“I can’t speak for my men,” he shouted, staring at her. “We need time to discuss it. Give us five minutes.”

Then the triumphant voice of the Major boomed over the speaker. “Talk. But you have exactly one more minute. Then we want your decision.”

“We need at least three minutes.”

“One minute!” the Major thundered.

Eric stood up and walked over toward the speaker in the ceiling. When he spoke, his voice was soft and menacing. “Major, I said we need three minutes. If anyone so much as pokes his nose in here before three minutes are up, or if Nicole twitches with even a flicker of pain, we’ll blow this whole place apart and us with it. You’ll hear from us in three minutes.”

CHAPTER 36

Eric jumped to one of the monitoring stations and grabbed a pad of paper and a pencil. The others gathered closer as he scribbled furiously. He turned and held it up. THEY CAN HEAR EVERYTHING WE SAY! ROD, MAKE NOISE. THE REST COME WITH ME. Then he spoke, “We can’t take a chance that they will move in on us while we debate. Block the doors with the furniture—anything you can move over there.” He picked up one of the vinyl chairs near the corner and hurled it toward the door.

As they stared at him for a moment, he turned to Rod and mouthed the words while he pointed, “Make noise! But don’t block the side door.”

Then he motioned to the others, and they went quickly into the room with the CPUs, leaving Nicole lying on the floor, watching them anxiously. As Eric shut the door, Loopes carefully set the blue box in a far corner, then grabbed a table and pushed it across the floor, banging it into the consoles along the wall.

“Is there a speaker in here?” Eric whispered.

Clayne peered up at the ceiling. “No.”

“All right,” Eric said grimly. “For now, let’s reject surrender as an option. Any ideas?”

Andreason spoke up first. “Nicole is the problem. If she was free, we could try and fight our way clear. But—”

“I could remove the implantation,” Chet said, “if I had something sharp and some time to work on her.”

“What if it won’t come out? What if you trigger it automatically or something?”

“I doubt it,” Chet replied. “They’re controlling it from out there, which means it must be an independent device. I’ll have to check once I see it, but my guess is it’s a simple receiving device with electrodes implanted into her spinal column.”

“I’ve got a pocketknife in my tool kit,” Andreason said. “It’s probably not very sharp though.”

“It’ll do,” Abernathy said.

“She’ll have to be kept absolutely quiet.” Clayne sounded dubious. “If the Major hears her cry out, that will be it.”