CHAPTER 25

The security guard left his little brick building and walked out to the fire truck. He stepped up on the side, next to the drivers door and asked the man inside, “what are you boys doing here?”

Tony told the man, “how you doing. I’m Fireman Tippet. We got a call that there was a fire here. This is B&N Labs, right?”

The security guard became a little confused. He then looked back inside the fence and at the nearby building that he was guarding. Everything looked all right. All hell had been breaking loose today but, thankfully, nobody had bothered B&N.

Tony could see the confusion and it only spurred him on, “maybe you should call somebody inside? Find out?”

The guy became even more confused, “there’s nobody here today. We’re closed. They all went home when…”

Tony pushed it, “you mean there’s no other guards here ether?”

“Well,” the guy pointed to the building, “Jones is inside but…”

Tony interrupted, “And that’s all?”

“Well yeah but,” the security guard took one last look at the building and then told Tony, “there’s no fire here. I can’t let you in unless…”

The big junction box that was sitting prominently on the front lawn exploded into a raging inferno. Tony pointed to it and said, “you mean a fire like that one? Come on man! This facility has all kinds of hazardous materials in it! You know what they do here, right?”

The guy was in complete fear and was near speechless. At first he could only shrug and then, finally, he managed to say, “I have no idea what they do here!”

“Well I do,” Tony shot back. He pushed it harder now, “with the stuff they have stored on premise, this kind of spontaneous, neo thermal, inebriated, indo-European, coagulating explosion is only inevitable with all of the hazardous material being put out in the air today. Do you know what that means?”

“Uh,” the security guards eyes kept looking from the fire to Tony and then back again. He finally managed to say, “what?”

“It means we could loose the entire block if we don’t act fast,” Tony snapped at the guy in fury, “now open the damn gate!”

The man jumped down off the fire truck and ran back inside his little building. Tony watched him try and use the phone in panic. He was not having much luck since the junction box, that Norm had just blown up with his grenade launcher, controlled all the communications on the property. The guy was really sweating it but, Tony was starting to think that he would still not push the button to open the gate. Tony really hated to resort to plan B here but, it might just become necessary.

Then the ground shook and there was a flash of light in the rearview mirror. Tony looked over his shoulder and tried to spot whatever had just happened. He saw a very large column of black smoke on the horizon and he gulped. It was not breaking up either. There was definitely a source beneath it that was feeding even more smoke into the air. Apparently the security guard reached the same conclusion. He hit the button to open the gate, grabbed his lunch box, and ran past the fire truck yelling, “you’re welcome to the place. I quit!”

As Tony put the fire truck in gear, and began driving through the gate, Garcia was still looking behind them. He was sitting in the passenger seat, also dressed as a fireman, and he still pretty stunned. He pointed back at the smoke, “is that what I think it is?”

“I don’t know,” Tony told him, “what do you think it is?”

Garcia exclaimed in fury, “man! Don’t play that dumb shit with me! Did the German’s just nuke us or something?”

Tony put the vehicle in park by the service doors to the building and he got out without answering Garcia’s question. That did not stop Garcia from rambling on about it as they joined up with Danni and Amy at the back of the fire truck. Garcia was still rambling and complaining as they all began shedding their fire coats and passing out weapons.

Norm and Barbara came walking up from across the buildings front lawn. They had cut holes in the fence right after Norm took out the buildings security system which also ran through the junction box that he blew up. Apparently, from what Tony could gage from the argument he was hearing, Barbara was not all that happy about it.

When they got close, Tony had to ask, “I thought the plan was always to take out that box?”

Barbara was livid, “I’m not talking about that explosion!” She thrust her finger at the horizon and said, “I’m talking about the other one!” Fire leapt form her eyes as she accusingly lashed out at Norm, “have you and Jake lost your goddamn minds! Blowing up Horst’s drug stash?”

Garcia suddenly relaxed, “is that what that was?”

Norm growled back at everyone but, specifically at Barbara, “I already told you. We didn’t do that!”

Barbara remained unconvinced, “who else would!?”

“I don’t know,” Norm growled back at the woman. Then he tried to get things back on track. He looked to Tony and asked, “how many more?”

Tony remained easy going, “only one. The guy at the gate already hauled ass.”

“Good,” Norm said resolutely as he walked over and stood in front of the service doors, pointed his grenade launcher at them, and then told everybody, “then we don’t have to be subtle anymore.”

Barbara tired to tell Norm to stop but, it was clear she was already too late. Instead, she used her time to grab Amy and Danni and pull them behind the truck. Tony and Garcia needed no help as they both jumped for cover. None of them made it before Norm pulled the trigger on the grenade launcher and put a giant hole in the service door. They were all a little surprised by the fact that there was no explosion.

Everyone was peeking out from cover and staring at Norm who only just stood care free and in the open. Norm shook his head at them and said, “don’t any of you know nothing? These grenades got proximity fuses. They got to travel a long way before they go…”

The explosion blasted the door clean open and left the air filled with smoke. Fortunately, the flames evaporated almost as quickly as they had formed. Norm had to push himself up off the ground, coughing, before he could examine the carnage and then angrily proclaim, “goddamn cheap ass Canadian ammo!”

Barbara was still coughing and fanning away the smoke as she stomped up to Norm and yanked the grenade launcher out of his hand. She told him, “I think we’ve had enough explosions for today!”

“Whatever,” Norm growled back. He then pointed to Danni and told her, “get my bag and bring it with us.”

As Danni pulled the black bag from the back of the truck, and unzipped it so she could examine the contents, Amy became flustered and told Norm, “I really think I need to be the one to go!”

“I’m fine,” Danni said as she rummaged thru Norm’s bag. Then she looked to Norm and said, “duct tape? Rope? A baseball bat? Norm have been shopping at WMD’s again? You’re going to give that little cashier girl a complex!”

Norm had already retrieved his shotgun and was walking up the stairs that led to the remains of the service door. He did not even bother looking back as he commanded, “stick to the jobs I told you. Now let’s move.”

Barbara and Danni quickly followed Norm. Garcia gave Tony a nod and then went to watch the front corner. That left Tony standing by Amy who was looking at the blown out door and obviously thinking pretty hard about something. Tony had to ask, “what’s wrong with Danni?”

Amy’s eyes shifted to Tony and, at first, she looked furious. Then she mellowed and asked, “you haven’t noticed?” When Tony would not answer, Amy decided to ask something else, “did you really kiss her?”

“What?” Tony was shocked, “no! I mean… yes, I mean…” He got huffy and then told her, “we don’t have time for this right now.” Tony grabbed his shotgun and stomped off towards the back of the little alley where he tried to keep watch.

Inside the building, Norm reached the second story fire door. When Barbara tried to say something he put a finger to his lips and she held her thoughts. Norm then used hand signals. He pointed to the door, then he held up one finger like he was counting, then he made a couple of little walking legs. Barbara just looked confused and she shrugged. She then looked to Danni, behind her, and only got another shrug. Norm rolled his eyes in frustration and waived for them to move out of the way. When their backs were against the wall he moved to the other side of the door and snatched it open. The security guard came flying thru and went tumbling down the stairs.

Norm then peeked out into what proved to be an empty hallway that was lined with windows and pressure doors of some kind. All Norm cared about, for the moment, was the fact that there were no more people. The place looked dark and shut down so, their intelligence must have been good. He then nodded to Danni, “the bag.”

Danni became kind of squeamish, “I don’t have to use the baseball bat, do I?”

The security guard was still laying face down on the stairwell landing. Barbara had a shotgun in the back of his head and, so far, it was proving to be more than enough of a deterrent. Then he heard the conversation and risked a peek up at Danni. He asked her, “baseball bat? Do you play?”

“Um,” Danni wondered what to say to that, “sometimes?”

Norm growled, “would you just get his ass up here!”

They taped him to the chair at his guard station and he was almost to the point of being cocooned in silver. Then Norm told Danni, “keep your eye on him. If he moves, shoot him.”

The boy had medium length blond hair, was definitely way too young to be a security guard, and Danni thought he looked a little too fit as well. She then took a really good look at him, from head to toe, and replied to Norm, “my pleasure.”

Barbara followed Norm as he stomped down the hall. He was looking at name plates while Barbara was looking at everything else. The rooms on the left side of the hall, those that were completely interior, looked to be a collection of various laboratories. Barbara had been under the impression that this guy was some kind of weapons contractor for the Germans. There was nothing about this place that even looked like an arsenal. There was also another added problem. The place was dimly lit and that could only mean one thing, “Kohler’s not here Norm. Nobody‘s here but that kid back there.”

“We knew that might be the case,” Norm said in a manner that made it clear he was completely undeterred.

Barbara remained pessimistic, “this plan won’t work without this Kohler guy.”

Norm found the door with the name plate he was looking for. He pointed to it and then told Barbara, “Helmut Kohler. I guess his office is just going to have to do.” Norm raised his shotgun and blew the door knob off. After he racked another round in the chamber as he kicked it open.

Barbara groaned and opened another office door with only a turn of the knob, “did you even think that it might have been unlocked?”

Norm thought about it, was about to say something, then reconsidered. Finally he just told her, “don’t matter no more, does it?” He then led Barbara into the office and he pointed out the man’s computer as he said, “ok, do your thing. I’ll keep watch.”

Barbara sat down at the man’s desk and clipped the little drive to the port on it’s main screen. She then turned on the computer and waited as the drive did it’s job. As she watched the jumbled mess that was booting up, instead of the operating system, she told Norm, “you know all of this is riding on Barton actually being right. How do we even know this drive thing of his is going to work?”

“Trust me Barbara, if there is one thing Jake knows, it‘s computers,” Norm told her as he stuck his head out of the door and looked in both directions. Now that he felt a bit more secure he was starting to notice the labs as well. He then asked, “what the hell is this place?”

Barbara felt a little bit of relief when the crap that had been flashing on the screen was replaced with an icon that began downloading folders. She started looking at a few as she asked Norm, “how does he know computers? I thought Barton was some kind of blow up the bad guy type. That doesn’t go together.”

Norm let out a sigh and then looked back at Barbara, “he told me the army sent him to… war college? Something like that. He said they worked on stuff like what Roger was…”

Barbara growled out a buzzer sound and then said, “we weren’t going to mention that again. Ever!” Norm dropped the subject as quickly as he had brought it up. Barbara then used the silence to keep looking through the files that they were downloading. Finally she had to mention it again though, “you’re telling me that Jake wrote computer programs that torture people? Is that what you’re saying?”

Norm was back to watching the hallway, “I thought we weren’t talking about this?” As and afterthought, Norm also added, “and you called him Jake, again.”

“Just come here and look at this,” Barbara said with some serious concern. When Norm did she pointed to one particular folder, “that’s Roger’s research, Norm. What’s it doing here on this computer? That place self destructed. How did B&N get it?”

Norm was just as perplexed and all he could really say was, “how the hell should I know?”

“The only way it could be here is,” Barbara told him, “this was the company that Roger was really working for.” Then Barbara took a deep breath and said, “and that’s not all.” She checked the status bar of the download and saw that she had fifteen percent left to go. It was enough time to pull up the other file she looked at. It was in a subfolder of the one holding Roger’s research.

When she called it up, there was not much intelligible about it. There was mostly just programming lines for standard quantum machine language. Barbara knew what it was even if she had no idea how to read it. There were some words in the code though. Barbara knew what a memo line was. Anybody that passed first grade knew that, with maybe the exception of Norm. It was a line that the computer ignored. It was simply so the programmer could put notes in the code. Those same programmers usually signed their work in those lines as well. In this particular case, that is exactly what the programmer did.

Norm read his name out loud, “Major Jacob Barton, US Army?”

Barbara licked her lips and then said, “Norm, that computer back at Roger’s little shop of horrors, you know? The one that tried to kill me? Jake was it’s creator.”

Norm blew up, “Did you find what we needed? I mean right now?”

Barbara almost couldn’t take her eyes off that name in the memo line. She thought back to that night. She still had nightmares about it. Barbara had never remembered feeling so helpless and that was the one thing that scared her more than anything else. She had never before been able to admit that to herself, let alone anyone else. That night had made her come face to face with it and it burned inside her. It was not just fear, it was also anger.

When it was obvious Barbara was somewhere else, Norm slapped her on the arm and repeated his question. Barbara had to shake herself back to reality and she said, “yeah we got what we came for.”

Norm went back into good soldier mode and commanded, “then send the damn things and lets get the hell out of here. We’ll worry about the rest of that shit later.”