Eldon had to turn away to compose himself, but he couldn't chase the image from his mind. The man's face was frosted from the freezer, his skin tinged blue. Chunks of flesh had been stolen from his cheeks, earlobes, and the tip of his nose. There were still crescents of mud in his ear canals and along his gum-line. He was dramatically swollen from the uptake of water, which caused his epidermis to crack as the deeper tissues froze.
"You don't want to see the parts I left covered," the attendant said. He smirked and clapped Eldon on the shoulder, eliciting a flinch. "Do what you need to do quickly. We don't want him to start to thaw."
Eldon removed the digital camera from the inner pocket of his suit jacket and leaned over the body. Three hurried flashes and he was out the door without another word. He needed fresh air, humid and oppressive though it may be. He ascended the stairs and crossed the lobby through a churning sea of the sick and injured, oblivious to their curses as he shouldered his way toward the front doors. As soon as he was outside, he ducked to his left, cast aside the handkerchief, and vomited into an acacia shrub.
Sometimes he absolutely hated his life.
He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and headed to where his car idled in the emergency bay. The driver waited outside the open rear door of the black Mercedes-Benz E-Class sedan, and ushered him inside. They drove in silence, save the whoosh of the wind through the open driver's side window. The chauffer repeatedly raised his hand to cover his nose as discreetly as he could.
Wonderful, Eldon thought. He'd obviously brought more than pictures of the corpse with him.
The Mercedes turned through the black, wrought-iron gates of the Consulate. Armed Marines saluted as the car passed and rounded the circular island of rainbow flowers, from which twin poles bearing the American and Peruvian flags rose.
Eldon didn't wait for the driver to come around to open the door. He just wanted to get this over with. As he ascended the concrete stairs beneath the gray marble portico, he focused on the task at hand: upload the digital images into the program that would compare them to the passport photos of all Americans still in Peru, starting with those who had registered their travel plans with the Embassy. Once he had positive identification, he could make his calls, get the body embalmed and on a plane back to the States, and wash his hands of the whole mess.
"Mr. Monahan," the receptionist called in a thick Spanish accent as he strode into the lobby. She pronounced it Meester Monahan.
He pretended not to hear her and started up the staircase beside her desk. The middle-aged Peruvian national climbed out from behind her post with the clatter of high heels.
"Mr. Monahan!"
With a frustrated sigh, he turned to face the frumpy woman and raised the question with his eyebrows.
"There's a man waiting for you outside your office."
"I assume he's been properly cleared?"
"Yes, Mr. Monahan."
"Thank you, Mrs. Arguedas."
He ascended to the top floor and headed toward his office at the end of the corridor. A man with shaggy chestnut hair and pale blue eyes sat in one of the chairs outside his office, a filthy backpack clutched to his chest. The armed soldier beside him snapped to attention when he saw Eldon, while the other man rose almost casually from his seat. His discomfort was apparent, yet he seemed less than intimidated by his surroundings. He had broad shoulders and a solid build that suggested he had been shaped more by physical exertion in the real world than by countless hours in the gym.
Eldon extended his hand and introduced himself as he approached. "Consulate-general Monahan."
"Wes Merritt," the man said. He offered his own hand, but retracted it when he noticed how dirty it was.
Eldon was silently grateful. He lowered his hand, gave a polite smile, and gestured for the man to follow him into his inner sanctum. The soldier fell in behind them and took his place beside the closing door.
"How can I be of assistance, Mr. Merritt?" Eldon seated himself in the high-backed leather chair behind his mahogany and brass Royal Louis XV Boulle desk, and made a show of checking his watch.
"Thank you for seeing me, Mr. Monahan. Especially with no notice."
Eldon waved him off, but he would definitely have to discuss such improprieties with Mrs. Arguedas.
Merritt opened the flap of the rucksack and set it on the edge of the pristine desk.
"I wanted to give this to you in person. You know how the authorities are down here..."
Eldon nodded and fought the urge to shove the vile bag off of his eighteenth century antique desk.
"I found this with the body you just visited at the morgue. I need to make sure it reaches the right people back home." Merritt shrugged and rose as if to leave. "You'll make sure it does, Mr. Monahan?"
"Of course. Thank you, Mr. Merritt. I'm sure the decedent's family appreciates your integrity."
Merritt gave a single nod in parting and exited through the polished oak door.
His curiosity piqued, Eldon plucked a handful of tissues from the box on the corner of the desk and walked around to inspect the bag. He gingerly moved aside a tangled nest of dried vines and appraised the contents. His eyes widened in surprise.
He leaned across the desk and pressed the "Speaker" button on his phone.
"Yes, Mr. Monahan?" Mrs. Arguedas answered.
"Please hold my calls."
"Yes, sir."
He disconnected and returned his attention to the rucksack.
Now he really needed to figure out to whom the body in the morgue belonged.
BLOODLETTING
MICHAEL McBRIDE
Now available in paperback and eBook
From Delirium Books
The butchered remains of twelve year-old Jasmine Rivers are discovered in the cellar of an abandoned farmhouse on the desolate eastern plains of Colorado, the fourth mutilated body found in the last two months. The FBI is still searching for the missing parts of the previous three.
Hundreds of miles away in Arizona, eleven corpses are exhumed from the Sonoran Desert. They've been mummified and bundled in the traditional Inca style. But the Inca lived in South America, and these bodies aren't centuries old.
Seemingly unrelated victims that share a common cause of death: exsanguination.
Special Agent Paxton Carver follows the trail of blood, which leads him to the continuation of genetic experimentation that began during World War II and a designer retrovirus capable of altering human chromosomes. Can he track down the virus and prevent further exposure before the real bloodletting begins?
Prologue
El Mirador Ruins
North of El Petén, Guatemala
30 Years Ago
Torrential rain laid siege to the jungle, beating a discordant melody on the broad leaves of the sacred ceiba trees and tropical cedars. No celestial light penetrated the smothering black storm clouds, beneath which a damp mist rolled across the muddy ground. Somewhere in the darkness a parrot cawed from an enclave in a mahogany tree and the hooting of howler monkeys echoed from nowhere and everywhere at once.
Until abruptly the world fell silent.
Four shadows peeled from the night at a crouch and emerged from the undergrowth into a small clearing at the base of the steep hillside that had grown over the ancient Maya temple La Danta, converging upon a rickety aluminum shack surrounded by drilling and earthmoving equipment sinking into the detritus. One of the shadows reached the door of the flimsy building, and after a few seconds, a padlock dropped into the mud. Another shadow drew the door wide and all four disappeared inside. Wooden crates and packing material lined the wall to the left, while middle Preclassic Era artifacts from narrow-mouthed tecomate jars to jade and obsidian figurines were displayed in a staged jumble on a table to the right as though someone had merely stepped away from their task of boxing and shipping. It was all for show. As were the baskets brimming with small picks and brushes, the dirty jackets hanging from nails, and the row of hardhats mounted with h
alogen lamps.
The rear of the shack abutting the slope had been retrofitted with a door to match the front, beaten and dirty, hinges rusted, yet it was secured by more than a simple padlock. Two of the shadows isolated the external detonators rigged to bricks of C4 and deactivated the remote triggers, while a third removed the cover of a breaker box on the wall, revealing a small black screen. The shadow produced what looked like a lollipop from an invisible pocket and held it up to the scanner. A red light projected from the screen, spotlighting an excised brown eye at the end of a short metal post.
They removed the aluminum door as the reinforced steel door behind slid back into the recessed wall, revealing a stone tunnel reaching back into the black heart of the pyramid. Merging with the darkness, they inched deeper, Steyr AUG 5.56 mm assault rifles sweeping the rocky passageway illuminated only by the pale green glare provided by the unwieldy night vision apparatuses strapped over their eyes. They advanced in silence, infiltrating what had once been a temple to a long dead god, but now led to the altar of technology, modernized to feature track lighting on the rock roof, the circulated air blowing in their faces, and the humidity controls that held the jungle at bay.
As one, the shadows flattened against the wall where the tunnel opened into a vast square chamber from which several dark passages branched. A row of gas-powered generators rumbled to the right beneath a hood that vented the fumes to the surface.
"We're too late," the first shadow said. "They knew we were coming."
"No," another said, shoving through the others into the room. "They have to be here somewhere."
Though none could see the man's eyes, glistening green tracks of tears streaked the mud he'd rubbed on his face. He headed straight for the widest branch, passing between walls composed of great cubes of stone, decorated with seventh century hieroglyphics barely visible through layers of dust and spider webs, until he reached the terminus, from which twin tunnels forked to either side.
The man turned left and nearly barreled into a stainless steel door. Beside it was another retina scanner that granted him access thanks to the eye in his pocket. The impenetrable slab hissed back into the wall and he stepped into a small tiled room with lockers to either side and clean suits hanging by another door directly ahead. He blew through and the door opened for him into a small chamber with a pull-cord chemical bath. As soon as the door closed behind him he was buffeted by scalding hot steam from the vents surrounding him, but he didn't care. All that mattered now was finding them.
After a blistering moment, the door in front of him slid back to expose a sterile laboratory more than thirty feet long, a recent addition with shiny steel walls that reflected his distorted black image. A series of metal drums dominated the center of the room, vaguely reminiscent of round horse troughs with domed lids upon which were mounted circular pressure, temperature, and humidity gauges. Racks lined the wall to the left, brimming with chemicals, glassware, pipettes, and Petri dishes. To his right was a long counter with several work stations demarcated by powerful electron microscopes, centrifuges, and other equipment beyond his comprehension.
The caustic scent of disinfecting agents was overwhelming, but beneath it lurked a more organic stench similar to stagnant marsh water that he recognized immediately.
"God, no," he whispered, running to the back of the room where a half dozen surgical lamps were mounted to the ceiling, directed toward the same point beneath. "No, no, no."
An agonized moan wrenched loose from his chest.
A body was draped across a steel table. The gutters to either side were sloppy with congealed blood and bone chips. Its abdomen had been opened and all the viscera removed, revealing the exposed spine framed by ribs that had been cracked open and drawn apart like a clamshell. The legs and arms were untouched, though a marbled shade of gray, the digits dark from necrosis. But her face...her beautiful face...
He leaned forward and gently caressed her waxy cheek, glancing only briefly into the hollow sockets where her blue eyes had once been. Sobbing, he wrapped his arm around her shoulders and pulled her to him. He lowered his chin to her forehead and stroked her tangled blonde hair, now crusted with blood.
Bellowing his sorrow, he had to look away, finally catching sight of the message they'd left for him, smeared in blood on the wall.
She died slowly.
The man roared, grief and rage forcing aside rational thought. He whirled and punched the nearest metal drum. The hatch of the dome opened and a gust of what looked like steam billowed out. Within was a liquid nitrogen-cooled system filled with organs in numbered containers. Before he could turn away, he saw a liver, kidneys, a heart, and two long, coiled ropes that he wished had been intestines. Deep down, he knew exactly what they were and collapsed to his knees.
"Get up, Colonel," a firm voice said from behind him. Fists knotted into his jacket and he was pulled to his feet. "We're registering heat signatures down the hall."
And with that, the Colonel was running, through the lab and the decontamination chamber, through the locker room into the corridor where two men stood before the other door with a thermographic infrared camera directed at the steel slab. The eye was in his hand before he shoved them aside and thrust it up to the scanner. He slid through sideways as the door opened, welcomed into the darkness by a cacophonous riot of crying.
There were plastic incubators to the left, rows of bassinettes to the right. Toward the back were clear plastic cribs with cage lids. The screaming was all around him.
"Jesus Christ," one of his men said from behind him, but he was already dashing toward the incubators. The heating elements over two of the incubators provided a faint green glow through the goggles. The first unit was empty. Beneath the second was a squirming infant, arms stretched stiffly from beneath a blanket, tiny fists clenched and trembling. Its mouth framed a scream, its eyes pinched closed. A tuft of light hair capped its wrinkled, round head.
The Colonel reached in and gently lifted the child from the incubator, cradled it to his chest, and sobbed anew.
There had been two umbilical cords in the cryogenic freezer, two heat lamps over the incubators.
"Where's the other one?" he shouted.
"There are more over here," one of the men called from his right. Children swaddled in blankets, none of them newborn, all crying. He passed them by, noting that only every other bassinette was occupied.
"More back here!" another man yelled.
The Colonel ran toward the voice, but there were only toddlers and small children wailing behind the vented plastic walls of their cages. He spun in a circle. There were no more infants.
Only the terrified cries.
"Where's my child?" he screamed, his voice echoing into the dark stone corridors beneath the temple.
Chapter One
The communication of the dead is tongued with fire beyond the language of the living.
- T.S. Eliot
I
20 Miles Southwest of
Wren, Colorado
The words of the dying man haunted him in whispers.
You'll never find her in time.
Special Agent Paxton Carver cranked the wheel to the right, the black Caprice Classic fishtailing on the gravel road in a cloud of dust before the tires finally caught and launched the sedan down the long, rutted dirt drive toward the distant farmhouse. Fallen barbed wire fences blew past to either side, tangled with tumbleweeds and overgrown by wild grasses and sunflowers, the fields beyond a riot of vegetation, prematurely browning from dehydration.
He could barely hear the distant cry of sirens behind over the pinging of rocks against the undercarriage.
The crows were already waiting when he reached the house and jammed the brakes, lining the steepled roof of the white clapboard house, the aluminum outbuilding, and the thick black wires stretching back to the telephone poles. The setting sun beyond cast a scarlet glare over everything, limning the feathers of the raucously cawing birds as though they'd bathed in b
lood.
The transmission had been well masked, bouncing from one satellite to another. They had finally isolated the source, but it had taken so long... Too long.
Twenty-two hours and nineteen minutes.
Carver leapt from the car and hit the front steps at a sprint, tightening the Kevlar vest over his torso, his official windbreaker still on the passenger seat. He drew his M9 Beretta 9mm from his shoulder holster and pointed it at the front door. The porch planks were bowed and gray, pulling the nails from their moorings; the siding of the house sandblasted, white paint peeling in curls. Two rusted chains dangled from the overhang to his left where a porch swing had once been suspended, the window behind covered from within by dusty drapes and cobwebs. He threw back the screen door, hammering the wall with a bang, tried the front door, then kicked it in.
"FBI!" he shouted, shoving past the shivering door through the cracked and splintered threshold and into the living room, arms tensed in front of him, taking in the room along the sightline of the Beretta.
Single level; no stairs. Dusty sheets draped over a couch and chair to the right. Twin framed oil landscapes flanking a single window guarded by floor-length maroon drapes. Older television on a stand. Magazines on an end table, glossy covers dulled by dust. Open bedroom door to the left. Stripped, stained mattress. The mirror on the inside of the open closet door reflected a rack of empty hangers, nothing beneath. A bathroom door stood ajar beside the bedroom. Shower curtain missing, the toilet and rim of the tub stained by rust. Mirror on the medicine chest spider-webbed.
The buzzing of flies drew him toward the kitchen ahead before being drowned out by the rising sirens and the grumble of tires on gravel.
He paused at the entryway, flattening his back to the wall between the living room and the kitchen. Deep breath. In. Out. Ducking around the corner, he scrutinized the room with a sweep of the pistol. To his left: white refrigerator, ice chest-style handles; oak cabinets; gas stove; green Formica countertops freckled with crumbs. To his right: dinette, two chairs, no dust; microwave behind, green numbers flashing the wrong time.
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