Plague Ship (37 page)

“It wouldn’t have killed the crew all at the same time,” Cabrillo replied. “I thought of that as soon as Eric mentioned Unit 731. No, it has to be something they created here.”

“Do you think it’s a bright idea to be walking around without a biohazard suit?”

“We’ll be fine,” Juan said confidently.

“Man, I’d settle for a surgical mask and some rubber gloves,” Linc groused.

“Try one of Linda’s yoga techniques and breathe through your eyes.”

Using flashlights and starting at opposite corners, the men examined every square inch of the building. There wasn’t so much as a gum wrapper on the floor.

“There’s nothing here,” Juan admitted.

“Not so fast,” Linc said. He was studying the warehouse’s back wall. He tapped one of the exposed steel support columns. It sounded tinny. Then he placed his hand against the metal siding. It was hot to the touch but not scalding. That, in itself, didn’t prove anything, since the sun might not shine directly on it, but it was an encouraging sign.

“What have you got?” Juan asked.

“A harebrained thought. Come on.” He turned and started for the door, counting his paces as he went. “Ninety-eight, ninety-nine, one hundred,” he said as he reached the opposite wall. “Three feet per step so we’ve got us a three-hundred-foot-long building.”

“Great,” Juan replied with little enthusiasm.

“Ye of little faith.”

Linc led Cabrillo outside and paced off the exterior wall, again counting each step. “Ninety-eight, ninety-nine, one hundred, one hundred and one.”

“You unintentionally shortened your stride.” Juan said flatly.

“Touch the back of the building,” Linc said, knowing what the Chairman would discover.

Juan yanked his fingers away. The metal was scorching hot. He cocked an inquiring eyebrow.

“The columns we saw on the other side of this wall aren’t load-bearing. The metal is too thin-gauged.”

“Are you sure?”

“SEAL training, my friend. They teach us how a building is put together so we better understand how to blow it up. That’s a false wall in there, and behind it is a three-foot void.”

“What the hell for?”

“Let’s find out.”

They returned inside the sweltering warehouse. Linc pulled a matte-finish folding knife from his pack. He flipped open the blade and rammed it into the metal siding, cutting the thin steel as if it were paper. He wrenched down on the blade, slicing a long gash nearly to the floor. Then he cut across the tear, sawing the blade back and forth with a sound that sent Cabrillo’s teeth on edge.

“Emerson CQC-7a,” Linc said, holding the knife proudly. There wasn’t a mark on the blade. “Read about them a few years ago and didn’t believe the hype. I do now.”

He kicked at the torn metal, peeling back the siding like the pedals of a flower, until he could step into the secret room. The beam of his flashlight revealed . . .

“Nothing. It’s empty. Just like the rest of this place,” Linc said with obvious disappointment.

“Damn.”

Together, they walked the width of the building in the tight space, sweeping their lights over every surface just to be sure. The heat was horrendous, like standing beside a crucible in a steel mill.

Linc had his light pointed at the floor when something caught his attention. He stooped, brushing his fingers lightly across the painted concrete. There was a grin on his face when he looked up at the Chairman.

“What have you got?”

“This concrete is new. Not the whole floor, just this section.”

Juan noticed it, too. An area about ten feet long and the full width of the secret chamber was much smoother than the rest and showed no signs of weathering.

“What do you think?” Juan asked.

“Perfect place for a stairwell to a basement level. The size is right.”

“Let’s find out.”

Juan rummaged through his pack for the block of C-4 plastic explosives. He molded it to direct its detonative force downward and inserted the timer pencil. A quick glance at Linc to make sure he was ready and Cabrillo activated the detonator.

They dashed out of the hidden room and sprinted across the warehouse floor, their lungs sucking in the overheated air and their footfalls echoing. Linc flew through the door with Cabrillo at his heels, and they ran for another fifty yards before they slowed and turned.

The explosion was a muted crump that blew the skylight panels off the roof and filled the warehouse with a roiling fog of concrete dust. Dust coiled through the damaged roof, making the building look like it was burning.

Waiting for the cloud to settle, Juan felt a vague apprehension creeping up his spine, so he carefully scanned the jungle. The glint of sunlight off a reflective surface was all the warning he needed. He shoved Linc aside and dove to the ground as a pair of bullets from two separate rifles split the air where they had been standing a microsecond earlier. The well-hidden gunmen switched their weapons to automatic and sent a devastating wall of fire into the parking lot where they believed Cabrillo and Linc were pinned.

The two men were hopelessly outgunned, and, if they didn’t find cover, they would be dead in the next few seconds. Without needing to communicate, they sprinted back into the warehouse, their legs peppered by bits of gravel thrown up by the bullets that stitched the ground in their wake.

Juan was the first to reach the blast site. The concrete had been shattered by the plastique, leaving a large crater in the floor that reeked of the explosive. But it hadn’t been enough. The plug was too thick for the amount of plastique they’d brought. Casting his flashlight over the bottom of the crater, he couldn’t see a single spot where they had breached all the way through.

Defeat was a bitter taste on the tip of his tongue.

A constellation of bullet holes appeared in the metal wall of the building. He whirled, not realizing he’d already drawn his Kel-Tek. Two gunmen stood on either side of the door. He fired three covering shots, the range far beyond the gun’s capabilities. Neither man flinched.

Linc jumped past him, landing in the bottom of the crater they’d created. When his feet hit the stressed cement, a hole opened up beneath him and he vanished into the earth. His weight had been enough to cause the plug to give way.

As more and more concrete splintered and tumbled down a flight of stairs, Juan tossed himself into the darkened hole, noting that the breeze blowing up from the depths carried the cold stench of death.

CHAPTER 23

THE PUNCH SANK DEEP INTO MAX’S STOMACH, doubling him over as much as the ropes holding him to the chair would allow. Zelimir Kovac hadn’t used half of his tremendous strength, and Hanley felt as though his guts had been turned to jelly. He grunted at the pain, spraying saliva and blood from his ruined mouth.

It was the fourth consecutive body blow, and he hadn’t expected it. Blindfolded, he could only rely on his torturer’s natural rhythm to anticipate the blow, and so far Kovac’s hadn’t established one. His punches were as random as they were brutal. He’d been at it for ten minutes and hadn’t yet asked a single question.

The duct tape covering Max’s eyes was suddenly ripped away, taking with it some of his heavy brows. The sensation was like having acid splashed on his face, and he couldn’t contain the yowl that burst from his lips.

He looked around, blinking through the gush of tears. The room was bare and antiseptic, with white cinder-block walls and a concrete floor. Ominously, there was a drain in the floor at Max’s feet and a water spigot with a length of hose coiled on a peg next to the metal door. The door was open, and beyond, Max could see the hallway had the same block walls and shabby white paint.

Kovac stood over Max, wearing suit trousers and a sleeveless undershirt. The Serb’s sweat and Max’s blood stained the shirt’s cotton. A pair of guards in matching jumpsuits leaned against the wall, their faces stony. Kovac thrust a hand toward one of the guards, and the man handed him a sheaf of papers.

“According to your son,” Kovac began, “your name is Max Hanley, and you are part of the merchant marine, a ship’s engineer. Is this correct?”

“Go to hell,” Max said, in a low, menacing tone.

Kovac squeezed a nerve bundle at the base of Max’s neck, sending torrents of pain lancing to every part of his body. He kept up the pressure, squeezing even harder, until Max was literally panting. “Is that information correct?”

“Yes, damnit,” Max said through clenched teeth.

Kovac released his grip and slammed his fist into Max’s jaw hard enough to twist his head. “That’s for lying. You had a transdermal transponder embedded in your leg. That isn’t common for the merchant marines.”

“The company I hired to get Kyle back,” Max mumbled, wishing more than anything to be able to massage some feeling into his face where it had gone numb. “They implanted it as part of their security.”

Kovac punched Max in the face again, loosening a tooth. “Nice try, but the scar was at least six months old.”

It was a good guess. Hux had implanted his new one seven months ago.

“It’s not—I swear it,” Max lied. “That’s how I heal, fast and ugly. Look at my hands.”

Kovac glanced down. Hanley’s hands were a patchwork of old crisscrossed scars. It meant nothing to him. He leaned in so his face was inches from Max’s. “I have inflicted more scars in my life than a surgeon and know how people heal. That implant is six or more months old. Tell me who are you and why have you such a device?”

Max’s response was to slam the crown of his balding head into Kovac’s nose. The restraints binding him to the chair prevented him from breaking the bone, but he was satisfied with the jet of blood that flew from one nostril until the Serb staunched it with his fingers.

The look Kovac shot Hanley was one of pure animal rage. Max had known the strike was going to earn him the beating of his life, but, as Kovac glared, smears of blood like war paint on his face, Max felt certain he had gone too far.

The blows came in a flurry. There was no pattern, no aim. It was an explosive reaction, the instinct of the primeval hindbrain toward a perceived threat. Max took shots to the face, chest, stomach, shoulders, and groin in a rain of punches and kicks that seemed inexhaustible. The strikes came so fast, he felt certain more than one person was hitting him, but, as his eyes rolled back so that only the whites showed, he could tell the punishment was being meted out by Kovac alone.

Two full minutes passed after Max had slumped over in his chair, his face a pulped mass, until one of the guards finally stepped in to restrain the Serb butcher. Kovac turned his murderous gaze at the interruption and the guard hastily backed away, but the distraction was enough to cool his rage.

He looked contemptuously at Hanley’s unconscious form, his chest heaving with exertion and adrenaline. Kovac snapped his wrists, making the taxed joints pop audibly and sending droplets of their mingled blood to the floor. Reaching over, he pushed up Max’s right eyelid. All that showed was a veined white orb.

Kovac turned to the guards. “Come back and check on him in a couple of hours. If he doesn’t break next time, we will have his son flown here from Corinth and see how much of a beating he can watch the kid take before he tells us what we want to know.”

He strode out the open door. The two guards waited a moment and then followed, closing the heavy door behind them. They never looked back or felt movement in the room, because it was the last thing they would have expected.

Watching them leave through nearly closed eyes, Max was in motion the instant their backs turned. All throughout the terrible pounding, he had worked his body back and forth in the chair to loosen the ropes. Kovac’s fury had blinded him to this, and the guards had assumed Hanley’s jerky movements were in response to the blows. But Max’s actions had been cold and deliberate.

He bent over and grabbed one of the pieces of paper Kovac had tossed aside when Max had hit his nose. Shuffling with the metal chair strapped to his back, he lunged toward the door. He had one shot at this, because, even if he survived another beating, he would tell them whatever they needed to know to protect Kyle no matter the consequences.

His aim was perfect. The piece of paper slipped between the door and the jamb the instant before the lock engaged, preventing the bolt from sliding home.

Max sagged back into the chair. It had been the worst pounding he had ever taken. Even more savage than when he was in a Vietcong prison, and there they had taken turns so that the blows went on for an hour or more. He felt around his mouth, moving two teeth freely with his tongue. It had been a minor miracle that his nose hadn’t broken or one of the body blows hadn’t caused his heart to fibrillate and stop.

The spot where they had cut out the bioelectric transponder was a dull ache compared to the rest of his body. His chest was a mottled sea of bruised flesh, and he could only imagine the damage done to his face.

Well, I wasn’t all that pretty to begin with, he thought grimly, and the wry smile that followed brought fresh blood from the cuts on his lips.

Max promised himself ten minutes to recover. Any longer and he would have cramped up to the point of immobility. There was a glimmer of hope amid his pain—at least they hadn’t brought Kyle to this hellhole. He was back in Greece. Even in the Responsivists’ grasp, he was relatively safe. Max clutched that thought to his heart and let it buoy his spirits.

By his estimation, six minutes had passed when he started working on the loosened ropes. He had created enough slack to work his wrists free of them so he could use his hands to pull away the ropes wound around his chest. Finally, he was able to untie his legs and stand. He groped for the back of the chair to keep from toppling over.

“I don’t feel so good,” he muttered aloud, and waited for his blurred vision to clear.