The Atlantis Gene (The Origin Mystery 1)

“I’ll take her,” she said to the men.

“Who are you?”

“Naomi. I work for Mr. Sloane.”

“Never heard of him.” The guard who was clearly in charge motioned to another man. “We’ll take her in too.”

“You’ll be sorry if you do,” Naomi said. “Call it in. I’ll wait. Ask your boss to call Mr. Sloane.”

The guards looked at each other.

Naomi grabbed one of their radios. “I’ll do it myself.” She clicked the button. “This is Naomi, I need to speak with Mr. Sloane.”

“Standby.”

“Sloane.”

“It’s Naomi, I’m bringing a girl to you, but there’s a pack of guards harassing us.”

“Hold on.” Then, Sloane’s voice said to someone in the background, “Tell your buffoons to quit harassing my people.”

Another voice came on the line. “This is Captain Zhào. Who is this?”

Naomi handed the radio back to the man, but he stepped back, dodging it like a plague blanket. Naomi tossed it to the man who had spoken. “Good luck.” She grabbed Kate by the arm and said under her breath, “Be quiet and follow me.”

Naomi led Kate away from the guards who were desperately trying to apologize to the man on the radio.

They took a right, then a left, down another deserted corridor. She asked Kate for her badge at a set of double doors.

“Who are you?” Kate said.

“It’s not important. I’m here to help you get the children out.”

“Who sent you?”

“The same person who sent you the IDs.”

“Thank you,” was all Kate could think to say.

The woman nodded. She opened a door, and Kate heard Adi and Surya talking inside. Her heart stopped. The door swung open and they were there, sitting at a table in a white-walled room. Kate ran in, knelt down to hug them, and without a word they ran to her and jumped into her arms, bowling her over. They were alive. She could do it. She could save them. Kate felt a firm hand pull her up.

“I’m sorry. We don’t have time. We have to hurry,” Naomi said.

CHAPTER 56

The security chief handed the radio back to Dorian. “They won’t give your girl any more trouble. I apologize for that Mr. Sloane. It’s all the new faces, we don’t do well—”

“Spare me.” Dorian turned to the nuclear scientist, Dr. Chase. “Continue.”

“The shipments we received from the North — I’m not sure we can use them.”

“Why not?”

“The nukes from Belarus have been tampered with. If we had the time, we could probably disassemble them and sort them.”

“What does that leave?” Dorian said.

“The Ukrainian and Russian devices look ok, they’re just old. And the shipment from China was pristine, very recent builds. How did you—”

“Never mind that. Numbers?”

“Let’s see.” He scanned a print out. “126 total warheads. And most are extremely high-yield. It would be helpful to know the target, outside of that I can’t say—”

“What about the portable nukes?”

“Ah, yes, we have them ready.” Dr. Chase motioned to an assistant across the room. The young man left the room and returned carrying an over-sized silver egg slightly smaller than a shopping cart. The man could barely get his arms around the slippery egg, so he carried it like a load of firewood, leaning back to make sure it didn’t roll out of his cupped arms. When he reached the table, he set the egg down and stepped away, but the egg wobbled awkwardly, then drifted toward the edge. The assistant lurched forward and steadied it with a hand.

Dr. Chang put his hands in his pockets, nodded once to Dorian, and smiled expectantly.

Dorian glared at the egg, then again at Dr. Chase. “What the f**k is that?”

The man slid his hands from his pockets and took a step toward the egg, pointing at it. “It’s the… portable device you requested. It’s 7.4 kilos or about 16 pounds.” He shook his head. “We simply couldn’t reduce it any more, well, we could with time.”

Dorian leaned back in the chair, looking from the egg to the scientist.

The scientist walked closer to the egg, scrutinizing it. “Is there something wrong with it? We have the other one—”

“Portable. I need two portable nukes.”

“Oh and indeed it is. You saw Harvey carrying it. Granted it’s a bit bulky, but—”

“Over distance and in a backpack, not some magic egg an ogre could skip across a loch. How long to make it smaller — like something that could actually fit in, keyword here Doctor, a suitcase?”

“Uhmm, well… you never said…” The man glanced at the egg.

“How long?” Dorian pressed.

“A couple of days, if—”

“Mr. Sloane, we have an issue in the power plant, you need to see this.”

Dorian wheeled over to the tablet the security chief held. Behind him, he heard the scientist pacing and complaining to Harvey. “It’s not like in the movies where you just ‘clip the green wire’ and shove it in a rucksack and take off for a hike up Everest, I mean we have to…” Dorian blocked the scientist out and focused on the video on the tablet: a man moving through some mechanical room.

“Where is this?”

“The main circuit room outside the reactors. There’s more.” The security chief rewound the video.

Dorian watched the man plant a series of charges. There was something. Dorian tapped the tablet, paused the video then zoomed in on the face. It couldn’t be.

“Do you recognize him, sir?”

Dorian studied the face and thought back to a mountainside village in Northern Pakistan, the flames rising from every hut, the women and children running, the men lying in front of the burning homes… and a man shooting back at him. He remembered shooting him, he didn’t know how many times. And finishing the job. “Yes, I know him. His name is Andrew Reed. He’s a former CIA Field Operative… You will need a lot more men to contain him.”

“Shoot to kill?”

Dorian glanced away absently. In the background, he heard the radio crackle and the security man barking orders. Reed was here, trying to kill the power. He wouldn’t be alone. Where had he been for the last four years — if he wasn’t dead? Why the power?

The security chief leaned over. “We have the charges and timer. We’re taking them out of the building. We’ve reviewed the security footage since he entered, they are the only threat. We’re surrounding him. Do you want us to—”