Exit 9

Unfortunately for Taylor, he would have been wrong.

It was amazing how easy it was. Murphy’s contact had said it would be, had told him the resistance would never suspect the attack to come from within. Under the man’s guidance, Murphy had practiced everything over and over until each move was automatic, natural.

He had watched the guard stationed at the door to the detention area check the status of the door, then head over to the elevators. As soon as the man was in position, Murphy exited the control room.

Holding a second container of the dueling liquids, he walked toward the guard.

Taylor finally heard the footsteps when they were only a few feet away. Since the lights beside the elevator door indicated the car was still at the top, he looked back, but instead of seeing one of the expected guards, it was a member of the monitoring crew.

Murphy? Maybe. It was hard to tell because the guy was wearing something on his face.

“Where are the others?” Taylor asked.

“Not coming.” Murphy’s voice was distorted by the thing over his mouth.

“What are you talking about?”

As he spoke, Taylor began to sense that something wasn’t right, but he was already too late. Murphy was flinging something at the floor by Taylor’s feet.

Taylor raised his gun. “Don’t move.”

“No problem,” Murphy replied.

“What was that? What did you…”

Taylor suddenly felt like he was losing his balance, the world around him becoming a blurry, vibrating mess. The next thing he knew, Murphy was holding on to him, gently lowering him to the floor.

“Don’t fight it,” Murphy said. “You’re not going to win.”

Taylor stared at the other man, trying to see him clearly. “What…wha…”

The rest of the question was lost forever as he took his last breath.

The young couple known as Adam and Eve had been joined by six others. The assault group moved in as soon as Murphy radioed. Within ninety seconds, all eight were standing at the front door of the Bluff.

There should be only four more guards in the main house, none currently expecting any trouble. The four who had come looking for them had all been permanently eliminated, as had the three who had been sent out to check the problem with the fence.

“Like we drilled,” the woman-Karie-instructed as they reached the front door.

Gleason unlocked the door with the keys he’d taken from one of the guards, and pushed it open. No gunshots. No feet pounding toward the entrance. No voices shouting at them.

Quietly, they slipped inside. Within three minutes, the four remaining guards were all accounted for and dealt with. The team reassembled in the lobby where Karie, after a quick look at the map of the house’s layout, said, “This way.”

Janice Humphrey had beenasleep in her room upstairs. It was early, but she was suffering from a cold. That was the only reason she was at the Bluff at all. She and her husband, Michael, had been called to the Ranch for a meeting, but Michael had insisted she stay and he would fill her in later.

So, drugged up with cold medicine, she had slept the afternoon away, and was surprised when she finally woke to see that it was starting to get dark outside. She was just grabbing a tissue when her door opened, and Robert Lieber, one of the Bluff’s security officers, ran inside.

“Out the window,” he said quickly.

“What?” she asked, thinking she wasn’t hearing correctly.

“There are hostiles in the house!”

She stumbled off the bed. “How did that happen?”

“I don’t know, but we don’t have time to talk about it. Ma’am, you need to go out the window and hide on the roof. They won’t look for you there.”

Even with a head slowed by a cold, Janice got his message. She ran over to the dormer window and threw it open. A cold blast of air hit her in the face. All she had on were the sweats she’d been sleeping in. They weren’t going to be enough.

Lieber seemed to sense this, too. He ripped the top cover off the bed and shoved it at her. “Take this. Now go, hurry!”

The roof outside Janice and Michael’s room had a gentle slope, but losing her balance was a very real possibility in her condition. If she did, the only thing that would stop her descent was the ground. She held the window frame tightly as she climbed out into the growing twilight.

“Try to get above the window. They won’t look there,” Lieber suggested. “But once you’re settled, don’t move around.”

“Aren’t you coming with me?”

“My job is to try to stop them.” He pushed the rest of the bedspread out the window after her.

“They’ll kill you! It’s not worth it.”

“Please,” he said. “Go.”

Then she understood. It wasn’t the Bluff he was trying to protect. It was her. The bedroom had obviously been occupied. The intruders would have to find someone there.

“Go!” he repeated.

With a sense of helplessness, she did as he told her, working her way above the dormer, then lying against the roof.

Lieber, no doubt to mask the cold air in the room, left the window partially open. Because of this, she could hear the door to her room open, and the gunshots that followed. A moment later, the window opened all the way again. From her vantage point, she could see the back of someone’s head looking out. As much as she hoped it was Leiber, she knew it wasn’t. He would have called to her, let her know it was okay.

After several seconds, the window shut all the way, and the light in her room went out.

BWHAP-BWHAP-BWHAP.

The detention area was the trickiest part. As simple as it would have been to toss the remaining container of toxin through the door, the cells were not airtight, so there was a very good chance the detainees would have been killed, too. Four of them wouldn’t have mattered, but if the fifth had died, it would have defeated the entire purpose of the mission. For that reason, the detention area was going to be up to the strike team.

Murphy glanced through the Plexiglas wall to the other side. Of the five guards, four were standing in front of their assigned cells, their eyes forward. The guard closest to the wall, though, was looking in Murphy’s direction, clearly confused. Murphy’s job now was to sell that this was only a medical emergency, not some forerunner to something more disastrous.

He knelt beside the dead guard, pretending first to take his pulse, then talk to him. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see the lights for the elevator indicate it was moving down. When the car was approximately ten seconds from arriving, Murphy jumped up and ran over to the phone at the guard’s desk near the door. As he’d hoped, the curious guard’s gaze followed him, so the man did not see the elevator doors open.

Murphy, on the other hand, was positioned perfectly, and saw with more than a little relief that it was the strike team, not Bluff security. Three canisters billowing smoke slid into the room. Within seconds, everything on Murphy’s side of the Plexiglas wall was hidden.

Murphy held his position as the others made their way to him. In addition to the gas masks they were all wearing, each had a pair of thermal goggles that allowed them to see heat signatures through the smoke. As he knew she would be, Karie was in the lead.

“Any problems?” she asked.

“None. You?”

“All secured. Door unlocked?”