“These the pros from Dover?” He tried for the joke, but his voice cracked, spoiling it. I gave him a hard grin anyway. It was a nice try.
I turned to our driver as we climbed out. “Thanks, Troop…we’re good from here.”
He gave me a gruff nod, backed up, turned, and left, throwing suspicious looks at us through the side view mirror. The three of us unzipped the light windbreakers we’d worn on the flight and checked our weapons. We all wore Heckler & Koch Mark 23 .45 ACP pistols in nylon shoulder rigs. We each carried six magazines, and we had other toys in the equipment bags. Bookworm stared at the guns and flicked his tongue over his lips like a nervous gecko.
“Okay, run it down for us,” I said to him.
“We’ll talk on the way down,” he said, and we piled into the golf cart. The security guy drove it into an elevator that began a descent of over a mile.
“I’m Dr. Goldman,” said the guy with glasses. “I’m the deputy director of this facility. This is Lars Halverson, our head of security.”
I shook hands with Halverson. His hand was firm but clammy, and his face and throat glistened with nervous sweat.
“You’re Captain Ledger?” Goldman asked.
I nodded and jerked a thumb over my shoulder. “The old man behind me is Top Sims and the kid in diapers is Bunny.” In my peripheral vision, I saw Top scratch his cheek with a middle finger.
First Sergeant Bradley Sims was hardly old — but at forty-one he was the oldest field operative in the DMS. He was nearly as tall as me, a little heavier in the shoulders, and though he was a calm man by nature, he could turn mean as a snake when it mattered.
The big kid next to him was Staff Sergeant Harvey Rabbit. Real name, so no surprise that everyone called him Bunny. He was just a smidge smaller than the Colossus of Rhodes, and somehow, despite everything we’ve been through together while running black ops for the Department of Military Sciences, Bunny still managed to keep his idealism bolted in place. My own was wearing pretty damn thin, and my optimism for rational behavior in people who should know better was taking one hell of a beating.
“What were you told?” asked Goldman.
“Not enough,” I said. “You believe there’s one or more infiltrators operating in your facility. You have one casualty, is that right?”
I caught the quick look that passed between Goldman and Halverson. It was furtive as all get-out, and at that moment I wouldn’t have bought water from either of them if my ass was on fire.
“Actually,” Goldman said slowly, “we have four casualties.”
The engine of the elevator car was the only sound for a while. I heard Top clear his throat ever so slightly behind me.
“Who’s dead?” I said sharply.
“Two of my people,” said Halverson. “And another of the research staff.”
“How and when?”
“We found the second guard half an hour ago,” Goldman said. “The others were killed sometime last night. They didn’t report for the breakfast meeting, and when the security teams did a search they found them dead in their rooms.”
“How were they killed?”
Goldman chewed his lip. “The same as the first one.”
“That’s not an answer. I asked ‘how?’”
He turned to Halverson, but I snapped my fingers. Loud as a firecracker in the confines of the elevator car. “Hey! Don’t look at him. I asked you a question. Look at me and give me a straight answer.”
He blinked in surprise, obviously unused to being ordered about. Probably thought his rank here at the facility put him above such things. Life’s full of disappointments.
“They were…bitten.”
“Bitten? By what? An animal? An insect?”
Halverson snorted and then hid it with a cough.
Goldman shook his head. “No…they were bitten to death by the…um…terrorists.”
I stared at him, mouth open, unable to know how to respond. The elevator reached the bottom with a clang, and Halverson drove us out into the complex. We passed through a massive airlock that would have put a dent in NASA’s budget. None of us said anything, because all around us klaxons screamed and red emergency lights pulsed.
Halverson stamped on the brakes.
“Christ!” Goldman yelled.
“OUT!” I growled, but Top and Bunny were already out of the cart, their guns appearing in their hands as if by magic. I was right with them.
The floor, the walls, even the ceiling of the steel tunnel were splashed with bright red blood. Five bodies lay sprawled in ragdoll heaps. Arms and legs twisted into grotesque shapes, eyes wide with profound shock and everlasting terror.
The corridor ran a hundred yards straight forward, angling deeper into the bowels of the mountain. Behind us, the hall ran twenty yards and jagged left into a side hall. Bunny put his laser sight on the far wall near the turn. Top had his pointed ahead. I swept in a full circle.
“Clear!” Bunny said.
“Clear,” said Top.
“Jesus Christ!” said Goldman.
Halverson was saying something to himself. Maybe a prayer, but we couldn’t hear it beneath the noise of the klaxons.
Then the alarms died. Just like that.
So did the lights.
The silence was immediate and dreadful.
The darkness was absolute.
But it was not an empty darkness. There were sounds in it, and I knew that we were far from alone down there.
“Night vision,” I barked.
“On it,” Bunny said. He was the closest to the golf cart, and I heard him rummaging in the bags. A moment later he said, “Green and go. Coming to you on your six.”
He moved through the darkness behind me and touched my shoulder, then pressed a helmet into my hands. I put on the tin pot, flipped down the night vision, and flicked it on. The world went from absolute darkness to a surreal landscape of green, white, and black.
“Top,” Bunny said, “coming to you.”
I held my ground and studied the hall. Nothing moved. Goldman cowered beside me. He folded himself into the smallest possible package, tucked against the right front fender of the cart. Halverson was still behind the wheel. He had a Glock in his hand and the barrel was pointed at Top.
“Halverson,” I said evenly, not wanting to startle him. “Raise your barrel. Do it now.”
He did it, but there was a long moment of nervous indecision before he complied, so I swarmed up and took the gun away from him.
“Hey!” he complained. “Don’t — I need that!”
“You can’t see to shoot. Do you have night vision?”
“I have a flashlight.” He began fumbling at his belt, but I batted his hand aside.
“No. Stay here and be still. I’m going to place your weapon on the seat next to you. Do not pick it up until the lights come on.”
“But—”
“You’re a danger to me and mine,” I said, bending close. “Point a gun in the dark around me again, and I’ll put a bullet in you. Do you believe me?”
“Y-yes.”
I patted his shoulder — at which he flinched — and moved away.
“What are you seeing, Top?”
He knelt by the wall, his pistol aimed wherever he looked. “Nothing, seeing nothing, Cap’n.”
“Bunny?”
He was guarding our backs. “Dead people and shadows, Boss. Look at the walls. Someone busted out the emergency lights.”
“Captain Ledger,” began Goldman, “what—”
“Be quiet and be still,” I said.
We squatted in the dark and listened.
A sound.
Thin and scratchy, like fingernails on cardboard. Then a grunt of effort.