“Oh, Adam,” she said, “I’ll tell the colonel. I’ll be sure to tell him.”
He began shooting around like a rocket, slamming into the walls with hideous, crunching thuds.
“Adam!” She leaped up out of the chair, but he was whizzing now, racing so fast she could hear the bzzt of his passing but not see so much as a glimpse of gray skin or the gleam of one of his huge black eyes.
At that moment, without the slightest warning, thick smoke came pouring through every air-conditioning vent in the room.
For an instant, she was frozen, her mind unable to take in what she was seeing.
The smoke roiled along the ceiling, and she saw that it was filled with glowing red streaks. The lights began flickering, grew dim.
“Adam,” she screamed, “we’ve got to get out!” In two strides she was across the room. She fumbled open the cover on the bail-out switch and hit it with the heel of her hand.
Sirens erupted, the facility went to emergency lighting, and the door to the lock slid open. “Adam,” she screamed,
The smoke came down like a curtain, turning everything inky dark. An instant later, the fire struck her head and neck with ferocious, terrifying heat. Covering her head, she dropped to the floor. “Adam! Come toward me, Adam, stay low!”
Nothing happened. There was bare visibility here, and it was hot and getting hotter. She could smell in the stink of the smoke the additional stench of her own singed hair. The next breath she took caused a reflex of a kind she didn’t know existed. The choking was a fearsome weight slammed down on her back, the gagging like some sort of spring unraveling in her throat.
She backed out through the airlock and into the control room. Here, meteors of plastic were dripping down from the ceiling.
She was sick with dread, she knew that she had lost Adam, but she also knew that she had to get out of this place fast or she would be burned to death. The elevator doors were open, but she would not dare to enter it. Feeling her way along, she came to the door of the emergency stair. She reached up into the heat and opened it. As she went through, smoke gushed in behind her, and she only just managed to get the door closed.
Crying and screaming, she opened it a crack, but there was nothing but smoke and now also flames licking into the shaft. “Adam! Adam! Adam!”
The door began to crackle, and heat hit her in the face even though she was low, and she had no choice but to slam it again.
Crying and coughing, she began the long trek upward on the narrow circular escape stair. As she trudged along, pacing herself to avoid exhaustion, she wracked her brain to understand how a grass fire next door had spread to the facility. Sparks must have somehow entered the ground-level air intake and started a conflagration in the air-conditioning system.
Three-quarters of the way to the top, she dragged her cell phone out of her pocket, but it was still out of range. She continued on, reaching the surface so winded that she had to stop and catch her breath before she could even manage to open the door that led into the foyer.
She felt it, noted that it wasn’t hot. She cracked it, looked out into the foyer. There were two firemen standing there. Above her head, thuds indicated that another man was on the stairs to the offices.
There was a rumbling from below and smoke came bursting up the stairwell. In an instant, it was fiercely hot, her eyes were burning, and she was choking again, even worse than before.
She had no choice but to act. She could not stay here. Again she opened the door. The intensity of the smoke increased at once. Behind her, the heat rose. Opening the door turned the stairwell into a flue.
The next instant, the door flew out of her hand and the firemen dragged her out, slamming it shut as soon as she was safe.
“Are you conscious?”
“Yes!”
“Okay, dizzy?”
“No, sir. My chest is burning.”
“Is there anybody else down there?”
She wanted to say yes, she wanted them to try to rescue Adam. That could not be allowed, though. These men had no clearances. These men could not enter the facility.
She fumbled in her jeans, drew out her credentials. “That facility is classified,” she gasped. “There’s nobody else in it and it cannot be entered without authorization.”
“This is a fire situation, lady. We’re gonna go in there.”
“No! It’s illegal!” She struggled to her feet, went for her cell phone again. “I’m calling my supervisor.” She punched in the colonel’s speed dial… and got his message. “Colonel, there’s a fire here, we’re dealing with a lot of unauthorized personnel and I need somebody here to control this situation!” She hung up.
At that moment, Andy appeared. He came hurrying in and threw his arms around her. Then he held her at arm’s length. “My God, you’re burned, you have no eyebrows.”
The foyer door burst open and fire gushed out with the ferocity of water from a burst main. They got out of there, and the firemen began deploying hose.
“It’s totally out of control,” she said to Andy.
“Where is he?”
“I couldn’t manage to save him.”
“Dear God.”
“They mustn’t find remains. We can’t let them find remains.”
“I know it.”
Her cell rang. “It’s him,” she said. “Colonel, there’s a fire in progress here.”
Silence. Then, very calmly, “What happened?”
“There was a grass fire next door. When I heard sirens, I came over here from my place. The fire didn’t appear to be serious, but I felt that I should be with Adam, so I went down. A few minutes later, the whole facility filled with smoke and fire. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“What’s Adam’s status?”
“He’s still down there!”
“Is he dead, then?”
“I would assume so.”
More silence. Then a sound that Lauren thought might be a cry, but it was so loud and so close to the phone that it broke up into a series of shattering electronic noises. Then she could hear him taking breaths. He said, finally, “Okay. You cannot let those people down there. Anything could be going on, this is outside the envelope.”
“Sir, I can’t stop them, they’re ignoring my credentials.”
“I’m gonna blow somebody’s brains out if this doesn’t get handled,” he said, but so mildly that it didn’t seem like the threat she knew that it was.
“Sir, where are you? Can you get here soon?”
“I’m an hour out in my plane, damnit! YOU handle it,
“He is one pissed-off guy,” she muttered.
“Oh, yeah, he would be. You know what we lost here? We lost the most important thing this country possesses, that’s what we lost. And that man is the person who has to take the heat for it. So he is gonna be pissed.”
Mike couldn’t pace in the plane, the cabin was too confined, so he sat rubbing the arms of his seat. He had to report this, he had to do it immediately. He said into the intercom, “I need the code box.” This small, highly sophisticated device transmitted and received in quantum-encoded bursts that could not be decrypted by intruders.
The first officer brought it back from the equipment bay behind his station, then returned to the flight deck. Mike turned off the intercom, then glanced at the flight-deck door to make certain that it was closed.
He pulled out the red handset and punched in Charles Gunn’s secure number. It rang once, part of a second time.
