Rogue Commander, Leo Maloney [classic books for 11 year olds TXT] 📗

to move fast because he had no idea where Medical was or how long it would take her to come back. Thankfully, just like with most such facilities, the security cameras were only out in the corridors.

He took out his lock picks and started quickly scanning the standing files, looking for that one label Collins had relayed. And there it was, middle of the fifth high cabinet on the left: Sierra 626. He worked the tube tumbler with a long pick and a tension wrench until it popped, then hauled the pike out of the top, and pulled the drawer open.

Inside was a double row of small standing files, greeting-card size with alphabetical tabs, and inside each folder was an air force chain-of-title card with a plastic sleeve containing a black square chip resembling a digital camera flash card. As instructed by Collins, Morgan plucked up the card from the M file and then took L and N as well, just in case Stepfield was dyslexic.

He stuffed them into his chest pocket, closed the drawer, slid the pike back down from the top, and locked it all up. He was just pocketing his lock pick set and scooting back around the desk when the door lock cranked. He leaned back on the wall with his arms folded, looking half asleep.

Tech Sergeant Stepfield walked in and faced him with her knuckles on her hips. She didn’t look pleased.

“You screwin’ with me, Master Sergeant?” she accused. “Medical says my file’s fine.”

Morgan raised his palms in surrender. “Hey, just tryin’ to help. Don’t shoot the messenger.”

Stepfield looked around her office and then eyed him again. “I haven’t seen you before. You got orders?”

“Sure.” Morgan came away from the wall, thinking, Shit, so close. He looked down, pulled open his right-hand breast pocket, then balled his fist, and coldcocked her right in the chin. Her head snapped back, and she went down like a sack of potatoes—lights out.

He bent over and looked at her, shaking his head. Damn it, kid. Why’d you have to be so smart? He didn’t see any blood. She’d have a wicked headache, but she’d be all right.

He walked out, pushed his way back through the Level Two door, took a right, quick-marched back to the vehicle tunnel, and then into the motor pool bay, his ears feeling pinned back like Neika’s as he waited for the first shouts and alarms.

Even so, he couldn’t look rushed or panicked for those eyes in the ceiling, so he slid casually into a Humvee, cranked it up, and drove out of the bay and up the long tunnel, holding his breath.

Please tell me you don’t need a code to get out. But sure enough, right before the pneumatic sliding doors was a metal stanchion with a keypad box at the top. Damn it! But there was also a big red button. He pushed it, and a disembodied voice echoed from a speaker above the truck.

“Gate, here. Whatcha need?”

“A Big Mac, large fries, and a Coke,” Morgan said.

“Funny. Hit the keypad.”

“Gimme a break,” Morgan pleaded. “I’m new, TDY, and nobody gave me a friggin’ code yet.”

“It’s three two eight two.”

“Thanks, brother.”

“Don’t thank me. Memorize it.”

“Will do.”

Morgan punched the numbers, and the doors whined open. He drove through, wound the Humvee slowly through the big red labyrinth barriers at the Entry Control Point, waved to the Security Forces Squadron guys at the booth, and gunned it.

Just before reaching Route 39, he swung the wheel hard to the left and took the Humvee down into a thick grove of brush. He jumped from the truck, stripped out of the uniform tunic, trousers, and sage-green tee—leaving himself wearing his black tee and jeans. He pulled the jeans cuffs down over the tops of his boots and then made sure to strip everything from the uniform and its pockets and stuff them into his jeans—especially the name tapes, chips, and his car keys. He kept the knife, ditched the 550 cord, and took off.

Twenty minutes later, he popped out of the woods across from The Oaks, crossed the highway, climbed into the Wrangler, and burned some rubber—heading back west toward Ogden. As he passed the cutoff for Coldcastle Mountain, he heard sirens and saw a wink of blue lights. Tech Sergeant Stepfield had apparently woken up, pissed.

He stepped on it hard, racing back toward Route 15. But he knew he couldn’t go anywhere near Hill Air Force Base again, and certainly not Salt Lake City airport. If those air force cops were halfway decent, they’d flash his description to Homeland Security. He’d have to turn north, drive his ass off to somewhere else, and take a train.

His knee was throbbing, and he felt bad about slugging the girl.

“You’re getting too old for this shit, Cobra,” he muttered. But then he smiled. “Hell, but she’ll have a great story to tell her grandkids.”

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Cold.

Bone-splintering, lung-sucking cold.

Lily had never felt anything like it. Not in Berlin in January, that safe house in Islamabad with no heat, or even in the Alps where she’d once lost her way on a climb. This was something else: the unmoving ice-brittle air of an empty Buddhist temple in the mountain forests of Dalian Jinlon—a structure constructed centuries ago before the concept of steam and one with no regard for a hearth. It was a place for monks to go dizzy with suffering and meld with their deity in delirium.

But she wasn’t a monk. Even so, she stopped shivering. She had nothing left. She was done.

She sat on a hard wooden chair in the middle of a conical space the size of an ancient Greek Orthodox apse. The floor was made up of polished, interlocked, stones, and the curving walls had been hewn from nearly black teak. A hundred small stone Buddhas sat in pocketed recesses in the walls, their lifeless fingers caressing unlit candles in their laps. From high above her head, where a convex ceiling braced the bottom of the