Uncaged Read Free Page B

clear fluid onto the kennel floor; a shaved section on the dog’s foreleg suggested where it had been attached. The animal definitely looked groggy, and Odin thought it might not be long out of surgery.
    “You’re not okay, are you?” he said, and the dog, in cocking a yellow eye at the window, answered him as clearly as if it had spoken.
    “Don’t worry, I’ll get you out of here.”
    But trouble was on the way.

2
    Darrell McClane had been half asleep, slumped in his chair at the front desk, his feet up on the seat of another chair, when the sirens began to shriek.
    Nearly falling between the two chairs, he looked up at the empty screens of his monitors, reached out, and began clicking through all the screens. He almost clicked past the action at the animal containment room, but caught a flash, and turned the camera, and saw a nightmare.
    McClane had been hired to sit in his chair and not sleep too much. In a year on the job, the only intruder he’d dealt with was a brown bat. He’d chased it out of the building with a broom.
    Still, security work was dangerous by definition, and Darrell McClane considered himself prepared. He got extra pay for being certified as “armed,” and for the .45 he carried in a military-style midthigh holster. He’d never had the chance to shoot for real.
    At the sight of the raiders, he scrolled through the contacts list on his cell phone until he got to the
S
’s and the head security honcho he’d never personally met: Sync.
    He called the number on the landline and heard two beeps just like the two beeps he’d heard during the company’s simulated emergency drills. He blurted, “Eugene lab, Code White! We’ve got all kinds of people busting out the animals. I repeat, Code White!”
    He hung up and dialed 911. An operator came on and asked, “Is this an emergency?”
    “Yes!” he shouted. “I’m at the EDT Lab on Franklin and we’ve got people in the building smashing open the cages for the lab animals. They’re wrecking the place. Lots of people, they’ve got weapons. I need backup right now.”
    “Could you give us your name?” The voice was calm, even remote.
    Still shouting: “Darrell McClane, I’m the security guard. I need cops. I’m armed. I’m going in, but I need some cops.”
    “We have a car on the way.”
    “There are a lot of them, we need more than one car,” he shouted. “I’m going in.” He dropped the phone and pulled his pistol.
    He was carrying his favorite piece, a Model 1911A1 Colt .45. He was so excited that he nearly forgot to jack a round into the chamber—he did that only when he was out the door and halfway to the elevator.
    McClane was overweight, an out-of-shape fifty-four, a resolute smoker and former drinker, but he’d studied all the Bruce Willis movies, some of which featured a cop who was also named McClane.
    A movie star would have rushed the stairs, but under it all, the real McClane knew that if he rushed the stairs, he’d probably have a heart attack. So he stood at the elevator, and waited, and then, insidethe car, waited some more, impatiently pushing the CLOSE DOOR button, until the elevator began slowly heading for the second floor.
    At the top, when the doors opened, he did a quick peek and then slid down the hall to the first locked door. He unlocked it with his key card, and then went to the next door and unlocked it, back always to the wall, so that he was more or less walking sideways, the gun out front.
    That all took time, and the longer it took, the more scared he got, until finally, with his heart pounding like a steam engine, his gun clenched in his right hand, he turned the last corner.
    At the other end of the hall, he saw a tall man in a black mask and two others behind him, also masked, and the tall man saw him and shouted, “Security, security! Let’s go!” and all three of them disappeared down the next hall, and he could hear more people screaming, “Security!”
    McClane went after them, face