Extinction Machine

Chapter One Hundred Twelve

VanMeer Castle

Near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

Monday, October 21, 7:54 a.m.

There was another huge whump on the door. The stout wood panels were cracking. It wouldn’t take them long to break in. Shit.

I tapped my earbud. “Cowboy to Bug, do you copy?”

“Right with you, boss. We’re finding some crazy, crazy stuff on that—”

“Save it,” I said, “the big bad wolf is at the door. I’m going to have to get creative here.”

“Copy that,” he said, and there was a nasty little laugh in his voice.

I grinned, too, though there were still a lot of ways this could go south on me. Events already seemed to be spinning that way.

Whump!

I grabbed the right cuff of my jacket and yanked. The sleeve tore away easily. Velcro, baby. Then I tore off the left sleeve. When the Velcro fastenings ripped it exposed small strips of adhesive. There were similar strips inside the cuffs. With all four exposed I pressed them across the big crack that was forming in the door, affixing half to the oak and half to the heavy frame. I made sure to leave a lot of slack, though. I wanted the door to open, at least part of the way.

The adhesive was great stuff. In seconds it would bond with the wall and even Bunny couldn’t pull it off. Fun with chemistry. That would mean that all the bursting strength of the door would have to tear the material apart.

Ghost barked at me while I worked, but I whistled a happy tune.

Then I returned to Shelton. His face was gray and streaked with sweat. I felt his pulse and it sounded like machine gun fire. His skin was cold, though. He was going into shock.

Shit.

“Okay, sparky, here’s the thing,” I said amiably. “There are two ways this can play out—”

“Kiss my ass. In ten seconds my guys are going to—”

“I know, I know, tear me apart so you can piss on my bones. Yesterday’s news. No, what we need to focus on is what happens before they break in. They can find you alive and unharmed, or they can find you dead, and believe me when I tell you that I don’t need ten whole seconds to change your life. Or end it. If I’m going to hell, then you’ll be driving the cab, capiche?”

He opened his mouth to say something smartass or threatening, but didn’t. Instead I saw pain flicker across his face.

Uh-oh.

Whump!

Splinters flew into the room. Ghost stood wide legged and growled at the noise. He was fierce and he’d definitely get the first man through the door, but I had no illusions about our survival if things kept sliding downhill. Even so, I kept those concerns off my face.

I drew my piece and screwed the barrel into the soft underside of Shelton’s jaw. “No more jokes. I know you rigged the cyber-attacks and even killed your own people to make the authorities look elsewhere. I know you framed me and somehow got the president to shut down the DMS. I know you’re a governor of Majestic Three. I know you’ve been breeding alien-human hybrids, and I know that you’re building spaceships.”

His jaw went slack as I rattled all that off.

“Yeah, we’re smart, too. We know all that. We also now have two copies of the Black Book. The original and the pretty blond copy.”

His mouth worked like a silent gasping fish.

“But I really need to know what the end game is here. It’s not just to sell a new stealth fighter. You could have done that without all this bullshit. You didn’t need to frame me or kill my friends to accomplish that.”

Whump!

Whoever was hitting the door was serious about it.

Shelton found his voice and sneered at me. “You f*cking idiot. You think you know a lot but you don’t know shit, but you don’t know what I’ve done to protect this country. You think I’m the bad guy? The f*cking Chinese blew up the Locust bomber. They’re the ones who have a working T-craft. Not us. We’re years away.”

He sold it so well that for a moment I almost bought it.

Almost.

He was stalling, feeding me another lie, but why? He had things to bargain with.

Suddenly Shelton’s body stiffened and he arched his back as if I’d just Tasered him. His eyes rolled up in their sockets and he gave a single strangled cry. Then he collapsed back onto the desk. His breath rattled in his throat.

I felt for his pulse.

And didn’t find one.

Goddamn it.

“Bug,” I said as I dug into my pocket for another hypo, “we have a problem. Shelton’s coding on me.”

I jabbed Shelton with the needle and then started CPR.

Whump!

Shelton twitched and gasped, dragging in a ragged lungful of air.

Ghost’s bark jumped up a notch and I turned to see the door crack from top to bottom. The shattered wood bowed into the room, caught against the sleeves I’d affixed across the door, pressed them to their ripping point, and tore them apart.

I flung myself off the desk, hooked my arm around Ghost and dove for cover.

The wires inside the sleeves snapped, triggering the detonators in the cuff buttons, sending tiny electrical impulses into the chemicals that saturated the fabric.

The explosion was spectacular.

The force picked me up and threw me all the way across the room. It destroyed the massive door, turning the heavy wood into a death storm of jagged splinters that tore into Shelton’s men. Arms and legs flew everywhere; blood sprayed the walls and ceiling.

The screams were terrible.

Some of those screams were mine.