The Orphan Uprising (The Orphan Trilogy, #3) (29 page)

Whatever was going on outside the lab building didn’t overly concern the operatives. Their only concern was to protect Omega’s investment – the medical lab – and to kill Nine if he showed up.

As Nine and his companions neared the building’s entrance, their luck changed. Machinegun-fire felled one rebel and badly wounded two others, effectively reducing their number to four. The shooting came from a machinegun post at the top of the nearby admin building.

Nine and the others who were still in one piece found cover beneath the lab building’s entrance. Behind them, the two wounded rebels were shot dead as they tried to crawl away.

The survivors’ respite was short-lived as more guards appeared from nowhere and directed shots their way. They were soon accounted for by Lusambo’s men who then turned their attention to the shots coming from the machinegun post atop the admin building. Lusambo sent half a dozen of his men into the building to deal with that particular problem.

Taking advantage of the brief respite, Nine and his three companions entered the lab building’s reception area only to be greeted by a hail of gunfire. The former operative recognized the tell-tale
rat-tat-tat
of machine pistols – a favoured weapon of Omega operatives in close-quarter combat conditions such as these.

Nine had never doubted he’d come face-to-face with more of his fellow orphan-operatives. He just wondered who Naylor had sent this time. Any misgivings he may have had about killing more Omega operatives vanished as he and his companions dived for cover to escape the withering gunfire.

In the confusion, Nine had been separated from his rebel comrades. He risked a quick look around the side of an upturned desk and caught a glimpse of two male figures on the other side of the reception area. They were crouched down at either end of the oak reception counter. Nine thought they looked familiar. Risking another quick look, he recognized one of the men.
Eighteen!
The operative’s Oriental features were instantly recognizable even though Nine hadn’t seen him in well over a decade.

Looking to his right, Nine saw that his three companions remained pinned down by the gunfire. They were sheltering behind large, steel filing cabinets to avoid the shots the two operatives continued to direct at them. It appeared the pair hadn’t noticed their fellow orphan.

Nine caught the attention of the nearest rebel – a young Congolese man - and motioned to the two grenades hanging from his belt. The young rebel immediately unhooked one of the grenades and rolled it along the marble floor, bowling ball style, toward Nine. The former operative hoped its pin remained intact. It did. He scooped the grenade up and peeked around the corner of the upturned desk to ensure the two combatants were still where he’d last seen them. They were. One of them noticed Nine and directed gunfire his way.
Was that Twelve?
He thought he recognized him.

Nine pulled the pin from the grenade then threw it toward the two operatives.

“Grenade!” Eighteen shouted.

61

In the enclosed space, the explosion was deafening. It shattered every window in the reception area and blew a hole in the wall behind the reception desk. It also killed the two orphan-operatives instantly.

Nine’s ears were still ringing as he raced over to check on the pair. The first body was unrecognizable as his face had been blown away. However, a tell-tale Chinese symbol tattooed on his forearm confirmed to Nine that it was indeed Eighteen. He’d been with him when, in a moment of rare rebelliousness, his fellow orphan had visited a tattooist in downtown Chicago and ordered the tattoo. That had been on Eighteen’s sixteenth birthday. Their mentor, Tommy Kentbridge, had grounded them both for a month and threatened to beat them to within an inch of their lives if they did anything like that again.

Nine thought it was appropriate in a ghoulish kind of way that Eighteen had been killed by an explosion: he recalled the operative had once boasted he’d lost count of the number of people he’d killed using explosive devices.

The former operative hurried to check on the other body. One of the rebels, a scar-faced Angolan, was already standing over it.

“This one’s dead, too,” the Angolan said.

Nine saw at a glance he’d been right the first time. It was Twelve. The twelfth-born orphan’s face was unscathed, but flying shrapnel had carved a large hole in his chest and there was only metal where his heart had once been.

Twelve’s unmarked face looked innocent in death. Looking down at him, Nine had to remind himself he was looking at the operative who, arguably, had more kills to his name than any of Omega’s operatives. Nine recalled his good friend Ten had told him Twelve was rumored to have terminated fifty-three targets. That had been six years earlier.
God knows how many he killed since then
. Nine guessed there had been many more.

The sound of running feet alerted the raiders to the presence of others on the ground floor. A bald Congolese rebel snuck a quick look around the corner of a corridor and saw three armed men running toward a stairwell at the far end of the building. He let off a burst of gunfire from his AK-47 in their direction before they disappeared downstairs. The bald rebel didn’t know it, but the three were the surviving Omega operatives.

Thirteen had made the decision to relocate to the next defensive position – on the floor below – as soon as he’d realized he and his fellow operatives were up against some serious firepower. He hadn’t bargained on facing grenades and AK-47’s. Rather, he’d assumed – as had Naylor – that Nine would try to infiltrate the lab building on his own, just as he did in Thule. This was something else altogether.

On the ground floor, Nine and his companions began a room-to-room sweep of the floor to root out any other opposition and commence their search for Francis and the other children. They found the floor deserted. Anyone who may have been working the night shift had obviously fled as soon as the shooting started. Nine guessed they would be holed up in the admin building opposite.

Nor was there any sign of any of the children or any other experimental subjects thought to be interned in the building. That was no surprise either as the confidential files Nine had uplifted showed the ground floor was purely an admin floor, and the labs and the lab’s subjects were accommodated on the two levels below ground.

The sound of continued gunfire and explosions outside told the men the fire-fight was continuing. From inside the building, there was no way of knowing if Lusambo’s rebels were holding their own.

The three rebels with Nine then conferred on their next move. Nine noted the Angolan and the young Congolese rebel deferred to the bald rebel. He was older than them and seemed a natural leader.

Using hand signs, the bald rebel motioned to Nine and the young Congolese to descend to the next floor via the stairwell at the rear of the building. Baldie and the Angolan ran back to a stairwell they’d noticed near the front of the building.

The strategy made sense to Nine. They would access the floor below from opposite ends of the building and trap any hostiles between them.

As Nine and the young rebel descended the stairs, the former operative glanced at his watch. He saw twenty minutes had elapsed since the shooting started at the refinery. Lusambo had warned that the refinery would alert the authorities in Kindu as soon as the attack began. Armed reinforcements would be mobilized within twenty minutes and it would only take them another thirty minutes to reach the refinery by road. If the captain was right, Nine realized they had another thirty minutes before their escape route would be sealed off.

Nearing the bottom of the stairs, the former operative thought he saw a shadow flit across the floor just beyond the bottom step.
There it is again!
This time it was more discernible. The shadow was that of a man holding an automatic weapon. It was now motionless. Nine flashed a warning sign to the young rebel who hadn’t yet seen the danger.

The gunman obviously wasn’t one of the other rebels. Nine calculated there hadn’t been enough time for Baldie or the Angolan to have reached this end of the building.

Noting the corridor’s walls were concrete, the former operative silently stepped to his right and aimed his machine pistol at the far wall at an angle that was close to forty-five degrees. He planned to fire a burst from his machine pistol and hope a ricochet would hit the target.

Nine aimed and fired a long, sustained burst. His plan worked. At least one bullet ricocheted and struck the gunman – not fatally but sufficient to drop him. Before the gunman could recover, Nine was onto him, shooting him dead with another burst.

The gunman lay face-down on the floor. Nine rolled him over onto his back and immediately saw it was yet another fellow orphan-operative.
Four!
As with most of the orphans, Nine had never been close to the fourth-born orphan. However, he recalled spending many an hour playing chess with him at the orphanage. He also recalled that Four was the only orphan who could sometimes beat him at chess.

Gunfire and shouting from the other end of the floor startled Nine and his companion. It sounded as though a full-blown firefight was underway. The shooting intensified as the pair moved cautiously toward the sounds of conflict. Then silence. The pair quickened their pace. Before they’d gone far, the faint sound of crying children reached them.

The corridor they followed took them past labs and medical facilities – all unoccupied and apparently vacated in a hurry not that long ago. They came across a staff cafeteria where half-full mugs of still-steaming coffee and plates of uneaten food indicated the diners had also departed hurriedly.

Nine and the young rebel hesitated as they came to yet another corridor. A sign at its entrance read:
Children’s Quarters: Authorized personnel only
. The sound of crying children was louder here. Some of them were screaming.

62

Nine could imagine how terrifying the continuing gunfire and explosions would be for any child. He was sorely tempted to check the quarters immediately, but he knew it was important to ensure the floor had been cleared of hostile forces first.

The former operative and the young Congolese rebel ran to the stairwell at the front of the building. As they proceeded, passing more labs, they noticed the sounds of conflict from outside had quieted. Nine hoped that meant Lusambo’s rebels had gained the upper hand.

Before they reached the stairwell, they found three bodies whose number included Baldie and the Angolan. All three were riddled with bullet holes.

The Congolese rebel checked to ensure his comrades were dead. However, Nine was more interested in the third body. The gunman was lying on his back. He’d flung his arm across his face – his final act – so his identity was momentarily concealed. Nine reached down and pulled the man’s arm away from his face.

The former operative recognized the man immediately. It was Twenty Two. Nine had clear recollections of clashing with him during their many Teleiotes sessions in the Pedemont Orphanage’s gym. He remembered Twenty Two as one of the toughest orphans.

A noise alerted the pair to the approach of others descending the stairs. They waited, weapons at the ready, for whoever it was to arrive.

“Mai Mai!” someone shouted, using the mission’s agreed codename.

Nine thought the voice was Lusambo’s.

“Mai Mai!” the young rebel responded.

Lusambo appeared. He was accompanied by two other rebels. The signs of conflict were visible on all three. Their faces and uniforms were blood-flecked, and Lusambo himself had sustained a flesh wound in his left leg. Blood flowed from the wound, which appeared to be just above his knee and which made walking difficult.

The captain scanned the three bodies on the floor then conferred with Nine’s young companion in Swahili. Nine understood most of what Lusambo was saying. It seemed the captain’s rebels had secured the grounds around the refinery with the loss of five lives and another seven wounded. The two rebels lying at his feet lifted the militia’s death toll to seven. Nine also deduced that most of the refinery’s guards had holed up in the nearby admin building, but they were safely contained for the moment.

Lusambo turned to Nine. “Are there children on this floor?”

“Yes,” Nine said. “A lot, if I’m not mistaken.”

Lusambo ordered the two rebels he’d brought with him to return upstairs to prevent enemy forces gaining access to the elevator or stairwells. Then he, Nine and the young rebel began a room-to-room search of the floor they were on, secure in the knowledge someone was watching their backs.

As was the case on the floor above, there were no staff members. They’d all fled.

The search took the trio to the corridor leading to the children’s quarters. It opened up into a maze of large rooms that could best be described as barracks – not too dissimilar to the sleeping quarters Nine had accessed at the medical lab at Thule. It was the same chamber of horrors as at Thule, only worse. The young inmates of this facility appeared to have been exposed to the same type of bizarre scientific experiments, but over a longer period.

All the children had been wakened by the firefight, and were highly distressed. The sight of strangers bearing arms in their midst caused even more distress.

Nine estimated there could be fifty children on this floor alone. He glanced at Lusambo. The captain was grim-faced. The photos hadn’t prepared them for what they were seeing in the flesh. They recoiled at the sight of children displaying the most grotesque deformities imaginable. A once pretty, young girl had the facial features of a Neanderthal while a little boy was covered from head to foot in long hair. Worse was to come.

As the trio went from room to room, the two rebels constantly referred to the photos of the children they’d come to rescue, looking for a match.

Nine didn’t need to do that. He was solely interested in finding his son. Desperate to locate Francis, he began shouting the boy’s name. “Francis! Francis!” There was no answer. He ran ahead of the others, checking on the children in each room. As he went, he showed Francis’ photo to children, asking them if they’d seen him. None had.