Upgrade(88)

I was sitting in what appeared to be a library, surrounded by bookshelves filled with legal volumes. Came to my feet, shouldered my pack, and moved around a dusty conference table into a hallway.

I slipped on my NightShades. Straight ahead stood a reception desk. I walked past the bank of dormant elevators to the north side of the building.

I was on the ninth story. The lab was twenty-five floors above me, and I had four stairwells to choose from.

Turning left, I headed for the northwest stairwell.

Seventeen minutes, twenty-nine seconds had elapsed since I’d started my ascent. I pulled my Five-seveN pistol as I approached the stairwell door.

I opened it slowly.

Complete darkness.

With no ambient light to work with, my NightShades were useless. I went to the nearest office, and as I grabbed a stapler off the desk, my phone buzzed in my pocket. I took it out—Edwin calling.

“Hey,” I said.

“Where are you?” Something was wrong.

“Why?”

“Are you in the building?”

“Yeah.”

“There’s a second team en route.”

“Why?”

“They’re going to land on the roof—”

“No, you can’t let that—”

“I was just told…” He lowered his voice. “…this isn’t my op anymore.”

“How is that possible?”

“Your time in Virginia…” He meant when he’d held me in a glass cage. “There was video footage. People found out. People way above my pay grade. I thought if we moved quickly on this thing, we could stay under the radar. Obviously, I miscalculated. They were watching me. I had no idea.”

It had to be the Department of Defense. Had they been searching for me and Kara all this time? The military applications of an enhanced human were the stuff of DARPA dreams, and in some ways even scarier than Kara’s plan. At least her motivations came from a place of wanting to help our species. She wanted to upgrade everyone. I had a hunch our government wouldn’t take such an egalitarian approach.

“They’re about to come in hard.”

“Who?” He didn’t answer. “Edwin. Tell me what I’m up against.”

“JTF-Black.” Shit. It was the domestic-based Joint Task Force unit comprised of former Delta, SEAL Team Six, Army Special Operations, Marine Raiders, and federal law enforcement officers from groups like FBI HRT. The elite of the elite.

“High-value target extraction?” I asked.

“I think it’s safe to assume they want you alive. Both of you. And whatever Kara has built. I need you to know, Logan, I didn’t sell you out. I had no idea—”

“How many?”

“They usually roll in teams of eight.”

“What about the SWAT? They seemed fine when—”

“They aren’t working for you anymore. I’m sorry. JTF-Black is six minutes out, so whatever you’re planning, do it fast and get out of there.”

The line went dead.

Five seconds later, another voice came through my earpiece.

“Logan, this is Noyes. You make it inside? What’s your position? Over.”

I could hear the deception in his voice. It sounded like honey. I ripped out my earpiece and chucked it with the wireless unit over my shoulder.

I opened the door to the stairwell, set the stapler against the jamb. As I shined the flashlight up the next flight of stairs, I heard footfalls and then Noyes’s voice drifting up from six floors below.

“I think he made us. Also, we just ran into…”—I missed a few words—”…third and fourth floors. We’re going down to try another way.”

When they began moving again, I turned on the flashlight and started up the stairwell, trying to keep my footfalls from echoing inside the column of concrete.

As I crossed the landing for the fifteenth floor, the building shook. I heard a sound like distant thunder, and dust motes floated in the beam of light. I glanced down, didn’t see fire or hear any screams. Whatever had exploded had been in another stairwell, and if Kara hadn’t known we were here two seconds ago, she did now.

I flew up the stairs.

17.

18.

19.





20.


Four minutes until JTF-Black set down on the roof. Wouldn’t matter how loaded up they were. They didn’t stand a chance against Kara’s upgraded special forces pals. Worse, all of this incoming mayhem would only serve to slow me down and provide cover for Kara’s escape.

24.

25.





26.


I caught an odd scent in the air—was that tar?





27.


Something glinted in the light above me. I slowed to a jog, finally coming to a stop at the landing between 28 and 29.

The smell was stronger here.

Coils of concertina wire had been strung from railing to railing and floor to ceiling, like Christmas decorations in hell. Razors gleamed in the light. From what I could see, they extended up an entire flight of stairs.

I knew what I was smelling—the C-4 that was packed inside the olive-green shell of the claymore, just six feet away from where I stood, on the landing, perched on a stand with wires running under the door to floor 29. The business end of the remote-controlled mine was facing me. It contained roughly 1.5 pounds of C-4 and 700 steel ball bearings. Across the fa?ade, I could read the words FRONT TOWARD ENEMY.