Outside the doorway, the rumbling cart sounded much louder now.

“If the gas had gotten you,” Pierce said, “we would have come into the woods in force, tranqed you both and dragged you back here. We figured we’d have to kill a third, maybe half the afflicted FBI agents by the time we found you. We ran it through scenarios. Drilled for it. It was manageable. Some approach always is.”

Behind Pierce, the black-haired man pushed the flatbed cart into the room.

“Let’s go,” Pierce said.

The two gunmen closest to the cart reacted in unison—maybe they’d drilled for this, too. They handed their MP5s to the men beside them, then came forward and grabbed Dryden by the shoulders. They dragged him to the cart and shoved him down onto it, face up, his bound wrists contorted painfully beneath him. They did the same with Danica, and a moment later the cart was rolling again.

CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

JULY 1989

Even through the closed door, Pierce could hear the chimps screaming. He’d been in that room once or twice before; he could picture the big cages lining the walls on both sides. The screams were getting on his nerves now, but otherwise he ignored them. He had the new pistol in his hand, a round chambered and ready, and three full magazines in his front pocket.

It had killed him to lose time getting the stuff—half a minute, maybe more—but there had been no choice: if the fucking kid managed to clear that stovepipe jam in the first gun, the weapon would be all set to go. The kid might be standing there right now, with the sights lined up on this door.

That, or else the two of them had run for it, through the second door and into the long corridor beyond.

Which was the nightmare scenario, of course. Because at the end of that corridor was one more locked door, and though the kids would not have the code for it—

They won’t fucking need it, Pierce thought.

No, not for that door.

Pierce cursed to himself and rested a fingertip against the zero button on the keypad.

He paused then, and mentally ran through his course of action one last time:

Crack open the door and stick the gun through.

Fire four shots in a sweep pattern.

Rush in—fast.

That last step was the key: not just getting into the room, but getting through that slim entry channel as quickly as possible. Every second spent inside of it was courting death. The thing was like the Thermopylae Pass, but in reverse: a choke point that gave him only disadvantages. No matter where in the room the kid might be, he would know that Pierce had to come through that narrow passage.

Unless Pierce could get past it while the kid was still flinching and running from the first four shots.