easily. A dead Sobak, on the other hand, was an event so rare and significant that four of them had been sent.
They stood cloaked, scanning the countryside around the building in all directions, even as debris crashed down around them. A moment later the two posted on the corners above the façade saw him.
A blur against the white field.
The traitor.
The murderer.
The one they’d been sent to wait for and capture. He glided away straight across the field, already aware of them. He moved much faster than a human, but it was obvious he was hurt and not fast enough to escape the Guard. There weren’t many who could outrun the Guardians in perfect health.
The front pair touched the snow together, followed closely by the other. They started the pursuit wide and began to spread wider, maintaining the perfect square formation that continued to expand. They could have taken the shortest way and forced the traitor to make a stand early, but they needed him alive, and time was nothing but a meaningless human concept. Nor did they clutter their minds with estimates of the traitor’s identity. There were not many choices, and it would be revealed soon enough. He had already been caught. In the end, they would have him surrounded. None were capable of breaking out of the Guard’s Square once they were inside. Not even the Rebel himself.
“There’s been an explosion,” the old man reported.
His green-eyed superior regarded him over the knot of intertwined, manicured fingers. Outside the window behind his back holographic billboards illuminated the gloom of a New You City morning. He pressed the button to close the shutters.