He had to come back to her. He had to survive. As she held those thoughts close to her like a shield, Tegan's deep voice came over the receiver mounted to the Rover's dashboard. "Fuck, I think we've got something out here." There was a rustle of movement in the background, the sound of boots traipsing carefully over dried leaves. The warrior dropped his voice to a low whisper. "Oh, hell yeah ... we got something, all right.
Dilapidated barn roughly four hundred and fifty yards northeast of the Rover." "Copy" came Brock's bass growl. "Moving in now." Claire exchanged an anxious look with Dylan as more warriors reported that they were circling over to the location Tegan had given. "Couple of Minions posted outside of it armed with semiautos," Tegan added. "Reichen and I are moving in on them. Everyone else bring up the rear." Not a few seconds later, gunfire exploded from out of the distant woods.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Wilhelm Roth turned away from the old barn's hidden closed-circuit cameras after the Order had mowed down the handful of Minions posted as guards at the ground-level entrance of the lab. The Minions were expendable, nothing more than an obstacle for appearance sake. After all, the Order might be suspicious if he and Dragos had rolled out a red carpet to welcome them. Let them think they had to expend some effort for their prize.
Lull them into believing they were actually the ones in control, when their arrival had been anticipated--indeed, encouraged--all along. Now that they had all gained entrance to the underground facility, it would be only minutes before the group of warriors and Andreas Reichen found their way down the bunker's earthen catacombs to the heart of Dragos's headquarters. A few minutes more than that before they realized the trap they'd entered and understood there could be no escape. Just a matter of minutes before Roth had the distinct pleasure of killing them all in one fell swoop. He smiled with genuine glee as he motioned to the half-dozen Gen One assassins gathered with him in the control room. "Two of you come with me," he said, not caring which of Dragos's homegrown, highly trained killers accompanied him since they were all born and bred to deal in death.
"The rest of you head up to guard the entrance. Make sure no one gets in or out." As four of them moved to carry out his command, Wilhelm Roth walked out of the control room to await his moment of triumph over Andreas Reichen and his doomed companions.
Tegan and Nikolai were the first ones down the dank, dark tunnel that had been carved deep into the earth and fortified by concrete and carbide steel supports. A few seconds after they'd descended, Niko came back up and signaled an all-clear to Brock, Kade, and Reichen. Hunter and Renata stayed on watch outside, covering the search party's exit. Once they'd removed the Minion guards from the entrance, Reichen and the others had moved into the old barn, which, they soon realized, wasn't so old after all. Nothing about the hidden bunker was as it seemed on the outside. At the other end of the sloping tunnel, easily some several hundred feet below, the bunker expanded and spread out as wide and long as a gymnasium. Fluorescent lights washed the place out in a pale white glow, illuminating cafeteria-style tables and chairs that had been stacked neatly against one wall.
A hinged door with a round window at eye level appeared to open into some sort of kitchen and service area, also empty and evidently closed for business although the odors of recently cooked food still hung cloyingly in the air. "Guess who's coming to dinner," Kade drawled under his breath. Brock scowled as he nodded. "Humans." "Minions," Tegan corrected with a snarl as he sniffed derisively. "Helluva lot of them, too. Dragos keeps plenty of staff down here." Nikolai grunted. "Yeah, but for what?" "Let's find out," Tegan said, motioning the group forward with him as he moved through the empty space to the corridor that let out on the other side. They crept soundlessly past multiple spoking hallways and door after door of vacant dormitory-type rooms with basic twin cots, shared toilets, and a decided lack of personal touches.
"Jesus," Kade whispered. "How many Minions does one twisted bastard need at his beck and call, anyway?" "Enough to man a very expansive clinical endeavor," Reichen said, pausing in front of a pair of steel doors that he'd pushed open a crack in order to peer inside. Beyond the doors was a massive laboratory with half-emptied cabinets and gaping file drawers, clumsily cleared work spaces, and a polished floor littered with pieces of equipment broken in what appeared to have been a hasty evacuation. The warriors entered cautiously, taking note of what little assets remained. There were a handful of toppled microscopes and cracked slides, and sundry other items that looked like they'd once starred in a chemist's wet dream. "Check this out," Kade called from the far side of the lab. He indicated a lidded stainless steel drum that looked like a giant pressure cooker.
"Now, what the hell do you suppose this thing does?" Reichen and Tegan walked over with Brock and Nikolai, glancing inside the large cylinder as Kade popped the seals on the top and opened the lid. It was no longer plugged in, so the temperature inside had warmed considerably from the deep freeze maintained while the unit was operable, and the contents had all been removed. Still, there was no mistaking the machine's purpose. "It's a cryo container," Reichen said. Tegan nodded grimly. He jerked his chin toward another nearby room, where a skewed fleet of clear Plexiglas boxes like one might expect to see in the maternity wing of a human hospital had been parked haphazardly along the far wall. "Incubators. Jesus Christ. Dragos is running a f**king breeding factory down here."