Bane fired another burst, grabbed Davey, and pulled him through the opening, shoving Chilgers as he went. Bullets chimed off the steel. One struck the area where Bane’s hands struggled to force the door closed again. He lost feeling in his right palm and thumb, kept the door moving anyway. It sealed shut. Bane swung around.
Chilgers stood in the middle of the small room, features still purple, bulging eyes furious, enraged now. He made no effort to wipe the blood from his nostrils, all his inner strength turned to regaining control.
The computer terminal sat in the vault’s center, innocuous enough save for a clock resting on top of it flashing the countdown in bright red letters.
2:59 …
Less than three minutes and the MX missile warheads would reenter space over their targets. Vortex would be complete.
“Reprogram the computer, Colonel,” Bane instructed clearly. “Reduce the folds in space to an infinitely small degree.”
Chilgers started toward the console, lurched back, a puppet being pulled in two directions. Finally he stood over the terminal and switched it on. His teeth sliced through his tongue. Blood started from his ears now.
Davey moved a little closer, tightened his stare as much as he could. His head was starting to pound now, the familiar pain returning. But he wouldn’t give in to it. He’d hold on to The Chill for as long as Josh needed him to. He gritted his teeth, pushed harder.
2:45 …
Chilgers’ fingers quivered over the keyboard, then descended upon it. He hit a series of numbers and letters, and a geometrical pattern appeared on the screen representing the points in space where each warhead would make its reentry, the vortexes themselves. Though there were 360 separate vortexes now, this one model represented all of them. It was conelike in design, stretching across the screen with the illusion of motion and three dimensions, its insides filled with honeycomb, oblong shapes. Bane guessed there were 360 of the shapes, one for each warhead.
2:15 …
Outside, Bane could hear them working on the vault door.
Chilgers had stopped typing. His eyes sought out Davey’s. The boy didn’t so much as flinch. The colonel went back to the terminal, started punching in instructions again. Figures and letters, random-looking to Bane, started appearing under and over the Vortex cone. Chilgers’ fingers were flying now and the machine responded instantly. The honeycomb shapes began disappearing from the inside of the cone. When all were gone, Bane knew the folds would have been made infinitesimally small. So long as one honeycomb remained, however, one or more of the missiles would still be able to slip through. The door Von Goss had described would remain open far enough for the end of the world, as The Vibes had shown it to Davey, to come to pass.
1:30 …
Only two more of the honeycomb shapes remained, one last button for Chilgers to press. The colonel’s finger rose over the center of the keyboard, moving for the row of numbers. It shook horribly. His last bit of resolve halted his progress. A generation of work was about to be lost forever, destroyed; and Davey could not erase the part of his mind which remembered that fact. The boy squeezed his eyes shut and pushed as hard as he could. Chilgers’ mouth dropped for a scream that wouldn’t come. Then his finger started moving again.
It was almost to the row of numbers, hovering over the middle, when a sudden explosion cracked the vault door open wide enough for one machine-gun barrel to sneak through and spray a series of random shells into the vault. Davey lurched backward, blood stitching a jagged design on the wall behind his torn shoulder. He slumped down, eyes dimming.
Chilgers collapsed, dazed but freed.
Bane made it to the door as the crack started to widen. He jabbed the Uzi through the opening and fired a burst. The guards beyond jumped back. Bane dropped the Uzi and slammed his body into the vault door, grabbing the blown latch with both hands to try to lock it back in place. A ragged, six-inch shard of steel came off in his fingers, slicing his flesh. Bane screamed and the shard went flying across the room into the computer console’s side.
:59 …
Ignoring the pain, Bane snapped what was left of the latch into place again and swung around in time to see Chilgers pounding a shoulder into his midsection, jamming him against the vault door. Then the colonel was squeezing his throat in a viselike grip born of rage and pain. Bane managed to break the hold but Chilgers went for his groin with a series of kicks and thrusts, enough finding their mark to stagger Bane and partially double him over. Then Chilgers interlaced his fingers and pounded the back of the Winter Man’s neck.
:45 …
Physically he was hardly a match for Bane and certainly would not be able to keep this pace up for long. But he didn’t have to. Seconds kept passing on the red clock, drawing the final moment of Vortex closer, and the vault door might be breached even before that.
Chilgers went for Bane’s eyes but the Winter Man caught the colonel’s wrist and pulled, depriving Chilgers of balance. The colonel compensated too much and Bane forced him backward. Chilgers tottered, eyes grasping the red digits ticking ever downward.
:35 …
He swung away from Bane and started for the Uzi but the Winter Man tripped him up and kicked the gun aside. Chilgers struggled back to his feet, never quite making it as Bane slammed a knee under his chin, blasting him hard against the wall. His head hit first and he crumpled to the floor.
Bane rushed to the console. Chilgers had been moving his finger toward the middle of the keyboard’s row of numbers—6 perhaps, or 5 or 7. Even 4 or 8 conceivably.
He heard the sound of metal scraping against tile and swung just as Chilgers was raising the Uzi. In an instant, Bane’s professional instincts provided him with a response. He grabbed the shard of steel from the blasted door latch that rested on the console table.
The colonel went for the trigger.
Bane was already airborne, into a headlong dive with the ragged weapon held taut and sure. He landed just as Chilgers’ finger had started to close, forcing the Uzi away and plunging the steel shard down toward the colonel’s midsection.
The Uzi fired a harmless volley into the wall.
Chilgers gasped, his mouth dropping wide for a scream lost in the rush of air up his throat. His eyes bulged, then grew glazed and distant, locking open, his grasp on life relinquished far more easily than his control of Vortex had been.
Bane pushed himself up off the corpse and rushed to the console, aware the vault door was almost certain to be blown open any second.
:15 …
His own death — and the boy’s — were inevitable now. No getting around that. It would be mercifully quick and at least his mission still stood a chance of success before the moment came.
:10 …
Bane narrowed his choice of numbers to 5, 6, or 7. Pick the right one and Vortex would be finished, the final folds in space closed forever. Pick the wrong one and the machine would register an inconsistency, an error of syntax Bane would be helpless to correct in time. One chance, one chance only.
:07 …
He moved his finger forward, relying on the instincts that had saved his life so often in the past and now had to be called upon to save the entire world. One chance in three … He’d faced far worse odds than that and won.
The Winter Man’s finger plunged down and he didn’t realize it was the six he’d chosen until his eyes followed.
The final honeycombs disappeared. The outline of the cone faded from the screen.
The folds in space had all closed. Vortex had been destroyed.
The red digits locked at:03.