The Breach - Ghost Country - Deep Sky

in time exactly five minutes from right now.” He continued speaking as they did it. “You’re going to save who you can downstairs, but at the five-minute mark, you’re going to be sitting in the Jeeps up top, ready to go. All six Jeeps are leaving at that moment, together. Even one straggler a few minutes behind would get everyone else killed. Be there or you’re staying here.”
    He didn’t wait to see what they thought of that plan. It didn’t matter what they thought. It was simply the only plan that didn’t end with everyone in the building dead. He turned and ran for the stairwell, and heard their footsteps following right behind him.
    When they were two levels down Travis slowed and pulled Paige aside on a landing. He let the crowd pass.
    “I have to go back up to B4 and do something,” he said. “We can’t leave that level intact for Holt’s people to find. They’ll see Defense Control and realize that’s where we would’ve watched the plane coming in. With that room still in place—and empty—they’ll know there were survivors who made it out.”
    Paige’s eyes narrowed as she took his point. “If Defense Control were destroyed … they’d think they got us all.”
    “They’d be sure of it. It wouldn’t occur to them that we left in Jeeps—that we even had Jeeps, forty miles from the nearest road. The charging station in the pole barn, all by itself, won’t tip them off; it could be used for a hundred different kinds of equipment.”
    Paige nodded. Then fear crept into her expression. She looked upward, as if through the wall of the stairwell, toward B4.
    “What are you planning to do?” she said.
    “Nothing just yet. I’ll need a few minutes to get it ready. Come up with the last of the crowd, and call out into B4 when everyone’s above that level.”
    “Travis, what are you—”
    “No time. I’ll be fine. I’ll be up top right behind you.” Before she could say more, he continued. “I need you to do something too.”
    “I’m already on it,” she said. “I’ll do it and then help with the survivors.”
    “I know what you’re planning,” he said. “What I need is for you to not do it, if it looks too risky.”
    “I have to try—”
    “No you don’t. Not if it jeopardizes your life. If it’s too dangerous, just skip it and go right to the wounded.”
    She started to protest, but he spoke over her again. “Promise.”
    A second passed. She looked frustrated—but understanding.
    “I promise.”
    Then she was gone, down the stairs after the others.
    Travis turned and sprinted up the flight they’d just come down.
    He passed the hole the bunker buster had punched in the floor, and entered Defense Control, its workstations and its wall of screens dark and dead. He turned to the flat wall, with its row of giant, semi-portable mainframe computers—eight in all.
    They were on wheels. Big industrial swivel casters the diameter of salad plates, with brake levers that could be locked or unlocked by stepping on them. Travis saw to his relief that only the front casters of each mainframe had been locked. He ran along the row, slamming his heel down on each lever and freeing each wheel. When he’d finished he ran back to the first mainframe in the line, the one nearest the door. He got a hand on its back corner, braced the other against the wall, and pulled.
    For a second the thing didn’t budge. It had to weigh five hundred pounds. Then one of its casters pivoted and the whole unit lurched outward, exposing its power cord and data cable. Travis ripped both from their sockets, got hold of the mainframe once more and heaved it farther out. It protested again, clinging to its inertia even on the room’s slanted floor, but once it’d traveled even a few inches, all four casters fell in line with its direction of travel. It rolled smoothly, gaining momentum as Travis pushed it toward the wide-open door.
    He eased it into the hallway and slipped past it, positioning himself on its downhill side. For the moment the huge machine, its wheels still cocked sideways, held still where it’d come to rest. Travis, facing it, turned and looked over his shoulder at the hallway dipping sickeningly behind him. Forty feet away, the low point. The weak point.
    How weak, exactly?
    Travis doubted the sudden addition of five hundred pounds would make a difference.
    Maybe four thousand would.
    If it didn’t, he and all the others would probably be dead within a few hours, hunted