by Paul Bishop
He grinned. “Story of my life. I guess I'll have to settle for another beer.” He jerked his chin toward his unwelcome companion. “Put it on her tab.”
The waitress nodded. "What are you drinking, hon?"
Alexandra asked, “Do you have a wine list?”
Patricia rolled her eyes. "Um, no. We have a box of merlot behind the bar, a bottle of chablis I filched off a transcontinental flight a couple of years ago, and a half-empty bottle of champagne left over from New Years. Take your pick."
He couldn't tell for sure in the lighting, but he thought he saw Alexandra pale under her perfectly applied makeup. She licked her lips and said, "Surprise me, darling."
The waitress opened her mouth to reply, apparently thought better of it, and walked away.
"Look, I have someone coming to see you,” the woman opposite him resumed as if his protests had gone unheard. “His name is David Hawkins. He's the head of Trask Corp's security and needs your help."
"What kind of help?"
"I'll let him tell you," she said. "But I think it will fit your skillset perfectly."
Sharpe scowled. "So it involves the Biodome."
She smiled. "It might. I try not to think about that horrible place."
"I'm sure you have more important responsibilities like kidnapping litters of Dalmation puppies to make fur coats."
Alexandra giggled and slapped his arm playfully.
"I've missed you, Scott. Truly, you're so much fun."
"Really, I'm not."
"Pish posh."
As she continued to talk, he wondered if it was too late to change his drink order to a gallon of drain cleaner or a bucket of lye.
Normally, he would've simply stood and walked to a different table. Or better yet, insulted her until she left in a huff.
Unfortunately, his consulting business had fallen on hard times over the last few months and he needed the money. For the moment, anyway, he was a captive audience.
Patricia breezed past long enough to deliver their drinks. While normally, she liked to banter with Sharpe, it was obvious she had—as did most sentient beings—no interest in being within twenty yards of his companion.
Sharpe sipped sullenly at his beer. Finally, after several minutes, a shaft of light filled with dancing dust motes beamed into the bar and a moment later, a thin man dressed in tan khakis and a short-sleeved olive-green polo shirt walked through the door. His white hair was shorn close to his scalp and his skin had a deep reddish-brown cast to it. METRO reeked of stale beer and sweat. Even during the day, the place was dark thanks to heavy wooden shutters over the windows. It kept the place cool and offered the patrons a respite from the Sahara's brutal sun.
Alexandra waved at the man, and Sharpe assumed it was the security chief. He acknowledged her with a nod and had soon joined them at the table. She introduced the two men. Hawkins dropped into the seat directly across from Sharpe and gave him an appraising stare. "So you're the one Alexandra told me about."
He bit off a sarcastic reply and nodded dutifully.
"Did she tell you what we need?"
"She didn’t really need to. Considering that she'd rather have her skin sandblasted than spend five minutes in this dive, I assume you need someone to escort you into the Biodome. Or to go into there on your behalf and collect Pita plant petals or goop."
Hawkins nodded. "You nailed it. We have two scientists who are involved in some of Trask Corp's most sensitive work and want them to collect samples and other data. It's a fairly light trip—maybe three hours."
Sharpe dug his cigarettes from his shirt pocket, tapped one into his palm, and slipped it between his lips. He pulled out his stainless-steel Zippo lighter, flicked the cover open, and thumbed the strike wheel to raise a blue-yellow flame to light the cigarette.
Alexandra wrinkled her nose and for a second, he thought the smoke might drive her away. Instead, she turned away from him, took her phone from her purse, and focused on the screen.
Hawkins shifted in his chair. "Do you think you can handle three hours in there, Scott?"
"Sure," he responded.
He took a long drag and tapped the cigarette against the lip of a heavy glass ashtray on the table.
"I've been in there for much longer trips."
"But not recently."
There it was. "No," he admitted. "I haven't been in there in a year. Not since my wife's death."
"Locusts got her, correct?"
"Correct."
"And you haven't been back since."
"I just said that."
"Yet now you're willing to go back. What changed?"
"I need the money."
"Money makes us all do surprising things. What's your price?"
Sharpe gave him a number and the man didn't flinch.
"That sounds fair," he said.
"I thought so."
"Do you still have your equipment?"
"I do," he lied.
Hawkins slapped his hands together. "Excellent. I think we can make this work. We'll send you the details later. Keep an eye on your email."
He uncoiled from his seat and proffered his hand. "I look forward to working with you on this, son. We have a good team going in. And, like I said, it's only a few hours. It'll all be over before you know it."
The two men shook. Alexandra had come to her feet and slid her phone into her purse. She leaned in and hugged Sharpe.
He stared after them as they filed toward the door. A knot had formed in his stomach and he felt like he'd made a deal with the devil. He pushed the doubts away, took a deep breath, and headed out to find equipment.
Thirty minutes after meeting with Sharpe, Hawkins returned to his hotel room and locked himself inside.
A thick black briefcase stood beside his bed. He hefted it from the floor and laid it on its side on the bed, slipped a key into the lock, and turned it. After a faint click, he pressed his right thumb on a fingerprint reader and waited for a green light to blink accompanied by the final snap as the lock released.
He opened the case, extracted an encrypted mobile phone, and powered it up. Quickly, he dialed a number and waited for three rings before someone answered.
“Yes?” said a man with a heavy Russian accent.
“It’s me.”
“Go ahead.”
“It's a go."
“The man agreed to the mission?”
“In a manner of speaking. He agreed to go into the Biodome again. As for the rest...”
“He knows nothing?”
“Not a damn thing.”
Hawkins heard the click of a lighter from the other end of the line. The man was silent as he lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply.
Finally, the Russian said, “That is good. You are sure this will work? That he will do as we require?”
“He only needs to be there. That's it. We need the locals to know he was on this expedition. They already know about his past. When they hear what happened, it won’t come as a surprise.”
“But if he figures it out—”
“Figures it out? Sharpe? He's focused on a payday. He’ll never know what hit him. When people hear what happened to him, what he did—or supposedly did—they might feel pity but they won’t be surprised. Besides, I’ll send a couple of my best guys in with him. They’ll handle the details and make sure this all goes off without a hitch.”
“You are sure of this?”
Hawkins rolled his eyes. “Trust me. I have one million dollars riding on this. I’ve thought through every detail.”
“I hope you have,” the Russian said. “Because if you screw this up, losing a fortune will be the least of your worries.”
He laughed. “Keep your check-writing hand limber,” he said.
The other man said nothing and ended the call.
With a shrug, he turned the phone off and sealed it in his briefcase. That done, he uncoiled from the bed, took a cigarette from the breast pocket of his shirt, and used a match to light it.
Yet these bastards still treated him like a damned amateur every single time and always second-guessed and threatened him. More than once, he'd almost told them to go to hell. There were other countries and organizations willing to pay for his services.
That said, they paid top dollar and did so discreetly. For that, he could tolerate their arrogance and disrespect. Besides, he enjoyed the work. What he had planned for the Trask Corp scientists and Scott Sharpe would be a work of art.
3
“You realize the whole Trask crew’s dirty, don’t you?” Damon Rogers asked.
Sharpe swigged from his can of beer and nodded in agreement.
“A pit of snakes,” he said. “Every last one of them. But I need the money, so here we are.”
“Are you sure that’s the reason?”
“Shit. Here we go.”
The man laughed. “It’s only a question.”
They had known one another for years. The two had served together in the army and when Sharpe retired, Damon had been the one who’d recruited him to run ops into the Biodome. He and his wife, Sarah, had been their best friends after they’d relocated there and had supported him after he’d lost his wife.
They now stood in the couple's basement, which doubled as his workshop. A month after Camila's death, Damon had run one last mission into the Biodome and lost a hand to a jaguar. After that, he retired. He’d always been a tinkerer and his father, a gunsmith in Indiana, had taught him how to fix and modify weapons. With his wife's help, he'd built a lucrative business supplying armor and weapons to mercenaries who made the trips into the Biodome.
Sarah smiled sweetly. “You’re avoiding Damon’s question.”
“Guilty as charged.”
“So, do you trust them?”
He shook his head. “Not even a little.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t go,” she said. "Nothing good comes out of that place. Ever."
“I need to do it."
The creases in Damon’s forehead deepened. “Because?”
His face flushed. “I need the money.”
“That’s a shit reason," his friend said. "We could loan you money. Do you want another beer?”
Sharpe shook his head. “No, to the beer—and the loan. I’m only halfway through this can. I appreciate you offering me money but I don’t want to be in hock to you two. I’m not even sure how I’d pay you back."
"You have your consulting business."
"It's been slow. No one wants a consultant with outdated information.”
Sarah scowled. “It’s only been a year since your last trip inside.”
“A year’s like a century in that place. We all know that.”
She rolled her eyes. “Time’s the same everywhere. That’s one thing the aliens haven’t screwed with.”
“Sure. That's not what I mean, though. I’m talking about the fast rate of change living things go through in there. I was talking to a microbiologist the other day—”
“Over beers,” Sarah interjected.
“Over beers. He specializes in studying the locusts. Over the last year, he’s seen changes to their wingspan and digestive system that normally would take hundreds if not thousands of years to manifest. The same goes for endurance and jaw strength. They adapt and change almost constantly.”
He finished his beer, crushed the can, and tossed it at a nearby trash can. It bounced off the rim and fell to the floor. He retrieved it, tossed it into the trash, and took another from the fridge.
“They’re eating humans, eating other animals, and refining their hunting abilities. They're changing constantly. With all those changes going on inside, it’s hard to convince a company to pay me for information when their analysts can tell them the same thing.”
“You’ve been inside and you know how to kill them,” Damon said. “That has to count for something.”
“In a perfect world, it'd mean something.” He shrugged. “Around here, it counts for almost nothing. I’ll show you my bank balance if you need proof. Besides, it never hurts to get fresh experience.”
“Except you swore you wouldn’t go back.”
Sharpe grinned. “We've been friends for years. You should know my word doesn’t mean shit.”
"Of course," Sarah said, "Trask stiffing you over the last job is the main reason you're broke now." She shrugged. "Just tossing that out there."
He nodded. When they'd come back empty-handed, Trask had refused to pay him anything. He’d heard later that'd been Alexandra's idea. Doing otherwise would've sent a bad message to other mercenaries, she'd said.
Since then, he had lived off a small insurance settlement and a few consulting gigs. With each passing month, the work had become more infrequent and he began to feel the pinch financially.
Damon and Sarah had lapsed into silence. He looked in their direction and saw them watching him. Her arms were folded over her chest and she chewed on her lower lip, which told him she wanted to say something. In the meantime, Damon fidgeted with his gaze fixed on the floor.
"Spit it out, you two," Sharpe said. "If this pause gets any more pregnant, it'll birth octuplets."
She forced a smile.
"We're merely concerned," she said. "You know it's an anniversary.”
His face burned hot. He knew where this line of questioning was going and didn't like it. An angry reply welled up inside, but he swallowed it.
“It is the anniversary,” he said. “That’s not what this is about, though. Trust me.”
Damon cocked an eyebrow. “Are you sure? Your wife died a year ago this week and suddenly, you agree to enter the Biodome again. Simply to make a few bucks? You have to admit it’s a hell of a coincidence.”
“That’s all it is. Really. I’m not doing this as part of a weird nostalgia trip. Or for closure or any other reason. I simply need the paycheck."
They nodded almost in unison, yet something told him his friends remained unconvinced.
Truthfully, he wasn’t sure he believed it, either. Not a day went by where he didn’t replay his wife’s death in his mind, either second-guessing how he’d handled it or hearing her cries for help as locusts ripped her apart.
He’d fought like hell for her and emptied his M4 into a swarm of locusts.
It hadn’t done a damn ounce of good.
The only way he could’ve saved her would’ve been to keep her out of the Biodome in the first place. She would never have stood for that, though. Camilla didn't want someone to tell her what to do or treat her as though she was helpless.
Logically, he knew that.
Still, her dying screams and the images of her falling body replayed daily in his head.
A voice intruded on his thoughts.
“Look,” Damon said, “we know the Trask people are bastards. But Hawkins is an unknown. At least let me ask around and see what I can find out. I'll make sure the company won’t stiff you again. Fair enough?”
Sharpe nodded. “Fair enough. But be discreet. Now, how about weapons and armor? Otherwise, I’ll do this mission in a loincloth.”
Sarah wrinkled her nose.
His friend squeezed his eyes shut and stuck his tongue out. "Dude, the image flashing in my mind…"
"One hundred percent awesome, right?"
"I'll loan you anything. You can take all my gear. But please don't mention you and loincloths in the same sentence. Like, ever again."
His wife turned to leave. "I'm going to take a shower," she said. "You two enjoy going through the toy box."
Damon fetched them each fresh beers before he pointed at a stack of large black storage trunks.
"Here's what you need," he said, the excitement audible in his voice.
He opened the lid on the first container to reveal armor for a torso as well as boots and gloves inside. All of i
t was held in place in foam cutouts. The armor pieces were a dull grey. "It's a mixture of steel alloys and composite fiber materials. It's light but tough. It will withstand a shotgun blast at a few yards."
"What about jaguar teeth or a locust swarm?"
His friend licked his lips.
"Did I mention it will withstand a shotgun blast? You can get twelve hours on a fully charged battery. It's flexible at the joints."
"Repulsor rays in the gloves?"
"On your budget? You'd be lucky if it comes with an eight-track tape player."
"Ouch."
"Sorry, man. Truth hurts. It does have attachable floodlights and speakers that emit intense screeching noises. My hope is that it's a high enough frequency to hurt panther and jaguar ears but I haven't had the chance to test it yet."
Sharpe nodded and ran his fingers over the armor's surface. He knew Damon did great work, probably the best of anyone around. If he wanted to survive his trip into the Biodome, he'd need every edge he could get.
"Does it come in red?"
4
The next morning, the team was scheduled to meet at a warehouse in the French quarter, a couple of blocks from METRO.
Sharpe had arrived first. He'd barely slept the night before and his eyes felt gritty and his brain sluggish. His HUD equipment and weapons were packed inside several storage crates stowed in a white panel van he'd borrowed from Damon. He unloaded the boxes and carried or dragged each to the warehouse.
When he finished, he lit a cigarette, leaned against the borrowed van, and smoked. A mixture of fear and anticipation fluttered in his stomach, which he tried to ignore. He'd always been nervous before he entered the Biodome, never knowing if he'd make it out alive. This time, the nervousness had kicked in about midnight and showed no signs of abating.
Several minutes later, a black Mercedes convertible rolled up. A tall man with bright red hair was seated behind the wheel. He was thick through the chest and shoulders and had the slight paunch of a powerlifter—or a dedicated beer drinker—and the big arms and legs of someone who spent most of his adulthood pumping iron and downing steroids. Dressed in a black t-shirt, camouflage pants, and black combat boots, he unfolded his large body from inside the convertible, stepped onto the pavement, and slammed the car's door. He raked his gaze over his surroundings until he located the waiting man.