Page 39 of Her Selfless Warrior (Omega Sky)
As soon as they got to the third building, Ryker and Kostya worked like a well-oiled machine. Ryker went clockwise and Kostya went counterclockwise. That would have them meeting at the front close to the tanks.
It was the same damn set-up as what he’d seen in the last building, basically a clean-room to manufacture pharmaceuticals. What kind of biological terror were they creating that they had to do it in the middle of nowhere behind concrete walls?
“I’ve got no signs of life. What about you, Ryker?”
“Nope, just the lab equipment, but at least it’s only set up as a Biosafety Level two.”
Shit. Kostya had forgotten that Ryker had been part of the team that was in Sierra Leone during the Ebola outbreak, which had been so horrific. No wonder he could recognize the difference between biosafety lab levels.
“You heard the man,” Kostya said into his mic. “The third building is clear, now it’s time to focus on the main building.”
His men knew what to do and where to go. He met up with Ryker at the front of the third outbuilding. Was this snow ever going to ease up? Now it was blowing straight at him and it was like he was in a wind tunnel. Kostya glanced over at Ryker to make sure he was all right. Kostya had at least thirty pounds on him, so he wanted to make sure that he was keeping up. Ryker gave him a jaunty salute, so Kostya kept pushing ahead until he got to the back of the big building. It was the same as the outbuilding—the windows were up high, or they would have been if it hadn’t been for all the snow. Not one of them had any kind of light showing from inside. Kostya jerked up on the sleeve of his jacket and saw that it was now a quarter to four in the morning, but still, he would have expectedsomelight from inside.
“Hey, do any of you see light coming from inside?” he asked his team.
He received nothing but negative answers.
Was it possible that the people inside had lost power?
“Who’s found doors?” Kostya asked.
“You know about the two here in the front,” Landon answered. “The doors are steel, could be reinforced. Can’t get too close, there are cameras out front.”
“On the northwest corner, there’s a door. Another metal awning. Two wet cigarette butts. But I would bet my last dollar there are dozens more under the snow,” Nolan reported. “No cameras.”
“How about windows?” Kostya asked. “We’ve got five on the south side, three too small to get in, two large enough to crawl into. The three on the west side were all too small. What about the rest of you?”
“Sounds like we have the same window configuration here on the north side as you do on the south. Three small, and two large enough that everybody but you and Mateo and Gideon could squeeze through.” Nolan reported.
“Sebastian, what’s the set-up on the east side?” Kostya asked.
“Just the two front doors with the camera. I haven’t seen it move, but the red light on it tells me that it’s active.”
Well, there goes my theory that the power is off inside.
“You guys stay away from the front doors. Go over to the north wall. Mateo and Nolan, go back to the west. Ryker and I will stay here on the south wall. I want every single window scoped out, I want to know exactly what we’re dealing with. Give your counts to Gideon.”
This is where Ryker shone. He was fast and accurate in these types of situations, and he scoped out three of the windows to Kostya’s two. At his second window, Kostya stopped and considered what he was seeing. It was a small room, with three bodies lying down, all of them with heat signatures. From what he could tell, they were all lying on the floor.
If this was some kind of complex they had built out here in the middle of nowhere, they would surely have set up suitable housing facilities for the people who were running things. Nope, these people lying on the floor weren’t expected. Kostya would bet his bottom dollar that they were three of the five missing biologists. He just hoped to God that the other two were somewhere else in the building.
He reported in what he was seeing.
“Okay, this is what we’ve got,” Gideon announced.
“Sebastian and his team reported a big ole goose egg when it came to people. Their windows lead out to what looked like offices and a conference room. Mateo and Nolan turned up twelve people in total, all in bed along the west wall. Our erstwhile leader probably found three of our targets on the south wall while Ryker came up with two people spooning in a bed, also on the south wall.”
“Lieutenant, I don’t suppose you saw your targets through the larger window, so somebody could get through?” Gideon asked hopefully.
Kostya snorted. “Hell no, only people in the movies get that lucky.”
“How should we play this?” Ryker asked. “The large window close to you are your snugglers, but you can’t fit through.”
“Mateo and Nolan, what’s the configuration of your people? Can you tell if they’re behind closed doors?”
“Yes,” they answered in unison.
“There’s no real way to be quiet about this if we go through the window,” Ryker said.
