Читать книгу Siren Song - James Axler - Страница 9

Chapter Two

As the companions didn’t have the destination codes for the mat-trans unit, where they ended up was totally random. The jump could take them to a redoubt five hundred miles away or five thousand—or anywhere in the world, for that matter. The companions never knew where they’d arrived until they left the redoubt and got their bearings.

The effects of traveling by mat-trans made a person feel as though he or she had caught a swamp bug. The stomach rebelled, the body went weak and there was the urgent feeling that you were about to crap your pants. Thankfully, the journey itself was momentary, and once it passed—usually—so did the sickness.

The seven companions materialized in a shock of light, and even as they appeared the extractor fans of the mat-trans hummed to life, working their magic to clear the chamber of gas.

They were sitting in a different mat-trans chamber—its dimensions and design exactly like the one they had just left, the only difference being the color of its armaglass walls, which was a sort of red-violet, Ricky thought.

Breathing through clenched teeth, he clutched his side, his eyes screwed up in pain. He still hadn’t got used to the discorporation and reintegration of his molecules that was necessary for the mat-trans to shunt him to a new location, and the jarring only served to make the wound in his side feel worse. “Madre—” he muttered, doubling over in agony.

“Okay, Ricky,” Mildred said, hurrying across the small room to the teen’s side and opening her satchel of medical supplies. She moved a little unsteadily, still suffering from the aftereffects of the jump. Mildred was far more experienced in this than Ricky, but it could still catch her unawares sometimes, just the same way it caught everyone unawares sometimes. She usually had a concoction she called jump juice, which was helpful in settling the stomach, but she was all out.

As she moved, Mildred spotted the box. It loomed incongruously at the rear wall of the chamber, clicking to itself in a kind of constant hum. “Um...” Mildred began, stopping in her tracks. “Ryan? J.B.?”

Ryan was still recovering from the jump, but he moved to where Mildred had halted and scanned the device with his single blue eye. “Shit.”

It was about the size of a shoebox, roughly a foot across and half as deep, and the top was open to reveal a mass of wires and a timer. The timer was analog, like an old oven timer, and it clicked quietly to itself as it counted down.

“What the hell is that?” J.B. said, peering past Ryan’s shoulder. “Oh.”

“Three minutes,” Ryan said, reading the dial on the timer.

“Get everyone out of here,” J.B. instructed, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a tiny pair of wire cutters no bigger than nail scissors. His instruction was unnecessary. Ryan was already rousing Krysty and the others, ushering them to the chamber door. “Triple red, everyone,” Ryan ordered as he turned the door handle. They had less than three minutes. Ryan would wait. He knew why J.B. wanted to defuse the bomb—the importance of the mat-trans was impossible to put a value on. If they’d emerged in a hot zone or a settlement of crazies—or both, as they had in California—then this chamber may be their only means of escape.

J.B. had defused bombs before. They had three minutes, which meant they still had a chance.

Doc and Jak took out their blasters before they hurried through the doorway, while Krysty followed a little more slowly, still reeling from the blow of her post-Gaia comedown. Mildred helped Ricky through, glancing back at J.B. as the Armorer knelt to study the explosive device. A bomb inside the mat-trans meant someone had been in this redoubt, wherever it was.

Anyone with any brains would have gotten out double-quick as soon as they had placed the explosive, but Ryan wasn’t taking any chances. He flipped the safety off his SIG Sauer blaster, left the chamber and anteroom and marched across the control room.

It was a redoubt like the one they had just exited, as most were—concrete walls, low ceilings, anteroom and control room, with winking and blinking lights and dials and comp monitors. The lights were on, but that didn’t mean anything. Redoubt lights functioned automatically when a mat-trans fired to life, which meant that the bomber could be long gone by now. Or just around the corner.

There were several cracks that ran across one side of the room, up the walls and through the ceiling, wide enough to accommodate a person’s arm. Something had struck the redoubt at some time, and struck it hard. Ryan’s people fanned out swiftly. A layer of dust was sprinkled on the age-old com terminals, but Doc noticed immediately that several screens had been wiped clean.

“Someone tried to use these,” Doc said. “Recently, too.”

Ryan waited while the rest of his friends made their way through the room. Jak keyed in the code to open the door, then they all filed into the corridor beyond. The albino youth scouted ahead, checking the immediate rooms of the redoubt, hunting for danger and for somewhere safe to position the group should the bomb go off.

While Ryan waited in the doorway, Doc helped a reluctant Krysty down the corridor.

“Ryan, come on,” she urged. “We can’t...”

“We have to try to save it,” Ryan said, his single eye fixed on J.B.

“Get her to safety,” he instructed Doc without turning.

“Krysty, I’ll see you outside.”

The redheaded beauty wanted to say something else; she was his soul mate and she usually wouldn’t leave him. But in her weakened state, leave was all she could do. And she knew that Ryan wouldn’t leave J.B. alone, not if there was a chance they could defuse the bomb.

Doc guided Krysty down the corridor. “How are you feeling, my dear?” he asked.

Krysty smiled, her usually vibrant hair hanging limply around her face. “Still kind of woozy,” she admitted, flashing him a half smile.

“Lean against me,” Doc instructed. “I may be old but I’m still good for that much, at least.”

While J.B. and Ryan dealt with the bomb, Jak employed his own natural talents to lead the rest of the group out of the redoubt as swiftly as he could.

While they had landed in an unknown redoubt, these military bases roughly followed the same basic design. Jak followed the widest corridor, turning each time it split and choosing the widest corridor again. The overhead lights flickered to life at each junction Jak stepped into, brought to life by motion sensors, filling in the void ahead with each step.

The others followed as fast as they were able—Doc helping Krysty along at his side, Mildred watching Ricky carefully as the lad struggled with his wounded side.

Mildred looked worriedly at Ricky. She glanced back at the open door to the control room—not to check on J.B. but merely to see how far they were from the potential blast. Mildred had feelings for J.B.—they were lovers—but she remained professional and focused during times like this. She had seen too many mistakes caused by people not paying attention, and as a doctor her first concern had to be her patient.

Mildred could see that Ricky wouldn’t make it to the outside in the two minutes they had left. He was slowing even now, not quite limping but certainly dragging his heels. His face was looking paler, too: blood loss.

“Jak, we’re going to have to stop,” Mildred called.

Without slowing his pace, Jak glanced over his shoulder and nodded. “We go. No point all dying.”

It was a harsh truth, Mildred knew. She turned back to Ricky, indicating an open doorway. “Stop here,” she instructed.

“But Ryan said...” Ricky began.

Mildred shot him a look. “I need to look at that wound,” she said. “In here.” She led him through the open doorway into what appeared to be a television monitoring room. The room contained two swivel chairs and a bank of television screens that dominated one wall in a gentle curve.

Ricky looked around with evident concern. “Lot of glass here if the bomb goes off.”

Mildred ignored him. “Lift up your arms,” she said, and Ricky did so.

* * *

RYANSTOODINthe doorway to the control room, wondering how long they had.

“J.B.?”

Inside the chamber, J.B. crouched by the device, warily eyeballing it. The timer was attached to a chemical mix with an explosive and an accelerant to increase the blast. When it went off, it would appear to be a single explosion, but in fact there would be two in very quick succession, the first triggering the full payload of the device. The Armorer judged the size of the device.

“The armaglass will hold the explosion,” he called back to Ryan.

“What about defusing it?” Ryan asked.

J.B. shook his head, still holding the wire cutters in front of him. “This bastard’s wired up six ways to Sunday. I’d need hours to figure it out,” he admitted.

“How long do we have?”

“Thirty seconds,” J.B. replied, slipping his wire cutters back into his jacket pocket. Then he got up from his crouch, knowing better than to rush. Rushing only made a person careless; the one time in a million that a person would slip on the floor of a chamber and earn a concussion. Thirty seconds was plenty of time to get out.

Ryan was waiting for J.B. at the door to the control room. If the bomb went off early, they were dead, but Ryan wouldn’t leave J.B.—they had been brothers in arms for too long for him to do that.

J.B. made his way swiftly to the chamber door and pulled it closed behind him. Once the door was closed, the mat-trans chamber was designed to be airtight to ensure a clean jump when in use. J.B. trusted that to help protect them from the blast. There were fifteen seconds left now before the bomb went off.

J.B. turned, checking his pockets nervously as he hurried from the room. He still had the M-4000 and the Mini-Uzi he habitually carried; it wouldn’t do to escape the explosion only to find himself weaponless.

Ryan watched as J.B. strode toward him.

“What are you still doing here?” J.B. asked, irritated.

“You think I’m letting you get blown up on your own?” Ryan snapped back. “Too much water under the bridge for that.”

J.B. nodded. “Ten seconds,” he said as he followed Ryan into the stark corridor.

Then the two men started to run, hurrying for the nearest doorway, which was cracked open. They pried it open wider to accommodate their size and slipped inside.

“Four...three...two...one,” J.B. intoned. When he got to “two,” both men turned away from the direction of the blast and placed their hands over their ears.

A moment later a dull sound like a thump reverberated through the redoubt, followed by a much louder boom accompanied almost instantaneously by the tinkling sound of shattering glass. Ryan and J.B. fell to the floor as the shockwave rocked through the redoubt.

* * *

JAKWASWITHDoc and Krysty when the bomb exploded. They were standing in a garage area of the redoubt, close to the surface and far enough away that they heard the explosion as a kind of distant cough. Still, they all knew exactly what it was and for a moment a solemn hush seemed to pass over them.

Krysty tensed. “Ryan...”

Doc held on to her, pulling her close. “Relax, Krysty, my girl,” he said, trying to calm her. “We don’t know what has happened yet.”

“I want to go back,” Krysty told him.

“Going back would only serve to place us in more danger,” Doc said reasonably. “They will come to us when they are ready.”

A few paces ahead of them, Jak had adopted a semi-crouch as he walked toward the door to the redoubt. The door lay on one side of the wide, garage-like area within which a few military vehicles still remained. The vehicles had been stripped down to shells, their components and armament long gone, tires removed along with anything else that anyone might be able to put to use. Worryingly, the door to the redoubt was open and showed about four feet of blue sky along with the scrappy dirt of an overgrown track.

Jak’s Colt Python had materialized in his hand once more. He didn’t like the fact that the door was open. It meant someone had been inside, which the bomb had already indicated, and that maybe they hadn’t had time to close it again, which meant they could still be nearby. Jak’s pale hand flicked at the Colt’s trigger guard absently as he approached the opening, padding toward it on silent feet.

Jak stopped for a moment at the open door and listened, isolating the sounds coming from outside. There were birds chirruping, the buzz of insects...and a being, moving amid the undergrowth, feet shuffling on leaves and grass. A moment later Jak heard another sound—more figures approaching, moving in unison with military precision, moving fast.

Blaster poised in front of him, Jak stepped through the open door of the redoubt.