At first, it could have been a hotel subbasement, with pipes and wiring, the part of the building the guests never see. Cool air down here. I saw an official warning sign in red, in Arabic, a cartoon drawing of an Arab man with a Saddam mustache — it must have been the law here for all guys to wear them — the guy in a yellow hard hat, air filter over his mouth, finger in the air as if to say, “Danger!” Beside the man was a skull and crossbones, but none of us could read the words. I cursed. Our translator had been sent away, to help in the main attack.
Maybe one of my guys hit a tripwire. Maybe the place had been wired and a timer set. All I knew was that suddenly the ground began trembling. Then shaking. “Down!” I yelled as a chain of explosions went off below. Blue smoke poured from the vents.
“Masks!” I yelled.
We donned the bug-eyed masks. Now the smoke was all around us, coming from beneath doors, filling the hallway. But nothing bad was happening — no itching, no catch in breathing, no burning, at least not yet.
I decided to stay.
There’s something important down here Saddam does not want us to find.
Then I saw something moving ahead, something living staggered toward us through smoke. It was small and two-legged, a child. A goddamn kid. A silhouette in agony, hands waving in the smoke, maybe to surrender. Head whipping back and forth.
I yelled, “Hold your fire!” The figure fell and stood and then continued forward with a crazy side-to-side gait. Up. Down. It was hurt or ill. A voice in my earpiece gasped, “What the fuck is that, Lieutenant?”
I breathed, staring, “A monkey.”
The thing began screaming, “Kraa… kraa.”
It had a snout like a dog or a baboon and pink hands like a person. It had a pink face and white fur on its chest. It jerked in crazy circles, not seeing us. Blood was pouring from its mouth and nose, and when it turned sideways, I saw red ooze dripping from its ears.
Concussion from the explosion?
The animal took two steps forward, rubbed its eyes, cocked its head, my guys froze, and then it seemed to see us. I could not imagine, in my wildest imagination, what it must be thinking.
The monkey screamed one long eruption of rage.
It lurched forward but fell down and began convulsing.
By the time I reached it, it was dead. It had hemorrhaged out from every possible orifice. Black, clotted, evil stuff spread out, pooled on the concrete floor.
Shit, shit, what were they making in here?
Eddie’s voice in the earpiece was saying, “We’re coming in, One, behind you.”
I saw a sign half in Arabic, half in English. AL HAZEN IBN AL HAITHAM INSTITUTE RESEARCH SATELLITE FACILITY.
“Eddie, it’s a lab down here. Stay out.”
I kept going.
The smoke thinned and the screams started.
It was hell, a tunnel to hell. Now the echoes came through vents all around us. “Kraaaaaaa!” It sounded like hundreds more animals were down here somewhere, grunting, screeching, and there were tearing noises and retching, and I did not think there would be humans down here anymore, but I still could not be sure what waited behind the next bend.
The toxic gear better work, I thought, and we stayed a couple inches farther away from the walls. We passed a half dozen paintings of the dictator, the madman king of this madman house; Saddam on a white horse, wearing white flowing Bedouin robes. Saddam cross-legged by a desert campfire, reading a Koran, the wise military sage.
I was proud of my guys. Eighteen and nineteen years old and they held discipline. The point men going in first, the other two behind.
The first room turned out to be an office. There was a steel desk, wood-paneled walls, and in the flashlight beam, I made out medical certificates in biochemistry. A panel read: DR. MASSOUD AZIZ. He was, in the photo, on a beach with a plump, fortyish woman and two smiling teenage sons. There were lots of reports in blue binders, a TV set in the wall, a pair of backless slippers on an oriental rug, as if the owner had laid them carefully down, expecting to return. I opened a photo album with my rifle. I was looking at photos of dead people, their faces bloated, bleeding, their eyes red from blood.
The next room was a locker room. Medical whites hung on hooks. There was a break room with refrigerated glass cases filled with orange juice cans, and dishes of what looked to be hummus or baba ghanoush, olives, tomato slices. I saw small bloody tracks… animal feet… on the linoleum, a loose pile of bloody stools on a table, an overturned sugar bowl. Those tiny hands would have been in there. There were sugar strands on the table.
The cacophony was growing. A symphony of agony came through the vents, echoed between walls. I heard sobbing, hiccups, metal rattling. I heard hacking and sneezing. I was in Bosch’s hell, and somewhere ahead, behind a door, behind smoke hovering by the floor, were the creatures.
The smoke didn’t kill them. Or is it killing them now?
I recoiled as my light beam hit the dead face of another monkey in the hallway; bled out, belly blasted open, ears a mass of clotted blood.
Did the doctors open the cages before they left? Did they leave because the cages opened accidentally, or because we were getting closer? Are these animals contagious, and if they are, will our suits protect us?
Each time we opened a door, we stepped back and waited for a charging animal. A pharmacy closet had been looted of drugs. The doctors’ quarters were equipped with DVDs and TV sets, refrigerators, porno and religious magazines.
The operating room had two tables, a small one for a child, or monkey, I guess, the other one for a larger primate or human adult. Built into both were bloodied iron manacles for hands and feet. There were vials on shelves and an electron microscope. I saw drawers labeled in Arabic. I smelled urine, shit, fear.
I opened the next door. The screaming exploded.
At least a hundred monkeys were inside, in cramped cages, on tables spread along four long aisles. I walked the aisles, horrified, disgusted, terrified, hoping the hot air in my suit remained clean. I saw animals with bloated stomachs and blood leaking from their ears, noses, mouths. I saw monkeys dead in cages, popped open at the intestines, flies buzzing by their heads. The live ones panicked, grabbing bars, possibly driven insane by what was going on around them, or by their treatment.
Monkeys watched me with eyes too sick to care. Monkeys lay in their own shit. Monkeys reached through bars like condemned prisoners, beseeching another species for help, with those pink human-like hands.
One male, the biggest, went berserk, throwing himself at me, trying to smash through his cage, when I looked into his eyes. Crabeater monkeys, I’d learn later. An Asian variety hunted in the swamps of the Philippines and shipped to labs all over the world.
I gagged but held it in. One of my guys was puking in a hallway. His mask was off. I sent him up top, fast. I was snapping photos for our major. Panic was trying to get out of my chest, into my thinking. What more do I need to do?
I felt something land on my shoulder and I whirled and it was Eddie. I felt better for a moment until I saw, behind him, like a ghost, through curling smoke, a man charging him, no, not a man because it was coming too fast.
My M16 was going up. Eddie saw it, threw himself left. The creature was in the air, canines bared, and it would have landed on his neck but my shots drove it sideways and into the wall and it slid down, whimpering and thrashing, torn and bloody, and a moment later it was still.
Eddie stared down in horror. “Shit. If it bit me…”