“What do we do?” Sked asked.
“Normally, I’d recommend tossing some smoke grenades in there, and maybe hose the whole place with machine-gun fire, but since you forgot to bring any decent weapons and we can’t stay out here any longer, let’s try this: we’ll flash every light we have into the hole and try to blind whoever’s waiting for us. Then we’ll go in, guns blazing. So I’ll need a volunteer to run in with me and someone to cover us without exposing themselves.”
“I’ll go with you,” Sked said. “Just get me my gun back.”
Akane rolled her eyes. “He’s grown a hero complex all of a sudden,” she informed the Marine. “I’ll cover you guys. From safety. Because I don’t have a testosterone problem.”
“I do not have a hero complex. But I’m the only one here who’s done this kind of thing before.”
“Whatever,” Akane replied.
The Colonel passed Sked his gun, and Cora turned to the group. “All right, turn on your flashlights. On my mark, point them into the entry without showing your heads. Just put your arms around the corner.” She turned to Sked. “Are you ready?”
He nodded.
“Three, two, one… mark,” she whispered.
She rolled out into the center of the door, fired two shots and charged in. Sked opted for a less dramatic spring into the now-illuminated tunnel beyond the door.
Someone had used the place for storage. Dust-covered shelves and equipment with sheets over it were lumped to the sides, forcing Sked and Cora to run through a narrow corridor between the junk. Perfect targets, unless the Marine’s plan to blind anyone waiting for them worked.
Following Cora’s lead, Sked dove behind a large blob of machinery and sat tight for a couple of seconds before diving towards the next one.
Just as he became certain that there was nobody waiting for them, a loud bang filled the tunnel. Sked could have sworn he heard a bullet whizz by his head.
A second later, everything went dark and he realized that the people behind them had probably instinctively pulled their hands away from the tunnel opening that had suddenly begun to fire at them.
That wouldn’t last. Even unarmed, Akane would soon get them organized again. And the Colonel would help.
Akane with a gun? He grinned.
Three seconds later, the light was back up where it had been. The tunnel was well-illuminated enough that he could see Cora crouched behind another unidentified pile of equipment. The stuff reminded Sked of medical equipment, but that made no sense—who’d build an underground clinic on an island no one was allowed to visit? She pointed ahead and to the left.
Sked nodded.
If there was only one shooter, he was better positioned to get close without exposing himself. If there were more than one, but they were holding their fire until they could see the whites of Sked and Cora’s eyes… they were toast.
He crawled between two crates and emerged into a maze of vehicles. Tata pickups and Bobcat earth movers were parked along the wall, just as dusty as everything else.
They afforded excellent cover, and he managed to advance several yards before he had to stop and consider his next move. He sat in a dark pocket and he tried to see where he could advance without making any noise. Knocking over a can would give the game away.
Or maybe he could intentionally draw fire from whoever was waiting back there, thus giving Cora a clear field to advance and expose the shooter or shooters.
For some reason, he didn’t find that option tempting. Instead, he moved carefully between a couple of canisters standing in front of him. On the other side, he found a long clear space that allowed him to advance quietly for several yards.
Brilliant. He figured that he was now actually past the position Cora had indicated, so he turned to the right and looked where she’d pointed.
Admiration filled him and he almost wanted to applaud. Cora had been exactly right, to a couple of inches. A figure huddled behind a stack of metal shelves holding a large gun in both hands and occasionally risking a look over the equipment. Unfortunately for him, there was little to be seen except for the beam of several blinding flashlights.
Sked grinned and crawled silently up to the guy. He placed the muzzle of his pistol against the back of his head and whispered, “Hi. I’ll be your captor this evening. Put the gun down right now. Make a false move and you’re dead.”
Sked had no clue if the guy understood or not, but the gun lowered slowly. Sked grabbed it and moved a couple of feet back. “All right. Nod if you understand me.”
The man nodded.
“Good. I want you to sit on your hands now. That’s right. Now one more question, and this is the one which defines whether you live or die. Is there anyone else waiting for us?”
The man shook his head.
Sked shrugged. He had no choice but to trust the guy.
“Cora,” he called, “target is secure. He claims he’s alone.”
An instant later, Cora rolled to a position a few feet away. She must have been making her way through the clutter, and Sked, even though he’d known she was out there, hadn’t noticed her. She was really good.
Cora nodded. “Nice advance. Good takedown. I’m impressed,” she said. “Up until a couple of minutes ago, I was convinced you and the thin girl were just a couple of amateurs playing soldier. It seems I owe you guys an apology.”
The praise filled him with pride; it wasn’t often that one of Sked’s operations had witnesses. His clients normally didn’t know how much skill was involved in getting the results they paid for. And Akane, who’d seen his ability firsthand, would rather die than say she thought he was any good.
But Sked would have been the first to admit that, had the showdown been between himself and the Marine… he would have been dead.
“What do we do now?” he said.
“Let’s get everyone inside and get that door closed.”
“What about the people in here?”
“We’ll deal with them if we need to. We need to take it step by step.”
Sked ran back to the opening and gave the order to get inside, then looked for the interior door mechanism. To his delight, he wouldn’t need to enter any codes. A big red button worked the door from the inside.
He gave the captured gun to the Colonel, who glanced at it and then, with practiced ease, slid the magazine out to check the number of bullets. “This is filthy,” he said. “Whoever you took this from isn’t a soldier.”
“I agree. He’s just some fat sweaty guy. Want to meet him?”
“Not in the least, but I suppose I must.”
Cora was questioning the prisoner when they arrived. Flashlights up close revealed a dark-skinned man who spoke English with an accent Sked couldn’t quite place. If pressed, he would have guessed he was from Latin America, but it could easily have been an Arab, a Central Asian or a man from Southern Europe. His grey t-shirt had damp patches under his arms and he had a scraggly beard halfway which ended down both cheeks.
He looked like an office worker. Pudgy and stooped.
“He says there’s four more of them in there,” Cora reported.
“Are any of them dangerous?”
“They are doctors and scientists,” the man said. “Not dangerous. They work here. For a salary.”
“What is this place?”
“Readjustment facility,” he replied.
“What kind of readjustment?”
“I don’t know,” the man replied.
That earned him a prod from Cora’s gun. The man recoiled. “I really don’t know. They do science work with people. People come in, they stay here a few days, then they go out. I fix the doctors’ computers and their equipment.”
“What kind of people?”
He looked uncomfortable for a moment. “Mostly women,” he said. “Some men. I don’t talk to them.”
“And weapons?”
“Some. I don’t think the doctors know how to use them. They’re in a room.”
&nb
sp; Sked spoke up. “Do you have a connection? Phone? Internet? Anything?”
The man, who’d shown every sign of being a nervous wreck to that point, actually laughed. “Of course not. We work here until they take us away. No one in this place ever communicates with the outside world.”
“Why not?”
He shrugged. “The bosses don’t want anyone asking questions.”
“Well,” Cora said, lifting him by the collar, “I’m someone, and I’m asking questions. What the hell is happening in here?”
“I told you. I just fix the computers.”
Damn, Sked thought. He’d seen this kind of thing before quite often. The guy wasn’t refusing to answer their questions because he’d suddenly grown a backbone. He was more scared of whoever ran the place than he was of a gun in his face. “Leave him,” he said. “We’ll go look for ourselves.”
The man stood and Cora said: “Lead the way.” She prodded him in the back with the gun.
The tunnel was shorter than it had appeared when they were expecting to be shot in the face. Just ten meters further on, it ended at another door. This one was carpeted in grey.
“I guess we can rule out a WWII storage bunker,” Akane said.
“I guess so.” Sked turned to their prisoner. “Anything we should know before we open that door?”
“No. It’s just a door.”
“Think carefully, because if you tell us it’s safe, we’re sending you through first.”
He hesitated, but finally nodded.
“All righty, then,” Sked said. “In you go. And if you run for it, I’ll shoot you in the back.”
They opened the door carefully. The room beyond was carpeted in the same grey and held four cubicles with shoulder-high partition walls. Though anything could be hiding behind one of those, the prisoner appeared unconcerned as he advanced towards the back of the room.
Sked and Cora took no chances. They crouched to the cubicles and checked each one.
“Clear,” Cora said when they were done. Akane and the Colonel led the rest of their team in.
The man led them to another door in the far wall. This one opened into a circular room about fifty feet in diameter, with a high, domed roof. It was lit like an operating room.
The four people who met them inside fit the surroundings perfectly. They wore white lab coats and the tall one in front was pale to the point of looking albino. All four were men, but the other three were Asian.
“What is the meaning of this?” the pale man asked. His English was near-perfect, the accent Germanic.
“We need shelter,” Cora replied.
“Well, you can’t have it here. This is private property. I must ask you to leave right now.”
“Well, I’m afraid that’s quite impossible,” Cora replied. “We go out there, we die. So we’re staying here.”
Akane moved up beside him and whispered in Sked’s ear. “Tattoos,” she said.
Sked cursed himself for a fool. The three Asian men each had a red flower inked on their neck. Even the white doctor had a hint of petal sticking out from beneath the white of his lab coat. It was the sign of Blood Orchid, a smuggling and white trafficking organization that held sway east of Istanbul.
The tall man spoke again. “You really don’t want to be here. You have no idea who you’re messing with.”
Akane laughed. “Oh, yes I do,” she said. She rolled back the sleeve of her left arm to show another tattoo: a two-by-two grid with ideograms in each square. “This is my code from when I was being readjusted.”
Then, without another word, she lifted her gun and shot the Asian doctor standing to the left of the tall man. The bullet caught him right between the eyes and he collapsed backward.
“Hello, Dr. Suzuki,” she said. “I told you I’d find you and kill you.”
She spat on the body and walked off.
Chapter 13
What the fuck was that all about?
Cora watched the woman walk away, gun in hand. She looked to Sked to see if he gave any clue, but as none was forthcoming, she turned back to the pale scientists. That wasn’t the way she would have handled the initial greetings, but one thing was for certain: Akane had gotten their attention. These guys would be receptive to anything they said from this point on.
“As you can see, we aren’t particularly worried about you or your superiors. In fact, you need to start thinking of why we would leave you alive to rat us out once we’re gone. It might be healthier for us if you’re dead. I’ll let you think about that for a little while.” She turned back. “Colonel, do you mind keeping this group covered for a moment? I’d like to speak to Sked.”
“Of course. Tell me what he says, afterward.”
The Englishman’s eyes burned with a fury she’d never seen there before, and she understood the rage: you didn’t just shoot an unarmed prisoner in the head. Not without a good reason. He knew exactly what she wanted to discuss with the hacker: what the hell was up with Akane?
She hoped Akane had that reason, because she didn’t want to spend the rest of their stay on this island keeping those two away from each other. Though Akane didn’t look like she would be much in a fight, she was dangerous in her own way. And the Colonel? He might be twenty years past his prime but he was well-trained and experienced.
It would be better if they got along.
Sked was already walking beside her when she realized one of the Asian men from the resort had joined them. Cora raised an eyebrow in Sked’s direction. He nodded and she shrugged. This should be interesting.
They sat at a perfectly normal table in a nook about ten meters from the rest of the group. It was a four-person table with a white plastic surface surrounded by white plastic chairs. The nook was perfectly normal, obviously a cafeteria space holding two more tables, a marble tabletop holding a microwave and a refrigerator. It could have served as the break room for pretty much any corporate office on the planet.
“I presume one of you can tell me what the fuck happened back there.”
Sked and the Asian guy—she thought his name was Harold, but he hadn’t spoken in her presence as far as she could recall—exchanged a glance and then Harold said: “Blood Orchid. These guys are bad news. Creeps of the highest order. Dangerous, too.”
“Criminal bad news or state sponsored?”
“Oh, most definitely criminal. Not even the North Koreans would touch these assholes.”
“Do tell.”
Harold nodded. “They’re the guys your mother warned you about. They supply the stuff that most criminal organizations don’t want to get involved in. The lab-built drugs that give you a high unlike anything else, but that kill you quicker than anything else, too. Sex slaves for the high-end trade, girls and boys willing to do anything, and to do it with anyone, with a smile. I heard a rumor they’d set up a studio somewhere that would, for a budget of a million dollars per body, film all the snuff you could ever dream up.”
Cora swallowed and looked around. “Is this…”
Sked shook his head. “I don’t think so,” he replied. “This is a medical center, so…” he glanced over at the three well-lit operating tables in the center of the room, “Organ harvesting?”
Harold shook his head. “I don’t think so. The fat, sweaty guy said this was a reprogramming center, didn’t he? So I’d say this is where they make the dolls.”
“Dolls?” Cora said.
“Human sex toys,” Sked responded with a smile. “This is where they break the personality. They mostly do it with drugs, but I know they also do surgery, prefrontal cortex stuff. That’s why you have tables and doctors.”
She recoiled at the idea. “So, what you’re saying is…”
Harold cut her off: “Screaming, scared kidnap victims come in and purring, happy sex toys go out. Mostly women, of course, but enough pretty boys to keep everyone happy.”
“Motherfucker.” Anger radiated from her gut. She wanted to go back and kill the three bastards that Akane had le
ft standing, and the IT guy for good measure. Then something hit her. “Wait. Akane said she knew that guy. Was she one of the…?”
Sked nodded. “She never talks about it, but she definitely went in and came out, and they worked her over.” He smiled. “As you can see, it didn’t take, but she spent at least a little time in a house in Thailand.”
Cora leaned back in her chair. She didn’t want to think about what someone who ended up in a brothel after coming through a place like this might go through, so she changed the subject. “You guys both seem to know a hell of a lot about this kind of thing.”
Sked shrugged. “I’m a freelance hacker with a background in field work for a couple of different governments. I work on the edges of the law. I need to know about the kind of stuff I might get dragged into if I’m not careful.”
Harold snorted.
“And sometimes a little bit past the edges,” Sked admitted. “The further you cross the line, the better the pay. But I don’t take the really wet and sticky jobs. Akane takes those, usually against my advice and against her own best interests. But there’s some stuff no one will touch unless they’re really desperate. This is one of them.”
Cora nodded and turned to Harold. “And you? Another hacker? You sound like you’re from the States.”
“Yeah. Philly.” He sighed. “I guess you’d probably call me a member of an organized crime family, except we’re not Italian. You ever heard of the Triads?”
“Of course.”
“I work for them.”
“In Philly?”
“Yeah.”
“A little out of your jurisdiction, aren’t you? Did you come here on vacation?”
“Not much vacation in my line of work. We came to put a hit on Akane.” The shock she felt must have showed because he held up both hands. “Look, I know you chicks stand together and she was in the whorehouse and all of that so you’ll defend her. But don’t let the past fool you. Akane is bad news. She’s on so many shit lists that I might probably have gotten medals from the governments of the US, Russia and China if we’d taken her out. Not a lot of people can unify the world that way.”
Lost Island Rampage Page 13