“I hope Peter is all right,” Marty worried quietly as he peered ahead, not sure exactly what he was supposed to be looking for.
“He knows what he’s doing, Mart,” Smith answered as he recorded the sentries’ routes.
Then Jon peered over at Randi, seeing her face intent on the scene below. She was stretched out on his other side and had been quietly listening.
She gave him a sympathetic smile.
With that troubled exchange, the three turned their full attention back to planning how to break into Tremont’s mountain castle. One of the bored and yawning guards circled the log-and-frame building every half hour, checking doors and cursorily sweeping the grounds with a gaze that would have seen nothing that was not immediately obvious. The second man sat relaxed in a chair, smoking and enjoying the late October sunlight, his old M-16A1 assault rifle across his lap. The third was comfortably ensconced in a civilian Humvee beside the small clearing for a helipad fifty yards to their right, his rifle jutting up beside him.
“They haven’t had any intruders for years,” Jon guessed. “If ever.”
“Maybe there isn’t anything to guard,” Randi said. “Griffin could’ve been lying to us. Or just mistaken.”
“No. He saved us, and he knew he was dying,” Smith insisted. “He wouldn’t lie.”
“It’s happened, Jon. You yourself said he’d gone wrong.”
“Not that wrong.” He turned to Marty. “When they had you locked up here, Mart, what do you remember of the layout inside?”
“A big living room and a lot of small rooms. A sun room and kitchen. Places like that. They questioned me in a room downstairs. It was empty except for a chair and a cot, and when I woke up I was in a basement storage room chained to a wall.”
“That’s all you can tell us?” Randi asked.
“I didn’t exactly get a vacation brochure of the place,” he said huffily. Then he grimaced. “All right. I’m sorry. I know you didn’t mean anything. Well, I did see some people in white coats, like doctors. Most wore white pants, too. They were going upstairs to the second floor, but I don’t know to where exactly.”
“A laboratory?” Randi wondered.
“A secret lab.” Jon’s voice was low but charged. “That’s it— one of the things Bill could’ve told us. A secret lab for research and development. The records of the experiment on the twelve victims from the Gulf War and whatever else they’ve been doing should be here. That’s probably why nothing showed up on the Blanchard company computer. They never put anything there.”
“Some other company name and password, maybe,” Randi theorized.
Jon said, “We’d better get in there and find out for sure. Marty, stay here. You’ll be safer. If you see or hear anyone, fire a single shot to warn us.
“You can count on it.” Marty hesitated, his round eyes widening with shock. “I can’t believe I said that. Especially that I said it enthusiastically.” He was gripping the Enfield bullpup in his plump hands with nervous distaste. He had taken a new dose of meds and was still calm, but the effect would wear off soon.
Jon and Randi decided to delay until the guard completed his next circuit and rejoined the one at the front for a relaxed smoke. Then they would take out the one in the Humvee in the clearing to the right, where the afternoon sun sent long, cool shadows through the tall trees.
They did not have long to wait. After a few minutes, one of the two at the front stood and vanished behind the lodge. Ten minutes later he reappeared, this time coming around the building’s far side. He gave a cursory scan of the forest and grounds, logged in at the key station next to the main rear entrance, and finally circled back to the front to rejoin his companion.
Only the guard in the Humvee remained on this side of the big lodge.
“Now,” Jon said.
They slipped through the pines to the clearing. Out of sight of his colleagues, the guard in the Humvee was dozing in the warm sunshine, slumped in the driver’s seat.
“You want to work around behind the Humvee, Randi?” Jon suggested. He could feel his pulse begin to pound behind his ears. “I’ll watch from here and cover you. When you get there, give me a signal, and I’ll distract him from this side. If he wakes up too soon and hears you, I’ll take him out.”
“I’ll wave a hankie.” She gave a short smile. “Well, a Kleenex.” She was relieved to be in action again.
Her heart pumping, she melted among the trees until she was out of Smith’s view. He crouched in the shadows just inside the forest. Beretta ready, he watched the dozing guard and waited. Five minutes passed. Then he saw a flash of white directly behind the parked Humvee. The guard stirred, moved in his seat, but did not open his eyes. As the man settled in once more, Jon loped straight toward the squat, open vehicle.
But just as Jon was halfway across the clearing, the guard’s eyes snapped open. He grabbed his M-16. Randi materialized behind him. Her pale hair was a wreath of sunlight around her head, and her beautiful face was stony with concentration. Her body moved with the fluidity of a feral cat as she sprinted silently to the topless Humvee, ran up over the back, balanced one foot on the top of the backseat and the other on the rollover rail, and pressed her Uzi down into the back of the guard’s head. It took Jon’s breath away. He had never seen a woman move like that.
Her voice was cold and clear. “Release the rifle.”
The guard hesitated a second as if calculating his chances, then slowly lay the rifle on the seat beside him. He placed his hands flat on his thighs in plain sight, like someone who knew the proper procedure for being arrested.
“Good decision.”
Jon reached the Humvee and removed the M-16. He and Randi marched the guard back to where Marty waited. The three worked quickly together. Marty ripped the man’s shirt into strips. Jon and Randi used the guard’s belt and the strips of cloth to gag and tie him hand and foot. Trussed up, unable to speak, he lay on a bed of pine needles, shooting angry looks.
Smith took the guard’s ring of keys. “The two others out front won’t expect us from inside the lodge.”
“I like that.” Randi nodded, approving the plan.
He looked at her a little longer than necessary, but she did not seem to notice.
Marty sighed. “I know what you’re going to tell me. `If you see anything, shoot.’ Gad. And to think two weeks ago I’d never even held a gun. I’m devolving.”
They left Marty shaking his head as he guarded the disabled sentry and trotted down the slope to a side rear entrance of the lodge. The scent of pine was aromatic but somehow cloying.
As Randi stood guard, Jon found the right key and unlocked the door. They stepped warily inside a small foyer where sunlight beamed down from clerestory windows and more shone ahead at the far end of a hall. Closed doors lined the hallway, and there was the faint odor of good cigars as they padded toward the second source of light.
“What’s that?” Randi stopped, her athletic shoes motionless on the parquet floor.
Smith shook his head. “I didn’t hear anything.”
She was frozen there, her even features pursed in concentration. “It’s gone. Whatever the sound was, I can’t hear it now.”
“We’d better try all the doors.”
She took one side, and he the other. They turned every knob.
“Locked.” Jon shook his head. “They look as if they might be guest rooms or offices.”
“We’d better leave them until later,” Randi decided.
They passed a staircase that rose to a landing and turned. They could see nothing above the landing. They continued on, listening. The odor of cigars increased. Edgy, Jon’s gaze swept everywhere. At last they stood at the timbered entry to a cavernous living room decorated with rustic wood-and-leather furniture, brass-and-wood lamps, and low wood tables. It had to be the big room Marty had described. Across it extended a wall of windows through which sunlight flooded. There was also an enormous stone fireplace in which coals glowed, warming the room against the October chill. The expanse of windows looked out to the lake through the dense trees, and in the middle of the wall were double front doors that opened out to a covered porch.
Without speaking, the silent pair slipped together across the room, stood beside the doors, and surveyed the porch. Beyond the porch, on the lawn off to the left, were the two remaining guards relaxing in Adirondack chairs, smoking and chatting, their rifles across their knees. They were gazing out at the valley where the colors of autumn had turned the sweep of hardwood trees to rich golds and reds among the green pines.