The Devil_s Workshop

by Stephen J. Cannell

  "Company A, First SATCOM Battalion Headquarters," he announced, reading the flags flapping from poles in front of buildings bathed in the moonlight. Then he swung the glasses to the right. "What the fuck is that?" he asked, and then handed the glasses to Dexter. It took the scientist a minute to adjust the lenses. What came into focus surprised him. He had never seen it before, only heard about it… the ultramodern train that was painted pure white.

  Chapter 43

  ARMING THE PRIONS

  As night fell they were crouched in the forest, east of the medical campus. Dexter had drawn a map that showed where Building 1666 was located. Fannon dispatched Randall Rader and the Texas Madman to find the lab and scout the area. Then he turned his gray eyes to look across the rich farmland at the lights coming on in the buildings a mile from where they were bivouacked in the stand of trees.

  "Whatta ya think is going on over there at SATCOM HQ?" Fannon finally said. "Looks like they're about ta move that train."

  Dexter looked over at the SATCOM Battalion HQ, which was almost a mile to the east. The hill they were on sat just halfway between the medical campus and the isolated SATCOM HQ, where he could see the strange four-car White Train, lit by lights from the building. Suddenly, they could hear the rumbling diesel engine as the train started moving slowly toward the east end of the Fort, where Dexter had heard the underground bio-weapons storage facility was located.

  "I don't know what's happening," Dexter said, although he had a pretty good idea, and it had huge ramifications.

  Fannon smiled at him. "Look at me, Mr. DeMille," the Reverend said softly.

  "I am looking at you."

  "No, all the way, into my eyes."

  As Dexter swung his head to look directly at Fannon, the Reverend swung a big fist. He had timed it so Dexter turned directly into the punch, and it knocked him flat; he was stunned and almost unconscious, and his displaced jaw shot such pain into his eyes it made them water. While he was still trying to get his mind to function, Fannon's face loomed over him like a pale rutted moon.

  "You ain't quite being honest with me, bub. Only a profligate sinner would attempt ta lie ta one a' the Lord's angels."

  Still out of it and half unconscious, Dexter felt himself being dragged into a sitting position by the front of his shirt. He became vaguely aware that Reverend Kincaid was astride him, pulling him up.

  "Again, let us talk about what is happening over there."

  Dexter could taste the coppery blood in his mouth; then he saw huge drops of it falling onto his pants from a badly split lower lip. His blood appeared black in the moonlight as it fell on his trousers in Rorschach-like splatters.

  "Why did you hit me?" he whined.

  "In the next life, God will punish all liars, Mr. DeMille, but I get ta kick the shit out of 'em in this one."

  "I think it's the White Train," Dexter finally whispered, his tongue feeling the new, unfamiliar edge of a chipped tooth.

  "Of course, I know it's a white train, you dip-shit. I got eyes. What I want to know is, what is it doing?"

  "It's called the White Train," Dexter repeated. He was feeling a complete loss of energy now, a hopelessness verging on despair. The blow had more or less convinced him that no plan to trap this man would ever work. "I never saw it before, but I heard about it. The government uses it to transport toxic material."

  "What's it doing here?"

  "There's a lot of chemical toxins and bio-weapons on the base, hidden in underground storage. It's all illegal stuff we should never have manufactured. There's an underground warehouse out by the SATCOM HQ."

  "You think they're putting toxic waste in that underground warehouse?"

  "No," Dexter said, thinking what a dumb human being Kincaid really was. "They're taking it out."

  "Why?"

  "All I can do is guess, so don't hit me."

  "Then do it! Guess!"

  "After that mess at Vanishing Lake, the Senate Defense Oversight Committee must be getting worried that something isn't right here, so Admiral Zoll is moving his stash of illegal weapons before an investigation committee finds them."

  Fannon Kincaid leaned back on his haunches, and in that moment looked like a painting of a great Apache warrior, looking off from his perch with weathered intensity. He studied the White Train through his binoculars as it came to a stop out in the middle of an empty field. It was a ghostly, moonlit apparition; its diesel was idling, the noise carrying across the windswept plain like the distant metallic purr of a mechanical beast.

  "That's gonna work for us pretty good," Fannon finally said, still looking at it through the binoculars. He watched as long pumping tubes were attached to the top of the car behind the engine and hooked to a female shackle sticking up from a paved square on the ground. He could see men in full canvas suits, bathed in pale light, walking around like astronauts on the moon.

  "How's it gonna help us?" Dexter finally got up the nerve to ask.

  "Zoll's gonna have his hands full getting that shit outta here. Gonna make it easier for us to get into that lab, do what needs to be done, and get out."

  He again settled back on his haunches, a modern renegade with his black metal Uzi full of hollow-points, slung on his back like a quiver of deadly arrows.

  Dexter thought in that pose Fannon Kincaid looked as frightening and resolute as any man he had ever seen.

  An hour later the Texas Madman and Randall Rader returned. They had found the building.

  "We can get in through a side door. I dismantled the internal alarm system," Randall Rader said. "These fuckers have outside security boxes. The idiot who designed this system was asking to get his pocket picked. Ain't it just like the Army, 'Cost over function.' Cheap, but it don't work for shit."

  Fannon pulled out a can of "black" and the members of the Choir, along with Dexter, rubbed it on their faces.

  "Okay, let's get in and out fast," Fannon said, then turned to Dexter and looked at him strangely.

  "Mr. DeMille, you are not important to me in any personal sense. Your value is in what needs to be done. You said you could arm this weapon, and you fucking well better do it. I suppose it might have occurred to you to try and arrange for us to be trapped inside that lab. You may have fantasized about setting off some hidden alarm, and finding a way to avoid getting hit in the ensuing battle. Let me encourage you not to try this foolish maneuver. We are not inexperienced. Every man here has seen action behind enemy lines. The Angel in the Church of Per-ga-mos is assigned to send you to your Maker at the first sign of trouble. A loaded gun will be at your head until we leave the lab. Are you straight with me so far, bub?"

  Dexter looked at him, and what little was left of his willpower evaporated. He didn't answer, just nodded.

  "Okay," Fannon said. "Let's move out."

  They came out of the hills in three separate groups, moving quickly in the dark, hugging the shadows and gullies.

  They made no noise and tripped no perimeter alarm as they skirted the edge of the hospital campus at Fort Detrick. They stayed off the walkways, using the landscaped common areas, always staying next to a building or clipped hedge. The members of the Christian Choir and the Lord's Desire headed stealthily toward Building 1666.

  With Randall Rader and the Texas Madman in the lead, they were finally in front of the unlocked door that had been jimmied earlier. Fannon left four men outside to act as rear guard. They settled low in the bushes, positioned to set up a deadly crossfire that would cover the Choir's exit from the building.

  Inside Building 1666, Fannon, Dexter, Randall, and three others moved down the stairs. It was ten P. M., but there seemed to be nobody around. Dexter wondered where the bio-containment people were. They were always stationed in this lab. It was a Level Three facility. As he asked himself this question, he instantly knew the answer. The crazy prophet had called it correctly. They were all with the White Train at the underground storage facility, or over at Company A, First SATCOM Battalion Headquarters.

&n
bsp; Dexter opened the door to the basement lab, using his palm print, which miraculously had not yet been erased from the database. Then he entered the room along with Fannon and Randall. The last three Choir members took up positions in the hall outside. Dexter turned on the light, illuminating the tile countertops and animal cages; the stark fluorescent overheads threw a bright white light on everything. Dexter cast his eyes around at the familiar cabinets full of chemicals and beakers of acids. He had spent two years in this room working on the accelerant for PHpr. Everything he needed to change the pH factors and arm the Prions was here: the acids, the pH meters, the DNA blood strands for Jews and African-Americans. His hands were shaking, his head felt light.

  "You got thirty minutes. Don't fuck it up, bub," Fannon Kincaid said softly.

  Chapter 44

  CLOSING IN meant "No reason to stay here."

  I "Beware, danger."

  "Bad water."

  They were blinding on a passenger train, moving fast up the Eastern Seaboard sitting on the narrow ledge behind the baggage car. They had elected to ride outside rather than buy a ticket so they could dismount if they spotted the Choir hiding anywhere along the tracks. Cris read Stacy the hobo markings on the sides of the shacks outside each switching yard as they strobed past. Former train riders had also obligingly left "track options" scribbled there, telling what rail lines intersected in each town. Also inscribed on the weathered lumber were all sorts of useful symbols, like the ones he showed her in Shreveport. He explained them to her:

  "Good jungle."

  "Bad jail."

  .

  They were a few miles out of Harpers Ferry, at the Maryland border, on the Norfolk Southern track, which would land them only ten miles from Fort Detrick.

  "Sometimes, when it was late, we'd lie in bed and talk," Stacy said suddenly, picking up the strains of an earlier conversation about Max Richardson. "We'd discuss things I'd never really thought about. Sometimes Max could see around corners. He'd spot dangers or see problems where it seemed others in the scientific community never even bothered to look. He worried about the effect this science would have on evolution, and its environmental effect on human development. That's why he was so worried about what they were doing at Fort Detrick."

  "He sounds pretty impressive," Cris said, looking at her as her eyes clouded with loss at the memory of her dead husband.

  "Sometimes, in science, people get target fixation," she went on. "It's like you're so bent on succeeding and beating your competitors to the prize that you forget the collateral damage your discoveries might one day cause. Scientific history is full of these oversights, from thalidomide to the Manhattan Project to Dexter DeMille's work with Prions. His research started out as a life-saving cure for a horrible disease in New Guinea, but it ended up as a genetically targeted bio-weapon. I'm sure if you asked Dr. DeMille when it went from good science to bad, he wouldn't be able to pinpoint the moment. In his mind, it was undoubtedly all about a fantastic discovery and scientific acclaim. Max used to say that the Nobel Prize hangs in front of all of us, a big ugly carrot on a string, driving scientific ego without regard for mankind's capacity for moral mistakes. To get funding, you often make horrible compromises with the business community or the military- anything to fund the science, anything for academic glory. Some great scientific theories have turned into potential world-ending nightmares."

  "Like the whole Nuclear Age?" he asked.

  "You got it. I'm sure Albeit Einstein never imagined that his Theory of Relativity would turn into the basis for understanding the apogee of the neutron, which eventually produced nuclear weapons. Every time something good is discovered, there is also the potential for unforeseen and horrific applications. Max understood that. It's one of the things that made him so special."

  "Then why did he go study at Fort Detrick? From what Wendell Kinney said, everybody knew Dexter DeMille had started using Prion research for military reasons." Stacy didn't answer; she remained silent, so Cris went on, "Wendell said that the Pentagon funds lots of university programs, and that military research into Prions was aimed at creating antipersonnel weapons."

  "Max believed that he needed to find out what DeMille was doing," she finally said.

  "So he was spying on Dr. DeMille?" Cris persisted.

  "Look, it isn't as easy as all that. It's not black and white." She was getting angry now. "I mean, knowledge is precious, and sometimes you form strange alliances to mine certain truths that you'll ultimately be able to use for the betterment of mankind. Sometimes people like Dexter DeMille have to be temporarily part of that equation."

  "But if USC was getting military funding, along with all those other universities like Sam Houston and the University of Texas, then wouldn't Max be part of the decision-making process if he ran the Microbiology Department?"

  "No!" she said. Now she was angry. "You just will never be able to understand how difficult it is to balance the need for funding against the moral equation. Max did that dance better than anybody!"

  Cris realized that he had become annoyed at Stacy's worship of her dead husband. He wondered if he was subconsciously trying to tear down his memory because she was so obviously still in love with him. Cris was suddenly ashamed of himself. "You loved him," he said sympathetically.

  "I adored him," she said, then fell silent as the train slowed for Harpers Ferry.

  Cris knew that they would have to get off the passenger train in about ten minutes. Already the sleek ten-car varnish was slowing for the station. The ragtag buildings that seemed to announce every new town were now drifting past the car they were blinding on. On the outskirts of town were leaning, unpainted shacks with tar-paper roofs. Soon those structures were replaced by small boxy industrial brick buildings with low-slanted eaves, announcing that they were getting closer to the yard.

  "We fought about just what you said the night before he left," Stacy continued softly. "I didn't want him to go. I was afraid of the research, where it was going. The last night he spent at home we argued about Dexter DeMille." She was speaking so quietly that he could barely hear her over the grinding metal brake shoes on the slowing train.

  "We have to get off. You got everything?" Cris said, changing the subject.

  She nodded and grabbed a small backpack she'd purchased in Shreveport. Then she shrugged her shoulders into the straps.

  "Let's go," he said, as the train slowed to less than five miles an hour, and they easily dismounted the metal strip that was on the back of the baggage car.

  Cris and Stacy moved away from the tracks and down into a gully. They crouched in the tall grass until the train was out of sight, moving very slowly into the yard.

  "It's about a ten-mile walk into Frederick," Stacy said.

  "How far is the Fort from there?" Cris asked.

  "Not far. Just on the outskirts of town."

  "If Fannon came here, he and DeMille must be collecting something from the base," he reasoned. "A military installation that big should be fed by rail. We oughta be able to catch a supply train into the property."

  They climbed down a long, sloping hillside to a spot where they could see the two-lane highway slanting across the valley.

  "I think I can get us in through the front door of the Fort without sneaking in," she said. "I left Max's ashes there, in Colonel Chittick's office. He said he was going to ship them, but what if we just show up to collect them?"

  "I don't like it," Cris said. "I think it's dangerous for them to know you're on the base. After what happened last time, somebody will call Admiral Zoll and you're gonna be sitting in some interrogation room trying to talk your way out again."

  "So, what do we do?"

  "Let's head over there and I'll check the rail line that feeds the Fort. Somebody along the track oughta know what time the rail deliveries are made. It's probably once or twice a day."

  They moved down to the two-lane highway and walked along the shoulder, heading northwest. It was a perfect day, cool and crisp.
A fall wind was beginning to gust leaves across the road; they danced and flipped along in their orange and gold colors like nimble circus acrobats.

  Cris found the rail heading into Fort Detrick, more or less by instinct. Most experienced hobos could look at the general terrain of an area and discern where the track would be; railroad engineers would shun any grade that exceeded twenty degrees and didn't allow for a switchback. After looking at the shape of the valley, Cris thought the rail leading into the Fort would most likely lie on the eastern slope, so he and Stacy headed that way. Before noon they found the spur leading into Fort Detrick and began walking alongside the track.

  Ever since Shreveport, Cris had been feeling his old energy coming back. He got the rhythm into his stride, swinging his arms and legs, moving briskly until he could hear Stacy huffing behind him.

  His lean body glistened with sweat, and he glowed with newfound purpose.

  Around eight-thirty A. M., they arrived at the perimeter fencing of the Fort, near where the trains entered. The terrain was wooded, and a few hundred yards past the fence his view was obstructed by a dense growth of trees.

  "It's surprising nobody is guarding this entrance. At the front gate they have Marines with automatic weapons," she said.

  "Rail tracks are the back door to the twentieth century," he said, somewhat poetically. "A freight train is a very efficient transportation system, but it doesn't fit in with the jet age. It's still used, but strangely forgotten."

  They found an old hobo sitting under a nearby tree. He was eating a peach, the juice running into his white beard. His face and clothes were grimy. Cris moved over and squatted in front of him. "Howdy. I'm Lucky," he said.

  "Don't have t'tell me that, not with a pair a' shoes like them you got on," the old 'bo said.

  "What time's the feeder train come through?" Cris asked.

  "Two of 'em. First one's already come through, goes by at nine ever' night. It was the military train, fulla shit from the Pentagon. Anytime from now on, ya got yer supply train, food, soft goods, stuff like that. They're both pushers. Hard t'get on, not that y'wanna. Line stops a few miles in. They got patrols all over… ridin' in jeeps. Ya can hear 'em runnin' around all the way out here."