“Said you should be here supervising us.”
Tucker tensed. “Tell him I’ll be there in just a bit.”
“Sure. Got it.”
Tucker felt like throwing the radio across the room. What did Mr. Rose want him to do? Take care of security? Or babysit a bunch of grown men who could handle a packing job just fine on their own?
He radioed the guardhouse one last time just to make sure nothing had changed. All was still quiet. He switched to channel four.
“This is Tucker,” he said into the mic. “Everybody up.”
He waited for a moment, then repeated the message.
A sleepy voice came over the speaker. “What time is it?”
“We’ll be loading the helicopters in a couple hours.”
“A couple hours? Hell, I’m going back to sleep.”
“Get up,” Tucker said. “And wake the others. I don’t need any of you still groggy when you fly us out of here.”
There was a pause. “We’ll be fine.”
“Get up or you won’t be paid.”
“Goddammit,” the pilot said.
“Check in with me after you eat.”
Tucker slipped the radio into the holder on his belt, knowing the pilot would get his flight teams moving. Maybe he’d stop in the kitchen and get a bite himself before heading down to the lab.
Anything to delay being near the cargo.
Quinn wished he had a wrecking bar. He would have only needed the small, foot-long version. It would have made things a hell of a lot easier. What he did have was a nine-inch flat blade screwdriver.
He worked it between the sliding doors of the elevator on the left. There was a rubber lining inside, so he had to be careful not to rip it. Once the screwdriver shaft was all the way in, he pushed sideways, trying to create an opening between the doors.
There was resistance at first, the doors holding their position as he applied pressure. Then the right half gave an inch. He jammed the fingers of his right hand in, holding the door in place, then dropped the screwdriver on the floor at his feet and used his left hand to grab the other half.
As he pushed his hands away from each other, the doors began to part. A few inches, then six, then a foot. But at twenty-four inches they stopped, some now-ancient security device kicking in.
He leaned through the opening. It was dark and he could see neither the bottom nor the top of the shaft. At least the elevator car wasn’t there.
He scanned the walls just inside, looking for something to anchor his rope. There were several pipes to the right, but he wasn’t quite sure how he would reach them. The most promising thing he found was above the opening — a steel bolt sticking out of the wall several inches. It was nowhere near a perfect solution, but Quinn thought he could use it to maneuver over to the pipes.
He positioned his leg in the gap so that his knee pushed against one side of the door, and his foot against the other. He then worked his backpack off and removed the rope from inside. As he was trying to zip the bag back up, it slipped out of his hands and fell to the ground, hitting the handle of the screwdriver. The tool rolled away from the bag, under Quinn’s foot, and into the gap.
He whipped his head back inside, but could see nothing. Then, a few seconds later, there was the crash of the screwdriver hitting bottom.
Quinn froze.
Had anyone on the lower level heard? He waited, expecting to see a flood of light as someone below opened the elevator doors to investigate. But the shaft remained dark.
He was just beginning to relax when he heard the footsteps.
They were coming down the hallway toward the elevator.
Quinn grabbed his bag off the floor and moved it into the shaft, hanging it off the bolt he was going to tie the rope to.
He only had seconds now. He squeezed through the opening and grabbed the rail that ran across the top of the door. The sliding sections closed again the moment he was out of the way.
He could hear the steps come into the elevator alcove, then stop. There was a moment of nothing, then the sound of an electric motor starting somewhere below Quinn.
Quinn looked behind him to see if he could tell which car was on its way up. But it was too dark.
The sound got louder and louder. Quinn kept his eyes on the darkness below him, looking for any change, prepared to jump if the car appeared directly beneath him.
The whir grew louder and louder. Then he saw the outline of a car moving up. Not below him, but next to him.
The car stopped seven feet to his left. There was a slight delay, then he heard the door open and the waiting passenger get on. As soon as the doors closed again, the motor restarted, and the elevator plunged back down into the darkness.
Quinn donned his backpack, then inched over to the pipes he’d spotted earlier, and attached the end of his rope to one of them. Once it was tied off, he cinched the loose end around his waist and began a controlled descent into the inky well below.
“Quinn?”
Marion looked up. Nate seemed to be talking to himself. When he noticed her, he said, “Radio.” He turned his collar out so she could see the black dot attached on the inside. “Quinn?”
“Maybe he’s hiding and can’t talk,” she offered.
Nate frowned. “Maybe. But he should have done a radio check by now.”
Before he could call out his friend’s name again, there was a buzzing sound. He shot a hand into one of his pants pockets. When he pulled it back out, he was holding a vibrating cell phone.
“Maybe his radio’s not working and he’s using his phone,” she said.
“It’s not him,” Nate said, looking at the display. He flipped it open. “Hi.” He listened for a moment. “I’m in the emergency exit tunnel…. No. He went back in…. about fifteen minutes ago…I can’t get through. I think he can’t get a signal on the second level…. There’s a reason, a good one…. Wait, wait. Orlando, let me talk for a moment…I didn’t go with him because I’m not alone. We found Marion Dupuis. She’s with me…. No, no kid. That’s who he went back for … are you there?… Yes. Said if he didn’t get back in a few hours, I was to try and get Marion out…. Where
Orlando had been the name the other man, Quinn, had mentioned before he left. Marion assumed it was another member of their team.
“What did your friend say?” Marion asked.
Nate continued to stare at the ground for a few seconds longer before looking at her. “She’s on her way to help us.”
“That’s good, right?”
He forced a smile, then turned and walked back down the tunnel toward the facility corridor. “Maybe I can get a signal if I go back into the hallway.”
“Don’t. Please,” she said. “I mean Quinn wanted us to wait here.”
Nate nodded. “All right. I’ll give him another fifteen. If we don’t hear from him by then, I’ll go back in. That fair?”
“Sure … yes. Very fair.”
It wasn’t the fear of being discovered that had made Marion stop Nate. It was the fear that he might actually
