It had been twenty-five years since he last felt as panicked as he did at that instant, and as he stared down into the abyss, memories of that night so long ago filled his thoughts.
It was the second of July. He was in his final year of internal medicine residency and had made the decision to switch to emergency medicine the following year. First, though, he had to rotate as chief resident in a large V.A. hospital. The day, his first as chief, had gone easily. He loved the vets and the challenges of caring for them, and was gaining confidence by the hour in what he knew.
Then night came.
The hospital, with hundreds of patients, many of them quite ill, quieted down. Much of the support staff went home. And soon, responsibility for medical care fell to a pair of interns, a junior resident, and him. Always in the past, when he looked over his shoulder in a tense situation, someone senior to him was there with a calming word and useful advice. That night, there was no one. Weighed down, it seemed, by various beepers, he stood in the doorway of the ICU, staring at the monitors and watching the intern in her first harried day as a doc, going about her mountain of work.
It was then that legitimate, gut-wrenching, throat-tightening panic took hold.
His stomach knotted. A wave of nausea swept over him, and he knew he was going to get sick. Just one day earlier, he had been a junior resident. Now, whatever happened in the hours ahead to hundreds of patients putting their trust in their caregivers, he was the ultimate authority. There was no one looking over his shoulder. No one with reassurance that he was doing the right thing—making the right decision. His panic lasted for more than an hour, and he twice got physically ill. But when the first code blue was called, the fear ended abruptly, and his life as a doc moved up a notch.
Now, as then, he was paralyzed.
“Hey, pal, what gives?”
Vaill’s voice, ironically, from over his shoulder, brought him back to their reality.
Lou turned slowly, wondering if, as in the V.A., he was going to get sick. “I’m okay.”
“That isn’t the look of someone who’s okay,” Vaill said, pulling his flashlight from Lou’s face and directing it through the trapdoor, where a flight of corrugated metal stairs disappeared into darkness. “I’m surprised this didn’t all hit you awhile ago.” He set his hand on Lou’s shoulder. “You’re doing amazing, doc. Better than I could have ever expected. Look, we have no idea what’s waiting down those stairs. I’d be worried if you weren’t scared. You didn’t bargain for any of this, but you never backed away. And you could have. There have been plenty of chances. Hell, this is a chance right now. I promise I wouldn’t think any less of you if you decided to just head into town and take your chances with the locals there.”
“Don’t worry, I’m in,” Lou said. “Thanks for the props.”
He turned, about to go down the stairs, but Vaill brought him back by the elbow. The agent’s eyes were flint.
“If you’re in, you’re in all the way,” he said. “Somebody could be down there right now waiting to ambush us. If they are, I don’t want any hesitations. None.”
Lou unholstered his Glock and straightened his Kevlar vest. God, but he wished he could hold Emily one more time.
“I’m ready,” he said.
“Just keep doing the next right thing, doc. You do that and don’t hesitate, and we’ll be all right.”
The stairs, maybe ten of them, led down to a surprisingly wide, dank, coal-black tunnel, hewn into the rock, and permeated with the distinct odor of the ocean. The rugged ceiling was low enough to make for an uncomfortable, stoop-shouldered passage. Footprints in the dirt-covered floor, like the tire tracks outside, suggested the setup was still in use.
“We’ve got to be passing under the moat,” Lou said.
Vaill panned his flashlight over the ceiling, where a row of inlaid light fixtures ran the length of the tunnel. High-tech. At the far end of the passage was a metal door. Where the other one was latched, this one, rusted in places from persistent exposure to salt air, had a knob.
“I’m surprised nobody’s come for us already,” Vaill whispered. “Either they didn’t hear that explosion, or with two guards dead, there aren’t that many more left in there, and they’re gonna wait for us to come to them. That’s what I’d do.”
Lou was first to reach the door.
“I got this,” he whispered back.
Vaill took up position to the right, with his back against the wall, gun drawn.
“If it opens, it’s gonna swing toward us,” he said. “Use it for cover. If it’s locked, we may have to unleash the Doberman again and fight it out right here. No hesitation, though, right?”
“No hesitation.”
Lou’s pulse was hammering as he turned the knob. The door pulled open easily and he slipped behind it, creating, for a moment, a makeshift shield. Vaill dropped to a crouch and sprang forward, his weapon leveled at the darkness ahead.
“We’re in,” Lou said with some excitement.
There was nobody waiting on the other side, no targets for him to shoot. Vaill had to be right. What remained of the fortress guards were waiting for them inside.
Lou’s nerves were crackling now. They banished the blackness with their lights. To his left, Lou could quite clearly discern waves churning.
“You hear that surf?”
Vaill nodded.
“How could we be close to the ocean here? The tunnel went straight and level. The ocean would be down and to the left.”
Again, Vaill panned his beam through darkness. He settled it on a rectangular corrugated metal platform, no more than ten feet away. On the other side of the platform was a set of five metal stairs that ascended to a narrow elevated area, lined by a metal pipe railing. Vaill crossed the platform and climbed up to the new space. Lou followed. Below them was a man-made shaft—a long passageway that extended down through the rock, almost certainly to the ocean below.
Lou used his light to indicate a series of partially corroded cables and pulleys, and all at once the layout made sense. From the satellite photos they knew there was a boathouse at the base of the imposing cliff. This platform was part of an elevator, and this shaft a way to move supplies in and out of the castle by sea. They huddled together at the railing, and focused on that section of the castle on their map.
“We’re behind this room right here,” Vaill whispered. “It could be some sort of storage area for things brought up by the elevator. There are two other spaces adjacent to where we are. From that larger room, a doorway leads to what’s labeled “Great Room,” with windows opening onto the cliff. Then there’s a corridor off of the Great Room that connects with the rest of the castle. I think this bottleneck is where they’ll be waiting.”
Lou agreed.
“Two ways inside,” he said. “One from the stone house, maybe for a truck making large deliveries to the storage areas, and the other from the boathouse down below.”
“So how do we get into the supply rooms?” Vaill asked. “No doors.”
Lou stood in the center of the space and listened. Then he put his hands against the cold concrete of the one wall.
“I hear machinery,” he whispered.
“A humming. I hear it, too. Coming from behind here.”
“So there’s almost certainly got to be a way inside. Otherwise this space makes no sense. Maybe from farther down the elevator shaft?”
Vaill withdrew another small black box from his pack, about the size of the detonator, and connected to a pair of cushioned headphones to it. Coming off the other side of the case was a small microphone.
“The future is now,” he said. “You can hear through five feet of concrete with this baby. I almost didn’t bring it.” He placed the small, disc-like receiver against the wall and then motioned for Lou to come take the earphones. “I hear voices,” Vaill said, “and I’m almost certain one of them is Dr. Kazimi. I think there’s only one other, another male, but it’s hard to make out what he’s saying. Here,
have a listen.”
Lou donned the headphones. The humming noise he heard was louder now, but did not drown out the voices. It took some time for Lou to attune his ears to the sounds behind the wall.
“What do you need now,” he heard an accented voice say.
“Bring over agar and pour into petri dishes five millimeters deep.”
There was no mistaking the dense, shorthand speech of the man giving orders.
Humphrey!
Vaill took the device and listened some more.
“It sounds like they’re alone, working,” he said, “but I can’t be sure.”
“We’ve got to find the way in.”
“It’s a risk.”
“You going chicken on me, Agent Vaill?”
Vaill was about to protest when the listening device slipped from his hand and slid underneath the railing, clattering nosily down the stairs to the elevator platform. The seconds that the echo persisted seemed like an hour.
Lou pulled his gun and tensed. If Kazimi and Humphrey were not alone, this could be it. A moment later, they heard a slight scraping sound. Before they could pinpoint the source, the wall began to move, pivoting precisely at its midpoint to reveal an opening several feet wide. They watched, guns raised, as the figure of a man emerged. Focused on Vaill’s repeated warning not to hesitate, Lou trained his weapon on the shadowy target, and tightened his finger on the trigger.
CHAPTER 52
If only allowed to flex its muscle, the bond of family would prove stronger than allegiance to any government.
—LANCASTER R. HILL, Climb the Mountain, SAWYER RIVER BOOKS, 1941, P. 33
“Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot!”
Committed to avoiding hesitation at all costs, Lou’s finger was tightening on the trigger when Vaill reached over and grabbed his wrist.
“Jesus, you almost killed him, Lou. Next time you decide you’re not going to hesitate, stop and check with me. Dr. Lou Welcome, Dr. Ahmed Kazimi.”
The men, would-be killer and would-be victim, shook hands.
“Please speak softly,” Kazimi said. “There is a surveillance camera in the room behind us. We will meet you by the elevator shaft where we cannot be heard or seen by them.”
The scientist vanished back into the castle, while Lou risked a quick peek into the space beyond the wall. Instead of the storage area he had expected, the room was a microbiology laboratory, with a stainless-steel autopsy table, a sink, and several large refrigeration units, along with a rack of hazmat suits and a portable chemical shower. Craning his neck sideways, Lou could see clear plastic cages lining the pivoting wall. White mice scurried about, disturbed by the sudden movement of their habitats.
Lou stepped back to make room for Kazimi in the space overlooking the elevator shaft. Humphrey, whose motorized wheelchair barely fit through the opening, followed. Kazimi applied pressure to a spot, and the wall glided shut, enclosing them. A nearly concealed switch turned on a trio of corroded sconces.
“You were the last person I expected to be knocking on the wall, Agent Vaill,” Kazimi said as the two men shook hands. “I saw what happened that night to Agent Rodriguez. I am terribly, terribly sorry.”
“I’m here to rescue you and to avenge her,” Vaill said without emotion.
“Well, I am glad you are alive to do so,” Kazimi replied. “Dr. Welcome, Mr. Miller has had many fine things to say about you.”
“I’m glad we’ve found you both. Humphrey, I confess I feared the worse for you. It’s very good to see you again.”
“Good to be found,” Humphrey said.
“I’m saddened about your aide. These are very bad people we are dealing with.”
“Especially that Burke.”
“No time for happy reunions,” Vaill said. “How long do we have before whoever is monitoring those cameras notices you’re gone?”
“No idea,” Kazimi said, “but I would think not long.”
“How many guards?”
“Again, I do not know. But Burke is here. I know that much.”
Lou expected Vaill to react to the news, but his face looked blank. It was the expression Lou had seen in the Arbor General parking lot and before that, in the interrogation room. Hopefully, if a headache was developing, it would either be minimal or short-lived. Lou feared otherwise.
“That’s important information,” he said. “Anything else you can tell us?”
“You should know that it is my fault that Mr. Miller is here. Burke forced me into giving up his name by showing me proof they were ready to harm or murder my friends and family.”
Vaill suddenly brightened, and seemed to connect with what was being said.
“Do you mean you told Burke about Humphrey? I thought there was an informant in the FBI.”
“Burke is the only informant I know of,” Kazimi said, “but he is enough—a violent, violent man.”
Lou and Vaill exchanged understanding looks. There was no additional mole in the FBI. Under great duress, Lou had disclosed Humphrey’s identity to Vaill and his partner, while Kazimi, imprisoned fifteen hundred miles away, had given up the same information to Alexander Burke.
“You did what you had to do, Dr. Kazimi,” Lou said. He glanced at Vaill. “We both did.”
“It appears summoning Mr. Miller may well be the key to solving this crisis. Mr. Miller and I connected online many years ago. I had never met him in person, so I was unaware of his disability while he was part of my team. But I did appreciate his brilliance. My decision to ignore his good council was predicated on my arrogance alone and nothing more.”
“You’ve made up for that now,” Humphrey said.
“Thank you for saying that. I believed in my approach to eradicating this germ. I was wrong. Thankfully, I have since seen the light, as it were. I now believe Mr. Miller’s theory about a combination of bacteriophage may well be the correct one. If his well-thought-out approach is proven in our trials, it will destroy the Janus germ, as it is referred to here, without harming the host.”
Instead of looking terrorized or weakened by his ordeal, Humphrey seemed aglow with pride.
“Very sad about Cassie,” he said, “but getting recognition I deserve means a lot.”
“What did he say?” Vaill asked, clearly impatient.
“He said he’s glad things are working out.”
“Tell him that if his theory works, he’ll be a national hero.”
“Tim, he can hear and understand you,” Lou said, suppressing most of a grin. “It’s just his speech that’s off.”
“Very confident will work,” Humphrey said. “Don’t need lab at Arbor, Lou. We’re about to get cure!”
His eyes were sparkling.
“He says—”
“I got it. I got it,” Vaill said, cutting Lou off. “Now, we need to get going. Let me ask you both one last time: Do you know of anyone else here besides Burke?”
“And that man, Ron, handling the radio from the security office,” Lou reminded him.
“I know of two other guards besides Burke,” Kazimi said. “One is a big, blond man named Collins and the other is an even bigger fellow named Drake. They seem very dangerous.”
Again, Vaill and Lou exchanged looks.
Not anymore …
“Anybody else?”
“Doug Bacon is here. Another bad man. I think he runs the entire organization. He limps and walks with a cane, and I think he has a drinking problem. But he is very smart and not to be underestimated.”
“Okay, last chance. Anyone else?”
“There’s a butler—an older man named Harris. Nobody else I know of. We have been told the microbiologist who first identified the Janus strain has arrived at the castle with tissue cultures growing the three strains of bacteriophage Mr. Miller believes will be the key, but we haven’t been introduced yet. That’s all.”
Vaill’s eyes were smoldering.
“Where is Burke?” he asked.
Good, Lou thought. False alarm. He’s bac
k.
“I don’t know where he is right now,” Kazimi said again. “He comes back here a lot.”
Vaill removed the Red Cliff plans from his backpack and laid them out on the cement floor.
“Show me the way to Bacon,” he said. “If Burke is here, he’ll be guarding the head of the dragon.”
Kazimi used his finger to trace the best route from the laboratory to Bacon’s videoconference study on the north side of the castle.
“The details of the map are small and blurry, but I believe this route will get you to Bacon’s study.”
“You two stay in the lab. We’ll be back to get you.”
Vaill retrieved the extra pistol he had brought—a Glock like the one he’d given Lou from his backpack—and tried to hand the weapon to Kazimi.
“Ever fire one of these?” Vaill asked.
Kazimi held up his hands in refusal.
“I study microbes and the Koran, Agent Vaill. You know that.”
“As you wish.”
“Keep low and to the wall as you go through the mouse room and the main lab. There are two cameras in the Great Room, but I don’t know how you might avoid them.”
Vaill nodded, replaced the gun, and Lou retrieved the listening device that had fallen onto the elevator platform. Kazimi reopened the secret door. Moving forward on their knees, careful to hug the wall, Vaill and Lou followed Kazimi into the adjacent, main lab—an impressive facility that spoke volumes of the resourcefulness and resources of the Neighbors.
Leaving the two scientists behind, Vaill and Lou crossed into the opulent Great Room. Each pointed to the mounted security cameras, and together, they elected to stand up. The message was clear: the time for stealth is over. Come and get us!
Vaill took the lead. Lou’s stomach felt knotted and raw but the Glock in his hand was actually somewhat reassuring. With Kazimi and Humphrey back in the lab, anyone else they encountered would be the enemy.
This time, there would be no hesitation.
Lou was mindful of his breathing—slow in, slow out—as he fought to quell his rumbling anxiety. He and Vaill entered the Great Room side by side. Lou paused momentarily to observe the spectacular bank of floor-to-ceiling windows lining the east-facing wall. Like the trappings of the Great Room, without a doubt the daytime view through those windows was spectacular.
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