The Milestone Protocol, Ernest Dempsey [100 best novels of all time txt] 📗

out. For a second, he thought the guards heard a huff come from one of the boxes, but with all the sounds from the machines, they didn’t react.

The two gunmen followed Tommy and the other two delivery guys off the platform, bringing up the rear as the procession headed toward the next elevator.

Sean immediately noted that the access panel was a card reader only, with no retinal scanner or voice recognition, and no keypad either.

Magnus may have thought of everything regarding the end of the world, but he’d slacked on a few things. And that security panel was one of them.

Sean shrugged his right shoulder and felt his delivery uniform loose on that side just enough that he could slip his hand through the unzipped portion to grab the pistol on his right hip. He was about to rap on the box nearest him—the signal that would spring their team into action—when he stopped with his palm over the lid. Dak noticed the gesture, but Sean quickly returned his hand to the steering mechanism and continued guiding the loader down the passage until he reached the elevator doors.

At the last second, Sean had noticed something different about the security panel. It was subtle, almost unnoticeable to anyone not paying attention.

It was a red light inside a dark plastic panel, but he hadn’t seen anything like it before. He realized that it could be a laser fingerprint scanner or perhaps something else—possibly a biochip reader.

Either way, Sean knew that to risk killing the men early would prove problematic. On top of that, he knew that the camera in the corner above the elevator door would bring their mission to an abrupt end. Magnus would have security monitoring everything going on in the compound, and those cameras were the lifeline to current information.

Sean had a plan for those, just as soon as the guards were out of the way.

The first guard who’d greeted the delivery crew stepped up to the panel and swiped his ID card. The light blinked green—casting away any wild theories Sean had come up with about the tech—and the elevator door slid open.

The guard stepped to the side and urged Sean to enter first. There was something off about the way he made the gesture. An eager look in his eye, perhaps? Or maybe it was the way his lips twitched. Whatever it was, Sean realized immediately that they were about to be executed. He doubted Magnus knew they were there. Their masks and uniforms kept their identities safe, at least up until that moment. Sean could only come to one conclusion as to why they were about to be killed. Magnus was tying off loose ends. If Sean had to bet, his former friend was about to lock down the facility and start the machine.

No sense in procrastinating when you can destroy civilization now, he thought.

Sean detected the guard to his left adjusting his submachine gun, a weapon that—like the others—was equipped with a suppressor.

He entered the elevator, questioning whether he should have sprung the trap sooner. With the camera just outside the lift, he knew that had he taken action sooner, someone would have seen it. Patience was the better end of caution, he reminded himself.

Tommy and the others followed him onto the elevator and waited for the guards to join them. Sean stepped to the side to make room for the second loader and watched the gunmen closely. If they weren’t going to do it in the corridor, they would do it in the elevator where there truly was nowhere to run.

The cliché Fish in a barrel came to Sean’s mind.

As Tommy positioned his machine, thoughts of elevator assassination scenes from movies flashed through Sean’s mind.

Then, one of the guards stepped on and over to the panel, though he didn’t turn and face the short array of buttons.

The other three also boarded the lift. The first pressed the button for the bottom floor and then faced the group again, shifting his submachine gun.

Sean knew they were out of time. He palmed a metal disc he’d taken from his pocket and pressed it hard twice, depressing the center of the device. The object was no larger than a watch battery, but it packed a powerful strategic punch—a little gift from a buddy at DARPA. Thankfully, Sean’s contact had sent a case of them, mini flash-bang devices that had bailed him out of several tight situations.

Sean looked around at the lights, wincing. “Is it bright in here or is it just me?” Then he leaned his head back and faked a sneeze, tossing the disk at the feet of the guards just as the elevator began its descent.

Sean and the other members of his team closed their eyes and covered them with their hands a split second before the flash bang sent a terrible, blinding white light through the elevator. Even with his palms shielding his eyes, Sean could see the residual light through his eyelids. The instant the light vanished, he rapped on the box nearest him.

The members of his team hiding in the crates popped up as the guards shouted and rubbed their eyes, blinded temporarily by the flash bang.

Emily, Tara, June, Niki, Tabitha, and Adriana fired their silenced pistols. The elevator erupted in a series of muted pops and clicks as the assault team cut down the guards before they could reach the triggers of their guns.

Three men slumped against the walls while one lay in a heap next to the loader.

Sean stepped over one of the bodies. As he moved, gun smoke lingering in the air swirled around him like a graveyard fog. He pressed the second button from the bottom and hoped they hadn’t missed that level.

Then he turned to Alex, who held a device about the size of a large cell phone. “You got access to the camera stream yet?”

“Not yet, but almost.”

“We could be at the next level soon,” Sean said. “I would hate to have to put on a