“Right again,” Zane said. “No flashbangs. Our best chance of success is to get close enough to the two guards to use Tasers. Or if the situation dictates, we’ll use suppressed shots. After that, we move down the hallway and reassess before hitting the lobby.” Zane looked over at Keiko. “Is there a closed door at the end that leads into the lobby, or is it open?”
“The architectural drawings I possess do show a door at the other end. But it is possible they were left out in final construction, or that they are propped open.”
"When we reach the third building, we’ll have a better idea of what we’re up against," Zane said.
“What if all the lights have been killed?” Reid asked.
“I believe that actually helps our cause. Remember, Skinner has night-vision capability.”
Keiko said, “I think there may be a better way. In fact, after calculating the odds of success I believe it is by far the best way.”
Zane nodded. “Let’s hear it.”
“I know both of the men down the hall, and they know me. I will present myself to them, let them know that I have some important information for Mr. Mironov, and then I will ask them to escort me down to the control room.”
“That’s exactly what we don’t want,” Zane pointed out. “They’ll immediately take you into custody. You aren’t supposed to be here, remember?”
“Perhaps, but if they do, that is the beauty of my plan: I will still get taken to the control room. Mr. Mironov will want to speak to me, regardless of what he thinks I might be up to. He would be foolish not to find out what it is that I wanted to tell him.”
“And what then?” Reid asked.
“When one leaves with me, you can take down the other, which should be much easier. I will then report back to you what you’re facing in the lobby and in the control room.”
“And how do you propose getting that information to us?” Zane asked in a slightly skeptical tone. “You said you’re not able to safely send messages.”
“To the best of my knowledge, Mr. Mironov has almost everyone on his team here at CERN. Now that their operation is underway, I seriously doubt anyone is monitoring me as closely as before. And even if they are, it will take them a while to react. By then, you will have everything you need in order to make your move.”
After a long pause, Zane nodded. “I like it. Let’s do it.”
“So does anyone have a phone?” Keiko asked.
Skinner pulled his out and handed it to her. She moved it across the front of her body, which produced a beep. Having transferred all of the information electronically, she handed it back to him.
Zane gave everyone sixty seconds to prep. When everyone had finished checking their weapons and radios, Zane gave the signal to proceed. Making sure all was clear, the group stepped out of the room and continued in the direction they had been traveling. They made it through the remainder of the second building without incident, aided by Keiko’s almost perfect sense of hearing. At one point she heard a second Renaissance search team in the distance, but they were moving away from them and posed no threat.
As they approached the entrance to the third building, the humanoid pulled everyone aside and told them that the two guards were only about a hundred yards ahead. The group slowed down, doing everything they could not to make any noise.
By prearrangement, the humanoid lifted a hand when they were about fifty yards out. On cue, Zane and Skinner ducked behind a row of lockers on the right side of the hall, and Reid behind another row on the left.
Zane watched Keiko continue straight ahead. She walked with purpose. The ambient blue glow from her eyes was still visible for a while, but eventually it disappeared altogether. As they had guessed, there were no lights in that section of the third building, and while the darkness helped keep them hidden, it also meant that they could easily be surprised themselves if they weren’t careful.
After what seemed like an eternity, flashlights turned on in the distance, and Zane could just barely make out Keiko’s voice. The beams bobbed around as the guards made sure nobody was following her. A few seconds later, a sliver of dim light appeared as a door opened, presumably the one to the fourth and final building. Zane watched as one of the guards escorted Keiko into the hallway beyond. Perfect. The closed door meant that they could dispatch the remaining guard without being heard.
After the door shut, the remaining guard started walking in their direction, the beam of his flashlight playing around on both sides of the corridor. That was something they hadn’t expected. Zane figured he must have been suspicious of Keiko’s sudden appearance and was checking things out.
“Get Reid to hit him,” Zane whispered into Skinner’s ear as they crouched behind the lockers.
“Roger that.”
About twenty feet from the operatives, the guard inexplicably stopped, the beam from his flashlight pointed straight head. Zane tensed. Had the man seen them? Or was he looking at something behind them?
Eventually the man moved forward again, slowly and with purpose. When the guard was about ten feet out, Skinner slid to the edge of the locker and lifted the Taser. The man must have caught the movement because the beam of light swung immediately toward the operative.
In the seconds that followed, Zane heard two simultaneous noises — the zap of a Taser and the firing of a suppressed shot. At the sound of the shot, he leapt out from behind the locker, got down on one knee, and raised his weapon. Only then did he see that the Renaissance guard and his light were already lying on the ground.
As he got up and approached the body, he noticed that there was not the twitching you’d expect when someone was hit with the Taser. Instead there was a rapidly expanding pool of blood around the man’s head.
“I had no choice,” Reid said, approaching from the other side of the hall. “He had a gun-mounted light and was about to fire at Cleavon.”
“Understood.” Zane examined the body. Reid’s shot was lethal, taking the man out before he had time to squeeze the trigger.
Zane grabbed the dead man’s rifle and turned off the mounted light. He then pulled off the guard’s black sweater and handed it to Reid for cleaning up the blood. Zane and Skinner lifted the body and carried it into a nearby room. After hiding it under a desk, they rejoined Reid, who finished the cleanup and threw the sweater into a nearby locker.
The three operatives then stole down to the closed door where the guards had been positioned earlier. Recognizing that the one who had escorted Keiko to Mironov could come bursting back through at any moment, Zane signaled Reid and Skinner that he was going to take a look. He then opened the door a few inches and used the monocular to examine the corridor beyond. After a couple of minutes, he turned back around and whispered, “Just as I expected, there is a long hallway that runs the entire length of the building. I could just barely make it out, but there appear to be two doors on the other end.”
“Were they glass doors?” Reid asked. “Could you see anything beyond?”
“The doors had small windows set in them,” Zane replied, “but the only thing I could make out was a bit of ambient light coming through. I thought I might have seen some movement beyond, but I really couldn’t tell what was going on. The bottom line is we have to assume there are tangos beyond, and plenty of them.”
“Copy that,” Skinner said.
“So, as soon as we go through this door, we move with speed down the hallway,” Zane said, “and we don’t stop unless we meet resistance. As we approach the other end, we’re going to take up position in rooms on either side of the hallway. I’ll take the one on the left, and I want the two of you to take the one on the right.”
“How do you know there are going to be rooms?” Reid asked.