Silent Assassin

by Leo J. Maloney

  CHAPTER 33

  Montauk, January 29

  “Cobra, Cobra, come in,” said Shepard through the comm.

  Morgan took a fire extinguisher from the wall and began to beat it against the door. The metal resounded deeply, vibrating to his core, but the blow barely made a dent. Far down the hall, the chimps were screaming still.

  He beat metal against metal, again and again. He knew it was futile, it would do nothing, but all he wanted to do was to hit something. He was trapped under rock and metal, with no way out, and it felt like force was the only thing he had left.

  “Cobra!” Shepard insisted. “If you’re alive, come in!” He hit until he was exhausted, then he dropped the fire extinguisher and leaned against the wall. Then he spoke.

  “I’m here,” he said. “No worse for wear except being buried fifty feet deep. Did the rest of the team make it out all right?”

  “Bishop, Spartan, and Diesel are fine, and they got the scientist out too.”

  “Novokoff?”

  “Escaped,” he said. “Off into the night. He must have had some escape plan already in place, because they found no sign of him anywhere.”

  “Is there anything they can do to get me out then?”

  “The lower stairs collapsed after the self-destruct sequence,” said Shepard. “There’s too much debris in the way. There’s no way they can get to you without some significant equipment that we don’t have on-site. Sorry, Cobra, there’s nothing they can do right now.”

  “I see,” he said.

  “Cobra, this is Bloch. Stay calm. We’re going to get you out of there.”

  Morgan looked around the hallway, looking more cramped by the second. “Oh yeah?” said Morgan. “How? Are you going to dig me out of here?”

  She hesitated. He knew she didn’t have an answer to that. It gave him some hollow satisfaction to catch her in her comforting lie. “We’ll find a way,” she insisted.

  “Yeah, I’m sure,” he said. “Listen, the rest of the facility’s completely destroyed, right? Even the ventilation system and the air purifiers? Am I going to run out of air here?”

  There was a pregnant pause, and then Shepard said, “Actually, it’s not how much air you have in there right now that’s the problem.”

  “Well, then what the hell is the problem?”

  “You just had incendiary devices go off on every level above yours. Fire. That means that almost all the oxygen in all the other levels has been converted into carbon dioxide. CO2 is heavier than oxygen, so it’s slowly going to move down to where you are.”

  Great. “So how much time do I actually have?”

  “An hour,” he said. “Maybe two. It’s hard to tell how airtight the blast doors are. Just sit tight, Cobra. We’ll figure this out.”

  Morgan felt a strange calm in being there. An hour of air. Not enough to get a team down there to dig him out, judging by the thickness of the doors. Suddenly, he had time. He had all the time in the world down there. After all, the only thing he had left to do was to die.

  He walked down the hall to the lab area, where the dozen screaming chimpanzees threw themselves against the bars of their cages with furious abandon and bared their teeth at him. This wasn’t normal, Morgan thought to himself. Couldn’t be normal. What the hell had they done to the poor beasts? This was no life.

  He walked back to Rogue’s corpse, silently apologizing for looting him one more time, and took his handgun. Then he walked back to the monkey lab, and he shot each of the apes in the head one by one. The ones that remained wailed like banshees until he had put a bullet in the last one. What remained afterwards was an eerie, muffled quiet. That gave him a thought.

  “Shepard,” he said. “How did the air get down here? There has to be a ventilation shaft of some kind.”

  “That’s the first thing I looked for,” said Shepard. “The good news is that they made the shaft big enough for a man to climb.”

  “Have I ever told you how much I hate good news, bad news?” said Morgan. “All right, give me the bad.”

  “In a facility like this, the used-up air can’t simply go out into the open. The shaft leads up straight into an air purifier. No way for you to get through.”

  “What floor is the purifier on?” asked Morgan.

  “First. That’s the limit for the biohazard, which is why there’s a different stairwell down to second. But there’s no opening to any areas that lead outside.”

  “There may not be an opening. But maybe I have enough explosives to make one.”

  “What? What are you talking about?”

  “The incendiary bombs. The ones used for the self-destruct sequence. They don’t explode if they’re separate, but if I put a bunch of them together do you think I can make a blast big enough to get through?”

  “Cobra, that’s ingenious!”

  “All right, then,” he said. “Let’s get to work. I’m going to need the locations of each of the incendiary bombs that didn’t go off.”

  “All right, they’re placed all along the main hallway,” said Shepard. “Each in a panel overhead. You should be able to pry them open with your knife.”

  “I see them,” he said. He realized that it was a bit too high for him to reach, so he grabbed a chair from one of the nearby labs. He stood up on the chair and slid his knife under the plate, gently levering it loose. A thin metal plate dropped to the ground. “Got it.”

  “Okay, now, you’re going to have to be careful with this part. The device is a disc, some two inches thick, not too different from a landmine. It’s supposed to drop when the self-destruct sequence is activated. It’s attached to a string that’s about half the height of that tunnel. It’s set to go off the moment that string is pulled. You’re going to push aside the bars holding it up, and then gently lower the device until you can cut that string. Understand?”

  “Loud and clear,” said Morgan, looking at the grey-green disc above his head. He could feel himself sweating. He pushed the bars aside with his knife, gently and carefully. As soon as he had gotten them clear of the bottom, the disc slipped down and fell. He caught it with inches to spare, the string almost pulled taut. He held the thing for a moment, in pure terror of what had almost happened. Then he cut the string with his knife and climbed down.

  “Where’s the next one?” he asked.

  Shepard talked him through finding and removing seven more devices from the hallway, which he collected in two neat piles on the floor.

  “All right,” said Shepard, “that should be enough. Now, bring them to the ventilation shaft. You’ll find that through a door marked ‘maintenance’ on the main corridor, on the exact opposite side of the door to the stairs.”

  Morgan carried four of the incendiary devices with him. “Found it,” he said. He left the bombs on the floor and went back for the rest. He tried the door and found it unlocked. Inside, he found a large metal tube, big enough for a man to fit in, with a bolted door. He opened it. Incendiary devices had clearly gone off in there. The air smelled sharply like burning match heads. He looked up and saw that there was a ladder built into the wall. There were scorch marks all along the tunnel, and the metal had warped and melted on two points along the way up.

  “The shaft turns horizontal at the air filters,” said Shepard. “That’s where you’ll want to place those charges. Then, cover the shaft with debris as tightly as possible. You want as much energy as possible directed into that wall.”

  Morgan cut off pieces of his shirt with his knife and wrapped them around his hands to climb the ladder. When he reached the top, he found the shelf Shepard was referring to. It was just a few square feet before it fed into a filter. It was impressively free of dust.

  “The first-floor corridor will be to your right, through the wall,” Shepard said.

  Morgan had to bring up the discs two by two, carefully stacking them together tightly into the sconce. He foraged the lab for something to plug up the hole, and settled on paper. He took several thick reams th
at he found in an office supply room and carried them up, setting the bombs as tightly against the wall as he could.

  “With any luck, that’ll be enough to bust right through that concrete,” said Shepard.

  Morgan tied the strings to the explosives together, and then tied that string to a spool of wire he’d found in the maintenance closet. He unspooled the wire all the way down the shaft and then as far as it would go. Bracing for impact, he pulled.

  He heard the blast—a series of blasts, in fact, as not all the devices went off at once—then he felt the rush of hot air coming from the shaft. He rushed back into it, finding that there was confetti flying thick down toward the bottom. He climbed up as fast as he could until he reached the top. There was still paper blocking the way, so he pushed it down the shaft. Then he looked at the place where the explosives had been.

  There was a hole in the concrete, just big enough for him to squeeze through, and beyond it was a darkened tunnel.

  He’d done it. He was saved. “I did it!” He laughed joyously.

  “Get out of there, Cobra!” said Bloch.

  “Hold on!” said Shepard. “The oxygen levels in those tunnels are going to be critically low. Really, it’s going to be pretty much all carbon dioxide. You won’t be able to breathe until you get back up.”

  Morgan took a few deep breaths, then plunged through the gaping hole into the upper level. His vision was a blur, and he noticed that there was thick smoke pervading the entire area. Holding his breath, he ran, remembering the layout from when he’d come in. He ran down the corridor, each step becoming progressively harder, his mind going faint, his limbs burning.

  Finally, he reached the outer door, which had been blown open. As he ascended the stairs, he felt the cool night air and took a deep breath. It smelled so sweet, so fresh. He couldn’t get enough of breathing, all of a sudden.

  He ran outside, then flopped onto the grass on his back and began to laugh maniacally, completely oblivious of anything else. His eyes stared straight ahead at the open sky. He had never been so happy to see the stars.

  CHAPTER 34

  Boston, January 30

  “How many hostiles were present at the Montauk facility?” asked the disembodied voice coming from the loudspeakers mounted on the upper corners of the room. The voice had the familiar metallic distortion that disguised the voice of the interrogator, who as usual remained behind mirrored glass while Morgan spoke to a video camera.

  “Six,” said Morgan. “Two outside, four inside.”

  “What is the status of each of these hostiles?”

  The Zeta team had remained on site until the cleaners arrived. There had been a dozen men who arrived in a van and a small truck. Six had been in biohazard suits and immediately filed into the building. Four had worked on securing the outside, while two had ushered the team’s survivors into the truck. The inside had been white and metal and entirely antiseptic—probably literally, Morgan thought. They’d sat down on metal benches along the sides and strapped in. Morgan had felt the pressure change in his ears when the doors closed. Negative pressure, he’d realized. If there were a breach, air would move inward, not out. If anything, the cleaners were serious about containment.

  “All dead but one,” Morgan told the voice. “Novokoff.”

  Morgan had never seen the cleaners in person before. “Confirm that this is Nikolai Novokoff, known Russian arms dealer.”

  “Confirmed,” said Morgan.

  They’d driven for a few hours. The back of the truck had had no windows, so it had been impossible to tell where they were going. As they moved, one of the cleaners had taken blood samples from each of the team members, neatly labeling each and storing them in a cooler.

  “Were there any friendly casualties?” asked the voice.

  “One. Code Name Rogue.”

  The team had been separated once they had reached a facility located God knew where. There, Morgan spent hours in decontamination, being scrubbed head to toe and taking enough medication to stave off an epidemic. Then he’d been taken back to Zeta headquarters, blindfolded to keep the location of the facility secret. He was now being debriefed.

  “Did you witness his death?” asked the voice.

  “I saw it,” said Morgan.

  “What was he doing?” asked the voice.

  “He was providing cover fire for me.”

  “Did you observe any breach of protocol or other factor that may have precipitated his death?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Did you observe any breach of protocol or other factor that may have precipitated his death?” the voice insisted.

  “Yeah, I observed something,” said Morgan, getting up and facing the glass. “He was sent down into a goddamn deathtrap! Do you think that might have precipitated his death? Huh? Why don’t you answer a question for a change?”

  “Did you observe any breach of protocol or other factor that may have precipitated his death?”

  “What was that down there? Who runs the facility? Who the hell are you?”

  “Did you observe any breach—”

  “I goddamn heard you,” said Morgan, sinking back down onto his chair. “No. There was nothing. He was shot in the line of duty, following orders and covering my ass. There. You happy?”

  There was a pause, and then the voice continued, “Did you or any other friendly sustain injuries during the occurrence?”

  CHAPTER 35

  Turkish countryside, January 30

  Dr. Gerhard Vogt looked up nervously from the document he was studying, an analysis of the proteins present in a sample of the organism he was to work with. It was impossible to work like this, under all this pressure. But he had to. He looked nervously at the two young lab assistants, just as nervous as he was. He had to.

  Vogt was a mycologist at the University of Mainz—or perhaps it was more accurate to say that he had been. He studied fungal infections, with a specialization in the rare and the unusual. Two months before, the American had come to him with a proposition to come work for him, for less than a year, he had been told. It was an inordinate amount of money, but it was also a huge commitment, which had the potential to seriously sidetrack his career. When Vogt demurred, the American promptly doubled the amount, tripled if he went at once. The university wouldn’t give him a sabbatical, but for that kind of money, he could afford to start his own lab if he wanted to. He was told to choose his own lab assistants, so he extended an offer to two of his best and most promising students, Flora and Julian, to come work for him. They had jumped at the opportunity to do cutting-edge research for pay, both of them being ambitious researchers and completely broke, as students tend to be.

  The location had been strange, and had made them slightly nervous. They did not know where they were, except that they were not in Europe anymore, but rather in a dry, rocky area. An advance deposit had been made to each of their bank accounts. Flora in particular had grown suspicious, and her conscience told her that there was something sinister about this. She was not alone in that, but she had expressed the greatest resistance. In the end, however, they had agreed that it was best not to ask too many questions. Such an opportunity did not come along every day, after all.

  They had been greeted by the American and another man, the Russian, who himself spoke German to near perfection. The laboratory was something from a dream—state-of-the-art equipment, everything he could have asked for, and everything in pristine condition. It also turned out to be a prison. They had told the guards that they wanted to go home. The guards informed them that they had orders to shoot anyone who tried to leave. They tried their best to ignore the armed guards, but it wasn’t easy to set into a routine, knowing that they were ultimately there against their will. Then came the documents for them to read, all about the fungus they were to work with once a sample came in. It was horrible, and it made them sick. They would, of course, readily work to produce a cure for such a horror. But it was clear that a cure was not what their emplo
yers were after.

  Flora had refused even to read more of the packets that had been brought. She had decided that she was done with the whole thing. At first she’d made a point of conspicuously staring at the wall, but after one of the guards threatened to hurt her if she continued, she at least pretended to read. Vogt was sure that results would be demanded of him, so he read. And it was while he was reading that the door to the lab opened, startling him.

  It was the Russian. He was wearing the same kind of turtleneck he had worn before, and all black. But this time, half his face was covered in bandages, and blood was seeping through them. He did not look happy.

  “Oh my God, what happened?”

  “Shut up,” said the Russian. “It’s none of your concern. I have a sample for you to work with.” He placed an array of vials kept in a small steel and Plexiglas case. “But first,” the Russian said, “you will check me for infection.”

  The information packets had described a test based on a protein that, according to the packet they had been given, was produced by the fungus in the body. Vogt had kept some test solution prepared, knowing that he would inevitably need it. He carefully took some blood from the Russian’s arm and mixed it into four test tubes with a prepared solution, as his two assistants looked on. The contents of each turned blue when the blood was added.

  “I’m sorry, sir,” he said nervously. “The test is positive.” He winced, not knowing what was coming when he found out.

  The Russian responded by overturning the table with the test tubes, which cracked on the floor, tiny shards spreading across the room.

  “I want a cure!” said the Russian. “And I want it to be made viable as a weapon.”

  “When do you need it?” asked Vogt sheepishly.

  “I have no time to waste,” said the Russian. “I want it in two weeks.”

  “What?” said Vogt, baffled. “Impossible!”

  “You will make it possible,” said the Russian. “If you value your lives.”