On his stomach, he thrust the blade under the door, aiming for the closest chair leg. The problem was, he couldn't see and stab at the same time. He'd have to keep poking until he got it right. But what did he have to lose? He stabbed four times. Five. And then, on the sixth time, the tip hit something solid.
He felt the chair move. “Jackpot!”
After a few moments of wiggling, it didn't topple. It jostled and lay still, jammed with its back beneath the handle.
“Oh, come on. Come on, don't do this to me!” Without an ounce of forethought, Gideon jumped up and kicked the door. “Goddammit, open! Open! I told you to fucking open!”
He heard a bang and stopped. There was something out there. Two seconds later, he grabbed the knife and held it to his chest, waiting. Then he realized what it had been. It was the chair. It must have fallen. It must have!
It was another minute before he could bring himself to try the handle again, but when he did, it turned effortlessly under his grip. The door swung open. On the other side, he could see the corpse of the chair, now fallen on its side. He laughed, and this time, it didn't sound crazy at all.
All at once, a floodlight blasted into his eyes. A form stepped in front of him, a huge, hulking form.
“Stay back!” he yelled, swinging the knife. “Stay back or I'll cut you!”
Something grabbed his wrist and then punched him in the nose. The blade clanked to the floor and he dropped to one knee, bleeding. As the form stepped into the light, he realized it was not one of the Argentinians. The idea that he might live seized him, and he threw both arms into the air. Gideon saw no irony in the fact that this was almost the exact behavior he had exhibited when little Jimmy had beaten him senseless all those years ago.
“Don't,” he cried. “I give up. I give up!”
2
When they arrived back at the center of the platform, Mason looked at the newcomer curiously. A faded gray suit and soggy black hair slapped onto a man too tall for his weight. Mason put him at six feet and a buck fifty — a good size for a boxer maybe, but not for a corporate suit. He was too lanky, all knees and elbows with no substance between. He might have been good-looking in a scrawny kind of way once, but it was hard to tell.
“What's your name, son?”
“Uh, Grey,” he stammered. “Gideon Grey.” And then, “Doctor Gideon Grey.”
“Are you all right?”
The man looked around at the squad of mercenaries surrounding him on the deck. “Yes. Yes, thank you. I think so. But we have to get out of here.”
Mason offered his canteen. “In a bit. Take this.”
“We have to get out of here, now! Now!”
Mason put his hands on the man's shoulders and forced him down onto a crate. He could feel the bones under his fingers and thought how easily he could snap them. Gideon must have felt it too, because he shut his mouth.
“Calle, if you would, please?”
Melvin jabbed a syringe into the man's shoulder. Gideon's demeanor didn't change, but his breathing slowed, and when Mason was sure he wasn't going to get up and run, he took his hands away. When Mason offered the canteen a second time, the man took it.
“Thank you.”
The others were supposed to be maintaining a perimeter around the top deck, but they circled close now, listening. Even Nicholas had gotten up on one leg to have a look.
Answers, Mason thought again, biting his lip. “All right, listen up. Me and the good doctor are going to have a conversation here. But I want the rest of you on mission. We came here to do a job, and we're only half done.”
“What the hell is going on here?” St. Croix asked.
“Yeah, we're in some weird shit, boss,” Calle added, patching up the doctor's arm.
“You have a right to know what the hell is going on, and I'm going to find out. But we need to stay on guard.”
“On guard?” Calle said. “Shit, boss. We don't even know what the hell we're guarding against.”
Hal spat on the deck. “He's right, sir. We don't know what we got here. What we do got is about twenty bodies out of two fifty. I don't know what the hell happened to the rest, but I ain't ever seen anything like it.”
Mason looked at Jin and Christian. They only stared back, a little more disciplined than the rest, but their eyes told the same story.
“So what are we gonna do, Mason?” Melvin asked. “I say we curb stomp this motherfucker until we start getting some goddamn—”
Mason lunged forward, his hand closing around Calle's throat. “That's 'Team Leader Bruhbaker' to you, boy. And the next words out of that stinking rot-gut hole of yours better be 'what are my orders, sir?' Do you get me?”
Melvin struggled for a moment, and Mason squeezed. He could see the man's eyes bulging, his glasses skewing off of one ear.
“Sir,” Melvin said, spittle dripping from his mouth. “What are my orders… sir?”
Mason looked back at the rest of the group, his free hand dropping to the survival knife on his belt of its own accord. Were any of them moving? He thought not. They weren't that far gone. He was their commander, and by Christ, they would listen.
“I know this isn't what we were expecting,” he said, tossing Melvin aside, “but that's all the more reason to hold it together. Now this ain't the worst shit we've been in, and since most of you guys were out east in the sandbox, I know it ain't the worst you've seen either. We're still in the dark, but intelligence isn't part of our job. Securing the platform is our job, and I intend to see that through.” He nodded towards the doctor. “Now, me and the doc here are going to chat, and we may get to the bottom of this yet, but in the meantime, we don't get sloppy. We can't afford to get sloppy. Our lives depend on us working as a unit. Right? Jesus Christ guys, that's been drilled into your head since basic.”
He scanned their faces and saw the words sink in. Some of them even looked embarrassed. That was good. Morale was an engineering marvel, like a bridge. When it held together, it was solid; when one column fell, the whole damned thing might collapse.
He nodded towards Hal. “McHalister!”
“Sir?”
“Get back to the helipad. I want to know what the hell happened to our Delta chopper. Jin Tae?”
“Aye?” Jin said.
“How's your arm?”
The man shrugged. “I'll live.”
“I want you to see if you can get the dish on this goddamned place up and running. We have no radio, no phones, and no way to talk to anyone on the outside. Think you can manage?”
“I'll have a look, but no promises.”
“Vy?”
“Yeah?” Christian said.
“Round up our guests. I want everyone back here in ten minutes, got it?”
The man nodded.
“St. Croix, you're with Jin. Give him what he needs. You got it?”
“Yeah, boss.”