Marge just nodded, but her expression looked a little confused.
Diesel asked, “Where’s the third one?” They both pointed to the next door. Diesel raced over, kicked the door down, and brought out the third scientist.
“What’s going on here?” Paul asked in a flat voice, as if he’d seen too much and had no hope anything good was happening.
“Do you have any connections to the Russians?” Jerricho asked instantly.
Paul looked at him, surprised, and shook his head. “No,” he said, “I’ve been here so long that I don’t even know what’s going on anymore.”
Diesel checked his watch, sent a text message to Shane on his phone, and turned to look at the three of them. “We weren’t prepared for three of you.”
“There were a lot more,” Eva said quietly. “They didn’t make it.”
“Any of them Russian?”
“Yes,” Paul said. “What is this about Russians though?”
“Another team is here, not with us, but they’re going through each of the floors—trying to find you guys, we presume. We don’t know because, of course, we haven’t stopped to ask them.”
“Oh, my God,” Paul said. “We need to get out of here.”
“What do you know about the Russian captive?”
“He died,” Paul said. “He was not all that healthy to begin with, and we’re down here without sunlight, and we work seven days a week without a break, and we’re not fed properly. He was getting weaker and weaker. I know he thought he had sent out an alert, requesting help, but nobody came, and he got very depressed.”
“Well, the help looks like it came,” he said.
“But too damn late,” Paul said, with a plaintive cry.
“Why are you even here now?” Marge asked.
“We got word about Eva,” he said. “We didn’t know about you two.”
“I am American, but I’ve been working out of Australia,” Marge said.
“I’m American too,” Paul said, “but I was over in Switzerland.”
“You were just plucked from your various labs?” Jerricho asked.
“Yes, that’s a good way to put it,” Paul said. “I’ve been here over a year. I’ve seen two others, and one was here for a few days and then disappeared.”
“Any idea why?”
He shook his head. “I never saw him again.”
“Well, we’ll get this information going forward,” he said. “Right now I want you two to stick close. And, if you have any injuries or health conditions, you need to tell us. We can’t carry three of you.”
“I’m fine,” Eva said, her voice stronger. “I haven’t been here as long as they have been.”
“No,” Marge said, “but you keep getting bashed because you don’t listen.”
“I don’t take well to authority,” she said slowly. “Besides, it was you they were trying to hurt.”
Marge, the older one, looked at her and smiled. “I told you that I probably wouldn’t make it through this anyway.”
“And that’s no reason to give up.” Eva turned to look at Diesel. “Can we leave now?”
He had his phone in his hand. “I’m trying to track where the Russians are. We don’t want to meet them.”
“Somebody needs to tell them their comrade died a while back,” Paul said in disgust. “It would have done him a lot of good if they could have been here in time.”
“I don’t imagine arranging something like this is all that easy, plus just finding us,” Eva protested.
“That’s the reason we found you. Eva was picked up on a street camera.”
“Oh,” she said in delight. “I deliberately kept my face up, facing forward, hoping that somebody would find me.”
“Yes, facial recognition caught you,” he said. “So good job.” He looked at the young woman and smiled. “You actually look a little familiar.”
“No idea why,” she said, “unless you are interested in talks on stem cell rejuvenation virus for virus multiplication.”
“Well, I think everybody is probably interested in it, but I can’t say I’ve ever attended any lectures like that,” he muttered.
“No,” she said, “not unless it’s your thing.”
“Well, I’m not sure what my thing would be outside of the fact that this is the work I do,” he said, ushering them toward the stairs. He said to Jerricho, “I don’t like the idea of going back out the same way.”
“We’ll take the balcony.”
“And what do you think the chances are that we’ve got the Russians here?”
“I’m not sure,” he said, “but we have to make a decision, and we’ve got to follow through.”
Up ahead they heard more gunfire. Immediately the captors cried out and clustered close. He motioned at Jerricho. “Let’s take this hallway off to the side. Sounds like the Russians are finding some targets. I don’t want our group to be next.”
“Out the back?”
“No, that’s most likely the place they’ll come looking,” he said, “but we have to stay away from the gunfire.”
“Jesus, yes,” Eva said, “please stay away from the gunfire.”
Ushering the three out, they asked them as many questions as they could about the layout. “We’ve seen it on blueprints,” Diesel said. “Do you have any thoughts that you can add as to where the men, the armed guards stay, how many there are, things like that?”
“Well, something’s definitely up,” Eva said. “The guards started acting more difficult today. And instead of us staying in the lab all day, we were moved from the lab abruptly and locked in our rooms.”
“The Russians were found. Caught going through the airport today,” Diesel said quietly.
“So then the Chinese should be expecting the attack today,” Eva said.
“Maybe. Did they double the guards?”
“They did,” she said. “We’ve had four on us all the time.”
He looked at Jerricho and nodded. “We’ve taken out four,” he said.
The scientists just looked at him mutely.
“What we don’t know is how many others could be here. We have video of a dozen Russians coming in.”
“Great,” Paul said. “So we’re still heavily outnumbered.”
“Maybe,” Diesel said. “Let’s keep moving.”
Racing as fast as they could, they headed down the hallway toward the back. At the service elevator, he stopped, pushed a button, and then stepped back out, as it went upward. He took the stairs down, motioning for them to join
