The 6th Extinction by James Rollins Page B

mounted, he slid along its length, ignoring the individual rungs. He used his hands and feet to occasionally brake to control his speed, counting the floors as he fell past them. In twenty seconds, he had reached the subbasement doors marked L3.
    Hanging by one hand, he pulled the latch to release those doors, then lunged out as soon as they parted. He landed and skidded on his knees across the floor, his body twisted to face the neighboring stairwell door. As he had suspected, a lone gunman stood guard, holding the way open with one foot, keeping an eye on the stairs.
    Gray already had his stolen pistol out, still outfitted with a silencer. He shot the man in the head, the suppressed gunshot little more than a harsh cough. He quickly swung his gun toward the data center down the hall.
    Shadows moved in there, along with hushed, angry voices.
    “Maybe they were never here,” he heard one assailant call out sharply. “That dead guy could’ve lied about someone being down here.”
    Gray let out a breath. So Monk and Jason hadn’t been found. Maybe they’d already made it upstairs. But he had to be certain, especially after hearing a voice, full of command, bark out.
    “We’re out of bloody time!”
    Another voice: “Done! Got the worm delivered into the servers. It’ll delete all files here and any redundant backups elsewhere.”
    “Then get those last charges set and move out!”
    With the fire alarm still ringing, Gray moved down the hallway to the data center’s open door. He took a fast glance inside before ducking back out of sight.
    Four men .
    They were all staring through the window to the rows of mainframes in the neighboring room.
    Must be more men in there, setting the final charges .
    Their mission was clearly to compromise those servers. He pictured Lucius Raffee upstairs. He imagined the handful of security guards in the building had suffered a similar fate. Had the director simply been at the wrong time and place, or was his execution another goal of this assault team? An hour ago, he had heard from Painter about the attempt to eliminate the only witness to events in California. Was this attack a part of that, an attempt to erase all trails that led back to that base?
    He had no way of knowing—except the one in command sounded like he had a British accent. He recalled Jason’s discovery of the connection between Dr. Hess’s work and a research team out of England.
    Could just be a coincidence, but maybe not .
    “All set!” a voice called from the server farm.
    “Clear out,” the leader said. “Double-time before we’re pinned down here.”
    Gray kept to the side of the doorway, half hidden behind a trash can. He was still mostly in the open, but he hoped that in their mad rush to flee, they’d dash right past him.
    As expected, men burst out of the control room and pounded down the hallway toward the stairwell—where the guard’s body still lay in shadows.
    Gray didn’t have much time to act.
    As soon as the last man barreled out, Gray rolled across the threshold and into the data center. He kicked the door closed behind him, swiping his black Sigma card to lock it from the inside.
    A shout burst from the hallway outside.
    Gray stood, staring through the bulletproof window in the door.
    A flashlight clicked on down the corridor, revealing a cluster of men around their fallen teammate. The tallest of the lot—burly-chested, with chiseled aristocratic features—turned and stared back at Gray.
    They made eye contact across the distance, the other glowering in fury.
    A teammate touched the man’s shoulder and pointed to his watch. They plainly had no time to force Gray out of the locked room, not with law enforcement closing a noose around the area and the charges about to blow.
    With a silent growl fixed to his lips, the leader waved the others up the stairs, then fled with them.
    Gray turned and opened the door that led into the server farm. A half flight of metal stairs led down to the