“Ready?”
She took a deep breath, let it out, then nodded.
They watched the camera, waiting for it to swing fully away, then dashed down the wall, opened the door, and stepped through.
CHAPTER 40
They were greeted by the blinding glare of white light. Before their eyes could adjust, a Scottish-accented voice said, “Hey, who are you? What are you—”
Hand held before his eyes, Sam jerked the Glock up and pointed it toward the voice. “Hands up!”
“Okay, okay, for God’s sake, don’t shoot me.”
Their eyes adjusted. They were in a laboratory clean room, painted all white save the floor, which was covered in white antistatic, antimicrobial rubber tiles. In the center of the space was a twelve-by-six-foot worktable surrounded by rolling stools. On the shelves and tables was, Sam estimated, a quarter-million dollars’ worth of restoration equipment, including autoclaves, glass-fronted refrigeration units, two Zeiss stereomicroscopes, a polarized fluorescence microscope, and a handheld XRF (X-ray fluorescence) device. On the table’s Formica surface rested what looked like pieces from Bondaruk’s war collection—a broken spear handle, a double-sided ax head, a tarnished and bent Civil War cavalry sword. A triangle of articulated stainless steel halogen lamps shined down from the ceiling.
The man who stood before them was short and bald save a fringe of orange hair above his ears. He was dressed in a knee-length white lab coat. From behind a pair of thick, black-rimmed glasses his eyes were comically magnified.
“Well, that’s a familiar sight,” Remi said, pointing.
Projected on one of the monitors was a piece of cracked leather bearing a grid of symbols.
“Eureka,” Sam muttered. Then he said to the man, “Who are—”
Even as the words left Sam’s mouth the man spun and began sprinting toward the far wall—heading for, Sam realized, the red mushroom-shaped panic button mounted there.
“Stop!” Sam shouted, to no effect. “Damn it!”
Behind him, Remi was moving. She leaped forward, snatched the spear handle from the table, and hurled it sidearm. It spun through the air in a flat arc and smacked the man behind the knees. Arm already outstretched for the button, he grunted and pitched forward. His head slammed into the wall with a dull thud just below the button. He slid face-first to the floor, unconscious.
Sam, eyes wide, his gun still raised, stared at her. She looked back at him and offered a shrug and a grin. “I used to toss a baton when I was a kid.”
“It shows. Bet you’re hell in a horseshoe pit.”
“Hope I didn’t kill him. Oh, God, I didn’t kill him, did I?”
Sam walked over, knelt down, and rolled the man onto his back. Protruding from his forehead was a purple egg-shaped lump. Sam checked for a pulse. “He’s just down for a long nap. He’ll have a headache for a few days but nothing else.”
Remi was standing before the monitor displaying the symbol grid. “You think it’s the bottle from Rum Cay?” she asked.
“I sure hope so. If not, that means Bondaruk’s got more than one bottle. Look around, see if it’s here.”
They checked the humidity-control cabinets, the refrigerators, and the drawers beneath the worktable, but found no sign of either the bottle or the label.
“It’s probably a digital image,” Remi said, studying the monitor. “See the edge there, on the left? It looks color enhanced.”
“As much as I’d like to get the bottle away from Bondaruk, this might be all we need. See if you can print—” Sam stopped talking and cocked his head. “You hear that . . . ? Oh, crap.” He pointed.
In the corner, partially hidden from view by a cabinet, was a wall-mounted video camera. It stopped panning, the lens aimed directly at them.
“Company’s coming,” Remi said.
“Quick, check the keyboard, see if you can print us a screen capture of the label!”
As Remi started tapping on the keyboard, Sam sprinted to the corner, grabbed the feed wire beneath the camera, and jerked it loose. Next he ran to the door, flipped off the lights, and returned to Remi, who said, “Got it!” and tapped a key. The laser printer’s lights blinked green and it hummed to life.
From the control room they heard a door bang open, then shut, then open again. Footsteps clicked on linoleum, then went silent.
“Down,” Sam whispered, then dropped onto his belly and pulled Remi with him. “Stay here and grab that printout.” He crawled down the short side of the table and peeked his head out.
At the door, the knob was slowly turning. He extended the Glock and took aim.
The laser printer started rhythmically humming.
“Printing,” Remi whispered.
The door burst open, revealing a figure silhouetted by the control room’s LCD monitors. Sam fired once. The bullet struck the man in the calf just below the knee. He screamed and toppled forward. His weapon—a compact Heckler & Koch MP5 submachine gun—bounced across the rubber floor and landed a few feet from Sam. In the control room he heard a hushed voice bark something—a curse, Sam assumed from the tone—in Russian. The man Sam shot was whimpering and crawling back toward the door.
“Got it!” Remi called. “Detail’s perfect. We can use it.”
“Come around,” Sam whispered. She crawled around the corner and tapped his ankle. “Here.” Sam turned, handed her the Glock, and said, “When I say go, fire three shots through the door. Aim for the glass wall.”
“Okay.”
Sam got to his knees, took a breath. “Go!”
Remi popped up and started firing. Glass began shattering. Sam somersaulted out from behind the table, veered left, grabbed the MP5, then scuttled back to cover.
“What’re they waiting for?” Remi asked.
“Reinforcements or better weaponry would be my guess. We need to get out of here before either arrives.”
As if on cue, a hand appeared around the edge of the door and hurled something. The object bounced off the side of the table, hit the rubber floor, then came to a spinning rest.
“Down, Remi!” Sam shouted.
Moving on instinct and on the faith that he’d correctly identified the thrown object, Sam stood up, took a bounding leap, and soccer-kicked the object back toward the door. As it reached the threshold it exploded. Blinding white light and a deafening boom filled the lab. Sam stumbled backward and collapsed behind the table.
“What in God’s name was that?” Remi said, shaking her head to clear it.
“Flash-bang grenade. Special forces and SWAT teams use them to distract the bad guys. A lot of sound and light, but no shrapnel.”
“How did you know?”
“Discovery Channel. At least now we know one thing—they’re trying to avoid any shooting in here.”
“How about a little distraction of our own?” Remi said, pointing with the Glock.
Sam looked. On the wall opposite the panic button was a paperback-sized Plexiglas box housing a yellow mushroom bearing a pictograph of a water droplet. “That’ll do.”
“Two shots, if you will.”
“Ready.”
“Go.”
Remi popped up and opened fire. Sam charged to the wall and slammed the butt of the MP5 sideways into the Plexiglas box, ripping it from the wall. He jerked the lever down. From unseen loudspeakers a computer-generated female voice made an announcement first in Russian, and then in English:
“Warning. Fire suppression system activated. Evacuate area
immediately. Warning. Fire suppression system activated.”
Sam rushed back behind the table. “Rain’s coming, Remi. Protect that printout!”
“Already tucked away.”
“Cleavage?”
“Safer. Found a ziplock Baggie.”