Текст книги "The Chosen"

Автор книги: Алекс Арчер

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Chapter 24

"It's all bullshit, Creed," Thompson said in a voice like a nail gun. She doubted he could bring himself to say anything that didn't sound like a command. "We're not glad to see you and we don't respect your resourcefulness and determination. A damned pain in the ass is all you are."

Hanratty's eyelids fluttered behind his lenses. His lips twisted in a weak, moist smile. "Now, now, Ms. Creed. Please don't take our Colonel Thompson too seriously. He seems to feel a certain bluster befits his position."

"Bluster, my ass. Why the hell didn't you back off after all the warnings you got?"

"Warnings?" she asked.

"That parking lot at UNM?" he said. "Mexico City? The Philippines? That hippie art gallery in Albuquerque? Your little artist friend. Did those slip your alleged mind?"

"They seemed more like assassination attempts to me," she said coolly. She thought it important to show him his bluster could not intimidate her.

"Didn't it ever penetrate that thick head that if you were pissing people off that bad, it might be a good idea to jump back?" Thompson raged.

"Now, now," Hanratty said mildly, fluttering a pale, well-manicured hand at his security chief on his way back to the desk. "There's no call to take such a tone with our guest."

Glaring, his face even redder than it had been when she first walked in, Mad Jack subsided with the good grace of a junkyard dog who'd had his leash yanked hard. It did not escape Annja's notice that Hanratty had refrained from yanking the lead until after Thompson got to establish his bad cop credentials.

Hanratty smiled. "Would you care to sit down, Ms. Creed?" he asked, indicating a chair across from his desk.

"Do I have a choice?"

"Of course, of course." Hanratty bounced his head like a bobble-head doll.

"Then I'll sit." She slid into the chair and tried to relax. It was not so much for the impression she gave her captors. She knew, especially from her study of meditation and martial arts, that allowing herself to remain in a state of tension would only drain her and tighten her up so neither mind nor body could respond with rapid flexibility should the opportunity arise.

"I'm sure you will understand, Ms. Creed," Hanratty said, "that we regret the necessity of constraining your person – as well as the unfortunate incidents to which my esteemed associate referred. You must understand our position, though. We are engaged in research of the utmost importance to our nation, especially engaged as we are in a generations-long war on terror."

"Cut to the chase," Annja said. "What's with the monsters? I'm presuming they're yours."

Cogswell shrugged his big shoulders. He was dressed in the same knobbly houndstooth coat he had worn when she met him, although his waistcoat and tie were of more subdued shades. "Our experiments have enjoyed varied levels of success."

He tipped his big, round, bristle-haired head briefly to the side. "There have been various levels of side effects. Ranging, primarily, from alarming to extremely alarming."

"Why are you running your damned mouth like that, Bergstrom?" Thompson shouted. "She's a goddamned TV reporter. You want to give her the frigging story?"

Annja scowled at that characterization of her. She found it even more demeaning than unflattering comparisons with Kristie Chatham. She said nothing. There was no point in letting him know he'd scored off her.

"Now, Nils," Hanratty said, "I know you love your theatrics. But please don't exaggerate the situation quite so excessively." He clasped his hands on the old-fashioned green blotter before him and turned to Annja. "Of course everything is really going well with the project. Quite well. Indeed, we are ahead of schedule. It's just that there have been certain unavoidable side effects – "

"Like three dead and eleven injured at the sanctuary?"

His brows came together like a large caterpillar. "Well, with the best of will, you surely cannot expect us to make omelets without breaking a few eggs. Can you?"

"I always hated that cliché," Annja said. "People aren't eggs. Multiple homicides aren't omelets. Maybe I just don't see the connection."

"You have an awfully smart damned mouth on you for a woman in your position," Thompson said, though at reduced volume from before.

"How unexpected of you to notice," she said, making him blink and then glare. "My intelligence, I mean. So you're somehow letting these horrors loose to terrorize the population, Dr. Hanratty. That doesn't sound to me as if you've got the situation all under control. What have you done to the child?" she asked.

Thompson barked a laugh.

"You must be dumber than you look, if you bought all that 'baby Jesus' shit," he said.

"We don't really have words to describe our experiments," Cogswell said. "What we see, quite candidly, are results far in excess of our ability to comprehend their causes."

"So what you're telling me, Doctor," she said, looking directly at Bergstrom, "is that you are messing with forces you don't understand."

His black eyes looked right back into her amber-green ones. "Precisely."

"Wonks," Thompson said in disgust. "What the hell good are you?"

"Fortunately that determination lies in the provenance of people with larger and more powerful heads," Bergstrom said, "if only marginally."

Thompson's red face purpled. "Listen, you overstuffed sack of ivory-tower shit – "

"Gentlemen, please," Hanratty said with a briskness that surprised Annja.

"We do not wish to give our guest the impression of discord among our ranks, do we?" Hanratty said.

"In any event," Bergstrom said to Annja, "we've run into some trouble with anomalous creatures that have appeared in various parts of the state."

She leaned back in her chair and folded her arms. "So why are you telling me this, anyway? Why is this happening? I'm not your guest. I'm a prisoner."

Mad Jack Thompson's laugh was harsh as a steel brush on her bare cheek. "We want you in the right frame of mind when we interrogate you," he said.

"It's important, Ms. Creed," Hanratty said apologetically, polishing his spectacles with a monogrammed silk handkerchief. "You must understand the vital importance of this project..."

"Oh, stuff it," Thompson said. "After Little Miss Muffet here gets a taste of our meds, she'll be only too eager to tell us everything she knows."

He turned to Annja. "I want to know how you found out about us, who you told. Everything. We're going to discover every secret you're keeping."

Chapter 25

Carefully Annja paced the stark white cell. Four steps by four. Allowing for detours around the bed and the sink and the chrome-steel toilet, all seeming to sprout from the floor on gleaming metal pedestals.

The padding on the bed was just that, a pad, plush enough, with a pillow-like protrusion at the head end, but integral with the pedestal bed. It was covered with some soft, resilient material that resisted a tentative attempt to tear it with her fingernails. Certain that she was being constantly watched by hidden cameras, she tried nothing too extreme. The point was there was nothing, sheet or otherwise, that a captive might tear into strips to hang herself.

Not that much presented itself to hang oneself from. The light, which she had not seen dim and suspected never did, was inset in the ceiling, no doubt shielded with polycarbonate or some other unbreakable synthetic. The air vents were high up, covered with heavy grilles well bolted, and too small in any event to pass any body larger than a house cat. There would be no escape by crawling through the HVAC ducts.

Another broken promise of action movies,she thought. She was beginning to wonder if it had been such a hot idea to let herself get caught.

She sat on the floor with her back to the metal base of the bed facing the door. The white floor tiles gave slightly beneath her.

She was in total confusion over Cogswell. Was this all some bizarre setup on his part? He had to know that his role in feeding her information about the secret facility and its bizarre research – which, however elliptical, had proved all too accurate – would come out sooner or later once they subjected her to questioning under drugs.

It was my decision to blunder in and get captured, intending to bust loose at the first opportunity, find the Santo Niño and spring us both. Was it possible Cogswell – when he was acting as Cogswell, anyway – had somehow intended to put that thought in her mind all along?

She shook her head. It didn't make much practical difference at this point.

She wasn't hopelessly trapped in the cell. But if she somehow hacked her way out, the facility was swarming with heavily armed men, no doubt too many for her to fight off. Especially if she roused the whole place, while betraying the existence of the sword to those hidden cameras. She had little sensible choice but to bide her time and wait for some opening.

She closed her eyes. It was cool in the cell, even with her jacket still on. But not cold enough to be a distraction. Drawing in a deep abdominal breath, she blanked herself in meditation.

"Wakey-wakey."

Never asleep, Annja had returned to full awareness from her deep meditative state the instant the door of her cell hissed open. She opened her eyes.

The derisive voice, vaguely familiar, had sounded somehow wrong to Annja. Now she saw why.

Three men had entered her cell. They were young and lean and dressed in black security uniforms. They also looked as if they had wandered right out of the infirmary.

"Remember me, shweetie?" said the man who had spoken first. He had black hair and held himself so rigidly upright that Annja suspected he wore some kind of brace beneath his shirt. The distortion in his speech came from the obvious fact his jaw was wired shut.

He and his companions looked different from the last time she'd seen them. They were cleaned up considerably, if visibly the worse for wear.

"Yes," she said. "I do. I thought I broke your neck with that spin kick. Too bad I didn't."

"Yeah," the gangly blond guy on his right said. Like his leader's, his beard had been shaved clean. "Too bad for you." Aside from a certain puffiness to what would naturally have been somewhat craggy features, he looked the least damaged. Until he grinned. The whistle of excess air escaping when he spoke indicated that the gap in his top teeth was fully authentic this time.

"You should have made sure of us, sweet cheeks," the third member of the trio said. He was a wiry Latino with a flexible cast on his right wrist.

"I have a tendency to be merciful," she said. "I won't make the same mistake twice."

"Yeah, well, the shoe is on the other foot here," the gap-toothed blonde said.

"Won't Mad Jack have a thing or two to say if you damage the merchandise?" Annja said.

They passed a look around and laughed. "Shit, girly, he sent us here," the Latino said. "He told us to make sure you spill your guts."

The dark-haired leader's grin bared his wired teeth. It was a terrible expression.

Annja decided the time had come to act.

As the leader moved in, Annja reached out and grabbed him by the broken lower jaw. She squeezed. His dark eyes flew wide and he squealed with pain. He tried to slash at her with his fingernails.

She pushed him away from her. Hard. The back of his head struck the side of the stainless-steel sink with a crunch. His lanky body spasmed. His eyes rolled up and locked there. He slid to the floor. There was a blood-smeared dent in the side of the sink.

The blond man launched an overhand right at her face. She leaned her upper body back. His knuckles lanced off her left cheekbone.

The sword appeared in her hand. She heard the Latino cry a shrill, wordless warning.

It was too late for the blond man. Before he could recover from throwing himself off balance with his mostly missed punch, the sword came whistling down.

Its tip raked a bloody furrow down his cheek as the blade sliced his shoulder at an angle. He reeled back, spraying blood from his arm. Annja spun to her right, lashing out horizontally. The sword slashed the Latino across his screaming mouth. She stepped into him and cut him down. Then she turned back to the blond man. Clutching at his shoulder with blood spurting through his fingers, he had backed against the wall by the still open cell door. He sidled toward it, leaving a wide smear of blood, shockingly brilliant red. Then he went limp.

She looked around the cell at the fallen men.

"I told you," she said. "I wasn't going to make the mistake of sparing you twice."

Chapter 26

She sprang into the corridor with the sword ready in both hands. Her peripheral vision showed no sign of anyone to the left or right. She looked both ways quickly, confirming that she was alone. She began to walk forward.

Her nerves were jangled and her blood sang with fury. She felt as if she were about to burst with anger. And the horror of the fate she had narrowly escaped. There was something about having that hostility – that foul, purely evil intent – directed at her that was like a strange and violent drug.

She knew she had to control the rage, to keep herself from turning into a soulless killing machine, or worse, a monster who presumed to judge and execute any and all unlucky enough to cross her path. That was the burden she must bear as she carried the sword.

To her left was a small alcove. She stopped, frowning. For a moment she stood, breathing deeply. Then she plunged inside.

"You're a welcome sight," Dr. Nils Bergstrom said from the bed of his cell. It was identical to the one she had just escaped.

He had his coat off. He sat with his legs dangling over the side. His manner was mild.

He raised a dark brow at the sword she still held in her hand. "So our gangster friends were neither confabulating nor lying," he said. "You really do carry a medieval-style broadsword with you."

"Early Renaissance, actually," she said, wondering if it mattered.

He passed it off with an easy gesture. "Outside my area of expertise. Remarkable how you manage to carry it without discovery."

"Why are you in a cell?" she asked.

"Apparently I failed to cover my tracks as well as I thought," he said. "Or perhaps our friend Mad Jack was merely allowing me enough rope to well and truly hang myself before he yanked it tight. He's not as stupid as he acts. Which would beggar possibility, of course."

"Why did you pretend to be somebody named Raywood Cogswell? Who is Raywood Cogswell? And why did you get in touch with me?"

"I did not pretend, my dear," he said. "Raywood Cogswell is me. Rather, a fictitious identity concocted for me."

"Why?" Annja asked.

"To position me to spread disinformation. Are you familiar with the phrase 'giggle spin'? Enthusiasts of the paranormal frequently stray uncomfortably near to truths we would just as soon no one learn. Occasionally they trip and fall right over them. We find it useful to have our people inside the movement, as it were. To spread silly stories, to plant superficially convincing evidence that can subsequently be proved to be false, in general to muddy the waters. Ridicule and sheer obfuscation are among the most potent weapons for protecting classified information."

She drew in a deep breath and let it hiss out between pursed lips. "We're getting off track here. Why did you get in touch with me?"

"I'd hoped you might use your television connections to shed light on what this facility is doing. Get the program canceled."

"Canceled? But isn't this a U.S. government black project?" Annja asked.

"Yes and no," Bergstrom said. "The program is illegal. Or at least deniable. The black-budget money being spent here is earmarked for other researches. The Department of Defense would shut us down at once if they realized what we were up to."

He sighed. "Once I thought this research was important and worthwhile. Unfortunately, the situation is deteriorating so rapidly that time has simply run out on us."

"What do you mean by that?"

Another wave of strangeness like the one she had felt in the abandoned farmhouse passed through her. She winced, swayed.

Klaxon-style horns began to blare, a cacophony of rising-falling sounds that grated, as though across the exposed nerves of broken teeth. Annja jumped, looked frantically about. The sword seemed to quiver like a living thing in her hand, eager to strike.

"Don't worry, young lady," Bergstrom said, standing up and straightening his clothing. "That is not for us. Although it concerns us rather intimately."

"What is it?"

"Containment has been breached," he said. "The creatures are loose inside the facility now." His cell door opened, triggered by the alarms.

She stared at him. "We should go now."

"Yes."

Bergstrom explained as he led her through a trail of slick-walled passageways and narrow stairs. She had put the sword away and he didn't seem surprised. As he predicted, the scientists and technicians they encountered were far too preoccupied to pay them any mind, with the breach alarms still grinding away. His own detention was unlikely to be widely known. Customary practice within the facility was for those who became dissatisfied – or dissatisfactory – to disappear. Asking questions was not encouraged.

Any guards they encountered would, he predicted, have at least a fifty-fifty chance of ignoring them, as well. She was content to take him at his word. She didn't see she had much choice, especially since wandering the halls brandishing a four-foot broadsword could only lead to questions.

"Actually," Bergstrom said, in answer to a question Annja took a personal interest in, "you caught Thompson's eye first. We have – he has – a roomful of information-security nerds who constantly scan the Net for signs of security breaches. When our black flyer manifested near your dig site, and the report subsequently leaked out, one of them spotted it and made the connection between you and that television series. Our Mad Colonel leaped to the conclusion that you were onto us, and preparing to do a feature on the program. Which naturally could not be permitted. So in his inimitable style he shot from the hip, sent three of his removal specialists after you. I fear he's partial to certain chemical assistance that doesn't always lead to calm reflection."

"So I've heard," Annja said grimly.

"Hanratty was terribly distressed when he found out. Dear Oliver is always flustered when confronted with the...less agreeable aspects of our work. But once an attempt had been made, and Thompson's ace operators came back in dire need of repair, he felt he had no choice but to allow Mad Jack to try to finish what he had so impetuously started."

A gaggle of techs in pastel jumpsuits emerged from a door on their right. They chattered nervously as they walked quickly past in the other direction.

"I'm sure it's a drill," said the stocky black woman in lime-green coveralls with the plastic cap on her head. "It's always a drill."

"But what if it's not this time?" asked her similarly clad white male companion, flapping his hands.

"It's always a drill."

"As top scientist for the program, I naturally found out what was happening as soon as the director did. He isn't capable of making a decision without having others around him to tell him what to do. Unfortunately, Thompson can yell a good deal louder than I can. I decided to make my own attempts to contact you."

"You didn't warn me," she said.

"Would you have listened?"

"I suppose not. And that last phone call?"

"Matters were coming to a head here. I wanted to goad you to action."

"So you weren't interrupted by Thompson's goons?"

He smiled. "I performed quite convincingly, did I not? Of course, years of playing Cogswell gave me ample practice for my thespian skills."

"If you were the top scientist here," she said, "why did you want to shut it down?"

Before he could answer, a pair of black-clad guards turned from a side passage on the run, thirty yards ahead, and made straight for them.

27

The guards wore their bulky black uniforms and helmets, and carried weapons slung by straps they kept tense with thumbs hooked through them to prevent the steel-shod butts of their machine pistols from pounding their kidneys. They ran straight toward the unlikely pair, the rogue scientist and the tall young woman in hiking clothes.

Annja began to curl her hand. "Wait," Bergstrom said conversationally.

The two black-clad operators trotted by without a glance at them.

"Quickly, now," he said. "Our research led us out of our depth. Experimenting with DNA, we found it easier to breed hybrid animals than we'd dreamed. Controlling the breaches was the problem. Among other things, it has proved difficult to confine the beast to the facility."

He sighed. His exertion had him breathing heavily. He was also limping slightly, favoring his right leg. "In some cases there have been...controlled breaches. Or at least deliberate ones."

"Why?"

"In part to test our ability to control the creatures themselves. These experiments have not produced many positive results. Also, in order to test our ability to control the release of potentially damaging information, and manage public perceptions of it."

"You mean you were putting innocent people at risk to test how well you could lieto them?" Annja said.

"Yes. We are not the first. Nor the only. We will not be the last."

"That wasn't what made you decide to blow the whistle?"

"Alas, no."

"What could, if not something like that?"

"The fear that we are threatening the fabric of reality itself. Between Hanratty's bland ambition and that psychotic Thompson's growing influence over him, all my warnings were ignored. And I became increasingly desperate. If those creatures begin breeding in the wild..." He shuddered.

"It's one thing to joke about creating the means of destroying the world, and quite another to confront the immediate risk of actually doing so."

"What about the Holy Child sightings?" Annja asked.

"I don't know. That had nothing to do with us," he said.

She frowned and wanted to question that. But approaching a cross passage, he raised a hand to stop her.

"And now time and answers are alike at an end. What remains is action. There may yet be time."

"To prevent what?"

"The world being overrun with deadly monsters," he said.

She looked at him. The alarms continued their cacophony. The corridors were crowded with excited technicians. No one paid the least attention to them.

She wondered, briefly, what was really going on. What did "containment breach" actually mean? But she took Bergstrom at his word. She had little choice.

"All right," she said. "Action I can do. What now?"

"Around this corner is the entrance to a control station. It will likely be guarded inside and out. You must get me inside at all costs."

"And then?"

"You must get out of this facility," he said, "and as far away as you can, as fast as you can."

She drew the sword to her. Bergstrom took a step back.

"Marvelous," he breathed. "What a terrible shame I shall never get to study the means whereby you do that!"

She put the back of her shoulders to the wall. It felt cold and hard through the fabric of her shirt and jacket. She took a deep breath and spun into the cross corridor.

A score of people occupied the passage. They moved in both directions in clumps. She had no idea where they were going or what they were doing.

A pair of men in black stood thirty yards down from her. They had MP-5s in their gloved hands. Their body language suggested they were distrustful of the technicians leavened with lab-coated scientists.

The one farthest from Annja noticed her first. He stepped into the middle of the passage, shouldering his weapon. Startled technicians began to part, screaming, to either side.

They didn't move quickly enough. He opened fire. The sound suppressor kept the burst from being intolerably loud in the confines of the corridor. But it still sounded, like an unmuffled motorcycle engine.

Some of the screams went up in timbre – or stopped. The guard was spraying bullets toward Annja without caring who or what was in the way.

She was running but not fast enough to give her any decent chance of closing with him before he put a bullet into her, even though the panicked technicians made her a harder target. The guard's companion turned and began shooting from the hip, right into the crowd, evoking more screams and causing two technicians to fall right in front of her.

On impulse she jumped. She straightened her body so that, just for an instant, she flew nearly horizontal. She lunged with the sword. She felt the blade bite deep, heard a hoarse cry of pain.

She landed heavily, pulling the sword with her as she fell.

The man had collapsed, his weapon stilled. She wheeled to find the other shooter, hunched in pain, the victim of a ricocheted bullet.

She swung her right foot and kicked away his weapon. He didn't attempt to stop her.

Some of the fleeing personnel had dropped to the floor. Now they were picking themselves up – those that could. Several lay moaning. At least four lay without moving or making any noise at all.

Through the wounded people Dr. Bergstrom made his way. He was walking bent over, clutching the right side of his substantial belly with his hand. The shirt beneath was dyed bright pink.

"You're hit," Annja said.

"I'll live," he replied conversationally enough, although his hairline was beaded with sweat. "Long enough at least."

She found herself standing outside a sealed door. There was a keypad with a slot mounted next to it. It offered nothing she could use.

"What now?" she asked as Bergstrom limped up.

He raised a hand holding a plastic card toward the pad.

"No biometrics?" she asked as he swiped its magnetic strip down the slot.

"No money," he said. "Our budget was far from unlimited. Our security was assumed."

He punched a quick five-number combination. "Get ready," he said, through now gritted teeth.

The door slid open. A guard stood there with a Beretta in his hand.

Annja head-butted him in the face. He staggered back clutching his flattened nose. A second guard was fumbling the strap of an MP-5 off his shoulder. He never got the chance to finish.

A technician in powder blue rose from a swivel chair in front of a bank of monitors. He stared in horror at Annja, standing with the sword still in hand. Then his eyes slid past her.

"Dr. Bergstrom!" he exclaimed.

"Get out, Yee," Bergstrom said. His teeth were individually outlined in scarlet. The technician paled as he saw this, then darted past him and out into the corridor. As he did, a fresh spate of screams wafted in past him.

"It has begun," Bergstrom said, leaning with a hand on the table in front of the console and frowning at the monitors. Whether he referred to what he saw or the terrified cries from outside the small room Annja couldn't tell.

He looked at her. His features were rigidly held against the pain of his wound. She guessed the anesthetic effects of wound shock were already beginning to wear through.

"You must go now, as well," he said. "Turn right, down the corridor for forty yards. Left into the stairwell. Go up two flights. It will put you in a truck tunnel that leads to the outside. Remember what I told you – fast and far!"