“Man, am I glad to see you guys,” the security guard said.
“Hey, aren’t you the head of security from the Vault?” Bunny asked.
Halverson grinned. “Guilty as charged. ‘I do one thing at a time, I do it very well, and then I move on.’”
Bunny just stared at him blankly. Too damn young to get the quote. M*A*S*H should be required viewing for all military personnel, if you ask me.
Feeling irrationally old and irritable, I unzipped my windbreaker and whipped out my Heckler & Koch Mark 23 .45 ACP pistol from my shoulder rig and pointed it at Halverson’s head. “Tell me we’re not here to clean up more mutant cockroach soldiers.”
Beads of sweat popped out on his forehead. “No, of course not. You destroyed all the research on those things.”
He was holding something back, but I couldn’t tell what. Nothing good, that’s for sure. “Then what do we have?”
“Better if I just show you.”
I stared him down for a moment, but after a nervous glance at my weapon, he turned and stepped into an open elevator. The metal elevator car looked oddly out of place among the graffiti-covered concrete skeleton of the unfinished PAR site, but I had no doubt its existence would somehow be concealed the moment we dropped belowground. I holstered my gun, then followed him, Top and Bunny joining us without a word.
As we descended, I opened the equipment bag I had slung over my shoulder and indicated for Top and Bunny to do the same. “Might as well get our helmets on now,” I said. “I have a feeling we’ll need our night vision before long.”
Halverson shook his head confidently. “Don’t bother, Captain Ledger. After what happened at the Vault, one of my first priorities here was beefing up the security on the power grid. Nothing will be able to get to it, I guarantee it. And we’ve got video cameras everywhere, so you won’t need your helmet-mounted ones.”
I refrained from saying what I felt his guarantee was worth. Not because I cared about hurting his feelings, but because I was distracted by his choice of words. He’d said “nothing” rather than “no one” and I didn’t like that slipup one bit.
Nope, not one bit.
“What’s this place used for?” I asked.
Even with the hard edge my voice had taken on, I expected Halverson to repeat his claim that it’d be better if he just showed us, so I was surprised when he answered right away. “The egghead in charge has a Ph.D. in psychology and he designed a labyrinth—”
“A maze?”
“Yeah. A big-ass one. The doc’s studying the psychological effects of being trapped in a seemingly endless maze, as a potential way to break down a prisoner’s will. It’s actually proven to be quite a useful interrogation technique.”
“Sounds more like psychological torture,” Bunny said. He sounded genuinely disturbed that our government would do such a thing. After the things we’d encountered running black ops for the DMS, particularly after discovering American soldiers were being turned into human-cockroach hybrids, I doubted anything would surprise me anymore.
“How is the maze ‘seemingly’ endless?” I asked.
“You’ll see,” Halverson said.
I’ll be damned if his voice didn’t sound ominous as all get-out.
Before I could ask him what the hell he meant by that, the elevator reached the bottom with a jolt and the doors opened.
“Now if that isn’t déjà vu all over again, I don’t know what is,” Top muttered as his gun appeared in his hand.
Just as in our first time exiting an elevator with Halverson, we encountered a steel tunnel splattered with bright red blood. That time there were five bodies, this time only two. Not that that made it any better. Both victims were male, one dressed in a security uniform, the other wearing khaki prison scrubs. The bodies each had twin sets of beer can — sized holes in their torsos.
Top stepped out of the cart first, sighting down the tunnel, while Bunny checked to the left and I moved to the right. The elevator was at the end of the tunnel, so it took Bunny and me all of half a second to clear our corners. We turned back to Top as he called out, “Clear!”
“They’re not supposed to be out of the maze,” Halverson said as he stepped tentatively out of the elevator, Glock in hand. Fortunately for him, he wasn’t pointing his gun at any of us this time.
“Who’s not?” I said sharply. Halverson didn’t reply fast enough for my liking, so I got right in his face. “Who did this? There are no damn terrorists, are there?”
“No, but I needed to get you here.”
“Me specifically? Or just someone like me and my team?”
Halverson stepped back, looking skittish. My instinct was to keep crowding him until he gave me a straight answer, but he held up his hand and said, “Wait! I heard something. Listen.”
I did. He was right. I heard a soft scuffing sound. Then immediately another.
Footsteps. Two sets.
Top and I looked down the hall at the same time, the red dots on our laser sights each finding an approaching man’s chest.
No, that wasn’t quite right. The chest I’d targeted, though not particularly large, was definitely female. Like the man beside her, she wore a security uniform and carried a Glock pointing downward. They were both wise enough not to raise their guns.
“It’s okay, they work for me,” Halverson said. He started to reach out, as if he’d intended to push my gun arm down, but then thought better of it. Smart choice. He turned his attention to the guards. “Sanders, Gale, what the hell happened here?”
The pair stopped just a few feet short of us. I don’t know if they even realized Top and I had a bead on them. That’s when I noticed they only had eyes for the corpses and their superior. They kept looking back and forth from the bodies to Halverson, as if silently imploring him to explain what was going on.
He didn’t.
That made me want to point my gun at him again. Instead, I just lowered it, motioning for Top to do the same.
“Your orders were clear, Sanders,” Halverson said to the man. “I told you to stay in the cell block with the prisoner. None of you were supposed to be in this wing at all. You most definitely were not authorized to go into the maze.”
“It was all Johnson’s doing,” Gale said, pointing at their dead co-worker. Convenient. “He was frustrated that the prisoner wouldn’t confess. Turned out the bastard killed a bunch of tourists in Mexico that included Johnson’s cousin. Small world, huh?” When her weak grin didn’t garner any return smiles or head nods, she added, “Johnson wanted to personally throw him into the maze and leave him there without any food or water. We refused to help him, but… we didn’t stop him, either.”
“Not long after he led the prisoner away at gunpoint, we heard shots,” Sanders said, picking up the story. “We thought Johnson had executed him. Instead, we found a blood trail leading from the maze entrance to here. When we realized that whatever had killed them had gone back to the maze, we raced back and closed the door. Then we heard the elevator and here we are.”
Gale glared at Halverson. “What’s in the maze, boss?”
“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” Halverson said.
“Maybe they wouldn’t,” I said, “but you know I would.”
“Still, it’s better if I just show you all.” Then, as if afraid I’d force him to change his mind, Halverson strode forward.
I immediately followed him, Top and Bunny falling in behind me. I glanced back and saw Sanders and Gale reluctantly bringing up the rear. “Stay alert,” I said, mostly for their sake.
A few hundred yards down the hall, we came to a T-junction. A long corridor with several closed doors branched off to the right. To the left, a short, dead-end hallway greeted us. Yet Halverson turned that way. He swiped his personnel badge on a scanner on the back wall near the corner. With a low hum similar to the elevator engine, the wall at the end of the hall slid to the right, creating an entryway into the maze.