by L. A. Cruz
“It was fine,” she said.
“I’m not a fan of the cheese whiz. You got me there. I would go provolone, if they had it. But what about the Coke? Was it not incredible? The perfect ratio of syrup to bubbles?”
A strand of hair had escaped her pony tail. She smiled, humoring him, and tucked it behind her ear.
“The Coke was fine too.”
Gus exhaled. His brow was furrowed, his eyes pointed at the tip of his own nose. “Okay, whatever. Wait here. They'll come for you shortly.”
Gus shoved his hands in his pockets and she felt bad.
“I’m sorry I didn’t like the cheesesteak,” Helia said. “I feel like I’ve offended you somehow.”
“No offense,” Gus said. “I just wanted you to enjoy it. It’s gonna be a long time before you get anything like that again.”
CHAPTER 13
Gus assured Helia that her contact would be arriving soon and said goodbye and left her standing by the water.
In the distance, the moon, a few days short of full, shimmered in the midnight waves. She untied her hair, corralled the escaping strands back into place with the others where they belonged, and retied her pony tail.
A raft motored toward the wharf. Its stainless steel pontoons, caught a broad glare from the moon, looked like two missiles strapped to a platform. The man sitting in back, steering it via the outboard motor, cut hard and brought the vessel parallel to the pier.
Helia wasn’t sure of the protocol. If this man was the Lieutenant Colonel, then she was supposed to salute him, but if her appointment was indeed secret, then saluting would be as stupid as saluting an officer on the battlefield and letting the enemy know who they were.
Instead, she waved. The man looked up from the motor, nodded, and then dropped his head to the task at hand and kept going, his vessel sending waves that slapped against the pier.
What the hell? she thought. Not the guy?
“Corporal Crane?”
She whipped around, her pony tail swinging. Behind her, a man had just stopped in the middle of a job. He was wearing sweats and a white t-shirt that said “I (heart) Party Girls.” His shirt was soaked under the arms and he wore a bib of sweat around his neck. Deep lines ran from the edge of his nostril down to the corner of his lips. If she had to guess, she’d say fifty. Handsome for an old guy.
“Are you Colonel Gates?”
His answer was wiping the sweat off his forehead with the back of his arm. “What the hell are you wearing? Didn’t they tell you to stay inconspicuous?”
“They didn’t tell me anything,” Helia said.
“You stand out like a fox in a hen house,” he said and flapped his arms to air out his pits. “What are you wearing underneath?”
“Excuse me?”
“Don’t get modest on me, Corporal. It’s a simple question. What are you wearing underneath that shirt?”
“A tank top,” she said.
“Good. Take off the uniform.”
She stared at him.
He grabbed his foot and stretched out his quadricep. “Look, it’s bad enough that guy in the boat already saw you.”
“I thought he was one of your guys.”
“No, he’s a civilian. But thanks to that uniform, he’s sure to tell his harbor buddies that he saw an MP standing at the pier at two o’clock in the morning, wandering around with a general look of bewilderment on her face. At best, he’s already told them that he saw you drunk and dishonoring the uniform. At worst, they’re already adding to their stash of conspiracy theories. This community has seen enough strange things to keep them on high alert. Now take the uniform off quickly before someone else sees you.”
Helia unbuttoned her combat greens and pulled her arms out of the sleeves. Underneath, she was wearing an olive-green tank top. The air was cool and her dark, slender arms erupted in goose flesh.
He glanced at the cobra curling around her right bicep. Then he grabbed her uniform and she got a whiff of sour sweat.
“Relax. Keep your trousers on,” he said. He bunched up her shirt and dropped it in the nearest trash receptacle and adjusted the garbage to bury it.
“Now you’re just a girl who likes her camo,” he said. “A girl out for jog at two in the morning. Let’s go.”
IT HAD BEEN a few weeks since she’d done PT in her combat boots, but she wasn’t too winded and was glad to work off that artery-clogging cheesesteak. Her dog tags had snuck out and jangled cold against her sternum.
Her companion was barely breathing at all.
“Hide those,” he said.
She tucked her dog tags into the scoop neck of her tank top. They jogged down the cobblestone streets, past the stone church, past an ice cream shop closed for the night, past the lamp posts, their fires hazy in the early morning fog that was draping itself over the gables and wrought iron fences.
There were no noises in town except for distant screams of children. It sent shivers up the back of Helia’s neck, but as they rounded the corner, she saw two feral cats pawing at a knocked-over garbage can. Not children at all. The rest of the town was asleep.
“As you asked, I’m Lieutenant Colonel Gates,” he said, his voice smooth despite the jogging. They crossed the street, the traffic lights all blinking yellow.
“Sorry, sir,” Helia said and raised her arm to salute, better late than never.
“Put your arm down. Don’t do that. People are watching.”
“What people?”
“People who think the graveyard is haunted.”
“And why would they think that?”
He didn’t answer. They stepped over a brick curb and followed a Gothic iron fence down the block. Behind it, the fog was wrapping itself around a collection of headstones. Near the end, an iron gate emerged, a sign overtop that read: Salem Cemetery, the same she had seen on the way in. The gate was open and a gravel path bisected the lot.
“I like to cut through the cemetery at the end of my route. Especially early in the morning. It helps me pick up the pace. At least that’s what the watchers think.”
“The watchers?”
“The people in the nearby houses. The conspiracy theorists,” he said and cut down the path.
Helia slowed, hesitating, but then she followed, the fog now thick enough to leave her cheeks wet. She passed an open grave, a pile of dirt beside it. There was a deep, black hole, artificial turf around the edges. She counted five such holes.
“Awful late for a funeral,” she said.
“This is the original cemetery,” Colonel Gates said. He pointed to a crumbling wall. “Those ruins over there are all that’s left of the old prison. If you poke around, you can find some markers dating all the way back to the revolution. Some of our first traitors. Some stones go back even earlier. Pilgrims—the ones who were caught practicing a different religion. Rumor has it, they buried some of the Salem witches here, the ones who died in jail.”
Helia passed a headstone with a flickering candle and wilted flowers at the base. Somebody must have paid dearly for that service.
“Can you believe those crazy Puritans actually believed in witches?” he said.
Given the current political climate, Helia was not surprised.
Colonel Gates jogged toward a large, above-ground crypt. It was as big as a small shed, iron bars on the opening. The tree cover was thick. Evergreens, so they’d never go bare in the winter. He slowed to a brisk walk and approached the gate. There, he pulled a set of keys out of his sweatpants.
Helia slowed too. “A relative, sir?”
“Something like that. A real patriot. Come join me. Pay your respects,” he said. He keyed the rusty lock on the gate and pulled it open and stepped into the darkness. He pulled a small Maglite flashlight from his pocket and twisted the lens. The beam, bluish-white, was weak. He banged it against the marble wall and the cone of light brightened.
She hesitated. What they hell were they doing in a crypt?
“This is very strange, sir.”
“You think this is strange? We’ve only just begun. Quickly now.”
She entered. The light swept over the small crypt. It was mostly empty, just broken stones and moss, save for a large, concrete tomb in the center.
Colonel Gates put a finger to his lips and pointed at the lid. “Give me a hand.”
She shook her head.
“Seriously, Corporal? Are you superstitious?”
“No sir.”
“Then there’s nothing to fear.”
“I’m just confused, sir. I imagined we’d be at some barracks or something.”
“Agent Connor told me this morning you passed the security clearance. He told me you’re a brave woman. So I don’t understand why you’d object to helping me with this slab of concrete. There’s something important inside that you need to see.”
“Yes, sir.”
Reluctantly, she put a hand on the side of the lid and helped him push it open. It was heavy and there was a large scraping, stone on stone.
“Blessed are those that achieve eternal happiness,” he said. Once there was a two-foot gap, he lifted his leg, straddled the edge, and stepped inside. He went as low as his waist, then his chest. There was no bottom. Then he ducked under the lid.
“Are you coming?”
“What the hell is this, sir?”
“The way down,” he said.
CHAPTER 14
Inside the stone sarcophagus was a stone staircase. The passageway was as narrow as a coffin and steep, the steps only long enough for her toes.
“After you,” he said.
It might’ve been a ploy to sneak a look at her ass, but she wanted to act strong and gripped an iron railing and squeezed past him. He reached up, grabbed a handle embedded in the concrete on the underside of the sarcophagus lid, and pulled it closed.
The stairs were blue-white in the beam from his flashlight. Moss grew in the cracks between the stones.
“Watch your step.”
Hesitantly, she descended.
“Excuse the lack of electricity, it gets better,” he said, his voice a faint echo. “This facility was originally built on the foundation of the old Salem jail where they housed the witches. The stench had gotten so bad in the jail that they wanted the quarters out of sight, underground. It also helped to keep the witches from mounting their brooms and flying away. Out of sight, out of mind, isn’t that how it goes?”
Helia now understood what had given fuel for the conspiracy theorists. A passerby could probably hear sounds coming from the crypt.
At the bottom of the staircase, they stepped into a concrete room. It was half the size of a classroom and the far wall glowed red. A punch pad. Next to it, a black rectangle. An elevator shaft.
“Try not to worry about all the dead people hanging out right above you,” he said. “Of course, depending on your religious beliefs, you might already think that. Heaven and all.”
“Is this a prison?”
“Yes. It has been here since the Puritan days, but has been reinforced and expanded. In the early 1900’s, a bit after the Eastern State Penitentiary, it got its largest renovations—sadly, it hasn’t had many since. It’s hard for Congress to find the money when most of Congress doesn’t know it exists.”
“It’s federal?”
“Yes. We rely on a small number of Senators to keep us going. A secret club, if you will,” he said. “This elevator here is the only way in and the only way out. Forget Alcatraz. You can’t swim your way out, you can’t climb your way out, and you can’t dig your way out. You won’t find a more secure prison anywhere in the world.”
“Ultra max?”
“That is correct.”
“So Connor wasn’t joking.”
“That man never jokes,” Colonel Gates said. He pointed the flashlight down the elevator shaft. It was so deep, the light faded before it lit the bottom.
He punched a code on the glowing pad. There was a groan and the darkness trembled as the cables and the elevator climbed up the shaft.
Helia stepped back. “I can’t say I fully understand the secrecy, sir. Are you telling me that the locals have no idea that this prison is here? Even if they have loved ones buried in the cemetery?”
“There hasn’t been a citizen buried in the lot for a hundred years. The federal government owns the land and the funeral home. We conduct burials that look legitimate to people passing by, but as you will see, they are anything but legitimate. The cemetery staff has no idea we are here. You, me, and about thirty other government people with top security clearance are the only ones who know about it.”
“But what about the prisoners, sir? Certainly once they’re released, they blab.”
Colonel Gate’s face was stern in the dim light. “Our prisoners don’t get released, Corporal. Everyone here is here for life. Or some semblance of it. There’s no early parole, no appeals. When you get sentenced to Salem, that’s the end of the road.”
Helia shut her eyes. Her stomach felt like lead. This place violated everything she believed in. It was inhumane. Incarceration without rehabilitation, a relic of a hundred years past.
She clenched her fists. She couldn’t tell which made her angrier; the government’s duplicity, or these horrible conditions. The words came out before she even realized she was speaking out of line and risking insubordination.
“So this basically a top secret death camp? The death penalty is falling out of favor so instead, the government takes them deep underground to rot.”
Colonel Gates laughed. “They told me you were a bit of a firebrand.”
“I did not join the Army to work on death row,” Helia said. “The men deserve appeals. Process. A second chance.”
“Are you having second thoughts?”
“I’ve had nothing but second thoughts.”
“Do you want to turn around? If so, we can make it happen. We’ll give you a drug. You’ll fall asleep. You’ll wake up in Florida thinking you had a bad dream. Then you can sit on your couch all day and watch Jeopardy while your aunt spoon-feeds your mother. Is that what you want?”
“Your intelligence is off,” she said. “My mother prefers Wheel of Fortune.”
“Whatever,” Colonel Gates said.
“I just don’t—“
“If you step onto this elevator, Corporal, there’s no going back. You’ll see things that nobody else gets to see.”
Helia stood on the edge of the shaft in limbo, pulled between two bad choices. The anger in her wanted her to go back home to the light and have nothing to do with this. But the patriot in her told her that down in the dark, she had a duty to try to make things better. There would be no change without her.
The ancient elevator stopped a foot above the ledge, hardly flush. Colonel Gates pulled open the accordion-style gate and stepped into the carriage.
“Are we going down?” he said.
HELIA WATCHED the cinderblock walls rush past the gate. The deeper they got, the colder it got, and she wished she had her jacket.
“The President knows we exist, but he doesn’t know where we are. If you’ve ever wondered why the NIH gets three million dollars each year for ‘rat supplies,’ now you know.”
“I never wondered,” Helia said. She imagined she was supposed to feel privileged to be in on these kind of high-level secrets, but all she could feel was a sinking in her gut.
She shivered and rubbed her arms to keep warm.
“We’ve updated portions of the facility, but of course, it still needs a lot of work. They keep saying, ‘next year’ and then one of the few Congressmen who knows about us loses reelection and it takes years to find a replacement. A few years ago, they decided it was safer to keep everything offline in the event of a cyber attack. Sometimes old school is the best school. You’re too young to have worked at the old Castle, but trust me, the Castle has got nothing on this place.”
The Castle, the old disciplinary barracks at Fort Leavenworth, had been demolished in 2007, ten years before
she joined the military. It too, had been designed on the Eastern State Penitentiary’s model. In training, they had briefed her about its history.
“There are lots of ghost stories in the Castle,” Colonel Gates said. “But it ain’t got nothing on this place.”
THE ELEVATOR PASSED three small stone rooms. Each were lit with fluorescent lights and were about the size of her entire house. The walls were tiled like a subway station.
“What are those rooms, sir?”
“The entrance to other wings,” Colonel Gates said. “But they’re above your pay grade. Don’t worry about them.”
The elevator went lower, passed another room, and stopped abruptly enough to shake the entire compartment. Helia instinctively grabbed the Colonel’s arm for balance. He looked over and took her wrist and removed her hand.
“I’m sorry, sir.”
“Not a problem,” Colonel Gates said.
He pulled back the folding gate and they stepped into the cold, underground room. There were three steel doors in this room. One was straight ahead, one was to the left, and one was to the right.
“This room is the central hub,” he said. “To the right is the living quarters for the Keepers. Straight ahead is the main wing for the day room and prison cells.”
“What’s that door to the left?”
He checked his watch. “You’ll find out in about twenty minutes.”
They went to the right, the Colonel’s sneakers squeaking on the tile, Helia’s heavy boots thudding beside him. It was cold down here, and smelled damp, the air thick and tasting of mildew.
At the door, he pulled out a key card and swiped it, and from somewhere in the side of the frame, a heavy bolt slid back. Obviously this part was a renovation. The knob, judging by its rust, not so much.
With the deadbolt slid back, Colonel Gates opened the door. Helia followed him into the hallway. Once she was inside, the door closed behind her.
“The living quarters for the Keepers are new. This entire wing was built in the 1950s. Back in the day, they didn't think that it was a good idea to live in close proximity to the criminals who were doing their penance. But now we know that should a problem arise, it’s better to be close by.”