Page 43 of Her Selfless Warrior (Omega Sky)
Kostya gave a chin tilt, then strode past him to the next room where Nolan had his med-kit out and was giving Iris Robinson a shot. Nolan looked up at him and by his expression, Kostya could tell that they had a problem on their hands. “I want her and the other two ready for transport in three minutes, you got it?”
“I’m going to need help,” Nolan told Kostya, but before he could answer, a harsh thud came over the commlink.
“Goddammit!” It was Lincoln’s voice. Kostya started running to the front of the building as he heard a loud crash and then a sharp scream in his ear. It was a man, but it didn’t sound like Linc.
“Watch out!” A woman shrieked.
A muffled grunt.
“Sooksin!”a man cursed in Russian.
Then there was silence.
“Are you all right, Ma’am?” Lincoln sounded out of breath.
Bitter cold hit Kostya’s face as he ran toward the all-terrain vehicle. The passenger side door wasn’t open, so he ran around to the driver’s side. It wasn’t open either. He kept going until he found the rear open, and he jumped aboard. He didn’t pay attention to the dead man; instead, he focused on Lincoln and the figure he was crouched over. She was huddled in a heavy winter coat.
Linc looked up at him. “She’s good.”
Kostya squatted down next to her head. “Doctor Lord, we need to get you and the others out of here.” Her bare hands reached up and gripped the front of his jacket.
“Can’t leave. They have to be stopped,” she panted.
He didn’t care about anything she might have to say, they needed to leave.Now.
“Gideon,” he growled into his mic as he scanned the vehicle. It would house his entire team as well as the biologists. “Tell me how to drive this thing.”
“The Vityaz?”
“Yep. I need a crash course.” He got up and Doctor Lord hooked her arm around his leg.
“Stop. Are you in charge?”
“Yes. Lady, we’ve got to get out of here before everybody wakes up. We have an advantage at the moment, but it won’t last long.” Kostya ripped his leg away from her grasp.
“We can’t go. Tens of thousands of Americans will die. Maybe hundreds of thousands.”
Kostya turned around and saw Linc’s expression. He looked concerned, like he was buying into what she was saying. Kostya hadn’t been worried from the moment Ryker said that they were only dealing with a Bio Safety Level Two. Kostya knew they couldn’t be dealing with any really dangerous biological agents.
“Doctor Lord, what are you talking about?” Kostya asked.
“They think they’re just going to kill our cattle and it won’t harm humans but they’re wrong, the formula is wrong. The aerosol that they intend to use to disperse the chemical, changes it. We won’t know until it’s too late. So many will be poisoned and die.”
Kostya looked at Linc.
The doctor continued. “But it doesn’t matter. Even if they just did what they were intending, it would be catastrophic to America’s food supply. We have to stop them no matter what.”
“So they are working on biological warfare,” Kostya muttered. No wonder this team was in the middle of nowhere. Did the scientists even think about the fact that they were put here because the Russian government thought things might go wrong—and if they did, they were expendable?
“Who’s in charge?”
“Two people are heading up the project. His name is Grigor Petrov, he’s the head biologist. And then there is Anfisa Nikitin. I don’t know exactly what she does, but Grigor is scared of her. Hell, everybody is.”
“Got it.” Kostya turned away from the doctor. “Did everyone hear that?” He was met with a chorus of affirmatives.
“We need to shut this shit down. Gideon, have you been able to get anybody in the States?” he asked.
“Negative, there’s still no satellite signal.”
