Robert Ludlum's The Utopia Experiment - By Kyle Mills Page 0,152
still slim. At least it would be a running fight, though. A hell of a lot better than lying around waiting to catch a bullet.
She felt uncharacteristically sluggish as she moved forward. It was easy to ignore the burning wounds in her back, but ignoring the image of Smith lying so still in front of her was less so. She’d lost friends and team members before. Why did this feel so different?
The steel behind her took another hit from the big-caliber weapon security had found and a pile of soccer balls in front of her burst and scattered around the room. The sudden chaotic motion created the illusion of Smith’s head moving. Or maybe it wasn’t the soccer balls at all—maybe she was just seeing what she wanted to see. Randi blinked hard, trying to clear her vision. Her mind wasn’t normally prone to playing tricks and now wasn’t the time for it to start.
But then his chest suddenly expanded and he rolled off de Galdiano onto the blood-soaked carpet. She froze, staring at him for a moment before looking up at the one surviving monitor bolted near the ceiling. It took a moment to make sense of the image made hazy by the smoke, but finally she managed to combine the shapes and colors into something coherent: Christian Dresner facedown on the floor.
Bullets continued to hiss overhead and security kept punching through the steel wall with their goddamn elephant gun, but all that seemed to fade away for a moment. Jon was alive and they’d done it. They’d actually pulled it off.
The moment of elation wasn’t particularly well reasoned, she knew—her chances of survival had actually just taken a turn for the worse. After his partial heart attack, she’d be lucky if Smith could operate at half speed. And he was almost certainly going to frown on her plan to use him as a human shield. But why question the sudden surge in her mood? Better to just enjoy it while it lasted.
She slithered forward and rolled over de Galdiano’s body, landing on her back next to a very confused Smith.
“You got him, Jon! Dresner’s dead. But we will be too unless—”
A gun appeared over the steel wall and she aimed at it, waiting for the top of the guard’s head to appear before firing her last round. It got close enough to make him drop behind cover again but confirmed her initial impression that the manufacturer had exaggerated the accuracy of her weapon.
She shoved Smith onto his stomach and pulled the pistol from his waistband, then started dragging him toward the empty window frames at the back of the room. There wasn’t much time. If one of the security men had made it to the wall, the others weren’t going to be far behind. And when they all got into position, they’d jump up in unison and spray the entire office. Game over.
“Marty!” she shouted as Smith came around enough to start providing some of his own propulsion. “Get off that damn computer and go to the windows. We’re leaving!”
He ignored her and she swore under her breath, knowing that she’d have to go back for him. There was no time for this crap.
Smith’s eyes had cleared by the time they made it to the windows and he grabbed her arm when she started back for Zellerbach. He didn’t seem to be able to speak, and instead motioned toward the edge of the floor where it dropped to the parking lot below. She leaned out, careful not to cut herself on the glass still clinging to the frame, and immediately understood what he was trying to communicate. The building’s facade was even smoother than she’d anticipated—making getting to the floor above or below unlikely for her and virtually impossible for the two men she was saddled with.
Another face appeared over the wall and she fired at it, but this time the man got a few rounds off first, taking out the leg of a pinball machine only inches from Zellerbach’s head. Randi looked around for anything they could use, but there was nothing. With more time, they could probably string together some cables, but time was something they didn’t have. She looked over at Smith, hoping for one of his inspired plans, but got just a smile and a shrug.
“I’m in!” Zellerbach shouted, and a moment later the sprinklers in the ceiling were dowsing them with frigid water.
“You get ’em, Marty,” Randi said, appreciating the effort. With a