Breacher (Tom Keeler Book 2), Jack Lively [ebook voice reader txt] 📗

a demonstration to a buyer. I asked about him and it’s what the sick people said.”

I said nothing.

Chapman was nodding at me. We were on the same page, as usual.

I said, “Time for that board meeting.”

We came at the house from an oblique angle.

We approached through the trees on the opposite side of the yard. As I got closer, I could see the building well. It was a modern design which had been all about the windows. These were massive glass panels, flattened out like black ice. It wouldn’t be easy to put a bullet through that glass. You could see by the way it absorbed the light rather than reflecting it. There were micro particles in there—it wasn’t the same material as regular window glass. That was for damn sure.

I spoke into Chapman’s ear. “Special glass.”

She nodded.

Through the windows, corridors could be seen running the width of the building on each of the two floors. The steel structure was black. The interior walls were dark wood. Wall sconces glowed, dim and discreet. Bottom floor, a guy stood guard next to the steel staircase. Top floor, a guy stood next to a door. Two guards, both in tactical black, both holding assault rifles, both with trigger fingers along the trigger guard, rifles up and ready. Both men were sweeping their eyes left and then right. Slow and regular, like automated lawn sprinklers. Sweep left, sweep right. One covered the stairs, the other the second floor door. Which meant that something important was happening inside that door.

Which made it the primary target.

I spoke softly. “Tell me how you got out of there.”

Chapman turned her head so that her mouth was close to my ear. “I was in the back. Second floor, like I said. I climbed through an air conditioning duct from the attic to the roof. Shimmied down the corner. Same as you see there.”

I was looking at the corner. A single steel beam painted in black. I was thinking that we might go in the way she’d come. But then I started to feel a stiffness building up where the bullet had grazed me in the side, which was wet with blood. Chapman was looking at me. My face was feeling the birdshot. She must have been reading my mind because she reached her slender fingers to picked out a pellet and flicked it into the dirt. "Too many to take out now. We’ll have to wait.”

I grunted.

Being wounded made me prone to a short temper. The idea of climbing up that building was aggravating me.

I said, “Where’s the bus?”

Fifty-Five

The Green Gremlin mini-bus was parked two hundred yards away in a half-circle cul-de-sac. It was the same vehicle I’d seen over at the cruise ship. It had been transporting sick people on wheel chairs. Now I knew where they’d come from. Here, the mini-bus had been set to do the same thing again, transport the remaining group to the cruise ship. My best guess was that the Mister Lawrence people had planned to ditch them in international waters, presumably the colder and more remote the better. They’d probably planned a special excursion.

Chapman had put a stop to that plan. Which made her a hero in my eyes.

When we arrived at the bus I could see one of the mercenaries was slumped in the driver’s seat, his head distorted by a single gunshot wound high on the temple. The driver’s side window was starred around the bullet hole. Good shot. The passenger door was open. Another gunman’s body lay sprawled across the steps leading to the interior. Chapman hadn’t been fooling around. I counted two entry wounds in the body.

The Gremlin grinned broadly above the tour bus logo.

Which reminded me of the first time I had seen it, back at the airport. The passengers coming off the silver Lear jet. I realized that they had been the board members. Arriving to finalize the project, no doubt.

A weak voice spoke from inside the bus. “Don’t shoot. We’re in here.”

I stepped over the corpse and boarded the vehicle. It was very hard to see anything, but I made out dim figures sprawled over luxury seats. If I hadn’t been able to hear them breathing I would have assumed that they were corpses. They would be dead soon enough, so they’d have an interest in the time that remained.

One of the walking dead men had looted a Tavor assault rifle from the mercenary’s corpse. He sat up front with it. His face was slick with sweat and glowed like an irradiated clock dial. Chapman stepped forward and waved her lipstick cylinder above the seats. She moved slowly and carefully. Then she stepped back outside and motioned for me to follow.

Chapman spoke softly. “Don’t go in the back with them for long. It isn’t safe. They are soaked in it.”

“The big guy said that you don’t need product, or the submarine returned. That right Chapman?”

Her voice came clipped and precise. “We need to end it. That’s all. Just a guarantee that the product and the reactor are taken care of and made safe by a reputable authority, like the United States of America.”

I said, “Okay, Alaska is American now. You sold it to us, remember that.”

Chapman smiled. “No doubt. What’s the plan?”

I said, “The plan is simple. Bullet-proof glass works both ways. They won’t be able to fire out. We’re going to ram it with the bus.”

“Then what?”

“We’ll take it from there. Nobody expects to be rammed by a Green Gremlin mini-bus. It’s blue sky thinking. Innovation in action. We’ll break the box open, then we’ll see. Surprise is on our side. The remaining enemy will be tired and fearful. We’ve delivered all of their friends to the other world. Never underestimate chaos and fear.”

Chapman grinned. “Why I wanted you here in the first place.”

“You did the right thing. That was out-of-the-box thinking.”

She said, “Good. I have high expectations of the future. I’m full of hope.”

I said, “So am I.”

I pulled