Again…what the hell?
Brielle continued past Caleb, barely throwing him a glance from the corner of her eye. Genevieve and Misty followed, leaving Forrest and Hudson to bring up the rear. The CIA agent gave him a confused look, confirming that he’d just seen what Caleb had and couldn’t understand it, either.
Thirty seconds and two twisting turns in the main passageway later, they discovered what those men in black had been fighting so hard to keep them away from when they found three main tunnels all coming together in what could only be called a control room of sorts. At least, with all the tables, computers, monitors, and walls of blinking electronic equipment, that was the best way Caleb could describe it.
Caleb moved down the line of computers and monitors, trying to understand what he was looking at. Some of it was obvious, like the blurry video views of men and women running through tunnels similar to the ones he and his teammates had just been in. Many of them were dressed in the same dark tactical gear as the bad guys they’d taken down. But there were just as many wearing lab coats. A few were even wearing hard hats.
He had no idea who the people were, but one thing was obvious—they were getting away. Even as he watched, a whole load of them crammed into an elevator while the rest disappeared through a doorway that likely led to a stairwell. The part that concerned him the most, though, was that the elevator on the screen didn’t look like the one they’d ridden down on.
“Should we try and stop them?” he asked, glancing over his shoulder at Jake.
“No,” Jake said. “There are so many scent trails running all over this place, it would take hours to figure out which ones to follow. They’ll be long gone before we ever get close.”
“Guys,” Hudson called out from where he stood in front of a bank of monitors a half a dozen feet away. “You really need to see this. I think we might be in trouble.”
Caleb and everyone else except for Misty and Genevieve headed Hudson’s way, leaving them to tap and poke at several of the nearer keyboards doing whatever computer geeks did at a time like this.
The moment he reached Hudson’s side, Caleb immediately recognized what had him so concerned. The screen the CIA agent was staring at showed a cylindrical, gray object sitting horizontally on some kind of metal fixture with what looked like a thousand wires and cables running in and around the thing. The object was sitting in the middle of a big intersection of at least six tunnels surrounded by even more wires and cables of every shape and size.
“That’s one of the stolen nukes,” Jake said.
Caleb was stunned to hear Jake’s heart beat faster. That worried Caleb more than he would ever admit. Jake was one cool cat. Caleb had never heard his heartbeat jump like that, not even in the middle of a violent firefight.
“What the hell are we looking at here, Misty?” Jake called out, glancing at her. “Please don’t tell me they’ve rigged that thing to blow.”
Misty didn’t say anything for a several long moments as she continued to tap away at the keyboard. When she finally looked up, Caleb knew from the expression on her face that it was bad before she said a word.
“Okay, I won’t tell you,” she said.
Reaching out, she spun one of the computer screens around to face them. There were a series of numbers displayed there, and it didn’t take a computer geek to figure out what they were for or what they meant. Caleb’s stomach dropped. It was a countdown timer. And they had less than twenty minutes left before it reached all zeroes. He had a pretty good idea what happened then.
“I don’t know why they’re doing it,” Misty said. “Maybe they want to see how powerful the nukes are. But that thing is going to blow—soon.”
“Any chance of us finding it and stopping it from going off?” Hudson asked without a shred of hope in his voice.
And Caleb thought that he was cynical.
Misty looked over at Genevieve for a second before shaking her head. “I wouldn’t even know which way to go to find it. We have no idea how big this tunnel complex might be. The nuke could be around the next corner or half a mile away. Hell, it could be right underneath us for all I know.”
“Can you do your thing and get into the computer to stop the countdown?” Jes asked, her eyes widening as she saw the number click down under eighteen.
“We’re going to find out,” Misty said, reaching out to touch the computer in front of her.
“Wait!” Jake shouted, stepping forward with a hand out. “You can go in there, but you have two minutes to try and do your thing. That’s it. Then you need to get out so we can escape before that thing blows. Understood?”
Misty nodded. A split second later, her eyes turned cloudy white and her face took on that signature nobody’s home expression.
“What the hell just happened?” Hudson said, staring at Misty like she had two heads—and flippers.
Jake glanced at the countdown timer before looking at Hudson. “She’s a technopath. She can merge her consciousness with any electronic system, slipping inside and communicating with it, for lack of a better word.”
Hudson’s mouth was hanging open a little as he glanced around the room, like he was once again waiting for someone to say, “Got you!” But obviously, that didn’t happen.
Two minutes rolled off the countdown timer faster than Caleb could have ever dreamed possible. And then the counter was streaking toward fourteen minutes.
“Um…guys,” Hudson said slowly. “Two minutes is up, and Misty isn’t out of the computer yet. Should we…I don’t know…give her a nudge or something?”
“It doesn’t work that way,” Forrest answered, moving closer to the woman he was in love with. It might not be a werewolf soulmate thing, but Caleb knew they had it bad for each other. “Once Misty is in a computer, she doesn’t have any connection with her body. She won’t feel anything if we try and get her attention that way.”
“Well, we have to do something,” Hudson said, glancing at the diminishing counter with a worried look. “The elevator ride alone will take us two or three minutes. Can’t we just pull her away from the computer and snap her out of it?”
“Maybe you weren’t listening to me before.” Forrest’s hand moved to rest on the weapon holstered at his side, like he’d shoot the CIA agent if the guy so much as took a step toward Misty. “That would trap her mind in the computer, and we’d never get her out.”
No one said anything, not even Hudson. Instead, they all stood there staring at the counter, watching the time run out.
“Everyone out,” Jake said suddenly. “Head for the elevator now. I’ll stay here and grab Misty the second she comes out. I’ll be right behind you.”