Although concerned about being trapped inside the base with a probably hostile invading force, he grinned at being back in action. He throttled the HDT motorcycle and sped down the underground train tunnel toward Labs. The invaders had secured all the doors and shut down local control of the electric trains that connected the three different sections of the base as well. As soon as he had discovered that, Duncan had told Lori to leave the glassed in office on the edge of the hangar and get into the main computer lab in Central. They hadn’t set up everything they would need there yet—and miles of cables were clustered sloppily on the floor until they set it all up correctly, but she would be safer there and she would have more computing power at her fingertips. Hopefully she would be able to crack the encryption keeping them out of half of the system.
After Lori was on her way, Duncan had headed to the weapons pallets on the hangar floor and unwrapped the plastic from a few. He selected an M4 carbine that got strapped over his back, an M9 pistol that went into a holster on his hip and an M11 bayonet knife. In their former lives as Delta Force operatives, Chess Team members had picked and chosen their tools from all the armed services. They all seemed to favor the KA-BAR knife the Marines and Navy used, but Duncan preferred the explosive ordinance disposal variant of the Army’s standard M9 bayonet. The KA-BAR always felt too slippery in his hand, and as a former Ranger, he was used to standard Army tools.
After arming up, Duncan had taken an already fueled up HDT dirt bike through the corridors and down to Central’s electric train terminal. He drove the bike right off the platform and down onto the concrete beside the two sets of rails—one for trains heading to Labs and one for trains returning from Labs—Ridley had thought of everything—and had roared off into the darkness of the tunnel. It was a ten-mile straight shot to Labs. Halfway there, with the breeze blowing in his face and the occasional LED security lights whizzing past him on the walls of the tunnel, the smile had crept onto his face. He was back in action again.
Even with the thrill of racing down the darkened tunnel on a dirt bike and the adrenaline coursing through his veins at the thought of confronting an incursion force, Duncan’s strategic mind was at work in the background. He was cataloguing the entry and exit points to the base, recalling exactly where everyone on his team was—even the field members of Chess Team that were away, thinking of choke points in the Labs section and mostly pondering what the goal could be. Was this Manifold after something they had left behind? Was it a revenge tactic on the part of some nation or organization Chess Team had done wrong? Could it possibly even be a non-military incursion? Burglars? He dismissed that thought with clinical precision. The facility was too complicated for an average burglar to have gained entrance. He quickly boiled things down to three possible sources. Manifold, Russians upset with the team over recent antics in their country or King’s clash with them over the hitman business or perhaps most upsetting, this incursion could be from US military or Homeland Security personnel that had no knowledge of Chess Team’s new black status. If it was the latter, Keasling would be able to sort things out, but it would be sticky for a while. If it was the Russians, unless they had sent in Spetsnaz troops, Duncan was confident he and Black Zero could handle things just fine until the security team found their way inside.
Duncan’s true concern was if this was a Manifold team. He couldn’t imagine why they would be back here at Alpha after the base had been dormant for so long. He’d had the place guarded all this time, of course, but the optimal time to strike the facility would have been when it was mostly empty. Or even when as president, Duncan had ordered Eli Jacobs and his cleanup team to scour the site for records and the warped remains of Richard Ridley’s genetic experiments—most of which ended up under lock and key at the CDC complex down in Georgia.
A half mile from the train platform in the Labs section, Duncan released the throttle and coasted to a stop. He turned the bike off and climbed off of it, keeping to the shadows. He leaned the bike in a concrete alcove—both to hide it and to prevent it from causing a wreck should either of the trains be activated again. He unslung the M4 and took a light jog toward the end of the tunnel, remaining close to the wall and the cover of darkness it provided.
‘A brisk pace’ indeed, he thought, his former campaign slogan running through his head, as he raced into what was likely to be danger.