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Authors: Clive Cussler

Plague Ship (36 page)

BOOK: Plague Ship
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“Roger that, Chairman, and good hunting.
Oregon
out.”
Juan clicked off the phone.
“The whole Donna Sky thing’s a bust?” Linc asked in the darkened confines of the jeep. Wearing all black, Linc was just a large shadow sitting next to Cabrillo.
“Yeah. She doesn’t know anything.”
“It was a long shot anyway. Woman like that can’t take her dog for a walk without the paparazzi following her.”
“Linda said about the same thing,” Juan said moodily. “I should have realized that.”
“Chairman, we’ve been grasping at straws since the beginning. No need to get all morose on me now. We go with the intel we have and see where it takes us. Dead end or not, we have to check it all.”
“I know,” Juan agreed. “It’s just—”
“—that Max’s butt is on the line this time,” Linc finished for him “And you’re concerned.”
Cabrillo forced a tired smile. “That’s putting it mildly.”
“Listen, man, this is our best lead yet. There were four hundred Responsivists here for God knows how long and now they’re all dead, most likely so they’ll never talk about what they were doing. We’ll find what we need and get Max and his son back.”
Juan appreciated the pep talk, but it did little to make him feel better. That would come only when Max was back aboard the
Oregon
, and Thom Severance and Zelimir Kovac were nailed to the most convenient outhouse door.
The ferry staggered into the harbor, slamming into the wooded pilings in one of the worst displays of seamanship Cabrillo had ever seen. Ten minutes later, with the boat secured to the dock and the ramp lowered, Linc fired the jeep’s engines, and they eased onto the quay. They immediately opened the windows to dissipate the pig smell that had permeated the vehicle.
“Good a time as any,” Juan said, and put his foot up on the dashboard.
He rolled up his pant leg. The prosthesis he wore was a bulbous, ugly limb of flesh-toned plastic. He pulled the leg free, and unlaced his boot, pulling it and his sock free. There was a tiny hole in the bottom of the prosthetic foot. He plucked a small Allen wrench from his pocket, inserted it in the hole, and turned it counterclockwise. This released a mechanism built into the leg that allowed him to split open the calf like an old-fashioned lunch box. Cached inside what he called his smuggler’s leg were two Kel-Tek pistols.
Despite its small size, the Kel-Tek fired P-rated .380 caliber bullets. For this particular mission, the armorer aboard the
Oregon
had hollowed out the seven rounds each pistol held and filled the voids with mercury. When the bullet struck flesh and slowed, the momentum would cause the mercury to explode out of the round and shred tissue the way a shaped explosive cuts through a tank’s armor. A hit anywhere center mass was fatal, and even a glancing shot to the shoulder or hip would sever a limb. Cabrillo handed one of the diminutive pistols to Linc and slipped the other into the small of his back.
A small block of plastic explosives and two detonator pencils, set at five minutes, were also in the smuggler’s leg. Juan had found over the years that when his prosthesis set off airport metal detectors and he pulled up his cuff to show the limb, he was waved through with an apologetic smile every time. Although they hadn’t encountered any bomb-sniffing dogs on this run, he was ready for that contingency with a small bottle of nitroglycerin pills and an explanation of having a bad heart.
The road out of town and into the hills hadn’t seen new asphalt in decades. The Responsivists had worked on the opposite side of the island, and it took an hour to reach the area. The sun had crested the horizon during the drive, revealing primal rain forest and jungle that hemmed in the road like a continuous emerald tunnel. The few villages they passed were composed of a couple of crude thatched huts and the odd corrugated-metal lean-to. With the exception of the Japanese occupation during the war, the pace of life in this part of the islands hadn’t changed in millennia.
When they were five miles from their destination, Linc pulled off the road, easing the jeep into a thicket of underbrush deep enough to hide the vehicle. They had no idea if the Responsivists had left guards at their facility and weren’t going to take unnecessary chances. He and Cabrillo spent a few minutes putting finishing touches on the camouflage and erasing the tracks the jeep had sunk into the soft soil. Even knowing where it was hidden, neither man could see it from the road. Juan built a small cairn of pebbles on the verge to mark the location.
Shouldering packs stuffed with gear, they stepped into the jungle and started the long walk in. The sun seemed to vanish, replaced by a green-filtered glow that barely penetrated the high canopy of trees. The color reminded Cabrillo of the
Oregon
’s moon pool at night when the underhull lights were turned on.
Despite his size, Lincoln moved through the jungle with the easy grace of a predatory cat, finding the tiniest openings between the dense vegetation so as not to disturb anything. His feet seemed to barely brush the loamy ground. He was so stealthy that the background symphony of insects and bird cries never dropped in volume or rose in alarm.
Cabrillo walked in his wake, constantly scanning behind them for any sign they were being followed. The air was so humid, it seemed that his lungs were filling with fluid with each breath. Sweat ran freely down his back, and soaked the band of his baseball cap. He could feel it cold and slick where his stump met his artificial leg.
After two hours of stalking silently through the rain forest, Linc held up a fist, then lowered himself to the ground. Cabrillo followed suit, crawling up next to the big SEAL. They were at the edge of the jungle. Ahead of them was open grassland that stretched for a quarter mile before dropping to the sea in a line of near-vertical slopes and eroded cliffs.
With the sun behind them, Cabrillo didn’t worry about reflections off his binoculars as he scanned his surroundings. The Responsivists had built a single metal building a short distance from the cliffs. It was as large as a warehouse, with a gently sloped roof to deal with the thirteen and a half feet of annual rainfall. Opaque panels in the roof would let in diffused sunlight, as there were no windows. The sides were bare metal painted with a red oxide anticorrosion paint, and there was just a single door facing a parking lot big enough for fifty or so vehicles.
About thirty yards from the warehouse were four rows of rectangular concrete pads. Cabrillo counted forty of the empty pads per row.
Linc tapped him on the shoulder. He drew a rectangle in the dirt and pointed at the warehouse. Then he made a second rectangle and pointed at the field of concrete. Cabrillo was with him so far. Then Linc drew a much larger square around the whole compound and pointed across the open field.
Juan studied the area through the binoculars and noticed a slight variation in the grass, which ran in a straight line before abruptly turning ninety degrees. He looked at Linc. The Navy vet placed the edge of his hand on the line he’d drawn, indicating he thought there had once been a fence running the perimeter of the field. He then used his fingers to rather crassly raise the corners of his eyes.
Cabrillo nodded his agreement. This had once been a Japanese compound of some kind, most likely a prison camp. The fence had been removed years ago, and all that remained of the cell blocks were the concrete pads. He wondered if the Responsivists chose this location because there was already an existing foundation for their building.
The duo watched the structure for another two hours, passing the binoculars back and forth when their eyes began to tire. Nothing moved in the clearing except when a breeze blew in off the ocean and made waves ripple through the knee-high grass.
Juan suddenly cursed and stood. “That’s it. Nobody’s home.” His voice seemed unnaturally loud after so many hours of silence.
“How can you be so sure?” Linc asked in a hoarse whisper.
“Listen.” His tone made it clear he was angry with himself.
Linc cocked his head. “Nothing but the ocean hitting the base of the cliffs.”
“Exactly. See the empty brackets on the roof? It’s got to be ninety degrees out here, which means it’s at least a hundred and twenty in that building. Those brackets once held some pretty big air-conditioning units. They took them when they bugged out. Unless that building is packed to the rafters with water, a guard detail wouldn’t last an hour in there, let alone the weeks it’s been since they abandoned this place.”
Cabrillo held out a hand to haul Lincoln to his feet. It was a testament to Juan’s time working out aboard the
Oregon
that the effort didn’t tear the muscles in his back.
Although he was reasonably certain of his deduction, they approached the structure carefully, keeping well away from the door until they were tight up to the metal side. The building’s skin was hot enough to singe Juan’s fingertips when he touched it.
With their pistols drawn, they approached the door. Juan set his pack on the ground and fished out a length of rubber tubing. He wrapped it around the knob and handed one end to Linc while he kept the other. They stood on opposite sides of the door, and Juan pulled at the tubing. The friction of the rubber against the metal knob caused it to turn, and the door clicked open. Had it been set with explosives, Cabrillo’s trick would have kept them well out of the blast radius.
“Not even locked,” Linc commented.
Juan peeked inside. “No reason it would be. Take a look.”
With pearly light shining through the skylights, the warehouse remained murky, but there was enough illumination to see the vast interior was completely empty. There weren’t even support columns for the roof trusses to break up the monotony of the expanse of concrete. If not for the small door, Juan would have thought this had been an aircraft hangar. The floor had been painted a uniform gray and was spotlessly clean. When Juan stepped inside, he caught a trace scent of bleach.
“Looks like the Merry Maids beat us here, eh?” Linc joked as he stood at Juan’s shoulder.
Cabrillo remained silent. He knew in his heart that they would find nothing to incriminate Severance, so there would be no leverage to get Max back. The Responsivists had removed any hint of what had gone on inside the building. The air-conditioning ducts were gone, all traces of wiring and plumbing—everything.
“Waste of damned time,” he finally said in disgust.
Linc was hunched down, examining the floor. He straightened, saying, “This concrete is pretty weathered. My guess is that it was laid by the Japanese when they built the rest of the prison.”
“Why the hell would they need such a large building?” Juan wondered aloud. “The ground’s too hilly for an airstrip, so it’s not a hangar.”
“I don’t know. Storage of some kind?”
“A factory,” Juan said. “I bet they used prisoners of war as slave labor here. God knows, they used them everywhere else they occupied.”
Linc touched the tip of his broad nose with his finger. “Bet you’re right.”
Juan grabbed his satellite phone and dialed the
Oregon
. With Hali working on the audio from the bug, Juan asked the on-duty communications staffer to plug him through to Eric Stone.
“What’s up, boss man?” Eric asked when he answered the phone in his cabin.
“Do me a favor and check into the Japanese occupation of Bohol Island in the Philippines. I’m interested if they had any prisons or factories set up here.”
“What, now?”
“You can plan your assault on Janni Dahl’s honor later.”
“Okay. Hold on a second.” The connection was so clear he could hear Eric’s fingers tapping furiously at his computer terminal. “I’ve got something. There was a prison for indigenous criminals opened on the island in March of 1943. It was closed the day MacArthur made his return, on October twentieth, 1944. It was overseen by something called Unit 731. Want me to run a check on that?”
“No,” Juan said. It was a hundred and eighteen degrees in the building, and Juan shivered, the blood in his veins suddenly turning to ice. “I know what that is.”
He killed the connection. “This place was a death factory,” he told Linc, “operated by an outfit called Unit 731.”
“Never heard of them.”
“Not surprised. Unlike the Germans who apologized for the Holocaust, the Japanese government hasn’t really acknowledged their own war crimes, especially Unit 731’s.”
“What did they do?”
“They had factories and laboratories set up all over China during the occupation and were responsible for Japan’s biological-warfare efforts. There are some estimates that claim Unit 731, and others like it, killed more people than Hitler did in his extermination camps. They experimented on prisoners by subjecting them to every virus known to mankind. They engineered bubonic plague, typhus, and anthrax outbreaks in several Chinese cities. Sometimes they used aircraft that sprayed the landscape with disease-ridden fleas or packed them into bombs. Another favorite trick was to take over local waterworks and intentionally contaminate a city’s drinking supply.”
“They got away with it?”
“For years. Another part of their job was to determine the effect of explosives and other weapons on the human body. They would gun down, blow up, or incinerate hundreds of prisoners at a time. You think of any torture imaginable, and I guarantee Unit 731 tested it thoroughly. I recall one experiment where they hung prisoners by their feet just to see how long it would take them to die.”
Linc had gone a little pale under his ebony skin. “And this place was one of their laboratories?” he asked, looking around.
Juan nodded. “And the local Philippine prisoners were the lab rats.”
“You thinking what I’m thinking?’
“That Severance chose this place for a very specific reason?”
“Using a toxin on the
Golden Dawn
after its people were working at an old germ-warfare factory can’t be a coincidence. Just throwing something out there, but is it possible they all contracted something left over by the Japanese?”
BOOK: Plague Ship
5.89Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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