Dutch didn't say anything, and he didn't have to. AJ watched his eyes flick over their surroundings, watched him count the others. Melvin and the good doctor were on the level above, Jin was working in the communications building below. McHalister and the kid were all the way up on the helipad, and Nick was probably nagging the old guy into telling him stories of the good old days. That left—
“St. Croix. You know where he is?”
“I heard him,” Dutch said. “He was down with Jin, but that was a few minutes ago.”
“So what do you think?”
“You know I'm with you on most things, buddy. But sticking your nose where it doesn't belong — that's the girl's job, not yours. Not mine, either.”
“Yeah.” AJ's mind flicked to Kate, knowing she was alone with the two biggest jugheads on the mission. He hoped she was all right. “She's not here, and we may lose our chance when they get back. Maybe the doc couldn't make sense of those files, but I bet she can. Kate's high enough up the food chain.”
“Might.”
“Yeah, might.”
“And you think you can trust her?”
“She wants to get to the bottom of this, Dutch. I don't know why, but it means something to her. Don't tell me you don't see it.”
His friend paused. “Maybe. You think anyone will try to stop us if we go up there?”
“If Mason were here, yeah.”
“But he's not here.”
“He's not here.” Never mind that AJ was also starting to feel a good deal of personal responsibility in spite of what his friend said. He didn't think he needed to share that, though.
Dutch sighed. “All right, what do you want me to do?”
3
The terrain around the perimeter was rocky and rugged. The trio walked through sand when they could and stepped on protuberant stones when they couldn't. For a short stretch, they marched through the water itself, the face of a cliff cutting their progress on dry land. The water was warm, and its caress more unnatural than Kate would have thought, but neither the man in front nor the one behind seemed to notice.
On their way through the shallows, Kate saw an islet just off the shore. It was covered in greenery and the ancient, white filth of animal droppings. It should have been teeming with birds—or penguins or seals, she thought, remembering how far south they were — but it was as empty as the rest. Nothing stirred along the coast but the lap of the water and the gray, creeping fog rolling in from the east.
“There,” Mason said. He had stopped just in front of her.
At first, she wasn't sure what she was looking at, but the object ahead was too regular to be of the same ilk as the terrain. Then the fog cleared, and she realized it was a wall. It wasn't a single contiguous barrier, but a semicircle of chunks, each rising some fifteen feet and extending maybe twenty or twenty-five feet lengthwise. Fence and barbed wire stretched between the gaps, a razor barrier built to deter what the walls did not. She had never seen anything like it. It was a fortress, but it looked like a fortress made from pre-assembled blocks, a giant's block house made with a giant's constructor set.
When they got close, Mason crouched by one of the gaps and produced his knife, a massive steel tool with a dozen rip teeth. He began rocking the blade, the thin wire of the fence trapped between the serrated edges. Kate could see he had probably not been the first one to get in; the fence was ripped in several places along the base. From the looks of things, something had wanted to get in, and badly.
As the last wire snapped, Mason grabbed the bottom of the fence and stood up, producing a gap just wide enough for a person to slip through. “Ladies first.”
Kate peered through with the same trepidation she had felt along the shoreline. In spite of the gap between the walls, she could not see what was on the other side. She swallowed, telling herself the answers could be on the other side of that fence, the workers could be on the other side of that fence.
“We don't have all day, princess. Vy, you go ahead.”
Without a word, Christian stepped past her and dropped to the ground. He disappeared into the opening, crawling his way through.
Mason smiled at her. He couldn't possibly predict what was on the other side, but it was a knowing smile just the same.
Kate got down on her belly and crawled. It was strange, but the ground was cold. It whispered of winter, as if in the long ago, the island had been a different place altogether. She got to her feet on the other side and found herself slipping through the gap in the concrete walls, into the inner sanctum.
When she turned, what she saw was not a surprise, not really, but it still packed a punch. There were no workers, nor any sign of Mason's missing chopper. The inner workings of the fortress — the bunkers, the towers, the machinery, the very ground itself — was a twisted and terrible ruin.
4
The folders had been stuffed into the kitchen pantry. They were clumped along the shelves, papers leaking out in spots and spilling to the floor. They mixed with the empty cans of food and filth left by the kitchen's last inhabitants. AJ found himself wondering why the staff had kept so many hard copies when he kicked a group of cans and found a stack of hard drives underneath. A fat lot of good they would do him now, but it didn't look like Doctor Grey had taken any chances. The place was an evidence locker.
“I never would have pictured the doc as a hoarder,” Dutch said. He was looking over AJ's shoulder.
“Yeah, me either.”
“Think you'll find what you're looking for?”
AJ looked at the corrugated file folders, the strewn papers, and wondered what other junk might be buried under the trash. “I don't know. I hope so. If all the doc was doing was collecting doughnut receipts, then I'd say he was crazier than he looked.”
“Well, this was your idea.”
“Just keep a lookout. Let me know if any of those idiots start to wander this way.”
“Yeah.”
“And stay out of sight.”
“Yeah.”
“Dutch, you hearing me buddy? No chances.”
His friend looked at him, exasperated. “Yeah,” he said.
As Dutch stepped into the hall, AJ found Gideon's flashlight and turned it on. The place looked small in the darkness and even smaller in the light, but as far as self-made prisons go, it wasn't bad. The pantry didn't look any less a disaster on second glance, but he made his own filtering system. He kept anything that looked useful, and he tossed the rest out of the pantry door.
“Still all clear, Dutch?”
“Yeah. I just poked my head around the corner. Looks like your buddy is coming back down from the helipad.”
“My buddy?”
“Melvin. I've seen the way you two stare into each others' eyes, all dreamy like.”
“Yeah, great. You see St. Croix?”
“No.”
“Keep looking.” And then, as he found payroll receipts, “Hey, you want to know how much a roughneck makes out here for a three week shift?”
“No.”
AJ tossed the file down. “It's a hell of a lot more than you.”
“You're breaking my heart.”
He uncovered accounting information, payroll stubs, insurance claims, sick reports, employee reviews, and everything else he knew existed and hated dealing with at his own job. So far, nothing useful. He tossed more files out the door, then found a couple with banking information he decided to keep. He knew that he and Dutch didn't have a lot of time before Mason came back, but there had to be something in here. Else, why would Gideon keep it all? If the man himself was present, they might have been able to ask him.