Читать книгу Payback - Harper Allen - Страница 8

September

Status: twenty-one days and counting

Time: 0900 hours

Any second now the man sitting across the desk from her could give the order to have her killed.

Dawn smoothed her palms on the gleaming leather of the skintight catsuit she was wearing, but as Aldrich Peters leveled an emotionless look at her she realized her mistake. She schooled her face to blankness, knowing there was nothing she could do to control the trip-hammer beat of her heart. After a long moment he bent his head again and resumed his perusal of Lab 33’s report on her.

Her few days AWOL from Lab 33 last December had stretched into nine months—longer than she’d anticipated, but then, her assignment for the women of Athena Academy had resulted in locating not one lost sister, Lynn White, but a second sibling, Faith Corbett, who had also been a victim of genetic manipulation and who’d had no knowledge of her true origins. Together the three of them had been introduced to the man who was their biological father, Navy SEAL Thomas King…a meeting she hadn’t wanted to attend. What was I supposed to say to him, dammit, she thought as she waited for Peters to finish reading. “Hey, now I know you’re my dad I’m kinda glad I missed when I had you in my rifle sights a couple of months ago when I was working for the bad guys?”

At the time she’d almost been glad she had the excuse of returning to Lab 33 to explain her hasty departure. But as the complex’s steel doors had begun sliding closed behind her yesterday evening, cutting off her last glimpse of the arid New Mexican canyons and foothills, a sense of complete isolation had overtaken her. And with her first breath of the recycled air supplying the massive underground bunker, a Cold War emergency command center secretly built in the 1950s that had never been utilized, but for years now the site of Aldrich Peters’s shadowy organization, her time away had seemed suddenly unreal.

For a moment she’d felt a terrible certainty that it had been unreal. There was no such group as the Cassandras; she hadn’t found Lynn White and Faith Corbett, her biological sisters; she’d never learned the truth about her existence. She was a Lab 33 assassin. She answered to Aldrich Peters. She was in a nightmare where nothing had changed.

In near panic she’d whirled around with the half-formed notion of darting back through the closing doors. At her unexpected movement the nearest guard—a commander, as she’d noted from the dull red flashes on the collar of his field-gray uniform—had jerked his weapon up into firing position, at the same time scrambling clumsily away from her. Behind his face shield she’d seen his eyes, open so wide that rims of white circled his pupils.

They’re scared of me, Uncle Lee! A long-buried memory flashed into Dawn’s mind. I wanted to play tag with them, but they shouted at me to go away. One of them called me a freak. Am I, Uncle Lee? Am I a freak like they say? In Dawn’s memory, the six-year-old version of herself felt arms scooping her close, smelled the somehow reassuring mixture of harsh tobacco and gun oil, heard a voice whose undertone of anger she knew wasn’t directed at her. They’re the freaks, Dawnie. You’re special, and don’t you ever let the sons of bitches convince you otherwise. They’re scared because they know you’re stronger than everyone here, and I don’t mean just lifting-things strong. Your strength comes from inside you. You understand what I’m saying? Her sobs had subsided by then but she’d stayed in the circle of his arms, happy just to be held by him. I guess. But you’re stronger than the sunsa bits, too, right? The arms around her had tightened. For a moment she’d thought the unthinkable had happened and Uncle Lee was mad at her, but when he’d answered his tone had been filled with such pain that she would have gladly traded it for anger. Maybe once, Dawnie. Now I’m no better than they are. But I promise I’ll always stay strong enough to keep them from owning you—even if staying strong costs me everything I care for in this world.

Aldrich Peters laid aside a sheet of paper, the crackle as he did so sounding like a gunshot in the oppressive silence. Dawn didn’t flinch. Her nervousness had disappeared in the past few seconds, she realized. She supposed she should be glad it had, but all she felt was anger.

When the hell are you going to stop falling into the same stupid trap, O’Shaughnessy? she berated herself. Every memory you have of Lee Craig is tainted. Be glad you’ve got something truer than your memories of him to give you strength.

She had payback. No matter that Kayla Ryan had seemed to think revenge wouldn’t set things right for her. No matter that in the conversation she’d had with her sisters on the subject, Lynn and Faith had both agreed with Kayla. She had no intention of delivering Peters to justice. For one final time, she intended to be judge, jury and executioner herself.

She concealed a faint wince as the dull throbbing that signaled one of the headaches she’d recently been experiencing set up a low tattoo behind her temples. As if he sensed her momentary vulnerability, Peters slid the papers aside.

“You passed Section Eight’s tests with flying colors.” His austere features seemed carved in stone. “The lie detector, the bio-and neuro-feedbacks, the psychological workups by Drs. Wang and Sobie. Apparently you were telling the truth when you contacted me yesterday and said you wanted to take up your duties again.”

A rush of triumph raced through her. Of course she’d passed their tests. She’d grown up here, dammit, and there wasn’t a test invented that hadn’t been run on her. By the age of eleven she’d known how to bend them to her advantage without even try—

“I would have been shocked if you’d failed,” Peters added brusquely. “After all, if anyone could manipulate the results it would be you.”

Dawn fought to keep her regard steady. She’d underestimated him, she thought tensely. Whatever his tests and his experts told him, Dr. Aldrich Peters preferred to rely on his own instincts…and those instincts were telling him she was lying. With seconds to revoke her own death warrant, she needed to go on the offensive—now.

“Maybe I’m being paranoid, but I get the feeling you don’t fully accept my explanation for my disappearance from Lab 33 last winter,” she said, allowing anger to creep into her voice. “At the risk of sounding more paranoid, I also get the feeling you’re making up your mind as to whether I should even walk out of here alive. Am I right?”

The thin smile that appeared on Aldrich Peters’s lips did little to soften the remoteness of his expression. “I don’t call that paranoid, Dawn, I call that astute. You’re right, I’ve got serious doubts about your story of going into an emotional tailspin after your Uncle Lee was killed. Lab 33’s ultimate killing machine, the protégé Lee Craig was grooming to take his place, falling to pieces like any ordinary woman? I don’t buy it.”

“You don’t buy it because you’re forgetting one important fact.” She stood abruptly, placing her palms flat on his desktop. “I am an ordinary woman in many respects—ordinary enough to feel pain when the only family member I’ve ever known is torn from me and ordinary enough to know that I haven’t lived an ordinary life. I told you, losing my uncle was a shattering experience and I needed to come to terms with it.”

She exhaled. “I needed time to come to terms with who and what I am, too. As you just said, I’m not your usual twenty-two-year-old, am I? I’m a superwoman who’s almost indestructible, trained to use my special talents to clandestinely further the best interests of my country as Uncle Lee did. After he died I felt it was time to ask myself if I really wanted to take his place.”

“What conclusion did you come to?”

She answered him promptly. “That Lab 33’s the only game in town for someone like me. And as Uncle Lee always told me, at least I’m working on the side of the good guys.”

“Which leads me to my second question. Do you still believe we’re the good guys, Dawn, or have you taken your allegiance elsewhere during these past nine months? After all, despite your orders, Kayla Ryan is still alive. Carl Bradford, whom I can assure you was on our side, is dead. Why is that?” Peters’s tone held an implied threat. Slowly she let her palms slide from the desk and straightened to her full height.

“I told you. Bradford interfered with my assassination attempt. He kidnapped Ryan’s daughter, made it a federal case. Then he tried to kill me. I had to take him out. And killing Ryan would have brought on too much heat. I’m certain she and the others are no longer a threat to us. I’ve dedicated my life to Lab 33. I’ve demonstrated my loyalty time and again, and you still feel you have the right to ask me that?”

This was it, she told herself as Aldrich Peters held her gaze. Either she’d allayed his suspicions or she hadn’t—and if it was the latter, both of them would be dead minutes from now. Her plan of gathering as much information as she could over the next few weeks for the Cassandras before she made her move against him would have to be forgotten. But she wouldn’t be able to stop him from hitting the emergency button on his desk that would bring the guards pouring in, and she had no doubt that they knew her Achilles’ heel.

A woven-steel garrote had been part of the standard weapons issue for Lab 33 internal security for as long as she could remember…and for as long as she could remember, she’d instinctively known that particular weapon had been issued with only one opponent in mind. She could survive a bullet or a knife but, as she’d told Peters, she was an ordinary human being in some respects…one of which was that she couldn’t survive without oxygen.

So be it, Dawn thought with deadly calm. If I die, I die knowing I’ve taken him with—

Without warning the throbbing shot through her head again. As fast as it had come it faded, and as her vision cleared she realized something had disconcerted Peters. His next words revealed what that something had been.

“The last thing I expected to see in your eyes when I questioned your loyalty was pain, but apparently the psych profile Drs. Wang and Sobie prepared on you was accurate,” he said slowly. “This changes everything.” He leaned back in his chair. “It seems I misjudged you, Dawn. Welcome home.”

“It’s good to be back.” Her clipped reply betrayed nothing of the relief sweeping through her. You did it, O’Shaughnessy! she thought in fierce exultation. You lied through your teeth to Aldrich Peters and the bastard bought it. Now nothing can stop you from—

“Unfortunately, your little vacation couldn’t have been more regrettably timed.” Peters’s composure was firmly back in place. “You’re dying.”

The man was a consummate manipulator, Dawn thought in disbelief, but whether he knew it or not his days of manipulating her were over. “Either I’m cleared for duty or I’m not,” she said tightly. “But if you think I’m going to jump through any more of your psychological hoops, forget it. I’ve had enough of—”

“I broke it to you clumsily, but believe me, it’s the truth.” He shook his head with every appearance of regret. “To put it as simply as I can, your genes are breaking down. I’ve had my best people working on the problem for almost a year, but although we’ve isolated the triggering factor, we haven’t been able to perfect the reversal process.”

“Almost a year.” Her mind still processing his stunning news, Dawn seized on the one detail she felt able to deal with. “You mean you knew about this before I went AWOL and you didn’t inform me?”

“If I’d suspected you were thinking of taking some unauthorized R and R, I would have,” Peters countered. “Be thankful that the medicals and psychological evaluations the doctors here have subjected you to all your life drew our attention to this as soon as it started to show up. Lab 33’s always had your best interests at heart.”

“Lab 33 has always had Lab 33’s best interests at heart. And Lab 33’s best interests include knowing the inner workings of their human lab rat,” she answered flatly. “Spare me the hearts and flowers, Doctor, and cut to the chase. How much time do I have?”

“Worst-case scenario, twenty-one days. The degeneration of your genes is following a mathematically predictable time line that can be precisely charted.” The well-tailored shoulders of his suit jacket lifted in a shrug. “We don’t know exactly when the symptoms will start, but they should begin exhibiting soon. Unfortunately, we don’t know what they’ll be, either.” He hesitated. “About the only thing besides the time line that we know for certain from our experiments is that your death will be painful. In effect, your body will turn on itself.”

She’d taken on every conceivable enemy during her dangerous career. She’d gone up against those enemies, confident that she would be their final and ultimately un-beatable opponent. Was it irony or simple justice that her own final battle would be desperately waged and lost against herself?

Simple justice, O’Shaughnessy, Dawn thought bleakly. Justice was the only word that fit when the genes that had helped her become Lab 33’s killing machine were the very ones that would bring about her—

Her thoughts came to a halt as a terrible realization filled her. Her mind went blank with fear before it grasped a possible glimmer of hope.

“You said worst-case scenario is that I have twenty-one days,” she said through stiff lips. “What’s the best case?”

Aldrich Peters steepled his fingers on the desk. “Your survival, of course. And there’s a good chance we can achieve that, now you’re on board with Lab 33 again.”

It took the space of a heartbeat for her to comprehend what lay behind his smile. When she did, it took all her self-control not to jerk Peters’s silk tie into a noose and end everything there and then.

“You know how to reverse the process and you deliberately let me think it was hopeless?” Her hands clenched into fists at her sides. “Enough with the games, Doctor. Let’s get started with my treatment.”

Because the sooner I receive it, the sooner I can get word to the Cassandras that Faith and Lynn are probably facing the same genetic breakdown, she thought. Maybe I deserve to pay for my past that way, but they don’t. And even if it means I have to push my own personal agenda back a little, I’m going to make sure they won’t.

She wasn’t giving up the payback that was coming to her, but Kayla had been right—despite the fact that she barely knew them, despite the very different lives they’d led, her sisters were her first priority.

“Get one thing straight.” Peters’s voice was a whip-lash. “If I choose to make you sweat a little to bring you back into line after your irresponsible disappearance, you’ll take it and like it. Yes, we can create a reversal serum, and yes, as a slap on the wrist I didn’t immediately reveal its existence to you. But I agree, the tit for tat stops here…because you’re leaving Lab 33 tonight on an assignment for me.”

She shook her head decisively. “No deal. I get the serum before I take on the job.”

“Getting the serum is the job.” A wintry smile crossed his features as he dropped his bombshell. “Our scientists are missing the final piece of the puzzle that will allow them to formulate the reversal serum. In fact, there’s only one man in the world who’s possibly cracked the puzzle.”

“Possibly?” she repeated blankly. “Dammit, you’re not sure?”

“That’s part of your assignment—to ascertain he’s made the breakthrough we believe he has.”

“Why not simply ask him?” she retorted. “Don’t scientists practically fall all over themselves to publicize their findings?”

“Most do.” Peters’s lips thinned. “Sir William London’s the exception, a paranoid megalomaniac who won’t reveal anything until he’s ready. He’s also the greatest genius the world has ever known in the field of genetics.”

“So I’m to break into the research facility where London works, steal his notes and bring them back for our people to use. Getting past a few security guards should be easy enough,” Dawn said in defeat.

A simple B & E she could live with, she told herself edgily. At worst she’d have to temporarily disable a guard or two, but she’d make sure no one got seriously hurt.

And if it hadn’t been a simple break and enter? If you’d been ordered to kill for the serum, would you have stepped over the line once more to save yourself and your sisters? The uncomfortable question came to her before she could thrust it away. She didn’t know, Dawn admitted. She’d made a vow never to carry out Aldrich Peters’s murderous orders again, but if the serum was all that stood between her sisters and a terrible death….

Pain spiked with sudden intensity behind her eyes. She fought against it as Peters pulled a sheaf of papers toward him with a frown.

“I should have made myself clear. Sir William is funded by the Defense Department in a joint venture with the British, and his laboratory’s inside a compound in the middle of the Arizona desert. It’s guarded by a crack team of military personnel headed by a certain Captain Des Asher—who’s not only London’s nephew, but a highly trained British Special Air Services officer. You’ll pose as a research assistant and get close to London that way.”

He held the papers out to her. “Study Asher’s military bio. He’s going to be your biggest obstacle, so assassinate him first.”