The Prisoner - Carlos J. Cortes [83]
With the flashlights turned off, the space became a sensory-deprivation tank but for the noises seemingly all around them.
“The FDU squad has located the phone.”
Over the years, Nikola had memorized the little nuances in Dennis’s voice when delivering snippets of information. He waited a moment, but only to confirm no added details would be forthcoming without a prompt. “Where?”
“The sewers.”
Nikola was still, his face twitching as if recovering from an impromptu slap. His eyes darted to a clock over the antique marble mantelpiece: 23:53—twenty-three minutes since the ridiculous threat and only minutes away from its deadline. Every DHS unit was deployed on the northern side of town, leaving the south squarely in the hands of the police, their roadblocks the only way to prevent an escape. Roadblocks … soon to be hurriedly unmanned as all units rushed to contain a major terrorist attack.
“There’s more.”
This time he didn’t offer a prompt.
“Bellevue Hospital has just reported a theft. An unknown person or persons have broken into their emergency supply room and made off with several pieces of equipment—and forty pints of type-O blood. The police are there with a scientific team. It seems one of the thieves left a set of strange footprints in the garden outside.”
Nikola bunched both fists on his desktop until his knuckles whitened.
“Prosthetic legs.”
chapter 29
23:58
“Carry on as usual. Imagine we’re not here.”
Charley Navarre swallowed hard, eyeing the three black-clad hulks weaving past the consoles at Villiard’s nuclear power station control room. How can I ignore them? Whoever designed the shiny body armor of the DHS FDU teams must have liberally copied the bad guys’ gear from a fifty-year-old film saga depicting intergalactic conflict. Heavy helmets bristling with dimples and lumps, probably housing communications gear, were mated with face masks that hid the wearer’s expression except for the eyes. They were the only hint that a sentient being was actually inside the articulated Kevlar carapace. Their boots were enormous. Charley wondered if, besides protecting the bearer’s feet, the monstrous contraptions doubled as some kind of storage.
He glanced at Hulk One, from which the voice originated, and at the object cradled in his arms: a rectangular box roughly the size to carry a dozen long-stemmed roses. But it was black, dotted with tiny lights and other mean-looking bits. Then Charley nodded at Sherry and Dieter, working the other two consoles, and looked down into the array of screens flanking his semicircular desk without registering the otherwise-normal diagrams sneaking across the displays. The Scourge of God? A terrorist attack? The whole thing somehow sounded too far-fetched.
His comm console flashed. “Navarre,” he said.
“Everything fine with you?” The voice of Dave Vela, the night-shift plant director, sounded harried.
“Well, I have three”—Charley was about to say gorillas, but checked his words—”DHS officers here, but otherwise normal.”
“Let’s be philosophic about this. Chalk it up to a security exercise.”
“Will do.”
Hulk Three changed posture and shook his leg. It suddenly occurred to Charley that inside the bulky armor, scratching an itch had to be a bitch. “I doubt they’ll be here much longer. Several squads are checking—”
The room trembled. Red lights flashed over the control panels as earthquake detectors triggered a warning. The room shook again and a deafening siren, reminiscent of yesteryear submarines announcing a crash dive, blared in the confined space.
“Scram!” Charley kicked back his swivel chair and bolted upright, only to be stopped by a paw slamming