"I suppose — huh?"
"Maybe this is one of my psyche tests and I’m just fucking with you, right?"
Christ, she can actually read minds.
"How long have you been on base, Corporal?"
He considered and answered, "A year, ma'am."
"Do you know you are the longest tenured member of the staff here? Borman wasn't lying when he told me that before, but when you said you had been here for just about a year I figured that wasn't long enough, so he must have been mistaken."
"I believe Colonel Haas and Lieutenant Colonel Lewis were here longer than I, ma'am," he replied, but, of course they were both dead.
"I'm not talking about officers; I'm talking about the garrison. The grunts, corporal. And when I say you've been here the longest, I don't just mean the longest of those here now. I mean the longest of anyone who has served here, for almost twenty years."
At first he did not follow her point, but then it hit him.
"Yes, Colonel, they move us in and out a lot. High-stress post and all."
"Sure, Corporal, high stress. But it's more than that. Keep shuffling people in and out and none of them get to see more than a small slice of this place's history."
He had no idea what she meant until she asked, "How many entry teams have you seen go into the quarantine zone in the last year?"
That, he knew, qualified as classified information, and while she was technically his boss, his previous boss had given strict orders not to discuss entry teams.
Again, she seemed to read his mind.
"Don't worry, Corporal, the answer is right here. General Borman indicated to me and Major Gant that his group was the first to go in since the original incident. He gave me records from only those original incursions. But Task Force Archangel isn't the first to go in since 1992. Hell, they aren't even the first this year, are they?"
Regardless of inflection, she was not really asking a question.
The lieutenant colonel stepped away from Sanchez and returned to the desk and the papers and all the files. She randomly selected one.
"Take a look around this room, corporal. What do you see?"
He carefully pulled his eyes from her and glanced at the rows of shelves and the piles of papers and books and binders stacked therein.
"Um … a lot of records."
"The army loves to keep records."
"Yes, ma'am."
"Each of the entry teams that headed into the quarantine zone over the years, each one was carefully recorded. The names and ranks of each team member, even the surface temperature at the time of entry. Real anal, wouldn’t you say?"
Instead of speaking, he nodded.
"Why, there are even inventory lists of every last piece of equipment, supplies, weapons, and everything else that each of these teams took in with them. I mean, down to their shoelaces."
Sanchez finally broke: "Ahh, excuse me, ma'am, but, so what?"
"So what? Look around this room, corporal. Look at all the paperwork. These aren't records of old experiments or base personnel. These are entry team records. Dozens upon dozens of them."
He glanced again at the shelves and the clutter that barely fit in the room. Corporal Sanchez began to understand.
"Corporal, if you think that’s interesting, wait until you see this."
She grabbed a stack of papers and walked over to Sanchez. She forced those papers into his hands.
"I started pulling the inventory lists; the shit the teams took in. Take a look."
Sammy hesitated to take his eyes from hers; he still was not sure if she was completely in control. Nonetheless, he examined the inventory sheets and read about the type of things the entry teams had taken into the quarantine zone over the years.
"What in God’s name …" his thoughts trailed off.
"God? I’m thinking General Borman."
He stuttered, "What do we do now?"
That stopped Thunder’s rant. Her tone — which had been a combination of sarcasm, anger, and fear — grew nervous but determined.
"Well, as commander of this base I believe I deserve an answer."
Sanchez smiled.
"I believe you do, ma'am."
27
"What do you figure this place was, Cap?" Galati asked as he sat on the floor, his back against a stainless steel wall.
Campion surveyed the dark surroundings. Only the tiniest pinpricks of light offered any illumination. That is why he had chosen this spot for a rest.
"Specimen containment, probably," Campion thought.
The area was old and dirty and full of clutter from broken equipment, discarded furniture, litter, and a thick layer of grime over everything. Yet there was no mistaking the cages built for small animals, the feed tubes stuck to bars, the small tabletops for opening up the beasts of scientific burden to understand what that nifty new drug had done, how had the brain cells been altered, whether it could withstand another 100 milligrams of saccharin.
Nothing moved now. The animals were long gone.
"Say, Captain," Wells asked after taking a swig from his canteen, "How much further we got to go?"
Campion removed his cap and scratched behind his ear as he thought. The comforting weight of his MP5 machine gun rested reassuringly on his lap.
"Not far. I've got a feeling we can access the main ventilation shaft at the end of this hallway. We should be able to drop down onto sublevel 8 not far from the primary lab facility. Then it’s a short hop skip and a jump and we’re at the target zone."
"Piece of cake, right Boss?"
"That’s right, no problem," Campion said.
Galati pulled his own canteen from his pack. He popped the top, but before the bottle touched his lips he asked, "So is this V.A.A.D. thing going to be hard to use?"
Campion did not reply. After several seconds both Wells and Galati gave the captain their complete attention as they waited for an answer.
None was forthcoming.
"Oh my fucking God," Wells said. "You have no clue how to work it, do you?"
Campion did not respond.
"Cap … sir," Galati was more respectful but equally as surprised. "What’s this all about if you can’t get that thing going?"
"Stow it, right now, both of you. Captain Twiste was trained on this the thing. Besides, he’s got the batteries. It’s no good without the batteries. We will rendezvous with Major Gant and Captain Twiste and he’ll operate it. End of story."
Galati and Wells fell silent, but they knew it was not the end of the story.
Twiste told Gant the good news: "The bleeding has really slowed down."
"Unfortunately the pain has not slowed down nearly as much."
The two had sat for a long time, although in the dark it was hard to tell if a couple of hours had passed or just a whole lot of minutes. Regardless, they had heard no movement from outside the locked office for quite some time.
"I’ve been thinking," Twiste speculated. "Briggs was looking for God, right?"
"Not really. Not God as the Bible thinks of it. More like a particle that was at the center of creation."
"Sounds like God to me."
Gant replied, "I suppose it is a matter of perspective."
"Point is, what if he succeeded, but didn’t find what he had been expecting?"
"I do not follow."
"You know me, always the good Catholic," Twiste smiled. "If my Sunday school teachers were right, if there is a God, then doesn’t it follow that … well … maybe Briggs found the opposite of God."
"Give me a moment while I struggle with the idea of you as an altar boy."
"Pure as the driven snow," Twiste chuckled.
"You mean all that snow growing in your hair? I suppose I should be more respectful to my elders."
"All right, all right, you got your shots in. But listen to what I’m saying. What if Briggs didn't exactly find God, but something else?"