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  Ian flung the laptop like a Frisbee. It smacked the lazy guard with the shot gun across the forehead. He fell back against the wall with a cry. Only the helmet kept the laptop from knocking him senseless.

  Dr. Jonas screamed and flailed to get away from Ian. He bumped into the second guard, who cursed and tried to get his gun around Jonas for a clear shot.

  Ian kicked his foot into the doctor’s back and knocked both men into the hallway. He turned to see the other guard with the shotgun recovering from the thrown laptop.

  Ian delivered a heel kick to the man’s neck, then snatched up the man’s shotgun as he fell and smashed him in the head with the butt. Helmet or no, he fell on his face and didn’t move.

  The other guard threw Jonas back into the room and lowered his shotgun for a shot. A split second too slow. Ian’s gun roared. The man went down.

  Ian turned, knocked away a stun baton that thrust at his back and fired again. A third shot against the man lying on the far side of Julia, still unable to extricate himself from a tangle of limbs. He never would. Ian pumped the shotgun and pointed it at Dr. Jonas, but the man was no threat.

  Jonas was screaming. So was Julia. He grabbed Jonas and dragged him from the doorway and into the center of the room, yanked the dead guards inside, then threw the door shut. He dragged the dead guard away from Julia. Her face was a mess of blood and tissue. If she hadn’t been screaming he might have thought she was dead. He didn’t think the blood was hers.

  “Are you hurt? Talk to me.”

  She stopped screaming and blinked back at him, then shook her head. Ian helped her to her feet and tore off some paper towels from over the sink to wipe some of the mess from her face.

  Dr. Jonas was still on the ground, curled in a fetal position. Ian dragged him to his feet and threw him over the examination table. He shoved the shotgun under Jonas’s chin.

  “Don’t kill him,” Julia begged.

  “Why not? This bastard deserves to die.”

  “He can help us.”

  Ian nodded, as if considering what she was saying, but not yet convinced. Of course he hadn’t meant to kill him. Killing him would be a stupid tactical decision, if nothing else. “How many more guards in the building?” he asked.

  Jonas simpered. “I-I don’t know. Lots.”

  “How many? Answer before I decorate the wall with your brains.”

  “Eight. Four at positions on top of the building. Two more at the front desk and two at the gates. And, uhm, half the shift changes in about twenty minutes, so there will be fresh men coming. Three, I think. Or four, I don’t remember.”

  Ian had started the battle unarmed, taken out four men with relative ease. He felt invincible, but couldn’t trust that feeling. It was one thing to win a battle against a botched attack and two civilians to mess things up, another to face men armed with shotguns in the narrow corridors. No way he could kill all those guards without taking incoming fire, not to mention calls for help that might bring in all manner of nasty backup.

  Not by himself, he couldn’t.

  “Take us to the cell block,” Ian said. “We’re going to let the other prisoners out.”

  “No, you can’t do that,” Jonas said. He looked, if possible, even more scared. “Those men…you don’t know what they can do. And they haven’t seen another human in years. They’re out of their minds. They’ll kill us all. Maybe worse.”

  “I’ll take my chances. Now get going before I kill you myself.” He needed to get out of this room. The smell of blood and gunpowder took him back to Namibia, and he couldn’t deal with that memory. He needed to stay level-headed.

  “I think he will,” Julia said. “I think he’s serious. Better not push him.”

  Ian smiled inwardly, thinking how well she was playing the good cop/bad cop routine, but then he looked at her face. Behind the blood that still splattered her face in places, she looked absolutely terrified. She was still quivering from the aftereffects of the stun batons. It was a wonder she was on her feet.

  He grabbed Dr. Jonas and hoisted him to his feet, pushed him face-first into the corner. He held the barrel against Jonas’s back with one hand and made a calming motion to Julia with the other hand. “You’re okay, you can do this.”

  She swallowed, nodded, and seemed to take control of her emotions. “Yes, I’m good.”

  “Someone will be watching those security cameras, right?” he asked Dr. Jonas.

  “That’s right,” Jonas said. “They’ll see you as soon as you go into the hall. But it doesn’t matter, since I can’t open the cell doors anyway.”

  Ian didn’t believe it. “We’ll see. If not, I’ll have no choice but to kill you. Julia, I have to put on one of these uniforms, which means you’ll need to hold my gun. Can you do that?”

  “I don’t know. I mean, I can, but I don’t know if I can shoot Dr. Jonas. I don’t think I can.” Ian sensed her hesitation, the awful decision she had to make. Whose side was she on?

  He kept his voice calm. “You don’t have to shoot him. We’ll stand near the door while he waits in the corner. If he moves, I’ll take care of him. He saw what I did to the others, he won’t try anything,” he added, more for the benefit of Dr. Jonas than for Julia.

  Ian piled the two stun batons and the other shotgun near the door and examined the four dead guards. One of them was close to his own size. He wrenched off the helmet and the man’s head lolled to one side. His eyes were open and blank with the expression that only the dead wore. Julia looked away.

  A moment later and Ian was dressed and ready to go. “Walk behind me,” he told Julia. “And stay back when we get to the cells. If anything happens, turn and run. Tell them I took you hostage, or whatever you need, but get the hell out of the building.”

  “Okay.”

  He examined the stun guns and the second shotgun, trying to decide if he should cache them here or bring them along. “With any luck, those guys will know how to use this stuff.”

  “You’re going to arm them?” she asked.

  “You really are insane,” Dr. Jonas muttered.

  “But I’d better leave the other weapons here for now,” Ian said. “I don’t want to be weighed down in case the other prisoners…well, in case they try anything funny.”

  “Oh, God,” Dr. Jonas said. “I’m going to die.”

  #

  It was all that Julia could do to keep her feet moving forward as she walked behind Ian—dressed as a security guard—toward the cell block. Ian acted supremely confident, unfazed by the horrific battle in the examination room. Dr. Jonas, on the other hand, sported a large stain spreading down his leg where he’d lost control of his bladder.

  At any moment she expected to hear a guttural voice yell, “Halt!” like a Nazi guard in an old movie, but they reached the end of the hallway unchallenged. Jonas keyed in the combination to open the doors to the next cell block.

  Ian pushed Dr. Jonas ahead of him until they stood at the door to the left of his own cell. He slid open a panel on the door. “Joe, are you in there? It’s me, Ian. I’m going to get us out of here.”

  A low chuckle came from the darkness beyond. “You did it, my friend. The Almighty was right, you are, indeed, our salvation.” The voice was hollow, like a voice from a crypt. A shiver went down Julia’s spine.

  “Now listen here Joe, I’m going to open this door. I need you to move slowly, carefully. I’ve got a prisoner here, and—”

  “Who? Who is the prisoner. Tell me.”

  “Dr. Jonas.”

  Another chuckle. “Dr. Jonas? Ah, that is perfect.”

  #

  “You’re sure? How many are dead?” Sarah paused with the phone to her ear. Markov felt the tension building. “I see.”

  She put the phone on hold and said to Markov, “Julia has freed the prisoner. The director of security believes that four of his men are down, and Dr. Jonas is probably dead, too. Westhelle is armed and loose in the asylum. Still think she’ll respond to questioning?”r />
  Markov’s mouth felt dry. How could this have happened? He was fully aware of Agent Westhelle’s abilities in the field, but that he could have overwhelmed four security guards under such controlled circumstances as a CIA-run psych ward was hard to fathom.

  Sarah turned back to the phone and continued in that same breezy tone, “Yes, I’m authorizing any and all measures. Call backup from Salt Lake City. Yes, I’m aware of the distance, but you should be sure. I don’t know, that’s operational in scope, helicopters, search teams, whatever. Take Dr. Nolan prisoner if you can.”

  She gave Markov a look that said he now owed her a favor. He felt a surge of relief.

  “But I want that facility locked down until all hostile actors are neutralized,” Sarah continued. “Of course I mean lethally, what did you think I meant?”

  She paused, listened, and for the first time a cloud passed over her face. “Why would he do that? And you’re sure, all three are free? Well, who are these other prisoners? No, I have no idea.”

  Markov knew at least one of the inmates at the asylum, a computer genius from the navy who had once hacked a ballistic missile submarine and nearly launched Trident nuclear missiles at Moscow. For fun, apparently, just to prove he could do it. It was safe to assume that any other prisoners would also be extremely dangerous.

  Sarah Redd’s face grew increasingly pale. A tremor started in the hand holding the phone. “Then you have no choice,” she said at last. “Kill them all. Level the building if you have to. We’ll deal with collateral damage.”

  She hung up and gave Markov a grim look. “The good news is that an entire wing of DIPSHIT has been emptied for renovation, so most of the inmates are elsewhere. The bad news is that the three remaining prisoners—not including Westhelle—might be the three most dangerous men alive. We can’t take a chance that any of them escape. We’ll have to kill them all. Let Director Price know I’m taking full control of this situation myself.”

  Chapter Twenty:

  “Oh, God,” Jonas said. His knees buckled.

  “Don’t touch him,” Ian said, his voice hard. “Do you understand me? We need him.”

  “Yes, I understand,” Kilroy said. Julia thought he sounded reluctant. “And he’s not the Fer-de-Lance, he’s not my true enemy. His brain is safe…for now.”

  “Good, and the woman with me, she’s a friend, do you understand? She’s helping us, so it’s important not to hurt her in any way.”

  “Yes, I understand.”

  Ian turned to Dr. Jonas. “Open the door. Do it now.”

  Jonas balked, but another prod from Ian’s shotgun changed his mind. He keyed in the combination and then shrank against the far wall while Ian slid open the door. He joined Julia and Jonas against the back wall of the corridor.

  Joe Kilroy’s smell preceded him into the corridor, almost alive in and of itself. He came out, blinking, staring first at the overhead fluorescent lights for a long moment before turning his attention to the Ian, Julia, and finally, fixed Dr. Jonas with a smile.

  He was completely naked, thin and wiry. Curly black hair, shot with gray, engulfed his head, became a beard that stretched almost to his navel.

  Kilroy stepped up to Dr. Jonas, stood nose to nose, and sniffed at the terrified man’s face. “You smell like a fresh croissant. Delicious. I just want to sink my teeth in.”

  “Joe, step back,” Ian said. “We don’t have time for this.”

  Kilroy looked at Ian. “No, not now. Do you want to free the others? You’d better let me speak to the Almighty. His brain is asynchronous with the rest of the world. Gandhi is even stranger, and more dangerous still.”

  Ian seemed to consider. “Yes, you’d better do the talking. But only one person can be in charge of this operation. They need to agree to obey me or we’ll never get out of here alive.”

  “If one person is in charge, shouldn’t that be the Almighty?” Kilroy asked. “It’s always a good idea to rely on the wisdom of the Supreme Being.”

  “Not today it’s not,” Ian said. “Today, I’m in charge. If he doesn’t agree, he doesn’t get out.”

  “I’ll tell him.”

  Kilroy went to the next cell and slid open the grate. “Bet you knew I was coming, didn’t you?” He relayed Ian’s words about who was in charge. The man inside said something Julia couldn’t catch.

  At Ian’s prodding, Dr. Jonas keyed open the lock with trembling hands, then retreated to press his back to the far wall. Ian pushed open the door. Julia noted that he kept his shotgun at the ready.

  She didn’t know what she’d expected the Almighty to look like, but it wasn’t the man who stepped into the hallway. The Almighty wore a white dress shirt—well, something that had once been white—and a thin black tie with numbers written across in binary. No shoes or socks, and his dress slacks hung in tatters at the cuffs. He wore a pair of square, black plastic glasses, and a thin beard. This was some computer nerd who had been snatched from his cubicle.

  “I’m in charge, do you understand?” Ian said.

  “I am thine to command.” His voice was high, nasal. “Guards shall approach in four minutes and sixteen seconds. They have already noted our release, and are preparing an armed response.”

  “You don’t need to be God to figure that out,” Ian said. “No offense, brother.” He turned his head slightly toward Kilroy without removing his eyes from the Almighty. “Get Gandhi.”

  Gandhi emerged from his cell wearing only a pair of once-white briefs. He was smooth and hairless, without so much as eyebrows. His skin was bleached from years without light, but he had an indefinable race that might, in fact, have been Indian like his namesake.

  “Jeez, didn’t they give you guys regular prison clothes?” Ian asked. Julia thought his voice sounded pinched, the humor forced.

  Gandhi kept his hands spread across his scalp, and leaned forward and whispered something into Kilroy’s ear.

  Kilroy said, “Gandhi says that he needs something to cover his head or our brains will start to boil in our skulls. It’s all he can do to keep from killing us right now. Lead would work best.”

  Julia addressed Kilroy. “That’s ridiculous.”

  “But having a computer in your brain isn’t?” Ian asked.

  She shrugged.

  “There is an x-ray shield in one of the drawers of the examination room,” Dr. Jonas said. He seemed especially terrified of Gandhi, and anxious to help insofar as it would keep him alive.

  “We’ve got to go back anyway, to get the weapons,” Ian said.

  “And I shall require a computer,” the Almighty said.

  “I’ve got a laptop,” Julia said. “Assuming it still works.”

  “Yes, I am aware. In the examination room, where you left the dead bodies.”

  She blinked, then realized it was a reasonable deduction. If the Almighty knew everything already, why hadn’t he spoken up about the lead x-ray shield? Unless, she supposed, he was just full of crap. The Almighty reminded her a bit of Chang, but with a God complex. Okay, with more of a God complex.

  Ian grabbed Dr. Jonas, pushed him in front and the group moved back toward the examination room. Julia stayed as close to Ian as she dared without obstructing his use of the shotgun. Kilroy, naked, immersed in his own stench, walked next to her left shoulder. He leaned in slightly and sniffed at her.

  “Please, don’t do that. It makes me nervous.”

  He took a step back, walked with his own wide berth of the Almighty, and both kept their distance from Gandhi, who still kept his hands clasped over his head. At least he wasn’t trying to make their brains boil.

  And to think she had been afraid of being alone with Ian.

  As they reached the examination room, the Almighty suddenly said, “The guards approacheth. They number six. More shall arrive within minutes.”

  All six of them ducked into the examination room. Kilroy squatted at once in front of the dead guards. He poked with one finger. “Not as fresh as it could be, but it will
do.”

  “Leave them alone,” Ian said. Kilroy backed away but took a long look back.

  Dr. Jonas rushed to the cabinet and rummaged through the drawers until he found a lead shield, which he threw at Gandhi, then shrank back against the wall, quivering. Gandhi draped it over his head.

  “But you don’t really think he can…?” Julia asked Ian. “With his brain, I mean? No, that’s scientifically impossible.”

  “Probably,” Ian said, “but why take chances?”

  The Almighty found Julia’s laptop and opened it on the examination table. His fingers danced over the keyboard. She unplugged the USB cable attached to the probe and stuffed them into her pocket.

  Outside the room came shouted orders from one guard to another. Julia had to fight the urge not to sprint for the door, scream for help. She was trapped in the room with four dead bodies, three certifiably insane prisoners, Ian, who may or may not have had a psychotic break, and Dr. Jonas, who seemed well on his way to insanity himself.

  Ian crouched at the door with his shotgun.

  Kilroy took advantage of his distraction and returned to the dead body. He clawed at the man’s head, then came up with something lumpen and shoved it into his mouth. Blood trickled from his lips and dripped down his hands and arms. Julia thought she was going to be sick.

  Kilroy’s eyes met hers. They had a strange glow. “I eat brains,” he whispered.

  #

  Ian ordered the others to barricade the door with the examination table. He could hear guards in the hallway, but so far they hadn’t tried the door. They would be waiting for backup, and though the CIA facility might be far from civilization, it would eventually arrive, and with overwhelming force. He had to figure out some way to mount an attack and do it soon.

  The Almighty stopped typing at Julia’s computer. “We now have complete control over all security systems. This door is locked and I can lock or unlock any others at will. I’ve snarled traffic in Salt Lake City to slow a detachment of operatives already driving south to intercept us. An order has been given to Hill Air Force Base in Ogden to scramble two F-16s, but it will be at least twenty minutes before they arrive. I’ll try to stop them.”